[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

2017-05-18 Thread Rick Halperin





May 18



UNITED KINGDOM:

Tory aide: 'I was hired as an execution consultant to teach US prison staff how 
to hang people'Tony Homewood, Conservative election agent for Wakefield 
candidate Antony Calvert, revealed he was an "execution consultant" and had 
been "instrumental" in the hanging of serial killer Westley Allan Dodd



A Tory candidate's senior aide has revealed he was hired by a US prison to 
teach staff how execute people by hanging.


Tony Homewood, who is Conservative election agent for Wakefield candidate 
Antony Calvert, was employed by the state of Washington as an "executions 
consultant in the 1990s."


Homewood told BBC Three Counties: "In the 90s, when the Americans hanged 
Westley Allan Dodd in Olympia, they didn't really know how to do it, so they 
looked around for someone who knew something about hanging. And I was a 
recognised historian on British judicial executions.


"And they engaged me as a consultant."

Tony Homewood said he slept "sucking my thumb like a baby" the night Dodd was 
executed


Host Jonathan Vernon-Smith was taken aback, saying: "You were a consultant 
executioner?"


Homewood said: "I was yes. For Scott Blonien, the [assistant] Attorney General 
at Walla Walla state prison."


Vernon-Smith asked: "So they wanted to know how they could effectively hang 
people and kill them?


Homewood replied: "How to do it without strangling them to death, basically. 
Yeah.


"Unfortunately - or, you might say fortunately depending on your viewpoint - 
the courts in America ruled it to be cruel and unusual punishment, and there 
were only 3 in the 90s and then there were no more."


Dodd was a serial killer and child molester, who has been called "one of the 
most evil killers in history."


He was convicted for tying 2 10 and 11 year old boys to a tree, raping them and 
then stabbing them to death. He abused and murdered a 3rd child in his home.


Dodd chose hanging as his preferred method of execution, adding that he chose 
the method because it was how his final victim died.


He also asked for the execution to be televised, but the request was denied.

He called into the radio station to take part in a debate on moors murderer Ian 
Brady, arguing the serial killer should have been put to death for his crimes.


He argued Brady had been able to "torture" the mother of victim Keith Bennett, 
whose body was never found, by claiming for decades he knew where he was 
buried, but refusing to reveal the location.


"Personally, I think that 10 quid for the executioner," he said, "or 15 guineas 
by '65, '64, to have hung him at Manchester would have saved the world a lot of 
trouble as far as I'm concerned."


Asked if he thought he could have conducted the execution himself, he said: 
"Yes, I could do it."


The host asked him how he knew he could perform an execution: "Have you 
performed one? Have you killed someone?"


"That's by the way," he replied. "That's not what we're talking about. We're 
here to talk about the death penalty and that's carrying out the sentence of 
the court."


He boasted he'd been told the 1st execution he consulted on was one of the 
quickest deaths ever


He added: "Let's put it this way, I orchestrated the execution of people in 
America and I didn't lose any sleep over it. Maybe I'm wrong. Taking someone's 
life...takes some doing, I'm sure it would have some effect.


"I'm very good at rationalising this sort of thing."

He said he had been "instrumental" in the death of prisoners, but had not been 
there when the execution took place.


He told authorities how tight to tie the rope and how far to drop the prisoner, 
among other things.


He said: "Well, Westley Dodd hanged three children. So hey ho, I'm not 
particularly worried about it. I'm very good at detaching myself from these 
things, you know what I mean?"


He added that when he went to bed that night he was "sucking my thumb like a 
baby. It didn't bother me at all."


He boasted he had been told by the assistant Attorney General that the 
execution had been one of the quickest he'd ever seen.


But he denied he was unemotional. "I've got Grandchildren,' he said. "And I 
love them to death."


He said he wouldn't want to do the job every day, and he wouldn't want to hang 
people "willy nilly."


He said he advised executioners on a 2nd prisoner, who they were concerned 
about hanging because he was overweight.


(source: mirror.co.uk)


*





Ian Brady escaped hanging - and defined attitudes to the death penaltyApart 
from their sheer horror, the Moors murders stayed in the public imagination 
because they marked the end of capital punishment



Ian Brady retained his dark grip on the British imagination right to the very 
end. The 1965 police photograph of the Moors murderer stared out from the front 
pages once more this week to mark his death at 79, just as they have done so 
often ever since Brady was convicted of 3 murders in May 1966. Few 

[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OKLA., ARIZ., CALIF., USA

2017-05-18 Thread Rick Halperin





May 18



OKLAHOMA:

Attorney Jacquelyn L. Ford Examines Death Penalty Issues in 
OklahomaOklahoma civil rights attorney Jacquelyn L. Ford discusses the 
state's pervasive capital punishment problems and innocent people being 
sentenced to death.



According to an April 26, 2017, article in The Intercept, the Oklahoma Death 
Penalty Review Commission recently recommended that a moratorium on carrying 
out capital punishment in the state be continued indefinitely. The Oklahoma 
Death Penalty Review Commission report also concluded that innocent people have 
"undeniably" been sentenced to death in Oklahoma.


"The obvious problem is the permanency of the death penalty. What if we got it 
wrong?" asked attorney Jacquelyn L. Ford, a native Oklahoman and founder of 
Jacquelyn Ford Law. "Our system is not a perfect one, and the convictions are 
only as accurate as the evidence and quality of defense presented. However, in 
a state facing a $900 million deficit, the real issue becomes the foolish use 
of our limited funds. The costs of the death penalty are shocking, especially 
when you take into account the money that is not spent on appropriately funding 
public defenders' offices."


In fact, Oklahoma public defenders have finite resources, and cannot operate on 
the same playing field as government lawyers. "Public defenders are routinely 
in violation of American Bar Association recommended number of cases per 
person," added Ford. The result is lack of effective investigation and defense, 
which results in lack of credible convictions.


The Intercept article also reports that the state of Oklahoma killed a man in 
January 2015 using an untested and improper drug, and that the same drug had 
been delivered for a 2nd execution scheduled for September 2015. This followed 
a botched execution in April 2014 in which an inmate struggled on a gurney 
before dying 43 minutes into his lethal injection.


"Oklahoma's problems with the death penalty have been well-documented and 
pervasive, with innocent men being murdered by their own government," concluded 
Ford. "After multiple cruel and unusual botched executions and a last-minute 
stay of execution from the Governor, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt 
launched a full-scale investigation into the issue and discovered that the 
Department of Corrections had been using potassium acetate instead of potassium 
chloride. In case your chemistry is rusty, potassium chloride is an approved 
chemical for lethal injection, while potassium acetate is not an approved 
chemical."


(source: benzinga.com)






ARIZONA:

Convicted Killer Faces Death Sentence A 3rd Time In Same Case


The Arizona Supreme Court has reinstated the death sentence for a convicted 
killer.


It is the 3rd death sentence Darrel Pandeli has faced for the same case.

The 1st time Pandeli faced the death sentence for killing and mutilating 
43-year-old Holly Iler, it was 1997 - 4 years after her murder.


In 2002, that case was overturned after a U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a 
different death penalty case that impacted several death sentences nationwide 
for procedural violations.


A lower court then returned his 2nd death penalty case in 2006 after adding 
aggravated circumstances to his case, including the 1991 murder of another 
woman and the "especially heinous and depraved" manner in which he killed Holly 
Iler.


But that death sentence was also thrown out by a Maricopa County Superior Court 
ruling on the grounds Pandeli's lawyers mishandled his case.


As of Monday, the state Supreme Court reinstated his death sentence claiming 
the lower court was incorrect on its procedural ruling.


(source: KJZZ news)






CALIFORNIA:

Inmate Dennis Bratton may face death penalty following conviction Wednesday in 
stomping death of his cellmate



Defense counsel for Dennis Bratton told jurors he fought for his life and acted 
in self-defense when he killed his cellmate 4 years ago.


The prosecution derided that argument, saying Bratton's "ridiculous" claim of 
self-defense didn't explain why he continued to stomp on his cellmate's head 
after the man was unconscious lying on the concrete floor of their cell. He 
wore prison work boots during the killing.


A jury of 10 women and 2 men deliberated for 2 days before finding Bratton 
guilty Wednesday afternoon of assault by a life prisoner with force causing 
death. Bratton, 47, showed no reaction as the verdict was read.


The assault charge is similar to a murder charge, but specific to Bratton's 
circumstances since he was already serving a life sentence when the killing 
occurred.


Jurors will return to court May 30 to begin the penalty phase of the trial. 
They can either recommend death or life in prison without the possibility of 
parole.


Bratton killed 27-year-old Andrew Keel the morning of May 16, 2013, in the cell 
they shared at Delano's Kern Valley State Prison.


Prosecutor Andi Bridges said Bratton repeatedly stomped on 

[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., FLA., ALA., LA., KY.

2017-05-18 Thread Rick Halperin






May 18



TEXAS:

Court lifts reprieve for Nicaraguan man on Texas death row


The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday lifted a reprieve it gave a 
Nicaraguan man a day before he was to be executed 2 years ago for killing a 
Houston high school teacher during a 1997 robbery.


The state's highest criminal appeals court had halted the scheduled August 2015 
lethal injection of Bernardo Tercero after his attorneys contended Harris 
County prosecutors unknowingly presented false testimony from a witness at his 
trial in 2000 for the death of 38-year-old Robert Berger. Wednesday's ruling 
affirms the findings of Tercero's trial court that last year held a hearing on 
the claim and determined the testimony was proper.


Berger was a customer in a Houston dry cleaners shop in March 1997 and was with 
his 3-year-old daughter when records show Tercero came in to rob the store. 
Berger was fatally shot and the store was robbed of about $400. Prosecutors 
said Tercero was in the U.S. illegally at the time.


Tercero, now 40, argued the shooting was accidental. He testified Berger 
confronted him and tried to thwart the robbery, and the gun went off as they 
struggled. He was arrested in Hidalgo County near the Texas-Mexico border more 
than 2 years after the slaying. A second man sought in the case never has been 
found.


Tercero's case has attracted attention in his home country, where a clemency 
plea from Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in 2015 was forwarded to Texas 
Gov. Greg Abbott.


(source: Associated Press)

**

Appeals court hears arguments in Williamson County death penalty case


A defense lawyer for a man given the death penalty for a Williamson County 
killing argued before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday that the 
evidence used to convict Steven Alan Thomas did not prove he committed the 
crime.


A Williamson County jury convicted Thomas of capital murder in October 2014 and 
sentenced him to death for the sexual assault and strangulation of 73-year-old 
Mildred McKinney in 1980.


Defense lawyer Ariel Payan said Wednesday that Thomas' fingerprint, which was 
found on the back of a clock in McKinney???s bedroom, could have been there 
because Thomas worked for a pesticide company that had been to her house.


Payan also said Thomas' sperm was found on a piece of medical tape wrapped 
around one of McKinney's thumbs but that did not prove he sexually assaulted 
her. McKinney also had DNA inside of her from 3 other unknown men, he said.


The same arguments about how the evidence could not prove Thomas' guilt were 
made by his lawyers during his trial.


Payan also said Wednesday the testimony of a jailhouse snitch during Thomas' 
trial could not be confirmed and should have been inadmissible. The inmate, 
Steven Shockey, told a jury that Thomas told him about being high on cocaine, 
breaking into a house, having to restrain a woman before she got out of bed and 
taking money and jewelry.


Williamson County Assistant District Attorney John Prezas, who was representing 
the state on the appeal, said the physical evidence alone was enough to convict 
Thomas without Shockey's testimony. The clock that had Thomas' fingerprint on 
it was found in the middle of McKinney's bed near some of the cord used to tie 
her up, Prezas said.


He also said Thomas' sperm was found not on medical tape but on a ribbon tied 
around McKinney's thumb that was used to restrain her hands. Prezas also 
questioned whether Thomas had been to McKinney's house when he worked for his 
brother's pesticide company. Thomas' brother testified during the trial that 
McKinney was one of their clients but he didn't have records that showed Thomas 
made a service call to her house, Prezas said.


By state law, every death penalty case is automatically sent to the Court of 
Criminal Appeals.


"The litigants can request oral argument or not," Payan said after the hearing. 
"I almost always do, and it is usually granted but not always."


It was unclear Wednesday when the judges would make a decision.

(source: Austin American-Statesman)






PENNSYLVANIA:

The slowly-shifting status of capital punishment in PA


Anti-establishment lawyer Larry Krasner's win in the Philadelphia District 
Attorney Democratic primary Tuesday put him on track for a probable victory in 
November.


Krasner has made a name for himself as a longtime defense lawyer in civil 
rights cases, but he is perhaps best-known for his ardent opposition to the 
death penalty. His election dredged up a recurring discussion Pennsylvania has 
been grappling with for decades: what does the future of capital punishment in 
the commonwealth look like?


Pennsylvania is 1 of only 2 states in the northeast that still allows the death 
penalty. It has the 5th most inmates on death row in the nation, but in the 
last 40 years, has only executed 3 people.


Why the disparity?

Marc Bookman, with the Atlantic Center for Capital