March 1 NEW MEXICO: State To Seek Death in Slaying of Young Single Mom The Santa Fe District Attorney's Office announced Monday that it will seek the death penalty against a 59-year-old woman accused of killing a 19-year-old single mother last year. Karen Smallwood whose last known residence was in Tucson, Ariz., is charged with first-degree murder and other crimes in connection with the Oct. 13, 2004, shooting death of Ursula Duran, 19. Deputy District Attorney David Foster announced the state's intent to seek the death penalty against Smallwood during a court hearing Monday. Foster said Duran's homicide was the killing of a witness to a crime, an element needed to impose the death penalty. Duran's mother and boyfriend discovered Duran's body at her aunt's Calle Cacique home in southeast Santa Fe, where she had been housesitting. She had been shot multiple times. Smallwood was arrested in Florida in November 2004, after police tracked the use of Duran's ATM card after her death. After Smallwood's arrest in Florida, a search of her vehicle there turned up a Sig Sauer P226 9 mm pistol and 4 boxes of ammunition, court records state. The pistol had blood on it, and shots that were later fired from the pistol at the state Department of Public Safety Crime Lab matched projectiles found at the scene of Duran's homicide. Duran's mother, Elaine Duran, was at the court hearing Monday and spoke to the media for the 1st time about her daughter's death. Elaine Duran said that she and her daughter's ex-boyfriend, Thomas Lujan, are both helping look after Duran's baby boy, Isaiah, who was just 2 at the time of his mother's death. She also spoke of the pain of having to tell young Isaiah why his mother isn't there to take care of him any more. Elaine said that her daughter will be remembered for her smile. She agreed that her daughter's murder was senseless. "I just feel that the way my daughter was killed was worse than you would have expected of an animal," Elaine Duran said. "You'd have more compassion for an animal." Foster, who stood by Elaine Duran while she spoke with reporters, said that the DA's office consulted with Elaine Duran and other family members before deciding to seek the death penalty. Elaine Duran said, "What was taken away from us was someone who was very valued in this life." It hasn't gotten any easier since Ursula's death, Elaine said. "There's a void in your life that never gets filled," she said. Foster's announcement Monday came on the same day that the state House of Representatives passed legislation that would ban the death penalty in New Mexico. For such a bill to become law, it must also be passed by the Senate and signed by Governor Bill Richardson. (source: Albuquerque Journal) ****************** House repeals death penalty New Mexicos two death-row inmates, Robert Fry of Farmington and Timothy Allen of Bloomfield, could still be executed even if a bill to repeal the death penalty became law, Rep. Gail Beam, D-Albuquerque, said Monday during a floor debate at the Roundhouse. House Bill 576 passed a short time later on a 38-31 vote. It would take affect July 1 - if passed by the Senate and signed by Gov. Bill Richardson - and would not be retroactive, said Beam, the bills sponsor. Only defendants convicted from that date forward of a capital felony would be given a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole instead of the death sentence, she said, adding the governor always has the power to commute any sentence. Rep. Ray Begaye, D-Shiprock, voted in favor of abolishing the death penalty only after it was made clear to him during the floor debate that Fry would remain on death row. Begaye, a cousin of one of Frys victims, also complained the appeal process in Frys case was taking too long. "In the case of Robert Fry, he committed the crime, he confessed to the crime. Theres been too many appeals," Begaye said, maintaining death row was valuable because, "There are individuals who are deranged who just want to end it. Beam replied that the state was not in the business of assisted suicide. Begaye then changed his perspective on the death penalty, saying the Navajo Nation opposed it. "We don't believe in the death penalty. Some of our elders say, putting a person to death is not of their ways but the way of God," said Begaye, a Navajo tribal member. Rep. Richard Cheney, R-Farmington, voted against the bill. During the floor debate he rapidly jumped from one Bible verse to another, quoting scripture to explain why he believed the death penalty was a necessity. Cheney also called it a myth that a disproportionate number of minorities nationwide were on death row. There were 72 executions nationwide in 2002, he said. Of those, 53 were whites and 18 were blacks. The delegates struggled with the decision during the floor debate. "We have a deeper problem - the violent nature of society where the death penalty does nothing," Rep. Antonio Lujan, D-Las Cruces said. He voted in favor of repealing the death penalty. Rep. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, voted against abolishing the death penalty. "The death penalty must remain an evil weapon of the state - a necessary weapon," he said, comparing its deterrent value to that of the United States having nuclear weapons. The death penalty was a deterrent to inmates from murdering correction officers, pastors and anyone else who they had contact with, he said, adding, "I hope the death penalty will never be used." Rep. Daniel Foley, R-Roswell, also voted against the bill. "I think our state is being very cautious," he said, in reply to Beam's statement that 118 death-row inmates nationwide were later found to be innocent. Foley pointed out there were only two people on death row in the state and that there had only been one execution in New Mexico since 1976. "We don't live in a perfect society," Rep. Donald Bratton, R-Hobbs, said. "We have to enact these laws knowing from time-to-time mistakes will be made." He voted against repealing the death penalty. 4 innocent people were exonerated on death row in New Mexico. Thomas Gladish, Richard Greer, Ronald Keine, and Clarence Smith all were released in 1976 after serving 2 years, according to the documentary film "Deadlines." Rep. Nick Salazar, D-San Juan Pueblo, voted in favor of abolishing the death penalty, saying, "There's no greater punishment (than) to be sentenced to life - especially if you're a young man." Rep. Ken Martinez, D-Grants, also voted in favor of abolishing it. "It's a very dangerous thing to do to allow government to have more power than individual liberties," he said. "Giving the government the right to retaliate ... is frightening. The death penalty is not a right that should exist in government because that right does not exist in a person." There are 3,455 inmates on death row nationwide. New Mexico, New York and Wyoming each have 2 inmates on death row [ the lowest of the 50 states. New Yorks death penalty was declared unconstitutional in 2004 by the New York Supreme Court. The top 3 states with the highest number of death row inmates are: California with 639 death row inmates; Texas with 447 and Florida with 332. The bill now moves to the Senate for consideration. The bill is HB576, and can be found on the Internet at legis.state.nm.us. (source: Carlsbad Current-Argus) NEW YORK: Ex-Prisoners Speak About Death Penalty Imagine spending more than 10 years in prison. Now consider being sentenced to death for a crime you did not commit. This situation was reality for Sonia "Sunny" Jacobs and Peter Pringle, who were brought by the Cornell Death Penalty Project to speak in the Moot Court room at the Cornell Law School yesterday afternoon. Both Jacobs and Pringle were exonerated after spending more than 10 years in prison. Jacobs was released from death row in the United States while Pringle was freed after being in prison in Ireland for almost 15 years of a 40-year sentence without parole for the death of a police officer. Jacobs' story is also told in the play The Exonerated written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen. Pringle spoke first about his experiences of being convicted and deciding not to give up. "I knew that if I killed myself they would say that I did it out of guilt and remorse," he said. He recalled being very angry at first, and then trying to meditate and do yoga. "I got a yoga book and was doing postures and positions in my cell," he said. Though lacking in formal education, he then began studying law in the prison to understand his case. A friend helped him by sending him the necessary papers such as the Irish constitution. After 12 years, he took his case to the high court in Ireland. Among his many arguments was the discovery of the notebook of the police officer who had interrogated him. The officer's written record of the interrogation, allegedly contained in the notebook, had in fact been written before the actual interrogation. Pringle recounted an unbelievable story from his case of another police officer who was called into the court as a witness. When asked to identify the perpetrator, the officer pointed to a man standing in the public gallery instead of the accused Pringle. However, this event was wiped from the official record by maneuvering from the prosecutor. When he was ultimately released from prison, he was unable to get compensation for which he is currently in the process of suing. "I've been very fortunate to be able to let it go and commit to a spirit of forgiveness," he said. Sonia "Sunny" Jacobs was 27 years old when she and her husband Jesse Tafero were convicted. She recalled that at the time she had a 9-year-old son, a 10-month-old daughter, a husband and parents. When she left prison, she was 45 years old, an orphan because her parents had died in a plane crash, a widow because her husband had been executed and a grandmother now that her 9-year-old son had grown up and had a 3-month-old daughter. "Part of my life was taken away; I'm not waiting to be compensated for that because no one can compensate for that," Jacobs said. She was with her husband and children, getting a ride with Walter Rhodes, a friend of her husband, when they stopped at a Florida interstate rest stop. She remembered that there were police there, who noticed a gun on the floor of the car and questioned Rhodes. Jacobs then remembers hearing shots fired, and Rhodes asking her and her husband to get in the police car. The 3 of them were stopped at a roadblock and taken into custody. Rhodes requested a plea bargain and after subsequent trials, both Tafero and Jacobs were given death sentences while Rhodes was given a life sentence. At first in complete despair, Jacobs remained in solitary confinement and isolation for 5 years, until her appeal. "I was in a terrible dilemma in my beliefs about God," she said. Anger and frustration were what she had to deal with primarily. "Everything I had been taught to believe in was wrong. I believed in truth, justice and the American way and that God wouldn't let this happen to us," Jacobs said. She said that she had a choice and that she chose to believe in God, to have hope, and to use the time to become the best person she could be. "I wasn't living in denial, I just decided not to dwell on the situation; I was given the gift of time, to do spiritual work, an opportunity I never would've had on the outside," she said. She argued that she wanted to be a loving mother and that she could not do that if, when everything was finally resolved, she was devastated, miserable and mentally unbalanced. Like Pringle, she turned to meditation and yoga while imprisoned and also did push-ups and sit-ups. In 1990, her husband was executed. According to Jacobs, the natural sponge on the electric chair had been replaced with an artificial one, so instead of dying quickly, his head caught fire and he was burned alive on the third try. "I kept my faith that eventually it would be okay," Jacobs said. She helped other women prisoners by teaching them yoga and meditation, and by encouraging them to read. With help from people on the outside, she went to court again armed with information that had been previously hidden. She was offered a deal that if she would say that Jesse committed the crime, she would be released. She said no, and later that week she was offered a plea that would maintain her innocence but not allow her to sue. "I went to see my son, who had a wife and child of his own. His daughter said: 'Grandma, I know why you didn't come to see me, you were lost.' Yes, I was, but not anymore." She ended by saying, "I'm very glad that I chose peace and reconciliation." She offered the advice: "Don't ever be ruled by fear, because it will kill you." The speakers were met with a standing ovation from the audience in the Moot Court room. "I thought it was amazing. I don't know how anyone could listen to a story like that and not be against the death penalty," said Jacqueline Moessner law. According to Prof. Sheri Lynn Johnson, law, director of the Cornell Death Penalty Project, this lecture allowed people to put both faces and personalities to the names. "I think it's important for people to hear that there are real, innocent people convicted to death," she said. (source: Cornell Daily Sun) OHIO: Report Issued on Death Row Prison Break Unnoticed by guards in one of Ohio's most secure prisons, 2 death row inmates built a ladder from bedsheets and rolled-up magazines. They also managed to make a tool to break through metal fences and hoard candy bars and water. The planned prison break by convicted killers Richard Cooey and Maxwell White last month was thwarted at the last minute, when alarm bells sounded. But a report released Monday found it shouldn't have happened at all because a death row unit manager was tipped off ahead of time by an informant. The report, released at the request of The Associated Press, said a complacent staff and "gross deficiencies" in supervision of inmates were responsible for the Feb. 3 incident at Mansfield Correctional Institution. The report was issued by the state Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Cooey, 37, is on death row for raping and killing 2 college students in 1986. White, 39, was convicted of killing a state highway trooper in January 1996. On the day of their escape attempt, the men were carrying laundry bags with several items in them, the report said. Cooey and White should have been watched in the recreation area and their bags should have been searched, said Andrea Dean, a prisons spokeswoman. The inmates fashioned a 13-foot ladder from blankets and hid it ahead of time under a pile of snow, the prison system said. The ladder's rungs were made of rolled-up magazines and newspapers. When caught, both had water, candy bars, matches, extra clothing, an exercise mat and a homemade tool designed to break through fences, according to the report. The death row unit manager was tipped on Jan. 20 and Feb. 1 and told the prison's security chief both times, but the information was never passed on to the warden, the report said. Instead, Cooey was made a block porter on February 1, a job that gave him full access to areas inside his death row housing unit. "There was a notable lack of mid-management supervisory presence in the entire Death Row Unit," the report said. The mother of one of Cooey's victims was angered to learn the prison knew of a possible escape attempt before it happened. "The concept of him being anything near out and on the street again just revolts me," Mary Ann Hackenberg said Monday. Eleven people are being disciplined, including a warden, who will receive a letter of reprimand, Dean said. On the Web: Mansfield Correctional Institution: http://www.drc.state.oh.us/public/manci.htm **************************** Ohio federal judge halts execution A federal judge on Monday halted the March 8 execution of a man who claims an abnormality in his brain may have affected his behavior when he raped and killed a woman in 1987. U.S. District Judge S. Arthur Spiegel said the claim of the prisoner, William H. Smith, should be investigated. "The court is not willing to send a man to his death, without having turned over every possible stone," Spiegel wrote in his ruling. He said Smith might have received a lesser sentence under different circumstances. Defense lawyers urged the judge last week to spare Smith's life. A CT scan in December revealed an abnormality or damage in a part of Smith's brain that can affect behavior, defense lawyer Jennifer Kinsley said. Kinsley argued that the stay was necessary to allow time for a more precise magnetic resonance imaging scan. Smith may have suffered the brain damage when he received electric shock treatment at a hospital between the ages of 9 and 14, his lawyers said. Lawyers from Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro's office will ask Spiegel to lift the stay, said Petro spokeswoman Kim Norris. The judge stopped the execution before he could see the results of an MRI taken at a hospital Friday, Norris said. She declined to discuss what the MRI showed. Kinsley said she had received a 1-page summary from the hospital of the MRI test. She said, however, that she would not comment on the results until after she receives film from the test. Smith, 47, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection for the murder, rape and robbery of a Cincinnati woman. (source for both: Associated Press) USA: War on terror, death penalty racist: Ex-panther Davis Angela Davis, a radical civil rights activist who briefly appeared on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, denounced the war on terrorism and the death penalty as outgrowths of racism in a Monday lecture that capped Black History Month. Calling the death penalty "proof that slavery wasn't really abolished," Davis said, "All of us, regardless of race or ethnic background, live with this slavery, and are affected by it." She also said that Black History Month and the practice of celebrating "firsts" can be misleading. "I would gladly relinquish the celebration of the 1st black woman Secretary of State in exchange for a white male Secretary of State who might give us some guidance on how to get the United States out of the racist war on terror," she said, eliciting applause from the audience. Despite the heavy, wet snow that fell most of Monday, McCosh 50 was nearly filled for Davis's talk, titled "The Role of the Arts in Achieving Social Justice." Davis, a former member of the Black Panthers, spent 16 months in prison before being acquitted of charges of conspiracy and murder. She ran for vice president on the Communist party ticket in 1980. She now teaches at the University of California, Santa Cruz - despite former California Gov. Ronald Reagan's pledge that she would never work in the UC system. "Angela Davis is one of the most recognizable faces in terms of powerful women in the history of our country, so it's pretty amazing to get to hear her speak," said Marisol Rosa-Shapiro '07, who attended the talk. Davis made an impression of quiet dignity as she stood behind the lectern in a flowing black pantsuit. But her speech was punctuated by impassioned wakeup calls about the nature of contemporary racism and parallels between the current political climate and the African-American struggle against racism throughout history. "The law has been pretty much purged of its overt racism," she said, "[but] racism still resides in the structures of society. The economy is still structured by racist hierarchies; punishment is very much structured by racism. Race matters when it is a question of who goes to prison and who does not." Davis also talked about what she sees as an oppression of civil rights in the name of protecting the nation against terrorist threats. "It's not so much a war on terrorism as it is a quest for empire," she said. Toward the end of her talk, Davis emphasized the need to connect across oppressed groups. Invoking her own experience in prison and the international network that fought for her acquittal, she spoke about the need for solidarity. "What I want to talk about are those connecting circuits that invite us, black Americans and all others who join in the historical legacy of struggle, to join in the continuing fight," she said. Afterwards, Ernie Mitchell '06, who attended the lecture, said, "I think she helped us to see connections between structures that we might not ordinarily think of as related." "She definitely opened my eyes to connections among social, political and psychological phenomena that I had just never thought about before," Mitchell added. (source: Daily Princetonian) ************************* I need someone to explain something to me. If your grandmother or other relative was brutally murdered like Marie Lindgren, how could you not want the death penalty for the low-lifes who did it? I don't want the perpetrators to be able to watch cable, get educated, spend my hard-earned tax dollars and eventually come out into the world again. They took a human life and - in my eyes - they would do it again! I say give the death penalty without any appeals! Silvia Puglia-Velykis----Philadelphia (source: Letter to the Editor, Philadelphia Daily News)
