[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OKLA., NEB., N.MEX., CALIF.
Sept. 21 OKLAHOMA: Oklahoma should develop execution protocol for nitrogen gas, AG Scott Pruitt says Oklahoma officials would be wise to develop an execution protocol that uses nitrogen gas, Attorney General Scott Pruitt said Tuesday. Pruitt said states across the nation, including Oklahoma, have found it difficult to obtain drugs to administer lethal injections because manufacturers put restrictions on the use of the drugs. "It will be a continuing problem," he said. As a result, the state should develop a protocol for the use of nitrogen gas, Pruitt said. In 2015, lawmakers passed and Gov. Mary Fallin signed House Bill 1879 following the state's use of a new, 3-drug protocol in the execution of Clayton Lockett, who spent 43 minutes on the death chamber gurney between the time of the injections and his death. His execution has been called a "procedural disaster." Later it was learned that the state had used the wrong drug combination to execute Charles Warner in January 2015. 1 of the 3 drugs the state used was potassium acetate, not potassium chloride as called for in the existing protocol. The execution of Richard Glossip, scheduled for last September, was put on hold after officials discovered that the state had received the same incorrect drug for his lethal injection. The H.B. 1879 law says that if lethal injection is determined by courts to be unconstitutional or becomes unavailable, an execution shall be carried out by nitrogen hypoxia. Electrocution and firing squad are legal alternatives should nitrogen gas not be available or be held unconstitutional. The Oklahoma Department of Corrections was charged with writing a new protocol for lethal injection following the May release of a multicounty grand jury report. The grand jury said the protocol should be revised and needs to require verification at every step of the process. Pruitt previously said he will not request new execution dates until at least five months after the protocol is finalized. "We are evaluating the current protocol, looking at the grand jury report and determining what changes need to be made," said Terri Watkins, an Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokeswoman. There is no timeline, she said. Pruitt said he thinks "it would be wise for the state of Oklahoma to engage in a process on the nitrogen oxide (option)." "It is authorized by statute," he said, but "it will be challenged. There will be an Eighth Amendment challenge." The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. "We will litigate that," he said. "The policymakers have spoken. The policymakers have established that as a matter of law. It is an alternative." No state has ever used nitrogen gas in an execution, but some researchers have suggested a protocol that would use a clinical plastic face mask connected by tubing to a canister of nitrogen gas rather than a gas chamber. "I think it is wise for the DOC to consider both and to publish both," Pruitt said of execution protocols for lethal injection and nitrogen gas. Administering the death penalty is the "most sobering responsibility that the state of Oklahoma has," Pruitt said. (source: Tulsa World) NEBRASKA: Judge declares Nikko Jenkins competent for death penalty hearing Get ready for Round 4. A judge on Tuesday declared Nikko Jenkins competent to face a death penalty hearing in the August 2013 murders of Juan Uribe-Pena, Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz, Curtis Bradford and Andrea Kruger. Douglas County District Judge Peter Bataillon set Jenkins' death penalty hearing for Nov. 14. The judge scheduled the hearing for after the Nov. 8 election in which voters will decide whether to restore Nebraska's death penalty. State senators repealed the death penalty in 2015 - prompting a petition drive to try to reinstate it. If the death penalty is reinstated, 3 judges will meet to hear evidence on whether Jenkins should receive the death penalty. The judge's order, released Tuesday, comes just a week or so after State Sen. Ernie Chambers asked for a Department of Justice investigation into how Jenkins was able to obtain the means to slice various parts of his anatomy, including his neck and penis. Prosecutors allege that Jenkins' self-mutilation is just part of his attempts to manipulate the system. Some psychiatrists have disputed that Jenkins' is faking it; concluding instead that he suffers from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Despite the diagnoses and the disfigurements, Bataillon ruled, Jenkins is able to understand the proceedings and assist his defense attorneys in fighting the death penalty. Thrice previously, Bataillon has set a death-penalty hearing - only to have Jenkins behave erratically and be declared incompetent before it could take place. (source: Omaha World-Herald) NEW MEXICO: New Mexicans respond to governor's death penalty push As lawmakers plan to debate reinstating the death
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OKLA., NEB., N.MEX., CALIF., USA
Sept. 13 OKLAHOMA: Tulsa plea deal reflects challenges of death penalty The killings last year of five members of a Broken Arrow family would seem to constitute a case tailor made for the death penalty. The deceased - a mother and father, and 3 of their 7 children - were stabbed to death in their home. 2 of the couple's sons were quickly arrested, with one later telling a police detective they intended to kill their family, cut up the bodies and carry out further mass killings. That son, Robert Bever, "was laughing or chuckling on several occasions," during his interview, the detective testifed in February. "He appeared to be laid back and mildly excited to tell the story." In a Tulsa courtroom last week, Bever, 19, told a judge that he and his 17-year-old brother, Michael, acted together and were responsible for the killings, and that they intended to kill one of their sisters who survived (another, younger sister was unharmed). Yet Robert Bever won't face the death penalty. As part of a plea agreement, he will be sentenced instead to life in prison without the possibility of parole. His brother, who had a not-guilty plea entered on his behalf, isn't eligible for the death penalty because he was 16 at the time of the killings. Bever's attorney acknowledged "there was overwhelming evidence about what happened," and said his goal all along was to avoid the ultimate punishment. District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler was amenable to that. His reason was understandable: a desire to spare the 2 sisters further heartache and stress. "Those children deserve to move on with their lives as best they can without the continued torment of a trial and decades of appeals that a death penalty case would most likely bring," Kunzweiler said. Similar sentiments are shared by prosecutors around the country. The Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment, reports that the death penalty declined "by virtually every measure" last year - fewer people were executed than in any year since 1991, and the number of death sentences handed down by juries (49) was a 33 % decline from 2014. Some of this is fueled by growing concerns, among jurors and others, about the potential to send an innocent person to death row. These aren't all driven by progressives, who traditionally have opposed capital punishment. Groups such as Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty are among voices on the right that are calling for changes. That group's national coordinator, Marc Hayden, calls the death penalty "a broken government program that has the real potential of killing innocent Americans." (Hayden is scheduled to make presentations Tuesday evening in Guthrie and Thursday evening in Midwest City.) The costs associated with trying death penalty cases, including the lengthy appeals process, also have contributed to the reduction in these cases. In Randall County, Texas, prosecutor James Farren told an Amarillo TV station in December that his office had spent "conservatively ... at least $400,000" prosecuting the case of a woman who has been on death row since 1998. That's a lot to ask of taxpayers, Farren said, and "I do not want to subject them to this kind of thing any longer." Although the death penalty remains popular in Oklahoma, opinion is shifting. A SoonerPoll released in August said three-quarters of Oklahomans support the death penalty, but about half of those polled said they would be OK without it, provided those to whom it would otherwise be applied were given life without parole and made to forfeit their property and pay restitution to victims' families. The long and short of it is this: The country seems to rapidly be approaching a point where death sentences are the rare exception, rather than the rule - no matter how heinous the crime. (source: The Oklahoman Editorial Board) NEBRASKA: Beatrice 6 book author tours Nebraska, talks about death penalty's influence in the case The author of a book about the Beatrice 6 says the 30 year old Gage County murder case is still relevant today. "Failure of Justice" by John Ferak traces the investigation of the February 1985 rape and murder of Helen Wilson and the story of the 6 people wrongfully convicted of the crime. Ferak says the case relates to the current debate over the death penalty in Nebraska. "The death penalty was used as an instrument to get a lot of these individuals to plead guilty, and they kind of fall over like a stack of dominos," Ferak tells Nebraska Radio Network. He wonders if investigators had not used the punishment as a "scary carrot dangled over their heads," would things have turned out differently. "We don't know the answer to that, but it very well could have," Ferak says. The book goes into the backstories of the six suspects. Joseph White, Thomas Winslow, Ada Joann Taylor, James Dean, Debra Shelden, and Kathy Gonzalez were ages 23 to
