By JAMES ELLIS - Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Burl Cain, 67, is warden of the tough Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola. Some 90 per cent of inmates die while incarcerated, thanks to the length of their sentences. Since Cain became warden in 1995, violence among inmates is down 73 per cent.
Tell us about Angola.
If you come in the front gate, go to the left and drive all the way down to the Mississippi River, over the hills and back to the front gate, you would drive 22miles (35km). This prison is as big as Manhattan. I have 5,260 inmates and the only sentences we have are rape, murder, armed robbery and habitual ‘three strikes and you’re out’ felons. Some 3,700 of them are serving life, the average sentence for the others is 93 years. This is hardcore but since I’ve been here, violence has fallen by 73 per cent. It’s not down to me, though, it’s down to God and the Bible College we set up.
How tough was taking over?
I lived 30 miles away and I would drive past at speed as there was constant unrest, bloodshed and violence. I prayed to the good Lord to help me change it. I did not want this job: anyone who took it got fired after five years. I told them they had to pay me an enormous amount of money and they did. Then I said I would take it temporarily and they said fine. After I was here a while, I had an execution to do and I did it wrong. I did not have much concern for the man. After, I looked at him dead on the table and I said: ‘What have you done to this guy?’ It caused me a lot of grief. I talked to the preacher the next morning and I realised I could do it better, that I could still have compassion and, if it has to happen, it should be done with more dignity than I allowed that man. Then I thought about the victim of the crime he committed. If one who was released went out and committed a crime again, I would have failed and that drove me on. ‘Correction’ is to correct deviant behaviour, so if I could teach inmates to read and write and have a trade and a moral component, then someone could get out of jail and make a living.
Some 90 per cent of your inmates die in prison. Once ‘corrected’, why not let them back into society?
We probably should. Prison should be a place for predators, not dying old men. But you also still have to remember the victim, they drive the wagon. If they are afraid and believe someone is going to kill again, then that is not right. But that also means we should do a better job of inmate-victim reconciliation, which is what I’m trying to work on now.
How many executions have you presided over and does it get easier?
Six and no. Here’s the deal. It’s the law of the land and I just keep the key. If I did not do it, someone else would. You run a quagmire of confusion if you try to deal with it. You have to deal with the victims, they are here at the time of the execution and they want him dead. His family is here too and they love him and want a stay of execution. You go from one side talking to the victim’s family to talking to the inmate’s. It’s an emotional roller coaster and for your own sanity you have to remember it is the law that drives it and you follow the law.
You have been accused of sanctioning one religion over others?
I am looking for morality and you tend to find that in religion, so it doesn’t matter what religion you are so long as you are a moral person. What I want you to do is be good and not hurt someone if you do get out of jail again. I am a Christian but what someone else believes in is their business.
Your favourite prison movie – Cool Hand Luke or The Shawshank Redemption?
The warden in Cool Hand Luke reminds me of me. At one point he says: ‘We have a failure to communicate,’ and that often happens in prison. I can relate to that. We want to be good but don’t forget we are doing time as well. We spoke to Burl Cain while he was in Britain as a guest speaker of Winning Entrepreneurs. www.winentrepreneurs.com
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
‘Strange Fruit’ describes horrors of lynchings
By Dolores Cox
Harlem, N.Y.
Published Jul 3, 2009 10:12 PM
June is Black Music Month, proclaimed so by former President Jimmy Carter. In honor of Black Music Month, there was a film series showing in New York at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture based in Harlem.
One of the films, “Strange Fruit,” is the first documentary exploring the history and legacy of the famous Black singer, Billie Holiday, who popularized the song “Strange Fruit.” The song tells a dramatic story of the U.S.’s grim past. “Strange Fruit” is a protest song highlighting the thousands of rampant racist lynchings of African Americans in the South. It was originally performed by Holiday in the first integrated New York City nightclub, Cafe Society, in 1939.
The profound lyrics are: “Southern trees bear a strange fruit. Blood on the leaves and blood at the roots. Black bodies swinging in the summer breeze. Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant South. The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth. Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh; and the sudden smell of burning flesh. Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck. For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck. For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop. Here is the strange and bitter crop.”
“Strange Fruit” was banned from radio airways as being too radical, and turned down by record companies because they did not want to offend white Southern customers. During the many decades of terrorism against Black people by white extremists the lynchings were brought to the public’s attention by the NAACP, Black newspaper editor and activist Ida B. Wells, the Communist Party USA, union leader A. Philip Randolph and other civil rights activists. A federal anti-lynching bill was also introduced in the U.S. Congress. However, it was successfully filibustered and permanently defeated by white Southern members of Congress.
The song was published in the 1930s in “N.Y. Teacher,” a union magazine. The music and lyrics were written by a Jewish poet named Abel Meeropol. He was inspired to write it after seeing a photo of several Black men hanging from a tree with a cheering white crowd below them. He wrote it under the name of Lewis Allan.
Meeropol was a New York high school teacher, an active union member and Communist Party member. He was among the numerous people interrogated by the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities during the McCarthy-era witch hunts.
The 2002 documentary contains file footage of the thousands of Communist Party members, unions and other activist groups who took to the streets of New York marching against racism and for workers’ rights during the 1900s. It also shows file footage of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, which revived the song. And it contains interviews of past and present human rights activists.
The songwriter died in 1968, and “Strange Fruit” was played at his funeral.
Robert and Michael Rosenberg were the adopted children of Abel Meeropol and Ann Meeropol. Their parents were Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg, Jewish-American communists found guilty of providing secret atomic bomb information to the Soviet Union. They were executed in New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility in 1953. They were the only two U.S. citizens executed for espionage during the Cold War; the case against them was built on an anti-Semitic Red Scare campaign. Despite worldwide protests against this legal lynching, President Dwight Eisenhower refused to stay their execution.
The Black historian, writer and activist Elombe Brath, in a 1995 N.Y. Amsterdam News newspaper article, described “Strange Fruit” as “Capitalism’s bitter crop.” ν
Harlem, N.Y.
Published Jul 3, 2009 10:12 PM
June is Black Music Month, proclaimed so by former President Jimmy Carter. In honor of Black Music Month, there was a film series showing in New York at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture based in Harlem.
One of the films, “Strange Fruit,” is the first documentary exploring the history and legacy of the famous Black singer, Billie Holiday, who popularized the song “Strange Fruit.” The song tells a dramatic story of the U.S.’s grim past. “Strange Fruit” is a protest song highlighting the thousands of rampant racist lynchings of African Americans in the South. It was originally performed by Holiday in the first integrated New York City nightclub, Cafe Society, in 1939.
The profound lyrics are: “Southern trees bear a strange fruit. Blood on the leaves and blood at the roots. Black bodies swinging in the summer breeze. Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant South. The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth. Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh; and the sudden smell of burning flesh. Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck. For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck. For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop. Here is the strange and bitter crop.”
“Strange Fruit” was banned from radio airways as being too radical, and turned down by record companies because they did not want to offend white Southern customers. During the many decades of terrorism against Black people by white extremists the lynchings were brought to the public’s attention by the NAACP, Black newspaper editor and activist Ida B. Wells, the Communist Party USA, union leader A. Philip Randolph and other civil rights activists. A federal anti-lynching bill was also introduced in the U.S. Congress. However, it was successfully filibustered and permanently defeated by white Southern members of Congress.
The song was published in the 1930s in “N.Y. Teacher,” a union magazine. The music and lyrics were written by a Jewish poet named Abel Meeropol. He was inspired to write it after seeing a photo of several Black men hanging from a tree with a cheering white crowd below them. He wrote it under the name of Lewis Allan.
Meeropol was a New York high school teacher, an active union member and Communist Party member. He was among the numerous people interrogated by the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities during the McCarthy-era witch hunts.
The 2002 documentary contains file footage of the thousands of Communist Party members, unions and other activist groups who took to the streets of New York marching against racism and for workers’ rights during the 1900s. It also shows file footage of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, which revived the song. And it contains interviews of past and present human rights activists.
The songwriter died in 1968, and “Strange Fruit” was played at his funeral.
Robert and Michael Rosenberg were the adopted children of Abel Meeropol and Ann Meeropol. Their parents were Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg, Jewish-American communists found guilty of providing secret atomic bomb information to the Soviet Union. They were executed in New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility in 1953. They were the only two U.S. citizens executed for espionage during the Cold War; the case against them was built on an anti-Semitic Red Scare campaign. Despite worldwide protests against this legal lynching, President Dwight Eisenhower refused to stay their execution.
The Black historian, writer and activist Elombe Brath, in a 1995 N.Y. Amsterdam News newspaper article, described “Strange Fruit” as “Capitalism’s bitter crop.” ν
Face-to-face with death row inmates at London show
By Julie Mollins
LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Death row inmates depicted in oil paintings by British artist Claire Phillips, on view in London's South Bank gallery@oxo, have one thing in common.
"All are demonstrably innocent, or very probably innocent," according to Clive Stafford Smith, director of prisoners' rights organization Reprieve, which sponsors the touring five-day "Human Face of Death Row" exhibit on show at Oxo until July 5.
"They are very powerless people who face an incredible distillation of hatred resulting in society wanting them dead."
Among the paintings of three current inmates is Briton Linda Carty, who has been on death row in Texas for eight years for murdering a neighbor. Her case is in the final stage of the appeals process.
The prosecution's case was based on testimony from three people accused of the same murder who, in exchange for statements against Carty, avoided the death penalty, according to Reprieve.
The four-hour visit Phillips had with Carty was held under armed guard.
"They will be executing her soon," Phillips said of the experience.
"It's very different in each visit -- Linda just chatted away and ate the five rice krispie bars and a cherry coke I took her."
Phillips, originally from Hammersmith in London, was not permitted to take any painting tools with her when she visited the inmates, so created the portraits from memory and other sources.
The exhibition also includes images of three former death row inmates who were freed after serving prison terms, along with an executioner; a legislator who introduced lethal injection and a foreperson on a jury that convicted and sentenced a man to death who was later found to be innocent.
"All the black people are on death row and all the white people are in positions of authority," Phillips said of her portraits.
"I didn't intend to become a campaigner," she added. "As an artist I wanted to communicate their stories.
"I've achieved putting the stories together. Make your mind up -- is this system the way to go?"
Reprieve founder and lawyer Stafford Smith is also featured in one of the paintings.
Phillips selected him as a subject because she was intrigued by him as someone "who had all the advantages of a public school education and yet had chosen to ignore the attractions of wealth and materialism in order to defend the powerless and vulnerable."
Originally from the U.S., Stafford Smith has worked on getting due process for Guantanamo inmates since 2004, as well as death penalty cases.
"As much as in the old days we would sacrifice an animal to God to solve our problems, today we take the life of a human being," Stafford Smith said, adding that politics of fear and hatred fuel the urge to invoke the death penalty.
(Editing by Steve Addison)
LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Death row inmates depicted in oil paintings by British artist Claire Phillips, on view in London's South Bank gallery@oxo, have one thing in common.
"All are demonstrably innocent, or very probably innocent," according to Clive Stafford Smith, director of prisoners' rights organization Reprieve, which sponsors the touring five-day "Human Face of Death Row" exhibit on show at Oxo until July 5.
"They are very powerless people who face an incredible distillation of hatred resulting in society wanting them dead."
Among the paintings of three current inmates is Briton Linda Carty, who has been on death row in Texas for eight years for murdering a neighbor. Her case is in the final stage of the appeals process.
The prosecution's case was based on testimony from three people accused of the same murder who, in exchange for statements against Carty, avoided the death penalty, according to Reprieve.
The four-hour visit Phillips had with Carty was held under armed guard.
"They will be executing her soon," Phillips said of the experience.
"It's very different in each visit -- Linda just chatted away and ate the five rice krispie bars and a cherry coke I took her."
Phillips, originally from Hammersmith in London, was not permitted to take any painting tools with her when she visited the inmates, so created the portraits from memory and other sources.
The exhibition also includes images of three former death row inmates who were freed after serving prison terms, along with an executioner; a legislator who introduced lethal injection and a foreperson on a jury that convicted and sentenced a man to death who was later found to be innocent.
"All the black people are on death row and all the white people are in positions of authority," Phillips said of her portraits.
"I didn't intend to become a campaigner," she added. "As an artist I wanted to communicate their stories.
"I've achieved putting the stories together. Make your mind up -- is this system the way to go?"
Reprieve founder and lawyer Stafford Smith is also featured in one of the paintings.
Phillips selected him as a subject because she was intrigued by him as someone "who had all the advantages of a public school education and yet had chosen to ignore the attractions of wealth and materialism in order to defend the powerless and vulnerable."
Originally from the U.S., Stafford Smith has worked on getting due process for Guantanamo inmates since 2004, as well as death penalty cases.
"As much as in the old days we would sacrifice an animal to God to solve our problems, today we take the life of a human being," Stafford Smith said, adding that politics of fear and hatred fuel the urge to invoke the death penalty.
(Editing by Steve Addison)
Declaration by the Presidency on behalf of the EU on the formal abolition of the death penalty in Togo
The EU welcomes the unanimous decision of the National Assembly of Togo on 23 June 2009 to abolish the death penalty for all crimes and to commute existing death sentences into life sentences. We congratulate the Togolese Parliament, the Togolese Government and the Togolese people on this important decision.
The Member States of the European Union consider that the abolition of capital punishment contributes to the enhancement of human dignity. The European Union reaffirms its objective of working towards universal abolition of the death penalty. It believes that abolition by Togo is an important step towards that aim and hopes that this decision will encourage other countries in the region to follow suit.
The Candidate Countries Turkey, Croatia* and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia*, the Countries of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidates Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and the EFTA countries Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, members of the European Economic Area, as well as Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia align themselves with this declaration.
* Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.
The Member States of the European Union consider that the abolition of capital punishment contributes to the enhancement of human dignity. The European Union reaffirms its objective of working towards universal abolition of the death penalty. It believes that abolition by Togo is an important step towards that aim and hopes that this decision will encourage other countries in the region to follow suit.
The Candidate Countries Turkey, Croatia* and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia*, the Countries of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidates Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and the EFTA countries Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, members of the European Economic Area, as well as Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia align themselves with this declaration.
* Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.
Death Penalty and Mental Illness: Families of Victims Speak out at National Convention; 'Double Tragedies' Report Released
SAN FRANCISCO, July 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- For the first time, families of murder victims have joined with families of persons with mental illness who have been executed to speak out against the death penalty.
Double Tragedies, a report being released today at a special session on the first day of the annual convention of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), calls the death penalty "inappropriate and unwarranted" for people with severe mental disorders and "a distraction from problems within the mental health system that contributed or even directly led to tragic violence."
The report calls for treatment and prevention, not execution. It is available online at www./nami.org/doubletragedies.
The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in cases involving defendants with mental retardation (Atkins v. Virginia, 2002) and juvenile defendants (Roper v. Simmons 2005).
The report, a joint project of NAMI and Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights (MVFHR), is based on extensive interviews with 21 family members from 10 states: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
"Family opposition to the death penalty is grounded in personal tragedy," said MVFHR executive director Renny Cushing. "In the public debate about the death penalty and how to respond in the aftermath of violent crime, these are the voices that need to be heard."
"Most people with mental illness are not violent," said NAMI executive director Mike Fitzpatrick. "When violent tragedies occur they are exceptional -- because something has gone terribly wrong, usually in the mental health care system. Tragedies are compounded and all our families suffer."
The report identifies an "intersection" of family concerns and makes four basic recommendations:
Ban the death penalty for people with severe mental illnesses.
Reform the mental health care system to focus on treatment.
Recognize the needs of families of murder victims through rights to information and participation in criminal or mental health proceedings.
Families of executed persons also should be recognized as victims and given the assistance due to any victims of traumatic loss.
At least 100 people with mental illness have been put to death in the United States and hundreds more are awaiting execution.
Other resources:
www.mvfhr.org
www.nami.org
www.nami.org/grades09
Website: http://www.nami.org
Website: http://murdervictimsfamilies.org/
Double Tragedies, a report being released today at a special session on the first day of the annual convention of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), calls the death penalty "inappropriate and unwarranted" for people with severe mental disorders and "a distraction from problems within the mental health system that contributed or even directly led to tragic violence."
The report calls for treatment and prevention, not execution. It is available online at www./nami.org/doubletragedies.
The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in cases involving defendants with mental retardation (Atkins v. Virginia, 2002) and juvenile defendants (Roper v. Simmons 2005).
The report, a joint project of NAMI and Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights (MVFHR), is based on extensive interviews with 21 family members from 10 states: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
"Family opposition to the death penalty is grounded in personal tragedy," said MVFHR executive director Renny Cushing. "In the public debate about the death penalty and how to respond in the aftermath of violent crime, these are the voices that need to be heard."
"Most people with mental illness are not violent," said NAMI executive director Mike Fitzpatrick. "When violent tragedies occur they are exceptional -- because something has gone terribly wrong, usually in the mental health care system. Tragedies are compounded and all our families suffer."
The report identifies an "intersection" of family concerns and makes four basic recommendations:
Ban the death penalty for people with severe mental illnesses.
Reform the mental health care system to focus on treatment.
Recognize the needs of families of murder victims through rights to information and participation in criminal or mental health proceedings.
Families of executed persons also should be recognized as victims and given the assistance due to any victims of traumatic loss.
At least 100 people with mental illness have been put to death in the United States and hundreds more are awaiting execution.
Other resources:
www.mvfhr.org
www.nami.org
www.nami.org/grades09
Website: http://www.nami.org
Website: http://murdervictimsfamilies.org/
Saturday, 4 July 2009
Brady claims confirmed in 11 circuit opinion in Derrick Smith
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Bill Dillon exonerated in FloridaRead the 11 circuit opinion in Derrick Smith in Florida
Lawyer Marty McClain
Watch lawyer Marty McClain in oral arguments in Florida Supreme Court in John Marek
Michael Conley in Broward Circuit Courthttp://johnmarek.us/legal/09-1080.ram
Watch lawyer Marty McClain arguing in Florida Supreme Court in the case of John Marek
Friday, 3 July 2009
The Nation: Saving Troy Davis From Death Row
by Benjamin Jealous
NPR.org, July 2, 2009 · In late May I went to Georgia, where I met with Troy Anthony Davis on Death Row. He has been there for eighteen years, and I wanted to speak with him. I came away convinced that he represents the most compelling case of innocence in decades.
This week, the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether to hear the request for a writ of habeas corpus in Davis's case in September hopefully signaling a more careful review of his motion. The reality, though, is that the last time the Justices granted such a motion was 1925 and should the Supreme Court decline the request, the countdown to Davis's execution will begin. It is even more imperative that the Chatham County District Attorney, Larry Chisolm, act now to do the right thing, and move to reopen the case.
The case must be reopened for several reasons: Davis's conviction was based on the word of eyewitnesses. However, since 2001, seven of the nine witnesses recanted or contradicted their original testimony. Several said they were coerced by the police. No physical evidence was ever produced that tied Davis to the murder of Mark Allen MacPhail, a white off-duty Savannah police officer who was killed as he tried to break up a street fight. The gun used in the shooting was never found.
Second, there is abundant evidence supporting Davis's likely innocence but it has not been aired in court. Our legal system does not allow defendants the opportunity to present new evidence of their innocence after conviction. This intransigence on legal procedural matters is unconscionable when a life is on the line.
The new evidence of his innocence means Davis deserves another day in court, not execution: The prospect that an innocent man might be put to death based on faulty witness testimony, and because the court won't agree to hear evidence of his innocence, represents a tragedy of epic proportions. A wrongful execution cannot be rectified.
More than thirty years' worth of social science and criminal justice research shows that eyewitness testimonies are notoriously unreliable, according to The Innocence Project. Since 1973, a total of 133 men and women have been exonerated or had their death sentences commuted based on post-conviction findings that demonstrated their likely innocence, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Adding to the sense of urgency around the Davis case, too, is the long, sour history of wrongly-accused black men receiving "rough justice" in the Deep South. Davis was convicted in Chatham County, a place where genteel traditions and picturesque antebellum mansions mask the harsher truths about the history of slavery, racism, and the Jim Crow era that is still imprinted on the region. Chatham County is home to about 250,000 of Georgia's 9.7 million residents but it has produced 40 percent of all death row exonerations in the state.
The department of corrections in Georgia has blocked television media from visiting Davis. But when I met with him on May 29, I was overwhelmed by his quiet confidence, and by the high regard with which he is held by inmates and personnel alike.
It is evident that Davis's jailers—prison guards whose faces are usually stony or a blank slate of indifference—are moved by his plight. While we talked, I saw guards who clearly had come to believe as I do—that Troy Davis has spent nearly half his life on Death Row for a crime he did not commit. Outside, as I crossed the parking-lot under a merciless sun, I chatted with a woman who said she knew of a former guard who quit his duty at that facility, rather than have to take part in marching Troy Davis to the death chamber. I share that man's sense of outrage. I've also met with Davis's sister, Marita, and her son. He is nearing adulthood, and has only known his uncle as a Death Row inmate. But Davis, a former athletic coach, has nonetheless been an effective, compassionate mentor to his only nephew.
Yet it is not only the many details of Davis's humanity that has led to a groundswell of grassroots support for a campaign to reopen the case: It is the undeniable fact that, as a nation of laws, we have an obligation to reconsider death penalty convictions when new evidence of innocence is revealed.
This is why a "strange bedfellows" group of individuals have been drawn together to fight for the reopening of his case, including former FBI Director William Sessions, Pope Benedict XVI; former Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Sessions, in fact, has been quite fired up about the need for reforms in a court and criminal justice system that refuses to re-examine a death penalty case despite new evidence that may prove a defendant's innocence.
"Only a full hearing, with all witnesses subject to rigorous cross-examination and a full exploration of the circumstances of their testimony, will provide a means to determine the reliability of the conviction," Sessions wrote in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed last year. "This never happened at [Troy Davis] trial. It must happen now."
The idea that any American might be sentenced to death without being allowed a full airing of all the evidence is an outrage, and represents a blatant flouting of our nation's founding principles. The NAACP has joined with Sessions, former president Jimmy Carter; Amnesty International, and a coalition of other human and civil rights groups to raise awareness of not only just the Troy Davis case, but of the urgent need to push for reforms to the criminal justice system. At www.iamtroy.com, information is available showing why innocence matters, and how all Americans can become a part of the movement to find solutions.
I believe that Troy Davis is innocent—and that the family of the slain Savannah police officer, Mark MacPhail, deserve to see the real killer brought to justice. These two things are not mutually exclusive, and our Constitution should be strong enough to ensure that both parts of that equation are realized.
NPR.org, July 2, 2009 · In late May I went to Georgia, where I met with Troy Anthony Davis on Death Row. He has been there for eighteen years, and I wanted to speak with him. I came away convinced that he represents the most compelling case of innocence in decades.
This week, the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether to hear the request for a writ of habeas corpus in Davis's case in September hopefully signaling a more careful review of his motion. The reality, though, is that the last time the Justices granted such a motion was 1925 and should the Supreme Court decline the request, the countdown to Davis's execution will begin. It is even more imperative that the Chatham County District Attorney, Larry Chisolm, act now to do the right thing, and move to reopen the case.
The case must be reopened for several reasons: Davis's conviction was based on the word of eyewitnesses. However, since 2001, seven of the nine witnesses recanted or contradicted their original testimony. Several said they were coerced by the police. No physical evidence was ever produced that tied Davis to the murder of Mark Allen MacPhail, a white off-duty Savannah police officer who was killed as he tried to break up a street fight. The gun used in the shooting was never found.
Second, there is abundant evidence supporting Davis's likely innocence but it has not been aired in court. Our legal system does not allow defendants the opportunity to present new evidence of their innocence after conviction. This intransigence on legal procedural matters is unconscionable when a life is on the line.
The new evidence of his innocence means Davis deserves another day in court, not execution: The prospect that an innocent man might be put to death based on faulty witness testimony, and because the court won't agree to hear evidence of his innocence, represents a tragedy of epic proportions. A wrongful execution cannot be rectified.
More than thirty years' worth of social science and criminal justice research shows that eyewitness testimonies are notoriously unreliable, according to The Innocence Project. Since 1973, a total of 133 men and women have been exonerated or had their death sentences commuted based on post-conviction findings that demonstrated their likely innocence, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Adding to the sense of urgency around the Davis case, too, is the long, sour history of wrongly-accused black men receiving "rough justice" in the Deep South. Davis was convicted in Chatham County, a place where genteel traditions and picturesque antebellum mansions mask the harsher truths about the history of slavery, racism, and the Jim Crow era that is still imprinted on the region. Chatham County is home to about 250,000 of Georgia's 9.7 million residents but it has produced 40 percent of all death row exonerations in the state.
The department of corrections in Georgia has blocked television media from visiting Davis. But when I met with him on May 29, I was overwhelmed by his quiet confidence, and by the high regard with which he is held by inmates and personnel alike.
It is evident that Davis's jailers—prison guards whose faces are usually stony or a blank slate of indifference—are moved by his plight. While we talked, I saw guards who clearly had come to believe as I do—that Troy Davis has spent nearly half his life on Death Row for a crime he did not commit. Outside, as I crossed the parking-lot under a merciless sun, I chatted with a woman who said she knew of a former guard who quit his duty at that facility, rather than have to take part in marching Troy Davis to the death chamber. I share that man's sense of outrage. I've also met with Davis's sister, Marita, and her son. He is nearing adulthood, and has only known his uncle as a Death Row inmate. But Davis, a former athletic coach, has nonetheless been an effective, compassionate mentor to his only nephew.
Yet it is not only the many details of Davis's humanity that has led to a groundswell of grassroots support for a campaign to reopen the case: It is the undeniable fact that, as a nation of laws, we have an obligation to reconsider death penalty convictions when new evidence of innocence is revealed.
This is why a "strange bedfellows" group of individuals have been drawn together to fight for the reopening of his case, including former FBI Director William Sessions, Pope Benedict XVI; former Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Sessions, in fact, has been quite fired up about the need for reforms in a court and criminal justice system that refuses to re-examine a death penalty case despite new evidence that may prove a defendant's innocence.
"Only a full hearing, with all witnesses subject to rigorous cross-examination and a full exploration of the circumstances of their testimony, will provide a means to determine the reliability of the conviction," Sessions wrote in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed last year. "This never happened at [Troy Davis] trial. It must happen now."
The idea that any American might be sentenced to death without being allowed a full airing of all the evidence is an outrage, and represents a blatant flouting of our nation's founding principles. The NAACP has joined with Sessions, former president Jimmy Carter; Amnesty International, and a coalition of other human and civil rights groups to raise awareness of not only just the Troy Davis case, but of the urgent need to push for reforms to the criminal justice system. At www.iamtroy.com, information is available showing why innocence matters, and how all Americans can become a part of the movement to find solutions.
I believe that Troy Davis is innocent—and that the family of the slain Savannah police officer, Mark MacPhail, deserve to see the real killer brought to justice. These two things are not mutually exclusive, and our Constitution should be strong enough to ensure that both parts of that equation are realized.
Justin Grodin case will go on for several years
Baby killer entitled to many appeals; competency question complicates
PAT GILLESPIE
pgillespie@news-press.com
When Justin Grodin is sentenced in August — either to life in prison or most likely to death by lethal injection if his judge follows the jury’s recommendation — it won’t create closure for the 9-year-old case.
Instead, it will signal the beginning of a new legal journey — an appeals process that will likely take more than a dozen years.
Grodin, 35, was convicted June 17 of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated child abuse in the 2000 death of his 11-month-old stepdaughter Gretchen. Last week, his jury recommended he be sentenced to death by lethal injection.
Lee Circuit Judge Edward Volz Jr. will have to make the decision, while giving the jury’s opinion “great weight.” Grodin will be in court next on Aug. 17 for a hearing where attorneys will argue to Volz, who will likely issue a written ruling explaining his decision. For Volz, this is the first time he will have to make the call.
Getting it right
According to the Florida Department of Corrections, the average stay on Death Row prior to execution is 12.3 years. In 2000, the average was nearly 14 years, according to The News-Press’ archives.
Florida and federal laws give capital murder convicts several avenues of appeal and that’s the way it should be, said Neal Dupree, the state’s capital collateral regional counsel in the south region. Capital Collateral Regional Counsel is an office akin to the public defender’s office, but created to provide representation for defendants sentenced to death during the appeals process.
“I think the courts take it seriously,” Dupree said. “There are a lot of safeguards put in place, because it’s such a serious issue.”
He said appeals are more efficient these days. Decades ago, attorneys were poorly trained to handle capital cases, less training was available and judges had less guidance and structure in making decisions. All those reasons gave attorneys a litany of issues to raise on appeal, Dupree said.
In 2000, however, the Legislature set up more stringent filing date requirements and more structured rules for judges and attorneys, which has speeded up the process, he said.
“The cases are moving much quicker,” he said. “The Legislature made that a priority over the last decade. They’ve really, really streamlined it.”
State Sen. Dave Aronberg, who is running for state attorney general, agreed the Legislature has made capital case efficiency a priority. But, cuts to the court system and an increase in defendants could leave motions sitting unresolved.
“I do think that will be a continuing issue under the budget crunch,” he said.
Aronberg, who is a member of the Florida Commission on Capital Cases and whose district includes part of Lee County, said capital cases require a balance between efficiency and fairness.
“When I speak to people in the community, they are concerned with the lengthy delays in the capital appeals process,” Aronberg said. “The goal is to do justice. You have to do it right.”
Try, try again
In Florida, defendants sentenced to death have many chances to appeal.
The first step will be Grodin getting new attorneys, courtesy of the taxpayers. They will pore through transcripts of the trial and related records.
Grodin’s attorneys will file what’s called a direct appeal, which goes to the Florida Supreme Court. The appeal is automatic and typically attacks errors made during trial, Dupree said. That process can take at least a year. The direct appeal can also be taken to the U.S. Supreme Court.
If a direct appeal is denied, the next area a defendant can attack for relief is called a post-conviction motion. During that process, appeals attorneys will attack Grodin’s trial attorneys for mistakes they made that should result in a new trial. Those issues are decided by a circuit judge and possibly Volz, but can be taken to either the state or country’s high court.
A final appeal is a writ of habeas corpus on the federal level. It attacks the constitutionality of the trial. If all appeals are denied, the defendant can request clemency from the governor.
Ryan Wiggins, deputy communications director for Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, said appeals can be dragged out for any number of reasons, including the issues raised on appeal and scheduling of the courts. Trial courts are not only dealing with cases that haven’t yet gone to trial, but also cases coming back on appeal.
Competency issue
A mentally incompetent defendant cannot be executed, which likely will be an issue raised in Grodin’s appeals. He was found incompetent to stand trial in 2005 and has been deemed competent by Volz since 2007. Doctors have disagreed about Grodin’s understanding of the court system and his attorneys have said he never contributed to his defense.
“It will definitely be an issue on appeal — whether he gets life or death,” said one of Grodin’s attorneys, J.L. “Ray” LeGrande.
Dupree said a judge during Grodin’s appeals could deem him incompetent, putting the process on hold.
“Competency is always an issue,” he said. “If a person’s incompetent, it will be brought up.”
Assistant State Attorney Anthony Kunasek said prosecutors have to balance getting a conviction with making sure it is done properly.
“The conviction doesn’t mean anything if the trial was filled with errors,” said Kunasek, who prosecuted Grodin. “You can cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s and still not anticipate an error that wasn’t intended.”
Kunasek, who has prosecuted several death penalty eligible cases, said he knows handling death penalty cases means anticipating a drawn-out process.
“If you’re dealing with capital cases and if you get a death sentence, that’s going to be a case you’re going to be dealing with for years to come,” he said.
Additional Facts
APPEAL STATUS
Joshua Nelson
He was convicted of conspiring with Keith Brennan to steal teenager’s Tommy Owens’ car in Cape Coral by luring him to a remote street on March 10, 1995. Brennan used a box cutter to slice Owens’ throat, while Nelson beat him with a baseball bat until he was dead.
• Sentenced to death on Nov. 27, 1996
• Direct appeal filed on Dec. 16, 1996
• Conviction and sentence affirmed on May 27, 1999
• Petition to U.S. Supreme Court
filed Nov. 18, 1999
• Petition denied by the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 18, 2000
• Post-conviction motion filed on Jan. 5, 2001
• Post-conviction motion is pending
Kevin Foster
Foster was the leader of the Lords of Chaos, a group of teens whose purpose was to create disorder through criminal acts. On April 30, 1996, the group shot Riverdale High School band teacher Mark Schwebes.
• Sentenced to death on June 17, 1998
• Direct appeal filed on July 6, 1998
• Conviction and sentence affirmed on Sept. 7, 2000
• Post-conviction motion filed Sept. 27, 2001
• Post-conviction motion is pending
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PAT GILLESPIE
pgillespie@news-press.com
When Justin Grodin is sentenced in August — either to life in prison or most likely to death by lethal injection if his judge follows the jury’s recommendation — it won’t create closure for the 9-year-old case.
Instead, it will signal the beginning of a new legal journey — an appeals process that will likely take more than a dozen years.
Grodin, 35, was convicted June 17 of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated child abuse in the 2000 death of his 11-month-old stepdaughter Gretchen. Last week, his jury recommended he be sentenced to death by lethal injection.
Lee Circuit Judge Edward Volz Jr. will have to make the decision, while giving the jury’s opinion “great weight.” Grodin will be in court next on Aug. 17 for a hearing where attorneys will argue to Volz, who will likely issue a written ruling explaining his decision. For Volz, this is the first time he will have to make the call.
Getting it right
According to the Florida Department of Corrections, the average stay on Death Row prior to execution is 12.3 years. In 2000, the average was nearly 14 years, according to The News-Press’ archives.
Florida and federal laws give capital murder convicts several avenues of appeal and that’s the way it should be, said Neal Dupree, the state’s capital collateral regional counsel in the south region. Capital Collateral Regional Counsel is an office akin to the public defender’s office, but created to provide representation for defendants sentenced to death during the appeals process.
“I think the courts take it seriously,” Dupree said. “There are a lot of safeguards put in place, because it’s such a serious issue.”
He said appeals are more efficient these days. Decades ago, attorneys were poorly trained to handle capital cases, less training was available and judges had less guidance and structure in making decisions. All those reasons gave attorneys a litany of issues to raise on appeal, Dupree said.
In 2000, however, the Legislature set up more stringent filing date requirements and more structured rules for judges and attorneys, which has speeded up the process, he said.
“The cases are moving much quicker,” he said. “The Legislature made that a priority over the last decade. They’ve really, really streamlined it.”
State Sen. Dave Aronberg, who is running for state attorney general, agreed the Legislature has made capital case efficiency a priority. But, cuts to the court system and an increase in defendants could leave motions sitting unresolved.
“I do think that will be a continuing issue under the budget crunch,” he said.
Aronberg, who is a member of the Florida Commission on Capital Cases and whose district includes part of Lee County, said capital cases require a balance between efficiency and fairness.
“When I speak to people in the community, they are concerned with the lengthy delays in the capital appeals process,” Aronberg said. “The goal is to do justice. You have to do it right.”
Try, try again
In Florida, defendants sentenced to death have many chances to appeal.
The first step will be Grodin getting new attorneys, courtesy of the taxpayers. They will pore through transcripts of the trial and related records.
Grodin’s attorneys will file what’s called a direct appeal, which goes to the Florida Supreme Court. The appeal is automatic and typically attacks errors made during trial, Dupree said. That process can take at least a year. The direct appeal can also be taken to the U.S. Supreme Court.
If a direct appeal is denied, the next area a defendant can attack for relief is called a post-conviction motion. During that process, appeals attorneys will attack Grodin’s trial attorneys for mistakes they made that should result in a new trial. Those issues are decided by a circuit judge and possibly Volz, but can be taken to either the state or country’s high court.
A final appeal is a writ of habeas corpus on the federal level. It attacks the constitutionality of the trial. If all appeals are denied, the defendant can request clemency from the governor.
Ryan Wiggins, deputy communications director for Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, said appeals can be dragged out for any number of reasons, including the issues raised on appeal and scheduling of the courts. Trial courts are not only dealing with cases that haven’t yet gone to trial, but also cases coming back on appeal.
Competency issue
A mentally incompetent defendant cannot be executed, which likely will be an issue raised in Grodin’s appeals. He was found incompetent to stand trial in 2005 and has been deemed competent by Volz since 2007. Doctors have disagreed about Grodin’s understanding of the court system and his attorneys have said he never contributed to his defense.
“It will definitely be an issue on appeal — whether he gets life or death,” said one of Grodin’s attorneys, J.L. “Ray” LeGrande.
Dupree said a judge during Grodin’s appeals could deem him incompetent, putting the process on hold.
“Competency is always an issue,” he said. “If a person’s incompetent, it will be brought up.”
Assistant State Attorney Anthony Kunasek said prosecutors have to balance getting a conviction with making sure it is done properly.
“The conviction doesn’t mean anything if the trial was filled with errors,” said Kunasek, who prosecuted Grodin. “You can cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s and still not anticipate an error that wasn’t intended.”
Kunasek, who has prosecuted several death penalty eligible cases, said he knows handling death penalty cases means anticipating a drawn-out process.
“If you’re dealing with capital cases and if you get a death sentence, that’s going to be a case you’re going to be dealing with for years to come,” he said.
Additional Facts
APPEAL STATUS
Joshua Nelson
He was convicted of conspiring with Keith Brennan to steal teenager’s Tommy Owens’ car in Cape Coral by luring him to a remote street on March 10, 1995. Brennan used a box cutter to slice Owens’ throat, while Nelson beat him with a baseball bat until he was dead.
• Sentenced to death on Nov. 27, 1996
• Direct appeal filed on Dec. 16, 1996
• Conviction and sentence affirmed on May 27, 1999
• Petition to U.S. Supreme Court
filed Nov. 18, 1999
• Petition denied by the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 18, 2000
• Post-conviction motion filed on Jan. 5, 2001
• Post-conviction motion is pending
Kevin Foster
Foster was the leader of the Lords of Chaos, a group of teens whose purpose was to create disorder through criminal acts. On April 30, 1996, the group shot Riverdale High School band teacher Mark Schwebes.
• Sentenced to death on June 17, 1998
• Direct appeal filed on July 6, 1998
• Conviction and sentence affirmed on Sept. 7, 2000
• Post-conviction motion filed Sept. 27, 2001
• Post-conviction motion is pending
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fight to save Troy Davis grows
Author: Joe Sims
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 07/03/09 16:12
The NAACP has initiated an “I am Troy Campaign” as part of worldwide effort to prevent the execution of Troy Davis, a 40-year-old man on death row in Georgia. Davis, who is African American, was convicted 20 years ago for the death of a white off-duty police officer, Mark MacPhail.
Davis, a former coach, is viewed to be innocent by a broad coalition of including former President Jimmy Carter, the Vatican, Amnesty International, former FBI head William Sessions and conservative Bob Barr. Seven of nine witnesses in the case have recanted their testimony.
The Davis case has been twice appealed to the Supreme Court, which recently delayed deciding whether it will take it up until its fall session in September.
NAACP leader Benjamin Jealous, in a July 2 Nation article, called for both the Supreme Court and local District Attorney Larry Chisholm to do all within their power to insure that justice is served. According to Jealous, the high court agreed to consider a writ of habeas corpus in September, but noted that the last time such an appeal was granted was in 1925.
However, Davis attorney, Jason Ewart, appears hopeful, according to AP. “It’s definitely good news,” he said, interpreting the court’s inaction as a sign it wants to take a closer look at the case. “It’s not just a move buying more time.”
The Chatham County district attorney however has the power to reopen the case. Over 60,000 petitions were presented to its Savannah office demanding justice.
Jealous joined a delegation of several member of Congress, including Rep. John Lewis to visit Davis in May. Lewis is considering asking for a presidential pardon.
The NAACP head cites several reasons for reopening the case, among them, the recanting of eyewitnesses, the appearance of new evidence (not allowed consideration under current legal rules) and a history of discriminatory practices in Chatham County which is home to 40 percent of all death row exonerations in Georgia.
“This case stands out,” Jealous said during a May 29 news conference after he met with Mr. Davis. “Something's wrong in Chatham County.”
Information on the Troy Davis case can be found at www.iamtroy.com.
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 07/03/09 16:12
The NAACP has initiated an “I am Troy Campaign” as part of worldwide effort to prevent the execution of Troy Davis, a 40-year-old man on death row in Georgia. Davis, who is African American, was convicted 20 years ago for the death of a white off-duty police officer, Mark MacPhail.
Davis, a former coach, is viewed to be innocent by a broad coalition of including former President Jimmy Carter, the Vatican, Amnesty International, former FBI head William Sessions and conservative Bob Barr. Seven of nine witnesses in the case have recanted their testimony.
The Davis case has been twice appealed to the Supreme Court, which recently delayed deciding whether it will take it up until its fall session in September.
NAACP leader Benjamin Jealous, in a July 2 Nation article, called for both the Supreme Court and local District Attorney Larry Chisholm to do all within their power to insure that justice is served. According to Jealous, the high court agreed to consider a writ of habeas corpus in September, but noted that the last time such an appeal was granted was in 1925.
However, Davis attorney, Jason Ewart, appears hopeful, according to AP. “It’s definitely good news,” he said, interpreting the court’s inaction as a sign it wants to take a closer look at the case. “It’s not just a move buying more time.”
The Chatham County district attorney however has the power to reopen the case. Over 60,000 petitions were presented to its Savannah office demanding justice.
Jealous joined a delegation of several member of Congress, including Rep. John Lewis to visit Davis in May. Lewis is considering asking for a presidential pardon.
The NAACP head cites several reasons for reopening the case, among them, the recanting of eyewitnesses, the appearance of new evidence (not allowed consideration under current legal rules) and a history of discriminatory practices in Chatham County which is home to 40 percent of all death row exonerations in Georgia.
“This case stands out,” Jealous said during a May 29 news conference after he met with Mr. Davis. “Something's wrong in Chatham County.”
Information on the Troy Davis case can be found at www.iamtroy.com.
Sunday, 28 June 2009
OUR VIEW: Postconviction DNA testing should be available whether it's a constitutional right or not
Posted by The Editorial Board June 27, 2009 2:01 AM
The U.S. Supreme Court says people who were wrongly convicted of old crimes have no constitutional right to the DNA testing that could prove their innocence.
The justices, in a 5-4 ruling last week, said it's not their job to say who should get DNA testing in old criminal cases. Rather, it should be up to Congress and state legislatures to make the call, and the court indicated satisfaction with what it called a "prompt and considered legislative response" on the issue.
Surely, though, the court wasn't thinking about Alabama. This past session, after years of efforts, our Legislature finally passed a postconviction DNA law, and it was one of the last states in the union to do so. (Only three states still don't have such a law. One of them, Alaska, generated the case decided by the Supreme Court.)
Moreover, the Alabama law is extremely limited by design. It allows only those convicted of capital crimes to petition for DNA testing -- and under such narrow circumstances that some experts believe it will be harder to get testing now than it was before the law passed.
In just one example, the Alabama law allows DNA testing only if the guilty party's identity was an issue at trial. That sounds perfectly reasonable on the surface. But some people who have been exonerated by DNA evidence pleaded guilty, so there was no trial, and no "question" about the identity of the perpetrator. What happens to them under Alabama's law?
Certainly, there must be a process with some restrictions, but the goal should be to make this latter-day, crime-solving method available wherever it could exonerate a wrongly convicted person -- and identify the person who got away with the crime.
Don't forget that last part, although Alabama officials sure seem to.
Like a number of their counterparts in other states, many Alabama prosecutors and law officers resist DNA testing in old cases as a matter of course. They are either so convinced they are right, or so worried at the prospect of being proved wrong, they prefer to keep a tight lid on that can of worms.
The U.S. Supreme Court could have pried open the lid for those hoping DNA will clear them of old crimes, and their refusal was a disappointment.
But all is not lost. As the justices said, the court doesn't have to make DNA testing a constitutional right for states to make it available to those who may have been convicted of crimes before the science was adapted for law enforcement.
Alabama can and should make it easier for anyone convicted of a crime involving biological evidence to have DNA tests performed. What is there to lose? If the tests confirm guilt, fine. If they prove innocence, shouldn't we want to find out?
This isn't about defendants' rights; it's about the state's responsibility to ensure that injustice doesn't stand and that justice is done.
The U.S. Supreme Court says people who were wrongly convicted of old crimes have no constitutional right to the DNA testing that could prove their innocence.
The justices, in a 5-4 ruling last week, said it's not their job to say who should get DNA testing in old criminal cases. Rather, it should be up to Congress and state legislatures to make the call, and the court indicated satisfaction with what it called a "prompt and considered legislative response" on the issue.
Surely, though, the court wasn't thinking about Alabama. This past session, after years of efforts, our Legislature finally passed a postconviction DNA law, and it was one of the last states in the union to do so. (Only three states still don't have such a law. One of them, Alaska, generated the case decided by the Supreme Court.)
Moreover, the Alabama law is extremely limited by design. It allows only those convicted of capital crimes to petition for DNA testing -- and under such narrow circumstances that some experts believe it will be harder to get testing now than it was before the law passed.
In just one example, the Alabama law allows DNA testing only if the guilty party's identity was an issue at trial. That sounds perfectly reasonable on the surface. But some people who have been exonerated by DNA evidence pleaded guilty, so there was no trial, and no "question" about the identity of the perpetrator. What happens to them under Alabama's law?
Certainly, there must be a process with some restrictions, but the goal should be to make this latter-day, crime-solving method available wherever it could exonerate a wrongly convicted person -- and identify the person who got away with the crime.
Don't forget that last part, although Alabama officials sure seem to.
Like a number of their counterparts in other states, many Alabama prosecutors and law officers resist DNA testing in old cases as a matter of course. They are either so convinced they are right, or so worried at the prospect of being proved wrong, they prefer to keep a tight lid on that can of worms.
The U.S. Supreme Court could have pried open the lid for those hoping DNA will clear them of old crimes, and their refusal was a disappointment.
But all is not lost. As the justices said, the court doesn't have to make DNA testing a constitutional right for states to make it available to those who may have been convicted of crimes before the science was adapted for law enforcement.
Alabama can and should make it easier for anyone convicted of a crime involving biological evidence to have DNA tests performed. What is there to lose? If the tests confirm guilt, fine. If they prove innocence, shouldn't we want to find out?
This isn't about defendants' rights; it's about the state's responsibility to ensure that injustice doesn't stand and that justice is done.
Supreme Court Expected to Take Up Davis Case
Seven of nine witnesses have recanted testimony
By AFRO Staff
(June 28, 2009) - The fate of Troy Davis now rests in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The nation’s highest court is expected this week to consider hearing the case of Davis, a Georgia man convicted 20 years ago of killing a Savannah police officer. Davis’ execution has been stayed three times as lawyers ran through options to keep him alive, but his final appeal now rests with the Supreme Court.
Davis, 40, was convicted in 1991 of killing off-duty police officer Mark Allen MacPhail, though no physical evidence at the time linked him to the murder. Since the trial, seven of the nine witnesses against Davis have recanted their testimony.
The Supreme Court will retire for its summer recess Tuesday until September. If it does not make a decision whether to take up Davis’s case, prosecutors could attempt to get a fourth execution warrant for Davis before the court re-convenes.
However, that delay may also work in the favor of Davis’ defense team, Laura Moye of Amnesty International USA’s Death Penalty Abolition Campaign told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“It buys more time for all of the advocates to get more publicity on the case,” Moye said.
Davis’ case has drawn international support, including from former President Jimmy Carter and the Vatican. The NAACP has launched an “I Am Troy” campaign.
In 1991, Chatham County, Georgia jurors took just two hours to decide Davis was guilty, and seven more to sentence him to death, both unanimous decisions. But an Associated Press investigation this week found that at least four have had second thoughts about their choice.
“Maybe I might have voted him guilty, but never, ever the death penalty,” Brenda Forrest, a 53-year-old research and development manager who served on the jury, told the AP. “That part is clear to me. If need be, take this thing back to trial.”
Georgia congressmen John Lewis and Hank Johnson along with NAACP President Ben Jealous met with Davis last month, and all three left the two-hour-long meeting convinced of Davis’ innocence.
Lewis said he planned to talk to leaders of both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees about the case, and said he has considered seeking a presidential pardon but has not spoken to President Obama about intervening in the case.
Jealous said the case is now a national priority for the organization.
“This case stands out,” Mr. Jealous said during a May 29 news conference after he met with Mr. Davis. “Something’s wrong in Chatham County.”
By AFRO Staff
(June 28, 2009) - The fate of Troy Davis now rests in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The nation’s highest court is expected this week to consider hearing the case of Davis, a Georgia man convicted 20 years ago of killing a Savannah police officer. Davis’ execution has been stayed three times as lawyers ran through options to keep him alive, but his final appeal now rests with the Supreme Court.
Davis, 40, was convicted in 1991 of killing off-duty police officer Mark Allen MacPhail, though no physical evidence at the time linked him to the murder. Since the trial, seven of the nine witnesses against Davis have recanted their testimony.
The Supreme Court will retire for its summer recess Tuesday until September. If it does not make a decision whether to take up Davis’s case, prosecutors could attempt to get a fourth execution warrant for Davis before the court re-convenes.
However, that delay may also work in the favor of Davis’ defense team, Laura Moye of Amnesty International USA’s Death Penalty Abolition Campaign told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“It buys more time for all of the advocates to get more publicity on the case,” Moye said.
Davis’ case has drawn international support, including from former President Jimmy Carter and the Vatican. The NAACP has launched an “I Am Troy” campaign.
In 1991, Chatham County, Georgia jurors took just two hours to decide Davis was guilty, and seven more to sentence him to death, both unanimous decisions. But an Associated Press investigation this week found that at least four have had second thoughts about their choice.
“Maybe I might have voted him guilty, but never, ever the death penalty,” Brenda Forrest, a 53-year-old research and development manager who served on the jury, told the AP. “That part is clear to me. If need be, take this thing back to trial.”
Georgia congressmen John Lewis and Hank Johnson along with NAACP President Ben Jealous met with Davis last month, and all three left the two-hour-long meeting convinced of Davis’ innocence.
Lewis said he planned to talk to leaders of both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees about the case, and said he has considered seeking a presidential pardon but has not spoken to President Obama about intervening in the case.
Jealous said the case is now a national priority for the organization.
“This case stands out,” Mr. Jealous said during a May 29 news conference after he met with Mr. Davis. “Something’s wrong in Chatham County.”
Vermont to California, new laws take effect July 1
Vermont to California, new laws take effect July 1
By The Associated Press – 1 day ago
New laws taking effect in several states Wednesday:
Alabama:
_Makes more women diagnosed with breast or cervical cancer eligible for treatment through Medicaid.
California:
_Bars schools from serving food containing transfats.
Florida:
_Relaxes schools' zero-tolerance policies by preventing children from being arrested or expelled for insignificant misbehavior such as bringing plastic butter knives to school, drawing pictures of guns or vandalizing property.
Kansas:
_Allows women seeking abortions to see ultrasound images or hear their fetus' heartbeat at least 30 minutes before the procedure.
Mississippi:
_Requires the state to pay $50,000 a year, up to $500,000, to people wrongfully convicted of crimes. The compensation must be sought within three years after the person is pardoned or the conviction is overturned.
Nevada:
_Reduces the liability of restaurants, hotel-casinos and other businesses that donate perishable foods such as bread, hot or cold dishes and leftover buffet items.
New Mexico:
_Abolishes the death penalty and replaces it with life in prison without parole.
Ohio:
_Allows the state to consider tolls to pay for major new highway construction projects.
Vermont:
_Permits prosecutors to send teenage cell phone "sexting" cases to juvenile courts to eliminate the stigma of child pornography convictions.
Wyoming:
_Specifies that the right to mine or drill for resources has legal precedence over the right to store carbon gas underground. Second law specifies that whoever injects carbon gas underground remains legally responsible for it forever.
By The Associated Press – 1 day ago
New laws taking effect in several states Wednesday:
Alabama:
_Makes more women diagnosed with breast or cervical cancer eligible for treatment through Medicaid.
California:
_Bars schools from serving food containing transfats.
Florida:
_Relaxes schools' zero-tolerance policies by preventing children from being arrested or expelled for insignificant misbehavior such as bringing plastic butter knives to school, drawing pictures of guns or vandalizing property.
Kansas:
_Allows women seeking abortions to see ultrasound images or hear their fetus' heartbeat at least 30 minutes before the procedure.
Mississippi:
_Requires the state to pay $50,000 a year, up to $500,000, to people wrongfully convicted of crimes. The compensation must be sought within three years after the person is pardoned or the conviction is overturned.
Nevada:
_Reduces the liability of restaurants, hotel-casinos and other businesses that donate perishable foods such as bread, hot or cold dishes and leftover buffet items.
New Mexico:
_Abolishes the death penalty and replaces it with life in prison without parole.
Ohio:
_Allows the state to consider tolls to pay for major new highway construction projects.
Vermont:
_Permits prosecutors to send teenage cell phone "sexting" cases to juvenile courts to eliminate the stigma of child pornography convictions.
Wyoming:
_Specifies that the right to mine or drill for resources has legal precedence over the right to store carbon gas underground. Second law specifies that whoever injects carbon gas underground remains legally responsible for it forever.
Jurors who sentenced man to die for '91 Ga. cop killing now split over appeal
GREG BLUESTEIN, RUSS BYNUM
Associated Press Writers
10:49 AM PDT, June 28, 2009
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Inside the jury room, seven men and five women huddled around a table to discuss a parade of witnesses in the case of an off-duty police officer shot and killed outside a fast-food restaurant.
In just two hours they found Troy Anthony Davis guilty. In another seven, they said he deserved to die. Both times they were unanimous.
Since then, Davis' attorneys have delayed his execution three times — less than 24 hours before he was to be executed, in one instance — by raising doubts about those witnesses.
Davis has drawn support from the Vatican to the European parliament, from former President Jimmy Carter to Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The NAACP has launched an "I am Troy" campaign.
While the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide soon whether to hear Davis' latest appeal, one thing is clear: Those who convicted Davis in 1991 no longer agree on whether they did the right thing.
The Associated Press set out to find the 12 jurors, some of whom are speaking publicly for the first time since the verdict. In interviews or affidavits, at least four said they were having second thoughts, based on claims by Davis' attorneys that key witnesses have backed away from their court testimony. At least two others, including Raleigh W. Powers, stand by the verdict and say Davis should be executed in the killing of police officer Mark MacPhail.
"That's something that I have closed the door on. It's painful enough to make that decision," said Powers, a 78-year-old retired engineer who served as the jury foreman. "As well as I remember, he stood over this young man and shot him in the face. I wouldn't do that to an animal."
For Brenda Forrest, the decision to sentence Davis to death was agonizing — so painful that she didn't tell her husband she had served on the jury until nearly a decade after they married.
Forrest agreed to meet with Davis' lawyers when they tracked her down two years ago in Chicago, where she moved in 1999. After reading two affidavits signed by trial witnesses saying they were coerced by police, Forrest gave a signed statement of her own saying she felt Davis had been sentenced based on "incomplete and unreliable evidence."
In a lengthy interview, she said she has doubts about the testimony she heard nearly two decades ago.
"Maybe I might have voted him guilty, but never, ever the death penalty," said Forrest, a 53-year-old research and development manager. "That part is clear to me. If need be, take this thing back to trial."
Davis' attorneys say seven witnesses who testified against their client have signed affidavits disputing all or parts of their trial testimony. Others who did not testify at the trial have since said another man admitted shooting MacPhail.
Prosecutors stand by their case, saying Davis killed MacPhail, who was working as a security guard on Aug. 9, 1989. That night, the 27-year-old officer was shot twice while trying to help a homeless man who had been pistol-whipped in a nearby parking lot.
They say evidence presented at Davis' trial was solid and allegations that someone else later confessed to the slaying were inconsistent and not admissible in court. Several courts have agreed, including the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said in a 2-1 ruling in April that it was "unpersuaded" by the affidavits.
The AP sought interviews with the jurors for a clearer picture of what they remember from the 1991 trial — and where they stand on the appeal. Three of them have died. Of the seven reached by the AP, three — Curtis Wilson, John C. Smith and Theodosia Johnston — declined comment.
Two jurors, Michelle Strickland and Cynthia Quarterman, could not be reached. A current phone number and address for Strickland could not be found. Repeated phone calls to Quarterman's house rang unanswered, and there was no sign of anyone at her home when an AP reporter recently visited.
Powers, the jury foreman, cited the testimony of Harriet Murray, who told the jury she saw Davis pistol-whip her friend. And juror William Hilliard said her testimony and others helped sway jurors to sentence Davis to death.
Murray identified Davis as MacPhail's killer in a police photo lineup, and later pointed to him as the shooter in court, saying he had "a little smirky-like smile" when he pulled the trigger.
But Murray, who has since died, signed an unsworn affidavit in 2002 that gives a more vague account of the shooting and doesn't name Davis as the killer. Defense attorneys say it adds to the doubt over Davis' guilt, but prosecutors say it doesn't exclude Davis as the shooter.
Hilliard, a 64-year-old retiree who now lives in California, said he's "100 percent OK with my decision."
"The prosecution 100 percent established the fact that it was Troy Davis," Hilliard said. The jury, he added, "was really satisfied with what we had done. There were no second thoughts."
But some jurors have second-guessed their decision since then. Four of them — Forrest, Wilson, Quarterman and Isaiah Middleton — signed affidavits presented at Davis' clemency hearing before the Georgia Pardons and Paroles board in 2007.
They said questions raised by Davis' lawyers made them doubt the justness of their death sentence, and Wilson urged the sentence be commuted to life in prison.
Middleton, 74, said in his sworn statement he had "genuine concerns" about the fairness of Davis' death sentence and that "another jury should hear all of the new evidence."
In a brief phone interview, Middleton said he suffered a stroke in 2000 and couldn't recall what led him to find Davis guilty. He also said he thought the jury had been charged only with deciding whether Davis was guilty and not whether he deserved the death penalty.
"I thought they were going to give him life, I didn't think they were going to put him to death," Middleton said. "Like I said, I just couldn't make up my mind that he really did it, you know what I mean?"
Powers, Forrest and Hilliard, however, said they understood the death penalty was their decision.
During the trial, Forrest was swayed by the testimony of Dorothy Ferrell, who said she witnessed the slaying from a hotel across the street. On the witness stand, Ferrell said she was "real sure, positive sure" that Davis was the shooter.
Years later, Ferrell signed a sworn statement for Davis' lawyers that she felt pressured by police to name Davis as the shooter because she was on parole for a shoplifting conviction at the time of the trial. Forrest said reviewing Ferrell's statement weighed heavily in her decision to question their verdict.
"If I had known the young lady had issues in her past that made her susceptible to being pushed into something, I would not have put so much emphasis on what she said," Forrest said.
Davis' lead attorney, Jason Ewart, commended those who have stepped forward to change their testimony.
"The vast majority of recantations came from innocent bystanders who don't know Troy Davis from a sack of salt," Ewart said. "This is exactly why Troy Davis needs a court hearing — to set the facts straight."
Hilliard, though, said he is not persuaded by arguments Davis deserves a new trial and is proud of his fellow jurors. He said they took exhaustive notes and decided to sleep on their decision before agreeing to the death penalty. The "legitimate" witnesses, Hilliard said, have not changed their testimony.
"If a person is innocent, naturally you want to save their lives," Hilliard said. "But that's not the case here. Unfortunately, it's not. And the fact that I can say this 20 years later and I don't have any guilt about it says it all."
___
Bluestein reported this story from Atlanta.
Associated Press Writers
10:49 AM PDT, June 28, 2009
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Inside the jury room, seven men and five women huddled around a table to discuss a parade of witnesses in the case of an off-duty police officer shot and killed outside a fast-food restaurant.
In just two hours they found Troy Anthony Davis guilty. In another seven, they said he deserved to die. Both times they were unanimous.
Since then, Davis' attorneys have delayed his execution three times — less than 24 hours before he was to be executed, in one instance — by raising doubts about those witnesses.
Davis has drawn support from the Vatican to the European parliament, from former President Jimmy Carter to Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The NAACP has launched an "I am Troy" campaign.
While the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide soon whether to hear Davis' latest appeal, one thing is clear: Those who convicted Davis in 1991 no longer agree on whether they did the right thing.
The Associated Press set out to find the 12 jurors, some of whom are speaking publicly for the first time since the verdict. In interviews or affidavits, at least four said they were having second thoughts, based on claims by Davis' attorneys that key witnesses have backed away from their court testimony. At least two others, including Raleigh W. Powers, stand by the verdict and say Davis should be executed in the killing of police officer Mark MacPhail.
"That's something that I have closed the door on. It's painful enough to make that decision," said Powers, a 78-year-old retired engineer who served as the jury foreman. "As well as I remember, he stood over this young man and shot him in the face. I wouldn't do that to an animal."
For Brenda Forrest, the decision to sentence Davis to death was agonizing — so painful that she didn't tell her husband she had served on the jury until nearly a decade after they married.
Forrest agreed to meet with Davis' lawyers when they tracked her down two years ago in Chicago, where she moved in 1999. After reading two affidavits signed by trial witnesses saying they were coerced by police, Forrest gave a signed statement of her own saying she felt Davis had been sentenced based on "incomplete and unreliable evidence."
In a lengthy interview, she said she has doubts about the testimony she heard nearly two decades ago.
"Maybe I might have voted him guilty, but never, ever the death penalty," said Forrest, a 53-year-old research and development manager. "That part is clear to me. If need be, take this thing back to trial."
Davis' attorneys say seven witnesses who testified against their client have signed affidavits disputing all or parts of their trial testimony. Others who did not testify at the trial have since said another man admitted shooting MacPhail.
Prosecutors stand by their case, saying Davis killed MacPhail, who was working as a security guard on Aug. 9, 1989. That night, the 27-year-old officer was shot twice while trying to help a homeless man who had been pistol-whipped in a nearby parking lot.
They say evidence presented at Davis' trial was solid and allegations that someone else later confessed to the slaying were inconsistent and not admissible in court. Several courts have agreed, including the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said in a 2-1 ruling in April that it was "unpersuaded" by the affidavits.
The AP sought interviews with the jurors for a clearer picture of what they remember from the 1991 trial — and where they stand on the appeal. Three of them have died. Of the seven reached by the AP, three — Curtis Wilson, John C. Smith and Theodosia Johnston — declined comment.
Two jurors, Michelle Strickland and Cynthia Quarterman, could not be reached. A current phone number and address for Strickland could not be found. Repeated phone calls to Quarterman's house rang unanswered, and there was no sign of anyone at her home when an AP reporter recently visited.
Powers, the jury foreman, cited the testimony of Harriet Murray, who told the jury she saw Davis pistol-whip her friend. And juror William Hilliard said her testimony and others helped sway jurors to sentence Davis to death.
Murray identified Davis as MacPhail's killer in a police photo lineup, and later pointed to him as the shooter in court, saying he had "a little smirky-like smile" when he pulled the trigger.
But Murray, who has since died, signed an unsworn affidavit in 2002 that gives a more vague account of the shooting and doesn't name Davis as the killer. Defense attorneys say it adds to the doubt over Davis' guilt, but prosecutors say it doesn't exclude Davis as the shooter.
Hilliard, a 64-year-old retiree who now lives in California, said he's "100 percent OK with my decision."
"The prosecution 100 percent established the fact that it was Troy Davis," Hilliard said. The jury, he added, "was really satisfied with what we had done. There were no second thoughts."
But some jurors have second-guessed their decision since then. Four of them — Forrest, Wilson, Quarterman and Isaiah Middleton — signed affidavits presented at Davis' clemency hearing before the Georgia Pardons and Paroles board in 2007.
They said questions raised by Davis' lawyers made them doubt the justness of their death sentence, and Wilson urged the sentence be commuted to life in prison.
Middleton, 74, said in his sworn statement he had "genuine concerns" about the fairness of Davis' death sentence and that "another jury should hear all of the new evidence."
In a brief phone interview, Middleton said he suffered a stroke in 2000 and couldn't recall what led him to find Davis guilty. He also said he thought the jury had been charged only with deciding whether Davis was guilty and not whether he deserved the death penalty.
"I thought they were going to give him life, I didn't think they were going to put him to death," Middleton said. "Like I said, I just couldn't make up my mind that he really did it, you know what I mean?"
Powers, Forrest and Hilliard, however, said they understood the death penalty was their decision.
During the trial, Forrest was swayed by the testimony of Dorothy Ferrell, who said she witnessed the slaying from a hotel across the street. On the witness stand, Ferrell said she was "real sure, positive sure" that Davis was the shooter.
Years later, Ferrell signed a sworn statement for Davis' lawyers that she felt pressured by police to name Davis as the shooter because she was on parole for a shoplifting conviction at the time of the trial. Forrest said reviewing Ferrell's statement weighed heavily in her decision to question their verdict.
"If I had known the young lady had issues in her past that made her susceptible to being pushed into something, I would not have put so much emphasis on what she said," Forrest said.
Davis' lead attorney, Jason Ewart, commended those who have stepped forward to change their testimony.
"The vast majority of recantations came from innocent bystanders who don't know Troy Davis from a sack of salt," Ewart said. "This is exactly why Troy Davis needs a court hearing — to set the facts straight."
Hilliard, though, said he is not persuaded by arguments Davis deserves a new trial and is proud of his fellow jurors. He said they took exhaustive notes and decided to sleep on their decision before agreeing to the death penalty. The "legitimate" witnesses, Hilliard said, have not changed their testimony.
"If a person is innocent, naturally you want to save their lives," Hilliard said. "But that's not the case here. Unfortunately, it's not. And the fact that I can say this 20 years later and I don't have any guilt about it says it all."
___
Bluestein reported this story from Atlanta.
Thursday, 25 June 2009
Routier still waiting on DNA testing
Tim Sampson
The Daily Times
Published June 24, 2009
Convicted child killer Darlie Lynn Routier sits on death row waiting for a new round of court-ordered DNA testing a year after the highest criminal appeals court in the state ordered that evidence be re-examined.
Her attorney says the results could substantiate Routier’s claims that an unidentified intruder murdered her two sons.
Arrested for killing her sons in their family home in Dallas in 1996, Routier was tried, convicted and sentence to death in Kerrville. More than a decade later, Routier, 38, continues to advocate her innocence from death row.
In June 2008, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled unanimously that Routier was entitled to re-testing of several pieces of forensic evidence, using more advanced methods not available during the trial.
“DNA testing has improved since those items were originally tested. So the court felt it was appropriate to order re-testing on those pieces of evidence that failed to yield a result the first time,” said Lisa Smith, an assistant district attorney in Dallas.
Following the state court’s decision, a federal judge ordered additional DNA testing of a much broader range of evidence in November 2008. But in April, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied Routier funding for the federally ordered testing until after the more limited state testing was completed.
“We were trying to coordinate both sets of tests, and that is what slowed us up there for about six months,” said Stephen Cooper, a Dallas attorney representing Routier.
Cooper said state-ordered tests most likely will be conducted this summer. If those tests fail to exonerate Routier, he said they once again will seek funding for the federal testing.
In June of 1996, Routier’s sons, Damon, 5, and Devon, 6, were stabbed to death in the middle of the night. First responders arrived on scene to find Routier with several less severe knife wounds, including one across her throat, which she claimed to have received while fighting off an intruder.
Days ofer their murder, Routier was charged with the death of both children, but she was only tried and convicted in the death of Damon. Prosecutors pointed toward circumstantial evidence of the family’s sliding financial state as motivation for the killings.
Routier remains on death row at the women’s prison in Gatesville.
Since 1994, 38 individuals have been exonerated in Texas by DNA testing, according to the Innocence Project of Texas.
The Daily Times
Published June 24, 2009
Convicted child killer Darlie Lynn Routier sits on death row waiting for a new round of court-ordered DNA testing a year after the highest criminal appeals court in the state ordered that evidence be re-examined.
Her attorney says the results could substantiate Routier’s claims that an unidentified intruder murdered her two sons.
Arrested for killing her sons in their family home in Dallas in 1996, Routier was tried, convicted and sentence to death in Kerrville. More than a decade later, Routier, 38, continues to advocate her innocence from death row.
In June 2008, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled unanimously that Routier was entitled to re-testing of several pieces of forensic evidence, using more advanced methods not available during the trial.
“DNA testing has improved since those items were originally tested. So the court felt it was appropriate to order re-testing on those pieces of evidence that failed to yield a result the first time,” said Lisa Smith, an assistant district attorney in Dallas.
Following the state court’s decision, a federal judge ordered additional DNA testing of a much broader range of evidence in November 2008. But in April, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied Routier funding for the federally ordered testing until after the more limited state testing was completed.
“We were trying to coordinate both sets of tests, and that is what slowed us up there for about six months,” said Stephen Cooper, a Dallas attorney representing Routier.
Cooper said state-ordered tests most likely will be conducted this summer. If those tests fail to exonerate Routier, he said they once again will seek funding for the federal testing.
In June of 1996, Routier’s sons, Damon, 5, and Devon, 6, were stabbed to death in the middle of the night. First responders arrived on scene to find Routier with several less severe knife wounds, including one across her throat, which she claimed to have received while fighting off an intruder.
Days ofer their murder, Routier was charged with the death of both children, but she was only tried and convicted in the death of Damon. Prosecutors pointed toward circumstantial evidence of the family’s sliding financial state as motivation for the killings.
Routier remains on death row at the women’s prison in Gatesville.
Since 1994, 38 individuals have been exonerated in Texas by DNA testing, according to the Innocence Project of Texas.
Dennis Skillicorn's widow reacts to the halting of Missouri executions
By Nadia Pflaum in Follow That Story
Thursday, Jun. 25 2009 @ 6:30AM
Just a little over a month after the state ended the life of Dennis Skillicorn by lethal injection, executions are again on hold in Missouri. Incoming Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice William Ray Price Jr. told the The Associated Press yesterday that he didn't expect the Court to schedule any executions while the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals weighs an appeal on behalf of death row inmate Reginald Clemons that questions the constitutionality of Missouri's lethal injection protocol.
The stall is temporary relief for Clemons, who was next up to be executed. But the news is bittersweet for Paula Skillicorn, Dennis' widow. "While this is good news for death row families who will be spared -- at least for a while -- the deep pain and horror that our whole family is suffering, the way the Supreme Court handled this shows once again how capricious and inconsistent the system is when it comes to the death penalty," Paula wrote to The Pitch via e-mail.
The Eighth Circuit, without explanation, granted a stay of execution for Clemons on June 5. Attorneys for Clemons, who was sentenced to death as an accomplice in the 1991 murders of two sisters in St. Louis, argue that Missouri's procedures for lethal injection are insufficient.
Missouri's recent history of lethal injections is messy. In 2006, Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. halted executions in the state after Dr. Alan Doerhoff testified that his dyslexia may have caused him to mix up the dosages of the lethal chemicals he administered to dozens of condemned inmates, potentially causing excruciating pain.
To correct future errors, the Missouri Department of Corrections came up with a new lethal injection protocol, but many objectors, including Doerhoff, considered it insufficient. Clemons' attorneys filed an appeal claiming as much, then filed for a stay of execution for Clemons because the 8th Circuit had yet to rule on the pending appeal.
The sad irony for Jennifer Merrigan, Skillicorn's attorney, is that she'd asked the Missouri Supreme Court to halt her client's execution based on the exact same issue: That because Clemons' appeal was still pending in the 8th Circuit, and its outcome would affect all prisoners awaiting execution on death row, no executions should be scheduled until Clemons' appeal is decided.
"The State itself had maintained (in regard to Clemons' appeal) that prisoners who were not plaintiffs to the suit need not intervene in the suit in order to benefit from a positive ruling, because legally a good result for any of the prisoners would benefit all death row prisoners," Merrigan wrote in an e-mail to The Pitch. "In Dennis' case, however, the State turned around and argued the opposite, that Dennis had no right to benefit from the Clemons litigation."
Thursday, Jun. 25 2009 @ 6:30AM
Just a little over a month after the state ended the life of Dennis Skillicorn by lethal injection, executions are again on hold in Missouri. Incoming Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice William Ray Price Jr. told the The Associated Press yesterday that he didn't expect the Court to schedule any executions while the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals weighs an appeal on behalf of death row inmate Reginald Clemons that questions the constitutionality of Missouri's lethal injection protocol.
The stall is temporary relief for Clemons, who was next up to be executed. But the news is bittersweet for Paula Skillicorn, Dennis' widow. "While this is good news for death row families who will be spared -- at least for a while -- the deep pain and horror that our whole family is suffering, the way the Supreme Court handled this shows once again how capricious and inconsistent the system is when it comes to the death penalty," Paula wrote to The Pitch via e-mail.
The Eighth Circuit, without explanation, granted a stay of execution for Clemons on June 5. Attorneys for Clemons, who was sentenced to death as an accomplice in the 1991 murders of two sisters in St. Louis, argue that Missouri's procedures for lethal injection are insufficient.
Missouri's recent history of lethal injections is messy. In 2006, Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. halted executions in the state after Dr. Alan Doerhoff testified that his dyslexia may have caused him to mix up the dosages of the lethal chemicals he administered to dozens of condemned inmates, potentially causing excruciating pain.
To correct future errors, the Missouri Department of Corrections came up with a new lethal injection protocol, but many objectors, including Doerhoff, considered it insufficient. Clemons' attorneys filed an appeal claiming as much, then filed for a stay of execution for Clemons because the 8th Circuit had yet to rule on the pending appeal.
The sad irony for Jennifer Merrigan, Skillicorn's attorney, is that she'd asked the Missouri Supreme Court to halt her client's execution based on the exact same issue: That because Clemons' appeal was still pending in the 8th Circuit, and its outcome would affect all prisoners awaiting execution on death row, no executions should be scheduled until Clemons' appeal is decided.
"The State itself had maintained (in regard to Clemons' appeal) that prisoners who were not plaintiffs to the suit need not intervene in the suit in order to benefit from a positive ruling, because legally a good result for any of the prisoners would benefit all death row prisoners," Merrigan wrote in an e-mail to The Pitch. "In Dennis' case, however, the State turned around and argued the opposite, that Dennis had no right to benefit from the Clemons litigation."
Judge orders more DNA testing in death penalty case
Judge orders more DNA testing in death penalty case
Florida Supreme Court stayed David Johnston's execution in May.
Sarah Lundy Sentinel Staff Writer
5:38 PM EDT, June 23, 2009
An Orange Circuit Court judge is allowing a lab selected by the defense and another picked by the state to test evidence for DNA in the death penalty case against David Eugene Johnston, whose execution was stayed last month by the Florida Supreme Court.
Johnston was convicted of the murder of 84-year-old Mary Hammond, who was strangled and stabbed in her Orlando home in 1983. He was scheduled to die on May 27.
The Florida Supreme Court stayed the execution so DNA testing could be done. Earlier this month, a state forensic lab recommended more testing with newer technology evaluate the evidence, which included the victim's fingernail clippings. The lab also tested Johnston's shoes, socks and shorts.
Now, a lab in Ohio selected by the defense will test for DNA and a lab in Virginia will test and report back to the court their findings, according to an order signed by Orange Circuit Court Judge Bob Wattles.
Monday, 22 June 2009
Obama names Martin to federal appeals court
Posted on Fri, Jun. 19, 2009
ATLANTA
President Obama on Friday nominated U.S. District Judge Beverly B. Martin of Atlanta to fill a vacant seat on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Martin, a former U.S. attorney in Macon, has been on the district court bench since 2000, when she was appointed by President Clinton.
If confirmed by the Senate, the 53-year-old Martin would fill a spot on the 12-member appeals court left by Judge R. Lanier Anderson III, who assumed senior status Feb. 1.
She is Obama's first appointee to the court, which hears federal appeals from Georgia, Alabama and Florida. Among the other 11 active judges, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan appointed one each, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton four a piece, and George W. Bush one, Judge William H. Pryor Jr., who was the last to be named.
Martin was one of two appeals court nominations by Obama on Friday. He also nominated Judge Joseph A. Greenaway Jr. of New Jersey for a seat in the Third Circuit, based in Philadelphia.
"Judge Greenaway and Judge Martin have distinguished themselves as first-rate jurists with unflagging integrity and evenhandedness," Obama said. "I am grateful for their service to the states of New Jersey and Georgia and look forward to adding their considerable wisdom and experience to the Third and 11th Circuit Courts."
Martin grew up in Macon, graduated from Stetson University and the University of Georgia School of Law.
After private practice in Macon, she worked for 10 years as an assistant state attorney general, then served as assistant U.S. attorney and then as the chief prosecutor in the Middle District of Georgia.
As a federal prosecutor, Martin served as the government's lead counsel in a variety of criminal matters, including drug conspiracy, firearms possession, and counterfeiting cases.
Her time on the U.S. District Court bench has been largely uncontroversial. Her rulings include one upholding Georgia's method of lethal injection for executions, in April 2008.
In February 2006, she also rejected an appeal by Wayne Williams, who was blamed in a string of child murders and disappearances in Atlanta 25 years ago, and in 2002 rejected a claim by environmental groups that state and federal agencies violated the Clean Air Act by approving metro Atlanta's $36 billion transportation plan.
© 2009 Ledger-Enquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.ledgerenquirer.com
ATLANTA
President Obama on Friday nominated U.S. District Judge Beverly B. Martin of Atlanta to fill a vacant seat on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Martin, a former U.S. attorney in Macon, has been on the district court bench since 2000, when she was appointed by President Clinton.
If confirmed by the Senate, the 53-year-old Martin would fill a spot on the 12-member appeals court left by Judge R. Lanier Anderson III, who assumed senior status Feb. 1.
She is Obama's first appointee to the court, which hears federal appeals from Georgia, Alabama and Florida. Among the other 11 active judges, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan appointed one each, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton four a piece, and George W. Bush one, Judge William H. Pryor Jr., who was the last to be named.
Martin was one of two appeals court nominations by Obama on Friday. He also nominated Judge Joseph A. Greenaway Jr. of New Jersey for a seat in the Third Circuit, based in Philadelphia.
"Judge Greenaway and Judge Martin have distinguished themselves as first-rate jurists with unflagging integrity and evenhandedness," Obama said. "I am grateful for their service to the states of New Jersey and Georgia and look forward to adding their considerable wisdom and experience to the Third and 11th Circuit Courts."
Martin grew up in Macon, graduated from Stetson University and the University of Georgia School of Law.
After private practice in Macon, she worked for 10 years as an assistant state attorney general, then served as assistant U.S. attorney and then as the chief prosecutor in the Middle District of Georgia.
As a federal prosecutor, Martin served as the government's lead counsel in a variety of criminal matters, including drug conspiracy, firearms possession, and counterfeiting cases.
Her time on the U.S. District Court bench has been largely uncontroversial. Her rulings include one upholding Georgia's method of lethal injection for executions, in April 2008.
In February 2006, she also rejected an appeal by Wayne Williams, who was blamed in a string of child murders and disappearances in Atlanta 25 years ago, and in 2002 rejected a claim by environmental groups that state and federal agencies violated the Clean Air Act by approving metro Atlanta's $36 billion transportation plan.
© 2009 Ledger-Enquirer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.ledgerenquirer.com
Death penalty decisions loom for Barack Obama
Death penalty decisions loom
By: Josh Gerstein
June 21, 2009 07:03 AM EST
For the first time in his career, President Barack Obama may soon confront one of the most weighty and unsavory decisions that a chief executive must make, whether to put a murder convict to death.
The decision could land on Obama’s desk within a matter of months, due to cases winding their way through the federal courts. And while Obama is on record supporting the death penalty for particularly heinous crimes, that’s a far cry from deciding whether a specific man’s life should be taken or spared.
“The death penalty in the abstract is one thing. The reality of the death penalty and all of its nasty details is a very different thing,” said Dianne Rust-Tierney of the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty. “This is something that this president is not the only one to face…..Having seen this thing in practice, you see it as a very different animal.”
Already, with little press attention or protest from the anti-death penalty camp, Attorney General Eric Holder has authorized federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for at least four defendants since Obama took office. In all, 55 men and two women are on federal death row, death-penalty opponents say.
But the timing of Obama’s first death-penalty decision is likely to be dictated by a case pending in Washington, involving six federal death-row inmates at most imminent risk of execution. Their sentences were stayed by a federal judge, who is deciding whether to let their executions proceed, despite their challenge to federal execution protocols.
The cases involve three members of a Richmond, Va., gang sentenced to death in 1993 for drug-related murders; two men sentenced to death for abduction, sexual assault and murder of a 16-year-girl; and another man convicted of killing a prison guard. All six defendants are black.
If the stay is lifted and execution dates are set, any of the men could ask the president to step in. And clearly, death-penalty opponents hope they have a sympathetic ear in Obama, despite his support for the limited use of executions. They hope he will try to impose more safeguards in federal capital cases, and even spare some prisoners. And they note that Holder once authored a ground-breaking federal study that found racial disparities in death penalty cases.
As a state senator in Illinois, Obama pressed for death penalty reforms, including a requirement that interrogations in capital cases be audio- or videotaped. He also opposed adding gang-related crimes to those which could prompt the death penalty.
And in his book, “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama said he saw little evidence that the death penalty is a deterrent.
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Still, he is on record supporting the ultimate penalty for “heinous” crimes — even in some cases where it has been found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. During last year’s campaign, he said he disagreed with a 5-4 decision the justices issued holding the death penalty unconstitutional in a child rape case where the child was not murdered.
“I have said repeatedly that I think that the death penalty should be applied in very narrow circumstances, for the most egregious of crimes,” Obama said following the court’s ruling last June. “I think that the rape of a small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous crime, and if a state makes a decision that under narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances, the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that that does not violate our Constitution.”
As president, Obama has been silent on the topic. A White House spokesman said the counsel’s office is aware of pending death penalty cases but had not started a formal policy review of how Obama might deal with them.
During the Clinton years, Holder helped oversee what he called a “very disturbing” study on racial disparities in the federal death penalty. Death penalty opponents would like to see Holder order a new study, return more autonomy for death penalty decisions to local federal prosecutors, and agree not to seek the federal death penalty in states which do not have it.
“The Attorney General is reviewing department policies across the board, including those dealing with capital cases, and has made no final determinations with respect to any new policies. As he said at his confirmation hearing, he is open to the idea of a new study,” Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller said. A new study would likely have the practical impact of deferring Obama’s first fateful decision on the death penalty.
But death penalty proponents say they doubt Obama will take a major stand against the death penalty as president.
“I don’t believe that Obama is going to rock the apple cart too much,” said Rusty Hubbarth of Justice for All. “The vast majority of Americans are fully in favor of capital punishment if the safeguards are there.”
One longtime opponent of the death penalty noted that all crime issues have a far lower profile now than in the 1990s – making support or opposition to the death penalty far less of a hot-button for a Democrat like Obama. “Fear of crime was one of the top issues. Now, it’s off the radar. The economy is Number 1, 2 and 3,” said Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center.
For much of President George W. Bush’s time in office, the federal death penalty was effectively halted while the Supreme Court considered cases challenging the so-called cocktail of lethal injection drugs used by most states and the federal government. In April 2008, the high court cleared away the main obstacle to further federal executions when the justices ruled, 7-2, that the lethal drugs didn’t present an unconstitutional risk of cruel and unusual punishment.
Clearing the way for a death sentence was nothing new for Bush when he took office in 2001. He presided over 152 executions as governor of Texas and three as president.
Likewise, President Bill Clinton was no stranger to what Justice Harry Blackmun once called “the machinery of death.” Clinton oversaw a total of four executions as governor of Arkansas. He famously underscored his tough-on-crime credentials by leaving the presidential campaign trail in 1992 to attend to the execution of a brain-damaged cop-killer, Ricky Ray Rector.
However, no federal inmate was executed on Clinton’s watch, after he twice postponed executions scheduled during his final months in office. .
The execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh under Bush in 2001 was the first execution in the federal system in nearly four decades.
Obama will likely be the first presidential novice to face the decision about whether to send a man to death since 1963, when President John F. Kennedy rejected a clemency request from a Michigan man sentenced to death in the federal courts for murder and kidnapping, Victor Feguer. He was hanged.
Even if the Washington cases moved forward, and the six men were cleared for execution, it could take months before it comes to Obama.
Execution dates are typically set by the Federal Bureau of Prisons at least 120 days in advance. Under federal regulations, a condemned inmate has 30 days from the notice to ask the president to commute the sentence, giving the president 90 days to mull the decision. Of course, the president can order a reprieve or commutation at any time, within or outside the official regulations.
Other cases are still in the courts.
In March, prosecutors in San Francisco said Holder “reauthorized” the request for the death penalty for a drug gang leader, Dennis Cyrus, charged with three drug-related murders. Jurors, who convicted Cyrus last month for the murders, are now considering whether to impose death. Holder also authorized seeking the death penalty for a U.S. soldier accused of war crimes in Iraq and for two inmates accused of killing a guard in a California federal prison.
In other cases, Holder has authorized plea bargains and declined the death penalty, including at least one case where Bush Administration officials were pressing for death.
More cases loom. On Tuesday, a federal judge in New York asked the Justice Department to move quickly to decide whether the government will seek the death penalty for a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner just flown into the U.S., Ahmed Ghailani, who is accused of involvement in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.
And Obama will have to decide whether to pursue the death penalty in new military commissions he has proposed for war-on-terror prisoners still housed at Guantanamo.
Of course, deciding whether to grant clemency to a condemned inmate would not be the first life-or-death decision Obama has faced as commander-in-chief at a time of two wars. And in April, he authorized the use of lethal force against pirates holding a U.S. ship captain off the coast of Somalia. Three pirates were killed.
By: Josh Gerstein
June 21, 2009 07:03 AM EST
For the first time in his career, President Barack Obama may soon confront one of the most weighty and unsavory decisions that a chief executive must make, whether to put a murder convict to death.
The decision could land on Obama’s desk within a matter of months, due to cases winding their way through the federal courts. And while Obama is on record supporting the death penalty for particularly heinous crimes, that’s a far cry from deciding whether a specific man’s life should be taken or spared.
“The death penalty in the abstract is one thing. The reality of the death penalty and all of its nasty details is a very different thing,” said Dianne Rust-Tierney of the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty. “This is something that this president is not the only one to face…..Having seen this thing in practice, you see it as a very different animal.”
Already, with little press attention or protest from the anti-death penalty camp, Attorney General Eric Holder has authorized federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for at least four defendants since Obama took office. In all, 55 men and two women are on federal death row, death-penalty opponents say.
But the timing of Obama’s first death-penalty decision is likely to be dictated by a case pending in Washington, involving six federal death-row inmates at most imminent risk of execution. Their sentences were stayed by a federal judge, who is deciding whether to let their executions proceed, despite their challenge to federal execution protocols.
The cases involve three members of a Richmond, Va., gang sentenced to death in 1993 for drug-related murders; two men sentenced to death for abduction, sexual assault and murder of a 16-year-girl; and another man convicted of killing a prison guard. All six defendants are black.
If the stay is lifted and execution dates are set, any of the men could ask the president to step in. And clearly, death-penalty opponents hope they have a sympathetic ear in Obama, despite his support for the limited use of executions. They hope he will try to impose more safeguards in federal capital cases, and even spare some prisoners. And they note that Holder once authored a ground-breaking federal study that found racial disparities in death penalty cases.
As a state senator in Illinois, Obama pressed for death penalty reforms, including a requirement that interrogations in capital cases be audio- or videotaped. He also opposed adding gang-related crimes to those which could prompt the death penalty.
And in his book, “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama said he saw little evidence that the death penalty is a deterrent.
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Still, he is on record supporting the ultimate penalty for “heinous” crimes — even in some cases where it has been found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. During last year’s campaign, he said he disagreed with a 5-4 decision the justices issued holding the death penalty unconstitutional in a child rape case where the child was not murdered.
“I have said repeatedly that I think that the death penalty should be applied in very narrow circumstances, for the most egregious of crimes,” Obama said following the court’s ruling last June. “I think that the rape of a small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous crime, and if a state makes a decision that under narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances, the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that that does not violate our Constitution.”
As president, Obama has been silent on the topic. A White House spokesman said the counsel’s office is aware of pending death penalty cases but had not started a formal policy review of how Obama might deal with them.
During the Clinton years, Holder helped oversee what he called a “very disturbing” study on racial disparities in the federal death penalty. Death penalty opponents would like to see Holder order a new study, return more autonomy for death penalty decisions to local federal prosecutors, and agree not to seek the federal death penalty in states which do not have it.
“The Attorney General is reviewing department policies across the board, including those dealing with capital cases, and has made no final determinations with respect to any new policies. As he said at his confirmation hearing, he is open to the idea of a new study,” Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller said. A new study would likely have the practical impact of deferring Obama’s first fateful decision on the death penalty.
But death penalty proponents say they doubt Obama will take a major stand against the death penalty as president.
“I don’t believe that Obama is going to rock the apple cart too much,” said Rusty Hubbarth of Justice for All. “The vast majority of Americans are fully in favor of capital punishment if the safeguards are there.”
One longtime opponent of the death penalty noted that all crime issues have a far lower profile now than in the 1990s – making support or opposition to the death penalty far less of a hot-button for a Democrat like Obama. “Fear of crime was one of the top issues. Now, it’s off the radar. The economy is Number 1, 2 and 3,” said Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center.
For much of President George W. Bush’s time in office, the federal death penalty was effectively halted while the Supreme Court considered cases challenging the so-called cocktail of lethal injection drugs used by most states and the federal government. In April 2008, the high court cleared away the main obstacle to further federal executions when the justices ruled, 7-2, that the lethal drugs didn’t present an unconstitutional risk of cruel and unusual punishment.
Clearing the way for a death sentence was nothing new for Bush when he took office in 2001. He presided over 152 executions as governor of Texas and three as president.
Likewise, President Bill Clinton was no stranger to what Justice Harry Blackmun once called “the machinery of death.” Clinton oversaw a total of four executions as governor of Arkansas. He famously underscored his tough-on-crime credentials by leaving the presidential campaign trail in 1992 to attend to the execution of a brain-damaged cop-killer, Ricky Ray Rector.
However, no federal inmate was executed on Clinton’s watch, after he twice postponed executions scheduled during his final months in office. .
The execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh under Bush in 2001 was the first execution in the federal system in nearly four decades.
Obama will likely be the first presidential novice to face the decision about whether to send a man to death since 1963, when President John F. Kennedy rejected a clemency request from a Michigan man sentenced to death in the federal courts for murder and kidnapping, Victor Feguer. He was hanged.
Even if the Washington cases moved forward, and the six men were cleared for execution, it could take months before it comes to Obama.
Execution dates are typically set by the Federal Bureau of Prisons at least 120 days in advance. Under federal regulations, a condemned inmate has 30 days from the notice to ask the president to commute the sentence, giving the president 90 days to mull the decision. Of course, the president can order a reprieve or commutation at any time, within or outside the official regulations.
Other cases are still in the courts.
In March, prosecutors in San Francisco said Holder “reauthorized” the request for the death penalty for a drug gang leader, Dennis Cyrus, charged with three drug-related murders. Jurors, who convicted Cyrus last month for the murders, are now considering whether to impose death. Holder also authorized seeking the death penalty for a U.S. soldier accused of war crimes in Iraq and for two inmates accused of killing a guard in a California federal prison.
In other cases, Holder has authorized plea bargains and declined the death penalty, including at least one case where Bush Administration officials were pressing for death.
More cases loom. On Tuesday, a federal judge in New York asked the Justice Department to move quickly to decide whether the government will seek the death penalty for a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner just flown into the U.S., Ahmed Ghailani, who is accused of involvement in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.
And Obama will have to decide whether to pursue the death penalty in new military commissions he has proposed for war-on-terror prisoners still housed at Guantanamo.
Of course, deciding whether to grant clemency to a condemned inmate would not be the first life-or-death decision Obama has faced as commander-in-chief at a time of two wars. And in April, he authorized the use of lethal force against pirates holding a U.S. ship captain off the coast of Somalia. Three pirates were killed.
Saturday, 20 June 2009
NAACP top exec says cop-killer conviction was built on 'lies'
Jan Skutch | Morris News Service
Friday, June 19, 2009 8:42 a.m.
SAVANNAH -- If the conviction of Troy Anthony Davis and his subsequent death sentencing resulted from "lies," then a "cop killer" has remained at large for 18 years, the top executive of the national NAACP says.
That is what occurred, asserted Benjamin Jealous, president and chief executive officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and it demands that Chatham County District Attorney Larry Chisolm reopen the case.
"The interest of the state is in the truth," he told the Savannah Morning News in an interview.
Jealous was in Savannah Friday as part of "I AM TROY," a grassroots campaign and petition drive to spare Davis from execution at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison near Jackson.
The campaign is part of a nationwide initiative.
Davis, 38, was convicted and sentenced to die in 1991 for the murder of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail.
A litany of appeals has failed to sway various courts, although Davis has evaded execution three times.
On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to consider the latest challenge by attorneys for Davis.
Jealous, along with state and Savannah Branch NAACP groups, wants Chisolm to reopen the case and find the assailant who is truly guilty.
They say seven of the nine state witnesses at the original trial have recanted their testimony. Execution of Davis will mean a possibly innocent man will die, they further argue.
Central to the position taken by Jealous is the testimony of seven of the nine witnesses.
Their trial testimonies were "lies," he said.
"If Troy Davis was convicted on lies, then the truth is: A killer's on the loose," he said.
The witnesses did not just question their prior statements.
"They contradicted it," he said.
By "voluntarily" coming forward and changing their testimony, each has opened him or herself to prosecution on charges of perjury, Jealous said.
He called it reasonable to believe that if the Davis jury had heard what the witnesses say now, "Troy Davis would not have been convicted."
But Jealous said Georgia courts have not listened to calls to air the new evidence that he called compelling.
He said the questionable testimony resulted from "multiple levels of coercion" - fear of "bad actors in the community," other witnesses or fear of police, he said.
Jealous, whose family was in law enforcement, said he understands the "fraternity" among police officers and the desire for resolution when one of their own is slain.
"I don't ascribe any bad motives," he said.
From the Friday, June 19, 2009 online edition of The Augusta Chronicle
Friday, June 19, 2009 8:42 a.m.
SAVANNAH -- If the conviction of Troy Anthony Davis and his subsequent death sentencing resulted from "lies," then a "cop killer" has remained at large for 18 years, the top executive of the national NAACP says.
That is what occurred, asserted Benjamin Jealous, president and chief executive officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and it demands that Chatham County District Attorney Larry Chisolm reopen the case.
"The interest of the state is in the truth," he told the Savannah Morning News in an interview.
Jealous was in Savannah Friday as part of "I AM TROY," a grassroots campaign and petition drive to spare Davis from execution at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison near Jackson.
The campaign is part of a nationwide initiative.
Davis, 38, was convicted and sentenced to die in 1991 for the murder of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail.
A litany of appeals has failed to sway various courts, although Davis has evaded execution three times.
On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to consider the latest challenge by attorneys for Davis.
Jealous, along with state and Savannah Branch NAACP groups, wants Chisolm to reopen the case and find the assailant who is truly guilty.
They say seven of the nine state witnesses at the original trial have recanted their testimony. Execution of Davis will mean a possibly innocent man will die, they further argue.
Central to the position taken by Jealous is the testimony of seven of the nine witnesses.
Their trial testimonies were "lies," he said.
"If Troy Davis was convicted on lies, then the truth is: A killer's on the loose," he said.
The witnesses did not just question their prior statements.
"They contradicted it," he said.
By "voluntarily" coming forward and changing their testimony, each has opened him or herself to prosecution on charges of perjury, Jealous said.
He called it reasonable to believe that if the Davis jury had heard what the witnesses say now, "Troy Davis would not have been convicted."
But Jealous said Georgia courts have not listened to calls to air the new evidence that he called compelling.
He said the questionable testimony resulted from "multiple levels of coercion" - fear of "bad actors in the community," other witnesses or fear of police, he said.
Jealous, whose family was in law enforcement, said he understands the "fraternity" among police officers and the desire for resolution when one of their own is slain.
"I don't ascribe any bad motives," he said.
From the Friday, June 19, 2009 online edition of The Augusta Chronicle
Monday, 15 June 2009
Legal stalling is packing Death Row
Tom Harman
Monday, June 15, 2009
Legal executions have been the law of the land in California since the late 1800s. They were briefly abolished by the state Supreme Court in 1972 and reinstated by the voters in 1978. Yet only 13 executions have taken place in the 37 years since the death penalty was reinstated.
Executions are routinely stalled by legal maneuverings that would try the patience of Job. As a result, Death Row is bursting at the seams - 680 inmates remain there, waiting decades for their appeals to run their course.
Clearly California can't afford the dysfunctional death penalty system in place. One could argue that the endless delays and legal maneuvering by death penalty opponents contribute most to the state's death penalty costs. Nationwide, the average time from conviction to execution is 12 years. In California, it is almost 25 years. If death sentences were carried out at the pace of the rest of the nation, costs to the state would be greatly diminished. Earlier this month, the California Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of Richard Allen Davis, the killer of 12-year-old Polly Klaas. Klaas was kidnapped from her home during a slumber party with her friends and brutally murdered. In the time it has taken California to process Davis' appeal, Polly would have finished high school, college and been on the road to achieving her dreams. Her future was viciously cut short by Davis, yet there seems to be no end to Davis' future in our prison system. This is not right and it is not what the voters intended. It is certainly not what the families of victims should have to endure, as they wait patiently for justice to be done.
In 2008, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice issued a report stating that the death penalty system in California was failing. In California, as of 2008, 30 inmates had been on Death Row for more than 25 years, 119 for more than 20 years and 240 for more than 15 years. Is California doing something wrong? Absolutely.
Delays in obtaining legal counsel, the appeals process, court-ordered moratoriums and other stalling tactics are routine. These delays ultimately place more value on the life of a convicted criminal than on that of the victim. I believe this is unacceptable to the victims, their families and the voters.
The sad truth in California is that killers on Death Row are far more likely to die of natural causes than at the hands of the state. As the commission noted, the interminable delays that have become the hallmark of the system have weakened the death penalty's effect on deterring crime.
One thing is certain: Californians have not shied away from their support of capital punishment. Since it was reinstated, the voters have made no effort to repeal the death penalty and, in fact, have supported ballot measures such as the "three strikes" law that impose harsher punishments for violent or repeat offenders. The simple fact is that execution for those who commit the most horrible of crimes is the law.
Advocates on both sides of this debate can agree on one point - the death penalty system in California is broken and unworkable. As long as the citizens of California continue to support the death penalty, it is the job of the Legislature to fix this dysfunctional system. If lawmakers don't, then the citizens of California will do it themselves through the initiative process. As it stands now, justice isn't being served for anyone.
Tom Harman, R-Huntingdon Beach, has served in the Legislature since 2000.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Legal executions have been the law of the land in California since the late 1800s. They were briefly abolished by the state Supreme Court in 1972 and reinstated by the voters in 1978. Yet only 13 executions have taken place in the 37 years since the death penalty was reinstated.
Executions are routinely stalled by legal maneuverings that would try the patience of Job. As a result, Death Row is bursting at the seams - 680 inmates remain there, waiting decades for their appeals to run their course.
Clearly California can't afford the dysfunctional death penalty system in place. One could argue that the endless delays and legal maneuvering by death penalty opponents contribute most to the state's death penalty costs. Nationwide, the average time from conviction to execution is 12 years. In California, it is almost 25 years. If death sentences were carried out at the pace of the rest of the nation, costs to the state would be greatly diminished. Earlier this month, the California Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of Richard Allen Davis, the killer of 12-year-old Polly Klaas. Klaas was kidnapped from her home during a slumber party with her friends and brutally murdered. In the time it has taken California to process Davis' appeal, Polly would have finished high school, college and been on the road to achieving her dreams. Her future was viciously cut short by Davis, yet there seems to be no end to Davis' future in our prison system. This is not right and it is not what the voters intended. It is certainly not what the families of victims should have to endure, as they wait patiently for justice to be done.
In 2008, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice issued a report stating that the death penalty system in California was failing. In California, as of 2008, 30 inmates had been on Death Row for more than 25 years, 119 for more than 20 years and 240 for more than 15 years. Is California doing something wrong? Absolutely.
Delays in obtaining legal counsel, the appeals process, court-ordered moratoriums and other stalling tactics are routine. These delays ultimately place more value on the life of a convicted criminal than on that of the victim. I believe this is unacceptable to the victims, their families and the voters.
The sad truth in California is that killers on Death Row are far more likely to die of natural causes than at the hands of the state. As the commission noted, the interminable delays that have become the hallmark of the system have weakened the death penalty's effect on deterring crime.
One thing is certain: Californians have not shied away from their support of capital punishment. Since it was reinstated, the voters have made no effort to repeal the death penalty and, in fact, have supported ballot measures such as the "three strikes" law that impose harsher punishments for violent or repeat offenders. The simple fact is that execution for those who commit the most horrible of crimes is the law.
Advocates on both sides of this debate can agree on one point - the death penalty system in California is broken and unworkable. As long as the citizens of California continue to support the death penalty, it is the job of the Legislature to fix this dysfunctional system. If lawmakers don't, then the citizens of California will do it themselves through the initiative process. As it stands now, justice isn't being served for anyone.
Tom Harman, R-Huntingdon Beach, has served in the Legislature since 2000.
Saturday, 23 May 2009
Former San Quentin warden honored for speaking out against death penalty
Richard Halstead
Posted: 05/22/2009 06:37:40 PM PDT
During her stint as warden of San Quentin State Prison, Jeanne Woodford oversaw the execution of four death row inmates without ever discussing her personal feelings about the death penalty.
On Thursday night, however, Woodford received an award from Death Penalty Focus for her courage in speaking out against capital punishment. Woodford, who went on to serve as both director and undersecretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, began sharing her thoughts about the death penalty about a year after retiring in 2006. Others honored by the San Francisco-based nonprofit included New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former California Attorney General John Van De Kamp.
Singling out Woodford and Van De Kamp, Death Penalty Focus director Lance Lindsey said, "They're courageous because they're coming out of communities that are often associated with a knee-jerk tough-on-crime position. What they represent is a smart-on-crime position."
Woodford, 56, said she has always opposed the death penalty.
"Initially for me it was just a matter of, does this really make sense to be killing people to avenge the death of someone else?" Woodford said in an interview this week.
She said it is a debate that will never be settled.
"Some people believe in an eye for an eye, and some people don't," she said.
Woodford, who started her career as a prison guard at San Quentin, said there are more practical reasons for opposing capital punishment.
She said the death penalty is an ineffective deterrent because of the time it takes to execute condemned prisoners. She said that due to improvements in prison security, capital punishment is no longer needed to protect the public from the possibility that killers might escape. She noted that prisoners can now be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. And, she said, it costs far more to execute a condemned prisoner than to keep one in prison for life.
"I just really worry about the state of California," Woodford said. "I worry about the fact that we continue to spend so much money on issues that aren't giving us any benefit. The death penalty is one of those."
Woodford said the state also can no longer afford to incarcerate nonviolent offenders or to skimp on mental health and drug treatment programs, which keep people out of prison. She said money is being wasted by sending parole violators back to state prison for minor violations.
"We're not making intelligent choices about who should be in state prison and who shouldn't," Woodford said.
During her stint as warden at San Quentin from 1999 to 2004, Woodford initiated a number of experimental programs aimed at reducing recidivism.
"We currently look back on that time with some nostalgia," said Jacques Verduin, executive director of the Insight Prison Project, a San Rafael-based nonprofit that works with San Quentin to provide rehabilitative programs.
"Jeannie was one of the first to understand that the community could play a larger role in this prison, or prisons period," Verduin said.
But Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, disputes Woodford's economic critique of capital punishment. The foundation is a public interest law organization that files friend of the court briefs to speed the implementation of executions.
"The argument assumes that the present costs are necessary and will continue and that is not a valid assumption," Scheidegger said. "The costs can be greatly reduced. The appeals don't need to last 20 years. Virginia does it in five."
In a guest editorial that appeared in the Los Angeles Times in October, Woodford recalled presiding over the execution of Robert Lee Massie. Woodford said she chose to write about Massie "because he would be the poster child for why people say we need a death penalty." Massie was originally sentenced to death in 1965, but his sentence was later commuted to life. He was paroled in 1978, murdered a liquor store owner during a robbery eight months later, pleaded guilty, and was once again sentenced to die.
Massie was one of several death row inmates who effectively volunteered to be executed by dropping their appeals, Woodford said.
"So it's really like assisting with their suicide," Woodford said. "What that ought to say to people is that permanent imprisonment isn't an easy punishment for anyone."
Contact Richard Halstead via e-mail at rhalstead@marinij.com
Posted: 05/22/2009 06:37:40 PM PDT
During her stint as warden of San Quentin State Prison, Jeanne Woodford oversaw the execution of four death row inmates without ever discussing her personal feelings about the death penalty.
On Thursday night, however, Woodford received an award from Death Penalty Focus for her courage in speaking out against capital punishment. Woodford, who went on to serve as both director and undersecretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, began sharing her thoughts about the death penalty about a year after retiring in 2006. Others honored by the San Francisco-based nonprofit included New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former California Attorney General John Van De Kamp.
Singling out Woodford and Van De Kamp, Death Penalty Focus director Lance Lindsey said, "They're courageous because they're coming out of communities that are often associated with a knee-jerk tough-on-crime position. What they represent is a smart-on-crime position."
Woodford, 56, said she has always opposed the death penalty.
"Initially for me it was just a matter of, does this really make sense to be killing people to avenge the death of someone else?" Woodford said in an interview this week.
She said it is a debate that will never be settled.
"Some people believe in an eye for an eye, and some people don't," she said.
Woodford, who started her career as a prison guard at San Quentin, said there are more practical reasons for opposing capital punishment.
She said the death penalty is an ineffective deterrent because of the time it takes to execute condemned prisoners. She said that due to improvements in prison security, capital punishment is no longer needed to protect the public from the possibility that killers might escape. She noted that prisoners can now be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. And, she said, it costs far more to execute a condemned prisoner than to keep one in prison for life.
"I just really worry about the state of California," Woodford said. "I worry about the fact that we continue to spend so much money on issues that aren't giving us any benefit. The death penalty is one of those."
Woodford said the state also can no longer afford to incarcerate nonviolent offenders or to skimp on mental health and drug treatment programs, which keep people out of prison. She said money is being wasted by sending parole violators back to state prison for minor violations.
"We're not making intelligent choices about who should be in state prison and who shouldn't," Woodford said.
During her stint as warden at San Quentin from 1999 to 2004, Woodford initiated a number of experimental programs aimed at reducing recidivism.
"We currently look back on that time with some nostalgia," said Jacques Verduin, executive director of the Insight Prison Project, a San Rafael-based nonprofit that works with San Quentin to provide rehabilitative programs.
"Jeannie was one of the first to understand that the community could play a larger role in this prison, or prisons period," Verduin said.
But Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, disputes Woodford's economic critique of capital punishment. The foundation is a public interest law organization that files friend of the court briefs to speed the implementation of executions.
"The argument assumes that the present costs are necessary and will continue and that is not a valid assumption," Scheidegger said. "The costs can be greatly reduced. The appeals don't need to last 20 years. Virginia does it in five."
In a guest editorial that appeared in the Los Angeles Times in October, Woodford recalled presiding over the execution of Robert Lee Massie. Woodford said she chose to write about Massie "because he would be the poster child for why people say we need a death penalty." Massie was originally sentenced to death in 1965, but his sentence was later commuted to life. He was paroled in 1978, murdered a liquor store owner during a robbery eight months later, pleaded guilty, and was once again sentenced to die.
Massie was one of several death row inmates who effectively volunteered to be executed by dropping their appeals, Woodford said.
"So it's really like assisting with their suicide," Woodford said. "What that ought to say to people is that permanent imprisonment isn't an easy punishment for anyone."
Contact Richard Halstead via e-mail at rhalstead@marinij.com
In the Absence of Proof
By BOB HERBERT
The options are running out for Troy Davis, a man who has been condemned to death for killing a police officer in Georgia, but whose guilt is seriously in question.
It’s bad enough that we still execute people in the United States. It’s absolutely chilling that we’re willing to do it when we’re not even sure we’ve got the right person in our clutches.
Mr. Davis came within an hour of execution last fall. His relatives and his attorney, Jason Ewart, had come to the state prison to say goodbye. Mr. Davis had eaten his last meal, and Mr. Ewart was ready to witness his execution.
The mind-numbing tension was broken with a last-minute stay from the Supreme Court. The case then made its way to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, which ruled 2-to-1 last month against Mr. Davis’s petition for a hearing to examine new evidence pointing to his innocence.
The countdown to the ghoulish ritual of execution resumed.
Mr. Davis was convicted of shooting a police officer to death in the parking lot of a Burger King in Savannah, Ga., in 1989. The officer, Mark Allen MacPhail, was murdered as he went to the aid of a homeless man who was being pistol-whipped.
I’m opposed to the death penalty, but I would have a very hard time finding even the faintest glimmer of sympathy for the person who murdered that officer. The problem with taking Mr. Davis’s life in response to the murder of Officer MacPhail is the steadily growing mass of evidence that Mr. Davis was not the man who committed the murder.
Nine witnesses testified against Mr. Davis at his trial in 1991, but seven of the nine have since changed their stories. One of those seven, Dorothy Ferrell, said she was on parole when she testified and was afraid that she’d be sent back to prison if she didn’t agree to cooperate with the authorities by fingering Mr. Davis.
“I told the detective that Troy Davis was the shooter,” she said in an affidavit, “even though the truth was that I didn’t know who shot the officer.”
Another witness, Darrell Collins, who was a teenager at the time of the murder, said the police had “scared” him into falsely testifying by threatening to charge him as an accessory to the crime. He said he was told that he would go to prison and might never get out if he refused to help make the case against Mr. Davis.
This week Mr. Davis’s lawyers, led by Mr. Ewart of the Arnold & Porter law firm in Washington, filed a last-ditch, long-shot petition with the Supreme Court, asking it to intervene and allow Mr. Davis’s claims of innocence to be fully examined.
An extraordinary group of 27 former judges and prosecutors joined in an amicus brief in support of the petition. Among those who signed on were William Sessions, the former director of the F.B.I.; Larry Thompson, a U.S. attorney general from 2001-2003; the former Congressman Bob Barr, who was the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986-1990; and Rudolph Gerber, who was an Arizona trial and court of appeals judge from 1979-2001.
The counsel of record for the amicus brief is the Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree. The brief asserts that the Supreme Court should intervene “because Mr. Davis can make an extraordinary showing through new, never reviewed evidence that strongly points to his innocence, and thus his execution would violate the Constitution.”
The very idea of executing someone who may in fact be innocent should also violate the nation’s conscience. Mr. Davis is incarcerated. He’s no threat to anyone. Where’s the harm in seeking out the truth and trying to see that justice is really done?
And if the truth can’t be properly sorted out, we should be unwilling to let a human life be taken on mere surmise.
There was no physical evidence against Mr. Davis, and no murder weapon was ever found. At least three witnesses who testified against him at his trial (and a number of others who were not part of the trial) have since said that a man named Sylvester “Redd” Coles admitted to killing the police officer.
Mr. Coles, who was at the scene, and who, according to witnesses, later ditched a gun of the same caliber as the murder weapon, is one of the two witnesses who have not recanted. The other is a man who initially told investigators that he could not identify the killer. Nearly two years later, at the trial, he testified that the killer was Mr. Davis.
Officer MacPhail’s murder was a horrendous crime that cries out for justice. Killing Mr. Davis, rather than remedying that tragedy, would only compound it.
The options are running out for Troy Davis, a man who has been condemned to death for killing a police officer in Georgia, but whose guilt is seriously in question.
It’s bad enough that we still execute people in the United States. It’s absolutely chilling that we’re willing to do it when we’re not even sure we’ve got the right person in our clutches.
Mr. Davis came within an hour of execution last fall. His relatives and his attorney, Jason Ewart, had come to the state prison to say goodbye. Mr. Davis had eaten his last meal, and Mr. Ewart was ready to witness his execution.
The mind-numbing tension was broken with a last-minute stay from the Supreme Court. The case then made its way to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, which ruled 2-to-1 last month against Mr. Davis’s petition for a hearing to examine new evidence pointing to his innocence.
The countdown to the ghoulish ritual of execution resumed.
Mr. Davis was convicted of shooting a police officer to death in the parking lot of a Burger King in Savannah, Ga., in 1989. The officer, Mark Allen MacPhail, was murdered as he went to the aid of a homeless man who was being pistol-whipped.
I’m opposed to the death penalty, but I would have a very hard time finding even the faintest glimmer of sympathy for the person who murdered that officer. The problem with taking Mr. Davis’s life in response to the murder of Officer MacPhail is the steadily growing mass of evidence that Mr. Davis was not the man who committed the murder.
Nine witnesses testified against Mr. Davis at his trial in 1991, but seven of the nine have since changed their stories. One of those seven, Dorothy Ferrell, said she was on parole when she testified and was afraid that she’d be sent back to prison if she didn’t agree to cooperate with the authorities by fingering Mr. Davis.
“I told the detective that Troy Davis was the shooter,” she said in an affidavit, “even though the truth was that I didn’t know who shot the officer.”
Another witness, Darrell Collins, who was a teenager at the time of the murder, said the police had “scared” him into falsely testifying by threatening to charge him as an accessory to the crime. He said he was told that he would go to prison and might never get out if he refused to help make the case against Mr. Davis.
This week Mr. Davis’s lawyers, led by Mr. Ewart of the Arnold & Porter law firm in Washington, filed a last-ditch, long-shot petition with the Supreme Court, asking it to intervene and allow Mr. Davis’s claims of innocence to be fully examined.
An extraordinary group of 27 former judges and prosecutors joined in an amicus brief in support of the petition. Among those who signed on were William Sessions, the former director of the F.B.I.; Larry Thompson, a U.S. attorney general from 2001-2003; the former Congressman Bob Barr, who was the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986-1990; and Rudolph Gerber, who was an Arizona trial and court of appeals judge from 1979-2001.
The counsel of record for the amicus brief is the Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree. The brief asserts that the Supreme Court should intervene “because Mr. Davis can make an extraordinary showing through new, never reviewed evidence that strongly points to his innocence, and thus his execution would violate the Constitution.”
The very idea of executing someone who may in fact be innocent should also violate the nation’s conscience. Mr. Davis is incarcerated. He’s no threat to anyone. Where’s the harm in seeking out the truth and trying to see that justice is really done?
And if the truth can’t be properly sorted out, we should be unwilling to let a human life be taken on mere surmise.
There was no physical evidence against Mr. Davis, and no murder weapon was ever found. At least three witnesses who testified against him at his trial (and a number of others who were not part of the trial) have since said that a man named Sylvester “Redd” Coles admitted to killing the police officer.
Mr. Coles, who was at the scene, and who, according to witnesses, later ditched a gun of the same caliber as the murder weapon, is one of the two witnesses who have not recanted. The other is a man who initially told investigators that he could not identify the killer. Nearly two years later, at the trial, he testified that the killer was Mr. Davis.
Officer MacPhail’s murder was a horrendous crime that cries out for justice. Killing Mr. Davis, rather than remedying that tragedy, would only compound it.
Friday, 22 May 2009
World Wide Protest for Death Row Inmate Troy Davis
Thousands of people in 43 U.S. states and five continents participated in Amnesty International's "Global Day of Action," where people from all over the world protested the death sentence of Georgia man Troy Davis. The activists rallied in efforts to bring awareness and also pressure the state to overturn its decision.
Davis and his attorneys made a last ditch effort to appeal his case in the U.S. Supreme Court on May 19. He was convicted of killing a Savannah police officer 20 years ago, however new evidence has surfaced which could potentially prove Davis' innocence, reports the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
“Davis’ new evidence eviscerates the state’s case against him,” the filing said. “Despite substantial new evidence of his innocence, no court has ever held a hearing to assess the scores of new witnesses that show Mr. Davis is innocent.”
The appeal states that fulfilling the execution would be less than constitutional without a “full and fair hearing in which he could make a truly persuasive demonstration that he is actually innocent.”
A 40-year-old Davis has been situated in death row for the killing of off-duty Officer Mark Allen MacPhail. The former Army ranger was gunned down in a Burger King parking lot while was rushing to the aid of a man being pistol whipped.
Davis' case has attracted the support of Amnesty International's Jared Feuer, former president and Georgia native Jimmy Carter, Republican Congressman Bob Barr and the Pope, reports BET.com.
"This case brings front and center all the problems with our criminal justice system," Feuer said. "We’ve been astonished by how focused the courts are on finality and not on getting it right."
Feuer said he was especially drawn to this case six years ago primarily because of the
overwhelming lack of physical evidence. He added that the murder weapon was never recovered
and the case was judged on inconsistent eyewitness testimonies alone.
Since Davis’ 1991 trial, seven of nine witnesses have withdrawn their testimony and some have even gone as far to name another man - Sylvester “Redd” Coles - as the shooter. Coles was at the scene at the scene of the crime and the first person to accuse Davis in the killing.
“With Troy’s case you have three execution dates that have come and gone,” Feuer said. “That’s unusual. There have been three stays. The public attention and pressure on this case is making a difference. There have been more than half a million petitions and letters from all around the world.”
One of Davis' lawyers, Jason Ewart, said the high court is his client's last resort to prove his innocence. “This is the last court that we can go to,” Ewart said. “It’s something that’s not often granted, but we think this is an exceptional case.”
Davis and his attorneys made a last ditch effort to appeal his case in the U.S. Supreme Court on May 19. He was convicted of killing a Savannah police officer 20 years ago, however new evidence has surfaced which could potentially prove Davis' innocence, reports the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
“Davis’ new evidence eviscerates the state’s case against him,” the filing said. “Despite substantial new evidence of his innocence, no court has ever held a hearing to assess the scores of new witnesses that show Mr. Davis is innocent.”
The appeal states that fulfilling the execution would be less than constitutional without a “full and fair hearing in which he could make a truly persuasive demonstration that he is actually innocent.”
A 40-year-old Davis has been situated in death row for the killing of off-duty Officer Mark Allen MacPhail. The former Army ranger was gunned down in a Burger King parking lot while was rushing to the aid of a man being pistol whipped.
Davis' case has attracted the support of Amnesty International's Jared Feuer, former president and Georgia native Jimmy Carter, Republican Congressman Bob Barr and the Pope, reports BET.com.
"This case brings front and center all the problems with our criminal justice system," Feuer said. "We’ve been astonished by how focused the courts are on finality and not on getting it right."
Feuer said he was especially drawn to this case six years ago primarily because of the
overwhelming lack of physical evidence. He added that the murder weapon was never recovered
and the case was judged on inconsistent eyewitness testimonies alone.
Since Davis’ 1991 trial, seven of nine witnesses have withdrawn their testimony and some have even gone as far to name another man - Sylvester “Redd” Coles - as the shooter. Coles was at the scene at the scene of the crime and the first person to accuse Davis in the killing.
“With Troy’s case you have three execution dates that have come and gone,” Feuer said. “That’s unusual. There have been three stays. The public attention and pressure on this case is making a difference. There have been more than half a million petitions and letters from all around the world.”
One of Davis' lawyers, Jason Ewart, said the high court is his client's last resort to prove his innocence. “This is the last court that we can go to,” Ewart said. “It’s something that’s not often granted, but we think this is an exceptional case.”
Please Ask Connecticut Governor Rell To Sign The Death Penalty Abolition Bill
Early this morning the Connecticut Senate voted to abolish Connecticut's death penalty. The vote was 19-17. The bill now goes to Governor Jodi Rell (R). She sounds like she will veto the bill. So, if you care about the value of human life and making Connecticut and America more just and ending the barbarism that is the death penalty, this is an important time to spend a few moments to call or email Governor Rell to ask her to sign the bill. The phone is 860.566.4840. The email: Governor.Rell@ct.gov.
Connecticut is not in the "death belt." Never has been. Connecticut has had one execution in the past 48 years. Michael Ross was executed in 2005 only after he withdrew his appeals and "volunteered" for execution, and that decision was fought as far as it could go in the Courts. Regardless, there seems to be strong support for retaining the death penalty in the Connecticut Senate among its Republican members, some Democrats in the Senate crossed over to vote against the abolition measure, and and Governor Rell has repeatedly said that she supports retention of the death penalty.
The Day reports:
The Connecticut Senate voted to abolish the death penalty early Friday morning after a marathon debate, narrowly approving a bill that would make life imprisonment without possibility of release the state’s highest criminal punishment.
The Senate approved the death penalty bill, 19-17, shortly after 4 a.m., after nearly 11 hours of debate. The same measure had previously passed in the House of Representatives, and proceeds to Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who has appeared likely to veto the bill.
If signed into law, the bill would make Connecticut the 16th American state without an active death penalty statute.
The bill almost died in the Senate. "Partisan acrimony virtually derailed the workings of the chamber, as the death penalty bill ran head-on into a deliberate slow-down effort by the Senate’s 12-member Republican minority, prompted by the minority party’s anger at the management of business in the Senate." Put another way, Republicans, even Connecticut Republicans, and some Democrats, even Connecticut Democrats, cling to the barbarism and caprice that is the death penalty. "Republicans filed 26 amendments on the bill, eventually calling five, and finally withdrew their remaining amendments from consideration after securing an agreement from Williams not to force a debate on reform of the state probate courts even later into Friday morning." The final vote was 17 against abolition. That means that 5 Democrats voted against abolition. You might ask what probate reform has to do with state killing.
You'll recall that just recently New Mexico abolished its death penalty when the bill was signed by Governor Richardson. Richardson took the matter seriously, requested input, and ultimately made the correct decision. What about Governor Rell?
Well, yesterday, Governor Rell had this to say:
Meanwhile, Rell reiterated her support for the death penalty Thursday, increasing the likelihood of a veto, which supporters do not have the votes to override.
“You know how I feel about the death penalty,” the governor said. “I’ve always believed there are some crimes that are so heinous it deserves the death penalty.”
And before that she repeatedly supported of state killing. In other words, this doesn't sound good.
Please lend a hand. Please take a moment to email Governor Rell at Governor.Rell@ct.gov or call her office at 860.566.4840 and ask her please to sign the death penalty abolition bill. Do it because it's the right thing to do. Do it because we need to join virtually all of the rest of the world and stop state killing.
Etiquetas: abolition, Connecticut, death penalty, human rights
POSTED BY DAVID SETH MICHAELS AT 1:07 PM
Connecticut is not in the "death belt." Never has been. Connecticut has had one execution in the past 48 years. Michael Ross was executed in 2005 only after he withdrew his appeals and "volunteered" for execution, and that decision was fought as far as it could go in the Courts. Regardless, there seems to be strong support for retaining the death penalty in the Connecticut Senate among its Republican members, some Democrats in the Senate crossed over to vote against the abolition measure, and and Governor Rell has repeatedly said that she supports retention of the death penalty.
The Day reports:
The Connecticut Senate voted to abolish the death penalty early Friday morning after a marathon debate, narrowly approving a bill that would make life imprisonment without possibility of release the state’s highest criminal punishment.
The Senate approved the death penalty bill, 19-17, shortly after 4 a.m., after nearly 11 hours of debate. The same measure had previously passed in the House of Representatives, and proceeds to Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who has appeared likely to veto the bill.
If signed into law, the bill would make Connecticut the 16th American state without an active death penalty statute.
The bill almost died in the Senate. "Partisan acrimony virtually derailed the workings of the chamber, as the death penalty bill ran head-on into a deliberate slow-down effort by the Senate’s 12-member Republican minority, prompted by the minority party’s anger at the management of business in the Senate." Put another way, Republicans, even Connecticut Republicans, and some Democrats, even Connecticut Democrats, cling to the barbarism and caprice that is the death penalty. "Republicans filed 26 amendments on the bill, eventually calling five, and finally withdrew their remaining amendments from consideration after securing an agreement from Williams not to force a debate on reform of the state probate courts even later into Friday morning." The final vote was 17 against abolition. That means that 5 Democrats voted against abolition. You might ask what probate reform has to do with state killing.
You'll recall that just recently New Mexico abolished its death penalty when the bill was signed by Governor Richardson. Richardson took the matter seriously, requested input, and ultimately made the correct decision. What about Governor Rell?
Well, yesterday, Governor Rell had this to say:
Meanwhile, Rell reiterated her support for the death penalty Thursday, increasing the likelihood of a veto, which supporters do not have the votes to override.
“You know how I feel about the death penalty,” the governor said. “I’ve always believed there are some crimes that are so heinous it deserves the death penalty.”
And before that she repeatedly supported of state killing. In other words, this doesn't sound good.
Please lend a hand. Please take a moment to email Governor Rell at Governor.Rell@ct.gov or call her office at 860.566.4840 and ask her please to sign the death penalty abolition bill. Do it because it's the right thing to do. Do it because we need to join virtually all of the rest of the world and stop state killing.
Etiquetas: abolition, Connecticut, death penalty, human rights
POSTED BY DAVID SETH MICHAELS AT 1:07 PM
Thursday, 21 May 2009
Voices raised for Troy
Troy Davis could again come face to face with the Georgia execution machine. Following a federal court's rejection of his appeal, the stay of execution protecting Troy was lifted on May 16.
Troy's lawyers are planning a new appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, pleading once again for justice--that the courts should at least hear persuasive new evidence of Troy's innocence.
Among the facts that have never been heard by a jury are the statements of seven of nine witnesses who testified against Troy at his trial that they would not now implicate him. Of the remaining witnesses against Troy, one is Sylvester Coles, initially the prime suspect in the murder an off-duty Savannah, Ga., police officer that Troy was sent to death row for.
On May 19, people across the country and around the world will participate in an international day of action to save Troy. This is the latest show of protest in a struggle that has been building over years, touching people around the globe.
Troy's sister, Martina Correia, has been at the center of that struggle. She talked to of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty about the fight to save her brother.
TROY HAS faced three execution dates and could soon face a fourth. Why do the courts keep blocking his chance to prove his innocence?
I THINK this has a lot to do with the fact that Georgia wants to remain defiant. There's been a lot of good-old-boy deals done to keep Troy from having his day in court.
In Georgia, we had a case last year of a white man who had been on death row for 20 years--and when one of the witnesses recanted, a lower court of appeals ordered a whole new trial. It's amazing--why would you do this for him, but not in Troy's case, where seven witnesses at his trial have recanted.
I think what's happened is that the former District Attorney Spencer Laughton has been so entrenched in prosecutorial misconduct in this state and in the good-old-boy system that they're saying, "Look, we can't let this guy be exonerated." They botched this so badly that I don't think they could even charge Sylvester Coles with the murder at this point.
I think they've played up this idea of the victim as a good old American boy, who had a family and was ex-military and was a police officer, and he was snuffed out by this Black guy named Troy Davis, so we have to kill Troy.
It's really disgusting. Bringing up a child, I teach my son to look at people and judge them for who they are, not how they look and how they speak. But in this case, when I'm standing up with my brother Troy, I feel like I never knew just what it meant to be Black in the South. To me, Troy's case is opening this big Pandora's box of what the South is really like--how some people are trying to make changes, but there's still others trying to hold on to that good-old-boy sentiment.
I'm trying to understand why it is that my brother's life is so insignificant to them. That they would blame him for the past mistakes his lawyers made when he had absolutely no control over them. I don't understand that at all. When they rule against him, they don't say "The State of Georgia v. the Law Firm of the Georgia Resource Center." They say "The State of Georgia v. Troy Anthony Davis: Denied."
ONE BLOCK on Troy's ability to get justice has been the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, passed under Bill Clinton, which put strict limits on death row appeals. Can you talk about that?
THE ANTI-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act has been a total disaster for us.
Just the name of it--do they think they're dealing with terrorists, or with poor people who have no money to defend themselves? Because this law isn't being used on terrorists--it's being used against death row prisoners.
Why should there be a law that puts a time limit on innocence? It doesn't make any sense. And to top it off, they made the law retroactive, so that Troy never had a chance. I live in a country that people think is the best country in the world, yet our laws don't protect the innocent.
The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act needs to be repealed. If our president is going to say that we're not a country that tortures, then when you don't give somebody an opportunity to prove their innocence, that's just a slap in the face of civil rights and human rights. Justice shouldn't be bought and paid for--but that's what happens.
The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act is a technicality that is helping to put Troy in his grave. And it's not because they think he's guilty--it's because they won't even give him a chance to prove his innocence.
TROY HAS already faced three execution dates and is likely to face a fourth. If you and your family had relied only on the court system, it's probably safe to say that Troy probably would have been dead already. But you've also emphasized the struggle outside the courtroom.
OVER THE years, I've gone to conferences where people want us to wear suits and be nice. They weren't really out there raising hell. They wanted to be petition signers. I think there's a place for signing petitions, and I think there's a place for holding up signs, and I think there's a place for raising hell. I think it takes all of that.
The problem is that I couldn't find anybody who would believe me, because they thought, "Well, she's his sister. Of course she's going to think he's innocent." And I had lawyers from the Georgia Resource Center saying: "Don't call attention to this case. The media can be very bad. Maybe we can work on the prosecutor." It seemed like every time I turned around, it's like "be quiet, be quiet, be a good little girl."
But I thought, "I'm not ashamed because my brother's on death row. I love my brother, and I know my brother is innocent, and I'm going to prove it." So I realized I had to start challenging the system.
What I had to do is stand up and say: "I'm going to scream at the top of my lungs until somebody listens." I started asking: Why are we waiting until somebody gets an execution date before we spend millions of dollars, and sign petitions, and fax the governors? Why weren't we working on these cases of innocence beforehand? Why aren't we being proactive instead of always reactive?
That's why when I fight against the death penalty, it's not just for Troy. Of course, I'm fighting for my brother because I want to save his life. But I found that there are bigger issues--systemic problems, rooted in racism and poverty and economics.
So many other Troy Davises are out there, but there are so many families who don't know how to fight, or they're afraid to fight, or they don't have the strength to fight, or their relatives are too old to fight.
So I'm trying to give a voice to people who some say are voiceless. Then I started getting people saying to me, "I wish I had a sister like you." And I say back: "I may not be your sister by blood, but I'm still your sister. But I can't fight your battle. I can't tell your story like you tell your story. So instead of you telling me how good I am, why don't you stand up beside me, and let's fight together."
THE GLOBAL day of action for Troy on May 19 is Malcolm X's birthday, and your mother's birthday, too. What do you hope it will accomplish?
THE GLOBAL day of action has taken on a life of its own. There are actions in all 50 states, and I think there are actions in about 21 countries, some as far away as Africa. The name Troy Anthony Davis is becoming known all over the world.
But what this says to me is that, with a collective voice, people are saying, "We're not taking this crap anymore, and it doesn't make any sense what you're doing."
I had this girl break down crying when she called to talk about what they were doing for Troy. She told me how her and her 60-something-year-old mother were out on the highway, getting signatures and wearing "Troy Davis Innocent" shirts. To me, that is more inspirational than anything that the State of Georgia could do against my brother.
I think it's ironic that it's my mother's birthday and Malcolm X's birthday, because my mother is a really passive, very prayerful person. But she's also very protective of her child. And she's had to endure so much. She's had me battling cancer, my brother on death row, and my father dying six months after my brother was put on death row. My sister battled multiple sclerosis when she was a teenager, and she's still standing.
That to me is one of the most powerful influences I can have. I got an award one time for being an "Unstoppable Woman," and I tell people if I'm unstoppable, it's because my mother was unstoppable first. For her to stand in the face of all she's facing, and still have faith and still get up in the morning and push on--that's one of the most powerful things I could see.
I think the day of action is going to be a testament to her birthday and to the legacy of Malcolm X, because Malcolm X did so much for our community and for getting people to stand up.
For the global day of action, we have the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Amnesty International, the NAACP, the National Action Network, the ACLU--many organizations that don't work together much, and they're doing phenomenal things.
It's all because this case brings together everything that's wrong with the death penalty. It involves racism, it involves coercion, it involves economics, it involves police misconduct.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would be speaking before the European Union and the Council of Europe, and that people would be calling me from other countries. Yesterday, a nun called from Ireland to say a prayer for Troy, and I told her I wasn't feeling well, so she said a prayer for me--she said they have a picture of my brother in their diocese, and they pray for him daily.
When you hear things like that, how can you not fight? And why aren't there more of us fighting?
YOU ALWAYS talk about how this struggle is bigger than just Troy. Can you say more about why?
I TELL people that no matter what happens, we have to push on, because Troy Davis is my brother, but there are other Troy Davises behind him. There were Troy Davises in front of him, and the struggle goes on. If we don't fight, we're going to lose much more than this fight against the death penalty. We'll lose ourselves.
I know that a lot of people are saying "we can't afford the death penalty anymore," and some of the legislation abolishing the death penalty is based on economics. But I hope at one point, the U.S. gets to be where we start teaching kids in schools about human rights. Most people don't even know when their human and civil rights are being violated. I think that happens so much in this country. And I think we need to have some people with integrity running for office, and we need to start holding them accountable.
I think that it's going to take a revolution. And it's coming, because with all the things that are going on--the death penalty, human rights, economics, racism--it's like a powder keg, waiting to explode. Someday soon, people are going to see what other people see--that we need to have human rights and human dignity for all.
Hopefully, one day, we won't have a need for an organization named the Campaign to End the Death Penalty because we won't have a death penalty. I look forward to that day in my lifetime. I look forward to that day very soon.
If we have to start marching in the streets from city to city, then we're going to have to start doing that--because these people need to understand that we're standing up for justice. And if they're not going to uphold the justice that we're supposed to have, then we're going to demand the justice that we need.
(Source : socialistworker.org)
Former judges push for hearing on Troy Davis innocence claim
Group asks Supreme Court to send death row case back to federal court.
Twenty-seven former judges, justices and prosecutors are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow death-row inmate Troy Davis’ innocence claims to be heard in federal court.
The filing comes a day after Davis’ lawyers filed their final legal bid. They are asking the nation’s highest court to send Davis’ case back so a judge can consider the recantation testimony of a number of key witnesses who testified for the state at the 1991 trial.
Davis sits on death row for the killing of off-duty Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail in 1989. MacPhail, a 27-year-old father of two and former U.S. Army ranger, was shot before he could draw his weapon.Davis can make “an extraordinary showing through new, never reviewed evidence that strongly points to his innocence,” the judges’ and prosecutors’ filing said. To allow Davis’ execution without appropriate legal review is “a plain constitutional injustice,” the filing said.
Among those signing the friend-of-the-court brief were former Deputy U.S. Attorney General Larry Thompson; two former state Supreme Court chief justices, including Norman Fletcher of Georgia; nine former U.S. attorneys, including former Georgia congressman Bob Barr and former FBI Director William Sessions; three former judges from the federal appeals court in Philadelphia; and former state attorneys general from Florida and New Jersey.
In a 2-1 decision in April, the federal appeals court in Atlanta rejected Davis’ request for an evidentiary hearing. The court, which had postponed Davis’ execution, extended the stay for 30 days. That expired Saturday.
Since Davis’ trial, seven of nine state witnesses have recanted their testimony and other witnesses have implicated Sylvester “Redd” Coles as the shooter. Coles was at the scene and was the first person to implicate Davis in the shooting.
(Source: www.ajc.com )
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
After 22 Years on Death Row, Paul House is Cleared
Paul House’s name has finally been cleared, bringing to an end two decades of struggle for freedom after a wrongful conviction in Tennessee. House (pictured above with his mother, Joyce) served more than two decades on Tennessee’s death row before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that he was entitled to a new hearing. He was freed last July, but was under house arrest facing a new trial until charges were dropped May 12.
House, who suffers from multiple sclerosis and is confined to a wheelchair, is looking forward to a trip to California for his grandfather’s 90th birthday. He was 23 when he was sent to death row and is 47 today. "This gives me a life,” he told CNN last week. “The only life I had was prison life, and that was nothing to be happy about."
The Innocence Project has worked with House’s attorneys on forensic issues for several years and filed a brief in his Supreme Court case. Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld said House’s exoneration highlights the need for courts to look closely at appeals based on new evidence of innocence.
"The Supreme Court was right to make sure all the evidence was fully considered in this case," Neufeld said. “The five justices who ruled in Paul House’s favor had the wisdom to recognize that there was enough evidence of his innocence to allow a full hearing and more investigation which ultimately proved he did not commit this crime. This is a profoundly important legal principle, but it also saved Paul House’s life. This case should give the Supreme Court great pause, and it should cause them to look more closely at cases like this.”
Read more about House’s case here, and read below for more on other clients around the country seeking access to DNA testing to prove their innocence.
(Source : www.innocenceproject.org)
Missouri executes Skillicorn for 1994 murder
Dennis Skillicorn was calm — “remarkably calm” — in his final hours.
The convicted murderer was executed at the state corrections facility here at 12:34 a.m. Wednesday, 11 minutes after being administered a series of injections that left him unconscious and ultimately stopped his heart.
He became the first Missouri inmate to be put to death in nearly four years. He was the 67th since capital punishment was reinstated in the state in 1989.
Skillicorn declined a sedative in the hours leading up to the execution, prison officials said, and was accommodating when led into chamber and secured on a gurney. His final meal was a double cheeseburger, fries and a slice of cheesecake from a local restaurant.
The execution was scheduled to begin at 12:01 a.m., but was delayed a little over 20 minutes while the state Supreme Court considered a sixth and final motion from Skillicorn’s lawyers to stay the execution.
The procedure itself took longer than in years past due to a new protocol. Previously, the three chemicals were administered in succession, and the execution was completed within four or five minutes.
But in response to court cases over the last few years examining the constitutionality of the lethal injection process, corrections officials this time paused after the first injection to ensure that Skillicorn was in fact unconscious. The fatal second and third injections were then administered.
Shortly after witnesses to the execution were seated in adjoining rooms with views into the execution chamber, Skillicorn could be seen and heard speaking to witnesses there on his behalf — his wife and two spiritual advisers. His words were muffled and could not be understood.
He continued speaking until the sedative rendered him unconscious.
His wife, Paula Skillicorn, a former Kansas City Star reporter who married him after covering his case for the paper, could be seen through two panes of tinted glass. As the execution progressed, her hand trembled and she clutched a tissue. One of the spiritual advisers held his hand on her shoulder, but neither made any overt movements.
Witnesses for the state included three reporters, three state lawmakers and officials from the Department of Corrections and the Attorney General’s Office. Prison officials narrated the procedure as it unfolded.
No one witnessed the execution on behalf of the victim, Richard Drummond.
In a lengthy letter written shortly before his execution, Skillicorn expressed remorse for his crime and apologized to Drummond’s family.
“My prayer for them has always been that God somehow deliver them from their torment,” he wrote.
Skillicorn also wrote that he had been delivered from “the sorrow, despair and regrets of my life” by his religious faith.
“Today I have no doubts that God does change a man from the inside out,” he wrote. “I know because I’ve personally experienced the work of his mighty hand.”
Gov. Jay Nixon, who could have granted clemency and reduced Skillicorn’s sentence to life in prison without parole, released a statement following the execution asking Missourians to remember the victims of Skillicorn’s crimes.
“The authority of the state to impose capital punishment bears with it great responsibility…” he said in the statement. “When these sentences are carried out, it is not with satisfaction, but with a solemn determination.”
Outside the prison, about 70 protesters gathered in opposition to the death penalty. One man — reportedly a Catholic priest from Illinois — was arrested after crossing onto prison property.
Skillicorn, of Kansas City, was one of three men charged in the murder of Drummond, a telephone company supervisor from Excelsior Springs. He and one of the men, Allen Nicklasson also killed a couple in Arizona a few days later.
Nicklasson remains on death row in Missouri. The third accomplice, Tim DeGraffenreid, was a teenager at the time of the crime and is now serving a life sentence.
(Source : www.kansascity.com)
Ex-Inmate Draws Attention To Need For Help
Connecticut - Let us applaud the man's resourcefulness. Leroy James Gardner, a 44-year-old ex-bank robber just out of federal prison, needed help. Mr. Gardner, as reported by Courant columnist Stan Simpson last week, was released in Hartford with no money or contacts and without his anxiety medication. He walked over to the Capitol and, after failing to arrange a meeting with the governor, sought out Judiciary Committee co-chairman Michael Lawlor.
Mr. Lawlor was at a hearing on the death penalty, along with people from the Board of Pardons and Paroles. They met with Mr. Gardner and got him a bed at a local shelter.
Prisoners shouldn't have to walk into the Capitol to get help re-entering society. Those on parole or probation are supervised as they connect to housing, job centers, mental health, substance abuse counseling and other services.
Mr. Gardner represents a gap in the state and federal systems. He had served his sentence (for a parole violation), was not sentenced to probation and wasn't paroled. Such "end-of-sentence" inmates are offered help before they leave prison, but are on their own when they get out.
This doesn't work for many ex-inmates. "A lot of these guys need assistance and a supervising agent," said William Carbone, head of the state Judicial Branch's Court Support Services Division.
The numbers bear him out. The state's most recent study of recidivism, released earlier this year, shows that 37 percent of all inmates returned to prison for a new offense within three years — but only 23 percent of parolees went back, suggesting that transitional services make a difference.
Helping inmates who have served their time to find a decent life is both humane and sensible. An ex-offender with a job and a place to live is less likely to threaten public safety and more likely to help raise his children. Also, community programs are less expensive than prison, the average cost of which is almost $90 a day in Connecticut.
The state has put much more emphasis on preventing recidivism in the past half-dozen years, and the investment is working. The federal programs are, if anything, more intensive than the state's. But end-of-sentence inmates are harder to help. How to reach them?
Maureen Price-Borland, executive director of Community Partners in Action, a nonprofit that works with people in the criminal justice system, suggested that major cities have centralized re-entry centers where all offenders can connect with the services they need. Half of released male inmates return to Hartford, Bridgeport or New Haven, and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. is working on a comprehensive re-entry program. Another possibility is to revisit the sentencing process and require some type of transitional supervision.
So the man who walked into the Capitol in prison garb had a point and may help change the system.
(Source : www.courant.com )
Missouri prepares for first execution in 4 years
BONNE TERRE, Mo. (AP) — Missouri early Wednesday executed a man who killed a good Samaritan who had stopped on the road to help him, ending a nearly four-year period without an execution in the state. Texas, meanwhile, executed its 15th prisoner this year.
Dennis Skillicorn, 49, received an injection at 12:23 a.m. at the prison in Bonne Terre and died 11 minutes later. It was the first execution in Missouri since Marlin Gray was put to death in October 2005.
As part of a lengthy final statement, Skillicorn apologized to the family of the victim, Richard Drummond, saying that "for the last 15 years I've lived with the remorse of my actions."
In Huntsville, Texas, Michael Lynn Riley also apologized as he was executed Tuesday for fatally stabbing a convenience store clerk during a robbery more than two decades ago.
"I know I hurt you very bad," Riley, 51, said to his victim's relatives, including her two daughters and husband. "I want you to know I'm sorry. I hope one day you can move on and, if not, I understand."
Executions in Missouri had been on hold shortly after Gray's death as the courts decided whether lethal injection in general, and the state's three-drug method in particular, violated constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
Some argued that if the initial anesthetic doesn't take hold, a third drug that stops the heart can cause excruciating pain. But the inmate would not be able to communicate the pain because of a second drug that paralyzes him.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld lethal injection, and a federal judge ruled in favor of Missouri's execution method, opening the way for executions to begin again.
Skillicorn mouthed words to his wife and two spiritual advisers as the first drug was administered to him. Soon, he appeared unconscious.
As part of a new protocol, curtains in witness viewing areas were then closed for about two minutes while medical staff checked to make sure that Skillicorn was unconscious and that the catheters were working properly. Once confirmed, the next two drugs were administered, and he was pronounced dead a short time later.
In 1994, a car carrying Skillicorn, Allen Nicklasson and Tim DeGraffenreid stalled along Interstate 70 north of Fulton in Callaway County.
Drummond, from the northwestern Missouri town of Excelsior Springs, stopped to help, but was forced at gunpoint to drive the men toward Kansas City. On the way, the men stopped in a rural area, and Nicklasson shot Drummond in the back of the head.
Nicklasson and Skillicorn were convicted of first-degree murder. Nicklasson is also on death row. DeGraffenreid, who was 17 when the crime took place, served time for second-degree murder.
Supporters wanted Skillicorn's sentence commuted to life in prison, calling him a role model for other inmates. But in denying a clemency request Tuesday, Gov. Jay Nixon noted that Skillicorn was on parole for another murder at the time Drummond was kidnapped, robbed and killed. Nixon also noted that Skillicorn was convicted of two subsequent murders in Arizona just days after Drummond was killed.
(Source : www.mercurynews.com)
Missouri executes Skillicorn for 1994 murder
BONNE TERRE, Mo. | Dennis Skillicorn died from lethal injection early this morning, becoming the first Missouri prisoner to be executed in nearly four years and the 67th since 1989.
Skillicorn, 49, was pronounced dead at 12:34 a.m. at the state’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center.
The Kansas City man was one of the “Good Samaritan killers” who murdered Richard Drummond of Excelsior Springs, and later an Arizona couple in a 1994 crime-spree that stretched from Missouri to Mexico. Skillicorn had been on death row since his conviction in 1996.
Prior to today, Missouri hadn’t carried out an execution since October 2005.
In 2007, the state was one of several to delay executions pending the outcome of a U.S. Supreme Court case over the constitutionality of lethal injections. The high court found the method of execution constitutional in April 2008, however, and a lower court issued a similar ruling specific to Missouri a few months later.
Gov. Jay Nixon denied Skillicorn’s clemency petition shortly after 5 p.m. Tuesday.
“The jury that convicted Dennis Skillicorn determined that he deserved the most severe punishment under Missouri law, and my decision on clemency upholds the jury’s action,” Nixon said in a statement.
Skillicorn was sentenced to death for the murder of Drummond, a telephone-company supervisor who picked up Skillicorn and two other men after their car broke down in central Missouri.
Skillicorn and Allen Nicklasson continued their crime spree in Arizona, where they killed another man and his wife after the man attempted to help them with car troubles.
Nicklasson, who actually pulled the trigger in the three murders, remains on death row. The third accomplice, Tim DeGraffenreid, was a teenager when he participated in the Missouri murder and is now serving a life sentence.
(Source : www.kansascity.com)
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
Missouri's other execution
Obviously, there's been a lot of coverage about the Dennis Skillicorn execution, set for 12:01 a.m Wednesday. But the Missouri Supremes have also scheduled a date for Reginald Clemons, who will be put to death June 17.
He is one of four men convicted in the murders of sisters Robin Kerry, 19, and Julie Kerry, 20, on the old Old Chain of Rocks Bridge in 1991.
The sisters, both graduates of Hazelwood East High School, were stripped, beaten and raped before they were shoved off the bridge into the Mississippi River. Their cousin, Tom Cummins, 19, was forced to watch, then ordered to jump into the river. He survived.
(Source :blogs.kansascity.com)
Rally planned Tuesday to protest Troy Davis execution
Final appeal to be filed with Supreme Court in case where witnesses recanted.
Death-row inmate Troy Anthony Davis will file a last-ditch appeal Tuesday to the U.S. Supreme Court, and a rally to protest his execution is planned for Tuesday night at the state Capiol.
Davis’ attorneys asked the high court to send Davis’ case back to a federal judge for an evidentiary hearing on his innocence claims. He was convicted of killing a Savannah police officer 20 years ago.
“Davis’ new evidence eviscerates the state’s case against him,” the filing said. “Despite substantial new evidence of his innocence, no court has ever held a hearing to assess the scores of new witnesses that show Mr. Davis is innocent.”
The petition says that carrying out Davis’ execution without a “full and fair hearing in which he could make a truly persuasive demonstration that he is actually innocent” would be unconstitutional.
Davis, 40, sits on death row for the killing of off-duty Officer Mark Allen MacPhail. The 27-year-old former Army ranger was shot three times before he could draw his weapon. He was responding to the wails of a man being pistol whipped in a Burger King parking lot.
Since Davis’ 1991 trial, seven of nine state witnesses have recanted their testimony and other witnesses have implicated Sylvester “Redd” Coles as the shooter. Coles was at the scene at the time of the shooting and the first person to implicate Davis in the killing.
Davis is filing an unusual petition for a writ of habeas corpus directly to the Supreme Court. It is through these lawsuits, almost always filed in lower courts and then appealed to the high court, that an inmate can bring a constitutional claim.
The last time the court granted relief to such an extraordinary petition was in 1925, Jason Ewart, one of Davis’ attorneys, said. This involved Philip Grossman, who was serving time for contempt even though he had been granted a presidential pardon. The high court ordered Grossman’s release.
Since then, however, the high court has sent some cases back to federal court judges, directing them to conduct hearings, he said.
“This is the last court that we can go to,” Ewart said. “It’s something that’s not often granted, but we think this is an exceptional case.”
Davis’ innocence claims have attracted worldwide attention. Former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI and former FBI Director William Sessions have asked that Davis be spared death by lethal injection. Amnesty International is holding a rally on Davis’ behalf Tuesday afternoon at the state Capitol.
Chatham County prosecutors, who tried Davis, have long expressed confidence that Davis was the triggerman. Larry Chisolm, who became Chatham’s new DA in January, declined comment Monday on the substance of prior court rulings or the facts of Davis’ case.
“He’s not going to take any action at all until all appeals are exhausted,” Lydia Sermons, a spokesman for the DA’s office, said Monday.
Davis’ Supreme Court petition notes that the only two eyewitnesses who have not recanted their trial testimony are Coles, who later told police he had a .38 caliber revolver on the night of the shooting, and Stephen Sanders, who was at the Burger King with his Air Force buddies.
Two hours after the shooting, Sanders told police he could not recognize anyone at the scene except by their clothes. At the trial two years later, Sanders identified Davis as the killer.
Davis’ recantation evidence is exceptional and warrants intervention by the high court, his petition says.
“Few — if any — recantation cases involve consistent, multiple recantations from state witnesses who were innocent bystanders to the crime,” the petition says.
In past years, Davis has come extraordinarily close to being executed and to getting relief in the courts.
Davis’ execution had previously been set three times but he was granted stays each time — once in 2007 less than 24 hours before he was to be put to death.
Davis has lost his bid for a new evidentiary hearing in two important court rulings, both decided by one-vote margins. In March 2008, the Georgia Supreme Court turned him down in a 4-3 decision. A month ago, the federal appeals court in Atlanta rejected Davis’ appeal by a 2-1 vote.
On April 16, the two federal appeals court judges in the majority said they viewed the recantations with skepticism and, after reviewing Davis’ claims, “remain unpersuaded.”
In dissent, Judge Rosemary Barkett said to execute Davis in the face of the new evidence “is unconscionable and unconstitutional.”
The court kept in place Davis’ stay of execution for another 30 days. That expired Saturday.
The rally is being organized by Amnesty International.
(Source : www.ajc.com)
As execution nears, Skillicorn loses two more appeals
Legal options for a Kansas City man scheduled to be executed shortly after midnight tonight continue to dwindle with the denial of more appeals.The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis late Monday denied Dennis Skillicorn’s appeal of a federal judge’s ruling last week. The ruling concerned whether Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon can fairly consider Skillicorn’s clemency request because of his previous role as Missouri attorney general.
The appeals court on Monday also denied a separate motion by Skillicorn seeking a stay of execution.
Skillicorn, 49, was sentenced to death for the 1994 killing of Richard Drummond in Lafayette County. Drummond was shot to death by a co-defendant of Skillicorn after Drummond stopped to help them after their car had broken down.
Skillicorn still has a legal action pending in U.S. District Court in Kansas City and is seeking a hearing from the U.S. Supreme Court.
(Source:www.kansascity.com)
Missouri Supreme Court rejects delay in Skillicorn’s execution
JEFFERSON CITY | The Missouri Supreme Court has denied a request to delay the scheduled execution of a man convicted in the slaying of a Good Samaritan 15 years ago.
Dennis Skillicorn is to be executed at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday for the 1994 killing of Richard Drummond, who stopped to help when Skillicorn’s car broke down. It started a multistate crime rampage.
Skillicorn’s attorneys sought to delay the execution so they could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but that request was denied Monday. The denial came several hours after a former inmate and ministers who worked with Skillicorn held a news conference in the Capitol asking for clemency from the governor.
Former inmate Jack Pyle says he turned his life around after regularly talking with Skillicorn.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has set an execution date of June 17 for Reginald Clemons, who was convicted 15 years ago in the deaths of two sisters shoved off an abandoned Mississippi River bridge in St. Louis.
Clemons was among four men convicted in the deaths of 21-year-old Julie Kerry and her 19-year-old sister, Robin. Supporters believe Clemons is innocent.
He confessed, but supporters say he did so only after being beaten by police.
(source : www.kansascity.com)
Monday, 18 May 2009
America, Religious Values, and the Death Penalty; Or, If it Was Good Enough for Jesus and Socrates...
America, Religious Values, and the Death Penalty; Or, If it Was Good Enough for Jesus and Socrates...
By Louis A. Ruprecht
Posted on May 18, 2009, Printed on May 18, 2009
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/1216/
It is one of the more striking features of the poorly-named “Western tradition” that two of its foundational stories both involve an act of extraordinary injustice and an ultimately, unwarranted, state-sponsored execution. To say that the death penalty lies at the very heart of Western civilization is true, so long as we modify that point: a concern with the death penalty lies at the very heart of Western civilization.
That seems an important modification to make, precisely because the United States finds itself in the peculiar position of being the only “Western” country within its primary coalitions (NAFTA and NATO especially) still to employ the death penalty. Europe has outgrown the death penalty (Turkey will surely have to give it up if it is to have any hope of being admitted to the European Union). The United States has not outgrown the death penalty, at least not yet. And so it finds itself in odd and uncomfortable company with those countries that still use the death penalty quite liberally: among them Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea, and Myanmar.
Deterrence, Vengeance, Retribution
In an increasingly abolitionist global environment, what are the arguments for a continued commitment to the death penalty? There are three main ones.
Far and away the most common argument offered in favor if the death penalty is the argument for deterrence. The threat of execution, it is held, deters violent crime. The problems with this argument are two-fold: first and foremost, there is no statistical evidence to suggest that it is true. States that had a death penalty, got rid of it, then brought it back again, display no shift whatsoever in their rates of violent crime and/or homicide. The reasons for this are not far to find. Most violent crimes are crimes of passion, not premeditation. Deterrence would presumably only work for crimes that are premeditated. And those crimes, murder-for-hire mostly, are committed by professionals of a sort who do not intend to get caught.
Deterrence also hinges on what are essentially Utilitarian premises, the old Anglo-Saxon moral calculus of measuring out dollops of pleasure and pain. It is held that the ultimate suffering of one person is outweighed by the benefits to society as a whole. The Classical Athenians, many of them at any rate, reasoned this way when they elected to put Socrates to death. The Athenian death penalty was believed to deter too much cynical philosophy. The Roman regional administration in Judea reasoned this way as well, believing that so egregious a form of punishment as crucifixion would deter rebellion in this most rebellious of its eastern provinces. Pontius Pilate mingles world-weary cynicism with Utilitarian calculation in some of the most memorable lines assigned to him in the Gospel according to John.
One met similar Utilitarian arguments for deterrence when the question of state-sponsored torture was still in question. And it was here that the intuitive problem with Utilitarianism as a singular moral philosophy became most apparent. It is not the attention to moral consequences and moral results; one can care about consequences and not be a Utilitarian. Rather, the problem is that such “consequential” reasoning about deterrence takes off the table any conception of human life as having sacred value. And as a corollary, appeals to deterrence seem to take off the table any initial inclination to deem certain things unthinkable and therefore unjustifiable in any circumstance. Things like torture, or the deliberate infliction of pain.
Now, with so many obvious problems of ancient and modern pedigree, why is the argument of deterrence made at all? In short, deterrence is invoked to distract attention away from what is, for real inspiration for an inclination to the death penalty: vengeance. State-sponsored killing offers a singular way to express the outrage we quite naturally feel in the face of violent crime, especially those most heinous acts of human outrage that result in death.
To be sure, the desire to kill in response to a killing is understandable, and all too visceral a reality for victims of violence and their families. It is a natural, and often quite understandable, response to the trauma of violence and the grief of loss. But to submit to this emotion—for it is an emotion, and not an argument—is ironically to eviscerate all the original reasons for state-sponsored killing I outlined above.
The logic of vengeance is the logic of the blood feud. It initiates a cycle of violence that cannot be ended in its own terms. The state intervenes with a sentence of death precisely to take this exercise of ultimate power out of the hands of those most personally and emotionally involved, and to render justice less emotionally. The state takes the power of killing away from feuding clans and enacts justice, not vengeance. That has always been the understanding of how the death penalty should work. It offers an answer to an age-old question posed both by the Bible and by Greek tragedy (and Greek philosophy): how to escape a never-ending cycle of revenge killing? In short, one escapes to the state and its institutions. The state kills with blindfolds on, de-personalizing this most personal of all human actions, with careful attention to certain ritual effects and due process. The idea is that this creates the possibility of that most elusive of all psychological and moral events: closure.
It is precisely by thinking through the outlaw logic of vengeance that one is led to the third, and probably the only compelling, argument for the death penalty. It is for that very reason harder to give a name. Let’s call it just retribution. Such an idea captures what I tried to describe as the limits of the illogic of vengeance. The state ironically asserts the value of the lives of those citizens who have been lost to violence, by violently punishing their killers. The state takes the power of life and death out of the hands of individual citizens, and places it squarely in the hands of the people, represented by a jury in the US system of justice.
This is not a silly argument, and it will not be defeated by the quotes one normally hears arrayed against it. “Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?” Just retribution is intended as an answer to that question. Gandhi offered a still more memorable line in opposition to the death penalty: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” There is something to that observation, but the blindness of capital punishment is held up as a virtue by its supporters. It is supposed to be killing that is not personal; it does not see the people, only crime and punishment.
Cruel and Unusual
The real problem with the concept of just retribution is the notion of “justice” it employs. For in my discussion up to now, I have only imagined imposing the ultimate penalty in a case where someone has been killed. But historically speaking, the death penalty has rarely been limited to acts of premeditated murder. Rape and robbery have regularly been punished with death, and still are in many of the countries I mentioned above.
This is a subtle point, but a crucial one. Conceptions of what rendering of justice might be “proportional” changes dramatically with time. Equally changeable are our notions of what kinds of punishment are appropriate. In the memorable first pages of Michel Foucault’s masterful Discipline and Punish, Foucault describes an almost surreal public execution in Paris on the 2nd of March 1757: a convicted murderer is submitted to flesh-tearing, burning sulphur, molten lead, burning oil and wax, and finally drawing and quartering with horses. When the horses failed to pull him apart, his limbs had to be cut at the joints until the horses finally broke the man. Unbelievably, he lived through all of this. Later, in the end, his corpse was ceremoniously burned, and the ashes publically dispersed. Clearly, when the founding fathers of the Unites States added the specific prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments” in the Eighth Amendment, they had practices like this in mind. Such torture is not just retribution; torture was no longer thought to be “just” at all.
Justice, in this sense, is not absolute; the execution of a death sentence is, however. Therein lies the paradox of the ultimate penalty of death. The justice required to make the argument for just retribution make sense needs to be what it cannot be: timeless and unchanging. Human justice is never that. It is important to recall that both Socrates’ and Jesus’ executions were entirely legitimate, according to the standards of the day in Athens and in Rome; it is only in retrospect that we recall them as acts of grave injustice.
Evolving Standards of Decency
Over the past forty years, the United States Supreme Court has returned repeatedly to that dilemma as it tries to hammer out a view of the death penalty that will fit within our Constitutional system; as well as addressing what it famously referred to as “evolving standards of decency that mark progress of a maturing society.”
That phrase appeared in the first major death penalty case to be heard in response to the cultural tumult of the 1960s, Witherspoon v. Illinois [391 US 510 (1968)]. The case did not tackle the Constitutionality of the death penalty directly, but rather examined the question of what properly constitutes a jury in a capital case. It was a fascinating way to begin the debate; not by examining principles or Constitutional logic, but rather by looking at the actual procedures through which human beings enact their conceptions of justice, in courts of law.
William C. Witherspoon was charged with killing a police officer to avoid arrest in 1959. In his original trial, during the jury selection process, 47 potential jurors were “excused for cause.” This ungentle phrase refers to the individual examination of potential jurors known as voir dire. The prosecuting attorney asked each potential juror how they felt about the death penalty; any who expressed reservations were excused, even though only five of them had said that they would under no circumstances consider the penalty.
The majority of US Supreme Court justices concluded that “the State of Illinois has stacked the deck against the petitioner,” and that in so doing it had violated the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that US citizens cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property without “due process of law.” In other words, Mr. Witherspoon did not receive his due in the process of selecting a jury of his peers.
The Court went still further, saying that the justices could even have imagined a situation in which a potential juror, while personally opposed to the death penalty, could “subordinate his personal views” to his oath, to do his duty as a juror “and to obey the law of the state.”
Clearly, this was a very progressive and very far-reaching decision. So much so that the three Justices who dissented (Justices Black, Harlan and White) said that if the majority wanted to get rid of the death penalty, then it should say so explicitly, not play games and make it practically impossible to administer.
Four years later, the Court struck again in Furman v. Georgia [92 S Ct 2726 (1972)], a strange case that involved three different death sentences, two from Georgia and one from Texas; two of the three involved rape, not murder. The decision was a narrow one (5-4) and ran to nearly 300 pages, as opposed to the 18-page decision in Witherspoon.
Here once again the question of what constitutes the proper role of a jury was at issue. In essence, juries in capital cases had what the majority referred to as “untrammeled discretion” in deciding who received a death sentence and who not. Unsurprisingly, prejudices were revealed in the statistical record of who received a death sentence in the United States. Assessing death sentences imposed since 1930, the Court noted that blacks constituted 57.7% of all death row inmates, men constituted over 90% of those inmates, and the indigent constituted nearly 100%. In such circumstances, trust in the fairness of the system was fatally compromised, and such jury discretion (read: prejudice) rendered the punishment cruel and unusual, and thus in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
This decision effectively struck down every capital statute in the country.
Yet there was great confusion about what the Supreme Court intended to say in the Furman decision. The Justices did not help themselves by writing so many separate opinions, and in disagreeing so vehemently with one another. More to the point, the justices had once again skirted the question of whether the death penalty was in principle unconstitutional, contenting themselves with a close analysis of the relevant court procedures, not the principle.
Three main interpretations of the meaning of the Furman decision arose. First, some felt that the Court clearly was opposed to the death penalty across the board, and would always find some procedural way to strike it down in any particular case; these people gave up on the attempt to write new death penalty legislation. A second group of interpreters felt that the Court was simply opposed to jury “discretion”; in their view, a mandatory death penalty would neatly solve the problem. A third group felt that the Court was inviting further reflection by legislatures on how to create a system where juries had some discretion in particular cases, but not the “untrammeled” sort that led to the willy-nilly execution of blacks, men, and the poor.
By 1973, nine states had already abolished the death penalty. After the Furman decision, 35 states drew up new death penalty laws, 20 of them with mandatory death sentences, and 15 with various attempts to “guide” jury discretion toward more consistent judgments.
Several states had more distinctive histories. New Jersey scrapped its death penalty and did not reinstate it until 1982 (it never used it, then finally scrapped it again in 2007). North Dakota and Kansas maintained the death penalty for a single crime: murder committed by someone already imprisoned for murder. Massachusetts and South Dakota legislatures saw their new death penalty statutes vetoed by their governors. And California’s then-governor Ronald Reagan was so outraged by the California State Supreme Court’s overturning of his state’s death penalty that he personally lobbied for that tried-and-true California initiative: an electoral proposition (Prop. 17) that called for reinstating a mandatory death penalty in California. (A second California State Supreme Court Justice, Rose Byrd, was ousted over this same issue in 1987.)
In 1976, the Supreme Court clarified its intentions further. Gregg v. Georgia [96 S Ct 2909 (1976)] actually involved five separate cases, all from Southern states (Georgia, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Louisiana). In three of those cases, by a 5-4 vote, the Court affirmed state laws that provided instruction to juries in order to guide their moral decisions regarding the sentence of death. By a 7-2 vote (with Chief Justice Rehnquist writing in dissent), the Court overturned mandatory death penalty statutes in Louisiana and North Carolina (the North Carolina law mandated death for sixteen different crimes ranging from murder to rape to armed robbery).
The Gregg decision led to the creation of the system that we still have today. Any trial in which a state or federal prosecutor intends to seek the death penalty must be a “bifurcated trial.” In the first phase, guilt or innocence is assessed. In a second trial, new evidence is heard involving the mitigating and aggravating circumstances in this particular case. At the conclusion of the second phase of a capital trial, jurors are provided with a questionnaire that essentially provides the “guided discretion” for which the Court was calling. By the time you have worked through the questionnaire, you will have often been led to one or the other conclusion. Finally, any death sentence carries an automatic and mandatory appeal to the State Supreme Court.
State-Sponsored Suicide
The moratorium on the enactment of the death penalty was thus lifted in 1976, and on 17 January 1977, Gary Gilmore became the first US citizen to be executed (in Utah) since the Witherspoon decision nearly a decade earlier. Gilmore, like Jesse Walter Bishop (who was the third person to be executed, on 22 October 1979 in Nevada) was executed voluntarily, causing Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to complain that the death penalty was fast becoming “state-sponsored suicide.”
The history of the death penalty since the landmark Gregg decision may be divided into three stages. In the first (1977-1982), there was a good faith effort by courts and legislatures alike to administer the new standards and procedural safeguards the Supreme Court had called for. In the second stage (1983-2000), it began to seem as if state courts and legislatures were abandoning the standards and returning to the pre-1968 business of state-sponsored execution. And then, quite suddenly in 2000, a new questioning of the justice of the death penalty emerged in some surprising and unexpected quarters.
Three cases were especially revealing of the disturbing new realities when the standards and safeguards were largely abandoned.
On 5/6 October 1983, James D. Autry received a stay of execution in Texas just 24 minutes before he was scheduled to die, and after already being strapped to the gurney with the IV tubes already inserted in his arms (Autry was later executed on 14 March 1984). This seemed to suggest that states no longer needed to worry about cruel and unusual punishment.
On 15 December 1983, John Eldon Smith was executed in Georgia; his wife was also sentenced to death in this case, but she was not executed. This seemed to indicate that states no longer needed to worry about untrammeled discretion.
And on 2 November 1984, Velma Bullard Barfield became the first woman to be executed since 1961, in the state of North Carolina. Barfield’s case was especially disturbing to abolitionists, and not only those like myself who worked on her case. The governor of the state, James Hunt, was running for Senator against arch-conservative Jesse Helms, and Helms had made the question of granting Barfield clemency a major campaign issue. The execution was scheduled just six days before the election. Barfield’s clemency petition, supported even by the prison staff with which she worked closely to assist new female inmates, was denied. If Velma Barfield could not receive clemency, then the prospects for anyone on death row nationwide looked grim indeed.
Then some unusual things began to happen; states started re-asserting a moratorium, this time because of the prevalence of new investigative procedures and DNA evidence that began to exonerate, much to the horror of all involved, several persons—most all of them men, most all of them black, and all of them poor—who were awaiting execution for crimes they may well not have committed. The specter of the unjust execution, the image that haunts the conscience of the Western tradition, has led to a renewed investigation of the justice of the death penalty as an institution.
It began where Witherspoon began, in the state of Illinois. Then-governor George Ryan (a Republican, and himself a prisoner in federal detention since 2007) ordered a ban on the death penalty that has been renewed by his Democratic successors, Pat Quinn and long-suffering Rod Blagojevich.
A World of Violence
And that is where we are today, initiating, with halting baby steps a new national discussion of the justice of the death penalty. The debate operates at two levels, as the US Supreme Court did. One set of questions concerns the pragmatics of how the death penalty is imposed. That is a procedural question best addressed in legislatures and courts of law. The second is housed in educational institutions and faith communities.
As a practical matter, close analysis does point to some disturbing trends in the way the death penalty is imposed. There is often little rhyme or reason as to why one person receives a life sentence and another receives death. While there are many more whites executed now (57% of the total since 1976), the percentage of women on death rows remains unchanged, and all such residents remain poor. No one who can afford private counsel gets the death penalty; our system simply doesn’t work that way.
And in the current economic climate, new arguments against the death penalty have begun to appear in some surprising quarters. A new argument for abolition stems from the cost of the death penalty. Capital trials are almost always longer and more expensive; there are more witnesses in general, and bifurcated trials mean you are getting two trials often for nearly twice the price. The mandatory appeals process takes years and literally costs millions of dollars, far more than it would cost to house someone in prison for life.
I used to think that a frivolous argument; I no longer do. The reason is this. Given our Constitutional commitments, we will and must have such mandatory safeguards and review; this is a good thing. Therefore, in this country, the death penalty will always be prohibitively expensive. In other countries like China, it is not. And in those settings, ironically enough, the death penalty does have a deterrent value; the deterrent value of any law has to do with the swiftness and certainty of punishment, not the severity of punishment. In the United States, the death penalty will never be either certain or swift. By contrast in China in the early 1980s, where there was no equivalent conception of civil liberty or Constitutional protection, 5000 persons arrested for highway robbery were executed en masse; robbery statistics immediately plummeted. Happily, we will never countenance that kind of death penalty in this country. And that is why the death penalty here will always be expensive, and will always be a kind of cruel and unusual lottery system.
Questions of principle are harder to resolve. One could argue that the lottery-like quality of the death penalty’s imposition is itself “cruel and unusual.” It seems unfair somehow that one would only be eligible for a death sentence if one committed a crime in Texas rather than New Jersey or Hawaii. The state of Texas has accounted for well over a third of all executions since lifting the ban in 1976 (a staggering 432, starting with James Autry, out of 1151 executions nationwide).
The difficulty in initiating a substantive discussion of the death penalty is that emotions on all sides run so high. We live in a world of violence, a world that at times seems a chamber of horrors. In just the past few months, we have witnessed fifteen persons gunned down in Germany and eleven more than that in the state of Alabama. In the face of such enormity, words break and grief can overwhelm. An impulse for vengeance, like blind rage itself, is all-too-human and all-too-understandable. Yet these are poor places from which to engage in serious deliberation over matters of great moral complexity. Recall that the death penalty was originally designed so that cool heads would prevail over vengeful rage.
On March 10, the State of Georgia executed its first death row inmate of 2009. The case was a strange one, concerning a crime committed more than 22 years ago. After an evening spent drinking Bloody Marys with his live-in girlfriend and their neighbor, Carol Sanders Beatty, Robert L. Newland drove his truck to the pier, struck a parked vehicle, then fled the scene on foot; it was 30 May 1986 on St. Simons Island, Georgia. Newland inexplicably returned to Beatty’s duplex, and when she spurned his advances, he stabbed her with a knife; Beatty died the next day, after identifying her assailant to police. Newland was convicted of with intent to commit rape, then sentenced to death.
This case and the curiously worded charges suggest one more problem: namely, the cultural embeddedness of any and every judgment about which crimes warrant death.
Once upon a time, it was the robber and the gunslinger who attracted capital attention. John Dillinger’s bullet-ridden corpse was put on public display in the 1930s. If a woman were to be executed, then she would need to be some Bonnie working with a Clyde. But these days, it is the crime of passion, especially one that links sex and violence, and especially one where a man kills a female lover or would-be lover, that elicits capital attention. It is important to recall that there was absolutely nothing premeditated in Newland’s strange and erratic behavior that evening. What there was, instead, was a crude and unsuccessful sexual advance, its inevitable rebuff, and then a drunken bout of male rage.
Consider the following recent trends here in Georgia. William Earl Lynd was executed on 6 May 2008 for kidnaping and killing his then-girlfriend. By contrast, on 23 September 2008, Troy Davis’ execution was stayed just two hours before it was scheduled, due to the admission of a significant likelihood that he did not kill the police officer he had been convicted of killing (his accusers recanted).
In short, the standards of any maturing society may not evolve, but they do change. Yet the decision of death is unchangeable.
Perhaps persons inclined to the Christian faith might join others of similar ethical interest and inclination to perform a thought experiment. What if Jesus and Socrates had not been killed? What next? What might they have said in prison? Whom might they have reached, whom convinced? When might they have been released? How might they have been reintroduced into the societies they offended? In what ways are forgiveness and reintegration the flip side of any mature system of justice?
To be sure, most Christians believe that Jesus did reach and convince others, after his rising. And most Platonists believe that Socrates also managed to reach and convince others, primarily through the record of his life and his manner of facing its end. But neither Jesus nor Socrates wrote a word; those who wrote about them were agreed that the manner in which they were killed, in both cases, was an outrageous assault on justice.
The death penalty is swift and it is certain and it is irreversible. Given certain widespread political and theological commitments regarding the inviolable moral worth of persons (imagined respectively as rights, and as sacred value), it is arguable that the death penalty requires a degree of certainty unavailable to any human system of law and moral reasoning.
This, to my mind, is the primary and the ultimate reason for us to eliminate it.
Louis A. Ruprecht Jr. is William M. Suttles Chair of Religious Studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta. The author of six books, his two most recent are: God Gardened East: A Gardener’s Meditation on the Dynamics of Genesis (Wipf and Stock, 2008) and This Tragic Gospel: How John Corrupted the Heart of Christianity (Jossey-Bass, 2008).
By Louis A. Ruprecht
Posted on May 18, 2009, Printed on May 18, 2009
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/1216/
It is one of the more striking features of the poorly-named “Western tradition” that two of its foundational stories both involve an act of extraordinary injustice and an ultimately, unwarranted, state-sponsored execution. To say that the death penalty lies at the very heart of Western civilization is true, so long as we modify that point: a concern with the death penalty lies at the very heart of Western civilization.
That seems an important modification to make, precisely because the United States finds itself in the peculiar position of being the only “Western” country within its primary coalitions (NAFTA and NATO especially) still to employ the death penalty. Europe has outgrown the death penalty (Turkey will surely have to give it up if it is to have any hope of being admitted to the European Union). The United States has not outgrown the death penalty, at least not yet. And so it finds itself in odd and uncomfortable company with those countries that still use the death penalty quite liberally: among them Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea, and Myanmar.
Deterrence, Vengeance, Retribution
In an increasingly abolitionist global environment, what are the arguments for a continued commitment to the death penalty? There are three main ones.
Far and away the most common argument offered in favor if the death penalty is the argument for deterrence. The threat of execution, it is held, deters violent crime. The problems with this argument are two-fold: first and foremost, there is no statistical evidence to suggest that it is true. States that had a death penalty, got rid of it, then brought it back again, display no shift whatsoever in their rates of violent crime and/or homicide. The reasons for this are not far to find. Most violent crimes are crimes of passion, not premeditation. Deterrence would presumably only work for crimes that are premeditated. And those crimes, murder-for-hire mostly, are committed by professionals of a sort who do not intend to get caught.
Deterrence also hinges on what are essentially Utilitarian premises, the old Anglo-Saxon moral calculus of measuring out dollops of pleasure and pain. It is held that the ultimate suffering of one person is outweighed by the benefits to society as a whole. The Classical Athenians, many of them at any rate, reasoned this way when they elected to put Socrates to death. The Athenian death penalty was believed to deter too much cynical philosophy. The Roman regional administration in Judea reasoned this way as well, believing that so egregious a form of punishment as crucifixion would deter rebellion in this most rebellious of its eastern provinces. Pontius Pilate mingles world-weary cynicism with Utilitarian calculation in some of the most memorable lines assigned to him in the Gospel according to John.
One met similar Utilitarian arguments for deterrence when the question of state-sponsored torture was still in question. And it was here that the intuitive problem with Utilitarianism as a singular moral philosophy became most apparent. It is not the attention to moral consequences and moral results; one can care about consequences and not be a Utilitarian. Rather, the problem is that such “consequential” reasoning about deterrence takes off the table any conception of human life as having sacred value. And as a corollary, appeals to deterrence seem to take off the table any initial inclination to deem certain things unthinkable and therefore unjustifiable in any circumstance. Things like torture, or the deliberate infliction of pain.
Now, with so many obvious problems of ancient and modern pedigree, why is the argument of deterrence made at all? In short, deterrence is invoked to distract attention away from what is, for real inspiration for an inclination to the death penalty: vengeance. State-sponsored killing offers a singular way to express the outrage we quite naturally feel in the face of violent crime, especially those most heinous acts of human outrage that result in death.
To be sure, the desire to kill in response to a killing is understandable, and all too visceral a reality for victims of violence and their families. It is a natural, and often quite understandable, response to the trauma of violence and the grief of loss. But to submit to this emotion—for it is an emotion, and not an argument—is ironically to eviscerate all the original reasons for state-sponsored killing I outlined above.
The logic of vengeance is the logic of the blood feud. It initiates a cycle of violence that cannot be ended in its own terms. The state intervenes with a sentence of death precisely to take this exercise of ultimate power out of the hands of those most personally and emotionally involved, and to render justice less emotionally. The state takes the power of killing away from feuding clans and enacts justice, not vengeance. That has always been the understanding of how the death penalty should work. It offers an answer to an age-old question posed both by the Bible and by Greek tragedy (and Greek philosophy): how to escape a never-ending cycle of revenge killing? In short, one escapes to the state and its institutions. The state kills with blindfolds on, de-personalizing this most personal of all human actions, with careful attention to certain ritual effects and due process. The idea is that this creates the possibility of that most elusive of all psychological and moral events: closure.
It is precisely by thinking through the outlaw logic of vengeance that one is led to the third, and probably the only compelling, argument for the death penalty. It is for that very reason harder to give a name. Let’s call it just retribution. Such an idea captures what I tried to describe as the limits of the illogic of vengeance. The state ironically asserts the value of the lives of those citizens who have been lost to violence, by violently punishing their killers. The state takes the power of life and death out of the hands of individual citizens, and places it squarely in the hands of the people, represented by a jury in the US system of justice.
This is not a silly argument, and it will not be defeated by the quotes one normally hears arrayed against it. “Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?” Just retribution is intended as an answer to that question. Gandhi offered a still more memorable line in opposition to the death penalty: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” There is something to that observation, but the blindness of capital punishment is held up as a virtue by its supporters. It is supposed to be killing that is not personal; it does not see the people, only crime and punishment.
Cruel and Unusual
The real problem with the concept of just retribution is the notion of “justice” it employs. For in my discussion up to now, I have only imagined imposing the ultimate penalty in a case where someone has been killed. But historically speaking, the death penalty has rarely been limited to acts of premeditated murder. Rape and robbery have regularly been punished with death, and still are in many of the countries I mentioned above.
This is a subtle point, but a crucial one. Conceptions of what rendering of justice might be “proportional” changes dramatically with time. Equally changeable are our notions of what kinds of punishment are appropriate. In the memorable first pages of Michel Foucault’s masterful Discipline and Punish, Foucault describes an almost surreal public execution in Paris on the 2nd of March 1757: a convicted murderer is submitted to flesh-tearing, burning sulphur, molten lead, burning oil and wax, and finally drawing and quartering with horses. When the horses failed to pull him apart, his limbs had to be cut at the joints until the horses finally broke the man. Unbelievably, he lived through all of this. Later, in the end, his corpse was ceremoniously burned, and the ashes publically dispersed. Clearly, when the founding fathers of the Unites States added the specific prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments” in the Eighth Amendment, they had practices like this in mind. Such torture is not just retribution; torture was no longer thought to be “just” at all.
Justice, in this sense, is not absolute; the execution of a death sentence is, however. Therein lies the paradox of the ultimate penalty of death. The justice required to make the argument for just retribution make sense needs to be what it cannot be: timeless and unchanging. Human justice is never that. It is important to recall that both Socrates’ and Jesus’ executions were entirely legitimate, according to the standards of the day in Athens and in Rome; it is only in retrospect that we recall them as acts of grave injustice.
Evolving Standards of Decency
Over the past forty years, the United States Supreme Court has returned repeatedly to that dilemma as it tries to hammer out a view of the death penalty that will fit within our Constitutional system; as well as addressing what it famously referred to as “evolving standards of decency that mark progress of a maturing society.”
That phrase appeared in the first major death penalty case to be heard in response to the cultural tumult of the 1960s, Witherspoon v. Illinois [391 US 510 (1968)]. The case did not tackle the Constitutionality of the death penalty directly, but rather examined the question of what properly constitutes a jury in a capital case. It was a fascinating way to begin the debate; not by examining principles or Constitutional logic, but rather by looking at the actual procedures through which human beings enact their conceptions of justice, in courts of law.
William C. Witherspoon was charged with killing a police officer to avoid arrest in 1959. In his original trial, during the jury selection process, 47 potential jurors were “excused for cause.” This ungentle phrase refers to the individual examination of potential jurors known as voir dire. The prosecuting attorney asked each potential juror how they felt about the death penalty; any who expressed reservations were excused, even though only five of them had said that they would under no circumstances consider the penalty.
The majority of US Supreme Court justices concluded that “the State of Illinois has stacked the deck against the petitioner,” and that in so doing it had violated the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that US citizens cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property without “due process of law.” In other words, Mr. Witherspoon did not receive his due in the process of selecting a jury of his peers.
The Court went still further, saying that the justices could even have imagined a situation in which a potential juror, while personally opposed to the death penalty, could “subordinate his personal views” to his oath, to do his duty as a juror “and to obey the law of the state.”
Clearly, this was a very progressive and very far-reaching decision. So much so that the three Justices who dissented (Justices Black, Harlan and White) said that if the majority wanted to get rid of the death penalty, then it should say so explicitly, not play games and make it practically impossible to administer.
Four years later, the Court struck again in Furman v. Georgia [92 S Ct 2726 (1972)], a strange case that involved three different death sentences, two from Georgia and one from Texas; two of the three involved rape, not murder. The decision was a narrow one (5-4) and ran to nearly 300 pages, as opposed to the 18-page decision in Witherspoon.
Here once again the question of what constitutes the proper role of a jury was at issue. In essence, juries in capital cases had what the majority referred to as “untrammeled discretion” in deciding who received a death sentence and who not. Unsurprisingly, prejudices were revealed in the statistical record of who received a death sentence in the United States. Assessing death sentences imposed since 1930, the Court noted that blacks constituted 57.7% of all death row inmates, men constituted over 90% of those inmates, and the indigent constituted nearly 100%. In such circumstances, trust in the fairness of the system was fatally compromised, and such jury discretion (read: prejudice) rendered the punishment cruel and unusual, and thus in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
This decision effectively struck down every capital statute in the country.
Yet there was great confusion about what the Supreme Court intended to say in the Furman decision. The Justices did not help themselves by writing so many separate opinions, and in disagreeing so vehemently with one another. More to the point, the justices had once again skirted the question of whether the death penalty was in principle unconstitutional, contenting themselves with a close analysis of the relevant court procedures, not the principle.
Three main interpretations of the meaning of the Furman decision arose. First, some felt that the Court clearly was opposed to the death penalty across the board, and would always find some procedural way to strike it down in any particular case; these people gave up on the attempt to write new death penalty legislation. A second group of interpreters felt that the Court was simply opposed to jury “discretion”; in their view, a mandatory death penalty would neatly solve the problem. A third group felt that the Court was inviting further reflection by legislatures on how to create a system where juries had some discretion in particular cases, but not the “untrammeled” sort that led to the willy-nilly execution of blacks, men, and the poor.
By 1973, nine states had already abolished the death penalty. After the Furman decision, 35 states drew up new death penalty laws, 20 of them with mandatory death sentences, and 15 with various attempts to “guide” jury discretion toward more consistent judgments.
Several states had more distinctive histories. New Jersey scrapped its death penalty and did not reinstate it until 1982 (it never used it, then finally scrapped it again in 2007). North Dakota and Kansas maintained the death penalty for a single crime: murder committed by someone already imprisoned for murder. Massachusetts and South Dakota legislatures saw their new death penalty statutes vetoed by their governors. And California’s then-governor Ronald Reagan was so outraged by the California State Supreme Court’s overturning of his state’s death penalty that he personally lobbied for that tried-and-true California initiative: an electoral proposition (Prop. 17) that called for reinstating a mandatory death penalty in California. (A second California State Supreme Court Justice, Rose Byrd, was ousted over this same issue in 1987.)
In 1976, the Supreme Court clarified its intentions further. Gregg v. Georgia [96 S Ct 2909 (1976)] actually involved five separate cases, all from Southern states (Georgia, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Louisiana). In three of those cases, by a 5-4 vote, the Court affirmed state laws that provided instruction to juries in order to guide their moral decisions regarding the sentence of death. By a 7-2 vote (with Chief Justice Rehnquist writing in dissent), the Court overturned mandatory death penalty statutes in Louisiana and North Carolina (the North Carolina law mandated death for sixteen different crimes ranging from murder to rape to armed robbery).
The Gregg decision led to the creation of the system that we still have today. Any trial in which a state or federal prosecutor intends to seek the death penalty must be a “bifurcated trial.” In the first phase, guilt or innocence is assessed. In a second trial, new evidence is heard involving the mitigating and aggravating circumstances in this particular case. At the conclusion of the second phase of a capital trial, jurors are provided with a questionnaire that essentially provides the “guided discretion” for which the Court was calling. By the time you have worked through the questionnaire, you will have often been led to one or the other conclusion. Finally, any death sentence carries an automatic and mandatory appeal to the State Supreme Court.
State-Sponsored Suicide
The moratorium on the enactment of the death penalty was thus lifted in 1976, and on 17 January 1977, Gary Gilmore became the first US citizen to be executed (in Utah) since the Witherspoon decision nearly a decade earlier. Gilmore, like Jesse Walter Bishop (who was the third person to be executed, on 22 October 1979 in Nevada) was executed voluntarily, causing Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to complain that the death penalty was fast becoming “state-sponsored suicide.”
The history of the death penalty since the landmark Gregg decision may be divided into three stages. In the first (1977-1982), there was a good faith effort by courts and legislatures alike to administer the new standards and procedural safeguards the Supreme Court had called for. In the second stage (1983-2000), it began to seem as if state courts and legislatures were abandoning the standards and returning to the pre-1968 business of state-sponsored execution. And then, quite suddenly in 2000, a new questioning of the justice of the death penalty emerged in some surprising and unexpected quarters.
Three cases were especially revealing of the disturbing new realities when the standards and safeguards were largely abandoned.
On 5/6 October 1983, James D. Autry received a stay of execution in Texas just 24 minutes before he was scheduled to die, and after already being strapped to the gurney with the IV tubes already inserted in his arms (Autry was later executed on 14 March 1984). This seemed to suggest that states no longer needed to worry about cruel and unusual punishment.
On 15 December 1983, John Eldon Smith was executed in Georgia; his wife was also sentenced to death in this case, but she was not executed. This seemed to indicate that states no longer needed to worry about untrammeled discretion.
And on 2 November 1984, Velma Bullard Barfield became the first woman to be executed since 1961, in the state of North Carolina. Barfield’s case was especially disturbing to abolitionists, and not only those like myself who worked on her case. The governor of the state, James Hunt, was running for Senator against arch-conservative Jesse Helms, and Helms had made the question of granting Barfield clemency a major campaign issue. The execution was scheduled just six days before the election. Barfield’s clemency petition, supported even by the prison staff with which she worked closely to assist new female inmates, was denied. If Velma Barfield could not receive clemency, then the prospects for anyone on death row nationwide looked grim indeed.
Then some unusual things began to happen; states started re-asserting a moratorium, this time because of the prevalence of new investigative procedures and DNA evidence that began to exonerate, much to the horror of all involved, several persons—most all of them men, most all of them black, and all of them poor—who were awaiting execution for crimes they may well not have committed. The specter of the unjust execution, the image that haunts the conscience of the Western tradition, has led to a renewed investigation of the justice of the death penalty as an institution.
It began where Witherspoon began, in the state of Illinois. Then-governor George Ryan (a Republican, and himself a prisoner in federal detention since 2007) ordered a ban on the death penalty that has been renewed by his Democratic successors, Pat Quinn and long-suffering Rod Blagojevich.
A World of Violence
And that is where we are today, initiating, with halting baby steps a new national discussion of the justice of the death penalty. The debate operates at two levels, as the US Supreme Court did. One set of questions concerns the pragmatics of how the death penalty is imposed. That is a procedural question best addressed in legislatures and courts of law. The second is housed in educational institutions and faith communities.
As a practical matter, close analysis does point to some disturbing trends in the way the death penalty is imposed. There is often little rhyme or reason as to why one person receives a life sentence and another receives death. While there are many more whites executed now (57% of the total since 1976), the percentage of women on death rows remains unchanged, and all such residents remain poor. No one who can afford private counsel gets the death penalty; our system simply doesn’t work that way.
And in the current economic climate, new arguments against the death penalty have begun to appear in some surprising quarters. A new argument for abolition stems from the cost of the death penalty. Capital trials are almost always longer and more expensive; there are more witnesses in general, and bifurcated trials mean you are getting two trials often for nearly twice the price. The mandatory appeals process takes years and literally costs millions of dollars, far more than it would cost to house someone in prison for life.
I used to think that a frivolous argument; I no longer do. The reason is this. Given our Constitutional commitments, we will and must have such mandatory safeguards and review; this is a good thing. Therefore, in this country, the death penalty will always be prohibitively expensive. In other countries like China, it is not. And in those settings, ironically enough, the death penalty does have a deterrent value; the deterrent value of any law has to do with the swiftness and certainty of punishment, not the severity of punishment. In the United States, the death penalty will never be either certain or swift. By contrast in China in the early 1980s, where there was no equivalent conception of civil liberty or Constitutional protection, 5000 persons arrested for highway robbery were executed en masse; robbery statistics immediately plummeted. Happily, we will never countenance that kind of death penalty in this country. And that is why the death penalty here will always be expensive, and will always be a kind of cruel and unusual lottery system.
Questions of principle are harder to resolve. One could argue that the lottery-like quality of the death penalty’s imposition is itself “cruel and unusual.” It seems unfair somehow that one would only be eligible for a death sentence if one committed a crime in Texas rather than New Jersey or Hawaii. The state of Texas has accounted for well over a third of all executions since lifting the ban in 1976 (a staggering 432, starting with James Autry, out of 1151 executions nationwide).
The difficulty in initiating a substantive discussion of the death penalty is that emotions on all sides run so high. We live in a world of violence, a world that at times seems a chamber of horrors. In just the past few months, we have witnessed fifteen persons gunned down in Germany and eleven more than that in the state of Alabama. In the face of such enormity, words break and grief can overwhelm. An impulse for vengeance, like blind rage itself, is all-too-human and all-too-understandable. Yet these are poor places from which to engage in serious deliberation over matters of great moral complexity. Recall that the death penalty was originally designed so that cool heads would prevail over vengeful rage.
On March 10, the State of Georgia executed its first death row inmate of 2009. The case was a strange one, concerning a crime committed more than 22 years ago. After an evening spent drinking Bloody Marys with his live-in girlfriend and their neighbor, Carol Sanders Beatty, Robert L. Newland drove his truck to the pier, struck a parked vehicle, then fled the scene on foot; it was 30 May 1986 on St. Simons Island, Georgia. Newland inexplicably returned to Beatty’s duplex, and when she spurned his advances, he stabbed her with a knife; Beatty died the next day, after identifying her assailant to police. Newland was convicted of with intent to commit rape, then sentenced to death.
This case and the curiously worded charges suggest one more problem: namely, the cultural embeddedness of any and every judgment about which crimes warrant death.
Once upon a time, it was the robber and the gunslinger who attracted capital attention. John Dillinger’s bullet-ridden corpse was put on public display in the 1930s. If a woman were to be executed, then she would need to be some Bonnie working with a Clyde. But these days, it is the crime of passion, especially one that links sex and violence, and especially one where a man kills a female lover or would-be lover, that elicits capital attention. It is important to recall that there was absolutely nothing premeditated in Newland’s strange and erratic behavior that evening. What there was, instead, was a crude and unsuccessful sexual advance, its inevitable rebuff, and then a drunken bout of male rage.
Consider the following recent trends here in Georgia. William Earl Lynd was executed on 6 May 2008 for kidnaping and killing his then-girlfriend. By contrast, on 23 September 2008, Troy Davis’ execution was stayed just two hours before it was scheduled, due to the admission of a significant likelihood that he did not kill the police officer he had been convicted of killing (his accusers recanted).
In short, the standards of any maturing society may not evolve, but they do change. Yet the decision of death is unchangeable.
Perhaps persons inclined to the Christian faith might join others of similar ethical interest and inclination to perform a thought experiment. What if Jesus and Socrates had not been killed? What next? What might they have said in prison? Whom might they have reached, whom convinced? When might they have been released? How might they have been reintroduced into the societies they offended? In what ways are forgiveness and reintegration the flip side of any mature system of justice?
To be sure, most Christians believe that Jesus did reach and convince others, after his rising. And most Platonists believe that Socrates also managed to reach and convince others, primarily through the record of his life and his manner of facing its end. But neither Jesus nor Socrates wrote a word; those who wrote about them were agreed that the manner in which they were killed, in both cases, was an outrageous assault on justice.
The death penalty is swift and it is certain and it is irreversible. Given certain widespread political and theological commitments regarding the inviolable moral worth of persons (imagined respectively as rights, and as sacred value), it is arguable that the death penalty requires a degree of certainty unavailable to any human system of law and moral reasoning.
This, to my mind, is the primary and the ultimate reason for us to eliminate it.
Louis A. Ruprecht Jr. is William M. Suttles Chair of Religious Studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta. The author of six books, his two most recent are: God Gardened East: A Gardener’s Meditation on the Dynamics of Genesis (Wipf and Stock, 2008) and This Tragic Gospel: How John Corrupted the Heart of Christianity (Jossey-Bass, 2008).
KANSAS VIEWS ON DEATH PENALTY, WIND POWER, HUNGER, SEAT BELTS
Death penalty -- Gov. Mark Parkinson revealed an interesting perspective on the state's death penalty when he said he would be open to re-evaluating it. As a state senator, Parkinson helped draft the law, which Kansas enacted in 1994. He said the purpose was to give murder defendants an incentive to plead guilty for a prison sentence without possibility of parole for 40 years. If the death penalty achieves that, it could be one benefit of it. But maybe it still doesn't make it good justice. Maybe it isn't entirely right to use the threat of execution to pressure a defendant into a plea bargain. This much we know: Life in prison is the best, most appropriate, conscientious -- and, apparently, cheapest -- punishment for murder. We should not need the death penalty to deliver that sentence. It should be the standard punishment, period.-- Hutchinson News
Killer is a celebrity, thanks to death row
His execution is set for Wednesday. So naturally we’re hearing a lot about how Dennis Skillicorn turned his life around while on Missouri’s death row.
Just before a court order helped him avoid lethal injection last year, we also were made aware of how he’d found God.
Which they all do. Except Skillicorn went on to start a prison ministry.
For several years, he’s been editor of a national magazine that features the work of other condemned prisoners. And he’s been involved in a prison hospice program and — well, there’s a lot more about his accomplishments and deep remorse on the Internet.
But what of Richard Drummond?
His fine points are little mentioned these days. About all we hear of him is that he was a Good Samaritan — an Excelsior Springs businessman who offered to help Skillicorn and two of his druggie pals when their car broke down on Interstate 70 one day in August 1994.
And for that kindness, Drummond, 47, was kidnapped, robbed and marched into the woods near Higginsville, Mo. It was there that one of the men, Allen Nicklasson, fired two bullets into Drummond’s brain.
This is what cuts me raw about the death penalty in this country, almost as much as the inequities of capital punishment.
The death penalty makes celebrities out of the most unrepentant killers and sympathetic characters out of those who, like Skillicorn, have managed to make something of themselves in prison.
The victims become cardboard cutouts, while the stories of the condemned are told and retold in court documents and news accounts.
And always the candlelight vigils. If Skillicorn is put to death, some will call him a martyr.
It wasn’t like this when death sentences were carried out in a matter of months. Killers were remembered only for their crimes.
No one lit candles for Charlie Starkweather.
But now it takes 12 years on average for a death sentence to be carried out, and often it’s longer.
That’s not about to change, even if states like Missouri make reforms. It’s as good an argument as any for getting rid of the death penalty.
Sentencing more killers to life without a chance of parole would recognize that people can change for the better over time. It also would ensure that they went about it in the anonymity they deserve.
Richard Drummond?
Press reports never did go into much detail about his life, except to say that he was a good husband and father.
“He loved life,” a family member said.
Just before a court order helped him avoid lethal injection last year, we also were made aware of how he’d found God.
Which they all do. Except Skillicorn went on to start a prison ministry.
For several years, he’s been editor of a national magazine that features the work of other condemned prisoners. And he’s been involved in a prison hospice program and — well, there’s a lot more about his accomplishments and deep remorse on the Internet.
But what of Richard Drummond?
His fine points are little mentioned these days. About all we hear of him is that he was a Good Samaritan — an Excelsior Springs businessman who offered to help Skillicorn and two of his druggie pals when their car broke down on Interstate 70 one day in August 1994.
And for that kindness, Drummond, 47, was kidnapped, robbed and marched into the woods near Higginsville, Mo. It was there that one of the men, Allen Nicklasson, fired two bullets into Drummond’s brain.
This is what cuts me raw about the death penalty in this country, almost as much as the inequities of capital punishment.
The death penalty makes celebrities out of the most unrepentant killers and sympathetic characters out of those who, like Skillicorn, have managed to make something of themselves in prison.
The victims become cardboard cutouts, while the stories of the condemned are told and retold in court documents and news accounts.
And always the candlelight vigils. If Skillicorn is put to death, some will call him a martyr.
It wasn’t like this when death sentences were carried out in a matter of months. Killers were remembered only for their crimes.
No one lit candles for Charlie Starkweather.
But now it takes 12 years on average for a death sentence to be carried out, and often it’s longer.
That’s not about to change, even if states like Missouri make reforms. It’s as good an argument as any for getting rid of the death penalty.
Sentencing more killers to life without a chance of parole would recognize that people can change for the better over time. It also would ensure that they went about it in the anonymity they deserve.
Richard Drummond?
Press reports never did go into much detail about his life, except to say that he was a good husband and father.
“He loved life,” a family member said.
Prison staffers back clemency for inmate facing death
Tony Rizzo |
last updated: May 17, 2009 02:06:20 PM
KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ “I know he’s not the same man who came into prison,” said Bill Henry, a volunteer who has worked with Skillicorn for years in a Christian-based group. “The good things he’s done you can’t even count.”
For Skillicorn, prison deeds are all he can do to make amends for a life of crime.
“If I had three lifetimes, I know I can’t repay society for the things I’ve done,” he said in a recent phone interview. “But I think we have a responsibility to build up what we once tore down with our criminal behavior.”
Regardless of who he is now, or what he once was, the 49-year-old former Kansas City resident is in line to be the first Missouri inmate put to death since 2005.
Barring court intercession or a grant of clemency from Gov. Jay Nixon, at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, an execution team will bind Skillicorn with sturdy leather straps and inject chemicals that will paralyze his breathing and stop his heart.
He would die having never taken a life with his own hands.
But he participated in a 1994 crime spree that horrified many, spurred a national manhunt and left three bodies in two states — all innocent victims shot to death by an accomplice who may outlive Skillicorn as a resident of Missouri’s death row.
Their first victim that summer was Richard Drummond, a 47-year-old father of three girls whose act of kindness toward strangers stranded on the side of a mid-Missouri road was paid back with two bullets in the head.
Read the complete story at kansascity.com For that, Skillicorn, and his accomplice, Allen Nicklasson, were sentenced to death.
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Larry Drummond, one of Richard Drummond’s three older brothers, who said he considers both men equally deserving of execution.
“I think they’re both guilty. They knew what they were doing.”
As a child, Skillicorn had two ambitions.
He wanted to be a nurse. And he wanted to play the guitar.
Standing in front of the television, he would grab an old tennis racket and imitate the musicians he saw.
He was about 12 when his mother died and his father bought him his first guitar.
His teen years brought with them a new hobby — drugs.
Skillicorn started getting in trouble when he was about 14, and his crimes escalated and he dropped out of school, said his brother, Charles Skillicorn, who is a year younger. Charles said he and his friends tried to encourage Dennis to spend time with them, but he kept gravitating toward the neighborhood troublemakers.
One day Dennis Skillicorn traded his guitar for a bag of marijuana. He also stole to support his drug habit.
On Dec. 2, 1979, he and two other young burglars from the Northeast area of Kansas City confronted an 81-year-old rural Jackson County farmer named Wendell Howell at his home.
They forced him to lie face down on a living room couch. One held a shotgun to his head while the others looted the home for valuables.
When they were done, the gunman told his partners to wait outside. Skillicorn and the other man later said they were waiting in the car when their co-defendant fired a blast into Howell’s head.
Prosecutors tried Skillicorn, then 20, for capital murder. But after seven hours of deliberations, a Jackson County jury found him guilty of second-degree murder instead. He got a 35-year prison sentence.
Authorities paroled him in 1992. He soon fell back into his drug and criminal ways.
By the summer of 1994, Skillicorn was running with Nicklasson, a 22-year-old hotheaded hoodlum who shared his taste for illegal drugs, including crystal meth.
On Aug. 23, they talked a teenage acquaintance, Tim DeGraffenreid of Blue Springs, into driving them to central Missouri to get drugs. When the car broke down, they burglarized a house, stealing, among other things, a .22-caliber pistol.
The car was repaired, but it broke down again the next day.
Drummond, a supervisor for AT&T, was driving by on a business trip to Kingdom City when he pulled over to see if he could help. He agreed to give them a ride to a pay phone. The trio piled into his car, lugging some loot from the burglarized house.
From the back seat, Nicklasson put a pistol to Drummond’s head and told him to keep driving.
For about 90 minutes, as they debated what to do, they forced Drummond to drive west with a gun pointed at his head.
In Lafayette County, they ordered him off the highway and into the countryside, where they found a secluded spot. Skillicorn took Drummond’s wallet and waited at the car.
Nicklasson marched Drummond toward a stand of trees, where he ordered his captive to kneel and pray. Then he fired two shots from the .22 into Drummond’s head.
Skillicorn and Nicklasson dropped off DeGraffenreid in Blue Springs, where the teen went into hiding at a motel. They headed west in Drummond’s car.
Three days later, along a desolate stretch of desert in western Arizona, they drove off the highway to rest. The car bogged down in the soft sand of a dry creek bed. Unable to free it, they hiked to the nearby home of Joe and Charlene Babcock. Joe Babcock offered to pull them out.
As Babcock kneeled and attempted to scoop sand from around the car’s tires, Nicklasson pumped four bullets into his head.
They returned to the house and confronted Charlene Babcock, who fought for her life before Nicklasson shot her too.
They fled in the Babcocks’ vehicle.
Back in the Kansas City area, Drummond’s family fretted. Days passed without word from the Excelsior Springs resident. Their fears intensified after authorities found his car in Arizona near two murder victims.
A week after Drummond vanished, police acting on a tip found the 17-year-old DeGraffenreid in Blue Springs. The next day, he led them to Drummond’s body.
By then, authorities had launched a cross-country manhunt for Skillicorn and Nicklasson.
The tense weeks-long search ended quietly 42 days after Drummond’s death.
A police officer saw the fugitives hitchhiking with a third man in San Diego. Nicklasson gave a fake name but provided his real Social Security number, which got him arrested. Skillicorn, who didn’t make the same mistake, was let go.
The next day, less than 20 miles away, a motorist saw Skillicorn hitchhiking alone, recognized him from news coverage and called police. Skillicorn submitted peacefully when officers converged on him.
In the aftermath, DeGraffenreid pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison. He remains incarcerated.
Tried separately, Skillicorn and Nicklasson each received sentences of death.
Skillicorn has maintained that he thought they were going to strand Drummond in the country long enough for them to get back to Kansas City. He says he didn’t know that Nicklasson was going to kill him.
To this day, Skillicorn says he doesn’t understand why Nicklasson shot Drummond.
“He can’t even tell you why he did it,” Skillicorn said.
Skillicorn never has denied his part in robbing Drummond and said that, regardless of his involvement, he feels remorse.
“I think about Mr. Drummond’s family every day,” he said. “I’m well aware of the fact, or as aware as I can be, of how devastating it must have been.”
In jail awaiting trial, Skillicorn found himself drug-free for the first time in many years. He also discovered literature from Set Free Ministries, a Bible study correspondence program for prisoners.
It began a new journey.
After entering prison, Skillicorn volunteered to help with the ministry program. Sober, he discovered talents like writing, speaking and leading. He started finding fulfillment from something other than drugs.
“Making a difference is a high in itself,” he said.
He fell in love with a woman interviewing him for a possible book. He married the former Kansas City Star reporter, who had left the paper after covering his trial, and became stepfather to her son.
He has continued his work with Set Free Ministries and even picked up the guitar again, playing it during worship services. He has helped set up and run a program to help incarcerated men and their children develop closer relationships. He volunteers in a hospice program to comfort terminally ill prisoners.
A book he edited, “Today’s Choices Affect Tomorrow’s Dreams,” contains essays, poems and artwork by him and other inmates on death rows across the country. It is provided free to juvenile detention facilities to give at-risk youths a firsthand understanding of what can happen if they succumb to bad choices made by men like Skillicorn.
“There’s no way I can bring Mr. Drummond back,” he said. “But I might be able to prevent some other family from being in the same situation as the Drummond family.”
He has been working on a follow-up book and hopes that someone else will complete it if he can’t.
The books are an offshoot of “Compassion,” a bimonthly newsletter edited by Skillicorn that features similar works. It has raised thousands of dollars in scholarship money for relatives of murder victims.
Those efforts are indicative of how Skillicorn has spent his time in prison, according to some former and current employees of the Potosi Correctional Center, where Skillicorn lived until recently.
About 12 current and former prison staffers gave statements for his clemency petition.
Their efforts were joined last week by Rep. Steven Tilley, the majority leader of the Missouri House, who called on Nixon to commute Skillicorn’s sentence to life in prison.
By helping other inmates turn their lives around, Skillicorn is helping make communities safer, his supporters say.
“I don’t condone what he did and I’m not asking that he be put out on the street,” said Sam Finley, a prison volunteer. “I just want to see him stay alive so he can be a positive influence for our society.”
Skillicorn says none of his work was done to save his life.
“I’ve never known of a person to get off death row for doing good things,” he said. “I’ve never been under that delusion whatsoever. I’ve simply done what I’ve done because it’s the right thing to do.”
last updated: May 17, 2009 02:06:20 PM
KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ “I know he’s not the same man who came into prison,” said Bill Henry, a volunteer who has worked with Skillicorn for years in a Christian-based group. “The good things he’s done you can’t even count.”
For Skillicorn, prison deeds are all he can do to make amends for a life of crime.
“If I had three lifetimes, I know I can’t repay society for the things I’ve done,” he said in a recent phone interview. “But I think we have a responsibility to build up what we once tore down with our criminal behavior.”
Regardless of who he is now, or what he once was, the 49-year-old former Kansas City resident is in line to be the first Missouri inmate put to death since 2005.
Barring court intercession or a grant of clemency from Gov. Jay Nixon, at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, an execution team will bind Skillicorn with sturdy leather straps and inject chemicals that will paralyze his breathing and stop his heart.
He would die having never taken a life with his own hands.
But he participated in a 1994 crime spree that horrified many, spurred a national manhunt and left three bodies in two states — all innocent victims shot to death by an accomplice who may outlive Skillicorn as a resident of Missouri’s death row.
Their first victim that summer was Richard Drummond, a 47-year-old father of three girls whose act of kindness toward strangers stranded on the side of a mid-Missouri road was paid back with two bullets in the head.
Read the complete story at kansascity.com For that, Skillicorn, and his accomplice, Allen Nicklasson, were sentenced to death.
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Larry Drummond, one of Richard Drummond’s three older brothers, who said he considers both men equally deserving of execution.
“I think they’re both guilty. They knew what they were doing.”
As a child, Skillicorn had two ambitions.
He wanted to be a nurse. And he wanted to play the guitar.
Standing in front of the television, he would grab an old tennis racket and imitate the musicians he saw.
He was about 12 when his mother died and his father bought him his first guitar.
His teen years brought with them a new hobby — drugs.
Skillicorn started getting in trouble when he was about 14, and his crimes escalated and he dropped out of school, said his brother, Charles Skillicorn, who is a year younger. Charles said he and his friends tried to encourage Dennis to spend time with them, but he kept gravitating toward the neighborhood troublemakers.
One day Dennis Skillicorn traded his guitar for a bag of marijuana. He also stole to support his drug habit.
On Dec. 2, 1979, he and two other young burglars from the Northeast area of Kansas City confronted an 81-year-old rural Jackson County farmer named Wendell Howell at his home.
They forced him to lie face down on a living room couch. One held a shotgun to his head while the others looted the home for valuables.
When they were done, the gunman told his partners to wait outside. Skillicorn and the other man later said they were waiting in the car when their co-defendant fired a blast into Howell’s head.
Prosecutors tried Skillicorn, then 20, for capital murder. But after seven hours of deliberations, a Jackson County jury found him guilty of second-degree murder instead. He got a 35-year prison sentence.
Authorities paroled him in 1992. He soon fell back into his drug and criminal ways.
By the summer of 1994, Skillicorn was running with Nicklasson, a 22-year-old hotheaded hoodlum who shared his taste for illegal drugs, including crystal meth.
On Aug. 23, they talked a teenage acquaintance, Tim DeGraffenreid of Blue Springs, into driving them to central Missouri to get drugs. When the car broke down, they burglarized a house, stealing, among other things, a .22-caliber pistol.
The car was repaired, but it broke down again the next day.
Drummond, a supervisor for AT&T, was driving by on a business trip to Kingdom City when he pulled over to see if he could help. He agreed to give them a ride to a pay phone. The trio piled into his car, lugging some loot from the burglarized house.
From the back seat, Nicklasson put a pistol to Drummond’s head and told him to keep driving.
For about 90 minutes, as they debated what to do, they forced Drummond to drive west with a gun pointed at his head.
In Lafayette County, they ordered him off the highway and into the countryside, where they found a secluded spot. Skillicorn took Drummond’s wallet and waited at the car.
Nicklasson marched Drummond toward a stand of trees, where he ordered his captive to kneel and pray. Then he fired two shots from the .22 into Drummond’s head.
Skillicorn and Nicklasson dropped off DeGraffenreid in Blue Springs, where the teen went into hiding at a motel. They headed west in Drummond’s car.
Three days later, along a desolate stretch of desert in western Arizona, they drove off the highway to rest. The car bogged down in the soft sand of a dry creek bed. Unable to free it, they hiked to the nearby home of Joe and Charlene Babcock. Joe Babcock offered to pull them out.
As Babcock kneeled and attempted to scoop sand from around the car’s tires, Nicklasson pumped four bullets into his head.
They returned to the house and confronted Charlene Babcock, who fought for her life before Nicklasson shot her too.
They fled in the Babcocks’ vehicle.
Back in the Kansas City area, Drummond’s family fretted. Days passed without word from the Excelsior Springs resident. Their fears intensified after authorities found his car in Arizona near two murder victims.
A week after Drummond vanished, police acting on a tip found the 17-year-old DeGraffenreid in Blue Springs. The next day, he led them to Drummond’s body.
By then, authorities had launched a cross-country manhunt for Skillicorn and Nicklasson.
The tense weeks-long search ended quietly 42 days after Drummond’s death.
A police officer saw the fugitives hitchhiking with a third man in San Diego. Nicklasson gave a fake name but provided his real Social Security number, which got him arrested. Skillicorn, who didn’t make the same mistake, was let go.
The next day, less than 20 miles away, a motorist saw Skillicorn hitchhiking alone, recognized him from news coverage and called police. Skillicorn submitted peacefully when officers converged on him.
In the aftermath, DeGraffenreid pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison. He remains incarcerated.
Tried separately, Skillicorn and Nicklasson each received sentences of death.
Skillicorn has maintained that he thought they were going to strand Drummond in the country long enough for them to get back to Kansas City. He says he didn’t know that Nicklasson was going to kill him.
To this day, Skillicorn says he doesn’t understand why Nicklasson shot Drummond.
“He can’t even tell you why he did it,” Skillicorn said.
Skillicorn never has denied his part in robbing Drummond and said that, regardless of his involvement, he feels remorse.
“I think about Mr. Drummond’s family every day,” he said. “I’m well aware of the fact, or as aware as I can be, of how devastating it must have been.”
In jail awaiting trial, Skillicorn found himself drug-free for the first time in many years. He also discovered literature from Set Free Ministries, a Bible study correspondence program for prisoners.
It began a new journey.
After entering prison, Skillicorn volunteered to help with the ministry program. Sober, he discovered talents like writing, speaking and leading. He started finding fulfillment from something other than drugs.
“Making a difference is a high in itself,” he said.
He fell in love with a woman interviewing him for a possible book. He married the former Kansas City Star reporter, who had left the paper after covering his trial, and became stepfather to her son.
He has continued his work with Set Free Ministries and even picked up the guitar again, playing it during worship services. He has helped set up and run a program to help incarcerated men and their children develop closer relationships. He volunteers in a hospice program to comfort terminally ill prisoners.
A book he edited, “Today’s Choices Affect Tomorrow’s Dreams,” contains essays, poems and artwork by him and other inmates on death rows across the country. It is provided free to juvenile detention facilities to give at-risk youths a firsthand understanding of what can happen if they succumb to bad choices made by men like Skillicorn.
“There’s no way I can bring Mr. Drummond back,” he said. “But I might be able to prevent some other family from being in the same situation as the Drummond family.”
He has been working on a follow-up book and hopes that someone else will complete it if he can’t.
The books are an offshoot of “Compassion,” a bimonthly newsletter edited by Skillicorn that features similar works. It has raised thousands of dollars in scholarship money for relatives of murder victims.
Those efforts are indicative of how Skillicorn has spent his time in prison, according to some former and current employees of the Potosi Correctional Center, where Skillicorn lived until recently.
About 12 current and former prison staffers gave statements for his clemency petition.
Their efforts were joined last week by Rep. Steven Tilley, the majority leader of the Missouri House, who called on Nixon to commute Skillicorn’s sentence to life in prison.
By helping other inmates turn their lives around, Skillicorn is helping make communities safer, his supporters say.
“I don’t condone what he did and I’m not asking that he be put out on the street,” said Sam Finley, a prison volunteer. “I just want to see him stay alive so he can be a positive influence for our society.”
Skillicorn says none of his work was done to save his life.
“I’ve never known of a person to get off death row for doing good things,” he said. “I’ve never been under that delusion whatsoever. I’ve simply done what I’ve done because it’s the right thing to do.”
Prisons, corrections workers to speak on Skillicorn execution
STATE CAPITOL -- Today at the State Capitol, Missouri prison and correctional workers will speak out against Wednesday's scheduled execution of Dennis Skillicorn.
Skillicorn is one of three men convicted of killing a man in 1994 along Interstate 70 in Callaway County.
Many have spoken out recently about the upcoming execution, including Missouri House Majority Leader Steven Tilley.
Tilley cited revelations that Allen Nicklasson, another suspect in the murder actually did the killing.
Skillicorn is one of three men convicted of killing a man in 1994 along Interstate 70 in Callaway County.
Many have spoken out recently about the upcoming execution, including Missouri House Majority Leader Steven Tilley.
Tilley cited revelations that Allen Nicklasson, another suspect in the murder actually did the killing.
Local vigil to protest Death Penalty
By JOE MEYER
Posted May 18, 2009 at 1:02 p.m.
Dennis Skillicorn is scheduled to be executed early Wednesday, marking the first execution in Missouri since 2005.
A vigil is scheduled from 5 to 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Boone County Courthouse on Walnut Street. It's one of 10 statewide vigils planned by Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty. For more information, contact Jeff Stack at 449-4585.
Here's the info about some other vigils scheduled Tuesday night across the state:
Bonne Terre: 11 p.m to 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, outside Boone Terre prison, 2727 Highway K at Coplin Road (candlelight vigil). Contact Colleen Cunningham, 314-397-6691
Jefferson City: 10:45 p.m., St. Peter's Catholic Church, 216 Broadway (prayer service); 11 p.m. to 12:01 a.m., 207 W. High St. across from Missouri Supreme Court (vigil). Contact Rita Linhardt, (573)635-7239.
Kansas City: 5 to 6 p.m., J.C. Nichols Fountain in the Plaza (vigil). Contact Donnie Morehouse, (816)756-3113x234.
Springfield: 7 p.m., Holy Trinity Catholic Church, 2818 E. Bennett St. (vigil). Contact Donna (417)459-2960.
St. Louis: 7:30 p.m., St. Francis Xavier Church (prayer service sponsored by The Intercommunity Justice Coordinators); 8:15 to 9 p.m. in front of the church (vigil); with carpooling to Bonne Terre following. Contact Margaret Phillips, (314)322-5159.
Posted May 18, 2009 at 1:02 p.m.
Dennis Skillicorn is scheduled to be executed early Wednesday, marking the first execution in Missouri since 2005.
A vigil is scheduled from 5 to 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Boone County Courthouse on Walnut Street. It's one of 10 statewide vigils planned by Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty. For more information, contact Jeff Stack at 449-4585.
Here's the info about some other vigils scheduled Tuesday night across the state:
Bonne Terre: 11 p.m to 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, outside Boone Terre prison, 2727 Highway K at Coplin Road (candlelight vigil). Contact Colleen Cunningham, 314-397-6691
Jefferson City: 10:45 p.m., St. Peter's Catholic Church, 216 Broadway (prayer service); 11 p.m. to 12:01 a.m., 207 W. High St. across from Missouri Supreme Court (vigil). Contact Rita Linhardt, (573)635-7239.
Kansas City: 5 to 6 p.m., J.C. Nichols Fountain in the Plaza (vigil). Contact Donnie Morehouse, (816)756-3113x234.
Springfield: 7 p.m., Holy Trinity Catholic Church, 2818 E. Bennett St. (vigil). Contact Donna (417)459-2960.
St. Louis: 7:30 p.m., St. Francis Xavier Church (prayer service sponsored by The Intercommunity Justice Coordinators); 8:15 to 9 p.m. in front of the church (vigil); with carpooling to Bonne Terre following. Contact Margaret Phillips, (314)322-5159.
Death row's revolving door
Post-trial evidence in Ga. case resonates
By Kevin Johnson
USA TODAY
The timeline of Troy Davis' 18 years on death row reads like most other condemned prisoners' slow shuffle to the execution chamber.
His appeals chart a legal marathon from a courtroom in Savannah, Ga., to the U.S. Supreme Court. The execution date for Davis, convicted of killing a police officer, has been set three times — and three times the courts or Georgia officials have granted extensions.
What doesn't exist in the docket entries or trial transcripts is a formal airing of evidence discovered after Davis' conviction that, his lawyers say, could win his freedom. Seven of nine prosecution witnesses have recanted their testimony implicating him since his 1991 trial.
Davis' attorneys and advocates for the wrongfully convicted say his case, set for another U.S. Supreme Court appeal this week, represents one of possibly dozens in which courts are reluctant to consider evidence discovered after conviction that might exonerate inmates on death row.
Laura Moye, a deputy director of Amnesty International USA, which supports Davis' appeal, says the "question of innocence doesn't seem to be as much of a priority for the courts as the craving for finality."
The courts' treatment of post-conviction evidence — revised witness statements, fresh forensic information — is drawing increased attention. During the past several days, calls for new evidence reviews were at the core of major developments in three prominent death cases, including the Davis challenge:
•Davis' latest stay of execution expired Saturday, and his lawyers plan to petition the U.S. Supreme Court this week for a hearing to consider the new witness statements, says Jay Ewart, one of Davis' attorneys.
•On May 11, seven years after Justin Wolfe was sentenced to death for arranging the execution of a fellow Virginia drug dealer, a federal appeals court directed a judge in Norfolk to consider reviewing new evidence of possible innocence.
That includes an affidavit from the triggerman, Owen Barber, who had told jurors that Wolfe, 28, paid him to kill the dealer. Four years after the trial, Barber said in an affidavit that Wolfe "had nothing to do with the killing," according to court documents. Five months after that, Barber changed his story again, saying that he told the truth at trial, the documents show. Despite the conflicting accounts, court documents show that two other witnesses have corroborated Barber's declaration clearing Wolfe.
•On May 12, a local district attorney in Tennessee dropped all charges against Paul House, 47, who was sentenced to death more than 20 years ago for the rape and murder of a Luttrell, Tenn., woman.
The dismissal was based on DNA testing unavailable when he was convicted, says John Galloway, Union County, Tenn., deputy district attorney. After lower courts denied several requests for a new review of the evidence, House was saved from execution in 2006, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that he was entitled to a new hearing.
In a non-death-penalty case, a Texas judge in February formally exonerated Tim Cole, who died in prison in 1999 after being wrongly convicted in the 1985 rape of a college student. Although DNA testing last year implicated another man who had confessed to the attack, the Lubbock court that convicted Cole declined to clear him. Four years before Cole died, the other man confessed his guilt to Lubbock court officials, but his claims were ignored, says Cole's attorney, Jeff Blackburn.
Some death penalty supporters say the courts should be suspicious of new information generated after conviction.
"These courts have seen more bull than a Texas prairie," says Dudley Sharp, a death penalty proponent who has written extensively on the subject.
He and other death penalty advocates say the "very high" legal standards necessary to trigger full examinations of post-conviction evidence are needed to control a system that otherwise would never end.
Defense lawyers must show in part that the new evidence could not have been discovered at trial and the information — if presented at trial — likely would have changed the verdict.
"At some point, you have to come to a conclusion," Galloway says. Although the prosecutor still suspects House played a role in the 1985 rape and murder, he says dismissal after DNA testing did not match House was the "right decision."
Troy Davis' sister Martina Correia says any court that fully reviews the new witness statements would grant her brother relief. Several of the statements include accounts of police coercion during interrogations. "There is more than reasonable doubt here," she says.
Chatham County District Attorney Larry Chisolm, whose predecessor prosecuted Davis, declined to comment.
Last month, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Davis' request for a new trial, saying it viewed the recantations "with some skepticism" and remained "unpersuaded." Judge Rosemary Barkett dissented, calling Davis' execution despite new evidence "unconscionable and unconstitutional."
If the appeals fail, "I'm still going to demand change," Correia says. "This thing is bigger than Troy Davis; there are a lot of Troy Davises out there."
Page 3A
By Kevin Johnson
USA TODAY
The timeline of Troy Davis' 18 years on death row reads like most other condemned prisoners' slow shuffle to the execution chamber.
His appeals chart a legal marathon from a courtroom in Savannah, Ga., to the U.S. Supreme Court. The execution date for Davis, convicted of killing a police officer, has been set three times — and three times the courts or Georgia officials have granted extensions.
What doesn't exist in the docket entries or trial transcripts is a formal airing of evidence discovered after Davis' conviction that, his lawyers say, could win his freedom. Seven of nine prosecution witnesses have recanted their testimony implicating him since his 1991 trial.
Davis' attorneys and advocates for the wrongfully convicted say his case, set for another U.S. Supreme Court appeal this week, represents one of possibly dozens in which courts are reluctant to consider evidence discovered after conviction that might exonerate inmates on death row.
Laura Moye, a deputy director of Amnesty International USA, which supports Davis' appeal, says the "question of innocence doesn't seem to be as much of a priority for the courts as the craving for finality."
The courts' treatment of post-conviction evidence — revised witness statements, fresh forensic information — is drawing increased attention. During the past several days, calls for new evidence reviews were at the core of major developments in three prominent death cases, including the Davis challenge:
•Davis' latest stay of execution expired Saturday, and his lawyers plan to petition the U.S. Supreme Court this week for a hearing to consider the new witness statements, says Jay Ewart, one of Davis' attorneys.
•On May 11, seven years after Justin Wolfe was sentenced to death for arranging the execution of a fellow Virginia drug dealer, a federal appeals court directed a judge in Norfolk to consider reviewing new evidence of possible innocence.
That includes an affidavit from the triggerman, Owen Barber, who had told jurors that Wolfe, 28, paid him to kill the dealer. Four years after the trial, Barber said in an affidavit that Wolfe "had nothing to do with the killing," according to court documents. Five months after that, Barber changed his story again, saying that he told the truth at trial, the documents show. Despite the conflicting accounts, court documents show that two other witnesses have corroborated Barber's declaration clearing Wolfe.
•On May 12, a local district attorney in Tennessee dropped all charges against Paul House, 47, who was sentenced to death more than 20 years ago for the rape and murder of a Luttrell, Tenn., woman.
The dismissal was based on DNA testing unavailable when he was convicted, says John Galloway, Union County, Tenn., deputy district attorney. After lower courts denied several requests for a new review of the evidence, House was saved from execution in 2006, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that he was entitled to a new hearing.
In a non-death-penalty case, a Texas judge in February formally exonerated Tim Cole, who died in prison in 1999 after being wrongly convicted in the 1985 rape of a college student. Although DNA testing last year implicated another man who had confessed to the attack, the Lubbock court that convicted Cole declined to clear him. Four years before Cole died, the other man confessed his guilt to Lubbock court officials, but his claims were ignored, says Cole's attorney, Jeff Blackburn.
Some death penalty supporters say the courts should be suspicious of new information generated after conviction.
"These courts have seen more bull than a Texas prairie," says Dudley Sharp, a death penalty proponent who has written extensively on the subject.
He and other death penalty advocates say the "very high" legal standards necessary to trigger full examinations of post-conviction evidence are needed to control a system that otherwise would never end.
Defense lawyers must show in part that the new evidence could not have been discovered at trial and the information — if presented at trial — likely would have changed the verdict.
"At some point, you have to come to a conclusion," Galloway says. Although the prosecutor still suspects House played a role in the 1985 rape and murder, he says dismissal after DNA testing did not match House was the "right decision."
Troy Davis' sister Martina Correia says any court that fully reviews the new witness statements would grant her brother relief. Several of the statements include accounts of police coercion during interrogations. "There is more than reasonable doubt here," she says.
Chatham County District Attorney Larry Chisolm, whose predecessor prosecuted Davis, declined to comment.
Last month, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Davis' request for a new trial, saying it viewed the recantations "with some skepticism" and remained "unpersuaded." Judge Rosemary Barkett dissented, calling Davis' execution despite new evidence "unconscionable and unconstitutional."
If the appeals fail, "I'm still going to demand change," Correia says. "This thing is bigger than Troy Davis; there are a lot of Troy Davises out there."
Page 3A
Plugging Holes in the Science of Forensics
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
It was time, the panel of experts said, to put more science in forensic science.
A report in February by a committee of the National Academy of Sciences found “serious problems” with much of the work performed by crime laboratories in the United States. Recent incidents of faulty evidence analysis — including the case of an Oregon lawyer who was arrested by the F.B.I. after the 2004 Madrid terrorist bombings based on fingerprint identification that turned out to be wrong — were just high-profile examples of wider deficiencies, the committee said. Crime labs were overworked, there were few certification programs for investigators and technicians, and the entire field suffered from a lack of oversight.
But perhaps the most damning conclusion was that many forensic disciplines — including analysis of fingerprints, bite marks and the striations and indentations left by a pry bar or a gun’s firing mechanism — were not grounded in the kind of rigorous, peer-reviewed research that is the hallmark of classic science. DNA analysis was an exception, the report noted, in that it had been studied extensively. But many other investigative tests, the report said, “have never been exposed to stringent scientific scrutiny.”
While some forensic experts took issue with that conclusion, many welcomed it. And some scientists are working on just the kind of research necessary to improve the field. They are refining software and studying human decision-making to improve an important aspect of much forensic science — the ability to recognize and compare patterns.
The report was “basically saying what many of us have been saying for a long time,” said Lawrence Kobilinsky, chairman of the department of sciences at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “There are a lot of areas in forensics that need improvement.”
Barry Fisher, a past president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and a former director of the crime laboratory at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, said he and others had been pushing for this kind of independent assessment for years. “There needs to be a demonstration that this stuff is reliable,” he said.
It’s not that there hasn’t been any research in forensic science. But over the years much of it has been done in crime labs themselves. “It hasn’t gotten to the level where they can state findings in a rigorous scientific way,” said Constantine Gatsonis, director of the Center for Statistical Sciences at Brown University and co-chairman of the National Academy of Sciences committee. And rather than being teased out in academic papers and debated at scientific conferences, “a lot of this forensic stuff is being argued in the courtroom,” Mr. Fisher said. “That’s not the place to validate any kind of scientific information.”
Much forensic research has been geared to improving technologies and techniques. These studies can result in the kinds of gee-whiz advances that may show up in the next episode of the “C.S.I.” series — a technique to obtain fingerprints from a grocery bag or other unlikely source, for example, or equipment that enables analyses of the tiniest bits of evidence.
This kind of work is useful, Dr. Kobilinsky said, “but it doesn’t solve the basic problem.”
DNA analysis came out of the biological sciences, and much money and time has been spent developing the field, resulting in a large body of peer-reviewed research. So when a DNA expert testifies in court that there is a certain probability that a sample comes from a suspect, that claim is grounded in science.
As evidence to be analyzed, DNA has certain advantages. “DNA has a particular structure, and can be digitized,” Dr. Gatsonis said. So scientists can agree, for example, on how many loci on a DNA strand to use in their analyses, and computers can do the necessary computations of probability.
“Fingerprints are a lot more complicated,” Dr. Gatsonis said. “There are a lot of different ways you can select features and make comparisons.” A smudged print may have only a few ridge endings or other points for comparison, while a clear print may have many more. And other factors can affect prints, including the material they were found on and the pressure of the fingers in making them.
Sargur N. Srihari, an expert in pattern recognition at the University at Buffalo, part of the New York state university system, is trying to quantify the uncertainty. His group did much of the research that led to postal systems that can recognize handwritten addresses on envelopes, and he works with databases of fingerprints to derive probabilities of random correspondence between two prints.
Most features on a print are usually represented by X and Y coordinates and by an angle that represents the orientation of the particular ridge where the feature is located. A single print can have 40 or more comparable features.
Dr. Srihari uses relatively small databases, including an extreme one that contains fingerprints from dozens of identical twins (so the probability of matches is high), and employs the results to further refine mathematical tools for comparison that would work with larger populations.
“These numbers are not easy to come by at this point,” he said. The goal is not individualization — matching two prints with absolute certainty — but coming up with firm probabilities that would be very useful in legal proceedings.
Other researchers are compiling databases of their own. Nicholas D. K. Petraco, an assistant professor at John Jay College, is studying microscopic tool marks of the kind made by a screwdriver when a burglar jimmies a window. It has been hypothesized that no two screwdrivers leave exactly the same pattern of marks, although that has never been proved. So Dr. Petraco is systematically making marks in jeweler’s wax and other materials, creating images of them under a stereo microscope and quantifying the details, assembling a database that can eventually be mined to determine probabilities that a mark matches a certain tool.
Dr. Petraco, a chemist with a strong background in computer science, looks to industry for ideas about pattern recognition — the tools that a company like Netflix uses, for example, to classify people by the kinds of movies they like. “A lot of computational machinery goes into making those kinds of decisions,” he said.
He figures that if something works for industry, it will work for forensic science. “You don’t want to invent anything new,” he said, because that raises legal issues of admissibility of evidence.
The work takes time, but the good news is that the data stays around forever. So as software improves, the probabilities should get more accurate. “Algorithms and data comparison evolve over time,” Dr. Petraco said.
But it may not be possible to develop useful databases in some disciplines — bite mark analysis, for example. “Using a screwdriver, that’s very straightforward and simple,” said Ira Titunik, a forensic odontologist and adjunct professor at John Jay College. But bites involve numerous teeth, and there are other factors, including condition of the skin, that may make it difficult to quantify them for purposes of determining probabilities.
A few researchers are looking at how errors creep into forensic analysis. The National Institute of Standards and Technology recently established a working group on fingerprints, with statisticians, psychologists and others, “to try to understand the circumstances that lead to human error,” said Mark Stolorow, director of the Office of Law Enforcement Standards at the institute.
In Britain, Itiel Dror, a psychologist who studies decision-making processes, is already looking at human factors. “I like to say the mind is not a camera, objectively and passively recording information,” said Dr. Dror, who has a consulting firm and is affiliated with University College London. “The brain is an active and dynamic device.”
He has conducted studies that show that when working on an identification, fingerprint examiners can be influenced by what else they know about a case. In one experiment, he found that the same examiner can come to different conclusions about the same fingerprint, if the context is changed over time.
The same kinds of contextual biases arise with other decision-makers, said Dr. Dror, who works with the military and with financial and medical professionals. He thinks one reason forensic examiners often do not acknowledge that they make errors is that in these other fields, the mistakes are obvious. “In forensics, they don’t really see it,” he said. “People go to jail.”
Forensics experts say the need for research like Dr. Dror’s and Dr. Srihari’s does not mean that disciplines like fingerprint analysis will turn out to be invalid. “I have no doubt that fingerprint evidence and firearms evidence, once looked into by the appropriate research entities, are going to be shown to be very reliable and good,” said Mr. Fisher, the former American Academy of Forensic Sciences president.
Dr. Kobilinsky said people should not jump to the conclusion that forensic science is bad science. “There’s a lot of experience and knowledge that goes into somebody’s expertise,” he said.
“It’s not junk science. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be improved.”
It was time, the panel of experts said, to put more science in forensic science.
A report in February by a committee of the National Academy of Sciences found “serious problems” with much of the work performed by crime laboratories in the United States. Recent incidents of faulty evidence analysis — including the case of an Oregon lawyer who was arrested by the F.B.I. after the 2004 Madrid terrorist bombings based on fingerprint identification that turned out to be wrong — were just high-profile examples of wider deficiencies, the committee said. Crime labs were overworked, there were few certification programs for investigators and technicians, and the entire field suffered from a lack of oversight.
But perhaps the most damning conclusion was that many forensic disciplines — including analysis of fingerprints, bite marks and the striations and indentations left by a pry bar or a gun’s firing mechanism — were not grounded in the kind of rigorous, peer-reviewed research that is the hallmark of classic science. DNA analysis was an exception, the report noted, in that it had been studied extensively. But many other investigative tests, the report said, “have never been exposed to stringent scientific scrutiny.”
While some forensic experts took issue with that conclusion, many welcomed it. And some scientists are working on just the kind of research necessary to improve the field. They are refining software and studying human decision-making to improve an important aspect of much forensic science — the ability to recognize and compare patterns.
The report was “basically saying what many of us have been saying for a long time,” said Lawrence Kobilinsky, chairman of the department of sciences at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “There are a lot of areas in forensics that need improvement.”
Barry Fisher, a past president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and a former director of the crime laboratory at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, said he and others had been pushing for this kind of independent assessment for years. “There needs to be a demonstration that this stuff is reliable,” he said.
It’s not that there hasn’t been any research in forensic science. But over the years much of it has been done in crime labs themselves. “It hasn’t gotten to the level where they can state findings in a rigorous scientific way,” said Constantine Gatsonis, director of the Center for Statistical Sciences at Brown University and co-chairman of the National Academy of Sciences committee. And rather than being teased out in academic papers and debated at scientific conferences, “a lot of this forensic stuff is being argued in the courtroom,” Mr. Fisher said. “That’s not the place to validate any kind of scientific information.”
Much forensic research has been geared to improving technologies and techniques. These studies can result in the kinds of gee-whiz advances that may show up in the next episode of the “C.S.I.” series — a technique to obtain fingerprints from a grocery bag or other unlikely source, for example, or equipment that enables analyses of the tiniest bits of evidence.
This kind of work is useful, Dr. Kobilinsky said, “but it doesn’t solve the basic problem.”
DNA analysis came out of the biological sciences, and much money and time has been spent developing the field, resulting in a large body of peer-reviewed research. So when a DNA expert testifies in court that there is a certain probability that a sample comes from a suspect, that claim is grounded in science.
As evidence to be analyzed, DNA has certain advantages. “DNA has a particular structure, and can be digitized,” Dr. Gatsonis said. So scientists can agree, for example, on how many loci on a DNA strand to use in their analyses, and computers can do the necessary computations of probability.
“Fingerprints are a lot more complicated,” Dr. Gatsonis said. “There are a lot of different ways you can select features and make comparisons.” A smudged print may have only a few ridge endings or other points for comparison, while a clear print may have many more. And other factors can affect prints, including the material they were found on and the pressure of the fingers in making them.
Sargur N. Srihari, an expert in pattern recognition at the University at Buffalo, part of the New York state university system, is trying to quantify the uncertainty. His group did much of the research that led to postal systems that can recognize handwritten addresses on envelopes, and he works with databases of fingerprints to derive probabilities of random correspondence between two prints.
Most features on a print are usually represented by X and Y coordinates and by an angle that represents the orientation of the particular ridge where the feature is located. A single print can have 40 or more comparable features.
Dr. Srihari uses relatively small databases, including an extreme one that contains fingerprints from dozens of identical twins (so the probability of matches is high), and employs the results to further refine mathematical tools for comparison that would work with larger populations.
“These numbers are not easy to come by at this point,” he said. The goal is not individualization — matching two prints with absolute certainty — but coming up with firm probabilities that would be very useful in legal proceedings.
Other researchers are compiling databases of their own. Nicholas D. K. Petraco, an assistant professor at John Jay College, is studying microscopic tool marks of the kind made by a screwdriver when a burglar jimmies a window. It has been hypothesized that no two screwdrivers leave exactly the same pattern of marks, although that has never been proved. So Dr. Petraco is systematically making marks in jeweler’s wax and other materials, creating images of them under a stereo microscope and quantifying the details, assembling a database that can eventually be mined to determine probabilities that a mark matches a certain tool.
Dr. Petraco, a chemist with a strong background in computer science, looks to industry for ideas about pattern recognition — the tools that a company like Netflix uses, for example, to classify people by the kinds of movies they like. “A lot of computational machinery goes into making those kinds of decisions,” he said.
He figures that if something works for industry, it will work for forensic science. “You don’t want to invent anything new,” he said, because that raises legal issues of admissibility of evidence.
The work takes time, but the good news is that the data stays around forever. So as software improves, the probabilities should get more accurate. “Algorithms and data comparison evolve over time,” Dr. Petraco said.
But it may not be possible to develop useful databases in some disciplines — bite mark analysis, for example. “Using a screwdriver, that’s very straightforward and simple,” said Ira Titunik, a forensic odontologist and adjunct professor at John Jay College. But bites involve numerous teeth, and there are other factors, including condition of the skin, that may make it difficult to quantify them for purposes of determining probabilities.
A few researchers are looking at how errors creep into forensic analysis. The National Institute of Standards and Technology recently established a working group on fingerprints, with statisticians, psychologists and others, “to try to understand the circumstances that lead to human error,” said Mark Stolorow, director of the Office of Law Enforcement Standards at the institute.
In Britain, Itiel Dror, a psychologist who studies decision-making processes, is already looking at human factors. “I like to say the mind is not a camera, objectively and passively recording information,” said Dr. Dror, who has a consulting firm and is affiliated with University College London. “The brain is an active and dynamic device.”
He has conducted studies that show that when working on an identification, fingerprint examiners can be influenced by what else they know about a case. In one experiment, he found that the same examiner can come to different conclusions about the same fingerprint, if the context is changed over time.
The same kinds of contextual biases arise with other decision-makers, said Dr. Dror, who works with the military and with financial and medical professionals. He thinks one reason forensic examiners often do not acknowledge that they make errors is that in these other fields, the mistakes are obvious. “In forensics, they don’t really see it,” he said. “People go to jail.”
Forensics experts say the need for research like Dr. Dror’s and Dr. Srihari’s does not mean that disciplines like fingerprint analysis will turn out to be invalid. “I have no doubt that fingerprint evidence and firearms evidence, once looked into by the appropriate research entities, are going to be shown to be very reliable and good,” said Mr. Fisher, the former American Academy of Forensic Sciences president.
Dr. Kobilinsky said people should not jump to the conclusion that forensic science is bad science. “There’s a lot of experience and knowledge that goes into somebody’s expertise,” he said.
“It’s not junk science. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be improved.”
Friday, 15 May 2009
Dead Souls
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, nowhere with more caprice than with the criminal justice system. On the plus side, there are at least a couple of good trends: a tilt from the death penalty (with serious qualifications about the “living death” alternative I discussed here recently) and a move away from imprisonment for victimless crimes—as evidenced by medical marijuana laws; impending reform of the Rockefeller drug laws; and Prop 36 in California, offering treatment alternatives to prison.
On the minus side, there are some grim developments. For violent felons, sentencing laws have been getting steadily worse. There have been big increases in sentencing enhancements (time added to your “base sentence” for using a gun, having prior felony convictions, gang-related nature of the crime, hate crimes, etc.). Some of these enhancements are new; others have been around for a long time but have gotten much more punitive, though there was a heartening victory in California in November with the defeat of Prop 6, which would have increased penalties for gang-related crimes.
Other bad trends include the growing use of solitary confinement units, the tendency to try juveniles as adults and, of course, the post-9/11 general loss of civil liberties, thanks to the ever more-conservative federal judiciary. This is not to forget the vindictive sex-offender laws that have been passed in the last few years.
So the introduction of life without the possibility of parole (LWOP)—as a sentencing option can be seen as part of the overall trend of toughening sentences for violent criminals, except when it is introduced as an alternative to the death penalty, and even here there’s a paradox: there’s much less money and access to the appeals process available in states like California to fight life imprisonment without parole, or with parole for that matter, than there is to fight the death penalty.
However, one seasoned obsrver who has worked on many death penalty defenses points out that when people go into LWOP, they are evaluated according to a detailed point system that assesses their potential danger to inmates and guards, the prison population's potential danger to them, and the likelihood they'll escape, or try to. These are the factors that lead to a decision to isolate someone. It's not an automatic part of LWOP punishment. It’s probable that most are put in the general prison population. “The LWOP is horrible,” this person says, “because it leaves people no hope of ever rejoining society or atoning. It tells them they are hopeless and worthless and that the darkest of human impulses aren't human; it denies the concept of rehab and redemption. It's bad enough without exaggerating the details. With death they will be sitting in isolation for 17 or 20 years; whereas with LWOP they'll be in the general prison population, with a job, maybe a class, the Jesus people ministering to them in groups if they like that, some friends, the use of the library.
“As you might suspect, pro-LWOP rhetoric is all tied up with defense lawyer rhetoric at trial. Everyone tells the jury how great it would be to give the guy or woman ‘a punishment worse than death’ ... because everyone at trial is terrified of the impending verdict. It's like an emergency room: all automatic pilot by the legal defense team -- reflex tactical activity, no higher thought, pandering to the hatred and anger of the community. Smart lawyers believe these cases should NEVER go to trial -- they should be pleaded out. If they do get to trial, it's all about trying to save a life, no matter what. It would probably help this situation if the death penalty were abolished. Until then, unfortunately, courtroom rhetoric bleeds into political rhetoric.”
.
The focus on LWOP tends to blur the fact that it is very hard for lifers NOT doing LWOP to get out on parole. Scott Handleman, an attorney in San Francisco who has spent much time representing prisoners in parole cases, has been helpful with the chastening data. In California last year, 31,051 prisoners were serving sentences of life with the possibility of parole. Of those, 8,815 have passed their “minimum eligible parole date,” meaning they have served long enough to be receiving parole hearings. Of those, 6,272 had hearings on the Board of Parole’s calendar last year. (Some prisoners serving beyond their minimum eligible parole date do not get hearings in a given year because they were denied for multiple years in a prior hearing.) Only 272 lifers were found suitable for parole by the board in 2008.
Moreover, the board’s decisions in these 272 cases were subject to Governor Schwarzenegger’s review. The California governor has the power, in murder cases, to reverse the board’s ruling and take away the parole date. For other life-sentence crimes, he can order the board to reconsider its decision. So only a fraction of those whose parole cases got reviewed were actually released to the streets. In 2007 the board found 172 lifers suitable for parole; Governor Schwarzenegger reversed 115 of those decisions, referred eighteen back to the board for reconsideration, modified two and let stand only thirty-seven. That means in 2007 somewhere between thirty-seven and fifty-seven life-term prisoners got out of prison in the whole state of California. Out of the roughly 30,000 prisoners who were serving sentences of life with the possibility of parole in 2007, somewhere around 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent were released. Last year the situation improved very slightly, thanks in part to a Supreme Court of California ruling that parole cannot be denied forever.
There’s a popular conception, nourished by the shock jocks on talk-radio, that people doing life sentences get put back on the streets by way of a revolving door, Willie Horton style. In fact, release for lifers is a rare phenomenon.
That being the case, what is the point of introducing LWOP as a sentencing alternative? What LWOP means is that for convicted murdurers who would otherwise get life with parole, often at very young ages, and who redeem themselves through rehabilitative efforts, even the remotest possibility of release will never become available. The hopelessness that comes with an LWOP sentence is a heavy psychological burden to bear. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, at least seventy-three inmates—most of whom are minorities—are serving LWOP for crimes committed at age 13 or 14.
It’s expensive running an ever-expanding gulag. State after state is finding that herding the dangerous classes into prison with tools such as the Rockefeller drug laws and throwing away the key for decades or forever by nonnegotiable mandatory minimum sentencing costs too much. But then there’s a problem: what to do about the prison unions and the towns (like many in New York) that survive economically only because of prison jobs, where the prison population is greater than the population of free people, and the free people love it because, apart from the jobs keeping their kids from fleeing the post-industrial or post-ag wasteland, the prisoners count in the census, giving these towns and regions more representation in statehouses, hence more political power, than they deserve.
Shades of Gogol, who was born 200 years ago this year. The motor of his great novel is the economic use of “dead souls”—deceased serfs listed by the state as assets of the landlords. The novel’s central character, Chichikov, goes around buying them up. New York State could take Gogol’s hint and start auctioning its “living dead” as income generators to other states in need. Looking at our criminal justice system here, Gogol would surely use the line carved on his gravestone: “And I shall laugh my bitter laugh.”
Round Up the Usual War Criminals!
Ten years ago NATO and its battle-commander Wesley Clark deliberately murdered 16 journalists and kindred media workers, who had the courage and the misfortune to be working at Radio Television Serbia (RTS). At 2.06 am local a bomb launched from the NATO plane slammed into the building – news desks, studios, and the makeup room – in downtown Belgrade. Most of the victims were young people – a makeup artist, technicians and production personnel.
It was an obvious war crime, even though Amnesty International prudently waited an entire decade – until this last April – to issue a report saying so. Amnesty now issues a call for NATO to be held accountable for the lives of those killed at RTS: “the bombing of the headquarters of Serbian state radio and television was a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime”.
In the new issue of our CounterPunch newsletter Tiphaine Dickson lays out the outrageous saga of how the Western powers dealt with this atrocity, by sponsoring a kangaroo court in Belgrade which sentencedto a lengthy term one of the targets of the bomb! This was the director of RTS , Dragoljub Milanovic,. He drew nine and a half years in prison for reckless endangerment of his staff! Newspapers like the New York Times raised not a word of protest at NATO’s claim that RTS deserved to be bombed.
Dickson, a defense attorney specialized in international criminal law, recently visited Milanovic in prison, and discovered he is eligible for parole but his persecutors are trying to lock him away for a further term. In her riveting story she gives close attention to the murky role of CNN and of Eason Jordan, then chief news executive of CNN international and later – by a satisfactory irony, fired by CNN for alleging that the US military was deliberately targeting journalists in Iraq.
Subscribe now to read this important story. In the same exciting issue you’ll get former US Senator Jim Abourezk on Wounded Knee and yours truly on one of the crucibles for the Sixties upsurge, Stiles Hall in Berkeley, and its amazing director at that time, Harry Kingman.
Subscribe Now!
Alexander Cockburn can be reached at alexandercockburn@asis.com
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, nowhere with more caprice than with the criminal justice system. On the plus side, there are at least a couple of good trends: a tilt from the death penalty (with serious qualifications about the “living death” alternative I discussed here recently) and a move away from imprisonment for victimless crimes—as evidenced by medical marijuana laws; impending reform of the Rockefeller drug laws; and Prop 36 in California, offering treatment alternatives to prison.
On the minus side, there are some grim developments. For violent felons, sentencing laws have been getting steadily worse. There have been big increases in sentencing enhancements (time added to your “base sentence” for using a gun, having prior felony convictions, gang-related nature of the crime, hate crimes, etc.). Some of these enhancements are new; others have been around for a long time but have gotten much more punitive, though there was a heartening victory in California in November with the defeat of Prop 6, which would have increased penalties for gang-related crimes.
Other bad trends include the growing use of solitary confinement units, the tendency to try juveniles as adults and, of course, the post-9/11 general loss of civil liberties, thanks to the ever more-conservative federal judiciary. This is not to forget the vindictive sex-offender laws that have been passed in the last few years.
So the introduction of life without the possibility of parole (LWOP)—as a sentencing option can be seen as part of the overall trend of toughening sentences for violent criminals, except when it is introduced as an alternative to the death penalty, and even here there’s a paradox: there’s much less money and access to the appeals process available in states like California to fight life imprisonment without parole, or with parole for that matter, than there is to fight the death penalty.
However, one seasoned obsrver who has worked on many death penalty defenses points out that when people go into LWOP, they are evaluated according to a detailed point system that assesses their potential danger to inmates and guards, the prison population's potential danger to them, and the likelihood they'll escape, or try to. These are the factors that lead to a decision to isolate someone. It's not an automatic part of LWOP punishment. It’s probable that most are put in the general prison population. “The LWOP is horrible,” this person says, “because it leaves people no hope of ever rejoining society or atoning. It tells them they are hopeless and worthless and that the darkest of human impulses aren't human; it denies the concept of rehab and redemption. It's bad enough without exaggerating the details. With death they will be sitting in isolation for 17 or 20 years; whereas with LWOP they'll be in the general prison population, with a job, maybe a class, the Jesus people ministering to them in groups if they like that, some friends, the use of the library.
“As you might suspect, pro-LWOP rhetoric is all tied up with defense lawyer rhetoric at trial. Everyone tells the jury how great it would be to give the guy or woman ‘a punishment worse than death’ ... because everyone at trial is terrified of the impending verdict. It's like an emergency room: all automatic pilot by the legal defense team -- reflex tactical activity, no higher thought, pandering to the hatred and anger of the community. Smart lawyers believe these cases should NEVER go to trial -- they should be pleaded out. If they do get to trial, it's all about trying to save a life, no matter what. It would probably help this situation if the death penalty were abolished. Until then, unfortunately, courtroom rhetoric bleeds into political rhetoric.”
.
The focus on LWOP tends to blur the fact that it is very hard for lifers NOT doing LWOP to get out on parole. Scott Handleman, an attorney in San Francisco who has spent much time representing prisoners in parole cases, has been helpful with the chastening data. In California last year, 31,051 prisoners were serving sentences of life with the possibility of parole. Of those, 8,815 have passed their “minimum eligible parole date,” meaning they have served long enough to be receiving parole hearings. Of those, 6,272 had hearings on the Board of Parole’s calendar last year. (Some prisoners serving beyond their minimum eligible parole date do not get hearings in a given year because they were denied for multiple years in a prior hearing.) Only 272 lifers were found suitable for parole by the board in 2008.
Moreover, the board’s decisions in these 272 cases were subject to Governor Schwarzenegger’s review. The California governor has the power, in murder cases, to reverse the board’s ruling and take away the parole date. For other life-sentence crimes, he can order the board to reconsider its decision. So only a fraction of those whose parole cases got reviewed were actually released to the streets. In 2007 the board found 172 lifers suitable for parole; Governor Schwarzenegger reversed 115 of those decisions, referred eighteen back to the board for reconsideration, modified two and let stand only thirty-seven. That means in 2007 somewhere between thirty-seven and fifty-seven life-term prisoners got out of prison in the whole state of California. Out of the roughly 30,000 prisoners who were serving sentences of life with the possibility of parole in 2007, somewhere around 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent were released. Last year the situation improved very slightly, thanks in part to a Supreme Court of California ruling that parole cannot be denied forever.
There’s a popular conception, nourished by the shock jocks on talk-radio, that people doing life sentences get put back on the streets by way of a revolving door, Willie Horton style. In fact, release for lifers is a rare phenomenon.
That being the case, what is the point of introducing LWOP as a sentencing alternative? What LWOP means is that for convicted murdurers who would otherwise get life with parole, often at very young ages, and who redeem themselves through rehabilitative efforts, even the remotest possibility of release will never become available. The hopelessness that comes with an LWOP sentence is a heavy psychological burden to bear. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, at least seventy-three inmates—most of whom are minorities—are serving LWOP for crimes committed at age 13 or 14.
It’s expensive running an ever-expanding gulag. State after state is finding that herding the dangerous classes into prison with tools such as the Rockefeller drug laws and throwing away the key for decades or forever by nonnegotiable mandatory minimum sentencing costs too much. But then there’s a problem: what to do about the prison unions and the towns (like many in New York) that survive economically only because of prison jobs, where the prison population is greater than the population of free people, and the free people love it because, apart from the jobs keeping their kids from fleeing the post-industrial or post-ag wasteland, the prisoners count in the census, giving these towns and regions more representation in statehouses, hence more political power, than they deserve.
Shades of Gogol, who was born 200 years ago this year. The motor of his great novel is the economic use of “dead souls”—deceased serfs listed by the state as assets of the landlords. The novel’s central character, Chichikov, goes around buying them up. New York State could take Gogol’s hint and start auctioning its “living dead” as income generators to other states in need. Looking at our criminal justice system here, Gogol would surely use the line carved on his gravestone: “And I shall laugh my bitter laugh.”
Round Up the Usual War Criminals!
Ten years ago NATO and its battle-commander Wesley Clark deliberately murdered 16 journalists and kindred media workers, who had the courage and the misfortune to be working at Radio Television Serbia (RTS). At 2.06 am local a bomb launched from the NATO plane slammed into the building – news desks, studios, and the makeup room – in downtown Belgrade. Most of the victims were young people – a makeup artist, technicians and production personnel.
It was an obvious war crime, even though Amnesty International prudently waited an entire decade – until this last April – to issue a report saying so. Amnesty now issues a call for NATO to be held accountable for the lives of those killed at RTS: “the bombing of the headquarters of Serbian state radio and television was a deliberate attack on a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime”.
In the new issue of our CounterPunch newsletter Tiphaine Dickson lays out the outrageous saga of how the Western powers dealt with this atrocity, by sponsoring a kangaroo court in Belgrade which sentencedto a lengthy term one of the targets of the bomb! This was the director of RTS , Dragoljub Milanovic,. He drew nine and a half years in prison for reckless endangerment of his staff! Newspapers like the New York Times raised not a word of protest at NATO’s claim that RTS deserved to be bombed.
Dickson, a defense attorney specialized in international criminal law, recently visited Milanovic in prison, and discovered he is eligible for parole but his persecutors are trying to lock him away for a further term. In her riveting story she gives close attention to the murky role of CNN and of Eason Jordan, then chief news executive of CNN international and later – by a satisfactory irony, fired by CNN for alleging that the US military was deliberately targeting journalists in Iraq.
Subscribe now to read this important story. In the same exciting issue you’ll get former US Senator Jim Abourezk on Wounded Knee and yours truly on one of the crucibles for the Sixties upsurge, Stiles Hall in Berkeley, and its amazing director at that time, Harry Kingman.
Subscribe Now!
Alexander Cockburn can be reached at alexandercockburn@asis.com
It's Up to You to Save Troy Davis
By RON JACOBS
One wonders how many times this scenario has played out in the United States. Like a classic crime movie, the details go something like this: A group of young men, usually African-American, get involved in an activity of questionable legality. A police officer (often off-duty) intervenes. Weapons are drawn by the officer and someone else. The officer ends up dead. One of the young men is accused of the crime even though the evidence (if there is any) offers no clear link between the accused and the crime. Prosecutors rely on witnesses with minimal credibility to get a conviction. The accused young man is then sentenced to death. While he sits on death row, questions about the prosecution and conviction begin to appear in the press. The prosecution conspires with the judicial system to keep their conviction intact, refusing any motions for retrial based on new evidence. The convicted man grows old in prison, facing multiple execution dates that are only stayed by appeals that never lead to a new trial.
This is the case of Troy Davis in one paragraph. The bulk of the prosecutor's evidence presented at Davis 1991 trial in the murder of an off-duty policeman in Georgia was based primarily on that of prosecution witnesses who later recanted their testimony. In addition, most of them have claimed repeatedly that they were pressured by police to point to Davis as the perpetrator. No murder weapon was ever found and no physical evidence linked him to the crime. One of the two main witnesses who has not recanted was the original suspect in the crime.
Despite a bulk of new evidence, the state of Georgia has refused to grant a new trial. As recently as April 16th, 2009, Davis’ appeal for a new trial was rejected by a federal appeals court in a 2-1 decision. The dissenting judge was unsparing in her criticism of the Georgia's legal case and his death sentence. She wrote: "To execute Davis, in the face of a significant amount of proffered evidence that may establish his actual innocence, is unconscionable and unconstitutional." Yet, the execution of Troy Davis looms in the distance.
Like almost every other case of this nature, the fundamental action that has kept Davis alive is a popular movement that spans the globe. From the streets of Atlanta to the chambers of the European Parliament, thousands have called for Davis's death sentence to be commuted, with many demanding a new trial based on the new evidence. I recently communicated with Marlene Martin, an organizer for the National Campaign to End the Death Penalty--one of the organizations spearheading the campaign around Troy. When I asked her about the Global Day of Action for Troy Davis on May 19th, she wrote me this:
The coming global day of Action for Troy Davis on May 19th--which also happens to be Malcolm X’s birthday--is really important. Troy Davis is alive today in spite of our legal system, not because of it. The fact that he hasn’t ever been allowed to present new and compelling evidence of his innocence to a jury--and could be executed without ever having the opportunity to do so--is mind-boggling.
The state of Georgia has already tried three times to kill Troy. They would rather kill him than admit wrongdoing. But they have been stopped in their tracks each and every time by the movement outside the courthouse, spearheaded by Troy’s sister Martina Correia. As a result of her efforts, and Amnesty International and many other organizations coming together to fight for Troy, people around the country and around the world know about his case. I get e-mails from all over -- England, Germany, France, New Zealand Canada--all people that support Troy.
One thing that’s clear in this fight is we can’t rely on the courts. We need to build for the day of action to be as big as it can be, and to keep organizing. Troy represents many, many others who are in prison today--too poor to afford good representation at trial, and a person of color.
Also at issue in this case is the entire question of the death penalty. The United States is one of the few nations in the so-called free world that continues to practice this barbaric form of justice. In addition, it also ranks near the top among nations that do execute some of their criminals. Add to that the well-documented racial disparity in these executions, especially when looking at the numbers of whites executed for killing blacks versus the number of blacks executed for killing whites and those executions seem even more barbaric. When one considers this, it becomes essential to challenge not only the execution of Troy Davis, but the political system that supports the practice of state-sanctioned murder. This challenge becomes even more necessary when that system also tortures those it has arrested in its "war on terror" and imprisons them indefinitely without trial. A land with such a system is closer to a police state than the land of the free. Unless those who live within its borders resist these authoritarian policies, there may come a time when such resistance will find them subject to them.
Not only is the movement to commute Troy Davis' execution and get him a new trial an effort to save a man's life, it is also part of an effort to prevent an increasingly authoritarian nation from becoming even more so. Please consider joining the Global Day of Action for Troy Davis on May 19, 2009.
Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net
One wonders how many times this scenario has played out in the United States. Like a classic crime movie, the details go something like this: A group of young men, usually African-American, get involved in an activity of questionable legality. A police officer (often off-duty) intervenes. Weapons are drawn by the officer and someone else. The officer ends up dead. One of the young men is accused of the crime even though the evidence (if there is any) offers no clear link between the accused and the crime. Prosecutors rely on witnesses with minimal credibility to get a conviction. The accused young man is then sentenced to death. While he sits on death row, questions about the prosecution and conviction begin to appear in the press. The prosecution conspires with the judicial system to keep their conviction intact, refusing any motions for retrial based on new evidence. The convicted man grows old in prison, facing multiple execution dates that are only stayed by appeals that never lead to a new trial.
This is the case of Troy Davis in one paragraph. The bulk of the prosecutor's evidence presented at Davis 1991 trial in the murder of an off-duty policeman in Georgia was based primarily on that of prosecution witnesses who later recanted their testimony. In addition, most of them have claimed repeatedly that they were pressured by police to point to Davis as the perpetrator. No murder weapon was ever found and no physical evidence linked him to the crime. One of the two main witnesses who has not recanted was the original suspect in the crime.
Despite a bulk of new evidence, the state of Georgia has refused to grant a new trial. As recently as April 16th, 2009, Davis’ appeal for a new trial was rejected by a federal appeals court in a 2-1 decision. The dissenting judge was unsparing in her criticism of the Georgia's legal case and his death sentence. She wrote: "To execute Davis, in the face of a significant amount of proffered evidence that may establish his actual innocence, is unconscionable and unconstitutional." Yet, the execution of Troy Davis looms in the distance.
Like almost every other case of this nature, the fundamental action that has kept Davis alive is a popular movement that spans the globe. From the streets of Atlanta to the chambers of the European Parliament, thousands have called for Davis's death sentence to be commuted, with many demanding a new trial based on the new evidence. I recently communicated with Marlene Martin, an organizer for the National Campaign to End the Death Penalty--one of the organizations spearheading the campaign around Troy. When I asked her about the Global Day of Action for Troy Davis on May 19th, she wrote me this:
The coming global day of Action for Troy Davis on May 19th--which also happens to be Malcolm X’s birthday--is really important. Troy Davis is alive today in spite of our legal system, not because of it. The fact that he hasn’t ever been allowed to present new and compelling evidence of his innocence to a jury--and could be executed without ever having the opportunity to do so--is mind-boggling.
The state of Georgia has already tried three times to kill Troy. They would rather kill him than admit wrongdoing. But they have been stopped in their tracks each and every time by the movement outside the courthouse, spearheaded by Troy’s sister Martina Correia. As a result of her efforts, and Amnesty International and many other organizations coming together to fight for Troy, people around the country and around the world know about his case. I get e-mails from all over -- England, Germany, France, New Zealand Canada--all people that support Troy.
One thing that’s clear in this fight is we can’t rely on the courts. We need to build for the day of action to be as big as it can be, and to keep organizing. Troy represents many, many others who are in prison today--too poor to afford good representation at trial, and a person of color.
Also at issue in this case is the entire question of the death penalty. The United States is one of the few nations in the so-called free world that continues to practice this barbaric form of justice. In addition, it also ranks near the top among nations that do execute some of their criminals. Add to that the well-documented racial disparity in these executions, especially when looking at the numbers of whites executed for killing blacks versus the number of blacks executed for killing whites and those executions seem even more barbaric. When one considers this, it becomes essential to challenge not only the execution of Troy Davis, but the political system that supports the practice of state-sanctioned murder. This challenge becomes even more necessary when that system also tortures those it has arrested in its "war on terror" and imprisons them indefinitely without trial. A land with such a system is closer to a police state than the land of the free. Unless those who live within its borders resist these authoritarian policies, there may come a time when such resistance will find them subject to them.
Not only is the movement to commute Troy Davis' execution and get him a new trial an effort to save a man's life, it is also part of an effort to prevent an increasingly authoritarian nation from becoming even more so. Please consider joining the Global Day of Action for Troy Davis on May 19, 2009.
Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net
The 132nd Death Row Exoneree: Implications for the Troy Davis Case
Diann Rust-TierneyExecutive Director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
Posted: May 14, 2009 06:12 PM
One of the many disturbing aspects of capital punishment is that it has no guarantee against mistaken convictions and executions. This risk of mistakes was driven home again on May 12th, just days ago, when a Tennessee District Attorney dropped all charges against former death row inmate Paul House, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1986.
House spent 22 years on death row and was scheduled to be retried next month. In 2006 the U.S. Supreme Court, because he had raised a colorable claim of innocence, granted House the opportunity to challenge the legality of his conviction and death sentence on other grounds. That ruling merely gave him the opportunity to have a federal court decide whether he should be given a hearing on the question of a new trial. A federal court ultimately did determine that House was entitled to a new trial. House was released from prison in July 2008 pending his new trial. And DNA testing has excluded House as the murderer. Now that the District Attorney has dropped all charges against Paul House, he is the second exoneree this year, and the 132nd individual to be exonerated from death row since 1973.
The exoneration of Paul House ironically came on the 16th anniversary of the execution of Leonel Herrera, a Texas man, who was sentenced to death for the shooting deaths of two police officers. Herrera like, Paul House, had insisted he was innocent; affidavits indicated that his brother actually committed the crime. Herrera asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that existing procedural barriers not deny him the opportunity for a court to hear his strong claim of innocence but the Court ruled against him.
In his dissenting opinion in Herrera v. Collins, Justice Harry Blackmun said, in part, "Just as an execution without adequate safeguards is unacceptable, so too is an execution when the condemned prisoner can prove that he is innocent. The execution of a person who can show that he is innocent comes perilously close to simple murder."
If the nuanced distinction between why the legal system would provide an avenue for one prisoner to prove his innocence and spare his life where no such route existed for the other is lost on you, you are not alone. To make Justice Blackmun's point more bluntly, fidelity to the rule of law demands that strong claims of innocence not be denied a fair hearing -- especially when the punishment is death.
Now comes the case of Troy Anthony Davis, where the high court will again be presented with a strong claim of innocence. Troy Anthony Davis was sentenced to death in Georgia in 1991 for the murder of police officer Mark Allen MacPhail- a crime for which there is no physical evidence linking him to the shooting, in which seven of nine witnesses who named him as the killer have since recanted their testimony, saying in sworn affidavits that they were coerced or pressured into implicating Davis, and for which no murder weapon has been produced.
Davis, like House and Herrera, has been fighting for years for a new trial through which to prove his innocence. Last month the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that effort, saying that the affidavits from the witnesses who recanted were introduced "too late" in the process. In her dissenting opinion, Circuit Court Judge Rosemary Barkett wrote, "To execute Davis, in the face of a significant amount of proffered evidence that may establish his actual innocence, is unconscionable and unconstitutional."
If there is any lesson that should be learned from these cases it is that our capital punishment system has some serious flaws. Not the least of which is a sufficiently adequate process for assuring that no innocent man or women is executed. The route to safety is too obscured by technicalities.
The Troy Anthony Davis case presents another test for the system. We must be as determined as the lawyers and other advocates who worked tirelessly to save the life of Paul House to prevent the execution of Troy Anthony Davis. While it should not be true -- it is -- it will take an extraordinary effort to prevent a miscarriage of justice here.
The Paul House case is a chilling reminder of just how often the system makes mistakes.
It should strengthen our resolve in the Davis case.
(A Global Day of Action in support of Davis has been organized by Amnesty International USA for May 19th. For more information on scheduled events of that day, and what can be done to obtain clemency for Davis, visit http://www.aiusa.org./troydavis.)
Posted: May 14, 2009 06:12 PM
One of the many disturbing aspects of capital punishment is that it has no guarantee against mistaken convictions and executions. This risk of mistakes was driven home again on May 12th, just days ago, when a Tennessee District Attorney dropped all charges against former death row inmate Paul House, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1986.
House spent 22 years on death row and was scheduled to be retried next month. In 2006 the U.S. Supreme Court, because he had raised a colorable claim of innocence, granted House the opportunity to challenge the legality of his conviction and death sentence on other grounds. That ruling merely gave him the opportunity to have a federal court decide whether he should be given a hearing on the question of a new trial. A federal court ultimately did determine that House was entitled to a new trial. House was released from prison in July 2008 pending his new trial. And DNA testing has excluded House as the murderer. Now that the District Attorney has dropped all charges against Paul House, he is the second exoneree this year, and the 132nd individual to be exonerated from death row since 1973.
The exoneration of Paul House ironically came on the 16th anniversary of the execution of Leonel Herrera, a Texas man, who was sentenced to death for the shooting deaths of two police officers. Herrera like, Paul House, had insisted he was innocent; affidavits indicated that his brother actually committed the crime. Herrera asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that existing procedural barriers not deny him the opportunity for a court to hear his strong claim of innocence but the Court ruled against him.
In his dissenting opinion in Herrera v. Collins, Justice Harry Blackmun said, in part, "Just as an execution without adequate safeguards is unacceptable, so too is an execution when the condemned prisoner can prove that he is innocent. The execution of a person who can show that he is innocent comes perilously close to simple murder."
If the nuanced distinction between why the legal system would provide an avenue for one prisoner to prove his innocence and spare his life where no such route existed for the other is lost on you, you are not alone. To make Justice Blackmun's point more bluntly, fidelity to the rule of law demands that strong claims of innocence not be denied a fair hearing -- especially when the punishment is death.
Now comes the case of Troy Anthony Davis, where the high court will again be presented with a strong claim of innocence. Troy Anthony Davis was sentenced to death in Georgia in 1991 for the murder of police officer Mark Allen MacPhail- a crime for which there is no physical evidence linking him to the shooting, in which seven of nine witnesses who named him as the killer have since recanted their testimony, saying in sworn affidavits that they were coerced or pressured into implicating Davis, and for which no murder weapon has been produced.
Davis, like House and Herrera, has been fighting for years for a new trial through which to prove his innocence. Last month the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that effort, saying that the affidavits from the witnesses who recanted were introduced "too late" in the process. In her dissenting opinion, Circuit Court Judge Rosemary Barkett wrote, "To execute Davis, in the face of a significant amount of proffered evidence that may establish his actual innocence, is unconscionable and unconstitutional."
If there is any lesson that should be learned from these cases it is that our capital punishment system has some serious flaws. Not the least of which is a sufficiently adequate process for assuring that no innocent man or women is executed. The route to safety is too obscured by technicalities.
The Troy Anthony Davis case presents another test for the system. We must be as determined as the lawyers and other advocates who worked tirelessly to save the life of Paul House to prevent the execution of Troy Anthony Davis. While it should not be true -- it is -- it will take an extraordinary effort to prevent a miscarriage of justice here.
The Paul House case is a chilling reminder of just how often the system makes mistakes.
It should strengthen our resolve in the Davis case.
(A Global Day of Action in support of Davis has been organized by Amnesty International USA for May 19th. For more information on scheduled events of that day, and what can be done to obtain clemency for Davis, visit http://www.aiusa.org./troydavis.)
Mo. House passes death penalty study
Marshall Griffin, KWMU
JEFFERSON CITY, MO (2009-05-13) The Missouri House has passed a crime bill that includes authorizing a commission to study the use of the death penalty in the state.
The original amendment called for a moratorium on executions in Missouri while the study is conducted, but it was stripped out on a mostly party-line vote.
State Representative Kenny Jones (R, California) was sheriff of Moniteau County in 1991 when his wife and three deputies were murdered in a shooting rampage. He says supporting a moratorium equates to being soft on crime.
"Often we don't think about those victims of murders...it's just not only the victims, but the families that are affected throughout their lifetime," Jones said.
Fellow Republican Bill Deeken of Jefferson City had sponsored the moratorium.
"I am for the death penalty, but I would appreciate the fact if we could get the vote for the commission to study, and make sure that we are not putting someone to death that is not guilty," Deeken said.
House and Senate negotiators will try to craft a final version of the bill before the end of session Friday.
During debate, House Majority Floor Leader Steven Tilley (R, Perryville) also called on Governor Nixon to halt next week's scheduled execution of Dennis Skillicorn and commute his sentence to life in prison.
He and two other men were convicted in the 1994 murder of Richard Drummond.
Skillicorn received the death penalty, although one of his companions confessed to pulling the trigger.
JEFFERSON CITY, MO (2009-05-13) The Missouri House has passed a crime bill that includes authorizing a commission to study the use of the death penalty in the state.
The original amendment called for a moratorium on executions in Missouri while the study is conducted, but it was stripped out on a mostly party-line vote.
State Representative Kenny Jones (R, California) was sheriff of Moniteau County in 1991 when his wife and three deputies were murdered in a shooting rampage. He says supporting a moratorium equates to being soft on crime.
"Often we don't think about those victims of murders...it's just not only the victims, but the families that are affected throughout their lifetime," Jones said.
Fellow Republican Bill Deeken of Jefferson City had sponsored the moratorium.
"I am for the death penalty, but I would appreciate the fact if we could get the vote for the commission to study, and make sure that we are not putting someone to death that is not guilty," Deeken said.
House and Senate negotiators will try to craft a final version of the bill before the end of session Friday.
During debate, House Majority Floor Leader Steven Tilley (R, Perryville) also called on Governor Nixon to halt next week's scheduled execution of Dennis Skillicorn and commute his sentence to life in prison.
He and two other men were convicted in the 1994 murder of Richard Drummond.
Skillicorn received the death penalty, although one of his companions confessed to pulling the trigger.
UPDATE: Missouri GOP leader urges commutation of death sentence
By CHRIS BLANK/The Associated Press
May 13, 2009 | 5:32 p.m. CDT
JEFFERSON CITY — House Majority Leader Steven Tilley said Wednesday that Gov. Jay Nixon should commute the death sentence of a Missouri man who is scheduled to be executed May 20.
Tilley, one of the chamber's top Republican leaders, urged the Democratic governor to change Dennis Skillicorn's sentence to life in prison.
Tilley's comments came as the House debated — and ultimately defeated — a measure that would have placed a moratorium on executions until 2012.
Skillicorn was one of three men convicted of killing Excelsior Springs businessman Richard Drummond in 1994, after Drummond stopped along Interstate 70 to help when their car stalled. The man who pulled the trigger, Allen Nicklasson, also has been sentenced to death and has said that Skillicorn didn't kill Drummond.
"That's enough reasonable doubt for me, that I would be very, very concerned if this state executed that individual," said Tilley, who also cited Skillicorn's behavior while incarcerated and called the convicted murderer "a model citizen" who has helped make the prison safer.
Skillicorn has assisted with terminally ill prisoners, a family strengthening program for inmates and their children, a national Death Row newsletter and efforts to set juvenile offenders straight.
A spokesman for Nixon said the governor's office would "give a full and fair review of any clemency petition that would be submitted by Mr. Skillicorn."
Rep. Bob Nance, who represents Drummond's hometown, said executing Skillicorn is fair.
"He has gotten what he deserved," said Nance, R-Excelsior Springs.
Missouri's last execution occurred in October 2005. A federal judge in 2006 halted all executions, declaring the state's lethal injection process unconstitutional after the surgeon who previously oversaw the executions testified he was dyslexic, sometimes transposed numbers and operated without written procedures or supervision.
Federal courts have since approved Missouri's revised execution protocols, clearing the way for executions to resume. A federal judge and the Missouri Supreme Court have denied efforts to delay Skillicorn's scheduled execution.
The often rancorous House was nearly silent during debate Wednesday over the proposed death penalty moratorium as observers — including schoolchildren touring the Capitol — watched from the upper galleries. Several House members shared personal stories about family members who had been killed.
The House eventually voted 95-64 to scrap the death penalty moratorium but keep a formal study of Missouri's execution system. A 10-member commission would study death penalty cases, review possible alternative punishments and suggest possible law changes to ensure those sentenced to death are guilty and received adequate legal counsel.
The death penalty provisions were added to broader crime legislation that would have to be reconciled with senators by the end of the legislative session at 6 p.m. Friday.
Some Republican and Democratic House members said the death penalty study was needed to preserve the integrity of the criminal justice system.
Rep. James Morris, D-St. Louis, told lawmakers he had urged a judge not impose the death penalty against someone who killed his nephew.
Arguing against the moratorium were two Republican lawmakers whose relative was one of four people killed in a mid-Missouri sniper rampage in 1991.
James R. Johnson was executed in 2002 for the killing of Leslie Roark, Moniteau County Reserve Deputy; Charles Smith, Cooper County Sheriff; Sandra Wilson, Miller County Deputy; and Pam Jones, wife of Moniteau County Sheriff Kenny Jones.
Kenny Jones now is a Republican lawmaker from California, Mo., and is the uncle of Rep. Tim Jones, R-Eureka, who choked back tears as he explained reading about the death of his aunt in USA Today. Kenny Jones left the chamber during parts of his nephew's floor speech.
Calling a vote for the death penalty moratorium an effort to be soft on crime, Kenny Jones urged lawmakers to remember crime victims.
"I think we have to realize that we speak for those who can't. We speak for those who have been murdered," he said.
May 13, 2009 | 5:32 p.m. CDT
JEFFERSON CITY — House Majority Leader Steven Tilley said Wednesday that Gov. Jay Nixon should commute the death sentence of a Missouri man who is scheduled to be executed May 20.
Tilley, one of the chamber's top Republican leaders, urged the Democratic governor to change Dennis Skillicorn's sentence to life in prison.
Tilley's comments came as the House debated — and ultimately defeated — a measure that would have placed a moratorium on executions until 2012.
Skillicorn was one of three men convicted of killing Excelsior Springs businessman Richard Drummond in 1994, after Drummond stopped along Interstate 70 to help when their car stalled. The man who pulled the trigger, Allen Nicklasson, also has been sentenced to death and has said that Skillicorn didn't kill Drummond.
"That's enough reasonable doubt for me, that I would be very, very concerned if this state executed that individual," said Tilley, who also cited Skillicorn's behavior while incarcerated and called the convicted murderer "a model citizen" who has helped make the prison safer.
Skillicorn has assisted with terminally ill prisoners, a family strengthening program for inmates and their children, a national Death Row newsletter and efforts to set juvenile offenders straight.
A spokesman for Nixon said the governor's office would "give a full and fair review of any clemency petition that would be submitted by Mr. Skillicorn."
Rep. Bob Nance, who represents Drummond's hometown, said executing Skillicorn is fair.
"He has gotten what he deserved," said Nance, R-Excelsior Springs.
Missouri's last execution occurred in October 2005. A federal judge in 2006 halted all executions, declaring the state's lethal injection process unconstitutional after the surgeon who previously oversaw the executions testified he was dyslexic, sometimes transposed numbers and operated without written procedures or supervision.
Federal courts have since approved Missouri's revised execution protocols, clearing the way for executions to resume. A federal judge and the Missouri Supreme Court have denied efforts to delay Skillicorn's scheduled execution.
The often rancorous House was nearly silent during debate Wednesday over the proposed death penalty moratorium as observers — including schoolchildren touring the Capitol — watched from the upper galleries. Several House members shared personal stories about family members who had been killed.
The House eventually voted 95-64 to scrap the death penalty moratorium but keep a formal study of Missouri's execution system. A 10-member commission would study death penalty cases, review possible alternative punishments and suggest possible law changes to ensure those sentenced to death are guilty and received adequate legal counsel.
The death penalty provisions were added to broader crime legislation that would have to be reconciled with senators by the end of the legislative session at 6 p.m. Friday.
Some Republican and Democratic House members said the death penalty study was needed to preserve the integrity of the criminal justice system.
Rep. James Morris, D-St. Louis, told lawmakers he had urged a judge not impose the death penalty against someone who killed his nephew.
Arguing against the moratorium were two Republican lawmakers whose relative was one of four people killed in a mid-Missouri sniper rampage in 1991.
James R. Johnson was executed in 2002 for the killing of Leslie Roark, Moniteau County Reserve Deputy; Charles Smith, Cooper County Sheriff; Sandra Wilson, Miller County Deputy; and Pam Jones, wife of Moniteau County Sheriff Kenny Jones.
Kenny Jones now is a Republican lawmaker from California, Mo., and is the uncle of Rep. Tim Jones, R-Eureka, who choked back tears as he explained reading about the death of his aunt in USA Today. Kenny Jones left the chamber during parts of his nephew's floor speech.
Calling a vote for the death penalty moratorium an effort to be soft on crime, Kenny Jones urged lawmakers to remember crime victims.
"I think we have to realize that we speak for those who can't. We speak for those who have been murdered," he said.
Saturday, 9 May 2009
Colo. may end death penalty to focus on cold cases
By P. SOLOMON BANDA, The Associated Press
2009-05-02 15:18:25.0
Current rank: Not ranked
DENVER -
Colorado and nine other states considered abolishing the death penalty this year to save money, but Colorado's proposal has a twist: It would use the savings to investigate about 1,400 unsolved slayings.
The measure has started a fierce debate between prosecutors and some victims' families. Prosecutors want to keep capital punishment as an option for heinous crimes, and they say the bill has raised unrealistic hopes about solving cold cases.
Supporters of the bill say it's more important to find and prosecute killers still on the loose than to execute the ones already tried and convicted.
"The death penalty is not relevant without a murderer brought to trial," said Laurie Wiedeman, the older sister of 17-year-old Gay Lynn Dixon, whose 1982 slaying remains unsolved. "I would like to see the person who killed my sister put to death. But to have that person free to run around and committing other crimes?"
Abolishing the death penalty would save an estimated $1 million a year in Colorado now spent on prosecutors' time, public defenders' fees and appeals, according to a legislative analysis. Supporters of the Colorado measure want that money diverted to the Colorado Bureau of Investigations cold case unit, which has just one staffer. The extra money could add eight people to the unit, the legislative analysis said.
The Colorado House narrowly passed the measure in late April, and the Senate is expected to vote before the session ends Wednesday.
Gov. Bill Ritter hasn't publicly said whether he would sign it, if it passes. Ritter was Denver's district attorney before becoming governor, and in that job he unsuccessfully sought capital punishment seven times. Before becoming district attorney in 1993, Ritter had expressed personal doubts about capital punishment.
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers and all but one of the state's district attorneys oppose the bill. Even if the savings were applied to a cold case unit, which Suthers and other said isn't guaranteed by the bill, many cases may remain unsolved.
"I think it's a sad situation," Suthers said. "You have hundreds of ... parents of murdered children, sitting there being led to believe that if they abolish the death penalty in Colorado their child's death will be solved.
"A million dollars doesn't buy you a lot of cold case investigation," he said.
Proponents of the bill, led by Evergreen-based Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons, say Colorado's death penalty is so rarely used that it's not a deterrent. The group says hundreds of thousands of dollars are wasted trying to put people to death when hundreds of murderers are free.
Suthers and other prosecutors say additional DNA testing, including a proposal pending in the Legislature to take samples at the time of a felony arrest, could do more than expanding the state's cold case unit to solve old cases.
Colorado has executed only one person in the past 42 years, Gary Lee Davis, put to death in 1997 for his conviction in a 1986 slaying.
Two men remain on Colorado's death row. Sir Mario Owens was convicted last year in the shooting deaths of Javad Marshall-Fields, a potential witness in a murder trial, and Vivian Wolfe, Marshall-Fields' fiancee. Nathan Dunlap was convicted in 1996 of murder, attempted murder and other charges for killing four people and wounding a fifth at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Aurora in December 1993.
Both cases are in the appeals process.
The mothers of Marshall-Fields and Wolfe support the death penalty.
New Mexico this year became the second state to abolish the death penalty since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. New Jersey abolished the death penalty in 2007.
Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire and Texas considered abolishing the death penalty, but bills in those states have stalled, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.
"It (budgetary concerns) was a prominent issue and an impetus for these bills getting hearings this year," Dieter said.
Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons documented 1,434 unsolved slayings in Colorado since 1970, and a CBI database for law enforcement closely matches those numbers
"We have 1,400 murderers walking around. We don't feel threatened by it, but we should," said Frank Birgfeld, whose 34-year-old daughter Paige Birgfeld disappeared from Grand Junction in July 2007 and is presumed dead.
But cold cases become harder to solve as time passes. In February, 65-year-old Tina Louise Lester was arrested in Ohio on a 1968 warrant in a Denver shooting death, but District Attorney Mitch Morrissey decided against filing charges because of the lack of witnesses who could counter Lester's self-defense claim.
"Two men in that bar, who are pivotal witnesses would have been in their late 80s," Morrissey said.
Morrissey said Denver's 11-person cold case unit sometimes identifies a suspect who is already serving a lengthy prison sentence or is dead. That brings some answers to victims' families but not the definitive conclusion of a conviction.
"Just because we're grieving doesn't mean we're stupid," said Howard Morton, executive director of Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons, whose 19-year-old son Guy Oliver was the victim of a still-unsolved 1975 slaying in Arizona.
"We want these cases to be effectively addressed by the state. We know they won't all be solved," he said. "We think that some of them will be, and more importantly it sends a signal that for those who have gotten away with murder, we're coming after you."
2009-05-02 15:18:25.0
Current rank: Not ranked
DENVER -
Colorado and nine other states considered abolishing the death penalty this year to save money, but Colorado's proposal has a twist: It would use the savings to investigate about 1,400 unsolved slayings.
The measure has started a fierce debate between prosecutors and some victims' families. Prosecutors want to keep capital punishment as an option for heinous crimes, and they say the bill has raised unrealistic hopes about solving cold cases.
Supporters of the bill say it's more important to find and prosecute killers still on the loose than to execute the ones already tried and convicted.
"The death penalty is not relevant without a murderer brought to trial," said Laurie Wiedeman, the older sister of 17-year-old Gay Lynn Dixon, whose 1982 slaying remains unsolved. "I would like to see the person who killed my sister put to death. But to have that person free to run around and committing other crimes?"
Abolishing the death penalty would save an estimated $1 million a year in Colorado now spent on prosecutors' time, public defenders' fees and appeals, according to a legislative analysis. Supporters of the Colorado measure want that money diverted to the Colorado Bureau of Investigations cold case unit, which has just one staffer. The extra money could add eight people to the unit, the legislative analysis said.
The Colorado House narrowly passed the measure in late April, and the Senate is expected to vote before the session ends Wednesday.
Gov. Bill Ritter hasn't publicly said whether he would sign it, if it passes. Ritter was Denver's district attorney before becoming governor, and in that job he unsuccessfully sought capital punishment seven times. Before becoming district attorney in 1993, Ritter had expressed personal doubts about capital punishment.
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers and all but one of the state's district attorneys oppose the bill. Even if the savings were applied to a cold case unit, which Suthers and other said isn't guaranteed by the bill, many cases may remain unsolved.
"I think it's a sad situation," Suthers said. "You have hundreds of ... parents of murdered children, sitting there being led to believe that if they abolish the death penalty in Colorado their child's death will be solved.
"A million dollars doesn't buy you a lot of cold case investigation," he said.
Proponents of the bill, led by Evergreen-based Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons, say Colorado's death penalty is so rarely used that it's not a deterrent. The group says hundreds of thousands of dollars are wasted trying to put people to death when hundreds of murderers are free.
Suthers and other prosecutors say additional DNA testing, including a proposal pending in the Legislature to take samples at the time of a felony arrest, could do more than expanding the state's cold case unit to solve old cases.
Colorado has executed only one person in the past 42 years, Gary Lee Davis, put to death in 1997 for his conviction in a 1986 slaying.
Two men remain on Colorado's death row. Sir Mario Owens was convicted last year in the shooting deaths of Javad Marshall-Fields, a potential witness in a murder trial, and Vivian Wolfe, Marshall-Fields' fiancee. Nathan Dunlap was convicted in 1996 of murder, attempted murder and other charges for killing four people and wounding a fifth at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Aurora in December 1993.
Both cases are in the appeals process.
The mothers of Marshall-Fields and Wolfe support the death penalty.
New Mexico this year became the second state to abolish the death penalty since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. New Jersey abolished the death penalty in 2007.
Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire and Texas considered abolishing the death penalty, but bills in those states have stalled, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.
"It (budgetary concerns) was a prominent issue and an impetus for these bills getting hearings this year," Dieter said.
Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons documented 1,434 unsolved slayings in Colorado since 1970, and a CBI database for law enforcement closely matches those numbers
"We have 1,400 murderers walking around. We don't feel threatened by it, but we should," said Frank Birgfeld, whose 34-year-old daughter Paige Birgfeld disappeared from Grand Junction in July 2007 and is presumed dead.
But cold cases become harder to solve as time passes. In February, 65-year-old Tina Louise Lester was arrested in Ohio on a 1968 warrant in a Denver shooting death, but District Attorney Mitch Morrissey decided against filing charges because of the lack of witnesses who could counter Lester's self-defense claim.
"Two men in that bar, who are pivotal witnesses would have been in their late 80s," Morrissey said.
Morrissey said Denver's 11-person cold case unit sometimes identifies a suspect who is already serving a lengthy prison sentence or is dead. That brings some answers to victims' families but not the definitive conclusion of a conviction.
"Just because we're grieving doesn't mean we're stupid," said Howard Morton, executive director of Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons, whose 19-year-old son Guy Oliver was the victim of a still-unsolved 1975 slaying in Arizona.
"We want these cases to be effectively addressed by the state. We know they won't all be solved," he said. "We think that some of them will be, and more importantly it sends a signal that for those who have gotten away with murder, we're coming after you."
Spencer hearing in Altersberger case starts Friday
By BRAD DICKERSON
Highlands Today
Defense counsel for Joshua Lee Altersberger will have one more chance to argue for life in prison for their client.
Attorneys on both sides will be back in Judge J. Michael Hunter's courtroom Friday in Bartow for a Spencer hearing. It comes more than one month after a jury made a 9-3 recommendation of death for Altersberger, following his admission of guilt for the Jan. 12, 2007 murder of Florida Highway Patrol Sgt. Nicholas Sottile during a traffic stop.
Assistant State Attorney Steve Houchin said he is allowed to make legal arguments, but cannot present additional evidence. The hearing is basically the "defense's show."
"We can cross examine, but some limited cross examination," Houchin said. "We'll just play it by ear."
Most Spencer hearings are generally composed of legal argument or a minimal amount of additional evidence, according to Houchin.
"Usually, the defense is going to put everything they've got on in front of the jury to try to get a good recommendation, because if they win that, there is no next stage," he said.
Houchin said Altersberger's defense counsel has indicated it wants to put on quite a bit of additional evidence at Friday's hearing. Houchin said he was not certain what that evidence was and that the defense was not obligated to tell him.
"It appears to be factual matters," Houchin said. "Some cops here have been subpoenaed; a woman who drove by and saw part of the incident on the side of the road got subpoenaed."
Once the hearing is complete, Houchin said Hunter will take all the evidence and arguments under advisement and set another hearing in the future, where the final decision will be handed down.
The judge is supposed to give the jury's recommendation "great weight" when working on his ruling, according to Houchin.
The hearing is named for Leonard Spencer, who was sentenced in 1989 to death after a jury found him guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and multiple counts of armed robbery. In 1993, he appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, which led to the state's high court reversing the convictions and granting a new trial.
One of the issues the court looked at occurred during jury selection, when the judge excused potential jurors on the basis of IQ, according to the ruling. Defense counsel objected to the use of an IQ standard.
"There is no legal basis for excusing a juror based on the trial judge's arbitrary evaluation of the juror's IQ," the ruling stated.
After the trial ended, Spencer filed a motion for a new trial. A hearing date was set to address that motion, as well as the sentencing.
The scheduled time for the hearing came and went, and neither the judge nor the state attorney appeared, according to the ruling. The defense attorney went into the judge's chambers and found the judge, the state attorney and an assistant proofreading an order sentencing Spencer to death.
Spencer's attorney, "voiced his concern that the judge had drafted an order expressing his reasons and conclusions for imposing the death penalty prior to Spencer's counsel having an opportunity to be heard," the ruling stated.
The defendant felt the communication between the prosecution and the judge was the "culmination of a pattern of judicial bias."
Florida Supreme Court justices, in their ruling, addressed a previous case where they directed that written orders for death must be prepared before announcing sentence to the defendant.
"However, we did not perceive that our decision would be used in such a way that a trial judge would formulate his decision prior to giving the defendant an opportunity to be heard," according to the ruling.
The justices then established a procedure to be used in the sentencing phase, which included the trial judge holding a hearing to give the defendant and his or her counsel the opportunity to be heard and an opportunity to present additional evidence.
Highlands Today
Defense counsel for Joshua Lee Altersberger will have one more chance to argue for life in prison for their client.
Attorneys on both sides will be back in Judge J. Michael Hunter's courtroom Friday in Bartow for a Spencer hearing. It comes more than one month after a jury made a 9-3 recommendation of death for Altersberger, following his admission of guilt for the Jan. 12, 2007 murder of Florida Highway Patrol Sgt. Nicholas Sottile during a traffic stop.
Assistant State Attorney Steve Houchin said he is allowed to make legal arguments, but cannot present additional evidence. The hearing is basically the "defense's show."
"We can cross examine, but some limited cross examination," Houchin said. "We'll just play it by ear."
Most Spencer hearings are generally composed of legal argument or a minimal amount of additional evidence, according to Houchin.
"Usually, the defense is going to put everything they've got on in front of the jury to try to get a good recommendation, because if they win that, there is no next stage," he said.
Houchin said Altersberger's defense counsel has indicated it wants to put on quite a bit of additional evidence at Friday's hearing. Houchin said he was not certain what that evidence was and that the defense was not obligated to tell him.
"It appears to be factual matters," Houchin said. "Some cops here have been subpoenaed; a woman who drove by and saw part of the incident on the side of the road got subpoenaed."
Once the hearing is complete, Houchin said Hunter will take all the evidence and arguments under advisement and set another hearing in the future, where the final decision will be handed down.
The judge is supposed to give the jury's recommendation "great weight" when working on his ruling, according to Houchin.
The hearing is named for Leonard Spencer, who was sentenced in 1989 to death after a jury found him guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and multiple counts of armed robbery. In 1993, he appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, which led to the state's high court reversing the convictions and granting a new trial.
One of the issues the court looked at occurred during jury selection, when the judge excused potential jurors on the basis of IQ, according to the ruling. Defense counsel objected to the use of an IQ standard.
"There is no legal basis for excusing a juror based on the trial judge's arbitrary evaluation of the juror's IQ," the ruling stated.
After the trial ended, Spencer filed a motion for a new trial. A hearing date was set to address that motion, as well as the sentencing.
The scheduled time for the hearing came and went, and neither the judge nor the state attorney appeared, according to the ruling. The defense attorney went into the judge's chambers and found the judge, the state attorney and an assistant proofreading an order sentencing Spencer to death.
Spencer's attorney, "voiced his concern that the judge had drafted an order expressing his reasons and conclusions for imposing the death penalty prior to Spencer's counsel having an opportunity to be heard," the ruling stated.
The defendant felt the communication between the prosecution and the judge was the "culmination of a pattern of judicial bias."
Florida Supreme Court justices, in their ruling, addressed a previous case where they directed that written orders for death must be prepared before announcing sentence to the defendant.
"However, we did not perceive that our decision would be used in such a way that a trial judge would formulate his decision prior to giving the defendant an opportunity to be heard," according to the ruling.
The justices then established a procedure to be used in the sentencing phase, which included the trial judge holding a hearing to give the defendant and his or her counsel the opportunity to be heard and an opportunity to present additional evidence.
Accused child killer has violent past
Tampa, Florida - The man accused of throwing 3-month-old Emmanuel Murray from his car window on I-275 was told Wednesday morning the charges he's facing could carry the death penalty.
Richard McTear Jr. made his first appearance before a judge with his head bowed and hands crossed.
"Obviously you won't be getting out jail anytime soon," the judge told McTear through a videocast after reading a laundry list of charges including first degree murder, kidnapping and aggravated child abuse.
People who know McTear told 10 Connects on Wednesday afternoon they are still shocked after learning of the allegations he tossed a baby out of his car window.
"I've never seen that side of him. Never had he never shown that to me," said family friend Margaret Hammond.
His arrest record tells a very different story. He's previously been booked on charges of felony battery, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and domestic battery and had active warrants burglary with an act of violence, battery and child abuse stemming from a March 31st incident.
10 Connects obtained a copy of a Tampa Police offense report from 2007 detailing a violent encounter between McTear Jr. and the mother of his child.
According to the report, the woman planned to meet McTear at his grandmother's apartment so she could drop off their son.
Once she got to the Temple Terrace apartment, police say McTear got inside her car, and proceeded to punch and strangle her as their 3-year-old son watched from the backseat.
The woman was able to escape to call 911 after he threatened to cut her with a steak knife. Police say McTear then took her car, with their son still inside.
One responding officer described her wounds, "Several bleeding scratches were observed on her throat. Her upper facial area was swollen, and she had bruising on the back of her arms."
The report says the woman told police, "McTear had become hostile toward her after discovering that she is dating other men."
She also told police she filed an emergency restraining order against him after he cut up her clothes and their son's during a previous fight. Police say that injunction had not been served at the time.
Two hours later the car was found on fire. The 3-year-old was recovered at a relatives house where a witness says she saw him drop off the child and leave with what appeared to be a bottle of lighter fluid.
Police arrested McTear on charges of aggravated assault, grand theft auto, battery by domestic violence strangulation, auto burglary for battery, second degree arson, and interference with custody.
It could have been a precursor of the alleged violence to come, but McTear never faced most of the charges in connection to that 2007 incident.
The State Attorney's Office tells 10 Connects the charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated battery, domestic battery with strangulation and grand theft auto were dismissed because the victim refused to cooperate and signed a waiver to drop the charges.
The burglary charge was dropped to trespassing.
Those who know McTear say regardless of what he did, they'll stand by his side.
"I will always love you," said Margaret Hammond, "I will always love you, you are a great person. I respect you and I admire you until the day I die."
Richard McTear Jr. made his first appearance before a judge with his head bowed and hands crossed.
"Obviously you won't be getting out jail anytime soon," the judge told McTear through a videocast after reading a laundry list of charges including first degree murder, kidnapping and aggravated child abuse.
People who know McTear told 10 Connects on Wednesday afternoon they are still shocked after learning of the allegations he tossed a baby out of his car window.
"I've never seen that side of him. Never had he never shown that to me," said family friend Margaret Hammond.
His arrest record tells a very different story. He's previously been booked on charges of felony battery, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and domestic battery and had active warrants burglary with an act of violence, battery and child abuse stemming from a March 31st incident.
10 Connects obtained a copy of a Tampa Police offense report from 2007 detailing a violent encounter between McTear Jr. and the mother of his child.
According to the report, the woman planned to meet McTear at his grandmother's apartment so she could drop off their son.
Once she got to the Temple Terrace apartment, police say McTear got inside her car, and proceeded to punch and strangle her as their 3-year-old son watched from the backseat.
The woman was able to escape to call 911 after he threatened to cut her with a steak knife. Police say McTear then took her car, with their son still inside.
One responding officer described her wounds, "Several bleeding scratches were observed on her throat. Her upper facial area was swollen, and she had bruising on the back of her arms."
The report says the woman told police, "McTear had become hostile toward her after discovering that she is dating other men."
She also told police she filed an emergency restraining order against him after he cut up her clothes and their son's during a previous fight. Police say that injunction had not been served at the time.
Two hours later the car was found on fire. The 3-year-old was recovered at a relatives house where a witness says she saw him drop off the child and leave with what appeared to be a bottle of lighter fluid.
Police arrested McTear on charges of aggravated assault, grand theft auto, battery by domestic violence strangulation, auto burglary for battery, second degree arson, and interference with custody.
It could have been a precursor of the alleged violence to come, but McTear never faced most of the charges in connection to that 2007 incident.
The State Attorney's Office tells 10 Connects the charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated battery, domestic battery with strangulation and grand theft auto were dismissed because the victim refused to cooperate and signed a waiver to drop the charges.
The burglary charge was dropped to trespassing.
Those who know McTear say regardless of what he did, they'll stand by his side.
"I will always love you," said Margaret Hammond, "I will always love you, you are a great person. I respect you and I admire you until the day I die."
Death penalty study debated
By BRENDAN RILEYAssociated Press Writer
last updated: May 05, 2009 06:03:11 PM
CARSON CITY, Nev. -- ]
Death penalty opponents joined with advocates of more funding for schools and other services in arguing Tuesday for a plan to determine how costly it is to continue the death penalty in Nevada.
Under AB190, reviewed by the Senate Legislative Operations and Elections Committee, the study would be done by the lawmakers' staff and completed in time for the 2011 session.
The bill, sponsored chiefly by Assemblyman Bernie Anderson, D-Sparks, was approved earlier on a 30-12 state Assembly vote.
Anderson said various studies around the country have shown that costs of dealing with capital cases are "alarmingly high," and the study would determine whether it makes "good fiscal sense to continue the death penalty system in Nevada."
Michael Pescetta, an assistant federal defender and death penalty foe who has been involved in many capital cases in Nevada, said there's no dispute that such cases are more costly than those that result in no-parole life sentences.
North Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Stephen Dahl said the higher expense in capital cases stems from the U.S. Supreme Court's requirements for a high level of legal review because "death is different." He said an Iowa study showed a capital case can cost about $2.4 million compared with $1.5 million for all legal proceedings and other costs in a life-in-prison case.
Maizie Pusich, chief deputy Washoe County public defender, also backed the study, saying it will ensure that lawmakers don't "make a decision in the dark" on capital punishment. She added that as it is now a lot of money is spent on legal proceedings that could be used for education, human services and public safety programs.
Byllie Andrews of the Nevada Women's Lobby echoed the comments by Pusich, saying the funds required for capital cases might be better spent elsewhere.
Sam Bateman of the Nevada District Attorneys Association said his group was "somewhat skeptical" about the study results. But he added he appreciated the fact that the study would be done by legislative staffers who would remain neutral in doing the study.
last updated: May 05, 2009 06:03:11 PM
CARSON CITY, Nev. -- ]
Death penalty opponents joined with advocates of more funding for schools and other services in arguing Tuesday for a plan to determine how costly it is to continue the death penalty in Nevada.
Under AB190, reviewed by the Senate Legislative Operations and Elections Committee, the study would be done by the lawmakers' staff and completed in time for the 2011 session.
The bill, sponsored chiefly by Assemblyman Bernie Anderson, D-Sparks, was approved earlier on a 30-12 state Assembly vote.
Anderson said various studies around the country have shown that costs of dealing with capital cases are "alarmingly high," and the study would determine whether it makes "good fiscal sense to continue the death penalty system in Nevada."
Michael Pescetta, an assistant federal defender and death penalty foe who has been involved in many capital cases in Nevada, said there's no dispute that such cases are more costly than those that result in no-parole life sentences.
North Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Stephen Dahl said the higher expense in capital cases stems from the U.S. Supreme Court's requirements for a high level of legal review because "death is different." He said an Iowa study showed a capital case can cost about $2.4 million compared with $1.5 million for all legal proceedings and other costs in a life-in-prison case.
Maizie Pusich, chief deputy Washoe County public defender, also backed the study, saying it will ensure that lawmakers don't "make a decision in the dark" on capital punishment. She added that as it is now a lot of money is spent on legal proceedings that could be used for education, human services and public safety programs.
Byllie Andrews of the Nevada Women's Lobby echoed the comments by Pusich, saying the funds required for capital cases might be better spent elsewhere.
Sam Bateman of the Nevada District Attorneys Association said his group was "somewhat skeptical" about the study results. But he added he appreciated the fact that the study would be done by legislative staffers who would remain neutral in doing the study.
Monday, 4 May 2009
Death penalty barrier lifted
Ruling says N.C. Medical Board can't stop doctors from monitoring executions, but other legal issues remain.
By Sarah Ovaska
sarah.ovaska@newsobserver.com
Posted: Saturday, May. 02, 2009
RALEIGH In a major decision in the debate over the death penalty, the N.C. Supreme Court ruled Friday that the N.C. Medical Board can't prevent doctors from participating in executions.
The 4-3 decision addressed one of several legal challenges that have led to North Carolina's de facto moratorium on execution by lethal injection for more than two years.
The N.C. Department of Correction sued the medical board after Central Prison's warden couldn't find physicians willing to risk disciplinary action by monitoring executions. The board licenses and disciplines doctors, and had held that participation violates a doctor's core ethical duty to preserve life.
Another case involving the state's execution policy is still pending. That means the legal morass surrounding a doctor's role in executions remains tangled.
The pending case involves a protocol approved by the Council of State for lethal injections in North Carolina. The protocol calls for a doctor to be present to ensure an inmate doesn't suffer.
“Executions will not resume immediately,” said Department of Correction spokesman Keith Acree.
Mark Kleinschmidt, a defense lawyer for an inmate in the Council of State case, said, “There is no timetable, and it doesn't seem the people are in any mad rush to get through this moratorium.”
N.C. Correction Secretary Alvin Keller declined to comment on Friday's ruling.
The justices decided that Wake Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens correctly sided with the N.C. Department of Correction when he ruled in September 2007 that the N.C. Medical Board lacked the authority to prevent doctors from participating in executions. The board had appealed Stephens' ruling.
State law calls for doctors to be at executions, something the N.C. Medical Board doesn't oppose, said Todd Brosius and Thomas Mansfield, attorneys for the board.
But the board argued that ethics rules don't allow doctors to participate by monitoring vital signs, a requirement approved in February 2007 by the Council of State.
Executions in North Carolina are administered in a death chamber in Raleigh's Central Prison. A lethal injection consisting of three drugs is given to an inmate to sedate, paralyze and kill. The person actually administering the lethal injection wouldn't have to be a doctor: Nurses, emergency medical technicians and physician assistants could do it.
The protocol requires a doctor to monitor a condemned inmate's “essential body functions” and tell the warden if the inmate shows signs of suffering.
The medical board, Justice Edward Thomas Brady wrote in the majority opinion, “may not discipline or threaten discipline against its licensees solely for participating in execution alone.”
Justices Robert Edmunds Jr., Mark Martin and Paul Newby sided with Brady.
The three justices who dissented, Chief Justice Sarah Parker and justices Robin Hudson and Patricia Timmons-Goodson, argued that the state legislature should ultimately decide whether the medical board can discipline doctors regarding executions.
There are 163 inmates on death row, including five who were convicted in Mecklenburg County.
One of the most recent additions to death row was Michael Wayne Sherrill of Mecklenburg County. He was sentenced to death in February for the 1984 murder of a young Charlotte woman. It was the first time a Mecklenburg jury had ordered the death penalty in nearly a decade.
The last N.C. execution took place Aug. 18, 2006, when Samuel Flippin, 36, was put to death for killing his 2-year-old stepdaughter.
The medical board's lawyers said they were disappointed. The board will likely discuss its next options when it meets on May 20. The Associated Press and Observer staff writer Cleve R. Wootson Jr. contributed.
By Sarah Ovaska
sarah.ovaska@newsobserver.com
Posted: Saturday, May. 02, 2009
RALEIGH In a major decision in the debate over the death penalty, the N.C. Supreme Court ruled Friday that the N.C. Medical Board can't prevent doctors from participating in executions.
The 4-3 decision addressed one of several legal challenges that have led to North Carolina's de facto moratorium on execution by lethal injection for more than two years.
The N.C. Department of Correction sued the medical board after Central Prison's warden couldn't find physicians willing to risk disciplinary action by monitoring executions. The board licenses and disciplines doctors, and had held that participation violates a doctor's core ethical duty to preserve life.
Another case involving the state's execution policy is still pending. That means the legal morass surrounding a doctor's role in executions remains tangled.
The pending case involves a protocol approved by the Council of State for lethal injections in North Carolina. The protocol calls for a doctor to be present to ensure an inmate doesn't suffer.
“Executions will not resume immediately,” said Department of Correction spokesman Keith Acree.
Mark Kleinschmidt, a defense lawyer for an inmate in the Council of State case, said, “There is no timetable, and it doesn't seem the people are in any mad rush to get through this moratorium.”
N.C. Correction Secretary Alvin Keller declined to comment on Friday's ruling.
The justices decided that Wake Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens correctly sided with the N.C. Department of Correction when he ruled in September 2007 that the N.C. Medical Board lacked the authority to prevent doctors from participating in executions. The board had appealed Stephens' ruling.
State law calls for doctors to be at executions, something the N.C. Medical Board doesn't oppose, said Todd Brosius and Thomas Mansfield, attorneys for the board.
But the board argued that ethics rules don't allow doctors to participate by monitoring vital signs, a requirement approved in February 2007 by the Council of State.
Executions in North Carolina are administered in a death chamber in Raleigh's Central Prison. A lethal injection consisting of three drugs is given to an inmate to sedate, paralyze and kill. The person actually administering the lethal injection wouldn't have to be a doctor: Nurses, emergency medical technicians and physician assistants could do it.
The protocol requires a doctor to monitor a condemned inmate's “essential body functions” and tell the warden if the inmate shows signs of suffering.
The medical board, Justice Edward Thomas Brady wrote in the majority opinion, “may not discipline or threaten discipline against its licensees solely for participating in execution alone.”
Justices Robert Edmunds Jr., Mark Martin and Paul Newby sided with Brady.
The three justices who dissented, Chief Justice Sarah Parker and justices Robin Hudson and Patricia Timmons-Goodson, argued that the state legislature should ultimately decide whether the medical board can discipline doctors regarding executions.
There are 163 inmates on death row, including five who were convicted in Mecklenburg County.
One of the most recent additions to death row was Michael Wayne Sherrill of Mecklenburg County. He was sentenced to death in February for the 1984 murder of a young Charlotte woman. It was the first time a Mecklenburg jury had ordered the death penalty in nearly a decade.
The last N.C. execution took place Aug. 18, 2006, when Samuel Flippin, 36, was put to death for killing his 2-year-old stepdaughter.
The medical board's lawyers said they were disappointed. The board will likely discuss its next options when it meets on May 20. The Associated Press and Observer staff writer Cleve R. Wootson Jr. contributed.
Court: Doctor must be present during execution
RALEIGH -- The North Carolina Supreme Court issued its ruling Friday on doctors being present during executions.
Last November, the court began hearing arguments on what roles, if any, doctors should play in executions.
Previously, the North Carolina Medical Board did not want doctors to participate in executions. And if a doctor did, he or she could face disciplinary action.
According to the board, a doctor assisted execution violated a code of ethics that doctors must uphold. However, attorneys for the Department of Correction argued that doctors are needed during an execution to monitor an inmate's vital signs and to certify an inmate's death.
Lawyers for the state argued that a doctor should monitor an execution to prevent cruel or unusual punishment. But the medical board and the American Medical Association said state lawmakers wanted a doctor to be present but not actively participate.
The court ruled 4-3 that state law "by its plain language, envisions physician participation in executions in some professional capacity."
The ruling also said the Medical Board ethics position statement "directly contravenes the specific requirement of physician presence. ... because the position statement is an invalid exercise of defendant's statutory powers, we affirm the decision of the trial court."
Friday's ruling states that a doctor and a prison warden or deputy warden must be present at the time of execution. The ruling ends a more than two-year state moratorium on executions.
Last November, the court began hearing arguments on what roles, if any, doctors should play in executions.
Previously, the North Carolina Medical Board did not want doctors to participate in executions. And if a doctor did, he or she could face disciplinary action.
According to the board, a doctor assisted execution violated a code of ethics that doctors must uphold. However, attorneys for the Department of Correction argued that doctors are needed during an execution to monitor an inmate's vital signs and to certify an inmate's death.
Lawyers for the state argued that a doctor should monitor an execution to prevent cruel or unusual punishment. But the medical board and the American Medical Association said state lawmakers wanted a doctor to be present but not actively participate.
The court ruled 4-3 that state law "by its plain language, envisions physician participation in executions in some professional capacity."
The ruling also said the Medical Board ethics position statement "directly contravenes the specific requirement of physician presence. ... because the position statement is an invalid exercise of defendant's statutory powers, we affirm the decision of the trial court."
Friday's ruling states that a doctor and a prison warden or deputy warden must be present at the time of execution. The ruling ends a more than two-year state moratorium on executions.
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Supreme Court Gets Hamilton County Death Penalty Case
Court To Determine If Disabled Standard Should Apply In 1992 Case
WLWT.com
updated 5:50 p.m. ET, Fri., April 24, 2009
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday in a 1992 murder case from Hamilton County.
Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray is asking the court to reverse a lower court decision that set aside the death sentence imposed on Michael Bies for his murder of a 10 year-old Cincinnati boy.
Bies and an accomplice lured Aaron Raines into an abandoned building and bludgeoned him to death. A Hamilton County jury convicted Bies of aggravated murder, attempted rape and kidnapping, and further recommended a sentence of death. The Ohio Supreme Court had affirmed the conviction and death sentence in 1996.
In a 2002 case, Atkins v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Constitution prohibits the execution of mentally retarded defendants. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit later ordered that Bies' death sentence be set aside because the Ohio Supreme Court briefly mentioned the mental retardation issue in one of its earlier opinions.
Cordray said he maintains that the Ohio Supreme Court never determined that Bies is mentally retarded under the Atkins standards.
If Cordray prevails, the court will return the case to the Hamilton County courts, which will conduct a hearing, take evidence and issue a finding on Bies' mental capacity.
"Developmentally disabled individuals cannot be executed, period," said Cordray in an news release. "However, it is important that the proper procedures be followed to make that determination for any death row inmate. We believe the federal courts should have allowed the Ohio state courts to determine this issue anew after Atkins was decided and resulted in a major change in the law. Should we prevail, I have every confidence that Mr. Bies will receive a full and fair hearing in the Ohio courts."
WLWT.com
updated 5:50 p.m. ET, Fri., April 24, 2009
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday in a 1992 murder case from Hamilton County.
Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray is asking the court to reverse a lower court decision that set aside the death sentence imposed on Michael Bies for his murder of a 10 year-old Cincinnati boy.
Bies and an accomplice lured Aaron Raines into an abandoned building and bludgeoned him to death. A Hamilton County jury convicted Bies of aggravated murder, attempted rape and kidnapping, and further recommended a sentence of death. The Ohio Supreme Court had affirmed the conviction and death sentence in 1996.
In a 2002 case, Atkins v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Constitution prohibits the execution of mentally retarded defendants. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit later ordered that Bies' death sentence be set aside because the Ohio Supreme Court briefly mentioned the mental retardation issue in one of its earlier opinions.
Cordray said he maintains that the Ohio Supreme Court never determined that Bies is mentally retarded under the Atkins standards.
If Cordray prevails, the court will return the case to the Hamilton County courts, which will conduct a hearing, take evidence and issue a finding on Bies' mental capacity.
"Developmentally disabled individuals cannot be executed, period," said Cordray in an news release. "However, it is important that the proper procedures be followed to make that determination for any death row inmate. We believe the federal courts should have allowed the Ohio state courts to determine this issue anew after Atkins was decided and resulted in a major change in the law. Should we prevail, I have every confidence that Mr. Bies will receive a full and fair hearing in the Ohio courts."
Sunday, 5 April 2009
Ottawa 'disappointed' with beheading sentence
Tiffany Crawford, Canwest News Service
OTTAWA -- The Harper government said Thursday it was ‘deeply disappointed' by news a Saudi court had upheld the death by beheading sentence of a Canadian man who was convicted in the 2007 death of another man.
"We are deeply disappointed at the reports that a Saudi court has upheld its decision to sentence Mohamed Kohail to death," said Deepak Obhrai, parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon. "Canada continues to express its concern for a fair and transparent review of the wording and the sentence."
The decision by the Jidda General Court sends the matter back to the Saudi Supreme Judicial Council -- essentially an appeal court -- for a final ruling.
Mr. Obhrai told the House of Commons that Cannon has requested that Canadian officials review the final court decision when it is issued.
Aubrey Harris, who works on a campaign to abolish the death penalty for Amnesty International, said there could still be a positive outcome for Kohail in the Supreme Judicial Council.
"The lower court is refusing to change its decision," he said, "but what it means is (Kohail's) case must now go back before the . . . council, which had originally felt that his case should be overturned. So it is a matter of waiting and seeing."
Mr. Harris said it's unclear if the delay will allow for more evidence to be presented in court.
There was no word on developments regarding Kohail's younger brother, Sultan, who was charged in the same incident.
Sultan was originally tried in Saudi youth court and sentenced to 200 lashes -- but now faces trial in adult court, where he could also face a death sentence.
Liberal MP Dan McTeague, the party's consular affairs critic, argues there's evidence to suggest Kohail's case was one of self-defence and he does not deserve a death sentence, which would be carried out by sword.
Kohail, a 23-year-old Montrealer, was living temporarily in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, when he got involved in a schoolyard brawl in January 2007. The fight resulted in the death of an 18-year-old man.
The Kohail family maintains evidence -- not permitted to be entered at the separate trials of their two sons -- suggests the two were trying to escape from a mob and did not cause the injuries that led to the Syrian man's death.
"It hasn't been a fair run," Mr. Harris said. "The court system is undergoing modifications and a number of them haven't taken effect yet, but [the council] may have the power to overturn lower court rulings."
Mr. Harris said the court's final decision will likely be made "in a few weeks," and he hoped the Canadian government would push for Kohail's release.
"The Canadian government must intervene," he said.
Mr. McTeague also has concerns about how the court decision was made without any public written documentation.
"This, in itself, is significant because it was done, in my view, in a very perfunctory way . . . and said, ‘ya, too bad, we're sticking with the decision.'"
The Kohails settled in Montreal after emigrating to Canada in 2000 and became Canadian citizens in 2005.
With files from the Montreal Gazette
OTTAWA -- The Harper government said Thursday it was ‘deeply disappointed' by news a Saudi court had upheld the death by beheading sentence of a Canadian man who was convicted in the 2007 death of another man.
"We are deeply disappointed at the reports that a Saudi court has upheld its decision to sentence Mohamed Kohail to death," said Deepak Obhrai, parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon. "Canada continues to express its concern for a fair and transparent review of the wording and the sentence."
The decision by the Jidda General Court sends the matter back to the Saudi Supreme Judicial Council -- essentially an appeal court -- for a final ruling.
Mr. Obhrai told the House of Commons that Cannon has requested that Canadian officials review the final court decision when it is issued.
Aubrey Harris, who works on a campaign to abolish the death penalty for Amnesty International, said there could still be a positive outcome for Kohail in the Supreme Judicial Council.
"The lower court is refusing to change its decision," he said, "but what it means is (Kohail's) case must now go back before the . . . council, which had originally felt that his case should be overturned. So it is a matter of waiting and seeing."
Mr. Harris said it's unclear if the delay will allow for more evidence to be presented in court.
There was no word on developments regarding Kohail's younger brother, Sultan, who was charged in the same incident.
Sultan was originally tried in Saudi youth court and sentenced to 200 lashes -- but now faces trial in adult court, where he could also face a death sentence.
Liberal MP Dan McTeague, the party's consular affairs critic, argues there's evidence to suggest Kohail's case was one of self-defence and he does not deserve a death sentence, which would be carried out by sword.
Kohail, a 23-year-old Montrealer, was living temporarily in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, when he got involved in a schoolyard brawl in January 2007. The fight resulted in the death of an 18-year-old man.
The Kohail family maintains evidence -- not permitted to be entered at the separate trials of their two sons -- suggests the two were trying to escape from a mob and did not cause the injuries that led to the Syrian man's death.
"It hasn't been a fair run," Mr. Harris said. "The court system is undergoing modifications and a number of them haven't taken effect yet, but [the council] may have the power to overturn lower court rulings."
Mr. Harris said the court's final decision will likely be made "in a few weeks," and he hoped the Canadian government would push for Kohail's release.
"The Canadian government must intervene," he said.
Mr. McTeague also has concerns about how the court decision was made without any public written documentation.
"This, in itself, is significant because it was done, in my view, in a very perfunctory way . . . and said, ‘ya, too bad, we're sticking with the decision.'"
The Kohails settled in Montreal after emigrating to Canada in 2000 and became Canadian citizens in 2005.
With files from the Montreal Gazette
Steve Goble's It's Debatable: Nothing sensible about the death penalty
By STEVE GOBLE
News Journal
Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray thinks the appeals process for death penalty cases is far too lengthy.
I can solve the problem in four words: Dump the death penalty.
The long appellate process sometimes defeats the possibility of justice being served, Cordray said last week. Long waits make it difficult when, after a dozen years in the courts, a retrial involving a new prosecutor and new police officials is required, he said.
"If it does lead to a retrial, it's very difficult to feel that fair justice can be achieved on a redo because so much changes over time, particularly in presenting factual evidence to juries," he said.
It is interesting Cordray mentioned things that change over time. One thing that often changes is the quality of forensic evidence. Better science and investigative techniques come along, and sometimes show the wrong people are on death row.
That, to me, is reason enough to dump the death penalty. If Cordray thinks redoing a trial is difficult, he should try redoing an execution.
On a gut level, I think some crimes merit death. Some evils make me lose all sympathy for the perpetrators.
The problem, of course, is making certain we get the right perpetrators. Too often, we don't.
The American Civil Liberties Union reports that since 1973, 123 people nationwide have been released from death row because they were innocent. Seven others were executed even though they probably were innocent. A study reported in the Stanford Law Review documents 350 capital convictions in which it was later proven the convict had not committed the crime. Of those, 25 people were executed. Fifty-five of the 350 cases took place in the 1970s, and another 20 between 1980 and 1985.
In many instances, DNA evidence is what sets innocent men free. Such evidence is relatively new -- it wasn't available when many people were wrongly convicted. A lengthy appeals process saved their lives, by keeping them alive until forensic evidence could prove their innocence.
The idea that innocent people might be run over while society seeks justice is appalling. When the issue is whether to take someone's life, "correct most of the time" is a worthless standard.
Today, about 3,350 people are on death row nationwide, the ACLU reports. Almost all are poor, many are mentally disabled, more than 40 percent are black and a disproportionate number are American Indian, Latino or Asian.
Ohio has 175 inmates on death row, Cordray's office reported last week. About half are black.
Some of these condemned may be innocent. How many are we willing to sacrifice?
Some argue capital punishment deters crime. Studies disagree with that claim. States that have death penalty laws do not have lower crime or murder rates than states without. States that abolished capital punishment show no significant changes in crime or murder rates, the ACLU says.
The Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit resource center in Washington, D.C., cites a national survey showing most police chiefs say the death penalty doesn't reduce homicides, because murderers don't think about possible punishments.
Think about most of those who commit crimes that could land them on death row. They're not our best and brightest. They often have limited ability to think beyond the next five minutes. They are in a rage, or hopped up on drugs, or desperate for their next fix. The last thing they are likely to consider is the consequences of their actions.
One more data point: A Death Penalty Information Center analysis of statistics from 2001 to 2007 shows Southern states, which execute far more inmates than the rest of the U.S. combined, have consistently had the highest per capita murder rates.
Some deterrent.
The ACLU cites numerous studies that show racial disparities in how the death penalty is applied. People who kill whites are more likely to receive a death sentence than those who kill minorities. Blacks who kill whites have the greatest chance of receiving a death sentence.
Cordray has said the appeals process properly results in second looks at some cases. Good for him. The next step is for him to realize that such instances are reason enough to flush the death penalty. He should use his office to promote such change.
According to Cordray's report, there are 21 inmates on Ohio's death row whose appeals are all but exhausted. Are any of them innocent? Maybe not, but I wonder. Is it worth the risk of executing them? No.
Evidence shows we have an imperfect judicial system, run by fallible human beings. Our courts get a lot of things right, and they have a lot of built-in protections to help assure they do. Still, mistakes are made. The merciful, sensible, moral thing to do is to not put convicts to death in the first place. We should work toward that.
In the meantime, let's not start erasing vital protections just to save time and fuss.
We're talking about human life here. It's worth the time and fuss.
Steve Goble is a copy editor and page designer for the News Journal. Look for his column, "It's Debatable," in the Community Conversation section every Sunday, and visit his blog on our Web site. E-mail him at sgoble@nncogannett.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
News Journal
Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray thinks the appeals process for death penalty cases is far too lengthy.
I can solve the problem in four words: Dump the death penalty.
The long appellate process sometimes defeats the possibility of justice being served, Cordray said last week. Long waits make it difficult when, after a dozen years in the courts, a retrial involving a new prosecutor and new police officials is required, he said.
"If it does lead to a retrial, it's very difficult to feel that fair justice can be achieved on a redo because so much changes over time, particularly in presenting factual evidence to juries," he said.
It is interesting Cordray mentioned things that change over time. One thing that often changes is the quality of forensic evidence. Better science and investigative techniques come along, and sometimes show the wrong people are on death row.
That, to me, is reason enough to dump the death penalty. If Cordray thinks redoing a trial is difficult, he should try redoing an execution.
On a gut level, I think some crimes merit death. Some evils make me lose all sympathy for the perpetrators.
The problem, of course, is making certain we get the right perpetrators. Too often, we don't.
The American Civil Liberties Union reports that since 1973, 123 people nationwide have been released from death row because they were innocent. Seven others were executed even though they probably were innocent. A study reported in the Stanford Law Review documents 350 capital convictions in which it was later proven the convict had not committed the crime. Of those, 25 people were executed. Fifty-five of the 350 cases took place in the 1970s, and another 20 between 1980 and 1985.
In many instances, DNA evidence is what sets innocent men free. Such evidence is relatively new -- it wasn't available when many people were wrongly convicted. A lengthy appeals process saved their lives, by keeping them alive until forensic evidence could prove their innocence.
The idea that innocent people might be run over while society seeks justice is appalling. When the issue is whether to take someone's life, "correct most of the time" is a worthless standard.
Today, about 3,350 people are on death row nationwide, the ACLU reports. Almost all are poor, many are mentally disabled, more than 40 percent are black and a disproportionate number are American Indian, Latino or Asian.
Ohio has 175 inmates on death row, Cordray's office reported last week. About half are black.
Some of these condemned may be innocent. How many are we willing to sacrifice?
Some argue capital punishment deters crime. Studies disagree with that claim. States that have death penalty laws do not have lower crime or murder rates than states without. States that abolished capital punishment show no significant changes in crime or murder rates, the ACLU says.
The Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit resource center in Washington, D.C., cites a national survey showing most police chiefs say the death penalty doesn't reduce homicides, because murderers don't think about possible punishments.
Think about most of those who commit crimes that could land them on death row. They're not our best and brightest. They often have limited ability to think beyond the next five minutes. They are in a rage, or hopped up on drugs, or desperate for their next fix. The last thing they are likely to consider is the consequences of their actions.
One more data point: A Death Penalty Information Center analysis of statistics from 2001 to 2007 shows Southern states, which execute far more inmates than the rest of the U.S. combined, have consistently had the highest per capita murder rates.
Some deterrent.
The ACLU cites numerous studies that show racial disparities in how the death penalty is applied. People who kill whites are more likely to receive a death sentence than those who kill minorities. Blacks who kill whites have the greatest chance of receiving a death sentence.
Cordray has said the appeals process properly results in second looks at some cases. Good for him. The next step is for him to realize that such instances are reason enough to flush the death penalty. He should use his office to promote such change.
According to Cordray's report, there are 21 inmates on Ohio's death row whose appeals are all but exhausted. Are any of them innocent? Maybe not, but I wonder. Is it worth the risk of executing them? No.
Evidence shows we have an imperfect judicial system, run by fallible human beings. Our courts get a lot of things right, and they have a lot of built-in protections to help assure they do. Still, mistakes are made. The merciful, sensible, moral thing to do is to not put convicts to death in the first place. We should work toward that.
In the meantime, let's not start erasing vital protections just to save time and fuss.
We're talking about human life here. It's worth the time and fuss.
Steve Goble is a copy editor and page designer for the News Journal. Look for his column, "It's Debatable," in the Community Conversation section every Sunday, and visit his blog on our Web site. E-mail him at sgoble@nncogannett.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What if They Gave an Execution and No One Came?
The state of Washington now finds itself without an executioner, following the abrupt resignation of its lethal injection team. The four volunteers who administer lethal injections to death-row inmates at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla quit their positions because of fears their identities might become revealed as a result of a judicial ruling. A state judge, Chris Wickham, wanted to review the four individuals’ credentials, qualifications and experience in administering lethal drugs as part of a lawsuit filed by death-row inmates over the constitutionality of the execution procedure. The judge would not have revealed any information that would have personally identified the team members, but apparently the individuals were still worried about having their records held under seal at the state attorney general’s office.
Currently, there are no executions scheduled in Washington, which gives officials time to assemble a new team. The state Department of Corrections has been in touch with officials in other states in case Washington has to “borrow” a lethal-injection team. Washington has not had an execution since August 2001.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Currently, there are no executions scheduled in Washington, which gives officials time to assemble a new team. The state Department of Corrections has been in touch with officials in other states in case Washington has to “borrow” a lethal-injection team. Washington has not had an execution since August 2001.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Friday, 3 April 2009
State's execution team resigns, fearing identities would be reveale,"
From the Blog Standdown :
Friday, April 03, 2009
More from Washington State
is today's Seattle Times report.
Four people who have volunteered to administer lethal injections to death-row inmates at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla quit their positions this week, apparently worried that their identities could become public as a result of an ongoing court case to decide whether lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
The four resigned Tuesday, which was the deadline Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Wickham had set for the team's records -- detailing the members' credentials, qualifications and experience in administering lethal drugs -- to be submitted for his review.
The state is now without a lethal-injection team, and it's unclear what effect the resignations will have on the court proceedings.
Death-row inmate Darold Stenson, who was sentenced to die in 1994 for killing his wife and business partner, filed his lawsuit last year, claiming that lethal injection can result in excruciating pain if not administered correctly.
Two other death-row inmates, Jonathan Gentry and Cal Coburn Brown, later filed similar suits, and the three cases were consolidated. Gentry was convicted in 1991 in Kitsap County of fatally bludgeoning 12-year-old Cassie Holden near Bremerton in 1981. Brown raped, tortured and murdered Holly Washa, 22, of Burien, in 1991.
The resignations are "a surprising and disturbing development," said Scott Englehard, the attorney representing Gentry. "This issue has nothing to do with guarding their identities."
Englehard said the plaintiff's attorneys already agreed that no identifying information related to the team members would be disclosed. The records were to be reviewed in camera, a time-honored legal tradition in which only a judge sees sensitive and confidential documents and then decides what information attorneys will be privy to, he said.
His client and the other plaintiffs have a right to inquire about the team's "experience or qualifications to properly carry out a lethal-injection execution," Englehard said.
Dan Sytman, a spokesman for State Attorney General Rob McKenna, confirmed the resignations and said the four were worried about Wickham's order to have their records held under seal inside the state attorney general's office. Typically, those records are kept in the office of the superintendent at the state penitentiary in Walla Walla, he said.
And:
The team members' identities are a closely guarded secret, known only to a handful of people, said Eldon Vail, secretary of the state DOC. He said even he doesn't know who's on the team.
"Historically and in the future, we'll do everything we can to guard their identities," Vail said. "It's not easy finding individuals" willing to serve on the lethal-injection team, and anyone who participates in an execution does so voluntarily.
There are currently no scheduled executions, "so we have some time" to figure out how to go about assembling a new team, Vail said. He's been in touch with other officials in other states, who have agreed to send a lethal-injection team to Washington if needed, but only if members' names are kept confidential.
AP reports, "Washington state's execution team resigns," via Google News.
Four people designated to administer lethal injections to death-row inmates at the Washington State Penitentiary have resigned, apparently worried that their identities could become public in court.
The Seattle Times reported Thursday that the four resigned Tuesday for fear that their names would become known as a result of litigation on whether lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
Tuesday was the deadline to give Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Wickham records detailing the execution team members' credentials, qualifications and experience in administering lethal drugs.
Darold Stenson, sentenced to die in 1994 for killing his wife and business partner, filed a lawsuit last year contending that lethal injection can result in excruciating pain if not administered correctly. Stenson's execution date had been set for September before being postponed because of the court case.
Two other death-row inmates, Jonathan Gentry and Cal Coburn Brown, have filed similar lawsuits and the cases were consolidated before Wickham.
In December the state prison system's chief physician, Dr. Marc Stern, resigned because he said preparing for an execution would violate medical ethics.
The execution team's resignations leave the state without personnel to perform lethal injections. The agency will begin assembling a new team, and officials said other states have agreed to send a lethal injection team to Washington if needed.
Yesterday's initial coverage of the mass resignation is noted here.
Friday, 20 March 2009
Death penalty rift in states continues
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=385489
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Death penalty rift in states continues
By John Gramlich, Stateline.org Staff Writer
Gov. Bill Richardson’s decision Wednesday (March 18) to repeal New Mexico’s death penalty and replace it with a maximum sentence of life without parole is being hailed by supporters as a major victory in the decades-old debate over state-sanctioned executions.
But the decision—which follows New Jersey’s repeal in 2007 and brings to 15 the number of states that do not execute inmates—also underscores the nuanced modern landscape of capital punishment.
Click on link to read ths story :
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=385489
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Death penalty rift in states continues
By John Gramlich, Stateline.org Staff Writer
Gov. Bill Richardson’s decision Wednesday (March 18) to repeal New Mexico’s death penalty and replace it with a maximum sentence of life without parole is being hailed by supporters as a major victory in the decades-old debate over state-sanctioned executions.
But the decision—which follows New Jersey’s repeal in 2007 and brings to 15 the number of states that do not execute inmates—also underscores the nuanced modern landscape of capital punishment.
Click on link to read ths story :
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=385489
Campaign to End the Death Penalty Celebrates Abolition in New Mexico
Campaign to End the Death Penalty Celebrates Abolition in New Mexico
Governor Bill Richardson did the right thing when he signed House Bill 285, which outlawed the death penalty. New Mexico now becomes the 15th state without the death penalty, and the second state to abolish it legislatively, after New Jersey in 2007. Activists who worked for repeal are celebrating their hard-fought victory, which took thousands of people making phone calls, writing letters and attending rallies. As Christy Armell from the Albuquerque chapter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty says, “it’s a great time for all New Mexicans, but also for this country, as we are setting an example that there is no need for the death penalty and it is not good public policy. New Mexico has spoken loud and clear and we have chosen to become part of the 14 other states that understand respect for life means every life. I am proud to be a New Mexican today.”
Passage of the legislation represents a growing recognition that the death penalty is too flawed to fix and has no place in a just society. As Governor Richardson said, “From an international human rights perspective, there is no reason the United States should be behind the rest of the world on this issue. Many of the countries that continue to support and use the death penalty are also the most repressive nations in the world. That's not something to be proud of.”
Richardson also recognized that race is a persistent factor in who gets the death penalty, and that all too often it condemns the innocent to die. He spoke for a growing number of people, both in New Mexico and around the country when he said, “I don’t have confidence in the criminal justice system as it currently operates to be the final arbiter when it comes to who lives and who dies for their crime. If the State is going to undertake this awesome responsibility, the system to impose this ultimate penalty must be perfect and can never be wrong.”
The death penalty in New Mexico and around the country did get it wrong. Four men, Thomas Gladich, Richard Greer, Ronald Keine and Clarence Smith, were sentenced to die for crimes they did not commit and later exonerated, while only one person has been executed there since reinstatement of the death penalty in 1977. Nationally, 130 people have been exonerated from death rows. Passage of this legislation is a victory for future New Mexicans who will no longer risk death for crimes they did not commit. We urge other states around the country, some of which also are considering abolition legislation, to follow in the footsteps of New Mexico and get rid of their own death penalty systems.
Our fight in New Mexico, however, is not over. House Bill 285 was not retroactive, and the two men on death row, Robert Fry and Timothy Allen, still face execution. We are disappointed that Governor Richardson has stated that he will not commute their sentences, and we call on him to reconsider, as any use of the death penalty, as he himself implied, violates the standards of a society that values human rights.
It is also the case that HB 285 introduced a Life Without Parole (LWOP) sentence in a state where it did not previously exist. Just as it does with the death penalty, the United States lags behind much of the world in its use of LWOP, another brutal, inhumane sentence that former California death row prisoner Stanley Tookie Williams, who was executed in 2005 despite his remarkable personal transformation, called “slow death in a cage”. The struggle for justice continues, in New Mexico and around the country.
Call (773)955-4841 for more information about the Campaign to End the Death Penalty
To donate, visit http://www.nodeathpenalty.org
Governor Bill Richardson did the right thing when he signed House Bill 285, which outlawed the death penalty. New Mexico now becomes the 15th state without the death penalty, and the second state to abolish it legislatively, after New Jersey in 2007. Activists who worked for repeal are celebrating their hard-fought victory, which took thousands of people making phone calls, writing letters and attending rallies. As Christy Armell from the Albuquerque chapter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty says, “it’s a great time for all New Mexicans, but also for this country, as we are setting an example that there is no need for the death penalty and it is not good public policy. New Mexico has spoken loud and clear and we have chosen to become part of the 14 other states that understand respect for life means every life. I am proud to be a New Mexican today.”
Passage of the legislation represents a growing recognition that the death penalty is too flawed to fix and has no place in a just society. As Governor Richardson said, “From an international human rights perspective, there is no reason the United States should be behind the rest of the world on this issue. Many of the countries that continue to support and use the death penalty are also the most repressive nations in the world. That's not something to be proud of.”
Richardson also recognized that race is a persistent factor in who gets the death penalty, and that all too often it condemns the innocent to die. He spoke for a growing number of people, both in New Mexico and around the country when he said, “I don’t have confidence in the criminal justice system as it currently operates to be the final arbiter when it comes to who lives and who dies for their crime. If the State is going to undertake this awesome responsibility, the system to impose this ultimate penalty must be perfect and can never be wrong.”
The death penalty in New Mexico and around the country did get it wrong. Four men, Thomas Gladich, Richard Greer, Ronald Keine and Clarence Smith, were sentenced to die for crimes they did not commit and later exonerated, while only one person has been executed there since reinstatement of the death penalty in 1977. Nationally, 130 people have been exonerated from death rows. Passage of this legislation is a victory for future New Mexicans who will no longer risk death for crimes they did not commit. We urge other states around the country, some of which also are considering abolition legislation, to follow in the footsteps of New Mexico and get rid of their own death penalty systems.
Our fight in New Mexico, however, is not over. House Bill 285 was not retroactive, and the two men on death row, Robert Fry and Timothy Allen, still face execution. We are disappointed that Governor Richardson has stated that he will not commute their sentences, and we call on him to reconsider, as any use of the death penalty, as he himself implied, violates the standards of a society that values human rights.
It is also the case that HB 285 introduced a Life Without Parole (LWOP) sentence in a state where it did not previously exist. Just as it does with the death penalty, the United States lags behind much of the world in its use of LWOP, another brutal, inhumane sentence that former California death row prisoner Stanley Tookie Williams, who was executed in 2005 despite his remarkable personal transformation, called “slow death in a cage”. The struggle for justice continues, in New Mexico and around the country.
Call (773)955-4841 for more information about the Campaign to End the Death Penalty
To donate, visit http://www.nodeathpenalty.org
STATEMENT BY BENJAMIN TODD JEALOUS
For
Immediate Release
March 19, 2009
CONTACT:
Leila McDowell
202/463-2940 ext. 1005
STATEMENT BY BENJAMIN TODD JEALOUS
PRESIDENT AND CEO OF THE NAACP
ON NEW MEXICO’S REPEAL OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and the state legislature made the right decision in repealing capital punishment. The governor’s inspirational leadership is an exemplar of the intersection of morality and wise governance that serves our nation well.
We congratulate our New Mexico State Conference and Sante Fe Branch that worked tirelessly to support the repeal. Their efforts helped result in a strong bipartisan vote in the New Mexico legislature reflecting a growing consensus that the death penalty has failed the people of New Mexico. They are joining millions of citizens nationwide who understand that capital punishment risks executing the innocent, is unfairly applied, fails victims’ families and law enforcement and wastes scarce taxpayer dollars .
Coretta Scott King said, "As one whose husband and mother-in-law have both died as the victims of murder assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by legalized murder."
Coretta’s prescient quote presaged a growing chorus of deep concern about the death penalty across the country.
In this time of fiscal crisis, it is more important than ever to make smart choices when it comes to meeting the needs of our citizens. By repealing the death penalty, New Mexico can now focus resources on the important issue of providing tangible assistance to the families of murder victims.. Additional measures making their way through the legislature will enable New Mexico to use the savings gained from ending the death penalty to provide a reparation award to children of murder victims, provide services and programs to murder victims’ families, create a murder victim family services fund and require employers to provide leave to crime victims to attend judicial proceedings.
Governor Bill Richardson and the state legislature are to be applauded for their moral courage. In doing so, they light a candle for smart crime policies for our entire nation. We sincerely hope that their enlightened leadership will clear a path for other states to follow.
Founded in 1909, the NAACP--the nation's oldest, largest and most widely-recognized grassroots–based civil rights organization—is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Its more than half-million members and supporters throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.
Immediate Release
March 19, 2009
CONTACT:
Leila McDowell
202/463-2940 ext. 1005
STATEMENT BY BENJAMIN TODD JEALOUS
PRESIDENT AND CEO OF THE NAACP
ON NEW MEXICO’S REPEAL OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and the state legislature made the right decision in repealing capital punishment. The governor’s inspirational leadership is an exemplar of the intersection of morality and wise governance that serves our nation well.
We congratulate our New Mexico State Conference and Sante Fe Branch that worked tirelessly to support the repeal. Their efforts helped result in a strong bipartisan vote in the New Mexico legislature reflecting a growing consensus that the death penalty has failed the people of New Mexico. They are joining millions of citizens nationwide who understand that capital punishment risks executing the innocent, is unfairly applied, fails victims’ families and law enforcement and wastes scarce taxpayer dollars .
Coretta Scott King said, "As one whose husband and mother-in-law have both died as the victims of murder assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by legalized murder."
Coretta’s prescient quote presaged a growing chorus of deep concern about the death penalty across the country.
In this time of fiscal crisis, it is more important than ever to make smart choices when it comes to meeting the needs of our citizens. By repealing the death penalty, New Mexico can now focus resources on the important issue of providing tangible assistance to the families of murder victims.. Additional measures making their way through the legislature will enable New Mexico to use the savings gained from ending the death penalty to provide a reparation award to children of murder victims, provide services and programs to murder victims’ families, create a murder victim family services fund and require employers to provide leave to crime victims to attend judicial proceedings.
Governor Bill Richardson and the state legislature are to be applauded for their moral courage. In doing so, they light a candle for smart crime policies for our entire nation. We sincerely hope that their enlightened leadership will clear a path for other states to follow.
Founded in 1909, the NAACP--the nation's oldest, largest and most widely-recognized grassroots–based civil rights organization—is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Its more than half-million members and supporters throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.
Sunday, 15 March 2009
Gov. Richardson to Decide Future of Death Penalty in NM
by Mary Shaw
On Friday, March 13, the New Mexico Senate voted 24-18 to repeal the death penalty in that state. This action follows a corresponding vote in the New Mexico House of Representatives in February.So the bill is on its way to Governor Bill Richardson's desk. The future of the death penalty in New Mexico is now in his hands.And, unfortunately, he appears to be on the fence.After yesterday's legislative victory, Richardson issued the following statement on the subject:
"This is an extremely difficult issue that deserved the serious and thoughtful debate it received in the Legislature. I have met with many people and will continue to consider all sides of the issue before making a decision."The governor has three days from the time he receives the bill until he must take action (excluding Sunday).
I urge everyone interested in this important issue to contact Governor Richardson today and ask him to support the death penalty repeal.
You can call the governor's office at 505-476-2200 or email him through his website at http://www.governor.state.nm.us/.
If you are undecided on the issue, like Richardson, or if you want to refer to some talking points while contacting his office, here is a summary of the reasons why I personally oppose the death penalty:
The death penalty is applied unevenly and unfairly, and minorities are victimized in the process. Studies in several states have shown that the death penalty is applied in a discriminatory, arbitrary, and uneven manner, and is used disproportionately against racial minorities and the poor.
For example, a 1998 study of death sentences in Philadelphia found that African-American defendants were almost four times more likely to receive the death penalty than were people of other ethnic origins who committed similar crimes. Where is the justice here?
In addition to its biased application, the death penalty is demonstrably not a deterrent, and is irreversible, which is a problem given so many cases of death row inmates who have been exonerated after conviction, based on DNA or other evidence. (How many other innocent persons weren't lucky enough to be proven innocent prior to their executions? We know of at least a few.)
On a more philosophical note, Amnesty International describes the death penalty as "the ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights."These are some of the reasons why most European nations have abolished the death penalty.
It has been more than a year since New Jersey abolished the death penalty, and prosecutors -- yes, prosecutors! -- in that state have found no problems with the new system, which replaced execution with life in prison without parole.
Ergo, I see no good reason to retain the death penalty, but a lot of good reasons to abolish it.Fingers crossed for New Mexico.
http://www.maryshawonline.com/
http://www.maryshawonline.com/
Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist, with a focus on politics, human rights, and social justice. She is a former Philadelphia Area Coordinator for the Nobel-Prize-winning human rights group Amnesty International, and her views (more...)
Friday, 13 March 2009
Capital punishment in New Mexico
The New Mexican
3/12/2009 - 3/13/09
3/12/2009 - 3/13/09
Here's a list of all legal executions performed by the New Mexico Department of Corrections (between 1913 and 1929 all executions there were the responsibilities of individual county sheriffs):
July 21, 1933: Two men die in the state's new electric chair. The first was Thomas Johnson, a black man convicted of killing 18-year-old Angelina Jaramillo, who had been raped and killed in her Santa Fe home. Through the years some have claimed that Johnson was framed by authorities. Author Ralph Melnick wrote a book called Justice Betrayed (2002) in which he argues Johnson was innocent and the guilty party was part of the victim's family. Melnick points out that Johnson's race constantly was made an issue in The New Mexican at the time, with Johnson frequently referred to as "The Negro" in this newspaper's stories and headlines. The paper even ran an editorial saying the killing was evidence that black people should not be permitted to live in Santa Fe.
Santiago Garduño was executed the same day as Johnson. He was convicted of murdering his stepson. Garduño gave the boy a drink of whiskey laced with strychnine.
May 10, 1946: Pedro Talamonte, who was convicted in Gallup of murdering his 25-year-old wife.
June 13, 1947: Louis Young was the second black man accused of killing a white or Hispanic Santa Fe woman to die in the electric chair. Young was a prison inmate who worked as personal handyman at the prison warden's home which was near the victim's house. Young confessed to the crime following a late-night interrogation in his cell by authorities, though he soon recanted, saying the confession was forced. Despite efforts by civil rights organizations throughout the state, Young was executed.
Feb. 19, 1954: Arthur Johnson, who was convicted of murdering and robbing a Hobbs man.
Oct. 29, 1954: Frederick Heisler, who was convicted of murdering a man who had given him a ride hitchhiking.
Feb. 24, 1956: James Larry Upton, who also was convicted of murdering a man who had given him a ride hitchhiking. According to newspaper accounts, several spectators at his electrocution were drunk and rowdy.
Jan. 8, 1960: David Cooper Nelson, who was the first and only New Mexico inmate to die in the gas chamber. He was the third New Mexico inmate to be executed after being convicted of murdering a man who had given him a ride hitchhiking.
Nov. 6, 2001: Terry Clark was convicted of the 1986 murder of 9-year-old Dena Lynn Gore in Artesia. Clark voluntarily halted his appeals process. He, so far, is the only New Mexico to be executed by lethal injection.
Death-penalty debate: Decades of doubt
Death-penalty debate: Decades of doubt
Photo: Nov. 6, 2001: Maria Santelli, left, and Rian Haney pause for a moment of silence after Terry Clark is executed. Clark, who was convicted of the 1986 murder of 9-year-old Dena Lynn Gore in Artesia, voluntarily halted his appeals process. He is the only person in New Mexico to be executed by lethal injection.
After centuries of commuted sentences and controversy, state closer than ever to repealing capital punishment
Photo: Nov. 6, 2001: Maria Santelli, left, and Rian Haney pause for a moment of silence after Terry Clark is executed. Clark, who was convicted of the 1986 murder of 9-year-old Dena Lynn Gore in Artesia, voluntarily halted his appeals process. He is the only person in New Mexico to be executed by lethal injection.
After centuries of commuted sentences and controversy, state closer than ever to repealing capital punishment
Steve Terrell The New Mexican
3/12/2009 - 3/11/09
New Mexico for centuries has been reluctant to execute criminals, even though the state has had some form of capital punishment law on its books for virtually all of its history since the Spanish colonial era.
Even during the blazing days of the Wild West, judges routinely requested Territorial governors commute death sentences. And governors frequently complied. Some governors even spoke out against the death penalty.
Why the reluctance? Some speculate it's the influence of the Catholic Church. At least one historian says it might have roots in a series of executions in 1847 by the U.S. government of native New Mexicans who rebelled against the American occupation of New Mexico.
History might be in the making. The state Senate appears to be closer to codifying that reluctance by repealing the death penalty than it has been in decades, and Gov. Bill Richardson, who in the past has supported the death penalty, recently has dropped hints that he could sign the abolition. At a news conference this week, Richardson stressed he had not made up his mind on the issue and would be talking to advocates on both sides if House Bill 285 is passed by the Senate.
The bill, which passed in the Senate Judiciary Committee this week — a hurdle that identical bills have failed to clear in recent years — is expected to go to the Senate floor for a vote as early as today.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Gail Chasey, D-Albuquerque — who has been carrying capital punishment repeal bills for the past decade — would eliminate the sentence of lethal injection, replacing it with life in prison without possibility of parole. Currently a life sentence means the convict isn't eligible for parole for at least 30 years.
Here is a look at the history of the death penalty in New Mexico.
A tradition of reluctance: In this year's capital punishment debate in the Legislature, both sides have referred to the fact that in the past 49 years only one person — child rapist and killer Terry Clark — has been executed. And Clark, who was lethally injected in November 2001, voluntarily ended his appeals process, which had gone on for 15 years.
Death penalty opponents use this to illustrate that the death penalty is not a useful law-enforcement tool and that keeping the law on the books only wastes money on lengthy appeals.
Supporters say the fact there are so few executions only proves that the state has been properly cautious in applying capital punishment.
But it's not just in recent years that New Mexico has appeared reluctant to impose the ultimate sentence.
Former State Historian Robert J. Torrez, author of a 2008 book called Myth of the Hanging Tree: Stories of Crime and Punishment in Territorial New Mexico, said in an interview this week that New Mexico juries, an sometimes even judges, never have been anxious to sentence criminals to death.
"There were only two capital cases in the Spanish colonial period," Torrez said. Each of those cases involved two defendants, which means there were only four executions during that time, Torrez said. One case was in 1779, the other in 1809.
It's likely the influence of the Catholic Church had something to do with those low numbers. Allan Sanchez, executive director of the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that after the Inquisition in the mid-1500s, the Church "pulled back and looked at its theology." In the 1700s and 1800s, the church doctrine was that if a criminal could be rendered harmless to society, he shouldn't be executed, Sanchez said.
During the period when New Mexico was under the Mexican government, 1821-1846, there are no records of any executions being carried out, Torrez said. He agreed it's possible that some records from those years have been lost.
During New Mexico's Territorial period, 1846-1913, there were a total of 51 legal executions by state and local authorities, all by hanging. According to Torrez's book, there were about 100 convictions in state courts during that time for first-degree murder, which at the time carried an automatic death sentence.
Some died in prison and a few escaped. But nearly half who weren't executed were pardoned or had their sentences commuted by the territorial governor.
In many cases, Torrez points out, territorial judges themselves — who had no say in the sentence because of the automatic death penalty — requested clemency from the governor because of some extenuating circumstance.
Torrez's execution figures in the Territorial days do not include the 20 New Mexicans who were hung after being convicted by military courts for an insurrection, sometimes called "The Taos Rebellion." This revolt against the American occupation took place in 1847.
These executions, which Torrez calls "the harsh introduction of American jurisprudence," might explain why juries and even judges were not so gung-ho on capital punishment, the historian said. He notes that the counties that bore the brunt of the retaliation by American forces — Taos, Rio Arriba and Mora — had some of the lowest rates of convictions in capital cases during Territorial days.
Some territorial governors spoke out against the death penalty, Torrez wrote. Although he signed the death warrant for the last man hanged during the Territorial period, Gov. George Curry told lawmakers that capital punishment was not a deterrent to crime and that an execution "involves an element of revenge repugnant to civilization." And in 1851, Gov. James Calhoun told the Legislature, "Humanity shudders at the thought of capital punishment."
Electric chairs, gas chambers:
In the early years of statehood, from 1913 to 1923, there were 20 legal executions. Twelve of those hanged were Mexican nationals.
In 1929, the Legislature passed a law making it the state's responsibility, rather than individual county sheriffs, to carry out executions. The method of execution was changed from hanging to electrocution.
The state's electric chair was first used in 1933. It would be used a total of seven times between that year and 1956. Reporter and author Tony Hillerman, who died last year, covered the 1956 execution of James Larry Upton for The New Mexican.
"I did a sidebar for the paper on the kind of Roman holiday they made out of this execution," Hillerman said in a 1999 interview with The New Mexican. "They had it in a big room, in the old penitentiary near downtown. They had about 110 drunk sheriff's posse types in there celebrating. It was really a grisly kind of thing. The politicos controlled the tickets. It was kind of like getting tickets to a Lobos-Utah game."
Upton had been composed and ready to die, Hillerman recalled. "Then he sees this great mob of drunken louts gaping at him like a circus." The grim spectacle of the execution apparently prompted the Legislature to passed a law limiting witnesses for executions.
By 1960, the method of execution changed again. Gas chambers were now in vogue around the country. But only one person would be executed that way in this state, David Nelson Cooper, who was executed in January 1960
.
Ten years later, the Legislature passed a law eliminating the death penalty for any crime except the murder of a law enforcement officer. Gov. David Cargo commuted the sentences of the inmates on death row. Cargo said in a 1998 interview with The New Mexican that there were "two or three" inmates whose sentences were commuted.
In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down death penalty laws, saying capital punishment was administered unevenly by the various states and thus was cruel and unusual punishment.
The next year, New Mexico's Legislature overwhelmingly passed a law similar to the old Territorial law, making execution automatic for anyone convicted of first-degree murder.
Although nobody was executed in New Mexico under that law before it was struck down as unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court, four members of a California motorcycle gang during that period were sentenced to death for the murder of a man in Albuquerque. The four eventually were exonerated and released after the chief witness admitted she lied on the witness stand and the true killer confessed and led authorities to the murder weapon.
Capital punishment today:
In 1979, the Legislature passed the current law. Only those convicted of first-degree murder with aggravating circumstances are eligible for execution.
Those circumstances include: killing a law-enforcement officer or a prison guard, killing a fellow inmate, killing while trying to escape from incarceration, murder for hire, murdering to prevent a witness of a crime from testifying and murder while trying to commit rape, kidnapping or child molestation.
Death row began to fill up again. The last time a Santa Fe jury imposed a death sentence was in 1983, when Ricky Garcia, a prison inmate, was sentenced to die for killing a guard.
But in November 1986, outgoing Gov. Toney Anaya surprised the nation by commuting the sentences of Garcia and the other four killers awaiting execution. Although he was blasted by many in the state, Anaya on Wednesday said he feels good about the fact the current repeal bill should at least come close to passing.
"Sometimes a good idea takes a long time," he said. In 1999, Clark, who was sentenced to death shortly after Anaya left office, first said he wanted to drop his appeals. He changed his mind several months later, but by 2001 he made the request again and this time a judge agreed with his wishes.
On Nov. 6, 2001, hired executioners from the Texas Corrections Department injected Clark with lethal doses of drugs purchased through the state Health Department.
Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com.
Read his political blog at roundhouseroundup.com.
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Mixed Opinions of a Judge Accused of Misconduct
Mixed Opinions of a Judge Accused of Misconduct
A refusal to accept a last-minute appeal in a death penalty case could end the career of a top judge in Texas.
By GRETEL C. KOVACH
By GRETEL C. KOVACH
Published: March 7, 2009
DALLAS — If Sharon Keller, the presiding judge of Texas’ highest criminal court, has ever doubted her judgment, she has not shown it.
Elena Grothe/Austin American-Statesman
Sharon Keller, who was first elected to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 1994, is now its presiding judge.
In 1998, Judge Keller wrote the opinion rejecting a new trial for Roy Criner, a mentally retarded man convicted of rape and murder, even though DNA tests after his trial showed that it was not his semen in the victim.
“We can’t give new trials to everyone who establishes, after conviction, that they might be innocent,” she later told the television news program “Frontline.” “We would have no finality in the criminal justice system, and finality is important.”
Gov. George W. Bush eventually pardoned Mr. Criner.
To Judge Keller’s detractors, the Criner decision highlighted what they see as her strong and habitual bias for the prosecution. Many Texas defense lawyers describe her as a law-and-order zealot who rejects most appeals out of hand. Her defenders argue that she has been fair and impartial, though unabashedly conservative, in her interpretation of the law.
Now, Judge Keller is again defending her actions, this time in a judicial misconduct case that could end her career.
Seventeen months ago, lawyers for a man facing execution sought extra time to file a last-minute appeal. Judge Keller refused to delay the closing of her clerk’s office past 5 p.m., even though late filings are common on the day of a scheduled execution. The man, Michael Richard, was put to death by lethal injection a few hours later.
Based on that case, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct last month charged Judge Keller with incompetence, violating her duties and casting public discredit on the judiciary.
Judge Keller, who was first elected chief judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 2000, faces a public trial and could be forced off the bench.
Her lawyer insists that she did nothing wrong and that she was being blamed for the mistakes of the defendant’s lawyers and court staff.
Judge Keller, whose current term runs through 2012, rarely grants interviews and did not respond to requests for comment. But others are taking up her cause.
“Sharon is a hard worker,” said Dan Hagood, a defense lawyer and longtime friend from Dallas who served as her campaign treasurer when she ran for election to the court in 1994. “She never complains, never explains.”
Judge Keller, 55, has always kept her own counsel; her colleagues at the court have given her the nickname Mother Superior because of her reserved and diligent demeanor and her devout Roman Catholic faith.
Friends say she is witty and well read, an engaging conversationalist in one-on-one encounters over cocktails, but the quietest one at the table at weekly card games with fellow alumni of Rice University.
What some consider rigid heartlessness in her legal opinions, others admire as calm confidence and the strength of her convictions.
“She doesn’t have a callous bone in her body,” said Knox Fitzpatrick, a lawyer who works with her on the state’s Task Force on Indigent Defense. “She has the highest standard of ethics; she is the ideal judge. Emotions have nothing to do with it: She follows the law, she looks at the facts and makes a dispassionate opinion.”
But Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, described Judge Keller as “unhearing.”
“She’s just totally shut down on capital cases,” Mr. Harrington said. “It’s one thing to take a hard line in terms of punishments and convictions. It’s another to not be receptive to the idea that people are entitled to an appeal, that there may be error in this system.”
Supporters point out, however, that under Judge Keller’s leadership as chairwoman of the task force, Texas has expanded the number of public defender offices to 15, from 7; increased the number of people represented by about 38 percent; and raised state spending on the program to almost $60 million, from $19 million.
People also say they admire how Judge Keller has raised her son as a single mother and how close she is with her extended family, which financed the bulk of her campaign to join the court.
Judge Keller had graduated from Rice with a degree in philosophy when her father, the founder of a Dallas chain of hamburger and beer drive-ins, encouraged her to study law, which she did at Southern Methodist University. After a brief stint as a defense lawyer, she joined the Dallas district attorney’s office in 1987 and became a star of the appellate division.
In 1994, she campaigned for an opening on the Court of Criminal Appeals, describing herself as “pro-prosecution.” She was elected along with a number of conservative Republican female justices, the same year that Mr. Bush ousted Ann Richards as governor.
Within a few years, the nine-member Court of Criminal Appeals had flipped from being all Democrats to all Republicans. And the rate of reversal of death penalty cases plummeted.
“I think she epitomizes what a judge should be: a fair and impartial umpire,” said Mr. Hagood, the Dallas defense lawyer.
But Charlie Baird, a Democrat who was voted off the Court of Criminal Appeals in 1998, said bitterly that Judge Keller remained true to her campaign promises.
“It was always one-sided to her, and her side was the state always wins,” Mr. Baird said. “She was always advancing a purely political agenda on behalf of far-right Republicans.”
Now Judge Keller is being forced to explain her actions of Sept. 25, 2007, the day Mr. Richard was executed.
According to the judicial conduct commission’s notice of formal proceedings, Mr. Richard, who had confessed to the rape and fatal shooting of a nurse in 1986, was scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. Earlier that day, his lawyers were busy drafting filings based on his mental capacity when the United States Supreme Court announced that it would hear arguments considering the constitutionality of lethal injections.
Mr. Richard’s lawyers switched tactics to take advantage of the development.
As 5 p.m. approached, lawyers with the nonprofit Texas Defender Service were having computer problems. They called the court and asked for a few extra minutes to file.
Judge Keller had gone home early that afternoon to meet a repairman, and the court counsel, Edward Marty, reached her by telephone to ask if they could keep the clerk’s office open.
A week later, in an interview with The Austin American-Statesman, Judge Keller offered her account of what had happened.
“I got a phone call shortly before 5 and was told the defendant had asked us to stay open,” she said. “They did not tell us they had computer failure. And given the late request, and with no reason given, I just said, ‘We close at 5.’ I didn’t really think of it as a decision so much as a statement.”
Another judge was waiting at the court for after-hours pleadings in the case but was never notified of the communications from the defense, as required by court policy, the commission concluded. Mr. Richard was executed at 8:20 p.m.
Judge Keller’s lawyer, Charles L. Babcock, said that many people shared in a failure of communication that day and that her role was minor.
“Hindsight being 20/20, I think Judge Keller is certainly sorry that the system broke down,” Mr. Babcock said. “As far as her overt actions, I don’t think she feels she did anything wrong. Nor do I.”
A version of this article appeared in print on March 8, 2009, on page A14 of the New York edition.
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
Correct a Terrible Mistake
From the Standdown Blog :
That's the title of a Baltimore Sun OpEd by former Maryland Speaker of the House Casper Taylor. LINK
In 28 years in the Maryland House of Delegates, nine as speaker, I cast thousands of votes. I have few regrets. But there is one vote I wish I could take back - my 1978 vote to reinstate the death penalty in Maryland.My vote seemed reasonable at the time. The Supreme Court had thrown out all state death penalty laws. Like other states, Maryland re-enacted the death penalty by approving a system that complied with new criteria established by the high court.
Today, that vote haunts me. Since reinstatement, Maryland's 30 years of experience with the death penalty have been a colossal failure. I now believe that life in prison without the possibility of parole is a better alternative. The majority of Marylanders agree.Late last year, a respected state commission chaired by former U.S. Attorney General Benjamin R. Civiletti conducted the most thorough examination of Maryland's death penalty ever performed. The commission's report is a terrifying indictment of the system our state government uses to take a life. It should be required reading for the General Assembly.
And:
Decades ago, I was sure that the death penalty made sense for the "worst of the worst."Today, thanks to the commission's report and all that we have learned about the death penalty since 1978, I can reconcile my moral convictions with a practical public policy decision. Replacing the death penalty with life without parole is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do.Capital punishment is rightfully on its way out in the United States. Maryland can and should be a national leader. I hope our state legislators will correct the mistake my colleagues and I made 31 years ago.
Earlier coverage of the Maryland legislation begins here.
Osborne : A case we`re watching
From the blog of The Innocence Project of Florida :
Arguments are set to begin in early March in the case of District Attorney’s Office for the Third Judicial District v. Osborne. This summary of the case comes from SCOTUSblog. (That site and its partner wiki, as always, are great sources of info, should you wish to read up more on the case.)
On March 2, 2009, in No. 08-6, District Attorney’s Office for the Third Judicial District v. Osborne, the Supreme Court will hear argument in a case that involves the relationship between the most cutting-edge DNA technology, capable of establishing guilt or innocence with unprecedented conclusiveness, and the longstanding constitutional right for the accused to receive fair process.
Fourteen years after his conviction for kidnapping and sexual assault, William Osborne seeks access to sperm deposited inside a condom found at the scene of the crime. At his own expense, he wishes to subject this evidence to sophisticated DNA testing, unavailable at the time of his trial, which he believes will definitively prove his innocence. During post-conviction proceedings, the state of Alaska denied Osborne access to this DNA evidence because of the other factors demonstrating his guilt. Osborne then brought a suit in federal court claiming that Alaska’s refusal to allow access to the evidence violated his due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Ninth Circuit agreed.
The Supreme Court must now address two decisions by the Ninth Circuit that have potentially far-reaching implications. First, the Ninth Circuit held that Osborne can bring a lawsuit against Alaska to access evidence instead of seeking a writ of habeas corpus, the procedural device afforded prisoners for invalidating a state conviction in federal court. The Ninth Circuit also held that the due process clause guarantees Osborne the right to access the DNA evidence so that he may ultimately bring a habeas corpus action to challenge his conviction.
In holding that Osborne has a right to access the DNA evidence, the Ninth Circuit also assumed without deciding a question that the Supreme Court has carefully avoided in the past ─ whether a prisoner with access to this evidence can then overturn his conviction by asserting a “freestanding innocence” claim, based solely on the ground that he is not guilty rather than on any trial defects. If the Supreme Court overturns the Ninth Circuit’s decision, it may have to grapple with this important question.
The Innocence Project in New York excerpts this article from McClatchy, in whichPeter Neufeld exhibits a genuine shock at the prosecution's stubbornness.
"Most prosecutors want to do justice and they want to get to the truth," Even if they believe deep down that a defendant is guilty, many also reason, "Fine, I'll give them the test. What's the downside? It's just a test - it's not letting them out of prison."
It should be obvious why our organization is watching this case very carefully. We are lucky in Florida, in the sense that a particular rule of the State's criminal procedure establishes the right for an inmate to file a motion to seek DNA testing. Florida is one of over 40 states that make such an allowance for people who have already been convicted of a crime. Alaska is one of the remaining handful of states that make no explicit allowance. In addition, Alaska has never granted an inmate post-conviction DNA testing.
We hope the Supreme Court can recognize what is at stake in this case. Many people were convicted and sentenced before the revolutionary advent of DNA testing. So far, over 230 people nationwide have been exonerated by testing biological evidence that remained since they were convicted. It is imperative that the Supreme Court recognize the gravity of those exonerations and the evidence they provide for the fallibility of our legal system, and extend the right to post-conviction DNA testing to all inmates in America.
Monday, 16 February 2009
Innocence Project of Florida Plans to Test Tompkins Evidence
Frank Lee SmithInnocence Project of Florida,
Inc.1100 East Park Avenue,
Tallahassee, FL 32301
Telephone 850.561.6767
Fax 850.561.5077
For Immediate Release
PRESS RELEASE
February 16, 2009
Contacts:Seth Miller, Esq.: 202.341.2127
Innocence Project of Florida Plans to Test Tompkins Evidence
Tompkins could be First Ever Executed Man to be Proven Innocent
Today the Innocence Project of Florida (IPF) reiterated its intent to test the remaining DNA evidence in the case of Wayne Tompkins. Mr. Tompkins was executed on Wednesday, February 11th, in Raiford, Florida after being found guilty of murdering Lisa DeCarr in 1983. IPF believes that further testing in the case could reveal that the body did not belong to the alleged victim, meaning Mr. Tompkins had been convicted of a murder that did not take place.
“We have a remarkable case with Mr. Tompkins,” said Seth Miller, Executive Director of the Innocence Project of Florida. “The State supported this match between the body and the victim with a partial dental record, which was pretty unconvincing. But on top of that, several people have signed affidavits saying that they’ve seen her alive since the murder.
If that’s the case, then Florida just killed an innocent man.
”If it were found that Mr. Tompkins was innocent of the 1983 murder, it would be the first case in American history of an executed man being scientifically proven innocent posthumously. In 2000, Frank Lee Smith was exonerated by DNA testing 11 months after he died of cancer on Florida’s Death Row.
IPF sent a letter to Florida Governor Charlie Crist on Tuesday, February 10th, urging him to stay Tompkins’ execution. On the next day IPF filed a motion asking a judge to notify the appropriate authorities of their statutory obligation to preserve the evidence in Mr. Tompkins’ case for 60 days after his execution. The Thirteenth Circuit Court granted that motion the same day.
“These agencies need to know we’re serious about going forward with testing, and we want to make sure they are preserving all of the evidence pursuant to Florida law,” said Miller.
“If the State Attorney is convinced that Mr. Tompkins was guilty, they should support testing to put the doubts to rest. We’ll pay for it, they just need to give us access to the evidence.”“We look forward to working with the State Attorney’s Office to get the DNA testing,” added Miller.
“We’re going to make sure we discover the truth in this case.
”The Innocence Project of Florida is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to finding and freeing innocent people in Florida prisons. IPF consulted on the DNA issues in the case of Wayne Tompkins.
Innocence Project of Florida
1100 East Park Ave
Tallahassee,
FL 32301
US
Saturday, 14 February 2009
National Academy of Sciences blasts Nation`s Crime Labs
Jimmy Ates
From the blog of the Innocence Project of Florida :
A report being released this month by the National Academy of Sciences is expected to be "a sweeping critique of many forensic methods that the police and prosecutors rely on," according to The New York Times last week.
People who have seen it say it is a sweeping critique of many forensic methods that the police and prosecutors rely on, including fingerprinting, firearms identification and analysis of bite marks, blood spatter, hair and handwriting.
The report says such analyses are often handled by poorly trained technicians who then exaggerate the accuracy of their methods in court.
It's authors recommend the creation of a federal agency "to finance research and training and promote universal standards in forensic science, a discipline that spans anthropology, biology, chemistry, physics, medicine and law." Oh, and it also "calls for tougher regulation of crime laboratories." Hmmm....is it a surprise then to find out that the report's publication was delayed by opposition from law enforcement?
What is it with these guys? The reason for using science in investigations is to find the truth -- not to exaggerate it, distort it or create it, but to find it. Why do so many law enforcement personnel and prosecutors react so negatively to attempts to discover the truth about a crime? In the words of The King, it never ceases to amaze me that we continue to get resistance from certain State Attorneys to DNA testing, and even AFTER we have exclusionary DNA results in a case, they continue to resist. I mean, what exactly is it that THEY are seeking? It's certainly not the truth, or they would welcome testing if the evidence is available.
And what really got my ticker going was learning that
the National Institute of Justice, a research arm of the Justice Department, tried to derail the forensic study by refusing to finance it and demanding to review the findings before publication. A bipartisan vote in Congress in 2005 broke the impasse with a $1.5 million appropriation.
That's our National Institute of Justice, a misnomer if I've ever heard one. There is so much wrong with this that words fail me. I'm just sitting here shaking my head.
It's hard to say how much of an impact the report will have. The National Academy certainly shook things up in 2004 when they issued a report discrediting the practice of "matching the chemical signature of lead in bullets at a crime scene to similar bullets possessed by a suspect." The F.B.I. ended up having to contact hundreds of people who might have been wrongfully convicted due to this bogus science. One of them, Jimmy Ates, is here in Florida. Jimmy is now out on bond and waiting to see if the State will re-try him.
"Everyone interviewed for this article agreed that the report would be a force of change in the forensics field." We can only hope.
Read the entire article here.
Visit IPF's Website here;
sign up to volunteer here;
contribute to our work here.
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
Letter from Florida Innocence Project to Governor Crist - the case of Wayne Tompkins
Letter from Florida Innocence Project to Governor Crist - the case of Wayne Tompkins
The letter from Florida Innocence Project to Governor Crist - the case of Wayne Tompkins
http://www.oranous.com/innocence/WayneTompkins/crist_letter_tompkins_21009.pdf
The letter from Florida Innocence Project to Governor Crist - the case of Wayne Tompkins
http://www.oranous.com/innocence/WayneTompkins/crist_letter_tompkins_21009.pdf
Pressrelease from Florida Innocence Project - Wayne Tompkins
Pressrelease from Florida Innocence Project - Wayne Tompkins
http://floridainnocence.org/pdf/tompkins_release_21009.pdf
Innocence Project of Florida, Inc.
1100 East Park Avenue,
Tallahassee, FL 32301
Telephone 850.561.6767
Fax 850.561.5077
For Immediate Release
PRESS RELEASE
February 10, 2009
Contacts:Seth Miller, Esq.: 202.341.2127
Innocence Project of Florida Urges Governor to Stay Wayne Tompkins’ Execution
New Round of DNA Testing Could Answer Lingering Questions about Victim’s Identity
The Innocence Project of Florida (IPF), in a letter signed by their Executive Director Seth Miller, today urged Florida Governor Charlie Crist to stay the execution of Wayne Tompkins, who is scheduled to be killed on Wednesday by lethal injection. Serious doubts persist about the identity of the victim, and IPF believes a new round of DNA testing is likely to answer these important questions.
“We still harbor grave concerns about the legitimacy of Mr. Tompkins’ guilty verdict,” said Miller in his letter. “We feel strongly that more time is necessary to look into this case.”
Mr. Tompkins was found guilty of murdering Lisa DeCarr in 1983. The evidence against him was circumstantial and consisted of three witnesses, including one jailhouse snitch. The nature of this case is also uncommon because the identity of the victim herself is also in doubt.
The victim’s alleged identity was supported at trial by a comparison with dental records which Miller says was “wholly unpersuasive.” Since then, several individuals have signed affidavits claiming to have seen her alive since the murder.“
Because the dead body’s identity is an issue, [late last year] you ordered DNA testing on bones from that dead body as well as a robe and sash found with the dead body,” Miller wrote to Crist. “We presume you did so in order to remove any remaining questions about whether the State of Florida was about to execute an innocent man.” That round of testing came back inconclusive, says Miller. But he adds that,“the facts of the case have not changed. The uncertainty surrounding the identity of the alleged victim that led to the last round of DNA testing still exists. There should be clarity about the identity of the alleged victim before we execute a potentially innocent man. That clarity is obtainable in Mr. Tompkins’case.”
IPF believes that a new round of DNA testing, involving methods that have not yet been tried in this case, would likely yield results.
Miller pledged to work with Governor Crist to “answer these remaining questions and finally obtain closure in this case,” urging patience in order to avoid executing a potentially innocent man on Wednesday.
The Innocence Project of Florida is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to finding and freeing innocentpeople in Florida prisons.
IPF consulted on the DNA issues in the case of Wayne Tompkins.# # #
http://floridainnocence.org/pdf/tompkins_release_21009.pdf
Innocence Project of Florida, Inc.
1100 East Park Avenue,
Tallahassee, FL 32301
Telephone 850.561.6767
Fax 850.561.5077
For Immediate Release
PRESS RELEASE
February 10, 2009
Contacts:Seth Miller, Esq.: 202.341.2127
Innocence Project of Florida Urges Governor to Stay Wayne Tompkins’ Execution
New Round of DNA Testing Could Answer Lingering Questions about Victim’s Identity
The Innocence Project of Florida (IPF), in a letter signed by their Executive Director Seth Miller, today urged Florida Governor Charlie Crist to stay the execution of Wayne Tompkins, who is scheduled to be killed on Wednesday by lethal injection. Serious doubts persist about the identity of the victim, and IPF believes a new round of DNA testing is likely to answer these important questions.
“We still harbor grave concerns about the legitimacy of Mr. Tompkins’ guilty verdict,” said Miller in his letter. “We feel strongly that more time is necessary to look into this case.”
Mr. Tompkins was found guilty of murdering Lisa DeCarr in 1983. The evidence against him was circumstantial and consisted of three witnesses, including one jailhouse snitch. The nature of this case is also uncommon because the identity of the victim herself is also in doubt.
The victim’s alleged identity was supported at trial by a comparison with dental records which Miller says was “wholly unpersuasive.” Since then, several individuals have signed affidavits claiming to have seen her alive since the murder.“
Because the dead body’s identity is an issue, [late last year] you ordered DNA testing on bones from that dead body as well as a robe and sash found with the dead body,” Miller wrote to Crist. “We presume you did so in order to remove any remaining questions about whether the State of Florida was about to execute an innocent man.” That round of testing came back inconclusive, says Miller. But he adds that,“the facts of the case have not changed. The uncertainty surrounding the identity of the alleged victim that led to the last round of DNA testing still exists. There should be clarity about the identity of the alleged victim before we execute a potentially innocent man. That clarity is obtainable in Mr. Tompkins’case.”
IPF believes that a new round of DNA testing, involving methods that have not yet been tried in this case, would likely yield results.
Miller pledged to work with Governor Crist to “answer these remaining questions and finally obtain closure in this case,” urging patience in order to avoid executing a potentially innocent man on Wednesday.
The Innocence Project of Florida is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to finding and freeing innocentpeople in Florida prisons.
IPF consulted on the DNA issues in the case of Wayne Tompkins.# # #
Man exonerated by DNA is freed after 24 years - IN FLORIDA
Man exonerated by DNA is freed after 24 years
Accused of robbery, rape, Floridian is glad for day ‘a long time coming’
Alan Crotzer throws his arms in the air Monday as he leaves the Hillsborough County Courthouse in Tampa, Fla.
updated 7:43 p.m. ET Jan. 23, 2006
TAMPA, Fla. - Alan Crotzer stepped into the warm sunlight outside the courthouse Monday and raised his arms to the sky, celebrating his freedom after more than 24 years behind bars for crimes he didn’t commit.
TAMPA, Fla. - Alan Crotzer stepped into the warm sunlight outside the courthouse Monday and raised his arms to the sky, celebrating his freedom after more than 24 years behind bars for crimes he didn’t commit.
A judge freed the 45-year-old Crotzer after DNA testing and other evidence convinced prosecutors he was not involved in the 1981 armed robbery and rapes that led to his 130-year prison sentence.
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Crotzer, his black hair graying at the temples. “Thank God for this day.”
Crotzer walked free more than three years after he wrote to the Innocence Project in New York, a legal clinic that seeks to exonerate inmates through DNA testing.“
Are you ready for what you waited so long to hear?” Circuit Judge J. Rogers Padgett said to Crotzer during the brief hearing. “Motion granted — you’re a free man.
”Members of Crotzer’s family and other courtroom spectators clapped and cheered as a bailiff removed the shackles from his wrists and ankles.
Hailed by prosecutor
Prosecutor Mike Sinacore congratulated him. “Trying to fix an error in the system is just as important as trying to convict someone who is guilty,” he said.
DNA has been used to clear at least 172 people wrongly convicted of crimes in 31 states since 1989, according to the Innocence Project.
Crotzer and brothers Douglas James and Corlenzo James were convicted of robbing a Tampa family in 1981. Douglas James and Crotzer were also found guilty of kidnapping and raping a 38-year-old woman and her 12-year-old girl at gunpoint.
A victim picked Crotzer out of a photo lineup. But Douglas James says Crotzer is innocent. He said he and his brother were the rapists and a childhood friend was their accomplice.
Crotzer, who has never held a paying job, said he will go live with a sister in St. Petersburg and try to find work. His attorneys said they will seek compensation from the state for him.
‘I’m not bitter’
In December, Gov. Jeb Bush signed a bill allowing Wilton Dedge to receive $2 million for the 22 years he spent in prison for a rape he did not commit. Dedge, 44, also was exonerated by DNA evidence.
“There ain’t no compensation for what they done to me,” said Crotzer, whose mother died while he was in prison. “But I’m not bitter.”
Crotzer said he was looking forward to a barbecue with his family, who promised him his favorites — pork chops and banana pudding. Then, he said, he wanted to take a bath in a real bathtub.
“I want to soak,” he said. “I want to get some of this off me.”
NOTICE OF APPEAL - WAYNE TOMPKINS
http://www.oranous.com/innocence/WayneTompkins/Filed_02-10-2009_Notice_Of_Appeal.pdf
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE THIRTEENTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT, IN AND FOR HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, FLORIDA
CASE NO. 84-CF-010538 STATE OF FLORIDA,
Plaintiff,
v. WAYNE TOMPKINS, Defendant. __________________________/ NOTICE OF APPEAL
WAYNE TOMPKINS, Defendant in the above-captioned action, files this, his notice of appeal, in order to appeal to the Florida Supreme Court the February 10, 2009, order that denied Mr. Tompkins’ motion to vacate judgment and sentence and that denied Mr. Tompkins’ motion for DNA testing of evidence in the possession of the State. Mr. Tompkins also appeals to the Florida Supreme Court all adverse rulings made by the circuit court during the pendency of Mr. Tompkins’ motion to for post conviction relief that was initially served on February 5, 2009, and adverse rulings made by the circuit court during the pendency of Mr. Tompkins’ motion for DNA testing that was initially served on December 1, 2008.
I HEREBY CERTIFY that a true copy of the foregoing Notice of Appeal has been furnished by mail, to Jalal Harb, Assistant State Attorney, Office of the State Attorney, 800 East Kennedy Blvd., 5th Floor, Tampa, FL 33602-4148; Scott Browne, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Legal Affairs, 3507 Frontage
Road, Suite 200, Tampa, FL 33607 on February 10, 2009.
MARTIN McCLAIN Special Assistant CCRC-SouthFlorida Bar No. 0754773 141 N.E. 30th Street Wilton Manors, FL 33334
(305) 984-8344
NEAL DUPREE CCRC-South 101 NE 3rd Ave., Suite 400 Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
(954) 713-1284
Counsel for Mr. Tompkins
2
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE THIRTEENTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT, IN AND FOR HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, FLORIDA
CASE NO. 84-CF-010538 STATE OF FLORIDA,
Plaintiff,
v. WAYNE TOMPKINS, Defendant. __________________________/ NOTICE OF APPEAL
WAYNE TOMPKINS, Defendant in the above-captioned action, files this, his notice of appeal, in order to appeal to the Florida Supreme Court the February 10, 2009, order that denied Mr. Tompkins’ motion to vacate judgment and sentence and that denied Mr. Tompkins’ motion for DNA testing of evidence in the possession of the State. Mr. Tompkins also appeals to the Florida Supreme Court all adverse rulings made by the circuit court during the pendency of Mr. Tompkins’ motion to for post conviction relief that was initially served on February 5, 2009, and adverse rulings made by the circuit court during the pendency of Mr. Tompkins’ motion for DNA testing that was initially served on December 1, 2008.
I HEREBY CERTIFY that a true copy of the foregoing Notice of Appeal has been furnished by mail, to Jalal Harb, Assistant State Attorney, Office of the State Attorney, 800 East Kennedy Blvd., 5th Floor, Tampa, FL 33602-4148; Scott Browne, Assistant Attorney General, Department of Legal Affairs, 3507 Frontage
Road, Suite 200, Tampa, FL 33607 on February 10, 2009.
MARTIN McCLAIN Special Assistant CCRC-SouthFlorida Bar No. 0754773 141 N.E. 30th Street Wilton Manors, FL 33334
(305) 984-8344
NEAL DUPREE CCRC-South 101 NE 3rd Ave., Suite 400 Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
(954) 713-1284
Counsel for Mr. Tompkins
2
Former Tampa man close to execution for killing teenager
Marty McClain and Juan MelendezFormer Tampa man close to execution for killing teenager
By Colleen Jenkins, Times Staff Writer
http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/article974717.ece
Posted: Feb 10, 2009 01:19 PM
TAMPA — After 23 years on death row, Wayne Tompkins has a day to live.
Barring any last-minute relief from his pending state and federal appeals, the 51-year-old former Tampa resident will be executed at 6 p.m. Wednesday for strangling his girlfriend's daughter and burying her body beneath the home where they lived.
Prosecutors say Tompkins tried to force himself on 15-year-old Lisa DeCarr and killed her when she resisted. With no physical evidence linking him to the murder, the state relied on testimony from three key witnesses to win a conviction.
Therein lies the problem, say Tompkins' lawyers, who have long attacked the credibility of those witnesses and the reliability of what they said.
"The evidence against Mr. Tompkins is just absurd," attorney Martin McClain said.
Jurors didn't think so. Neither did the circuit judge who sentenced Tompkins to death, nor the long list of state and federal judges who have denied the inmate's litany of appeals.
McClain says none of them had the benefit of DNA testing that was conducted only recently and that he argues remains incomplete. He believes the keys to the case could be locked inside this biological material. He's running out of time to prove it.
•••
Lisa DeCarr was initially reported as a runaway after she disappeared on March 24, 1983, from her Southeast Seminole Heights home. She had been suspended from school for smoking; those close to her thought she might be pregnant.
Perceptions changed in June 1984 with the discovery of a shallow grave below the porch of her home at 1225 E Osborne Ave. In about a foot of dirt, searchers found skeletal remains in a pink bathrobe, its sash tied tightly around the neck bones.
The robe belonged to Lisa, her mother said. She told police that Tompkins, her live-in boyfriend, had been at home alone with Lisa the day she disappeared.
Tompkins, then 27, was arrested that fall and put on trial a year later. By then, he had already pleaded guilty and was serving time for abducting and raping two convenience store clerks in Pasco County.
Prosecutors said three witnesses would provide "the overwhelming evidence" that he killed Lisa: her mother, who said she had last seen her daughter in a pink robe; her best friend, who said she had seen Tompkins and Lisa struggling on the couch as he tried to take off her clothes on the day prosecutors say she died; and a jail cell mate, who said Tompkins told him the details of the killing, down to how he buried her with her purse and clothes to make it look as if she'd run away.
But last November, the former cell mate claimed that the prosecutor, Mike Benito, had instructed him to include the purse detail in his testimony even though the informer didn't recall hearing that from Tompkins.
Benito denied doing so.
Florida Supreme Court Justice Harry Lee Anstead said the disclosure could have changed a jury's evaluation of the case. His colleagues disagreed, saying the main thrust of the informer's testimony had not changed, and denied Tompkins' appeal.
Appeals courts have shot down most of Tompkins' arguments. He got his best chance at life in April 2001, when Hillsborough Circuit Judge Daniel Perry granted him a new sentencing hearing just two weeks before he was scheduled to be executed. Perry ruled that the trial judge — the late Harry Lee Coe, nicknamed "Hanging Harry" and known for handing down harsh punishments quickly — had improperly handled the sentencing.
But in 2003, the state Supreme Court ruled that no new hearing was necessary. Tompkins continued to pursue appeals.
It wasn't until December that Gov. Charlie Crist ordered the DNA testing Tompkins' attorneys had been seeking for years.
As part of their efforts to exonerate Tompkins, who has always maintained his innocence, McClain and his colleague, Neal Dupree, want proof that the remains are actually Lisa's. Their suspicion stems from reports that people saw or heard from Lisa after the date that prosecutors contend she died, claims that have never been substantiated in court.
"Pink bathrobes are pretty much a dime a dozen," McClain said, referring to one of the key pieces of evidence used to identify Lisa.
The attorneys also wonder if hair and blood evidence that they only recently learned existed might point to a different killer.
So far, that hasn't happened. The DNA test results from the FBI and Florida Department of Law Enforcement came back last month as inconclusive.
On Monday, McClain and Dupree requested a stay of execution. They need more time, they said, to pursue further testing.
In a pointed response, prosecutors noted that the Florida Supreme Court has ruled that such DNA tests would have "no reasonable probability" of vindicating Tompkins.
"This eleventh hour application is clearly without merit and simply represents another attempt to delay Tompkins' long overdue execution," Assistant Attorney General Scott A. Browne wrote.
Not true, McClain said.
He points to the case of Alan Crotzer, of St. Petersburg, who spent 24 years in prison for two rapes he did not commit. DNA evidence exonerated him in 2006.
It took three rounds of testing by independent labs before one was able to produce meaningful results.
Colleen Jenkins can be reached at cjenkins@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3337.
[Last modified: Feb 10, 2009 02:11 PM]
Monday, 9 February 2009
PETITION SEEKING TO INVOKE THIS COURT'S ALL WRITS JURISDICTION AND APPLY TO THIS COURT FOR A STAY OF EXECUTION
http://www.oranous.com/innocence/WayneTompkins/Filed_02-09-2009_Petition.pdf
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF FLORIDA
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF FLORIDA
WAYNE TOMPKINS,
Petitioner,
v. CASE NO. SC09-___
BILL McCOLLUM,
Attorney General of the
State of Florida,
and,
WALTER A. McNEIL,
Secretary,
Department of Corrections,
State of Florida,
Respondents.
____________________________________/
PETITION SEEKING TO INVOKE THIS COURT'S ALL
WRITS JURISDICTION AND APPLY TO THIS COURT
FOR A STAY OF EXECUTION
Article V, Section 3(b)(1) and (7) of the Florida
Constitution gives this Court exclusive appellate jurisdiction
over all capital cases and the abilit