Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Voices of Families of the Executed - Part 5
Here is the final installment in our series of excerpts from the MVFHR panel of families of the executed at the Third International Women's Peace Conference in Dallas this past July. See the original post announcing this series, the current issue of our newsletter with more about the peace conference panel, and MVFHR's report about families of the executed.
Remarks from Tamara Chikunova:I am the mother of a son who was arrested and sentenced to death [in Uzbekistan] against all justice and human rights. My son was tortured, but he refused to sign a confession saying he killed somebody, because he had not. When the police then arrested me and started to torture me, my son heard this and said, “All right, I’ll sign whatever you want, but please don’t hurt my mother.” In this way, my son signed his own death warrant, to save my life.
The trial lasted six months and in all that time I had no chance to see him. Afterward, I learned that during those six months he had been tortured in all kinds of cruel ways, from gas to electric shock. The lawyer that I had hired for my son was denied access to the court. Instead, my son was given a court-appointed lawyer, but she actually acted against him: she brought evidence from the prosecution against him. At the beginning of the trial, my son stood up and said that he is not guilty and that he signed the confession only because he was tortured and believed he was doing it to save his mother’s life. The judge said, “People like you should be killed right here in the courtroom.”
The trial lasted only three days, and on November 11, 1999 my son was sentenced to death. Seven months later, on July 10, 2000, I was allowed to visit him. I arrived at Tashkent prison but I was told there were no visits allowed. Shortly before this I had received a letter from my son in which he wrote that he missed me very much and looked forward to the visit on July 10. That day, July 10, he did leave his cell, but not for a visit with me; instead, it was for a visit with death. He was shot in the head that morning. It is incredibly cruel when a mother stands behind the prison’s wall and her son is waiting for her visit. We could have had even just ten minutes, but no, that was not allowed; the law in Uzbekistan does not require that families be given a last visit, and families are not told about the execution date ahead of time. The body is not released to the relatives to be buried, and the place of burial is a state secret.
After seven years, I still do not know where my only child is buried.After the execution, I didn’t want to live, because my son was all my life. I received a letter that he had written to me:“My dear mother, If it is not our fate to see each other again, remember that I am innocent. I have not spilled blood! I would rather die than let anyone hurt you. I love you very much, you are the only person dear to me. Please remember me. I send you a kiss. Your son, Dmitri”My son wrote to me please remember me, and for his memory I established my organization, Mothers Against the Death Penalty and Torture, that fights for life and against the death penalty in Uzbekistan and in the world. Our work has led to the overturning of 22 death sentences.
Our work is very difficult, but it’s not fruitless. This year, on June 29, official legislation was passed saying that on January 1, 2008 the death penalty in Uzbekistan will be abolished.This is a great victory, but we still have work to do. There are still hundreds of people in Uzbekistan who don’t know when their children were executed or where they are buried. Five months ago, a UN resolution was issued saying that there were several human rights violations in my son’s case and demanding that reparation be paid to my family and that such violations cease in the future. The Uzbekistan government has not responded to the resolution. What’s the price for human life? What’s the reparation if my only child was killed? I asked the UN not to give me the reparation but to give me my son’s body so I can bury him myself.Thanks to Elena Misheneva and Natalia Glebova for translating these remarks from the Russian. Read more about Tamara Chikunova and her work here, here, and here.
at 8:27 AM 0 comments
Monday, October 8, 2007
Voices of Families of the Executed - Part 4
We continue our series of excerpts from the MVFHR panel of families of the executed at the Third International Women's Peace Conference in Dallas this past July. See the original post announcing this series, the current issue of our newsletter with more about the peace conference panel, and MVFHR's report about families of the executed.
More from Melanie Hebert (see Friday's post for the first excerpt from Melanie): When my uncle was sentenced to death, I was just entering high school. For a young girl who is not dealing with any kind of issue, the transition to high school is still difficult, so you can imagine how it was compounded by the fact that I was from the same town and shared the last name with my uncle who had just been sentenced to death, and it was a very big news story. I was really taunted at school, and I went into a deep depression for the first two years of high school. I had a very tough time going to school every day.
There’s so much shame attached to it. Of course now, as a competent adult, I look back and say why didn’t I stand up and say yes, he did do that, but I didn’t do anything wrong, I shouldn’t feel any shame. But I was young and naïve and embarrassed and I felt like nobody would want to be friends with me because my uncle had done something terrible. Certainly I wish that the adults at my high school had had more knowledge and awareness about how to help a young person in my situation, and I also wish that they had been more proactive in coming to me. I didn’t know what resources were available to me, I didn’t know to go to the counselor or if this was something it would be appropriate to go to her about.
I wish that people in the school system had come to me and offered more support.When he was executed, I was grown up, I had been through college, I thought I had put all this behind me, but it kind of all came up again. By this time I had an entirely different circle of friends and peers, and people weren’t as direct in their shaming of me, but I still definitely felt it. One of the most difficult aspects was taking time off from work. I knew that I would be visiting with Spencer and essentially what I felt forced to do was to lie. I said I had had a death in the family and I needed time off to mourn. In fact that death had not yet occurred, but I didn’t feel comfortable disclosing that. When I returned to work I remember seeing my boss with the newspaper opened to the story and I thought well, she does know now.
at 7:49 AM 0 comments
Friday, October 5, 2007
Voices of Families of the Executed - Part 3
We continue our series of excerpts from the MVFHR panel of families of the executed at the Third International Women's Peace Conference in Dallas this past July. See the original post announcing this series, the current issue of our newsletter with more about the peace conference panel, and MVFHR's report about families of the executed.
Remarks from Melanie Hebert: My uncle Spencer Corey Goodman was executed here in Texas in 2000. He had been adopted by my paternal grandparents, and he was much younger than their natural children. He and I had a very close relationship and he felt much more like a brother to me than an uncle. We were just seven years apart in age and we spent a lot of time together during my childhood.
He became estranged from the family when I was in elementary school and the next thing I heard about him was after he had committed a murder and my grandfather was called to testify at the trial. My family wanted us to have nothing to do with him, and they didn’t speak about him much. I kind of just put it out of my mind and went about my life until shortly before he was executed. My sister had been visiting him and he requested that I come and visit before his execution. She asked me if I would, and I agreed. When I went to visit him, I was really surprised that he wasn’t the monster that I had been led to believe he was.
My heart was really changed as I spent the next couple of days with him before his execution. I was reluctant to get involved with any kind of political activity regarding the death penalty. I wasn’t sure where I stood and I was so young, I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with it. But I woke up the next morning and I had such a hollow feeling. I felt compelled at that point to speak out against the atrocity that is the death penalty and let people know what my family went through. We didn’t have a lot of support from our friends or from our church; people didn’t know what to do or say, so they left us to deal with it on our own.
In any other circumstance when you know someone who has had a loss, the neighbors and friends and church pull together to support that person. A surreal aspect of it was that while we were mourning the loss of our loved one, people were cheering about it and saying that justice had been served, and that’s something I don’t think people experience with any other death. It would have helped if we had been treated with more compassion by the judicial system. One of the most difficult parts of dealing with Spencer’s execution was that we had to learn the information from the television. That’s a really difficult way to learn about your loved one’s fate. We learned about the death sentence from the TV on a night that happened to be my father’s birthday. It was very hard. Later, I asked every single person at the prison to please call our family to let us know when the execution was complete. No one called us. Finally we turned on the television and learned that he had died. It’s a really cruel way for families to be treated.
at 8:48 AM 0 comments
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Voices of Families of the Executed - Part 2
We continue our series of excerpts from the MVFHR panel of families of the executed at the Third International Women's Peace Conference in Dallas this past July. See the original post announcing this series, the current issue of our newsletter with more about the peace conference panel, and MVFHR's report about families of the executed.
More from Lois Robison (see yesterday's post for the first excerpt from Lois): One of the things that always worried me was that I knew they would set Larry’s execution date 30 days in advance, and I wondered how I was going to go into my classroom and teach my little third graders while the clock kept ticking and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It was very difficult for all our family. Our daughter, who was 12 years old when this happened, was teased at school. It affected her terribly and affects her to this day.
As a matter of fact, she too is mentally ill. I know she had the genes for it, but I think that this precipitated her breakdown, because she began to have trouble from that point on and was finally diagnosed as bipolar and schizoaffective when she was 19. Many of our family members have had depression. I have been taking medication for depression for years. Some people were very kind to us when this happened and others were not.
My principal told me just before I retired that every year there were parents who came to him and told him they did not want their child in my classroom because they knew my son was a murderer. He always told them that he would not honor their request, but if they came back at midterm and still wanted their child transferred to another classroom, he would do it. He said in every case they came back and apologized.
The church where we were attending was very kind when Larry was arrested, they came and brought us food, they were there when it hit the television. But later on when we became involved in groups working to abolish the death penalty, they were not as supportive. We finally ended up going to another church, where we were asked to speak about the death penalty. Larry’s execution date was set once before and it came within three hours of his execution and then he got a stay. We had tried to get ourselves prepared for it and then he got the stay, and we had to go through it all again. Two of our children got hysterical and said I can’t go through this again. But we did; we had to.
I would like for our country to be educated about the nature of mental illness because it is an organic brain disease, and it is treatable, but there is very little available treatment for it, especially in Texas. Texas is right at the bottom of the heap in treating the mentally ill and it’s right at the top in executing the mentally ill and there’s something wrong with that picture. If we would use just one tenth of the money that’s spent on imprisonment and execution to have some prevention, if we had mental health treatment for anybody who needs it, these horrible, horrible crimes like Larry committed would not happen. But instead our state and our federal governments are cutting the benefits for the mentally ill.
at 8:05 AM 1 comments
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Voices of Families of the Executed - Part 1
Today we begin our series of excerpts from the MVFHR panel of families of the executed at the Third International Women's Peace Conference in Dallas this past July. See the original post announcing this series, the current issue of our newsletter with more about the peace conference panel, and MVFHR's report about families of the executed.
Remarks from Lois Robison:We’re just an average family, except we have a son who was executed by the state of Texas. Larry was every mother’s dream: he was in the band, he was a good student, he did church work, had a paper route, he would have made Eagle Scout if he hadn’t got sick. We realized he had a problem and took him to the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, where we lived at the time, but he wasn’t diagnosed until after he got out of the Air Force when he was 21.
Unfortunate timing: we took him to the hospital, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, but our insurance didn’t cover him because he had just turned 21, so they discharged him and told us to take him to the county hospital. We took him there, and they kept him for 30 days and then told us they were discharging him and not to take him home. I said, “He has no job, no place to stay, no car, you can’t just put him on the street.” They said, “You’d be surprised, we do it every day.”We got him into the veterans’ hospital; they kept him for 30 days and then told us the same thing: “We don’t have the money, we don’t have the beds, and he’s never been violent so we can’t keep him for more than 30 days.”
They told us to take him to the county MHMR (Mental Health and Mental Retardation) for treatment, but they forgot to have him sign a release of records, so MHMR would not treat him or give him his medications. Consequently he disappeared and he ended up not getting treatment for four years. The first violent thing he ever did was to kill five people, very brutally. We were horrified, and we felt terribly for the families that lost their family members. We thought that Larry would probably be sent to a mental hospital for life.
We were wrong: he was jailed for a year, tried, and given the death penalty – found sane, by the way, despite his record. I collapsed outside the courtroom and was hauled to the hospital in an ambulance, screaming all the way, “They’re going to kill my son.” I was in the hospital for four days. When I came up out of it, I got angry and I said, “This is not right. They told us if he ever got violent they would give him treatment, and instead they gave him the death penalty.” I determined that I was going to tell this story to everyone in the United States. I haven’t told them all, but I’ve told quite a few of them! Larry was on death row for 17 years and was executed on January 21, 2000. The day that he died I promised him I would spend the rest of my life working to help the mentally ill and people on death row.
at 8:04 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Panel of Families of the Executed
In the current issue of our newsletter, there’s a story titled “Families of the Executed Come Together at Women’s Peace Conference,” about the panel presentation at which MVFHR members Lois Robison and Melanie Hebert from Texas were joined by Tamara Chikunova, who traveled from Uzbekistan to the U.S. for the first time to participate in this Dallas, Texas conference. In the newsletter story, you can read Lois’s and Melanie’s reflections about what a powerful experience it was to meet and connect with someone who has suffered a similar tragedy to theirs, in a country halfway across the world.
As organizer and moderator of the panel, I also found the experience powerful in ways I haven’t fully been able to articulate, except that it has something to do with an awareness that whatever it is within human beings that we’re fighting when we’re fighting the death penalty, it isn’t unique to any one country. I knew that before the peace conference, of course, but there are different kinds of knowing, and the experience of bringing these three women together and listening to them listen to each other will stay with me for a long time. Beginning tomorrow, our next series of blog posts will feature excerpts from the women’s peace conference panel presentation.
As you visit us here over the next several days, you’ll be able to read Lois’s, Melanie’s, and Tamara’s heartbreaking accounts, which remind us that each execution creates a new set of victims. You’ll read, too, about the courage of these survivors who continue to fight so that others don’t have to experience what they experienced – very much like the survivors we featured in the Preventing Violence series.
And for more on the subject, read MVFHR’s report on families of the executed, Creating More Victims: How Executions Hurt the Families Left Behind. Read about the Third International Women’s Peace Conference here.
Tuesday, 9 October 2007
Twenty five years of state killings by lethal injection
Lethal injection kit
Doctors and nurses should not participate in executions ordered by the state in breach of their ethical oath, said Amnesty International in a new report today.
The report, [Execution by lethal injection a quarter century of state poisoning] looks at the legal and ethical implications of the use of the lethal injection across the world.
"Medical professionals are trained to work for patients' well-being, not to participate in executions ordered by the state. The simplest way of resolving the ethical dilemmas posed by using doctors and nurses to kill is by abolishing the death penalty," said Jim Welsh, Amnesty International's Health and Human Rights coordinator.
Since 1982, at least 1,000 people were executed by lethal injection globally - three in Guatemala, four in Thailand, seven in the Philippines, more than 900 in the USA and up to several thousands in China, where executions are a state secret.
In lethal injection executions, prisoners are commonly injected with massive doses of three chemicals: sodium thiopental to rapidly induce unconsciousness, pancuronium bromide to cause muscle paralysis, and potassium chloride to stop the heart.
Doctors have expressed concern that if inadequate levels of sodium thiopental are administered, the anaesthetic effect can wear off before the prisoner's heart stops, placing them at risk of experiencing excruciating pain as the chemicals enter the veins producing cardiac arrest. Due to the paralysis induced by pancuronium bromide, they would be unable to communicate their distress to anyone.
For these reasons, these chemicals are not used by veterinary surgeons on animals for euthanasia. In Texas, the biggest user of lethal injection in the USA, the same drugs that are prohibited for use on cats and dogs because of the potential pain they might suffer are being used to execute.
Joseph Clark was executed in Ohio in December 2006. It took 22 minutes for the execution technicians to find a vein to insert the catheter. Shortly after the start of the injection, the vein collapsed and Joseph's arm began to swell. He raised his head off the stretcher and said "it don't work, it don't work". The curtains surrounding the stretcher were then closed while the technicians worked for 30 minutes to find another vein.
"The use of lethal injection does not resolve the problems inherent to the death penalty: its cruelty; its irreversibility; the risk of executing the innocent; its discriminatory and arbitrary application; and its irrelevance to effective crime control," said Jim Welsh.
"Governments are putting doctors and nurses in an impossible position by asking them to do something that goes against their ethical oath."
In China, the world's top executioner, many, executions by lethal injection are carried out in mobile vans. The windowless chamber at the back of the vans contains a metal bed on which the prisoner is strapped down. Once the needle is attached by the doctor, a police officer presses a button and an automatic syringe inserts the lethal drug into the prisoner's vein. The execution can be watched on a video monitor next to the driver's seat and can be videotaped if required.
"There is a global consensus within the medical profession that the involvement of health professionals in carrying out an execution, particularly by a method using the technology and knowledge of medicine, is a breach of medical ethics; yet health professionals are participating in such executions."
"Professional bodies have recently spoken strongly about this abuse of ethics, but governments want to hide the identity of participating doctors to shield them from the scrutiny of professional colleagues," said Jim Welsh.
Amnesty International calls on world leaders to abolish the death penalty and urges them to take the opportunity to begin with a vote for a moratorium at the current session of the United Nations General Assembly when it is voted on later in 2007.
Further information
Execution by lethal injection - a quarter century of state poisoning
Murder victim's father speaks on forgiveness
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
By Sally Kalson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Rev. Walter Everett, who forgave the murderer of his 24-year-old son, Scott, will speak at a number of Pittsburgh religious venues Thursday through Sunday about how forgiveness gave him peace.
His visit is sponsored by Pittsburgh Faith in Action on the Death Penalty, an interfaith initiative whose Protestant, Catholic and Jewish members have called for a moratorium on executions until the justice system's flaws can be corrected.
The Rev. Everett, pastor of St. John's United Methodist Church in Sunbury, Northumberland County, says his opposition to the death penalty was academic until the 1987 shooting death of his son in Bridgeport, Conn. Grief and rage were destroying him, he says, until he was moved to forgive the killer. He has since befriended him and says the man's life has been transformed by God.
The Rev. Everett will speak at nine sites, including Sacred Heart in Shadyside, St. Paul's United Methodist Church in McCandless, Ahavath Achim Congregation in Carnegie and Monumental Baptist Church in the Hill District. For locations and times, call 412-784-1677.
According to Faith in Action, Pennsylvania has 225 people on death row, making it fourth in number behind California, Texas and Florida; the state also has the highest percentage of minorities (70 percent) awaiting execution.
Some 90 percent of those on death row are poor, often lacking an adequate defense. Pennsylvania is one of only two states that do not fund public defenders, shifting the cost to counties that may not have many resources of their own.
To date, six death-row inmates in the states have been released after they were found to have been wrongfully convicted.
First published on October 9, 2007 at 12:00 am
Sally Kalson can be reached at skalson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1610.
USSC on Tuesday October 9, 2007
The Court, in other action on Tuesday, refused to give states new guidance on how a death-row inmate is to be judged mentally retarded and thus not subject to the death penalty. (Chester v. Texas, 06-1616).
Over the dissents of three Justices, the Court sent back to lower courts for reconsideration a new case testing what instructions must be given to a jury in a death penalty case to assure that they need not be unanimous in finding offsetting (mitigating) factors even though they must all agree on their ultimate punishment verdict. The case, Hudson v. Spisak (06-1535), also tested the standard for evaluating the effectiveness of a defense lawyer when trial strategy seems to work against the defendant’s interests. The case was returned to the Sixth Circuit Court for a new look under two prior precedents, Carey v. Musladin and Schriro v. Landrigan. Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens noted that they would have denied the petition.
The Court took no action on Tuesday on a plea to expand its review of the lethal injection procedure in capital punishment cases. The new case is Taylor v. Crawford (07-303). The Court was asked to expedite that petition and hear it along with Baze v. Reese (07-5439), granted on Sept. 25.
Pa. death penalty under fire
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Article Launched: 10/09/2007 10:24:08 AM EDT
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- Pennsylvania needs to make drastic changes to its death penalty system, including preserving biological evidence until an inmate is released or executed, a team of prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges recommends in a study released Tuesday.
The report, which is part of a death penalty project run by the American Bar Association, found Pennsylvania's application of the death penalty highly inconsistent. It warns that people convicted of committing murders under similar circumstances often get very different sentences, with some facing execution and others decades behind bars.
The state, which has had six death row inmates exonerated since the death penalty was reinstated in 1974, needs widespread policy reforms to overcome what the ABA called "substantial shortcomings."
Among other things, the team found that there are racial disparities in the state's capital sentencing system, with blacks being targeted for execution more often than whites.
The assessment team that reviewed Pennsylvania's death penalty system found that the state is in full compliance with only seven of the 93 protocols the ABA drafted to ensure that capital punishment is applied fairly to convicted murderers.
The group, chaired by Villanova law professor and former federal prosecutor Anne Bowen Poulin, issued nine broad recommendations in its report aimed at ensuring that capital punishment is imposed consistently.
Those recommendations include banning the execution of offenders with severe mental illness and requiring law enforcement to record video or audio of all interrogations. The team also said the state should adopt tougher attorney qualifications and monitoring procedures for attorneys in capital cases.
The report also found that the state fails to protect defendants in capital cases against shoddy defense attorneys, provides defense attorneys inadequate access to experts and investigators, and has jury instructions so confusing that nearly all capital jurors failed to understand at least some of them.
The state had 228 people on death row as of Oct. 1. Pennsylvania has executed three people since reinstating the death penalty in 1978, the last in 1999.
Pennsylvania is the eighth and final state to be assessed by the ABA's Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project, following Georgia, Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Virginia. Unlike several other state reports, the Pennsylvania panel did not make a recommendation on whether to enact a death penalty moratorium until reforms were made.
The report and its recommendations have not been presented to the ABA's House of Delegates and do not constitute ABA policy. The report itself does not specifically call for a moratorium on executions, though the ABA has urged one until fairness and due process can be guaranteed.
In 2003, a committee appointed by the state Supreme Court recommended that Pennsylvania stop executing criminals until it can study the impact of race in death penalty sentences, but the idea didn't get much political support.
Other team members were Delaware County Common Pleas Judge Frank Hazel, Montgomery County prosecutor Mary Ann MacNeil Killinger, Philadelphia attorney Gregory P. Miller and civil rights lawyer and Penn law professor David Rudovsky.
------
On the Net:
Pennsylvania report: http://www.abavideonews.org/ABA340/
Article Launched: 10/09/2007 10:24:08 AM EDT
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- Pennsylvania needs to make drastic changes to its death penalty system, including preserving biological evidence until an inmate is released or executed, a team of prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges recommends in a study released Tuesday.
The report, which is part of a death penalty project run by the American Bar Association, found Pennsylvania's application of the death penalty highly inconsistent. It warns that people convicted of committing murders under similar circumstances often get very different sentences, with some facing execution and others decades behind bars.
The state, which has had six death row inmates exonerated since the death penalty was reinstated in 1974, needs widespread policy reforms to overcome what the ABA called "substantial shortcomings."
Among other things, the team found that there are racial disparities in the state's capital sentencing system, with blacks being targeted for execution more often than whites.
The assessment team that reviewed Pennsylvania's death penalty system found that the state is in full compliance with only seven of the 93 protocols the ABA drafted to ensure that capital punishment is applied fairly to convicted murderers.
The group, chaired by Villanova law professor and former federal prosecutor Anne Bowen Poulin, issued nine broad recommendations in its report aimed at ensuring that capital punishment is imposed consistently.
Those recommendations include banning the execution of offenders with severe mental illness and requiring law enforcement to record video or audio of all interrogations. The team also said the state should adopt tougher attorney qualifications and monitoring procedures for attorneys in capital cases.
The report also found that the state fails to protect defendants in capital cases against shoddy defense attorneys, provides defense attorneys inadequate access to experts and investigators, and has jury instructions so confusing that nearly all capital jurors failed to understand at least some of them.
The state had 228 people on death row as of Oct. 1. Pennsylvania has executed three people since reinstating the death penalty in 1978, the last in 1999.
Pennsylvania is the eighth and final state to be assessed by the ABA's Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project, following Georgia, Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Virginia. Unlike several other state reports, the Pennsylvania panel did not make a recommendation on whether to enact a death penalty moratorium until reforms were made.
The report and its recommendations have not been presented to the ABA's House of Delegates and do not constitute ABA policy. The report itself does not specifically call for a moratorium on executions, though the ABA has urged one until fairness and due process can be guaranteed.
In 2003, a committee appointed by the state Supreme Court recommended that Pennsylvania stop executing criminals until it can study the impact of race in death penalty sentences, but the idea didn't get much political support.
Other team members were Delaware County Common Pleas Judge Frank Hazel, Montgomery County prosecutor Mary Ann MacNeil Killinger, Philadelphia attorney Gregory P. Miller and civil rights lawyer and Penn law professor David Rudovsky.
------
On the Net:
Pennsylvania report: http://www.abavideonews.org/ABA340/
STATE RESPONSE TO PRO SE LETTER - Lightbourne
http://www.oranous.com/florida/IanLightbourne/stateresponsetoprose.htm
http://www.oranous.com/florida/IanLightbourne/Filed_09-25-2007_StatesResponseProSeLetter.pdf
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE
FIFTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT,
IN AND FOR MARION COUNTY, FLORIDA
STATE OF FLORIDA,
Plaintiff,
v. Case No. 81-170-CF-A-01
IAN DECO LIGHTBOURNE,
Defendant.
/
RESPONSE TO PRO SE LETTER
RESPONSE TO PETITIONER’S PRO SE LETTER TO THE COURT - Lightbourne
http://www.oranous.com/florida/IanLightbourne/responsetoprose.htm
http://www.oranous.com/florida/IanLightbourne/Filed_09-24-2007_PetitionersResponseProSeLetter.pdf
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF FLORIDA
IAN DECO LIGHTBOURNE,
Petitioner,
Case No. SC06-2391
v.
BILL McCOLLUM, ET AL.,
Respondents.
____________________________/
RESPONSE TO PETITIONER’S PRO SE LETTER TO THE COURT
COMES NOW the undersigned, Suzanne Keffer, counsel for the Petitioner, Ian Deco Lightbourne, and hereby responds to Petitioner’s "An Open Letter to The Justices of the Supreme Court" filed on September 7, 2007. In furtherance thereof, counsel states:
The replybrief in Lightbourne
http://www.oranous.com/florida/IanLightbourne/ThereplybriefinLightbourne.htm
http://www.oranous.com/florida/IanLightbourne/Filed_09-28-2007_Lightbourne_Reply.pdf
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF FLORIDA
CASE NO. SC06-2391
IAN DECO LIGHTBOURNE, Appellant, v. STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee. ON APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE FIFTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT, IN AND FOR MARION COUNTY, STATE OF FLORIDA REPLY BRIEF OF APPELLANT
SUZANNE MYERS KEFFER
Assistant CCRC
Florida Bar No. 0150177
ROSEANNE ECKERT
Assistant CCRC
Florida Bar No. 82491
ANNA-LIISA NIXON
Staff Attorney
Florida Bar No. 26283
OFFICE OF THE CAPITAL
COLLATERAL REGIONAL COUNSEL
101 N.E. 3rd Ave., Suite 400
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
(954) 713-1284
COUNSEL FOR APPELLANT
State`s answerbrief in Lightbourne
http://www.oranous.com/florida/IanLightbourne/stateanswerbriefinligtbourne.htm
http://www.oranous.com/florida/IanLightbourne/Filed_09-27-2007_Answer_Brief.pdf
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF FLORIDA
CASE NO. SC SC06-2391
IAN DECO LIGHTBOURNE,
Appellant,
v.
STATE OF FLORIDA,
Appellee.
ON APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT
OF THE FIFTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT FOR MARION COUNTY,
STATE OF FLORIDA
ANSWER BRIEF OF APPELLEE
BILL McCOLLUM
ATTORNEY GENERAL
CAROLYN M. SNURKOWSKI
ASSISTANT DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL
KENNETH S. NUNNELLEY
SENIOR ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL
Fla. Bar #998818
444 Seabreeze Blvd., 5th FL
Daytona Beach, FL 32118
(386) 238-4990
Fax # (386) 226-0457
COUNSEL FOR APPELLEE
Initial brief filed in Lightbourne
http://www.oranous.com/florida/IanLightbourne/inibriefLightbourne1.htm
http://www.oranous.com/florida/IanLightbourne/Filed_09-19-2007_Lightbourne_Brief.pdf
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF FLORIDA CASE NO. SC06-2391 IAN DECO LIGHTBOURNE, Appellant, v. STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee. ON APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE FIFTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT, IN AND FOR MARION COUNTY, STATE OF FLORIDA INITIAL BRIEF OF APPELLANT
SUZANNE MYERS KEFFER
Assistant CCRC
Florida Bar No. 0150177
ROSEANNE ECKERT
Assistant CCRC
Florida Bar No. 82491
ANNA-LIISA NIXON
Staff Attorney
Florida Bar No. 26283
OFFICE OF THE CAPITAL
COLLATERAL REGIONAL COUNSEL
101 N.E. 3rd Ave., Suite 400
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
(954) 713-1284
COUNSEL FOR APPELLANT
Sunday, 7 October 2007
Death penalty: Eye for eye
But opponents want moratoriumS to halt 'murder of murderers.'
Sunday, October 07, 2007
By TONY NAUROTH
The Express-Times
The Supreme Court of the United States will soon be considering one of the most important death penalty cases in decades.
The issue centers on the use of lethal injection as the executioner's tool in a case involving two inmates on Kentucky's death row.
Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. sued the Bluegrass State in 2004, claiming the needle amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
Locally, some say any form of capital punishment is just plain wrong.
Lehigh University Chaplain Lloyd Steffen is a longtime opponent of the death penalty. He's even written a book about it -- "Executing Justice: The Moral Meaning of the Death Penalty."
Steffen is a professor of religion and a minister with the United Church of Christ, which is taking a strong stand against the death penalty.
Karen Berry, head of the Social Action Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Lehigh Valley, says her church adopted a moratorium resolution earlier this summer and is hoping for formal action from the Pennsylvania Legislature to make some type of death penalty moratorium official statewide.
And during the weekend of Oct. 19-20, Amnesty International is sponsoring the 2007 National Weekend of Faith in Action on the Death Penalty when churches throughout the country will hold events to bring attention to the issue.
The fight is in the courts
This connection between religious and secular organizations is at the forefront of the struggle to rid states of what organizers see as a barbaric and unfairly administered penalty for the crime of murder.
The courts are where the fighting has begun.
All 37 states that perform lethal injection use the same three-drug cocktail, but at least 10 of those states suspended its use after opponents alleged it was ineffective and cruel, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The three consist of an anesthetic, a muscle paralyzer, and a substance to stop the heart. Death penalty foes have argued that if the condemned prisoner is not given enough anesthetic, he -- or she -- can suffer excruciating pain without being able to cry out.
Baze, 52, has been on death row for 14 years. He was sentenced for the 1992 shooting deaths of Powell County Sheriff Steve Bennett and Deputy Arthur Briscoe.
Bennett and Briscoe were serving warrants on Baze when he shot them. Baze has said the shootings were the result of a family dispute that got out of hand and resulted in the sheriff being called.
Bowling was sentenced to death for killing Edward and Tina Earley and shooting their 2-year-old son outside the couple's Lexington, Ky., dry-cleaning business in 1990.
Lethal injection is just one battle; the war consists of opponents fighting against all forms of capital punishment.
'Seamless garment of life'
When asked if churches have any business getting mixed up in the politics of whether states should, or should not, execute criminals for the most heinous crimes, Steffen says, "Sure they should. All the mainline churches have taken positions opposing the death penalty, and Pope John Paul II has said the death penalty is inimical to the 'seamless garment of life.' "
Steffen is not encouraging the justice system to let the most vile criminals out onto the streets, he's just looking for the same kind of consideration parents use when their kids act out -- give them a time out.
"If people took a time out to study the problem," he says, "they would be against the death penalty."
Perhaps the Bible verse from Hebrews 10:30 applies here: "'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord." And from Deuteronomy 32:36: "For the Lord will be judge of his people."
But what do the people do when a Timothy McVeigh blows up an office building in Oklahoma City, snuffing out 168 souls? Or -- much closer to home -- when Martin Appel robbed the bank in East Allen Township, executing three to leave no witnesses. Appel was sentenced to death, but got off death row through appeals.
Death for 'horrific crimes'
Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli still chafes at that decision.
"We need to keep the death penalty on the books for any horrific crimes that come along," Morganelli says. He maintains Appel is one of those criminals. Besides, Morganelli says Pennsylvania has had a "de facto" moratorium on death sentences for decades.
"We've only had three executions, and all of those came after they stopped appealing their cases.
Steffen refers to those same three cases as "voluntary" executions. He has visited death rows in Pennsylvania and Tennessee and says death row confinement usually means solitary confinement for years.
"There are a lot of suicides," he says. "It's torturous for them. All three executions have been volunteers. They drop all appeals; it's a mental illness situation."
Pennsylvania's primary method of execution is by lethal injection which, according to Amnesty International, is the same method used by China, Guatemala, the Philippines and Thailand.
New Jersey's method of execution is also by lethal injection. However, The Garden State does have a formal moratorium on executions, due to legislation passed in 2006.
Steffen says too many convicts who were innocent slip through the cracks.
"There have been 124 nationwide," he says.
Return to Martin Appel case
When Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted his state's death sentences in a blanket order in January 2003, he was making a statement against the death penalty. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for that action and has stumped in Harrisburg for a moratorium on the death penalty in the Keystone State.
Morganelli, who authored his own book about the Appel case, says those seeking a death penalty moratorium in Pennsylvania "are all do-good organizations that don't believe in punishment and that everybody can be rehabilitated. They're just anti-law and don't carry much credibility."
Morganelli's book is titled "The D-Day Bank Massacre: The True Story Behind the Martin Appel Case."
Morganelli says he's more concerned about inmates who manage to get paroled and end up killing again. He names Reginald McFadden and "Mudman" Simon as two examples.
He also says the American justice system already has a built-in safeguard against making mistakes -- a jury of 12 who must vote unanimously for the death penalty.
"We just had a case where it went 11 to 1," Morganelli says, citing the Andrew D. Paschal verdict. Paschal was convicted of gunning down Marcellus McDuffie outside Larry Holmes Ringside Restaurant and Lounge, in Easton on May 14, 2006.
Death penalty not logical
Maria Weick of the Lehigh Valley Committee Against Killing and the Pennsylvania Death Penalty Abolition Coordinator for Amnesty International, says "Pennsylvania is a really hard case when it comes to the death penalty."
Both she and Steffen say the single most difficult roadblock to a moratorium is politicians.
"Pennsylvania politicians," Weick scoffs, "are married to the idea that supporting the death penalty means they're tough on crime."
Weick says Pennsylvanians are split 50-50 for and against the death penalty.
She admits, "Moratoriums are an act of desperation. But they are a way of getting people to think about the issue."
Steffen says they act to increase public awareness.
Weick adds that the death penalty makes no logical sense.
"Think about it," she says, "Do we drug the drug dealer? Do we rape the rapist? Then why do we murder the murderer?"
Tony Nauroth is a features writer with The Express-Times. He can be reached at 610-258-7171 or by e-mail at tnauroth@express-times.com.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
By TONY NAUROTH
The Express-Times
The Supreme Court of the United States will soon be considering one of the most important death penalty cases in decades.
The issue centers on the use of lethal injection as the executioner's tool in a case involving two inmates on Kentucky's death row.
Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. sued the Bluegrass State in 2004, claiming the needle amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
Locally, some say any form of capital punishment is just plain wrong.
Lehigh University Chaplain Lloyd Steffen is a longtime opponent of the death penalty. He's even written a book about it -- "Executing Justice: The Moral Meaning of the Death Penalty."
Steffen is a professor of religion and a minister with the United Church of Christ, which is taking a strong stand against the death penalty.
Karen Berry, head of the Social Action Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Lehigh Valley, says her church adopted a moratorium resolution earlier this summer and is hoping for formal action from the Pennsylvania Legislature to make some type of death penalty moratorium official statewide.
And during the weekend of Oct. 19-20, Amnesty International is sponsoring the 2007 National Weekend of Faith in Action on the Death Penalty when churches throughout the country will hold events to bring attention to the issue.
The fight is in the courts
This connection between religious and secular organizations is at the forefront of the struggle to rid states of what organizers see as a barbaric and unfairly administered penalty for the crime of murder.
The courts are where the fighting has begun.
All 37 states that perform lethal injection use the same three-drug cocktail, but at least 10 of those states suspended its use after opponents alleged it was ineffective and cruel, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The three consist of an anesthetic, a muscle paralyzer, and a substance to stop the heart. Death penalty foes have argued that if the condemned prisoner is not given enough anesthetic, he -- or she -- can suffer excruciating pain without being able to cry out.
Baze, 52, has been on death row for 14 years. He was sentenced for the 1992 shooting deaths of Powell County Sheriff Steve Bennett and Deputy Arthur Briscoe.
Bennett and Briscoe were serving warrants on Baze when he shot them. Baze has said the shootings were the result of a family dispute that got out of hand and resulted in the sheriff being called.
Bowling was sentenced to death for killing Edward and Tina Earley and shooting their 2-year-old son outside the couple's Lexington, Ky., dry-cleaning business in 1990.
Lethal injection is just one battle; the war consists of opponents fighting against all forms of capital punishment.
'Seamless garment of life'
When asked if churches have any business getting mixed up in the politics of whether states should, or should not, execute criminals for the most heinous crimes, Steffen says, "Sure they should. All the mainline churches have taken positions opposing the death penalty, and Pope John Paul II has said the death penalty is inimical to the 'seamless garment of life.' "
Steffen is not encouraging the justice system to let the most vile criminals out onto the streets, he's just looking for the same kind of consideration parents use when their kids act out -- give them a time out.
"If people took a time out to study the problem," he says, "they would be against the death penalty."
Perhaps the Bible verse from Hebrews 10:30 applies here: "'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord." And from Deuteronomy 32:36: "For the Lord will be judge of his people."
But what do the people do when a Timothy McVeigh blows up an office building in Oklahoma City, snuffing out 168 souls? Or -- much closer to home -- when Martin Appel robbed the bank in East Allen Township, executing three to leave no witnesses. Appel was sentenced to death, but got off death row through appeals.
Death for 'horrific crimes'
Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli still chafes at that decision.
"We need to keep the death penalty on the books for any horrific crimes that come along," Morganelli says. He maintains Appel is one of those criminals. Besides, Morganelli says Pennsylvania has had a "de facto" moratorium on death sentences for decades.
"We've only had three executions, and all of those came after they stopped appealing their cases.
Steffen refers to those same three cases as "voluntary" executions. He has visited death rows in Pennsylvania and Tennessee and says death row confinement usually means solitary confinement for years.
"There are a lot of suicides," he says. "It's torturous for them. All three executions have been volunteers. They drop all appeals; it's a mental illness situation."
Pennsylvania's primary method of execution is by lethal injection which, according to Amnesty International, is the same method used by China, Guatemala, the Philippines and Thailand.
New Jersey's method of execution is also by lethal injection. However, The Garden State does have a formal moratorium on executions, due to legislation passed in 2006.
Steffen says too many convicts who were innocent slip through the cracks.
"There have been 124 nationwide," he says.
Return to Martin Appel case
When Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted his state's death sentences in a blanket order in January 2003, he was making a statement against the death penalty. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for that action and has stumped in Harrisburg for a moratorium on the death penalty in the Keystone State.
Morganelli, who authored his own book about the Appel case, says those seeking a death penalty moratorium in Pennsylvania "are all do-good organizations that don't believe in punishment and that everybody can be rehabilitated. They're just anti-law and don't carry much credibility."
Morganelli's book is titled "The D-Day Bank Massacre: The True Story Behind the Martin Appel Case."
Morganelli says he's more concerned about inmates who manage to get paroled and end up killing again. He names Reginald McFadden and "Mudman" Simon as two examples.
He also says the American justice system already has a built-in safeguard against making mistakes -- a jury of 12 who must vote unanimously for the death penalty.
"We just had a case where it went 11 to 1," Morganelli says, citing the Andrew D. Paschal verdict. Paschal was convicted of gunning down Marcellus McDuffie outside Larry Holmes Ringside Restaurant and Lounge, in Easton on May 14, 2006.
Death penalty not logical
Maria Weick of the Lehigh Valley Committee Against Killing and the Pennsylvania Death Penalty Abolition Coordinator for Amnesty International, says "Pennsylvania is a really hard case when it comes to the death penalty."
Both she and Steffen say the single most difficult roadblock to a moratorium is politicians.
"Pennsylvania politicians," Weick scoffs, "are married to the idea that supporting the death penalty means they're tough on crime."
Weick says Pennsylvanians are split 50-50 for and against the death penalty.
She admits, "Moratoriums are an act of desperation. But they are a way of getting people to think about the issue."
Steffen says they act to increase public awareness.
Weick adds that the death penalty makes no logical sense.
"Think about it," she says, "Do we drug the drug dealer? Do we rape the rapist? Then why do we murder the murderer?"
Tony Nauroth is a features writer with The Express-Times. He can be reached at 610-258-7171 or by e-mail at tnauroth@express-times.com.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Veterinarians find selves in death penalty debate
By JOHN MORITZ
Star-Telegram staff writer
Inmates are executed by lethal injection in this death chamber in Huntsville. The constitutionality of the three-chemical execution method will be at issue before the Supreme Court.
AUSTIN -- The ongoing debate over whether lethal injection inflicts unconstitutional misery on condemned inmates has ensnared the American Veterinary Medical Association in a political debate of which the 75,000-member organization wants no part.
At issue is the argument, asserted mostly by opponents of capital punishment, that one of the three drugs used in lethal injection has been roundly condemned by the veterinary group as an acceptable agent to euthanize animals. The argument has been commonly cited in media reports and is part of the legal arguments the U.S. Supreme Court will hear as it considers whether the lethal injection process violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
"Somehow, we are part of this fight," said Michael San Filippo, a spokesman for the American Veterinary Medical Association. "But we never wanted to be in it, and we don't want to stay in it."
Focus on paralyzing chemicals
The organization, whose mission is to develop scientific research that leads to better medical care for animals and to lobby on behalf of veterinarians at the state and federal levels, became part of the death penalty debate after issuing guidelines for euthanizing animals in 2000. The guidelines, which were updated again this year, urge veterinarians not to use chemicals that cause paralysis as the sole agent for causing death or to mix them with fast-acting, sleep-inducing chemicals to put down animals.
The reasoning behind the directive is that drugs that cause paralysis prevent breathing, leading to slow and agonizing suffocation.
Lawyers for Death Row inmates and anti-death-penalty activists seized on the veterinary guidelines because the three-drug cocktail used in lethal injection includes the paralyzing agent pancuronium bromide. It is administered after a dose of sodium thiopental, which puts the inmate to sleep, and before the heart-stopping potassium chloride.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge to lethal injection in a case that originated in Kentucky. No date has been set for the hearing, but since the court decided to hear arguments, two Texas inmates scheduled for execution this month have been granted at least temporary reprieves. One was condemned for killing an Arlington store manager in 2001.
Opponents of lethal injection have persuaded the high court to examine the lethal injection process in part by pointing out that if an inmate received an improper dose of the sleep-inducing chemical, he or she would suffer needlessly after the pancuronium bromide kicked in, but because of the head-to-toe paralysis, no observer would be able to discern the discomfort.
Foes' view called oversimplification
The argument has often boiled down to a simple question: "If a vet wouldn't put down a dog with pancuronium bromide, why should the state be allowed to execute a human being with the stuff?"
But San Filippo said the statement is an oversimplification of the veterinary association's guidelines and implies that it is in league with critics of the death penalty.
"It's a catchy argument, but it's not what we're saying," he said. "As an organization, we take no position on the death penalty."
Kimberly May, a veterinarian who is also medical and science writer for the veterinary association, said its guidelines for euthanasia make no specific mention of pancuronium bromide. She also said that the organization has no power to ban any drugs. However, a number of states, including Texas, have banned the use of pancuronium bromide for euthanizing animals based on the veterinary association's concerns.
May and San Fillippo also said that circumstances might arise when a veterinarian might be justified in using a paralyzing drug, such as to subdue a dangerous animal who poses an immediate threat to humans.
Steve Hall, who runs Austin-based StandDown Texas, which calls for a moratorium on executions, said that even if the veterinary association does not want to become involved in the death penalty debate, there is probably little its officers can do to prevent it.
"The death penalty is a hot-button issue, and a lot of people don't like to touch it," Hall said. "But it's hard to walk away from the fact that we are using a drug to kill people that our neighborhood vet wouldn't use if our dog or cat needed to be put to sleep."
Online: http://www.avma.org/; http://www.standdown.org/
jmoritz@star-telegram.com John Moritz reports from the Star-Telegram's Austin bureau. 512-476-4294
Mom won't give up death-penalty fight
By BRANDON PUTTBRESE bputtbrese@dnj.com — Brandon Puttbrese, 615-278-5153
While Tennessee officials ramp up for a court battle to keep its lethal-injection process, the mother of a convicted death-row inmate is calling for an end to the death penalty.
Joyce House says DNA evidence proved the innocence of her son, Paul House, who was convicted of raping and killing his neighbor, Carolyn Muncey, 22 years ago in Union County in East Tennessee.
"People don't think an innocent person could get convicted," the mother said Saturday, speaking to students at MTSU during a conference sponsored by the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing.
Joyce House says the death penalty should be done away with because the court system sometimes sentences innocent people to death such as her son.
More than a decade after the conviction, DNA evidence proved Paul House didn't rape Muncey, taking away the prosecution's motive for the killing, his mother said.
A medical examiner said during court testimony the bloodstains on House's clothing were planted during a crime-lab mishap. DNA tests concluded the semen found on the victim came from her husband, Hubert Muncey Jr., according to previous reports.
Paul House remains on death row at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, watching his appeals wind through the judicial system, which recently barred executions in Tennessee's using the three-drug method of lethal injection.
U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger found last month the injections amount to cruel and unusual punishment due to the state's problems with training and medical expertise to ensure painless executions.
Isaac Kimes, an organizer with TCASK, applauded Trauger's ruling.
"Pets are euthanized in a more humane way than people are in this state," he said.
Robert Cooper, the state's attorney general, filed a motion Friday telling the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals he will appeal the court decision.
The challenge was brought by death row inmate Edward Jerome Harbison, who was convicted in the 1983 beating death of an elderly woman in Chattanooga.
Attorney General spokeswoman Sharon Curtis-Flair said details of the state's arguments have not yet been filed.
Trauger ruled that Correction Commissioner George Little did not give enough consideration to a recommendation to discard the standard three-drug lethal injection cocktail in favor of a single drug method.
Tennessee law allows death row inmates to choose between lethal injection and electrocution if their crimes were committed before 1999.
A legislative committee will study the state's death penalty system later this month and is expected to report back to the General Assembly.
Any changes to the death penalty system will be decided by the Legislature.
State Rep. Jason Mumpower, R-Bristol, said he's glad to hear the state will appeal Trauger's ruling.
"With the exception of a few ardent members who are opposed, I think most members see (the death penalty) as a valid form of punishment," Mumpower said. "It is about the end of a long process — acquiring justice for the voiceless victims of tragic crimes."
Joyce House hopes the Legislature will consider outlawing the death penalty in Tennessee, not only for her son, but also for other wrongfully accused people on death row. There are 98 people on death row in the state, according to TCASK figures.
"When Paul gets out, I'm not going to stop. I'm going to keep going on because I don't support the death penalty," she said.
The group says 124 people sentenced to death have been exonerated by evidence after their convictions.
While Tennessee officials ramp up for a court battle to keep its lethal-injection process, the mother of a convicted death-row inmate is calling for an end to the death penalty.
Joyce House says DNA evidence proved the innocence of her son, Paul House, who was convicted of raping and killing his neighbor, Carolyn Muncey, 22 years ago in Union County in East Tennessee.
"People don't think an innocent person could get convicted," the mother said Saturday, speaking to students at MTSU during a conference sponsored by the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing.
Joyce House says the death penalty should be done away with because the court system sometimes sentences innocent people to death such as her son.
More than a decade after the conviction, DNA evidence proved Paul House didn't rape Muncey, taking away the prosecution's motive for the killing, his mother said.
A medical examiner said during court testimony the bloodstains on House's clothing were planted during a crime-lab mishap. DNA tests concluded the semen found on the victim came from her husband, Hubert Muncey Jr., according to previous reports.
Paul House remains on death row at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, watching his appeals wind through the judicial system, which recently barred executions in Tennessee's using the three-drug method of lethal injection.
U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger found last month the injections amount to cruel and unusual punishment due to the state's problems with training and medical expertise to ensure painless executions.
Isaac Kimes, an organizer with TCASK, applauded Trauger's ruling.
"Pets are euthanized in a more humane way than people are in this state," he said.
Robert Cooper, the state's attorney general, filed a motion Friday telling the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals he will appeal the court decision.
The challenge was brought by death row inmate Edward Jerome Harbison, who was convicted in the 1983 beating death of an elderly woman in Chattanooga.
Attorney General spokeswoman Sharon Curtis-Flair said details of the state's arguments have not yet been filed.
Trauger ruled that Correction Commissioner George Little did not give enough consideration to a recommendation to discard the standard three-drug lethal injection cocktail in favor of a single drug method.
Tennessee law allows death row inmates to choose between lethal injection and electrocution if their crimes were committed before 1999.
A legislative committee will study the state's death penalty system later this month and is expected to report back to the General Assembly.
Any changes to the death penalty system will be decided by the Legislature.
State Rep. Jason Mumpower, R-Bristol, said he's glad to hear the state will appeal Trauger's ruling.
"With the exception of a few ardent members who are opposed, I think most members see (the death penalty) as a valid form of punishment," Mumpower said. "It is about the end of a long process — acquiring justice for the voiceless victims of tragic crimes."
Joyce House hopes the Legislature will consider outlawing the death penalty in Tennessee, not only for her son, but also for other wrongfully accused people on death row. There are 98 people on death row in the state, according to TCASK figures.
"When Paul gets out, I'm not going to stop. I'm going to keep going on because I don't support the death penalty," she said.
The group says 124 people sentenced to death have been exonerated by evidence after their convictions.
Lethal injection case may affect Vermonter on federal death row
October 7, 2007
By Alan J. Keays Staff Writer
A constitutional challenge to execution by lethal injection will be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court, and the case is being closely watched in Vermont. Donald R. Fell, the first man sentenced to die in Vermont in more than a half century, would likely face lethal injection should he exhaust all appeals, a process legal experts say could take more than 10 years.
Fell is on federal death row in a Terre Haute, Ind., prison, following his conviction two years ago on federal capital crimes for his role in killing a North Clarendon woman, Terry King. The crime started with a carjacking in Rutland and ended with a beating death in New York.Vermont is one of a dozen states without a death penalty statute. Fell was prosecuted under federal law because his offense involved crossing state lines.
Fell's lawyers are appealing his death penalty sentence and say they are keenly aware of the legal wrangling playing out before the nation's highest court regarding the constitutionally of lethal injection.The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take up a legal challenge from two death row inmates in Kentucky who claim that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.I
t's a case that could affect how inmates, including Fell, are executed, or depending on how far-reaching the high court's decision is, if they will ever face execution.
Fell's case is in the early stages of the appeal process. His attorneys are challenging issues regarding the jury selection and sentencing phases of his trial, which was held in U.S. District Court in Burlington. The lawyers say that because the appeal is pending there is little they can say about the case.
For Fell, any challenge to the legality of the method of execution is still likely years away, his attorney said."If they were to decide sometime this year that lethal injection was unconstitutional then I suppose they'd have to figure out if there is a method of execution that is constitutional," said Alexander Bunin, a federal public defender representing Fell. "It would have an affect at some point, but I can't tell you right now how."
King's sister, Barbara Tuttle of North Clarendon, said she is watching the U.S. Supreme Court case closely."It will affect the death penalty as we know it, whatever way they decide," she said. "Obviously, we're interested in this case. We want Donald Fell executed. We wish they would hurry up and get this over with."
Michael Mello, a Vermont Law School professor and death penalty expert, has been lecturing to his students on the importance of the upcoming case before the nation's highest court. He teaches a seminar on capital punishment at the state's only law school in South Royalton. He also teaches a class on constitutional criminal procedures."It's something I've been following neurotically close, as anyone who has been a student in either one of my classes would attest," Mello said. "Certainly, Donnie Fell is the person in Vermont who this case most directly affects."
Fell's case was the first death penalty trial in nearly 50 years in Vermont. Fell was ultimately convicted of capital crimes for abducting King, 53, as she showed up for work at a downtown Rutland supermarket in November 2000.
After the carjacking, police said Fell and another man drove her to New York where she was beaten to death. Fell's alleged accomplice died in prison before standing trial. Police said the two men abducted King because they needed a vehicle as they were fleeing Rutland after killing Fell's mother and her friend.
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center, said Fell is one 53 condemned prisoners on federal death row. Eight inmates, like Fell, come from a state that does not have a death penalty statute of its own."It could definitely have an impact Fell's case because the Supreme Court is going to consider the standards for lethal injections, not just in Kentucky, but generally what would be acceptable under the Constitution," Dieter said. "The federal government has used lethal injection for all its executions so far."
It's the first time the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the mixture of three drugs that are used in lethal injections to carry out executions in Kentucky and other states is constitutional under the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment."There's actually a very narrow issue that's before the Supreme Court," Mello said. "It is whether this particular method of lethal injection is constitutional, with this particular set of drugs, in this particular pharmaceutical sequence, represents cruel and unusual punishment."
The drugs used in lethal injections include one designed to relax muscles, another to serve as an anesthetic and a third to stop the heart. Mello said the legal challenge before the U.S. Supreme Court centers on the pain level felt by a condemned person when the "three-drug cocktail" is administered. The law professor said he doesn't expect the court to issue a ruling striking down the death penalty."I could very definitely see them declare this particular lethal injection technique unconstitutional," he said, adding that he believed the court would limit its decision to that particular matter.
"What they could say is come back to us with something different … The new system might just be new drugs, or new administration of lethal injection through some addition training by those carrying out the execution."Mello added that depending on the ruling by the nation's highest court, executions could be put on hold around the country until a "constitutionally-accepted" manner of lethal injection is developed.
"If there's no constitutionally acceptable way of carrying out executions then there's no death penalty," the law professor said.
Rachel Lawler of Vermonters Against the Death Penalty, a group that formed prior Fell's trial more than two years ago, said that while she is waiting to see how the U.S. Supreme Court addresses the most recent death penalty case before it, she had hoped the court would take up a more direct challenge to the death penalty.
"The recent news of the Supreme Court hearing a case of unconstitutionality of lethal injection is an important step forward in our country," she said. "However, the issues that the justices will be addressing is whether the method of lethal injection is unconstitutional; they will not be addressing whether the death penalty, in and of itself, is unconstitutional."
She added that she hoped the nation's highest court will strike down the current lethal injection process used in carrying out death sentences. "Lethal injection is only humane to those who watch the process, not to those who undergo it," she said.Dieter said it's hard to predict how the U.S. Supreme Court would rule on the case before it, or what they will require to make lethal injection constitutional.
"The court will likely set the standards for how lethal injections can be carried out and then states will try to meet those standards," Dieter said. "You do get a sticking point if lethal injection itself is somehow impossible to carry out and states don't have any alternatives."
Contact Alan J. Keays at alan.keays@rutlandherald.com.
Lethal injection won't go away, experts say
Oct. 4, 2007
If chemical cocktail is ruled cruel and unusual, states likely to just adjust mix
By LISA SANDBERG Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
AUSTIN — Some form of lethal injection is likely to remain the method of execution in much of the United States, no matter how the U.S. Supreme Court rules next year, death penalty experts say.
"I don't think the Supreme Court's decision is going to herald the end of capital punishment," said Houston attorney David Dow.
Should the court deem as "cruel and unusual" the current three-chemical cocktail administered to death row inmates in Kentucky, where a challenge is pending, Dow said states likely would just adjust the mixture.
Dow represents Heliberto Chi, 28, the North Texas inmate whose scheduled execution Wednesday for killing a shopkeeper in Arlington was halted this week by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Though the lethal injection argument affects nearly every death row case in the country — the number of death row inmates nationally is put at more than 3,330 — the scope of the challenge is rather narrow, Dow said.
Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal said his office would "pursue death penalty cases just like we always have."
He said his office was moving forward this week with one of two death penalty cases. The second case would be prosecuted early next year. He said he was confident the nation's highest court would not view lethal injections as inhumane.
"When the Founding Fathers wrote about cruel and unusual punishment, they were talking about things like drawing and quartering and being tortured to death," not lethal injection, he said.
Executions nationally are expected to grind to a halt, however, until the court issues its ruling in Baze v. Rees next year.
Thirty-seven of 38 states with the death penalty, including Texas, carry out executions with lethal injections.
Texas, the country's most active death penalty state, hasn't issued a moratorium on executions, but Tuesday's decision by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to stay Chi's execution amounts to an informal one. Because there's no moratorium, death row attorneys will be forced to file paperwork on each case before the state's highest court, experts said.
There are two executions scheduled in Texas this year, both from Tarrant County, and two scheduled early next year, one from Dallas County, the other from Bell County.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, in its ruling Tuesday, gave attorneys for the state 30 days to file arguments that its executions do not cause unnecessary pain.
Prosecutors around the state seem undaunted by the current halt in executions, temporary as they are likely to be.
Jefferson County District Attorney Tom Maness said he thought lethal injection would survive the challenge against it, but if it doesn't, "states will redo their chemicals. That's quite simple to do," Maness said from Beaumont.
Even if the lethal injection challenges didn't lead to the abolition of the death penalty, Dow said he was hopeful the review would provide more details about state-sponsored killings.
He said it was possible the public would learn about the qualifications of the people who carry out executions, the training they receive, whether a doctor is present and the precise dosage of the lethal cocktail.
"There's more we don't know than that we do," he said. "These are all things that are germane to the issue of whether lethal injection violates the Eighth Amendment."
lsandberg@express-news.net
If chemical cocktail is ruled cruel and unusual, states likely to just adjust mix
By LISA SANDBERG Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
AUSTIN — Some form of lethal injection is likely to remain the method of execution in much of the United States, no matter how the U.S. Supreme Court rules next year, death penalty experts say.
"I don't think the Supreme Court's decision is going to herald the end of capital punishment," said Houston attorney David Dow.
Should the court deem as "cruel and unusual" the current three-chemical cocktail administered to death row inmates in Kentucky, where a challenge is pending, Dow said states likely would just adjust the mixture.
Dow represents Heliberto Chi, 28, the North Texas inmate whose scheduled execution Wednesday for killing a shopkeeper in Arlington was halted this week by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Though the lethal injection argument affects nearly every death row case in the country — the number of death row inmates nationally is put at more than 3,330 — the scope of the challenge is rather narrow, Dow said.
Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal said his office would "pursue death penalty cases just like we always have."
He said his office was moving forward this week with one of two death penalty cases. The second case would be prosecuted early next year. He said he was confident the nation's highest court would not view lethal injections as inhumane.
"When the Founding Fathers wrote about cruel and unusual punishment, they were talking about things like drawing and quartering and being tortured to death," not lethal injection, he said.
Executions nationally are expected to grind to a halt, however, until the court issues its ruling in Baze v. Rees next year.
Thirty-seven of 38 states with the death penalty, including Texas, carry out executions with lethal injections.
Texas, the country's most active death penalty state, hasn't issued a moratorium on executions, but Tuesday's decision by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to stay Chi's execution amounts to an informal one. Because there's no moratorium, death row attorneys will be forced to file paperwork on each case before the state's highest court, experts said.
There are two executions scheduled in Texas this year, both from Tarrant County, and two scheduled early next year, one from Dallas County, the other from Bell County.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, in its ruling Tuesday, gave attorneys for the state 30 days to file arguments that its executions do not cause unnecessary pain.
Prosecutors around the state seem undaunted by the current halt in executions, temporary as they are likely to be.
Jefferson County District Attorney Tom Maness said he thought lethal injection would survive the challenge against it, but if it doesn't, "states will redo their chemicals. That's quite simple to do," Maness said from Beaumont.
Even if the lethal injection challenges didn't lead to the abolition of the death penalty, Dow said he was hopeful the review would provide more details about state-sponsored killings.
He said it was possible the public would learn about the qualifications of the people who carry out executions, the training they receive, whether a doctor is present and the precise dosage of the lethal cocktail.
"There's more we don't know than that we do," he said. "These are all things that are germane to the issue of whether lethal injection violates the Eighth Amendment."
lsandberg@express-news.net
Death penalty: Eye for eye
But opponents want moratorium to halt 'murder of murderers.'
Sunday, October 07, 2007
By TONY NAUROTHThe Express-Times
The Supreme Court of the United States will soon be considering one of the most important death penalty cases in decades.
The issue centers on the use of lethal injection as the executioner's tool in a case involving two inmates on Kentucky's death row.
Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. sued the Bluegrass State in 2004, claiming the needle amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
Locally, some say any form of capital punishment is just plain wrong.
Lehigh University Chaplain Lloyd Steffen is a longtime opponent of the death penalty. He's even written a book about it -- "Executing Justice: The Moral Meaning of the Death Penalty."
Steffen is a professor of religion and a minister with the United Church of Christ, which is taking a strong stand against the death penalty.
Karen Berry, head of the Social Action Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Lehigh Valley, says her church adopted a moratorium resolution earlier this summer and is hoping for formal action from the Pennsylvania Legislature to make some type of death penalty moratorium official statewide.
And during the weekend of Oct. 19-20, Amnesty International is sponsoring the 2007 National Weekend of Faith in Action on the Death Penalty when churches throughout the country will hold events to bring attention to the issue.
The fight is in the courts
This connection between religious and secular organizations is at the forefront of the struggle to rid states of what organizers see as a barbaric and unfairly administered penalty for the crime of murder.
The courts are where the fighting has begun.
All 37 states that perform lethal injection use the same three-drug cocktail, but at least 10 of those states suspended its use after opponents alleged it was ineffective and cruel, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The three consist of an anesthetic, a muscle paralyzer, and a substance to stop the heart. Death penalty foes have argued that if the condemned prisoner is not given enough anesthetic, he -- or she -- can suffer excruciating pain without being able to cry out.
Baze, 52, has been on death row for 14 years. He was sentenced for the 1992 shooting deaths of Powell County Sheriff Steve Bennett and Deputy Arthur Briscoe.
Bennett and Briscoe were serving warrants on Baze when he shot them. Baze has said the shootings were the result of a family dispute that got out of hand and resulted in the sheriff being called.
Bowling was sentenced to death for killing Edward and Tina Earley and shooting their 2-year-old son outside the couple's Lexington, Ky., dry-cleaning business in 1990.
Lethal injection is just one battle; the war consists of opponents fighting against all forms of capital punishment.
'Seamless garment of life'
When asked if churches have any business getting mixed up in the politics of whether states should, or should not, execute criminals for the most heinous crimes, Steffen says, "Sure they should. All the mainline churches have taken positions opposing the death penalty, and Pope John Paul II has said the death penalty is inimical to the 'seamless garment of life.' "
Steffen is not encouraging the justice system to let the most vile criminals out onto the streets, he's just looking for the same kind of consideration parents use when their kids act out -- give them a time out.
"If people took a time out to study the problem," he says, "they would be against the death penalty."
Perhaps the Bible verse from Hebrews 10:30 applies here: "'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord." And from Deuteronomy 32:36: "For the Lord will be judge of his people."
But what do the people do when a Timothy McVeigh blows up an office building in Oklahoma City, snuffing out 168 souls? Or -- much closer to home -- when Martin Appel robbed the bank in East Allen Township, executing three to leave no witnesses. Appel was sentenced to death, but got off death row through appeals.
Death for 'horrific crimes'
Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli still chafes at that decision.
"We need to keep the death penalty on the books for any horrific crimes that come along," Morganelli says. He maintains Appel is one of those criminals. Besides, Morganelli says Pennsylvania has had a "de facto" moratorium on death sentences for decades.
"We've only had three executions, and all of those came after they stopped appealing their cases.
Steffen refers to those same three cases as "voluntary" executions. He has visited death rows in Pennsylvania and Tennessee and says death row confinement usually means solitary confinement for years.
"There are a lot of suicides," he says. "It's torturous for them. All three executions have been volunteers. They drop all appeals; it's a mental illness situation."
Pennsylvania's primary method of execution is by lethal injection which, according to Amnesty International, is the same method used by China, Guatemala, the Philippines and Thailand.
New Jersey's method of execution is also by lethal injection. However, The Garden State does have a formal moratorium on executions, due to legislation passed in 2006.
Steffen says too many convicts who were innocent slip through the cracks.
"There have been 124 nationwide," he says.
Return to Martin Appel case
When Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted his state's death sentences in a blanket order in January 2003, he was making a statement against the death penalty. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for that action and has stumped in Harrisburg for a moratorium on the death penalty in the Keystone State.
Morganelli, who authored his own book about the Appel case, says those seeking a death penalty moratorium in Pennsylvania "are all do-good organizations that don't believe in punishment and that everybody can be rehabilitated. They're just anti-law and don't carry much credibility."
Morganelli's book is titled "The D-Day Bank Massacre: The True Story Behind the Martin Appel Case."
Morganelli says he's more concerned about inmates who manage to get paroled and end up killing again. He names Reginald McFadden and "Mudman" Simon as two examples.
He also says the American justice system already has a built-in safeguard against making mistakes -- a jury of 12 who must vote unanimously for the death penalty.
"We just had a case where it went 11 to 1," Morganelli says, citing the Andrew D. Paschal verdict. Paschal was convicted of gunning down Marcellus McDuffie outside Larry Holmes Ringside Restaurant and Lounge, in Easton on May 14, 2006.
Death penalty not logical
Maria Weick of the Lehigh Valley Committee Against Killing and the Pennsylvania Death Penalty Abolition Coordinator for Amnesty International, says "Pennsylvania is a really hard case when it comes to the death penalty."
Both she and Steffen say the single most difficult roadblock to a moratorium is politicians.
"Pennsylvania politicians," Weick scoffs, "are married to the idea that supporting the death penalty means they're tough on crime."
Weick says Pennsylvanians are split 50-50 for and against the death penalty.
She admits, "Moratoriums are an act of desperation. But they are a way of getting people to think about the issue."
Steffen says they act to increase public awareness.
Weick adds that the death penalty makes no logical sense.
"Think about it," she says, "Do we drug the drug dealer? Do we rape the rapist? Then why do we murder the murderer?"
Tony Nauroth is a features writer with The Express-Times. He can be reached at 610-258-7171 or by e-mail at tnauroth@express-times.com
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
By TONY NAUROTHThe Express-Times
The Supreme Court of the United States will soon be considering one of the most important death penalty cases in decades.
The issue centers on the use of lethal injection as the executioner's tool in a case involving two inmates on Kentucky's death row.
Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. sued the Bluegrass State in 2004, claiming the needle amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
Locally, some say any form of capital punishment is just plain wrong.
Lehigh University Chaplain Lloyd Steffen is a longtime opponent of the death penalty. He's even written a book about it -- "Executing Justice: The Moral Meaning of the Death Penalty."
Steffen is a professor of religion and a minister with the United Church of Christ, which is taking a strong stand against the death penalty.
Karen Berry, head of the Social Action Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Lehigh Valley, says her church adopted a moratorium resolution earlier this summer and is hoping for formal action from the Pennsylvania Legislature to make some type of death penalty moratorium official statewide.
And during the weekend of Oct. 19-20, Amnesty International is sponsoring the 2007 National Weekend of Faith in Action on the Death Penalty when churches throughout the country will hold events to bring attention to the issue.
The fight is in the courts
This connection between religious and secular organizations is at the forefront of the struggle to rid states of what organizers see as a barbaric and unfairly administered penalty for the crime of murder.
The courts are where the fighting has begun.
All 37 states that perform lethal injection use the same three-drug cocktail, but at least 10 of those states suspended its use after opponents alleged it was ineffective and cruel, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The three consist of an anesthetic, a muscle paralyzer, and a substance to stop the heart. Death penalty foes have argued that if the condemned prisoner is not given enough anesthetic, he -- or she -- can suffer excruciating pain without being able to cry out.
Baze, 52, has been on death row for 14 years. He was sentenced for the 1992 shooting deaths of Powell County Sheriff Steve Bennett and Deputy Arthur Briscoe.
Bennett and Briscoe were serving warrants on Baze when he shot them. Baze has said the shootings were the result of a family dispute that got out of hand and resulted in the sheriff being called.
Bowling was sentenced to death for killing Edward and Tina Earley and shooting their 2-year-old son outside the couple's Lexington, Ky., dry-cleaning business in 1990.
Lethal injection is just one battle; the war consists of opponents fighting against all forms of capital punishment.
'Seamless garment of life'
When asked if churches have any business getting mixed up in the politics of whether states should, or should not, execute criminals for the most heinous crimes, Steffen says, "Sure they should. All the mainline churches have taken positions opposing the death penalty, and Pope John Paul II has said the death penalty is inimical to the 'seamless garment of life.' "
Steffen is not encouraging the justice system to let the most vile criminals out onto the streets, he's just looking for the same kind of consideration parents use when their kids act out -- give them a time out.
"If people took a time out to study the problem," he says, "they would be against the death penalty."
Perhaps the Bible verse from Hebrews 10:30 applies here: "'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord." And from Deuteronomy 32:36: "For the Lord will be judge of his people."
But what do the people do when a Timothy McVeigh blows up an office building in Oklahoma City, snuffing out 168 souls? Or -- much closer to home -- when Martin Appel robbed the bank in East Allen Township, executing three to leave no witnesses. Appel was sentenced to death, but got off death row through appeals.
Death for 'horrific crimes'
Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli still chafes at that decision.
"We need to keep the death penalty on the books for any horrific crimes that come along," Morganelli says. He maintains Appel is one of those criminals. Besides, Morganelli says Pennsylvania has had a "de facto" moratorium on death sentences for decades.
"We've only had three executions, and all of those came after they stopped appealing their cases.
Steffen refers to those same three cases as "voluntary" executions. He has visited death rows in Pennsylvania and Tennessee and says death row confinement usually means solitary confinement for years.
"There are a lot of suicides," he says. "It's torturous for them. All three executions have been volunteers. They drop all appeals; it's a mental illness situation."
Pennsylvania's primary method of execution is by lethal injection which, according to Amnesty International, is the same method used by China, Guatemala, the Philippines and Thailand.
New Jersey's method of execution is also by lethal injection. However, The Garden State does have a formal moratorium on executions, due to legislation passed in 2006.
Steffen says too many convicts who were innocent slip through the cracks.
"There have been 124 nationwide," he says.
Return to Martin Appel case
When Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted his state's death sentences in a blanket order in January 2003, he was making a statement against the death penalty. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for that action and has stumped in Harrisburg for a moratorium on the death penalty in the Keystone State.
Morganelli, who authored his own book about the Appel case, says those seeking a death penalty moratorium in Pennsylvania "are all do-good organizations that don't believe in punishment and that everybody can be rehabilitated. They're just anti-law and don't carry much credibility."
Morganelli's book is titled "The D-Day Bank Massacre: The True Story Behind the Martin Appel Case."
Morganelli says he's more concerned about inmates who manage to get paroled and end up killing again. He names Reginald McFadden and "Mudman" Simon as two examples.
He also says the American justice system already has a built-in safeguard against making mistakes -- a jury of 12 who must vote unanimously for the death penalty.
"We just had a case where it went 11 to 1," Morganelli says, citing the Andrew D. Paschal verdict. Paschal was convicted of gunning down Marcellus McDuffie outside Larry Holmes Ringside Restaurant and Lounge, in Easton on May 14, 2006.
Death penalty not logical
Maria Weick of the Lehigh Valley Committee Against Killing and the Pennsylvania Death Penalty Abolition Coordinator for Amnesty International, says "Pennsylvania is a really hard case when it comes to the death penalty."
Both she and Steffen say the single most difficult roadblock to a moratorium is politicians.
"Pennsylvania politicians," Weick scoffs, "are married to the idea that supporting the death penalty means they're tough on crime."
Weick says Pennsylvanians are split 50-50 for and against the death penalty.
She admits, "Moratoriums are an act of desperation. But they are a way of getting people to think about the issue."
Steffen says they act to increase public awareness.
Weick adds that the death penalty makes no logical sense.
"Think about it," she says, "Do we drug the drug dealer? Do we rape the rapist? Then why do we murder the murderer?"
Tony Nauroth is a features writer with The Express-Times. He can be reached at 610-258-7171 or by e-mail at tnauroth@express-times.com
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Closing time at the death chamber
By The Editorial Board Saturday, October 6, 2007, 06:00 PM
Texas finally woke up to the news that executing condemned prisoners by lethal injection may be ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. But that awakening came too late for Michael Richard.
Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court halted the execution of Carlton Turner Jr., after it agreed to consider the legality of lethal injections. Then last week, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted the execution of Heliberto Chi, who claims lethal injections can cause extreme pain, violating the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
Between those two reprieves came Richard, whose appeal was ignored because appeals court Presiding Judge Sharon Keller closed the court at 5 p.m. Keller didn’t inform the appeals court judge assigned to Richard’s case, or any of the other judges still in the office after 5 p.m., of the request by Richard’s attorney to stay late to consider the appeal.
Earlier that day, the Supreme Court had accepted an appeal from a Kentucky inmate arguing the legality of lethal injections. Richard’s attorney wanted some extra time to respond in filing an appeal because of the changed circumstance. He didn’t get it because Keller said it is the court’s practice to close on time.
That callous disregard shocked the world, and the international outcry may have prompted Keller’s court to temporarily halt Chi’s execution. Texas was slow to recognize that executions should be banned while the high court determines whether lethal injections violate the Eighth Amendment’s cruel-and-unusual language.
Better late than not at all. If Texas continues to execute condemned prisoners on the eve of the Supreme Court decision, it will incur the scorn of the civilized world. After the offense of Richard’s death, Texas needs to adhere to expected standards of conduct and prohibit all executions until the Supreme Court rules.
Other states are doing just that. Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson has asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to stop setting execution dates until the Supreme Court decision arrives. Arguments in the Kentucky death row case are set for November. Also, Alabama’s governor issued a temporary halt to an execution last week pending the ruling from Washington.
The issue for Texas and the other 37 states that use lethal injection to execute condemned prisoners is whether the drug cocktail used to anesthetize, paralyze and kill can cause inmates extreme pain.
In a separate but related issue, the American Medical Association has issued a ban on physicians administering lethal injections to condemned prisoners. The AMA says doctors violate their oath to do no harm when they administer lethal injections. That might make it difficult for death penalty states to find qualified people to dispense the fatal injection.
When the Supreme Court agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injections, the states that impose it were cautioned to stop a procedure that may be found illegal. Texas should heed that caution and suspend executions until the Supreme Court determines whether that method of execution is allowable.
Texas finally woke up to the news that executing condemned prisoners by lethal injection may be ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. But that awakening came too late for Michael Richard.
Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court halted the execution of Carlton Turner Jr., after it agreed to consider the legality of lethal injections. Then last week, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted the execution of Heliberto Chi, who claims lethal injections can cause extreme pain, violating the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
Between those two reprieves came Richard, whose appeal was ignored because appeals court Presiding Judge Sharon Keller closed the court at 5 p.m. Keller didn’t inform the appeals court judge assigned to Richard’s case, or any of the other judges still in the office after 5 p.m., of the request by Richard’s attorney to stay late to consider the appeal.
Earlier that day, the Supreme Court had accepted an appeal from a Kentucky inmate arguing the legality of lethal injections. Richard’s attorney wanted some extra time to respond in filing an appeal because of the changed circumstance. He didn’t get it because Keller said it is the court’s practice to close on time.
That callous disregard shocked the world, and the international outcry may have prompted Keller’s court to temporarily halt Chi’s execution. Texas was slow to recognize that executions should be banned while the high court determines whether lethal injections violate the Eighth Amendment’s cruel-and-unusual language.
Better late than not at all. If Texas continues to execute condemned prisoners on the eve of the Supreme Court decision, it will incur the scorn of the civilized world. After the offense of Richard’s death, Texas needs to adhere to expected standards of conduct and prohibit all executions until the Supreme Court rules.
Other states are doing just that. Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson has asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to stop setting execution dates until the Supreme Court decision arrives. Arguments in the Kentucky death row case are set for November. Also, Alabama’s governor issued a temporary halt to an execution last week pending the ruling from Washington.
The issue for Texas and the other 37 states that use lethal injection to execute condemned prisoners is whether the drug cocktail used to anesthetize, paralyze and kill can cause inmates extreme pain.
In a separate but related issue, the American Medical Association has issued a ban on physicians administering lethal injections to condemned prisoners. The AMA says doctors violate their oath to do no harm when they administer lethal injections. That might make it difficult for death penalty states to find qualified people to dispense the fatal injection.
When the Supreme Court agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injections, the states that impose it were cautioned to stop a procedure that may be found illegal. Texas should heed that caution and suspend executions until the Supreme Court determines whether that method of execution is allowable.
Atlanta Journal Constitution Calls for Abolition of Georgia's Death Penalty
In an editorial that followed a four-part news series reviewing death penalty-eligible murder cases in Georgia between 1995 and 2004, the Atlanta Journal Constitution called on the state to abandon capital punishment because death sentences are often unfairly influenced by geography, a prosecutor's personal politics, or the victim's race. The paper also said that Georgia fails to meet minimum standards to ensure an accurate and fair capital punishment system, noting:
For criminal cases involving the most severe punishment that society can inflict, justice has never been blind. As we're learning, it probably never can be....
But if society chooses to inflict death, it has an obligation to do so fairly. A death sentence should not be arbitrary and capricious, imposed on some but not on others who are guilty of even more heinous crimes.
And because a death sentence is absolute, it should be imposed only in cases where the person's guilt is absolutely certain, and it should be imposed based on clear standards in the law, not on the human biases and prejudices that afflict all of us.
The death penalty as it is imposed here in Georgia does not meet those minimum standards.
For example:
• District attorneys in metro Atlanta counties such as DeKalb and Fulton routinely offer defendants in capital crimes the option of pleading guilty and facing life sentences without hope of parole.
But in similar cases elsewhere in the state, prosecutors seek and win death penalty sentences, making the punishment irrational.
"It would make as much sense just to execute every 10th or every 100th murderer [as] it would be to figure out the rhyme or reason for why we're picking the ones to get the death penalty," as Atlanta defense attorney Jack Martin noted.
• Race has played a role in the administration of justice in this country since its founding. That ugly and intractable dynamic is still evident today; according to a statistical analysis of more than a thousand cases, prosecutors in Georgia were twice as likely to seek the death penalty if the victim was white than if the victim was black. In the more specific category of murders carried out during an armed robbery, defendants were an astonishing six times as likely to face death sentences if the person they killed was white.
• The Georgia Supreme Court has the responsibility to scrutinize death sentences to ensure the penalty is being applied uniformly statewide, based on precedents set in earlier cases. But former and sitting justices openly admit that their "proportionality reviews" have often been woefully sloppy and inaccurate.
In the vast majority of 159 such reviews undertaken since 1982, the justices have cited cases as precedent that had actually been dismissed, overturned or reversed on appeal, including some that had been overturned by the justices themselves. Only 14 of those 159 proportionality reviews cited no cases that had been reversed.
In 1972, citing evidence that the death penalty in Georgia was being applied in a similarly arbitrary manner, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out death-penalty laws here and in 39 other states as well. Since then, laws have been rewritten and processes and safeguards allegedly tightened, but to little apparent effect.
The difficulties of fairly, accurately and efficiently carrying out the death penalty in Georgia are further illustrated by two prominent cases in the news. The first involves Brian Nichols, charged in a sensational 2005 killing spree that left four people dead, including a judge, his court reporter, a sheriff's deputy and a federal agent. The proceedings have been repeatedly delayed by controversy over the cost of Nichols' state-appointed legal defense, which has now reached more than $1.8 million.
The multiple crimes alleged to have been committed by Nichols are at least as heinous as those that have put other people on Death Row. But even if Nichols is found guilty, at this point the odds of a death sentence being imposed and carried out against him appear pretty slim. If that assessment proves valid, it would add to the already overwhelming evidence of the arbitrary nature of the death penalty in Georgia.
The second Georgia case involves the fate of Troy Anthony Davis, who was convicted in 1991 of killing a Savannah police officer and has been sitting on death row ever since. Davis was convicted based exclusively on eyewitness testimony, which in other cases has proved notoriously unreliable, especially when no supporting physical evidence existed. For example, in cases in which DNA evidence has exonerated felons of crimes they did not commit, faulty eyewitness reports often turns out to have played a central role in the original conviction.
In the Davis case, the uncertain nature of eyewitness testimony is compounded by the fact that most of the prosecution witnesses have since recanted or contradicted their testimony naming Davis as the killer. Yet Davis was one day from execution before state officials agreed to a temporary stay to examine his case more carefully.
Georgia's death penalty law can and should be updated to try to wring as much unfairness as possible from the system, but reform can never eradicate the possibility of error, and it can never remove human bias and prejudice from the process. Imposing the absolute penalty requires absolute justice, and in the absence of that, the death penalty ought to be abolished.
Thursday, 4 October 2007
Death Penalty: New report calls for doctors to stop doing lethal injections
Posted: 04 October 2007
Paralysed prisoners in 'chemical straitjackets' unable to move or cry out during execution
Amnesty International has called for doctors and other medical personnel to stop taking part in lethal injection executions as it published a new report today showing the extent and cruelty of death by lethal injection.
Professional medical bodies have expressed strong ethical opposition to the involvement of medical professionals in lethal injections but, as Amnesty International's report shows, numerous doctors and other specialists have continued to carry out executions in breach of their own ethical standards.
Amnesty International's Health and Human Rights Coordinator Dr James Welsh said:
'Medical professionals are trained to work for patients' well-being, not to participate in executions ordered by the state.
'Governments are putting doctors and nurses in an impossible position by asking them to do something that goes against their ethical oath.
'The simplest way of resolving the ethical dilemmas posed by using doctors and nurses to kill is by abolishing the death penalty.'
Amnesty International is totally opposed to the death penalty in all instances regardless of execution method, and its 41-page report, 'Execution by lethal injection: a quarter century of state poisoning' challenges the claim that lethal injections are a 'humane' alternative to 'traditional' execution methods like hanging, beheading, shooting, gassing or electrocution.
In fact the report lists a series of botched executions carried out by lethal injection (see cases studies below). Some prisoners have enduring prolonged deaths of over an hour, others have gone into convulsions or suffered skin burns or bloody 'cut-down' operations to find veins.
In addition, the medical 'efficiency' of lethal injection has recently been called into serious question, with grave concerns that its cocktail of drugs can result in a prisoner being put into a 'chemical straitjacket' - conscious but totally paralysed and unable to move or cry out while suffering excruciating pain and extreme mental suffering before death. For this reason the chemicals are not used by veterinary surgeons on animals for euthanasia. Texas, for example, has executed more than 400 people by lethal injection in the last 25 years, but since September 2003 has banned similar injections in animal euthanasia.
Amnesty International's report also charts the growth of lethal injections around the world. Since the world's first lethal injection was carried out in the state of Texas, USA in 1982, over 900 such executions have occurred in the US alone. In China, where executions numbers are an official secret, it is possible that thousands of people have been executed this way since 1997. Lethal injections now account for 85% of US executions in the United States and a growing proportion of judicial killings carried out in China (the world's biggest user of the death penalty).
In recent years China has introduced 'mobile execution chambers' - converted 24-seater buses with windowless execution chambers at their rear. Prisoners are strapped down to metal beds in these bus chambers, a needle is then attached to the prisoner by a doctor before a police officer presses a button activating an automatic syringe which inserts the lethal drug into the prisoner's vein. Executions are watched on a monitor next to the driver's seat and can be videotaped.
As Amnesty International's report shows, besides the USA and China lethal injection killings have also taken place in Guatemala, the Philippines and Thailand, while legal systems in Taiwan and Papua New Guinea allow for lethal injection, and India and Vietnam have discussed its introduction.
According to even minimum figures, 1,591 people were executed in 25 countries in 2006 and Amnesty International is calling on the current session of the United Nations General Assembly to vote for an international moratorium on the death penalty.
Amnesty International has long campaigned for total global abolition of the death penalty and the organisation points out that claims about the relative 'efficiency' of lethal injections compared to other methods of killing fail to even consider other vital issues regarding the death penalty.
Dr Welsh added:
'The use of lethal injection does not resolve the problems inherent to the death penalty: its cruelty; its irreversibility; the risk of executing the innocent; its discriminatory and arbitrary application; and its irrelevance to effective crime control.'
Sample of botched executions:
Bennie Demps, Florida, USA, 8 June 2000: execution personnel took 33 minutes to find a vein for the injection; among Demps' last words were 'They cut me in the groin; they cut me in the leg. They butchered me back there.'
Joseph Clark, Ohio, USA, 2 May 2006: execution personnel took 22 minutes to find a vein, only for the vein then to collapse and Clark's arm to swell. Clark repeatedly raised his head to say 'It don't work, it don't work', before the curtain around the gurney was closed. It was a further half an hour before a vein was eventually found.
Angel Diaz, Florida, USA, 13 December 2006: injection missed the vein and Diaz was seen moving - grimacing, blinking, blowing, mouthing words - for some 24 minutes before a second injection was administered. After half an hour a doctor wearing a hood to cover his face entered the chamber and Diaz was pronounced dead.
Manuel Martinez Coronado, Guatemala, 10 February 1999: the execution was televised; viewers saw medical personnel in green surgical gowns and face masks taking 18 minutes to find a vein, while Martinez's wife, who was present with her three children, was heard wailing in the background. The executioners could be seen shaking, apparently with nerves.
Note on chemicals
Lethal injection generally involves the intravenous introduction of three chemicals into the body: (1) sodium thiopental (also know by the trade name Pentothal), which induces general anaesthesia; (2) pancuronium bromide, which causes muscle paralysis, and hence respiratory failure; (3) potassium chloride, which leads to cardiac arrest. If the anaesthetic is inadequate or causes an unexpected reaction, the pain caused by potassium chloride in the blood system and subsequent heart attack could be intense, while paralysis may mean the victim is unable to even signal their distress.
Paralysed prisoners in 'chemical straitjackets' unable to move or cry out during execution
Amnesty International has called for doctors and other medical personnel to stop taking part in lethal injection executions as it published a new report today showing the extent and cruelty of death by lethal injection.
Professional medical bodies have expressed strong ethical opposition to the involvement of medical professionals in lethal injections but, as Amnesty International's report shows, numerous doctors and other specialists have continued to carry out executions in breach of their own ethical standards.
Amnesty International's Health and Human Rights Coordinator Dr James Welsh said:
'Medical professionals are trained to work for patients' well-being, not to participate in executions ordered by the state.
'Governments are putting doctors and nurses in an impossible position by asking them to do something that goes against their ethical oath.
'The simplest way of resolving the ethical dilemmas posed by using doctors and nurses to kill is by abolishing the death penalty.'
Amnesty International is totally opposed to the death penalty in all instances regardless of execution method, and its 41-page report, 'Execution by lethal injection: a quarter century of state poisoning' challenges the claim that lethal injections are a 'humane' alternative to 'traditional' execution methods like hanging, beheading, shooting, gassing or electrocution.
In fact the report lists a series of botched executions carried out by lethal injection (see cases studies below). Some prisoners have enduring prolonged deaths of over an hour, others have gone into convulsions or suffered skin burns or bloody 'cut-down' operations to find veins.
In addition, the medical 'efficiency' of lethal injection has recently been called into serious question, with grave concerns that its cocktail of drugs can result in a prisoner being put into a 'chemical straitjacket' - conscious but totally paralysed and unable to move or cry out while suffering excruciating pain and extreme mental suffering before death. For this reason the chemicals are not used by veterinary surgeons on animals for euthanasia. Texas, for example, has executed more than 400 people by lethal injection in the last 25 years, but since September 2003 has banned similar injections in animal euthanasia.
Amnesty International's report also charts the growth of lethal injections around the world. Since the world's first lethal injection was carried out in the state of Texas, USA in 1982, over 900 such executions have occurred in the US alone. In China, where executions numbers are an official secret, it is possible that thousands of people have been executed this way since 1997. Lethal injections now account for 85% of US executions in the United States and a growing proportion of judicial killings carried out in China (the world's biggest user of the death penalty).
In recent years China has introduced 'mobile execution chambers' - converted 24-seater buses with windowless execution chambers at their rear. Prisoners are strapped down to metal beds in these bus chambers, a needle is then attached to the prisoner by a doctor before a police officer presses a button activating an automatic syringe which inserts the lethal drug into the prisoner's vein. Executions are watched on a monitor next to the driver's seat and can be videotaped.
As Amnesty International's report shows, besides the USA and China lethal injection killings have also taken place in Guatemala, the Philippines and Thailand, while legal systems in Taiwan and Papua New Guinea allow for lethal injection, and India and Vietnam have discussed its introduction.
According to even minimum figures, 1,591 people were executed in 25 countries in 2006 and Amnesty International is calling on the current session of the United Nations General Assembly to vote for an international moratorium on the death penalty.
Amnesty International has long campaigned for total global abolition of the death penalty and the organisation points out that claims about the relative 'efficiency' of lethal injections compared to other methods of killing fail to even consider other vital issues regarding the death penalty.
Dr Welsh added:
'The use of lethal injection does not resolve the problems inherent to the death penalty: its cruelty; its irreversibility; the risk of executing the innocent; its discriminatory and arbitrary application; and its irrelevance to effective crime control.'
Sample of botched executions:
Bennie Demps, Florida, USA, 8 June 2000: execution personnel took 33 minutes to find a vein for the injection; among Demps' last words were 'They cut me in the groin; they cut me in the leg. They butchered me back there.'
Joseph Clark, Ohio, USA, 2 May 2006: execution personnel took 22 minutes to find a vein, only for the vein then to collapse and Clark's arm to swell. Clark repeatedly raised his head to say 'It don't work, it don't work', before the curtain around the gurney was closed. It was a further half an hour before a vein was eventually found.
Angel Diaz, Florida, USA, 13 December 2006: injection missed the vein and Diaz was seen moving - grimacing, blinking, blowing, mouthing words - for some 24 minutes before a second injection was administered. After half an hour a doctor wearing a hood to cover his face entered the chamber and Diaz was pronounced dead.
Manuel Martinez Coronado, Guatemala, 10 February 1999: the execution was televised; viewers saw medical personnel in green surgical gowns and face masks taking 18 minutes to find a vein, while Martinez's wife, who was present with her three children, was heard wailing in the background. The executioners could be seen shaking, apparently with nerves.
Note on chemicals
Lethal injection generally involves the intravenous introduction of three chemicals into the body: (1) sodium thiopental (also know by the trade name Pentothal), which induces general anaesthesia; (2) pancuronium bromide, which causes muscle paralysis, and hence respiratory failure; (3) potassium chloride, which leads to cardiac arrest. If the anaesthetic is inadequate or causes an unexpected reaction, the pain caused by potassium chloride in the blood system and subsequent heart attack could be intense, while paralysis may mean the victim is unable to even signal their distress.
Wednesday, 3 October 2007
Texas falls into line over 'cruel' lethal injections
By Tom Leonard in New York
Last Updated: 1:45am BST 04/10/2007
The highest criminal appeals court in Texas delayed an execution yesterday in a signal that even the most avid supporters of the death penalty in America are concerned that lethal injections are too cruel.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the execution of Heliberto Chi, a convicted murderer, after his lawyers raised questions about the "constitutionality" of injections.
Texas, which executes far more criminals than any other state, had previously ignored the growing concern but yesterday's decision brings it into line with the US Supreme Court, which announced last week that it would review the legality of lethal injections. State prosecutors have 30 days to respond.
The Texas Attorney General's Office said it would review the case of each Death Row inmate with an approaching execution date.
Some Texas prosecutors vowed they would continue to push for the death penalty, if necessary substituting a different execution method.
advertisementBut critics believe the Chi reprieve has stopped the death penalty in its tracks in Texas, as it has in at least 10 other states which have suspended executions.
"Until the Court of Criminal Appeals addresses the questions raised in this case, there will be no more executions in Texas," said David Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston who worked on Chi's appeal.
Wes Ball, Chi's lawyer, said: "I'm grateful there's some measure of common sense descending on the great state of Texas. We're not left in the wilderness."
Lethal injection is almost the universal method of capital punishment in America. Texas has executed 26 people this year.
The lethal injection procedure involves administering a cocktail of three drugs – an anaesthetic, a muscle paralyser and a chemical that stops the heart.
But opponents say it violates the constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual punishment". They cite medical evidence that it appeared to have caused some recipients to suffocate while they were conscious but paralysed.
The Texas decision coincided with the publication of an Amnesty International report today calling on doctors to stop carrying out such injections.
One of the main criticisms levelled at lethal injections is that they are often badly administered by poorly trained prison staff.
Amnesty, which opposes the death penalty on principle, compared lethal injections to a paralysed prisoner in a "chemical straitjacket" who was unable to move or cry out while suffering "excruciating pain and extreme mental suffering" before death.
Its report detailed a series of well-documented "botched" executions, where some prisoners have endured prolonged deaths of over an hour, while others have gone into convulsions or suffered "cut-down" operations to find veins.
These include the execution of the triple murderer Bennie Demps in Florida in 2000, where prison staff took 33 minutes to find a vein for the injection.
In Florida last December, Angel Diaz was seen moving – grimacing, blinking, blowing, and mouthing words – for around 24 minutes before a second injection was administered.
After half an hour, a doctor wearing a hood to cover his face entered the chamber and Diaz was pronounced dead, Amnesty said.
Last Updated: 1:45am BST 04/10/2007
The highest criminal appeals court in Texas delayed an execution yesterday in a signal that even the most avid supporters of the death penalty in America are concerned that lethal injections are too cruel.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the execution of Heliberto Chi, a convicted murderer, after his lawyers raised questions about the "constitutionality" of injections.
Texas, which executes far more criminals than any other state, had previously ignored the growing concern but yesterday's decision brings it into line with the US Supreme Court, which announced last week that it would review the legality of lethal injections. State prosecutors have 30 days to respond.
The Texas Attorney General's Office said it would review the case of each Death Row inmate with an approaching execution date.
Some Texas prosecutors vowed they would continue to push for the death penalty, if necessary substituting a different execution method.
advertisementBut critics believe the Chi reprieve has stopped the death penalty in its tracks in Texas, as it has in at least 10 other states which have suspended executions.
"Until the Court of Criminal Appeals addresses the questions raised in this case, there will be no more executions in Texas," said David Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston who worked on Chi's appeal.
Wes Ball, Chi's lawyer, said: "I'm grateful there's some measure of common sense descending on the great state of Texas. We're not left in the wilderness."
Lethal injection is almost the universal method of capital punishment in America. Texas has executed 26 people this year.
The lethal injection procedure involves administering a cocktail of three drugs – an anaesthetic, a muscle paralyser and a chemical that stops the heart.
But opponents say it violates the constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual punishment". They cite medical evidence that it appeared to have caused some recipients to suffocate while they were conscious but paralysed.
The Texas decision coincided with the publication of an Amnesty International report today calling on doctors to stop carrying out such injections.
One of the main criticisms levelled at lethal injections is that they are often badly administered by poorly trained prison staff.
Amnesty, which opposes the death penalty on principle, compared lethal injections to a paralysed prisoner in a "chemical straitjacket" who was unable to move or cry out while suffering "excruciating pain and extreme mental suffering" before death.
Its report detailed a series of well-documented "botched" executions, where some prisoners have endured prolonged deaths of over an hour, while others have gone into convulsions or suffered "cut-down" operations to find veins.
These include the execution of the triple murderer Bennie Demps in Florida in 2000, where prison staff took 33 minutes to find a vein for the injection.
In Florida last December, Angel Diaz was seen moving – grimacing, blinking, blowing, and mouthing words – for around 24 minutes before a second injection was administered.
After half an hour, a doctor wearing a hood to cover his face entered the chamber and Diaz was pronounced dead, Amnesty said.
Texas Court Halts Inmate's Execution
Appeals Court Stops Execution of Honduran Man Convicted of Killing Store Owner
HOUSTON -- Oct. 3, 2007—
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals brought the state in line with the effect of a U.S. Supreme Court review of lethal injection procedures by stopping Wednesday's scheduled execution of a Honduran man.
In a reversal from a week ago, the state's highest criminal court Tuesday ordered a halt to the lethal injection of Heliberto Chi, 28, condemned for killing the manager of an Arlington clothing store during a robbery 6½ years ago.
Just last week, the appeals court was given a similar appeal for Carlton Turner Jr., a Dallas man set to die for killing his parents, but refused to stop his punishment. The Supreme Court, which last week agreed to review whether lethal injection is unconstitutionally cruel in a claim raised by two condemned Kentucky inmates, gave Turner a reprieve a few hours later, sparing him a trip to the nation's busiest death chamber in Huntsville.
The Kentucky lethal injection procedure is the same one used by Texas and other states.
Although Chi's lawyers were prepared to go to the Supreme Court, his appeal never got that far.
"I'm grateful there's some measure of common sense descending on the great state of Texas," Wes Ball, Chi's attorney, said. "We're not left in the wilderness."
Chi would have been the 27th inmate executed in Texas this year, far more than any other state.
"We're actually joining the company of perhaps more progressive states like Alabama and Florida," Ball said. "Somebody's finally going to decide this question, so let's stop killing people. If we're supposed to kill them, we can kill them later."
In its brief order, the appeals court gave state lawyers 30 days to address the question of "whether the current method of administering lethal injection in Texas constitutes cruel and unusual punishment" in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.
In their appeal, Chi's attorneys said the execution procedure "creates a wholly unnecessary, unacceptable risk that he will experience excruciating pain and suffering."
The Texas Attorney General's Office has said it will review each condemned inmate with an approaching execution date on a case-by-case basis. Gov. Rick Perry, who could issue a 30-day reprieve, has said through a spokesman that the matter is for the courts to resolve but also has said he believes the procedure is proper.
Early last week, within hours of the Supreme Court announcement in the Kentucky case, the courts allowed Texas officials to execute Michael Richard for a slaying 21 years ago. Lawyers attributed his execution moving forward to procedural hurdles they couldn't overcome in the hours immediately after the high court announced its Kentucky review. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals never ruled in his case because the appeal was filed past the court's 5 p.m. closing time.
In Turner's case, the Texas court voted 5-4 against stopping his punishment. The order in Chi's reprieve listed no dissenters among the judges.
Attorneys involved in death penalty litigation viewed Chi's case as a better indicator of the immediate future of lethal injection in Texas, where 405 inmates have received the toxic drug combinaton since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982.
Earlier Tuesday, Terence O'Rourke, a lawyer in the Chi case working with the government of Honduras, lost a request to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles for a commutation request or 180-day reprieve.
O'Rourke's focus was on Chi's inability to contact someone from the Honduran government, a violation of an international treaty, after he was arrested for the 2001 slaying of Armand Paliotta.
The board voted Tuesday 7-0 against a request for commutation. The request for a 180-day reprieve failed in a 4-3 vote.
The International Court of Justice in The Hague, ruling in a suit Mexico filed against the United States, has said the convictions of about 50 Mexican-born prisoners violated the 1963 Vienna Convention because they were denied legal help available under the treaty. President Bush then ordered new state court hearings for those prisoners based on the ruling, but his order applies only to imprisoned Mexican citizens.
David Dow, a University of Houston law professor involved in the Turner and Chi appeals, said Chi was "getting executed because he's Honduran rather than Mexican."
"That seems absurd," he said.
Chi was in the United States illegally when he was arrested in California, then extradited to Texas to face the capital murder charges.
Chi, who once worked as a tailor at the store where the shooting occured, would say little about the crime in an interview last week.
"My situation is not about being innocent or guilty," he told The Associated Press. "My rights were violated.
"I'm a Christian. I know about the Lord. If it's the Lord's will, things happen. I have great peace in my mind and soul."
The next scheduled execution isn't until late November. It's one of at least three lethal injections on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice execution calendar extending into next year.
HOUSTON -- Oct. 3, 2007—
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals brought the state in line with the effect of a U.S. Supreme Court review of lethal injection procedures by stopping Wednesday's scheduled execution of a Honduran man.
In a reversal from a week ago, the state's highest criminal court Tuesday ordered a halt to the lethal injection of Heliberto Chi, 28, condemned for killing the manager of an Arlington clothing store during a robbery 6½ years ago.
Just last week, the appeals court was given a similar appeal for Carlton Turner Jr., a Dallas man set to die for killing his parents, but refused to stop his punishment. The Supreme Court, which last week agreed to review whether lethal injection is unconstitutionally cruel in a claim raised by two condemned Kentucky inmates, gave Turner a reprieve a few hours later, sparing him a trip to the nation's busiest death chamber in Huntsville.
The Kentucky lethal injection procedure is the same one used by Texas and other states.
Although Chi's lawyers were prepared to go to the Supreme Court, his appeal never got that far.
"I'm grateful there's some measure of common sense descending on the great state of Texas," Wes Ball, Chi's attorney, said. "We're not left in the wilderness."
Chi would have been the 27th inmate executed in Texas this year, far more than any other state.
"We're actually joining the company of perhaps more progressive states like Alabama and Florida," Ball said. "Somebody's finally going to decide this question, so let's stop killing people. If we're supposed to kill them, we can kill them later."
In its brief order, the appeals court gave state lawyers 30 days to address the question of "whether the current method of administering lethal injection in Texas constitutes cruel and unusual punishment" in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.
In their appeal, Chi's attorneys said the execution procedure "creates a wholly unnecessary, unacceptable risk that he will experience excruciating pain and suffering."
The Texas Attorney General's Office has said it will review each condemned inmate with an approaching execution date on a case-by-case basis. Gov. Rick Perry, who could issue a 30-day reprieve, has said through a spokesman that the matter is for the courts to resolve but also has said he believes the procedure is proper.
Early last week, within hours of the Supreme Court announcement in the Kentucky case, the courts allowed Texas officials to execute Michael Richard for a slaying 21 years ago. Lawyers attributed his execution moving forward to procedural hurdles they couldn't overcome in the hours immediately after the high court announced its Kentucky review. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals never ruled in his case because the appeal was filed past the court's 5 p.m. closing time.
In Turner's case, the Texas court voted 5-4 against stopping his punishment. The order in Chi's reprieve listed no dissenters among the judges.
Attorneys involved in death penalty litigation viewed Chi's case as a better indicator of the immediate future of lethal injection in Texas, where 405 inmates have received the toxic drug combinaton since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982.
Earlier Tuesday, Terence O'Rourke, a lawyer in the Chi case working with the government of Honduras, lost a request to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles for a commutation request or 180-day reprieve.
O'Rourke's focus was on Chi's inability to contact someone from the Honduran government, a violation of an international treaty, after he was arrested for the 2001 slaying of Armand Paliotta.
The board voted Tuesday 7-0 against a request for commutation. The request for a 180-day reprieve failed in a 4-3 vote.
The International Court of Justice in The Hague, ruling in a suit Mexico filed against the United States, has said the convictions of about 50 Mexican-born prisoners violated the 1963 Vienna Convention because they were denied legal help available under the treaty. President Bush then ordered new state court hearings for those prisoners based on the ruling, but his order applies only to imprisoned Mexican citizens.
David Dow, a University of Houston law professor involved in the Turner and Chi appeals, said Chi was "getting executed because he's Honduran rather than Mexican."
"That seems absurd," he said.
Chi was in the United States illegally when he was arrested in California, then extradited to Texas to face the capital murder charges.
Chi, who once worked as a tailor at the store where the shooting occured, would say little about the crime in an interview last week.
"My situation is not about being innocent or guilty," he told The Associated Press. "My rights were violated.
"I'm a Christian. I know about the Lord. If it's the Lord's will, things happen. I have great peace in my mind and soul."
The next scheduled execution isn't until late November. It's one of at least three lethal injections on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice execution calendar extending into next year.
Amnesty lists execution horrors
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Thursday October 4, 2007
Guardian
The use of lethal injections in the US has led to at least nine bungled executions, including one in which the prisoner took 69 minutes to die and another in which the condemned man complained five times: "It don't work," a report by Amnesty International says today.
The report contains a catalogue of botched executions dating from 2000, when lethal injection was adopted by 37 of the 38 US states with the death penalty.
In an execution in Ohio in May last year it took technicians 22 minutes to find a suitable vein in which to inject the lethal combination of three drugs. When the condemned man, Joseph Clark, raised his head to complain that the process was not working, the technicians closed the curtains around his trolley and spent an additional 30 minutes looking for a suitable vein.
An autopsy discovered 19 puncture marks on Clark's corpse.
In a celebrated case in Florida in December last year the condemned man, Angel Nieves Dias, suffered chemical burns along his arms after technicians struggled to find a vein. Reports at the time described Diaz as grimacing in pain.
Such horrific instances have destroyed the main argument for lethal injection - that it offers a relatively painless and humane death, Amnesty says. "A number of executions in the USA have been botched and caused suffering, sometimes prolonged, to the victim."
Amnesty notes that Texas, which operates America's busiest execution chamber, has banned one of the chemicals involved for use in euthanising pets, because it does not effectively mask pain.
The report comes days after an unofficial halt to executions following a supreme court decision to review the lethal injection method. On Tuesday night the appeals court of Texas stayed the impending execution of a Honduran man pending the supreme court's decision.
Thursday October 4, 2007
Guardian
The use of lethal injections in the US has led to at least nine bungled executions, including one in which the prisoner took 69 minutes to die and another in which the condemned man complained five times: "It don't work," a report by Amnesty International says today.
The report contains a catalogue of botched executions dating from 2000, when lethal injection was adopted by 37 of the 38 US states with the death penalty.
In an execution in Ohio in May last year it took technicians 22 minutes to find a suitable vein in which to inject the lethal combination of three drugs. When the condemned man, Joseph Clark, raised his head to complain that the process was not working, the technicians closed the curtains around his trolley and spent an additional 30 minutes looking for a suitable vein.
An autopsy discovered 19 puncture marks on Clark's corpse.
In a celebrated case in Florida in December last year the condemned man, Angel Nieves Dias, suffered chemical burns along his arms after technicians struggled to find a vein. Reports at the time described Diaz as grimacing in pain.
Such horrific instances have destroyed the main argument for lethal injection - that it offers a relatively painless and humane death, Amnesty says. "A number of executions in the USA have been botched and caused suffering, sometimes prolonged, to the victim."
Amnesty notes that Texas, which operates America's busiest execution chamber, has banned one of the chemicals involved for use in euthanising pets, because it does not effectively mask pain.
The report comes days after an unofficial halt to executions following a supreme court decision to review the lethal injection method. On Tuesday night the appeals court of Texas stayed the impending execution of a Honduran man pending the supreme court's decision.
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