12-31-09 -- The number of police officers killed by gunfire in
2008 dropped by 40% from 2007, down to its lowest level in more
than 50 years, according to a report by the National Law
Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. The report attributed the
decline to a new emphasis on officer safety training and
equipment. In addition to increased training, more officers
are wearing body armor and using stun guns to protect
themselves. The overall number of officers killed in the line of
duty also declined in 2008.
Read more
The Death
Penalty Information Center's
Year End Report for 2008 recorded 37 executions for
the year that ends today. That is a 12% drop from the 42
executions in 2007. However, based on executions already
scheduled for 2009, the coming year may see an increase. There
are 23 executions scheduled for the first five months of 2009,
and more dates are likely to be added. As was true in 2008,
almost all the executions scheduled are in the south and about
half (12 of 23) are in Texas. Although the time between
sentencing and execution has grown longer, the size of death row
has remained relatively stable and many inmates are running out
of appeals.
Read more
12-30-08 -- The Dallas Morning News renewed its call for a
moratorium on executions in Texas because
of the numerous errors in the state's death penalty system. The
paper highlighted the cases of Michael Blair and Charles Hood as
examples of how the system has broken down. Blair was
exonerated in 2008 after 14 years on death row. DNA evidence
revealed that he had not been the murderer of 7-year-old Ashley
Estel in 1993, despite the fact that the jury had taken only 27
minutes to convict him, and that he may have been guilty of
other crimes. Charles Hood remains on Texas' death row, even
though the fairness of his trial was completely compromised by
the fact that the judge and the prosecutor admitted to having an
illicit sexual affair.
Read more
12-26-08 -- The top medical officer for the Department of
Corrections in the state of Washington has
resigned in order to avoid any participation in the state's
execution process. As the doctor responsible for preparing
others to carry out lethal injections, Dr. Marc Stern concluded
that his ethical obligations as a physician required that he
recuse himself from such actions and that resigning was the only
way to fully remove himself from this process. Dr. Stern, who
supervised 700 employees around the state, said that the
American Medical Association and the Society of Correctional
Physicians oppose physician involvement in executions, "and they
say physicians should not supervise somebody who is involved in
executions."
Read more
12-23-08 -- In December 2007, New Jersey
became the first state to legislatively abolish the death
penalty in 40 years. In commenting on the absence of capital
punishment for one year, a number of state prosecutors found no
problems with the new system. "We have not viewed it as an
impediment in the disposition of murder cases," said Hudson
County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio, who served on a state study
commission that reviewed the death penalty. "As a practical
matter, we have really seen no difference in the way we conduct
our business in prosecuting murder cases."
Read more
The U.S. Court
of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a $14 million award to
John Thompson, a former death row inmate in Louisiana who was
exonerated after withheld evidence was revealed. Thompson spent
18 years in prison, including 14 years in the solitary
confinement of death row in Angola Prison. He came within one
month of being executed in 1999 when his attorneys discovered
blood evidence that should have been turned over to the defense
years ago. The new evidence cleared Thompson of an armed
robbery conviction, which in turn had influenced his trial for
an unrelated murder. At his re-trial on the capital murder
charge, Thompson was acquitted in thirty-five minutes by a jury
in 2003. Thompson sued the District Attorney's Office of
Orleans Parish in 2003 and won a jury verdict in 2007. The jury
also awarded $1 million for attorneys' fees.
Read more
12-22-08 -- Ray Samuels, a police officer for 33 years and Chief
of Police in Newark, California,
for 5 years, recently expressed concern that state budget cuts
will prevent important crime-fighting measures from being
passed, while an expensive death penalty continues to drain the
state's finances. In an op-ed in the Contra Costa Times,
Samuels wrote:
Local
jurisdictions are likely to lose a significant amount of state
funding this year because of the severe financial crisis. This
funding helps cities and counties provide essential services in
the areas of public safety, emergency services, and health and
children's services. Without it, our communities will no doubt
suffer dire consequences. At the same time, we continue to waste
hundreds of millions on the state's dysfunctional death penalty.
If we replaced the death penalty with a sentence of permanent
imprisonment, the state would save more than $125 million each
year. We haven't had an execution in California for three years.
Are we any less safe as a result? I don't think so.
Read more
12-19-08 -- Compared to the 1990’s, there has been a marked
decline in death sentences in the U.S. since
2000. Every region of the country and every state that averaged
one or more death sentences per year have seen a decline in the
annual number of death sentences. The chart below compares the
annual number of death sentences in each state in the 1990s with
the 2000s. North Carolina,
California, Florida, and Texas experienced the greatest declines
in sentencing. This issue and others are addressed in the Death
Penalty Information Center’s
Year End Report, released December 11, 2008.
Read more
12-18-08 -- Two California
legislators from opposing political parties and with different
points of view on the death penalty have proposed cutting
funding for a new $395 million death row at San Quentin Prison.
“The Death Row expansion is a bottomless money pit,” said
Republican state Senator Jeff Denham. Democratic Assemblyman
Jared Huffman added, “We should use this opportunity, with the
state running out of cash, to step back and rethink this
project.” Calling the renovation project, “Cadillac Death Row,”
Huffman pointed to a state auditor’s report that found the cost
of the project had already increased by $40 million over earlier
estimates and the 20-year operating cost would be $1.2 billion.
Huffman predicted that the new facility would run out of space
by 2014, adding, “This project is hugely expensive and has a
shelf life of three years.” Read
more
12-17-08 -- The Presiding Justice of the Mississippi Supreme
Court, Oliver Diaz, dissented in a recent capital case, Doss v.
Mississippi, stating he had come to the conclusion that the
death penalty is unconstitutional:
[A]ll that
remains to justify our system of capital punishment is the quest
for revenge, and I cannot find, as a matter of law, that the
thirst for vengeance is a legitimate state interest. Even if it
is, capital punishment’s benefit over life imprisonment in
society’s quest for revenge is so minimal that it cannot
possibly justify the burden that it imposes in outright
heinousness. The death penalty is, therefore, reduced to “the
pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal
contributions to any discernible social or public purposes. A
penalty with such negligible returns to the State [is] patently
excessive and cruel and unusual punishment violative of the
Eighth Amendment.” (quoting Justice White in Furman v. Georgia).
Read more
12-16-08 -- Research on death qualification--the selection of
jurors who are qualified to serve on a capital case because they
are willing to sentence someone to death--has revealed
additional characteristics among such jurors. Professor Brooke
Butler of the University of
South Florida in Sarasota has studied such jurors and published
her results in the journal of Behavioral Sciences and the Law.
Her study, “Death qualification and prejudice: the effect of
implicit racism, sexism, and homophobia on capital defendants'
right to due process,” surveyed 200 juror candidates from the
12th Circuit in Bradenton, Florida. In addition to the
questions that measured their support for the death penalty and
their death-qualification status, she studied their attitudes
towards women, gays, and people of other races. The results
indicated that as death penalty support increased, participants
exhibited more negative attitudes towards women, homosexuals,
and people of other races.
Read more
More than seven years have passed
since city officer’s killer was sentenced to death
By
Erica M. Stocks, The Winchester Star
12-31-08 --
A Feb. 19 execution date has been set for convicted killer
Edward Nathaniel Bell. . . . Twenty-sixth Judicial Circuit Court
Judge Dennis L. Hupp set the date Tuesday morning after a
conference call with Winchester Commonwealth’s Attorney
Alexander Iden, the Virginia Attorney General’s Office, and
Bell’s counsel. . . . “Having determined that the Supreme Court
of the United States has issued a final order after granting a
stay [of execution] in order to review the judgment of the
United States Court of Appeals, this Court hereby orders the
death sentence of Edward Nathaniel Bell to be carried out,” Hupp
wrote in the court order. . . . At this point, the only way Bell
would likely avoid execution is if Gov. Timothy M. Kaine
commutes his sentence to life in prison. . . . In January 2001,
a Winchester Circuit Court jury found Bell guilty of capital
murder in the Oct. 29, 1999, death of city police Sgt. Ricky L.
Timbrook and recommended the death penalty. . . . Four months
later, Bell was sentenced to death by Hupp, who presided at the
trial.
12-22-08 --
An Arizona murderer whose 1982 case helped define how the death
penalty is imposed in the United States got his ticket off death
row last week. . . . Warren Summerlin, 61, who raped and
murdered a bill collector in Phoenix in 1981, will be
resentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25
years. According to the prosecutor and court records, even if he
is paroled, he still must serve an additional 28 years for
sexual assault. . . . He cannot be sentenced to life with no
chance of parole because that punishment did not exist at the
time of the murder. . . . Summerlin's case went before the U.S.
Supreme Court in 2004 to determine whether another landmark
decision would be retroactive. In 2002, the high court had ruled
that juries and not judges would decide if aggravating
circumstances of a murder existed that would demand a death
penalty.
12-20-08 --
A jury sentenced Addison, 28, to death on Thursday for the 2006 fatal shooting of Manchester police Officer Michael
Briggs. . . . Addison's attorney, Richard Guerriero, said the defense will appeal. Lawyers
are expected to argue that the judge made the wrong decision
when denying their request to change the location of the trial.
. . . New Hampshire's
narrow capital murder law applies to a half-dozen crimes,
including killing a police officer, murder for hire and killing
during a kidnapping. Prisoners who kill another while serving a
life sentence, murder during a rape, and certain drug crimes
also qualify. . . . New Hampshire's last execution was in 1939
and the last death sentence was issued in 1959. The state's
current death penalty law was enacted in 1991 and it has never
been tested in the higher courts.
Executions hit a 14-year low
nationally, with 37 in 2008, and new death sentences fell to a
30-year low, according to a year-end report by the Death Penalty
Information Center. . . . Use of capital punishment had been
under a de facto moratorium for roughly eight months, until the
U.S. Supreme Court upheld lethal injection in April 2008. But
even with the decision in Baze v. Rees, 128 S.Ct. 1520,
upholding Kentucky's lethal injection system, only nine states
resumed executions and all but one, Ohio, were in the South. . .
. The report indicates that almost half the 37 executions were
in Texas alone, which had 18. Only two states, New York and New
Jersey do not have the death penalty. . . . California has the
largest death row of any state, with 667 inmates awaiting
execution. California, along with Maryland, Delaware and North Carolina, did
not resume executions because their lethal injection programs
remain unsettled legally. . . . Executions peaked in 1999 with
98, but have fallen each year since, with 42 in 2007 and 37 in
2008, according to the report.
In the 31 years since the
punishment was reinstated, the numbers of death cases heard and
sentences handed out have steeply declined
Dan Kane - Staff Writer
12-20-08 --
North Carolina will finish this year with just one defendant
sentenced to death, a record low since the penalty was
reinstated 31 years ago. . . . The single capital murder
conviction this year continues a downward trend fueled by better
criminal defense lawyers and new laws that exclude the mentally
challenged and make prosecution evidence more accessible. . . .
In North Carolina, more people on death row have been exonerated
this year -- two -- than were sentenced to death. A de facto
death penalty moratorium in North Carolina -- as the courts,
state officials and the medical profession debate the ethics of
lethal injections -- has prevented anyone from being executed
for the past two years. . . . This year, 13 juries could have
chosen death for defendants. Only one in Forsyth County did.
Last month, a jury there gave the death sentence to James Ray
Little III for shooting a cab driver to death two years ago in
Winston-Salem. There will be no more capital murder trials
before Wednesday, the end of the year.
12-17-08 --
Two legislators from opposing parties and with opposite views on
the death penalty joined Tuesday to propose cutting off funding
for a new $395 million Death Row at San Quentin, calling it a
boondoggle that a financially strapped state can't afford. . . .
"The Death Row expansion is a bottomless money pit," said state
Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Atwater (Merced County). . . . "We should
use this opportunity, with the state running out of cash, to
step back and rethink this project," said Assemblyman Jared
Huffman, D-San Rafael, who joined Denham at a news conference in
front of the aging MarinCounty prison. He referred to
the project as a "Cadillac Death Row" and said many condemned
inmates could be safely housed at other prisons during their
decades of appeals. . . . Denham, who supports capital
punishment, has been trying for years to get the state to sell
the buildings and grounds at San Quentin and build a new Death
Row on cheaper land elsewhere.
12-15-08 --
The U.S. Department of Justice has issued final, controversial
regulations for certifying states that qualify for using
fast-track federal court review of their death penalty cases. .
. . The final regulations differ little in substance from the
regulations proposed in June 2007, which generated 32,000
individual public comments, according to the department. . . .
"The proposed regulations of June 2007 were basically sound and
only minor tweaks were needed," said Kent Scheidegger of the
Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, Calif., who is a strong
proponent of both the fast-track procedures and states'
certification. . . . But veteran capital defense litigator
George Kendall, partner in the New York office of
Holland & Knight, said it was a "dark day" for the Justice
Department.
12-15-08 --
State Rep. Barry Fleming (R-Harlem) was dead-on in his
commentary on the Brian Nichols case. Said Fleming: . . . “We’re
in a day and age when people get on a jury and they’ll say they
will vote for a death penalty, but simply won’t do it. That has
to be accounted for.” . . . That’s it. Those who most vigorously
oppose the death penalty have great incentive to work their way
onto capital cases to keep the penalty from being imposed.
There’s no way to detect their bias until the deed’s done. . . .
Without question, Nichols deserved death. He’s an evil man,
dangerous to every correctional officer he encounters for the
remainder of his life. He sets the standard for application of
the death penalty.
EJUSA has been working closely
with the repeal campaign in Maryland, and we're hoping that
Maryland's legislature will heed the call of the Commission and
end the death penalty in 2009!
12-11-08 --
The number of executions in U.S. prisons hit a 14-year-low in
2008, continuing a downward trend and coinciding with a drop in
juries handing out death sentences, according to a year-end
report. . . . The Death Penalty Information Center estimates 111
defendants will be sentenced to death this year, the lowest
figure since executions were reinstated in 1976. . . . Just 37
people were put to death in 2008, compared with a record amount
of 98 executions in 1999. Texas carried out nearly half of this
year's executions, and one state outside the South carried out
executions -- Ohio, with two. No executions are scheduled for
the rest of the year. . . . The reduced figures were helped by a
de facto Supreme Court moratorium that put off any capital
punishment for the first four months of 2008. . . . The
high court ruled in April that lethal injection
procedures in Kentucky were constitutional,
lifting an unofficial ban on the procedure that had been in
place for about eight months while the justices considered the
appeal. That case involved convicted murderers Ralph Baze and
Thomas Bowling, who both remain on death row in that state. . .
. Executions resumed nationwide in May.
Sixth Circuit denies appeal to
woman convicted in murder for hire of husband
By Ken Whitehouse
12-9-08 --
The first woman ever to be sentenced to death in Tennessee is a
step closer to the death chamber today after the Sixth Circuit
Court of Appeals denied her habeas petition in a 2-1 decision.
Nashville based Judge Gil Merritt filed the dissenting opinion.
. . . Gaile K. Owens was convicted in ShelbyCounty in 1986 of accessory
before the fact in the 1985 murder of her husband, Ronald Owens.
The man who killed her husband, Sidney Porterfield, was also
sentenced to death. Owens committed her crime on February 17,
1985 and was convicted on January 4, 1986. She entered prison on
February 21, 1986. . . . According to court documents in early
1985, Owens solicited several men to kill her husband before
Porterfield agreed to commit the crime. . . . On February 17,
1985, Ronald Owens was found in the family's den with his skull
smashed from at least 21 blows from a tire iron. He had been
beaten with so much force that fragments of his skull had been
driven into his brain and his face had been driven into the
floor. A pathologist's report showed extensive injuries to his
hands, indicating that he had been trying to cover his head with
his hands during the savage attack.
12-3-08 --
The sentence has been handed down and the death warrant signed,
but a long road remains to death row for convicted murderer Gary
Kleypas. . . . Although Crawford County District Judge Donald
Noland upheld a second death-penalty verdict that a jury handed
to Kleypas on Sept. 18, the Kansas Supreme Court will still have
to review and approve the conviction and sentence, according to
a spokeswoman for Kansas Attorney General Stephen Six. . . .
“The Supreme Court of Kansas automatically reviews all
death-penalty cases in Kansas,” said Ashley Anstaett.
“There is no timeline for that.” . . . Noland upheld the ruling
and signed the death warrant for Kleypas, 52, at a hearing
Wednesday in Girard. In addition to a sentence of death by
lethal injection, Noland sentenced Kleypas to 69 months on one
count of attempted rape and 34 months on one count of aggravated
burglary stemming from Carrie Williams’ murder. Death-row
inmates in Kansas are usually housed at El Dorado Correctional
Facility.
11-21-08 --
When the U.S. Supreme Court last month refused to hear the case
of Troy Anthony Davis, whose claims of innocence had delayed the
lethal injection he was to undergo for killing a Savannah, Ga., police officer, the
efforts of his lawyers and activists supporting him were
pronounced a failure. . . . But three days before Davis'
execution, a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
ordered a stay -- a "drastic measure" under the circumstances,
the judges said. While the judges could have made a final
decision based on the written briefs filed since the Oct. 24
stay, on Wednesday the panel ordered Davis' lawyers and those
for the state of Georgia to present oral argument Dec. 9. . . .
One death penalty expert said Davis' chances of prevailing
remain slim. But the 11th Circuit's actions are intriguing. The
panel of Judges Joel F. Dubina, Rosemary Barkett and Stanley
Marcus has raised questions about the complex web of law
governing how courts should handle habeas corpus claims by death
row inmates.
11-20-08 --
John Delaney faced the toughest moment of his legal career — his
condemned client wanted to drop his appeals and die by
injection, an act Delaney opposed and had been trained to try to
prevent. . . . "What do you say?" asked Delaney, a public
defender in northern Kentucky who represented Marco Allen
Chapman, a convicted murderer who is set to be executed Friday.
/ FAITH & REASON:Choosing to die and the death penalty . . . It's a
question that has arisen 131 times since U.S. states resumed
executions in 1977, and each time it leaves defense lawyers
struggling against their training to act in the best interest of
their clients and justice.
11-19-08 --
Texas is set to thin out its death row before the week is over.
Since mid-October
Texas has executed eight inmates, with another two
scheduled for execution by the end of this week. That's a total
of ten executions in a little over thirty days, a new record
even for the country's most active death penalty state. . . .
The high rates of Texas executions seen in October and November
are a result of the logjam created when the U.S. Supreme Court
effectively halted lethal injections around the country while it
decided whether the killing method was unconstitutionally
inhumane earlier this year. The Supreme Court's 7-2 decision
last April held that injection was not unconstitutionally cruel
and allowed executions to resume. Since then
17 executions have been carried out in Texas alone
this year, the most in the nation.
Marcia Coyle / Staff reporter National Law
Journal
11-13-08 --
The Department of Justice plans to publish final regulations
before the end of the administration on how states can get
certified to use fast-track federal court review of their death
penalty cases. . . . Although more than a year has passed since
the public comment period on proposed regulations has ended, a
department spokesman said the department does not plan to leave
the issue to the new administration in January. . . . The
department's regulations are intended to carry out the mandate
of Congress, which amended the PATRIOT Act two years ago to take
away certification decisions from federal appellate courts and
to transfer those decisions to the attorney general, with review
by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia. Congress acted at the behest of some lawmakers,
particularly Senator Jon Kyle, R-Ariz., who were angry that the
appellate courts had yet to find any states qualified for the
fast-track federal habeas corpus procedures. . . . The
fast-track procedures cut to six months, instead of a year, the
time that death row inmates have to file their habeas appeals
once their cases are final in state courts. They also impose
strict time limits on federal courts for deciding habeas
petitions: 450 days for district courts and 120 days for
appellate courts.
11-13-08 --
A state commission reviewing capital punishment recommended last
night an end to executions in Maryland, prompting hope among
death penalty opponents that the General Assembly could soon
abolish the 30-year practice. . . . The Maryland Commission on
Capital Punishment voted 13-7 to make the recommendation. It
found that the death penalty carries the "real possibility" of
executing innocent people and may be biased against blacks. . .
. The final report of the 23-member commission is expected to
provide additional ammunition to
Gov. Martin O'Malley and other death penalty
opponents in their uphill fight to stop state executions.
Previous repeal efforts have narrowly failed despite
high-profile campaigns by O'Malley, a Roman Catholic and ardent
opponent of capital punishment.
10-27-08 --
A federal appeals court gave a late reprieve Friday to a Georgia
man set to be executed for the 1989 killing of an off-duty
police officer in a case in which several witnesses have changed
their accounts of the crime. . . . Troy Davis, 40, was scheduled
to be executed Monday for the murder of Savannah police Officer Mark
MacPhail. But the three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals stayed the execution and ordered his attorneys
to prove whether he can meet "stringent requirements" to press
his appeal. . . . Davis' supporters have called for a new trial
because seven of the nine key witnesses against him have
recanted their testimony, and the doubts about his guilt have
won him the support of former President Jimmy Carter and other
prominent advocates. . . . It was the third time since July 2007
that Davis has been spared the death penalty by a late court
decision. . . . "I'm ecstatic. This movement is building and
building and building," said Martina Correia, Davis' sister.
"This is going to crumble the justice system in Georgia if they
don't do the right thing."
10-26-08 --
When U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens recently
criticized the way the Georgia Supreme Court reviews
death-penalty cases, he appeared to be inviting legal challenges
on the issue. . . . Georgia promised to ensure fairness in the
application of the death penalty when it reinstated capital
punishment in 1973. But Stevens said one facet of Georgia’s
review to achieve that goal has become cursory and could result
in arbitrary or discriminatory sentences. . . . “The Georgia
Supreme Court … must take seriously its obligation to safeguard
against the imposition of death sentences that are arbitrary or
infected by impermissible considerations such as race,” Stevens
wrote. . . . Lawyers defending capital cases said last week they
are mounting new appeals. They will challenge the state Supreme
Court’s proportionality review, which compares a death sentence
with punishments in similar cases. . . . “We intend to challenge
it,” said Atlanta veteran death-penalty lawyer Jack Martin, who
represents a Towns County man. . . . Lawyers in the Office of
the Georgia Capital Defender also are pursuing the issue.
10-14-08 --
The Supreme Court today refused to hear an appeal by a Georgia
man facing execution for the 1989 murder of a police officer,
declining to decide whether the death penalty should be ruled
out for a defendant who presents strong evidence of innocence. .
. . The order clears the way for Georgia to proceed with the
execution of Troy Anthony Davis, 40. It was issued three weeks
after the high court granted him a stay with less than two hours
to spare. . . . In refusing to hear a full appeal, the court
maintained the high bar it has set for assertions of innocence
following convictions in capital cases. Georgia now can set a new date
for Davis's execution, because the court's stay expires with
today's order. . . . Georgia's Supreme Court has twice refused
to grant Davis a new trial, and the State Board of Pardons and
Paroles rejected his request for clemency again last month
despite pleas from a number of dignitaries.
10-14-08 --
Ohio just executed the convicted murderer who cited his obesity
in a last-ditch effort to avoid the death penalty. . . . Richard
Cooey, 41, died this morning at the Southern Ohio Correctional
Facility, according to the Associated Press. The wire service
says "[t]here were no immediate reports of problems finding
suitable veins." . . . As we told you in August, the 267-pound
inmate cited his size as grounds for overturning the capital
sentence he received after being convicted of raping and
murdering two college students in 1986. His lawyers argued that
the executioners would have too much trouble administering the
lethal mix of drugs during his execution.
10-14-08 --
Alvin Kelly doesn't deny he committed a murder and deserves a
prison cell. . . . But Mr. Kelly, 57, insisted he had no
involvement in a murder spree – where three people, including a
22-month-old child, were gunned down 24 years ago in East Texas – that put him on death row. . . . The former Tyler truck repair shop owner is
to be executed this evening in Huntsville. . . . He'd be the
10th Texas prisoner executed this year, the first of two set to
die this week and the first of 12 scheduled for lethal injection
in the next six weeks in the nation's busiest death penalty
state. . . . "As I stand before God, I'm innocent of this case,"
Mr. Kelly said last week from a small visiting cage outside
Texas death row.
10-11-08 --
The crowd on A-Wing A-Section at the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice Polunsky Unit is about to be thinned. . . . A
dozen condemned inmates in the so-called “death watch” cells on
death row are set for lethal injection over the next six weeks.
. . . Two are scheduled for next week, two for the week after
and two more the week after that. Then six more in November,
adding to Texas' standing as the nation's most active death
penalty state. . . . Alvin Kelly said “it's just the way of
Texas.” Kelly's to be the first of the 12 set to die when he
heads to the state death chamber in Huntsville on Tuesday. . . .
Kelly, unlike some of his fellow prisoners, said he looks
forward to dying. But he insists evidence in his case was
manipulated and that he's innocent of fatally shooting of
22-month-old Devin Morgan in East Texas in 1984. The toddler's
parents, Jerry and Brenda Morgan, were gunned down at the same
time.
10-1-08 --
This just in, from the hardworking Ben Winograd over at
SCOTUS blog: The High Court has denied rehearing in Kennedy v. Louisiana, the case in which it struck
down the death penalty for the crime of child rape in Louisiana. But
the Court modified both the majority and dissenting opinions. . . .
The result,
writes Lyle Denniston, was that the Court left intact its
decision, not only that a death sentence could not be imposed for
that particular crime, but also that death could not be imposed for
any crime in which the victim is not killed. . . . For past LB
coverage of the Kennedy case, click
here,
here and
here. Thanks to SCOTUS blog,
here’s the modified opinion and
here’s Justice Scalia’s statement denying rehearing.
Justice Scalia, who joined Justice Alito’s dissent in Kennedy,
writes:
I am voting against the petition for
rehearing because the views of the American people on the death
penalty for child rape were, to tell the truth, irrelevant to the
majority’s decision in this case. The majority opinion, after an
unpersuasive attempt to show that a consensus against the penalty
existed, in the end came down to this: “[T]he Constitution
contemplates that in the end our own judgment will be brought to
bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty under
the Eighth Amendment.” . .. Of course the Constitution contemplates
no such thing; the proposed Eighth Amendment would have been laughed
to scorn if it had read “no criminal penalty shall be imposed which
the Supreme Court deems unacceptable.” But that is what the majority
opinion said, and there is no reason to believe that absence of a
national consensus would provoke second thoughts.
Execution stayed: ‘This is the
kind of case that has the [Supreme Court] on edge,’ said one
death penalty expert.
By
Bill Rankin, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
9-29-08 --
When the U.S. Supreme Court meets today to decide Troy Anthony
Davis’ fate, its nine justices face a fairly straightforward
question: Is there sufficient doubt about Davis’ guilt to
warrant further scrutiny of his case? . . . Davis needs four
justices to vote “yes.” Otherwise, his execution, halted by the
high court less than two hours before it was to be carried out
Tuesday evening, will be rescheduled. The court is expected to
announce its decision Oct. 6. . . . The high court’s granting
the stay at such a late hour, while not unprecedented, indicates
the case has the justices’ interest, court watchers said. . . .
“The court can grant a stay and then refuse to hear a case, but
they don’t issue the stay lightly,” said Thomas Goldstein, a
Washington lawyer who specializes in arguing cases before the
high court. “They are thinking about it hard.”
9-28-08 --
Recent confirmation of a long-rumored romance between a former
CollinCounty district attorney and a
former judge could lead to allegations of unfair trials in
hundreds of cases, but legal experts differ over what should
happen next. . . . In court depositions sought by attorneys
trying to get a new trial for death row convict Charles Dean
Hood, Judge Verla Sue Holland and prosecutor Tom O'Connell
reportedly admitted to a years-long affair that Mr. Hood's
attorneys say prevented him from getting a fair trial in 1990. .
. . At least one other man, Timothy David Nixon, was found
guilty of murder while Judge Holland was on the bench and Mr.
O'Connell tried the case. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison
for allegedly killing his mother. . . . Some legal ethicists say
prosecutors have a responsibility to identify cases from the
years the two held office and ensure that the convicted have
their day in court. Others doubt that is the prosecutors' role.
New York Lawyer, By Daphne Eviatar, The American
Lawyer
9-26-08 --
Jason Ewart found himself walking down the halls of a Georgia maximum security prison
on Tuesday afternoon, hours before the scheduled execution of
his longtime client, Troy Davis. It would be the last of several
visits made over five years while representing Davis pro bono. .
. . As a fifth-year associate who practices antitrust and
consumer protection law at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C., Ewart, 32, never expected
to spend so much time in a prison. But ever since 2003, when as
a first year associate he signed on with then-partner Kathleen
Behan to handle the matter--Davis had been convicted of
murdering a Savannah, Georgia police officer at the age of 20 in
1989--he came to know the halls of the mammoth Georgia
Diagnostic and Classification Prison well. . . . The heart of
Davis's habeas case was that
seven of the nine trial witnesses had recanted their testimony,
with several claiming police coercion. Davis consistently
proclaimed his innocence. He'd received international pleas of
support from such eminent figures as Jimmy Carter, Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, and Pope Benedict the XIV.
9-26-08 --
Lawyers for a convicted Texas murderer who narrowly escaped
execution earlier this month have filed a habeas corpus petition
in the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas. . . . The judge and
prosecutor in his death penalty case not only admitted earlier
this month, after being ordered to give depositions by a
state-court judge, that they had had an affair, but said they
had considered marriage, according to a Texas Defender Service
press release. In the petition, Charles Dean Hood asks the
appeals court to grant him either a new trial or remand for new
proceedings, saying that his constitutional right to a fair
trial was violated by the secret relationship. . . . "There is
no dispute that Judge Holland and Mr. O'Connell were engaged in
a long-term, intimate sexual relationship prior to Mr. Hood's
trial and did not disclose that fact to Mr. Hood or his
counsel," the press release states. It describes the "damage to
Mr. Hood's constitutional right to a fair and impartial
tribunal" due to the relationship as "obvious and egregious."
9-25-08 --
When we last left the case of death row inmate Charles Dean
Hood, a state district judge had ordered a hearing on whether to
force the judge and district attorney in the case to give sworn
testimony as to whether they were secretly lovers at the time of
the trial. . . . Collin County District Judge Robert Dry set the
hearing for Sept. 12, two days after Hood was scheduled to get
the needle. . . . I guess you'd call that a Dry sense of humor.
. . . Since that time, a number of extraordinary things have
happened. . . . AG seeks execution delay . . . •On Sept. 3,
Judge Dry, without anyone requesting it, recused himself and
transferred the case to another court. Apparently he suddenly
remembered that he had been a business associate of Earl
Holland, the late husband of former Judge Verla Sue Holland, at
about the time Holland sued the judge for divorce. . . . Earl
Holland allegedly told some friends he was divorcing the judge
because of her affair with District Attorney Tom O'Connell, who
took a lead role in Hood's trial.
9-24-08 --
The U.S. Supreme Court gave a reprieve to a Georgia inmate less
than two hours before his scheduled execution Tuesday for the
1989 slaying of an off-duty police officer. . . . Supporters of
39-year-old Troy Davis have called for a new trial as seven of
the nine witnesses who helped put him on death row recanted
their testimony. Protesters had arrived by the busload to
protest the execution, carrying signs with slogans like "Justice
for Troy Davis" and wearing blue T-shirts emblazoned with "I am
Troy Davis." A crowd of about 50 erupted in cheers when the
stay, granted around 5:20 p.m., was announced. . . . Troy Davis spoke to the crowd by phone, sounding
upbeat and optimistic. . . . "This is not over yet," said Davis, whose execution had been
scheduled for 7 p.m. "This is the beginning of my blessing."
9-19-08 --
Attorney General Troy King said Thursday he will continue to
support the execution of child rapists. . . . King said the U.S.
Supreme Court was wrong in a June 2008 decision that sentencing
someone to death for raping a child is unconstitutional. In a
5-4 decision, it overturned a Louisiana court ruling. . . . King
said the high court is expected to revisit the issue. . . .
"This is not over," King said after defending his support of the
death penalty to students at Samford University Cumberland
School of Law in Homewood. King was the guest speaker Thursday
at the law school's Alabama death penalty forum. . . . He said a
majority of Alabama residents continue to support the death
penalty despite efforts by groups with liberal agendas.
9-17-08 --
Legal experts are harshly criticizing a former judge and an
ex-Texas prosecutor, saying their alleged sexual affair while
handling cases together represents a black eye to the system. .
. . "It's such incredible bad judgment because it throws every
conviction into doubt," said Fred Moss, a Southern Methodist
University law professor. . . . An apparent open secret 20 years
ago in Collin County legal circles, the alleged affair became
part of the public record again last week. . . . Lawyers for
death row inmate Charles Dean Hood sought a stay of execution in
the nation's busiest death penalty state, arguing former Judge
Verla Sue Holland was biased because of her relationship with
ex-Collin County District Attorney Thomas O'Connell.
9-16-08 --
The 20th man executed in Georgia by lethal injection took 14
minutes to die Tuesday night. . . . Witness described Jack
Alderman’s manner as calm, almost serene, his eyes closed the
entire time. For a few minutes before he was declared dead, they
said he smiled. . . . “There was no jerking,” said Jan Skutch, a
media witness from The Savannah Morning News. “He was calm. It
was almost antiseptic.” . . . Adlerman, pronounced dead at 7:25
p.m. Tuesday, has been on death row almost 35 years — longer
than any of the 109 death row inmates in Georgia. He was
convicted of the 1974 Chatham County murder of wife Barbara
Alderman for $10,000 in insurance money. . . .When that
conviction was overturned by a federal appeals court, he was
convicted in a second trial in 1984.
Death Row Inmate's Last Ditch
Appeal Reveals Affair Between Judge and Prosecutor
By Scott Michels
9-11-08 --
The revelation that a former judge had an affair with a
prosecutor in Texas has outraged legal ethicists and may call
into question dozens of criminal cases. . . . In a letter sent
Tuesday to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, lawyers for Charles Dean Hood,
a death row inmate, said that the district attorney who
prosecuted Hood and the judge who oversaw his trial had admitted
under oath on Monday night and Tuesday morning that they had a
sexual relationship. . . . Hood, who was convicted of a double
murder in 1990, was scheduled to be executed Wednesday. The
Texas Court of Criminal Appeal stayed the execution Tuesday
night for an unrelated reason. . . . It was unclear what the
immediate impact of the affair would be for Hood or others, but
lawyers expected that some other defendants who have been
convicted in Holland's courtroom would attempt to challenge
their convictions because of the reported affair.
9-11-08 --
A convicted killer won a reprieve Tuesday, one day before his
scheduled execution, after a Texas appeals court said it would
reconsider its earlier dismissal of a challenge over jury
instructions at his murder trial. . . . In granting the reprieve
to Charles Dean Hood, the Texas Court of Appeals cited
developments in the law regarding jury nullification. . . . The
court however dismissed his attorney's claims that Hood was
denied a fair trial because of what would be a
legally unethical relationship between the judge and
prosecutor. . . . The reprieve came almost
simultaneously as Hood's lawyers sent a letter to Gov. Rick
Perry in which they said retired Judge Verla Sue Holland and
former Collin County District Attorney Tom O'Connell "admitted
under oath that they had an intimate sexual relationship for
many years." The attorneys previously asked Perry for a 30-day
reprieve for Hood.
9-9-08 --
A judge and a prosecutor who handled the murder trial of a man
sentenced to death here have admitted under oath that they
carried on a secret affair for years, lawyers for the condemned
man said Tuesday in a letter to Gov. Rick Perry. . . . . On the
same day, the highest criminal court in Texas postponed the
man’s execution, which had been set for Wednesday evening — not
because of the affair, but to reconsider whether the jury
instructions were flawed. . . . . In the letter to the governor,
lawyers for the inmate, Charles Dean Hood, said the former
judge, Verla Sue Holland, and the former prosecutor, Thomas S.
O’Connell Jr., testified in depositions given late Monday and
Tuesday morning that they had a romantic relationship for years.
. . . . “Judge Holland and Mr. O’Connell confirmed that they
kept the relationship secret,” Mr. Hood’s lawyer, Gregory W.
Wiercioch, wrote to the governor. “She never disclosed it to a
single litigant or lawyer who appeared before her, and she never
recused herself from hearing a single case because of her affair
with the elected district attorney.”
9-9-08 --
The judge and prosecutor from a condemned man's murder trial
were ordered Monday to testify under oath about allegations that
they were romantically involved during the case. . . . . The
Texas district court ruling two days before convicted killer
Charles Dean Hood's scheduled execution stemmed from requests by
his attorneys to investigate
claims of an improper relationship between retired state
District Judge Verla Sue Holland and former Collin County
District Attorney Tom O'Connell. . . . . The deposition
for O'Connell began in a jury room shortly after District Judge
Greg Brewer's ruling Monday afternoon. Holland's deposition was
scheduled for Tuesday morning. . . . . Hood's attorneys also
were working to postpone his execution in order to have more
time to pursue their claims of judicial bias. They filed a
request for a stay of execution and also asked Gov. Rick Perry
to grant a 30-day reprieve.
9-4-08 --
With less than a week to go before the scheduled execution of a
man who contends his murder trial was tainted by a love affair
between the judge and the prosecutor, a state judge on Thursday
ordered a hearing into the accusation and the Texas attorney
general called for a review of the fairness of the trial. . . .
The judge’s order and the attorney general’s request are the
latest twists in a complicated legal drama that has prompted
criticism from prosecutors, judges and experts on legal ethics
across the nation. They argue that if the love affair occurred,
the condemned man did not receive a fair trial.
A compelling
narrative of the legal and political fight to
end the death penalty in France has just been
released in an English translation.
Abolition:One Man’s Battle Against
the Death Penalty
is authored by Robert Badinter, probably the
single person most responsible for abolishing
the death penalty in France. He begins his story
in 1972 when one of his clients was guillotined
in a case he felt was unjust. Upon dedicating
his career to abolishing the death penalty, he
agreed to represent any convict facing capital
punishment, and he succeeded in having six death
sentences overturned. Readers follow Badinter’s
journey from writing the legislation to ban the
death penalty to the push through the National
Assembly and Senate. His narrative moves from
courtroom experiences to the political front
throughout this memoir. Badinter currently sits
in the French Senate and is one of the founders
of the World Congress Against the Death Penalty.
The California Supreme Court
upholds the ruling in the case of Gunner Lindberg, the first
person in the state condemned to die for a racially motivated
murder. The victim was a Vietnamese American.
By Mike Anton, Los Angeles Times
Staff Writer
8-30-08 --
The California Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty for a
self-proclaimed white supremacist from OrangeCounty who was the first person
in the state condemned to die for a racially motivated murder. .
. . Gunner Lindberg, 33, was convicted in the 1996 slaying of
Thien Minh Ly, 24, who was stabbed more than 50 times and had
his throat slashed. . . . Lindberg was convicted in Orange
County Superior Court of first-degree murder with a special
circumstance that the crime was based on the victim's race.
Lindberg's attorney sought to have the special circumstance
overturned on appeal because of lack of evidence. . . . But the
state high court ruled Thursday that "the evidence
overwhelmingly showed that the defendant was a racist who
regarded nonwhites as subhuman and who, by his own admission,
callously murdered victim Ly for the 'racial movement.' "
8-25-08 --
A Superior Court judge contacted Greensboro lawyer Don Cowan in
1987 asking him to take the appeal of Willie Brown, a MartinCounty man sentenced to death in
1983 for first-degree murder. . . . Although Cowan had never
handled a capital case, he knew of their grueling and
time-consuming nature. Cases bounce up and down among appeals
courts. Hopes of lawyers and defendants soar and plunge. . . .
But Cowan accepted, and not only that, he agreed to work without
fee — “pro bono.” He’d only get expenses. . . . The case lasted
19 years. The end came April 2, 2006. Brown, 64, was executed
at Central Prison in Raleigh. Cowan watched from behind a
window in the death chamber. Brown moved once, gasped and failed
to move again. . . . “I was disappointed, but I think I had done
everything I knew to do,” says Cowan, recently honored with the
Greensboro Bar Association’s Pro Bono Award for the Brown case
and his work without fee on other capital cases. . . . Former
state Supreme Court Chief Justice Henry Frye, who now works for
the Brooks Pierce law firm here, said he was impressed with
Cowan’s commitment to capital cases. Before, he had thought of
Cowan as a business lawyer. . . . “He has shown a lot of
interest in good issues,’' Frye says. “And I think what he did
has helped to get other lawyers to do the same. It’s hard to get
people to take death penalty cases.” . . . Making about 100
trips to Williamston, the eastern North Carolina town where the
crime occurred, Cowan sought people who knew Brown. In his suit
and tie, he knocked on doors in a black neighborhood where Brown
once lived.
8-20-08 --
Defense attorneys for condemned killer Charles Dean Hood are
taking the unusual step of using the civil courts to try to
subpoena retired Judge Verla Sue Holland and former District
Attorney Tom O'Connell Jr. to talk about their alleged romance.
. . . The petition filed Tuesday could result in a civil rights
lawsuit alleging "that Judge Holland or Tom O'Connell deprived
Charles Hood of his constitutional rights by not revealing this
romantic relationship prior to his capital murder trial,"
defense attorney Greg Wiercioch said. . . . Mr. Hood was
convicted in 1990 of the robbery and slaying of Ronald
Williamson and Tracie Lynn Wallace the year before in Plano. He
is scheduled to die Sept. 10. . . . Mr. Hood's defense team has
been trying since June to get information about the alleged
affair, which they say would have violated Mr. Hood's ability to
get a fair trial.
Daughters of elderly couple slain
during a burglary later testify that the murders devastated
their close-knit family.
By
Larry Welborn, The Orange County Register
8-18-08 -- An OrangeCounty judge on Monday rejected
a motion by the Mexican government for a delay in an ongoing
murder trial of a Mexican national who faces a potential death
sentence. . . .Berkeley Attorney Skyla V. Olds argued in a
38-page motion that defendant Carlos Martinez – who was
convicted last week of murdering an elderly Santa Ana couple
during a botched burglary – should have been told following his
arrest that he could get legal advice and help from the
consulate. . . . Olds contended that Mexico was prevented from
exercising its right to talk with, provide lawyers for and to
help prepare a legal defense for one its citizens. Olds says she
works for the Mexican Capital Legal Assistance Program, which
provides legal assistance for Mexican national accused of
capital crimes.
8-12-08 -- A sitting
federal judge who is working on a book is calling on the Justice
Department to ease off in pursuing the federal death penalty in
New York City cases. . . . Speaking at an American Bar Association event yesterday,
the judge, Frederic Block of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, criticized the government for spending millions of dollars in pursuit
of death sentences and ignoring what he said were New Yorkers'
views on capital punishment. Washington often seeks death
sentences when it has virtually no chance of success, he said,
sometimes even over the objections of the local U.S. attorneys
tasked with prosecuting the cases. . . . "The problem is,
basically, New York
has spoken against the death penalty with the exception of a
situation involving a cop killing," he said, referring to the
single instance in which a federal jury has rendered a death
verdict in New York in recent years. The condemned man, Ronell
Wilson, killed two undercover detectives. . . . Judge Block
cited the fact that federal juries have been reluctant to impose
death penalties in other trials. Since that February 2006 death
verdict in the Wilson case, Judge Block's courthouse has hosted
seven capital trials in which a jury has declined to impose a
death sentence, which requires unanimity.
In carrying out two executions,
the state endangers Americans detained abroad.
The
Washington Post Editorial
8-8-08 --
THE STATE of Texas had an opportunity this week to display a
victor's grace. Instead, it rebuffed pleas by the U.S. secretary
of state and the U.S. attorney general for help in resolving an
international dispute and in the process gave the back of its
hand to the country and its obligations. . . . The issue
involved two foreign nationals on Texas's death row. The leading
case involved José Ernesto Medellín, a Mexican national whom the
state executed Tuesday for his part in the 1993 gang rape and
murder of two Texas girls. There is little doubt that Mr.
Medellín was guilty: He confessed to the crimes just hours after
his arrest, and his conviction was upheld by state and federal
appeals courts. But Mr. Medellín, who spoke fluent English and
had lived in the United States since he was a child, later
challenged his conviction because Texas law enforcement
officials failed to inform him of his right under the Vienna
Convention for Consular Affairs to speak with the Mexican
consulate. The state, which admitted the error, became the
subject of a dispute with Mexico before the International Court
of Justice, the judicial arm of the United Nations.
A Different Convicted Murderer
Claims Responsibility For 1982 Slaying
7-31-08 --
The Alabama Supreme Court postponed the execution of Thomas
Arthur late Wednesday, just over 24 hours before he was
scheduled to die. It was the third time Arthur has received a
stay on the eve of a scheduled execution. . . . Voting 5-4, the
justices wrote a two-paragraph order postponing the execution
"pending further orders of this Court." The move comes two days
after another inmate submitted an affidavit saying he committed
the crime that sent Arthur to death row. . . . "My reaction is
we finally look forward to the opportunity to examine fully Mr.
Arthur's claim of innocence by assessing witness testimony and
DNA evidence," said Suhana S. Han, who is representing Arthur. "That is the
right result." . . . State Attorney General Troy King said he was disappointed the court issued the stay because
the victim's family had already waited too long for justice.
"The crimes against Troy Wicker's family continue to compound,"
he said.
7-31-08 --
Convicted killer Thomas D. Arthur narrowly escaped death again
Wednesday when the Alabama Supreme Court, without comment and on
a 5-4 vote, indefinitely delayed his execution. Arthur had been
scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. today. . . .
Convicted of the 1982 contract killing of Troy Wicker Jr. of
Muscle Shoals, Arthur twice last year came within a day of
execution before stays were granted. . . . Wednesday's court
ruling granting the stay followed a bizarre series of filings in
which the state admitted losing key evidence, Arthur's daughter
was accused of trying to bribe a witness and the same witness,
an admitted conspirator in the murder, offered testimony to
debunk the confession this week of another man who insists it
was he - not Arthur - who killed Wicker. . . . Eric Ferrero,
spokesman for the Innocence Project, a New York-based nonprofit
group that is working with Arthur's defense team, late Wednesday
called on Gov. Bob Riley to order DNA testing of evidence in the case and resolve questions about Arthur's
guilt. . . . "The governor has the authority - and the moral
obligation - to order DNA
testing immediately," Ferrero said.
The state plans to execute a
Mexican national on Aug. 5, despite objections of the World
Court.
By
Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
7-31-08 --
The United States is fast approaching a showdown over its
commitment to the rule of international law as Texas prepares to
carry out the scheduled Aug. 5 execution of convicted killer and
rapist Jose Medellin. . . . On July 14, the International Court
of Justice at The Hague ordered the US government to "take all
measures necessary" to prevent the execution of Mr. Medellin and
four other Mexican nationals awaiting execution dates on death
row in Texas. . . . But Medellin is in the custody of Texas
authorities, not the federal government, and the Texas governor
says he intends to push forward with the execution next Tuesday.
. . . Congress could take quick action to defuse the
international imbroglio, but legal analysts say intervening in
the Medellin case would be politically risky for national
lawmakers in an election year. . . . The case highlights a
heated debate over the relevance of international legal rulings
in the American justice system. It is a flash point in an
ongoing rivalry pitting American law against international law,
and the controversy is playing out in an emotional case
involving race, rape, murder, and capital punishment
Texas-style.
7-29-08 --
President Bush on Monday approved the first execution by the
military since 1961, upholding the death penalty of an Army
private convicted of a series of rapes and murders more than two
decades ago. . . . As commander in chief, the president has the
final authority to approve capital punishment under the Uniform
Code of Military Justice, and he did so on Monday morning in the
case of Pvt. Ronald A. Gray, convicted by court-martial for two
killings and an attempted murder at Fort Bragg, N.C., the White
House said in a statement. . . . Although the Supreme Court
upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty in the
military in 1996, no one has been executed since President
Ronald Reagan reinstated capital punishment in 1984 for military
crimes. . . . The last military execution was ordered by
President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1957, although it was not
carried out by hanging until 1961. President John F. Kennedy was
the last president to face the question, in 1962, but commuted
the sentence to life in prison.
Years after Dallas DA's death,
his legacy is taking a beating; 19 convictions undone by DNA
By
Michael Graczyk, Associated Press Writer
7-29-08 --
As district attorney of Dallas for an unprecedented 36 years,
Henry Wade was the embodiment of Texas justice. . . . A
strapping 6-footer with a square jaw and a half-chewed cigar
clamped between his teeth, The Chief, as he was known,
prosecuted Jack Ruby. He was the Wade in Roe v. Wade. And he
compiled a conviction rate so impressive that defense attorneys
ruefully called themselves the 7 Percent Club. . . . But now,
seven years after Wade's death, The Chief's legacy is taking a
beating. . . . Nineteen convictions — three for murder and the
rest involving rape or burglary — won by Wade and two successors
who trained under him have been overturned after DNA evidence exonerated the defendants. About 250 more cases are under
review. . . . No other county in America — and almost no state,
for that matter — has freed more innocent people from prison in
recent years than Dallas County, where Wade was DA from 1951
through 1986.
7-28-08 --
A killer who argued Virginia's procedures for lethal injection
were unconstitutional was executed Thursday
after a federal appeals court upheld the primary method of
capital punishment in the country's second-busiest death
chamber. . . . Christopher Scott Emmett, 36, was pronounced dead
at 9:07 p.m. He was convicted of beating a co-worker to death
with a brass lamp in 2001 so he could steal the man's money to
buy crack cocaine. . . . Emmett's appeal was the first to
require a federal appeals court to interpret
a U.S. Supreme Court decision in April that upheld Kentucky's
three-drug method of lethal injection and apply it to
another state's procedures. . . . Gov. Tim Kaine declined to
intervene with the sentence being carried out. . . . "Tell my
family and friends I love them, tell the governor he just lost
my vote," Emmett said in the chamber before he died. "Y'all
hurry this along, I'm dying to get out of here." . . . The
lethal injection appeared to go as planned. Emmett was
pronounced dead about five minutes after he was first sedated.
7-22-08 --
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court yesterday dealt setbacks to four
death-row inmates, including two mentally ill prisoners from
Philadelphia who can now be forcibly medicated in order to make
them mentally competent to continue their appeals. . . . Ruling
in the case of Thavirak Sam, a Cambodian immigrant who killed
three family members in 1989 and has been mentally incompetent
for years, the court said that if Sam were left untreated, his
appeal would remain in limbo indefinitely. . . . "Not to
litigate the claims delays both justice and finality," wrote
Chief Justice Ronald Castille, who was Philadelphia district attorney when the killings occurred. . . . Sam's defense
attorney, Jules Epstein, said he believed the rulings marked the
first time in the United
States that an appellate court had approved forcible medication
for a death-row inmate who is not a danger to himself or others.
. . . "The decision raises a profound question of what to do
with mentally ill death-row inmates . . . who have no family or
other dedicated person to speak for them," said Epstein, a law
professor at Widener University. . . . Deputy District Attorney
Ronald E. Eisenberg said the rulings would allow appeals to
proceed.
7-17-08 --
Texas is refusing to bow to yesterday's World Court order to
stay the Aug. 5 lethal injection of convicted rapist-killer and
illegal alien Jose
Medellin.
. . . The highest U.N.
court insisted that five scheduled executions of Mexicans be
immediately halted until the cases undergo further review.
Mexico's government filed a petition with the court
last month because it said the men had been deprived of
assistance from their consulates following their arrests.
. . . According to Geneva
Convention rules, illegal aliens must have access to
their national consulates once they have been detained.
. . . The U.N. court order
echoes statements made by Mexico that "Texas has made clear that
unless restrained, it will go forward with the execution without
providing Mr. Medellin the mandated review and reconsideration,"
which will "irreparably" violate U.S. obligations to the World
Court's 2004 directive, the Houston Chronicle reported.
. . . Citing "the
paramount interest in human life," Mexico said it would "for
forever be deprived of the opportunity to vindicate its rights
and those of the nationals concerned" if Medellin's execution
continues as scheduled.
7-16-08 --
The U.N.'s highest court on Wednesday ordered U.S. authorities
to do everything in their power to halt the executions of five
Mexicans on death row in Texas until their cases are reviewed.
. . . The Bush
administration has said the World Court does not have
jurisdiction in the case.
. . . The ruling followed
hastily convened hearings last month at which Mexico argued that
the United States is defying a 2004 order by the
International Court of Justice to review the cases of
51 Mexicans sentenced to death by state courts.
. . . That order was based
on the court's finding that the condemned prisoners had been
denied the right to help from their consulate following their
arrest. . . .
When the executions were
cleared to go ahead despite that ruling, Mexico turned again to
the court last month and asked the judges to issue an emergency
injunction to stop the schedule of killings.
The commission stopped short of
calling for the abolition of the state's death penalty
Paul
Elias, The Associated Press
7-1-08 --
California's 30-year-old death penalty system that costs more
than $100 million annually to administer is "close to collapse,"
according to a new report issued Monday. . . . The
California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice,
appointed by the state Legislature to propose criminal justice
reforms, issued a 117-page report detailing a deeply flawed
system with the biggest backlog of cases in the nation. . . .
The commission stopped short of calling for the abolition of the
state's death penalty. It did note, however, that California
would save hundreds of millions of dollars if capital punishment
were eliminated. Most condemned inmates are essentially given
life sentences because so few executions are carried out, the
report said. . . . The commission blamed inadequate legal
representation and a broad death penalty law that makes nearly
all first-degree murder cases eligible for the death penalty
among other issues that have made the California capital
punishment system "dysfunctional." . . . "It is the law in name
only, and not in reality," the report stated. . . . The
commission recommended California double its annual amount of
capital punishment spending to hire more defense lawyers and
prosecutors. . . . There are 673 inmates on California's death
row. Seventy-nine of them are still waiting to be appointed
attorneys to prepare their automatic appeals to the California
Supreme Court
6-30-08 --
It is impossible to stand by the murder conviction of Charles
Dean Hood without examining charges of corruption against the
very Collin County court where he was sentenced to die. . . .
Yet there has been no indication that courts at any level are
interested in delving into accusations of unethical,
unconstitutional behavior – a secret affair – by the trial judge
and district attorney. . . . The public deserves more than
avoidance. This is more than a question of guilt or innocence of
one man. Rather, the judiciary must recognize the cloud of
suspicion that hovers and the need to clear the air. . . .
Failure to do so risks casting doubt on the quality of justice
for the entire period in which Tom O'Connell was DA and Sue
Holland presided over cases brought by his office. The integrity
of other cases is drawn into question, and that is an affront to
a host of crime victims. . . . As it stands, Presiding State
District Judge John Nelms of CollinCounty has reset Mr. Hood's
execution date for Sept. 10. He passed up the chance to examine
years-old attacks on Judge Holland's impartiality, kicking the
matter up to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. That prolonged
the unseemly game of hot potato that has been going on since the
postponement of Mr. Hood's last date with the executioner, June
17.
6-28-08 --
Barring unlikely last-minute delays, the end will come this week
for murderer Mark Dean Schwab. . . . Various other Florida Death
Row inmates are due to follow him to the death chamber at
Raiford State Prison in the coming months, after an 18-month
moratorium on executions. . . . Schwab is scheduled to be
strapped to a gurney and killed by lethal injection at 6 p.m.
Tuesday. . . . That will be exactly 16 years to the day that he
was sentenced to death for the rape and strangulation of an
11-year-old boy, Junny Rios-Martinez of Cocoa. . . . If Schwab
is executed, he will be the first Florida Death Row inmate to be
killed since Dec. 13, 2006. On that day, murderer Angel Diaz,
55, of Puerto Rico, injected with a lethal three-drug "cocktail," took 34 minutes to die.
EXECUTIONS IN 2008 . . .
Since the U.S. Supreme Court's decision upholding Kentucky's
lethal injection process on April 16, there have been 9
executions:
6-26-08 --
The Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, on Wednesday that sentencing
someone to death for raping a child is unconstitutional,
assuming that the victim is not killed. . . . “The death penalty
is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child,”
Justice
Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court. He was joined by
Justices
John Paul Stevens,
David H. Souter,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and
Stephen G. Breyer. . . . The court overturned a ruling by
the Louisiana Supreme Court, which had held that child rape is
unique in the harm it inflicts not just upon the victim but on
society and that, short of first-degree murder, no crime is more
deserving of the death penalty. . . . Justice Kennedy, while in
no way minimizing the heinous nature of child rape, wrote that
executing someone for that crime, assuming that the victim was
not killed, violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and
unusual punishment, which draws it meaning from “the evolving
standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing
society.” . . . “When the law punishes by death, it risks its
own sudden descent into brutality, transgressing the
constitutional commitment to decency and restraint,” Justice
Kennedy wrote.
6-26-08 --
Former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson, now vice
president and general counsel of PepsiCo in Purchase, N.Y.,
tried to help Curtis Osborne avoid the death penalty in Georgia.
It didn't work. . . . . Thompson was one of several luminaries
-- including former President Jimmy Carter -- who wrote
letters in support of Osborne's clemency plea, handled pro bono
by Thompson's former law firm, King & Spalding. In his May 28
letter to the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, Thompson asked
the group to commute Osborne's sentence to life imprisonment
without parole. . . . . Two days later, on May 30, the board met
to consider the clemency plea. On June 2, the board denied the
request, and Osborne was executed on June 4. . . . . Osborne was
convicted of the 1990 murders of Arthur Lee Jones and Linda
Seaborne. Both victims were found shot to death over money
Osborne owed to Jones from the sale of a motorcycle.
6-25-08 --
A federal appeals court overturned a Los Angeles man's death
sentence Tuesday for the fatal stabbing of his supervisor during
a 1984 robbery, saying the defense lawyer ignored blood evidence
that might have shown that someone else was the killer. . . .
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said another jury should
look at the evidence and decide whether it shows Henry Earl
Duncan, who admitted being at the scene of the crime, intended
to kill the victim, Josephine DeBaun. If so, he could be
resentenced to death after a new penalty trial; otherwise, he
would be sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. . . . Duncan,
now 43, was a 20-year-old restaurant cashier at Los Angeles
International Airport at the time of the murder in November
1984. DeBaun's body, with multiple stab wounds, was found in a
small room at the restaurant near an open cash drawer from which
$2,100 was missing, the court said.
6-24-08 --
The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to have a third look at the
case of a death row inmate in Tennessee, this time to consider
whether he has forfeited the opportunity to argue that
prosecutors withheld evidence important to his defense. . . . In
its two earlier decisions, the Supreme Court reversed rulings
from the federal appeals court in Cincinnati that had favored
the inmate, Gary B. Cone. This time, the appeals court, the
United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, ruled for
the prosecution, over the dissents of seven judges. . . . Mr.
Cone, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, killed Shipley Todd, 93,
and his wife, Cleopatra, 79, in their Memphis home at the end of a
two-day crime spree in 1980. His only defense was that he had
been in the throes of an amphetamine psychosis. . . . “This
proved to be a tenuous defense, at best,” the Tennessee Supreme
Court said in affirming Mr. Cone’s conviction and death
sentence. There was no solid evidence, the court said, that Mr.
Cone was even a drug user. . . . Indeed, a prosecutor called Mr.
Cone’s claim that he was a drug addict “baloney.” Mr. Cone, the
prosecutor said, was instead “a calm, cool professional robber.”
6-16-08 --
A Texas man scheduled for execution Tuesday alleges in documents
filed Thursday in the
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that his conviction
and sentence are "null and void," because the judge who presided
over his 1990 trial was having an affair with a prosecutor on
the case -- an allegation that surfaced at least three years
ago. . . . Charles Dean Hood, who faces death by lethal
injection June 17, alleges in his "Original Petition for Writ of
Habeas Corpus or in the Alternative Original Petition for Writ
of Prohibition and Motion for Stay of Execution" that Verla Sue
Holland, who was presiding judge of the 296th District Court in
1990, was involved in a long-term intimate relationship with
then-Collin
County District Attorney Tom O'Connell, who actively
participated in Hood's capital murder trial. As alleged in
Hood's writ petition, neither Holland nor O'Connell was married
at the time of Hood's trial, but neither chose to make their
relationship public. . . . Holland also served on the Court of
Criminal Appeals from 1997 until her retirement in 2001.
6-14-08 --
A federal appeals court overturned a San Joaquin County man's
death sentence for the third time Friday in the battering death
of a 19-year-old woman during a 1981 burglary, saying his lawyer
failed to present evidence that might have led jurors to spare
his life. . . . Two previous rulings by the Ninth U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals that would have granted Fernando Belmontes a
new penalty trial on other grounds were both overturned by the
U.S. Supreme Court. The high court returned the case to the
appellate panel in November 2006 to consider other issues the
defense raised, including the claim that Belmontes' trial lawyer
represented him incompetently. . . . Belmontes, now 47, was a
month short of his 20th birthday and living in a halfway house
in Stockton in March 1981 when he and two friends decided to rob
a home in Victor, east of Lodi. According to trial
testimony, Belmontes was confronted by Steacy McConnell and hit
her 15 to 20 times with an iron dumbbell, crushing her skull. He
and his accomplices took her stereo system and sold it for $100,
which they used to buy beer.
6-13-08 --
Ohio's method of putting prisoners to death is unconstitutional
because two of three drugs used in lethal injection can cause
pain, a judge ruled Tuesday. . . . A story from the AP says, the
process doesn't provide the quick and painless death required by
Ohio law, said Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge, who
agreed with two inmates facing murder charges who had challenged
the procedure. . . . Ohio must stop allowing a combination of
drugs and focus instead on a single, anesthetic drug, Burge
said. . . . State officials were reviewing the decision and had
not determined if an appeal would be filed with the Ohio Supreme
Court, said Jim Gravelle, a spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General's office. . . . In an interview in his chambers, Burge said his
ruling applies only to the two inmates who challenged the
procedure in his court and is likely not appealable unless one
of the men gets sentenced to death.
Derrick Sonnier, scheduled for
execution in Texas on June 3, 2008, was granted a
stay by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Sonnier
had requested a stay in light of the court's
consideration of Texas' lethal injection process in
another case and the fact that the process had
recently been revised.
On
June 4, Georgia
has scheduled the execution of Curtis Osborne
(pictured with some of his family). (UPDATE:
Osborne was executed on June 4.) Osborne's own
defense lawyer at trial was racially biased against
him and failed to do the most basic investigation
that might have saved his client's life. The
attorney repeatedly referred to Osborne with a
racial epithet, saying, "that little n____r deserves
the chair."
At the time of the murder that sent Osborne to death
row, he was suffering from mental problems and his
family had a history of mental illness going back
for 3 generations. However, Osborne's attorney
failed to raise this issue.
Law enforcement officials and religious leaders who
have come to know Curtis Osborne have noted his
complete remorse for the crime and the dramatic
changes in his life while on death row. His story is
recounted in a video prepared by his current defense
attorneys. (Posted May 28, 2008).
6-2-08 --
In 1990, Curtis Osborne, a small-time cocaine dealer and addict,
killed two people in a dispute over $400. His crime revulsed the
town of Griffin, Georgia, one measure of which was the bigoted
remark a local inmate reported hearing at the jail: "That little
nigger deserves the chair." . . . As repulsive as the remark was
on its own, far more disturbing was the fact that the person
alleged to have uttered it was Osborne's own court-appointed
lawyer. And somehow, through years of appeals in state and
federal courts, no tribunal has squarely confronted this basic
but fundamental question: is a person on trial for his life
entitled to a lawyer who does not hold him in contempt and
believe he should be executed. . . . Osborne is scheduled to be
executed Wednesday. His last-ditch plea to have his sentence
commuted to life in prison was denied this morning by the state
Board of Pardons and Paroles, despite supportive letters from
Georgia luminaries including former President Jimmy Carter and
former deputy attorney general Larry Thompson — a Democrat and a
Republican, respectively. . . . His case is a vivid example of
the way legal "technicalities" have tipped the scales from
favoring death row prisoners to favoring the state. Georgia
officials, after all, never had to try to prove that Osborne's
lawyer was not a bigot, or even that his feelings about his
client shouldn't matter one way or the other. Instead, they were
the beneficiaries of court rulings that said the issue was moot
for procedural reasons. . . . From the record of his case,
Curtis Osborne was a numbskull junkie who managed to sell his
friend's motorcycle for $400, then pocketed the money. When the
friend came after the cash, Osborne shot the man and his
girlfriend at close range. He later tried to explain the gunshot
residue on his hands by saying that he fed his dog doses of
gunpowder, but the authorities weren't impressed. Osborne
eventually cracked and confessed.
6-2-08 --
Over the course of the last two years I’ve been telling my
students about an important case making its way up to the United
States Supreme Court. The State of Louisiana has been seeking to
execute those who are convicted of the aggravated rape of
children. As of this writing the Supremes are approaching a
decision in that case – one that would not have been difficult
but for the legacy of Chief Justice Earl Warren. . . . Our
Founding Fathers would never have imagined the constitutionality
of executing rapists to be a serious question. Indeed my own
state, North Carolina, considered rape – along with murder,
burglary, and arson – to be punishable by death for the better
part of the 20th Century. None of this would be controversial
until some time after the Court – led by Chief Justice Earl
Warren – announced that it had somehow inherited a new standard
for declaring statutes in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s
ban on Cruel and Unusual Punishment. . . . That standard is now
known as the “evolving standard of decency.” The case of Coker
v. Georgia (1977) may well represent its most indecent
application. I argue that the case was wrong on at least two
counts. . . . First, in its application of the concept of
“evolving standards of decency,” the Court rightly noted that
after the re-instatement of the death penalty in America (see
Furman v. Georgia, 1972) most states had elected not to classify
rape as a capital offense. But, strangely, the Court also cited
as evidence of an “evolving standard of decency” that citizens
of Georgia had in recent years declined to impose the sentence
of death in over 90% of the cases when given the option. This
should have signaled to the Court that the people of Georgia had
been cautiously reserving the ultimate penalty of death for the
most aggravated of cases.
5-25-08 --
It is a 19th-century Rhode Island legal case that has lived
through the ages in the legal and historical psyche of Rhode
Island: the 1844 murder trial that resulted in the hanging of
John Gordon, the last time the death penalty was used in the
state. . . . The trial came at a time in the state of
anti-immigrant hysteria against Irish Roman Catholics, the first
group to immigrate here in large numbers and threaten the
hegemony of the Yankee Protestants that ran Rhode Island as
their duchy. . . . Now, Christine King, a University of Rhode
Island employee, and Scott Molloy, a URI professor and noted student of Rhode Island history, have identified
original papers belonging to Job Durfee, the state Supreme Court
chief justice who presided over the Gordon case. . . . King has
carted the papers from one attic to another in a series of moves
over her adult life. The documents came from her family home in
Tiverton, which was once owned by Durfee. King’s grandfather, a
dairy farmer named George Morgan, was proud, said King, “that he
got the home of such a respected man, a judge, a rich man.”
5-23-08 --
In just the third time out of 24 requests since 1995, the
Georgia Pardons and Parole Board on Thursday commuted a death
sentence, just hours before the convicted killer was to be
executed by lethal injection. . . . The five-member board
commuted admitted murderer Samuel David Crowe's death sentence
to life without parole less than 2 1/2 hours before he was
scheduled to die Thursday evening for a crime 20 years ago. . .
. near the prison outside of Jackson — and his final physical
and was waiting in a cell for the execution team when his
lawyer, Ann Fort, telephoned him with the news the Parole Board
had granted him mercy. . . . "He said, 'We will certainly take
that.' It was the first time I've been able to call and give him
good news," Fort said. . . . The board would not give a reason
for its decision. "After careful and exhaustive consideration of
the request, the board voted to grant clemency," said board
spokeswoman Scheree Lipscomb.
5-21-08 --
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that a condemned inmate
waited too long to challenge Georgia's method of execution,
lethal injection. . . . Samuel David Crowe is to be executed
Thursday for a murder he admitted to 20 years ago, the slaying
of Joseph V. Pala, manager of Wikes Lumber Co. in Douglasville.
Crowe would be the second person put to death in Georgia in 16
days. . . . The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected
Crowe's pleas for a stay, noting that his challenge to lethal
injection "was filed several years beyond the applicable
two-year statute of limitations." . . . The judges wrote he
could have raised his concerns earlier "at such a time as to
allow consideration of the merits without required entry of a
stay." . . . Crowe could be the third person in the nation put
to death by lethal injection since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
in April that the use of the three-drug cocktail was
constitutional. An execution scheduled for Wednesday in Mississippi would be the second.
5-19-08 --
The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday lifted the stays of
execution it put in place last October for condemned killers
Jack Alderman and Curtis Osborne. . . . The court had delayed
the scheduled executions of the two men while the U.S. Supreme
Court considered a challenge to lethal injection procedures in
Kentucky. . . . procedure. The day the decision was issued,
state Attorney General Thurbert Baker filed motions asking the
state Supreme Court to lift the stays against Alderman and
Osborne. . . . Also since that decision, Georgia became the first state
in the country to carry out an execution. On May 6, William Earl
Lynd was put to death by lethal injection for the 1988 slaying
of his live-in girlfriend, Ginger Moore.
5-10-08 --
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens drew a round of applause
Friday night in Chattanooga when he suggested that the
recently-euthanized Kentucky Derby horse Eight Bells had
probably experienced a more humane death than those who die on
death row. . . . “I had checked the procedure they used to kill
the horse,” Justice Stevens said, expressing surprise to learn
it is against the law in Kentucky to kill animals using one of
the drugs in a three-drug lethal injection cocktail that many
believe is cruel to humans. . . . Yet just three weeks ago, the
Supreme Court ruled that Kentucky’s use of that cocktail on
death row did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
Justice Stevens concurred with the court’s decision, but
conceded his opinion would “generate debate not only about the
constitutionality of the three-drug protocol, but also about the
justification for the death penalty itself.” . . . Justice
Stevens talked about the lethal injection case and other recent
Supreme Court decisions as he addressed an audience of legal
professionals at the Chattanooga Convention Center during the
last evening of the 68th conference of the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the 6th Circuit. Justice Stevens presides over the 6th
Circuit in his position on the Supreme Court.
The Adam Miranda case shows that
the California death penalty costs too much in time, money and
justice.
5-7-08 --
If a respected entertainment lawyer had not decided 20 years ago
to devote a substantial chunk of his life and work to helping a
California death row inmate -- for free -- Adam Miranda would be
dead by now. A document that could well have reduced Miranda's
sentence had it not purposely or accidentally been kept from
defense lawyers never would have come to light. Miranda's most
recent petition for habeas corpus likely would have been
rejected, just like the ones in 1987, 1989 and 1993. . . . But
George R. Hedges stood by Miranda for two decades and happened
upon evidence in the file of the Los Angeles County district
attorney's office that a different man stabbed a drug dealer to
death in 1980. On Monday, that changed everything, as the state
Supreme Court threw out Miranda's death sentence and ordered a
new penalty trial. . . . Miranda had an attorney whose firm was
willing to donate millions of dollars worth of time to his case.
Most of the 669 people on San Quentin's death row aren't nearly
as lucky. If they have lawyers at all, they're usually harried,
well-meaning professionals who do the best they can with the
limited resources the state gives them to pursue their appeals.
Earlier this year, one defense lawyer told the California
Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice that, in a
single death-penalty case, he typically must review 100 boxes of
files and explore 40 areas in which things may have gone wrong
-- but must tell his clients that "maybe I can only do seven of
them" because there isn't enough money to do the rest.
5-7-08 --
A Georgia man who killed his live-in girlfriend was executed
Tuesday, the first inmate put to death
since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of
lethal injections. . . . William Earl Lynd was
pronounced dead at 7:51 p.m. EDT, Georgia Department of
Corrections spokeswoman Mallie McCord told The Associated Press.
It came less than an hour after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected
efforts to block it. . . . The roughly three dozen states around
the country that use lethal injection held off on carrying out
any executions for more than seven months while the U.S. Supreme
Court reviewed the constitutionality of the three-drug cocktail
that's used. It was the longest pause in U.S. executions in a
quarter century. . . . The Supreme Court last month upheld the
legality of lethal injections, and Georgia was the first state
to carry one out. . . . Lynd, 53, was sentenced to die for
kidnapping and shooting his live-in girlfriend, Ginger Moore,
three times in the face and head two decades ago. After he
buried Moore's body in a shallow grave near a south Georgia
farm, authorities said Lynd fled to Ohio, where he shot and
killed another woman who had stopped along the side of the road
to help him.
4-30-08 --
Lawyers for convicted murderer Earl Wesley Berry say their
client is mentally retarded and cannot be executed for the
murder of Mary Bounds in Chickasaw County. . . . Tuesday, they
filed a thick petition to the Mississippi Supreme Court to stop
Berry's execution, which was stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court
last fall but put back into motion by a go-ahead on lethal
injections nationwide last week. . . . Attorney General Jim Hood
asked the state's highest court to set a new death date,
preferably early in May. . . . The Berry petition also argues
that Mississippi's process for lethal injection is different
from the safeguards approved by the U.S. Supreme Court on April
16. . .. His attorneys say that even if the state court denies
their claims about Berry's possible mental retardation or the
lethal injection system, it should give them enough time to
prepare a full clemency petition for Gov. Haley Barbour's review
so lesser punishments can be considered. . . . Berry was
convicted and sentenced to death by a jury for the Nov. 29,
1987, murder of Bounds, a crime to which he confessed.
4-30-08 --
The
U.S. Supreme Court will consider next month whether
to allow Virginia to set an execution date for a death row
inmate who contends that the commonwealth's lethal injection
procedures do not meet the standards that the court recently
found constitutional. . . . . Virginia
Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell (R) has asked
the court to vacate the stay of execution it granted
Christopher Scott Emmett last fall, after the court
agreed to hear a case challenging the constitutionality of
Kentucky's lethal injection procedure. . . . The court ruled 7
to 2 in favor of Kentucky, and Virginia contends that because
its procedures are "virtually identical" to those the court
found constitutional, Emmett's stay should be vacated and the
state should be allowed to set an execution date.
The Supreme Court's continued
failure to rationalize its decisions about cruel and unusual
punishment.
by
Benjamin Wittes
4-28-08 --
The Supreme Court last week gave the country an object lesson in
the absurdity of the
Eighth Amendment--at least, as it is currently
understood by the justices. On a single day, it handed down a
decision upholding as constitutional the specific
mixture of drugs by which thirty states put condemned prisoners
to death, and it then went on to hear
oral arguments over the question of whether states
may constitutionally execute child rapists. That may not sound
absurd, and it wouldn't be if the court had any kind of coherent
approach to cases alleging "cruel and unusual punishment." But
it doesn't. So the one-two punch, like so most of the court's
recent hand-wringing over the amendment, operated more as a kind
of philosophical and--let's face it--political Rorschach test
for the justices than anything else. . . . And in these cases,
the test revealed a serious case of multiple personality
disorder. . . . There are no principles here, none that anyone
can agree on, anyway. So while seven justices seemed to think
that the drug cocktail was okay, no more than three could sign
any one opinion holding as much. This plurality regarded the
drug combination as adequate, since those challenging it had not
proven a substantial chance of it causing great pain. Justice
Stephen Breyer wrote separately to say that he regarded the
current drugs as okay too, though based on a different standard.
So did Justice John Paul Stevens, who nonetheless took the
opportunity to announce that he now regarded the death penalty
itself as "cruel and unusual."
4-23-08 --
THE Supreme Court concluded last week, in a 7-2 ruling, that
Kentucky’s three-drug method of execution by lethal injection
does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and
unusual punishment. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John
Roberts cited a Supreme Court principle from a ruling in 1890
that defines cruelty as limited to punishments that “involve
torture or a lingering death.” . . . But the court was wrong in
the 19th century, an error that has infected its jurisprudence
for more than 100 years. In this nation’s landmark capital
punishment cases, the resultant executions were anything but
free from torture and prolonged deaths. . . . The first of those
landmark cases, the 1879 case of Wilkerson v. Utah, was cited by
Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion in the Kentucky case. The court “had no
difficulty concluding that death by firing squad” did not amount
to cruel and unusual punishment, Justice Thomas wrote. . . .
Wallace Wilkerson might have begged to differ. Once the Supreme
Court affirmed Utah’s right to eradicate him by rifle, Wilkerson
was let into a jailyard where he declined to be blindfolded. A
sheriff gave the command to fire and Wilkerson braced for the
barrage. He moved just enough for the bullets to strike his arm
and torso but not his heart. . . . “My God!” Wilkerson shrieked.
“My God! They have missed!” More than 27 minutes passed as
Wilkerson bled to death in front of astonished witnesses and a
helpless doctor.
4-22-08 --
The Supreme Court,
fresh off its decision that lethal injection was a
constitutional method of execution, lifted reprieves
Monday for three death-row inmates around the country, including
a Texas man who was waiting only a few feet from the death
chamber when his life was temporarily spared. . . . Prosecutors
in the Texas case and one each from Alabama and Mississippi were
moving quickly to set new execution dates after a seven-month
national hiatus. . . . The Supreme Court blocked the execution
of Carlton Turner Jr., from suburban Dallas, and others last
fall while they considered whether Kentucky's lethal injection
procedure, similarly used by other death penalty states, was
unconstitutionally cruel. . . . The high court rejected the
Kentucky case last week in a 7-2 vote. . . . Besides Turner, who
killed his parents, the Court Monday cleared the way for the
executions of Thomas Arthur of Alabama and Earl Wesley Berry of
Mississippi. . . . Turner won his delay late Sept. 27 as he
waited in a holding cell a few feet from the nation's busiest
death chamber in Huntsville, Texas, where 26 convicted killers
were executed last year.
4-22-08 --
A Jefferson County judge has overridden a jury's decision and
imposed the death penalty on Montez Spradley for stalking and
killing a woman. . . . A jury convicted Spradley in February and
voted 10-2 to recommend life without parole. . . . Jefferson
County Circuit Judge Gloria Bahakel imposed the sentence of
death by lethal injection on Monday after a brief hearing. . . .
Spradley is the fourth person in Jefferson County in the last
three years to be sentenced to death after 10 jurors called for
the lesser sentence. Seven votes are needed for a jury to
recommend life without parole. . . . Alabama allows judges to
override a jury's sentencing verdict.
Excerpts from
the Supreme Court Opinion in
Baze v. Rees
April 16, 2008
Opinion of the Chief Justice announcing the judgment of
the Court
"Some risk of pain is inherent in any method of
execution—no matter how humane—if only from the prospect
of error in following the required procedure. It is
clear, then, that the Constitution does not demand the
avoidance of all risk of pain in carrying out
executions."
Concurring Opinion of Justice Alito
"The issue presented in this case—the constitutionality
of a method of execution—should be kept separate from
the controversial issue of the death penalty itself. If
the Court wishes to reexamine the latter issue, it
should do so directly, as JUSTICE STEVENS now suggests."
Concurring Opinion of Justice Stevens
"The risk of executing innocent defendants can be
entirely eliminated by treating any penalty more severe
than life imprisonment without the possibility of parole
as constitutionally excessive."
Concurring Opinion of Justice Scalia
"I take no position on the desirability of the death
penalty, except to say that its value is eminently
debatable and the subject of deeply, indeed
passionately, held views—which means, to me, that it is
preeminently not a matter to be resolved here. And
especially not when it is explicitly permitted by the
Constitution."
Concurring Opinion of Justice Thomas
"[A] method of execution violates the Eighth Amendment
only if it is deliberately designed to inflict pain. . .
."
Concurring Opinion of Justice Breyer
"The death penalty itself, of course, brings with it
serious risks, for example, risks of executing the wrong
person, risks that unwarranted animus (in respect, e.g.,
to the race of victims), may play a role, risks that
those convicted will find themselves on death row for
many years, perhaps decades, to come. These risks in
part explain why that penalty is so controversial. But
the lawfulness of the death penalty is not before us."
Dissenting Opinion of Justice Ginsburg
"Kentucky’s protocol lacks basic safeguards used by
other States to confirm that an inmate is unconscious
before injection of the second and third drugs. I would
vacate and remand with instructions to consider whether
Kentucky’s omission of those safeguards poses an
untoward, readily avoidable risk of inflicting severe
and unnecessary pain."
Below
are examples of state media coverage of Baze
v. Rees regarding the constitutionality of
lethal injection. In many instances, the
articles discuss the possible impact of the
decision on specific states:
Kaine Orders Halt Till U.S.
Supreme Court Rules on Lethal Injections
By
Tim Craig, Washington Post Staff Writer
04-02-08 --
Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine announced Tuesday that he is
halting all executions until the Supreme Court decides whether
lethal injection violates the constitutional ban on cruel and
unusual punishment. . . . Kaine's announcement came as he stayed
the April 8 execution of Edward N. Bell, who killed a police
officer in Winchester in 1999. Along with the reprieve, Kaine
said future executions will be put on hold until the Supreme
Court rules in the case of Baze v. Rees. The case was argued in
January, and a decision could come before the court adjourns in
June. . . . "In order to provide guidance to courts, litigants
and the public, it is my intention . . . to grant a temporary
delay of any execution date in Virginia that has been set,"
Kaine (D) said in a statement. . . . The decision prompted
concern from Republicans that Kaine, who opposes the death
penalty, is trying to work toward a permanent moratorium, a
contention that administration officials deny. . . . Bell's
execution date has been changed to July 24. The scheduled May 27
execution of Kevin Green, who killed a Southern Virginia
convenience store owner in 1998, will also be put on hold,
according to the state attorney general's office.
03-18-08 --
His request for a new trial rejected Monday, condemned cop
killer Troy Anthony Davis probably will have his fate decided by
the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. . . . The state
Supreme Court, which turned down Davis's appeal on a 4-3 vote,
said the recantations of seven witnesses who testified against
him were not enough to win him a new trial. . . . "We simply
cannot disregard the jury's verdict in this case," wrote Justice
Harold Melton, who was joined by Justices George Carley, Harris
Hines and Hugh Thompson. . . . Most of the witnesses who
recanted "have merely stated they now do not feel able to
identify the shooter," Melton said. He added that the majority
would not ignore the trial testimony, "and, in fact, we favor
that original testimony over the new." . . . Davis' lawyers are
expected to ask the state Supreme Court to reconsider and then
appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. If those bids are rejected,
the case would head back to the Board of Pardons and Paroles,
which in July granted Davis a 90-day stay just 23 hours before
he was to be executed. . . . At that time, the board said it
delayed the execution because it was troubled by questions about
Davis' guilt.
03-18-08 --
Troy Anthony Davis, sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of a
Savannah police officer, will
not be getting a new trial. The Georgia Supreme Court turned
down his request —- a ruling that was no surprise. Appeals
courts are loath to overturn the verdict of local juries in
death penalty cases, even when key witnesses at trial, as in
this case, recant their testimony. . . . But the cumulative
weight of new testimony from seven prosecution witnesses still
calls into question the justice of the death penalty. The
Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles should commute his sentence
to life in prison. . . . Despite the court's decision, there is
clear evidence of problems with the testimony at Davis' trial.
Seven of nine witnesses have either recanted their original
testimony or said it was flawed in some way.
03-19-08 --
Lawyers for death row inmate Rodney Reed appeared in court
Wednesday morning to present oral arguments as to why they
believe their client has been unlawfully imprisoned. . . . While
no decision is expected for several months, attorneys for Reed
and state prosecutors each had 20 minutes to argue for or
against a new trial for Reed. . . . Reed has been on death row
ever since he was convicted in 1998 in Bastrop County in the
murder of Stacey Stites, 19. Stites was strangled to death two
years earlier. . . . Reed's attorneys argue that the forensic
evidence used at his original trial was incorrect and
misleading.
4 Part Series
Why Would
Anyone Support Capital Punishment?
By
Andrew Tallman, Townhall, "The Andrew Tallman Show," KPXQ-Phoenix
03-11-08 --
(AP) - A Senate committee approved a proposal on Monday that
would allow the state to execute people convicted of sexually
assaulting children 12 years old and under. . . . The bill
applies to perpetrators who threaten to retaliate against their
victims, and who are convicted of a second assault on a child. .
. . Sen. Josh Penry (R-Fruita) said the death penalty would be a
deterrent to predators who have previously been convicted of
sexual assault on a child. . . . "If it happens, it won't happen
again," Penry told the committee. . . . Prosecutors would have
to submit DNA evidence to pursue the death penalty. If there is
no DNA, the maximum penalty would be life in prison. . . . Cathryn Hazouri,
executive director of the ACLU in Colorado, said she believes the
bill is unconstitutional because a person convicted using DNA could face the death penalty, while another predator who did not leave
DNA could avoid it.
New
York Lawyer, By Mark Fass, New York Law Journal
03-03-08 --In a decision handed down
yesterday in the murder trial of a man accused of killing two
fellow drug dealers, Eastern District Judge Jack B. Weinstein
implicitly called on the U.S. attorney general to reconsider the
breadth of cases in which the government seeks the death
penalty. . . . Though the 4 1/2-page written decision in United States v. Taveras, 04-156,was ostensibly
issued to address jury and scheduling issues, the judge spent
three pages outlining the expenses related to the case and the
unlikeliness that the defendant, Humberto Pepin Taveras, will be
sentenced to death. . . . "To date, more than $769,000 has been
spent on defense costs alone in this capital case. It is likely
that the prosecution has expended an equal amount. Thus, from
its inception until today - before trial has even begun - the
insistence of the government on a death sentence has cost over
$1.5 million . . . These sums are typical of those expended in
other capital cases in this district," Judge Weinstein wrote.
The
Nebraska Supreme Court ruled on Friday, February 8,
2008, that electrocution is cruel and unusual
punishment, outlawing the electric chair in the only
state that still used it as its sole means of execution.
In the landmark ruling, the court
said the state legislature may vote to have a death
penalty, just not one that offends rights under the
state constitution. The evidence shows that
electrocution inflicts "intense pain and agonizing
suffering," it said.
"Condemned prisoners must not be
tortured to death, regardless of their crimes," Judge
William Connolly wrote in the 6-1 opinion.
02-01-08 --
A murderer who would have become the nation's first executed inmate
in months won a reprieve Thursday from the U.S. Supreme Court a
little more than an hour before he was scheduled to die by lethal
injection. . . . James Harvey Callahan, set to die at 6 p.m. Central
time, was granted a stay, Holman prison warden Grantt Culliver told
officers on death row. The Supreme Court's brief order did not
detail why it granted the stay. . . . It would have been the
nation's first execution since September, when the high court agreed
to consider whether lethal injection is cruel and unusual
punishment. The inmate's attorney had asked the high court to halt
the execution after a federal appeals court lifted a stay granted by
a Montgomery judge.
01-25-08 --
In November, the United Nations called for a worldwide
moratorium on the death penalty. In December, Gov. John Corzine
signed legislation abolishing the death penalty in New Jersey.
Now, in January, the Supreme Court has heard arguments on
whether lethal injection violates the 8th Amendment’s ban on
cruel and unusual punishment. So, with New Jersey and the UN on
one side and Texas and Iran on the other side, the Supreme Court
seems poised to pick for us all between the new morality and the
old. . . . Granted, New Jersey hadn’t actually executed anyone
in 45 years, so this was a bit like Bill Cosby announcing that
he will stop using profanity in his sketches. But the official
decision is still noteworthy, as is the fact that New Mexico,
Montana, and Nebraska all came
close to doing the same thing this year. In the face of the
seemingly unstoppable modern sensibility, why would anyone
continue to support executing murderers?
01-21-08 --
Lawyers for five death row inmates are pressing Missouri to
provide the names of members of its execution team after a
Post-Dispatch investigation revealed that one was a convicted
stalker. . . . In papers filed last week in federal court in
Kansas City, the lawyers said the executioner's criminal record,
detailed in a front-page story Jan. 13, raises questions about
his "temperament and suitability" to help with executions. . . .
The newspaper reported that David L. Pinkley, a licensed
practical nurse then on probation, worked on Missouri executions
and was permitted to join a federal team that executed Oklahoma
City bomber Timothy McVeigh in Indiana in 2001.
History shows heedless rush to
adopt lethal injection
Alison J. Nathan, Legal Times
01-09-08 --
Of the 36 death penalty states, 35 now rely on lethal injection
as their preferred method of execution. They adopted lethal
injection at least in part because it was supposed to be more
humane than other forms of the death penalty -- less painful
than the electric chair or the gas chamber. And yet this week
the Supreme Court
heard oral argument in Baze v. Rees, a
case challenging Kentucky's lethal-injection protocol
as too cruel to pass constitutional scrutiny. . . . Kentucky's
protocol is similar to that employed by other death penalty
states: a combination of a short-acting anesthetic, a muscle
paralyzer, and a heart-stopping drug. The Baze plaintiffs, two
death row inmates, argue that this method violates the Eighth
Amendment because an uncritically chosen combination of drugs (a
generous description of how the individual drugs were chosen in
most states), particularly when administered by untrained
personnel (as is standard practice in death houses nationwide),
produces a foreseeable and avoidable danger of tortuous pain. .
. . In particular, the paralyzing drug serves to mask all
visible suffering by freezing the inmate's muscles. Thus,
improperly anesthetized inmates may appear peaceful to
witnesses, but suffer excruciating pain or conscious suffocation
before death. . . . How can this three-drug protocol be so
obviously unsound when all but one death penalty state has
adopted it over the last 30 years? History provides the answer.
01-09-08 --
KENNETH Richey is most assuredly not a sympathetic figure, but
the kangaroo-court deal that set him free after two decades on
death row is an embarrassing reminder that the wheels of the
Ohio legal system sometimes grind in cruel, interminable fashion
with no guarantee that real justice will prevail. . . . We make
this declaration out of frustration because this newspaper has
long maintained a strong editorial position in favor of swift
and sure capital punishment in open-and-shut murder cases while
opposing those that are unjustly imposed. . . . Unfortunately,
the case of Richey, a small-time Scottish-American hooligan,
turned into a travesty of justice before a skeptical world
audience. Tried on flimsy evidence in the 1986 fire death of a
2-year-old PutnamCounty girl, he got an inept
legal defense and a faulty trial full of errors and omissions
that cast convincing doubt as to whether he committed any crime
at all. . . . Moreover, it took 21 years for the case to run its
course, culminating in Richey's release Monday to return to his
homeland, free but broke and in ill health at 43 after years
behind bars. . . . Had it not been for the intervention of a
federal appeals court, Richey probably would have been executed
unjustifiably.
01-08-08 --
The Supreme Court on Monday appeared unconvinced that the
lethal-injection procedure used for capital punishment
nationwide poses enough risk of pain to inmates that it raises
constitutional objections as "cruel and unusual" punishment. . .
. The three-drug "cocktail" used to anesthetize, paralyze and
then kill death row inmates is the focus in Baze v. Rees, a Kentucky appeal brought by Ralph
Baze and Thomas Bowling, two inmates convicted of separate
double murders in the early 1990s. Since the Court granted
review in the case in September, a de facto moratorium on
executions has taken hold across the country. All but one of the
37 states with capital punishment use lethal injections as a
requirement or a choice. (Nebraska uses electrocution.)
01-03-08 --
When a state panel recommended last April that
Tennessee abandon the three chemicals used in
executions across the nation in favor of the single
drug usually used in animal euthanasia, the state’s
corrections commissioner said no. . .. Though the
move would have simplified executions and eliminated
the possibility of excruciating pain, the
commissioner, George Little, said Tennessee should
not be “out at the forefront” of a decision with
“political ramifications,” according to recently
disclosed evidence in a death row inmate’s lawsuit.
. . . Mr. Little’s decision helps illuminate one of
the questions lurking behind the year’s most eagerly
anticipated death penalty case: Why have states so
doggedly and uniformly clung to an execution method
with the potential to inflict intense pain when a
simpler one is readily available?
Kentucky appeal
sparks unofficial moratorium on most common form of
capital punishment
By Joan Biskupic,
USA TODAY
01-03-08 --
The Supreme Court will hear arguments Monday on
whether a common lethal injection method is
unconstitutional. The case, which has prompted a
temporary halt in executions, comes at a crucial
time for capital punishment nationwide. . . . The
dispute from Kentucky tests standards for when a
method of execution is cruel and unusual punishment
under the Eighth Amendment. Although the basic
constitutionality of capital punishment is not at
issue, the case has galvanized larger questions
about the death penalty. . . . Executions in 2007
dropped to a 13-year low of 42, largely because
states began putting executions on hold soon after
the justices announced they would hear the Kentucky
case. Thirty-five of the 36 states that permit
capital punishment carry out executions with a
lethal drug combination. . . . In 2007, 110
defendants were sentenced to die, the lowest number
since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976,
according to the DeathPenalty Information Center. At
the end of 2007, New Jersey became the first state
to pass a law abolishing the death penalty in more
than 40 years.
Man first sentenced
in '75 to have fourth chance in court
By Diane Jennings /
The Dallas Morning News
01-03-08 --
Ronald Curtis Chambers, who has been on death row
longer than anyone in state history, will receive
yet another sentencing trial – his fourth – under an
order issued by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of
Appeals. . . . The U.S. Supreme Court had previously
ordered the lower court to review the case because
the jury in Mr. Chamber's third death penalty trial
may have received faulty instructions before
rendering the sentence. . . . Defense attorneys hope
to be able to negotiate a life sentence for the man
who murdered 22-year-old Mike McMahan and left Deia
Sutton to die in the Trinity River bottom in 1975. .
. . "The important thing to consider is Mr.
Chambers' age, as well as the extraordinary expense
of seeking another death verdict," said attorney
Jordan Steiker, a law professor at the University of
Texas. . .. Mr. Chambers was 20
when he committed the crime and has spent almost 32
years on death row. . . . "It's hard to imagine that
the Dallas taxpayers would want to
spend millions more," Mr. Steiker said.
There's no question, in my
mind, that someone has slipped through the cracks and that an
innocent person has been executed. -- Jay Burnett, former Harris County
criminal court judge --
Inmate argues in petition for
certiorari that death sentence for child rape would be 'cruel
and unique'
Tom Goldstein, Legal Times 01-02-08 --Conference Call summarizes the roughly 15 percent of all
nonpauper petitions that are the most likely candidates for
certiorari. It is prepared by the law firms Akin Gump Strauss
Hauer & Feld and Howe & Russell, which together publish the
Supreme Court of the U.S. Blog.
Tom Goldstein, who is the head of
Supreme Court litigation for Akin Gump, selects the petitions
from the docket of nonpauper petitions. The firms then prepare
the summaries of the cases. If either firm is involved in a case
mentioned in this column, that will be disclosed. . . . There
are about 3,300 people in this country who are on death row
right now. But Patrick Kennedy is different from the others:
both he and the state of Louisiana agree that he didn't kill
anyone. Instead, Patrick Kennedy is on death row because he was
convicted of raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter. Now, after the
Louisiana Supreme Court upheld his death sentence in
a lengthy opinion, he has made a plea to the U.S. Supreme Court
to hear his case and find his sentence unconstitutionally cruel
and unusual under the Eighth Amendment. Kennedy argues in his
petition for certiorari that such a punishment for child rape is
"not only cruel and unusual," but is something even worse:
"cruel and unique." The justices will consider whether to hear
the appeal at their private conference Jan. 4. (The petition is
No. 07-343, Kennedy v. Louisiana.)
WEB PAGES
OF DEATH ROW INMATES CLAIMING THEY ARE
INNOCENT
Death in Missouri
In July of 1992, Brian J. Kinder was
sentenced to die in Missouri by lethal
injection. This page is dedicated to
telling his story.
If a punishment is unusually severe, if there is a strong probability
that it is inflicted arbitrarily, if it is substantially rejected by
contemporary society, and if there is no reason to believe that it
serves any penal purpose more effectively than some less severe
punishment, then the continued infliction of that punishment violates
the command of the Clause that the State may not inflict inhuman and
uncivilized punishments upon those convicted of crimes. Under these
principles and this test, death is today a ‘cruel and unusual’
punishment.
-- William Brennan,
former U.S.
Supreme Court Justice-- Furman v. Georgia 408 US 238 (1972)
Victims-of-Law has
compiled this list for educational
& research purposes.
The inclusion of links to any site in no way constitutes
an endorsement by Victims-of-Law.
Death Penalty 2008 Inaugurated
on January 5, 2008
Updated: 01/11/2010
On
June 4, 
Below
are examples of state media coverage of Baze
v. Rees regarding the constitutionality of
lethal injection. In many instances, the
articles discuss the possible impact of the
decision on specific states: 
The
Nebraska Supreme Court ruled on Friday, February 8,
2008, that electrocution is cruel and unusual
punishment, outlawing the electric chair in the only
state that still used it as its sole means of execution.
