June 26 PENNSYLVANIA: Death Row Volunteer Problematic for Court >From the start, Hubert Michael was unequivocal about wanting to die. Charged with the murder of a 16-year-old girl, he confessed, pleaded guilty and demanded the death penalty. After a judge granted his wish, he began a long fight to join the growing ranks of death row "volunteers" - murderers who give up their appeals and seek to hurry their executions. But with just weeks to go until his scheduled execution, Michael stunned prosecutors in May by telling a judge that he wants to live. The announcement has thrown the case into nearly uncharted legal territory. Lawyers for the state appeared before a federal appeals court Tuesday to argue that it is too late for Michael to change his mind. Michael's court-appointed lawyer, Joseph Cosgrove, asked for the case to be reopened. The case appeared to frustrate a 3-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "We don't do do-overs," said Judge Michael Chertoff, a former federal prosecutor appointed to the court last year by President Bush. Judge Morton Greenberg, a Ronald Reagan appointee, was more blunt. "Did he plan this all along, and then just jerk this around for years?" he demanded of Cosgrove, who replied that he was certain that his client had acted in good faith. Greenberg wasn't satisfied. "You know what they say. 'Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.' Well, he got it. He got what he asked for," he said. Michael was not alone in his wish to be executed. As of late spring, 103 of the 915 people who have been executed in the United States since 1976 went to their deaths voluntarily, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. But cases in which death row inmates ask to be executed, then change their minds, are rarer. David Paul Hammer, a federal prisoner sentenced to die for killing a cellmate in Pennsylvania, has vacillated for years over whether he wishes to continue his appeals. His execution was scheduled earlier this month, but was postponed after the 3rd Circuit ruled the courts had not properly explored whether he had "knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily" waived his appeals. Michael's case poses a different set of questions. Unlike Hammer, the court has already ruled Michael received a full and proper hearing to determine whether he was knowingly giving up his appeal. Cosgrove argued the case could be revived on a number of technicalities, including a ruling that had briefly left Michael without an attorney. He also said a psychologist who told the court Michael was sane has since changed his mind. Cosgrove argued Michael's appeals shouldn't be declared dead on procedural grounds, as they might be in other cases, because, as the Supreme Court has recognized, "death is different" as a punishment. "What about the death of a little girl?" Greenberg interrupted, referring to Michael's victim, Trista Eng, who was kidnapped and shot in York County in 1993. Greenberg said there was "100 percent certainty" Michael had committed the murder, and asked Cosgrove to consider whether it was fair to Eng's relatives to allow her killer to tie the legal system in knots. The panel did not indicate when it would rule in Michael's case. (source: Associated Press) LOUISIANA: Judge: Brain damaged man not protected from death penalty A man whose brain was damaged as an adult is not protected from the death penalty as he would be had he been mentally retarded since childhood, a state judge has ruled. Attorneys for Henry Anderson, charged with killing an 85-year-old woman during a robbery, said they will ask the Louisiana Supreme Court to overturn Friday's decision by Judge Marcus Clark. Clark asked attorneys to block off at least 4 weeks during September and October for Anderson's trial on a charge of 1st-degree murder. However, he said, the high court's ruling could change the case. "They're going to want to look at this," he said. Anderson, 40, was injured in 1994. He is accused of killing Nita Brinson, a well-known community leader and real estate agent, in her kitchen on Oct. 2, 2000. Police have said the motive probably was robbery. In June, 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that executing mentally retarded people is cruel and unusual punishment, but left the definition of retardation to the states. Anderson's attorneys say he is mentally impaired. But Louisiana is among 17 states where courts use the American Psychiatric Assocaition's definition of mental retardation, which includes onset before a person's 18th birthday. If that definition is expanded, people might evade the death penalty by scoring lower than their real intelligence on tests, Clark said in his ruling Friday. He said evidence of Anderson's mental condition could be introduced in the sentencing phase of the trial. (source: Associated Press) NORTH CAROLINA: N.C. executions raise questions of cruelty, equity----Some prisoners have not been given adequate amount of anesthesia As a pharmacist I am concerned about the use of thiopental sodium, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride in capital punishment. These products are intended to save lives, not take lives. The thiopental sodium is used as a fast-acting anesthetic, while the potassium chloride causes a heart attack. The pancuronium bromide relaxes the chest muscles, which makes it impossible for the convict to breathe and produces suffocation. The procedure is to administer the anesthesia, causing the prisoner to become unconscious, then the other 2 drugs. Toxicology data reveal that this execution method has either serious flaws or untrained executioners. In two of three executions from 1999 to 2002 when toxicology studies were performed, blood levels for the anesthetic were either a trace amount or very low compared to the full dose. The net result of this, in my opinion, is that 2 of these 3 prisoners were wide awake for their drug-induced heart attack and suffocation because they had no effective anesthesia. It would be a real negative jolt for a convict who is expecting a quick snooze to get chest pain like a burning hot coal and be unable to catch his breath. We will never know for certain because the decedent cannot tell us now. The adjective "cruel" does come to mind. Several questions arise from this information. Specifically, who performs the execution by pushing the drugs into the veins or arteries? What training do these people have in the administration of drugs? What procedure is used to administer the drugs? The family of the victim as well as the convict face distressing issues from losing loved ones with various levels of culpability and self-condemnation among relatives. Capital punishment also affects those people close to the prisoner. I know of at least one attorney who sank into a deep, disabling depression after losing a capital case. It has been reported that employees of the Department of Corrections are uneasy and disturbed about their emotions in dealing with death row convicts as part of their job. Mental health issues are almost unavoidable in these situations. Our law on capital punishment presents families of the victim with something approaching an entitlement to retaliation. A loved one who resists pursuing the death penalty can be accused of not honoring the victim. Emotions are fervent, and it takes a brave, strong person indeed to resist the primitive calls for a life for a life. We have all heard the maxim that begins "An eye for any eye ...," which justifies or some say even compels revenge. Some basis for this thinking comes from the early books of the Bible. Both Christians and Jews often cite the verse in Exodus to support this view. Biblical scholars reject this revenge notion by viewing this verse as an admonition against the pagan practice of killing everyone in a village in reprisal for the death of one of their own tribe. Rather than spending big money pursuing the death penalty, it would be a positive step to provide free tuition at state universities for victim's children who were minors at the time of the crime. I have never heard of the execution of a prosperous person in the United States. Invariably those on death row are without significant property and were represented by court-appointed attorneys. Now these may be fine lawyers, but they have a small fraction of the time and resources available to the prosecution. Except for occasional pro-bono work, a defendant in a capital case never sees any of the "big hitters" from law firms whose names you hear on National Public Radio. From everything I have seen, it's apparent that capital punishment is applied only to poor people, and others escape that sentence. When we consider that capital punishment is applied almost exclusively to poor people, that retribution is a dubious reason for executions, that questions exist on personnel training and methods, that mental health issues are abundant in this area and the process can be more painful than we realize, there are more than enough issues to study. We need a moratorium on capital punishment now. (source: Opinion, David R. Work, who is executive director of the North Carolina Pharmacy Board and former president of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy. His words are his own and do not reflect the position of the pharmacy board; Charlotte Observer) SOUTH CAROLINA: Greenwood school shooter wants execution halted A man sent to death row for killing 2 8-year-old girls during a shooting spree at a Greenwood elementary school has asked the state Supreme Court to stop his execution because he is not mentally competent. Jamie Wilson lost his final formal appeal at the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this week, but an execution date has not been set. Wilson was sentenced to death after pleading guilty but mentally ill for killing the girls and injuring seven other students and 2 teachers at Oakland Elementary School in September 1988. In all of his appeals, Wilson's lawyers have argued his mental illness, including schizophrenia, kept him from understanding what he was doing at the school was wrong. 5 months before the shooting, Wilson was released from the psychiatric unit at Self Memorial Hospital when his father's insurance could no longer pay. Relatives said Wilson then stopped taking antidepressants. On death row, inmates say they often have to clean up after Wilson, who soils himself. In the latest filing, defense lawyer John Blume asked the justices to halt Wilson's execution because he does not understand the nature of his sentence and cannot assist his lawyers. Blume wants a judge to hold a post-conviction relief hearing to determine if the 35-year-old inmate is mentally competent. In their reply, lawyers from the state attorney general's office offered several examples from prison staff that they say show Wilson knows what is happening in his case. After a federal judge overturned his death sentence in January 2003, a prison employee reported that Wilson said he "had a new court case going on - I might be off death row." The 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reinstated Wilson's death sentence about a year later. Also in its brief, the attorney general's office says the state Supreme Court will have to set an execution date before it can decide whether to grant a competency hearing for Wilson. (source: Associated Press)
