June 27 WASHINGTON: Sentencing Decision's Reach Is Far and Wide In March, at the sentencing hearing after his conviction in a financial fraud case, Jamie Olis broke into tears when he heard his fate. Under the federal sentencing guidelines, which penalize defendants who choose to go to trial and can sharply increase sentences based on factors like the financial losses involved, a federal judge in Houston sentenced Mr. Olis, a 38-year-old midlevel executive with an infant daughter, to 24 years in prison. On Thursday, in striking down Washington State's sentencing law, the Supreme Court almost certainly also doomed the federal guidelines that generated Mr. Olis's sentence and hundreds of thousands like it. That means Mr. Olis, who has started serving his sentence while the courts consider his appeals, may be entitled to a much shorter prison term. In light of the decision, said Frank O. Bowman, an author of a treatise on sentencing law, "Olis's sentencing range would probably be zero to six months." Thursday's decision requires any factor that increases a criminal sentence, except for prior convictions, to be proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Many sentencing schemes allow or require judges to impose longer sentences based on all sorts of criteria, including the defendant's background and the nature and severity of his crime. The decision may also affect sentencing laws in at least 7 states in addition to Washington and the federal system, said Kevin R. Reitz, an expert on sentencing at the University of Colorado. In all of those jurisdictions, many people sentenced in recent years may be expected to challenge their sentences. And prosecutors, defendants and judges in pending and new cases will face an altered landscape. "It throws the whole country's criminal system into turmoil," said Professor Bowman, who teaches law at Indiana University. In the federal system alone, which handles a small minority of criminal cases, the "vast majority" of 270,000 sentences in the last 4 years may be affected, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in her dissent. "The court ignores the havoc it is about to wreak on trial courts across the country," Justice O'Connor wrote. John Kramer, a former executive director of the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing, said the decision could affect almost 90,000 state cases in the same period. In North Carolina, about 8,000 cases may be affected in those years, said Ronald F. Wright Jr., a law professor at Wake Forest University and an expert on sentencing law. Jeffrey Fisher, who represents the defendant who challenged the Washington law, said that perhaps 2,600 Washington cases would be affected by the decision in that time frame. The defendant, Ralph Blakely, had pleaded guilty to kidnapping his estranged wife, which carried a penalty of 53 months. A judge increased the sentence to 90 months based on his finding that Mr. Blakely had acted with "deliberate cruelty," which the defendant had not admitted and no jury had found. The Supreme Court said the imposition of additional time violated Mr. Blakely's right to a jury trial. Legal scholars were virtually unanimous in agreeing with Justice O'Connor that the decision guts the federal sentencing guidelines. "It will invalidate the federal guidelines," Mr. Reitz said. "The federal system looks to be invalid from top to bottom." Pending cases, including those on direct appeal, are affected by the decision. So are, Justice O'Connor wrote, all sentences that followed a 2000 decision, Apprendi vs. New Jersey, on which Thursday's decision was based. A separate decision on Thursday suggested that neither Apprendi nor the new sentencing decision will otherwise be applied retroactively. The Supreme Court gave trial judges no guidance on how to adjust to the ruling. Starting Thursday morning, for instance, federal judges conducting sentencing hearings had to decide whether to ignore the federal sentencing guidelines entirely, to rely on only those aggravating factors that had been proved to the jury or to carry on as before pending definitive guidance from higher courts. The middle course is a likely one, experts said. Luke Esser, a Washington State senator, said the Supreme Court's decision would please defense lawyers in the short run. "The convicted felons that they represent are very happy that they may be having some of their sentences reduced," Mr. Esser said. "I think the general public and most of the state legislators will not share their enthusiasm." It is less clear whether defendants will be better off in the long run. Also unclear is whether the decision will give judges more or less power in deciding sentences. The decision seemed to endorse both traditional sentencing schemes that leave sentences entirely up to judges so long as they do not exceed statutory maximums and schemes that designate fixed sentences for given crimes. Only a middle approach, in which judges are required to make their own factual findings to increase sentences, was held unconstitutional. Sentencing guidelines that allow or require judges to impose more lenient sentences based on mitigating factors are apparently unaffected. Prosecutors and judges may use a variety of stopgap measures to address the decision, experts said. Prosecutors can add more factors to indictments and to plea agreements. Judges can require juries to answer so-called special interrogatories concerning the additional factors or give juries a role in sentencing, as happens in death penalty cases. State legislators in Washington will turn to fixing the flaws in the state's sentencing law identified by the Supreme Court when they reconvene in January, said Mr. Esser, a Republican and the vice chairman of the Senate judiciary committee. The approach the Washington Legislature ultimately adopts may influence lawmakers in other states and members of the commission that oversees the federal guidelines. Mr. Esser said he favored longer sentences that judges may reduce based on mitigating factors. He dismissed the idea of giving jurors a larger role in sentencing as "too expensive to the point of impracticality." Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in Thursday's decision, said that practical considerations must take a back seat to the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a right to a jury trial. "Our decision cannot turn," Justice Scalia wrote, "on whether or to what degree trial by jury impairs the efficiency or fairness of criminal justice." Mr. Bowman questioned that approach. "They're just upsetting the apple cart," he said. "They're saying, 'You guys pick up the apples.'" (source: New York Times) VIRGINIA: Court case on juvenile killers may echo here A series of rapes earned Shermaine Ali Johnson 100 years in prison before he was old enough to vote. Then a DNA test sent him to death row. He was sentenced to death for the murder of a young Petersburg mother. The evidence of guilt was overwhelming. Yet Johnson's life may be spared. This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether to outlaw the execution of someone who killed while age 16 or 17. The court's decision, expected next spring, could end this nation's distinction as one of the last places in the world where juvenile offenders are executed. Momentum for lifting the minimum age has been building. This year, Wyoming and South Dakota raised the age to 18, although New Hampshire Gov. Craig Benson vetoed similar legislation. Now, 19 of the 38 states with the death penalty reserve it for those who kill at age 18 or older. Polls have found that the public opposes the execution of juvenile offenders, and scientific studies are producing evidence that the brain is not fully mature before age 18 - that juveniles think differently. The minimum age in Virginia is 16, and an attempt to raise the age to 18 was tabled by this year's General Assembly. Since the nation's highest court allowed executions to resume in 1976, Virginia has executed 3 men for murders they committed before they were 18. That is 2nd to Texas, which has executed 13 juvenile offenders. The only juvenile offender now on Virginia's death row is Johnson. He was 16 in July 1994 when he raped and murdered Hope Denise Hall, 22, a mother and part-time television producer for WWBT-Channel 12. Brain development and culpability Over the past 5 years, science has determined that adolescent brains are less developed than previously believed, according to the American Bar Association. It is more difficult for young people to make mature decisions or understand the consequences of their actions, the studies suggest. That does not mean they should not be punished when they commit crimes, but it lessens their culpability, the ABA said. Stephen K. Harper, a professor of juvenile justice at the University of Miami law school, said the death penalty for 16-and 17-year-olds has always been looked at as a moral issue by the courts, legislatures and juries. Anglo-American law punishes according to the level of culpability of the offender, he said. The more capacity an individual has to fully understand the consequences of his actions and to control behavior, "the more punishable the crime." "The assumption is if someone chooses evil, then that's a fully developed choice," Harper said. But he said science is finding that is not necessarily the case with juveniles. The studies are cited in a resolution calling for a ban on the death penalty for juveniles, which was signed recently by more than 30 Virginia religious leaders. The resolution is the latest lobbying effort by Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty to build support for a similar proposal in the next General Assembly. The group worked with Del. Albert C. Eisenberg, D-Arlington, during the 2004 session on legislation. The bill, which would have restricted the death penalty to those 18 or older at the time of the capital offense, was tabled in committee. Eisenberg said he is awaiting the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court case on the constitutionality of executing those who commit crimes as a minor. Depending on the outcome, the 1st-term delegate may reintroduce the bill during next year's session. Johnson, now 26, lives in a cell on death row at the Sussex I State Prison. He declined to be interviewed for this story. Given the nature and scope of his crimes, he is an unlikely poster boy for raising the minimum age. Yet he has much in common with others who kill while juveniles. He has a low IQ and a possible personality disorder, and he had a dysfunctional, chaotic childhood. He did not know his father. His mother, a drug abuser, died of AIDS when Johnson was 14. He was born Dec. 30, 1977, in Hoboken, N.J. His mother, Angela Johnson, was 18 and unmarried. 2 years later, over her family's objections, she married Russell "Rush" Foster. Shermaine Johnson's grandmother, Virginia Dancy of Queens, N.Y., would later testify that Foster and her daughter used drugs and moved from place to place across northern New Jersey, one step ahead of police and rent collectors. Sometimes, Shermaine would stay with them; other times, with her, Dancy said. She said she once went to an address looking for her grandson and found him sitting amid a crowd of people who were smoking crack cocaine. One was his mother. Dancy said she took the child to use the bathroom and discovered he had been sexually abused, though his mother denied it. Dancy alleged that Angela Johnson was threatened and abused by Foster. To escape him, Angela Johnson moved to a great-aunt's house in Franklin, Va., Dancy said. When Angela Johnson got a place of her own, she sent for Shermaine. He was 8 years old. Shermaine was having difficulty in school. A psychological evaluation by the Franklin school system in February 1991, when he was a 13-year-old fifth-grader, noted that he "experiences a great deal of insecurity; dependence and need for support" and has a "propensity for aggressive action." He later would tell psychological evaluators that he had his first sexual experience at age 10 with a 14-year-old girl. Mother and son moved back to New Jersey when Shermaine was in the sixth grade. Then he moved to New York to live with Dancy and finally back to Virginia. Then his mother died of AIDS. 2 years ago, Shermaine told an evaluator about his mother's illness and death. He said he remembered when his grandmother gave him the bad news. He was watching television. "I haven't cried over it yet. Everybody was sitting around crying. . . . I can't get a tear out," he said. Johnson was 1st arrested in Franklin, in 1990, for assault and battery. The charge was dismissed. In 1992, he was convicted in New York of attempted theft and aggravated sexual battery, earning two six-month probation terms. By 1994, he was shuttling between New Jersey and Franklin. In January 1994, he was arrested for aggravated sexual assault in Hudson County, N.J., but the charge was not prosecuted. In that case, a 13-year-old girl said Johnson came up behind and grabbed her as she was leaving her apartment in Hoboken. He put a steak knife against her throat and dragged her back up the hallway of her building. He ordered her to take off her clothes and then raped her, she said. Later in 1994 in Southampton County, Va., he raped two women at knifepoint. He knew both women. He also raped a woman in New York. In Virginia, he was convicted of the two rapes, statutory burglary and abduction by force and sentenced to 100 years. In 1996, he was convicted of the 1994 rape he committed in New York. On July 11, 1994, Hall's nude body was found on the bedroom floor of her apartment. She had been stabbed 15 times, her throat cut. She suffered fatal wounds in her back, chest and neck. She was conscious as she bled to death. Police found blood on two steak knives in the kitchen. 2 more knives were found, one on Hall's bed and one in her bathroom. Blood also was found on the kitchen floor, and it was smeared on the inside of the apartment door. In the bedroom, blood was on the wall near Hall's body as well as the floor, dresser, sheets and bedspread. The telephone cord had been pulled from the wall. There was no sign of forced entry. A suspect or 2 surfaced, but in the end, police were stumped. Two years after the slaying, the state forensics lab was comparing DNA samples from crime scenes with the DNA profiles of 7,442 felons on file at the time in Virginia and made a match, or "cold hit." DNA in some of the blood and in semen found at the scene of Hall's murder matched that of Johnson, then a 19-year-old inmate at the Southampton Correctional Center. He was charged with Hall's murder in January 1997. On July 24, 1998, a jury recommended that he be sentenced to death. The small, boyish-looking Johnson raised his chained hands and balled his fists as he was led out of the courtroom. The death sentence was thrown out by the Virginia Supreme Court on a technicality. Meanwhile, an evaluation of Johnson found that he has a dissociative identity disorder, also known as multiple-personality disorder. In August 2002, a 2nd jury recommended the death penalty for Johnson, and he was sentenced to death again on Oct. 28, 2002. Johnson now waits for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide a Missouri case that could save his life. This year, the justices announced they would consider the constitutionality of the death penalty for those who commit capital murders while they are juveniles. The case involves Christopher Simmons, who was 17 when he murdered Shirley Crook 10 years ago. Last year, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the execution of Simmons would violate the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Missouri appealed, bringing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In its ruling, the Missouri Supreme Court cited "evolving standards of decency" that held such executions to be wrong. The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in 2002 barring the execution of mentally retarded killers also cited evolving standards of decency. A 2002 Gallup poll found that while 72 % of Americans favored capital punishment, nearly 70 % opposed capital punishment for those who killed while younger than 18. A 2003 ABC News poll found that only 37 % of the public wanted the death penalty for Lee Boyd Malvo, who was a juvenile while he participated in the sniper slayings in Virginia and the Washington area. Malvo was sentenced to life, even though the Justice Department steered the case to Virginia, where Malvo could face the death penalty. (source: Richmond Times-Dispatch) MARYLAND: A good society's answers to death penalty's backers Maryland filled Steven Oken's veins with poison 10 days ago. How many of you feel safer than you did 11 days ago? One other question: Has the state-inflicted death of this pathetic human being made you feel better about the quality of life in this state? Living in a place where, every few years, we strap a guy down and stick chemicals in his arms - there's a special feeling that comes from being a taxpayer who contributes to that. Don't worry. Like the 17-year cicada, the Steven Oken story won't be around much longer, and we won't have to think about it or wrestle with the conscience anymore. In fact, it's pretty much gone already. Death carries, oh, a certain finality with it. But before we move on to other business, I'd like to respond to some of the many assertions I heard people make - or I read in their e-mails - in the days before and immediately after the Oken execution. There were recurring themes, so I picked the quotes that best sounded them. "I believe the death penalty should not be looked at as a means to deter crime. Rather, if you are willing take the life of another the state should require your life in return." Supporters of the death penalty have been saying this for years, without regard to the calculus. We'd have to put to death hundreds of Marylanders - and thousands of Americans, in time - to kill every killer and meet that eye-for-an-eye imperative. We'd have to buy lethal chemicals by the barrel and establish a state crematorium just to keep up with demand. "I am certain that if the appeals process was shortened and convicted felons didn't sit in jail for years earning their degrees, the death penalty would be a deterrent." Yes, and if history is any guide, we'd probably execute some innocent guys along the way. But what's 1 or 2 mistakes when we're talking about the expeditious eradication of killers? The people who argue this point never seem to acknowledge the deterrent quality or punitive power of life sentences without parole. "For better or worse, execution absolutely guarantees that the murderer will not murder again." Of course. But life without parole approaches the same promise without forcing the state to load up a syringe with succinylcholine chloride. "How many of those who live in ivory towers and are opponents of capital punishment have ever been the victim of a violent act or know the loss of someone who has been tortured and killed by another human being?" Ever get called for jury duty? Ever notice the number of hands that go up during voir dire, when the judge asks prospective jurors who have been the victims of crime - or the relatives of victims of crime - to identify themselves? It's startling. But it's also irrelevant. What the state does, it does in all our names. What the state does is everyone's business. I'm tired of hearing that the victims of violent crime - or the relatives of victims of crime - have the exclusive say in this matter and that the rest of us aren't qualified to render an opinion because we can neither claim a homicide in the family nor appreciate horrific tragedies endured by others. "It was poor judgment on the part of the Attorney General to make such a public pronouncement [against the death penalty] on such a controversial issue." Someone said this about Joe Curran, even as the attorney general's assistants rushed off to various courts to argue for the execution of Oken. Apparently, there was concern that Curran, a Democrat who opposes the death penalty, might keep his staff from making the state's case. Obviously, he didn't. Nor did he stand in the way of 3 other executions that occurred earlier on his watch. By contrast, no one seemed overly concerned about the Republican governor's bias in support of the death penalty, or his myopia. He's been dismissive of questions raised about racial and jurisdictional disparities in the application of capital punishment in Maryland; he made it clear during his 2002 campaign that he wasn't going to hold up executions despite claims that the system was terribly flawed. "How about we build the new prison to house all the murderers next to your house?" Sorry, I don't think we have the right zoning. Besides, there's no need. We've got space, assuming the governor doesn't tear down Super Max. Housing murderers for life - and not putting them to death - is what a civilized society does. It's a measure of our decency. There's nothing uplifting about state-sanctioned murder. For proof, I offer the next statement, from a reader: "One day Channel 11 asked if lethal injection was 'cruel and unusual.' My response was, 'Well, it's pretty much like putting your dog to sleep, which makes it way too humane.'" Look, I hate the death penalty. It's barbaric. It's homicidal retribution, and homicidal retribution breeds and feeds violence in a society. The good society wouldn't tolerate this. The good society would view human life as inviolate to the extent that the state may not kill in cold blood. You can't accept the proposition that the state has the right to take a life in cold blood and call yourself civilized. You can't have it both ways. "I applaud Governor Ehrlich for having the guts not to stand in the way of justice. Sorry, but some of us are cynical about politicians, Democrats and Republican, who use the death penalty to their advantage. I suspect a lot of them think it's morally abhorrent, and not useful in fighting crime, but they don't dare speak against it for fear of being labeled soft. Even many so-called liberals - Hillary and Bill Clinton, for example - have made a point of flashing their support of capital punishment just to avoid the soft-on-crime tag. Even the most lightweight politician knows the safe course is to let a condemned man die. Politicians know that in a week or 10 days, it'll all be forgotten. (source: Column, Dan Rodricks, The Baltimore Sun) NEW YORK: Death penalty law likely to be revised New York State Senator Dale Volker said the Legislature will probably try to revise the state's death penalty law after part of it was deemed unconstitutional last week. Still, the Erie County Republican and chief legislative proponent of the death penalty said he still doesn't think there's a problem with the current law. The state's highest court disagrees. On Thursday, the Court of Appeals struck down the law in a 4-3 vote. (source: Capital 9 News) *********************** The case against the court Death penalty opponents were not the only winners when New York's highest court threw out the state's capital punishment law. Count John Taylor a winner, too. He gets to keep living. Taylor is on death row for being 1 of 2 shooters in the Wendy's massacre 4 years ago. A Queens jury found he deserved to die for his role in that grisly bloodbath, the details of which prove that the death penalty is the only punishment that fits some crimes. At closing time on May 24, 2000, the seven workers in the Flushing fast-food shop were gagged with tape and marched into a basement freezer. Garbage bags were put over their heads, and they were ordered to get on their knees. Each was then shot in the head, execution style. Taylor was convicted of killing the first two workers, one of whom had fired him from the store months earlier for stealing. He then told his accomplice to "finish the job." The accomplice, Craig Godineaux, killed 3 and wounded 2. Godineaux confessed and testified against Taylor, saying they came to rob the store - they got $2,400 - and Taylor didn't want any witnesses. Godineaux, deemed "immune from execution" because he is mildly retarded, is serving life without parole. Taylor is apparently now also "immune from execution," thanks to the crazy ruling by the Court of Appeals. The court, acting in a separate case, found the death penalty law unconstitutional because of a provision on instructions to deadlocked juries. By a 4-to-3 vote, the court said the law was so flawed "the death penalty may not be imposed." The losing judges were bitter, saying the majority was looking for a way to kill a law it didn't like. The dissenters are persuasive, given that the court stopped the state's first 3 death convictions and now has tortured logic to stop the law itself. So while Taylor and others on death row get new life, the law's supporters can be forgiven if they are so frustrated that they consider throwing in the towel. After all, not a single killer has been executed since the popular law was signed with great fanfare by Gov. Pataki in 1995. Some prosecutors, namely Robert Morgenthau in Manhattan and Robert Johnson in the Bronx, have undermined it by never using it. Then, too, the facts on the street have changed dramatically in nine years. The crime wave that propelled the law through the Legislature by wide margins has receded. City murders have dropped by some 70% since the bad old days. While some death penalty supporters insist the existence of the law has been a deterrent, I don't buy that argument. People like John Taylor and Craig Godineaux don't think rationally about consequences, to themselves or anybody else. Consider that the people they killed in Wendy's were a roll call of New York's ethnic and racial working class. Anita Smith, 22, Jean-Dumel Auguste, 27, Ramon Nazario, 44, Jeremy Mele, 18, and Ali Ibadat, 40 - all wiped out. The death penalty law did not save them, nor has it stopped killers in Texas and other states where executions are fairly common. Whether by nature or nurture, some people simply are cold-blooded killers, and no law will stop them. Deterrence aside, then, there is only one justification for capital punishment, and it's why supporters must fix the law to pass court muster. The issue is this: society's obligation to deal with heinous killers after their cases are absolutely final. Rehabilitate them? Hardly. Warehouse them for 30, 40 or 50 years? Why? So they can enjoy another sunrise or kill a guard or escape to freedom? They don't deserve the chance for any of that. Quite simply, by their actions, the John Taylors of the world have forfeited the right to live. They have no right to hope, to dream, to smile, to cry. Death is what they deserve. Death is all they deserve. (source: Opinion, Michael Goodwin, The New York Daily News) *************************** We can't let killers decide to kill selves 'Let's do it." Those are Gary Gilmore's immortal words, the most famous three syllables in the modern history of capital punishment. They are enshrined forever in "The Executioner's Song," Norman Mailer's rattling portrait of a new breed of death-row inmate. Stephen LaValle is just the latest member of that very same breed - impatient volunteers for state-assisted suicide. Like Gilmore, LaValle fought his lawyers as they tried to save his life. Unlike Gilmore, he tried to hide the facts of his own troubled past, facts that couldn't help but illuminate the vicious path he'd chosen. Like Gilmore, LaValle swore he'd rather die than spend the rest of his life behind bars. Then, yesterday, the judges of New York's highest court showed that they are something more than the shrugging Utah jurists of 25 years ago, who'd answered Gilmore's "Let's do it" with their own "Well, OK." By the narrowest possible margin, the New York State Court of Appeals declared it is not in the business of helping psychopathic murderers kill themselves. They sent Stephen LaValle, this convicted capital murderer, back to Long Island to be sentenced again. And they did something more sweeping than that: They tossed the state's oddly constructed death- penalty law. "Let's not do it," was the unmistakable message from Albany yesterday. It isn't hard to detest Stephen LaValle. All it takes is a quick recollection of the way he left the woman he was convicted of murdering. She was Cynthia Quinn, a 32-year-old Long Island art teacher and track coach with two young children. Her body was found shortly after noon on May 31, 1997, in the woods near Mill Road in Suffolk County's Yaphank. The coroner counted 73 puncture wounds on her neck, chest, back and arms that looked like they'd been delivered with a screwdriver. She had broken ribs, bruises on her arms and scrapes on various other parts of her body. She appeared to have been raped. 6 hours earlier, she'd left for her usual morning run through the neighborhood, never to return again. There was DNA evidence, a confession to police and a conviction at trial. All very good reasons for the man pinned with her murder to spend the rest of his life behind bars. But none of it could justify making the state an official, taxpayer-supported killer of last resort. Not surprisingly, New York's death-penalty law has now collapsed from its own internal illogic, nudged by the diligent work of dedicated defense lawyers. The legal flaw here was a weird provision in the 1995 law that comes up when a jury is split 6-to-6 at sentencing - half its members wanting death, half wanting life without parole. Oddly, in such cases, the state law said the defendant would get a life sentence - with the possibility of parole in as little as 20 years. What kind of sense does that make? This so-called deadlock instruction might well coerce wavering jurors to vote for death, Judge Albert Rosenblatt noted quite eloquently in his opinion yesterday. "The trial judge gives the jury the deadlock instruction at an exquisitely crucial time," Rosenblatt wrote. "It is a signpost at the very crossroads of life and death. If the directions are omitted or coercive, it could wrongfully mean someone's life." LaValle made clear his own death wish. "I'd rather be executed than spend the rest of my life in a cell," he said in a chilling death-row interview two years ago with New York Times reporter Bill Glaberson. It was his way of saying, "Let's do it." And he did what he could to handcuff his defense team, led by appellate counsel Kevin Doyle of the state Capital Defenders office. Under New York's death-penalty law, juries are instructed at sentencing to weigh "mitigation evidence" such as a defendant's upbringing, family history and psychiatric health. Yet LaValle wanted to keep from the jury - and the trial judge, Michael Mullen agreed - details like his youthful suicide attempt and abuse of angel dust, crack and mescaline. The story gets rich and sordid: the "physical and possibly sexual abuse," mentioned court papers. The time his mother purportedly stabbed his father with a kitchen knife. The threats to his own lawyers that he would "cut off persons' heads, shoot them, cripple them or sodomize them." The more you tour the inside of this killer's tortured mind, the more you realize he shouldn't be deciding anything. Including whether we should "do it" or not. (source: Newsday) *********************** Editorial: Hold it----N.Y. court finds flaw in death penalty law While we remain unpersuaded that capital punishment is something a civilized society should be engaged in, the fact remains that New York reinstituted the death penalty in 1995 and there have been local crimes which have cried out for it. The killers of Broome County Sheriff's Deputy Kevin Tarsia didn't receive it because they pled guilty and opted for life in prison -- a suitable alternative. The accused killers of Valerie Spears and her daughter Devin Spears were facing the death penalty -- until this week, when the state's highest court struck down part of the law. The Court of Appeals, in a 4-3 decision, didn't hold that the punishment was unconstitutional but said the jury-instruction portion was. The court held that requiring judges to tell juries that if they cannot agree on a sentence (death or life without parole) the judge will impose a sentence of 20 years to life to 25-to-life -- either of which includes the possibility of parole. "The deadlock instruction interjects the fear that if jurors do not reach unanimity, the defendant may be paroled in 20 years and pose a threat to society in the future," Judge George Bundy Smith wrote. That could pressure a juror who doesn't want to see a defendant back on the street vote for a death penalty sentence they would otherwise oppose. Death penalty advocates criticized the decision, and Gov. George E. Pataki and some legislators said they'd quickly rectify that portion of the law -- either by having the judges impose a life-without-parole sentence if the jury is hung, or by giving juries three sentencing options: death, life-without-parole or life-with-parole. That sounds simple enough, but New York is saddled with a state Legislature in which nothing is simple -- and very little is done quickly. It has refused to adopt a state budget on time for 20 consecutive years, and this year has ignored a court mandate to change the school aid formula. It has also walked away from a whole range of other pressing problems. The immediate impact of the death penalty ruling is that four death sentences have been invalidated -- no one has been executed since the penalty was restored -- and nine people facing trial (including two in Broome County) won't have to face the death sentence but can still be sent to prison for life. That won't satisfy the common urge for revenge, but it's still justice. A large majority of Americans favor capital punishment, but it doesn't reduce crime and it has been applied inconsistently. Many murderers may richly deserve the fate they dealt to their victims, but if we cannot ensure that it is meted out without regard to the financial or racial background of the defendant -- and we cannot -- then as a decent society, we would do well to forgo it. (source: Editorial, Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin)
