August 13 KENTUCKY: Lawsuit says execution by injection is torture Attorneys for 2 men on Kentucky's death row claim in a lawsuit that being executed by chemical injection or electrocution is a form of torture and should be declared unconstitutional. Thomas Clyde Bowling and Ralph Baze "will ... be tortured to death" if the state is allowed to carry out their death sentences, according to the suit filed in Franklin County Circuit Court by attorneys from the state Department of Public Advocacy. Bowling was convicted of murdering a young couple in Lexington and wounding their infant son in 1990. The U.S. Supreme Court has to decide whether to hear Bowling's final appeal. Baze ambushed and killed a sheriff and deputy in Powell County in 1992. His appeal is at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, one step behind Bowling's appeal. Kentucky used the electric chair until the General Assembly adopted injection for execution in 1998. It has been used against one prisoner - Eddie Lee Harper of Louisville in 1999. Because Bowling and Baze already were on death row when the law was changed, they have to choose between injection and electrocution. The lawsuit alleges that an autopsy of Harper showed a low level of anesthetic in his bloodstream and that he probably was conscious and in pain when another drug designed to stop his heart "seared through his body." (source: Associated Press) LOUISIANA: Conviction in frying pan murder overturned In Shreveport, the 1991 1st-degree murder conviction of a Houston man who was sentenced to life inprison for the beating death of a Bossier City man has been reversed. But Tuesday's decision by U.S. Magistrate Judge Roy S. Payne doesn't mean James Crandell will automatically be set free. Payne conditioned Crandell's release upon the state's plans to seek a new indictment against him. Bossier-Webster Parish District Attorney Schuyler Marvin already has plans to present Crandell's case to a Bossier Parish grand jury Sept. 7. "We're going to re-indict and go back to square one," Marvin said. "We objected to this and contested it, but we expected this decision. We intend to proceed forward and not seek an appeal before the Fifth Circuit." Crandell, 57, was convicted of killing Charles Parr, 48, in a room Crandell shared with his girlfriend, Gail Willars, at the Beacon Manor Motel in Bossier City in August 1989. Willarstold the jury of Parr getting rough with her. Crandell, who was hiding in a bathroom with Willars' son, hit Parr in the head with a frying pan. His body was stuffed inside a closet, where he eventually died. Crandell and Willars fled to Chicago, where they were arrested. Willars' son, Zachary, who was 9 at the time, witnessed the crime and testified at the trial. Gail Willars began traveling with Crandell after her husband died. She collected her husband's life insurance but after going through it, she turned to prostitution. Crandell's reversal was based upon a successful challenge to the manner in which grand jury foremen had been selected, specifically the exclusion of blacks as jury foremen within 20 or more years preceding Crandell's indictment. The long-standing rule in Louisiana was for the presiding judge to hand pick the foreman from the selected jury, sometimes using information gleaned from other court personnel on who would best be in charge of the special panel. In his ruling, Payne noted that Bossier Parish's "mere 20 % black population" does not provide a "legal excuse for (zero) black foremen of 50 chosen." But Crandell's success also opens the door to the repeat possibility of his facing the death penalty. He received a mandatory life sentence because the jury hearing his case could not unanimously agree on a penalty. "Federal law principals of double jeopardy or due process will not prevent the state from obtaining a death sentence when the original jury was hung on the sentencing issue," Payne wrote. (source: Associated Press) CALIFORNIA: Frey Pressed Peterson to Tell Her the Entire Truth Amber Frey, who until now had seemed almost naively dependent on Scott Peterson in their taped conversations, demanded that he tell her the truth about everything - including his wife's disappearance - in tapes played Thursday for the jury in his murder trial. After weeks of what many observers called an uninspired prosecution case, jurors Thursday heard some of the most gripping evidence yet as Frey, Peterson's girlfriend, told him she suspected he might have murdered his pregnant wife. "Oh, my God," Peterson cried on the tape of a phone call on Jan. 6, 2003, less than 2 weeks after Laci Peterson disappeared and became the subject of a nationwide manhunt. "I hope you know me well enough [to know] that I could never do something like this." No, she said, she didn't. Frey did not let up on the Modesto fertilizer salesman, who had told exotic stories of owning boats and condos and traveling the world. Although he never confessed to anything criminal in the lengthy, often tearful conversations Frey was recording for the Modesto police, some said it was the prosecution's best day thus far in the trial. Saying Frey had missed her calling as a prosecutor, former Northern California prosecutor Dean Johnson said she repeatedly "bored in on Peterson" as he tried to dodge her questions. Peterson began dating Frey, a Fresno massage therapist with a young daughter, in late November 2002, claiming he was unmarried. In fact, Laci Peterson was 8 months pregnant as Christmas approached. On Christmas Eve, she vanished. Peterson said he was fishing in San Francisco Bay and returned home that afternoon to find her gone. With volunteers searching for Laci, Peterson tried to maintain his relationship with Frey and the fiction he was single through dozens of phone calls, which the jury has been hearing over the last three days. To explain his absence while working at the volunteer search center in Modesto, Peterson told Frey he was on a business trip in Europe. He threw in details of European life, talking about beautiful churches and saying he had fallen and hurt himself while jogging on cobblestones in Paris. Frey learned independently of the missing Modesto woman on Dec. 30 and contacted police, who asked her to record Peterson's calls in case he incriminated himself. After he didn't, and in fact talked happily about the future he and Frey would have, Frey decided to jar him by claiming a friend of hers had left a cryptic message warning her to be careful. That provoked his confession that he was married and that his wife was missing. In that call, just after 11 p.m. on Jan. 6, Peterson said he had to tell Frey about "the worst thing in the world.. The girl I'm married to, her name is Laci." Prosecutors contend that Peterson killed his wife and dumped her body into the bay so he could be with Frey. He was arrested several months after Laci disappeared. But it is believed there is very little, if any, physical evidence tying him to the crime. That increases the pressure on prosectors to show that there is enough circumstantial evidence to warrant conviction. One piece is the fact that Laci's remains washed up months after her disappearance in the part of the bay where Peterson said he fished on Christmas Eve. Equally important, if not more, is the battering Peterson's character has taken since Frey, the star prosecution witness, took the stand Tuesday. When asked by Frey if it wasn't "twisted" for him to carry on the affair with her while Laci was missing, Peterson responded, "It is." Frey then asked if Laci knew about her. Peterson said she did. "Really, how did she respond to it?" Amber asked in a Jan. 7 phone call. "Fine," he said. "Fine?" Frey shouted. "An 8-month [pregnant] woman, fine about another woman?" In a rare interruption, laughter rippled through the court of Judge Alfred Delucchi. "I know you can't believe me. Wish you could . I hope to gain your trust again," Peterson said. In another conversation, Peterson said he was not an "evil person" and had never hurt anybody, to which Frey replied: "What are you doing to me right now? Do you think I'm drowning in daisies?" The tapes included another call in which Frey recalled that she had earlier accused him of being married, to which he had replied that he had lost his wife. He lied because it was too painful to talk about, he said. Peterson also had said the Christmas holidays of 2002 would be the 1st he would spend without his wife. "Scott, this has to be the biggest coincidence I have ever heard of," Frey said. "I mean, are you psychic? I mean, you predicted your wife would be missing?" As the tapes played, jurors frequently glanced at the defendant, seated next to his attorney, Mark Geragos. At one point, where Frey discussed on tape how hard it had been to be a single mother and how much she had been counting on Peterson to help her raise her daughter, Frey, seated in the audience, began to cry. Her attorney, Gloria Allred, put her arm around her. "I have one word for her," Allred said outside court. "Awesome." She added: "This was a very important day." The trial resumes Monday, with more tape recordings. By midweek, it is expected, Geragos will get his chance to cross-examine Frey. (source: Los Angeles Times) NEVADA----execution LETHAL INJECTION: Death row inmate executed----Dennis calm, quiet as he gets his wish for life to end Death row inmate Terry Dennis offered no final words and died quietly at 9:08 p.m. Thursday for the strangulation of a Reno woman in 1999. "Mr. Dennis was asked if he had any final words, and he did not," said Jackie Crawford, director of the Department of Corrections. "He was very quiet, and it went very well." Dennis, wearing glasses and his head shaved, was escorted into the execution chamber at 8:52 p.m. He appeared calm as 5 correctional officers with the Nevada State Prison secured him to a table in the former gas chamber. At 8:56 p.m., the shades were drawn across the window so that witnesses could not see into the execution chamber. An intravenous needle then was inserted into Dennis' arm. Dennis, who had chosen not to pursue appeals, could have stopped the execution at any point, but chose not to do so. At 9:03 p.m., the shades were pulled back and the 7 official witnesses watched as three drugs were fed into Dennis' blood stream. One rendered him unconscious, one stopped his breathing and a third stopped his heart. Dennis was breathing rapidly at first, but at 9:05 p.m. his lips fluttered a few times and he appeared to stop breathing. The chamber door was opened at 9:08 p.m., and a doctor checked Dennis for a pulse. There was none. It was the 11th execution in Nevada since the Legislature reimposed the death penalty in 1977. It was the 2nd execution this year. Department spokesman Fritz Schlottman said Dennis visited with his brother, Gary Dennis, for two hours Thursday morning. He stayed in the "last night" cell across from the execution chamber, not posting any mail or making any phone calls, Schlottman said. Dennis was offered and took a Valium at 4 p.m. and another at 7 p.m., Schlottman said. Dennis ate his last meal , he said. No members of the family of the victim, Ilona Strumanis, 51, appeared as witnesses. Strumanis was originally from Russia, and the department had no contact with relatives, Schlottman said. Dennis pleaded guilty to the killing, which occurred during a vodka-and-beer binge in a Reno motel room. A 3-judge panel sentenced Dennis to death. Outside the prison in the capital, about 25 death penalty protesters quietly demonstrated against the execution of Dennis, 56. Dennis was a volunteer, meaning an inmate sentenced to death who refused to try to appeal his case. 10 of the last 11 executions in Nevada have come when inmates have given up their appeals. He told court officials at one hearing: "Death is preferable to another 15 to 20 years in prison." (source: Las Vegas Review-Journal)
