August 16 VIRGINIA: U.S. Supreme Court lifts stay James Edward Reid is on death row for the brutal killing of Annie Lester. The U.S. Supreme Court decided Wednesday to lift the stay of execution of an inmate facing death for the 1996 slaying of an elderly Christiansburg woman. The decision clears the way for the setting of an execution date for James Edward Reid. But it does not mean Reid is barred from raising the claim that his execution would constitute "cruel and unusual punishment," which is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution, said one of Reid's attorneys, Jimmy Turk of Radford. Reid is on death row for the brutal killing of 87-year-old Annie Lester. The Supreme Court's brief order Wednesday is probably not the last word on a case that has wended its way through various courts for eight years. "We still certainly intend to pursue several legal issues from this point forward," Turk said. Montgomery County Circuit Judge Ray Grubbs, who sentenced Reid to death in 1998, has scheduled a conference call in the case for today, Turk said. Attorney General Jerry Kilgore's office plans to ask Grubbs to set an execution date for Reid, said Kilgore's press secretary, Tim Murtaugh. Grubbs is required by law to set the execution date within 60 days, Turk said. The Supreme Court made its ruling in response to a request from Kilgore's office, Murtaugh said. The 5-4 ruling did not specify a reason for the decision. The attorney general's office had argued that the stay of execution that the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued in the case Dec. 17 was moot. The appeals court, in Richmond, issued the stay the day before Reid was scheduled for execution. The appeals court said at the time that it issued the stay because the U.S. Supreme Court had agreed to hear a similar case involving an Alabama inmate who claimed that lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment. The appeals court wanted to see how the higher court would rule. The Alabama inmate's past drug use would have required prison officials to cut into his leg to find a vein to administer a lethal injection. Reid's attorneys made a similar argument about the collapse of veins in his arms. But Murtaugh said Reid had not raised the same claims as the Alabama inmate. Based on that argument, the attorney general's office asked the Supreme Court in July to lift the stay, Murtaugh said. The Supreme Court had denied an earlier request to lift the stay. Whatever date is set, the attorney general's office views it as a real execution date, Murtaugh said. "When you get to this point in a case like this, naturally the attention seems to focus on the inmate," Murtaugh said. "But we prefer to focus on the victim and her family and remember all the pain that they have suffered." Sgt. Curtis Brown, a detective with the Christiansburg Police Department who is Lester's great-nephew, said he rejected the "cruel and unusual punishment" argument that Reid's attorneys have made. "It's kind of hard for me to have any sympathy, since my great-aunt was stabbed 22 times, she was raped, she was beaten" in the head with a can of condensed milk, and she was strangled with an electrical cord, Brown said. He described Lester as an independent and opinionated woman who had befriended Reid at church. On Oct. 12, 1996, Reid went to Lester's house on Radford Street to do some chores. She was killed sometime that afternoon. Reid, 58, has claimed he was drunk and blacked out at the time of the slaying and has no memory of it. "I'm in favor of this sentence being carried out as soon as possible," Brown said. But Jack Payden-Travers, director of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, called Reid "a poster child for why one might oppose the death penalty." "Once again, it just proves that capital punishment means those without the capital get the punishment," Payden-Travers said. Reid has been on death row since 1998, after he essentially entered guilty pleas to capital murder, attempted rape and attempted robbery in Reid's death on the advice of his attorneys. Reid's sister, Ida Reid, argued that she and court personnel saw one of Reid's attorneys, Pete Theodore, sleeping during court proceedings in his case. Theodore has since been reprimanded by the Virginia State Bar in connection with the case. "If that's not substandard legal counsel, what is?" Ida Reid asked. She described her brother as a brain-damaged alcoholic who doesn't know right from wrong and could not have planned to kill Lester. "This is foolishness," Ida Reid said of the decisions of various courts to remove barriers to her brother's execution. "This is not what the death penalty is for. Virginia has run amok." (source: The Roanoke Times, Aug. 12) [NOTE---Reid now has an execution date for September 9----source: VADP] USA: Medical groups seek end to death penalty for minors - Their legal brief is one of dozens filed by groups worldwide that call for a U.S. ban on this punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court is considering the legality of sentencing children younger than 18 to death, and the American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Assn. and other medical societies are asking justices to put an end to the practice. In a friend-of-the court brief filed in the case of a 17-year-old death-row inmate challenging his sentence, the medical groups say adolescents are less developed than adults and should not be held to the same standards. "Our society understands the differences between adolescents and adults when it comes to driving, drinking alcohol and smoking, voting, and marriage," said Robert Weinstock, MD, a member of the APA's Committee on Judicial Action. "We are contradicting ourselves to deny these privileges to adolescents, yet still enforce the ultimate punishment on them -- death." The medical associations argue that science has shown that adolescents -- even at age 16 or 17 -- underestimate risks and overestimate short-term benefits. Studies also have shown that teens are more emotionally volatile and more susceptible to stressful situations, they wrote. "This court has held that executing a mentally retarded offender is unlikely to 'affect the cold calculus that precedes the decision of other potential murders,' " the brief states. "The same is true of older 'adolescents' whose calculus weighs inputs -- particularly, future consequences -- differently from adults, and far differently from the cold-blooded adult murderer for whom the death penalty is reserved." The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case, Roper v. Simmons, in its term that begins in October. The court will decide whether to uphold the Missouri Supreme Court's decision that overturned Christopher Simmons' death sentence on the grounds that it violated the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, National Assn. of Social Workers, Missouri Chapter of the National Assn. of Social Workers, and the National Mental Health Assn. also have signed on to the brief. Dozens of other organizations from around the world have weighed in on the case and are calling for the United States to ban the death penalty for minors. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: AMA brief filed in Roper v. Simmons, in pdf (www.abanet.org/crimjust/juvjus/simmons/ama.pdf) (source: American Medical News) MISSISSIPPI/USA: Part II:---Death Penalty Unfairly Applied, Part II Now that we have this person strapped on the gurney in the death chamber, we search for a good vein in one arm. Then we put in an intravenous needle. Did you know that a medical doctor is not allowed to do this? Why? Because in most states, including Mississippi, "medical ethics preclude doctors from participating in executions." Interesting. Perhaps others should be excused as well for ethical reasons. How about ministers and teachers and all social workers? And let's add parents and children; and anyone who has ever done something horribly wrong. I should think that all our supposedly fiscally conservative politicians would want to be excused and would be clamoring to oppose our killings. After all, the cost of execution is staggeringly more than the cost of housing someone in prison for a lifetime. The most comprehensive study in the country found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution more than the costs of a non-death penalty murder case. Enforcing the death penalty costs Florida $51 million a year above and beyond what it would cost to punish all 1st-degree murderers with life in prison without parole. In addition, Florida spent an average of $3.2 million per execution from 1976 to 1988. In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about 3 times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. On a national basis, these figures translate to an extra cost of over $1 billion dollars spent since 1976 on the death penalty. In this year of under-funded education in Mississippi, we and our politicians feel that killing people is one of those things that is worth our tax dollars. Did I mention that the person we strapped to the gurney did have a chance to speak with someone like a priest or preacher? We are, after all, sensitive to the spiritual needs of this person we are killing. In our part of the world, we often hear religious arguments for the death penalty; usually they involve the Bible. A simple look at history will show that we have done the same for other issues too, such as slavery and segregation. People on both sides have used religion and the Bible to argue their case. The indisputable facts are these: Laws in the Christian Old Testament advise the death penalty for a lot more than murder - they advise it for rebellious teenagers, for working on the Sabbath, for blasphemy, and for several other violations. So why are those who claim the Bible as their authority not consistent? Why do they not advocate killing in all these cases? Israelite law required two and sometimes three eyewitnesses for a guilty verdict - a test few murder trials today could meet. Several other verses could be cited also, some in the New Testament. On the other hand, the Bible also has stories and laws that limit, question, or even disapprove of the death penalty, such as the life-preserving punishment of the very first murderer, Cain, and Jesus saving the life of the adulteress. How can this be? Honesty demands that we recognize that all modern interpreters make their own decisions based on their own values, training, and traditions. They pick and choose which Bible verses, stories, and laws will inform their view of state-sponsored killing. And then, when they argue, they lob their chosen verses at the opposition and they reinterpret the ones that get lobbed at them. It is interesting to note, however, that most major Christian denominations in the United States have spoken out against the death penalty as inconsistent with grace, justice, and mercy, including the Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran, United Methodist, Presbyterian Church (USA), and the United Church of Christ churches. Many other religious groups concur. So, after we have cared for this person's soul, strapped him or her onto the gurney, and inserted the intravenous tube, we begin to fill his or her veins with a series of poisons until pavulon (or pancuronium bromide) paralyzes his or her muscle system and she or he stops breathing. Then potassium chloride stops his or her heart. This we will call "closure." "Closure" is what we will tell society and families of murder victims they will have once we have killed this person. Psychologically, it is highly questionable to present another killing as "closure," because the loss will never be made up, no matter how many persons we put to death, and, as many family members have testified, this kind of "closure" does not heal. The pain of those who suffer calls us as a community to provide support, comfort, and love, none of which requires a killing. Perhaps in our honest moments we would say that killing labeled as "closure" is a code for "revenge." Revenge may be sweet at the time but in the long run is not healing, and certainly does not make for a just society. Revenge is a form of anger that fuels a never-ending cycle of violence. The unspeakably sad and angry feelings are in every way understandable, but they do not provide a proper foundation for a system of justice. The poison is in. The person is dead. We have killed him or her. This is what we do, you and I. This is who we are. At the very least, our politicians do it in your name and mine. It is not a rash act. It is premeditated. We kill people as a solution to violence and we do it with blatant inequality. Does this make sense? It is not justice. How do we sleep? We could do better. We could tell our politicians to stop the killing. (source: James Bowley, Planet Weekly)
