Mar. 7 NORTH CAROLINA----impending execution Officials prepare for state's first execution of the year----William Powell is scheduled for execution Friday State correction officials are continuing preparations for the 1st execution of the year. Members of the media toured the execution chamber and death watch area on Monday morning. A jury sentenced William Powell to death after prosecutors argued that Powell killed Mary Gladden during a robbery attempt at a Shelby pantry store in 1991. Authorities said Powell wanted money to buy cocaine. North Carolina now has 183 prisoners on death row. Each one has been convicted of murder. (source: RDU News) OKLAHOMA: State Lawmakers, Ministers Call For Execution Study Ministers joined state lawmakers Monday in demanding a study of whether the state has ever put an innocent person to death for a crime he did not commit. Flanked by more than a dozen pastors, priests and representatives of faith-based groups, Rep. Opio Toure said he fears that an innocent person has been executed in the state. "The religious leaders are here because they agree with me," said Toure, D-Oklahoma City. "It is not only likely, but also probable, that we have executed an individual on flimsy evidence." Toure did not identify a wrongfully executed defendant. He has said there is evidence some defendants executed early in the state's history when the rules of evidence and appellate procedures were not well developed may have been innocent. Toure called on Republican House Speaker Todd Hiett and the chairwoman of the House Rules Committee, Rep. Sue Tibbs, R-Tulsa, to allow a hearing on a measure that calls for a task force to study the issue. "This should not enter into the area of partisan politics," said Pam Maisano of the Oklahoma Conference of Churches. "It can't possibly be damaging to either part to know the truth." The Rev. Anthony Nelson of the Russian Orthodox Church in Oklahoma City said there is no greater wrong than the execution of an innocent person by his own government. "If we trust out judicial system, we can look at it," Nelson said. Toure said neither Hiett nor Tibbs has said whether they will hear the measure. It will die in the Rules Committee if it is not hear by Friday. Toure said he filed a similar bill last year that died in committee. A telephone call to Tibbs' state Capitol office was not immediately returned. Oklahoma has executed 158 people, including three women, since 1915. Oklahoma led the nation in the number of executions in 2001 with 18. Oklahoma had 93 inmates on death row at the end of January. The legislation would create a 13-member task force to determine whether any defendant convicted of first-degree murder -- the only crime punishable by death -- and executed by the state was actually innocent. Since 1981, seven Oklahoma death row inmates have been released from prison after they were exonerated of the crimes that resulted in the death penalty, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. "I sincerely believe that one or more of our citizens have been wrongfully executed in our state," Toure said. He said the state has a moral obligation to identify wrongfully executed prisoners, acknowledge the mistake and compensate family members. Toure wrote legislation that was signed into law by Gov. Brad Henry in 2003 that allows citizens who are convicted and imprisoned for crimes they did not commit to apply for up to $175,000 in compensation. The measure is House Joint Resolution 1022. (source: Associated Press) INDIANA----impending execution Attorney expects no effort to halt execution set for this week The defense attorney for convicted killer Donald Ray Wallace Jr. expects him to die by chemical injection early Thursday at the Indiana State Prison. Attorney Sarah Nagy has a 40-page clemency request prepared to file with the state Parole Board, but Wallace won't allow her to file it. Because of that, Nagy said there is nothing she can do to try to stop the execution from going forward because Wallace - convicted in the 1980 murders of an Evansville couple and their 2 young children - has been clear in his wishes. "He's capable of making his own decisions," she said Monday. "If he had competency issues I would go behind his back and do what's in his best interest. But that's not the case here." Wallace, 47, was convicted in 1982 of shooting to death Patrick Gilligan, his wife, Theresa, their 5-year-old daughter, Lisa, and 4-year-old son, Gregory, while he burglarized their Evansville home. Nagy said with no appeals left in state or federal courts and no clemency request, she expects Wallace to be executed shortly after midnight CST at the state prison in Michigan City. The last person executed in Indiana who didn't seek clemency was Gerald Bivins, who was put to death in March 2001 for the killing of a minister at an Interstate 65 rest stop near Lebanon. Then-Gov. Frank O'Bannon did not review the case because Bivins specifically requested that clemency not be considered. D.H. Fleenor, who was executed on Dec. 9, 1999, also did not request clemency, but O'Bannon reviewed the case anyway because of disputes on whether Fleenor was mentally competent. O'Bannon denied clemency for Fleenor, saying evidence proved he was sane. Gov. Mitch Daniels has been briefed on Wallace's case but does not plan to take any further action, said Jane Jankowski, the governor's press secretary. "No further review is under way," she said. Nagy, an attorney in Indianapolis, said she has been in contact with Wallace daily and hoped he would change his mind. "I don't want my client to die," she said. She said she will be at the prison on standby Wednesday evening ready to file the clemency request if Wallace changes his mind. She doesn't expect that to happen, though. If he is executed, he would become the 1st person executed in Indiana since Joseph Trueblood was put to death on June 13, 2003. Then-Gov. Joe Kernan granted clemency in July to Darnell Williams, a week before his scheduled execution date, following an unanimous recommendation by the state Parole Board. In making his decision, Kernan said it would be unfair to execute him when a mentally retarded accomplice got a life sentence. It was 1st time in 48 years that an Indiana governor granted clemency in a capital case. Kernan also granted clemency in January to Michael Daniels, an Indianapolis man convicted of murdering an Army minister in 1978. (source: Associated Press) TENNESSEE----impending execution Christopher Davis March 15, 2005 Take action at www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=437 On March 15, 2005 the State of Tennessee is scheduled to execute Christopher Davis, a 28-year-old black male, for a gang-related double murder committed in 1996 in Davidson County. This would be only the 2nd execution in Tennessee since 1960, and the 1st since 2000. Davis, a member of the "Gangster Disciples", was raised in a two-parent home where drugs were a way of life. Davis started dealing cocaine when he was 13 years old. His father had been in and out of prison for drug-related charges and only months before Davis' trial, his brother was murdered during the course of a drug deal. Evidence in Davis' trial was mostly circumstantial, with ballistics experts not able to determine whether the spent rounds were fired by guns found in Davis' apartment. The many witnesses that offered hearsay evidence had conflicting stories - some pinpointing Davis as the killer, and others testifying that an alternate shooter said he did it to 'set up Davis' and his friends. Many of the witnesses were also involved in gang activity and one of prosecution's witnesses admittedly had pending charges of murder and robbery against her and that she 'hoped her testimony would warrant consideration in her pending cases." Another point to note in Davis' case is that the district attorney had employed the trial court's former law clerk who had attended Ex Parte hearings in the case while employed at the trial court. He had access to privileged information in that regard which he could have shared with the District Attorney's office. The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty maintains its stance against capital punishment in all cases. Please take action. (source: NCADP) MISSOURI:----impending execution FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Tuesday, March 8, 2005 Rita Linhardt, 573-635-7239 Nelson Mitten, 314-727-0101, Hall's attorney EXECUTION SCHEDULED FOR MAN WHOSE DEATH SENTENCE SHOWED ARBITRARINESS AND DISPROPORTION Stanley Hall is to be executed March 16 Stanley Hall received a death sentence for the 1994 murder, kidnapping, and robbery of Barbara Jo Wood in St. Louis. Soon after that he confessed to throwing Mrs. Wood into the Mississippi River after he and an accomplice had abducted her from a mall parking lot. This was a brutal crime, and MADP members express sincere condolences to Mrs. Woods family. His attorney however has identified several troublesome issues in the trial resulting in his death sentence. Halls accomplice was not even charged in the murder, and then Hall (black) faced an all-white jury. During the sentencing phase, the prosecutor likened Mr. Hall to his pet dog, which was afflicted with distemper. Both beings, he implied, needed to be killed, even when there is sadness and difficulty in so doing. The sentence also reflects the arbitrariness inherent in the process: his death sentence was handed down in St. Louis County, in which death sentences are handed down disproportionately considerably more than in St. Louis city. A news conference is scheduled to discuss these issues, 3:00 pm, Wednesday, March 9 in the Capitol's Senate Hearing Room #1 in Jefferson City. Speakers will include Hall's attorney, Nelson Mitten; Celesta Hall, mother of Stanley; his wife, Stephanie Renee Tooley; Rita Linhardt with MADP; and Michael Lenza, University of Missouri-Columbia sociology instructor and author of Perspectives on the Politics of Death: A Statistical, Theoretical and Historical examination of the Death Penalty in Missouri. We are opposed to executions wherever and however they occur, said Rita Linhardt of MADP. For any human beingor stateto take the life of another human being adds to the level of violence we all have to live with. When issues of arbitrariness, race, and prosecutorial behavior taint the process, MADP members say, we see again the need for a moratorium on the death penalty a commission to study these problems of arbitrariness, disproportion, and prosecutorial behavior with a three-year moratorium on executions. Such public policy is proposed by House Bill 408 and Senate Bill 303. Check http://www.moabolition.org <http://www.moabolition.org/> for updates. (source: Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty----www.moabolition.org)
