March 9 MISSOURI: Prosecutor Could Seek Death Penalty In Serial Killer Case----DNA Evidence Allegedly Links Gilyard To 12 Murders The Jackson County Prosecutor's Office could make history later this week. KMBC reported that a decision will be made Thursday on whether to seek the death penalty against accused serial killer Lorenzo J. Gilyard. Gilyard is accused of murdering 12 women between 1977 and 1993. All of the victims were strangled. DNA is the alleged link between Gilyard and all of the victims. Prosecutor Mike Sanders said if his office seeks the death penalty, it will be the 1st case of its kind in the country. "We're unaware of any death penalty prosecution based solely upon DNA evidence, so if that is the decision we make here in 48 hours, that would really make this case fairly historic, not just for our jurisdiction, but for the country," Sanders told KMBC. Sanders said it has taken months to reach a decision on the issue. (source: The Kansas City Channel) CONNECTICUT: Maximum security living conditions get civil liberties interest Civil rights groups are challenging conditions in many of the nation's most restrictive maximum-security prisons because they believe long-term isolation breeds mental illness among inmates. Chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union have filed lawsuits across the country seeking changes to such prisons, many of which lock dangerous felons in isolated confinement for all but three to five hours a week. The lawsuits, filed in Connecticut, Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio and New Mexico, claim that a disproportionate number of prisoners are mentally ill and not receiving proper medical treatment. The suits come less than 2 months after serial killer Michael Ross came within hours of being executed. A federal judge handling some appeals in the case said Ross may have "death row syndrome" as a result of isolation and "deplorable conditions" on death row. Ross, 45, who admitted he killed 8 women in Connecticut and New York in the early 1980s, will undergo a competency hearing before his newly scheduled execution May 11. "The people who end up in 'supermax' prisons tend to be emotionally disjointed and behaviorally have a real difficult time with themselves," said Dr. Stuart Grassian, a former Harvard University professor who has written articles on the psychiatric effects of solitary confinement. "Putting them in these environments makes it phenomenally worse." Former inmate Bob Dellelo, who served 40 years in Massachusetts prison, described living in solitary confinement as "maddening." Dellelo was convicted in 1964 for his part in a jewelry store robbery that resulted in the death of a police detective. He later was allowed to change his plea to a lesser manslaughter charge and was released on parole in 2003. Dellelo, who now lives in Revere, Mass., served 5 years in a segregation unit at the Walpole State Prison in Massachusetts as punishment for escaping from the Old Colony Correctional Center in 1993. "I thought I was losing my mind," he said. The ACLU's lawsuits allege that even the healthiest of inmates succumb to mental illness if they are only allowed minimal human contact, recreation or programming. A complaint filed against the Connecticut Department of Correction in August 2003 said some prisoners at the Northern Correctional Institute are "subjected to social isolation and sensory deprivation that approach the limits of human endurance." They lash out by swallowing razors, smashing their heads into walls or cutting their flesh, the lawsuit claims. Connecticut prisons spokesman Brian Garnett said many inmates at Northern are allowed to participate in programs, such as anger management. Prisoners can also earn their way back into the general prison population, he said. A similar lawsuit filed last month in Indiana blamed the deaths of four mentally ill inmates on isolated prison conditions at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility. "These places are restrictive, oppressive and destructive environments," said David Fathi, an attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project. But those who work within the correction system say isolated confinement is a necessity for violent prisoners who pose a threat to other inmates and staff. 3 correctional officers have been killed by prisoners who are now living in segregated units in Michigan's Ionia Maximum Correctional Facility, said Leo Lalonde, a spokesman for the state's Department of Correction. "So I mean these people have demonstrated through their behavior that they deserve to be locked up 23 hours a day," Lalonde said. "They have shown us that they are not willing participants to get the programming and to get rehabilitated. That's the thinking." Fathi estimates that in the 1990s, more than 30 states operated so-called "supermax" prisons -- maximum-security facilities. But in recent years, both Virginia and Michigan have converted supermax units to regular maximum security prisons, and Maryland has announced plans to transfer most supermax inmates to other facilities by the end of the year. Connecticut agreed last March that it would no longer keep seriously mentally ill inmates in the segregation program unless the state deems it absolutely necessary. The agreement has not been put into effect because the 2 sides are still deciding how to monitor compliance. A federal judge must also approve the agreement. Charles Cabone, a human rights attorney in California, attributes the trend to the hefty price tag that comes with such restrictive prisons. He said they tend to be much more expensive since paid employees maintain the facility instead of inmates and prison trusties. The California Prison Focus organization estimates that a super maximum-security prison in California costs $57,000 per prisoner per year, compared to $26,000 per inmate in a regular prison. "There's also going to be a cost increase because of all these mental health issues," Cabone said. "It costs money to take care of these prisoners." (source: Waterbury Republican-American) USA: Cruel and unusual at 18 and beyond Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says many disagreeable things, but it's hard to dispute one of the points he made in his dissent in Roper v. Simmons. "It is entirely consistent to believe that young people often act impetuously and lack judgment, but, at the same time, to believe that those who commit premeditated murder are -- at least sometimes -- just as culpable as adults." Scalia's point -- that a 17-year-old can be as morally liable as an 18-year-old -- is, we think, undisputable. The question then is: What to do about it? A closely divided Supreme Court gave its answer March 1 when, by a vote of 5-4, it ruled that the death penalty for juveniles was a violation of the Constitution's Eighth Amendment prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishment." The decision was in keeping with recent precedents. In 1988, the court ruled that executing those who were 16 or under at the time they committed their crime was unconstitutional; and, in June 2002, it said that the mentally retarded could not be subject to the ultimate penalty. Still, the Scalia dissent (in which Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas joined) rankles. True, society draws lines around an 18th birthday and declares that what a teenager cant do one day (such as vote or leave home and rent an apartment) he or she can do the next. Nevertheless, it seems cruel for society to say that a murderer of 17-years-and-364-days-of-age faces one penalty, while a commensurate crime by an 18-year-old faces a much harsher sanction. It seems cruel because it is cruel. Cruel and unusual. Scalia is an originalist, by which it is meant that he looks at the "plain text" of the law -- no context, no "legislative history," no adapting old standards to new mores. The fault in that approach is perhaps no more evident than in the court's death penalty cases, where the justices must grapple with the Eighth Amendment prohibition on inflicting "cruel and unusual punishments." At the time the Bill of Rights was debated, the drafters were aware that they had been vague. They could have specified the types of punishments they meant to forbid (and if they'd done so the list would likely have been drawn based on the actions of British invaders during the Revolutionary War.) But they chose not to be specific. They chose, in other words, to leave the interpretation of what constitutes "cruel and unusual" to the generations to come. That's us. Today, the barest of court majorities performs legal jujitsu to arrive at the conclusion that state-sanctioned killing of teenagers is cruel -- what else could one call it? -- or unusual, despite the fact that the United States was 1 of only 6 nations, including China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, that allowed for a juvenile death penalty. Better that the court would take the advice of one of its departed members, Justice Harry Blackmun, and just stop "tinkering with the machinery of death." State sanctioned killing is cruel and unusual whether it is carried out against a 17-year-old, a 27-year-old, or a 75-year-old. And the Supreme Court should say so. (source: National Catholic Reporter) ****************** Eliminate the death penalty Optimists should be heartened by last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling outlawing capital punishment for juveniles, which noted this country's "evolving sense of decency" on the issue of executing minors. That's good news. But an "evolving sense of decency" means that the death penalty itself, relic of a more bestial, less enlightened past, no longer has a place here or anywhere else. The court, by a single vote, decided a case challenging the constitutionality of executing people who committed their crimes at 16 or 17. The majority recognized that on this issue, America has been both isolated and hypocritical compared with other nations. "It is fair to say that the United States now stands alone in a world that has turned its face against the juvenile death penalty," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. According to Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, 226 juveniles have been sentenced to death since 1976. Last week's ruling spared 72 remaining on Death Row, and forced prosecutors to rethink pending cases, including those against Lee Malvo, who as a teen joined John Muhammad in a D.C.-area shooting spree. Muhammad was sentenced to die, but Malvo got life in Virginia; Louisiana and Alabama prosecutors were weighing capital charges against him. The issue, though, isn't whether to execute or free Malvo, or the man whose case the high court decided, Christopher Simmons, who at 17 killed a woman in Missouri. Long terms, even with no parole, are fine with me in the most heinous cases. For those methodically working against the death penalty and for more reasonable solutions, it's "Where do we go from here?" A few years ago the Supreme Court banned executions of the mentally retarded. What about the mentally ill? Some 10 % of those on U.S. Death Rows suffer from severe mental illness, and up to a dozen are executed each year, says David Elliott, of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. There is also a need to revisit the issue of racial disparities in the meting out of death sentences, and to address the competency of lawyers for many defendants who end up on death row. The main path to abolition of the death penalty, however, runs through the statehouses. As "favorable as this ruling was, the center of gravity has shifted from the Supreme Court to the state legislatures," Elliott says. I am optimistic that in my lifetime, the day will arrive when that "evolving sense of decency" means complete elimination of capital punishment. (source: Opinion, E.R. Shipp, New York Daily News) NEW YORK: Foes of death penalty outnumber advocates A new poll shows most New York State voters would rather see the worst criminals jailed for life instead of executed. The poll by Siena College Research Institute showed that 42% of voters support capital punishment while 46% oppose it. But when life without parole is offered as an alternative to execution of heinous criminals, 56% of voters favor the nonlethal punishment. The poll comes amid fierce legislative debate over whether the death penalty should be reinstated. The state's highest court nixed the statute last June. Although the GOP-led Senate has passed a measure that addresses the flaws identified by the Court of Appeals, Assembly Democrats say capital punishment is too costly and that innocent people could be executed. In the city, only 32% said the death penalty should be reinstituted. In the suburbs, 49% of voters backed it. The Legislature's most ardent death penalty supporter, Sen. Dale Volker (R-Depew), questioned the survey's accuracy and predicted that enough lawmakers will be out to save their jobs next year to put the death penalty back on the books. "The Democrats will do this next year because they know what will happen to them if they don't," Volker said. But Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (D-Westchester), a death penalty foe, said of the poll: "It's a great relief to see the politics come our way. It shows there is a stong moral force to people's concerns." (source: New York Daily News) **************************** NEW YORKERS OPPOSE NEW DEATH PENALTY New York voters narrowly oppose reinstating the death penalty, with 46 percent opposed and 42 percent in favor, a new poll shows. The Siena College Research Institute survey also found New Yorkers overwhelmingly favor - by 56 % to 29 % - imposing a sentence of life without parole as an alternative. 48 % of men favor the death penalty, compared with just 36 % of women. Capital punishment received its strongest backing in the New York City suburbs, with 49 % in favor and 38 % opposed. In sharp contrast, just 32 % of city voters favor the death penalty, compared with 56 % who are opposed. The survey results came a day before the Republican-controlled state Senate was expected to take up a measure reinstating capital punishment. Gov. Pataki won election in 1994 promising to bring back the death penalty, which former Gov. Mario Cuomo had repeatedly vetoed. (source: New York Post) *********************** 2 GOP legislators call for return of death penalty Citing the second anniversary of the killing of 2 police detectives in Tompkinsville, two Staten Island Republicans yesterday urged the state's top Democrat to reinstate the death penalty in New York. "These devoted officers braved the colossal dangers inherent in police work and paid the ultimate price to uphold their oath to protect and serve," stated a letter sent Monday by Assemblymen Matthew Mirones (R-East Shore/Brooklyn) and Vincent Ignizio (R-South Shore) to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan). "We owe it to the victims' families, their fellow officers and prosecutors to provide all options -- including a death penalty -- available to them in these types of cases." Detectives James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews were slain in a buy-and-bust gun sting on March, 10, 2003, at St. Pauls Avenue and Hannah Street. The case against accused triggerman Ronell Wilson, 22, originally charged at the local level, was transferred to federal jurisdiction so he could face the death penalty if convicted. New York state's death penalty was reinstated in 1995, spurred by then-rookie Gov. George Pataki, who had used it as a linchpin election issue the previous year. The bill restoring it was co-sponsored by then-Staten Island Assemblyman Eric Vitaliano, a Democrat who is now a judge. But in June, the state Court of Appeals found a key provision of the law unconstitutional, effectively scuttling it. Capital cases, including Wilson's, became life-without-parole cases. While Pataki, a Republican, and Senate Republican Majority Leader Joseph Bruno call for a new law, Mirones and Ignizio allege that Silver has "balked." And they accused the Democratic-controlled Assembly's Codes Committee, which handles crime legislation, of blocking the effort. "We urge you to permit an open and inclusive capital punishment debate and vote," the letter said. Silver spokesman Charles Carrier told the Advance the Assembly held five public hearings on the death penalty and is developing a report. He said the issue cannot be judged hastily, as the law has been around for 10 years and crime is down. Meanwhile, opposition to the death penalty has been growing in many states, as DNA evidence and other new techniques have determined that some people convicted of serious crimes did not commit them, leaving open the possibility that innocent people have been executed under capital punishment. In addition, Carrier noted the law has cost taxpayers upwards of $200 million -- and that no one has been executed since it went back on the books. A wide spectrum of public opinion was heard during the hearings, the spokesman added. (source: Staten Island Advance) NEW JERSEY: Redefining death-penalty age limits New Jersey law says anyone younger than 18 is a juvenile. Juvenile offenders cannot be sentenced to death. So even if a youth has wantonly murdered someone for the thrill of it, the punishment is a prison term. Nineteen other states have been less lenient, authorizing the death penalty for killers 16 and 17 years old. That was permitted under a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment applied, with respect to age, to those 15 and younger. Now the court, in a 5-to-4 decision, has raised the age threshold to 18. The opinion of the majority last week was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who in the interim changed his mind on the issue. He said that standards of decency on the death penalty were evolving; that five more states, totaling 30, had banned executions of 16- and 17-year-olds, and that world opinion was nearly unanimous that it was wrong. In a forceful dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that what foreign governments did should be irrelevant to United States policy, that the court majority was imposing its view by diktat, that it was proclaiming itself sole arbiter of the nation's moral standards. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor again was somewhere in the middle. She said that it was not inappropriate for the court to take note of changing standards in other countries. But she also disagreed with the majority that a new national consensus on 18 had developed, and that the execution of juveniles was always disproportionate to their moral culpability. The reality is more complicated, she said. Case-by-case determinations of young offenders' maturity and guilt make for better justice. "Chronological age is not an unfailing measure of psychological development, and common experience suggests that many 17-year-olds are more mature than the average young 'adult.'" I think she is right. We see again the lessons she drew from real-world experience as a legislator in Arizona and, if I may say so, as a mother. The case before the court involved a Missouri defendant, Christopher Simmons, who was 17 in 1993 when he discussed with two younger friends committing a burglary and murdering someone. He was quite specific as to how he would do it. He would tie the victim up and push him or her off a bridge. He assured the friends that if caught they would get away with it because they were juveniles. At 2 a.m. one night, he and one of his buddies gained entrance to the home of a neighbor, Shirley Crook. They turned on a light, which wakened her. She sat up in bed, and asked, "Who's there?" Simmons ordered her out of bed, bound her hands behind her back, covered her eyes with duct tape, took her purse, forced her out of the house and into her car, and drove to a bridge over a river. Simmons pushed her, still alive and conscious, over the edge. She drowned. New Jersey had a somewhat similar case in 1997, the pizza murders in rural Sussex County. The killers were Thomas Koskovich, then 18, and Jayson Vreeland, 17. 11 days before the killings Koskovich and a confederate stole weapons from a gun store. They at first intended to sell them. Then the plot turned to murder and the confederate bowed out. Koskovich and a new partner, Vreeland, fired the guns for practice, shooting at trees and deer, and Vreeland helped scout the murder site. A day before the crime, Koskovich told a girlfriend that he was planning to kill someone, that murder would give him an entre to the Mafia. The following night Vreeland and Koskovich called pizza parlors at random, seeking a delivery that would turn into an ambush. One shop accepted the order. When the pizza shop owner and an assistant showed up at a remote, abandoned house and stopped, Koskovich and Vreeland approached the car and shot the 2 dead. The prosecution was able to prove premeditation, with chilling taped confessions by both youths. Vreeland said the crimes were thrill killings. Each defendant was convicted at a separate trial. Koskovich was sentenced to death, but after a state Supreme Court appeal, a new jury gave him life. Vreeland got life imprisonment, the only sentence available because he was underage at the time of the murders. I would apply Justice O'Connor's standard here. Was Vreeland as culpable as Koskovich? I think so. There is disturbing evidence in the cases of several 16- and 17-year-old killers convicted in other states with laws like ours that they committed their crimes knowing that if caught they could not be sentenced to death. Regardless, the Supreme Court has ruled, and there is no turning back. (source: Opinion, James Ahearn is former managing editor of The Record)
