March 23 OHIO: Death Row On The Move State corrections officials say they expect no problems in moving 198 condemned killers more than 100 miles from the Mansfield prison to the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown. The state is moving death row from Mansfield to Youngstown's supermaximum security prison. The move is planned this summer and deputy corrections chief Terry Collins says he's confident it can be accomplished without incident. Officials say it is a cost-saving measure and is unrelated to 2 inmates' escape attempt from the death row unit in Mansfield last month. The state's public defender says the Youngstown prison is too harsh for most death row inmates. He says the move also will make it harder for their lawyers to meet with them. Ohio's one female inmate sentenced to death is housed at Ohio's women's prison in Marysville. 16 men have been executed since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999. (source: Ohio News Network) ********************* Ohio to transfer death row unit to Youngstown -- State public defender criticizes move -- Ohio moved death row from southern Ohio 10 years ago, in the wake of a bloody prison uprising that killed a guard and nine inmates. The state announced Tuesday that it would move the unit for condemned killers again, this time to save money. The move to Youngstown's supermaximum security prison, scheduled for this summer, is unrelated to an attempted escape from the death row unit at the prison in Mansfield last month or to security concerns, said Terry Collins, deputy director of the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. The Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown already has staff and space to handle the additional inmates, Collins said. The move "would give us the ability to close the death row unit at Mansfield and therefore be able to meet some of the needs of our budget," Collins said. Collins said the move could save millions of dollars but no specific figure was available Tuesday. The supermax prison, built in 1998, was meant for Ohio inmates with the worst discipline problems, but not necessarily those who committed the most heinous crimes. Ohio had 198 men on death row Tuesday at the Mansfield Correctional Institution. One woman who has been sentenced to death is housed at Ohio's women's prison in Marysville. Ohio moved death row to Mansfield from the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville after the 1993 riots. The state will continue to execute condemned killers in Lucasville, Collins said. The state's public defender slammed the announcement, criticizing the Youngstown facility as overly harsh and saying it will hurt efforts to represent the inmates in court. The move will force public defenders from Columbus to nearly double their driving time to meet with clients at Youngstown in Northeast Ohio, said State Public Defender David Bodiker. "We try to keep the morale of the people on death row up and try to do what we can," Bodiker said. "They're sitting there anticipating execution. They're probably going to think execution is welcome if they have to stay at Youngstown." (source: The Plain Dealer) USA: Catholics vs. death penalty The Catholic bishops' announcement of a new campaign to end the death penalty is fitting for this Easter week, when Christians mark the death and resurrection of Jesus. It's also a welcome change from the Catholic leadership's recent overarching emphasis on opposing abortion and gay marriage. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which announced the campaign this week, has spoken out against capital punishment since the 1970s. But that stance has recently been overshadowed by the group's unswerving and outspoken views on some other issues, particularly abortion. The lopsided emphasis came to a head last year when the conference declared that politicians who support abortion rights are "cooperating in evil," but made far less of an issue out of elected officials' stands on the death penalty. In New Jersey, Newark Archbishop John Myers instructed Catholics that they should judge candidates by their positions on abortion. Capital punishment was less clear-cut, the archbishop said, because Catholic teachings allow executions when they are necessary to protect the community. Such election-year pronouncements by Archbishop Myers and some other Catholic leaders were disturbing because they ignored President Bush's poor record on the death penalty: More than 150 people were executed in Texas while Mr. Bush was governor. It's true Catholic teachings allow for capital punishment in some instances. But Pope John Paul II has made it clear that such instances are so rare in modern society that they are practically nonexistent. Catholic lay people, more than some of their leaders, seem to have gotten the pope's message. A new national poll of Catholics found that support for the death penalty has dropped from 68 % 4 years ago to 48 percent now. That's a bigger decline than in the general population, where support for capital punishment is about 66 %. One Catholic archbishop said the recent exoneration of a number of death row inmates on DNA evidence has helped sway public opinion against the death penalty. Another church official suggested that Americans are losing faith in the idea that putting convicts to death helps crime victims heal. "We've been executing a lot of people," he said, "and we don't feel better." Amen. (source: Opinion, The Bergen Record) PUERTO RICO----re: federal death penalty Puerto Rico may impose death penalty Puerto Rico appears set to carry out its 1st execution in more than 75 years following the conviction of 2 men for murder, El Nuevo Dia reported Wednesday. Hernando Medina Villegas and Lorenzo Catalan Roman have been found guilty of killing security guard Gilberto Rodriguez Cabrera during a robbery 3 years ago. The 2 face sentencing next month. Though the death penalty is banned in Puerto Rico, the U.S. territory does fall under the jurisdiction of federal law, which could mean a death sentence for the duo. If sentenced to death, Villegas and Roman will likely die by lethal injection. (source: Big News Network)
