April 18
TEXAS:
El Paso Senator Speaks Out On No Parole Decision
Texas juries may soon have a new choice when deciding the punishment for
defendants convicted of capital murder.
The senate has approved legislation to allow juries to sentence murderers
to life in prison without parole.
El Paso's Senator, Eliot Shapleigh says it gives juries that don't feel
like death is appropriate, to use life without parole.
"There is a death row case out of Pecos, Texas where the guy has been set
free because DNA evidence established that they did not do the crime. I
think if we are going to have a death penalty in Texas we need to make
sure the person charged with the crime did the crime," said Senator Eliot
Shapleigh, Democrat-El Paso.
Under the bill, the 2 possible sentences for people convicted of capital
murder would be execution by lethal injection or life in prison without
parole.
(source: KFOX News)
COLORADO:
Supreme Court: Killers Can't Get Death Penalty
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday 2 convicted killers shouldn't be
sentenced to death.
Instead, Randy Canister and Abraham Hagos will be sentenced to life in
prison.
Both were convicted in separate cases under a law that required 3-judge
panels to decide death-penalty sentences. The cases were stalled over
questions about who can impose capital punishment.
Before either man was sentenced, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it
unconstitutional to allow judges to make death-penalty decisions. That
prompted Colorado lawmakers to require death-penalty decisions be made by
juries.
The cases of Canister and Hagos are the last remaining Colorado
death-penalty cases in doubt under the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2002
ruling.
Hagos already is serving life in prison in an unrelated case. He was
convicted in Denver of hiring other people to kill a man expected to
testify against him in a drug trial.
Canister is being held in the Arapahoe County Jail and was convicted in
the execution-style shootings of 3 teenagers in Aurora.
(source: CBS News)
IDAHO:
Panel discusses death penalty
The humanity of the death penalty was put to question Wednesday night in
the Hatch Ballroom in the Student Union at Boise State University.
6 students (Alicia Records, Mario Borges, Steve Marick, Don Easteppe,
Shannan Brimmer, Adriane Wright, and Katie Medellin) from a Social Work
301 class organized the event to bring the issue to BSUs doorstep.
More than 85 people attended the forum. The majority were students. The
audience was asked to submit questions concerning the issue to the panel
of speakers: Boise State Dean of the College of Social Sciences and Public
Affairs Michael Blankenship, former Idaho State Representative on the
Judiciary Rules and Administration Committee Henry Kulczyk, founder of the
conservative Idaho Family Forum Dennis Mansfield, and Rev. Leeland
Hunefeld of the Meridian United Methodist Church.
Jim Weatherby, chair of the BSU political science department, moderated
the forum.
The speakers were split up into the proponents for capital punishment
(Kulczyk and Mansfield) and the opponents of it (Blankenship and
Hunefeld).
Each presented his opinion, then answered questions from the audience
concerning innocence, drugs and alcohol, poverty, war, mental illness,
mental retardation, ethnicity, and change.
"If you take a life, that life is still valuable," Mansfield said. "So
valuable that if you take it, you must surrender yours as well."
"There needs to be consequences for actions, and those consequences should
equate to those actions," Kulczyk said.
"What is the purpose of punishment?" asked Blankenship. "Retribution?
Deterrence? Rehabilitation? You have to be around to be rehabilitated."
The average American on death row spends about 7.2 years in prison before
being executed, but some prisoners have been incarcerated since the late
1970s. Since 1976, 956 prisoners have been executed in the U.S., mostly in
the south (434 in Texas and Virginia combined). One prisoner has been
executed in Idaho during that span. The 1st man to be executed on American
soil was a Spanish spy in 1632. Some 22,000 executions have been noted
overall.
The majority of prisoners executed are white (58 percent). The majority of
victims in death-penalty cases are white (81 percent). The numbers show
that someone who murders a white person is more likely to get sentenced to
death than someone who murders a black person: 12 white people have been
executed for murdering a black person, while 193 black people have been
executed for murdering a white person.
"People of color are not treated equally, and justice is not blind,"
Blankenship said.
Since 1976, most executions have been performed by lethal injection (788),
and 152 were by electrocution, 11 in the gas chamber, 3 were hanged and 2
were executed by the firing squad.
Financials play a part.
"Of those people executed, 90 % couldnt afford a lawyer at the start if
their trial," Hunefeld said.
"You can purchase the best justice you can afford," Dr. Blankenship said.
Kulczyk mentioned the introduction of DNA evidence as a witness to crime.
Blankenship added that a large number of innocent prisoners were
exonerated with the aid of DNA evidence, prisoners that would have been
executed.
"You live with it; it is a constant visitor at your table," Mansfield said
about the families involved in capital cases.
"The state does not help them get the closure they need," Dr. Blankenship
said. He talked about families that go to watch the executions and then
say, "That's it?"
"How'd they get there?" Dr. Blankenship asked about the prisoners on death
row. "Sexual, physical abuse and abandonment share some of the blame on
how each of us gets to the pass where we take the different paths of our
lives."
"Should the judge, jury, prosecutors, etc. be executed in wrongful
executions?" Kulczyk asked. "If they continue with the prosecution, there
should be criminal charges if they knew the person was innocent."
Dr. Blankenship noted that the U.S. is the only Western country that still
permits capital punishment. Those that still do are: China, Iran, Iraq,
certain African countries, Saudi Arabia, etc. "Are these the countries we
want to be associated with?" he asked. "What is our place in this world?
Are we sick of death? Have we had our fill? We are asking a human being to
put a needle in, push a button and take a lifethink about the person
carrying out the punishment."
The forum, sponsored by Catholic Charities of Idaho, the ACLU and the BSU
School of Social Work, and with 3 ministers on the panel, had a heavy
religious overtone. The panelists talked about biblical law, an eye for an
eye and Jesus' parable about the prostitute, asking the crowd, "ye who
have not sinned, cast the first stone." They spoke about stoning (a person
was buried up to his/her neck then hit with small rocks, everyone got a
throw). They talked about the difficulty of incarceration in history and
how efficient it has become, of the old prison life of short-terms and
hard labor and todays long-term easy-time.
Hunefeld spoke if the Radical Nature of Gods Grace, of how no human has an
ability to forgive beyond that of God and that we must give prisoners the
opportunity to achieve that forgiveness.
Switching to the term, Hate Crime.
"If you go out and kill someone, that's a hate crime, whether they're gay
or black or white protestant," Kulczyk said.
"A society has to address those crimes as a threat to society as a whole,
not just to the individual," Hunefeld said.
A member of the audience asked a question about how or what to change in
the system.
"We have set the criminal justice system up to fail," Dr. Blankenship
said. "It's ill-equipped to deal with violent crime. Rehabilitation,
therapy, anything, its not working; try something else."
"You can't prevent crime," Kulczyk said. "We are in a fallen-state of sin.
The police dont prevent crime. They catch them, convict them, and punish
them."
Mansfield mentioned the movie Dead Man Walking and how the lead character
on death row had gotten serious with the guy who made him. "Eternity has
its scope on us," Mansfield said.
"When you take a life from someone, you must be cautious," Kulczyk said in
conclusion. "We are men. Men are fallible. It is through these debates and
discussions of issues that solutions come." The forum ended with applause
and thanks.
"The purpose was to educate the public and students, to inform," Katie
Medellin said. "I think it went very well."
(source : The (Boise State University) Arbeiter)
USA:
McVeigh's father deals with a different loss ---- Going about his daily
life anything but easy for retiree
"I'm trying to treat it like any other day. I realize what it is but..."
The words stopped there.
Bill McVeigh's voice trailed off into an awkward 7-second silence. That
was his response in fetching up his thoughts on the approaching 10th
anniversary of the worst act of terrorism committed on American soil, the
bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City.
The last time I saw Bill McVeigh, was about 26 hours after his son,
Timothy J. McVeigh was put by death by lethal injection at the Federal
Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana on the morning of June 11, 2001.
There was a fluorescent orange cardboard sign on Bill McVeigh's garage
door with a hand-written message that said something like: "No Media
Allowed". My memory is fuzzy about the exact wording but in true Bill
McVeigh fashion, the language wasn't much harsher than that. He was and
remains too much of a decent, humble, and plainspoken sort of man to have
written anything overtly rude. He has invited reporters into his home and
given tours of his garden. I vividly recall chatting with him in his
living room, with an NBA basketball game providing background distraction,
while we ate pizza.
And in the days following his son's execution, McVeigh has maintained
roughly the same routine he's followed since he retired in 1999 as a
production worker from the local radiator plant in town. "It's been as
normal as possible. It ain't normal. I try to do it, but it's always
there. and it's always going to be there," he said.
That routine is unremarkable. "I'm in two leagues. I golf almost every
day, play those nine holes. I've got the golf leagues and bowling."
Were he not the father of Timothy McVeigh, 65 year-old Bill McVeigh, would
probably best be known for his meticulously groomed and lush 50-foot by
70-foot backyard garden at his modest home in upstate Pendelton, New York.
He proudly lists the contents of that garden: "strawberries. asparagus.
peas. onions. corn. beans. cabbage." His nemesis? "Cauliflower, it's the
only thing I can't grow."
By disposition, McVeigh is an amiable, friendly, and solidly alpha-male
type who is spawned of a generation that would hardly speak openly of
internal strife, let alone show up for a confessional on Oprah's yellow
sofa.
Bud Welch, who lost his daughter, Julie Marie Welch, in the Oklahoma City
bombing and became an outspoken anti-death penalty advocate, maintains a
friendship by telephone with Bill. "If you go visit him, he'll sit and
talk to you all afternoon, {but} he doesn't like to be exposed and he's
content with working in his garden," he says. "He's not anti-social
because he does enjoy going out with others and being involved in sporting
activities and running the bingo games at church." Welch, a Catholic
himself added: "Of course, if you're Catholic, you've got to have a bingo
game."
Welch's friendship with Bill McVeigh is the subject of a movie titled "Bud
& Bill" that is to be produced by Robert Greenwald later next year.
That friendship is something Welch deliberately works at: "I'm concerned
with his welfare. I think somehow it's easier for me than it is for me
than Bill and we've both buried children. When your parents die, you go to
the hilltop and you bury them, when your children die, you bury them in
your heart, and it's forever."
Welch's concern is palpable: "Bill is worse than most people in keeping
things within him, trying to express emotions, and I think he'd be better
off if he'd let some emotions out."
Does Bill McVeigh have a message or a sentiment he wishes to express to
the victims and survivors of the bombing? "Not that I can mention. I just
don't. I just don't like to talk about that. I get very nervous. I'm very
aware of it though." He also has no intentions, as he's stated throughout,
of visiting Oklahoma City.
Bill McVeigh is still a father who has lost his son. "Every day, I think
of him almost every day. I don't keep track, you know what I mean, but I
do think about him."
(source: Alice Rhee, NBC News)
