death penalty news
April 19, 2005
USA:
Lethal injection faces fight from condemned
A Kentucky case that begins today is the latest legal challenge to lethal
injection, the nation's most used but increasingly controversial form of
execution.
Lethal injection is under assault from condemned convicts across the USA
who claim an anesthetic administered with poison chemicals can leave a
person conscious enough to feel excruciating pain. The debate moves into a
Frankfort, Ky., courtroom where lawyers for two convicted murderers will
ask judges to strike down or at least suspend such executions as
unconstitutional punishment.
The plaintiffs - Ralph Baze murdered two police officers with an assault
rifle and Thomas Bowling killed two robbery victims - plan to present
autopsy evidence allegedly showing that a recently executed Kentucky
prisoner was still aware when deadly chemicals stopped his heart.
"Of all the evidentiary hearings that have been held so far, this is likely
to be the fullest and most balanced," says Deborah Denno, a Fordham
University law professor who has written on lethal injection and will
testify for the prisoners. "We've come a long way in terms of our knowledge
of the (lethal) drugs and how they're used, (and) this case takes advantage
of that."
Lawyers for Kentucky charge in court papers that the case is a veiled
attempt to outlaw all forms of execution. They say stopping lethal
injection, the chief means of execution for 37 of 38 states that use the
death penalty, would amount to suspending capital punishment since "more
humane methods" do not exist.
Since 1988, at least 17 states and federal courts have considered the
issue. But none has struck down lethal injection.
Lethal injection opponents have been gathering momentum, however. The
Lancet, a British medical publication, reported last Wednesday that
autopsies from 49 executed killers found that 43 had anesthesia levels
below that required for surgery.
In February 2004, a New Jersey appellate court suspended lethal injection
until state officials can explain why the chemicals are chosen and how they
are administered.
And last May, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously agreed to permit a
prisoner on Alabama's death row to challenge lethal injection. The
prisoner, a longtime intravenous drug user, claims that cutting a path
through his flesh to embed a chemical drip would cause excessive pain.
Lethal injection was introduced in 1978 as a gentler alternative to the
historic methods of execution: electrocution, gassing, hanging and
shooting. Since the death penalty was resumed in 1977, 790 of 958
executions have been by injection.
Lethal injections in Kentucky begin with a large dose of sodium thiopental,
an anesthetic often used in surgery. It is followed with pancuronium
bromide, a muscle blocker that halts breathing, and by potassium chloride,
a cardiotoxin that stops the heart. The Kentucky formula is virtually
identical to those in 27 of the 28 states that have divulged how executions
are carried out, Denno says.
David Smith, Jeff Middendorf and Brian Judy, lawyers defending lethal
injection in Kentucky, argue in court papers that the "three-chemical
cocktail" has been proven "effective and reliable."
Not so, says David Barron, a public defender representing the condemned
killers. Autopsy results from a prisoner Kentucky executed in 1999, Barron
says, show little of the anesthetic had been absorbed before the killing
drugs were administered. It's likely, Barron says, that the prisoner was
conscious but appeared to be unconscious because his muscles were paralyzed
by the follow-up drug.
If so, Barron says, the prisoner experienced the "torture" of suffocating
to death or having his veins seared by the heart toxin.
"That's clearly cruel and unusual (punishment)," Barron says.
He also says the Kentucky formula may leave condemned prisoners unconscious
but still able to feel pain. It's impossible to know, Barron says, because
Kentucky's execution formula, like that of most other states, has never
been tested in a laboratory or by computer modeling.
The formulas, Denno noted in a law journal article in 2002, appear to be
based on notes that a University of Oklahoma anesthesiology professor wrote
in 1978 after a state legislator asked him to suggest an alternative to
lethal gassing or electrocution.
Kentucky's lawyers dismiss those arguments as "speculation." They say the
dose of anesthetic is more than enough to ensure a prisoner feels no pain.
Even if lethal injection causes some pain, they argue, states are not
required to use the "least severe means" of execution.
The Kentucky court's decision is likely to be appealed by whichever side
loses. If lethal injection in its present form is found unconstitutional,
states might increase the amount of anesthesia used, says Michael Rushford,
president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation of Sacramento and a
death penalty supporter.
(source: USA Today / Yahoo News)
TEXAS --- impending executions:
Texas Set for Two Executions on Same Night
Texas, the leading U.S. death penalty state, is set to carry out a rare
double execution on Wednesday night, when two men convicted of separate
murders will receive lethal injections.
Barring intervention by the courts or Gov. Rick Perry, Milton Mathis, 26,
will be put to death first, followed quickly by Douglas Roberts, 42,
officials said on Monday.
"Witnesses to the first execution will be escorted out and witnesses to the
second will be brought in," said prison spokeswoman Michelle Lyons.
"All the medical supplies and bedding will be switched. When we proceed
will depend, as always, on what is working in the courts," she said.
Texas leads the nation with 340 executions since resuming capital
punishment in 1982 after the lifting of a death penalty by the U.S. Supreme
Court. It was the last state to kill two people on the same night.
That took place on Aug. 9, 2000 when Brian Roberson, 36 and Oliver Cruz,
33, died 30 minutes apart in the Texas death chamber, which is at a state
prison in Huntsville, 75 miles north of Houston.
Texas also did it on Jan. 31, 1995 and June 4, 1997. Before that, it had
not happened in the state since Sept. 5, 1951.
The most known executions in Texas in one day took place on Feb. 8, 1924
when the state used its new electric chair to put five people to death.
Lyons said Mathis and Roberts would be held in separate cells near the
death chamber and would have separate chaplains to assist them in the hours
leading up to execution.
Mathis was the first of the two to have an execution date set and,
therefore, shortly after 6 p.m. CDT will be the first to be strapped into
the lone gurney in the death chamber and injected with a lethal mix of
chemicals.
His body will be removed; then officials will change the needles and tubes
used to inject the chemicals, change the gurney sheets and bring in the
next inmate.
"We basically treat it as two separate events that happen to happen on the
same evening," said Lyons.
Having two executions on the same day is just a coincidence because the
dates are set by the judges who preside over the criminal cases of each inmate.
The judges usually do not consult with each other and their only scheduling
criteria is that no executions are performed around Christmas or Easter,
officials said.
Mathis was condemned for a 1998 shooting spree at a reputed drug den near
Houston that left two people dead and another paralyzed.
Roberts was sentenced to death for kidnapping and stabbing a San Antonio
man to death in 1996.
They would be the fifth and sixth people executed in Texas this year.
(source: Reuters)
COLORADO:
The Bible, the Death Penalty, and Legal Nonsense in Colorado
The Colorado Supreme Court recently upheld a lower court's decision
reversing the sentence of a murderer who had been given the death penalty.
Why? Because the jurors were found to have consulted the Bible in reaching
their decision.
In this case, the issues of secularism, legal principles, and moral
reasoning come into conflict, only because a slim majority on Colorado's
highest court found that when jurors consult the Bible, they violate the
legal requirement that jurors should follow only the instructions of the
court itself. In its own way, this decision by the Colorado Supreme Court
demonstrates this nation's growing allergic reaction to any claim that
morality and moral reasoning should be rooted in the Bible.
The facts of this case appear simple enough. Robert Harlan was convicted of
kidnapping a waitress, Rhonda Maloney, and later raping and murdering her.
At some point in the commission of Harlan's crime, Maloney escaped and
caught the attention of a passing motorist, Jaquie Creazzo. Eventually,
Harlan shot Creazzo, leaving her paralyzed. He then murdered Maloney in an
act of extreme violence and brutality.
After his conviction, the trial court jury was given instructions
concerning the sentencing phase of the trial. Colorado law--in contrast to
the law of other states--specifically instructs jurors that they must
arrive at an "individual moral assessment" in making their decision
regarding the death penalty. In the end, the jurors voted unanimously for
the death penalty. Months later, an investigator working for Harlan's
defense attorneys interviewed jurors about the nature of their
deliberations. In the course of these interviews, some jurors indicated
that Bibles had been brought into the jury room during deliberations and
that at least some jurors had mentioned specific texts as relevant to the
decision the jurors faced. In the Colorado Supreme Court's written
decision, the court found that evidence adduced at the trial court's
hearing shows that at least one juror brought a Bible, a Bible index, and
handwritten notes into the jury room and shared information from the Bible
with other jurors. Further, the court found that "these extraneous
materials contained a passage commanding the death penalty for murderers
and another instructing obedience to civil authorities." Lastly, "these
passages were pointed out by at least one juror to another juror before the
jury reached its unanimous verdict imposing the death sentence." The trial
court later concluded "that use of the Bible in the jury room to
demonstrate a requirement of the death penalty for the crime of murder
could influence a typical juror to reject a life sentence for Harlan.
Therefore, the trial court found that Colorado's legal standards require
reversal of the jury's death sentence verdict in this case."
Prosecutors appealed the trial court's findings and the case eventually
found its way to the Colorado Supreme Court. On March 28, that court--in a
3-2 decision--decided, "we can no longer say that Harlan's death sentence
was not influenced by passion, prejudice, or some other arbitrary factor."
This sharply divided court produced a decision that apparently sets legal
principles and moral reasoning on a collision course. Colorado law offers
protections to defendants in capital cases, requiring that a death sentence
not be influenced by the very "passion, prejudice, or some other arbitrary
factor" that at least three Colorado Supreme Court jurists were willing to
see in the use of the Bible in jury deliberations.
Again and again, the court's decision documents the fact that the trial
court instructed the jury that it was to base its decision in the
sentencing phase on the evidence provided in the case and "nothing else
whatsoever." The judge actually instructed the jury that it was to rely
upon absolutely no knowledge or moral reasoning not presented in the
limited context of the trial. "I just want you to come to this court
focused on this case ready to listen to the evidence in this case and to
base your decision only on evidence that you get at this trial, nothing
else whatsoever," he instructed. Just before opening statements in the
trial began, the judge admonished the jury with these words: "Your purpose
as jurors is to decide what the facts are, and your decision must be based
solely upon the evidence presented in this courtroom."
During the trial, the jurors were sequestered and cut off from media
coverage, not only of this specific murder case, but of all legal issues.
Furthermore, they were isolated from telephone and other communication
devices and were allowed to speak with family members only when an officer
of the court was present.
After reaching its guilty verdict, the jury was then assigned the task of
deliberating the appropriate sentence. With this crime, the two possible
sentences were life in prison without chance of parole and the death
penalty. According to Colorado law, any verdict imposing the death penalty
must be unanimous, and the jury was again instructed that it "must not base
its decision on passion, prejudice, or some other arbitrary response."
Beyond this, the judge did instruct the jury that "it could consider mercy
or sympathy for Harlan based on his allocution statements."
In the judge's instructions to the jury concerning its death penalty
deliberations, specific instructions unique to Colorado were presented to
the jury. "This consideration involves a process in which you must apply
your reasoned judgment in deciding whether the situation calls for life
imprisonment or the imposition of the death penalty. You must still all
make a further individual moral assessment of whether you've been convinced
beyond a reasonable doubt that the death penalty instead of life in prison
is the appropriate punishment." Finally, the court instructed: "You should
attempt to arrive at a reasoned judgment as to whether you have been
convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the mitigating factors do not
outweigh the aggravating factor or factors."
Note clearly that the jurors were told that it was their responsibility to
"make a further individual moral assessment" concerning the death penalty
in this precise case. How are jurors to make that "individual moral
assessment?"
In sequestering the jury, the court had carefully eliminated access to the
media, removing televisions and radios from the hotel rooms where the
jurors were housed. Telephones and other means of communication were also
removed. But the court did not remove copies of the Bible, placed in the
rooms by the Gideons chapter.
According to the court's written decision, "Several jurors studied Bibles
Friday night in their hotel rooms, looking for passages relating to capital
punishment and a citizen's duty to obey the law, and took notes on the
location of particular passages." One juror "took notes on two passages."
The first passage was Leviticus 24:20-21 and the second was Romans 13:1.
The Leviticus passage includes the instruction, "Thus the one who kills an
animal shall make it good, but the one who kills a man shall be put to
death." Romans 13:1 reads, "Every person is to be in subjection to the
governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those
which exist are established by God."
According to the record, at least one juror brought a Bible into the jury's
deliberation room on Saturday morning, and at least one copy of the Bible
"contained a study index with which a reader could locate passages on
particular subjects." At some point, one juror showed another juror "the
Bible text from Leviticus commanding the death penalty for murder, as well
as the Romans text." Shortly thereafter, the jury returned a unanimous
verdict that imposed the death penalty on Robert Harlan.
When an investigator working for Harlan's defense counsel discovered the
use of the Bible in the jury's death penalty discussion, his attorneys
immediately filed a "Motion to Vacate the Death Sentence Due to Jurors Use
of the Bible During Penalty Phase Deliberations."
The trial court later held an evidentiary hearing and determined that the
death penalty verdict must be vacated. In its own decision, the Colorado
Supreme Court upheld the trial court's action and stated, "We can no longer
say that the death penalty verdict was not influenced by passion,
prejudice, or some other arbitrary factor."
In explaining its decision, the Colorado high court indicated that it had
adopted an "objective test" for determining whether or not prejudice had
entered into the jury's deliberations. "The relevant question for
determining prejudice is whether there is a reasonable possibility that the
extraneous information influenced the verdict to the detriment of the
defendant," the decision stated.
Note clearly what this court decided. The Colorado Supreme Court has
decided that the very fact that one or more jurors consulted the Bible in
the course of making the "individual moral assessment" that was its
assignment invalidated the jury's unanimous action. In other words, the
Bible was labeled as the very kind of "extraneous information" that is
likely to illicit passion and prejudice on the part of jurors. The court
concluded "that there is a reasonable possibility that the Bible material
introduced into the jury room could have influenced a typical juror to vote
for the death penalty instead of a life sentence, to Harlan's obvious
detriment."
In an interesting twist, the court explicitly found that the Bible was
"extraneous" to the case and that for a juror to bring the Bible or to take
handwritten notes from the Bible "was improper and constituted misconduct."
The high court ruled that, since the Bible had not been directly introduced
at the trial as evidence, it could not be consulted by jurors in making
their own moral assessment of the death penalty. This flies in the face of
the fact that the defense had made an explicit reference to the Bible in
pleading for mercy in Harlan's sentencing phase. In a bizarre
misapplication of the text, Harlan's attorneys apparently argued that as
God had extended mercy to Abraham after Abraham had come close to killing
his own son, so the jury should extend mercy to Robert Harlan. Of course,
the attorney's argument is a complete misconstrual and misunderstanding of
Genesis 22:1-18, but the key point is that the defense counsel made an
explicit appeal to the Bible in the first place.
Did not the witnesses who gave sworn testimony in this case place their
hand upon the Bible and repeat the oath, pledging to tell the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth, "so help me God?"
The majority opinion in this case attempted to make a distinction between
the Bible as a written authority and the knowledge of the Bible some jurors
may have possessed and from which they may have drawn insight during the
jury deliberations. "The written word persuasively conveys the authentic
ring of reliable authority in a way that recollected spoken word does not,"
the majority decided. Further, "Some jurors may view biblical texts like
the Leviticus passage at issue here as a factual representation of God's
will. The texts may also be viewed as a legal instruction, issuing from
God, requiring a particular mandatory punishment for murder. Such a 'fact'
is not one presented in evidence in this case and such a 'legal
instruction' is not the law of the state or part of the court's instructions."
Lest the majority's point be left unclear, the decision included this
straightforward sentence: "In a community where 'Holy Scripture' has
factual or legal import for many citizens and the actual text introduced
into the deliberations without authorization by the trial court plainly
instructs mandatory imposition of the death penalty, contrary to state law,
its use in the jury room prior to the penalty phase verdict was prejudicial
to Harlan."
Two justices joined in a dissenting opinion, accusing the court's majority
of elevating "form over substance" and violating the right of jurors to
make the very "individual moral assessment" that was charged as their
responsibility.
In a sweeping dissent, these two justices rejected any claim of juror
misconduct in this case. "Although the jurors were advised of many things
which they could not do during the course of their deliberations, the
jurors were never told to refrain from consulting the Bible or other
religious material." Beyond this, the dissenting justices accused the trial
court of overestimating "both the nature of the extraneous information and
the jurors' use of that information, making conclusions from these
overstated facts which are simply not supported by the record."
More importantly, these justices found "no reasonable possibility that the
jurors' exposure to a biblical passage instructing them to follow Colorado
law was prejudicial to Harlan." The majority opinion "exhibits a complete
lack of faith in the jury system and in the jurors who uphold that system,"
the dissenting justices declared, adding that the majority had engaged in
"second guessing those jurors' abilities to follow the law in spite of and
because of their religious backgrounds."
The dissenting opinion also ransacked the majority opinion's distinction
between the written and remembered forms of the biblical text. "However, by
choosing to define the written version of these commonly known biblical
passages as 'a higher authority,' the majority elevates form over
substance. Many people know large parts of the Bible by heart and can quote
certain passages verbatim with persuasive alacrity, particularly when the
ideas in those passages are as widespread and generally known as those
referenced here. It is without doubt that a juror may relate passages of
scripture from memory during deliberations, and that such recitation would
not even be considered extraneous, much less prejudicial. It makes little
sense, therefore, that the exact same passage in written form is somehow
enshrined with an authority that the spoken or remembered passage lacks."
From the vantage point of history, it may be that the most important
effect of this decision is not the reversal of the death sentence in this
particular case, but the chilling signal it sends throughout the court
system. The Colorado Supreme Court has effectively decided that the Bible,
in written form, is a prejudicial document that is judged to be detrimental
to the cause of a defendant who may face the death penalty. The jurors who
are assigned responsibility to arrive at an "individual moral assessment"
are now told that they cannot use the very text that, for vast millions of
Americans, constitutes the very basis of morality itself.
This case represents a direct assault upon freedom of conscience and
religious liberty. For, if the logic of this ridiculous decision controls,
jury deliberations will be reduced to secular reasoning based upon secular
texts as imposed by a secular authority. Every concerned American should
quickly arrive at an "individual moral assessment" regarding that precedent.
R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
[R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.]
(source: Column, Christian Post)
FLORIDA:
Prosecutors may ask for death penalty in Lunde case
Prosecutors have not decided yet whether to seek the death penalty after a
convicted sex offender confessed to the murder of a 13-year-old Florida girl.
Police said that 36-year-old David Onstott admitted to strangling Sarah
Lunde over the weekend and then dumping her body in a pond less than a mile
from her home.
Police say Onstott went to the girl's home looking for Sarah's mother, who
had recently ended a relationship with him. Instead, Onstott said he got
into an argument with the 13-year-old, and strangled her to death.
Onstott is a convicted rapist who was already in police custody on
unrelated charges when he told authorities what he did. He is currently
being held without bail.
(source: AP / CapitalNews9.com)
