April 28 USA: End death penalty With the recent Terri Schiavo conflict, there was a public outcry to keep her alive with a feeding tube. She had little to no chance of survival, yet millions of people, including the president, wanted her to remain on life support. Where are the pro-life voices when the discussion changes to the death penalty? Not as many people seem to care about state-sanctioned killing. Death row inmates have a chance to change into better people. When they are killed, doesn't it teach people that if the state can kill, then why not anyone? The same people who argued that it was wrong to "kill" Schiavo need to speak out that it is wrong to kill anyone. There are already 12 states, plus the District of Columbia, that have no death penalty. The other 38, including California, need to figure out that killing killers is wrong and needs to stop. Parker Farabee----Walnut Creek (source: Letter to the Editor, Contra Costra Times) *********************** DEATH ROW STORIES Humanity's capacity to endure and triumph is explored in The Exonerated' At last I'll see "The Exonerated" again. On a cool night in October 2003, this critic took a seat at 45 Bleecker, a small off-Broadway house in downtown Manhattan, to see a play about which he knew little - except that the bulk of the text consisted of the words of people who had been on death row. This was during the week of the one-year anniversary of the show, which in New York had a permanent cast of core actors with three roles designated as rotating slots for celebrities. That Saturday night the 'guest stars' were the veteran character actor Richard Masur; Kristin Davis of "Sex and the City" and Kerry Max Cook. Cook was no actor. He was one of the exonerated. And on that night he played himself, telling of his conviction and horrific experiences in prison, reading his own words to chilling effect. It was one of those moments when the barrier between art and reality was erased, and it made for an exceptional night of theater. "The Exonerated" tells the story of 6 people - men, women, black, white - who landed on death row for murders they said they didn't commit. Eventually the courts decided they were right and released them. And what is striking is just how ordinary they are. Some were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Others were the wrong color. Some should have chosen better company. And there were those who just had bad luck. They may have been rough around the edges. They may have made bad choices that left them vulnerable to a deeply flawed criminal justice system. But they really weren't all that different from you. Or me. Or most people who will see the play. Freeing an idea The drama by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen has been widely produced in regional theaters. The 45 Bleecker version was named best off Broadway play by the Outer Critics Circle and was recognized as a "unique theatrical experience" by the Drama Desk Awards. There was a touring production. And earlier this year a star-studded film had its premiere on Court TV. Now it will be seen in Kansas City for the first time. The Unicorn Theatre production, featuring some of our best local actors, opens Friday. (The final preview performance is tonight.) And even though it's a play that deals with death and wrongful imprisonment, it also deals with the human capacity to endure and ultimately triumph. "People shouldn't be afraid of the play," Jensen said from New York. "It's certainly a serious issue, and it's something that is important for the country to have a real conversation about - not one of these pundit conversations where people scream at each other. But the play is actually hopeful." When the piece is done correctly, Jensen said, it's about being in a long dark tunnel with no light at the end and realizing that it's up to you to provide the light. "That's really the essential message of the play," he said. "The last thing we want to do is tell people what to think. The play is an invitation to a dialogue. When theater is done right that's what good theater does. But I'm coming dangerously close to bragging." Jensen and Blank, who fell in love and married in the process of researching the play, are principally actors. He has a recurring role on "CSI," and she will be in the next Mira Nair film. But their success as playwrights took them by surprise. It all began in 2000 when Blank asked Jensen to accompany her to a death penalty conference at Columbia University. "And this was early on in the dating process," he said. "We had just met the month previously, and at that point you pretty much say yes to everything. I would have said yes to knee surgery if she had asked me to." The conference offered speakers, panel discussions and documentary films, but the turning point came when a convict spoke by telephone into a microphone from death row in Illinois. Everyone was moved, but Jensen looked around and realized that he was watching a sermon for the converted. How, he wondered, could people elevate the important questions surrounding the death penalty to a broader public debate? "Let's make a play," Blank suggested. Research behind bars Together they interviewed 40 former death row inmates by telephone and 20 in person. Jensen figures they went to 20 states in the South and Midwest. "We were doing this on a shoestring," he said. "In other words we were sleeping in the car. Motel 6 was a luxury." Blank said they began the creative process with specific goals in mind. "The parameters were we wanted to interview people who had been convicted of capital murder, spent time on death row and then freed amidst overwhelming evidence of their innocence, and create a play from their words," she said. "We knew we wanted to work directly with the words of the people involved. And we knew we didn't want composite characters. And we did know starting out that we would be dealing with multiple stories." The play runs 90 minutes with no intermission and builds dramatic suspense by cutting back and forth between the stories of 6 people: - David Keaton (on death row from 1970 to 1979) - Delbert Tibbs (1974-77) - Sonia 'Sunny' Jacobs (1976-92) - Kerry Max Cook (1977-97) - Robert Earl Hayes (1990-97) - Gary Gauger (1993-96) We learn the circumstances of their arrests, the crimes of which they were accused, their experiences in prison and their view of life now. Blank said neither she nor Jensen had any experience as journalists. So she asked a reporter friend how to do an interview. The reporter's advice: In the weeks before the interview, when you think of a question write it on a piece of paper and put it in a jar until you have about 200 of them. You'll probably never use them, but you gain comfort from knowing you can fall back on them if necessary. For their first live interview, Blank recalled, they came prepared with notebooks bulging with questions. But nobody ever mistook them for reporters. "I actually think that the people we spoke to were more readily able to open up to us because we weren't journalists, because the questions that we were asking were unusual," Jensen said. "I think most people, when they encounter an exonerated person, they're like, 'Well what is it like thinking that you're going to die?' There's a standard five or six questions that your average cable television reporter would ask someone. So a lot of barriers dropped away, and I think we got a lot of responses maybe the average journalist wouldn't get because - we just really wanted to know about their stories from their perspective and the effect it had on them." To the stage In New York the play was staged as reader's theater: actors seated on stools reading the real words of the characters they played. Cynthia Levin, the Unicorn's producing artistic director, said she was taking a different approach. Scenes will be staged, video images will inform the action on stage and often the audience will see episodes described in the text. "I had many specific visual images that I wanted to portray," Levin said. The set is designed with what looks like a jury box on either side of the stage and a central playing area that can become a courtroom, a jail cell or an interrogation room as needed. "It's very presentational but still very theatrical," Levin said. "I can't help but believe that we are very attuned to visual stimulation, and if we can set a scene in a particular place the audience will buy it." Levin counts as a career highlight her staging of another well-known example of documentary theater, "The Laramie Project," which depicted the aftermath of the beating death of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyo. "I love the chance to produce these docudramas," Levin said. "There isn't anything more important than to show injustice. That is part of our mission, to show what goes wrong and how to right - to allow people a chance to see what needs to be changed and to try and fix our world. Not even in this play do you have to be against the death penalty. But until the system is fixed, we need to be very careful." Jensen and Blank have both appeared in stage versions of the show and play small roles in the TV film. But Blank said they didn't write the piece with acting possibilities in mind. "Both of us are primarily actors, but we didn't write this piece for ourselves," she said. "It was never conceptualized as a vehicle for us as actors or anything like that. This play has never been about us. It's always been about the stories and getting the stories out there." The play was intended to reach a wide audience, but there is one demographic group whose feedback has special meaning for the playwrights: the exonerated, including death-row veterans as well as those who were falsely imprisoned but never faced the death penalty. "We've gotten a lot of really excellent feedback from them," Blank said. "We feel that this play in a way doesn't tell the story of just these six people. It tells the story of the wrongly convicted in general and what they've endured. And we really perceive that as a shared story. "So when we get feedback from other exonerated individuals (who say) we got parts of the story right or that they related to it or it moved them or it was cathartic for them, that means a lot to us." OPENING FRIDAY "The Exonerated" runs through May 22 at the Unicorn Theatre, 3828 Main St. Tickets cost $15 to $25. Call (816) 531-7529. (source: Kansas City Star) ARIZONA: Judge sets June retrial date for once-condemned inmate A Superior Court judge tentatively set a June 9 date for a new trial for a death row inmate whose conviction was overturned earlier this month. Judge Richard Weiss threw out Clarence David Hill's 1989 murder conviction based on DNA testing completed several months ago. Weiss ruled that considering the DNA evidence, a new jury may not convict Hill. The tests show that the victim's blood wasn't present on Hill's clothing or on his bed sheet, refuting the prosecution's main arguments. Hill, 56, was found guilty of burning his landlord, Dale Edmundson, to death. He was sentenced to death in 1990. Assistant Arizona Attorney General J.D. Nielsen said he will appeal Weiss's ruling to the state Supreme Court. Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith said he isn't sure if he will pursue the death penalty against Hill if the case goes to trial again. (source: Associated Press) DELAWARE: Capano lawyer wants off case----Bernstein says his client is broke The attorney representing convicted killer and one-time millionaire Thomas Capano wants a judge to release him from the case because his client is broke. Joseph Bernstein, who has handled Capano's appeals since his conviction for the 1996 murder of Anne Marie Fahey, filed a motion Monday asking for a taxpayer-funded attorney to be appointed in his place. Capano "doesn't have any money," Bernstein said Wednesday. "All I can say is he can't afford to pay me or anyone else." Fahey was the scheduling secretary for then-Gov. Tom Carper, now a U.S. senator. A jury found that Capano killed Fahey because she was about to break off an affair with him, then dumped her body in the Atlantic Ocean. Prosecutor Ferris Wharton said Bernstein's request was expected. "This was not an out-of-the-blue kind of thing," Wharton said. Capano told the court in September he was broke and requested a court-appointed attorney to replace Bernstein, but the judge denied the request. According to a court transcript of an October 2004 proceeding, Superior Court Judge T. Henley Graves expressed reservations about letting Bernstein go, as well as Capano's claims of poverty, noting the case was "very far advanced for us to change." As for getting taxpayers to pay Capano's legal bills, Graves said, "We are going to have to have a full-blown hearing as to ... his assets and where his money is going. ... Before I could give you any money from the state, I would have to determine he's indigent." Graves also ultimately rejected Capano's appeal of his death sentence, denying his claim of ineffective counsel at trial as well as his argument that recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions required his death sentence to be set aside. Last month, Graves set June 7 as Capano's execution date. An appeal has been filed to the Delaware Supreme Court, however, and attorneys expect the execution to be delayed until the appeal is heard. Capano also has the option, if he fails in the state courts, of taking his appeal to the federal court system. Bernstein said it is possible that the judge will appoint him to continue representing Capano at taxpayer's expense. "It is up to the court," he said. Wharton said if the court chooses a lawyer other than Bernstein, it would likely delay proceedings because the new lawyer would want time to review the case. In the October hearing with Graves, Bernstein estimated it would take longer than 6 months for another attorney to "figure out what is going on." Professor Thomas Reed of Widener University School of Law said people filing appeals don't have a constitutionally guaranteed right to a taxpayer-funded attorney. It is likely, however, that one will be appointed in this case - if the court finds Capano is broke - because it involves the death penalty and some constitutional questions. (source: The News Journal) NEW YORK: Death Penalty Dear Editor: The New York Assembly, which approved the death penalty for 20 years, had the wisdom and decency to schedule hearings on that issue this past December and January. As a representative of New York State Religious Leaders Against the Death Penalty, I was privileged to participate for a full nine hours on December 15th. Only two of the many speakers wished the death penalty reinstated. 20 years of close study have exposed injustices within the system, including wrongful convictions. Many citizens, including some families of murder victims, now oppose this vindictive, barbaric practice. The United States is out of sync with all of Europe and in step with Iran and China, unworthy models for the upholding of human rights. New York State has become part of a national trend away from the death penalty. Sheldon Silver and the New York State Assembly deserve appreciation for their willingness to change a position when that change is warranted by experience and evidence. It is clearly time to eliminate this shameful procedure once and for all. Sister Camille DArienzo, Glendale (source: Queens Chronicle) CONNECTICUT: Attorney Appeals Ruling That Serial Killer Can Waive His Appeals An attorney appointed to argue that serial killer Michael Ross is mentally incompetent is setting off a new round of legal moves in an effort to stop the first execution in New England in 45 years. Hartford attorney Thomas Groark filed a request in New London Superior Court today to block Ross' scheduled May 11 execution. Also on Thursday, Groark appealed New London Superior Court Judge Patrick Clifford's decision to the state Supreme Court that Ross was mentally competent to forgo his appeals. Ross, 45, has admitted killing and raping 8 young women in Connecticut and New York in the early 1980s. Ross fought off attempts by public defenders, death penalty opponents and his own family to stop his execution last year and came within hours of death in January. His attorney asked for a new competency hearing only after being chastised by a federal judge for helping Ross hasten his execution. Clifford's ruling last week came after a six-day hearing in which psychiatrists gave conflicting assessments of Ross' mental competence. Calls were placed to Chief State's Attorney Christopher Morano and Ross' attorney, T.R. Paulding, seeking comment. Clifford appointed Groark in February to argue that Ross was incompetent, but it was unknown if Groark had any standing to file appeals. Of the 6 New England states, only Connecticut and New Hampshire have the death penalty. No one is on New Hampshire's death row and the state has not executed anyone since 1939. Rhode Island has not put anyone to death since 1845; Maine, 1885; Massachusetts, 1947; and Vermont, 1954. (source: Associated Press)
