death penalty news May 19, 2005
TEXAS: Execution scheduled for Wednesday Bryan Wolfe is scheduled to die in the state death chamber Wednesday night for the 1992 robbery and slaying of an 84-year-old Beaumont woman. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up Wolfe's appeal. Wolfe would be the seventh Texas inmate to receive lethal injection this year. Another execution is set for Thursday night. The 44-year-old death-row inmate was convicted in the fatal stabbing of Bertha Lemell in her Beaumont home. The woman lived in Wolfe's neighborhood and babysat his children while his wife went to work. DNA testing was still in its infancy 13 years ago when Beaumont police used it to link Wolfe to the murder. (source: AP / News8Austin) -------------------- Texas Prepares For Seventh Execution Of 2005 Wednesday Death row inmate Bryan Wolfe, 44, is scheduled to die just after 6 p.m. Wednesday in Huntsville for the 1992 slaying of an 84-year-old woman who was stabbed 26 times during a robbery at her home in Beaumont. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the case on Monday. Relatives remembered Bertha Lemell, the woman Wolfe is convicted of killing, as always helping people and looking after youngsters in the neighborhood in which she lived south of downtown Beaumont. Among the children for whom Lemell cared were Wolfe?s. A psychologist testifying for his defense blamed Wolfe's actions on intoxication. Wolfe said he had a drug habit. (source: AP / KWTX) -------------------- Execution death certificate wording targeted; rule changes aimed at delaying teacher retirements Harriett Semander and the woman in the cab appeared to have a terrible thing in common: the loss of a child to murder. Semander's daughter was strangled in 1982 by confessed serial killer Coral Eugene Watts. The woman in the cab said only that her son had been murdered. Only after she arrived at her destination, Semander told the Senate Criminal Justice Committee on Tuesday, did she find out that the woman's son was "murdered" by the state of Texas ? and that Texas law seemed to give the woman justification for that claim. By law, death certificates for executed inmates list the cause of death as "homicide." "I felt like somebody had kicked me in the stomach," Semander, who lives in Houston, said about discovering this semantic wrinkle in the law. House Bill 93 would change that. Under the measure passed by the House in March, the cause of death would become "legally authorized execution." The Criminal Justice Committee amended the measure to make the cause "judicial order" and then passed it on a 5-0 vote Tuesday. With only a dozen days left in the legislative session, many measures will die from neglect. But committee Chairman Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, said the measure won't be one of them. "We will get it changed," he told Semander. Clemency hearings might be open The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles would have to hold public meetings when voting on death-penalty clemency cases under a proposal tentatively approved today by the Texas Senate. Currently, the entire board does not meet together, instead faxing in their votes on clemency. In 1998, state District Judge Paul Davis of Austin ruled twice that the state's clemency process violates the state open meetings law. Under Senate Bill 548 by Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, telephone meetings would be allowed. "All this says is that before you make a decision to kill somebody, you ought to do something more than just fax in a vote. It's an open government bill," Ellis said. A separate measure approved in the Senate would allow the Texas Building and Procurement Commission to discuss pending procurements and contracts in a private meeting. Currently, commission members may only discuss the issues in open meeting. (source: Washington Post / AP) INDIANA: Court won?t hear appeal by Matheney The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of a death row inmate convicted in the 1989 beating death of his former wife while out of prison on a brief furlough. Alan Matheney, 54, was charged with forcing his way into Lisa Bianco?s Mishawaka home a few hours after his release on an eight-hour pass from a prison. As their two daughters fled in terror, Matheney chased Bianco into the street and beat her outside a neighbor?s home with an unloaded .410 guage shotgun. The state attorney general?s office will file a motion with the state Supreme Court in the coming days to set an execution date for Matheney, spokeswoman Staci Schneider said. Matheney had been serving an eight-year sentence for a 1987 assault on his former wife when he was released on the furlough. The killing drew widespread national attention as it came in the wake of the 1988 presidential election, during which then Vice-President George Bush ran a series of TV ads that depicted Democratic rival Michael Dukakis as soft on crime. The commercials blamed Dukakis for the prison furlough program that permitted the release of Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who fled during his furlough and was eventually arrested for brutally assaulting a man and raping a woman. The Supreme Court gave no comments in its decision Monday not to hear the case. Matheney still can seek a new round of appeals with the state Supreme Court or reconsideration of the U.S. Supreme Court?s denial, Schneider said. The state?s high court would wait until those matters are resolved to set a date to carry out Matheney?s death sentence, she said. Monday?s ruling comes about 10 months after a federal appeals court rejected Matheney?s argument that he was incompetent to stand trial. If Matheney is executed this year, he could become the fifth person put to death in Indiana in 2005. Two men have already been executed at the Indiana State Prison and other executions have been set for May 25 and June 22. The state of Indiana hasn?t executed more than two people in a year since the death penalty was reinstituted in 1977. (source: AP / Indystar.com) MISSOURI: Killer refuses to help police As Vernon Brown lay on his belly in a prison cot, watching the last movie of his life, a St. Louis police homicide investigator sat just outside the death row cell and waited. Detective Tom Carroll said he hoped, prayed, that the twice-condemned killer would break silence and admit one of the city's most haunting murders - the rape and decapitation of an unidentified girl in an abandoned building in 1983. But the movie "Platoon" reached its end, and Brown was carted off to the execution chamber of the prison at Bonne Terre without revealing anything that would implicate or exonerate him. He died at 2:25 a.m. Wednesday, taking with him what police figured could be their best chance of identifying the girl and her killer. "Personally, I believe he did it," said Carroll, who has worked homicide for 10 years and combed through the case file since 1999. He acknowledges there is no hard evidence. But he said Brown was among a tiny subset of those who kill. "It was his style, tying up little girls," Carroll explained. "How many child killers are there?" Authorities say Brown was a child killer at the very least. And not only a child killer, but a killer who nearly cut off one victim's head, another grisly criminal subset. His execution was for strangling 9-year-old Janet Perkins in St. Louis in 1986. Her body was found in a trash bin behind Brown's home in the 4100 block of Enright Avenue. Brown was also under a separate death sentence for killing Synetta Ford, 19, in St. Louis in 1985. Her head was nearly severed with a large knife. In addition, Brown was charged in Indianapolis with the killing of a 9-year-old girl in 1980. She was tied, beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled. Indiana also charged him with molesting several other children. "Vernon Brown is certainly capable of committing a crime like our Jane Doe case," said Capt. James Gieseke, commander of the crimes against persons division. "It was certainly worth our efforts to make this last try. You've got to take your shot. "And if not Jane Doe, maybe there's some other unsolved killing out there he could tell us about. Every avenue needs to be explored." The body of the child, believed to be 8 to 10 years old, was discovered in the basement of an abandoned building in the 5600 block of Clemens Avenue on Feb. 28, 1983. Her head was never found. Carroll's theory is that Jane Doe was the daughter of one of Brown's girlfriends or wives (Brown told police he was married three times), and that the mother was too scared of Brown to tell anyone. Investigators have tried to reach various people whose lives touched Brown's, but so far without success. Homicide Sgt. Gary Stittum visited Brown in prison about five years ago but got no cooperation. Right up to Brown's execution, he refused to talk to police or reporters. Carroll tried to interview Brown on May 5. "He was very cold. He was devoid of emotion," the detective recalled. "I've got nothing to say to you," Brown told the detective. Carroll pleaded with him to bring closure to Jane Doe's family. "He said, 'I don't give a (expletive) about them,'" Carroll recalled. "He wasn't trying to be proud or slick," Carroll said. "He wasn't trying to pull anything over on me. He just didn't want to talk. "He was almost like a robot." Carroll's vigil outside the cell Tuesday night was much the same. "I'm not talking to you. I've got nothing to say," the skinny killer with icy eyes told Carroll again. "He laid in his bed and watched all of 'Platoon,'" Carroll continued. "At 11, when the movie was over, the prison superintendent came in and read him the order of execution. "At 11:22 p.m. he was put on the gurney. He refused any kind of sedative." On the gurney, covered to his chin by a sheet, Brown appeared slightly frail and older than his 51 years. After nearly 2 1/2 hours of delay because of Supreme Court appeals, officials began pumping three poisons into Brown's vein. He tilted his chin up and blew a breath out his mouth, which then dropped open as the sodium pentothal took effect. One of Brown's lawyers, public defender Janet Thompson, described his mood Tuesday evening as "scared." When he was arrested, Brown had confessed killing Perkins and Ford. He said he was on the drug PCP when he murdered Perkins; he said he strangled Ford after she attacked him with a knife, in the process stabbing herself in the chest and throat. Investigators from around the country looked to the then-33-year-old as a possible suspect in a variety of slayings. News reports said he had lived in 35 states in 10 years. In the 1970s, Brown spent four years in prison for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl. During the Perkins and Ford trials, three boys testified that Brown repeatedly sodomized them. Robert L. Garrison, who prosecuted Brown for killing Ford, witnessed the execution and later compared Brown to infamous serial killer Ted Bundy. Said Carroll, the disappointed detective, "He was the meanest man I've ever met." (source: St.Louis Today) USA --- federal death penalty trial: Jury weighs death penalty for Chicago podiatrist in murder of patient A federal court jury is deciding whether to impose the death penalty on a Chicago podiatrist for fatally shooting a woman who'd been scheduled to testify against him in a Medicare fraud case. Assistant U-S Attorney John Kocoras (koh--KOHR'-uhs) today told jurors that Doctor Ronald Mikos (MY'-kohs) is "a cold, ruthless, calculating killer." The jurors are winding up the penalty phase of Mikos' trial.He was convicted May Fifth of the December 2002 murder of Joyce Brannon, only days before she was to tell a federal grand jury that Mikos defrauded Medicare by collecting money for a series of foot surgeries that he never performed.Defense attorneys say Mikos was overcome by depression, alcoholism and drug abuse. And they say he doesn't deserve death because he may have been impaired by a brain abnormality. (source: AP / KWQC) ------------------ Court Split Over Death Penalty Method The Supreme Court's latest clash over the death penalty involves the lethal chemical cocktail used by many states and whether it is an unnecessarily cruel way to die. The high court temporarily stopped a Missouri execution early Wednesday so justices could consider a last-minute appeal. A few hours later, Vernon Brown was put to death, after justices lifted the stay. The 5-4 vote was illustrative of the court's sharp division on the death penalty. Earlier this year, by the same vote, the justices issued a landmark ruling barring executions of juvenile killers on grounds they were cruel and unusual punishment. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion on that case; in the Brown case, he voted to allow the execution. Brown was convicted of strangling a 9-year-old girl with a rope after luring her into his home as she walked home from school in 1986. His lawyers contended his execution would be cruel because the drug combination of sodium pentathal, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride can paralyze inmates before subjecting them to suffocation, a burning sensation and a heart attack. ``People are raising this issue across the country. It needs to be addressed,'' said Richard Dieter, executive director of the anti-capital punishment Death Penalty Information Center. Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, said state leaders could head off a Supreme Court showdown by reviewing their methods of performing executions. ``It doesn't cost much to do it and it's cheaper than to litigate,'' he said. The Supreme Court has never found a specific form of execution to be unconstitutional. A 1999 case challenging Florida's electric chair, known as ``Old Sparky,'' was dropped at the high court after Florida added lethal injection as an option. Lethal injection is used in 37 states because it is considered more humane than options like the gas chamber and hanging. Chemical solutions vary some by state. Other issues related to lethal injection have reached the court. Last year, justices looked at the case of an Alabama death row inmate who claimed his damaged veins made it impossible to insert an intravenous line without cutting deep into flesh and muscle. At the time, several members of the court pressed for assurances that Alabama prison staff would consider the best medical procedures for the inmate. In a unanimous ruling, David Larry Nelson won the right to pursue an appeal. Although Nelson's case did not involve a direct challenge to lethal injection, it prompted lawsuits over the types of drug cocktails used in other states and justices divided on 5-4 votes in a string of emergency appeals from inmates seeking temporary reprieves. Wednesday's case involved the same 5-4 lineup. Three liberal justices who opposed the execution - Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer - seemed disturbed by Missouri's failure to respond to the claim that the execution would be painful. ``The state has not disputed the merits of (Brown's) challenge to the chemical protocol used by Missouri to carry out lethal injections,'' they wrote. Justice David H. Souter sided with them but did not sign on to their dissent. The three justices also cited an opinion by Judge Kermit Bye on the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. Bye, who supported delaying Brown's execution, relied on an article last month in The Lancet medical journal that questions the pain caused by the chemical combination generally used in lethal injections. The study involved 49 executions in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. In 21 of the deaths, the study found, inmates were likely conscious when they received the final drug that causes heart attacks. ``No one will be able to tell whether Brown is conscious and therefore experiencing gratuitous pain because his entire body will be paralyzed so that he cannot express himself in any way,'' Bye said. Justice Clarence Thomas, who handles appeals from Missouri, briefly stopped Brown's execution, apparently to give his colleagues time to handle the multiple rounds of appeals in the case. Brown's lawyers submitted hundreds of pages of documents to the court. Missouri lawyers argued that courts were right to allow the execution although the subject ``may be a topic for additional scientific research.'' (source: AP / The Guardian (UK)) ------------------------- amnesty international - An extrajudicial execution by the CIA? AI Index: AMR 51/079/2005 Amnesty International is concerned by the reported killing on 7 May 2005 by US forces in Pakistan of Haitham al-Yemeni, a Libyan national who is alleged to have been a senior member of al-Qa'ida. He and another man, identified as Samiullah Khan, are reported to have been killed in Toorikhel in Mirali, Pakistan, when the car they were in was hit by a missile fired from a CIA-controlled Predator unmanned aerial vehicle. Haitham al-Yemeni is alleged to have been the target. Amnesty International fears that, if the circumstances of these killings have been reported accurately, the USA has carried out an extrajudicial execution, in violation of international law. Amnesty International reminds the USA that it has condemned such unlawful actions when carried out by other states in the past. It calls upon the USA to end immediately all operations aimed at killing suspects instead of arresting them, investigate all past suspected cases of extrajudicial executions, and revoke all orders that may allow extrajudicial executions. Haitham al-Yemeni had reportedly been under surveillance by US agents. After the arrest in Pakistan of another Libyan national and alleged al-Qa'ida member, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, on or around 2 May 2005, (http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA330072005), intelligence agents are said to have feared that Haitham al-Yemeni would go into hiding. It is alleged that the decision was taken to kill him to avoid that possibility. The Pakistani authorities have denied knowledge of the incident. On 18 May 2005, the Office of Public Affairs of the CIA in Washington, DC, would neither confirm nor deny the reports to Amnesty International, offering only "no comment". The United Nations (UN) Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials state that "Law enforcement officials shall not use firearms against persons except in self-defence or defence of others against the imminent threat of death or serious injury, to prevent the perpetration of a particularly serious crime involving grave threat to life, to arrest a person presenting such a danger and resisting their authority, or to prevent his or her escape, and only when less extreme means are insufficient to achieve these objectives. In any event, intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life." Amnesty International believes that the governments of the USA and Pakistan should have cooperated to arrest Haitham al-Yemeni rather than kill him. Under international human rights standards, lethal force should have been used only as a last resort. If the US authorities deliberately decided to kill, rather than attempt to arrest Haitham al-Yemeni, his killing would amount to an extrajudicial execution. Under international standards, extrajudicial executions are always unlawful, and "a state of war or threat of war, internal political instability or any public emergency may not be invoked as a justification of such executions". On 27 August 2001, US State Department spokesperson had said of the Israeli government's resort to targeted killings: "We remain opposed to targeted killings. We think Israel needs to understand that targeted killings of Palestinians don't end the violence " A week earlier a State Department spokesperson had similarly said: "We have long made very clear ? we have made known the US Government's opposition to the policy and practice of targeted killings, and we are going to continue to urge the Israelis to desist from this policy." On 17 September 2001, President Bush is reported to have signed an executive order giving the CIA broad authorities, including the use of lethal force, in the "war on terror". In January 2003, President Bush said "you can't hide from the United States of America. You may hide for a brief period of time, but pretty soon we're going to put the spotlight on you, and we'll bring you to justice We're working with friends and allies around the world. And we're hauling them in, one by one. Some have met their fate by sudden justice; some are now answering questions at Guant?namo Bay. In either case, they're no longer a problem to the United States of America and our friends." An earlier case of what President Bush characterizes as "sudden justice" occurred in Yemen on 3 November 2002, when six men were killed in a car, blown up by missiles fired from a CIA-controlled Predator drone. One of the people in the car was alleged to be a senior member of al-Qa'ida, Abu Ali al-Harithi, and the strike was carried out with the cooperation of the Government of Yemen. In January 2003, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions described the killing of six men in Yemen as "truly disturbing" and "an alaming precedent", adding that in her opinion the attack "constitutes a clear case of extrajudicial killing". The USA dismissed her findings, stating that "enemy combatants may be attacked unless they have surrendered or are otherwise rendered hors de combat", and that any "Al Qaida terrorists who continue to plot attacks against the United States may be lawful subjects of armed attacks in appropriate circumstances". It stated that the mandate of the Special Rapporteur does not extend to "allegations stemming from any military operations conducted during the course of an armed conflict with Al Qaida", and that the Special Rapporteur lacked competence "to address issues of this nature arising under the law of armed conflict". In December 2004, the new Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions followed up on this issue. He stated: "Empowering Governments to identify and kill 'known terrorists' places no verifiable obligation upon them to demonstrate in any way that those against whom lethal force is used are indeed terrorists, or to demonstrate that every other alternative had been exhausted. While it is portrayed as a limited 'exception' to international norms, it actually creates the potential for an endless expansion of the relevant category to include any enemies of the State, social misfits, political opponents, or others. And it makes a mockery of whatever accountability mechanisms may have otherwise constrained or exposed such illegal acts under either humanitarian or human rights law." Amnesty International similarly rejects the US view of the world being in effect a "war zone" in which persons which it considers to be "enemy combatants" can be killed with impunity. Under the UN Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions, all suspected cases of extrajudicial killings should be subject to a thorough, prompt and impartial investigation. The US administration has not initiated such an investigation into the November 2002 killings in Yemen. Given that the CIA has reportedly been given presidential authority to use lethal force, and in light of the USA's response to the UN Special Rapporteur, it has to be considered highly unlikely that any such investigation will be conducted into the killing of Haitham al-Yemeni and Samiullah Khan. Amnesty International continues to call on US Congress to set up a full independent commission of inquiry into all aspects of the USA's "war on terror" detention policies and practices. Such an inquiry should include an investigation into all cases of alleged extrajudicial execution. Anyone found to have authorized or committed extrajudicial executions should be brought to justice. In a 160-page report issued on 13 May, which included discussion of the question of extrajudicial killings in the "war on terror", Amnesty International concluded that hypocrisy, secrecy, an overarching war mentality and a disregard for international human rights law continues to mark the USA's conduct in the "war on terror" (see, USA: Guant?namo and beyond: The continuing pursuit of unchecked executive http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510632005). (source: Amnesty International) VERMONT --- federal death penalty trial: Demonstrators peacefully protested the death penalty Wednesday in Burlington where jury selection continues for the Donald Fell trial. The murder victim's relatives took the protest as a personal affront. 28 death penalty opponents held a peaceful vigil outside Burlington's federal building. They were protesting the on-going jury selection for the federal capital murder trial of Donald Fell, 24. For the protestors, execution is a moral wrong compounded because Vermont repealed its death penalty 33 years ago. "When I become God then I will decide whether I kill somebody and, until then, no, I see no need for it," said Kathy Farrow of Shelburne. But Terri King's two sisters and two daughters.They were in court again Wednesday, having attended every minute of the jury selection proceedings. They hope the jury will eventually decide that Donald Fell definitely needs the death penalty, so they were not pleased when they discovered the death penalty protest as they left the courthouse for lunch. " I don't think it's very nice that they're here doing it right in front of our face but this is America and everybody has a right to their own opinion," said Barbara Tuttle, Terri King's sister. "He brutally murdered her while she prayed for her life. And if this is not a case for the death penalty then you tell me one that is," she added. The protestors say they had no intention to hurt anyone's feelings. "My heart goes out to them.I can imagine that they have a whole mix of feelings and they are certainly entitled and should be respected for all their feelings,"said Cherry Racusin, one of the protestors. It is a question dividing the victim's family and the death penalty opponents. It is one of paramount interest inside the courtroom where a jury of 12 Vermonters will be chosen to decide Donald Fell's guilt or innocent and possibly his fate. More than 38 people have been selected for the initial pool of 70 potential jurors. From that group, 12 will be selected for the jury with six alternates. Trial is scheduled to begin on June 20th. (source: WCAX)
