June 21 USA: Death Penalty Trials To the Editor: Re "Prosecutorial Racial Bias in Texas" (editorial, June 14): When the Supreme Court threw out Thomas Miller-El's death sentence (on the grounds that blacks were systematically excluded from serving as jurors in his case), the court paved the way for it, or a future court, to examine a more substantive question: whether any death penalty trial can ever be a fair one. No defendant in a capital case in the United States - black, white or other - is afforded a fair trial under our current system. Each is tried by a jury from which the state has excluded anyone who says he or she opposes the idea of a fellow human's being put to death. When do you suppose the court will acknowledge that barring potential jurors on such grounds is no different from excluding them on the basis of race, religion or gender? Frank McNeirney National Coordinator, Catholics Against Capital Punishment Bethesda, Md., June 14, 2005 (source: Letter to the Editor, New York Times) OHIO/USA: Judge: Demjanjuk can be deported John Demjanjuk, the Seven Hills man suspected of being a Nazi war criminal, is a big step closer to deportation. Chief U.S. Immigration Judge Michael Creppy ruled Thursday that Demjanjuk, 85, can be deported based on his service as a Nazi death camp guard during World War II. Demjanjuk has until June 30 to appeal. In 2002, a federal court found that Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian national, was a sentry at three concentration camps and lied about his wartime past when he entered the United States in 1952. The federal courts stripped him of his U.S. citizenship. In December he lost his appeals to regain citizenship, paving the way for deportation. Creppy's June 16 opinion said Demjanjuk was removable from the United States "by clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence." Creppy said the federal courts showed Demjanjuk prevented the escape of prisoners held by the Nazis, leaving them to abuse and almost certain death. At one of the camps, the judge said, thousands of Jews were murdered by asphyxiation. Demjanjuk's attorney, Thomas Elliot, called the deportation proceedings unfair and said the retired autoworker has been the victim of mistaken identity for 28 years. Elliot said Creppy appears to be biased because he wrote law review articles about aggressive prosecution of war criminals. Creppy appointed himself to the deportation case. Elliot plans to ask Creppy to step aside at the next hearing, June 30, when the court will decide to which country Demjanjuk will be sent. The case began in 1977, when the Justice Department, citing a Nazi identification card with Demjanjuk's name, birth date and parentage, asked a federal judge to revoke Demjanjuk's citizenship. Officials in the former Soviet Union provided the card to investigators, saying that Soviet soldiers found it in a Nazi training camp. The Justice Department found nearly a dozen survivors of the Nazi death camp at Treblinka who identified Demjanjuk as "Ivan," a Ukrainian guard who tortured Jewish inmates and operated gas chambers that exterminated an estimated 900,000 people. In 1981, Demjanjuk was stripped of his citizenship by a federal judge. Two years later, while Demjanjuk was being considered for deportation to Ukraine, Israel requested his extradition to stand trial on war-crimes charges. A 3-judge panel in Israel found Demjanjuk guilty of war crimes and sentenced him to death. In 1991, his lawyers produced testimony from 37 Treblinka death camp guards and forced laborers who identified another man, Ivan Marczenko, as "Ivan the Terrible." In July 1993, Israel's Supreme Court overturned Demjanjuk's conviction. He was released from prison on Sept. 22, 1993, and returned to his family in Seven Hills. In 1998, his U.S. citizenship was restored, and the Justice Department began anew its efforts to revoke his citizenship and deport him. (source: Cleveland Plain Dealer) PENNSYLVANIA: Killer uses low IQ defense Defense attorneys argue Karl Chambers should not be executed because of mental retardation. In the mid-1970s, Karl Stephenson Chambers, a 7th-grade special-education student in the York City School District, had an IQ of 60. In 1994, Chambers, a convicted killer, was tested in prison and determined to have an IQ of 74. According to Dr. Stanley E. Schnieder, a licensed psychologist who has examined Chambers and provided those numbers, the medical community considers anyone with an IQ of less than 75 as mentally retarded. Now Chambers' defense team is trying to keep the 41-year-old off death row, arguing the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the execution of mentally retarded prisoners is cruel and unusual punishment. This is Chambers' 3rd time in York County Common Pleas Court for sentencing. His 1st 2 death sentences here for the 1986 beating death of 70-year-old Anna Mae Morris were vacated on appeal. His 1st-degree murder conviction was affirmed by the appellate courts. York County District Attorney Stan Rebert is challenging the defense's attempts to establish that Chambers is mentally retarded and should not be subject to the death penalty. Monday, Chambers' "Atkins" hearing - so called for the U.S. Supreme Court's 2002 ruling in Atkins v. Virginia - began before Judge John S. Kennedy. Chambers, who was functionally illiterate at the time of his conviction, told Kennedy he has attempted to learn to read while in prison since 1992. He said he is limited to the Bible, his own legal documents and an occasional magazine. He said he has access to the prison library once a week and is now reading "a lot more better than before." Schnieder testified that Chamber's increase in IQ points through age and self-help was expected, although he remains in the "mild borderline range of mental retardation." Chambers was in special education classes from 2nd through 10th grades, when he dropped out of school, Schnieder said. After the death of his mother when he was 16, Chambers "basically lived a life on the streets, ultimately getting into substance abuse," Schnieder said. "He was unable to maintain the same level of academic achievement as his peer level," Schnieder said. "His ability to adapt as compared to other kids was limited." Adam McKinney, a friend of Chambers around the time of Morris' murder, testified Chambers was homeless and got money from his grandmother and through the occasional act of prostitution. Chambers did not testify at his 1987 trial and told York City Police and the various attorneys who have represented him over the years he has no memory of killing Morris. On cross-examination by Rebert, Schnieder conceded a mentally retarded person is capable of committing a violent crime. "Aggression is part of our innate makeup," he said. "Any mentally retarded individual, except for the profoundly retarded, could commit a crime." THE CASE Karl Stephenson Chambers was convicted in a June 1987 jury trial in York County Common Pleas Court of 1st-degree murder for the Feb. 1, 1986, ax-handle beating death of Anna Mae Morris, a 70-year-old bag lady. He was sentenced to death. That sentence was overturned in November 1991 by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which ruled that York County District Attorney Stan Rebert had improperly referred to a Bible passage as a higher law for the jury's consideration during the penalty phase of Chambers' trial. After testimony at a June 1994 hearing, Chambers again was sentenced to death by a York County jury. That sentence was overturned in September 2002 by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which ruled the 2nd sentencing jury had received improper instructions before beginning deliberations. Chambers was to appear before a jury for a 3rd sentencing hearing this year when his attorney, William T. Hangley, filed a motion to bar capital punishment on the basis of Chambers' IQ. The defense alleges Chambers has mental retardation. In June 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a death penalty appeal - Atkins v. Virginia - that executions of mentally retarded criminals are cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Chambers, now 41, returned to York County court this week for an "Atkins hearing" to determine if he is mentally retarded and exempt from the death penalty or if he goes before a third sentencing jury. If Judge John Kennedy rules that Chambers is mentally retarded, he must sentence Chambers to life in prison without parole. If Kennedy decides Chambers' defense team has not established he is mentally retarded, Kennedy will schedule a sentencing hearing. Another jury, after hearing testimony about the 1986 murder, will determine if Chambers is sentenced to life without parole or returns to death row a third time to await execution. ANOTHER CASE The Supreme Court overturned a Pennsylvania man's death sentence Monday, saying his court-appointed lawyers failed to adequately investigate evidence that could have persuaded a jury to spare his life. The 5-4 ruling gives teeth to a prior decision that heightened standards for defense lawyers in capital cases. The ruling will have the most immediate impact for Ronald Rompilla, who beat, stabbed and set afire an Allentown tavern owner in 1988. He'll leave Pennsylvania's death row and return only if prosecutors decide to seek a new hearing to have him executed. Monday's ruling follows the justices' long-established course toward significant death-penalty reform. Last week, the court made it easier for defendants to raise claims of racial bias in jury selection. Earlier in this term, the justices declared juvenile executions unconstitutional. The justices said Rompilla's lawyers, who conducted a background investigation but ignored a court file with evidence of serious dysfunction in their client's past, failed to meet standards expected of them. The majority said the lawyers had an obligation, especially since they knew prosecutors intended to use information from the same file against Rompilla, to review the records. (source: Knight Ridder Tribune)
