July 18 TEXAS: There's no justice in death chamber 95 times, I personally walked a man who was sentenced to die to the death chamber in Texas. From the very first person executed by lethal injection, through 16 years of walking those eight steps from the holding cell in the death house to the impeccably clean gurney in the death chamber, I led a man - some were older, some convicted in their teens, some mentally ill, some very hardened by life and, I fully know, some who were innocent. Each one was different. They were brought to my unit early in the morning, usually, to be held for death at midnight, so I was with them for 18 hours, and in some cases even longer if their cases went to appellate courts and stays were held until 3, 4 or 5am - or the latest which was 6.20am the next day. More than 200 men came to the death chamber in my time as chaplain there, and of those, 95 were murdered by the state in the name of "justice", but in all reality, it was "retaliation" or "punishment" or simply "murder by law". During those many hours I spent talking with, mostly listening to, the men who would die after midnight when needles filled with three chemicals were inserted into their bodies, there was one question that was asked by many of those waiting to die: "How can we say that killing is wrong if we continue killing in the name of the state?" When I ministered to the first man executed, in 1982, we had less than 100 prisoners on Death Row. Texas has now executed more than 300 men and women, and we have 500 on death row yet more and more murders are taking place in Texas. Edinburgh-born Kenny Richey spent 18 years on death row in Ohio for the murder of a child he says he did not commit. That sentence was overturned in April but he now faces a retrial. Many believe there are enough flaws in the case for Richey to be exonerated but one thing is certain. If Kenny Richey is murdered in the name of the state or country, it will not bring back the victim. And in my many years of visiting both the families of the victims and the families of the condemned, there is no so-called "closure". The loss is still there, the pain is still there, and the cry for "justice" is not satisfied. It is plain and simply murder by law to try to tell others that murder is wrong. Even the philosophy is wrong. It does not work as a deterrent. Let me add some factual reviews of "justice in a civilised society". Once a man was brought into the death house to be executed. He had been convicted of murder. To show how simple-minded (or retarded) he was, he had used a bicycle to try to escape from the scene of the crime and the highway patrol. When he arrived at the death house, all he wanted to do was use his colours and a colouring book. Another man was involved in a case with his "fall partner", the prison term for someone who is convicted along with him, but usually is the "snitch" who blames everything on the other one. The one convicted had a stroke several days before his execution date, and was flown to a major hospital 150 miles away, to be put back into health good enough to be killed. He was then flown back, not in a very good condition, and I spent that day with him. He was too sick to live, and could hardly be understood, but we talked as much as possible. Is this justice, to heal a man just enough to murder him? And I know he was innocent. Another case was a man who was sitting in a car when his "fall partner" murdered a highway patrolman in an undercover drug bust. Everyone knew who did the shooting, but the murderer got off with a short sentence and the innocent man, by action, but not by Texas law, was murdered for just being there. Is this justice? Several of our murdered-by-lethal-injection inmates were 17 when they committed their crime. International law forbids their being put to death. But Texas, under the leadership at the time, said: "We do not have to obey international law." Yet we expect to receive help from the international community when we want it. And on and on it goes - and I am certain that others have been innocent. One man has been declared innocent this year by the courts, but he was murdered by our state years ago. Is this justice? (source: Edinburgh Evening News (The Reverend Carroll Pickett was minister to 95 executions in Texas. His book, Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain, will be published on July 28 by Vision, priced 10.99) ARIZONA: Questions Still Linger Over Tucson Capital Murder Case - Star Prosecutor Disbarred Over Allegations Of Eliciting False Testimony A dozen years have passed since Martin Soto Fong was convicted in a triple homicide at a convenience store in a threadbare Tucson neighborhood, part of an apparent robbery gone awry. Soto might have quietly disappeared into the prison system like scores of other murderers - except for the clouds that linger over the prosecutor who won the conviction, Kenneth Peasley. A one-time star litigator in Pima County, Mr. Peasley was disbarred last year for intentionally eliciting false testimony to win capital murder convictions in the trials of Sotos co-defendants. Both men are free now - Christopher McCrimmon acquitted in a retrial and Andre Minnitt released when the state Supreme Court vacated his conviction. Soto remains in prison. "I do not believe McCrimmon and Minnitt did this," said Karen Clark, the State Bar of Arizona attorney who headed the effort to yank Mr. Peasley's law license. "I have seriously strong doubts about (Soto) Fong." The case began with a 911 call late on the night of June 24, 1992: At the El Grande Market in a lower-income neighborhood, 3 bodies were on the floor covered in blood. Shot to death were Fred Gee, manager of the family-owned market; his elderly uncle, Zewan Huang; and store employee Ray Arriola, police said. About $300 was missing from the register. Detective Joseph Godoy and others chased down leads and processed evidence, but no suspects emerged for months. Then, on Aug. 31, two calls came to different investigators from anonymous sources, seeming to point to Mr. McCrimmon and another man. Using the tips and other interviews, Mr. Godoy soon had suspects: Mr. McCrimmon, Mr. McCrimmons buddy Mr. Minnitt and Soto, a 17-year-old former employee of the store. It was a start but not enough for charges. That changed a few days later when Keith Woods, a 3-time convicted drug offender, was picked up for another offense. Facing 25 years in prison if convicted again, Woods said he had information about the market murders. He later testified against Mr. McCrimmon and Mr. Minnitt; under a plea agreement, he avoided a lengthy prison sentence. Mr. Godoy interviewed Woods, but didnt record the first 45 minutes. "No plausible explanation" was offered why some of the interview was untaped, the Arizona Supreme Court found. In the recorded portion of the interview, Woods said, Mr. McCrimmon and Mr. Minnitt told him that they and another guy named "Cha Chi" had committed the robbery and murders. Mr. Peasley said Cha Chi was Soto. Soto denied it, but was convicted and sentenced to death. Next, Mr. Minnitt and Mr. McCrimmon were tried together and convicted, though their convictions were overturned in 1996 because of juror misconduct in the case. It was during their retrials that allegations surfaced of false testimony by Mr. Godoy. Mr. Godoy had testified that Woods was the first to tell him about Mr. Minnitt, Mr. McCrimmon and Soto; in fact, the anonymous calls had led the detective to the 3. Mr. Godoy eventually admitted that his testimony - that the men were not suspects before Woods approached investigators - was untrue. That might have been a trivial matter in some cases, but in this case, much hinged on Woodss credibility, said Ms. Clark, the Bar investigator. And prosecutor Mr. Peasley knew it. In his trial arguments, he said Woods's testimony should convict Mr. McCrimmon and Mr. Minnitt. Twice Named Prosecutor Of The Year Mr. Peasley, twice named Arizona Prosecutor of the Year, had won dozens of capital cases and even trained other prosecutors. "Peasley could convict a ham sandwich. Hes that good with juries," Ms. Clark said. But his knowing use of false testimony, which won the convictions and death sentences for Mr. McCrimmon and Mr. Minnitt, cost him his law license. "We cannot conceive of a more serious injury, not just to the defendants but to the criminal justice system, than a prosecutors presentation of false testimony in a capital murder case," the Arizona Supreme Court said in ordering the disbarment, a rarity for someone of Mr. Peasleys stature. 10 Attorneys Disbarred In 2004 In Arizona, 10 lawyers were disbarred last year and seven the year before. Most stole money from clients or committed similar offenses, Ms. Clark said, adding that Mr. Peasley may be the only U.S. prosecutor disbarred for intentionally eliciting false testimony in a capital case. The American Bar Association doesn't track such cases. Mr. Peasley has said the misstatements at trial were oversights, not intentional misconduct. He maintained he didn't do anything wrong and accused the state Bar of unfairly targeting him. He did not return calls from The Associated Press, seeking further comment. He now works as an investigator for a criminal defense lawyer in Tucson and cannot be readmitted to the Bar for 4 more years. Mr. Godoy said he lied because he knew he couldnt talk about confidential informants - the anonymous callers - without violating the defendants constitutional right to confront their accusers. "The mistakes they say were intentional were never intentional," he said in an interview. Mr. Godoy has retired from the police force. Three separate grand juries considered perjury charges. 2 issued indictments, which were dismissed by a judge, who found the grand jury was presented irrelevant prejudicial information and was manipulated in the proceeding. The same judge, Lina Rodriguez of Pima County Superior Court, had volunteered previously to be a character witness for Mr. Peasley in his Bar discipline proceedings, Ms. Clark said. Meanwhile, Soto is still seeking a new trial. The judge found that the specific misconduct that freed Mr. Minnitt and Mr. McCrimmon didnt occur in Sotos original trial, but his current lawyer argues other misconduct tainted the case. He was on death row until an unrelated ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court found that people who committed crimes as juveniles couldnt be executed. He awaits resentencing on Aug. 15 and could get 3 life terms. Soto, now 30, said in a phone interview he thought he was being framed even in his 1st interviews with Mr. Godoy. "You're wrong. Youre setting me up," he said he told the detective. In an appeal, he claimed Mr. Godoy may have planted the crucial fingerprint evidence. Such a claim might be dismissed as outlandish if it werent for the pattern of misconduct already demonstrated, Ms. Clark said. "How in the world could I have set (Soto) up?" Mr. Godoy said. The fingerprints, found on a produce bag at the markets counter and on a food stamp near the register, prove that Soto killed his former boss and the others, he said. Investigators theorized that Sotos presence made the crime possible because the victims recognized him and allowed him into the store at closing time. Richard Gee, the managers younger brother, agrees. He supports Mr. Godoy and Mr. Peasley and believes they did good work. "If (Soto) walks away free," he said, "you just let a killer off the hook." But Ms. Clark points to an additional problem with the Soto case: 2 police reports covering the same anonymous tip were filed - and they named different suspects. One identified the market murderers as a "black man named McKinney" and "Cha Chi." The other said "McKinney" and "Martin Soto" were involved. A major part of Sotos defense was that he was a victim of mistaken identity. Soto, a Mexican citizen whose mother was Chinese, was not "Cha Chi," he argued. Another Martin in the neighborhood used that nickname. Sotos trial attorney, James Stuehringer, received the "Martin Soto" report, but its not clear whether he received the other report, referring to Cha Chi. That report was sent to a lawyer in an unrelated case. Legally, Mr. Peasley was obligated to disclose all the reports to Mr. Stuehringer. Mr. Stuehringer has said he doesnt recall whether he ever saw the "Cha Chi" report, though he presented trial evidence challenging the Cha Chi nickname, mentioned by Woods. He also argued that Mr. Godoy rushed to judgment on Soto. Raising the conflicting reports could have bolstered those lines of defense, Ms. Clark said. In a twist, Mr. Stuehringer later represented Mr. Peasley, when Mr. Peasley was being investigated by the Bar. Calls to Mr. Stuehringer for comment have not been returned. Ms. Clark said she believes Sotos case was an injustice but added, 'How can you ever know what the truth was?' (source: Associated Press) MASSACHUSETTS: Mitt's execution bill should be DOA All too often debates about the death penalty dissolve into either emotionally charged arguments over morality or intellectually sterile exchanges of facts, figures and scientific research. Neither type of discussion appears to change many minds on the propriety of state-sanctioned killing. Logic about the utility of capital punishment, however, suggests that legislation proposed by Gov. Mitt Romney to reinstate the death penalty is just a bad idea. Restoring capital punishment makes little sense, especially in light of Massachusetts' distinction as having the lowest homicide rate among the urban states and the lack of consensus in public opinion. Romney's bill strives to eliminate the chance of error by fashioning a foolproof system informed by science, such as DNA and other high-tech approaches to produce a no-doubt standard. The layers of safeguards, including a tandem of top-notch defense attorneys, wide latitude in hiring experts, appeals and post-conviction review, would make the state's capital punishment machinery the most expensive in the land. When Romney called his proposal a gold standard, he wasn't kidding, at least about the gold. Romney apparently isn't concerned about the millions that this process would cost the taxpayers. In 2002, then-candidate Romney made his priorities clear. "I don't think that the death penalty has anything to do with cost," he argued during a debate with Democrat Shannon O'Brien. "But it has everything to do with deterrence - to send a statement loud and clear to terrorists, cop killer and others." In light of his commitment to science and uncritical trust in scientific evidence, it is perplexing that the governor is so dismissive of decades of scientific studies refuting the deterrence myth. Suicide bombers certainly are not deterrable by the prospect of death. Other terrorists even welcome execution to advance their agenda and status as martyrs. As for cop killers, slaying an officer is often a deliberate move to escape arrest. For someone maneuvering to avoid any penalty, the severity of that punishment is of no real significance. It is the likelihood of punishment, and not its severity, that has the potential to deter. Ironically, the narrow applicability of Romney's bill would negate any deterrent effect that capital punishment could arguably carry. Designed to apply only to the worst of the worst, which translates into the rarest of the rare, how could it deter? I am not arguing for a broader-based bill - a silver or bronze standard. The death penalty does not protect us any better than the current sanction, life in prison without possibility of parole. The deterrence issue is relative, not absolute. The question is not whether offenders are dissuaded by death, but whether they are any more dissuaded by death than by life without parole. Much of the debate last week surrounding Romney's bill addressed whether it would guarantee an error-free death penalty. However, in these difficult economic times with so many critical social programs underfunded, it is foolish to spend millions in an attempt to execute a tiny handful of murderers. (source: Opinion, Boston Herald) VERMONT: Inmate removed from Vt. death row----His new location is not disclosed Donald Fell, the man sentenced to die in Vermont's 1st death penalty case in nearly 50 years, has been removed from the state. Federal marshals took Fell from his jail cell Friday, a day after a federal jury ruled that he should be put to death for abducting and killing Tressa King, a North Clarendon woman, in November 2000. ''He's no longer in Vermont," US Marshal for Vermont John Edwards said Friday. ''We're not going to disclose which facility he is being held at, but he is out of state." Fell's most likely destination is Terre Haute, Ind., home to the federal prison system's death row. Fell, a 25-year-old Pennsylvania native, has been housed at the St. Albans jail since his arrest in December 2000. Robert Hoffman, Vermont corrections commissioner, said Fell was held at a Vermont jail Thursday night. "He was kept under active observation last night, and it was uneventful," Hoffman said Friday morning. Federal Bureau of Prison officials contacted Friday said they could not comment on where Fell is housed. The bureau's website has an "inmate locator" section, and Fell's name is listed on the site, but his location is not disclosed. If Fell was not immediately taken to the prison in Terre Haute, he may be in a federal facility closer to Vermont. He has to return to the state for a formal sentencing hearing sometime in the next several months. Currently, 39 people are on federal death row. In June 2001, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was the first person executed under the federal death penalty statute since 1963. Vermont abolished the death penalty in the 1960s, but the US government has the authority to execute people charged with certain federal crimes. Fell was charged under federal law because King's killing involved crossing the Vermont state line. (source: Associated Press) ******************* Vt. doesn't need the death penalty I have been so proud to live in a state where we have abolished the death penalty. Please, let's work to keep it this way. A human being is a human being, no matter what crimes he or she may have committed. We incarcerate to protect society and to give one the chance to repent and change. Might we leave the final judgment to God and nature? KATHY FARROW----Shelburne (source: Letter, Rutland Herald) MISSOURI: Proof that innocent people have been executed could save others from the same fate Condemned men usually are resigned, stoic even, as their execution draws near. Larry Griffin was different as he faced lethal injection in 1995. "Larry went down with an attitude," attorney Sean OBrien said. "He had bread and water for his last meal." Most inmates thank their lawyers for trying to save them, said OBrien, who has been with many in their final hours. Griffin did not. "We did everything we could," one of his lawyers told him. "It wasn't enough," the condemned man replied. OBrien told that story as he spoke to a group of lawyers Tuesday in Kansas City. He had a reason for discussing an execution that occurred 10 years ago. The day before, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce had announced that, because of evidence pointing to Griffins possible innocence, she was opening a new investigation into the murder for which he was executed. If Joyce determines Griffin did not kill Quintin Moss in a 1980 drive-by shooting in St. Louis, it would be the 1st time since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States that a person was cleared of a crime after being put to death. Griffin always denied killing Moss. No physical evidence connected him to the shooting. The prosecutions key witness was a felon from Boston, a heroin addict in the federal government's witness protection program. He claimed to have been about 20 feet away when shots fired from a moving car killed Moss, 19, and wounded another man. Samuel Gross, a University of Michigan law professor who opposes the death penalty, adopted Griffins case as a project. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund financed a yearlong investigation. Among other things, witnesses said the heroin addict, a white man, wasn't at the scene when the murder occurred in the nearly all-black neighborhood. Gross has a political motive for clearing Griffin in memoriam. Evidence that an innocent man had been executed would sway a public that is becoming increasingly queasy about the death penalty. More than 100 death row prisoners around the nation have been freed after new evidence nullified their convictions. But advocates of capital punishment claim the exonerations prove the system works because no innocent person has been put to death. That argument leaves OBrien cold. "When people ask me, 'Has Missouri executed an innocent person?' I point them to Larry Griffin," he said. OBrien and his law partner, Kent Gipson, took on Griffins appeals in the early 1990s. Griffin, who grew up in a St. Louis housing project, had been convicted of murdering Moss, a drug dealer, a decade earlier. The attorneys located Robert Fitzgerald, the heroin addict who had testified for the prosecution. "He told us a much different story," O'Brien said. "He admitted that he lied when he testified in court, that he didnt see Larry Griffin." But Fitzgeralds reversal wasn't enough. A federal judge who reviewed the case chose to believe the account given at trial. The missing link was the man wounded in the drive-by shooting. Neither the prosecution nor the defense had called him to testify. OBrien and Gipson looked for him but had limited Internet resources at the time. "We couldn't find him," O'Brien said. After Griffins execution, an investigator working for Gross located the man in Los Angeles. He had left Missouri after the shooting. The man told the investigator hed seen the face of the shooter, and it wasnt Griffin. "He was shocked to find that Larry Griffin had been executed for the murder of Quintin Moss," O'Brien said. Joyce is courageous to reopen the investigation. Too many prosecutors refuse to acknowledge the possibility that guilty verdicts can be wrong. They can, though. The fact that new evidence is coming to light in Griffins case now should resound in the U.S. Congress. The Senate and House are considering legislation that would prevent many death row inmates from challenging their convictions in the federal courts after other appeals have failed. The proposed legislation, named the "Streamlined Procedures Act of 2005," would narrow the circumstances under which an inmate could seek federal review, bar the courts from considering key issues, and set arbitrary timetables for rulings. It is a frightening proposal. DNA testing has proven, without a doubt, that innocent people are sentenced to death. Closing a window of appeal increases the likelihood that they will be executed. Sponsors of the Streamlined Procedures Act are catering to critics who claim the appeals process for capital cases is too costly and takes too long. In Larry Griffins case, the span between arrest and execution took 15 years. That is looking increasingly like a fatal rush to judgment. (source: Barbara Shelly is a member of the Editorial Board; Kansas City Star)
