August 31 ARIZONA: Death penalty prosecutor among new judges Governor Napolitano has appointed seven new Maricopa County Superior Court judges, including a county prosecutor who formerly served as the state's top death penalty lawyer. Paul McMurdie is currently an assistant county attorney. H oversaw the state's section handling death penalty cases while an assistant attorney general. Other new judges appointed by Napolitano during the past week include Jo Lynn Gentry-Lewis, John Richard Hannah Junior, Robert Ewell Miles, Timothy J. Ryan, Michael Gordon and Kristin Carson Hoffman. The appointees will replace retiring judges and fill openings created by new court divisions. Napolitano made her selections from among nominees submitted by a state commission. (source: Associated Press) OHIO: ACLU in court to try to block move of death row Condemned killers would have better living conditions under a plan to move Ohio's death row from Mansfield to Youngstown, a state prison official testified Wednesday. The planned move of Ohio's approximately 200 death row inmates to the supermaximum security Ohio State Penitentiary is being challenged in U.S. District Court by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU argues that the move would deny inmates' constitutional due process rights and that a prior court ruling forbids inmates from being sent to the Youngstown prison unless they prove to be a security risk. The state needs to move the inmates to save money, said attorney Mark Landes, who represented the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction in a hearing before U.S. District Judge James Gwin. "This is not standard, but this is a better deal for these inmates," Landes said. "We should be allowed to try it." The Ohio State Penitentiary is designed to hold the state's most dangerous prisoners who have poor conduct records. Except for an hour a day, inmates are kept in 80-square-foot cells built to prevent them from communicating with each other. Death row inmates would not be subjected to the same restrictions that the supermax's other inmates experience. Also, because the prison is more secure than the Mansfield Correctional Institution, the condemned inmates would be given improved privileges there, such as eating meals together, Landes said. The inmates would be in smaller cells, however, with just 67 square feet of unencumbered living space, compared with 89 square feet of unencumbered space in Mansfield's cells. Staughton Lynd, an attorney volunteering for the ACLU, questioned the state prison system's assistant director, Terry Collins, on the size of the outdoor recreation areas at both the Mansfield and Youngstown prisons. Collins testified that one of three recreation areas at Mansfield, at roughly 21,000 square feet, is about 20 times larger than the recreation area at the prison in Youngstown. He said the important issue is the amount of time inmates can spend in the recreation area. Collins said that 36 death row inmates who have earned privileges for good behavior, such as extra time permitted out of their cells, might lose some when moved, but he said that as a whole the death row inmates would have better conditions. "More inmates would receive more privileges than what currently exists for them at Mansfield," Collins said. Collins estimated that the state would save from $5 million to $6 million by eliminating 91 jobs at Mansfield. The state has not set a date to move the inmates. The federal court hearing is expected to last 3 days. Gwin won't make a ruling on the case until the end of September. Ohio previously moved death row to Mansfield from the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville after the 1993 riots there. On the Net: ACLU: _http://www.acluohio.org/_ (http://www.acluohio.org/) Ohio State Penitentiary: _http://www.drc.state.oh.us/public/osp.htm_ (http://www.drc.state.oh.us/public/osp.htm) (source: Associated Press)
