August 1 KANSAS: United States Supreme Court Sets Date For Kansas Death Penalty Appeal Attorney General Phill Kline will continue his efforts to have the states death penalty statute reinstated when he appears before the United States Supreme Court on December 7, 2005. On December 17, 2004 the Kansas Supreme Court, in a direct reversal of an earlier ruling by the same court, ruled 4-3 in the case of State v. Marsh that the weighting equation of the Kansas death penalty statute is unconstitutional, thereby striking down the law. Attorney General Kline immediately filed a motion to stay the ruling and indicated his intention to seek a reversal of the state courts decision by the United States Supreme Court. The Kansas Supreme Court granted the motion for stay on December 20, 2004 and, on May 31, 2005, the United States Supreme Court announced that they granted Klines Writ of Certiorari and would consider the states appeal. The United States Supreme Court also announced today that it will hear arguments in the case of the Kansas Department of Revenue v. Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation on October 3, 2005. The case involves the states ability to tax goods purchased by the tribe off tribal land. The state sought Certiorari following a 2004 ruling by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. (source: All American Patriots) VERMONT: Death penalty is never an option I was not surprised by the sentencing verdict in the Donald Fell case, nor was I surprised by the letters lauding the verdict and calling Fell less than human, but I was saddened. I am against the death penalty for Donald Fell and against capital punishment in general. Capital punishment serves absolutely no positive purpose in our society. Studies have shown that it does not deter violent crime, as some hoped it would, and when you consider the automatic appeals, the extended appeals and the special requirements of a death row inmate, capital punishment is at least as expensive as long-term incarceration. The death penalty is a revenge killing accepted by many in our society, allowed by the Supreme Court, selected as punishment by our judicial system and sanctioned and carried out by the government. It cannot help but lessen the humanity of all the individuals involved and our culture as a whole. I cannot begin to imagine what the family and friends of Fell's victims went throught and are still going through. If I were related to the victim of such a heinous crime, I would want Fell dead, and the method could not be brutal enough. But what would that ritual killing accomplish? Would it bring my loved one back? Would it give me sense of closure? Would it really start the healing process? Would the taking of another human life in any way lessen the great wound made when 3 souls were wrenched from this world well before their time? I cannot imagine it would. Life in a maximum security prison without parole is a gift or a walk on the beach is simply wrong. The court system that represents our society is taking away a man's most valuable and dearest right: his freedom. Donald Fell will never again leave his cell, walk a hallway, eat, shower or do a thousand little things we take for granted without first getting permission. He will constantly be in danger of life-threatening violence, severe physical and sexual abuse. Life in prison without parole is a very real and terrible punishment. It will also give Donald Fell a lifetime to remember and regret that awful night when he took absolutely everything from three fellow human beings and destroyed his own life. LEONARD POWERS JR.----Rutland (source: Letter to the Editor, Rutland Herald) ALABAMA----impending execution//volunteer Sibley execution nears The government that George Sibley Jr. refused to acknowledge during his life as a right-wing extremist in Florida's Patriot movement plans to execute him Thursday for the 1993 killing of an Opelika police officer. Sibley, 62, will be the 3rd Alabama man executed this year, and the 2nd this year to forgo steps in the appeals process that could have extended his life. Earlier this month he filed a 13-page petition, handwritten on notebook paper, that asked the state Supreme Court to stop his execution, scheduled for Thursday. He has had an uneasy relationship with attorneys and represented himself at times. "I contend that I am innocent of the crime charged and that the conviction and sentence against me are unconstitutional contrivances from which I am due relief," Sibley wrote. The court denied his request. Sibley's footnoted petition is a mix of legal jargon and bizarre meanderings. He claims his lawyers failed him and Alabama courts have acted illegally. He also claims that the state misidentified him in the execution order by listing his middle name as "E.," instead of Everett. (source: Birmingham News) ************************* A Crenshaw County man will learn his fate today at a sentencing hearing in Luverne. 25-year-old Westley Devon Harris was convicted June 14th of capital murder in the killing of 6 members of his then-girlfriend's family at their farm in Rutledge in August 2002. 2 days later, a jury recommended that Harris be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. But Alabama Attorney General Troy King asked Circuit Judge Ed McFerrin to override the recommendation and sentence Harris to death. King previously said the mass murders were among the worst in Alabama in modern times and demands that Harris die for his crimes. The hearing is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. today. ************************** Judge agrees to sequester jury for man in police deaths A judge says jurors will be sequestered for the August 22nd capital murder trial of Nathaniel Woods. He's the last of 2 men charged in the deaths of 3 Birmingham police officers. Jefferson County Circuit Judge Tommy Nail granted prosecution motions to sequester the jury. The 28-year-old Woods is charged in the June 17th, 2004, deaths of Officers Carlos Owen, Charles Robert Bennett, and Harley Chisholm III. A 4th officer, Michael Collins, was hit by a bullet fragment but not seriously injured. Defense attorneys declined to comment on Friday's ruling. Co-defendant Kerry Spencer was convicted in June of capital murder for the officers' deaths and attempted murder for Collins. The 25-year-old Spencer will be sentenced in September. Jurors recommended life in prison without parole for Spencer. The judge can follow the recommendation or override it and give Spencer death. (source for both: The Tuscaloosa News) OHIO: Brother who doubted Richey's innocence now wants him free He has become a household name as the only Scot on America's death row - for a murder he insists he did not commit. >From his cell in an Ohio prison Kenny Richey is the focus of a high-profile campaign to secure his release. A key figure in that campaign is also locked in a cell 2000 miles away in Washington. Like Kenny Richey, his younger brother Tom left his native Edinburgh as a teenager full of hope for a new life in the US, but the only America they have experienced is the inside of prison. It is now more than 20 years since the brothers were jailed for separate murders. Tom Richey, who admits his crime, feels partly responsible for his brother's conviction. With only "a good Scottish education" behind him he has spent his time in prison reading and writing. The latter has seen him produce a book which he hopes will help win the release of his brother, who is facing a retrial. Tom Richey followed his father to America and joined the US army aged 17. A year later while high on LSD he gunned down an American shop assistant. For a year, like his brother, he faced the death penalty but he eventually agreed to a plea bargain and instead of execution received a 65-year jail sentence. >From his cell in Washington State's Clallam Bay Corrections Centre, which houses 900 prisoners and where his only visitor is his father, Tom Richey yesterday spoke about the guilt he carries about his brother's conviction, his own life in prison, and why he wrote the book which is expected to be published soon. He also spoke of his hopes that both he and his brother will be freed and reunited in Scotland later this year with his mother, who he has not seen since 1992. He admits he initially had doubts about the innocence of his brother, who had a track record of trouble before being arrested in 1986 for starting a fire in which 2-year-old Cynthia Collins died. He said: "I feel partly responsible for my brother's conviction because they used my conviction to prejudice him. The prosecutor went to a grand jury and implied that if one brother was capable of murder then so must the other, and that helped indict my brother. "When he went to trial they again used my conviction to prejudice my brother and that was one of the motivating factors for writing the book. I wanted to tell the story." His early life in prison was traumatic and involved a lot of fighting and it was 4 years into his sentence before an 18-month spell in solitary confinement gave him time to think and write. He has not been able to speak to his brother since his arrest in 1986 and they communicate by twice weekly letters. "Although I doubted him early on he continued to maintain his innocence and it wasn't until some of the facts started to come to light that I changed my mind. I believed him and I was shocked by the decision to convict him. "I got my information through family and through Kenny himself and my year and a half in solitary gave me the time to go through everything time after time. "One thing that particularly bothered me was that the prosecutor for the State of Ohio stated that even though new evidence might show my brother's innocence, the US and state constitution still allowed him to be executed. "That bugged me because they were admitting his innocence but said 'we're going to kill him anyway'. I wrote the book in 1992. I wrote it out in longhand and later typed it out, but it is only now I have managed to get a publisher. "I kept meeting prejudicial barriers from the publishing houses. "I rewrote it in 1995, then again in 2001 and last year and Black & White Publishing in Edinburgh agreed to take a look at it. "To be honest I am surprised it was picked up after all these years but I am kind of proud of the achievement." He said he accepted that there was a credibility issue with a murderer writing about his own brother, also a convicted murderer, but said: "That's why I had to ensure I was more objective than the average person and relied only on the facts and the material from the transcripts." Mr Richey added: "Most certainly my hope is that we will both be freed and reunited in Scotland. "What would I like to do in Scotland? Where would I start? I just want to get with my family and my mum and catch up. I call her once a month and we talk on the phone but the last time I saw my mum was in 1992." Kenny Richey - Death Row Scot will be published on August 11 by Black & White Publishing. (source: The (UK) Herald)
