Oct. 27
ILLINOIS: Lecture on death penalty sparks contemplation----Deacon George Brooks tells criminology students at Lewis University that the death penalty is hopelessly flawed. Invoking both the church and secular mores, Deacon George Brooks, a Catholic prison minister, urged lecture-goers to look beyond vengeance in measuring the effectiveness of the death penalty. Despite a litany of prophetic statements that oppose capital punishment on moral, ethical, religious and philosophical grounds, the deacon and lawyer, said Catholics' opinions concerning the death penalty essentially mirror the rest of the population in the United States - Americans are divided on the issue, Deacon Brooks said. Speaking before a group of mostly criminal justice students Oct. 19 at Romeovilles Lewis University, Deacon Brooks said even the most impassioned opinions by the likes of Pope John Paul II, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Catholic Conference of Illinois, the Texas Catholic Conference and more have failed to sway attitudes he believes are shaped by a misconstrued sense of justice. However, Brooks, who is the director of advocacy at Chicagos South Side Catholic Ministry facility called Kolbe House, is banking on Americas economic sensibilities. The general population is paying attention to the financial bottom line. In this case, the bottom line is slimmer when an individual serves life in prison rather than being executed, according to Deacon Brooks, a pro-life advocate and jailhouse minister at the Cook County Department of Corrections. Due to lengthy judicial procedures, including petitions to squash evidence, requests for retrial, appeals for clemency, multiple filings and more, sentencing someone to death is roughly 3 times more costly than life without parole, he explained. Bringing to light the recent declarations by a team of prosecutors in Kansas City, Kan., along with several from North Carolina that they can no longer afford to process death penalty cases, Deacon Brooks pointed out the economic reality of the situation. It cost "approximately $850 million to $1 billion to prosecute (death penalty) cases. The money could have been better used for crime prevention or for victims families." During his hourlong presentation, Deacon Brooks never wavered from his anti-death penalty stance, despite a handful of students who, during a question-and-answer period, expressed an emotional discourse that blended the desire to defend victims together with a sense of justice for a crime on the scale of murder. The deacon countered the sentiment by referring to it as an act of "vengeance." Having testified in 2000 before a committee established by former Illinois Gov. George Ryan to examine the death penalty by identifying its flaws and societal implications, Deacon Brooks equated vengeance to "an act of revenge." Having listened to the deacon's presentation of facts that describe the death penalty as hopelessly "flawed," and "racist" in consideration of the disproportionate number of minority and low-income inmates that make up the prison population, LU students Adam Neider of Madison, Wis., and Dave Szymanski of Lockport, surmised that each situation should be judged on the basis of its own merit. "If the punishment fits the crime, if it's excessive - like if the guy killed 20 people - then it's okay," said Neider. >From Szymanski's point of view, the circumstances of one's life, particularly his or her level of education and life experiences should be taken into consideration when determining the sentence for a crime or during parole hearings. "A lot of lower income families and minorities are faced with a lot of stress," which potentially contribute to the commission of a crime, said Neider, a junior. Prior to another death penalty presentation Oct. 20 at St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Naperville, the featured speaker, a member of a murder victim's family, revealed the emotionally wrought reasons for her opposition to the death penalty. Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins of Winnetka, whose pregnant sister and brother in-law were shot to death in 1990 in their suburban home, said, "The problem is that there is no price that that man can pay that is enough. There is no price he could pay, including his own life." Even cases such as the highly publicized trial of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, Iraq, who is charged with mass murder, are unlikely to stir a sense of revenge within Bishop-Jenkins. Speaking of the trial, she said, "In the wake of no justice, in the face of that, you simply have to decide what youre going to do. It becomes about who we are as a people. We have to make sure it never happens again." Deacon Brooks added in his experience as a minister who has met with countless surviving family members in the aftermath of a murder, "forgiveness" is the key to coping with a loss that can never be erased. Tapping into her own experience both physically and spiritually, Bishop-Jenkins said she has discovered that medical research agrees with the notion of forgiveness. "Studies show people who hang on to anger and seek revenge, it hurts them," she added. Over the past 15 years, Bishop-Jenkins and her husband, Bill Jenkins, whose son was murdered in a 1997 robbery in Richmond, Va., have prayed together to overcome their pain and find spiritual healing. The consequence of anguish, internal struggle, faith and more has resulted in the creation of a group the pair co-founded, called the Murder Victims Families for Human Rights. The couple also works extensively to advocate on behalf of the National Coalition of Victims in Action. Currently, they are focused on the prevention of gun-related violence. "I would rail against (a characterization of being) anti-gun," said Bishop-Jenkins. "We are pro gun-safety." Certainly, urban and rural issues clash when broaching the topic of gun availability. "We have different needs," she said. Instead, the activist said she is more concerned about proper background checks for weapons purchasers and better tracking systems. She cited U.S. crime statistics that indicate in 2003 nearly 60 % of gun-related deaths were conducted with weapons purchased out-of-state. Meanwhile, 46 percent of guns used in crimes in Illinois were purchased from 1 of 2 shops in suburban Chicago. "We need to crack down on the bad dealers," she said. (source: Catholic Explorer) USA----re: federal death sentence Is killer's life story best left untold? ---- Victims' families resent concept of Sampson book While he sat in his 12-by-7-foot cell on death row, Gary Lee Sampson has had time to gain 50 pounds and take 30 off. Time to watch his red hair go gray. And time to reflect on a bloody week in which he killed three men in cold blood. And now, 4 years after the murders, Sampson wants people to know what he's been thinking. For the past 11 months, he has been working with a writer and evangelical minister on his biography. The working title: "The DNA of a Killer: Society's Child, Gary Lee Sampson." The book, said biographer Deborah Murphy, is a cautionary tale that both she and Sampson hope will save others from following the same path by describing the warning signs of mental illness, and drug and alcohol abuse. "Gary wants a book written before he gets executed because he wants to tell his story, his side, the true version of everything that happened," said Murphy, who first met Sampson 26 years ago when the 2 were growing up on the South Shore. ''He noticed certain signs of depression that led to alcohol and drugs and that's how you get into big trouble. He hopes telling his story can help young people. . . . He's trying to spare lives." Relatives of Sampson's victims don't buy that story line. "The idea that Gary Sampson wants to help other children makes me nauseous," said Mary Rizzo, mother of Jonathan Rizzo, one of Sampson's victims. "If someone wants to write a book to help children they should write about Jonathan and Philip and Robert, they all led good lives." In July 2001, Sampson carjacked Philip McCloskey, 69, of Taunton, and stabbed him to death. A few days later, he did the same to Rizzo, a 19-year-old college sophomore from Kingston. 4 days after that, he strangled Robert Whitney, 58, of Penacook, N.H. Sampson, who is from Abington, was tried in federal court and found guilty of the murders; he became the 1st person in Massachusetts sentenced to die under the federal death penalty. He is on death row at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Ind., where he is confined to his cell 23 hours day, said Trey Adams, a spokesman for the prison complex. Sampson's case is notable for its brutality, but also for his short-circuited attempt to turn himself in the day before his killing rampage began. Telephone records confirmed that Sampson called the FBI from a pay phone that day; a fugitive facing charges in North Carolina, Sampson said he was trying to surrender. But the call was accidentally disconnected by an FBI clerk, and no action was taken. After the murders, Sampson surrendered in Vermont and confessed. Those 2 facts -- the call to the FBI and his surrender -- were raised at the trial, but did not convince jurors that he should be spared from capital punishment. Nor do they generate sympathy in the McCloskey family. Scott McCloskey, son of Philip McCloskey, shares Mary Rizzo's distaste for Sampson's book venture. "A biography about a murderer, that's usually the case, right?" he said. The killer "goes out and kills and they find him and they do movies about him, they put these guys on a pedestal." In a rambling, 3-page typed letter laden with spelling errors, Sampson said he is deeply remorseful for the murders. "At times the anguish is overwhelming," he wrote in the letter, mailed in response to a query from The Boston Globe. Still, Sampson has told Murphy that he hopes the death penalty will be overturned. In the letter, he questions the social prudence of state-sanctioned execution, and cites Henry Ford's arguments against it. He also writes that although surrounded by ''abject drudgery," he is finding "comfort and faith" in "God and the religious instruction I am receiving. "In my actions and in my deeds I strive to show remorse." Murphy, who grew up in Rockland not far from Sampson, is also outspoken against the death penalty. "Jesus said turn the other cheek," she said. "And my own personal, emotional feeling is 2 wrongs don't make a right." Murphy and Sampson first met briefly at house party in 1979. They did not keep in touch. Two years later she was paralyzed in a car accident, and several years after that she became a born-again Christian and later an evangelical minister. In 1989 she published a memoir, "Tho I Walkest Through the Fire." Murphy, 48, lives in Tampa and serves as a minister through a church called New Beginnings. She began corresponding with Sampson in August 2004, and signed an agreement to write his biography last November. To facilitate the process, Murphy's husband, a general contractor, bought and refurbished a house near the Terre Haute prison. Murphy has been staying there, interviewing Sampson four times a month for several hours at a time, she said. Because of the Son of Sam law that prohibits convicted murderers from profiting from their crimes, Sampson will not be entitled to any proceeds from the book. Murphy said she has not started shopping for a publisher. She describes Sampson, who recently turned 46, as charismatic, creative, and remorseful. "He has had nightmares about the crimes," she said. "He has a conscience." But Murphy also said she understands the pain a biography could cause the family members of Sampson's victims. Tragedy in her own life helps qualify her to write the book, she said. In the same car accident that left her paralyzed, Murphy's brother was killed. 13 years earlier, in a hit-and-run in Boston that was never solved, Murphy's sister was killed. And in 2000 Murphy's niece was shot to death in Arizona and left on the street. That case has never been solved. "I can understand how they feel," Murphy said, referring to the grieving relatives. "But I am giving them a chance to know why, and that's something my family would certainly like to have." In his letter to the Globe, Sampson is opaque about what motivated his murder spree. He writes "many of the 'why questions' weigh excruciatingly heavy and our [sic] indelible upon my soul and have to [sic] earthly obtainable answers." A followup request for further details went unanswered. Despite Sampson's professed discomfort, Murphy said, he has adjusted well to prison life. His arrest record dates back more than 25 years; before his conviction on the murder charges, he had served 8 years for robbing banks. Still, Sampson has complained about the quality of the health care and the food, Murphy said. The guards consider Sampson a "neat freak" who immediately paints his cell every time he is transferred into a new one. Recently he was moved into a brand new facility "which he is thrilled about," Murphy said. He spends most of his time in his cell watching nature shows on a 12-inch black and white television. His cell is painted gray, lighted by a single fluorescent bulb, and equipped with a toilet, shower, writing table, sink, and bed. A single 6-inch-wide window looks out onto the prison grounds, said prison spokesman Adams. Sampson has received dozens of letters of support from around the country, as well as a handful of romantic inquiries and a few cash gifts, Murphy said. David Ruhnke, Sampson's lawyer, said ''there will be numerous grounds presented on appeal," but declined to elaborate what they will be. Murphy, meanwhile, expresses hope that the book may sway the families of the victims to forgive Sampson and perhaps even speak out against his execution. Scott McCloskey said that day will never come. "I will never forgive him," McCloskey said. "As far as I'm concerned, Gary Sampson is an evil man. And as far as the death penalty goes, he deserves it and I will be there when it happens." (source: Boston Globe) *************************** The death penalty----OUR OPINION: PATRIOT ACT DEVELOPING DECIDEDLY UN-AMERICAN TILT In the name of fighting terror, some lawmakers have gone overboard with amendments to the U.S.A. Patriot Act. For example, U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, would let federal prosecutors shop for another jury if the first panel deadlocked on a death sentence. The very notion is absurd -- jury shopping for death -- and the amendment should be stripped from the Patriot Act reauthorization bill. Rep. Carter's measure would allow prosecutors to empanel a second jury and argue for death if at least one person on the original jury voted for the death penalty. Thus, an 11-1 vote recommending life in prison instead of death could be rejected in order to empanel another jury to give the prosecutorone more chance to win a death sentence. This measure would do little to actually help fight terrorism. Yet it would undermine a feature that strengthens U.S. jurisprudence and makes our system an international model. Under U.S. law, prosecutors must prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt; and federal juries must reach unanimous consensus on imposing the death penalty. If some jurors object to imposing death, it means the case for death wasn't demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt. After all, only jurors who support the death penalty are allowed to judge death cases. Other amendments also should be deleted from this bill. One would triple the number of terrorism-related crimes eligible for the death penalty. Another would authorize the death penalty for a person who gives money to an organization whose members kill someone, even if the contributor did not know that the organization or its members were planning to kill. Such measures increase the chances of executing the innocent. They weaken the U.S. fight against terror and give other countries reasons to stop supporting the anti-terror campaign. These amendments have no place in the Patriot Act and should be removed. (source: Opinion, Miami Herald) *********************** U.S.: House Amendment Tilts Playing Field for Death Penalty The House has slipped an amendment into the Patriot Act Reauthorization Act that would dramatically skew federal death penalty cases in favor of the prosecution, Human Rights Watch said today. The legislation would radically increase the number of federal crimes drawing the death penalty, allow judges to reduce juries deciding the death penalty to fewer than twelve persons, and allow the prosecutor to start afresh in trying to get the death penalty with a new sentencing jury any time even one juror resists imposing the death penalty in a capital case. Under current federal law, the defendant is given a life sentence if a jury of twelve does not unanimously vote for the death penalty. Under this legislation, the prosecutor could re-impanel a new jury and try for death once again. "It's a strange notion of justice indeed to give prosecutors multiple bites at the apple," said Jamie Fellner, U.S. Director of Human Rights Watch. "Death penalty cases are already riddled with unfairness. Why would Congress want to make them worse?" Human Rights Watch said that the legislation would give dramatic power to a single juror who could hold out for the death penalty - and thus enable the prosecution to secure a new jury. Juries in death penalty cases are already "death-qualified," meaning that anyone who opposes the death penalty on moral, religious, or practical grounds is excluded from the jury. Yet another legislative provision passed by the House would tilt the trial in favor of death even further by permitting the judge to reduce the number of jurors below twelve, with no minimum number set. A smaller jury would make it even easier for prosecutors to secure a unanimous verdict in favor of death. The House provisions would also triple the number of death penalty-eligible terrorism related crimes and allow the government to impose the death penalty even if the defendant had no knowledge or intent to kill. Under this legislation, an individual could be sentenced to death for providing financial support to a designated terrorist organization whose members caused the death of another, even if this individual did not know or in any way intend that the members engage in any specific acts of violence. Rep. John Carter (R- Tex.) introduced these death penalty provisions as last minute amendments to the House version of the Patriot Act Reauthorization Act. They were passed by voice vote, without debate. The Patriot Act Reauthorization Act passed by the Senate contains none of these death penalty provisions. A final version of the legislation is expected to emerge from conference with the Senate in the next one to 2 weeks and go to the floor of both the House and Senate for an up or down vote. "These provisions dramatically extend the reach of the federal death penalty and make it significantly easier for the prosecution to secure death, an inherently cruel penalty," said Jennifer Daskal, U.S. Program Advocate at Human Rights Watch. "Such a radical change to the federal death penalty should not become law without public debate." The key provisions are in Title II of H.R. 3199. Section 231 (f) allows for the impaneling of consecutive juries in the penalty phase of a death penalty trial, and Sections 211 and 214 together add a long list of new federal death penalty eligible crimes that do not carry the intent requirement laid out in 18 U.S.C. 3591(b). The Senate version of the Patriot Act Reauthorization (S.1389) does not include these provisions. House and Senate negotiators have begun to meet to iron out the differences in the 2 bills. A final version will be voted on by named conferees and then sent back to the House and Senate for an up or down vote. Senate conferees are Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Mike DeWine (R-OH), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Carl Levin (D-MI), Pat Roberts (R-KS), John Rockefeller (D-WV), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Arlen Specter (R-PA). House conferees have not yet been named. To view this document on the Human Rights Watch web site, please visit: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/10/26/usdom11924.htm (source: Human Rights Watch) ******************* Doctors, Lawyers Develop Credibility Test for Expert Testimony Doctors and lawyers -- often natural-born enemies in the courtroom -- are joining forces in Chattanooga, Tenn., in an experimental effort to keep junk science and dubious malpractice cases out of court. Under the program, judges presiding over malpractice cases will select an independent doctor from out of state to evaluate the testimony of potential expert witnesses and help decide well before trial whether those witnesses should be allowed to take the stand. Hamilton County Circuit Judge W. Neil Thomas III started the pilot program and said the Chattanooga-area medical society and bar association have agreed to the rules. Supporters hope that if it works in Chattanooga, the approach will spread. BlueCross BlueShield Tennessee and the nation's largest disability insurer, Chattanooga-based UnumProvident, are listed among sponsors of the experiment. Former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, president of the American Bar Association in 2003-04, commended Thomas for the effort, saying, "There are times when a judge needs additional assistance." "The court has a responsibility to make sure we don't waste taxpayer money," he added. Dr. Donald Palmisano of New Orleans, president of the American Medical Association in 2003-04, said, "Junk science has no place in the courtroom. It increases the cost of litigation." The Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association was not involved in the program. "We were never consulted," said the group's legislative liaison, Mary Littleton. "Where are the patients?" (source : Associated Press) ******************************* Sister Prejean shares mission against death penalty William Faulkner once said that the only thing worth writing about is the conflict in the human heart. For Sister Helen Prejean, the conflict she has made her mission has been the death penalty. "I've been in the struggle," she told an audience at Holy Rosary Catholic Church in St. Amant Thursday night. "I'm still in the struggle." Prejean wrote "Dead Man Walking," which was made into a motion picture in 1995, starring Susan Sarandon as Prejean and Sean Penn as a death row inmate. Sarandon won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Also nominated were Penn, director Tim Robbins and Bruce Springsteen for his original song of the same name. It has been translated in 12 languages. "It brings people close to the death penalty. It puts you on both sides of the heart," she said. "Dead Man Walking" chronicles the beginning of her "journey of faith," as she called it. When she was asked to become a death row inmate's pen pal in 1982, she had no idea what was to come. At the time, she said she only saw the step, "not the end of the road." What she thought was only going to be a few letters to Patrick Sonnier turned into a meeting. "I was shocked to see how human he was," she said. After counseling him, she said she began to feel guilty. "What am I doing?," she said. "That's the questioning going on inside me." She thought about meeting the victims' families, but figured they wouldn't want to meet her. "I stayed away and it was a terrible mistake," she said. She met them at the worst possible time, she said, at a pardon board hearing. Only 3 asked for clemency, while everyone else wanted execution. The father of one of the victims, Lloyd LeBlanc, reached out to her. He had lost his only son, and the family name had died. "He's the hero. I'm not the hero," she said. The family had moved because of all of the memories of their son. LeBlanc told Prejean that every birthday felt like they were losing their son all over again. She said vengeance, even when legalized, does not heal. "If you respect life, vote for the death penalty. Language like that is what is heard in the court room," she said. Sitting on the front row of another killing victimizes a family all over again, she said. When she watched Sonnier die, she said she was reminded of the words of Jesus - "and the last will be first." "Who are we to say some are not fit to live with us?" she said. The execution happened on the night of April 5, 1984, a night that changed her life. "I threw up. I was so cold. I had never watched someone intentionally killed," she said. A mission had been given to her. It was in the middle of the night and most everyone was asleep. It was like "a secret ritual," she said. "People have no idea how inhuman and imperfect and frail and biased the whole thing is," she said. Growing up in Baton Rouge, where she attended St. Joseph's, the death penalty was not discussed, she said. In researching for the book, she said she was surprised to learn there was a portable electric chair that was sent around the state to perform executions while she was in school. "If you find yourself struggling with the issue of the death penalty, you are not alone," she said. "Everybody struggles with the issue. The reason is because we read in the paper or hear on the news about an innocent person - maybe a mother in a car with two kids and she gets carjacked and thugs get in there and kill her and the children - we read these terrible stories and we feel outraged." "Something in us wells up and we say, Maybe the death penalty isn't for everybody, but it sure is for the people who did this.'" Prejean said just as Jesus crossed social boundaries and reached out to all people - including women, children and the poor - every life should be respected. "The last will be first," she said. "He's talking about a love so great, you can't consider anyone an enemy." In working with the poor, she said she has witnessed how poverty and poor education can cause some to "drown in society." In most cases, the poor cannot afford adequate defense, she said. "We don't have a way of getting the truth," she said. Her 2nd book, "Death of Innocents," focuses on those wrongly put to death. "When we sentence a human being to death, we are saying, 'You are so unredeemable, we have decided for you to meet God.'" She acknowledged that another horrendous crime will eventually happen, and the same strong feelings will arise again. "Tomorrow we'll read about a crime and go through it all over again," she said. Some families of murder victims have disagreed with Prejean's beliefs, she said. "I let them talk. All I can tell them is there is nobody in this room who has experienced the pain you have. We don't understand what you are feeling." She contends her mission is not about changing minds. She simply wants to expose the system for what it is. Prejean also said there is a need for support for victims' families. "They are alone. They say people don't talk to them. They don't know what to do with their pain," she said. (source: The Ascension Citizen) FLORIDA: Justice still denied----State should dump DNA testing deadline for inmates and repay Dedge in full State lawmakers are finally taking steps to close a hole in Florida's justice system that can keep the wrongfully convicted behind bars, sometimes for decades. A legislative committee has approved a proposal to give inmates a chance for exoneration by doing away with deadlines on DNA testing. The proposal would preempt a previous law which set a 2-year deadline for inmates to request tests. That law expired in 2003, but has been twice extended at the last minute by the Florida Supreme Court. It's time to stop that wasteful game of legal back-and-forth and make inmates' rights to seek testing permanent, which is what the new measure would do. The proposal still has to make its way through three other committees before coming up for a final vote. Those committees should hone the measure to ensure it gives all prisoners whose cases merit a second look the chance to prove their innocence. They also should expedite the work so lawmakers can consider -- and approve -- dumping the DNA deadline during a special session of the Legislature scheduled for December, instead of waiting for the regular session in March. Here's why: There's a backlog of some 1,200 prisoners who have requested review of their cases under the DNA testing law. Those petitions are pending at the Tallahassee-based Innocence Initiative, where a handful of lawyers handle inmates' applications at no charge. What's more, there are no doubt other prisoners in the system -- many of whom are illiterate -- who remain unaware they can petition for testing and require help to do so. That's why lawmakers should also tie funding to the measure, so testing requests can be reviewed more swiftly though the Innocence Initiative or another entity. Justice delayed is justice denied, and nowhere has that aphorism proven more true than in the case of Brevard County's Wilton Dedge. Dedge was exonerated on a rape charge last August after much-delayed DNA testing proved him innocent. He served 22 years behind bars. Adding insult to injury, the Legislature this year dithered away proposals to compensate him for those lost years. He has yet to receive a penny from the state. We're glad to see Sen. Mike Haridopolos, R-Indialantic -- apparently the only legislator with the resolve to press the issue -- has filed a new claims bill for Dedge for 2006. So far there's no dollar amount attached to the bill, but Haridopolos proposed a similar measure in the past session asking $50,000 a year, or $1.1 million, in Dedge's case. As we said before, that's too little to repay Dedge for the travesty of justice he suffered. His lawyers are in the process of trying to sue the state for adequate compensation, but it's not too late for Haridopolos and other lawmakers to take the high road themselves. A smart move would be to pass a significantly beefed-up claims bill for Dedge -- along with a broader measure setting up compensation standards for all exonerated prisoners -- side-by-side with the DNA testing bill in special session. Dedge has waited far too long for justice, and as his case chillingly illustrates, there may be other innocent individuals like him sitting in a Florida prison. No more delays, lawmakers. (source: Opinion, Florida Today) ****************** Consider Capital Punishment Change Should Florida require a unanimous jury recommendation before a murder defendant can be sentenced to death? That's a question the Florida Supreme Court says the Legislature ought to consider. Early indications are that the Legislature won't pay much attention. That could be a mistake. Depending on whatever the U.S. Supreme Court makes of it, FLorida could see some of its death sentences reversed in the future. The problem is that the nation's highest court has never fully explained the ramifications of its 2002 decision in the case of Ring vs. Arizona. At one point, it appeared that Florida's death row might be on the verge of being cleared, but later decisions from Washington kept most of the death sentences intact, even though judges -- rather than juries -- made the ultimate life-ordeath decision. Last week, the Florida Supreme Court noted that this state is pretty much alone among the 38 states with capital punishment laws. All the other states either require unanimous jury recommendations for death sentences or unanimous agreement on aggravating circumstances that are a prerequisite in capital cases. That could mean Florida's law is vulnerable to being overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, according to Florida's highest court. But the Florida court didn't make any such determination on its own. Instead, all seven justices agreed the Legislature ought to review the matter and make its own decision. The Legislature apparently isn't so sure. Lawmakers interviewed on the issue by The Tampa Tribune last week seemed to prefer a go-slow approach. That's because the Legislature hates to make any changes in the capital punishment law for fear that they will open up new avenues for appeal. Some inmates have been on death row for three decades, and there is no end in sight for many of those cases. Any change in the law regarding jury recommendations could prolong some cases even longer. It's a serious issue. This month, for example, Thomas Rigterink was sentenced to death for a double murder based on a Polk County jury recommendation that was made by a 7-5 vote. In other death-penalty states, Rigterink would have gotten an automatic life sentence, without parole. That surely will be a part of his appeal, given the state Supreme Court's signal. Florida legislators often have voiced displeasure over "activist" courts making legislative decisions. For that reason, lawmakers ought to thank the Florida Supreme Court for giving them the opportunity to consider the issue on its merits. That's a fine example of judicial restraint. (source: The Lakeland Ledger) VIRGINIA: Man Exonerated From Death Row Visits Charlottesville It was a hot topic during the gubernatorial debate. The death penalty, which is legal in Virginia, affects thousands of people nationwide. "I have a great life, and I have command of my life only because I've chosen not to be angry," says Nick Yarris, a man exonerated from death row. Yarris never thought he'd be sitting here a free man. He was convicted and sentenced to death back in 1982 for allegedly murdering a woman he never even met. After spending more than 20 years in prison, he's out and taking a stand. "If the governor's mother was arrested for murder, she would never face the death penalty, but if she was murdered the cry for blood would be an outrage. Until that value is there on both sides, we can't have the death penalty, it's that simple." Yarris says his exoneration highlights a flaw in the justice system and believes a lot of innocent people go to jail. Right here in Charlottesville, we saw a man arrested for rape only to find out days later he was innocent, thanks to DNA testing. "Fifteen or 20 years ago Mr. Matthew would have stood trial for a crime he didn't commit," says Charlottesville Police Chief Tim Longo. Preventing that from happening to anyone else is Yarris' new mission in life. "I fight valiantly to try and make changes for others who are suffering now, so that 2 years from now or five years from now when I finish this effort or whenever it is that I finish, I leave behind a changed system," says Yarris. Yarris is in town to host a screening of a motion picture called "After Innocence" as part of the Virginia Film Festival. Yarris was exonerated after 8,057 days on death row. He currently lives in the UK with his wife and is writing a book aimed at implementing prison reform and social programs. Yarris hopes to make a serious difference in my world. For more information about his life, his articles and contact information, visit http://nickyarris.com (source: Charlotteville News) CALIFORNIA: Lawmaker warns on death row The state will be forced to start "double-bunking" death row inmates for the 1st time in California history within 2 or 3 years of opening its planned new death row at San Quentin State Prison, an area lawmaker said yesterday. "Both the state public defender and attorney general have said it's a mistake to double-bunk condemned inmates - and it may not be allowed anyway," said Assemblyman Joe Nation, D-San Rafael. "This doesn't sound like a long-term solution to me." Nation, citing statistics gathered by Marin County staff and a county consultant, said the planned $233 million, 768-cell death row facility will be filled to capacity almost as soon as it opens in late 2008. Nation's comments, before more than 100 state, county and Bay Area officials and members of the public at a Marin Civic Center hearing in San Rafael, came just a week before the state Public Works Board is scheduled to vote on approving preliminary construction plans for the facility. George Sifuentes, facilities management deputy director for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said he expects the board to approve the project, to be built on 40 acres next to the existing 153-year-old prison on the bayfront near Larkspur Landing. "We need to move ahead. With inflation, costs are going up," Sifuentes said. "Our schedule is to move as quickly as we can, and bid it out and move forward." Nation and others said the plan doesn't make economic sense. With 633 condemned prisoners currently housed at San Quentin, and an average of 27 new condemned prisoners sentenced annually, the inmates may be forced to share cells a year or two later, even though many of them may have violence or privacy issues, he said. If double-bunking is banned, the state will then have to start looking toward a second death row expansion or continue to house condemned inmates in the current aging prison. "I'm encouraging Gov. (Arnold) Schwarzenegger to engage in the process to stop this project before California makes another $1 billion mistake," Nation said. "Is this a sound investment for a state that will have a $6 billion budget shortfall next year?" Nation referred to a county analysis that showed San Quentin had the second highest nonmedical overtime rate in the state and was at least $16 million a year more costly to operate than the average of three other comparable state prisons. "You have a wasteful investment here," Supervisor Steve Kinsey said. "You have a rotting dungeon in San Quentin that is clearly neither safe nor efficient to operate." Sifuentes, who was joined by other corrections and state Department of Finance officials at yesterday's event, said he believed the state would prevail in a lawsuit filed by Marin County against the death row's final environmental impact report. A hearing on the suit is set for Dec. 14 in Marin Superior Court. "This lawsuit was an act of desperation," said Deputy County Counsel David Zaltsman. "The most egregious deficiency of the final ElR is that it fails to analyze any alternatives to building the death row at San Quentin - other than a 'no project' alternative." State finance and corrections officials did not defend the project yesterday, other than to say they had to address an urgent need for safer housing for death row inmates and were carrying through on orders from the state Legislature. In September, lawmakers approved a downsizing of the project from 1,024 cells to 768, but the death row will still cost $233 million - a $13 million increase from the $220 million authorized by the state Legislature in 2003. Michael Pickett, a retired state corrections senior manager hired by Marin County to analyze costs for the new death row, said the prison in 2003-04 paid $7.7 million in overtime versus an average of $4.9 million for the 3 comparable prisons studied. The 3 others studied by Pickett, paid $14,000 by Marin County for his comparative analysis, were Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, California State Prison in Sacramento and Wasco State Prison near Bakersfield. "One of my co-workers takes home $18,000 a month in overtime," said Roger Wilson of San Rafael, a correctional counselor at San Quentin for the past 23 years who said he thinks the new death row should be built elsewhere. "The Legislature and the iron will of the department of corrections will make you build it, whether you like it or not." Wilson, one of about a dozen members of the public who spoke at yesterday's hearing, said the prison is so short-staffed that people work 16-hour shifts. A prison sergeant was recently killed in a motorcycle accident while driving home after working a double shift, he said. "They should build this where people can afford to live," Wilson said. Wilson's comments echoed those of state Auditor Elaine Howle, who published a March 2004 report saying the new death row was not well thought-out. "We concluded the Corrections Department did not do a complete analysis," Howle said at yesterday's meeting. "Their only other suggestion was (California State Prison at) Sacramento, but they only compared inmate transfer costs, and didn't look at operating or maintenance expenses." Kinsey compared the project to San Francisco's defunct Embarcadero Freeway, which he said was "a terrible idea that was stopped in the middle" by a major earthquake. The freeway has been replaced by a "pedestrian-friendly boulevard and the Ferry Building - it's now a place that people love to come to," Kinsey said. "That was a difficult decision that turned into a remarkable asset," Kinsey said. "This project, too, needs to be stopped in the middle." But Yvette Wakefield of Fairfax blasted Kinsey and Nation, accusing them of using the cost of the death row as a ruse to clear the land for housing and to appease "your friends" in the real estate community. "I would not like to see housing on the site," Wakefield said. "If anything other than the prison, I would like to see the land as open space, accessible only by pedestrians or bicyclists." Both Nation and Kinsey used yesterday's hearing to point to Schwarzenegger's apparent unwillingness to meet with them on the issue. The 2 leaders were promised a meeting with the governor's staff 10 months ago, but the event never happened. Schwarzenegger did not send a representative to yesterday's hearing, although Nation said his office invited the governor to do so. "I believe San Quentin should be torn down," said former state Assemblywoman Vivien Bronshvag of Kentfield. "The Navy still owns Treasure Island, and the state could take that and lease it for nothing - with a 250-bed prison already there. "Treasure Island would be a superior alternative and environmentally satisfying," Bronshvag added. "The state shouldn't rush headlong into wasting taxpayers' dollars." (source: Marin Independent Journal) *********************** Shut down death row STANLEY "TOOKIE" WILLIAMS is a charismatic symbol of what's wrong with the death penalty - and of what's wrong with the debate about the death penalty. His story of sin and redemption powerfully illustrates the unfairness of capital punishment. But to argue that capital punishment is unjust for some defendants is to concede that it may be acceptable for others. The reason to oppose capital punishment has to do with who we are, not who death row inmates are. The death penalty is inappropriate in all situations because it is unbefitting of a civilized society. Williams' case, though poignant, is irrelevant to this argument. Part of what makes Williams such an effective symbol in the debate over capital punishment is his compelling story. If there was a hall of shame for criminals, Williams would deserve his own wing. Williams founded the violent and oppressive Crips gang, dealers of crack cocaine and death by gunfire who spread their lethal gospel nationwide. He was convicted of four 1979 gun murders, and who knows what other violence he masterminded as the Crips leader. By most accounts, however, Williams has become a very different person in his nearly quarter-century in San Quentin. He has written children's books warning against gang life, debunked the thug glamour of prison, helped broker gang treaties and, absurdly, been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by supporters who romanticize his rehabilitation. There is even a TV movie about Williams' jailhouse conversion. Williams is a good symbol, and good symbols are important to opponents of the death penalty. Yet proponents have their symbols too. And arguing over symbols fails to reach the core of the injustice of capital punishment. Which is not to say there aren't practical arguments against the death penalty. Putting people to death is more costly than incarcerating them for life, and even then our legal system is not foolproof. Mounting evidence that innocent people were on death row led Illinois to impose a moratorium on executions in 2000, and the pace of executions elsewhere has slowed because of similar concerns. Even U.S. Supreme Court justices are voicing concern about the death penalty's application. California, which has executed only 11 people since 1976, should give up on capital punishment altogether, like 12 U.S. states and most of what is often referred to as the "civilized world." Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should cancel Williams' execution, scheduled for Dec. 13, and Williams should spend the rest of his days in jail. So should everyone else on death row - even those who haven't had their lives turned into a TV movie. (source: Editorial, Los Angeles Times) ******************* Capital punishment debate: Staring death in the face -- A date has been set for the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, even though he is a reformed character praised by George Bush for renunciating violence. More that a month ago, Stanley "Tookie" Williams was presented with a Presidential honour for his work speaking out against gang culture from his very particular vantage point on California's death row. The Call to Service award came with a letter from George W Bush praising him for demonstrating "the outstanding character of America", the consequence of years of activism by Williams to stop young people following the self-destructive path he did in the badlands of south central Los Angeles, where he was a founding member of the Crips in the early 1970s. But his week Williams got a startlingly different piece of news. A Superior Court judge in Los Angeles told him his execution date had been set for 13 December after the exhaustion of the last of his appeals. Bizarrely, Judge William Pounders made it almost seem as though he was doing Williams a favour. "This case has taken over 24 years to get to this point," he told the court. "That is a long delay in itself and I would hate to add to that." Such are the ironies of a case that seems destined to stir up an extraordinary clamour among death penalty activists - pro and anti - over the next few weeks and draw in an international cast of characters who will be pleading with California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to exercise his power of clemency and recognise the value of keeping Williams alive. The former gang chief is about as close as one can imagine to a poster-child for rehabilitation. Not only has Williams renounced his past and disavowed his reputation, acquired during his teens and twenties, as a muscle-man capable of terrifying all who dared to cross him or his fellow gang members. He has also spent the past decade campaigning actively against gang violence, turning out 10 books directed at children and teenagers that have addressed everything from the grief of losing friends and family members to the privations of his 9ft-by-4ft cell at San Quentin. He has drawn up a protocol for ending gang warfare that has been applied from New Jersey to Switzerland and South Africa. And he has been nominated multiple times for the Nobel Peace Prize and, rather less probably, the Nobel Prize for Literature. Mario Fehr, among six members of the Swiss parliament who nominated Williams for the Peace Prize in 2000, singled him out for praise for his "extraordinary youth violence prevention and intervention work". Yet Williams risks falling victim to the casual bureaucratic cruelty of the American criminal justice system. Several appeal courts have agreed he is a ripe candidate for clemency, but they have refused to quash his death sentence themselves on procedural grounds. Essentially, they have not found sufficient reason to believe Williams when he insists on his innocence in the 4 murders for which he was convicted in 1981. That is not to say there are not problems with the evidence against Williams, or with the manner in which his original trial was conducted. Several of the witnesses who testified under oath that he had shot dead a convenience store employee and then, 12 days later, gunned down the owners of a south central motel and their daughter have turned out, on close examination, to be problematic. As the federal appeals court noted in 2002, several were informants with "less-than-clean backgrounds and incentives to lie to obtain leniency from the state in either charging or sentencing". During the trial, the prosecutor, Robert Martin, found reasons to dismiss the only 3 black members of the jury pool and constructed a closing argument which sounded much like an appeal to racist stereotypes. Mr Martin described Williams, shackled in the defendant's box, as a "Bengal tiger in captivity in a zoo" and said the jury needed to imagine him in his natural "habitat" which was like "going into the back country, into the hinterlands". In 2 subsequent cases, Mr Martin was rebuked by the California appeals courts for using race as a criterion in jury selection and had two murder convictions overturned on those grounds. And he came close to suffering the same fate in the Williams case. In February, a federal appeals judge wrote that the jury selection process in his case violated the constitution and the case deserved to be reheard. But that opinion turned out to be a minority view, because 15 of the 24 judges on the Ninth Circuit appeals court voted to uphold Williams' conviction and sentence. Few things are harder to pull off in the American justice system than to overturn the outcome of a criminal trial, even in a case like this one where the appeals courts understand and broadly accept the argument that Williams is a deserving candidate for clemency. The question arising from the Tookie Williams case is whether the justice system is even remotely interested in rehabilitation, or whether the death penalty serves a much more elemental and vengeful purpose. The families of the victims have uniformly come out in opposition to clemency for Williams because, for all his apologies about his past life, he has neither acknowledged his role in the murders nor expressed remorse for them. (They do not buy the argument that he did not commit them.) Some of the shriller conservative newspaper columnists and opinion-makers have expressed similar scepticism that a man like Williams can ever really be said to have reformed. "What a swell message for kids," The San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders wrote dismissively when talk of commuting Williams' death sentence bubbled up a few years ago. "You can gun down four people and still turn your life around. Or at least find some suckers who will believe you've changed." Officials at San Quentin say that over the years, they have found evidence that Williams is still in touch with his old Crips brothers, and argued that gang-members still feel a strong allegiance to him as their leader, whatever he might have said or done. Reaction to such claims has depended largely on people's preconceived notions about the justice system. Proponents of capital punishment have seized on them as a reason to dismiss all of Williams' good works, and death penalty opponents have both minimised their importance and suggested they are part of a concerted campaign by the state to make sure Williams dies by lethal injection, no matter what. Williams's early life started down a depressingly familiar path. Born in Louisiana, he was the product of a broken home and found himself exposed and vulnerable when he and his mother moved to Los Angeles. With a friend, Raymond Washington, he formed a gang to protect themselves and the other teenagers in his neighbourhood. Nobody quite knows where the name Crips came from; one theory suggests it was short for "crypt-keepers", another that the gang was originally called the Cribs, in acknowledgement of the founders' tender ages. (They also called themselves the Baby Avenues, in homage to the older Avenue gang whom they revered.) Williams grew up quickly and developed a reputation as a 300lb bruiser who was not afraid to use his muscles and let his victims know who it was they were dealing with. "When I was working the streets, what he was known for is people didn't mess with him, and if you did mess with him, you know, he was a big man and he'd hurt you," a retired South Central detective, Joe Holmes, said on National Public Radio. "And people were in awe of him. They were scared of him." Williams himself has acknowledged much the same, realising that his magnetism and brute strength was a major factor behind the Crips spreading throughout Los Angeles and beyond in the years when he ruled the streets. "We morphed into a monster," he said on the same radio programme. "We performed mayhem and aggression throughout the city. We terrorised everybody." The murders for which he was arrested were committed in 1979, when he was 26, and he was convicted and sentenced to death two years later. His rehabilitation, as he describes it, did not begin until several years later, when he was placed in solitary confinement to ward off fears of gang warfare within San Quentin and he began to think seriously about who he was and what he could do to atone for the damage he had done. In 1993, he gave an interview to a young writer called Barbara Becnel, who dismissed him at first as an unrepentant thug but came around enough to volunteer her services as his ghost writer. The first in the Tookie Williams Speaks Out Against Gang Violence books appeared shortly afterwards. Williams would draft his words in his cell then communicate them in phone conversations with Becnel, which were limited under prison rules to 15 minutes. In 1997, Williams issued a formal apology on his website in which he lamented the ruin of many young lives, especially young black lives, caught up in the gang lifestyle and vowed "to spend the rest of my life working toward solutions". He has been true to that vow. Last year, his peace protocol was responsible for a successful truce between the Crips and their eternal rivals, the Bloods, in Newark, New Jersey, earning the gratitude of city officials who back his clemency request. His website receives a torrent of e-mails from young people who say he turned their lives around, a torrent that turned into a flood last year after the airing of a television movie about his life starring Jamie Foxx. Governor Schwarzenegger's thoughts on the matter are unknown. He has had two clemency requests in his 2 years as governor, and refused both. In one he rejected the notion that model behaviour was grounds for clemency. "I expect nothing less," his official statement said. He is expected to receive Williams' request no later than 8 November, leaving just more than a month for what promises to be an intense and emotional battle for one man's life. More that a month ago, Stanley "Tookie" Williams was presented with a Presidential honour for his work speaking out against gang culture from his very particular vantage point on California's death row. The Call to Service award came with a letter from George W Bush praising him for demonstrating "the outstanding character of America", the consequence of years of activism by Williams to stop young people following the self-destructive path he did in the badlands of south central Los Angeles, where he was a founding member of the Crips in the early 1970s. But his week Williams got a startlingly different piece of news. A Superior Court judge in Los Angeles told him his execution date had been set for 13 December after the exhaustion of the last of his appeals. Bizarrely, Judge William Pounders made it almost seem as though he was doing Williams a favour. "This case has taken over 24 years to get to this point," he told the court. "That is a long delay in itself and I would hate to add to that." Such are the ironies of a case that seems destined to stir up an extraordinary clamour among death penalty activists - pro and anti - over the next few weeks and draw in an international cast of characters who will be pleading with California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to exercise his power of clemency and recognise the value of keeping Williams alive. The former gang chief is about as close as one can imagine to a poster-child for rehabilitation. Not only has Williams renounced his past and disavowed his reputation, acquired during his teens and twenties, as a muscle-man capable of terrifying all who dared to cross him or his fellow gang members. He has also spent the past decade campaigning actively against gang violence, turning out 10 books directed at children and teenagers that have addressed everything from the grief of losing friends and family members to the privations of his 9ft-by-4ft cell at San Quentin. He has drawn up a protocol for ending gang warfare that has been applied from New Jersey to Switzerland and South Africa. And he has been nominated multiple times for the Nobel Peace Prize and, rather less probably, the Nobel Prize for Literature. Mario Fehr, among six members of the Swiss parliament who nominated Williams for the Peace Prize in 2000, singled him out for praise for his "extraordinary youth violence prevention and intervention work". Yet Williams risks falling victim to the casual bureaucratic cruelty of the American criminal justice system. Several appeal courts have agreed he is a ripe candidate for clemency, but they have refused to quash his death sentence themselves on procedural grounds. Essentially, they have not found sufficient reason to believe Williams when he insists on his innocence in the 4 murders for which he was convicted in 1981. That is not to say there are not problems with the evidence against Williams, or with the manner in which his original trial was conducted. Several of the witnesses who testified under oath that he had shot dead a convenience store employee and then, 12 days later, gunned down the owners of a south central motel and their daughter have turned out, on close examination, to be problematic. As the federal appeals court noted in 2002, several were informants with "less-than-clean backgrounds and incentives to lie to obtain leniency from the state in either charging or sentencing". During the trial, the prosecutor, Robert Martin, found reasons to dismiss the only 3 black members of the jury pool and constructed a closing argument which sounded much like an appeal to racist stereotypes. Mr Martin described Williams, shackled in the defendant's box, as a "Bengal tiger in captivity in a zoo" and said the jury needed to imagine him in his natural "habitat" which was like "going into the back country, into the hinterlands". In 2 subsequent cases, Mr Martin was rebuked by the California appeals courts for using race as a criterion in jury selection and had two murder convictions overturned on those grounds. And he came close to suffering the same fate in the Williams case. In February, a federal appeals judge wrote that the jury selection process in his case violated the constitution and the case deserved to be reheard. But that opinion turned out to be a minority view, because 15 of the 24 judges on the Ninth Circuit appeals court voted to uphold Williams' conviction and sentence. Few things are harder to pull off in the American justice system than to overturn the outcome of a criminal trial, even in a case like this one where the appeals courts understand and broadly accept the argument that Williams is a deserving candidate for clemency. The question arising from the Tookie Williams case is whether the justice system is even remotely interested in rehabilitation, or whether the death penalty serves a much more elemental and vengeful purpose. The families of the victims have uniformly come out in opposition to clemency for Williams because, for all his apologies about his past life, he has neither acknowledged his role in the murders nor expressed remorse for them. (They do not buy the argument that he did not commit them.) Some of the shriller conservative newspaper columnists and opinion-makers have expressed similar scepticism that a man like Williams can ever really be said to have reformed. "What a swell message for kids," The San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders wrote dismissively when talk of commuting Williams' death sentence bubbled up a few years ago. "You can gun down four people and still turn your life around. Or at least find some suckers who will believe you've changed." Officials at San Quentin say that over the years, they have found evidence that Williams is still in touch with his old Crips brothers, and argued that gang-members still feel a strong allegiance to him as their leader, whatever he might have said or done. Reaction to such claims has depended largely on people's preconceived notions about the justice system. Proponents of capital punishment have seized on them as a reason to dismiss all of Williams' good works, and death penalty opponents have both minimised their importance and suggested they are part of a concerted campaign by the state to make sure Williams dies by lethal injection, no matter what. Williams's early life started down a depressingly familiar path. Born in Louisiana, he was the product of a broken home and found himself exposed and vulnerable when he and his mother moved to Los Angeles. With a friend, Raymond Washington, he formed a gang to protect themselves and the other teenagers in his neighbourhood. Nobody quite knows where the name Crips came from; one theory suggests it was short for "crypt-keepers", another that the gang was originally called the Cribs, in acknowledgement of the founders' tender ages. (They also called themselves the Baby Avenues, in homage to the older Avenue gang whom they revered.) Williams grew up quickly and developed a reputation as a 300lb bruiser who was not afraid to use his muscles and let his victims know who it was they were dealing with. "When I was working the streets, what he was known for is people didn't mess with him, and if you did mess with him, you know, he was a big man and he'd hurt you," a retired South Central detective, Joe Holmes, said on National Public Radio. "And people were in awe of him. They were scared of him." Williams himself has acknowledged much the same, realising that his magnetism and brute strength was a major factor behind the Crips spreading throughout Los Angeles and beyond in the years when he ruled the streets. "We morphed into a monster," he said on the same radio programme. "We performed mayhem and aggression throughout the city. We terrorised everybody." The murders for which he was arrested were committed in 1979, when he was 26, and he was convicted and sentenced to death two years later. His rehabilitation, as he describes it, did not begin until several years later, when he was placed in solitary confinement to ward off fears of gang warfare within San Quentin and he began to think seriously about who he was and what he could do to atone for the damage he had done. In 1993, he gave an interview to a young writer called Barbara Becnel, who dismissed him at first as an unrepentant thug but came around enough to volunteer her services as his ghost writer. The first in the Tookie Williams Speaks Out Against Gang Violence books appeared shortly afterwards. Williams would draft his words in his cell then communicate them in phone conversations with Becnel, which were limited under prison rules to 15 minutes. In 1997, Williams issued a formal apology on his website in which he lamented the ruin of many young lives, especially young black lives, caught up in the gang lifestyle and vowed "to spend the rest of my life working toward solutions". He has been true to that vow. Last year, his peace protocol was responsible for a successful truce between the Crips and their eternal rivals, the Bloods, in Newark, New Jersey, earning the gratitude of city officials who back his clemency request. His website receives a torrent of e-mails from young people who say he turned their lives around, a torrent that turned into a flood last year after the airing of a television movie about his life starring Jamie Foxx. Governor Schwarzenegger's thoughts on the matter are unknown. He has had 2 clemency requests in his 2 years as governor, and refused both. In one he rejected the notion that model behaviour was grounds for clemency. "I expect nothing less," his official statement said. He is expected to receive Williams' request no later than 8 November, leaving just more than a month for what promises to be an intense and emotional battle for one man's life. (source: The Independent (UK) ) ******************* Hearing set for killer's mental-retardation claim----DEATH PENALTY: Horace Edwards Kelly was found guilty in 3 1984 Inland-area murders. One of the Inland area's most notorious death-penalty cases returns to Riverside Superior Court today when attorneys meet to discuss details for a November hearing for convicted triple-murderer Horace Edwards Kelly. The hearing next month will examine Kelly's claim that he should escape lethal injection because he is mentally retarded. In 1998 3 execution dates were set and vacated for Kelly as he made appeals in both federal and state court. The matter today, in which attorneys will likely exchange information and dates, is before Riverside County Supervising Judge W. Charles Morgan. Kelly, 45, of San Bernardino was convicted 19 years ago for the 1984 Thanksgiving Day slaying of 11-year-old Daniel David Osentowski of Rancho Cucamonga. The boy was shot to death while rescuing his cousin, Shannon Lee Prock, 13, whom Kelly had accosted while Prock and Osentowski were taking a post-Thanksgiving dinner stroll in the Jurupa Hills area of Riverside County. Kelly, in a security guard's uniform, stalked the children in a van as they returned down a darkened area of Limonite Avenue after buying sunflower seeds and bubble gum at a convenience store. After Kelly grabbed Prock, Osentowski first tried to flag passing cars, and, when no one stopped, he ran back and kicked Kelly. Prock escaped, but the boy was shot in the chest. Prock said her cousin begged for his life as Kelly shot the wounded boy in the forehead with a .357-magnum revolver. Prock's description led to Kelly's arrest a few hours later. Kelly also murdered 2 San Bernardino women, Sonia Reed, 25, and Ursula Houser, 43, during sexual assaults in 1984. Kelly received the death penalty for the Riverside County slaying and again for the San Bernardino County slayings, said Riverside County Chief Deputy District Attorney Kevin Ruddy. The state Supreme Court determined the Osentowski killing in Riverside County will be the case used to examine his claim of mental retardation. Kelly is one of several death-row inmates who qualified for such hearings under a state Supreme Court ruling earlier this year. Another from the Inland area is David Ray Fierro, who murdered a Glen Avon storekeeper in Riverside County in 1985. No date has been set for the Fierro case, Ruddy said by phone Wednesday. The one available attorney representing Kelly in the hearings, Deputy Federal Public Defender Harry Simon, declined to comment on the case when reached by phone Wednesday. The California Supreme Court ruling issued in February set the post-conviction standards for deciding whether a death sentence should be vacated because the condemned is mentally retarded. The court declined to set an IQ score as the mark, but said in its unanimous ruling that the inmate's attorneys must prove retardation by showing the inmates have substantial limitations in two or more skill areas identified by the American Psychiatric Association and the American Association of Mental Retardation. The court also said a judge, rather than a jury, should make the decision. In 1998, a jury in Marin County found Kelly sane in a trial that was the first of its kind in 50 years. Defense witnesses said Kelly talked in gibberish and did not seem to know where he was. Prosecution experts told jurors that Kelly was aware of his pending execution and remembered his victims' names. The trial was in Marin County because its jurisdiction includes San Quentin prison, where Kelly is imprisoned. Later intervention by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals took Kelly's case into the federal appeals process. It returns to state court on the recent California Supreme Court ruling. (source: Press-Enterprise)
