Nov. 29 OHIO----execution Hicks Executed for Murder Ohio putting to death a man who was high on cocaine when he strangled his mother-in-law to steal her money to buy his VCR back from his dealer. John Hicks returned the next day and suffocated his 5-year-old stepdaughter with duct tape over her mouth and nose, so she couldn't tell police he had been at the mother-in-law's Cincinnati apartment. Hicks, 49, died by injection at 10:20 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, setting up the likely 1,000 execution since the United States widely resumed executions in 1977. Robin Lovitt is scheduled to be executed Wednesday in Virginia for stabbing to death a pool hall manager with a pair of scissors. Hicks, who turned himself in to police after the 1985 murders, tried to avoid the death penalty by arguing that his cocaine use made him lose control. Hicks offered a tearful apology for the Cincinnati murders in an early November interview with Ohio Parole Board members and said he loved both victims - mother-in-law Maxine Armstrong and stepdaugther Brandy Green. He said his cocaine high made him desperate and paranoid. On Aug. 2, 1985, Hicks traded his VCR for about $50 worth of cocaine, court records show. After taking the drugs, he realized that he needed to get the VCR back before his wife wondered where it was, so he decided to steal some money from Armstrong. Hicks found his stepdaughter asleep on the couch at Armstrong's apartment. He woke her and brought her to bed and then visited with Armstrong. Hicks tried to build up his courage at Armstrong's apartment. Eventually he told himself, "You go do it, or you don't," records show. He then strangled Armstrong, first with his hands and then with a clothesline. He left her apartment with about $300 and some credit cards. He used some of the money to buy back his VCR and purchase more cocaine. Realizing Green could identify him as the last person at the apartment Friday night, he returned early Saturday morning and attempted to suffocate the 5-year-old with a pillow then strangle her with his hands. She struggled, and Hicks covered her mouth and nose with duct tape. Defense attorney Marc Mezibov said Hicks should be spared because he was in the throes of a "cocaine psychosis" when he committed the murders. Mezibov also argued that Hicks should be granted a new trial because prosecutors had suggested Hicks should be put to death before jurors had returned a verdict. Appellate judges noted that prosecutors should not have mentioned sentencing before jurors had a verdict. However, they said evidence of his guilt was overwhelming. Hamilton County Assistant Prosecutor Ronald Springman told the Parole Board that the use of duct tape in Brandy Green's murder signified premeditation. Hicks becomes the 4th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Ohio and the 19th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999. Hicks becomes the 55th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 999th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977. Robin Lovitt is scheduled to be executed tomorrow night in Virginia, marking the 1000th US executions since the death penalty was re-legalized on July 2, 1976. (sources: Associated Press, Ohio News Network & Rick Halperin) ***************** Scotsman properly convicted, justices say ---- Ohio Death Row inmate still has basis for appeal The 1986 death-penalty case of convicted killer Kenneth Richey has garnered worldwide attention. The U.S. Supreme Court turned Scotsman Kenneth T. Richey's celebration to frustration yesterday, reinstating his conviction and death penalty for the 1986 murder of a 2-year-old Columbus Grove girl. The court, under new Chief Justice John Roberts, unanimously overturned a January ruling from the 6 th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that ordered the state to either retry Richey or release him within 90 days. Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro appealed to the Supreme Court while staving off the 90-day deadline through legal maneuvers. The nation's top court backed Petro and discarded a large part of Richey's appeal. However, justices returned the case to the 6 th Circuit to reconsider his contention that he had received ineffective legal counsel. Although Richey's conviction and death penalty were reinstated, he is unlikely to face execution in the near future. That won't happen, if at all, until after the 6 th Circuit acts, a process that could take 6 months or longer. The decision was an abrupt change of fortune for Ohio's best known prisoner internationally. The case is being watched closely throughout Great Britain, which does not have the death penalty; in the British Parliament, where 150 members signed a letter of support; and in the Vatican, where the late Pope John Paul II intervened on his behalf. Richey had celebrated the appeals court ruling as vindication of his claims of innocence. Petro, however, bought time by filing appeals, preventing the 90-day retrial clock from starting. He said yesterday that he was "pleased the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with our arguments that the 6 th Circuit erred in vacating Richey's conviction and that the Ohio Supreme Court got it right the 1st time." "This is additional confirmation of our belief that Mr. Richey was justly tried, convicted and sentenced . . . " Richey attorney Kenneth J. Parsigian, of Boston, said the decision is "certainly not good news" but not the end of the road. Parsigian described Richey's reaction after speaking with him by phone yesterday. "He's enormously frustrated and disappointed, as anyone would be who's spent 20 years in jail for a crime they didn't commit." Parsigian noted that the Supreme Court threw out only one of two reasons the appeals court cited in overturning the guilty verdict - the argument of "transferred intent." The high court accepted the state's logic that although Richey might not have intended to kill Cynthia Collins when he set fire to his girlfriend's apartment on June 30, 1986, the intent to kill transferred to the 2-year-old. Parsigian said the remaining appeal - on ineffective legal counsel - to be heard by the federal appellate court "is still enough to win the whole case . . . The question is completely open." "At the end of the day, we still think we will get to the same place with the 6 th Circuit Court of Appeals. This is going to back to the Supreme Court either way." A retrial planned by Putnam County Prosecutor Gary L. Lammers is moot, pending further action by the federal courts. Richey has U.S.-British citizenship. He came to Ohio in the 1980s to live near his father. (source: Columbus Dispatch) *************** Richey death sentence is reinstated; U.S. Supreme Court sides with Ohio in 1986 arson murder case In a case that has galvanized death-penalty opponents on both sides of the Atlantic, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday reinstated the murder conviction and death sentence of a British-U.S. citizen in the 1986 arson murder of a 2-year-old girl from Columbus Grove, Ohio. The court, in an unsigned opinion with no recorded dissent, said it didn't matter under Ohio law that Kenneth Richey's intended victims were his ex-girlfriend and her lover in the apartment below, and not toddler Cynthia Collins, whom he was baby-sitting. "...Intent to kill was proven directly. It was not inferred from the dangerousness of the arson; it was shown to be the purpose of the arson," wrote the court in overturning a February ruling from the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The lower court had overturned Richey's conviction and sentence and had given Putnam County Prosecutor Gary Lammers 90 days to retry Richey, 41, or set him free. Karen Torley Richey, Richey's Scottish fiancee who has taken his last name, described the roller-coaster ride of court rulings as "emotional torture" for Richey. Richey's Boston attorney, Ken Parsigian, telephoned the news to him yesterday morning at Mansfield Correctional Institution. "He was frustrated, disappointed, and angry," he said. "He's been in jail nearly 20 years for a crime he didn't commit. He could have been out in 11 years if he had admitted guilt, but he wouldn't admit to something he didn't do. Now he's going to be in jail another year while the battle continues." Richey has said he was intoxicated the night of the fire and doesn't remember what happened. However, he has denied setting the June 30, 1986, fire that killed the toddler. Despite the 6th Circuit's 90-day clock and his lawyers' attempts to move him to a county jail, Richey remains on Ohio's old death row at Mansfield. He is one of 36 inmates who have yet to be transferred to the new death row at Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown. "This is additional confirmation of our belief that Mr. Richey was justly tried, convicted, and sentenced for the death of 2-year-old Cynthia Collins," Attorney General Jim Petro said. Mr. Lammers could not be reached for comment. He had announced plans to retry Richey before the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the clock. Yesterday's ruling surprised both sides. Lawyers were waiting for what they thought would be a decision on whether the justices would hear the state's appeal at a later date. Instead, after weeks of delays, the high court decided the case in the state's favor based on the briefs submitted. It said the Ohio Supreme Court, as arbiter of state law, was right when it found that "the fact that the intended victims escaped harm, and that an innocent child, Cynthia Collins, was killed instead, does not alter Richey's legal and moral responsibility." Richey was born in the Netherlands to a Scottish woman and U.S. serviceman. He was raised in Scotland and has maintained dual citizenship. He moved to the United States in 1982 to be near his father, but he has expressed a desire to return to Scotland if released from prison. "We just celebrated Thanksgiving and we were counting our blessings that he would be out soon," said Jim Richey of Seattle, Richey's father. "It looks like it's going to be a little while longer before he gets out." Mr. Richey said he's confident his son will not be executed. In addition to becoming one of the cases most cited in Ohio by death-penalty opponents, Richey has become a cause celebre in Europe, attracting the attention of the late Pope John Paul II and Amnesty International. A Scottish member of Britain's Parliament, Alistair Carmichael, visited Richey on death row at Mansfield. The U.S. Supreme Court left 1 last avenue for Richey to pursue to avoid execution on Ohio's lethal-injection gurney. The court sent the case back to the 6th Circuit to more fully explore whether Richey's trial attorney was ineffective by failing to challenge questionable arson forensics evidence presented at his trial. Some of the evidence had been discarded and had to be retrieved from a garbage dump for testing. Mr. Parsigian described the ineffectiveness-of-counsel claim as the stronger of the arguments presented to the 6th Circuit. In a 2-1 decision, the 6th Circuit found in February that a "competent arson expert would have all but demolished the state's scientific evidence." "With Kenny's case and John Spirko's case side by side, 2 high-profile cases, I believe that somebody is going to be sacrificed, and that's going to be Kenny. Petro is not going to back down," said Karen Torley Richey from her home in Glasgow. Mr. Spirko, convicted in the 1982 robbery murder of a Van Wert County postmaster, recently received a 2nd reprieve of his execution while modern DNA testing is conducted on 23-year-old evidence. (source: Toledo Blade) **************** Karen Richey statement on yesterday's USSC ruling Thank you to the many hundreds of people who have emailed me offering support and who have called me too. Everyone is in a state of total disbelief but that disbelief is turning to anger at the total injustice Kenny is enduring. The fight as I said will continue. I am not stopping until we get justice for Kenny who has been so terribly treated by the State of Ohio. I would like to ask everyone to please send Kenny a card of support telling him we are all still fighting for him and that he cannot give up now. He is deeply depressed which is no wonder, but the fight must and will go on. He will fight back though. We know the US Supreme Court is hiding behind a legal technicality and has not looked at the evidence. That much is obvious! We also know that Jim Petro, Ohio attorney general, said yesterday: "This is additional confirmation of our belief that Mr Richey was justly tried, convicted and sentenced for the death of 2-year old Cynthia Collins." NO it does not. This ruling was NOT about Kenny's innocence. This ruling put simple is about the higher court telling a lower court off. The scientific evidence proves this fire was not an arson but rather an accidental fire. Tony Cafe the arson expert rightly said in 2000, that the investigation into this case was "tantamount to being criminal" and he is right. Please send cards to Kenneth T Richey A194 764 Man C I PO Box 788 Mansfield, Ohio 44901 USA thank you so much. I know Kenny will appreciate the love and support his supporters have always given him from all over the world. Karen (source: KR) ARKANSAS: Arkansas executes convicted murderer Arkansas death row inmate Eric Nance was executed by injection following a 1 1/2-hour delay while U.S. Supreme Court justices considered separate claims that Nance is mentally retarded and that additional DNA testing might clear his name. During the delay Monday night, Nance awaited execution in a holding cell near Arkansas' death chamber 90 miles (145 kilometers) southeast of Little Rock. During an execution nine years ago, a death row inmate was left on a gurney for 40 minutes with needles in his arms while justices deliberated. After the justices rejected Nance's pleas, Arkansas executed him for the killing and attempted rape of Julie Heath, 18, of Malvern. Heath was last seen October 11, 1993, and her car was discovered along U.S. 270. A hunter found her body October 18, 1993, and authorities said she had been dead about a week. Her throat had been slashed with a box cutter. "This is not easy for any of us and we do feel for his mother, his family," said Johnie Hood, a cousin of the victim. "I just pray that Julie rests in peace now. He couldn't say he was sorry. What he went through tonight was painless compared to what he put Julie through." Hood and other family members watched the execution via closed-circuit television in a prison office. Heath's mother Nancy killed herself a year after her daughter's murder. "I hope that he did say he's sorry to someone for what he had done," said Belinda Crites, another cousin. "We want to make sure the devil dies. He's gone now so I hope they can rest in peace." Justice Clarence Thomas temporarily delayed Nance's execution to review the condemned man's file and eventually other justices weighed in. Four sets of appeals went before the justices Monday night. On two of them, Justices David Souter, John Paul Stevens, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg said they would have given Nance a stay. The U.S. Supreme Court was asked to consider whether Nance was mentally retarded; justices have ruled previously that mentally retarded inmates should not be put to death. Nance also asked for additional DNA testing on a hair found in his truck after Heath's body was found. Gov. Mike Huckabee rejected Nance's clemency request earlier Monday, and the state Supreme Court also denied an 11th-hour request for a stay. Huckabee said he gave Nance's case "prayerful consideration" and that he had made a thorough review of Nance's records. About 30 protesters gathered briefly outside the Governor's Mansion on Monday night and sang "Amazing Grace." They also lit candles to remember previous inmates executed in Arkansas. In January 1997, while U.S. Supreme Court justices considered whether to stop Kirt Wainwright's execution, guards left the inmate strapped to a gurney with needles in his arms. After a 40-minute delay, the execution proceeded. The prison said it would have been cruel to take Wainwright back to his cell and have him walk a 2nd time to the death chamber. (source: Associated Press) FLORIDA: Carlie's Mom: 'I cry for her at night'---- Girl's parents tell jurors her murder shattered their lives Carlie Brucia's parents told jurors Monday that the 11-year-old girl's abduction and slaying shattered their lives as a prosecutor sought the death penalty for her killer. "I lost the love of my life," her mother, Susan Schorpen, said Monday while fighting back tears from the witness stand. "I cry for her at all hours of the day. I cry for her at night. I'm broken. I will never heal." Outside the courthouse, she said, "I'd like him dead today." But defense attorney Carolyn DaSilva asked jurors to recommend sparing Joseph Smith's life on the first day of his trial's sentencing phase. She noted that the former auto mechanic had battled back pain, depression and drug addiction for the past dozen years, and said relatives, friends and a drug-addiction expert would testify how "a man with good qualities could have fallen so far." His aunt, a cousin and a former girlfriend described him as a talented handyman who was ready to help anybody with cars or home-improvement projects. Carlie's slaying received worldwide attention because her abduction on February 1, 2004, was captured by a car wash surveillance camera. Her body was found 5 days later outside a church. "When Carlie was taken from our family, it hurt us to the core," Carlie's father, Joseph Brucia said. "Many times, I didn't want to go on and was close to taking my own life." Circuit Judge Andrew Owens, who ultimately will decide the sentence, said he would give the jurors' recommendation "great weight." The same jury convicted Smith on November 17 of kidnapping, sexual battery and 1st-degree murder. Carlie's murder spurred the introduction of federal and state legislation to crack down on probation violators. (source: Associated Press) USA: Opponents in capital punishment have blood on their hands Those of us who believe in the death penalty for some murders are told by opponents of the death penalty that if the state executes an innocent man, we have blood on our hands. They are right. I, for one, readily acknowledge that as a proponent of the death penalty, my advocacy could result in the killing of an innocent person. I have never, however, encountered any opponents of the death penalty who acknowledge that they have the blood of innocent men and women on their hands. Yet they certainly do. Whereas the shedding of innocent blood that proponents of capital punishment are responsible for is thus far, thankfully, only theoretical, the shedding of innocent blood for which opponents of capital punishment are responsible is not theoretical at all. Thanks to their opposition to the death penalty, innocent men and women have been murdered by killers who would otherwise have been put to death. Opponents of capital punishment give us names of innocents who would have been killed by the state had their convictions stood and they been actually executed, and a few executed convicts whom they believe might have been innocent. But proponents can name men and women who really were -- not might have been -- murdered by convicted murderers while in prison. The murdered include prison guards, fellow inmates, and innocent men and women outside of prison. In 1974, Clarence Ray Allen ordered a 17-year-old young woman, Mary Sue Kitts, murdered because she knew of Allen's involvement in a Fresno, Calif., store burglary. After his 1977 trial and conviction, Allen was sentenced to life without parole. According to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders, "In Folsom State Prison, Allen cooked up a scheme to kill the witnesses who testified against him so that he could appeal his conviction and then be freed because any witnesses were dead -- or scared into silence." As a result, three more innocent people were murdered -- Bryon Schletewitz, 27, Josephine Rocha, 17, and Douglas White, 18. This time, a jury sentenced Allen to death, the only death sentence ever handed down by a Glenn County (California) jury. That was in 1982. For 23 years, opponents of the death penalty have played with the legal system -- not to mention played with the lives of the murdered individuals' loved ones -- to keep Allen alive. Had Clarence Allen been executed for the 1974 murder of Mary Sue Kitts, 3 innocent people under the age of 30 would not have been killed. But because moral clarity among anti-death penalty activists is as rare as their self-righteousness is ubiquitous, finding an abolitionist who will acknowledge moral responsibility for innocents murdered by convicted murderers is an exercise in futility. Perhaps the most infamous case of a death penalty opponent directly causing the murder of an innocent is that of novelist Norman Mailer. In 1981, Mailer utilized his influence to obtain parole for a bank robber and murderer named Jack Abbott on the grounds that Abbott was a talented writer. Six weeks after being paroled, Abbott murdered Richard Adan, a 22-year-old newlywed, aspiring actor and playwright who was waiting tables at his father's restaurant. Mailer's reaction? "Culture is worth a little risk," he told the press. "I'm willing to gamble with a portion of society to save this man's talent." That in a nutshell is the attitude of the abolitionists. They are "willing to gamble with a portion of society" -- such as the lives of additional innocent victims -- in order to save the life of every murderer. Abolitionists are certain that they are morally superior to the rest of us. In their view, we who recoil at the thought that every murderer be allowed to keep his life are moral inferiors, barbarians essentially. But just as pacifists' views ensure that far more innocents will be killed, so do abolitionists' views ensure that more innocents will die. There may be moral reasons to oppose taking the life of any murderer (though I cannot think of one), but saving the lives of innocents cannot be regarded as one of them. Nevertheless, abolitionists will be happy to learn that Amnesty International has taken up the cause of ensuring that Clarence Ray Allen be spared execution. That is what the international community now regards as fighting for human rights. (source: Dennis Prager is a radio talk show host, author, and contributing columnist for Townhall.com.; Townhall) ************** Press Release - 1000th execution While human rights organizations around the world are decrying the shameful milestone of the 1000th execution in the United States, there is another slightly smaller, but perhaps even more shameful number to consider: 832. Of the 1000 executions, 832 have been administered by lethal injection. The first occurred in 1982, when two physicians watched as a Texas inmate was executed by the injection of lethal drugs into a vein in his arm. In the ensuing 25 years, almost all states have adopted lethal injection as the preferred execution technique. Since 2001, 99% of executions have been carried out by lethal injection. The number 832 is shameful because it is likely that doctors have participated - to some degree - in every lethal injection. It is well documented that physicians have monitored vital signs, prepared lethal drugs, selected IV sites, inserted IVs, and supervised execution personnel. It is known for certain that physicians directly participate in lethal injection executions in Connecticut, Georgia, and Missouri, and there is evidence that they been involved in other states as well. This participation is contrary to the ethical guidelines of major national medical organizations, including The American Medical Association. Lethal injection is a medical charade. It subverts medical technology and medical expertise - designed to bring comfort and healing - into instruments of killing. This medicalization of killing originated in the atrocities of Nazi medicine during World War II. Furthermore, lethal injection is a stain on the face of medicine because it defiles not only those physicians who participate, but all physicians as well. Doctors have a responsibility not only to heal and comfort, but also to be a morally protective force in society. Doctors have failed society 832 times. It is time for the medical community to call for an end to capital punishment in the United States. Contact information: Jonathan I. Groner MD Clinical Associate Professor of Surgery, The OSU College of Medicine and Public Health phone:614-722-3919 ---- fax: 614-722-3903 -- [email protected] Articles by Dr. Groner: 1. Groner JI: Lethal injection: a stain on the face of medicine. Bmj 325:1026-1028., 2002 2. Groner JI: Lethal Injection and the Medicalization of Capital Punishment in the United States. Health and Human Rights: An International Journal 6:64-79, 2002 3. Groner JI: Lethal Injection: The Medical Charade. Ethics and Medicine: An International Journal of Bioethics 20:25-30, 2004 (source: JIG) ********************** Death penalty future should be in doubt Ruben Cantu was executed by the state of Texas shortly after midnight on Aug. 24 in 1993. Police say Cantu shot 2 men in a 1978 attempted robbery. He was convicted on the testimony of one man, a survivor of the shootings who now says a dozen years later that police pressured him to identify Cantu. "They told me they were certain it was him, and that's why I testified," the man told the Houston Chronicle this month. "That was bad to blame someone that was not there." The forewoman of the jury that convicted Cantu told the Houston Chronicle that she believes the jury made a tragic mistake. "The bottom line is an innocent person was put to death ... We all have our fingers in that." We have used this space in the past to oppose the death penalty, arguing that it does not deter violent crime and that it unfairly targets blacks and other minorities. Here is yet another argument, perhaps the most damning of the many arguments against the death penalty. It is, to borrow a phrase from the jury forewoman in the Cantu case, the bottom line: Death penalty cases rely on a judicial system that, while among the best in the world, sometimes makes mistakes and therefore can never guarantee it won't sentence to death an innocent person. Since 1973, 122 convicted murderers in 25 states have been freed after evidence surfaced that they had been wrongly convicted, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. On Wednesday, Robin Lovitt will become the 1,000th death row inmate to be executed in the U.S. since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty nearly 3 decades ago. Lawyers for Lovitt says he's innocent, arguing that initial DNA tests on the murder weapon were inconclusive. The milestone of the 1,000th execution should renew the public debate over the death penalty as a tool of American justice - and hasten its end. The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that it was unconstitutional to execute criminals who are mentally retarded. Earlier this year, it ruled that crimes committed by juveniles could not be punished by death. What next? We'll let you be the judge. (source: Editorial, The Republican) ******************* Death penalty reaches grisly milestone in America Capital punishment reaches a macabre milestone this week with America's 1000th execution since it reintroduced the death penalty in the 1970s. Barring a miraculous last minute pardon, Robin Lovitt, 41, will be executed today for fatally stabbing a man with scissors during a Virginia pool hall robbery in 1998. Over the past 28 years the US has on average executed one person every 10 days. And the conveyor belt is so efficient that reports of executions are hidden inside the local papers. Lovitt's death will also mark a grisly hat trick: 3 executions in 3 days, with Eric Nance (number 998) executed yesterday in Arkansas and John Hicks (999) due to die overnight in Ohio. The death penalty itself appeared condemned in the 1960s amid a consensus that it amounted to one of the "cruel and unusual punishments" outlawed by the constitution. The Supreme Court imposed a de facto moratorium on the practice in 1968. But the legal pendulum then swung back and in 1976 the ban was lifted. The first criminal to be executed after capital punishment's return was also the most famous condemned man of modern times: Gary Gilmore. He was shot dead by a Utah firing squad in 1977 for the murder of a motel manager and was the hero of Norman Mailer's book The Executioner's Song. Now more than 3400 prisoners, including 118 foreigners, await sentence on death row.The fact that the US is the only Western democracy which routinely executes its citizens goes almost unnoticed inside the US. Sympathy for the victims of violent crime and a desire for retribution ensure that support for the death penalty runs deep. Capital punishment is rarely raised in national politics, although Bill Clinton boosted his 1992 presidential campaign by flying home to Arkansas to sign the death sentence of a mentally retarded man. While the governor of Texas from 1994 to 2000, President George Bush presided over 152 executions. Even so the numbers being executed are dwindling. Death sentences nationwide have dropped 50 % since 1999, with executions carried out down by 40 %, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre. 12 states do not have the death penalty and 2, Illinois and New Jersey, have formal moratoriums on capital punishment. (sources: The (London) Telegraph and Reuters) **** GRIM RECORD - Since 1976 the US has performed 829 executions by lethal injection, 152 by electric chair, 11 in gas chambers, 3 by hanging, 2 by firing squad. - 58 % of executions are of whites; 34 % of blacks. - On March 1 the Supreme Court death penalty for juveniles halted; 22 had been executed for crimes committed as juveniles since 1976. - As of July 1, there were 54 women on death row: 11 have been executed since 1976. (source: Sydney Morning Herald)
