Jan. 10 NEW JERSEY: New Jersey legislature suspends death penalty -- Concerns over fairness in application, waste of public money spark action New Jersey lawmakers approved a moratorium on the death penalty Monday, becoming the first U.S. state legislature to block executions since the Supreme Court reinstated the punishment in 1976. The state Assembly voted 55 to 21 with 2 abstentions to suspend the death penalty until a commission report due to be given to lawmakers and the governor by Nov. 15. The state Senate approved the measure last month. The commission will study whether the death penalty deters crime and whether there is a significant difference between the cost of the death penalty and that of life without parole. New Jersey is one of 38 U.S. states that have the death penalty, although it has not executed anyone since 1963. 10 people are currently on the state's death row. The bill is expected to be signed by acting Gov. Richard Codey, a Democrat. 2 other states, Illinois and Maryland, have placed a moratorium on the death penalty by the governor's order, although the Maryland measure has now expired. Texas, on the other hand, leads the nation in executions, putting to death 355 people since 1976. Death penalty has failed "By any measure, the death penalty has failed the people of New Jersey who have come to know that it risks executing innocent people and wastes millions of taxpayer dollars," said Celeste Fitzgerald, director of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, a campaign group. U.S. public support for the death penalty has dropped to a 27-year low of 64 percent in October 2005 from 80 percent in 1994, according to Gallup opinion polls. The number of executions in the United States dropped to 60 in 2005 from 98 in 1999, the largest number since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 after declaring it unconstitutional in 1972. Doubts rise as wrongful convictions do Public doubts are based on increasing evidence, particularly from DNA testing, of wrongful convictions and an increasing willingness of courts and attorneys to revisit old cases, according to Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that campaigns against the policy. Nationwide, 122 people have been freed from death row since 1973 because of evidence they may not be guilty, Dieter said. Support for the death penalty has also waned because of the increasing availability of life-without-parole sentences, which are now provided by all but one of the death-penalty states. In 2004, the United States conducted the 4th-largest number of executions of any country in the world, exceeded only by China, Iran and Vietnam, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. (source: Reuters) *************** CONCERNS: Cost of drawn-out appeals, chance of error; REPORT DUE: Commission to study impact, alternatives----Death penalty put on hold for study An official yearlong moratorium on capital punishment is one step away from reality after the full Assembly on Monday approved a measure to create a Death Penalty Study Commission. The commission would study the economics, ethics, effects and possible alternatives to the death penalty in a report due Nov. 15. The bill also would enact a moratorium on executions until January 2007. The Assembly approved the measure 55 to 21 without debate; 2 lawmakers abstained. While not an explicit abolition of the death penalty - not used in the state since 1963 - the measure has spurred debate on whether the penalty should remain on the books in New Jersey. Death penalty opponents say capital punishment should be replaced by life without parole because death sentences result in costly, drawn-out appeals that are hard for victims' families and because of fears of executing someone who is later found innocent. Proponents say people who commit gruesome murders deserve death when there is no doubt of guilt, but they are divided over whether the lengthy appeals process should be shortened or is a needed step to ensure no innocent person is executed. The think tank New Jersey Policy Perspective started the volleys with a report last fall that showed the death penalty has cost New Jersey taxpayers $253 million - with no executions - since it was reinstated in 1982. The Assembly vote was greeted by cheers from members of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Celeste D. Fitzgerald, the group's executive director, said she wasn't surprised Assembly members didn't debate the usually divisive issue. "This is mainstream. I'm not that surprised," Fitzgerald said. "It's a common-sense bill. The death penalty as it's constituted in New Jersey isn't working." Fitzgerald wouldn't predict what the study commission would conclude. Assemblyman Christopher J. Connors, R-Ocean, a member of the Assembly Judiciary Committee who supports capital punishment, said he would support studying the death penalty but opposes another moratorium in a state that hasn't executed anyone since the 1960s. "We haven't committed the death sentence for anyone for 43 years. Effectively we have a de facto moratorium in place," Connors said. Connors said he hopes the study commission will find a "more efficient and effective way of carrying out capital punishment." Gov. Codey, who voted for the measure when the Senate approved it 30 to 6 last month, is expected to sign the moratorium into law, his spokeswoman, Kelley Heck, said. The death penalty is already on a court-ordered moratorium in New Jersey on technical grounds until the state adopts new execution procedures. (source: Asbury Park Press) ************* Assembly approves death penalty moratorium New Jersey is on the brink of becoming the 1st state in the nation to enact a law mandating a moratorium on its death penalty. The Assembly yesterday gave final legislative approval to a bill that bans executions for a year to allow a commission to study the issue. Illinois is now the only state with a moratorium on executing death row inmates, but that ban was instituted by executive order in 2000 by then-Gov. George Ryan. "We must look at all the issues surrounding the use of capital punishment and decide once and for all whether this policy should be continued," Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer), one of the bill's sponsors, said following the Assembly's 55-21 vote passing the bill. The Senate passed identical legislation last month, and Gov. Richard Codey is expected to sign it into law. Celeste Fitzgerald, director of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said it is "common sense" to examine a system that has not resulted in a single execution since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1982. "The death penalty system isn't working and has failed the people of New Jersey, who have come to know that it risks executing the innocent," she said after last evening's vote. "It's unfairly applied, it's failed its victims and law enforcement, and it's wasted millions of the taxpayers' money." In November, opponents of capital punishment and a Trenton-based liberal think tank released a study that contends the death penalty has cost taxpayers $253 million since it was reinstated. The bill (A2347) would create a 13-member commission to study whether capital punishment is "discriminatory in any way" and "consistent with evolving standards of decency." The commission would have until Nov. 15 to report, but the moratorium would remain in place for another 60 days. Sharon Hazard-Johnson, a death penalty advocate whose parents were murdered in 2001, she said would support the commission "as long it is not meant to push somebody's hidden agenda." "The optimistic point would be this is yet another part of the process," said Hazard-Johnson, who had lobbied against the bill. "But those that are against it are so vocal, and for those of us who are victims' survivors of vile murders, we look at the long period of time as being a stall tactic." This is the 2nd time the Legislature has passed a bill to study capital punishment in New Jersey. Then-Gov. James E. McGreevey vetoed a proposal two years ago because he said the death penalty had already been "continuously studied in painstaking detail." There are 10 prisoners on New Jersey's death row. New Jersey last executed an inmate in 1963. Maryland also banned executions through an executive order, but has since lifted the suspension. (source: Newark Star-Ledger) *********************** Vote to suspend death penalty New Jersey lawmakers have approved a moratorium on the death penalty, becoming the 1st US state legislature to block executions since the Supreme Court reinstated the punishment in 1976. The state Assembly voted 55 to 21 with 2 abstentions to suspend the death penalty until a commission report due to be given to lawmakers and the governor by November 15. The state Senate approved the measure last month. The commission will study whether the death penalty deters crime and whether there is a significant difference between the cost of the death penalty and that of life without parole. New Jersey is 1 of 38 US states that have the death penalty although it has not executed anyone since 1963. 10 people are on the state's death row. The Bill is expected to be signed by Acting Governor Richard Codey, a Democrat. 2 other states, Illinois and Maryland, have placed a moratorium on the death penalty by the governor's order, although the Maryland measure has now expired. Texas, on the other hand, leads the nation in executions, putting to death 355 people since 1976. "By any measure, the death penalty has failed the people of New Jersey who have come to know that it risks executing innocent people and wastes millions of taxpayer dollars," said Celeste Fitzgerald, director of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, a campaign group. US public support for the death penalty has dropped to a 27-year low of 64 % in October 2005 from 80 % in 1994, according to Gallup opinion polls. The number of executions in the US dropped to 60 in 2005 from 98 in 1999, the largest number since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 after declaring it unconstitutional in 1972. Public doubts are based on increasing evidence, particularly from DNA testing, of wrongful convictions and an increasing willingness of courts and attorneys to revisit old cases, according to Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre, a group that campaigns against the policy. Nationwide, 122 people have been freed from death row since 1973 because of evidence they might not be guilty, Mr Dieter said. Support for the death penalty has also waned because of the increasing availability of life-without-parole sentences, which are now provided by all but one of the death-penalty states. In 2004, the US conducted the 4th-largest number of executions of any country in the world, exceeded only by China, Iran and Vietnam, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre. (source: News.com.au) ******************** Death penalty moratorium won't halt Morris murder cases----Study won't hold up, change hearings The 3 capital murder cases winding through the court system in Morris County will not be derailed or altered by a Death Penalty Study Commission that is expected to be approved in the next week by acting Gov. Richard J. Codey, Morris prosecutors said Monday. The state Assembly on Monday passed a measure to create the study commission, and Codey -- who supported it with his vote in the state Senate last month -- is expected to sign the bill creating the commission before he leaves the governor's office on Jan. 17. There are three pending capital murder cases in Morris County --and 17 statewide -- and prosecutors have not said yet whether they will ask a grand jury to authorize pursuit of the death penalty for Jonathan Zarate, who is charged with murdering and mutilating 16-year-old Jennifer Parks in Randolph on July 30. County Prosecutor Michael M. Rubbinaccio said the commission's review of the viability of the death penalty will not, at least for now, force any changes or put a hold on any hearings in the three pending cases. While the commission studies the morality, financial impact and possible alternatives to the death penalty, there also will be a moratorium on any executions until January 2007 -- a moot point since none of the 10 people currently on death row has exhausted appeals. No one has been executed in New Jersey since 1963. "We're going to still proceed and prosecute cases," Rubbinaccio said. "In essence, the moratorium is only on executions and not on capital prosecutions." If the death penalty statute in New Jersey winds up being outlawed, he said, sentences for people convicted of capital crimes would be changed to life in prison. FuncoLand case Early Monday, Superior Court Judge Salem Vincent Ahto asked lawyers during a status conference for accused killer Omar Thomas how the commission and moratorium might impact the case. County Assistant Prosecutor John McNamara Jr. replied that nothing has changed. After the hearing, McNamara said to change course now "presupposes a result" that the death penalty doesn't exist in New Jersey. Thomas is an Irvington resident charged with shooting Erik Rewoldt, 26, and Jeff Eresman, 22, to death during a robbery on Dec. 1, 2002, at the FuncoLand game store in Roxbury. A new defense attorney has been assigned to the Thomas case, and a judge is still in the process of hearing testimony about several statements that Thomas gave police. The next hearing for Thomas is set for Feb. 27. Delay 'wasteful' Putting off capital prosecutions on the chance the death penalty could be outlawed in a year means wasted time for families of victims, attorneys and the defendants, Assistant Prosecutor John Redden said. No trial dates have been set for any of the 3 capital cases in Morris County. The oldest pending case involves Porfirio Jimenez, who is charged with stabbing and sexually assaulting 10-year-old Walter Contreras Valenzuela in Morristown on May 20, 2001. Jimenez's case already is on hold while the state Supreme Court decides what procedures should be followed to determine whether Jimenez is mentally retarded, as defense lawyers contend. A 2nd capital murder defendant, James Howard Vaughn, is next due in Superior Court on Jan. 19. A judge is expected then to decide whether statements Vaughn gave police may be used against him at a trial on charges of fatally shooting Maxine McCaden, 72, in Morristown, and wounding her daughter, Ruth Bernadette Kennedy, on July 19, 2003. The 3rd capital prosecution involves Omar Thomas. (source: Daily Record) FLORIDA: HALLANDALE BEACH STABBING----The brutal, shocking demise of Lola Salzman For years, her kids agonized over how their mother, who suffered from mental illness, should be cared for. In the end, authorities say her caregiver murdered her.By SARA [email protected] Salzman was brainy, ambitious and, at times, a royal pain in the neck. In her 30s, she was a stunning mother of three, an auburn version of 1960s screen siren Janet Leigh. She lived on Long Island, had deep dimples, arched brows and a bouffant hairdo. Her death some 40 years later was graceless and cruel. She was stabbed 43 times inside her low-rise Hallandale Beach condominium. Police say the 71-year-old woman died at the hands of an employee Salzman had found in the classifieds of a free weekly, someone she'd hired to help out with errands and cleaning. Her accused killer, Charlene Rosa, a 36-year-old immigrant from Jamaica and mother of 3 sons, was on the lam for nearly 3 years. In August, U.S. Marshals caught up with her on the island. Salzman's death in the summer of 2002 marked the end of a complicated, fiercely independent woman who repeatedly rebuffed the attempts of her 3 children -- who all live up north -- to govern her affairs. Her story, while extreme, is emblematic of the difficulties faced by adult children who live thousands of miles from aging parents. Her kids agonized over how their mother, who suffered from mental illness, should be cared for. They feared her exploitation. She wanted total autonomy. "Once you take away everyone's rights, it's like the last nail in the coffin," said Broward Circuit Judge Mark Speiser, who presided over Salzman's guardianship and was a frequent target of her ire. "Her scenario is not very different from that of many elderly people." A grandmother of five, Salzman had problems when she failed to take her psychiatric medication. She would spend hours on the phone, dialing imagined enemies over and over. Shrouded in cigarette smoke, she sent off angry letters to Speiser. She was banned from the Wal-Mart in Hallandale Beach for yelling profanities at customers and employees. In the 1960s, Salzman was diagnosed as paranoid-schizophrenic, a disease that causes victims to lose touch with reality. When she didn't take her medication, her symptoms would emerge, said her eldest daughter, Shelley Levitt. "She had an illness that clearly affected her, affected the whole family," Levitt said. "There were amounts of absolute pain and torment." BRIGHT SIDE Still, she was a brilliant woman who championed the arts and espoused feminist ideals long before they became fashionable. She taught math to elementary and junior high kids, and later earned a degree in interior design. In 1978, after her children had grown, Salzman divorced her husband and moved in with her parents, who had a condo in Hallandale Beach on Northeast 14th Avenue. "It was very painful for her to stay in New York," Levitt said. "It was a new start, she wanted to be on her own and help with her parents." Her mom died in 1984, her dad four years later. BREAKDOWNS After that, Salzman started to get sick more often, Levitt said, estimating that her mother was hospitalized for nervous breakdowns every 2 or 3 years. "We couldn't convince her to take her medication," her daughter said. As Salzman became increasingly estranged from her family, Levitt led an effort to have a court-ordered guardianship set up to protect her mom and ensure that she was getting the psychiatric treatment she needed. The guardianship was also designed to help her handle her finances. Mark Moening, who serves on Broward's Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Planning Council, said some mental health clients chose not to take their medication because it leaves them feeling zombie-like. BIPOLAR "Even if I am symptomatic, I still have a sense of self," said Moening, 49, who was diagnosed in 1986 with bipolar disorder. A hallmark symptom of a paranoid-schizophrenic is the belief that others are conspiring against them, said Randy Otto, an associate professor in the department of Mental Health Law and Policy at the University of South Florida. Salzman wrote to Speiser about this in February 1997. "These medications are dangerous. . . .I need my good name back," she wrote. In July 2000, Speiser appointed the South Florida Guardianship Program, a nonprofit based in Sunrise, to watch over Salzman. Under Florida law, the court must choose the least restrictive arrangement and review the plan annually. FRAGILE STATE "She was in and out of the guardianship because of her fragile mental health," said Robert Trinkler, the guardianship's general counsel. Thick court files reflect protracted legal battles between Salzman and her kids over the degree she was allowed to control her finances. Levitt and professionals close to the case also recalled periods in which Salzman was in decent shape, able to care for herself and direct her affairs. In the weeks before her murder, the court ordered her guardian to give Salzman $1,200 every 2 weeks. This money would go for her bills, including the cost of hiring caretakers who would help her around her home and drive her on her errands. Salzman didn't want her appointed guardian to pick out her caregivers because his office would use a licensed, bonded agency -- a place likely to screen its workers and require certification. However, that would be more expensive than choosing random workers through a free weekly. VERY FRUGAL "She was very thrifty and figured she could do it cheaper," Trinkler said. Police believe Salzman saw Rosa's ad in the Hallandale Digest, titled "Companion Driver," who promised to "take you anywhere." Her rates were not advertised. >From phone records, Hallandale police Detective Ron Beukers, the lead investigator on the case, learned that Rosa had called a woman named Maxine Hylton from Salzman's condo on the morning of July 4, 2002 -- the day police suspect Salzman was murdered. "The old woman won't pay me," Hylton said Rosa told her over the phone. Less than 2 hours after the phone call, Rosa made flight plans back to Jamaica, according to Rosa's cellphone records. Salzman was missing about $1,200 from her purse, 2 cashier's checks totaling $2,500 and some jewelry. Hylton and a former boyfriend of Rosa's helped police gather evidence. Separately, the pair got Rosa to admit involvement in Salzman's death, according to court records. On one tape, Rosa admits that she left Salzman "there to die." Rosa's trial could be at least a year away. Rosa, who is due back in court in February, has no prior convictions. Her lawyer, assistant public defender Tom Gallagher, declined to talk about the case. Jamaican authorities allowed her extradition this summer on the condition the state waive the death penalty. "The sheer brutality of the crime was a shock," said David Frankel, the assistant state attorney prosecuting the case. "This definitely was a death penalty case." (source: Miami Herald) ************** Trial of inmate accused of killing female prison guard delayed In Punta Gorda, the trial of a prison inmate accused of killing a female guard during a botched escape attempt has been delayed to allow the defense to analyze new DNA evidence. Dwight T. Eaglin's trial was scheduled to begin Monday, but Circuit Judge William Blackwell agreed to postpone the trial until Feb. 20 because the defense just a week ago received the evidence that prosecutors say links Eaglin to the deaths of corrections officer Darla Lathrem and inmate Charles Fuston. According to the new evidence, Lathrem's blood was found on one of Eaglin's boots, and Fuston's blood was found on Eaglin's pants, Assistant State Attorney Bob Lee said. Monday's trial date had been set before the defense learned that prosecutors were re-examining several pieces of evidence for DNA and bodily fluids, said Douglas Withee, Eaglin's attorney. The defense needs about 4 weeks to take additional depositions from the prosecutors' lab analysts and have out-of-state experts review the evidence, Withee said. State investigators said Eaglin, 30, was 1 of 3 prisoners who attacked Lathrem, beat her to death and stuffed her body into a locked mop closet at the Charlotte Correctional Institution on June 11, 2003. Fuston died several days later from injuries sustained in the attack. Lathrem was armed only with pepper spray and a radio. She was the first female officer ever killed in Florida. Eaglin and inmates Michael Jones and Stephen Smith each were charged with 2 counts of 1st-degree murder. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Jones' trial is scheduled to begin April 17, and Smith is scheduled to stand trial June 12. (source: Associated Press) OHIO: Spirko execution put off to July 19 for DNA tests For the 3rd time in four months, death-row inmate John Spirko has dodged a date with the executioner. He now has at least until July 19 before facing lethal injection for the slaying of a rural western Ohio postmaster in the summer of 1982, a crime Spirko says he had nothing to do with. On Monday, Gov. Bob Taft postponed Spirko's Jan. 19 execution date for six months. Taft said in a statement that he agrees with Attorney General Jim Petro that "additional investigation and analysis of the evidence in the kidnapping and murder of Betty Jane Mottinger are warranted." Petro asked for a 180-day reprieve last week, saying that complex DNA testing of the evidence would likely take months to complete. The parade of executive reprieves in this complicated case began in early September, after The Plain Dealer reported that a top Petro assistant made several misstatements about the evidence during Spirko's marathon clemency hearing before the Ohio Parole Board in late August. Petro said he stood by his staff members, but he offered to have them appear before the board again. On Sept. 8, Taft granted the board's request for a reprieve, delaying Spirko's execution from Sept. 20 to Nov. 15. Then came an even longer parole-board hearing on Oct. 12, followed by a 6 to 3 vote against clemency - the same margin as before - but with the minority issuing a spirited dissent. In a case without physical evidence pointing to Spirko, and with lingering questions about the quality of the prosecution and the integrity of the lead investigator, the minority said there was too much doubt on too many points to allow Spirko to be executed. The dissenters also chastised officials for never following up on a lead from former house painter John Willier, who had implicated his former boss in the Mottinger case in a 1997 interview with law enforcement. A week after the hearing, The Plain Dealer found Willier in a small town in Tennessee. He agreed to - and later passed - a polygraph test regarding his 1997 statement, prompting Spirko's lawyers to demand DNA testing on the paint-covered shroud in which Mottinger's body was found. On Nov. 7, a week before Spirko was scheduled to die, Petro asked for - and Taft granted - a 60-day reprieve so that state technicians could do DNA testing on the shroud and other evidence in the case. Last week, Petro and his staff reported that several hairs had been found on the duct tape used to wrap the shroud around Mottinger's body, but that an outside lab must be hired to test it. The attorney general said all tests should be completed in 6 months. (source: Plain Dealer) **************** 3RD REPRIEVE ---- Spirko's execution pushed back 6 months The execution date for John G. Spirko Jr. was moved to July to allow for DNA testing in the 1982 murder of a postmistress. John G. Spirko Jr. will see another spring and summer before DNA testing that may decide his fate is complete. Gov. Bob Taft yesterday approved a 6-month reprieve for Spirko, who was scheduled to be executed Jan. 19 for the 1982 abduction and murder of Betty Jane Mottinger, the postmistress in Elgin in northwestern Ohio. It was the third consecutive reprieve for Spirko, 59, who also had been scheduled for execution on Sept. 19 and Nov. 19. The new dte is July 19. In a statement, Taft said he agreed with Attorney General Jim Petro's opinion that "additional investigation and analysis of the evidence" are needed. Petro asked Taft last week to postpone Spirko's execution to allow time for additional DNA testing, specifically on hairs found on duct tape used to wrap Mottinger's body in a tarp. It was found in a farm field in northwestern Ohio about 3 weeks after she disappeared. The testing Petro ordered involves mitochondrial DNA, a new type of testing that focuses on maternally inherited DNA. Since the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation does not do that type of testing, the attorney general is contracting with a private lab. In addition, Petro's office said it might take time to get DNA samples for comparison with other possible suspects in the case. Spirko, his attorneys and supporters have mounted a highpressure campaign protesting his innocence. He was convicted largely based on information about the crime that prosecutors said only the killer could have known. All state and federal courts have affirmed his guilt and death sentence. The Ohio Parole Board twice voted 6-3 against clemency for Spirko. (source: Columbus Dispatch) ***************** Kenny speaks to rally from death row Death row Scot Kenny Richey has recorded a message to be played at an anti-death penalty rally being organised by Amnesty International. Richey, 41, was sentenced to death in 1987 for murdering 2-year-old Cynthia Collins by setting fire to an apartment in Ohio. Despite winning an appeal in January last year he is still on death row as the state of Ohio fights attempts to free him. His case was taken up by human rights groups, including Amnesty, who see it as a compelling case of a miscarriage of justice. The group has organised an event, Women Against The Death Penalty, in London tomorrow which will feature a talk by Sister Helen Prejean, the anti-death penalty campaigner who wrote Dead Man Walking. Kenny's fiance Karen Richey will also be speaking at the event. She said: "Kenny has recorded a message for the Amnesty event, which will give people there an idea of his life in prison, and also give him a chance to thank the people who have supported his campaign. It is really hard for him at the moment, as all of the time inside has affected his health, so all the support over Christmas was really appreciated. "It is so frustrating to be almost exactly where we were a year ago, but we have to keep fighting." (source: Edinburgh News) NORTH CAROLINA: New facts at heart of appeal Perrie Dyon Simpson's attorneys on Monday filed a 2nd motion for appropriate relief with the North Carolina Superior Court, claiming two new mitigating circumstances as potential grounds for a new sentencing hearing. The motion includes a sworn affidavit by a juror who served during Simpson's 1993 sentencing who claims that the judge in that trial entered the jury room during deliberation and told the jurors Simpson "would be out on the street in one to five years" if they recommended life imprisonment. Simpson's defense contends that this statement, delivered outside the presence of Simpson or his lawyers, unfairly persuaded jurors to recommend the death penalty. Simpson's attorneys also point to their client's right frontal lobe syndrome, a brain disorder they say impacts Simpson's impulse control. Joseph Gram, an attorney with Simpson's defense team, noted that treatment for this condition is entirely possible. "With appropriate structure, that condition can be addressed," said Gram. The defense says evidence of this condition was noted in early psychiatric evaluations of their client, and that its existence was unfairly withheld from jurors who might have considered it as a factor when recommending his sentence. The motion came on the eve of today's clemency hearing before Gov. Mike Easley. Also on that day, Stephanie Eury, Simpson's co-defendant in the 1984 murder, sat for an interview with The Reidsville Review at the Southern Correctional Institute in Troy, N.C., where she is presently serving a life sentence. Throughout the interview, she spoke candidly of her role in the slaying of the Rev. Jean Darter at his Courtland Avenue home. She also spoke of her relationship with Simpson, whose execution will be carried out Jan. 20 unless he receives clemency from the governor or relief from the Superior Court. Eury repeatedly expressed remorse for the murder and her part in it, but she maintained her stance that she was an unwilling participant. "Of course I regret it," she says. "That crime is going to be with me for the rest of my life." The 37-year-old woman, who has been classified as developmentally disabled, was 16 when she entered prison. Eury, who was 8 months pregnant at the time of the murder, has so far served more than 20 years of her life sentence. She became eligible for parole in 2004, but has twice been denied because, she says, the parole board believes she is still a threat to society. Her next hearing will be on or about July 19, according to the state Parole Commission. After Eury was arrested in late 1984, her attorneys successfully petitioned for a change of venue, and her trial was relocated to Stokes County. She pled not guilty, claiming that she was not an active participant in Darter's murder. In the end, the jury rejected her assertion, finding her culpable and sentencing her to life in prison shortly after her 17th birthday. Given the number of years she has spent in custody, she refutes the idea that she still poses a danger. "I'm not going to sit up here and say I shouldn't be here. I should be in prison to a certain extent," Eury says, adding: "I feel like I've been punished enough for my role." For Eury, the jury's sentence was the culmination of a long, disastrous relationship with her co-defendant. Her recollection of how she met Perrie Simpson is hazy ? the intervening years have obscured the finer points of their time together, but their lives contained some notable similarities: like Simpson, Eury moved frequently in her childhood, attending several different schools and churches in Guilford and Rockingham counties. A habitual runaway who divided her time between her father's home in Greensboro and her mother's home in Reidsville, Eury says she met Simpson at a homeless shelter when she was 12 or 13, and continually ran off to be with him. To her, these were the actions of an irrational teenager. "I was 'in love'," she says, gesturing quotations around the last 2 words with her fingers. She says she sincerely believed she loved Simpson at the time, and her complicity in the Aug. 27, 1984 murder came as a direct result. She remembers Darter as a nice man who opened his door to the young couple, offering them food and what little cash he had. Indeed, part of what convinced juries for both Simpson and Eury to impart such severe sentences was the fact that on the night before the murder, the minister had invited the 2 into his home and sent them away with a bag of food and the $4 in his possession. This initial kindness, they felt, made the ensuing crime all the more senseless. Simpson, in his signed confession, included an exchange with Eury after the pair's first meeting with Rev. Darter, implying that both of them demonstrated forethought in planning the murder. "Stephanie said she knew that old preacher had some more money and that we should go back one night and see," Simpson told investigators at the time of his arrest. His account of their conversation immediately before they committed the murder was similarly damning. "Stephanie said we were going [to Darter's house] for one reason and one reason only, which was to take money from the preacher, and I agreed. Stephanie said if we go in there and rob the man, we can't let him live, and I said that's the truth," Simpson said. Simpson's past defense teams have, over time, seized on this exchange to paint Eury as the de facto architect of the crime. In their petition for clemency submitted last week, Simpson's lawyers insinuate that Eury held sway over their client and, at least to an extent, steered his actions. "[Simpson's] desperation and emotional deprivation left him susceptible to the influence of people like Stephanie Eury and the possibility of criminal conduct," they write. Eury scoffs at the suggestion that she wielded such considerable influence over Simpson. "I was 16 years old," she says emphatically, "I didn't have no control over no one at 16 years old." Further, she disputes the idea she conspired to murder Darter, saying that while she and Simpson fully intended to rob him, she had no idea he would go so far as to murder the 92-year-old. Her role, she claims, was that of an observer, her crime one of concealment. "I was going to go to the police," Eury says, adding that her reason for staying quiet was simple: "I was afraid for me and my baby," she says. Thinking that her silence was protective, she says she told no one of the murder until she was arrested. Gram pointed to Eury's upcoming parole hearing to explain why she might attempt to minimize her role in the murder. If Eury's account is to be believed, it's undeniable that her strategy of silence ultimately failed: she gave birth to her son about a month before entering prison, and while she has seen him since her incarceration began, she says she's had no contact with him recently. The boy, who was adopted by members of the Eury family, just turned 21. Eury freely expresses remorse for what she sees as her part in the crime. Even by Simpson's own account, Eury did comparatively little in the way of direct bodily harm to Darter. Though she denies being an active participant at all, she says she has no anger toward Simpson. "I'm not a cold-blooded person. I'm not mad at nobody. I don't have no hate in my heart right now," she says. She said she believes both she and Simpson deserve punishment, but in her opinion, the time she has already served is sufficient. "I feel like I've been punished enough for my role," she says. She's equally adamant that Simpson does not deserve to die. "It ain't nobody's place to take nobody's life," she says quietly. Eury also reflected on what she might say to the victim's family, given the opportunity. "I just hate that the crime happened," she says. "If I could change what happened, I would." At the time of her interview, she said she didn't remember the last time she spoke with or saw Simpson, and she doesn't remember the last thing he said to her. Her unit manager confirmed Monday afternoon that Eury spoke with Simpson briefly via telephone after she spoke with The Reidsville Review, though he could not divulge the contents of their conversation. The two were forbidden from speaking about the crime itself, but this parameter likely did not hinder the one message Eury told The Reidsville Review she wants to send the father of her child. "I just want him to ask God to forgive him for what he done," Eury said. (source: Reidsville Review) **************** Sharpsburg Police Remove Photo Of Man Convicted In Chief's Death Amid concerns of racism, police have removed a photo from their station of the black man convicted in the 1997 slaying of the town's white police chief. Sheila Williams, mayor of the town of about 2,500, asked police last week to remove the photo of Abner Nicholson, 40, from the wall where it has hung for 8 years. He is on death row for the slayings of Chief Wayne Hathaway and Nicholson's wife. The photo had been displayed with the phrases "Don't Never Forget This Face" and "Dead Man Walking." Williams did not return calls seeking comment. Town Commissioner Cheryl Walker-O'neal said the photograph and text were inappropriate because it could make visitors to the police department uncomfortable. "I'm quite sure that some people will look at it as a racial slur," Walker-O'neal said. Commissioner Bill Sharpe agreed that the photo served no public purpose. "He's already been tried and convicted," Sharpe said. "If it's a wanted poster, put it on the wall. But the man's not wanted." Police declined comment on the issue and directed questions to interim town administrator Victor Marrow, who also declined comment. Hathaway's sister, Monica Worsham, said the photo served as a daily reminder to police officers of her brother and his killer. "The only reason they had it up there is that he killed the chief of police. What's wrong with that?" Worsham said. "I could walk in there and feel like nobody forgot my brother." (source: The Associated Press) CALIFORNIA: Moratorium on Executions Is Urged----Author of state's death penalty initiative and other prosecutors send a letter to the Assembly backing a bill seeking a 2-year suspension. A group of current and former prosecutors - including the author of the state's 1978 death penalty initiative and Ira Reiner, whose office sent dozens of people to death row when he was Los Angeles County's district attorney - endorsed a moratorium Monday on executions in California. The group sent a letter to members of the state Assembly on the eve of the 1st hearing on a bill that would place executions on hold for 2 years while the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice examines the problem of wrongful convictions in the state. The 13-member commission was created by an act of the Legislature last year, and includes proponents and opponents of the death penalty. "The execution of an innocent person is unacceptable, and it is imperative that California takes every precaution that it never happens," the letter states. "This is not just a matter of justice for these individuals. It is a matter of public safety." If an innocent person is convicted, that means that the true perpetrator may well still be free to commit more crimes." In addition to Reiner, who served as Los Angeles County district attorney from 1984 to 1992, signers of the letter included Sacramento attorney Donald Heller, author of the 1978 Briggs initiative that created the state's death penalty statute; Jon Willis, a deputy district attorney in Imperial County; Michael Hennessy, the sheriff of San Francisco County; and former California Supreme Court Justice Joseph Grodin. Some of the signatories oppose the death penalty, and some favor it as a philosophical matter but have developed concerns in recent years because of revelations that individuals slated for execution were wrongfully convicted, the letter states. "We agree that a temporary suspension of executions in California is necessary while we ensure, as much as is possible, that the administration of criminal justice in this state is just, fair and accurate," the letter states. In New Jersey on Monday, lawmakers approved a suspension of executions, becoming the 1st state legislature in the country to do so since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976. Heller, in an interview, said his opposition to the death penalty, from both a "practical and moral perspective," had developed in the years after he left the U.S. attorney's office in Sacramento. He acknowledged that "the California death penalty law had met constitutional muster". I think it was written to provide a fair method. In practice it has not worked out that way." "There are too many variables law can't control," Heller said. Prime among them, he said, is the quality of representation a defendant receives in a capital case. Heller said that since being in private practice, he has observed "a lot of marginal and submarginal lawyers." In contrast, Reiner said in an interview Monday that he still favored the death penalty as a philosophical matter, and is scheduled to debate actor Mike Farrell, a longtime death penalty foe, later this week. But Reiner quickly added: "I don't see any appropriate argument against a brief moratorium on executions while the death penalty process in California is examined very carefully by serious people." "If the state is going to have the moral authority to take a life," he said, "it has to be done when there are no questions about the fairness of the trial." Proponents of the moratorium said that California has released at least 6 men who were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death during the last 25 years. David LaBahn, executive director of the California District Attorneys Assn., said his organization is opposed to the moratorium bill, sponsored by Assemblywoman Sally J. Lieber (D-Mountain View) and Assemblyman Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood). "We are not persuaded that the capital punishment system in California needs reform," LaBahn said. He also said the organization believes there is "no need" for a moratorium in the state and that 2 prosecutors - George Williamson of the Solano County district attorney's office and Dane Gillette, chief of the California attorney general's office - plan to testify against the bill today in Sacramento. California has the nation's largest death row, now numbering 646 residents. However, since the 1978 law ushered in the modern death penalty era, only 12 people have been executed. The gap between the time they were sentenced and put to death averaged 15.9 years, LaBahn said. He added that the cases are reviewed very thoroughly by courts in California. Clarence Ray Allen, 75, who arranged a triple slaying in 1980 while in prison for another murder, is scheduled to be executed next Tuesday, and it is anticipated that a judge soon will set a date for the execution of 46-year-old Michael Morales, who raped and killed a 17-year-old girl in 1981. (source: Los Angeles Times) ************** Ca. case has local lawyers locked up THE CASE A grand jury indictment accuses 40 people of 50 criminal acts, including a 1999 prison killing in Marion, Ill., and several other murders or attempted murders. THE ATTORNEYS Some of the region's top defense lawyers represented the three accused in Marion, including one now suspected of being a top gun in the Aryan Brotherhood. In October 2002, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles returned what some authorities called the most massive criminal indictment in U.S. history. It claims a gang called the Aryan Brotherhood operated a prison-based criminal enterprise for more than 25 years. The 110 pages of charges accuse 40 people of more than 50 overt criminal acts, including 32 murders or attempted murders dating to 1979. As a byproduct, the case has disrupted the professional and personal lives of several of the St. Louis region's top criminal defense attorneys, who became increasingly absorbed by what seemed at the start to be a simple prison murder case. They spent 7 months in 2003 and 2004 representing 3 men in a federal trial 85 miles away in Benton, Ill. Some of them may be spending a substantial amount of time away from home again this year - or even 2007 - defending the same defendants in a retrial almost 2,000 miles away, in California. The 5 lawyers include 3 from Missouri, Burton Shostak and Richard Sindel, who practice in Clayton, and Joseph Green, based in St. Louis; and 2 from Illinois, Dan Schattnik of Rosewood Heights, near Wood River, and John O'Gara of Belleville. In recent interviews, they discussed their views of the case, what they learned about life behind bars and what the protracted work has done to their own lives. The defenders It began as a simple weapons possession case against a prisoner at the federal supermaximum-security prison at Marion, Ill., explained Shostak, a dean of the St. Louis criminal defense bar. A federal public defender, citing a conflict, asked Shostak in 1999 to represent David Sahakian, accused of hiding a homemade knife in his rectum. It became far more complex when the Los Angeles indictment identified Sahakian as one of the Aryan Brotherhood's national top guns. It said that before Marion, Sahakian and another inmate controlled narcotics trafficking at the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan. Later, Sahakian supposedly ran day-to-day gang operations at Marion. Sahakian, now 49, faces the possibility of a death sentence on murder and conspiracy charges. He is accused of ordering 2 other white inmates, Richard McIntosh and Carl Knorr Jr., to kill a black inmate, Terry Walker, in May 1999 in a race war at the prison. Shostak, a longtime member of Missouri's Public Defender Commission, has represented a number of high profile, white-collar defendants, including Tom Zych, former president of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, in a well-publicized scandal over St. Louis cable television. Lawyers from all over the country represented other defendants; Shostak won the only jury acquittal. Shostak enlisted Green, who has specialized in complicated criminal cases as an assistant public defender and later in private practice. Green said he has tried 24 death penalty cases in Missouri and Illinois and has disposed of 25 others through pleas or dismissals. Among his famous clients were Matt Funke, accused killer of a teenage girl in Breckenridge Hills, and St. Louis County courthouse shooter Ken Baumruk. Over more than two decades, Sindel has represented a range of clients, from mobsters to Ellen Reasonover, who won release from prison after 16 years of protesting her innocence of murder. Sindel became Knorr's lawyer in 1999, also at the request of a federal public defender. He brought in Schattnik, who specialized in criminal and insurance defense after working as an assistant prosecutor for seven years in Madison County. Schattnik currently represents James Miller, accused of the murders of 2 people outside an Alton nightclub in a death penalty case. Schattnik worked in the past with O'Gara, who with co-counsel Charles Rogers of Kansas City had represented McIntosh in the Benton trial. O'Gara has represented a wide range of defendants in the Metro East area, from political figures such as East St. Louis' Kelvin Ellis, recently convicted of vote fraud and tax evasion, to serial killers. O'Gara recently won an acquittal for James Wiley, accused of murdering his wife in Waterloo. O'Gara lectures on the death penalty. Like Shostak and Sindel, O'Gara was in the Benton case early, hired to represent McIntosh within months of Walker's murder and unaware then that the government would place his client in the middle of a race war conspiracy 3 years later. O'Gara has decided, he said, that 7 months in trial in Benton and away from his family was enough. For family reasons, he has bowed out of McIntosh's defense in California. The Brotherhood In 2004, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Jessner told the New Yorker magazine that the Aryan Brotherhood "may be the most murderous criminal organization in the United States." In the charges, an FBI agent suggests that while the Brotherhood accounted for no more than 1 % of the federal prison population, it was responsible for 25 % of the violence. Founded in 1964 by bikers and neo-Nazis in California's San Quentin prison, the Brotherhood was said to be a white response to the Black Guerrilla Family, an African-American gang. The price of admission to the Brotherhood, authorities allege, is to kill someone; the only way out is death. Members are known for body tattoos such as the letters AB, or the numbers 666 - a biblical reference to evil - or a green shamrock. The Brotherhood has controlled drug trafficking, prostitution, gambling and extortion within prison walls and extended its influence beyond, according to the government's claims. "The AB enforces its rules by, among other tactics, murdering or assaulting those who are considered to be a threat to the organization, including those who act as informants for law enforcement officials," wrote Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for Los Angeles U.S. Attorney Debra Wong Yang, in a statement accompanying the indictment. The charges say the ring and its leaders were guilty of violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, multiple murders and multiple conspiracies. Officials served 80 search warrants, most in prison cells in 12 states. Part of the roundup included Sahakian, Knorr and McIntosh, at Marion. The Marion prison The U.S. penitentiary at Marion opened in 1963 about the same time that the infamous Alcatraz prison was closing. Until late 1994, when a new supermax opened in Colorado, Marion became home to the federal system's biggest challenges - drug lords, mob bosses such as the late John Gotti, murderers, bank robbers, even the spy Jonathan Pollard. On just one day in 1983, two inmates, both said to be in the Brotherhood, fatally stabbed two guards. A few days later, Marion went on lockdown, with the inmates confined to their cells 23 hours a day. In subsequent years, more than two-dozen inmates were murdered there, but no more guards. One of the later victims was Terry Walker, 37, a bank robber from Atlanta, stabbed on May 19, 1999. Sahakian, Knorr and McIntosh were the 1st of the 40 defendants from the Los Angeles indictment to go to trial. It began in a heavily secured court in the rural community of Benton on Sept. 8, 2003, and continued for 7 months. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Carr alleged that Sahakian ordered Walker's death as part of a race war, and that Knorr and McIntosh complied. Jurors heard about 80 witnesses. Fact or fiction? All 5 defense attorneys insisted that the grandiose conspiracy was more fiction than fact. Shostak argued that it would be physically impossible for 54 so-called AB leaders, scattered at different locations, to control mayhem in the federal and California penal systems. He said the Brotherhood was no different from other prison gangs. "The trial was a question of culture versus conspiracy," Green said. "These are inmates trying to live one day at a time, trying to survive. They have a strong moral code among themselves when those grills are closed. They have rules and codes by which they live." That way of life wasn't lost on Sindel, who said he learned "a simple thing: understanding how integrity and morality can shift depending on the society you are forced to live in. The moral code from a prison perspective is as important and related to the way they live than any moral code on the outside." Sindel, Schattnik and O'Gara said it was Walker who attacked Knorr and McIntosh, who killed him in self-defense. There were no links, the lawyers argued, to any hit list by Sahakian or the Brotherhood. O'Gara said McIntosh was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and joked that McIntosh considered the Brotherhood too liberal. One of the government informers testified that the head of the El Rukins, a black gang with roots in Chicago, provided McIntosh with the murder weapon. That made no sense either to the defense lawyers or the jury, O'Gara said. Sindel said Knorr, a bank robber, "never was and never wanted to be a member of the Brotherhood." He had no tattoos, the lawyer said, but did have a strong relationship with his wife and an independent streak - and he had turned down overtures from the gang to join. On March 2, 2004, U.S. District Judge J. Phil Gilbert declared a mistrial in Benton after jurors failed after two weeks of deliberations to reach verdicts on any charge but one - they convicted Sahakian of weapon possession for the knife that guards found on him. All over again The mistrial means the defendants will be tried again. Mrozek, of the Los Angeles federal prosecutor's office, said recently that 20 of the original 40 defendants have pleaded guilty. The remainder have been divided into several groups for trials, with one tentatively set for this month in Santa Ana, Calif. Schattnik says he expects that the four St. Louis-area defense lawyers still involved will be in the Los Angeles area late this month to waive an arraignment for the trio they represent. That would open the way for the Justice Department to begin the process again to seek the death penalty against Sahakian, Knorr and McIntosh. Schattnik said the trial probably won't start until late this year or early next year. Schattnik recalled the Benton trial as personally difficult. "Seven months was way too long and rough on the family," said the lawyer, whose daughter was then in the 6th grade. He had been a soccer coach and a volleyball coach, but "that was the year I missed pretty much the whole year." The lawyers would go to Benton on Sunday and return home on Thursday night - every week of the trial, except Thanksgiving and Christmas. At the Thanksgiving break, Green said, his children, then 7 and 8, asked him: "Daddy, are we from a broken home?" Sindel said the months away from Clayton were difficult on his family and he had to let his law practice slide. "I was really worried about it, living in a motel room, away from family, losing new clients," he said. "But you know what, I got to do exactly what I was trained to do. I got to do what I got into this business for. I got to be a lawyer." (source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch) ************* Stop Clarence Ray Allen's Execution The sun will rise at 7:23 AM on Tuesday, January 17, 2006 in San Quentin, California. But Clarence Ray Allen won't see it. He'll be dead, dispatched at midnight by an executioner on behalf of the good people of California. But then, he would not have seen the sunrise anyway; he's blind. He will be given a chance to utter his last words but there likely will be none. Hes deaf, too. And he will probably roll, not walk, his "last mile" - not on a gurney but in his wheelchair. He is too feeble to walk. This assumes that Ray Allen stays alive until January 17th. He turns 76 on January 16th. A heart attack last September nearly cheated the hangman but Allen was resuscitated by the medical staff. (What a lucky guy!) If he does survive until January 17th, Ray Allen will become the oldest inmate executed in the United States in 50 years. If ever there were a case that reduces capital punishment to its essence, this is it. Ray Allen lost his liberty and his future 32 years ago. We cant deprive him of his ability to communicate; his sight and hearing are gone. We can't take his mobility, thats gone too. Good health? Gone, swept away by diabetes and hypertension. What's left of Ray Allen for the state to take? Only his innermost thoughts and whats left of his drug-mediated metabolism. Taking those will only be the coup de grce to a life that will end soon enough on its own. Death penalty supporters cite the usual reasons why Ray Allen should be executed even now. We need to carry out the will of God, show respect for the rule of law, obtain justice for the victims, provide support for the survivors, deter future criminals, and eliminate the cost of keeping the man alive, among others. One group even advances the outrageous theory that his execution will be good for the environment (no, I cant imagine how either). None of those arguments changes the facts surrounding this execution. Ray Allen is a threat to no one. He is close to the end of his life anyway. His execution will deter no one; it will save no money. Survivors of his 4 victims (one in 1974 and three in 1982) will get along as they have gotten along for decades. The victims are still dead and call to no one from their graves for retribution. Justice, if that's what Ray Allen's execution might have been, has been so long delayed that it's already been denied. What do you call an execution that advances no cause, makes no point, supports no theory, satisfies no moral imperative, saves no money, fills no hearts with peace, and deters no crime? I call it a gratuitous killing, nothing more. It is murder carried out in the people's name. I always thought we were a decent and compassionate people. But killing Ray Allen is not decent and compassionate; its not even humane. It's vengeful, barbarous and sadistic. As a society, we should hang our heads in shame. Clarence Ray Allen is blind. If we allow his execution to proceed, so are we. (source: OpEdNews - Rick Wise is managing director, ValueNet International, inc., Hartford, CT.) ************* Calif. inmate says he's too old, ill to die Less than a month after the uproar over gang leader Stanley "Tookie" Williams' clemency bid and execution, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has another mercy plea on his desk. Though both involve multiple killers, Clarence Allen's case bears little resemblance to Williams'. Allen, scheduled to die next Tuesday by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison, makes no claim of redemption through good works, as Crips gang co-founder Williams did. Allen has no stable of celebrity supporters or Nobel Peace Prize nominations on his resume, no plaudits for a crusade to steer children away from gang violence, as Williams did. Allen's argument is more basic: He says he's too old and too sick to be put to death. More than 2 decades on death row, marked by what his clemency petition calls San Quentin's "chronically deficient health care system," is punishment enough, he says. The 75-year-old Allen, involved in the murders of 4 people, is diabetic, legally blind and confined to a wheelchair outside his cell. He has had 2 heart attacks and a stroke and is too weak to grant interviews, one of his lawyers says. "He's been reduced to an incapacitated old man, near death already," says Michael Satris, Allen's chief appeals lawyer. "To put him to death on top of that is beyond the borders of civilized behavior." Allen's clemency petition also claims that he didn't get a fair trial in 1982 because testimony from witnesses with criminal records was unreliable. State and federal appeals courts have rejected those arguments. No age limit on executions Allen would be the 2nd-oldest inmate executed since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted its capital punishment ban in 1976, according to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. The oldest was John Nixon, who was 77 when he died by lethal injection on Dec. 14 for a 1985 Mississippi murder. The Supreme Court has restricted applying the death penalty if condemned inmates are mentally ill at the time of execution or were under 18 when they committed their crimes. Under a 1986 ruling, for example, if an elderly death row inmate were incapacitated because of Alzheimer's disease, execution would violate the Constitution's Eighth Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. But the justices have made no such stipulation regarding old age. "It's totally related to mental status," says Elisabeth Semel, director of the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California-Berkeley law school. "Age alone hasn't been raised as a legal issue." The Supreme Court has found capital punishment acceptable under the Eighth Amendment on two grounds: retribution or deterrence. Allen's lawyers argue that neither purpose would be served because he's so ill - physically and mentally. "He's been fully punished and deterred by the 23 years he's spent on death row facing execution," Satris says. A former San Quentin warden, Daniel Vasquez, says Allen poses no threat. "He has tended toward passive acceptance and reconciliation rather than active rebellion and conflict," Vasquez says in the petition. Says he didn't get medications When James Hubbard faced execution in Alabama, his lawyers raised some of the same issues now before Schwarzenegger. Hubbard was 74 and had cancer and emphysema. He had been on death row 27 years, and in August 2004 became the oldest inmate put to death in the USA since 1941. Because of the slow pace of capital punishment appeals, death row inmates in many states are more likely to die from illness or suicide than execution. Only 12 killers have been executed since California reinstated the death penalty in 1977, but 48 others died before appeals ran their course. 31 died from what the state Department of Corrections calls "natural causes." Suicide claimed 12, and "other" causes such as drug overdoses claimed 5. Allen's is the 4th clemency petition before Schwarzenegger since he took office in November 2003. He had denied 3, including the one from Williams in December. "I don't think Schwarzenegger has created reason for optimism" in Allen's case, Semel says. "On the other hand, it's not over until it's over." Allen was convicted in the 1974 murder of a 17-year-old robbery accomplice who had snitched on him. While in prison, he ordered the murders of 3 witnesses who had testified against him. He was sentenced to death in 1982 for those killings. "The fact that Allen has been able to live his life after depriving so many innocent people of theirs is no reason to show him mercy," says the state attorney general's petition opposing clemency. The California Supreme Court is also weighing Allen's claim that execution would be cruel. A ruling could come this week. Schwarzenegger announced last week that he would decide clemency without holding a private hearing in Sacramento, as he did in Williams' case. Allen's petition says that at different times, San Quentin denied him his medication for heart disease and diabetes. "The kindest slant you can put on it was it was your typical bureaucratic inadvertence," Satris says. "But who knows." Several calls to San Quentin seeking response to Allen's claims weren't returned. The quality of health care in California's 165,000-inmate prison system is under federal court scrutiny. Last month, a judge ordered Schwarzenegger to take immediate steps to resolve problems that result in the death of an average of one inmate a month. Allen's execution would be the 3rd in California in less than a year. That pace could accelerate in the state with the nation's biggest death row population - about 650 - even while a blue-ribbon panel studies the fairness of the death penalty and a state Assemblybill calls for a moratorium. A 2001 Field Poll found that 73% of Californians favor a moratorium, even though about two-thirds support the death penalty. 4 other killers could be executed this year, according to the state attorney general's office. (source: USA TODAY) **************** Bill to delay executions faces 1st hurdle today----Assembly committee will consider bid for 3-year moratorium As California braces for its second execution in less than 2 months, a legislative committee today will consider a bill to place a 3-year moratorium on the death penalty. The fate of Assembly Bill 1121 will not be decided soon enough to affect Clarence Ray Allen, 75, the mastermind of a triple murder who is scheduled to die Jan. 17, but the bill potentially could affect dozens of other death row inmates. AB 1121's proposed moratorium comes at a time of substantial public debate over the death penalty, prompted in part by last month's execution of Stanley Tookie Williams, 51, a quadruple murderer and founder of the Crips street gang who later urged abandonment of gang violence. Assembly Democrats Paul Koretz of West Hollywood and Sally Lieber of Mountain View are joint authors of the measure, which faces its 1st legislative hurdle today before the Assembly Public Safety Committee. Koretz and Lieber said a three-year moratorium would provide time for the state to study whether the death penalty is being implemented fairly and whether additional safeguards are needed. A newly created panel, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, is charged with completing such a study and making recommendations to the Legislature by Dec. 31, 2007. San Quentin's death row currently contains nearly 650 convicted criminals, including more than 20 who are in the final stages of appeal before an execution date is set. "With the flurry of executions facing us, there's a chance that we could possibly execute an innocent person," Koretz said. "It only makes common sense that if you're studying things that go wrong with the death penalty, you don't keep executing people while you're doing that study." But opponents of AB 1121 claim it represents a 1st step toward banning the death penalty. "This is nothing more than trying to pull the rug out from underneath the justice system," said Assemblyman Jay La Suer, R-La Mesa. Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Orange, ripped AB 1121 as the "be kind to cop killers act." Marc Klaas, a crime-victims advocate whose 12-year-old daughter, Polly, was kidnapped and murdered in 1993, blasted AB 1121 as an affront to families devastated by violent crime. "Myself and hundreds of other individuals who are waiting for justice to be carried out will be sorely disappointed and again victimized by a system that seems to pay more attention to those who commit crimes than those who suffer from crimes," Klaas said. Supporters of AB 1121 counter that the criminal justice system sometimes convicts the wrong person. More than 120 people have been released from death rows nationwide since 1973, according to an analysis of AB 1121 by the Assembly Public Safety Committee. Six convicts have been released from California's death row since 1981 after substantive questions emerged about their convictions and charges later were dropped or they were acquitted in retrial, according to Koretz. Attorney General Bill Lockyer, a Democrat, opposes AB 1121. "No innocent person in this state has ever come close to being executed," said Nathan Barankin, Lockyer's spokesman. Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully said numerous checks and balances - from prosecutorial charging decisions to jury findings and lengthy appeals - are built into the criminal justice system to protect defendants' rights. Since 1992, 12 California death row inmates have been executed in this state, and 1 in Missouri. Their average stay on death row was 17 years, state records show. "We already have a de facto moratorium in California - and it's a heckuva lot longer than 3 years," Scully said of multiple appeals. "In some cases, it takes a lifetime." Lieber said the new death penalty commission should look at things like the disproportionate number of African Americans on death row, 35 percent, and whether laws governing special circumstances in capital cases are applied fairly. "Let's make sure that people are getting executed because of the crime, not because of who the victim was or where the crime was committed," said Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who chairs the Public Safety Committee. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nez have taken no position on AB 1121. Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata said he supports it but does not expect it to pass the Legislature in this election year. (source: Sacramento Bee)
