Jan. 11 TEXAS: Crime lab investigator to target specific cases -- Focus will be on those in which team suspects injustice, he says In the wake of new revelations of incompetence - or perhaps worse - in the Houston Police Department crime laboratory, the investigator hired to get to the bottom of the scandal says he is sharpening his focus to target DNA cases with known problems. Michael Bromwich told the City Council's Public Safety Committee on Tuesday that the fine-tuning was necessary in light of his report last week that found errors in almost 1/3 of the lab's DNA and serology cases selected by random sampling. "The rate of error is so high, little would be accomplished by doing a representative, or random, sampling as originally (planned)," he said. The former U.S. Justice Department inspector general also expressed frustration about the lack of cooperation by some former lab workers, saying it might take subpoena power to force them to talk with his team. But he acknowledged that he is not likely to get the authority that could help him determine whether all of the testing errors resulted from honest mistakes, or whether some results may have been tailored to fit certain suspects. Calling the problems in the DNA and serology labs "serious and pervasive," including the failure to report evidence crucial to the defense, Bromwich said his investigators will "target specific cases in which we believe there may have been injustice committed." His team now will focus on 56 DNA cases that outside labs found to have problems. HPD hired those labs in a massive retesting effort that began after an independent audit found widespread problems at the department's DNA lab 3 years ago. He said the retest list will include 13 cases recently added by HPD and the Harris County District Attorney's Office. Since the DNA lab was shuttered in December 2002, errors have been exposed in the work of four other crime lab disciplines, as well. In releasing his report last week - the 4th installment of his crime lab probe - Bromwich announced that his review of the lab's serology division also will be expanded to include cases dating to 1980 instead of 1987, as was first planned. He added that his investigators already have looked at all 18 death penalty cases involving DNA evidence processed by the HPD lab. Of those, Bromwich said, his team found errors in three and possible errors in a 4th. The condemned inmates in those cases are awaiting execution. Bromwich also said his team is still reviewing 51 non-DNA death penalty cases handled by other divisions of the lab, and is looking for more. He said the convicts in 19 of the 51 cases have been executed. Councilwoman Carol Alvarado cited a story in Sunday's Houston Chronicle that noted that HPD had attempted to fire or discipline some lab employees, only to see the sanctions overturned by the city Civil Service Commission. Three analysts suspended because of the latest findings by the Bromwich team - Mary Childs-Henry, Joseph Chu and Raynard Cockrell - have been targeted for discipline in the past but have escaped serious punishment. The same goes for former analyst Christy Kim, whose shoddy work led to the wrongful rape conviction of Josiah Sutton, 1 of 2 men released from prison after the discovery of flawed work. Kim was fired, but the Civil Service Commission re-instated her and she later retired. "The Civil Service Commission needs to be revamped," Alvarado said. She added that if lab workers are found to have intentionally falsified test results, they should be prosecuted. "Why aren't these people sitting in a jail somewhere? I'm not going to be satisfied until somebody's head is on a platter." District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal said last week that the statute of limitations may preclude bringing state criminal charges against lab workers. Chu said in a civil service hearing that the analysts attempted to alert then-Police Chief C.O. Bradford about the lab problems in 1999. In a letter, the analysts described the DNA division as a "total disaster." Bradford has denied receiving the letter. Bromwich told the council committee it may take subpoena power to get cooperation from some key witnesses but acknowledged that it's doubtful he could be granted such power. Former state appellate court judge Murry Cohen agrees, saying Bromwich probably would have be named as a special prosecutor. Since that would involve working with a grand jury in secret - something Bromwich opposes - both say the chances of that happening are slim. (source: Houston Chronicle) ************************* HPD Crime Lab Problems Widen Following Report -- Investigation Finds Problems With Analysis In 3 Death Row Cases The Houston Police Department's crime lab problems widened Tuesday as a team of investigators continues to focus on years, possibly decades, of serious problems with crime scene evidence analysis, KPRC Local 2 reported. The 4th report into problems at the city's crime lab has led to the suspension of 3 analysts whose findings over the years have been particularly troubled. Independent investigator Michael Bromwich told a City Council committee the lack of training and an adequate standard of operating procedures, and the absence of an effective quality assurance program, have contributed to the lab's problems. According to a team of investigators, 40 % of DNA cases reviewed so far have what Bromwich called "major issues," including the failure to use basic, sound scientific techniques. "We found major issues in 3 of the 18 death penalty cases that we've reviewed," Bromwich said. None of those inmates has been executed. Their court cases are now under review. Bromwich made his comments to the Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security. The investigation has raised the question of whether some of the DNA mistakes were made on purpose. As the investigation moves toward looking at specific cases and the depth of the timeline moves back to 1980, investigators said they are not sure how many cases had flawed or purposely altered results. "At this point, we would really only be speculating about whether the wrong results or bad science that was done, was done deliberately," Bromwich said. Bromwich said although there is no conclusive evidence of intentional misconduct in the lab, there are questions about what he calls "police shaping," where investigators might have influenced the results in some cases. He said that remains under investigation. He specifically mentioned a 1998 death penalty case in which the suspect was convicted. The case is being reviewed. "The lab only reported DNA testing results that were consistent with the investigator's theory and did not report, some would say, suppress, the findings that were inconsistent," Bromwich said. Bromwich said he is confident that the biggest problems in HPD's crime lab are in the areas of DNA analysis and serology, the study of bodily fluids. In contrast, Bromwich said the firearms, toxicology and question documents units have performed well under his testing. At least 3 crime lab scientists are under the microscope, too, for their histories of flawed results. "They are relieved of duty, at home, until this investigation is completed," said assistant chief Martha Montalvo of the Houston Police Department. Montalvo said they are still being paid. (source: Click2Houston.com) ************** Deputy fired over inmate escape speaks out The only Harris County sheriff's deputy fired after the escape of a death row inmate wonders why no one else lost their job over the incident. John Thurmon admits he made some mistakes that helped condemned killer Charles Thompson escape last year. Thurmon believes a shortage of deputies at the jail contributed to the escape but the sheriff's office has repeatedly denied staffing had anything to do with it. The department punished nine people for the escape but only Thurmon was fired. He feels all in employees should have been disciplined equally. "I think a few of the other people involved in the chain were given some days off. I'm not sure why they were that critical on my half. I wasn't sure on that," said former deputy Thurmon. Eyewitness News attempted to get a response from the sheriff's office but our requests were repeatedly denied. During Thompson's escape, the department hired close to 30 new detention officers to work at the jail. (source: KTRK-TV) ************* Trial set in South Texas capital murder case A Florida woman who is one of five suspects in the slaying of a Maine man found dead along a rural South Texas road was scheduled to go on trial next month on a capital murder charge. Athena Gandy, 23, of Lakeland, Fla., was arrested in June and is being held in the Wharton County Jail on $500,000 bond. She's set to go on trial Feb. 27 in the death of 21-year-old James Junkins, of Biddeford, Maine. His body was found in a roadside ditch in Wharton County, about 55 miles southwest of Houston, in February. Junkins went unidentified for several months until a homeless man, 22-year-old Edward Bachelder, turned himself in to in Portland, Maine authorities and said he had witnessed the murder of his traveling companion. Gandy's trial is one of a possible three trials still pending in Junkin's death, Wharton County District Attorney Josh McCown told the Victoria Advocate for its Wednesday edition. Bachelder was charged with capital murder and is awaiting trial. Also awaiting trial for capital murder is Sean Flanders, 22, of Lakeland, Fla. They are each being held in Wharton County Jail on $1 million bond. 2 other suspects, 22-year-old Tasha Kersey, of Lakeland, Fla., and 27-year-old David Anthony Theriot, of Lexington, Ky., both pleaded guilty to murder in December as part of plea bargains that resulted in 40-year sentences for each. McCown would not comment on whether the 2 convicted suspects will testify in the pending trials. (source: Associated Press) VIRGINIA: Feelings mixed on DNA tests----Judge who ordered 1990 tests in Coleman case fears impact on juries New DNA testing in the case of Roger Keith Coleman wouldn't have been possible without the bold order of a Buchanan County judge more than 15 years ago. Retired Judge Nicholas E. Persin said yesterday that he has mixed feelings about the testing, but he characterized Gov. Mark R. Warner's action almost 14 years after Coleman's execution as being one that could bring "a determination that perhaps we can all live by." The genetic material now being tested was extracted from original evidence in 1990 by Edward T. Blake, a DNA scientist in California who saved the material after testing it. The original material, which Blake returned to Virginia, was destroyed in accordance with state policies in 1994, a state police spokeswoman said yesterday. Last week, the governor's office said the evidence could not be found. Blake said his concern over the fate of the evidence was the reason he kept the extracts. Warner announced last week that he had approved new -- and likely more definitive -- DNA testing in an effort to put to rest controversy surrounding Coleman's execution. Persin said one concern he has is that if the testing clears Coleman, it could make jurors in the future reticent to do their duty. "Reasonable doubt and beyond a shadow of a doubt [are] 2 different things," Persin said. "So can I say that it's wrong to do it? No, I can't say that it's wrong. Do I think it may result in something that would be constructive? Perhaps. I doubt it, but perhaps." Persin, 71, retired in 1996 but still sits as a substitute judge and is a practicing mediator and arbitrator. He would not predict the outcome of the current testing. "I'm sure the evidence they are examining is very good evidence," he said. Coleman was executed in the rape and murder of Wanda Fay McCoy in her Grundy home on March 10, 1981. McCoy, 19, was raped and stabbed to death, her throat cut. Coleman was her brother-in-law and a convicted sex offender. He was tried and sentenced to death in 1982. Coleman steadfastly maintained his innocence, and his supporters drew international attention to the case. Persin said he stuck his neck out in 1990 to order the DNA testing, which was not available when Coleman was convicted. In a 2001 interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Persin said the attorney general's office strongly opposed DNA testing at the time. Government lawyers told him, "'Judge, you don't have jurisdiction.' "I said, 'You're right, but I'm going to order it anyway,' because I was the trial judge and I had to sentence him to death. "If there's any possibility that the jury was in error in reaching its decision and its recommendation of death . . . I want to know it," Persin reasoned. As it turned out, even though Blake was hired by defense lawyers, his 1990 testing further implicated Coleman, showing he was within 2 % of the population that could have committed the crime. Persin yesterday described the case against Coleman as "the strongest circumstantial case. . . . Jurors generally, in circumstantial cases, would never administer the death penalty." The jurors "were absolutely satisfied with the theory of the commonwealth," Persin said. "I think they were just satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that his motive for being there was for sex and that in order to cover his tracks, he slit her throat and let her bleed to death," Persin said. Meantime, the confusion over the disposition of the evidence was the result of a "miscommunication" between the governor's office and the state police, said Corinne Geller, a state police spokeswoman. Geller said that after the evidence was returned to Virginia, it was placed in a state police evidence locker in Wytheville. The policy at the time dictated that once all court proceedings and appeals expired, evidence related to the criminal investigation was to be destroyed, Geller said. "Because of the attention this case gained over the years, we actually kept it longer than we normally would," she said. (source: Richmond Times-Dispatch) *************** Acquaintance with a doomed man The 1st time I saw Roger Keith Coleman, he was shackled from ankle to waist to wrist. The chains forced him to hunch as burly guards escorted him into the visiting room at the Mecklenburg state prison, which housed Virginia's death row. He shook my hand with his arm pinned to his hip. "Do you want the chains off?" a corrections officer asked me. "Of course," I answered. Actually, I wasn't so sure. I was 25, recently hired at the Roanoke Times, as new to journalism as Coleman was to death row. And Coleman, just a year older than I, had been convicted of a horrible murder - raping his wife's 19-year-old sister, then slashing her throat. During our conversation that day in May 1985, Coleman insisted to me what he had insisted to everyone from the moment of his conviction, what he would maintain for the next 7 years, until the moment of his execution in 1992: He was innocent. This week, the results of new DNA tests could show whether Coleman was telling the truth. I left Virginia in 1987 to join The Inquirer, but Coleman and I stayed in touch. "My final appeal was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court," he wrote to me in mid-1991. "But all hope isn't lost yet... . A lot of people are working very hard on my behalf." He said that investigator James McCloskey, who runs Centurion Ministries in Princeton, was discovering evidence that could clear him. In a later letter, his execution drawing nearer, Coleman said he was hoping the growing publicity about his case would lead to clemency. He said that movie star Alec Baldwin was willing to appear at rallies on his behalf. (Whoopi Goldberg had sent her regrets.) He was hoping to build the kind of celebrity support that had saved Joseph Giarratano, a Virginia death-row inmate who came within two days of execution before being spared by the governor. "We face one drawback," Coleman wrote to me. "Giarratano had two years to gear up his campaign and gather support. I have only four and a half months left." In the days before he died in the electric chair, Coleman indeed became a cause celebre. The New York Times editorialized on his behalf, citing procedural problems with his appeal, and Time featured him in a cover story. Pope John Paul II tried to block the execution. But on that day in May that he sat down across from me, Coleman was no media star. He wasn't even particularly notorious. The murder that put him on death row had occurred in rural Buchanan County in far southwest Virginia, well away from the media centers of Richmond and Norfolk. I hadn't come to discuss his case but his environment. A year earlier, Mecklenburg prison was the site of the largest death-row breakout in American history. Six inmates had overpowered their guards, taken their uniforms, and bluffed their way out of the prison with a fake bomb. The escape plunged the state corrections system into chaos, and conditions on death row, already among the harshest in the nation, became even tougher. Coleman was one of the few prisoners willing to talk about what life was like there. He was clean cut, muscular, thick through the chest. He wore wire-rim glasses, a prison-issue shirt, and a smirk. As we spoke, Coleman confirmed that he had known about the plans for the escape and decided to stay behind. "I'm innocent," he told me. "If I escape, that's like I'm guilty." At first, Coleman told me, prison life had seemed so oppressive - by then he'd spent three years on death row - that he considered dropping his appeals and going willingly to the electric chair. Now he was more determined. "Some guys are just delaying the inevitable," he said. "I have a good case. I have hope." Still, he understood the reality of death row. Linwood and James Briley, two brothers who led the prison break, had both been executed during the past seven months. Morris Mason was scheduled to die in June. "I'm 26 now. I'll live to be 28. I may be 29," he told me. "Unless something happens with my appeals, 30 is doubtful." Coleman didn't want to discuss the specifics of his conviction. And at any rate there wasn't all that much to discuss. In March 1982 he'd been found guilty of one of the most heinous crimes ever committed in the tiny coal-mining community of Grundy, Va. Wanda McCoy, Coleman's sister-in-law, was found dead inside her home, her head nearly cut off. Investigators said they discovered no sign of forced entry. They believe she knew her killer. Coleman insisted that he had no reason to kill anyone, that he had a good job in the mines, a nice home and a stable marriage. I didn't pay much attention to his protests. Practically everyone who is in prison says they're innocent. To me, Coleman didn't seem angry enough - or frightened enough. Or at least he didn't seem as angry or as frightened as I, in all my 25-year-old wisdom, imagined that an innocent man should be. He came across as a little slick, a little hard. What's more, he had been previously convicted of the attempted gunpoint rape of a school teacher. And at the time of his capital conviction he was under indictment for exposing himself to two women. It seemed a short step from attempted rape to rape and murder. But later, when I thought about Coleman's decision to stay put during the Mecklenburg escape, doubt crept in. I tried to imagine myself in his place: If the state was planning to kill me, would I run if I had the chance? On death row, Coleman started a Scared-Straight-style program called The Choice Is Yours, seeking to warn young people about the harsh realities of prison. The program drew praise from juvenile-justice authorities and was even featured on ABC's Good Morning America - irritating police officers and prosecutors, who saw the program as a ploy to gain sympathy. In 1991, his hopes intact but his appeals dwindling, Coleman wrote to me that he had continued to build The Choice Is Yours, even being allowed to have young people visit him, and he felt he had made a difference in their lives. "In the event I do die on Jan. 23," he wrote, "I'll die with the knowledge that the last 10 years of my life haven't been wasted." The courts halted that execution. But four months later, on May 20, his appeals exhausted, Coleman was led to the electric chair. "An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight," he said when asked for his last words. "When my innocence is proven, I hope Americans will realize the injustice of the death penalty as all other civilized countries have." ******************** Did he do it? -- DNA results are due any day for inmate executed in 1992, and the man who fought for an answer. Just before Roger Keith Coleman was executed in Virginia in the spring of 1992, Jim McCloskey made him a promise: to continue efforts to prove Coleman's innocence. It has taken nearly 14 years, but McCloskey kept his word, and this week advanced DNA testing could show conclusively whether Coleman raped and murdered his sister-in-law, Wanda McCoy, in a tiny Appalachian coal town back in 1981. If the tests demonstrate that Coleman was not the killer, it would mark the 1st time in America that scientific evidence has shown that an innocent man was put to death. "I think he's going to get exonerated," said McCloskey, executive director of Centurion Ministries, a nonprofit organization here that works to free prisoners it believes have been convicted of murders or rapes they did not commit. Thomas R. Scott Jr., who helped prosecute the case, said he was hoping that the tests - which he believes will implicate Coleman - would bring peace to McCoy's family. "They've never had closure - that's for 25 years," he said. The case is being watched closely by people on both sides of the capital-punishment debate - and by residents of Grundy, Va., the small town in the southwestern part of the state where McCoy was raped, stabbed and nearly decapitated. No one is watching more anxiously than McCloskey, who persuaded Gov. Mark R. Warner to allow the testing. "I have never in my life - and I'm 63 - been so excited and full of anticipation, but nervous at the same time," McCloskey said in an interview this week at Centurion Ministries' modest offices a few blocks from Princeton University. For many in Grundy, the case has been like a wound that just won't heal. "Hopefully, this will end it," said Lodge Compton, editor and publisher of the local paper, the Virginia Mountaineer. He said most people in town did not need the DNA results to confirm Coleman's guilt. Since 1983, McCloskey's group has won the release of about 3 dozen prisoners, including four from Philadelphia, by reinvestigating the crimes and pressing the cases in court. Even with all that success, the Coleman case stands out because McCloskey was unable to stop the execution. After Coleman's death, McCloskey pressed on as DNA technology became more sophisticated. Centurion Ministries and several newspapers went to court in 2001 seeking retesting of semen removed from McCoy's body. The Virginia Supreme Court refused in 2002, so McCloskey turned to the governor. Last week, Warner said he ordered the testing - which began last month - because technological advances could provide forensic certainty that was not available when Coleman was convicted in 1982. The results are expected before Warner, a Democrat who is considering a presidential run in 2008, leaves office Saturday. Even before Coleman went to the electric chair, the case had been the focus of international attention. Coleman gave interviews from death row, the case made the cover of Time magazine, and Pope John Paul II urged that the execution be called off. Post-execution DNA testing has not been an issue so far in Pennsylvania or New Jersey. Only three executions have taken place in Pennsylvania since capital punishment was reinstated in 1978, and all 3 death-row inmates stopped their appeals. New Jersey has not executed anyone since 1963. The slow pace of executions in Pennsylvania bought time for a Philadelphia man, Nicholas Yarris, as DNA testing became more sophisticated and finally led to his release in 2004. He had spent 22 years on death row for a 1981 rape and murder in Delaware County. Coleman, a coal miner who was a pallbearer at McCoy's funeral, always insisted that he had nothing to do with the killing, which took place between 10 and 11 p.m. on March 10, 1981. He said he left the mine about 10 that night, stopped to talk to a friend, drove to a trailer park to visit another friend, and then was home by 11:05. McCloskey said Coleman's whereabouts can be verified for all but about the last 15 to 20 minutes of that time. He said he did not believe Coleman had the time to get from the trailer park to McCoy's house, carry out the crime, clean himself up, and then drive home to his wife, who was McCoy's sister. "If he did this, he's got to be a Ninja, a magician," McCloskey said. "He simply didn't have the time." Scott said there was compelling evidence that pointed to Coleman, who had previously been convicted of an attempted rape. He said there was no sign of forcible entry, leading investigators to believe that McCoy knew her killer; pubic hair found on her body was consistent with Coleman's hair; blood on Coleman's clothing - tiny specks of type O - was the same type as the victim's; and both the assailant and Coleman had type-B blood. Scott said the evidence actually got stronger after the trial. He said a 1990 DNA test placed Coleman within 2 % of the population that could have produced the semen. McCloskey thinks the new testing will clear Coleman. He said he first interviewed Coleman in 1988, believed there was a chance he was innocent, and then spent four years interviewing witnesses in an investigation that Centurion Ministries said ultimately pointed to the involvement of others. McCloskey spent 5 hours with Coleman until just a half-hour before the execution, and it was then that he told Coleman he would never give up. "I promised him that night I would do everything I could to prove his innocence," McCloskey said. He said it was possible the test might show that Coleman was the killer. "All of us in the criminal-justice system who care about the truth and do everything we humanly can to secure the truth, we all live and die by the sword of DNA," McCloskey said. But if the tests show that Coleman was not the killer, he said, it could lead to the end of capital punishment in America. "If that is done, Roger Coleman will not have died in vain." (source for both: Philadelphia Inquirer) FLORIDA: 1986 murder back in court----Death row inmate's attorneys bring case before Florida Supreme Court justices Hours before she died from at least 7 stab wounds, 70-year-old Virgie E. Langford told relatives she remembered her attacker's light-colored eyes. Almost 20 years later, a hazel-eyed Melvin Trotter, 45, of Palmetto, sits on death row for Langford's murder. And his attorneys continue trying to save his life. Florida Supreme Court justices took up Trotter's case Tuesday morning in Tallahassee. Attorneys argued before the court whether Trotter should be deemed mentally retarded - the most recent of several attempts in the past 2 decades to get Trotter a life sentence. Trotter, a former glass worker for Tropicana, was convicted of the 1986 murder and sentenced to death in the late 1980s. He stabbed Langford - owner of a small market at 215 10th St. W. in Palmetto for about 50 years - to death with a 16-inch-long butcher knife she used to cut large slabs of cheese and meat. Langford died about 10 hours after the stabbing, but not before providing authorities with a detailed description of her attacker. He had a Tropicana shirt with the name Melvin on it, she told them. Trotter, who was supposed to be on house arrest on unrelated charges at the time, stole about $100 from the store and used the money to buy rock cocaine, according to Herald archives. He was arrested the next day. Attorneys argued at the trial that Trotter had been on a near-week-long cocaine high without sleep before going into Langford's store and killing her. A tearful Trotter testified and said that Langford provoked the attack and that he didn't remember stabbing or choking her. He said he was an abused and neglected child of a heavy drinker who beat him regularly with an extension cord. Trotter was put into foster care at age 9 and in classes for mildly retarded children at Bradenton Middle School. He sat in a Manatee County courtroom with his head bowed and eyes closed as a guilty verdict was read in April 1987. But when the jury recommended the death penalty about a month later, he didn't flinch. His attorneys sought a new trial, citing misconduct on part of the jurors and errors on part of the judge. A new trial was denied. But in December 1990, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a new sentencing hearing for Trotter. About 3 years later, a new jury was seated - same verdict. That same year - in 1993 - Trotter's younger brother Anthony, who was 25 at the time, was found incompetent to stand trial in a rape case involving an 85-year-old woman. Since then, Melvin Trotter's defense attorneys have pulled out all the stops. They argued in 1993 that prosecutors sought the death penalty against him "in a racially discriminatory manner," according to Herald archives. They said if Langford had been a black woman, things might have been handled differently in Trotter's case. Langford was white. Trotter is black. Prosecutors said Trotter was sentenced to die because of his "horrible crime" and not the color of his skin, according to Herald archives. In 1995, the appeals kicked off. Trotter was assigned a new attorney, who announced in 2002 plans to address the possibility Trotter is mentally retarded and that the original defense team did not do a good job. Manatee County Circuit Court Judge Peter Dubensky was part of that defense team in the late 1980s. Trotter's new attorney also requested a lesser sentence in 2002, but the motion for post-conviction relief was rejected in March 2003. In court Tuesday, attorneys argued several issues involving Trotter's possible mental retardation. The 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Atkins v. Virginia holds that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of mentally retarded offenders. Prosecutors say Trotter is not mentally retarded. But his defense team argues that doesn't mean he wasn't mentally retarded before he turned 18 and at the time of the murder. The Atkins ruling outlines that "mental retardation" should be determined by below average intellectual functioning and adaptive skills such as communication, self-care and self-direction that become apparent before age 18. Attorneys argued over conflicting reports of Trotter's scores on IQ tests throughout his life. A spokesman for the Florida Supreme Court said it could take months for the court to return a ruling in the case. (source: The Herald Today) NEW HAMPSHIRE: State should rid itself of unused death penalty law It is time to bring New Hampshires law into line with its current practices and those of almost all civilized countries in the world. It is time to end the death penalty in this state. Today House Bill 1422, sponsored by Portsmouth Democratic state Rep. Jim Splaine, will be heard before the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. It calls for the repeal of the death penalty, but requires anyone convicted of capital murder to spend his or her life in prison without the possibility of parole. In fact, no one has been executed in New Hampshire since 1939. After years of being without the death penalty, it was reinstated in 1990 only to have both houses of the state Legislature vote for repeal in 2000. It was only a veto from then Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen that kept the penalty on the books. There is no one on death row currently in New Hampshire and no death chamber in which to hold executions anywhere in the state. But because there is still a death penalty on the books here, state officials are being called on to execute someone convicted of murder outside the state. In 2003, Gary Lee Sampson, who killed two Massachusetts people and a man from Penacook, N.H., was sentenced to death by a federal court. However, because Massachusetts has no death-penalty law, the federal judge ordered Sampson to be executed here in New Hampshire. Sampson is currently going through the appeals process, but unless the death penalty is repealed in this state, it is probable New Hampshire will be called upon to execute a man who has not been found guilty of any crime in its courts. There are, of course, ethical and moral issues involved in support for - or opposition to - the death penalty, along with the financial questions about whether it is cheaper to go through the lengthy appeals process required in a death penalty case than to keep a man incarcerated for the rest of his life. But the real question hinges on whether the death penalty is a real deterrent to anyone considering killing another individual. With the specific criteria for instituting the death penalty in current New Hampshire law - that the murder take place during a rape or kidnapping, or that the victim be a law-enforcement officer or a judge - the deterrent value is obviously limited. If having such a law on the books offers no deterrent, is initially more costly because of the appeals process, hasnt been used in more than half a century, is open to abuse and groups New Hampshire with the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia and China, it is time to get rid of it. We urge members of the House committee to vote to recommend passage of this bill to the entire House, encourage the full House and Senate to support it as they did in 2000, and for Gov. John Lynch to sign it into law as soon as possible. (source: Editorial, Portsmouth Herald) OHIO: Sister Helen Prejean joins campaign for death row Scot Kenny Richey Renowned US anti-death penalty campaigner and author Sister Helen Prejean has joined forces with Amnesty International and other campaigners to press for justice for Kenny Richey, a Scottish man on death row in the USA. Mr Richey was convicted of arson and murder in the US state of Ohio in 1986 and sentenced to death in January 1987. He has now been on death row for 19 years but has always protested his innocence. Since his conviction evidence has emerged casting serious doubt on Mr Richey's guilt. Sister Helen, whose best-selling book Dead Man Walking has done much to raise the issue of the injustice of the death penalty in the US, has now spoken out about Mr Richey's plight. Sister Helen was speaking ahead of a special Amnesty International "Women Against The Death Penalty" event tonight, which will also feature British campaigner Karen Torley, Kenny Richey's fiancee. Sister Helen said: "Kenny Richey's case is one more tragic example of the flawed, politicised death penalty system in the United States. "In Kenny Richey's case effective defense counsel was miserably lacking at his trial. "Yet so far no appeals court will acknowledge this abuse of his constitutional right and order a new trial. "I am proud to stand alongside Karen Torley who has been such a steadfast force in seeking justice for Kenny Richey." Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen, who has visited Kenny Richey on death row, said: "Sister Helen's magnificent campaigning on the death penalty has been an inspiration to thousands of people around the world and her involvement in Kenny Richey's case can only help this man achieve some measure of justice." The event, being held tonight at Amnesty International UK's Human Rights Action Centre in east London, will also feature speeches from 2 women who are campaigning against the highly secretive use of the death penalty in Uzbekistan. Tamara Chikunova, head of Mothers Against The Death Penalty And Torture in Uzbekistan, has campaigned against capital punishment in the country since her 28-year-old son Dmitry was executed despite allegations that he was tortured into a false confession. Fellow campaigner Dilobar Khudoberganova is raising the case of her brother, Iskandar, who has been on death row since 2002. There are allegations that he was similarly tortured into a false confession. Sister Helen and fellow campaigners will be signing a new 16,000-strong petition to the governments of Uzbekistan and Belarus calling on them to abolish the death penalty in those countries. Find out more about our campaign against the Death Penalty... (http://www.amnesty.org.uk/action/camp/dp/index.shtml) Notes: Sister Helen Prejean's new publication, The Death Of Innocents (published in the UK in January 2006) is the follow-up to the best-selling 1993 book Dead Man Walking, which formed the basis of the Oscar-winning film directed by Tim Robbins and starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon. The Death of Innocents tells the story of 2 men - Dobie Williams in Louisiana and Joseph O'Dell in Virginia - whom Sister Helen believes were innocent of the crimes for which they were nevertheless executed. (source: Amnesty International)
