Feb. 7 OHIO----execution State executes Akron man for two rapes, murders Ohio executed a man Tuesday for raping and strangling a woman he grew up with and a woman he met at a concert in a 5-month spree of assaults while on drugs. Glenn L. Benner II, 43, died by injection at 10:15 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. Benner admitted committing horrific crimes while under the influence of drugs. He was convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering Trina Bowser, 21, in 1986, leaving her body in the trunk of her car along a highway in Tallmadge, the town where they grew up across the street from each other. A year earlier, he strangled Cynthia Sedgwick, 26, of Cleveland Heights, after a George Thorogood concert. Benner had refused to ask for his life to be spared because he said the process does not consider whether a person changes in prison. He smiled at relatives and nodded toward the victims' families when he entered the execution chamber. "Over the last 20 years I've caused you unimaginable pain and I'm sorry. Trina and Cynthia were beautiful girls who didn't deserve what I done to them. They are in a better place. I pray that God will grant you peace," Benner said just before he died. Bradley Bowser, one of Trina Bowser's 3 brothers who witnessed the execution, said softly, "That won't get you into heaven, ace." Another brother, Rodney, had a private, 15-minute meeting that he requested through the cell door with Benner before the execution. It was the 1st meeting between an inmate and a victim's family member, prisons spokesman Andrea Dean said. Bowser didn't discuss the meeting with reporters. Bowser, 48, said last week that he wanted to talk to Benner to resolve some unanswered questions that have been haunting him for years, such as how Benner and his sister crossed paths the night of her death. He said it would be a difficult conversation with his boyhood friend, but something he needed to do. After the execution, 13 of Trina Bowser's family members criticized the law allowing only 3 people for each victim to witness the executions and lashed out against death penalty opponents. "Please know that your 'civilized and merciful' comments are meaningless to us, because you have not suffered the heart-wrenching loss and ongoing nightmare of a loved one being brutally murdered," said Scott Bowser, Trina's nephew. Benner spent countless summer days as a boy splashing at a swimming hole with Trina and Rodney Bowser. Rodney and his parents discovered her car along the highway on a winter night after the young secretary didn't return from visiting a girlfriend. Sedgwick's body was found in the woods at Blossom Music Center near Akron, and several witnesses saw Benner carrying her into the area. He also assaulted 2 other women in the Akron area in northeast Ohio. Benner's aunt, his lawyer and a woman from Ireland who became his pen pal in prison also witnessed the execution, along with a brother and the parents of Sedgwick. Gov. Bob Taft accepted the unanimous recommendation against clemency for Benner by the Ohio Parole Board, with one member calling the crimes "pure evil." Benner killed to avoid getting caught so he could continue assaulting women, said Phil Bogdanoff, an assistant Summit County prosecutor, who called Benner a serial rapist and killer at his clemency hearing last month. He was a football player and well-liked in his middle-class neighborhood. He began abusing marijuana and alcohol at age 13, tried to commit suicide at 17 and was most likely intoxicated when he raped and killed, according to James Siddall, a psychologist who evaluated Benner 2 weeks after his conviction. Siddall wrote that Benner had below average intelligence, experienced major depression and was prone to impulsive behavior that included a lack of anger control. His defense attorney attacked the credibility of a co-worker who said Benner confessed the killing to him and questioned the witnesses' recollections. Benner appealed numerous aspects of his trial, claiming ineffective counsel and prosecutorial misconduct. He agreed to DNA testing in one of his legal challenges and the 2003 results clearly established that he raped and killed Bowser. Benner becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Ohio and the 20th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999. Benner becomes the 6th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1010th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977. (sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin) ************* Ohio murderer apologizes before execution A man convicted of raping and killing 2 women 20 years ago was executed on Tuesday in Ohio moments after he apologized to his victims' families for the "unimaginable pain" he had caused. Glenn Benner, 43, was pronounced dead at 10:15 a.m. 1515 GMT following an injection of lethal chemicals at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, said Jo Ellen Lyons, a spokeswoman for the state prison system. "I just need you to give me 2 seconds," Benner said in remarks to the families of his victims just before the drugs were pumped into his body. "Over the past 20 years I have been in unimaginable pain." The 2 women he killed, he said, "were beautiful girls who did not deserve what happened to them. They are in a better place. I pray that God will grant you peace." "I have been going over and over in my head trying to think of the words I can say to you that would ease the unimaginable pain that you have been going through for 20 years because of my actions," he added. "Words seem so futile. All I can say is I'm sorry. May God give you peace," Benner concluded. He was the 6th person put to death in the United States so far this year and 1,010th since 1976 when the country reinstated capital punishment. Benner was convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering Cynthia Sedgwick, 26, in August 1985 in a wooded area near Akron, Ohio, and raping and murdering 21-year-old Trina Bowser in Akron in January 1986. He was also convicted of rape and attempted murder of 2 other women in the months between the 2 slayings. Benner, who said he was under the influence of drugs when the crimes were committed, did not seek clemency from Governor Bob Taft. (source: Reuters) GEORGIA: Will Nichols be tried at a crime scene?----Shootout at Atlanta courthouse, aftermath, left 4 dead In Atlanta, a man accused of killing 4 people should be tried in the same downtown courthouse where the shooting spree started because no suitable alternative has been found, prosecutors say. Prosecutors wrote in court papers that Brian Nichols' defense failed to come up with another site for the October 3 trial to which both sides can agree. Nichols' defense has argued the trial should not be held in the Fulton County Courthouse complex because its hallways, parking lots and one of its courtrooms are considered a crime scene. A hearing on the issue was scheduled for Wednesday. Nichols was in the courthouse facing retrial on rape charges March 11 when he is accused of overpowering a deputy, grabbing her gun and shooting the presiding judge and a court reporter. Nichols also is accused of killing a sheriff's deputy who chased him outside the courthouse, and a federal agent at a home a few miles away. He surrendered the next day after allegedly taking a woman hostage in a suburban Atlanta apartment. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. For the last several months, both sides have discussed holding the trial at other court buildings in the county. Officials at the federal courthouse a few blocks away have refused to hold the trial there. Other sites suggested -- including the City of Atlanta Traffic Court, the Charles Carnes State Court and the Union City Municipal Court -- could not be agreed on by both sides, prosecutors said in court papers. Nichols' defense has not formally asked for the trial to be moved to another county. (source: Associated Press) MARYLAND: Evans' death sentence on hold----State's high court to hear lethal injection challenge, claim that race had role Maryland's highest court halted yesterday the scheduled execution of convicted murderer Vernon Lee Evans Jr., agreeing to hear his challenge to the state's lethal injection procedure, along with claims that race has played a role in his case. The Maryland Court of Appeals issued its orders on the 1st of 5 days when a death warrant authorized the state to put Evans to death for the 1983 contract killings of 2 Pikesville motel employees. The court's rulings raised hopes among death penalty opponents that any other state executions would be held up at least until the issues are debated this spring. "Certainly, the lethal injection issue is not particular to Vernon," said Gary E. Proctor, a defense attorney who assisted with the legal appeals of a man executed in December and is representing two other men on Maryland's death row. "That affects everyone on death row and everyone the state is trying to send there." Jane Henderson, executive director of Maryland Citizens Against State Executions, agreed. "This is quite an amazing set of orders that came down. The Court of Appeals has stepped in quite strongly here," she said. John Cox, an assistant Baltimore County state's attorney who has handled all of the circuit court filings and hearings in the Evans case since the late 1980s, said he was frustrated by another delay in a nearly 23-year-old case that has generated 11 prior claims heard by the Court of Appeals. Evans also was granted a stay of execution last spring, allowing his lawyers time to argue their 1st appeal based on a state-funded University of Maryland study that found racial and geographic disparities in the state's imposition of the death penalty. "It's amazing to me," Cox said. "For them to raise all these issues at the last minute and, frankly, put pressure on the Court of Appeals, filing claims within days of an execution, it's just frustrating. These particular lawyers have been representing him for the last 10 years. I don't know why they couldn't have done it sooner." Evans, 56, learned of the court's decision in a phone call shortly before noon. 2 of his attorneys were in Annapolis at the Court of Appeals for a hearing in the case of another death row inmate they represent, Lawrence M. Borchardt Sr., a convicted killer who was granted a new sentencing hearing last year. A court clerk informed the lawyers of the judges' orders to postpone Evans' execution. Attorney Julie S. Dietrich said she reached immediately for her cell phone, dialing a number for the Rev. Charles Canterna, a priest who ministers to inmates at the Supermax prison. Canterna was with Evans in his cell at the Metropolitan Transition Center, the old, castle-like former state penitentiary that houses Maryland's execution chamber. "He wasn't allowed to hand Vernon the [cell] phone, so I couldn't talk to him, but he held the phone up to Vernon and I was able to yell," Dietrich said. "He heard me." She said Evans responded, "Praise God." The appeals court scheduled oral arguments for May on Evans' claims that his previous lawyers failed to investigate and present evidence of his abusive childhood to the jury that sentenced him and on an appeal based on the University of Maryland's death penalty study. The court also agreed to hear arguments on Evans' challenge to the state's lethal injection procedure, a civil lawsuit filed by Evans along with the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union and Henderson's organization, Maryland CASE. The lawsuit challenges the execution protocols on grounds that they were never made available for public comment, as is required by state law, and that regulations in the Division of Correction's execution manual differ from those laid out in the statute that establishes the state's death penalty procedures. 2 months ago, another death row inmate, Wesley Eugene Baker, raised similar arguments regarding the University of Maryland death penalty study, lethal injection and his most recent lawyers' claims that he was ineffectively represented at his sentencing hearing. Baker was executed in December. Evans' lawyers say their arguments differ from those of Baker's lawyers, particularly with their specific allegations of racial influence on Evans' case. They argue that prosecutors used eight of 10 peremptory strikes to strip the jury of nearly all African-Americans and that an officer participating in Evans' arrest in 1983 told him, "It's all right for you to kill each other, but when you start killing whites in this country, you are going to burn." In addition to Evans' affidavit about those remarks, his lawyers submitted affidavits from a former inmate and a pastor who said Evans told them of the officer's comments in the mid-1980s and in early 2002, respectively. Cox, a county prosecutor, called the allegations incredible. "That allegation of a comment by some unnamed, unknown police officer is solely from Vernon Evans, and I have absolutely no reason to believe that it bears any truth," he said. "Even if it did happen, how does that affect what our office later decided to do? Their suggestion that we decided to seek the death penalty against somebody who murdered two federal witnesses based on race is ludicrous." Evans was sentenced to death in the shootings of Susan Kennedy and her sister's husband, David Scott Piechowicz, who were gunned down in April 1983 with a MAC-11 machine pistol in the lobby of the Warren House Motor Hotel in Pikesville. Another death row inmate, drug kingpin Anthony Grandison, was also sentenced to death in the case after being convicted of offering Evans $9,000 to kill two witnesses scheduled to testify against him in a federal drug trial. Evans' family learned of the postponed execution in a phone call from Evans. "We realize that this is just another pause and that we have just got to continue the fight," said Gwendolyn Bates, one of Evans' sisters. "But God is good, and we are just happy, happy right now." A prayer vigil planned for last night turned celebratory with red and white balloons and smiles. "I think there's a hopefulness that all the issues will continue to be considered," said Sister Mary Helen of St. Mary's Parish in South Baltimore. "It's not that somebody doesn't deserve to be punished. It's just that death for death doesn't take us anywhere." Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., who received a clemency petition last week from Evans' lawyers, said yesterday that he respects the separation of powers and remains confident that "the system will play itself out." "Any parenthetical comment I would make is for everyone to remember what this case is really about, which is the machine-gun murder with a silencer of two individuals who didn't do anything wrong other than decide to become part of the system, part of the solution, be willing to testify in a case," the governor said. "The facts of the case are pretty clear. The legal issues will be disposed of by the courts. That's their job. We'll go from there." (source: Baltimore Sun) USA: Lethal injection challenged in court in numerous states When a California death row inmate is strapped onto a gurney inside San Quentin's execution chamber, "Protocol 770" begins. This is the lethal injection procedure the state uses to send three drugs through the condemned killer's veins, causing death within minutes. But death row inmates in California and dozens of other states have mounted furious legal challenges to lethal injection, arguing that the seemingly antiseptic process masks the potential for a searingly painful death that amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Largely unsuccessful in the past, this legal argument has gained unprecedented momentum in the past week because of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to stop a Florida execution as an inmate was being prepared to die by lethal injection. The Supreme Court's dramatic 11th-hour stay to consider how challenges to lethal injection should proceed has rippled across the country, casting doubt on dozens of execution dates, including the scheduled Feb. 21 execution of condemned killer Michael Morales at San Quentin. Morales has challenged the constitutionality of California's lethal injection procedure, and a San Jose federal judge is scheduled to hold the state's first substantial hearing on the issue Thursday. The Supreme Court's intervention in the Florida case has added drama to Morales' fight, as well as to looming executions in Ohio and Maryland scheduled for this week. Even death penalty supporters say that lawyers for death row inmates could have a window of opportunity to postpone executions. "The uncertainty gives them ammunition," said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, Calif. "How many executions they will actually succeed in delaying is unknown." Legal experts say the uncertainty could extend at least until the Supreme Court issues a ruling in the Florida case, not expected until the end of its term in June. "I don't think it's inconceivable there could be a mini-moratorium on the death penalty over this," said Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor and lethal-injection expert. Many legal experts doubt the conservative Supreme Court, which has never specifically struck down a method of execution, will eventually ban lethal injection. But until the high court rules, the issue will continue to simmer in the federal courts - and one of the next battlegrounds is California. "So much will depend on particular judges and courts," said Elisabeth Semel, head of Boalt Hall School of Law's death penalty clinic. San Jose U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, who is hearing Morales' challenge, on Thursday will consider specific evidence on the issue, and has ordered the state to release partial medical records from the state's last two executions. Morales' lawyers hope to persuade Fogel to at least postpone the execution. Morales, 46, is on death row for the 1981 rape and murder of a 17-year-old Lodi girl, Terri Winchell. Fogel has rejected previous lethal-injection challenges, primarily because they were brought too close to execution dates. In one of those cases, the execution of San Mateo County killer Donald Beardslee, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Fogel, but said the state's method raises "extremely troubling questions." California and most other death penalty states have relied almost exclusively on lethal injection for the past decade, choosing the method in large measure to neutralize challenges to other forms of execution such as the gas chamber, electric chair and hanging. In fact, California turned to lethal injection after a federal appeals court found the gas chamber to be cruel and unusual punishment in 1996. In recent years, lawyers for death row inmates have argued that medical evidence suggests the progression of drugs used in most lethal injection executions violates the constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. California's Protocol 770, which is virtually identical to other states' protocols, calls for administering three drugs - the 1st, sodium thiopental, to render the inmate unconscious; the 2nd, pancuronium bromide, to paralyze the muscles used in breathing; and the 3rd, potassium chloride, to stop the heart. The crux of the legal challenge is that the 1st drug may not always render the inmate fully unconscious, and the 2nd paralytic drug then conceals the inmate's suffering when the lethal - and, some argue, painful - 3rd dose is administered. Defense lawyers point out that the American Veterinary Association has outlawed using sedatives in combination with paralyzing drugs like pancuronium bromide in euthanizing animals because of the prospect of "pain and distress." This protocol, Morales' lawyers wrote in court papers filed last month, "creates a significant risk that the inmate will experience a prolonged, agonizing death." California officials and death penalty supporters say the argument is unsupported by medical evidence, and is a thinly veiled attempt to abolish capital punishment. Deputy Attorney General Dane Gillette, who supervises the state's defense of death sentences, said the courts have repeatedly refused to stop executions based on the argument because there is no proof inmates suffer. "It's not an issue that has any legs, as far as I can tell," Gillette said. "There has been no showing that the execution protocol in California or any other state is unconstitutional." The courts appear poised to put both sides to the test, although it may still be years before the Supreme Court resolves the ultimate question of whether lethal injection meets society's standards. The Supreme Court is considering a procedural question in the Florida case, not the central fight over the constitutionality of lethal injection. At the same time Morales is pressing his lethal injection challenge in San Jose, he is trying to persuade Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant him clemency. Morales, who is represented by former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr in the clemency bid, received extraordinary support last week from the judge who had sentenced him to death. In a rare move, the now-retired judge, Charles McGrath, urged the governor to spare Morales because of proof that a jailhouse informant and key witness lied at the 1983 trial, influencing the jury's decision to return a death verdict. (source: Knight Ridder) *********** United States Senate, Committee on the Judiciary -- Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property Rights Hearing on "An Examination of the Death Penalty in the United States" February 1, 2006 Testimony of Antoinette Bosco I am the mother of murder victims, opposed to the death penalty. In August 1993, I got the word that my son John and his wife Nancy had been murdered in their Montana home. It turned out that the killer was 18-year old Joseph "Shadow" Clark, the son of the people from whom they had just bought their home. After confessing to this horrible crime, he faced the death penalty. The day I got the news of the brutal murders, I learned a new definition of torment. My beloved son and his beautiful wife were dead at the hand of someone I could only believe to be, at that moment, an agent of Satan. I found myself screaming, sometimes aloud, sometimes with silent cries tearing at my insides. I tormented myself, wanting to know who was the faceless monster that had brought such permanent, unrelenting pain into my family. I wanted to kill him with my own hands. I wanted him dead. But that feeling also tormented me, for I had always been opposed to the death penalty. I felt now I was being tested on whether my values were permanent, or primarily based on human feelings and expediency. It was when I went to Montana and stood in that room of death with 2 of my sons that I was overpowered with a sense of the evil I felt there. In that room, I was able to grasp truth again, that unnatural death at the hands of another is always wrong, except in a clear case of self-defense. The state is no more justified in taking a life than is an individual. Killing can't be "sanitized" by calling it "official" and "legal." I and my family were relieved when Shadow Clark took a plea bargain, and thus avoided the death penalty. He is now serving a life sentence. He has written to me from his prison cell, asking forgiveness. His latest letter arrived on January 25, 2006, and he writes: "Not a day goes by that is free from the pain of what I did. I was a very foolish kid and I truly regret my actions." I've heard all the arguments for the death penalty and I don't dismiss these lightly. You can't arrive at opposition to this form of punishment with blinders on. When it hits you personally, the anger and pain of your loss makes you want to tear apart that person who stole your loved one and your happiness. But does this do any good in the long run? And should we be in the business of killing people? We have the right, and the responsibility, to punish, and I believe murderers should be given life, confined away from society, without parole. But executions? Never. It is only a delusion to believe that ones pain is ended by making someone else feel pain. I have long reflected on what Supreme Court Justice Harry A.Blackmun wrote in the mid-90's, that nearly "20 years have passed since this Court declared that the death penalty must be imposed fairly, and with reasonable consistency, or not at all, and despite the effort of the states and courts to devise legal formulas and procedural rules to meet this daunting challenge, the death penalty remains fraught with arbitrariness, discriminations, caprice and mistake." That well expresses why I urge our nation to abolish the death penalty. Thank you. Antoinette Bosco, author of "Choosing Mercy, A Mother of Murder Victims Pleads to End the Death Penalty" (Orbis Books) (source: MVFHR)
