Feb. 26 OKLAHOMA: Court throws out death sentence of man in 1984 killing The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has thrown out the death sentence for a man convicted of killing his seven-year-old former stepdaughter. A Washita County jury convicted Richard Norman Rojem Junior and sentenced him to death for killing Layla Dawn Cummings in 1984. A federal appeals court threw out his death sentence in 2001 because of errors that occurred in his trial. He was again condemned to die in 2003. Yesterday, the state appeals court granted Rojem a new trial on grounds that errors were made during the sentencing phase. The appeal court said one of the errors occurred when the trial court refused to dismiss 3 jurors for cause, resulting in Rojem being forced to keep an unacceptable juror in the 2003 trial. (source: Associated Press) COLORADO: Life without parole: Too harsh for teens -- A combination of tough laws and too much discretion for prosecutors has left Colorado without enough flexibility in sentencing youthful offenders. A 4-part series, "Teen crime, adult time," in last week's Denver Post showed how Draconian laws passed after a surge of youth violence in the 1980s and '90s have sent Coloradans as young as 14 to prison for life without possibility of parole. Some of the youngsters committed monstrous crimes while others had peripheral roles in offenses by others. Many of these youths were themselves abused physically and sexually. Treating them as throwaways often satisfies society's quest for justice and punishment, but the law shouldn't exist solely as a means of retribution. Reporters Miles Moffeit and Kevin Simpson noted that Colorado is one of 14 states where juveniles can be charged with adult crimes carrying sentences of life in prison without possibility of parole. Colorado's 1993 law gives a district attorney sole discretion to decide whether a youth is tried in juvenile or adult court. Also, in 1990, the penalty for 1st-degree murder was set at life without possibility of parole, or death. (Mercifully, Colorado doesn't execute minors.) But by the decision of a prosecutor, a teenager can be sentenced to life behind bars. There's no lesser punishment for a teen convicted of felony murder in adult court, even one who had no role in the actual killing. Since 1998, Moffeit and Simpson learned, 1,244 juveniles have been convicted as adults in Colorado. Currently, 45 juveniles have been sentenced to life without possibility of parole. To show they were tough on juvenile crime in the "Summer of Violence" era, state lawmakers authored a misbegotten system with no middle ground between the short sentences meted out in juvenile court and life without parole for youths tried as adults. The DA alone makes the call on whether to charge a youth as an adult. That's too much power to put in a DA's hands. A decision that could send a 14-year-old to adult prison for life should be made by the courts after careful consideration. We're not so naive as to believe that there is no such thing as a bad boy: Father Flannigan obviously never met Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Strange as it seems, Texas - death-penalty capital of the free world - has found a way to salvage teens who most would consider beyond hope. Youths facing adult prison time are sent to the Giddings State School for a grueling program that strips away the self-delusions and fantasies that many youthful offenders hide behind, forcing them to take ownership of their crimes and recognize the damage they've inflicted on others. More important, many young offenders discover human feelings for the 1st time. George W. Bush enthusiastically supported the program as governor of Texas. The Giddings program is detailed in-depth in "Last Chance in Texas: The Redemption of Criminal Youth," by longtime journalist John Hubner. "Intensive" is too mild a word to describe the regimen. The success rate is impressive, and kids nobody would have given a chance have completed high school and college and built productive new lives. Colorado's Youth Offender System isn't really comparable to Giddings; funding and support have been too half-hearted. Last week at the Capitol, the Pendulum Foundation's Juvenile Justice arm rallied support from groups including Amnesty International and the Criminal Defense Bar to support a bill to make juveniles serving life terms eligible for parole. House Bill 1315 co-sponsored by Rep. Lynn Hefley, R-Colorado Springs, and Sen. Ken Gordon, D-Denver, would allow such youths to be considered for parole after 40 years, but a shorter period might be in order for some youths, based on their crimes and whether they're judged good prospects for rehabilitation. Some experts suggest possible parole after 20 years. But it's also important that the critical decision of whether to charge a youth as an adult rest with the court - not the prosecution. We no longer execute juveniles in light of scientific findings that show adolescents' brains aren't fully developed. For similar reasons, we shouldn't lock up so many and throw away the key. (source: Editorial, Denver Post) NEW YORK: Death Row Case May Decide More Than Inmate's Fate Voices once echoed through New York's death row as condemned men shouted to one another from their cells to make small talk. Now, the Unit for Condemned Persons at the Clinton Correctional Facility near the Canadian border is much quieter - there is only one prisoner inside. Nearly 20 months after the State Court of Appeals ruled that a central provision of New York's death penalty law was unconstitutional, only John B. Taylor still faces the possibility of execution. In May 2000, Mr. Taylor and an accomplice, Craig Godineaux, marched seven workers single-file into a large freezer at a Wendy's in Flushing, Queens. They bound and gagged the workers, wrapped their heads in garbage bags and forced them to kneel before shooting each in the head. Only 2 survived. Mr. Godineaux, who is mildly retarded, pleaded guilty to murder in 2001 and is serving a life sentence without a chance of parole. Aside from the ghastly nature of Mr. Taylor's crime, it is an unusual twist in his sentencing that could uphold his execution, even as the death sentences have been overturned for the two other prisoners who were facing execution when the death penalty was suspended. The case is not simply a legal struggle over one convict's fate, but the latest battle in a long war over capital punishment in New York, and one way or the other, it will leave a lasting impression on the legacy of Gov. George E. Pataki, who was elected in 1994 on a promise to reinstate the death penalty. As he weighs a run for president in 2008, he will most likely leave office next year without having seen a single execution. Should the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, uphold Mr. Taylor's execution, it "may well open the door for prosecutors in New York to once again seek the death penalty," said Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney, who prosecuted Mr. Taylor, 41, and sought death in his case. Should the court overturn the death sentence, it would effectively end the most recent effort to reinstate capital punishment, an issue that has lost support in the Legislature since it was approved in 1995. Mr. Taylor's is not only the last death row case to be appealed, but the thorniest. In June 2004, in the case of Stephen LaValle - who was sentenced to death for raping and murdering a schoolteacher - the Court of Appeals found that the sentencing instructions a judge was required to give jurors in a capital case were unconstitutional because they could coerce deadlocked jurors to vote for death. The law required a judge to instruct jurors that, if they could not choose unanimously between a sentence of death and one of life without parole, the judge would have to impose a sentence that would make a defendant eligible for parole after 20 to 25 years. That, the court said, could improperly lead jurors to vote for death out of fear that a deadlock could lead to the eventual release of particularly violent murderers. Yet in Mr. Taylor's case, the trial judge, Steven W. Fisher of State Supreme Court in Queens, anticipated the shortcomings of the sentencing instructions. He told the jury that in the event of a deadlock, he would "almost certainly impose" consecutive terms totaling 175 years, and that Mr. Taylor would be ineligible for parole until every year was served. To District Attorney Brown, Justice Fisher's instruction added the element that the court later found lacking in the LaValle case, and means his sentence should be upheld. To Mr. Taylor's principal lawyer, Kevin M. Doyle, the chief attorney for the New York Capital Defender Office, the execution should be overturned because the statute under which Mr. Taylor was sentenced has been declared unconstitutional. Last month, Mr. Taylor's lawyers in the state-financed Capital Defender Office, which has not lost a client since it opened in 1995, filed a brief outlining their case. Among other points, they wrote that the judge's instruction of "almost certainly" could not guarantee that the trial judge would, in fact, impose the maximum deadlock sentence. "Almost certain is not certain," they wrote. "Almost always is not always." In addition to the legal arguments, political maneuverings may affect the outcome. A bill fixing the defective instruction in the death penalty statute is expected to be approved in the Senate, though a similar effort died in the Assembly last year. And two seats on the Court of Appeals are due for reappointment by January. How Mr. Pataki fills them could shift the membership of the court in favor of reinstating capital punishment. "This case could be profoundly significant because the new court could use this case as the vehicle for reversing its earlier LaValle decision," said Robert Blecker, a professor at New York Law School and an advocate of the death penalty. This month, the Court of Appeals refused to grant a request by Mr. Taylor's lawyers to speed up the appeals process. The lawyers had asked that the court consider only the so-called deadlock provision, which was the basis for the court's invalidation of the death penalty. The motion's denial was reported in The New York Law Journal on Feb. 15. The final brief in the case is not due until early next year, and by the time the case is argued in front of the Court of Appeals, there could be as many as three new judges - even as the number of lawyers in the state Capital Defender Office has dwindled since the death penalty was suspended and the office has begun to be phased out. In September, the term of Judge George Bundy Smith, a Cuomo appointee to the Court of Appeals who wrote the majority opinion in LaValle, will expire, and it is unknown whether his term will be extended. Judge Albert M. Rosenblatt, a Pataki appointee who sided with the majority in LaValle, must retire in December because of age restrictions. And in March 2007, the term of Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye expires. "We're going to change that majority, if all goes well, in September," said State Senator Dale M. Volker, a Republican from western New York who is a leading death penalty supporter. A spokeswoman for Mr. Pataki declined to comment on Mr. Taylor's appeal or on the politics surrounding it. "The governor seems to tack with prevailing winds," said Douglas Muzzio, a professor of political science at Baruch College. "It's part of the lethargy of the governor. He gets elected on this issue and then in a sense moves on, given that the political winds have changed on the death penalty." Senator Volker said that either outcome, upholding or overturning Mr. Taylor's sentence, would amount to a victory for capital punishment advocates, because overturning his execution for so gruesome a crime would spur a groundswell of support for reinstating the death penalty. Capital punishment opponents, however, say that Mr. Taylor's execution would energize what they said was growing opposition to the death penalty in the state. "It strikes me if you sentence someone under a law that is fatally unconstitutional, there's a problem with the sentence," said David Kaczynski, a leading opponent of capital punishment and the executive director of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty, an advocacy group. Although personally opposed to capital punishment, Mr. Brown, Mr. Taylor's main prosecutor, has said he seeks it now because it was the law at the time of Mr. Taylor's trial. Once counsel to Gov. Hugh L. Carey, Mr. Brown drafted vetoes for earlier legislative attempts to reinstate the death penalty. His office is now under increased pressure by former allies and death penalty opponents to abandon its pursuit of Mr. Taylor's execution. As Mr. Taylor's fate hangs in limbo, along with the state's death penalty, the protracted uncertainty continues to torment relatives of those killed at Wendy's in May 2000. They said Mr. Taylor's death would provide some resolution to their ordeal. "I don't feel it should be overturned; he should be put to death," said Babbette Mele, whose brother Jeremy Mele was 19 when he was killed at Wendy's. "It was unconstitutional for him to kill all those people." (source: New York Times) USA/NORTH CAROLINA: Execution objections on the rise The claim sounds straight out of a horror novel: A man, completely paralyzed but fully conscious, endures a searing pain throughout his body and suffocates because he can't take a breath. To a dozen or so onlookers, he appears serene, asleep. They remain oblivious to his agony as he dies. Thats the issue at the heart of a lawsuit in California that halted the execution of killer and rapist Michael Morales this week. It's the crux of similar lawsuits in North Carolina and 13 other states. Lawyers contend that the lethal injection techniques in 37 of the 38 states with capital punishment, contrary to expectations and all outward appearances, give the condemned a torturous death. This, they say, violates the U.S. Constitutions ban on cruel and unusual punishment. In the fight over capital punishment, "This seems to be the new front, which is attack the death penalty on the execution front," said Robeson County District Attorney Johnson Britt. Britt favors capital punishment. "Every lawyer worth his salt is putting in a lethal injection challenge," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. The center opposes capital punishment. 3 drugs are used in lethal injection executions. The 1st is sodium pentothal, a barbiturate. It puts the inmate to sleep. The 2nd drug is pancuronium bromide, also called Pavulon. This paralyzes the inmate. The final drug is potassium chloride. This drug is supposed to stop the heart. The method is supposed to kill the inmate quickly and painlessly. The system doesnt work as advertised, Jim Exum says in a federal lawsuit in North Carolina. Exum is a former chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court. His lawsuit, on behalf of condemned inmates George Franklin Page and Kenneth Bernard Rouse, contends that the first drug, the sodium pentothal, wears off quickly, allowing the inmate to wake up. At that point in the execution, the lawsuit says in its claims and in an affidavit from a doctor, the inmate is awake but unable to move because he has been paralyzed by the second drug. The suit says the second drug stops him from drawing any breath because he cant get his respiratory muscles to respond. Suffocation death The lawsuit says that the 3rd drug, the potassium chloride, reacts with the nerve endings in the inmates veins and causes a burning as it spreads throughout his body. The suit contends that when administered intravenously, the drug is strong enough to stop the inmate from breathing but not strong enough to stop his heart. The suit says the inmate dies of suffocation. The process "can indeed be very painful and very terrifying," Exum said. An affidavit for the state by a physician, Mark Dershwitz, disagrees with Exum's contention. He says if the inmate woke up during the process there would be time, before he became totally paralyzed, to cry out or complain if he were suffering. Based on the high dosage of the 1st drug, "There exists no more than a miniscule probability that the person could be conscious" during the execution, Dershwitz said. Britt, the Robeson County prosecutor, watched the execution of murderer Henry Lee Hunt in 2003. He doesn't think there was any pain for Hunt. "The appearance was he just fell asleep," Britt said. "To me it appears that it was a very peaceful process. There was no grimacing of the face, no jerk, no convulsion-like movement. Nothing to indicate that there was any pain." Exum said that after his suit was filed in 2004, North Carolina doubled the dosage of the drug that knocks the inmate out. A federal judge in California responded to the issue by ordering in the Morales case that a doctor monitor whether the inmate needs more of the barbiturate to remain unconscious. Doctors refused to take part, citing their medical oaths not to harm a patient. The judge said the state could kill the inmate with just an overdose of the barbiturate. But he also required medical professionals to take part. This method would have made the execution take 30 minutes or more, at least twice as long as the 3-drug method. And again, no medical personnel would take part. The issue could surface in North Carolina next month. Patrick Moody is scheduled to die March 17 for the 1994 murder of Donnie Robbins in Davidson County. Lines are to be inserted into each of Moody's arms by technicians and the drugs administered by people hidden by curtains. One of his lawyers, Charlotte Blake, said she is more optimistic now that judges are paying attention to health issues. "There's a renewed vigor," she said. (source: Associated Press)
