March 5 MISSOURI: Monday, March 6th, 7:30 pm----SLU Cook Hall, Busch Auditorium, 3674 Lindell Blvd, 63108 Sponsor: Coalition to Abolish Death Penalty in MO--http://www.mindspring.com/~emcadp A panel of expert witnesses will discuss lethan injection and its use in humans for administering the death penalty in Missouri. WHO: 4 death row inmates on the verge of execution were granted last minute stays in recent weeks, including Missouri inmate Michael Anthony Taylor, who was scheduled to die on Feb. 1. At the same time, other executions have been allowed to go forward. All of the executions have been by lethal injection, and almost all of the inmates raised similar legal challenges to the lethal injection process. In California, a judge ordered that the drugs be changed or anesthesiologists had to be present at the execution....the state chose to have the anesthesiologists present, who showed up but then walked out of the prison before the execution could occur. Find out what is going on with this issue. This is a free public education event co-sponsored by Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty-St. Louis Chapter, the SLU Community United to End the Death Penalty and Amnesty International. Panelists will include: Professor David Sloss, SLU Law School Professor Larry May, Washington University Witnesses will include: Mark J.S. Heath, M.D. - Anesthesiology Professor, Columbia University Jonathan I. Groner, M.D. - Trauma Surgeon & Medical Ethicist, Columbus, Ohio Leah Haub, Esq. - St. Charles, MO., on Nursing Ethics The Death Penalty Information Center has a quick summary of what has been happening regarding the Lethal Injection Issue, FYI. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=1686&scid=64 In addition, Oral Arguments will be held on the Missouri protocol for Lethal Injection on the Michael Taylor case on Tuesday, April 18th at 2 p.m. The hearing is open to the public, and you are encouraged to come. It will be at 111 South 10th Street, St. Louis, 63102 at the 8th Circuit Court. We will send out a reminder in April. (source: EMCADP) OREGON: Lives extended on Death Row -- Capital punishment - Appeals keep inmates such as Dayton Leroy Rogers alive long after sentencing Although three separate juries have said Dayton Leroy Rogers should die, the battle over his life -- and capital punishment in Oregon -- is far from over. None of the 53 men sentenced to death since Oregon voters reinstated capital punishment 22 years ago has been executed, except for 2 who said they wanted to die and gave up their appeals. A Clackamas County jury Friday became the latest to sentence Oregon's most prolific serial killer to death. But Rogers, 52, is no closer to execution than he was 17 years ago, when the 1st jury issued the same verdict for the 1987 murders of 6 women. Rogers' death sentence will automatically be appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court, and legal experts estimate it will be another 10 years to 15 years before he exhausts his appeals. The Rogers case symbolizes the frustration of death penalty proponents in a state that provides for lethal injection, yet rarely uses it. The Rogers case also fuels the arguments of death penalty opponents, who say the process is too long, too expensive and too hard on victims' families. One of the worst parts of the long, drawn-out nature of Oregon's death penalty cases is that it turns "poorly educated, low-life, nobodies" into celebrities, said Laura Graser, an attorney who opposes capital punishment and has defended a few dozen death penalty clients. She has defended Rogers in the past, but was speaking about Death Row inmates in general. "The doctors will say they have a sociopathic personality disorder, and one of the things they like is all the attention," Graser said. "The death penalty glamorizes them for years, for decades." Clackamas County District Attorney John Foote, who supports the death penalty in select cases, said Rogers' case represents a system that needs fixing. "The victims shouldn't have to wait 25 to 30 years for these cases to be concluded," Foote said. "I really hope that can be fixed." The reason Death Row inmates have lived on for a decade or even 2, Foote says, is not because the majority of Oregonians have problems with putting some of the most heinous killers to death. Rather, Foote points to years-long delays in the courts. Oregon has had an on-again, off-again relationship with the death penalty. Lawmakers first instated the death penalty in 1864. Since then, voters have repealed it twice and voted for it three times, and the Oregon Supreme Court has struck it down once. Voters most recently reinstated capital punishment in 1984, and a solid majority of the public appears to have supported it since then. Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., says Oregon is among a handful of states -- including California, New Jersey and Connecticut -- where the death penalty is on the books, but the states have used it rarely, if at all. California, for example, has 649 people on death row but executed 2 people in 2005. This "stalemate" results in the greatest cost to taxpayers, Dieter said. "You have all the expenses of the death penalty -- the trials, the attorneys -- but you really keep people in prison for life. That's the worst of both worlds," said Dieter, whose nonprofit research organization is critical of the way the death penalty is implemented. Death penalty proponents point out one benefit of the sentence: It encourages defendants accused of murder to agree to plea deals. And plea deals save taxpayers money because the cases don't go to trial. Irene James, whose daughter, Maureen Hodges, died by Rogers' knife, has sat through many months of Rogers' trials over the years. "The first time he was sentenced to death, I was very happy because I felt like there was justice for my daughter," said James, 76, a retired grade school teacher and Tualatin resident. "The second time (he was sentenced to death), I was beginning to catch on. I began to get wiser. "The way I feel now is he won't be put to death," James said, after Friday's verdict. Rogers is one of about 9 killers in Oregon whose cases date to the late 1980s. One reason legal experts cite for the slow pace of death penalty cases is the much higher level of scrutiny they receive. No one wants to execute people if there are questions about their guilt or the legal process that sent them to death row, experts say. Time and time again, the courts have found legal grounds to overturn Rogers' and other convicted killers' cases. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively overturned Oregon's death penalty law because it didn't allow jurors to consider mitigating evidence, such as an abusive childhood, that might sway a jury to spare a life. The Oregon Legislature also changed the rules repeatedly, adding the sentencing option of life in prison without the possibility of parole and allowing victims' families to testify. And when prosecutors used the new rules and won death sentences again, in many cases the Oregon Supreme Court overturned the death sentences again. Murder cases since 1989 have gone through the appeals process with only a handful of reversals, albeit slowly. James, whose daughter was 26 when Rogers took her to the woods near Molalla and murdered her, says she would have been "down in the dumps" if the jury had spared Rogers' life. But she doesn't feel good about his death sentence, either. "It's silly, really silly to sentence people to death when they never get executed," James said. "It's such a farce." (source: The Sunday Oregonian) PENNSYLVANIA----stay of impending execution Chambersburg killer asks for lawyer, halting execution In Williamsport, a federal judge stopped the scheduled April 6 execution of a Chambersburg man convicted in a 1998 shooting and stabbing spree. U.S. Middle District Judge John E. Jones III issued the stay Friday after Michael B. Singley requested a lawyer. The judge said a stay is automatic when a death-row inmate files for a lawyer. Singley was convicted of killing Christine Rohrer, 23, and James Gilliam, 39, on Nov. 3, 1998, at a duplex in the 300 block of Elder Street in Chambersburg. Rohrer was found stabbed multiple times in a bedroom on her side of the duplex. Her husband, Travis, was stabbed and shot when he came home and encountered Singley. He survived. Before fleeing in the Rohrers' Jeep, Singley fired at Gilliam and his girlfriend as they returned to their side of the duplex. Gilliam was shot in the chest. His girlfriend was not injured. Singley, a cousin of Christine Rohrer, graduated in 1994 from Chambersburg High School, where he played varsity football. (source: The Patriot-News)
