April 5 NEVADA: Daryl Mack, NV - April 23-28 Do Not Execute Daryl Mack! Take action at www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/ campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=3339 Daryl Mack April 23-28, 2006 Nevada Daryl Linnie Mack, a black man, faces execution the week of April 23-28, 2006 for the Oct. 28, 1988 murder of Betty May in Reno, Nevada. After a night of drinking, a neighbor, Steven Floyd, went to borrow money from Betty May and found her body. Mack has waived his right to appeals, although he has maintained his innocence since he was accused. Mack suffers from anxiety and psychotic disorders. According to the Supreme Court of Nevada, "A correctional casework specialist from Ely State Prison testified at Mack's hearing that she did not consider Mack to be a violent inmate and that any disciplinary problems appeared related to changes in medication he was taking to maintain his mental stability." However the court still upheld his death sentence. Mack has shown signs of rehabilitation in prison. He has stopped using drugs which he had abused since 1990. He has helped other inmates with their adjustment to incarceration and with their rehabilitation efforts. Mack has been cooperative with both institutional and court personnel. While maintaining his innocence, Mack has offered condolences to May's family. He has also apologized to his own family. Clearly Daryl Mack is not an appropriate candidate for the death penalty. He suffers from mental disorders that could arguably affect his judgment, yet the Supreme Court of Nevada has ruled that Mack's waiver of his right to appeal was both intentional and voluntary. Furthermore, he is capable of being an asset to society while serving a life sentence without opportunity for parole by helping other inmates adjust to prison. Finally, while maintaining his innocence, Mack has shown sorrow for any pain that has occurred to May's family and his own. Please write to Gov. Kenny Guinn on behalf of Daryl Mack! (source: NCADP) FLORIDA: House fires back at court on death penalty rules The Florida Supreme Court sent the legislature a clear message last year: Fix the state's death penalty structure or risk the courts doing it for you. Now the state House is sending a message back: No thanks, our death penalty structure is just fine. In a strongly worded opinion, Justice Raoul Cantero wrote in October that Florida was the only state in the country that does not require a unanimous jury verdict to either determine whether a case rises to the level of the death penalty or to then impose the death sentence. In Florida, both determinations are simply majority recommendations to a judge, who then has the final say. Sen. Alex Villalobos, R-Miami, and Rep. Jack Seiler, D-Wilton Manors, filed bills this year that would have changed that, joining Florida with other states that have changed their death penalty structure following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that found such death penalty structures to be constitutionally flawed. But those bills now appear to be dead, replaced instead with a House resolution passed by the Criminal Justice Committee on Tuesday that states: "The House of Representatives believes that the public policy of this state should be that unanimous jury recommendations not be required in death penalty cases." A resolution is only a statement of belief by a chamber and does not have the force of law. It faces another committee before going to the House floor, and there is not a similar resolution before the Senate. Why the switch in the House? "It was a combination of politics and some election-year campaigning," Seiler said. That combination may be the struggle between Villalobos and Sen. Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, over who will become the Senate president for the 2009-10 sessions. The favoritism usually afforded incoming chamber leaders has not been evident for Villalobos, the onetime owner of enough pledge cards to become the next Senate president. His version of the bill, which would have required a unanimous jury verdict before imposing a death sentence, has stalled in the Senate, which prompted Seiler to withdraw his version of the bill. Villalobos said he was upset that such a politically charged environment has defeated a bill that he felt was placing Florida's death penalty structure in a safer environment constitutionally. "By not doing this bill, the death penalty is in danger," Villalobos said. "We will live to see the day when the Supreme Court strikes it down. That's going to throw the criminal justice system into chaos, but that's what they did to our bill." Rep. Bruce Kyle, R-Fort Myers and chairman of the Justice Council, is sponsoring the House resolution defending Florida's death penalty structure. He said Florida's system is fine and that he has no problems with Florida being the only state with such a structure. "I don't think that there's anything wrong with being the only one," Kyle said. "There's several countries that don't have democracies. And just because a majority don't have democracies doesn't means that we should do away with our system. "I think our system is functioning fine. If the state Supreme Court thinks otherwise, then they should rule on it." (source: Palm Beach Post) USA: High Court Cases Put International Law in the Spotlight Twice last week the U.S. Supreme Court delved into the possible application of rights and remedies under international law but in 3 very different contexts: the war on crime and the war on terror. And in both contexts, the Bush administration argued there were no judicially enforceable rights created. The day after the justices heard arguments on whether enemy combatant Salim Hamdan, detained at Guantnamo Bay, was entitled to certain protections under the Geneva Conventions, the justices took up the much less heralded cases of two foreign nationals claiming that their rights under the Vienna Convention were violated and that their criminal convictions should be set aside. Moises Sanchez-Llamas, a Mexican national convicted of attempted murder, and Mario Bustillo, a Honduran citizen convicted of first-degree murder, contend that Article 36 of the Vienna treaty requires signing nations to notify "without delay" a detained foreign national of his right to request help from his country's consul and, if the foreign national asks, to inform the consul of the arrest or detention. Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon, No. 04-10566; Bustillo v. Johnson, No. 05-51. About six years ago, they say, the U.S. government reversed its position that Article 36 creates individual rights of consular notice and access. The justices agreed to decide whether it does, and whether suppression of evidence sought by Sanchez-Llamas, or the habeas relief sought by Bustillo, would be appropriate remedies for violations of Article 36. FOCUSED ON REMEDY During the 90-minute argument, which featured five lawyers -- two for the criminal defendants and one each for Oregon, Virginia and the United States -- the justices focused primarily on the remedy, not the rights question. The International Court of Justice has said that treaty signatories are to provide a reasonable remedy, noted Justice Stephen G. Breyer. If the foreign national has a lawyer, he said, perhaps the lawyer should inform him of his right, and if the lawyer fails to do so, that is ineffective assistance of counsel. "Is that sufficient in the appropriate case?" he asked. Bustillo's counsel, Mark T. Stancil of the Washington office of Houston's Baker Botts, answered, "Relying on the lawyer to do the duty of the state does not effectuate the treaty. The treaty says the state has to notify." "Yes, the state has to notify," said Justice David H. Souter, "but the lawyer should be taxed with knowing that this is the right, that the treaty is the law of the land, and he should raise the question of whether notice has been given, just as he asks the client if he got his Miranda rights. If he doesn't, then it's ineffective assistance." But this situation is different from Miranda warnings, countered Stancil. The right to notice and access is a stand-alone right. "If you push these claims into ineffective assistance of counsel, they evaporate," he added, noting that there have been about 60 ineffective assistance of counsel claims based on Vienna Convention violations, and courts reportedly have found ineffective assistance in "one or none" of them. Oregon Solicitor General Mary H. Williams told the justices that it would be "revolutionary" if the high court interpreted the Vienna Convention as sought by the defendants. "Our problem is: The ICJ said you have to give a remedy," said Breyer. However, Williams countered, "The treaty makes clear in its preamble that it's concerned with the obligation of the signatories and not with creating individual rights and remedies." "Should police officers give [notice] as part of the Miranda warnings?" asked Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Williams said that the U.S. State Department recommends police give notice as soon as they know a person is a foreign national. "We've made better efforts to comply with our obligation under the treaty, but that doesn't lead to suppression of evidence for violations," Williams added. U.S. Deputy Solicitor General Gregory Garre told the court, "It is a traditional rule of international law that treaties don't create individual enforceable rights." The ICJ decision that a remedy must be provided "to be blunt, is wrong," he said, adding that the traditional way to enforce the treaty is to give notice to the detainee at the point it is determined that he is a foreign national. (source: National Law Journal) ******************* Moussaoui's mother: life term worse than death The mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, who has been ruled eligible for the death penalty, said yesterday a life sentence would be as bad as execution. Aicha Moussaoui, in an interview on More 4 News last night, said: "Whether he's condemned to death or condemned to life, it's the same. In fact it's worse to be condemned to life than to die." The verdict on Moussaoui, the only person to be prosecuted in connection with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, was welcomed by victims' relatives. "If any of them are caught they should be executed," Betty Hilton from London, whose son-in-law died in New York, said. (source: Associated Press) OHIO: Death penalty upheld for wife-killer The Ohio Supreme Court upheld the death sentence this morning for a Waynesville man who fatally shot his 44-year-old wife in 2003, then tried to commit suicide in his front yard. Lawyers for Rocky Barton tried to overturn the death sentence arguing that Barton had fired his attorneys during the sentencing phase of the trial and refused to present any evidence that might persuade jurors against giving him the death penalty. Defense attorney Chris Pagan contended that Judge Neal Bronson in Warren County Common Pleas Court also should have ordered a psychological evaluation of Barton at the time, even though Barton had asked for the death penalty. Barton was just out of prison after serving nine years for trying to kill a former wife when he ambushed Kimberli Jo Barton outside their Bellbrook Road farmhouse Jan. 16, 2003. Kimberli Jo Barton was planning to leave her husband and had arrived to pick up some of her belongings, authorities said. Shot twice with a shotgun, she died in her daughters arms. Barton, 49, turned the gun on himself, but survived. (source: Cincinnati Enquirer) PENNSYLVANIA: Death Penalty Withdrawn For Man Who Spent Decades On Death Row The Washington County district attorney has agreed to withdraw the death penalty against a Washington County man who has spent decades on death row for a woman's death. Dino Rucci was convicted of stabbing Louise Fridley, whose body was found inside her home in 1989. Rucci was married to her niece. Police determined robbery was the motive. But the jury never heard about Rucci's mental problems, which he had since he was a child. The district attorney said he made this deal in the interest of justice. "I have reviewed the medical records. I've reviewed the case file. And there is a possibility of perhaps that Mr. Rucci could have had a different result on the penalty phase had all of his medical problems been brought before a jury," said John Pettit. In exchange for getting off of death row, Rucci will get a sentence of life behind bars without the possibility of parole. The judge is looking over the deal and is expected to sign off on it within the next week. (source: The PittsburghChannel)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----NEV., FLA., USA, OHIO, PENN.
Rick Halperin Wed, 5 Apr 2006 16:20:46 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
