April 9 USA: MEDICAL ETHICS----Physicians take more active roles; Hot-button issues becoming matters of life and death For a few weeks this spring, doctors took center stage in discussions of public policy. They signed a letter opposing the U.S. military's force-feeding of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. They refused to participate in an execution in California, and they resisted government intervention in Oregon's physician-assisted-suicide law. It seemed to presage a new era of activist physicians, with doctors - normally considered apolitical creatures - taking positions on some of the most controversial issues of the day. These are more partisan times, but Dr. Eugene Boisaubin, a medical ethicist at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, suggests that the recent actions owe more to a coincidence of timing than to any philosophical change. Really, he and others say, doctors have always taken stands on public issues. "We've actually talked about physicians' participation in executions ... since Hippocrates," said Dr. Priscilla Ray, a Houston psychiatrist and chairwoman of the American Medical Association's council on ethics. The official AMA policy, which states that any participation by doctors in an execution is unethical, was written in the 1980s. The AMA's 1st national code of ethics was approved in 1847. Since then, addenda have covered topics ranging from organ transplantation to reality TV shows. "People have been doing plastic surgery for however long they've had plastic surgeons, but no one put it on TV before," Ray said. "None of us ever dreamed in the past we would have something (like that) to deal with." But the latest controversies go beyond what a surgeon should do during an episode of Extreme Makeover. They are literally matters of life and death. - More than 250 doctors from around the world signed a letter published last month in the British medical journal Lancet condemning the Pentagon's decision to force-feed suspected terrorists at a prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, noting that prisoners have a right to refuse treatment. - An execution in California was indefinitely postponed in February when two anesthesiologists refused to verify that the inmate was unconscious before his execution, making it impossible for the state to meet a federal court order requiring licensed medical personnel to take part. - The U.S. Supreme Court in January denied the Bush administration's attempt to quash Oregon's physician-assisted-suicide law, essentially upholding the issue as a matter between patients and their doctors. Doctors have always straddled the border between 2 worlds - the private doctor-patient relationship and a broader role involving public health. The 1st formal recognition of those obligations came in the 19th century, when the original AMA code of ethics addressed such public-health issues as sanitation, said Laurence McCullough, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine's Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy. "Once you think physicians have public-health obligations, you're in the public arena," he said. Fast-forward a century and you find Physicians for Social Responsibility taking a role in nuclear disarmament. The organization was founded in 1961 to fight above-ground nuclear testing, documenting the presence of strontium 90, a deadly chemical produced as a byproduct of atomic testing, in children's teeth. It has since broadened its mission to address environmental health and violence. Nukes, guns and belching smokestacks can certainly be seen as political issues, but Ray said that the bottom line remains providing care for patients. Boisaubin agreed, but he said that relationship has been under pressure. That has taken many forms: managed care and its perceived interference with a doctor's autonomy, laws restricting abortion and even military actions. Medical journals recently have carried articles about the juxtaposition of ethics and politics, including the Abu Ghraib prison torture, Boisaubin said, an acknowledgment that physicians live in a political world. American physicians have a long and complicated relationship with the penal system. Boisaubin dealt with one of the prickly issues in a 2004 article he co-authored for the Journal of Correctional Health Care that recounted the case of a Texas inmate resuscitated from a drug overdose, only to be immediately executed. Standards issued by the American Medical Association and other health-care organizations, including the American Nurses Association, consistently prohibit physicians or nurses from directly or indirectly participating in capital punishment, the journal article noted. The decision by the California physicians not to participate in the execution of Michael Morales, convicted of torturing, raping and killing a teenage girl 25 years ago, effectively forced a moratorium on capital punishment in California, which has 650 inmates on death row. But it came as no surprise to ethicists. "A physician should never accept the state's judgment that a life is not worth living," McCullough said. "That's a judgment for a patient to make. You might decide your life is not worth living ... but the state should not do so." When a patient makes that decision, it becomes another hot-button issue. The Supreme Court protected Oregon's physician-assisted-suicide law in January when it ruled against the Bush administration argument that doctors who help terminally ill patients die should lose their drug licenses. The justices agreed with two lower courts that federal drug laws are aimed at drug abuse and trafficking, not to usurp the states' role in regulating doctors. The Oregon law was approved in 1997, but it has been used only sparingly. McCullough noted that 45-50 prescriptions are written each year for a fatal dose of drugs, and not all of them are filled. "Anecdotally, it's reported that the sense of control patients gain (from the possibility) helps them deal with their dying process." Medical schools now focus more on ethics and the issues doctors will face, Boisaubin said, but the the essential principles remain unchanged. "There is a common belief that, as biotechnology advances, we face new and unprecedented issues," McCullough said. He and others disagree. "I think the primary issue, which is doing what's best for the patient, is going to be the same," Ray said. "It's going to have different appearances at times, because it's going to be in a different setting, but the same ethical precept is there." (source: Houston Chronicle) ******************** Guilty conscience For 18 years the Unabomber terrorised America and escaped the clutches of the FBI. Then a middle-aged youth counsellor realised his brother was the man they were looking for. 10 years on, he recalls the painful decision to turn in his own flesh and blood. There are few similarities between Ted Kaczynski, the American serial killer known as the Unabomber, and his younger brother, David, who turned him in to the FBI. But on the day of Ted's arrest in April 1996, both felt betrayed. Despite assurances from the FBI that his role would be kept confidential, it was widely reported that David Kaczynski had stumbled across some old correspondence from his brother and noticed "striking similarities" to a 35,000-word, anti-technology manifesto written by the Unabomber and published by The Washington Post seven months earlier. After comparing the documents, David took his suspicions to a lawyer, who contacted the FBI. His actions brought to an end his brother's 18-year campaign of terror, during which airlines, universities and computer stores across America were bombed, resulting in the deaths of 3 people and leaving a further 23 disabled or scarred for life. The media focused on the chance discovery of the letters and the dilemma David Kaczynski, "a tree-loving Buddhist" according to one report, faced in turning in his brother. "He was torn, as anyone would be, between doing what is right and loyalty to his brother," said one FBI agent. Neighbours and former colleagues spoke of him as a "quiet man," well read and shy. David Kaczynski himself remained resolutely silent. He barricaded himself in his house with his wife and mother. He was unwilling to talk to the press, afraid of their reaction; unwilling to make his mother endure any more pain than she was already experiencing. He felt burnt, betrayed and was bearing the burden of knowing that at the very least he had sentenced his only brother to life imprisonment, possibly to death. "What made the decision so appalling was that it could have led to somebody dying whatever I chose," David says today, near his home in upstate New York. The press was right that it was a hard decision for David, who initially believed there was no more than a "1-in-30,000 chance" that his reclusive brother was the Unabomber. But much of what was reported, for example about David being a Buddhist, and the sequence of events that led up to him contacting the FBI, was untrue. "There were times when they said they were going for the death penalty that I had such deep regrets," David says. "Not regrets that I had turned him in, but that it had all happened. There just seemed to be so much pain going around." It is 10 years this month since Ted was captured, but it is still an event that David thinks about every day. Now a full-time anti-death-penalty campaigner, he lives with his wife, Linda Patrik, a philosophy professor, outside Albany, New York. He is a tall, gentle man who never expected or sought the infamy that being the brother of a serial killer has brought. Being the one who turned his brother in has only added to his anguish. He never expected the public to be sympathetic. "I really thought people wouldn't understand," he says. "I was the only person Ted said he had ever loved, and what a nightmare to be turned in by the one person he thought he had a loving relationship with." As David's suspicions that his brother was the Unabomber grew, he says he found himself questioning whether or not he should have been able to see it coming. "I remember struggling with the awful dilemma of 'Do I turn my brother in?' and asking myself if I had grown up with someone who was evil," he says. "I didn't think so. But I had a feeling, looking back, that if I'd only known how unhappy he was, how desperate he was, then I would have been a better brother." David and Ted Kaczynski were born in Chicago in 1949 and 1942, respectively. Their parents, Theodore and Wanda, were Polish immigrants and staunch liberals who attempted to instil moral rather than religious values in their sons. "We lived in a community called the Village of Churches, but my parents weren't religious," he recalls. "I was taken to the Ethical Society as a child, an alternative to church. The idea was to talk about what it was to be a good person. I don't remember Ted going to that." David says Ted was always a bit different. "He had few, if any, friends," he recalls. "One of the few times he would go out socially would be to see me play baseball." But David doesn't remember him ever being violent. "I always thought he was incapable of hurting anyone." While Ted's social skills may have been questionable, his intelligence was not. He excelled at school, and at 16 was accepted into Harvard to study mathematics. He received his PhD in the subject from another university and then, in 1967, started teaching at the University of California, Berkeley (to which he later sent 2 bombs). He resigned in 1969, and soon went to live with his brother, who, after graduating with an English degree from Columbia University, had moved to Montana. Together they purchased the plot of land where Ted built the shack that he would later transform into a bomb-making facility and where, over 20 years later, he would be arrested. "Ted wanted to see if he could sustain himself purely in the wilderness," says David. "He had begun to develop his thesis about technology. He had a suspicion that technology was this monster and it was growing beyond human control. He would say he wanted to get away from technology, but my feeling was he was unhappy, running from things he couldn't handle." David believes his brother was mentally ill (he has since been diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia) and that the condition was getting worse. "The 1st time I thought there was something wrong with him was when he wrote this awful letter to our parents saying, 'I've been unhappy all my life. I've been miserable and I've finally worked out why - you never loved me.' He told me not to defend our parents or he would cut me out of his life as well." David left Montana and moved to Iowa, Chicago and then Texas. Ted stayed in the wilderness and several years later inexplicably began his campaign of violence - sending 12 parcel bombs between 1978 and 1987, causing one fatality. During this period, David recalls going to visit his brother one summer. "We spent some time backpacking and I suggested he come and spend the winter with me," David says. "Before I left he said he had decided not to because he had too much to do. I thought it was an excuse, but obviously I had no idea what he meant." The next morning they said goodbye. "I remember almost impulsively hugging him, and it wasn't something we did often. He endured it - I never realised it was probably the last time I would ever have contact with him in my life." David, unaware his brother was now a murderer, headed or his own rural retreat in Texas. For seven years he spent most of his time, like his brother, living off the land. But he returned to the family home each summer and drove buses to earn money. He also saw Linda Patrik, his childhood sweetheart and the only woman he had ever loved. They had met in school when they were 11 and had kept in contact. After returning to Texas in 1989, David wrote to her, confessing his love. "It provoked a tremendous response from Linda, so we planned that I would come for a visit, and I never left," he says. He wrote to Ted to tell him they were getting married and inviting him to the wedding. The letter brought an angry and troubling response. "He tried to convince me that this woman he'd never met was somehow an exploitative woman who didn't really love me." A few months later, Ted and David's father, who had terminal cancer, ended his life. Although Ted had not spoken to his parents in a few years, David wrote to him informing him of his father's suicide. Ted replied that he did not want to come to the funeral. Contact between Ted and his brother nearly dried up completely after that. David and Linda settled into a routine life: she taught philosophy at a local college while he started work as a counsellor at a youth shelter. Ted continued to send parcel bombs, killing a further 2 people in the 2 years before he was arrested. The FBI's search for America's most wanted man was proving fruitless. As late as November 1995, an FBI agent was quoted as saying: "The bottom line is we don't have a suspect." However, 3 months earlier, while on holiday in Paris with her mother, Linda read an article that contained some previously unreleased information about the Unabomber. Reading it, she had a feeling it could be her husband's brother. Speaking for the 1st time since Ted was sentenced, she says: "I remember becoming aware of the threats of the Unabomber in June that year. But in this article there was more information about the cities he had bombed, his writing style and technological fears. It sounded as if it could be Ted." Although she had never met Ted, Linda explains that David and his mother would talk about him incessantly. "After David's father died, we spent a lot of time with his mother," she says. "They would spend hours analysing Ted, why he wouldn't talk to them, why he wouldn't let them visit, so I had heard a lot about him and his ideas." Linda pieced together information that the Unabomber had ties to the Chicago area, was against the expansion of technology, and had sent bombs to the University of California, Berkeley (where Ted had taught). When David arrived to join his wife on holiday, she was desperate to share her alarming suspicions. "I was really, really frightened by this possibility," she says, as she starts to cry. "I just couldn't shake it from my mind. I needed to talk this over with David." She expected her husband to be taken aback. "I knew he would be surprised," she says. "But we've known one another so long that I knew he would be willing to listen and that if this was a possibility we would do something about it." David, who had paid no attention to the Unabomber case, was shocked. "I thought that all I was dealing with was a wife with an overactive imagination. I didnt think it was credible at all." That feeling changed when a month later the Unabombers 35,000-word manifesto was published. "I thought I would be able to tell Linda that Ted hadnt written it, that we could lay this to rest," says David, "but that changed reading it. She asked me what I thought. I said if I had to estimate, there was now maybe 1 chance in 1,000 that Ted had written it." He admits he may not have been being honest. "Maybe I couldn't be all that objective about him." Nevertheless, he continued to research the Unabomber story. "I started looking at dates to try and rule Ted out, but I couldn't find anything like that. I did, however, think the sketch of the Unabomber didn't look like Ted and a witness description didn't match him. There was also no connection between Ted and his victims, as far as I could see. I remember going home and telling Linda what I thought was good news, but I also mentioned that he was connected to all of the three places that bombs had been mailed from." Still uncertain and lacking any prima-facie evidence, they decided to reread Ted's old letters and compare them to the manifesto. "We never found anything conclusive but the process made me feel more concerned. By the end, I could hear my brother's voice in the manifesto." David now believed there was a "50/50 chance" Ted was the Unabomber. He faced a dilemma: what to do that didnt result in anyone dying? At first he thought of visiting Ted, but Linda was afraid Ted might hurt or kill him. "So I wrote to him," David says. "I wrote the most loving letter I could, and said I was sad about the estrangement and could I come visit? Ted wrote back and it was a pretty devastating letter. He said he didn't consider me his brother and that he didn't want anything to do with me now or ever. My feeling was he had gone over the edge." The process was affecting David deeply. "It felt like part of my world was falling apart. I had always believed that brothers should love and protect each other and I knew Ted was struggling. It was tearing me apart. It felt like Ted's dark vision of the world was becoming my vision too. But my bigger worries were: was it or wasn't it Ted, and how would it impact Mom?" He and Linda decided to contact an old friend of Linda's called Susan Swanson, a private detective. They asked her to obtain a writing analysis comparing Teds letters to the manifesto. The report concluded there was a "60%" probability that one person had written them all. "Linda and I had decided that if there was a significant possibility, we would go forward," David says. "We couldn't live with ourselves if we opened the paper and read that someone else had died because we didnt act." Thinking back on the decision to allow his attorney to contact the FBI, he says: "I still can't describe how I made the decision. So many things go into it: is the system fair? What will it do to the family? Will he be framed? Ultimately it was a sense of responsibility that made us act. We had to take some steps to stop the violence." But David still hadn't told his 78-year-old mother. "I still thought there was a 25% chance it wasn't Ted," says David. "Then I got the call I had been dreading. The FBI said they had tried everything possible to exonerate Ted but, on the contrary, he had moved to the top of their suspect list and they needed to speak to Mom." Telling her was one of the hardest things he has ever done. "I didn't know how much she knew about the Unabomber case, and I didn't know if she would still love me after I told her what I had done," he says. He paced round the room as his mother sat listening. He explained about the Unabomber and the bombs; about the places Ted had visited and the places that had been bombed. He then told her he believed Ted was the Unabomber and he had told this to the FBI. His mother was silent and then slowly stood up and walked over to him. With tears in his eyes, David says: "She kissed me and said, 'I can't imagine what you've been going through. I know you love Ted and I know you wouldn't have done this unless you thought you had to.'" Less than a month later, Ted Kaczynski was arrested. David and his mother learnt of the arrest only when they turned on the evening news. "There were a number of broken promises," says David. "The FBI said they would give us some notice, but they didn't. They said we would be treated as confidential informants and that nobody would know, so it was shocking to see Ted on television and hear [the news presenter] Dan Rather saying he was turned in by his own brother. I had wanted him to hear it from my lips and in my words rather than from some stranger." David asked to visit his brother in jail before his trial began. "His lawyers said he was adamant he didn't want to see me," he reveals. He gave Ted's attorneys everything they asked for, including all of Ted's letters and over 20,000 pages of diaries. Reading Ted's private thoughts, David says he could see that "every day of his life was a day of despair and pain. It was as if he was in a nightmare you never wake up from." But David also felt as if he was living a nightmare. "I remember flying back from California after meeting with lawyers and after the government had said they were seeking the death penalty, and thinking that if the plane crashed it wouldn't bother me at all. It wasn't like I was suicidal, but life was bleak. I just thought it wouldn't make a difference if I died today." At the trial, Ted never once looked at his brother or his mother, despite being seated less than 3 feet from them. "He would never make eye contact or show any recognition that we were even there," David says. "With 1 step I could have reached out and touched him." After being declared fit to stand trial, Ted initially pleaded not guilty. He eventually accepted a plea bargain that, in return for pleading guilty, would see him sentenced to life imprisonment rather than face execution. "He accepted it not to save his life," says David, "but because he said he couldn't endure a public trial in which he would be described, in his words, as 'a lunatic'." He was sent to a maximum-security prison in Colorado while David, his wife and his mother returned to New York. David was awarded the $1m reward, but after paying taxes and his attorney, who had acted as a conduit between David and the FBI, gave the remaining $680,000 to the victims' families. "For us to have accepted the money would have totally confused what we had done," he says. "I wanted to reconcile on some level with the people who had been hurt. That was very important to me." David has become friends with one of those who were injured, a former computer-store employee, Gary Wright. Wright, who spoke at Ted's sentencing and told the serial killer that he forgave him, says: "David is an extraordinary man. I think the really hard part for him was coming to grips with the fact that his brother could be a murderer. He seemed to feel tremendous relief when he realised Ted wouldn't die." Apart from being unable to tell Ted face to face that he was the one who turned him in, David says he has no regrets. "People have suggested I felt guilty about turning him in," he says. "I felt terrible but I didnt feel guilty that I had done something wrong. I think: thank God Linda suspected; thank God she forced me to take it seriously; thank God we did what we did, otherwise others would probably have been hurt and killed. So thank God we turned him in, but thank God he didn't get executed." Angered that the government wanted to execute his mentally ill brother, David started to speak out against capital punishment. 5 years ago he became the executive director of the charitable organisation New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty. After New York's Court of Appeals ruled in 2004 that the death penalty was unconstitutional, there were calls in the State Assembly for a "quick fix." David helped drown them out. "The assembly held hearings where I testified," he says. "We presented a broad coalition of witnesses representing diverse points of view, but all agreeing that the death penalty as applied was a failed experiment, riddled with error and unfairness. As DNA testing has evolved, it's been shown that there have been 121 wrongful convictions in capital cases across the US." David is glad that "some good did come from an awful experience." Yet he still believes he may have been able to alter the course of history if he had realised how ill Ted was. "There is a learning curve when you are dealing with someone elses illness," he says. "Looking back, I realise there are so many things that don't fit together unless you recognise Ted was desperately ill. If I knew then what I know now, I would have worked harder at trying to get him help." It has taken years, but the pain for the Kaczynski family has finally begun to dull. Linda has tried to put the episode behind her by seldom talking about it, while David uses it to urge the nation his brother terrorised to stop seeking an eye for an eye. The couple remain happily married and closer than ever. David's mother now lives only a short distance away and they visit often. Yet there is no doubt that the family has paid a heavy price. "I still write to Ted 3 or 4 times a year and Mom writes every month," David says. "But we have never had a reply." (source: Sunday Times (UK) ) ************************* U.S. must reconnect with world I recently had the opportunity to travel to Wales and England on a high school trip. One thing I learned in my short time abroad is that England and Wales view themselves as part of an international community. It seems that the United States does not see itself in that light. There is an alarming trend in this country, a growing belief that we're the only nation in the world that matters. We call ourselves the greatest country in the world, and we may very well be, but if we isolate ourselves from the rest of the world, we will not be important for much longer. In the recent past, we have begun to distance ourselves from international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court. The U.S. is one of the only "civilized" countries that still consider capital punishment an acceptable way to deal with criminals. The world is becoming smaller; globalization is happening. We see evidence of this with the outsourcing of American jobs and with the growth of the European Union. The United States cannot stop globalization from occurring. We can either be passive and the world will shape itself, or we can be an active presence in shaping the future of our planet. The only way to do that is to engage with countries around the world, even those countries that are opposed to us on every issue. National sovereignty is important, and we should never allow another country to dictate our foreign or domestic policies, but at the same time, we shouldn't allow ourselves to become a country whose borders are closed to new people and new ideas. America is at its best when we're engaged in the world. During and after World War II, the United States was the greatest force for peace and righteousness anywhere on the planet. The only way to lead is by setting a positive example for others to follow. We can't do that by isolating ourselves. We shouldn't continue with a policy of unilateral action against other countries. It's possible for us to fight and win a war without any support from the rest of the world, but just because we can do so doesn't mean that we should. We need to be responsible with the power that we have, and responsible leadership depends upon active engagement with the rest of the world. First and foremost, I'm an American. But as well as being Americans, the men and women of my generation will be citizens of a much wider world. This is something to which no previous generation has had to adjust to in the same way. It will be difficult and will take a national effort to navigate a truly interconnected world. I hope that, as I grow older, my United States will again be a force for peace. We need to be a shepherd for the world. We should be setting an example by how we protect the environment, treat criminals and defend our citizens. Now, more than at any other point in the history of our country, we can't isolate ourselves from the world. We have to step forward and shape the future, because if we don't, we might not like how the world shapes itself. (source: Appleton Post-Crescent (Wisconsin) -- Owen Truesdell is an Appleton resident and junior at Appleton West High School) NEW MEXICO: Ruling Limits Death Penalty There was no disputing the crime was awful: an elderly couple attacked in the Hobbs home where they also ran a gem store, the husband stabbed to death and his wife stabbed and beaten savagely and left tied to a chair. The accused called it a "robbery gone bad." But was it a death-penalty case? When prosecutors charged Manuel Martinez, 41, with 2 counts of 1st-degree murder, they decided to seek capital punishment. They argued that Ervin and Julia Tafoya, both in their 80s, were killed because they were witnesses to the burglary of their store and that Julia Tafoya was mortally wounded while she was bound to her chair, which constitutes kidnapping under the law. Nearly 4 years have passed since the killings and Martinez has yet to go to trial. When he does, the New Mexico Supreme Court has said he can face the death penalty if convicted of killing Julia Tafoya in the commission of her kidnapping. But the court said he can't face death for the killing of witnesses because prosecutors did not show the Tafoyas were killed to keep them from reporting the break-in. The reason? Reversing a long-held precedent, the state high court said it isn't enough to speculate that the motive for killing witnesses is to prevent them from reporting the crime. Without some evidence of a motive, the court said, the murder of a witness cannot be used as a so-called aggravator that pushes a murder into the death-penalty zone. 'Favorite of prosecutors' The decision further narrows the circumstances under which defendants in New Mexico can face a death sentence. This has been welcomed by criminal defense lawyers. It is cause for concern among prosecutors. Jeffrey Buckels, chief of the New Mexico Public Defender's capital crimes unit, said the ruling will reduce the number of possible death penalty cases. "That murder-of-a-witness aggravator is a very frequent favorite of prosecutors," Buckels said. "When someone has been killed and there is no evidence of motive, they say, what other explanation can there be?" Assistant Attorney General Victoria Wilson, who represented the state in the appeal, said the court was clear that it will require more than speculation for the murder of a witness to be used to support the death penalty. "It's going to be very, very difficult (now) to have murder of a witness as an aggravator," Wilson said. "I think you're going to need something as strong as a statement by the defendant that that is why he did it." The Supreme Court decision, written by Chief Justice Richard Bosson and filed earlier this year, says speculation isn't enough. Bosson noted that the majority of murder cases involve efforts to destroy evidence or conceal the crime and the killing of someone who is a potential witness. "The key," Bosson wrote, "is to determine from the record whether there is a direct link from the circumstantial evidence that makes it reasonably probable, not just possible, that the defendant's motive was to silence a witness." The decision was the topic of discussion at a district attorneys meeting in Albuquerque last week, according to Brian Stover, the deputy district attorney in Lovington, who is bringing Martinez to trial. "In those kinds of cases, you do not have that aggravator anymore and the most severe penalty is no longer available," Stover said. "It certainly narrows it." The Supreme Court concluded Julia Tafoya was stabbed, bound to a chair with her husband's suspenders and beaten severely, wounds that she died from 2 days later at a Lubbock hospital - evidence to support the charge that she was intentionally murdered during kidnapping. The death penalty certification appeal went straight to the Supreme Court, which has now sent the matter back to state District Judge William McBee in Lovington for trial. Stover said Martinez's trial date has not been set and won't be until the judge has decided whether to allow Martinez to be tried separately for Ervin and Julia Tafoya's deaths. 'Compelling evidence' According to the Supreme Court decision, some New Mexico death penalty cases involving eliminating a witness have been clear. Timothy Allen, sentenced to death in 1995 for the rape and murder of a San Juan County teenager, told his wife he killed the girl to prevent her from reporting the rape. Allen is one of two men awaiting execution in New Mexico. Terry Clark, executed in 2001, said he killed his kidnapped 9-year-old victim because she said she would tell on him. In other cases, courts have relied on a lack of any other plausible explanation to allow the death penalty. The precedent for that - a New Mexico Supreme Court opinion in a case involving a rape and murder of an elderly woman in Albuquerque in 1986 - was overturned in the Martinez opinion. The earlier opinion concluded that the lack of another plausible motive for killing the rape victim and the defendant's attempts to destroy evidence were sufficient evidence to support that the murder was committed to silence the witness. Bosson, with Justices Pamela Minzner, Patricio Serna, Petra Maes and Edward Chavez signing on, said that was not what lawmakers had in mind when they wrote the parameters for capital punishment in New Mexico. "Consistent with the Constitution and our legislative mandate," Bosson wrote, "death penalty eligibility requires more in the way of compelling evidence that, as a matter of probabilities, the killing was specifically for the purpose of silencing a witness." While only 2 men are awaiting death in the New Mexico Department of Corrections, a half dozen or so death penalty cases are in the court system at any given time, Wilson said. (source: Albuquerque Journal) WASHINGTON (state): State's high court takes proper path on death penalty Though the decision produced an interesting split, the state Supreme Court has charted a proper course of action for handling capital punishment cases by upholding the death penalty for a man who fatally stabbed his wife and her two daughters. The 5-4 ruling involved what was thought by many to be a test case for capital punishment itself. The ruling shows the fallacy of such reasoning. Dayva Cross contended that he should not be executed while Gary Ridgway was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. Ridgway is the infamous "Green River killer" who pleaded guilty to 48 counts of murder and was sentenced in 2004 to life in prison as part of a deal that helped prosecutors close the book on several previously unsolved murders. We don't see the connection, although both opponents and proponents of capital punishment saw the Ridgway plea bargain as shackling future attempts to get jury approval of death for those committing heinous crimes. It's true that it's difficult to ignore confusion prompted by different sentences for seemingly similar crimes. But an important consideration here is that Ridgway was the special case of all special cases, one that cried out for judicial discretion in dealing with it. Writing for the majority, Justice Tom Chambers, a Wapato native, said Ridgway's plea deal came in an extraordinary case and that his cooperation "resolved the tragedy of many unsolved deaths and disappearances that probably would have otherwise remained unsolved forever." "Ridgway's abhorrent killings, standing alone, do not render the death penalty unconstitutional or disproportionate. Our law is not so fragile," the majority wrote. The dissenters, on the other hand, argued that the case shows that the death penalty can be meted out in an "arbitrary" manner. We can't buy into that argument. What they see as arbitrary, we think is more properly termed discretionary application of the ultimate penalty if there are extraordinary circumstances that must be considered. The Green River killings certainly met that standard. The Ridgway case allowed a competent prosecutor - King County Prosecutor Norm Maling - to craft a deal that brought closure to not only the unsolved murders, but the families of victims as well. We didn't particularly like the disposition either, but can't argue with the results. Concurring with Chambers were Chief Justice Gerry Alexander and justices Bobbe Bridge and Mary Fairhurst and former Justice Faith Ireland. Ireland was involved in the ruling because she was on the court when it originally was argued in 2004. Ireland has since retired and her seat was filled by Justice James Johnson, who did not participate in the ruling. Joining Justice Charles Johnson in dissent were justices Barbara Madsen, Susan Owens and Richard Sanders. Court watchers might find it difficult to find a liberal/conservative split on capital punishment in that makeup. But the death penalty wasn't the issue anyway; rather it was whether it can be meted out with some discretion. Capital punishment is one of the least desirable things we do as a society, but the fact remains it is part of our system of law and justice as the ultimate penalty for heinous crimes. Certainly it should be administered with great care and caution and given the advances in technology, such as DNA testing, there are much greater assurances executions will not involve innocent people. It's one thing to have problems philosophically with capital punishment, but if we're going to have it, then let's do it properly and judiciously - with discretion where needed. This nation has the best law and justice system in the world, but no system is perfect. That's another reason for discretion, and in this case we go along with the court majority that it was properly applied. (source: Members of the Yakima Herald-Republic editorial board are Michael Shepard, Sarah Jenkins and Bill Lee) ******************* Capital injustice----Death penalty system is so fractured it's unworkable I believe in a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye and a life for a life. I believe that the brutal murderer of Mark McKenzie, Brenda Groene and her sons, Slade and Dylan, should die for his crimes. In fact, this might be one villain that I could execute myself. The enormity of this man's crimes screams for the death penalty. Yet I advocated in an editorial on these pages that Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas should accept a plea bargain that would preserve the life of Groene family murder suspect Joseph Edward Duncan III, if found guilty. Why? Because the capital punishment system is broken. The death blow is meted out haphazardly to killers, many years after their crimes, if at all. One is injected. Another slips through a legal crack. Charles Manson remains alive despite the "Helter Skelter" murders because he was fortunate enough to be on death row when capital punishment was banned for a decade. I believe in the death penalty for premeditated, first-degree murder. However, I don't believe in our current legal system when it comes to handling these cases. Anti-capital punishment attorneys have become so adept at appealing death penalty cases that executions have become cost prohibitive. A county faces a higher price tag to prosecute and defend a death sentence on appeal than it does to ship a killer to prison for life. It would still be worth the million bucks or so to see the Groene family killer prosecuted and sentenced to die, if: - Anyone could guarantee that he would be put to death in a decade. - It would bring peace to the Groene family. - Kidnap survivor Shasta Groene would be spared from living under his shadow for the rest of her life. No one can look into a crystal ball today and say whether these things would occur - or whether the death penalty will exist in this country in a decade. Idaho has put only one murderer to death since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty. In Washington state, the death penalty is hanging by a thread after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a triple-murderer can't escape death row simply because the Green River Killer had done so. Dayva Cross, 46, didn't think it was fair that he should be executed for three murders when Gary Ridgway killed dozens and then plea-bargained his way to a life sentence. The proportionality defense swayed Justice Charles Johnson, who wrote in the minority opinion that the sentences handed to Ridgway and other mass killers "reveals a staggering flaw in the system of administration of the death penalty in Washington." Elsewhere, state and court officials fret that lackluster defense has landed innocent people on death row. I'd love to see the Groene family killer dispatched in the same way that he murdered, tied up with a hammer blow to the head. I'd love to see this pathological monster suffer as the Groenes have. But the legal system that has protected him for so long has fractured to the point that it's ineffective, for punishment or justice. The best society can hope for is that the burden of life without possibility of parole shortens his miserable life. Then, God help him when he meets his maker without a hand-wringing advocate at his side. (source: D.F. Oliveria, The Spokesman Review) WYOMING: Death penalty not sought in slaying In Casper, prosecutors say they will not seek the death penalty against a man accused of fatally shooting a taxi driver. Keith J. Booth, 18, pleaded not guilty in March to murder and aggravated robbery. Booth is accused of shooting Gregory Clarkson, 25, in the chest. Clarkson was found dead in his cab Aug. 18, and Booth was arrested the next day. Natrona County District Attorney Michael Blonigen said he was not seeking the death penalty in part because of Booth's age. Wyoming does not allow the death penalty for anyone under 18; Booth turned 18 on July 5. (source: Billings (Mont.) Gazette)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, N. MEX., WASH., WYO.
Rick Halperin Sun, 9 Apr 2006 16:13:44 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
