[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OHIO, USA, ILL.

[Rick Halperin]

April 17



OHIO:

Supreme Court: Death row inmate can keep lawyers' files private


The U.S. Supreme Court allowed an Ohio death row inmate to keep his
defense lawyers' files private as he tries to overturn his murder
conviction, declining Monday to hear prosecutors' appeal.

Public defenders say Ohio prosecutors improperly withheld crucial evidence
before Gregory Lott, 44, was convicted of the 1986 murder of John McGrath
of East Cleveland. Lott was scheduled for execution in 2002 and 2004, but
got stays. The first time, his lawyers claimed he was mentally retarded, a
claim that was later dismissed. The next time, the Supreme Court blocked
the execution so lower courts could review Lott's claim that evidence
supporting his innocence was withheld during his trial.

That was the case being heard last year when prosecutors said they should
be able to access the files of Lott's former lawyers. U.S. District Judge
Kathleen O'Malley agreed, but the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said
that would breach attorney-client privilege. Monday's Supreme Court
decision returns it to O'Malley's court in Cleveland.

Public defender Greg Meyers said it was crucial to protect Lott's
privileged communications with his lawyers, but some evidence still will
have to be disclosed. Bob Beasley, spokesman for Attorney General Jim
Petro said the prosecution team was disappointed it would not be able to
review all the material.

In a separate case last month, O'Malley granted a new trial to Joe
D'Ambrosio, a man convicted of a 1988 murder, ruling that prosecutors
failed to tell defense lawyers about several pieces of evidence that might
have helped exonerate him.

Now, Meyers will get another chance to argue before O'Malley that former
prosecutor Carmen Marino failed to disclose to Lott's lawyers a statement
the victim made before he died. In the statement, McGrath, 84, identified
his attacker as a light-skinned black man with long hair. Meyers has
claimed that description didn't match Lott's skin or hair at the time of
the murder.

McGrath was attacked and set on fire in his home in 1986 and died a week
later.

Marino, who handled the case from 1986 to his retirement in 2002, has said
that "everything in my file was disclosed to the defense."

Meyers said no formal complaint has been filed against Marino.

(source: Associated Press)

**************************

Parole board, state Supreme Court keep Clark execution on track for May 2


Gov. Bob Taft should not intervene in the planned May 2 execution of
Joseph Lewis Clark in the 1984 robbery slaying of a 23-year-old Toledo
man, the Ohio Parole Board unanimously recommended this morning.

Also this morning, the state Supreme Court rejected a motion from Clark
seeking to stop the May 2 execution clock on the grounds that a case still
pending in federal court challenges Ohio's lethal injection protocol as
potentially cruel and unusual punishment.

The parole board did not accept the arguments of Clark's attorneys that
his drug addiction, troubled childhood, and low-normal intelligence
culminated in a nine-day crime spree that ended in the deaths of 2 men and
the wounding of a 3rd.

"(T)he brutality inflicted by Clark cannot be justifiably explained away
by speculation that his actions were caused by factors adversely working
together in a short duration of a crime spree," reads the board's clemency
report. "His well established prior criminal conduct, both as a juvenile
and as an adult, signifies a propensity for violent behavior."

Clark is set to become the 21st person, and the 1st from Lucas County, to
die on Ohio's lethal injection gurney since the state resumed carrying out
the death penalty in 1999.

Clark confessed to shooting David A. Manning, during a robbery of a Clark
gas station at 3070 Airport Highway on the night of Jan. 13, 1984. A day
earlier, Clark had killed another store clerk, Donald Harris, 21, at a
Lawson Milk Store at 4401 Hill Ave, a crime for which he received a life
sentence.

The crime spree came to an end after Clark shot a 3rd man, Robert Roloff,
during a robbery at a bank ATM, and a fast-thinking witness noted his
license plate number. Mr. Roloff survived two gunshot wounds.

(source: Toledo Blade)

*******************

Questions About Schmidt's Death Penalty Stance


There are questions over Second District U.S. Congresswoman Jean Schmidt's
position on the death penalty.

It comes two weeks before facing Bob McEwen and seven others in the May
2nd Ohio primary.

The questions were raised by McEwen supporter J. Duffy Beischel and
Cincinnati FOP President Kathy Harrell.

Beischel says Schmidt, former president of Right To Life of Greater
Cincinnati, filled out a form for Anderson Township Republicans last year
saying she did not support the death penalty.

Then, she wrote the FOP she supports it as a tool in the war on terrorism.

Beischel and Harrell call that a "flip-flop" that voters need to know
about before going to to the polls.

Schmidt campaign manager Allen Freeman says her position on the issue has
never changed.

(source: WCPO News)






USA:

Overkill on death row


They were among my saddest days when we had our Labrador retrievers put to
death, first Bubba, at 15, then Sissy, nearly 14.

But I remember wishing that, when my time came, I could go as they went.

In Bubba's case, a veterinarian with a special attachment to him came on a
bright and mild spring April day to his backyard domain. She gave him a
shot as he lay in the grass near the rock waterfall amid flowers. Before
long he simply didn't breathe anymore. He had passed out of his misery and
into our memory.

This was a far dearer soul than your garden-variety death row inmate. But
there is a worthy argument emerging that says we should endeavor to treat
death row inmates like dogs, which is to say as humanely, at least when we
end their lives.

I recall when an Arkansas legislator argued for his bill to implement
lethal injection in place of electrocution as the means for imposing the
death penalty. He concluded by pleading, "Gentlemen, what I'm saying is
that when you vote on this bill, try to act like human beings and not
legislators."

Now, 2 decades later, judges across the country have begun looking
favorably on death row appeals based on the charge that the way 35 states
do lethal injection is, like the electric chair before it, needlessly
cruel, even torturous. What once was considered a stalling tactic has come
to be taken seriously.

The argument is that vets treat household pets much better, and that
Oregon's assisted suicide law is based on the veterinary model, not the
death chamber.

Our courts say the Constitution permits a death penalty. But our courts
say the Constitution does not allow unusually cruel treatment. That is to
say we seem to be under license to kill, but under mandate to do it
painlessly.

In North Carolina, a judge said that a scheduled lethal injection could
not proceed unless a doctor was present to make sure the three injections
that actually compose the fatal process were handled properly. When the 3
shots aren't handled properly, it apparently is pure hell.

But the American Medical Association's code of ethics prohibits member
participation in executions. Widespread imposition of such a
physican-attended requirement would seem either to effectively end lethal
injections or require the AMA to change its code.

This developing issue could force states to give death row inmates a
single lethal dose of a long-lasting barbiturate, which is the standard
veterinary practice.

But, to be frank, doctors can't really be sure that the single shot
appearing so painless and peaceful in pets would be as painless and
peaceful in the human brain. What we don't know about the central nervous
system could fill libraries.

The three-step process used in prisons actually seems best in terms of
being humane, I'm told, but only if done expertly. And postmortem evidence
has shown that nonphysician technicians administering lethal injections in
prison death chambers often make errors, and that if the first shot, a
barbiturate, is not properly given, the paralyzing effect of the 2nd shot
and the heart-stopping effect of the 3rd can be torture.

At its core, the issue seems to be what we might call overkill, literally.

Actually, that's not the core issue at all. The core issue is whether it's
right for the state to take human life, period.

Our constant struggle with the fairness, equity and humanity of the death
penalty suggests that we may not have the stomach for it that we think we
do. It may be that we're re-evolving to the notion that killing as
punishment without exercising unusual cruelty is a hopeless contradiction
in terms.

I'll take my chances on what Bubba got, but, like Oregonians, only by my
choice and only when the time comes.

(source: John Brummett is an award-winning columnist for the Arkansas News
Bureau in Little Rock and author of "High Wire," a book about Bill
Clinton's 1st year as president)






ILLINOIS:

Death penalty opponents react to Ryan verdict


Death penalty opponents say history will remember former Governor George
Ryan for clearing death row -- not today's guilty verdict.

A jury convicted Ryan today of mail fraud, racketeering conspiracy and
other charges after a five-month trial.

Rob Warden is director of Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful
Convictions. He says Ryan took a courageous and significant step that has
led to major reforms in the Illinois criminal justice system.

In 2003, Ryan commuted all Illinois death sentences to life in prison
after 13 men sentenced to death were later found to have been wrongfully
convicted.

Warden says history will judge Ryan more kindly than the jury did today.

(source: Associated Press)