April 25 TEXAS----2 stays of execution Injection for slayer of Refugio pair on hold The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Monday halted the lethal injection of condemned inmate Derrick Frazier to allow time to consider a new appeal. Frazier, 28, was scheduled to die Thursday for the June 1997 fatal shootings of Betsy Nutt, 41, and her 15-year-old son, Cody, at their home on a ranch in Refugio County. Frazier and another man showed up at the home under the guise that their car had broken down and they needed to make a phone call. After shooting the pair, the men fled with the woman's pickup. The U.S. Supreme Court, acting on an appeal filed in January, refused last week to halt the punishment. Frazier's lawyers have an affidavit from a friend of the inmate who said that during the trial she saw a juror improperly communicating with Jerry Nutt, whose wife and son were killed. The juror, an affidavit from Courtney LaFont says, ensured Nutt that Frazier would be convicted and given a death sentence. Prosecutors argued that they had affidavits from jurors saying the incident never happened. In a 3-sentence order Monday afternoon, the appeals court said it was granting the reprieve pending its review of the appeal. (source: San Antonio Express-News) ******************** Wilson deputy's killer has execution delayed Today's scheduled execution of a bank robber who killed a Wilson County sheriff's deputy has been postponed until the fall. The delay allows time for lawyers for Pedro Solis Sosa to pursue claims that the convict might be mentally retarded and therefore exempt from capital punishment. The postponement also may help ensure that no last-minute appeals will get lost in the shuffle while the clerk at the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans moves to a new location. Sosa, 54, was convicted of abducting and then murdering Deputy Ollie Childress Jr. on Nov. 4, 1983, the same day Sosa and his nephew robbed the LaVernia State Bank. Lawyers on both sides of the case said Sosa's new execution date is Sept. 25. (source: San Antonio Express-News) ************************ Jury sentences Garza to death for 2nd time----New evidence fails to win lighter sentence A Lubbock County jury on Monday sentenced a convicted murderer to die for the 2nd time in 6 years. The jury deliberated for about 2 hours before finding that 34-year-old Joe Franco Garza Jr. of Lubbock was not entitled to a lesser sentence for killing and robbing Silbiano Rangel in 1998. "Given the right set of circumstances, this man would kill somebody again," Lubbock County Criminal District Attorney Matt Powell said following the verdict. Garza was convicted on 1 count of capital murder in 2000 for strangling the 71-year-old retired preacher and then stealing his truck, wallet and ring. A federal judge found earlier this year that important evidence included in Garza's juvenile record was omitted during the 1st trial. According to court records, U.S. District Judge Sam Cummings found that evidence - including the crimes he committed as a child and the contents of 3 psychological evaluations - could lead a jury to sentence Garza to life in prison. Under Texas law, the only punishments for a capital offense are a life in prison or the death penalty. The jury - composed of 6 men and 6 women - heard 4 days of testimony detailing physical and mental abuse Garza suffered as a child and the numerous criminal offenses his attorney said were committed as a result of that abuse. "If you plant a seed and fertilize it with neglect and water it with scorn, what are you going to end up with?" Jack Stoffregen asked the jury as he argued for a lighter sentence. Prosecutors asked the jury to consider the burglaries Garza committed and the fires he set as a child as the actions of a career criminal. They argued that these crimes and other instances of assault and robbery continued when Garza reached adulthood and after his initial murder conviction. Prison guards testified that on several occasions they had taken weapons, razor blades and even alcohol from Garza while he was incarcerated. "Do you have any doubt that this defendant will shank a guard without even blinking an eye?" Powell told the jury. The courtroom remained quiet for several minutes after the judge read the verdict. Garza was unmoved by the verdict. Prosecutors said that few things are as chilling in the courtroom as a death sentence. George Leal prosecuted Garza in both trials. "Your legs get that heavy feeling. You get a knot in your stomach," Leal said of the verdict. "But it's the right thing to do and it needs to happen." Rangel's family declined to comment in detail about the verdict. But Stevie Rangel, the victims grandson, did say he was glad the case was over. Garza, who is 1 of 4 Lubbock inmates on death row, will be able appeal Monday's verdict. ****************** Lubbock Jury Upholds Death Sentence A Lubbock murderer will return to death row. Lubbock County Prosecutor Jennifer Basett said, "It's not a victory for anyone but it's also necessary and must be done." It took a Lubbock jury less than 2 hours to sentence Joe Franco Garza to death on Monday. A Lubbock Federal judge overturned Garza's original death sentence in February, causing attorneys to try the sentencing phase of the trial again. Garza strangled 71-year-old Silbiano Rangel to death in 1998. He then stole his money and truck. Lubbock County District Attorney Matt Powell says Garza continues to be a danger within the prison system. Powell said, 'We see how he continued to handle himself in the prison and he continued to be a danger to the guards and other inmates and personal that work in the prison." Rangel's family was present at the verdict and feels justice was served. (source: KCBD News) **************** Court papers: Suspects admit role -- Shooting: Man allegedly pawned stolen jewelry A man arrested in connection with the killing of 2 men near Wildorado confessed his involvement in the homicides last week, according to court papers filed Monday. Michael Edward Ryan, 29, admitted to officers that he shot both Allen Hazlewood, 51, and Claude Robertson, 74, with a shotgun near Wildorado, according to court complaints filed in the 47th District Clerk's Office. The court complaints charge Ryan and Jason Michael Williams, 29, with capital murder in the April 18 deaths of the two men. A capital-murder conviction carries the death penalty or life in prison without parole. The complaint filed against Williams on Monday said that he admitted to officers he was involved in the killings and that Ryan shot both men. Ryan also faces a charge of theft from $1,500 to $20,000 for allegedly pawning stolen jewelry from Robertson's home, court records show. Both men were in the Potter County Detention Center late Monday in lieu of $1 million bonds for capital murder. A family member discovered Robertson's body lying beside his pickup about 1 p.m. April 18 on his property near Adkisson Road and Interstate 40 near Wildorado, reports show. When authorities moved Robertson's body, they found he had been shot once in the chest. While searching the area, authorities found Hazlewood - an employee of Robertson - dead about 40 yards away. A preliminary autopsy on Hazlewood showed he was shot 4 times in the upper body. Court records show Robertson was also shot in the upper body. The break in the homicide case came Friday afternoon when Potter County Sgt. John Coffee, a unit investigator, found that jewelry from Robertson's home was pawned the same day at Cash for Gold, 1913 S. Georgia St., reports show. According to court records, Ryan reportedly pawned two of the gold rings that belonged to Patty Robertson, Claude Robertson's wife. One ring had a wide gold band with a large single diamond stone, while the other was a multi-diamond ring with wire-gold bands that are distinctive. Pawn receipts showed that Ryan received about $850 in exchange for the jewelry, court records show. Armed with an arrest warrant, a SWAT team later went to arrest Ryan at his home in the 1000 block of West 10th Avenue, where Ryan reportedly jumped out a window. Officers used a TASER to bring him into custody, according to police. A later search of Ryan's home and vehicles yielded a shotgun that authorities say was used in the homicides. (source: The Amarillo Globe-News) GEORGIA: Accused courthouse gunman challenges death sentence effort Lawyers for accused courthouse gunman Brian Nichols are challenging prosecution efforts to have their client executed if he is convicted of killing a judge, court reporter, sheriff's deputy and federal agent during a 2005 shooting spree. As part of a flurry of defense motions filed Monday night, the lawyers say the 54-count indictment against Nichols fails to list the aggravating factors the state is relying on in seeking the death penalty. Therefore, they say prosecutors should be barred from arguing for a death sentence or a sentence of life without parole if Nichols is convicted at trial, which is scheduled to begin Jan. 11. Otherwise, the lawyers say the indictment should be thrown out. Prosecution spokesman Erik Friedly said the state would respond in writing, but would have no other comment. Also on Monday the defense made these requests: to make improvements to the courtroom where the trial will be held so that lawyers can see and hear witnesses from where they are sitting; to declare certain counts in the indictment unconstitutional; and to require the state to disclose all information regarding scientific testing. Nichols was being retried on charges he raped an off-and-on girlfriend when he allegedly grabbed a deputy's gun and went on the shooting spree at the Fulton County Courthouse on March 11, 2005. He is accused of killing Judge Rowland Barnes and court reporter Julie Ann Brandau inside a courtroom, and sheriff's Sgt. Hoyt Teasley, who chased him outside the courthouse. A fourth victim, federal agent David Wilhelm, was killed at his home a few miles away that night. Nichols surrendered the next day after allegedly taking a woman hostage in her suburban Atlanta apartment. He has pleaded not guilty. The motions are expected to be discussed at a pretrial hearing next month. (source: Associated Press) NEVADA: Lethal injection: Is it cruel? Witnesses will get first chance to see entire process Barring a last-minute appeal, an IV will drip lethal drugs into Daryl Mack's veins on Wednesday, and if doctors' estimates prove true, he will die about 90 seconds later - punishment for sexually assaulting and strangling a 55-year-old Reno woman in 1988. But will his own death be painful? To help answer that question, execution witnesses - for the 1st time since Nevada reinstated capital punishment in 1977 - will watch the actual injection of drugs into the arm of the condemned inmate. For the 11 other inmates who have been executed since 1977, the death chamber's curtains have been closed as the injection was given. As a result, there have been no public witnesses to whether the injection caused pain to the inmate, which could violate the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment. But the curtains will be kept open when Mack, 47, is injected. Nevada Prison officials agreed to allow viewing of the entire process in response to a lawsuit filed by the Reno Gazette-Journal that, arguing a First Amendment right to view the entire execution, challenged the limited viewing previously allowed by the Corrections Department. Defense attorneys for death row inmates and other opponents of lethal injection argue that the use of inexperienced technicians or orderlies can lead to inmates experiencing torturelike pain if they are not fully anesthetized. The lack of sufficient anesthetics has been attributed to drugs mixed improperly, injected into a muscle instead of a vein or clogged in the needle. While the specific protocol for lethal injection in Nevada and the other 36 states that use that form of execution is kept secret, all are believed to use the same "standard method," which involves the mixing of 3 drugs. Inmates are first sedated with an anesthetic and then injected with a drug that paralyzes their muscles, causing them to stop breathing. A final drug, potassium chloride, causes a deadly heart attack. The inmate is ultimately killed by a combination of anesthetic overdose and respiratory and cardiac arrest while unconscious. Medical ethics preclude doctors from participating in these executions, but they do enter the chamber to confirm the inmate's death. The contention that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment has not been raised in Nevada, but has come before federal courts in California and North Carolina. Judges in those cases have ruled that lethal injection can be carried out only if the injections are administered by those with proper medical training. Last week 4 convicted murderers in Missouri filed a federal lawsuit challenging the legality of lethal injection. The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled on Wednesday to hear a Florida case challenging the constitutionality of lethal injection. Mack has waived all of his available appeals and has instructed his lawyer, Marc Picker, not to intervene in his execution. Mack has said he wants to die even though he denies strangling and raping Betty May in her Reno home in 1988. Mack has made it clear "he doesn't want to exercise his appellate rights and (he) wants to die," Picker said. Citing attorney-client privilege, Picker would not comment on whether he advised Mack of the possibility of raising the lethal injection issue. However, Picker said, "From what I've heard and read there seem to be some real questions out there as per whether lethal injection procedures equate to cruel and unusual punishment." Picker said he's been told that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, U.S. District Court and the Nevada Supreme Court "are all standing by to see if Daryl changes his mind." "I'm not sure how any of those courts would rule if Daryl changes his mind," Picker said. "It's not as if he's exhausted his appellate options, but instead he's just decided to go ahead with it." Conrad Hafen , chief of the Nevada attorney general's criminal division, said Nevada's system of lethal injection "is legitimate and doesn't come close to being cruel and unusual punishment." The other states have come under criticism, Hafen said, because of the concern that nondoctors are improperly mixing the solutions, causing the condemned inmates to suffer. There is no evidence in Nevada that inmates have suffered pain during lethal injection, he said. If there was indication in Nevada's executions of pain because of improper mixing or poor injection of drugs, a judge would have to hold an evidentiary hearing to determine if the complaint was valid - and then decide whether the pain constituted cruel and unusual punishment. A ruling by the 9th Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court banning lethal injections would affect Nevada, but rulings in North Carolina or California would not stop its use in Nevada. At most, Hafen said, rulings in those states could be cited by defense attorneys in raising the issue here. Richard Siegel, president of the Nevada Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the issue hasn't been raised in Nevada primarily because there have been relatively few executions in the state - and the condemned inmates didn't object to the process. He said he believes that if Mack didn't voluntarily want to be executed, Picker would seek a stay of execution based on the lethal injection issue. Siegel predicted that the U.S. Supreme Court won't ban lethal injections, but call for greater safeguards, perhaps by involving physicians in the process. "I don't think any ruling on the issue of lethal injections will be a system breaker," Siegel said. (source: Las Vegas Sun) USA: Court Case May Open Lethal Injection Inquiry----Prisoners Rights Groups Believe Lethal Injection Inflicts Severe Pain Last week, Teresa Shepard witnessed the execution of her brother by the state of North Carolina. Willie Brown Jr., who had been on death row for the slaying of Vallerie Ann Roberson Dixon, was killed by a combination of injected drugs. Shepard, who watched the execution from a small viewing room, believes that her brother died in intense pain. "I think he was in pain, because before he took his last breath he gagged. You had to know my brother to know he wasn't a person to complain," she said. "We don't know for sure whether he was in pain, all we know is that it is very cruel. There should have been a doctor there." Across the nation, a debate about lethal injection -- used in 37 states to carry out the death penalty -- is gaining momentum as reports emerge that question whether the chemicals produce a painless death. Lethal injection was first used in 1977 when it was considered the most humane means to implement the death penalty. However, as critics have uncovered more details about the practice and states have been pressured to release more information about the deaths, questions have been raised as to how much pain is actually involved and whether corrections officials have been adequately trained to carry out the procedure. American Medical Association guidelines prohibit the direct participation of medical personnel at executions. Victims' rights advocate Diane Clement from Justice for All counters that the procedure is not cruel. "We have devised the most humane means that is possible," Clement said. "We have to kill these people. It is constitutional, legal and moral. It is the process we live with and those that are convicted die with." However, several courts throughout the country have delayed executions as they study the ways the procedure can be performed. And on Wednesday, the issue comes before the U.S. Supreme Court when lawyers for convicted killer Clarence Hill argue a more narrow issue regarding when petitioners can file their appeals. Last January, Clarence Hill was strapped to his gurney when the nation's highest court issued a stay in his case to hear his appeal. Although the justices won't rule on the constitutionality of the issue, Hill's lawyers argue that lethal injection is "excruciatingly and unnecessarily torturous." Prisoners' Rights Groups Want More Research Human Rights Watch has issued a report condemning lethal injection: "There is mounting evidence that prisoners may have experienced excruciating pain during their executions," the report said. The group recommends that states suspend lethal injection executions until a panel of doctors, corrections officials, judges and attorneys determine whether the way lethal injection executions are currently practiced are the most humane form of execution. Affidavits have been filed in several cases where witnesses describe violent deaths with prisoners gasping for air. Some prisoners' rights groups are concerned that even if the drugs themselves do not violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual treatment, many times prison officials are not properly trained to administer them. "People in the corrections system don't have the training to do this. They are not qualified," said Gary Clements, acting director of the Capitol Post Conviction Project of Louisiana. Kevin Fagan, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, who witnessed the execution of convicted murderer Stanley "Tookie" Williams, said a prison official had difficulty with the procedure. "A medical technician, a woman with short black hair, had to poke for 11 minutes before her needle hit home. At the first stick, at 12:04, Williams clenched his toes. At 12:05, he struggled mightily against the straps holding him down to look up at the press gallery behind him, dishing out a hard stare for six long seconds. By 12:10 a.m., the medical tech's lips were tight and white and sweat was pooling on her forehead as she probed Williams' arm," Fagan wrote in the San Franciso Chronicle. "'You guys doing that right?' Williams asked angrily, frustration clear on his face." Elisabeth Semel, the head of Boalt Hall School of Law's death penalty clinic and a critic of the procedure, stresses that it can be impossible to tell if the prisoner is feeling pain because one of the administered drugs causes paralysis, "which prevents the receiver from expressing feeling." In other cases, a judge in California had to stay a proceeding when two anesthesiologists walked out just before the scheduled execution citing ethical concerns. Another death row prisoner, Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman, has a pending appeal with the Supreme Courts. Abdur'Rahman argues that a veterinarian couldn't legally put down a dog with the chemicals the state wants to use for Abdur'Rahman's death. (source: ABC News) *************************** Lethal injections - will they ever be too barbaric?----Americans are slowly turning against the death penalty Tomorrow the US Supreme Court is to hear arguments over the constitutionality of the lethal injection as presently administered. The claim has stayed executions from Florida to California and is based on the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. The hearing also coincides with the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged with direct responsibility for 9/11, where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. In the background to both cases are issues that have always been central to the death penalty debate. Stays of execution were granted in California in February after the state's failure to find physicians willing to superintend the execution of Michael Morales. In the same state, recent polls show a gradual decline in public support for capital punishment. All of this follows the release in February of the 123rd inmate from death row because of innocence since 1976. All these issues show that capital punishment is slowly moving towards its own extinction as an unworkable anachronism. The pace with which it does this can be accurately measured only with hindsight - but a glance at the past provides a good indication of how long it will be before the penalty is entirely abolished. Charles Dickens, writing in The Times more than a century ago, believed: "Nothing that ingenuity could devise to be done in this city, in the same compass of time, could work such ruin as one public execution." Behind this belief were the same fears that recur today. It was clear to Dickens, as well as several of his contemporaries, including William Makepeace Thackeray, that public hangings served only to martyr the condemned and lacked any deterring influence. The unpredictable nature of death by hanging led to a revolution in American death chambers with the introduction of the electric chair in 1890. Billed as a humane progression from the barbarity of the noose, the chair spread throughout the US, with New Jersey, Virginia, both Carolinas and Kentucky adopting it within the decade. Soon after, soldiers leaving to fight the First World War found the added horror of comrades facing the firing squad as punishment for cowardice - a horror that the soldiers of the Second World War were relived of, thanks to a shift in attitudes to military discipline. The search for the perfect method continued in the US after the Great War with the introduction of lethal gas in the 1920s, followed in 1977 by lethal injection. As execution techniques were being refined in America, its abolition spread throughout the world. The UK abolished it in the 1960s, Canada in the 1970s and France in 1981; a trend culminating in complete abolition across Europe. Today the US stands alone as the only Western country with capital punishment on its statute book - 37 states, the US military and the federal Government use lethal injection as a method of execution; Nebraska uses only electrocution. Hanging is still available but hasn't been used since 1996. Electrocution is slowly working its way from the death chambers to the museum; described by the Florida Supreme Court as "a dinosaur more befitting the laboratory of Baron Frankenstein than the death chamber of Florida State Prison". The claim before the Supreme Court tomorrow centres on the three drugs used in lethal injection. The first, sodium thiopental, intended to anaesthetise the condemned, is claimed by defence counsel to merely cast a "chemical veil" over the pain. The prisoner is then left conscious but trapped in a paralysed body to endure the pain of suffocation and heart attack induced by the two drugs that follow. At the same time, the paralysis makes it impossible for those observing the execution to recognise the suffering. The narrow grounds on which the court granted leave to appeal means there is no possibility of the method being declared unconstitutional. At most, the courts decision will lead to the combination being declared unconstitutional. The 37 states will then have to find a new magic formula to be used on Moussaoui. It is right that a man convicted of conspiring in the death of 3,000 New Yorkers should face the highest penalty offered by the criminal law. The law must, however, be objectively justified without the colouring of a world-changing day such as 9/11. At worst, executing Moussaoui would lead to his martyrdom, a loss of a potential intelligence source, reprisals from existing supporters and the recruiting of new ones. At best he would be forgotten. Methods of execution have evolved from the gibbeting pole to the needle without one method proving flawless. Tinkering with the combination is simply to delay the inevitable. Arguments justifying the death penalty on the ground that it deters future offenders fall flat on their face in the terrorist context. Timothy McVeigh was executed in June 2001, just before the 9/11 attacks, for the Oklahoma bombing. It was one of the most publicised executions for a long time and had no demonstrable impact 3 months later. Executing Moussaoui will, therefore, be about vengeance and perceived retribution but the vengeance will be his and our retribution may follow. (source: The Times (UK) -- The author is a barrister and lecturer in law at the BPP law school, Waterloo, London) ******************* Lethal Injection Debate Misses Bigger Point, Abolitionists Say While heated deliberations rage over an execution method considered the "most humane" practiced today, those opposed to the death penalty altogether hope their side gains traction. Mounting evidence that America's favored method for state-sponsored execution of prisoners may cause its victims excruciating pain has infused fresh rigor into at lease one narrow aspect of the death-penalty debate. Defense attorneys and medical ethicists are squaring off against state executioners in a fight for judicial and public opinion on whether lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Meanwhile, many of the leading death-penalty abolition groups are staying above the fray, saying that rather than discussing how best to put people to death, the nation should be discussing whether to kill them at all. On Monday, the international group Human Rights Watch (HRW), which categorically opposes the death penalty, released a report documenting instances in which the three-drug combination used to kill the majority of Death Row victims may have caused and masked horrible pain before death. "Prison officials have been more concerned about sparing the sensitivities of executioners and witnesses than protecting the condemned prisoner from pain," Jamie Fellner, HRW's US program director and report co-author, said in a statement accompanying release of the findings. "They are more concerned with appearances than with the reality." The HRW report comes as the constitutionality of lethal injection is under scrutiny in courtrooms across the nation and at all levels of the judicial system. The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Wednesday on whether death row inmates can challenge lethal injection as a violation of civil rights. But to David Elliot, communications director for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP), debating the form an execution takes is to "tinker with the machinery of death" instead of discussing whether killing is sound public policy. "We are concerned that debating the most humane way to execute a person diverts from the more fundamental question of whether we should be executing people to begin with," Elliot told The NewStandard. "The unhappy fact of the matter is that there is no kind and gentle way to kill someone." Lethal injection was adopted by Oklahoma in 1977 as a more humane option than other methods of capital punishment, such as electrocution, chemical asphyxiation, hanging and firing squad. However, HRW found that the Oklahoma medical examiner who developed the 3-drug regimen currently used by most states had no expertise in pharmacology or anesthesia. Since then, 37 states have started using lethal injection to execute felons, and in at least 19 states the method is the only legal form of capital punishment. Lethal injection killed every death row victim in 2005. "Drawing on its own research and that of others, Human Rights Watch has found no evidence that any state seriously investigated whether other drugs or administration methods would be 'more humane' than the protocol it adopted," wrote the report's authors. The report details how the three drugs are supposed to work in tandem, first killing pain, next immobilizing the inmate and finally stopping the victim's heart. But without proper administration of the initial anesthetic, the 2 chasers - pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride - could cause prisoners to feel suffocation and a fiery pain coursing their veins, according to the report. Critics are concerned that the anesthesia - which like the rest of the process is never performed by a licensed physician, let alone an anesthesiologist - is often mishandled. In their study, HRW researchers found evidence in multiple states that executed people may have felt that pain. For instance, John Daniels, who North Carolina executed on November 14, 2003, suddenly started to convulse." The account says Daniels sat upright, and "witnesses could hear him gagging through the glass that separated him from them. After laying down again for a brief time, he sat up, gagged, and choked, while his arms appeared to be struggling underneath the sheet covering him." Challenging the 3-drug protocol in court, the American Civil Liberties Union has argued that the 2nd drug, which paralyzes voluntary muscles, may be acting as a "chemical curtain," hiding whether the inmate is suffering. In a statement on the ACLU of Northern California's court challenge to lethal injection last year, Legal Director Alan Schlossersaid, that method "would interfere with the public's right to know and could conceal cruel or unusual punishment by the state, which is forbidden by the Constitution." Schlosser contended that "the First Amendment precludes the state from sanitizing the execution process by administering a drug that appears to have no purpose other than to prevent the public and the press from seeing whether the use of lethal injection causes pain." Abe Bonowitz, director of Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (CUADP), said the evidence suggesting the pain experienced by executed prisoners calls into the question the whole justification for switching to lethal injection from other forms of execution. "The issue for us really is not the question of how we kill our prisoners, but that we do it at all," Bonowitz told TNS. The media frenzy over the recent cases challenging lethal injection, however, has focused mainly on possible alternatives to the 3 drugs currently used or on devices that could help states circumvent recent court rulings in California and North Carolina. Those rulings require licensed medical personnel administer the drugs in order to make sure the prisoner is properly anesthetized. Most medical professionals have refused to directly administer the drugs on the grounds that doing so would violate their ethical code. Though Bonowitz said he does not think the court challenges are actually going to stop lethal injection, he thinks it is a positive step in "forcing people to actually look at the process and understand exactly what we are doing." But neither CUADP nor NCADP are actively involved in the lethal-injection lawsuits. For Elliot, it's a matter of principle. "If you focus on saying 'this mode [of execution] is good' or 'this mode is bad,' then you are almost conceding the point, and we're simply not going to go there," he said. (source: The NewStandard) **************** Why the innocent confess In the penalty phase of his trial, Zacarias Moussaoui declared that he planned to fly a 5th hijacked airplane into the White House on Sept. 11, 2001. No independent evidence suggests that such a plan ever existed. It seems quite possible that Moussaoui, who appears to be deranged in one way or another and clearly enjoys taunting his captors, fabricated it. Nevertheless, many commentators instantly declared that Moussaoui had sealed his fate - death - with this confession. They may well be right. That's because, in our legal system, confessions are among the most persuasive kinds of evidence juries hear. Juries - like all of us - find it extremely difficult to believe that anyone would confess to a crime he didn't commit, or in this case, that he didn't plan to commit. It's a notion that requires scrutiny. The commentators in the Moussaoui case, and the jury too, are presumably unaware that more than 200 people claimed to have kidnapped the Lindbergh baby. Desire for notoriety is among the many causes of false confessions. In fact, a surprising number of innocent people confess to crimes they did not commit. Thanks in large part to DNA testing, we have learned that innocent people are convicted with greater frequency than anyone imagined. Since 1989, DNA testing has exonerated 175 people convicted of crimes. Intriguingly, 1/5 of them had confessed (among them, the 5 teenagers convicted of assaulting the "Central Park jogger"). Spurred by the DNA exonerations, several scholars have sought to show the prevalence of false confessions. Professors Richard Leo and Steven Drizin recently published a study in the North Carolina Law Review documenting 125 false confessions. Although it is impossible to estimate the total number or percentage of false confessions, experts believe that the known cases represent only the tip of the iceberg. Many social scientists explain that a major cause of false confessions is interrogation tactics that leave an innocent suspect feeling there is no escape except an admission of guilt. Courts condone these tactics, apart from extreme cases. Interrogators exaggerate or fabricate evidence, telling a murder suspect, for example, that he was identified as the culprit in the victim's dying declaration. They threaten him with severe punishment unless he confesses, or they suggest mitigating circumstances and hint at lenient treatment, if only he confesses. Throughout the interrogation, they communicate unbreakable certainty of his guilt. In the face of all this, at some point many suspects find the situation hopeless and conclude that they are simply better off confessing. That decision may be foolish, but it is not irrational. It reflects a conscious or unconscious cost-benefit analysis - albeit an analysis skewed by fear and fatigue. But aren't the interrogators obligated to inform the suspect of his rights to counsel and to remain silent? Yes, but many false confessors don't fully understand their Miranda rights. Moreover, the innocent suspect may feel no need to exercise these rights, believing he has nothing to hide. Paradoxically, his innocence only makes things worse. His aggressive denials of guilt cause interrogators to more insistently assert his guilt, triggering a Kafka-esque cycle of deepening despair. Experts have identified many additional explanations for false confessions. Some innocent suspects actually come to believe they committed the crime. Others may confess to protect a friend or loved one, or to expiate guilt over other improper actions. Once the confession is made, people assume it to be true because of the incorrect intuition that an innocent person would not confess, absent extreme coercion such as torture. When defendants who ultimately turned out to be false confessors pleaded not guilty and went to trial - aggressively recanting the confession and working to contradict it - studies show that conviction rates were high, ranging 73% to 81%. The power of confessions also is on depressing display among prosecutors. After DNA exonerations of false confessors, prosecutors generally refuse to admit error, instead coming up with a new theory of the case (for example, that the confessor had an accomplice who physically committed the crime) even if no evidence supports it. The reality is that confessions should be regarded as one piece of evidence only, and analyzed to determine, among other things, their consistency with other evidence and whether they disclose details of the crime unknown to the public. Instead, the authorities commonly regard a confession as a guarantee of guilt that forecloses the need for further inquiry. Which brings us back to Moussaoui. It would be foolish to make him the poster child for false confessions - his admissions of involvement with Al Qaeda have been verified; he almost certainly trained to commit terrorist acts, and he is unrepentant, to put it mildly. But if the jury sentences him to death, let's hope it is based on hard evidence of what he actually did rather than on a dubious, unsupported confession. Few will shed tears for Moussaoui, but the deeply engrained habit of taking confessions at face value is one we desperately need to break. (source: Los Angeles Times - ALAN HIRSCH, a visiting professor of legal studies at Williams College, created and operates www.truthaboutfalseconfessions.com.) *********************** Perception and High-Profile Cases: Jackie and Laci Peterson, Zacarias Moussaoui and 9/11, Duke University and the Presumption of Guilt, and Alfonso Rodriguez and Dru Sjodin (Bill Bickel's Crimeweek, April 24, 2006) Public opinion seems to be a factor in a number of cases currently in the news: Followers of the Peterson case reacted with glee earlier this month when Judge David G. Vander Wall ruled that Jackie Peterson (Scott Peterson's mother) was not entitled to be reimbursed about $35,000 from Laci Peterson's estate (which has essentially gone to Laci's mother, Sharon Rocha) for mortgage, property tax, utility repair bills Jackie paid on behalf of Scott and Laci's home between April 2003 and February 2005. The judge agreed with the Rocha lawyer's argument that the law only mandates reimbursement for funeral bills or for bills that would have been incurred by the estate before Laci's death. Possibly Judge Vander Wall had no choice but to rule as he did under the law, which was never intended for a case such a this, but he was not thwarting some greedy scheme on behalf of Jackie Peterson. While it's true she wasn't forced by law to pay out this money (which kept the house from falling into disrepair and being foreclosed upon), and probably did so because she expected Scott to be found not guilty and therefore assume sole ownership, she did make these payments on behalf of the estate, and in all fairness the estate should have paid her back. But Jackie Peterson's been assigned a villain's role: She's not only the mother of a convicted murderer, she is by most account... not an easy woman to like. Even her daughter Anne Bird, who in Blood Brother seemed to go to great lengths not to criticize Jackie, clearly described Laci as having had the Mother-in-Law From Hell. The thing is, though... If fairness and protection under the law are to have any meaning, they have to apply to Jackie Peterson as well as to the most sympathetic of victims. As part of the ongoing penalty phase in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the prosecution wanted to let the jury hear from more than forty 9/11 survivors and family members of victims. The defense objected, arguing that this testimony would cause the jurors to rely more on their emotions than on the facts. But this case is all about emotion, and always has been: Moussaoui did not take part in the attacks. He is not facing death for having conspired in the attacks. He was ruled eligible for the death penalty because he knew of the attacks and both lied to the FBI and withheld information that might have prevented them. In modern times, has anybody ever been sentenced to death for refusing to help prevent a crime? The jury might as well already be in for the Duke University lacrosse players accused of raping an exotic dancer last month. While there doesn't seem to be any actual physical evidence against Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann, they have been arrested on kidnapping and rape charges and have been suspended from the University pending resolution of the case. The lacrosse team's season has been canceled. One member of the team was turned down in his attempt to transfer to Syracuse University -- a school that had recruited him -- leading Syracuse to announce an official policy of not accepting any transfers from Duke University pending resolution of the case against Finnerty and Seligmann. (Bill Cosby announced he will pay all college expenses for the dancer, apparently regardless of the eventual outcome of the case, which evokes obvious memories of the Tawana Brawley case). On July 6, Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. is scheduled to stand trial in federal court for the November 22, 2003 abduction and murder of 22-year-old Dru Sjodin. Last week, the defense asked for a change of venue from North Dakota (the site of her abduction and most of the search effort) to neighboring Minnesota (where her body was found), citing the publicity the case attracted in North Dakota. I've said this before and I'll continue to say it until the government changes its methods on my say-so: This is a federal case, so it can theoretically be tried anywhere. Just move it to New Hampshire or someplace else where this case was barely ever a blip on the local consciousness. Yes, it will mean flying some witnesses halfway across the country: but factor in the money saved -- attorneys for both sides, the judge, court personnel -- by shortening the jury selection process (imagine the most notorious local criminal case in your area, and how difficult it would be to find impartial jurors), plus the cost of dealing with the motions to move the trial from North Dakota to Minnesota, and you probably come out ahead. And oh yeah, there's also the "fairer trial for a guy facing the death penalty" aspect. (source: AllInfoAbout.com)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS, GA., NEV., USA
Rick Halperin Tue, 25 Apr 2006 15:47:02 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
