[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----TEXAS, USA, KY., MISS.

[Rick Halperin]

June 24


TEXAS----impending execution

'Railroad Killer' files for stay of execution----The lawyers for Maturino
Resendiz seek help at the federal level after losing a ruling


After a major defeat in state district court, lawyers for convicted killer
Angel Maturino Resendiz on Friday filed a flurry of motions in federal
court in a desperate bid to save their client from a Tuesday date with the
executioner.

Houston attorney Jack Zimmermann said he has filed a writ of habeas corpus
in federal court here seeking a review of an adverse ruling Maturino
Resendiz received in Judge William Harmon's 178th state District Court.

Harmon ruled Wednesday that the Mexican national, convicted of the
December 1998 rape-murder of West University physician Claudia Benton, was
aware that he soon would be killed and that he knew the reason for the
death sentence.

By meeting that legal test, the judge found, Maturino Resendiz was
competent to be executed.

The ruling came after two days of hearings in which the defense counsel
attempted to prove that Maturino Resendiz, who has claimed to be half-man,
half-angel, was psychotic and could not legally be put to death.

Zimmermann said a motion for a stay of execution was filed in connection
with the writ of habeas corpus.

In other action, U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal agreed that Maturino
Resendiz could become a plaintiff in a civil rights lawsuit originally
filed on his behalf by the Mexican consulate that seeks an injunction
against the execution on the grounds that lethal chemicals might lead to a
protracted, torturous death.

Rosenthal rejected a separate motion for a postponement submitted so that
lawyers could prepare a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, noting that
she did not have jurisdiction in the matter.

The legal action came as the Mexican government, which opposes capital
punishment, lodged an appeal on Maturino Resendiz's behalf with the Texas
Board of Pardons and Paroles, which already is considering a motion for a
stay filed in early June by the killer's Houston lawyers.

The pardons board will make a recommendation to Gov. Rick Perry.

Maturino Resendiz, 45, was convicted of Benton's murder in Harmon's court.
He has confessed or been linked by evidence to at least 12 other slayings.

The Mexican consulate in Houston hired Zimmermann to represent Maturino
Resendiz in a last-ditch effort to save the drifter's life.

In the civil rights lawsuit filed by Austin lawyer Robert Owen in Houston
federal court, Maturino Resendiz argues that prison officials have
"demonstrated deliberate indifference to the basic human right of
condemned individuals not to be subject to a torturous and unnecessarily
painful death without the ability to communicate the fact that they are in
pain."

The lawsuit contends that sodium thiopental, a short-acting barbiturate
use to initiate the procedure, might not be effective in keeping the
killer from feeling the intense pain associated with potassium chloride,
which is administered to stop the heart.

Additionally, the lawsuit claims, pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant,
might act to neutralize the sedative effect of the barbiturate.

Resendiz's action is among a flood of lawsuits nationally challenging the
3-drug formula used in lethal injections in many states.

(source: Houston Chronicle)






USA:

Death penalty experiment has failed


You brush up against a lot of weird stuff in the course of child rearing,
but one phenomenon that always had me scratching my head was the parents
who hit their kids to teach them that hitting was a bad thing.

In their defense, they had a civic model for that kind of bizarre circular
reasoning. Americans still live in one of the few countries that kill
people to make clear what a terrible thing killing people is. Hardly any
other civilized place does this anymore. Last year four countries
accounted for nearly all executions worldwide: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia
and the United States.

Last week the Supreme Court agreed to cogitate once more about capital
punishment, a boomerang the justices find coming back at them time and
time again. This new case is about the way lethal injection is
administered. The argument is that even though one drug anesthetizes, a
2nd paralyzes and a 3rd stops the heart, the 1st is not sufficient to
mitigate the pain and the 2nd makes the inmate appear peaceful when he is
in agony. In other words, the case is about whether being put to death
hurts.

Much of the debate about the death penalty since it reared its ugly head
again in the '70s has been about whether it is disproportionately meted
out to poor minorities, whether it should be permitted for juvenile
offenders, whether various methods constitute cruel and unusual
punishment. Most of these discussions are designed not to examine
underlying deep moral issues but to allow Americans to continue to put
people to death and still feel good about themselves.

That's become increasingly difficult. At the same time the court decided
to revisit lethal injection, the justices agreed to a federal hearing in
the case of a man who has spent 20 years on death row. He was convicted of
raping and murdering a neighbor. The prosecution said his semen was found
on the dead woman. New DNA tests show the semen was instead that of her
husband, who witnesses say had drunkenly confessed to the murder.

This is just one of a long line of such cases. Accusers recant, guilty
parties confess, the lab makes a match that wasn't possible before. Since
1976, more than a thousand men and women have been executed in the United
States. But during that same period, more than 123 death-row inmates have
been exonerated. That's a terrible statistical average.

Some years ago the execution of a woman named Karla Faye Tucker in Texas
got a lot of attention. She had been found guilty of a heinous double
murder involving a pickax. But in jail she had a religious conversion so
transformative that she referred to the place where she was held as "life
row."

When Tucker was put to death, there was a mob scene outside the prison.
Some of those who gathered there were opponents of the death penalty. Some
wanted the execution to proceed. And some of the latter group danced and
laughed and cheered and acted as though they were at the Super Bowl and
their team had just scored a touchdown.

Most people who support capital punishment can't be counted as members of
that sorry fringe mob. But this is one of those issues where there isn't a
middle ground. Just because the electric chair has been phased out doesn't
mean civilization has prevailed; it only means that people didn't like how
reports of a convicted man's head bursting into flame made them feel about
what they were doing. In judicial terms, Justice Harry Blackmun concluded
in 1994 that all it came down to was figuring out how to "tinker with the
machinery of death."

And he was officially finished with it, writing: "Rather than continue to
coddle the court's delusion that the desired level of fairness has been
achieved and the need for regulation eviscerated, I feel morally and
intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty
experiment has failed."

The question isn't whether executions can be made painless; it's whether
they're wrong. Everything else is just quibbling. And most of the
quibbling simply boils down to trying to make the wrong seem right.

(source: Anna Quindlen, Newsweek)






KENTUCKY:

Judge grants DNA testing for death row inmate


In Lousiville, a judge has granted a Kentucky death row inmate's request
to do D-N-A tests on evidence from a 1979 homicide in Jefferson County.

Circuit Judge James Shake says Brian Moore can have testing done on pants
and a pair of shoes that were worn when Virgil Harris was kidnapped and
killed. Harris was on his way to his 77th birthday party.

The 49-year-old Moore is the first Kentucky Death Row inmate to use a
state law to seek testing on evidence stemming from a crime predating
D-N-A tests.

Moore's attorney, assistant public advocate David Barron, says D-N-A
testing could cast doubt on Moore's conviction by putting another man at
the scene of the slaying. Barron says the test and results may take some
time. He adds that the matter won't be resolved in a matter of weeks.

(source: WKYT News)



MISSISSIPPI:

Judge: Killer 'wishes to die'----Supreme Court still must decide on
execution date for Wilcher


A federal judge's ruling on Friday means convicted killer Bobby Glenn
Wilcher's fate now is in the hands of the state Supreme Court.

(Read judge's order on Bobby Wilcher execution
----http://www.clarionledger.com/assets/pdf/D032296623.PDF )

U.S. District Court Judge Henry T. Wingate rejected a motion filed by
Wilcher's attorney, Cliff Johnson, challenging Wilcher's competence to
drop all his appeals. Last week Wingate had granted Wilcher's request for
the state to proceed with executing him after being on death row for more
than 20 years.

"He recognizes that the state of Mississippi will seek to execute him as
soon as possible. He is not suffering from any mental disease, disorder or
defect. He says he simply is at peace with his decision and wishes to
die," Wingate said.

State Attorney General Jim Hood has asked the state Supreme Court to set a
July 14 execution date, but Johnson has asked the court for a delay.

Mississippi Supreme Court spokeswoman Beverly Pettigrew Kraft said Friday
she did not know when the court would rule.

Wilcher, 44, was sentenced to death for the 1982 murders of 2 Scott County
mothers, Katie Belle Moore and Velma Odell Noblin. After the women agreed
to give him a ride home from a Forest bar, he diverted them down a side
road and stabbed them at least 20 times each. He was 19 at the time.

"I'm relieved to know that it's finally going to conclude," said Bill
Wilbourne, a neighbor of one victim. Previously, he had expressed
skepticism over whether the execution would actually happen.

Johnson said he will consider filing additional motions with Wingate and
other appeals options.

"I was appointed by the court to zealously represent Mr. Wilcher, and
that's exactly what I intend to do for as long as there's any possible
opportunity to protect him from execution at the hands of the state of
Mississippi," he said.

Mississippi's last execution was that of John B. Nixon Sr. on Dec. 14,
2005, for the the 1985 killing of Virginia Tucker of Brandon.

Johnson had argued Wilcher's mental competency and Johnson being out of
the country June 8 when Wilcher had stated in open court that he wanted to
dismiss his appeals were reasons to delay any further action.

But Wingate said, "He (Wilcher) has reminded his attorneys that he, not
they, should be the ultimate decision-maker as to these matters and that,
while he understands their zeal to continue to fight, he is committed to a
decision that he has reached after much reflection. This court agrees with
Wilcher that this call is his to make."

(source: Jackson Clarion Ledger)