April 29
TEXAS: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/DarlieRoutier/ If you would please take a few minutes to read this petition and sign it for Darlie I would appreciate it. I hope to gather enough signatures to present this to the District Attorney here in Dallas this summer. Perhaps we will succeed in getting her DNA tested or a new trial OR BOTH. I will have it available on the web site later this week but please circulate among your friends and family members as soon as you can. You may also post this link on web sites. Thank you, Darlie Kee CALIFORNIA: Still waiting----Ruling clears way for Morales' execution, but it's not over yet Michael Morales could be put to death by the end of the year. Morales, 48, was sentenced to die for the rape and murder of 17-year-old Terri Lynn Winchell. Had she lived, Winchell would be 44 today. It's taken that long - since 1981 - for her killer to face his punishment. He was arrested two days after the killing and convicted in 1983. Morales, among about a dozen San Joaquin County men on death row at San Quentin Prison, came within hours of being executed 2 years ago. He was reprieved, his case caught up in the nationwide debate over the suitability of the 3-drug cocktail used in most states' lethal injection protocols. A Kentucky case involving 2 convicted killers ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court on the issue of the chemical cocktail. The killers argued that the drug cocktail they faced in the death chamber would cause undue pain and suffering and therefore violated the cruel and unusual punishment prohibitions of the U.S. Constitution. As that case lingered, executions were halted nationwide. 35 states use lethal injection, although other methods also are used in some states. Last week, the high court ruled 7-2 that the Kentucky killers had not, in the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, "carried their burden of showing that the risk of pain" springs from a maladministration of the drugs. That opens the floodgates, death penalty supporters argue. It was a setback, opponents concede. But in death penalty cases, it's not over until it's over, and it's only over when the attending doctor enters the death chamber and declares death. Despite the Supreme Court's ruling and strong popular support for capital punishment, California still faces some hurdles. (The last capital punishment ballot initiative in 1978 was approved by 72 % of the voters.) For one thing, the procedure used in California differs from that used in Kentucky. It is unclear if the state will bring its lethal injection protocol in line with Kentucky's, which the high court has approved. For another, the U.S. district judge handling the Morales case, Jeremy Fogel of San Jose, has indicated he wants to visit the state's new death chamber at San Quentin. A hearing on Morales is scheduled for June 12. It would be foolhardy to assume Morales - 1st in line among the 669 men and women on California's death row - will die this year. So the man who used $11 from Terri Lynn Winchell's purse to buy beer, wine and cigarettes the night he killed her waits. And so do the rest of us. (source: Opinion, The Recorder, Apri. 28)
