July 6 URGENT ACTION APPEAL----OHIO ---------------------------------- 06 July 2006 UA 191/06 Death penalty / Legal concern USA (Ohio) Rocky Barton (m), white, aged 49 Rocky Barton is scheduled to be executed in Ohio on 12 July 2006. He was sentenced to death for the murder of his wife, Kimbirli Barton. He has given up his appeals against his conviction and sentence. Rocky Barton shot and killed Kimbirli Barton on 16 January 2003. He then shot himself in the head with his shotgun, but survived. At his trial for the murder, his defense was that the killing had not been premeditated. A jury rejected this and the trial went into its sentencing phase. Rocky Barton refused to have any mitigating evidence presented to the jury. Instead, he made the following statement to the jury: ''At this time my attorneys have advised me to beg for my life. I can't do that. I strongly believe in the death penalty. And for the ruthless, cold-blooded act that I committed, if I was sitting over there, I'd hold out for the death penaltyLife in prison would be a burden to all the citizens of Ohio. It would be at their cost. I wouldn't have nothing to worry about. I'd get fed every day, have a roof over my head, free medical, you people pay for it, I'd have a stress-free life. That's not much of a punishment. Punishment would be to wake up every day and have a date with death. That's the only punishment for this crime. That's all I've got to say''. In its 2006 affirmation of the death sentence on mandatory appeal, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected the argument that the trial judge should have inquired whether Rocky Barton was mentally competent to waive his right to present any mitigating evidence. It reached this conclusion by deciding that Barton's statement to the jury asking for the death penalty was mitigating evidence. Two of the Justices dissented. Justice Pfeifer wrote: ''Our country's most creative writers of fiction would be hard-pressed to spin Barton's statement as evidence offered in mitigation. Yet a majority of this court unquestioningly accepts that it was.'' He also wrote: ''I do not believe that the facts of this case justify imposing a sentence of death. The murder that Barton committed was heinous, and his guilt is undeniable, but Barton's crime is not deathworthy-- This case involves a hot-blooded domestic killing''. Chief Justice Moyer wrote: ''It is difficult to imagine more compelling indicia of incompetence'' than a defendant asking to be executed, and accused the majority of applying ''inverse logic'' to interpret the statement as mitigating. He added: ''I do not know whether Barton was competent to waive the presentation of mitigation evidence during the penalty phase of the trial. I do not know whether he understood the ramifications of his statements to the jury suggesting that he deserved the death penalty. On the record before us, no one can be certain of Barton's competence when he urged the jury to sentence him to death''. In a recent interview, in contrast to his assertion to the jury that it was a ''ruthless, cold-blooded'' murder, Rocky Barton recalled that the shooting was done on the ''spur of the moment'', and ''was not planned, calculated, designed''. He said that he had planned to kill himself in front of Kimbirli, but had then turned the gun on her: ''I don't know why I did. Can't tell you what was going through my mind at the time''. Rocky Barton is reported to have been diagnosed on death row as suffering from a major depressive illness and schizo-affective disorder, for which he has received medication. On 5 July 2006, a judge found him competent to waive his appeals, despite refusing to allow a psychiatric evaluation to determine competence. BACKGROUND INFORMATION In 1972, the US Supreme Court overturned the USA's capital laws after finding that the death penalty was being applied in an arbitrary manner (Furman v. Georgia). Four years later, in Gregg v. Georgia, the Court approved new laws passed by state legislatures. Executions resumed in January 1977 after almost a decade without them. There have been some 500,000 murders in the USA since 1977. In the same period about 7,000 people have been sentenced to death, just over 1,000 of whom have been executed and about 3,300 of whom remain on death row. The capital justice system, which attempts to select the ''worst of the worst'' crimes and offenders for execution, is marked by arbitrariness, discrimination and error. As the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions concluded in 1998, ''race, ethnic origin and economic status appear to be key determinants of who will, and who will not, receive a sentence of death'' in the USA. In 2000, the findings of a long-term study were released which concluded that US death sentences are ''persistently and systematically fraught with error'' that had required judicial remedy from the appeal courts. About one in 10 of the people executed since 1977 have been so-called ''volunteers'', prisoners who had dropped their appeals and ''consented'' to execution. Any number of factors may lead a prisoner not to pursue appeals against his or her death sentence, including mental disorder, physical illness, remorse, bravado, religious belief, the severity of conditions of confinement, including prolonged isolation and lack of physical contact visits, the bleak alternative of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, pessimism about appeal prospects, a quest for notoriety, or simply a desire to gain a semblance of control over a situation in which the prisoner is otherwise powerless. Rational or irrational, a decision taken by someone who is under threat of death at the hands of others cannot be consensual. What is more, it cannot disguise the fact that the state is involved in a premeditated killing part of a culture of violence, not a solution to it. Whether or not prisoners who ''ask'' to be executed are deluding themselves about the level of control they have gained over their fate -- after all, they are merely assisting their government in what it has set out to do anyway the state is guilty of a far greater deception. It is peddling its own illusion of control: that, by killing a selection of those it convicts of murder, it can offer a constructive contribution to efforts to defeat violent crime. In reality, the state is taking to refined, calculated heights what it seeks to condemn the deliberate taking of human life. While such executions are sometimes referred to as a form of state-assisted suicide, ''prisoner-assisted homicide'' would be a more accurate label. For if a death row inmate seeks to commit actual suicide, the state will make every effort to prevent it. The phenomenon of prisoners ''volunteering'' for execution contributes to the lottery of the death penalty. To put it another way, given the rate of reversible error found in capital cases, if the approximately 120 ''volunteers'' executed since 1977 had pursued their appeals, there is a significant possibility that a number of them would have had their death sentences overturned to prison terms by the appeal courts. (See also: USA: Blind faith, http://web.amnesty.org/library/pdf/AMR511002006ENGLISH/$File/AMR5110006.pdf; and The Illusion of Control, http://web.amnesty.org/library/pdf/AMR510532001ENGLISH/$File/AMR5105301.pdf). RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible: - expressing sympathy for those affected by the shooting of Kimbirli Barton and explaining that you are not seeking to downplay the seriousness of the crime or the suffering caused; - opposing the execution of Rocky Barton, noting his major depressive illness, the questions about his mental competency that have been raised, the dissenting opinion from the Chief Justice and another Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, and your opposition to the death penalty in general; - calling on the Governor to stop this execution and to grant clemency to Rocky Barton. APPEALS TO: Governor Bob Taft 30th Floor 77 South High Street Columbus, Ohio 43215-6117 Faxes: 1 614 466 9354 Email, via: http://governor.ohio.gov/contactinfopage.asp Salutation: Dear Governor PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. Amnesty International is a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and defends human rights. This Urgent Action may be reposted if kept intact, including contact information and stop action date (if applicable). Thank you for your help with this appeal. Urgent Action Network Amnesty International USA 600 Pennsylvania Ave SE 5th fl Washington DC 20003 Email: uan at aiusa.org http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/ Phone: 202.544.0200 Fax: 202.675.8566 ---------------------------------- END OF URGENT ACTION APPEAL ---------------------------------- ****************************** URGENT ACTION APPEAL----SOUTH CAROLINA ---------------------------------- 06 July 2006----UA 190/06 Death penalty / Legal concern USA (South Carolina) William Downs (m), white, aged 38 William Downs is scheduled to be executed in South Carolina on 14 July 2006. He was sentenced to death in 2002 for the rape and murder of Keenan O'Mailia, a six-year-old boy. William Downs has given up appeals against his conviction and death sentence. William Downs, who apparently attempted suicide while in pre-trial custody, insisted on pleading guilty to the murder of the boy. This meant that he waived his right to a jury trial. William Downs refused to allow his lawyer to present any mitigating evidence. His lawyer persuaded him to consider a plea of ''guilty but mentally ill'' by telling him that it could help others. Under South Carolina law, a defendant is guilty but mentally ill (GBMI) if, at the time of the crime, he or she could tell right from wrong, but was unable to conform his or her conduct to the requirements of the law ''because of mental disease or defect''. Shockingly, a successful plea of GBMI does not rule out the possibility of the death penalty (see pages 30-35 of AI report USA: The execution of mentally ill offenders, AMR 51/003/2006). The trial judge held a hearing on the question of whether a plea of ''guilty but mentally ill'' could be upheld. Of three doctors presented as expert witnesses at the hearing, only one concluded that William Downs was mentally ill as defined under the South Carolina GBMI statute. On 21 June 2002, the judge noted that the burden was on the defendant to prove this plea by a preponderance of the evidence, and ruled that this burden had not been met. The judge then accepted the unqualified guilty plea. The judge found a number of mitigating factors, including that William Downs had no significant history of violent conduct; and that his capacity to appreciate the criminality of his act or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law was ''substantially impaired''. Nevertheless, on 25 June 2002, the judge sentenced him to death. Just before the sentence was passed, the victim's mother reportedly stated that she forgave William Downs. William Downs' childhood was one marked by poverty as well as physical and sexual abuse. His father allegedly subjected the children to severe beatings, including with a fiberglass fishing pole, electric cords, and the handle of a cattle whip. On a least one occasion the children had to be taken for emergency hospital treatment. William Downs attempted suicide when he was 10 years old; the first of a number of attempts. William Downs has been found competent to waive his appeals. Various mental health experts have agreed that he suffers from depression, and have noted his numerous suicide attempts. At a hearing into his competency to waive his appeals, one of the doctors noted that William Downs may have suffered a major depressive episode in the past and that he has been unhappy all his life. A forensic psychiatrist testified that she did not have enough evidence to rule out a diagnosis of major depression, and could therefore not offer an opinion on his competency. The judge found that William Downs did not have a current desire to commit suicide, but that he preferred execution to imprisonment. The judge ruled him competent to drop his appeals. BACKGROUND INFORMATION In 1972, the US Supreme Court overturned the USA's capital laws after finding that the death penalty was being applied in an arbitrary manner (Furman v. Georgia). Four years later, in Gregg v. Georgia, the Court approved new laws passed by state legislatures. Executions resumed in January 1977 after almost a decade without them. There have been some 500,000 murders in the USA since 1977. In the same period about 7,000 people have been sentenced to death, just over 1,000 of whom have been executed and about 3,300 of whom remain on death row. The capital justice system, which attempts to select the ''worst of the worst'' crimes and offenders for execution, is marked by arbitrariness, discrimination and error. As the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions concluded in 1998, ''race, ethnic origin and economic status appear to be key determinants of who will, and who will not, receive a sentence of death'' in the USA. In 2000, the findings of a long-term study were released which concluded that US death sentences are ''persistently and systematically fraught with error'' that had required judicial remedy from the appeal courts. About one in 10 of the people executed since 1977 have been so-called ''volunteers'', prisoners who had dropped their appeals and ''consented'' to execution. Any number of factors may lead a prisoner not to pursue appeals against his or her death sentence, including mental disorder, physical illness, remorse, bravado, religious belief, the severity of conditions of confinement, including prolonged isolation and lack of physical contact visits, the bleak alternative of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, pessimism about appeal prospects, a quest for notoriety, or simply a desire to gain a semblance of control over a situation in which the prisoner is otherwise powerless. Rational or irrational, a decision taken by someone who is under threat of death at the hands of others cannot be consensual. What is more, it cannot disguise the fact that the state is involved in a premeditated killing - part of a culture of violence, not a solution to it. Whether or not prisoners who ''ask'' to be executed are deluding themselves about the level of control they have gained over their fate after all, they are merely assisting their government in what it has set out to do anyway the state is guilty of a far greater deception. It is peddling its own illusion of control: that, by killing a selection of those it convicts of murder, it can offer a constructive contribution to efforts to defeat violent crime. In reality, the state is taking to refined, calculated heights what it seeks to condemn the deliberate taking of human life. While such executions are sometimes referred to as a form of state-assisted suicide, ''prisoner- assisted homicide'' would be a more accurate label. For if a death row inmate seeks to commit actual suicide, the state will make every effort to prevent it.The phenomenon of prisoners ''volunteering'' for execution contributes to the lottery of the death penalty. To put it another way, given the rate of reversible error found in capital cases, if the approximately 120 ''volunteers'' executed since 1977 had pursued their appeals, there is a significant possibility that a number of them would have had their death sentences overturned to prison terms by the appeal courts. RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible: - expressing sympathy for the family of Keenan O'Mailia, and explaining that you are not seeking to downplay the seriousness of the crime or the suffering caused; - opposing the execution of William Downs, noting his background of childhood abuse, depressive illness and suicide attempts, the questions about his mental competency that have been raised, and your opposition to the death penalty in general; - calling on the Governor to stop this execution and to grant clemency to William Downs. APPEALS TO: Governor Mark Sanford Office of the Governor, PO Box 12267 Columbia, SC 29211 Fax: 1 803 734 5167 Email: via website: http://www.scgovernor.com/Contact.asp?sitecontentid=33 Salutation: Dear Governor PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. Amnesty International is a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and defends human rights. This Urgent Action may be reposted if kept intact, including contact information and stop action date (if applicable). Thank you for your help with this appeal. Urgent Action Network Amnesty International USA 600 Pennsylvania Ave SE 5th fl Washington DC 20003 Email: uan at aiusa.org http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/ Phone: 202.544.0200 Fax: 202.675.8566 ---------------------------------- END OF URGENT ACTION APPEAL ---------------------------------- ******************************************* URGENT ACTION APPEAL----MISSISSIPPI 06 July 2006 UA 189/06 Death penalty / Legal concern USA (Mississippi): Bobby Glen Wilcher (m), white, aged 44 Bobby Wilcher is scheduled for execution in Mississippi on the evening of 11 July. He was sentenced to death in 1984 for the murder of Katie Belle Moore and Velma Odell Noblin who were stabbed to death in Bienville National Forest in central Mississippi in March 1982. Bobby Wilcher has been on death row for more than two decades. He was 19 years old at the time of the crime. He is now 44. He has given up his appeals. Bobby Wilcher's lawyer is continuing to seek to have the execution stayed by the courts, arguing that Wilcher should have a mental evaluation to determine his competency to waive his appeals. Bobby Wilcher suffers from bipolar disorder, a serious mental illness for which he takes medication on death row. In addition to bipolar disorder, Bobby Wilcher has a long history of psychological problems, including suicide attempts. On 14 June 2006, a federal judge found Wilcher competent to waive his appeals, after a hearing held at short notice without expert testimony presented. Over recent years, conditions on Mississippi's death row have been severely criticized, including in relation to the psychological impact of these conditions and the poor mental health care provided. In May 2003, a federal judge ruled that the conditions in the State Penitentiary offended ''contemporary concepts of decency, human dignity and precepts of civilization which we profess to possess''. Judge Jerry Davis found that death row inmates were being subjected to ''profound isolation, intolerable stench and filth, consistent exposure to human excrement, dangerously high temperatures and humidity, insect infestations, deprivation of basic mental health care, and constant exposure to severely psychotic inmates in adjoining cells.'' Among other things, the federal judge found that: the filthy conditions impacted on the mental health of inmates; the probability of heat-related illness was high for death row inmates, particularly those suffering from mental illness who either did not take appropriate steps to deal with the heat or whose medications interfere with the human body's temperature regulation; the exposure to the severely psychotic individuals was intolerable; the mental health care provided to inmates was ''grossly inadequate''; and the isolation of death row, combined with the conditions on it and the fact that its population are awaiting execution, would weaken even the strongest individual. In 2004, the US Court of Appeals ''agree[d] that the conditions of inadequate mental health care do present a risk of serious harm to the inmates' mental and physical health. Again, the obvious and pervasive nature of these conditions supports the conclusion that [Mississippi Department of Correction] officials displayed a deliberate indifference to these conditions.'' While the authorities have recently improved the environmental conditions on death row following the lawsuit brought against them, there has been an ongoing struggle to ensure adequate medical and mental health care. Over the past decade, the UN Commission on Human Rights repeatedly adopted resolutions calling for an end to the use of the death penalty against anyone suffering from any form of mental disorder. Scores of prisoners with histories of mental illness have been executed in the USA since 1977 (see AI report USA: The execution of mentally ill offenders, http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510032006). BACKGROUND INFORMATION In 1972, the US Supreme Court overturned the USA's capital laws after finding that the death penalty was being applied in an arbitrary manner (Furman v. Georgia). Four years later, in Gregg v. Georgia, the Court looked at new laws drafted by state legislatures and approved them. Executions resumed in January 1977 after almost a decade without them. There have been approximately 500,000 murders in the USA since 1977. In the same period about 7,000 people have been sentenced to death, just over 1,000 of whom have been executed and about 3,300 of whom remain on death row. The US capital justice system, which attempts to select the ''worst of the worst'' crimes and offenders for execution, is marked by arbitrariness, discrimination and error. As the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions concluded in 1998, ''race, ethnic origin and economic status appear to be key determinants of who will, and who will not, receive a sentence of death'' in the USA. In June 2000, the findings of a long-term study were released which concluded that US death sentences are ''persistently and systematically fraught with error'' that had required judicial remedy from the appeal courts. About one in 10 of the people executed in the USA since 1977 have been so-called ''volunteers'', death row prisoners who had dropped their appeals and ''consented'' to execution. Any number of factors may lead a prisoner not to pursue appeals against his or her death sentence, including mental disorder, physical illness, remorse, bravado, religious belief, the severity of conditions of confinement, including prolonged isolation and lack of physical contact visits, the bleak alternative of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, pessimism about appeal prospects, a quest for notoriety, or simply a desire to gain a semblance of control over a situation in which the prisoner is otherwise powerless. Rational or irrational, a decision taken by someone who is under threat of death at the hands of others cannot be consensual. What is more, it cannot disguise the fact that the state is involved in a premeditated killing, a human rights violation that is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it. Whether or not a prisoner who ''asks'' to be executed is deluding himself or herself about the level of control they have gained over their fate after all, they are merely assisting their government in what it has set out to do anyway - " the state is guilty of a far greater deception. It is peddling its own illusion of control: that, by killing a selection of those it convicts of murder, it can offer a constructive contribution to efforts to defeat violent crime. In reality, the state is taking to refined, calculated heights what it seeks to condemn " the deliberate taking of human life. The phenomenon of prisoners ''volunteering'' for execution is yet another factor contributing to the lottery of the death penalty. To put it another way, given the rate of reversible error found in capital cases, if the approximately 120 ''volunteers'' executed since 1977 had pursued their appeals, there is a significant possibility that a number of them would have had their death sentences overturned to prison terms by the appeal courts. RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible: - expressing sympathy for those affected by the murders of Katie Belle Moore and Velma Odell Noblin and explaining that you are not seeking to downplay the seriousness of these crimes or the suffering caused; - opposing the execution of Bobby Wilcher, noting his mental illness, the questions about his mental competency that have been raised, the potential impact on his decision to waive his appeals of the appalling conditions that have been found on Mississippi's death row in recent years, and your opposition to the death penalty in general; - calling on the Governor to stop this execution and to grant clemency to Bobby Wilcher. APPEALS TO: Haley Barbour Governor of Mississippi P.O. Box 139 Jackson MS 39205 Fax: 1 601 576 2791 Salutation: Dear Governor PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. All appeals must arrive by 11 July 2006. Amnesty International is a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and defends human rights. This Urgent Action may be reposted if kept intact, including contact information and stop action date (if applicable). Thank you for your help with this appeal. Urgent Action Network Amnesty International USA 600 Pennsylvania Ave SE 5th fl Washington DC 20003 Email: uan at aiusa.org http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/ Phone: 202.544.0200 Fax: 202.675.8566 ---------------------------------- END OF URGENT ACTION APPEAL ----------------------------------
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----OHIO, S.C., MISS.
Rick Halperin Thu, 6 Jul 2006 17:37:30 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
