[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, S.C., ARIZ., MONT.

[Rick Halperin]

August 20



TEXAS:

Karla Faye Tucker, and Aileen Wuornos: Murders and Monsters


2 women on death row were executed between 1990 and now. One was Karla
Faye Tucker, the second, Aileen Wuornos.

Those people in favor of the death penalty scream out "Let the bitch fry!
She killed other human beings!" Those against the death penalty lash out
"Let them sit in prison and think about what they have done for the rest
of their lives!"

Karla Faye Tucker in the late 1980's hacked an ex-lover and an innocent
woman to death. This was a culmination of an almost weeklong drug binge.
Tucker took a pick -ax and once said she had a "sexual climax" with every
stroke she took. She and her accomplice then bragged about the gruesome
murder of the 2 to their siblings who finally turned the 2 in.

Horrible, gross, disgusting, inhumane. Let the bitch fry!

Aileen Wuornos is known as "America's First Woman Serial Killer." She
killed 7 men who had picked her up as a prostitute. Her claim was that
each man had attempted to rape her. Each shot she fired was in
self-defense, and she tried to hide the bodies. Unthinkable, Unimaginable,
Hateful, unforgivable. Let the bitch fry!

A young girl was forced into prostitution at age fourteen by her mother.
She was taking part in sexual orgies by age 10. By that age, she had done
every type of drug imaginable, marijuana, speed and cocaine. On top of
that, her mother told her the man she had been calling dad for all her
years was not really her dad at all. She was the product of a one-night
stand.

She took into doing more drugs, getting involved in more prostitution and
hanging out with the wrong crowds. She was 23 when she committed the
murder. This young girl had her life taken away. She never had a
childhood. Nobody wanted to help her. The state of Texas that was supposed
to "leave no child behind" had abandoned Karla Faye Tucker. The state
Department of Children and Family Services had closed their eyes and
turned their back.

Once clean, she realized what she had done. Does this take her crime away?
Never. Tucker never wanted to get out of prison; she just wanted a chance
to live out the rest of her life. She felt that people might learn
something from her. They also might realize that with proper treatment and
care, people can change. The system failed her and did not give her a
chance at childhood. The state never gave her a chance at life. Let the
bitch fry.

A young girl's father was imprisoned for raping a 5-year-old girl. In
prison, he commits suicide. She is abandoned by her alcoholic mother, and
adopted by her grandparents. They do not reveal they are grandparents
until years later. She is pregnant at 14. The baby boy is given up for
adoption.

The staff at the home says she is "uncooperative and incorrigible" She
takes off and becomes a prostitute trying to make money quickly. She is
left to take care of her siblings. One sibling commits suicide, the other
dies of throat cancer. The young girl is left alone to fend for herself.
She heads for Florida. The young woman picks up a drug habit and a
girlfriend. The only time she ever thought she felt loved.

Aileen Wuornos, like Karla Faye Ticker had no chance at life. They were
born into horrible situations, of which the state did not take notice. A
father who raped a child? A mother who was an alcoholic and abandoned her?
What was this woman supposed to do? What could she have done? More backs
turned. Another child left behind.

Let the bitch fry. Moreover, that is exactly what we did.They may have
committed these horrible crimes, and deserve punishment, but we failed
them miserably as children. Leave a child behind, and see what they
become.

(source: AC News)





SOUTH CAROLINA:

Physicians split over use of doctors at executions----Debate sparked after
ruling in North Carolina


Minutes after witnesses noticed the last sign of life leave Shawn
Humphries last December, a man walked into the execution chamber from a
side door, lifted Humphries' eyelids and then listened to his chest with a
stethoscope.

Sentenced to die for killing a Fountain Inn store owner, Humphries had
just been injected with a lethal mix of chemicals.

The man with the stethoscope nodded to one of the wardens standing nearby,
who announced Humphries was dead.

South Carolina's prisons director would not say who that man was, though
state law says who it can't be and the American Medical Association says
who it shouldn't be.

Capital punishment, long a divisive issue in American society, has split
physicians and politicians over the use of medical professionals in
executions. Their playing supporting roles has become more common
nationally with the advent of lethal injection.

But some physicians, and the AMA, believe using doctors violates a
physician's oath to save lives. The issue has been heightened recently by
some defense lawyers' arguments that medical expertise is needed to
prevent the injections from becoming a constitutionally prohibited type of
cruel and unusual punishment.

Last month, the North Carolina Medical Board voted to ban physicians from
doing anything other than watching an execution.

Dr. Louis Costa II, vice president of South Carolina's medical board and
its official spokesman, said the issue has never come up before the
10-member panel and no doctor has ever been disciplined for participating
in an execution.

Nonetheless, he said, given the North Carolina board's action, his board
will likely debate the issue when it meets again in November. He said,
however, that he does not personally object to doctors participating in
executions.

"I would have no problem as a physician, or have a physician, be part of
the actual process, nor the pronouncement of death afterward," he said. "I
might be the only member of the board that feels that way, because we have
not discussed that. I would want the public to know that I would never use
that to sway the direction of the board if there were other directives we
had to observe in the process that would contraindicate my personal
opinion."

The AMA issued its opinion in 1980.

"The American Medical Association is troubled by continuous refusal of
many state courts and legislatures to acknowledge the ethical obligations
of physicians, which strictly prohibit physician involvement in a legally
authorized execution," said Dr. William Plested III, president of the AMA,
in a July statement.

"The AMA's policy is clear and unambiguous -- requiring physicians to
participate in executions violates their oath to protect lives and erodes
public confidence in the medical profession."

South Carolina Department of Corrections Director Jon Ozmint declined to
answer questions about physician involvement, citing "security reasons," a
spokeswoman told The Greenville News. Richland County Coroner Gary Watts
said the prison system uses one of its physicians at each execution at the
Broad River Correctional Facility. He said he doesn't know what the
physicians do. He said a member of his staff also attends.

Defense lawyers who represented a man executed 2 years ago said the exact
makeup of the team was not disclosed to them but said emergency medical
technicians were involved. In court documents filed then, the lawyers said
a paramedic mixed the chemicals used for lethal injection and also
prepared the inmate.

Adam Myrick, a spokesman for the state Department of Health and
Environmental Control, which regulates paramedics, said the agency is not
aware of involvement by paramedics in executions, which he said is not
allowed.

"That is not something they are legally able to do," he said. "Their scope
of practice doesn't allow for that. Basically they are licensed for
prehospital treatment to save people. They are not, in this state,
involved in the other side of that, the preparation of any kind of a
lethal punishment in a Department of Corrections stage."

David Barron, one of the lawyers representing David Clayton Hill, executed
in 2004, said it was his understanding at the time that a physician was
used in executions to pronounce the inmate's death. He said he also
understood that paramedics and physician's assistants also were used in
executions, but not as executioners.

The North Carolina Medical Board in July gave preliminary approval to a
proposal that would allow physicians to attend executions but not to
engage in "any verbal or physical activity that facilitates the
execution," according to the board's Web site. North Carolina law requires
that a physician be present at an execution.

The new policy came after some doctors asked the board for advice in a
case in which a death row inmate's lawyers asked a judge to require that
an anesthesiologist be present at the prisoner's execution. The lawyers
argued that only an anesthesiologist could determine if an inmate was
unconscious when lethal drugs were administered.

Defense attorneys nationwide, including the 2 lawyers who represented
South Carolina inmate Hill in 2004, have argued that unless an inmate
receives enough of the drug to make him unconscious, he could suffer a
painful death, a violation of the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual
punishment.

In Hill's case, his lawyers used a federal subpoena to acquire the drug
levels of executed inmates in South Carolina. They alleged that 1/4 of the
state's executions since 1998 have been "botched" because officials did
not use enough of the drug to first induce unconsciousness.

In California, the refusal by anesthesiologists to participate in an
inmate's execution earlier this year resulted in the suspension of
executions there.

In North Carolina, a federal judge who ordered prison officials to be sure
an inmate was unconscious before injecting lethal drugs ruled that it was
acceptable to use a brain-wave monitor. Officials disclosed that a doctor
and a nurse stand in the room where the monitor is located during
executions.

Monitoring vital signs and brain waves violates the AMA's ethics code,
according to the AMA.

Costa said while his board uses the AMA code in making decisions, there is
no legal requirement that they enforce every AMA opinion.

"There have been instances where we have made exceptions," he said. "A
significant number of physicians in this state are not members of the
American Medical Association because they find themselves in such conflict
with some of the AMA's policies."

He said while he does not know how the board feels about the issue of
doctors participating in executions, his sense is that the board will not
follow North Carolina's example.

"South Carolina has tilted historically toward understanding the
justification, if not in some instances the virtue, of capital
punishment," he said. "I would be surprised if the board accepted the
AMA's recommendation outright. I would only presume that it would require
some constructive debate to come to our conclusion. I personally would be
surprised if they didn't allow it to exist status quo."

(source: Greenville News)

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

Killing a man not to be taken lightly


Stephen Stanko deserves to die.

I'm just not sure I deserve to kill him.

Let's face it. He raped and tried to murder a 15-year-old girl, killed a
live-in girlfriend and is alleged to have killed another man. He hasn't
officially been convicted of that last crime but, given his track record,
it's hard to extend him the benefit of doubt.

He terrorized our community the day he did all of this and triggered a
nationwide manhunt. And that was after he spent nearly a decade in jail
for assaulting and kidnapping a former companion.

His insanity and brain-damage and the
cops-should-have-stopped-me-before-I-killed-those-people defense seemed
hollow, as though his attorneys were grasping at straws, throwing any and
every excuse imaginable at the jury in the hopes something would connect
with at least one of the 12 men and women charged with determining his
fate.

It was laughable when a defense expert testified that Stanko's mother told
him Stanko changed after being hit in the head with a bottle when he was
15 years old.

That doesn't mean we should ignore mitigating factors in crimes, including
genetic makeup - which an increasing number of studies show has influence
in the decisions we make - brain abnormalities, environment and others.
Most or all of our behavior likely results from a combination of those
factors, not simply free will.

That's why a jury in Texas was right during a retrial when it recently
found Andrea Yates guilty by reason of insanity for killing her 5
children.

But nothing emerged in Stanko's trial to convince me he didn't know that
raping, killing and kidnapping were illegal, wrong and immoral acts. Yates
was different. She was delusional and killed her kids after having visions
that suggested if they lived they'd fall into the clutches of Satan.

Besides, Stanko's long criminal track record and unrepentant demeanor
proves he is a menace who must permanently be removed from society.

In many cases, a guilty verdict doesn't necessarily mean the defendant
actually committed the crime, just that prosecutors convinced a jury that
he most likely did. There's little doubt Stanko did what prosecutors and
his 15-year-old victim said he did, including leaving that girl to die
after slashing her neck.

If the death penalty is eventually administered in this case, no one will
worry that maybe an innocent man met an untimely death. Stanko is not
innocent.

But to kill him because he killed? Do it if you must. Just not in my name.

(source: Myrtle Beach Sun News)






ARIZONA:

Protective powers


U.S. CONSTITUTION: SIXTH AMENDMENT

"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a
speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district
wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have
been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and
cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him;
to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to
have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."

Editor's note: The U.S. Constitution lays down the structure of the
government and separates the powers among three distinct branches -
legislative, executive and judicial. The landmark document was signed
Sept. 17, 1787. Subsequently, the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments
to the Constitution, went into effect Dec. 15, 1791.

The Constitution imposes a series of checks and balances among the
branches of government. The Bill of Rights guarantees that government
cannot take away rights from its citizens and protects citizens from
excessive government power.

Today: the Sixth Amendment

The Sixth Amendment is one part of the Bill of Rights shield that stands
between the people and an overzealous, powerful government. It requires
that the government tell a person what charges he is facing, what evidence
will be used against him and gives him the right to confront his accusers
in a public trial.

"It's so important because without the Sixth Amendment, the government -
state or federal - would be able to charge and convict people and they
wouldn't be able to mount a defense," said Victoria Brambl, an assistant
federal public defender in Tucson. "The overwhelming majority of people
who are charged with crimes can't afford counsel, especially when you get
into the more serious crimes. This makes sure they're treated fairly."

For most of the United States' history, a person could be charged with a
serious crime in a state court and be forced to go to trial without an
attorney.

It wasn't until 1963 - yes, 1963 - that states were required to provide
counsel to defendants who were facing jail time but were too poor to hire
a lawyer.

Until the landmark Gideon v. Wainwright decision from the U.S. Supreme
Court, only indigent defendants in federal court were afforded free
representation and some states provided an attorney to people charged with
murder or facing the death penalty.

The Sixth Amendment provided the legal basis for the Gideon decision that
prompted the creation of public defenders' offices and required states to
provide attorneys for defendants charged with felonies who cannot pay for
an attorney, even if they face only jail time, not the death penalty.

"It doesn't level the playing field completely, but with respect to the
quality of the sides in the battle, it certainly helps redress the
balance," said University of Arizona law professor Charles Ares. "I think
most people, if faced with the question of should a defendant, whoever
they are, be denied counsel just because they can't afford a lawyer, I
think most people would say no."

Effects of poverty

The Gideon decision didn't happen overnight. It came in the context of an
increasing national awareness on the destabilizing effect that poverty has
on many problems in American society, including the criminal justice
system.

"It just seems so self-evidently right to me, unless you can say people
only have rights that they can afford," said Ares. "I've tried lots of
cases and the thought of some poor, uneducated person facing a prosecutor
without a lawyer is just bizarre."

If a trial could be shown as unfair because a defendant didn't have an
attorney and the person was convicted and appealed, the lack of counsel
was sometimes successful grounds for a due process argument, he said.

Justice - already too often perverted by racial discrimination, hatred and
turned blind eyes - was further twisted by the uneven playing field of
economics. Before 1963, people charged in state court who could afford a
legal defense got one - and those who couldn't, simply didn't.

"You got a different result in different jurisdictions," said Tucson
attorney Brian Laird. "Tradition in many jurisdictions was that if the
judge felt a defendant couldn't afford an attorney and it was a very
serious or capital case, he would point to a lawyer in the courtroom and
say 'You're defending him.' "

And because the appointed attorney had no expectation of getting paid,
those cases sometimes weren't a priority for the attorney. "You might not
get the best representation," Laird said.

The Gideon case signaled a shift in thinking, although the legal playing
field remains undeniably uneven. A wealthy defendant can afford legal
brain trusts and fleets of investigators to fight criminal charges, while
most can never afford to do the same.

"There was a good deal of upheaval. It meant states had to shoulder the
burden of providing counsel, and that's incredibly important in criminal
proceedings," Ares said. "There was opposition to it; there were people
who resented that taxpayers would have to foot the bill for the defense of
criminals as well as the prosecution."

Pima County paid nearly $19 million last year to defend people who
couldn't afford their own attorneys. That figure includes the county
defender's office as well as payments to private attorneys appointed to
defend clients that the county office couldn't handle because of workload
or conflicts of interest within cases, according to a story by Star
reporter Kim Smith.

There are some limits to the free defense ruling, however. For example, in
Arizona you are eligible for a free defense if you are charged with a
felony or are facing a misdemeanor that carries jail time, like a DUI. But
don't expect a free attorney for a traffic ticket that could result in
only a fine.

The Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial has been adopted into criminal
codes, and now prosecutors have time limits that govern how they proceed,
said Rick Unklesbay, chief trial counsel for the Pima County Attorney's
Office. In Arizona defendants must, generally speaking, go to trial within
150 days of arraignment. In death penalty cases, it's extended to a year
and a half, he said.

Right to jury trial shifting

The Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial is also evolving through cases
before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Juries consider cases and decide the facts of the case beyond a reasonable
doubt. But judges, Brambl said, are allowed to make decisions based on a
preponderance of the evidence - a lower bar - and that is where the Sixth
Amendment comes into play.

For example, the Sixth Amendment provided the legal basis for a 2002 U.S.
Supreme Court ruling on a Phoenix case that has sent up to 40 death
penalty cases back to court to reconsider sentencing. In Ring v. Arizona
the high court found that the practice of allowing judges to decide if
aggravating factors existed to warrant the death penalty was
unconstitutional. It said that juries must determine if factors which push
the punishment from life in prison to death exist.

The decision overturned a 1990 ruling that stemmed from a Tucson case
where the U.S. Supreme Court decided judge-imposed death penalties did not
violate the Sixth Amendment.

The result is that three high-profile Pima County death penalty cases -
those of Robert Moody, Scott D. Nordstrom and Shad Armstrong - will likely
head back to court for sentencing trials within the next year, Unklesbay
said. The convictions are not in question, but new juries must hear the
cases and determine if the death penalty or life in prison is warranted.

Given the inherent pitfalls of the death penalty - such as uneven
application along economic and racial lines, and new DNA evidence
overturning death row convictions across the country - any additional
steps and scrutiny should be welcome, even though the new trials may
present logistical obstacles to prosecutors.

"It's a whole exciting area - it all just boils down to trying to
determine and figure out what judges can do and what has to be decided by
a jury, and that's all based on the idea of the Sixth Amendment," Brambl
said. "It protects people from their government."

Go online to www.azstarnet.com/special/usconstitution

U.S. CONSTITUTION: SIXTH AMENDMENT

"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a
speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district
wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have
been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and
cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him;
to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to
have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."

(source: Opinion, Sarah Gassen, Arizona Daily Star)






MONTANA:

City Lights: Death proves absolute, but answers don't


Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death." David Dawson
shortened the phrase to "Give me death." On Aug. 11, the state of Montana
granted his wish.

And though Dawson is now dead, the debate over capital punishment lives
on. Diane Barz, who was a District Court judge when she sentenced Dawson
to die, neatly summed up the difficulties of that debate.

"The years that have gone by haven't completely erased my thoughts about
whether or not the death penalty is the appropriate punishment in any
case," Barz said. "However, if it is appropriate punishment, this case is
the one to impose it."

It's hard to argue with that. Twenty years ago, Dawson murdered a Billings
couple and their 11-year-old son. He never offered a hint as to his
motives, and he never showed an ounce of remorse.

But in asking for death, Dawson showed how thorny the issue can be. If we
want to punish someone like Dawson, aren't we doing him a favor by
honoring his final request? Or, if you think capital punishment is
inherently immoral, what do you make of Dawson's evident conclusion that
death is better than prison?

He ended his appeals and asked to be released from life only 2 years ago,
after 18 years in a maximum-security cell in Deer Lodge. I don't know what
those cells look like now, but I toured the max unit at Montana State
Prison in the early 1980s, and believe me, sentencing anyone to live
inside those bleak walls ought to satisfy the strongest desire for revenge
or punishment.

No frills in max

The tiny cells had nothing in them but a concrete cot, a small steel sink
and a steel toilet. Between the cells was a common area you could spit
across, and it contained nothing but a couple of immovable tables and
chairs. The prisoners didn't leave their cells for more than an hour and a
half a day, and occasionally they were taken out, alone, to spend a few
minutes in a caged yard.

After 18 years of that, it's no wonder Dawson wanted out.

For my part, I like the idea of making criminals sit and think about their
crimes for 18 years - or 30 or 40 or 50 years. What does that say about
me? If I wanted Dawson to suffer, why wouldn't I also want him dead? And
if punishment is what we're after, why do we kill people by lethal
injection?

Administered correctly, a lethal injection produces a perfectly painless
death, one vouchsafed only to that small percentage of people lucky enough
to die of old age in their sleep. If punishment is the goal, death by
firing squad, hanging or the electric chair must be a lot more satisfying.

Among the British, not all that long ago in historical terms, public
hangings were a common spectacle attended by people of all ages, and by
vendors hawking treats and trinkets. Such events were also popular among
pickpockets, which speaks poorly of the deterrent effect of capital
punishment, since theft back then could get you hanged.

The 'humane' alternative

The French invented the guillotine, which we think of today as a
particularly gruesome device. But because it killed instantly and cleanly,
it was proposed as a humane alternative to beheading by sword or ax,
reserved for the nobility, or hanging, the fate of commoners.

I just read about a novel form of execution in a book about Genghis Kahn,
founder of the Mongol empire. Despite their well-deserved reputation for
ferocity, the Mongols had strong taboos against touching blood or a dead
body, so they would roll a condemned man up in felt blankets and kick him
to death. Toss out the rug and you're done.

It might seem ridiculous to worry so much about how we dispatch a criminal
whose crimes showed an absence of pity or humanity, but how else do we
draw a line between wicked individuals and what we hope is a just society?
And if we want to be a just society, how do we tell ourselves it's
allowable to victimize still more people - the innocent family and friends
of a condemned criminal, whose pain is all the worse because they can't
even expect any sympathy?

Then I think of Amy, the 15-year-old daughter of the murdered couple, who
wasn't killed by Dawson and who survived two days of horror before being
rescued. The day after Dawson's execution, the family member who took Amy
in after the murders said: "I do believe she finally feels this whole
chapter is done. She'll never have it hanging over her head again."

If Dawson's passing brought Amy peace, and if he wanted to go, shouldn't
we all be happy?

There are more questions than answers, which is the point. Unless your
mind is made up one way or another, you take each case as it comes and try
to latch onto what seems to make sense, what seems to hold out the best
hope for justice. That's what Judge Barz did, and what most of us will
continue to do.

(source: The Billings Gazette)