[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----ALA., PENN., GA.

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 2




ALABAMA:

Death chamber one of busiest ---- Alabama No. 2 in executions in 2007


Alabama's 3 executions tied for 2nd nationally in 2007, while
federal judges halted 3 other execution dates the state set during an
informal nationwide moratorium on putting killers to death, a study shows.

The number of executions in the United States reached a 13-year low in
2007, according to an annual report by the Death Penalty Information
Center. New death sentences hit a 31-year valley.

Public support for capital punishment rose slightly to 69 percent in 2007,
the report said, citing a Gallup poll.

But one state, New Jersey, abolished the death penalty, and legislatures
in three other states came close to following suit. New York also dropped
the death penalty after a state court declared it unconstitutional.

"It was quite a momentous year," said Richard Dieter, executive director
of the Washington-based clearinghouse on capital punishment data.

"We had the 1st state to abolish the death penalty in 40 years," he
said. "And although a national moratorium has not specifically been
court-ordered, the net effect is all executions are on hold."

The annual study by the Death Penalty Information Center compiles data
from a variety of sources, noting trends in the imposition and use of the
death penalty, public support and events affecting the issue.

Lethal injections:

No executions have been conducted since the U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 25
agreed to hear a challenge to the 3 drugs Kentucky uses in its lethal
injections. With the exception of Nebraska, all of the 38 states and
federal jurisdictions with the death penalty use lethal injection.

But while most states voluntarily stopped setting execution dates, federal
judges had to step in to halt Alabama's attempts late this year to put to
death three of its convicted murderers: James Callahan, Thomas D. Arthur
and Daniel Lee Siebert.

In Alabama, the state Supreme Court sets execution dates after the state
attorney general certifies that all required appeals have been completed.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the Kentucky case next
week. A decision is not expected until the end of the court's term in
June.

More than 40 murderers were granted stays of execution nationwide because
of the lethal-injection challenge, the study said.

"Once the court clears the way for executions to resume, there could be a
surge due to that backlog," Dieter said. "But with fewer people coming in
to death row, the numbers of executions will level off. There seems to be
less confidence in the death penalty and less reliance on it. It will
remain, but it will be used less."

Other trends noted in the report include:

The annual number of executions dropped 57 percent between 1999 and 2007,
when 42 murderers were put to death. In 1999, 98 killers were executed,
the most in any year since capital punishment resumed in 1976, 4 years
after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all existing death penalty laws
and sentences.

Of the 10 states that held executions in 2007, Texas led with 26
executions, 62 % of the national total. Alabama and Oklahoma each
had 3 executions.

The number of new death row inmates was the lowest since 1976. The 110 new
death sentences represented a 60 % reduction from the peak year of
1999.

Alabama's numbers remained steady, with 13 death sentences in both 2006
and 2007, according to state Department of Corrections data. Alabama's
death sentences in 2007 accounted for 12 % of the national total.

More than 3,400 condemned killers are on death row nationwide. Alabama's
death row population of 200 inmates ranks 5th nationally.

3 condemned men were exonerated on appeals or retrials in 2007, 1 each
from Tennessee, Oklahoma and North Carolina. Since 1973, 126 condemned
men have been cleared of capital murders.

(source:  Birmingham News)



PENNSYLVANIA:

Pa. Supreme Court rejects Copenhefer's death penalty appeal


Pennsylvania's Supreme Court has refused to overturn the death sentence
for convicted Erie County murderer and kidnapper David Copenhefer.

The 60-year-old Copenhefer is on death row for the 1988 kidnap and murder
of Sally Weiner, a 37-year-old wife and mother of 2. Authorities say
Copenhefer kidnapped Weiner in an effort to extort money from her husband,
a bank manager. Weiner eventually shot Weiner.

The state Supreme Court says Copenhefer's appeal was filed too late.

Copenhefer still has an appeal pending in federal court. He claims the
trial judge erred by not telling jurors to consider his clean criminal
record before the jury sentenced him to death.

(source:  Associated Press)








OREGON:

Inmates carrying out ministry from death row By


>From a windowless cell at Oregon State Penitentiary, a Catholic death row
inmate evangelizes across the world.

A former white supremacist, Jeff Tiner is now inspired by a humble African
saint. He resists publicity for himself, saying he wants only to spread
the story of St. Josephine Bakhita far and wide. He uses most of this time
and resources to support the Canossian Sisters, the religious community
St. Bakhita joined more than a century ago. <P>

At one time, Tiner had other priorities. In 1993 in Springfield, he
allegedly shot a man in consort with a woman who wanted the victim out of
the house and away from her children. Tiner, court records say, disposed
of the body in a remote area of the Cascade Range. He had been in trouble
with the law before and bore tattoos of a swastika and the words "White
Pride."

Years after being convicted, inmate Tiner was sitting despondent in his
cell. A letter appeared under his door. The writer, calling herself his
"Swiss Mum", informed him that Jesus, Mary and Josephine Bakhita loved
him.

Huh?

Tiner tried to throw what he considered a zany screed into the waste bag,
but it fell short. He bent over to grab it for another try and it felt as
if the letter jumped into his hand. He placed it on his desk and returned
to other projects. But the letter nagged him and he felt a small stir of
the soul.

Tiner wrote back to the stranger, telling her that he did not know he was
Swiss and inquiring about this Bakhita woman.

As time went by, he received more letters and pamphlets from his Swiss
friend, a lay member of the Canossian order who had read about death row
inmates on the Internet. She taught him about the Sudanese saint.

Born to an important family in the Darfur region in 1869, Bakhita was
kidnapped at age 6 by Arab slave traders. Treated brutally, she was sold
and resold five times, falling at one point into the hands of an Ottoman
army officer who marked her as his with scars and tattoos.

Sold to an Italian diplomat when she was still a teen, she went to Venice
and met the Canossian Sisters, an Italian order that had been founded in
1808. Bakhita sought baptism in 1890. A court later found that Italian law
did not recognize slavery and so she was freed.

She chose to stay with the sisters. By 1896, she professed vows. She
served for years in northern Italy, becoming known for a gentle spirit and
holiness. Children called her "Our Brown Mother." She died in 1947 and was
canonized in 2000.

"My own story is unimportant," Tiner says, preferring instead to talk
about the saint who changed his life. "Her story pierced my soul."

After reading about St. Bakhita, the condemned man felt hope.

"I came to understand that I, too, could come back to life, spiritually,"
he wrote in a 2006 article for the Canossian Sisters magazine. "I could be
rescued from slavery to sin and find redemption and joy in the arms of
Jesus and Mary." He felt Bakhita leading him down a path toward Jesus, he
says.

"I am no longer waiting to die," Tiner declared. "I am alive in Christ
Jesus."

Tiner was baptized in 2005. Because prison officials refused to allow him
into the main chapel, the chaplain asked 2 guards to fill a large
laundry tub with water and wheel it to death row.

"There, in shackles and handcuffs, I was baptized in the water that flowed
from the side of Christ, made new in the Holy Spirit," Tiner recalls in a
letter written to Auxiliary Bishop Ken Steiner.

The summer after his baptism, Archbishop John Vlazny came to the prison
and confirmed Tiner and 4 other prisoners.

For the past 6 months, Tiner has written regularly to Bishop Steiner,
signing his letters, "Mama Mary loves you!" Bishop Steiner admits that he
has caught the Bakhita fever. He even wrote his Christmas column in The
Sentinel about her.

"I am very impressed with the conversion of this man, especially his
missionary spirit," Bishop Steiner says.

Another member of the hierarchy holds St. Bakhita in high regard. When
Pope Benedict issued an encyclical on hope this year, he prominently cited
her as a role model of the virtue. Tiner sent the pope a letter of thanks.

With Deacon Allen Vandecoevering and St. Edward Parish in Keizer helping,
Tiner started the grassroots Bakhita Project to help the Canossian
Sisters. The women, who wear simple gray habits, have worked in Sudan
since 1996, teaching children who are refugees from the long warfare
there. They also provide food and health care for families. Through
benefactors of the Bakhita Project, Tiner and his associates have so far
helped build classrooms at St. Francis School in Khartoum. They have paid
for a brick school and womens center in a desert refugee camp and provided
food and supplies for several thousand children attending school in tents.
The project is also seeking to raise $45,000 to pay for a new bus to
transport students in the desert where temperatures can reach 130 degrees.

Sister Severina Motta, who serves in Sudan, wrote to Tiner a year ago to
tell him what gifts can mean there.

"I would have never thought that children can be overhappy with just a few
sweets, biscuits, drinks, soap and a little ball," she wrote just after
Christmas. "You must have seen their exploding happiness. They ran along
the street carrying the little bag on their shoulders, then they danced
and sang under the hot sun."

The lay Canossian and several Canossian Sisters who work in Rome have been
sacramental sponsors for Tiner on his faith trek.

"I consider myself very fortunate in being one of Jeffreys pen friends
because of his most edifying spiritual life," writes Canossian Sister
Velia De Giusto. "He shows an unquenched thirst for becoming more
Christ-like."

One nun in Singapore, moved by Tiners writings, refers to him as a "lay
Canossian brother."

"Has anyone ever done so much and from behind prison bars?" Sister Mary
Siluvainathan wrote in her orders magazine.

"These Sisters remind me so of Mother Teresa of Calcutta," Tiner writes in
a letter to The Sentinel. "They all refuse to get side-tracked by
governmental blather. They crawl right down into the mud to save the
poorest of the poor and the little ones."

Tiner's influence has spread on death row. He was confirmation sponsor for
Conan Hale, convicted of a 1996 triple murder. It was Hale's sacramental
confession to Father Tim Mockaitis that in 1996 was recorded by Lane
County jailers, setting off an international argument on religious
freedom.

When he met Hale, Tiner could tell the new inmate was distressed,
"infested" with demons. Tiner prayed for him, even holding a crucifix up
in front of Hale's cell and seeking the help of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
This would be a big job.

The next day, Tiner saw Hale crying tears of contrition. The death row
veteran asked permission to teach the faith to the new man. Over time,
Hale seemed like a new person. Hale's confirmation was arranged and the
presider was to be none other than Father Mockaitis, an arrangement Tiner
calls "beautiful symmetry."

Hale, whom Tiner calls a "refurbished soul," now creates and sells art to
help support the Canossian Sisters and other religious communities.
3 other inmates have gotten involved in the Bakhita Project. Tiner is
teaching the rosary to another troubled prisoner.

His fond hope is that the Bakhita Project continues to spread beyond the
penitentiary fences. The Holy Names Sisters Foundation printed up a
brochure on the project. The flyer is making its way out to Catholic
parishes in the area.

Tiner's deep faith, Deacon Vandecoevering says, has granted him a kind of
freedom. "This conversion has been an incredible thing for me to witness,"
says the deacon. It has been sustained. "Once Jeff converted and was
baptized, he shed all these layers of sin and became the child of God he
was meant to be."

To learn more about the Bakhita Project, go to www.sainteds.com and look
at the feature pages. Aid can be mailed to The Bakhita Project/St. Edward
Church, 5303 River Road North, Keizer, OR 97303.

(source:  Catholic Sentinel)



GEORGIA:

"At Least Five Men Who Were Sentenced to Death in Georgia had Lawyers who
Referred to Them in Court as 'Niggers.'"----Georgia's Racist Death Penalty


Thinking back on 2007, one of the major victories for human rights was the
end of the death penalty in New Jersey. On December 13, 2007 the New
Jersey legislature repealed the cruel practice and we are told that
Governor Jon S. Corzine will sign the bill. New Jersey is the first state
to ban the death penalty since executions began again after the U.S.
Supreme Court's Gregg v Georgia decision in 1976. We in Georgia feature
considerably in the recent efforts to end the death penalty in the United
States. This is probably because Georgia has an outrageously cruel history
of executing minors, mentally retarded, mentally ill and particularly
Black males who have been accused of killing whites. Our notorious racist
history is prime grounds for resistance.

The U.S. record on capital punishment overall, however, is dismal. With
New Jersey's decision, there are now 37 states with the death penalty and
13 without. Compared to the rest of the industrialized world the U.S.
stands as one of the most backward regarding capital punishment - all of
Western Europe, most of Eastern Europe, Russia, Australia, Canada, South
Africa, have all abandoned the death penalty. In fact, according to
sociologist Michael Radelet in his article "Thirty Years after Gregg", "in
2005, 94 percent of all known judicial executions (those imposed by courts
of law) were carried out in just four countries: China, Iran, Saudi
Arabia, and the United States."

Radelet says further that the U.S. "Supreme Court decisions can be
reflective of standards of decency, albeit belatedly, (as) in March 2005
the Court finally banned the death penalty for prisoners who committed
their crimes prior to their eighteenth birthdays." The age of 18 is the
international standard. He tells us that between 1990 and December 2005
Amnesty International documented 46 executions of child offenders in eight
countries (the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia, the U.S., China and Yemen). In that time period there were
19 executions of child offenders in the United States giving it the world
record for this barbaric procedure.

Capital punishment in the U.S. is also extremely racist in nature and the
excellent work by Iowa University law professor David Baldus and his
colleagues clearly demonstrates this reality. Baldus reports in 1990 that
in Georgia "the death sentence was four times more likely to be applied
when the victim was white rather than Black and that Blacks who kill
Whites are 11 times more likely to receive the death penalty then Whites
who kill Blacks" (Georgia Moratorium Campaign).

Racist traditions in criminal justice are definitely maintained in
Georgia's courtrooms. Georgia attorney Stephen Bright notes in the Santa
Clara Law Review "At least 5 men who were sentenced to death in Georgia
had lawyers who referred to them in court as 'niggers.'"

This also demonstrates another major problem with death penalty
convictions, which is that they are generally reserved for the poor who
cannot afford other than court appointed attorneys who are renowned for
not pursuing justice for their clients or have no resources for adequate
defense.

Here's some background on critical Georgia cases regarding challenges to
the death penalty.

In 1972 the Furman v Georgia case was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The argument under Furman was of the capricious and racist nature of the
death penalty in the United States. In a 5 to 4 decision, the court
overruled the use of the death penalty. The justices expressed concern
about the "standardless discretion" of death penalty convictions.

After Furman, the implementation of capital punishment was suspended and
the states went back to the drawing board to develop procedures they hoped
would pass muster with the court. They needed to prove to the Supreme
Court that they had a standardized process that would eliminate the
capricious application of the death penalty. Florida led the way in this,
but by 1976, Radelet notes that 35 states had passed new death penalty
laws. Georgia was one of them.

By 1975 Gregg v Georgia was before the Supreme Court along with cases from
other southern states--North Carolina, Louisiana, Florida and Texas -
saying that they had resolved the problem. The court agreed that the
statutes presented by the states with "guided discretion" for juries in
death penalty convictions likely resolved the problems referred to in the
Furman case. After the Court's Gregg decision announcement in 1976 the
states once again resumed killing their death row inmates. Radelet makes
convincing arguments in his 2006 article, however, that since Gregg the
new statutes did not resolve the random and capricious nature of death
penalty convictions!

The 3rd and critical case presented before the court by Georgia was
McClesky v Kemp in 1987 (Kemp being the Superintendent of the Georgia
Diagnostic and Classification Center in Jackson, Georgia where death row
inmates are housed and executed). The Baldus study was presented to the
Supreme Court stating that McClesky, a Black male accused of killing a
white male, was given the death penalty under racially biased conditions
relating to the race of the victim. The Court ruled that McClesky's equal
protection had not been violated.

The Supreme Court did not allow for McClesky to demonstrate the glaring
institutional racism in America as his defense, rather he had to prove
that there had been a diliberate attempt by Georgia authorities to violate
his "individual" rights. McClesky was executed by the State of Georgia on
September 25, 1991.

On September 24, 1991, the day before McClesky was executed, I interviewed
attorney Stephen Bright on my radio program. There was still hope that the
Court would stop the procedure. It was not to be. Activists in Georgia
quickly transcribed the interview as McClesky wanted to read it. Later in
the week I went to McClesky's funeral in Atlanta.

The history of the death penalty in Georgia demonstrates the egregious
ongoing racist nature of the punishment as demonstrated in a fascinating
article by "The Athens Observer" in 1994 entitled "Sentenced to Death."
The paper states, "Racism is the vilest and most notorious aspect of the
unfairness that has infected Georgia's death penalty throughout its
history. It is a tragic fact that traditionally capital punishment in
Georgia has been used to perpetuate white supremacy." This continues
today, of course!

What is interesting about "The Athens Observer" article, however, are the
criteria for crimes that were given the death penalty in Georgia. Clearly,
as indicated by the so-called crimes, there was significant resistance by
African slaves to their oppression and efforts by abolitionists attempting
to free the slaves, none of which was appreciated by Georgia's white
elite.

Here's a summary on how historically you could be given a death penalty
conviction in Georgia.

In 1775 capital crimes involved "any slave who killed a white person,
grievously wounded, maimed or bruised a white person, was convicted for a
third time of striking a white person, raised or attempted an
insurrection, or endeavored to entice a slave to run away and leave the
colony. The 1755 law also made it a capital crime for a slave to steal
slaves, to administer poison to anyone, to burn or destroy stacks of
crops, to set fire to tar or turpentine barrels, or to attempt to run away
from his master...."

In 1816, "Georgia statute made the following acts capital crimes, but only
if committed by a slave or a 'free person of color': poisoning or
attempted poisoning; insurrection or attempted insurrection; rape or
attempted rape of a white female; assaulting a white person with a deadly
weapon or with intent to murder; maiming a white person; and burglary."

To maintain slavery, in 1829 Georgia decided to punish white
abolitionists. In 1829, "whites could be executed for introducing into
Georgia, or circulating in Georgia, any publication for the purpose of
inciting a revolt among the slaves." This statute was again repeated in
1863 in the midst of the Civil War.

The racist nature of the death penalty in Georgia, and throughout America
itself, is appalling. When Georgia began executing death row inmates with
a vengeance after the 1976 Gregg decision, the first one was in 1983 and
14 in total throughout the 1980s. Many of us involved with the Georgia
Committee Against the Death Penalty would make the trek to the Jackson
Diagnostic Center, about 45 miles south of Atlanta, to be outside the
prison when the executions took place. Invariably the Ku Klux Klan was
there to celebrate the death of yet another Black inmate.

The ritual surrounding the executions at Jackson is always surreal. When
you enter the grounds of the prison the guards will search your car, ask
if you are for or against the execution and then point you in the
appropriate direction. Invariably we would form a circle and sing protest
or peace songs while the Klan in the opposite area chanted their vicious
racial slurs. Ultimately, the guards will inform us when the inmate, who
has been strapped to the electric chair with currents coursing through his
body, has been killed. The State of Georgia will also have jets flying
over the Jackson prison as the inmate is being executed which is rather
like some sort of decadent ritual demonstrating the State's power over
life. In some ways the inmate is a blood sacrifice to the all-powerful
State.

Then I would make my way back to Atlanta on Interstate 75 as if life was
somehow normal after that experience. It never is! It's been said that if
Jesus were alive today and executed people would walk around wearing an
electric chair or maybe a lethal injection needle rather than a cross.

As Supreme Court Justice William Brennan said in his dissent on the
McClesky case:

"Warren McClesky doubtless asked his lawyer whether a jury was likely to
sentence him to die. A candid reply to this question would have been
disturbing. First, counsel would have to tell McClesky that few of the
details of the crime or of McClesky's past criminal conduct were more
important than the fact that his victim was white. Furthermore, counsel
would feel bound to tell McClesky that defendants charged with killing
white victims in Georgia are 4.3 times as likely to be sentenced to death
as defendants charged with killing blacks. In addition, frankness would
compel the disclosure that it was more likely than not that the race of
McCleskey's victim would determine whether he received the death
sentence.Finally, the assessment would not be complete without the
information that cases involving black defendants and white victims are
more likely to result in a death sentence than cases featuring any other
combination of defendant and victim. The story could be told in a variety
of ways, but McClesky could not fail to grasp its essential narrative
line: there was a significant chance that race would play a prominent role
in determining if he lived or died."

Any who thinks that racism and the maintenance of white supremacy is not a
leading reason for implementing the capital punishment in the United
States must be kidding themselves. As Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun
ultimately conceded, "Even under the most sophisticated death penalty
statutes, race continues to pay a major role in determining who shall live
and who shall die." Hopefully, the wise decision by the New Jersey
legislature to end the death penalty bodes well for an America that might
sometime rid itself of the scourge of capital punishment.

(source:  CounterPunch----Heather Gray produces "Just Peace" on
WRFG-Atlanta 89.3 FM covering local, regional, national and international
news)