[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----CALIF., USA, IDAHO

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 10



CALIFORNIA:

Appeals court reinstates death penalty for 1978 rape and murder


In San Francisco, a federal appeals court reinstated the death penalty
Monday for a convicted murderer whose death sentence had been overturned
when a lower court found that a juror's use of biblical quotations during
the penalty phase was improper.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Stevie Lamar Fields' 1979
conviction for the rape and murder of a University of Southern California
student librarian, but overturned a 2000 district court ruling that had
him taken off death row.

Fields, 50, was on parole in 1978 after doing time for a manslaughter
conviction when he went on a 3-week spree of rape, robbery and violence
that included the slaying of 26-year-old Rosemary Cobbs.

Days later, Fields and an associate kidnapped 2 other women, whom they
beat and raped. Hours after those crimes, he and another man abducted an
18-year-old student at gunpoint before sexually assaulting and robbing
her.

A Los Angeles County jury found him guilty of the attacks in 1979 and
sentenced him to death.

After decades of appeals, the U.S. District Court for the Central District
of California tossed the death penalty and sentenced Fields to life in
prison without the possibility of parole. The court concluded that a juror
who made a list of biblical arguments for and against the death penalty
had the potential to be highly prejudicial.

Included on the juror's list for capital punishment were "placate gods"
and "eye for eye," and on the list against death, the juror wrote, "No
real deterrent valuemostly because murderers not normal," according to
court documents.

Fields' appellate attorney, David Olson, said the jury's use of scripture
in its sentencing deliberations was a basic violation of criminal law.

"We know this jury looked at the bible passages the foreman had at home to
break a deadlock," Olson said.

Last year a 3-judge panel of the federal appeals court reinstated Fields'
death sentence while affirming the conviction, but that ruling was cast
aside when the full court agreed to hear the case.

Writing for the majority Monday, Judge Pamela Ann Rymer said the use of
the biblical phrases in the case did not prejudice the jury.

"Both the Biblical verses and the other concepts contained in the notes
are notions of general currency that inform the moral judgment that
capital-case jurors are called upon to make," she wrote.

3 judges, led by Judge Marsha Berzon, dissented the court's ruling.

"(H)e was sentenced to death by a jury whose foreperson brought into the
jury room, and placed before his colleagues for consideration, lengthy
Biblical quotations that clashed with the judge's instructions, with
California death penalty law, and with constitutional precepts governing
sentencing in a death penalty case," Berzon wrote.

Fields had also argued that the case should have been thrown out because a
juror was allowed to stay on the panel whose wife had been raped. The
juror's wife testified in an earlier appeals hearing that during Fields'
trial, she told her husband that she suspected Fields may have been her
attacker.

The juror testified that he had been honest with the attorneys and judge
regarding his wife's past. The court ruled that, based on the evidence,
the juror did not have a problem being impartial.

"Being the spouse of a rape victim is not, in and of itself, such an
'extreme' or 'extraordinary situation that it should automatically
disqualify one from serving on a jury in a case that involves rape," Judge
Rymer wrote.

In dissent, Berzon said the juror's obvious conflicts should result in a
retrial.

California Deputy Attorney General Kristofer Jorstad said if the U.S.
Supreme Court rejects review of Fields' case, the inmate will be 4th in
line to be executed. Fields can appeal again to the state's high court if
the U.S. Supreme Court does not take the case.

No executions will take place in California, however, until concerns about
the state's lethal injection method that arose in the case of death row
inmate Michael Morales are resolved.

(source: Associated Press)






USA:

States' death penalty laws, death row inmates


States with the death penalty, when the law was enacted, when the first
execution occurred, how many inmates are on death row and how many have
been executed since 1976.

STATE ENACTED FIRST GAP D ROW EXEC

Utah 1973 1977 4 years 9 6

Nevada 1973 1979 6 years 80 12

Alabama 1976 1983 7 years 195 38

Florida 1972 1979 7 years 397 64

North Carolina 1977 1984 7 years 185 43

Virginia 1975 1982 7 years 20 98

Indiana 1973 1981 8 years 23 19

Texas 1974 1982 8 years 393 402

Mississippi 1974 1983 9 years 66 8

Georgia 1973 1983 10 years 107 40

Louisiana 1973 1983 10 years 41 2

South Carolina 1974 1985 11 years 67 37

New York 1995 12 years 1 0

KANSAS 1994 13 years 9 0

Missouri 1975 1989 14 years 51 66

Wyoming 1977 1992 15 years 2 1

Illinois 1974 1990 16 years 11 12

New Hampshire 1991 16 years 0 0

Arkansas 1973 1990 17 years 37 27

Oklahoma 1973 1990 17 years 88 86

California 1974 1992 18 years 660 13

Delaware 1974 1992 18 years 18 14

Oregon 1978 1996 18 years 33 2

Washington 1975 1993 18 years 9 4

Arizona 1973 1992 19 years 124 23

Maryland 1975 1994 19 years 8 5

Idaho 1973 1994 21 years 20 1

Montana 1974 1995 21 years 2 3

Nebraska 1973 1994 21 years 9 3

Pennsylvania 1974 1995 21 years 226 3

Colorado 1975 1997 22 years 2 1

Kentucky 1975 1997 22 years 88 27

New Mexico 1979 2001 22 years 2 1

New Jersey 1982 25 years 11 0

Ohio 1974 1999 25 years 191 26

Tennessee 1974 2000 26 years 107 3

South Dakota 1979 2007 28 years 4 1

Connecticut 1973 2005 32 years 8 1

TOTAL 3,304 1,092

New York's death penalty was declared unconstitutional.

STATES WITH NO DEATH PENALTY LAW (12):

Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North
Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin.

EXECUTION METHODS:

-- Injection (23): Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois,
Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New
Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania,
South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wyoming.

-- Injection or electrocution (7): Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky,
South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia.

-- Injection or gas chamber (4): Arizona, California, Maryland, Missouri.

-- Injection or hanging (2): New Hampshire, Washington.

-- Injection or firing squad (1): Idaho.

-- Electrocution (1): Nebraska.

[source: Death Penalty Information Center]

(source: Associated Press)






IDAHO:

Double murderer asks high court to overturn death sentence


A death-row inmate wants the Idaho Supreme Court to overturn his death
sentence because he says he's mentally retarded.

Gerald Pizzuto was sentenced in 1986 for the beating murders of Berta and
Del Dean Herndon in Idaho County. His public defender, Joan Fisher, says
that his execution is barred under a federal and state rule that prohibits
the death sentence for mentally retarded people.

Fisher says that when it was tested several years ago, Pizzuto had an IQ
of just 72 points. And she says that such tests have a 5-point margin of
error and that means his IQ could actually be lower. Fisher says her
client also exhibits several other symptoms of mental retardation.

But deputy attorney general Lamont Anderson says even an IQ of 72 points
is above the state's guideline of 70 points for mental retardation. And he
says it's too late for Pizzuto to bring up such a claim.

The Idaho Supreme Court heard the arguments today and is expected to rule
on the matter sometime in the coming months.

(source: Associated Press)