March 31
OHIO:
Ohio's execution process, death row inmates face uncertain future
With Ohio’s execution process tied up in court, 153 inmates on death row face
an uncertain future.
The 2011 Capital Crimes report, issued today by Ohio Attorney General Mike
DeWine, summarizes the status of the death-penalty process, including the 12
inmates with scheduled execution dates and 46 inmates lethally injected since
1999. The report, required annually by state law, goes to the governor, state
lawmakers and the courts.
What DeWine’s report does not say is when, or if, executions will resume.
Reginald Brooks, a Cuyahoga County man who murdered his three sons in their
beds, was the last person executed, on Nov. 15 last year.
Since then, the state has been tied up in federal court on a legal challenge to
the lethal injection process. U.S. District Judge Gregory L. Frost has been
highly critical of the state’s lethal-injection protocol and stopped an
execution; Gov. John Kasich postponed others, anticipating federal court
entanglements.
In general, the appeals process in capital punishment cases takes so long that
22 Death Row inmates died before their execution, DeWine said. That number
increased by one this week with the death by natural causes of Billy Sowell,
75, of Hamilton County.
DeWine’s report covered the calendar year through Dec. 31, 2011.
DeWine reported there are 14 convicted killers with scheduled death dates,
although the number is now 12 with two having been postponed. The death dates
run through Jan. 16, 2014.
The 46 men who have been executed were responsible for killing 76 people, 17 of
them children.
(source: Columbus Dispatch)
CONNECTICUT:
Some Deserve Death Penalty
Once again the politicians think they know better than the people, preparing to
abolish capital punishment in the teeth of popular support for the death of
those who most deserve it.
Ask the people about Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes — at least 3/4 of
Connecticut knows that these depraved and sadistic monsters deserve to die for
raping then burning alive the Petit family in 2007. But the majority of
Connecticut's General Assembly and governor would abolish the death penalty,
call it "justice" and call it a day.
If the legislature abolishes the death penalty, it will be a great day in
Connecticut for the worst of the worst. Condemned killers on death row, no less
than experts on both sides, all understand "prospective only" abolition as a
fraud.
The state will never execute anybody for a crime that could no longer get
death. The death penalty and death row will be left to wither. Russell Peeler,
who had an 8-year-old and his mother killed to eliminate the child as a
witness; Todd Rizzo, who used a sledgehammer to beat to death a 13-year-old boy
to know what it felt like — all the condemned can look forward to their release
into general population where their crimes will be forgotten and consciously
ignored by officers and prisoners alike, eager to make the best of their lives,
day-by-day.
Historians will record it. In 2012, the death penalty in Connecticut had this
feel: Unable to withstand well orchestrated and relentless attacks, weighed
down by disuse and expense, its time seemed to have passed. The whole
institution felt like a burdensome vestige of an irrational obsession with the
past. EvenDr. William PetitJr. appears more prepared than ever to move on, with
his announced marriage and absence from the latest hearings before a judiciary
committee preset to recommend abolition.
Grieving survivors should never be made to feel guilty in giving up the hate
and getting on with their lives. But Dr. Petit was not murdered, raped and
burnt alive. His family was. We, the political family of the victim, although
one step removed, in our righteous indignation, our need for justice — we,
strangers but fellow citizens, fellow survivors, equally vulnerable to
viciousness and terror, feel, yes feel, continually connected to the slain.
Compared to the survivors' grief, immediate and intense, enduring sometimes
crippling — our righteous indignation, our rage at the callous or sadistic
murderer may seem mere commentary. Their healing takes priority.
Many immediate survivors could better come to terms with their loss, but for
this nagging feeling that moving beyond their anger means letting down their
loved one. Only by keeping the wound fresh, they fear, can they keep the memory
alive. They may feel guilty in healing, as if looking forward turns their backs
on their beloved and buries them a 2nd time.
Although brutal murderers may enjoy long lives in prison while the memory of
their suffering victim decays, many abolitionists, especially devout
Christians, maintain their moral equilibrium through faith that justice will be
done in the hereafter. This belief consoles them. The need for justice may
especially incline victims' survivors to those religious beliefs — seeking as
they do, solace in the face of suffering. It would console me to believe that
my loved one's brutal murderer will someday face ultimate justice. Our secular
society, however, separates church and state. We, the people, commit ourselves
to human justice in this world — here, now — as if there will be no hereafter.
Can we abolish the death penalty and still keep our covenant with the victim we
never knew? Never to forgive; never to forget. Can we keep the fire burning
until justice at last is done? We, fellow citizens of the slain, declare to the
survivors: The voice of your brother's blood, your parent's blood, our
children's blood, the blood of your beloved, cries out to us from the ground.
It remains our responsibility and we accept it: to continue to hate sadistic
viciousness, and callous predators. We will not allow politicians' anguished
deliberation to diminish our felt need for justice.
Now is the time to take our turn at the watch; to sit in for the family. We
pledge to the survivors we will not let our anger cool, our memory decay. We
will retain our righteous indignation, and keep up the pressure for justice.
And if we no longer can punish the worst killers by the death they deserve, we
will do our best to keep a covenant with the dead. We pledge to the victims
that we, the lucky, spared the murderous wrath of their depraved and sadistic
killers, will punish those murderers everyday with life. Steven Hayes and
Joshua Komisarjevsky deserve to die. If the state keeps them alive, they
deserve to live miserably, forever condemned, segregated and denied the perks
and privileges of daily prison life.
The end of death as punishment does not end, but opens a conversation. What
should the punishment of life feel like, day-to--day, when we can no longer
kill those who most deserve to die?
(source: Commentary, Robert Blecker, The Hartford Courant)
OREGON:
Court again rules against Ore. man's death penalty
The Oregon Supreme Court has again overturned a death sentence against a man
convicted of 2 murders from the 1980s who has 4 times been condemned to die.
The justices ruled Thursday that a trial judge in 2005, Joseph Ochoa, erred in
dealing with Robert Langley and his disputes with his defense attorneys, The
Oregonian reported (http://bit.ly/H1BrKX) reported.
Before a sentencing trial, the court said, Langley's attorneys tried to
withdraw because of conflicts with their client.
Ochoa said Langley, having gone through multiple lawyers, was being
manipulative, cooperating with his attorneys only so long as they could put off
the trial.
He gave Langley 2 alternatives: cooperate with one attorney or represent
himself.
Langley appeared before the jury in a white prison jumpsuit and didn't mount a
defense. Deliberating less than 20 minutes, the jury sentenced him to death.
The Supreme Court rejected arguments that the behavior left the judge no option
but to find that Langley had waived his right to counsel and should represent
himself. It also found the judge had not adequately considered Langley's
objections to his lawyers.
Langley, 52, is one of the longest-serving inmates on Oregon's death row.
In 1988, he was living at the Oregon State Hospital in a program for mentally
and emotionally disabled prison inmates when the body of a former prison
friend, Larry Rockenbrant, was found beneath a cactus garden. He had been
beaten with a baseball bat.
That led Langley's aunt to contact police about a hole he dug in her backyard
months earlier. There, police discovered the corpse of Anne Louise Gray.
Prosecutors said he taped her mouth and nose shut, watched her die and buried
her.
In 1989, juries convicted him of the killings.
In 1992, the Supreme Court threw out the death sentence for Gray's murder
because jurors weren't sufficiently instructed to consider mitigating evidence
in determining the punishment.
The same year, the court reversed Langley's conviction in the Rockenbrant case,
ruling that evidence from Gray's murder was improperly allowed. 5 years later,
a judge found Langley guilty of aggravated murder and sentenced him to life
with a minimum of 30 years.
In 1994, a new jury in the Gray case sentenced Langley to death. 6 years later,
the Supreme Court found that the judge failed to tell that jury that among the
options was life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In 2005, he was again sentenced to death; the sentence was thrown out Thursday.
Marion County Deputy District Attorney Matt Kemmy said he would again seek the
death penalty.
"We will continue to do what we have always felt was right in regards to Mr.
Langley," he said.
(source: Associated Press)
PENNSYLVANIA:
PSU visitors speak out on death penalty
Pittsburg State University hosted 2 death penalty opponents on Friday,
beginning with a talk at 11 a.m. in the Crimson and Gold Ballroom by Rob
Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, and Bluhm
Legal Clinic, Northwestern University School of Law.
Sister Helen Prejean, author of “Dead Man Walking,” spoke at 7 p.m. in
Pittsburg Memorial Auditorium for the final event of the 2011-2012 Performing
Arts and Lecture Series (PALS).
Warden grew up in Carthage, Mo., started out his career as a reporter for the
Joplin Globe and attended a few PSU courses during that time.
“We know that since 1989, the dawn of the DNA age, 877 wrongful convictions
have been overturned,” he said. “That’s when a person has been restored to
legal innocence by exculpatory evidence not presented at trial.”
Warden added that this number does not include persons who, while possibly
innocent, had their convictions overturned because of legal technicalities.
He noted that death penalty supporters claim that there have been no wrongful
executions in the United States, but countered that claim with the sad case of
William Jackson Marion, who had been a roommate of good friend John Cameron in
Clay County, Kan., in 1872. The 2 left Kansas, saying they were going west to
work on the railroad, but a few days later Marion returned without Cameron. 11
years later, a body was found dressed in clothing that witnesses identified as
belonging to Cameron.
Marion was indicted, convicted and sentenced to death. He was hung on March 25,
1887, still proclaiming his innocence.
“3 years later, Cameron was found living in Kansas,” Warden said. “He said he
had run away to avoid a shotgun wedding and had no idea his friend Marion had
been accused of his death. This was the 1st documented wrongful execution in
the United States.”
Since the Center on Wrongful Convictions was founded in 1998, it has been
instrumental in the exonerations of 34 innocent men and women in Illinois.
Staff members were also responsible for an additional 14 exonerations before
the center was founded. Of those 48 exonerated people, 13 had been sentenced to
death.
“We’ve simply got to abolish the death penalty,” Warden said.
For Sister Helen Prejean, her struggle against the death penalty started with a
simple human encounter. While she was working at Hope House in New Orleans, she
was asked to become a pen pal with Patrick Sonnier, a death row inmate.
“God is sneaky, sneaky, sneaky,” she told her audience. “I thought, ‘I was an
English major, I can write some nice letters.’ The problem is, he wrote back
and there was an encounter between two human beings. Then he wrote that he was
a Catholic and asked if I would be his spiritual adviser.”
(source: The Morning Sun)
**************************
Jury deliberates sentence in Crawford death penalty case
In the long years before OxyContin addiction drove Gary C. Wiley's life "over a
cliff," he doted on his daughters, gave away free car service to needy
customers, and once ran into a burning building to save his mother's pet, his
lawyer said.
A panel of Crawford County jurors were asked Friday in the final stage of an
8-day trial to decide whether those redeeming aspects of Wiley's character and
past were enough to spare him the ultimate punishment for what he did on April
10, 2010: Walking into the home of Tod Prenatt, the man he called his best
friend, and shooting him and Prenatt's wife, Laurie, repeatedly, to silence
them for an armed robbery Wiley had committed days before.
The panel deliberated for more than 3 hours Friday before deciding Wiley,
despite the manner in which he killed the Prenatts, was not deserving of death.
The jury forewoman stood and announced the sentence for each killing: "Life,"
she said.
Though the sentence has been determined by the jury, President Judge Anthony J.
Vardaro. will formally impose it on May 11. He will also sentence Wiley for two
counts of burglary. Wiley faces a maximum possible sentence of two consecutive
life terms with no chance of parole, followed by 40 years. All in the
courtroom, including Wiley and family and friends of the Prenatts, remained
calm as the verdict was read.
Afterward, District Attorney Francis Schultz, who had advocated for Wiley's
execution, said he found no fault with the verdict. The Prenatts' relatives, he
said, are not vindictive, he said. They hoped for the death penalty, he said,
but they also know that no sentence will bring back their loved ones.
With the life sentence, it is guaranteed that Wiley is "never going to get out
of jail," he said.
"Hopefully, this verdict will bring some closure," he said.
Ross Prather, the court-appointed lawyer who handled the sentencing phase of
Wiley's case, said there was nothing in the verdict for anyone to celebrate.
"Gary is going to spend the rest of his life in prison," he said.
But Prather said Wiley and his family were happy that "he is not going to be
executed."
Wiley, 39, of Linesville, was convicted late Tuesday of 2 counts of 1st-degree
murder for gunning down the couple at their Linesville-area home. Laurie
Prenatt, 44, was shot 4 times in the face and head as she was folding laundry.
Tod Prenatt, 51, was shot twice, in the face and neck, while working on his
Nova street rod in the home's detached garage.
At trial, Crawford County Correctional Facility inmates told jurors that Wiley
admitted he killed the couple because they knew he had robbed a Linesville
drugstore of cash and powerful prescription painkillers a week earlier. Wiley
was arrested for the robbery of the Linesville Rite Aid store three days after
the Prenatt murders. He was convicted in January 2011 and is serving up to 10
years in the Crawford County Correctional Facility in Saegertown.
Judges ordinarily sentence a defendant in a criminal case. In a death-penalty
case, the task falls to jurors.
The panel was asked to decide whether aggravating factors surrounding the
Prenatts' killings outweighed any mitigating factors about Wiley and his
background.
The verdict, which was decided at about 4:30 p.m. and announced about 45
minutes later, came after 2 days of testimony meant to help jurors decide
whether Wiley was deserving of death.
The Prenatts' family members shared their memories of the victims and explained
the effect of the murders upon them on Wednesday.
Wiley's lawyer Prather then called Wiley family members and friends to the
stand who said that Wiley was abused as a child by the man he knew as his
father. Despite that abuse, he grew up to be a responsible business owner and
attentive husband and father, witnesses said.
"He was a good person, a hard worker, and he loved my daughter," his
mother-in-law, Pamela Britton, told jurors. Others shared stories of Wiley's
faith and willingness to help neighbors and younger relatives.
Prather said but for Wiley's addiction to the powerful narcotic painkiller
OxyContin, he never would have wound up in court, convicted of murder. Prather
said the death penalty was meant for the most heinous criminals, he said.
Wiley, he said, was neither a sociopath nor a derelict. Instead, he said,
Wiley's life, finances and family had spun out of control as a result of his
addiction.
Jurors should not sentence Wiley for the slice of his life that occurred on
April 10, 2010, but sentence the whole man, Prather said, as he put on a screen
photos of Wiley with his children, including one in which he cradled a sleeping
infant on his chest.
"Every person in this room knows the reason Gary's here," he said. "It is
OxyContin."
Schultz urged jurors to disregard the testimony. The Prenatts, on the day of
their murders, likely did not care that Wiley had once given away a cowboy hat
or unlocked a car door for a neighbor, he said. "He wants you to reward him for
doing things everybody else does every single day," he said.
Schultz said Wiley was trying to duck responsibility for his crimes by blaming
them on childhood abuse and addiction, just as he had tried to blame someone
else for the murder during the police investigation.
Wiley's problems, including his drug addiction, "were brought on by the
defendant's own free will and his own choices."
"Every tear shed" by the victims' survivors, every "sleepless night, every bad
dream and ... every bout of depression" they will suffer "lies at the feet of
this defendant."
(source: The Erie Times-News)
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