Sept. 9
NEVADA:
Officials recommend building new death chamber in Ely
State officials are recommending Nevada build a new execution chamber at Ely
State Prison.
Nevada's existing death chamber is housed at the now-closed Nevada State Prison
in Carson City that was shuttered in January.
The Nevada Appeal reported that a proposed list of capital improvement projects
estimates constructing an execution chamber in the Ely prison administration
building would cost about $692,000.
That's far less the $5.3 million estimate to build a new execution building in
Southern Nevada.
Officials said another advantage is that all death row inmates are currently
housed in Ely.
The new execution chamber was part of a $127 million package of projects
recommended by the head of the state public works department.
The Public Works Board will meet Sept. 18 to try to finalize the list.
(source: Associated Press)
CONNECTICUT:
Death Row Inmates' Hopes Rest On Bias Data
When the landmark case that challenges the death sentences of five of
Connecticut's 11 death-row inmates resumes Tuesday, testimony will shift to
competing experts' analysis of whether race and geography played a role in
prosecutors' decisions to seek executions.
The testimony is expected to be complex as attorneys attempt to sort through
the methodology, underlying assumptions and statistical theories ??? key
evidence Superior Court Judge Samuel J. Sferrazza will use to decide whether
the condemned inmates' death sentences should be overturned.
Though state legislators in April abolished the death penalty for future
offenses, the 11 men on death row still face execution. And, there are three
pending death-eligible cases, including the case of Jose Jusino, charged with
killing his prison cellmate 3 years ago. Jusino's trial began Monday.
Before the bias trial began, the inmates tried unsuccessfully to raise the
issue of whether the death penalty should still apply to those already on death
row. Sferrazza said the new claims stemming from the repeal raise legal
questions distinct from the unique statistics-based analysis evidence that will
be presented in the discrimination trial.
That evidence is expected to come from Stanford Law School professor John
Donohue III, whose research has concluded that race and geography do play a
factor in capital punishment in Connecticut, bolstering the claims of the
black, white and Hispanic death row inmates who say the system is both
arbitrary and biased.
Donohue, who used to teach at Yale University, reviewed capital cases in
Connecticut from 1973 to 2007, finding that minority defendants whose victims
were white were more likely to be sentenced to death than others.
Those facing capital charges in the city of Waterbury, according to Donohue,
were at least 7 times as likely to be sentenced to death as in other judicial
districts. Former Waterbury State's Attorney John A. Connelly has prosecuted 6
men who were sentenced to death.
The state is being represented by a team of prosecutors from the chief state's
attorney's office. They are expected to vigorously challenge Donohue's
findings, pointing to evidence they say shows that race and geography did not
affect the administration of the death penalty in Connecticut. Their own
expert, Stephan Michelson, in his testimony is expected to dispute Donohue's
findings, saying his conclusions were flawed and that erroneous inclusions of
non-death eligible cases in a Donohue report forced Michelson to alter his own
report.
Attorneys for the inmates will likely fire back, saying revisions in
Michelson's conclusions corrected errors he had in his own reports and that in
a deposition, Michelson said he believed that "many" of Donohue's conclusions
were correct, according to recently filed court motions.
For years, both sides have fought to exclude each other's expert testimony from
the trial. Sharply written legal filings have attacked the qualifications of
the experts and the reliability of their testimony.
There has been criticism about the amount of time it took to complete reports
and charges by prosecutors that the inmates' lawyers tried to hide one of
Donohue's reports.
"The petitioners have consistently endeavored to conceal from the respondent,
and ultimately from this court, facts that would reveal that their claims are
without substance," prosecutors wrote in a recent court filing.
And there have been questions raised about the money the state has spent on
expert witnesses for the case, which as of July is more than $1 million.
Attorneys for the inmates said Michelson in an August 2009 deposition said he
was "blown away" by what he has been paid. It was a "sizable investment" that
was "misguided," the attorneys wrote in a recent court filing, "as this witness
is not qualified to testify as an expert on the death penalty nor is his
methodology reliable."
From April 2007 through last July, prosecutors have spent $863,107.54 on expert
witness costs, according to Chief State's Attorney Kevin T. Kane.
Since 2006, attorneys for the inmates have spent a total of $334,340.88 on
expert witness costs, according to Deborah Del Prete Sullivan, legal counsel
and executive assistant public defender of the Office of the Chief Public
Defender.
Prosecutors, in a motion filed this week, are seeking to get reimbursed for
costs they incurred while deposing Michelson in 2009.
Sferrazza regularly presides over trials involving habeas corpus petitions,
which often are a convict's last resort to get a verdict overturned or prison
sentence reduced. To prevail, a convict typically must present newly discovered
evidence that was not available at the time of trial.
Petitioners in the lawsuit include Sedrick Cobb, Daniel Webb, Todd Rizzo,
Richard Reynolds and Robert Breton. Lazale Ashby and Jesse Campbell III
recently withdrew from the case.
Last week, attorneys for the inmates tried to show through questioning that the
death penalty in Connecticut is arbitrary through Kane's testimony in which he
said state laws - not written policies or guidelines - help prosecutors decide
when to seek death by lethal injection for killers in capital cases.
Kane, who was the New London state's attorney from 1995 to 2006, the year he
was appointed chief state's attorney, said though he was aware of informal
discussions through the years among prosecutors about whether there should be
formal guidelines, ultimately "there were no specific policies directed to
capital felony cases."
Kane had prosecuted serial killer Michael Ross, the last person put to death in
Connecticut.
The inmates' attorneys planned to call other prosecutors last week to question
them about the manner in which they exercise their charging discretion and
decide whether to seek the death penalty.
But after Kane's testimony, both sides agreed to enter into evidence
transcripts from a 2007 Superior Court hearing for Campbell, who was convicted
in May 2004 of two slayings. Campbell's attorneys tried to show that the
factors weighed by different prosecutors vary in Connecticut from one judicial
district to another - and therefore violate the state's constitution.
A Superior Court judge did not agree with Campbell's lawyers, and prosecutors'
exercise of such discretion was upheld also by the Supreme Court when
prosecutorial discretion became an issue in the case of Rizzo, convicted in the
1997 killing of a 13-year-old boy.
Both sides also agreed to allow into evidence testimony that shows that from
1973 until today, no written or oral guidelines or policies have been used by
state's attorneys or chief state's attorneys to make decisions on an initial
charge, whether to seek the death penalty or whether to reduce a charge.
Sferrazza was also asked to consider evidence that there is no oversight by the
chief state's attorney over decisions made by state's attorneys on whether to
seek the death penalty, and that each state's attorney makes decisions on
charging capital felony and seeking death based on criteria that is appropriate
in his or her case.
(source: Hartford Courant)
PENNSYLVANIA----impending execution
Advocates plead for clemency from Corbett in looming execution of Terrance
Williams
With less than a month before condemned murderer Terrance Williams is scheduled
to die by lethal injection, his advocates on Thursday chose an option not used
in a half-century: a plea for clemency from the governor.
Lawyers for Williams, 46, formerly of Philadelphia, filed the petition asking
Gov. Corbett and the state Board of Pardons to stop Williams' Oct. 3 execution
and commute his sentence to life in prison without parole.
A broad-based group of lawyers and former judges, child advocates, and
religious figures - including the widow of the man Williams killed in 1984 -
urged that his life be spared for a crime committed three months after he
turned 18, the minimum age for someone to be sentenced to death in the United
States.
(source: Philadelphia Inquirer)
MONTANA:
Montana judge strikes down state execution method
A judge has struck down Montana's lethal injection procedure as a violation of
the state constitution's protections against cruel and unusual punishment,
effectively suspending executions in the state, officials said on Friday.
State District Court Judge Jeffrey Sherlock did not question the
constitutionality of the death penalty in Montana, which has 2 inmates on death
row and has executed 3 since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
But he ruled, in a written decision handed down on Thursday, that the state's
three-drug execution procedure differed from a 2-drug protocol spelled out in
law, which he said "increases the likelihood of confusion and error in the
process."
Sherlock also faulted a practice in Montana that allows a prison warden with no
medical training or execution experience to determine a prisoner was
unconscious before a fatal drug was administered.
He also found that the prison official setting up the execution process was not
required to have experience with the intravenous procedure.
Sherlock said those concerns and the disparity between the protocol in state
law and the one practiced by the Department of Corrections created "a
substantial risk of serious harm." He also said the problems could easily be
remedied by the Legislature and the state corrections department.
Montana Assistant Attorney General C. Mark Fowler said in a statement that the
state was studying the ruling "and determining what options were available to
modify the protocol." He added that no executions were scheduled.
Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have no death penalty, and there
has been a gradual trend away from capital punishment in the country, with the
number of executions falling slightly in recent years.
The decision stemmed from a lawsuit brought in 2008 by the Montana American
Civil Liberties Union and attorneys for death row inmate Ronald Allen Smith, a
Canadian convicted of shooting and killing two people in Montana in 1982.
Smith's execution was stayed last year pending the outcome of the lawsuit.
Smith has also petitioned Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer for clemency.
Ron Waterman, an attorney for Smith, said in a statement that he was pleased
the court recognized that insufficiencies in the state's lethal injection
protocol "create a situation where execution could inflict pain and suffering."
Convicted killer William Gollehon, the only other prisoner on death row in
Montana, was later added as a plaintiff in the case.
(source: Reuters)
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