Oct. 26
FLORIDA:
Jurors Suggest Death Penalty for a Florida Panhandle Man
Jurors say a 43-year-old Florida Panhandle man should be executed for at least
1 of 2 2010 deaths during a drug robbery.
Robert Hobart was convicted last week for fatally shooting 41-year-old Robert
Hamm and 43-year-old Tracie Tolbert and leaving their bodies beside a rural
road in Santa Rosa County.
The Pensacola News-Journal reports that jurors on Wednesday recommended the
death penalty for Tolbert's slaying and a life sentence in Hamm's death.
Prosecutors say Hobart killed the couple to steal their Roxicodone, which is a
prescription painkiller.
(source: Associated Press)
ARIZONA:
Suit challenging state execution methods dismissed
A lawsuit challenging how Arizona conducts executions has been dismissed in the
wake of the state changing procedures that drew objections from lawyers for
death-row inmates.
The changes include using 1 execution drug instead of the 3-drug mix that the
state has used for nearly three decades, and allowing witnesses to watch the
execution team insert injection lines into the condemned prisoner.
Lawyers for the state and inmates on Wednesday jointly asked a U.S. District
Court judge to dismiss the suit, and he promptly did so.
The suit was filed in February, but it followed years of litigation concerning
some of the same concerns that inmates could be subjected to pain and suffering
in violation of the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual
punishment.
The request to dismiss the latest suit has been in the works for about a month
as lawyers for the inmates reviewed changes that the state made to its protocol
in September and consulted their clients.
"Because these matters have been addressed and the changes bring more
transparency to the execution process, it's time for this litigation to end,"
said Dale Baich, a federal public defender helping represent death-row inmates
who sued.
Kent Cattani, the state's top criminal appeals lawyer, said the state believes
its execution protocol was constitutional even before making what he called
"minor changes."
"It remains constitutional and this demonstrates the plaintiffs agree with that
assessment," the prosecutor said.
Like some other death-penalty states, Arizona this year began using one
execution drug, and the current protocol specifies that's now the chosen
procedure. It says that 1 of 2 sedatives will be used to kill the inmate,
unless an inmate and his lawyers are told in advance that a different drug will
be used.
Inmate attorneys had criticized the 3-drug mix, saying there was a possibility
that the sedative would not work properly. They said an inmate could regain
consciousness but be paralyzed and unable to communicate while undergoing a
painful death when another drug stops his heart.
Arizona this year also began allowing execution witnesses to observe the
insertion of injection lines, and that's now included in the protocol.
Witnesses typically include relatives and attorneys of the condemned man,
relatives of the victim, journalists and law enforcement officials.
Inmate attorneys had complained that insertions in the groin area could be
painful and that insertions into the prisoner's arms should be used instead.
The protocol leaves it up to the officials where to make insertions, but
specifies that a groin-area insertion be used only if the person that that type
of line is licensed or certified to do that procedure.
"When the process was going on behind the curtain, we had no idea what was
really happening back there," Baich said.
Other changes included in the current protocol deal with qualifications of the
medical personnel participating in the execution and with providing time for
inmates to meet with their lawyers during the 24 hours before executions.
Cattani said inmates have been provided time with their lawyers and that
practice is now in writing. He said the change on medical personnel set a
standard that should avoid further questioning that ends up being hashed out in
court.
A federal judge ruled last December in a previous case that the state's
procedures in place at the time didn't violate inmates' constitutional rights,
but inmates' lawyers complained that previous assurances provided by the state
hadn't proven to be reliable.
The state contended that the allegations by inmate attorneys hadn't resulted in
any proof that inmates were actually subjected to substantial risks, whether
from drugs or procedures used.
Corrections Director Charles Ryan testified in a previous lawsuit that it was
enough that the warden was in the injection room and could alert the injection
team to any problems, while a sheet draped over a sheet draped over most of the
inmate's body blocked it from the view of witnesses in an adjacent room.
Arizona has executed 33 inmates since resuming capital punishment in 1992, all
but 1 by injection.
Arizona has executed 5 men so far this year, most recently Daniel W. Cook on
Aug. 8 for 2 murders committed in Lake Havasu City.
No executions are currently scheduled, but prosecutors have asked the Arizona
Supreme Court to schedule one for Richard Stokley, convicted of 2 murders in
Cochise County.
(source: Associated Press)
KANSAS:
Kan. Supreme Court considers capital murder case
The Kansas Supreme Court is considering the appeal of a man sentenced to die
over the killings of a Great Bend couple in 2004.
The justices were hearing arguments Friday in the case of Sidney Gleason. He is
challenging his convictions for capital murder and other crimes and his death
sentence.
The murder victims were Miki Martinez and boyfriend Darren Wornkey. Their
deaths were days after the robbery of a 76-year-old man in February 2004.
Prosecutors say Gleason and cousin Damien Thompson worried about what Martinez
would tell police about the robbery.
Workney was shot while he sat in his Jeep outside his home. Martinez was taken
to a rural area and strangled and shot.
Thompson avoided the death penalty by pleading guilty to Martinez's murder.
(source: Associated Press)
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