Oct. 29
SOUTH DAKOTA----impending execution
Donald Moeller's Crime & Punishment
South Dakota authorities who helped convict Donald Moeller say it's the worst
crime scene they've ever investigated.
This week Moeller is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection. It comes 22
years after he raped, stabbed, and murdered nine-year-old Becky O'Connell in
one of the most brutal crimes in South Dakota history.
"Probably the worst thing I ever saw," former Lincoln County Sheriff Ken Albers
said.
Albers was the 1st on the scene on the morning of May 9, 1990 after O'Connell's
body was discovered by 2 men who were out 4-wheeling in a rural area near Lake
Alvin in Lincoln County.
"It didn't look real initially. I actually wondered about if it was real
because it didn't look real," Albers said.
The discovery of the mangled body was quickly connected to O'Connell's
disappearance that was reported in Sioux Falls the night before. Albers called
former Sioux Falls Police Chief and detective Terry Satterlee.
"It was just terrible. It was just absolutely terrible what he did to that
little girl," Satterlee said.
Both Albers and Satterlee are retired now but worked in law enforcement more
than 30 years and say the Becky O'Connell murder was one of the most gruesome
cases they had to investigate.
"I know that you shouldn't step on a crime scene but I had to go over and touch
the body to convince myself that was a person; a child," Albers said.
Moeller had kidnapped O'Connell on May 8, 1990 from a Sioux Falls convenience
store and took her to a wooded area near Lake Alvin where he raped and
sodomized her while continually stabbing her at the same time; sometimes going
so deep it went all the way to the handle.
"Such a mindless crime. It made no sense, but Moeller was that type of person,
his whole focus is self gratification and he doesn't give any thought to who
his victim is or what the impact of his actions are," Satterlee said.
While Moeller was identified as a suspect shortly after O'Connell's body was
discovered, it wasn't until February of 1991 when Moeller was captured in
Washington State.
It wasn't Moeller's 1st violent crime. He was actually convicted of assaulting
a teenage boy in Wyoming in 1979, when he tied up the 13-year-old and forced
him to perform oral sex at knife point.
Satterlee says if they didn't arrest Moeller following O'Connell's killing he
would have continued the violent pattern.
"He wasn't going to stop. If he hadn't been captured he would have continued on
satisfying his needs until he was either captured or killed, one or the other,
he wasn't about to stop," Satterlee said.
Because of appeals Moeller eventually had two trials and was convicted of
raping and killing O'Connell twice by two different South Dakota juries. Even
though it has taken 22 years for Moeller's execution to be carried out, the
investigators who were first on the scene say the 60-year-old deserves the
punishment that awaits him in South Dakota's death chamber.
"I do think it's time to get it done. Probably well over the time to get it
done," Albers said.
"He's had his day in court and he's been found guilty by 2 separate juries,
their recommendation was the death penalty and it's an absolutely appropriate
in this case. I can't think of another case where there would be more
appropriate than this one. This was an outrageous crime and the death penalty
is the proper sentence," Satterlee said.
And as Moeller's last days approach the investigators who worked the case say
no one should forget the innocent girl whose life was brutally ended in rural
Lincoln County.
"There's nothing she could possibly have done to deserve that kind of thing to
happen," Albers said.
"In my opinion if anybody feels compelled to shed a tear for Donald Moeller
they ought to save a tear and shed it for a little girl and her family and
friends who Moeller took away the most precious commodity she had and that was
her life. After he's executed I hope I never hear his name again," Satterlee
said.
A name that in just days will no longer be part of South Dakota's list of death
row inmates.
Albers says he plans to attend Moeller's execution this week. Satterlee says he
will not be there and has no desire to witness the execution.
(source: Keloland)
******************************
Execution looms for Donald Moeller, ending 22-year saga
Torrential overnight rains had washed away the blood so the searchers at first
thought the pale form lying on the earthen berm might be a mannequin.
"I almost didn't believe it," recalled former Lincoln County Sheriff Ken
Albers, the f`t officer to approach the body of 9-year-old Becky O'Connell.
"You don't mess up a crime scene, but I had to walk over and touch the body to
convince myself that it was real."
The shocking discovery that night in 1990 began a 22-year legal and emotional
saga that is expected to end Tuesday, when Donald Moeller, who was convicted of
abducting and murdering the girl, is scheduled to be put to death by lethal
injection in the state penitentiary.
After decades of appeals, Moeller, 60, now accepts his fate without protest.
But the end leaves behind a community still marked by the crime and its
experience with capital punishment.
Moeller's death sentence in 1992 was the 1st handed down in South Dakota in 45
years. Until this month, when the killer of a prison guard was executed, there
had been only 1 other execution in the state since the 1940s.
The child's mother, Tina Curl, plans to drive the 1,400 miles back to Sioux
Falls from her native New York state to watch Moeller take his last breath. She
didn't have the money for the trip but did fundraising events to pay her way.
"I'm looking forward to it," said Curl, who said she fell into alcoholism after
her daughter's death. "All this is just bringing what I tried to push way in
the back, back up front."
Some residents said the murder changed how they felt about their city, where
violent crime is rare.
"It's just like society as a whole just kind of tightened up for a long time,"
said Jeff Masten, the former Lincoln County state's attorney who prosecuted the
case, and who later changed careers because of the strain of criminal law.
LaVonne Martley, a juror, said she knew the execution would bring the case back
into the public spotlight - "and I've dreaded it." But she has never questioned
the outcome. "He definitely did it," she said.
Curl thought she was escaping the dangers of big-city life when she moved her
family in 1990 from New York to Sioux Falls, a well-kept, medium-size city
along the Big Sioux River that serves as a market center for the sprawling
expanse of farmland where South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota come together.
Homicides happen, but not many - about a half dozen a year, most involving
people who know each other, and where there is no mystery to solve.
On May 8, 1990, Becky, a fourthgrader who lived with her mother and stepfather
in a Sioux Falls mobile home, began walking a couple of blocks to Omer's Market
to buy sugar to make lemonade. She never returned.
Authorities say Moeller, a felon with a history of assaults who lived nearby,
lured the brown-haired girl into his truck and drove her to a wooded area near
the Iowa state line, where he raped her, stabbed her and left her to bleed to
death.
Moeller was interviewed shortly after the killing but disappeared before
investigators could follow up. Detectives later tracked him down in Tacoma,
Wash., and brought him back for trial. He was convicted in September 1992 based
on DNA and circumstantial evidence. The trial, with detailed and graphic
displays on how the child was killed, devastated the community, but the ordeal
wasn't over: The verdict was overturned by the South Dakota Supreme Court
because of the mention of past crimes during testimony.
With a new trial ordered in 1996, the horror of the gruesome killing was
relived, and lingered for years longer.
Residents around Sioux Falls - and also in Yankton and Rapid City, where the
two trials were held because of pretrial publicity - worried in new ways about
the safety of their cities.
"We very seldom left our kids at a baby sitter," recalled Marcel Kathol, a
father of 4 and a juror at Moeller's 1st trial. "A lot of us, we held onto our
kids a little tighter and made sure where they were at."
Masten said that even though prosecutors won a 2nd guilty verdict, the case
stayed with him over the years through the periodic reports about Moeller's
appeals.
The stress of his work led him to shift into private practice and eventually to
a career change to nuclear medicine.
"Whether you're prosecuting or defending, the emotional investment that you've
got in that is tremendous," he said. 'You just sleep eat and drink that case
for months, if not years. You have to be able to walk away from it, but it's
really tough to develop that skill."
Moeller fought his conviction and sentence until July, when he said he was
ready to accept death as punishment for his actions. He removed the final
obstacle by persuading a federal judge to dismiss his long-standing challenge
of South Dakota's lethal injection procedure.
"The law has spoken," he said. "I killed. I deserve to be killed."
Just hours after Becky's private memorial service in Sioux Falls, Curl and her
husband had packed up their belongings and moved to Lake Luzerne, N.Y. She said
she soon lost control of her life.
"Right after Beck was murdered, I started drinking every day," she said. "I
drank from the time I woke up to the time I passed out at night." She has dealt
with a series of health problems, suffering a heart attack and quadruple bypass
in 2003.
She said she hopes her trip back to Sioux Falls to watch Moeller's execution
will help still the memories of her daughter's haunting crime scene photos.
"I picture them every day in my head," she said.
(source: Mitchell Republic)
********************************
Protesters to spread their message for 2nd execution
Donald Moeller will be the 2nd inmate put to death by lethal injection in a
span of a few weeks, in South Dakota. He will die by lethal injection Tuesday
at 10:00 p.m.
For someone like Mark Sanderson who speaks out against capital punishment, it's
overwhelming.
"The death penalty does nothing to help us solve the ills of our society and
does nothing to heal the wounds created with the victims of the crime," Mark
Sanderson said.
Sanderson says continuing with capital punishment does nothing to prevent
violence or make things better for society, even if an inmate feels they
deserve it, like Donald Moeller did after 22 years of time to reflect.
"Just because they feel they deserve to have death, in my mind, is not a reason
for giving them that wish," Sanderson said.
Many disagree. We turned to viewers on our Facebook page for reaction to this
execution. We found many say the same thing: it's about time.
Nancy P. said: "Since [Donald Moeller] murdered Becky, I've had 4 children, 3
of them are grown. Becky deserved the chance to grow up, have a family and live
her life. In my opinion, he should have been executed a long time ago."
Kathleen B. said: "I'm glad he finally confessed and owned up to what he did.
Sad it took so long for him to grow a conscience. I am pro death penalty and
always will be."
Regardless of the inmate, what they did, or how long they've been on death row,
those who stand against capital punishment await the day it will end all
together.
"I would expect that if we eliminate the death penalty, and give life without
parole, these people may be able to have a chance they never had before to find
out who they are. That's our hope," Sanderson said.
Protesters of the death penalty plan to attend a vigil, Tuesday night,
beginning at 8:00 p.m. as the state puts Moeller to death.
(source: KSFY News)
CALIFORNIA:
The Death Penalty is Experiencing Technical Difficulties; How legal wrangling
over the chemicals used in lethal injection could shut down capital punishment.
LOS ANGELES DISTRICT ATTORNEY Steve Cooley is in a hurry to have Mitchell Sims
put to death. You couldn't blame Cooley if he felt frustrated. He's seen the
execution of Sims, a convicted triple murderer, delayed for 6 solid years,
bogged down in a legal quagmire over whether California's 3-chemical
lethal-injection sequence is a sufficiently humane method of killing someone.
By the time the courts decide the issue, the state might not even be able to
obtain the deadly drugs required. And to top it off, Cooley may be running out
of time: this November, the state's voters may decide to abandon the death
penalty altogether.
Opponents in the Golden State have been trying to get rid of capital punishment
for a long time, but this year's ballot initiative is their most forceful
effort in many years. It is headlined by Cooley's onetime boss, former L.A.
District Attorney Gil Garcetti, as well as law-and-order luminaries like Don
Heller, another former prosecutor, who wrote California's ballot language
reinstating the death penalty in 1978, and Jeanne Woodford, who, when she was
warden of San Quentin, presided over 4 executions. They argue the death penalty
is a sham - and an expensive one that California can ill afford. Since 1978,
taxpayers have shelled out $4 billion in executing only 13 condemned inmates.
By contrast, they note, 57 have died of old age. And the initiative has
momentum: in the past 5 years, 4 other states have done away with the death
penalty. California's death row - the nation's largest, with 729 condemned
inmates - could well be the next to be shut down.
IF THE DEATH PENALTY is meant for anybody, it's Mitchell Sims. Back in January
1985, Sims - then 25 - had just been promoted to a mid-management position at a
Domino's Pizza in West Columbia, South Carolina. Sims believed he deserved a
bonus; his bosses thought otherwise. In December, Sims shot and killed 2
employees at a nearby Domino's franchise. He and his girlfriend fled to
California and took up lodging at a motel in Glendale. The next night, the
couple telephoned a local Domino's to order room service. When John Harrigan
showed up with a pizza in hand, Sims robbed and hog-tied the 21-year-old,
dumped him in the bathtub, and turned on the water. He gagged Harrigan by
strapping a washcloth over his mouth, and wrapped a sock around his head to
keep it there. Then Sims covered Harrigan's head with a pillowcase and tied it
tightly around the deliveryman's neck with what the forensic literature called
a "ligature." Sims would later testify that Harrigan was still alive when he
and his girlfriend left; but this homicide was never remotely a whodunit. When
Harrigan's body was discovered a few hours later, the lone mystery was whether
he'd been strangled or drowned.
In 1987, Sims was sentenced to death. Sims was not, as he told the judge, "a
nice person." Jurors would hear how Sims's sadistic stepfather repeatedly raped
him as a young boy and made him have sex with his own mother. But they must
have been more horrified by the creative cruelty Sims exhibited in the
commission of his crimes. By 2006, Sims had exhausted all his appeals.
Debate over the death penalty all across the nation has been infused with a
fresh sense of moral urgency. Death-penalty critics point out that 140
death-row inmates have been released because they were innocent - some of them
exonerated by new DNA evidence - or improperly convicted. Recent reports have
raised questions about the guilt of Troy Davis, who was executed in Georgia,
and Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas. In response to the
fallibility of the legal process and the irreversibility of the punishment,
Democratic and Republican legislators in Connecticut and Illinois have voted to
abolish capital punishment in the past 18 months, following the lead of
legislators in New Jersey in 2007 and New Mexico in 2009.
For Mitchell Sims, however, exoneration isn't an option. Given the facts of
Sims???s case, he's not likely to become the poster child for the Innocence
Project. Sims's sole defense was that if he'd actually intended to kill
Harrigan, he would have done so before leaving the motel room.
Keeping Mitchell Sims alive has been the work of skillful attorneys
specializing in death-penalty appeals. Since 2006, these attorneys have
persuaded a handful of key state, federal, and appeals judges that problems
abound with the lethal injection of a 3-chemical sequence. Given the battles
over the death penalty now consuming California - and the nation - it's
questionable whether Sims, or anyone now on California's death row, will ever
be put to death.
IN 1977, Oklahoma's chief medical examiner, Dr. Jay Chapman, was approached by
a member of his state legislature seeking advice on humane methods of
execution. The death penalty had just been reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court
after the historic 4-year hiatus after which it had been held unconstitutional.
That year, Utah had become the 1st state to execute a prisoner in the so-called
modern era, when Gary Gilmore was shot to death by a firing squad of 5 marksmen
standing behind a curtain 10 yards away. Utah's brutally direct method provoked
a wave of moral revulsion. The divide over the death penalty was still acute,
as reflected in the Supreme Court's starkly divided written opinions on
reinstatement. As Chapman explained in a recent interview, his advice was
sought so that Oklahoma could avoid the "national media circus" that had
engulfed Utah during Gilmore's execution.
Back then, Oklahoma executed its condemned prisoners via the electric chair,
which, in the continuing effort to inflict death without undue spectacle, had
supplanted the gallows. But the electric chair didn't always deliver the quick
death its champions claimed it would. Repeated jolts were sometimes needed to
get the job done. In the process, some inmates were slowly cooked, and flames,
on occasion, shot off the top of their heads. All but the most vengeful
witnesses were horrified.
The shortcomings of the electric chair gave rise to the gas chamber, but that,
too, proved less dispassionately clinical than hoped. Inmates writhed and
strained against their straps. Suffering was visible. And the parallels with
Nazi gas chambers were too obvious for comfort.
Eventually, thanks to Dr. Chapman, all other methods would give way to the
antiseptic tranquility promised by lethal injection.
Chapman said he spent all of 5 days coming up with a procedure mimicking the
steps already used to induce unconsciousness during surgical procedures. But to
get the desired fatal result, he explained, he would "exaggerate them."
First, sodium thiopental. It's a knockout agent with quick effects that don't
last long, meaning patients must be given an ongoing dose lest they wake up
mid-operation. Chapman urged they be given a continuous IV drip of the
anesthetic to keep them under for the entire execution.
Chapman also included a paralytic agent, pancuronium bromide, used in many
surgeries to keep the sedated from thrashing about. A cousin to curare, the
poison was made famous by Amazonian tribesmen who used it on their arrows to
paralyze their prey. Pancuronium, in immobilizing all the body's muscles, can
effectively stop the lungs from breathing. It also smothers any outward signs
of distress that would trouble observers.
Pancuronium had been used - and not that long ago - to paralyze living animals
so that surgeons could practice skills and techniques they would later use on
human subjects. That was before the advent of animal-rights activism. But using
sodium thiopental and pancuronium together is more fraught than it might seem.
Every year, thousands of Americans report waking up mid-surgery, able to feel
the pain but unable to cry out because of the paralytic drug. (Laws have been
enacted in a majority of states banning the use of pancuronium bromide in
animal euthanasia on humanitarian grounds, and requiring an overdose of a
single barbiturate instead. Many of those same states, however, do use
pancuronium in executing human beings.)
Lastly, Chapman recommended that the condemned be given an injection of
potassium chloride, which induces a massive and sudden heart attack. If all
else failed, this would do the trick.
In short order, Chapman's protocol swept the death-penalty states. Some states
gave inmates a choice of execution methods; but all of them used the 3-chemical
protocol, even if not exclusively. Although it originated in Oklahoma, lethal
injection was first deployed in Texas in 1982. Not surprisingly, Chapman's
protocol did little to still the waters. Almost from the start, the new method
elicited a steady stream of legal objections: critics have claimed the drugs
can cause excruciating pain, and have cited reports likening the feeling to
that of a liquid flame-thrower. Chapman said such reports are exaggerated for
political purposes.
Every year, more than 30,000 Americans kill themselves - most of them,
accidentally - with drug overdoses. So how hard can it be to administer such a
demise intentionally?
Chapman insists it's pretty easy, and "doesn't take a rocket-science expert."
But even Chapman acknowledges problems. "There have been situations where
someone points the needle in the vein towards the hand and not the body," he
said. "I can't imagine anyone being that stupid."
And that - according to Deborah Denno of Fordham Law School, one of the
country's top scholars of lethal injection, and Richard Dieter, of the Death
Penalty Information Center - is the least of it. They cite the case of
Missouri's now-infamous Dr. John Doe, who presided over 54 executions. Dr. Doe,
it turns out, had been the subject of 20 malpractice lawsuits and had
privileges revoked by 2 hospitals. He was also dyslexic and frequently measured
out less of the sodium-thiopental powder than the protocol called for, thus
increasing the likelihood that the condemned were conscious when the other 2
drugs attacked.
In December 2006, Florida executioners fumbled with the vein of convicted
killer Angel Diaz, sticking the needle in 1 side and out the other. A typical
lethal-injection execution is supposed to take about 15 minutes; Diaz took 34
minutes to die. He was conscious for the first 25. Critics contended Diaz was
tortured to death. Afterward, then-Governor Jeb Bush declared a moratorium on
executions. In 2009, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland halted the execution of
convicted killer Romell Broom after his executioners spent no less than 2 hours
poking him 18 times. The prisoner "was helping them, he was in such pain," said
Denno. "He tried to kill himself. They even got the prison doctor in there, and
they couldn't kill him."
THE YEAR 1999 was the high-water mark for executions in the United States: 98
inmates were killed. Since then, the yearly total has been cut in half. All the
while, death-penalty supporters continue to rail against what they describe as
a self-serving cottage industry of death-row lawyers specializing in the art of
delay and thwarting the law of the land. That cadre of anti-death-penalty
lawyers, in opposing the three-chemical method, have objected that no science
exists to back up claims that Chapman's protocol is painless.
As of 2005, these concerns could no longer be dismissed as hypothetical. Three
American medical professionals teamed up that year with an anti-death-penalty
attorney and published a scholarly study, in the British medical journal The
Lancet, concluding that 21 of the 49 executed inmates who were studied had
sodium-thiopental concentrations in their blood "consistent with
consciousness." In plainer language, the authors stated: "It is possible some
of these inmates were fully aware during their executions."
But the Lancet article was nothing compared with the damage done to the
3-chemical protocol by Federal Judge Jeremy Fogel in December 2006. That's when
Fogel - in response to an appeal filed on behalf of a condemned California
inmate - declared California's lethal-injection system "broken." Fogel's long
list of deficiencies included poor visibility in the execution chamber, a place
so dark that one doctor reported needing a flashlight to fill out records; and
lack of training for the execution team, with 1 nurse reporting she'd received
no instruction on how to mix the chemicals. Based on autopsy reports, Fogel
expressed serious doubts that breathing had stopped when expected in 6 of the
11 inmates executed. This, he said, raised "concerns that inmates may have been
conscious." Fogel recommended all executions be stopped until the system was
"fixed"; capital punishment in California ground to a halt.
Fogel gave the Department of Corrections two relatively quick fix-it options:
have medically certified anesthesiologists participate in the proceedings to
ensure that the condemned are given sufficient quantities of sodium thiopental
that they don't ever wake up; or switch to a one-drug method. Fogel made it
clear that if California switched to a 1-drug protocol, the concerns about
cruel and unusual punishment would be obviated, and executions could
recommence. That marked the first time in the history of lethal injection that
any judge - anywhere in the country - had weighed in so dramatically.
California prison officials responded in another way: by developing for the
3-chemical protocol a much more detailed set of guidelines, designed to address
Fogel's concerns. Meanwhile, Fogel took a leave from the federal bench; to
date, no judge has signed off on those improvements.
And while the department did hire 2 anesthesiologists, both quit shortly before
the state's next execution was scheduled. Controversy still exists as to why,
but they apparently got cold feet after learning that they might have to play a
more active role than merely recording the time of death. At the time of
Fogel's ruling, no state in the nation had yet switched to a 1-drug send-off.
According to Deborah Denno, states like California were loath to contemplate
new execution methods. Doing so, she suggested, would be a tacit admission of
possible problems with their 3-drug protocol. Any deviation from the status
quo, she added, would have opened California's execution protocol to new legal
challenges.
Then, in 2008, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Kentucky's
3-drug death penalty in what's known as the Baze decision, after the name of
one of the condemned inmates who brought the suit. This meant that as long as
California???s execution teams adhered to a 3-drug protocol similar to
Kentucky's, their death penalty was not unconstitutionally "cruel and unusual."
If California corrections officials were reluctant to experiment with new
execution methods before Baze, they were absolutely opposed afterward.
The Supreme Court "wanted to quell all the chaos, with Baze," said Denno, "but
since Baze, things have only gotten more chaotic than ever." Before Baze, she
noted, Jay Chapman's was the 1 and only lethal-injection protocol. But since
Baze, 5 states - Ohio, Idaho, Texas, Washington, and Arizona - have shifted
tactics, embracing the 1-drug process. Combined, these states have dispatched
26 condemned prisoners using the new methods. 4 other states - Kentucky,
Georgia, Missouri, and South Dakota - have announced they've changed their
protocols, but have yet to actually use a new method.
In part, those states are responding to a twist that could render all these
machinations moot: it turns out that the days of the 3-chemical compound are
numbered. Companies that manufacture the fast-acting anesthetic sodium
thiopental - a key ingredient - no longer produce it in the United States.
European manufacturers, citing moral and political concerns with capital
punishment, have refused to sell the drug to prison administrators in the
United States. Now state executioners are in a desperate scramble to obtain
supplies from other foreign sources. U.S. hospitals are experiencing collateral
difficulties, reporting shortages of the drug. And earlier this year, Federal
Judge Richard Leon ruled that the Food and Drug Administration could not allow
sodium thiopental to be imported. The judge also ordered all states to hand
over for such screening any sodium thiopental they'd already imported. The FDA
has challenged that ruling, as have attorneys general from 15 states. A few
states publicly refused to give up their supply, California included. By 2014,
by some estimates, the death-penalty drugs California has on hand will expire
anyway.
ONE SHOT
IN THE PAST 2 YEARS, the states that adopted procedures in which condemned
inmates are put to sleep forever with a single barbiturate have mostly switched
to the sedative pentobarbital (Missouri opted for the drug that killed the
singer Michael Jackson, propofol). In July, Texas exacted its 1st single-drug
execution on 33-year-old Yokamon Hearn. Georgia has just announced plans to
switch to a single drug. Even Kentucky - which established the Chapman protocol
as the constitutional gold standard - is jumping ship. Arizona recently adopted
a 1-drug protocol, using the longer-acting barbiturate pentobarbital.
As Judge Fogel noted, switching to a single drug would solve California's
problem almost overnight. But only earlier this year did Attorney General
Kamala Harris publicly agree to begin looking into the feasibility of the
1-chemical path. In response, death-penalty advocates claim that Harris and
California Governor Jerry Brown, as well as former Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger - despite their public pledges to uphold the death penalty -
personally oppose capital punishment and have embraced every obstacle that's
come their way.
"I don't see any point of 'looking into it.' It's already been looked into,"
objected Kent Scheidegger, the legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal
Foundation, in a recent interview. A longtime advocate for the death penalty in
California, Scheidegger - who is working with Steve Cooley and Deputy District
Attorney Michele Hanisee on the Sims challenge - expressed bewilderment that
California corrections officials have insisted on pursuing the 3-chemical path
when it clearly is the path of maximum resistance. "It's an abuse of discretion
to choose the path that leads to obstruction," he said. Whatever your position
on the death penalty, he's hard to disagree with.
This May, Cooley and Hanisee took a new tack: they filed a motion in Los
Angeles Superior Court that Sims be given a lethal overdose of a single
barbiturate. This legal action may be the courtroom equivalent of a Hail Mary
pass. In the never-ending twists and turns of the legal morass that is capital
punishment, Attorney General Harris fought back, saying that only the state
corrections department has the authority to determine the method of execution.
She added that Cooley's approach violated the court order that put all
executions on ice until a new protocol - one giving due consideration to the
1-drug option - was adopted. In September, Judge Larry Fidler agreed with
Harris.
DENNO AND CHAPMAN, who maintain a long-distance adversarial conviviality, agree
that even if all of the death-penalty states - now numbering 33 - adopted the
1-drug protocol, not much would be settled. "It doesn't matter what method you
use, people will find some argument against it," said Chapman. Denno regards
the 1-drug protocol as an improvement, but concedes that it "just raises new
questions."
For example, Denno pointed out, executing with the 1-drug method takes longer.
Inmates have been known to shudder and shake, disrupting what Chief Justice
John Roberts described in the Baze ruling as "the dignity" of the procedure.
(Of all methods of execution, Denno said, she found the firing squad the most
defensible. It's quick and definite, she said. It satisfies the public demand
for punishment, while assuring the condemned a swift, straightforward exit.)
If California voters pass the death-penalty ban in November, the case, and the
entire question of execution method, will be rendered moot. Public-opinion
polls show that although 62 % of respondents statewide still support the death
penalty, that figure is the lowest it's been in years; and when voters are
given the option of sentencing an offender to life without the possibility of
parole, support for the death penalty slips below 50 %.
Supporters of the ban have raised nearly $5.4 million; opponents have raised
more than $200,000. Death-penalty advocates find themselves, unaccustomedly, on
the defensive. As tuition rates rise at the University of California campuses,
and community colleges turn students away, voters appear inclined to scrutinize
the cost of punishment. However you do the math - $4 billion spent on only 13
executions - the status quo ain't working.
Today, Mitchell Sims is 52 years old. The average life expectancy for a white
male in the United States is 76. Given the legal challenges confronting
California's death-penalty protocol - and the state's overwhelming budget woes
- Sims will likely live another 24 years.
(source: Pacific Standard Magazine)
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Life or death on the ballot
Some might call him a dead man walking, or even a ghost. If things had gone as
planned for the state of Florida, Juan Roberto Melendez would most certainly be
dead.
Melendez spent 17 years, 8 months and 1 day on Florida's death row for a crime
he didn't commit.
"It was hell and I wanted to get out of there," Melendez said.
He lived in a 6-by-9 cell infested with rats and roaches. Melendez would often
have fleeting thoughts of suicide, but never succumbed.
"Every time I wanted to commit suicide, our creator, God, would send me an
awesome dream, a dream of happier times, a dream of my childhood, a dream of
hope - hope that one day I would be free," he said.
On May 2, 1984, Melendez was arrested by the FBI for the 1983 murder of Delbert
Baker, a man Melendez claimed he had never met. Even though Melendez was
scared, he thought that everything was just a mistake and he would soon go back
to his life as a migrant farmer.
But it took the Florida court 1 week to sentence Melendez to death for
1st-degree murder and armed robbery. During his interrogation and trial,
Melendez never received an interpreter.
At the time, he only spoke Spanish and could neither read nor write in English.
"I was naive to the language and I was naive to the law," Melendez said.
In 2002, Melendez was exonerated from Florida's death row after a taped
confession by the real killer was discovered. After 3 appeals, more than 13
attorneys and faith, Melendez was finally a free man.
Upon his release, he received $100 compensation from the state of Florida for
transportation and food. Florida's 'Victims of Wrongful Incarceration Act'
states that wrongfully incarcerated people are not eligible for compensation if
the defendant had a prior record, which Melendez had.
But Melendez' story is not unique.
A 2012 report by Death Penalty Information Center said 141 death row inmates
nationwide have been exonerated since 1973. In California, three people have
proven their innocence.
"We can always release an innocent man from prison, but we can never release an
innocent man from the grave," Melendez said.
In November, California voters will be asked if they want to abolish the death
penalty, which currently affects 724 inmates - the highest in the nation.
If voters say yes to Proposition 34, the initiative will abolish capital
punishment and impose a new sentence of life in prison without the possibility
of parole for previously condemned inmates.
Opponents of Proposition 34 say Californians should not throw away a useful
tool, but should fix and improve the death penalty. They believe that the state
should modify and limit the time for filings certain types of appeals and house
death row inmates in other prisoners.
Jonny Bridge, a sociology major at CSUN, attended one of Melendez' lectures
when he shared his story. After the lecture, Bridge changed his view of the
death penalty.
"Unless there is 100 % DNA evidence, there shouldn't be death penalty," Bridge
said.
Bridge still believes that the death penalty should exist, but said California
needs to either redraft their system or abolish it.
However, supporters of the measure argue that the death penalty is not only
broken, but it is also expensive.
In 2011, a judge and Loyola Law School professor conducted research showing
that California taxpayers spend more than $170 million per year confining death
row inmates - the costliest death penalty system in the country - compared to
inmates that serve life without possibility of parole.
But as the research illustrates, the tax money has not been financing the
execution itself.
Only 13 death row prisoners have been executed since 1978 in California. But
while the state has spent $4 billion trying to enforce capital punishment, $3
billion has been spent on trial costs and petitions.
Proposition 34 would also reinvest $100 million that will be saved from
abolishing the death penalty to fund law enforcement agencies and require
inmates to work while in prison so their wages can be applied to any victim
restitution fines.
Kevin Riggs, spokesman for the No on 34 campaign, said that the cost-saving
numbers for abolishing death penalty are greatly exaggerated and biased.
"They are going to have continuing court costs no matter what kind of case it
is," Riggs said. "Because the judge and lawyers are still going to the
courthouse whether it is a death penalty or not."
But it is not only the cost of the death penalty that is raising questions -
eliminating it could save $183 million for Californians.
Some also argue that death row prisoners are receiving 2 distinct punishments:
the death sentence and years living in conditions equivalent to solitary
confinement.
From 1978 until 2011, more than 78 death row inmates have died of natural
causes or by suicide in California.The long wait for execution, which in this
state can take more than 20 years, inspires some inmates to take their own
life.
"You might be dead, but you will be free," Melendez said, who had friends that
committed suicide.
Opponents of Proposition 34 also believe that the death penalty gives family of
the victims a sense of justice.
Melanie Shaw, 21, an English major at CSUN, said she supports the death penalty
because of the "eye for an eye" concept.
"You took away all possibilities for that person to have a life so why should
you deserve to live," Shaw said.
But Karren Baird-Olson, a sociology professor at CSUN, disagrees. In spite of
her 3-year-old granddaughter being murdered in 1985, Baird-Olson says that the
"eye for an eye" concept eventually makes us all blind.
"Killing somebody doesn't bring back the person you lost," Baird-Olson said.
Baird-Olson said that revenge and retribution are not qualities a civilized
society should advocate.
"Why should I want the defendants' family to go through what I went through,"
Baird-Olson said.
Carl Adams, president of the California District Attorneys Association, said
people should not oppose Proposition 34 for philosophical or moral reason.
"The existence of death penalty is a political factor that keeps the public
safe and deters crime," Adams said.
However, a 2011 report by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the murder rate is
usually higher in states with the death penalty compared to states without it.
In 2009, California's murder rate was 5.9 per 100,000 populations. This was
more than 2 times higher than Vermont - a state without death penalty - that
had 1.3-per-100,000 populations.
But Melendez said that death penalty should not only be abolished because of
deterrence or the cost of maintaining it, but also because it is a cruel system
that legitimizes killing of another human being.
"The United States is the only country in the Western industrialized world that
has the death penalty," said Melendez. "California has an opportunity now to be
on right side of history."
(source: The Daily Sundial)
*******************************
Marshall Thompson and Michael Genest: The pro and con of repealing death
penalty in California; Proposition 34 on the Nov. 6 ballot would repeal the
state's death penalty option and replace it with life in prison without the
possibility of parole.
PRO
No one gets out alive----By Marshall Thompson
I executed people for the state of California because it was my job. I support
Proposition 34 because I am a law enforcement professional committed to public
safety.
During 27 years with the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation, I was directly involved in carrying out the state's orders to
put 4 men to death. For what would have been my 5th execution - one that didn't
happen - I was the team leader.
As a peace officer, a citizen and a taxpayer, I want public safety to be
California's priority when it spends our money. The more than $130 million that
we spend on the death penalty every year does not keep our families any safer.
What we need to do is to investigate unsolved homicides and rapes. Right now we
know that 46 percent of homicides in California go unsolved. Putting our faith
in the death penalty makes absolutely no sense when each year we have over
1,000 killers in California who are not even apprehended.
Over my many years in San Quentin I learned that the death penalty is not only
a horrendous waste of money, but that it is not a deterrent.
I helped put 4 men to death at San Quentin. I've known hundreds of others on
death row. Not a single one of them thought he'd get caught. Not one of them
thought about getting the death penalty or life in prison. Not one of those
hundreds of men gave punishment a thought when he was committing murder. Anyone
who thinks the death penalty is a deterrent has not spent time around convicted
criminals and condemned inmates the way I have. Some death penalty supporters
claim that the deterrent effect of punishment is greatest when the punishment
is the most severe. They are wrong; it is the certainty of punishment, rather
than its severity, that maximizes deterrence.
That is why I urge my fellow Californians, as strongly as I know how, to vote
yes on Prop. 34 to make our state safer by replacing the death penalty with
life in prison without the possibility of parole, and creating a fund that will
put $100 million in the 1st 3 years into solving unsolved rapes and homicides.
Life means forever. A person sentenced to life without parole does not get out
alive.
Replacing the death penalty with life without parole means that those convicted
of our worst murders will die in prison. With the death penalty, we spend
millions and millions of dollars to try to make the inmates die sooner. But far
more people on death row die of natural causes than by being executed, and a
lot of people believe that death on the gurney is easier for the inmate than
death after a lifelong term of imprisonment.
The public should understand that a sentence of life in prison without the
possibility of parole is very severe. People are generally unaware that death
row inmates' living conditions are better than they are for other inmates. If
the death penalty is replaced with life without possibility of parole, these
inmates will lose that special status.
Let's stop spending all this money on something that doesn't work when we can
require that inmates actually work and pay restitution to victims, and stop the
waste of tax dollars.
Marshall Thompson is a retired California correctional lieutenant and execution
team leader at San Quentin State Prison.
CON
Misleading savings claims----By Michael Genest
Having served for 30 years in various fiscal and budget-related jobs, I am
familiar with how ballot initiatives affect the state budget, including their
effects on taxpayers and on funding for public services. Based on my review of
the ballot language and the corresponding "study" put forward by its
proponents, I believe the claims that Proposition 34 will save money for
taxpayers and schools are exaggerated, misleading and irrelevant.
Initially, the ACLU and other sponsors argued that Prop. 34 would "save
hundreds of millions and redirect $100 million to solve rapes and murders."
A Superior Court judge ruled these claims were a matter of opinion and
hyperbole. The Yes on 34 campaign was ordered to remove misleading claims that
the initiative's $100 million expenditure was tied to savings of any kind.
In fact, $100 million is taken directly from the state's general fund,
regardless of whether Prop. 34 achieves any savings. There is no guarantee that
this would not result in money being taken from other budget priorities, even
from our schools.
Prop. 34 supporters make a myriad of savings claims, attributing the entire
cost of investigations, trials, appeals and incarceration for condemned
murderers to the death penalty. This superficial analysis greatly overstates
the true marginal cost of death penalty cases as compared to life without
parole cases. It also ignores the fact that no 2 murder cases are alike. Each
criminal investigation is unique and the costs to investigate and prosecute are
based on the specifics of each case.
When a murder is investigated, especially one in which a special circumstance
is alleged, the cost for local law enforcement to investigate the crime is the
same regardless of whether or not the prosecutor seeks the death penalty or
life without parole. Many life-without-parole cases cost more than death
penalty cases, the trial for O.J. Simpson being just one example.
More credible is the fiscal analysis that appears on the ballot by the
independent Legislative Analyst's Office. The LAO says that eliminating the
death penalty could ultimately "save" $130 million per year. My detailed review
of the LAO's assumptions leads me to question whether there would be any
savings at all.
One big question relates to whether there would be an increase in cases going
to trial if defendants who now plead guilty decide that with no potential death
penalty hanging over their head they will take their chances with a protracted
and expensive trial. If the LAO has guessed wrong on this (and I think there is
a good chance they have), that effect alone could wipe out all the supposed
savings. They also assume that over time, the entire state spending on death
penalty appeals will simply stop, not seeming to understand that the criminals
and their lawyers will simply re-direct their appeals efforts to life
sentences.
Perhaps more significantly, whatever savings may occur would be to local law
enforcement, the courts and the state's correction department.
If you read your ballot pamphlet, you will see that the LAO acknowledges the
possibility that eliminating the death penalty could lead to a higher rate of
murder in California, saying "the resulting fiscal effect is unknown." So, the
real question is: Is whatever savings may be achieved really worth the risk to
public safety? As a fiscal expert, I don't think so.
Michael Genest was director of the California Department of Finance from 2005
to 2009.
(source: Daily News)
GEORGIA:
Death sentences upheld in 2003 killings of east Cobb mother, son
The Supreme Court of Georgia has unanimously upheld death sentences for
Lawrence Rice who was convicted in 2008 of killing Connie Mincher and her
teenage son, Ethan, in their east Cobb home in April 2003.
In the opinion, written by Justice Robert Benham and released Monday, the high
court has rejected each of the 10 errors alleged by Rice's attorneys and finds
that "the evidence presented at trial was sufficient to authorize a rational
trier of fact to find Rice guilty beyond a reasonable doubt on all counts."
Connie and Ethan Mincher were found dead in their home by 12-year-old Marlee
Mincher on April 17, 2003.
The family's next-door neighbor told police she had seen Mrs. Mincher arrive
home at around 2 p.m. About 20-30 minutes later she saw a champagne or gold
colored car parked in the Mincher's driveway. She said a man, later identified
as Lawrence Rice of Tucker, got out of the vehicle and removed what appeared to
be a tool box from the back. He then went into the house. 20 minutes later, she
saw Ethan, a freshman at Pope High School, arrive home and go inside. 20
minutes after that, she watched Rice quickly go down the stairs and drive away
in his car. Other witnesses had seen Rice and his older model gold Mercedes in
the neighborhood the weeks before the murders.
Trevor Mincher, the husband and father of the victims, told detectives he had a
history with the owner of the Mercedes. Trevor Mincher died of cancer in 2005,
before Rice's trial.
In 1990, Mincher's company, Videotape Associates, had hired Rice to work as a
maintenance engineer. Mincher said that while working there, Rice drove a gold
Mercedes. He said that after less than 6 months on the job, Rice resigned after
learning that another employee was earning a higher salary. Rice subsequently
wrote letters to Mincher and others, saying Mincher had "blackballed" him and
thwarted his efforts to find another job in the video industry. Eventually,
Rice lost his home and was living in his car. Evidence at trial showed Rice had
called Mincher at home numerous times, mostly around holidays. Mincher said he
considered Rice unpredictable and dangerous. Mrs. Mincher once answered the
phone and told Rice to stop harassing them. Mincher also told police he'd once
received a Christmas card from Rice depicting an angel with a blackened eye and
blood dripping from its wings. The card said the "curse of Akbar" would be on
the Mincher family.
After a month-long trial before Cobb Superior Court Judge Mary E. Staley, a
Cobb jury convicted Rice of murder and burglary and he was given 2 death
sentences plus a 20-year prison sentence for burglary.
Rice appealed to the Supreme Court of Georgia, arguing that errors were made
regarding his competence to stand trial, during jury selection, during the
guilt-innocence phase of the trial, during the sentencing phase of the trial,
and regarding the issues he raised in his motion requesting a new trial.
In today's 47-page opinion, the high court addresses each of his arguments,
finding no reversible errors.
The high court concludes "that the sentences of death in this case were not
imposed under the influence of passion, prejudice, or any other arbitrary
factor.
"Upon our review of the record, we conclude that the evidence at Rice's trial
was sufficient to support the statutory aggravating circumstances found as to
both murders." Georgia law requires that at least 1 of 11 aggravating
circumstances accompany a murder to impose the death penalty.
Finally, "[c]onsidering both the murders in this case and Rice as a defendant,
we find that the death sentences imposed were not disproportionate punishment
within the meaning of Georgia law."
Rice, now 63, is incarcerated at the state's diagnostic and classification
prison in Jackson.
(source: The Marietta Daily Journal)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Man facing possible death sentence in beating death of 74-year-old Smithfield
widow
A jury is now hearing testimony over whether a man convicted of beating a
74-year-old Smithfield widow to death should get the death penalty.
WRAL-TV reports (http://bitly.com/VNUTng) that a Johnston County jury last week
found Matthew Hagert Salentine guilty of 1st-degree murder, 1st-degree burglary
and 1st-degree robbery.
Patricia Stevens was found dead in her home in 2010, wrapped in a rug. She was
the widow of prominent attorney Austin Stevens, who died in 2005.
Salentine lived about a block away and was arrested the day after Patricia
Stevens was killed. Salentine's attorney said his client is bi-polar and was a
crack-cocaine addict at the time.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Salentine. That hearing
continues this week.
(source: Associated Press)
NEW JERSEY:
Death penalty
I am very angry. There have been too many child murders and murders in general
since former Gov. Jon Corzine wrote off New Jersey's death penalty.
The senseless murder of sweet, young Autumn Pasquale should now be the main
reason why Gov. Chris Christie must reinstate the death penalty.
I do not care how old these 2 brothers are, they must pay with their lives for
allegedly taking Autumn's.
If what is alleged by prosecutors is found true in court, they became adults
when they murdered Autumn. They committed a terrible crime - and for a bicycle.
Just take the bicycle. They did not have to kill Autumn. These 2 brothers have
been in trouble with the police before, the younger one for stealing bikes.
Well, now they have stolen Autumn's life.
I am a very vocal advocate for the death penalty. I am asking Christie to take
a little time out from campaigning and reinstate the death penalty.
It's time these child killers pay for killing innocent children. I'm sick of
it. Aren't you?
CHERYL GILBERT----Oaklyn
(source: Letters to the Editor, Courier Post)
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