Nov. 18
TEXAS:
Executions under Rick Perry, 2001-present-----253
Number--------scheduled execution date---------name--------#in Texas
254-------------January 29----------------Kimberly McCarthy-------493
255-------------February 20---------------Britt Ripkowski-----------494
256-------------February 21--------------Carl Blue-------------------495
256-------------April 10------------------Ribogerto Avila, Jr.---------496
257-------------April 16------------------Ronnie Threadgill-----------497
(sources: Texas Department of Criminal Justice & Rick Halperin)
CALIFORNIA:
Convicted murderer still waits on death row
10 years after he murdered a police officer, Andrew Hampton Mickel, now 33, is
still waiting for his final punishment.
Mickel was sentenced to the death penalty on April 27, 2005 for the murder of
Red Bluff police officer Dave Mobilio 3 years earlier.
A day after his sentencing, Mickel was transported to San Quentin State Prison.
He has sat on death row ever since, a fate he shares with 725 others in
California's correctional system.
Since the state Legislature in 1977 reinstated the death penalty, which was
reaffirmed by voters in 1978, the state has had 14 inmates executed.
Those 14 inmates waited an average of 17.5 years from the time of their
sentencing to their death.
California hasn't executed an inmate since Jan. 17, 2006 as court orders
required the Department of Corrections to rewrite its lethal injection
regulations.
The new requirements became effective Aug. 29, 2010.
This month, California voters again backed capital punishment when they turned
down a ballot initiative that would have ended the death penalty.
Red Bluff police Chief Paul Nanfito said he is thankful that voters rejected
the proposition to repeal the death penalty.
It would have taken Mickel off death row, Nanfito said. I'm a proponent of the
death penalty particularly in that case.
Even if the state begins executing condemned prisoners again, Mickel's road to
the lengthy appeals process is just beginning.
Mickel's case itself provided an extra layer of rulings because the convicted
murderer had chosen to represent himself during trial.
4 years after Mickel arrived at San Quentin, the court ruled criminal
defendants have no right to represent themselves during the process of capital
punishment appeals and ordered an attorney for him.
California requires any condemned inmate to find at least one new attorney as
part of their automatic, non-waivable, direct appeal to the California Supreme
Court.
The next step is for the inmate's attorney to file a brief, arguing an error
occurred during the trial and the defendant's conviction or sentence should be
overturned Then the Attorney General's Office files answers to those claims and
the defendent's attorney has an opportunity to file another reply.
Mickel's case is in the latter of that step. On Nov. 5 his attorney filed a
request for a time extension to file the reply brief.
The extension is the first, of what could be many, before an oral argument is
heard before the California Supreme Court.
After the oral argument is made, the California Supreme Court has 90 days to
issue a written opinion.
If the court sides against the defendant, the case can be appealed to the U.S.
Supreme Court.
The defendant, in some cases, also has the option to seek a state habeas corpus
review.
These appeals are based on claims from facts outside the trial record.
This process sets up another timetable of briefs and replies before eventually
reaching oral arguments.
Once again an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court can be made.
Under federal law, after state claims have been reviewed, a petitioner may
raise federal constitutional claims in federal court.
These appeals involve possible violations of constitutional rights and go
through the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on their way to the U.S. Supreme
Court.
Although defendants are only allowed one direct appeal to the California
Supreme Court, they can request permission from the courts to file more than
one habeas corpus petition in state and federal courts.
The last step a defendant has to avoid execution is appealing for executive
clemency.
Only the governor can grant clemency, who often obtains a nonbinding
recommendation from the Board of Paroles.
Is the lengthy process worth it?
Mobilio's father, Richard, told The Sacramento Bee in March that it is.
It's a primal thing, he told The Bee.
I must admit. There is something very visceral about getting your due.
(source: Rich Greene, Red Bluff Daily News)
NEW HAMPSHIRE:
In death penalty case, shocking statements from judge
Last week, the 5 justices of the New Hampshire Supreme Court heard the appeal
of the 1st death sentence levied in the state's modern era. The court gave
lawyers for Michael Addison, the man convicted of shooting and killing
Manchester police officer Michael Briggs in 2006, a full day to make their
case. The legal team raised serious questions that are expected to take the
court at least a year to answer. Pursuing the death penalty will consume months
of the court's time and millions of taxpayer dollars. That alone should give
citizens reason to question whether the alleged benefits of capital punishment
??? there are none in our view ??? are worth the cost to society and the
additional pain for all involved. But testimony at Wednesday's proceeding
raised a surprising, serious and immediate concern that speaks to the ability
of the state's high court to fairly decide whether to take a person's life in
the name of the state. We're referring to statements by Justice Robert Lynn in
a discussion about the fairness of admitting information, including the
testimony of family members, of what an outstanding person Briggs was.
The line is not always clear between victim-witness statements that fairly
inform a judge and jurors of the uniqueness of the person killed and statements
designed to appeal to the emotion of jurors and potentially prejudice the
outcome. The intent of the law is to treat everyone equally and not, as
justices warned in a U.S. Supreme Court case that broadened the nature of
admissible statements, "to imply that one victim is less valued than another. .
. . for instance, that the killer of a hard-working, devoted parent deserves
the death penalty, but the murderer of a reprobate does not."
Lynn's comments were made during a broad discussion of statements that bear on
the character of the victim, but they nonetheless suggest a view that is
disquieting and perhaps disqualifying. Lynn was responding to defense attorney
David Rothstein's allegation that the state unfairly prejudiced the case by
portraying Addison as an outsider and Briggs as protector of the community.
That in itself may not have been inappropriate, and it also happens to be true.
But Lynn's response was shocking.
"Why wouldn't it be an appropriate factor for the jury to consider that . . .
the person someone killed was going to be the next Einstein? That (he) was
going to find a cure for cancer? That he was going to find, going to do some
tremendous things as demonstrated by what they've done already, on the other
hand, as opposed to somebody who had a lesser potential," Lynn said.
That might be true, Rothstein said, if one knew that someone was going to be
the next Einstein, but in most circumstances, "who the victim is an arbitrary
factor."
Lynn persisted. "Isn't it more, quote unquote, of a crime, you know, to kill
the person who was going to find the cure for cancer than . . . someone whose
potential was something less than that?"
The answer is a ringing, resounding "No."
It is not the job of jurors or justices to mete out punishment based on their
opinion of the relative societal worth of the victim. To the extent that is
done, it's the job of legislators and governors who, in New Hampshire, did just
that when they decided that some crimes, including the killing of on-duty
police officers like Briggs, may merit the death penalty.
We hope that Lynn was playing devil's advocate to further the discussion.
Because if he indeed so fundamentally misunderstands how the law applies in
this instance, one is forced to question whether he should sit on the case.
(source: Editorial, Concord Monitor)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Death penalty an option that's lived too long
No matter how glorious the weather - perhaps it's an achingly splendid fall
afternoon with brilliant sun highlighting the palette of changing leaves -
there???s a place along Raleigh's Western Boulevard where the mood turns gray
and raw.
The men locked inside the fences and walls of Central Prison at times might
even be able to hear traffic passing by on Western. But as for gentle breezes
and trees attired in festive red and orange, these are pleasures they have
forfeited.
Their crimes, hurtful acts of thoughtlessness, anger, greed, have landed them
in a netherworld of deprivation where not a breath can be drawn that carries
the precious scent of freedom.
Do the crime, do the time. That is our code, and it's a necessary one.
Imprisonment removes from our communities people who have shown their
willingness to prey on others. It punishes. Occasionally - too occasionally -
it may be the impetus someone needs to turn his life around if he gets another
chance.
There aren't supposed to be any other chances for the men on North Carolina's
death row, held there in the prison squatting incongruously along the scenic
boulevard.
These are the murderers, 155 of them, declared by juries to have committed
deeds so foul that no punishment short of losing their own lives will suffice.
So they languish in their miserably monotonous routines until finally comes the
hour of their doom.
Unless, that is, an appeal brings a sentence converted to life in prison
without parole, perhaps even a new trial in which the state again would be
forced to prove the defendant's guilt or let him go.
Or unless, as happens to be the case in North Carolina, the death penalty
itself falls into disuse - to the point where, as The N&O's Anne Blythe
reported the other day, no executions have occurred for the past 6 years and
where, in 2012, no one has been or will be sent to death row at all. To me,
this is progress. One way to gauge that progress involves a case that has stuck
in my mind ever since I wrote about it in 1995.
Phillip Lee Ingle was 31 that September when he was given a lethal injection in
the weirdly shaped little room that is the Central Prison death chamber.
He had been found guilty and duly sentenced by juries in Rutherford and Gaston
counties in the fatal beatings of 2 elderly couples in separate incidents. One
problem: The man appears to have been sick in the head.
1 psychiatrist who did a thorough review after Ingle's trials said his mental
issues dated from childhood and included a brain injury from being struck with
a baseball bat and hallucinations in which he saw his mother as the devil.
In 1991 he had been beset by frightful hallucinations in which, for example, a
TV newscaster "would suddenly become red and hairy with horns and red eyes,"
the psychiatrist wrote. Neighborhood cats were threatening creatures that had
to be killed. The diagnosis was "acute paranoid, manic psychosis."
Ingle told a clinical psychologist that the murder victims all appeared to have
"short horns, a tail, and red skin," the psychologist recounted. "He felt these
demons were planning to do evil things and that he needed to act to stop this."
Someone possessed in this fashion who commits a terrible crime must be confined
to protect the public. But he should not be at risk of execution. With the
state's death penalty in abeyance, he isn't.
Dozens of people have been taken off North Carolina's death row since 1980
because the courts have ruled their convictions or their sentences needed to be
reconsidered. The margin for error in applying the death penalty according to
proper standards of fairness, meaning capable legal representation and
honorable conduct by prosecutors, appears to be uncomfortably large.
Death penalty cases place a severe burden on prosecutors' offices and the court
system. And as North Carolina juries have become more attuned to the kind of
mistakes that can result in a wrongful conviction, they have grown reluctant to
impose death as the sentence even when district attorneys give them the option.
1st-degree murder these days is likely to bring a sentence that didn???t used
to be available ??? life in prison without parole. It would make good sense if
Gov. Beverly Perdue, before she leaves office in a few weeks, were to commute
the sentences of those 155 prisoners now on death row. They, too, would be
locked up for the rest of their lives.
Such a move would acknowledge shifts in public opinion and a greater
sensitivity to the justice system's imperfections. It would spare public
resources while affirming the principle that violent criminals must pay
heavily. And it would bring honor to Perdue for having stood against a
punishment that will be a blight on the state???s justice system so long as it
remains an option.
(source: Editorial page editor Steve Ford , News & Observer)
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