Feb. 21
GEORGIA----stay of execution lifted
Cook Execution Back On For Thursday Night
The way is again clear for Andrew Allen Cook to die Thursday evening.
Lawyers for the man convicted of killing 2 Mercer University students in 1995
had won a temporary stay of execution Wednesday from the Georgia Court of
Appeals.
They argued that the state cannot legally use a powerful sedative for lethal
injections without first getting a prescription from a doctor.
But on Thursday afternoon the Georgia Supreme Court lifted the stay.
"The statute is fairly clear, whether you agree with it or not," said John
Marshall Law School professor Michael Mears. "The dispensing and the using of
these particular medications [for executions] does not constitute the
practicing of medicine and is not regulated."
Attorneys for death row inmate Warren Lee Hill had made the same failed
argument about the execution drug, but that case will likely linger on over the
question of whether Hill is developmentally disabled, Mears said.
But Cook, who is scheduled to die at 7 PM Thursday, appears to be out of
options, Mears said.
(source: GPB News)
**************************************************
Georgia rushes to carry out executions before lethal drug supply
expires--State's entire supply of pentobarbital runs out on March 1 with
Georgia seeking permission from courts to block legal delays
The state of Georgia is scrambling for legal permission to proceed with 2
scheduled executions before its supply of the drug that would be used to kill
the prisoners reaches its expiration date on 1 March.
Georgia has death warrants currently served on Warren Hill and Andrew Cook,
convicted murderers who have been on death row since 1991 and 1995
respectively. Hill's death warrant runs until 26 February and Cook's until 28
February - the final day before the state's stock of pentobarbital runs out.
The attorney general of Georgia - the state's chief prosecutor - is hurriedly
trying to overturn stays of execution that have been imposed this week on the
Hill and Cook executions. The courts intervened after it was found that
pentobarbital was being ordered by the corrections department for use as a
lethal injection without a prescription from a doctor - a breach of federal
rules over the distribution of a controlled substance.
The attempt to execute Warren Hill, pictured, has provoked international
condemnation because the prisoner has been diagnosed as intellectually
disabled. A federal appeals court has also blocked the execution to allow time
to consider the disability issue, and on Thursday the US supreme court denied
Georgia's request to overturn the stay.
Georgia confirmed to the Guardian that its entire supply of pentobarbital
expires on 1 March. The expiration date leaves the state in a quandary: it
still has 94 men and 1 woman on death row, including Hill and Cook, but with no
obvious means by which to execute them.
A spokeswoman for the department of corrections insisted that it anticipated
"it will be able to obtain sufficient supplies of the drugs necessary to carry
out the court ordered lethal injection process." But just how that could be
done is not obvious.
Anti-death penalty campaigners are scathing about the unseemly haste with which
Georgia appears to rushing to beat the deadline. "This highlights the nastiness
of the process that the AG should be racing to kill prisoners ahead of an
expiration date," said Sara Totonchi, director of the Southern Center for Human
Rights.
Georgia's difficulties procuring execution drugs is a reflection of the gradual
stranglehold that is being put on the US death penalty by authorities and
companies around the world refusing to act as accomplices in the death
sentence. The European Commission, following unilateral action by the UK, has
imposed restrictions on the export of medicines to all US corrections
departments.
As a result of the European squeeze, Hospira, the only US manufacturer of
sodium thiopental, an anaesthetic that was used widely in the triple cocktail
of lethal injections, ceased production in 2011. That, in turn, forced states
including Georgia to revise their death protocols, shifting to a single
injection of pentobarbital.
But now supplies of pentobarbital are also running out. One of the leading
manufacturers of the drug, the Danish firm Lundbeck, has introduced tough
restrictions on the distribution of the drug to prevent it falling into the
hands of US executioners.
As legal routes for the procurement of medical drugs have been successively
shut down, several of the 33 states that still practice the death penalty have
resorted to shady methods for acquiring them. Georgia was exposed in 2011 as
having been one of the states that bought lethal injection drugs from Dream
Pharma, an unlicensed company that operated out of a driving school in west
London.
Other corrections departments have looked to India for their supplies.
Maya Foa, an expert on execution drugs at the human rights group Reprieve, said
that at the heart of the issue was a fundamental principle "that medicines
should be used to save lives, not end them. The underhand, sordid practices we
have seen in states trying to get hold of these drugs exposes their absolute
disregard for human dignity."
As Georgia struggles to find new sources of pentobarbital or alternatives,
death penalty abolitionists will be watching closely for any signs that they
are turning to compounding pharmacies to make up the drugs for them. In
October, South Dakota executed Eric Robert using a batch of pentobarbital that
it had obtained from a local pharmacy.
Tests that were done on the batch showed that it was contaminated with fungus,
in an echo of last year's outbreak of fungal meningitis that was tracked down
to a compounding center in Massachusetts.
(source: The Guardian)
********************
Ga. high court dismisses request to stay execution
The Georgia Supreme Court has dismissed a request for a stay by a Georgia death
row inmate whose execution is set for Thursday.
The court dismissed the request from Andrew Cook, saying the initial petition
was not filed in the correct court. Cook's execution is set for 7 p.m.
Lawyers for Cook and Warren Lee Hill, another inmate set for execution this
week, had filed a joint legal challenge arguing the state is violating the law
by using pentobarbital in executions without a prescription. The state has said
the challenge is frivolous.
Cook was convicted in the 1995 shooting deaths of two college students.
Authorities say the killings were random.
(source: Associated Press)
*************************
Attorneys file new appeals in hopes of stopping execution
Attorneys for Andrew Cook have begun a series of appeals in the final hours
leading up to his execution scheduled for 7 p.m. tonight, already losing with a
court in the county where the prison is located and now hoping for a 2nd chance
with the Georgia Supreme.
Earlier today, the state Supreme Court lifted a stay issued by a lower court on
the pending execution but that was on an appeal based on a civil matter. In an
usual move, the Georgia Court of Appeals had issued a stay Wednesday to stop
Cook's execution so it could consider a lawsuit Cook and 2 other death row
inmates had brought challenging the state's lethal injection process; the Court
of Appeals does not have jurisdiction over death cases.
The Georgia Supreme took over that matter and then lifted the stay.
Now his lawyers are asking the justices to look at an appeal directly related
to his execution, a different issue. They are asking for mercy because, they
say, the 38-year-old Cook has changed and is remorseful for shooting to death
Grant Patrick Hendrickson and his girlfriend, Michele Cartagena.
The couple was parked on a small peninsula that jutted into Lake Juliette in
Monroe County when Cook picked them at random around midnight Jan. 2, 1995. He
fired 19 shots from 2 weapons.
Cook was arrested 2 years later after telling his father, then an FBI agent,
what he had done.
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
NEW YORK:
Memorial Library Exhibition to Document Executions in the U.S.
New York photojournalist Scott Langley's black and white images chronicle the
grim sequence of events transpiring in and around the death chamber before and
after an execution.
The curtain of secrecy will be pulled back for the campus and community to view
just a few of Langley's chilling images during an exhibition and opening
reception at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 27, on the 2nd floor in SUNY
Cortland's Memorial Library.
The show, titled "Visions of Impending Death: Bearing Witness to Executions in
the United States," is free and open to the public.
Langley will be available to discuss his work with visitors. 5 of his pieces
will be on display during the presentation only and 2 additional images from
among the collection are being shown from now until Friday, March 15, in a
glass case near The Bookmark cafe. All are owned by the Ithaca chapter of
Amnesty International.
"The images depict an insider's hour-by-hour walk-through of what happens on an
execution night, taking the viewer from the prison deathwatch cell into the
actual lethal injection chamber," Langley said. "Photos from Troy Davis' recent
execution in Georgia tell the story of what happens outside a prison in the
moments leading up to execution."
The presentation also includes original photos from execution vigils, both for
and against the death penalty, marches and rallies. It features portraits of
exonerated death row prisoners, candid emotional and prayerful moments, and
celebrities who are outspoken on the issue.
The photographs, together with Langley's narratives, uniquely combine art,
journalism and education into a poignant and powerful experience.
Executions in the United States are not public events, so the events
culminating a death sentence happen off camera, behind closed doors and in the
dark of night. Langley's camera captures scenes that very few people see or
experience.
"The death penalty photography documentary project began in 1999 as a college
class assignment in Texas, artistically capturing what was available to those
of us 'on the outside,'" Langley said.
Since then, the project has expanded to include thousands of images, including
in-depth coverage of North Carolina, Georgia, and the federal death penalty.
Langley's project is considered to be the most comprehensive collection of
original United States death penalty-related photographs available from one
source.
His images capture unforgettable moments such as when the Ku Klux Klan rallied
in support of a black man's execution in Texas; as well as the vivid scene of a
North Carolina death row warden wheeling a gurney into the execution chamber
and weeping family members at the moment of a loved one's execution.
His documentary work has been widespread throughout the world in recent years -
appearing in newspapers, magazines, books, encyclopedias, theater productions,
calendars, films, on television and t-shirts.
A photographer who has been engaged with death penalty issues for decades,
Langley has received numerous awards for his work and frequently exhibits for
Amnesty International. In 2009, he was honored with the People of Faith Against
the Death Penalty's Community Service Award, presented to The Justice Theater
Project, featuring the death penalty photo project.
He has been an active grassroots organizer against the death penalty since
1999. Since 2004, Langley has served as an Amnesty International USA state
death penalty coordinator, first for North Carolina and Massachusetts, and now
New York state.
More of his personal and documentary work can be seen at Langley's website at
scottlangleyphoto.com.
Langley's current partnerships in collaboration with the Death Penalty Photo
Project are: Abolition Action Committee, Amnesty International Campaign to End
the Death Penalty, Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty, Dead Man
Walking School Theater Project, Equal Justice USA, The Justice Theater Project,
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Moratorium Campaign, Murder
Victims' Families for Human Rights, Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation
and Shae Foundation.
The exhibition at SUNY Cortland also is supported by the Campus Artist and
Lecture Series, Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies, the History
Department, and the campus Amnesty International student group.
(source: Read Media)
FLORIDA:
Faith leaders, others call for end to the death penalty
As Florida prepares to execute Paul Howell next week, faith leaders and others
are calling for a stay of execution and an end to the death penalty.
Tallahassee Citizens Against the Death Penalty joined with representatives from
local churches and other nonprofits earlier today for a news conference at the
Florida Press Center.
Howell, convicted in the 1992 pipe-bomb killing of Florida Highway Patrol
trooper and Greenville native Jimmy Fulford, is set to die by lethal injection
Tuesday at Florida State Prison in Starke.
Howell was sentenced to death in the 1992 pipe-bomb killing of state trooper
Jimmy Fulford, a Madison County native and 14-year veteran of the Florida
Highway Patrol. Howell's execution is set for Tuesday at Florida State Prison
in Starke.
Fulford, 35, was killed Feb. 1, 1992, after stopping a car for speeding on
Interstate 10 in Jefferson County and examining a gift-wrapped box found in the
trunk. The box contained a microwave oven rigged with a pipe bomb, which went
off when he opened it, killing him instantly. Howell, a member of the violent
Jamaican Posse drug ring, built the bomb and hired a man to deliver it to a
woman in Marianna who could tie Howell, his brother Patrick Howell a cousin to
a South Florida murder.
TCADP said in a news release it is asking Scott to stay the execution of Howell
and that if he does not, it will hold a vigil at the time of the execution at
the Governor's Mansion.
Howell's retained attorneys, Sonya Rudenstine of Gainesville and Michael
Ufferman of Tallahassee, have said that if Howell is executed, he will be the
1st person in Florida's modern era to be put to death without federal review.
Howell's original post-conviction lawyer filed an appellate pleading too late
to preserve his habeas corpus review in federal court.
The Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday denied Howell???s request for a stay,
saying he failed to show "that there are substantial grounds upon which relief
might be granted."
(source: Tallahassee Democrat)
******************************
see: http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa04713.pdf
(source: Amnesty International)
ARIZONA:
Under cross examination, Arias admits to memory problems
A woman who's on trial in Phoenix in the stabbing and shooting death of her
lover has testified under cross-examination today that she has memory problems.
Jodi Arias was grilled by prosecutors about why she can recall precise details
of her life from years earlier -- like the kind of coffee she bought at
Starbucks -- but she can't remember crucial aspects of the murder case against
her.
Arias could face a death sentence if she's convicted of 1st-degree murder in
the June 2008 killing of Travis Alexander in his suburban Phoenix home. She's
been testifying for a 9th day today -- with prosecutors focusing on her
apparent selective memory.
She has testified in detail about the events that led her to kill Alexander --
a killing that she says was self-defense.
But when asked details of the day of the killing, she doesn't recall much.
A prosecutor asked her today, "Do you have memory problems?" She replied,
"Sometimes."
(source: Associated Press)
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