June 17
TEXAS:
What won't die: Controversy----State remains defiant against death penalty
opponents here, abroad
The illuminated clock set in the red-brick facade of the Walls UInit might be
the most dreaded timepiece in Texas. Minute by minute, it ticks away dreary
years behind bars. On some days - 15 times last year, 40 times in 2000 - its
black hands signal another criminal justice milestone.
6 o'clock, the hands say. Another killer will be dead and gone.
Barring a last-minute stay, Kimberly McCarthy on June 26 will become the 5ooth
Texas killer to be executed since the state re-activated trhe death penalty in
1976. Texas leads the nation's 33 death penalty states in executions, killing
more than the next 5 most active states combined.
Virginia places 2nd with 110 executions.
Minutes before the killing hour, McCarthy, 52, condemned for the 1997
murder-robbery of 71-year-old Dorothy Booth in Lancaster, will be strapped to a
guryne in a room deep within the 164-year-old prison. Then, as a warden and
chaplain stand silently nearby, she will be injected with a lethal dose of a
drug commonly used to euthanize cats and dogs.
McCarthy will be the 4th woman in Texas executed by injection.
Killers from Harris County, Texas's most populous, fill the Polunsky Unit's
death row. Since 1982, 118 Harris County killers have been executed. 50 Dallas
County killers have been put to death; 37 from Bexar County.
Typical of the extremes in the death penalty debate are Ray Hunt, the Houston
Polcie Officers Union president who calls for expanding the death penalty to
cases of brutal child abuse, and Anthony Graves, who was sentenced to die for
murders he did not commit.
"There's no doubt in my mind," Hunt said when asked if exectuions have made
Texas safer. "The 500 people who are executed - they have no opportunity to
brutally murder again."
Countered Graves, who was released from prison in 2010 after prosecutors
admitted he wrongly had been convicted in the August 1992 killings of 6
Somerville residents: "For me, the death penalety is a slap in the face. I
spent 18 years in prison, 12 of them on death row with 2 execution dates, and
it doesn't even slow down. It says to me: 'Your life has no value.'"
Known executions date to 1819, a period in which Texas was a Spanish
possession. Hanging - carried out at the county level - remained the primary
manner of execution in the state until 1923.
In that year, the authority to execute - employing the new-to-Texas electric
chair - was assumed by the state, in part, Texas Prison Museum staff says,
because public hangings attracted unruly crowds.
6 black men were electrocuted on Feb. 8, 1924, the Walls' inaugural day as the
offical Texas death house. Warden R.F. Coleman resigned rather than pull the
switch.
"It just couldn't be done, boys," he told reporters. "A warden can't be a
warden and a killer, too. The penitentiary is a place to reform a man, not to
kill him."
An additional 355 convicted killers were electrocuted before the U.S. Supreme
Court's 1972 Furman vs. Georgia ruling brought capital punishment to a
nationwide halt.
The Furman ruling and those in 2 related cases found the death penalty cruel
and unusual, in part because of the lack of uniform criteria under which it
could be imposed. Texas and other death penalty states rewrote their laws. The
high court approved the changes in ts 1976 Gregg vs. Georgia decision, and
executions resumed.
Texas' 1st post-Gregg execution, that of Charlie Brooks, condemned for the
abduction and murder of Fort Worth auto mechanic David Gregory, took placed on
Dec. 7, 1982. Brooks, 40, also was the 1st killer to be executed by lethal
injection.
Slowly Texas' revamped death penalty gained momentum. By the late 1990s,
executions topped 35 a year. A record 40 killers were put to death in 2000.
15 Texas killers were executed in 2012; McCarthy will be the 8th this year.
(source: Dallas Morning News)
GEORGIA:
Death penalty reinstated for convicted killer
The Georgia Supreme Court has reversed a lower court's ruling and reinstated
the death penalty for the man convicted of a 1993 murder.
The high court's decision for Michael Wade Nance was released Monday.
The chain of events leading up to the Dec. 18, 1993 murder began with a bank
robbery. According to information presented in court, Nance stole a car and
drove it to the Tucker Federal Bank in Lilburn, which he robbed at gunpoint.
The bank teller slipped 2 dye packs into the cash she gave Nance. The packs
exploded inside the car, emitting red dye and tear gas. Nance abandoned the car
and ran across Indian Trail Road to a package store, where Gabor Balogh was
backing his car out of a parking space.
A witness said Nance yanked open Balogh's car door and shot him in the left
elbow. The bullet ricocheted into Balogh's chest, hit his heart and lodged in
his liver. He died at the scene.
Nance fired a shot at the witness, which missed, and then ran to a nearby gas
station and held an hour-long police standoff before surrendering.
At Nance's original trial, prosecutors argued that he had robbed another
Gwinnett County bank three months earlier and had also been convicted of armed
robbery in Kansas in 1984. In September 1997, he was convicted of malice murder
and aggravated assault, among other charges, and was sentenced to death.
Nance's death sentence was first reversed in February 2000, when the Georgia
Supreme Court found that a juror who should have been excused was instead
selected for the trial. The death sentenced was reinstated in 2002, but Nance
appealed to the high court in March 2007, arguing that his trial attorneys
failed to present certain evidence in his favor, such as his developmental
delays, learning difficulties and history of drug abuse.
In Monday's opinion, a Supreme Court justice wrote that "there is no reasonable
probability that the outcome would have been different" even if Nance's lawyers
had referred to his "low average intelligence" during trial.
(source: 11Alive News)
***************
Court reinstates Gwinnett death sentence
The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday reinstated the death sentence against a man
convicted of killing another man following a bank robbery.
A Gwinnett County jury had sentenced Michael Wade Nance to death for killing
Gabor Balogh on Dec. 18, 1993, after Nance robbed the Tucker Federal Bank in
Lilburn.
Nance left the bank in a stolen car that he had to abandon after packets placed
with the stolen money exploded, emitting red dye and tear gas. He ran across
Indian Trail Road and confronted Balogh, who had just walked out of a liquor
store. Nance shot Balogh in the left elbow and the bullet ricocheted into his
chest.
Nance eventually surrendered after a standoff with police.
A lower-court judge had upheld Nance's convictions but threw out his death
sentence on grounds Nance's lawyers were ineffective during the sentencing
phase of the trial. But on Monday, in an opinion authored by Chief Justice
Carol Hunstein, the court overturned that decision and reinstated Nance's death
sentence.
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
FLORIDA:
Ignoring The Public To Speed Up Executions
On Friday late afternoon, Florida Governor Rick Scott signed the "Timely
Justice Act," a bill designed to speed up executions in a state that is
responsible for more known wrongful convictions in death penalty cases than any
other. As a result, there are "at least 13 inmates immediately eligible for
death warrants."
Governor Scott signed the bill after requesting to hear from the public, who
responded by overwhelmingly urging him to veto it. As the News Service of
Florida reported:
"As of Thursday, his office had received 447 phone calls, with 438 opposed to
the bill; 14 letters, with 13 opposed; and 14,571 emails, with 14,565 opposed."
Although Governor Scott, in signing the bill into law, ignored this public
response, he does seem to have been impacted by it. He is now claiming that the
"Timely Justice Act" is not meant to "fast track" executions, a claim seemingly
disputed by the bill's key sponsor, who said on Twitter that "Several on death
row need to start picking out their last meals."
As Governor Scott at least seems to recognize, an excessive enthusiasm for
executions is not playing very well with the Florida public. That is an
encouraging sign and reflects the general public disenchantment with capital
punishment that has been evident for many years now.
Governor Pat McCrory of North Carolina, who has a bill to restart executions in
his state on his desk, ought to take note and reconsider resuming executions in
a state that has done fine without them for almost 7 years.
(source: Brian Evans, Amnesty International USA, blog)
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