Oct. 9
MISSOURI:
Missouri returning execution drug to European supplier
The Missouri Department of Corrections says it is returning to the supplier a
drug that it had planned to use in 2 executions later this year.
It was not immediately clear yet what effect the action would have on the
state's ability to carry out the executions scheduled for Oct. 23 and Nov. 20.
The anti-death penalty European Union is considering export limits on propofol
if it is used for lethal injections. Makers of the drug say that could slow
movement to the U.S. and create a propofol shortage that could endanger the
well-being of patients.
In a statement emailed to a reporter this morning, the Department of
Corrections said:
"After the propofol was delivered by Morris & Dickson to the Missouri
Department of Corrections last year, Morris & Dickson requested that the order
be returned. Today???s action fulfills that request. The propofol supplied by
Morris & Dickson was manufactured by Fresenius Kabi, a German company."
The statement indicates the state still has some propofol in stock.
"The remainder of the department's propofol inventory was produced by a
domestic manufacturer."
(source: Associated Press)
NEBRASKA:
Prosecutors to seek death penalty in Omaha case
Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said Wednesday he will seek the death
penalty for Nikko Jenkins, charged with killing 4 people in the weeks after he
was released from prison this summer.
"The evidence supports the death penalty in this case," he said.
Now, Kleine must prepare for a possible insanity defense and how that might
affect his capital punishment case against Jenkins, who was ordered Tuesday to
stand trial on 4 counts of 1st-degree murder and a bevy of weapons counts.
Authorities testified in Jenkins' preliminary hearing Tuesday that he confessed
to shooting 4 people in 3 separate ambushes in and around Omaha in August,
saying voices and commands from an Egyptian god told him to do it. Criminal
investigators say robbery was Jenkins' motive.
Police say Jenkins, 27, used a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun loaded with deer
slugs on Aug. 11 to kill Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz, 29, and Juan Uribe-Pena, 26, whose
bodies were found inside a pickup truck in southeast Omaha. Police say he used
a small-caliber gun to kill a onetime prison acquaintance, 22-year-old Curtis
Bradford, on Aug. 19. Then on Aug. 21, authorities say he pulled 33-year-old
Andrea Kruger from her SUV as she drove home from work after midnight and shot
her 4 times before speeding off in her vehicle.
Kleine presented incriminating evidence during Jenkins' preliminary hearing
Tuesday, including police testimony that Jenkins' and Kruger's DNA was found on
a 12-gauge deer slug found in Kruger's vehicle.
Jenkins' attorney, public defender Thomas Riley, hinted at an insanity defense
during the hearing by grilling investigators about whether they were aware of
Jenkins' possible mental health problems.
Court documents show Jenkins had repeatedly told prison officials and even
judges in recent years that he was troubled by voices and bad dreams. Other
officials have reported receiving rambling, incoherent letters from Jenkins
while he was in a Nebraska prison for more than a decade on robbery, assault
and weapons charges.
Riley confirmed Wednesday that he's exploring the option of an insanity
defense.
"It's too early to determine now," he said. "That will require psychological
evaluations and other measures."
Kleine said certain aspects of the killings - such as an attempt to burn
Kruger's vehicle - showed that the assailant knew the killings were wrong.
Nebraska law requires a defendant using an insanity defense to prove he or she
was mentally ill at the time of the crime and too incapacitated by mental
illness to understand that a crime was being committed or to understand right
from wrong.
But Kleine acknowledged that, even if an insanity defense fails, those claims
can be used in the sentencing phase of the case.
"Certainly, mental health issues could be raised as mitigating factors" in an
effort to receive life in prison instead of lethal injection, he said.
(source: Assocaited Press)
ARIZONA----execution
Arizona executes oldest person on its death row after Supreme Court rejects his
final appeals
Arizona on Wednesday executed the oldest person on its death row, nearly 35
years after he was charged with murdering a Bisbee man during a robbery.
The execution of 71-year-old Edward Harold Schad Jr. came about 2 hours after
the U.S. Supreme Court denied his final appeals.
He was given a lethal dose of pentobarbital at the state prison in Florence,
and was pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m.
In his final hours, Schad thanked his lawyers and corrections officers who
watched over him during the 35 days since his execution was scheduled, said
Kelley Henry, a federal public defender who helped represent him.
"Ed Schad was a model inmate to the end," Henry said in a statement released by
the defender's office in Phoenix.
Schad was sentenced to death for killing Lorimer "Leroy" Grove, whose body was
found Aug. 9, 1978, in underbrush off the shoulder of U.S. 89 south of
Prescott. A sash-like cord used to strangle Grove was still knotted around his
neck.
Schad was arrested several weeks later in Utah while driving Grove's Cadillac.
Authorities say he had driven the car across the country, used Grove's credit
cards and forged a check from Grove's bank account.
At the time, Schad was on parole for 2nd-degree murder in the 1968
strangulation death of a male sex partner in Utah. His lawyers in that case
said the death was an accident.
Schad was convicted in Grove's death in 1979 and again in 1985 after the
previous conviction was thrown out. The conviction was upheld by the state
Supreme Court in 1989 but later became tied up in a series of federal court
appeals.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June lifted a stay put in place by an appeals court,
ordering the court to issue the execution authorization.
Schad always maintained he didn't kill Grove but told the state's clemency
board at a hearing last week that he has accepted his fate.
A top Yavapai County prosecutor told the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency
that despite Schad's denial, he was twice convicted by juries that rejected his
assertion of innocence.
"He doesn't take any responsibility for what he did," chief deputy Dennis
McGrane told the board. "Accidents 2 times, died of strangulation? I don't
think so."
The board refused to recommend to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer that Schad's
sentenced be commuted to life in prison.
Schad becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Arizona,
and 35th in the state since capital punishment resumed there in 1992. His death
leaves 121 people on the death row in the state, including 2 women..
Schad becomes the 29th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA
and the 1349th overall since the nation resumed executions on Janaury 17, 1977.
(sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin)
***********************
Arizona executes inmate for 1978 killing
The oldest man on Arizona's death row was executed Wednesday morning after 35
years in custody.
Edward Harold Schad Jr., 71, was given a lethal dose of the pentobarbital and
was pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m. Wednesday at the state prison in Florence,
Ariz.
Schad was sentenced to death for the 1978 murder of Lorimer Grove, 74, who was
found dead in underbrush by the side of a road south of Prescott, Ariz. A month
later, Schad was arrested in Salt Lake City; he had Grove's Cadillac and his
credit cards.
Schad met with his attorney, assistant federal defender Kelley Henry, Tuesday
night and expressed his gratitude for kindness of the correctional officers who
guarded him during the last 35 days of his life, a period called "death watch,"
when the condemned prisoners are separated from the other inmates on death row.
Wednesday morning, Schad met with his longtime spiritual adviser, a Lutheran
pastor who administered last rites. The pastor told Henry that Schad was "doing
well," and had not yet heard that the U.S. Supreme Court had denied the final
requests for a reprieve.
Schad was convicted twice of killing 74-year-old Lorimer "Leroy" Grove.
Grove was last seen leaving town pulling a trailer with his new Cadillac on the
way to visit his sister in Washington state. He was found dead with a rope
knotted around his neck on Aug. 9, 1978, south of Prescott.
Schad's execution was Arizona's 35th since 1992. His death leaves 121 people on
the death row in the state, including 2 women.
Schad says he ended up on death row only because of a misunderstanding. He was
a car thief and a forger, not a murderer, he told the clemency board.
His earlier 2nd-degree murder conviction had been a case of mistaken identity,
as well, he said.
The clemency board did not believe him; neither did the 3 juries that convicted
him, nor a host of judges and justices right up to the U.S. Supreme Court over
34 years of appeals.
(source: Arizona Republic)
USA:
Torture on Death Row
It is inhumane, fallible, expensive, and an ineffective crime deterrent. It is
also no secret that the death penalty in the United States is carried out in a
racially discriminatory manner. African Americans and Latinos make up over half
the people on death row while comprising about a quarter of the U.S.
population. Looking at the race of the victim, in the last 30 years, only 20
white on black murders have resulted in execution, compared with 261 black on
white. You probably can't recall the last time the State of Louisiana executed
a white person for a crime against an African American. That's because it last
happened in 1752.
What remains largely unseen is how, beneath a misleading veneer of due process
and legal protocol, thousands of death row inmates are often subject to
conditions that constitute torture, sometimes for decades on end, while waiting
to be executed or exonerated. These conditions, as much as the death penalty
itself, constitute violations of established international human rights law as
well as the constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment.
In 1972, the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty, declaring that its
application was so arbitrary as to be unconstitutional. Although many believed
that this marked the end of capital punishment in the U.S., state legislatures
responded by rewriting their death penalty laws in order to convince the Court
that the death penalty could be made impartial and compatible with a basic
concept of human dignity. In 1976, the Supreme Court ended the de facto
moratorium on U.S. executions and, since then, has tried to delineate a
"modern" death penalty by calling for a better appellate process and outlawing
the penalty for certain offenses and categories of people, including juveniles
and people with mental disabilities. Given that the standard for mental
disability is non-existent, that line has been crossed many times.
But no constitutional window dressing can legitimize state-sponsored murder or
humanize the system that administers it. More than three decades after the
Supreme Court reversed its stance on capital punishment, conditions on death
rows across the country remain nothing short of barbaric. The Court's demand
for a better appellate process has mostly extended the time death row prisoners
spend in these conditions -- thereby paradoxically deepening the human rights
violations -- and research continues to show that race is the dominant factor
in explaining who is sentenced to death in this country.
In May of this year, I traveled to Louisiana and California to document
conditions of confinement on death row together with colleagues at the Center
for Constitutional Rights, and Florence Bellivier, president of the World
Coalition Against the Death Penalty, there representing the International
Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) on the mission. California has the largest
number of people on death row in the country and Louisiana is infamous for the
harsh conditions prisoners suffer. Our findings are published here.
In Louisiana's notorious Angola prison, home to all men on death row in the
state, those sentenced to death spend their final years locked in their cells
alone for 23 hours each day. During summer, death row inmates are kept in their
cells even though the heat index regularly exceeds 110 degrees. The prison does
not provide them with clean ice or cool showers, but it does provide the public
with tours of death row and the lethal injection table.
At night, in an effort to keep cool, the men at Angola sleep on the floor where
they are exposed to fire ants. When they "misbehave," they are moved to cells
in the hottest tiers. Men have lived up to 28 years on Louisiana's death row,
and most spend at least a decade in these dehumanizing conditions waiting for
court appeals to go through. That is their due process.
In California, where minorities make up 65 % of death row, the wheels of
justice turn so slowly that new death row inmates will spend approximately 20
years on death row, and some over 30. Others will spend decades locked inside
their cells in solitary confinement for minor infractions committed years ago,
without access to a telephone and without feeling the touch of a family member
for the entire length of time in solitary. Their due process while on death
row? Wait an average of 3-5 years before a lawyer is even appointed to appeal
the sentence, then an additional 8-10 years following the conclusion of their
appeal for another lawyer to be assigned to handle a state habeas petition. In
the meantime, the stress and anxiety of not knowing when they will be executed
or when they will even receive the assistance of a lawyer will cause severe
mental anguish for long decades, and will lead some prisoners to commit suicide
rather than endure the long waiting process ahead.
And that's a glimpse of what the "modern" death penalty in the U.S. looks like
in two of the states that retain it. The Supreme Court tried to sanitize a
brutal practice, but it is impossible to legitimize the indefensible. The only
morally and legally tenable response to the death penalty is its complete
abolition. Yet while we continue to work for that day, we must also work to
address the human rights violations that send people, disproportionately people
of color, to death row and then torture them there before the final act of
killing.
(source: Vincent Warren, Executive Director, Center for Constitutional
Rights----Huffington Post)
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