Oct. 22
COLORADO:
Lawyers for Colorado theater shooting defendant Holmes seek to bar testimony of
bomb experts
The battle over what evidence can be used against Colorado theater shooting
defendant James Holmes is turning to the testimony of bomb technicians and
explosives experts.
Hearings resume Tuesday.
Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges of killing 12 people
and injuring 70 in 2012. At pretrial hearings this month, prosecutors and
defense lawyers are trying to persuade the judge to allow or throw out
statements Holmes made to police and other evidence. Most of the evidence could
be used to bolster or weaken the insanity claim.
Holmes faces murder and attempted-murder charges. His lawyers acknowledge he
was the shooter, but they say he was in the grip of a psychotic episode.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, but they must convince jurors that
he was sane.
(source: Associated Press)
NEVADA:
Dispute over cover charge leads to Vegas nightclub killing, police say
An argument over a cover charge led to a nightclub shooting early Monday on the
Las Vegas Strip that left one patron dead when he tried to subdue the gunman
and 2 employees wounded, police said.
A man opened fire at 5:45 a.m. wounding a manager and a guard at Drai's After
Hours, a club at Bally's Hotel-Casino, police Sgt. John Sheahan said. Another
guard might have been injured.
Sheahan said the nightclub was open at the time and the shooter was believed to
have acted alone. He was hospitalized with unspecified injuries.
Sheahan said the male patron was shot and killed trying to subdue the gunman as
people ran from the club.
"The person is in custody. The weapon is in custody," Sheahan said. No names
have been released.
A Las Vegas police officer told CBS News: "The suspect asked to enter the club
and take a look around before paying. He returned to the entrance and paid the
cover fee but then determined that there wasn't enough activity in the club. He
approached the manager and asked for his money back. An argument ensued. The
suspect pulled a handgun out and shot the manager and a security guard. At that
point another patron tackled the suspect. The suspect then shot the patron.
Other patrons and security officers subdue him and (took) him into custody."
The club is located on the lower level of Bally's.
Gambling continued in the casino after the shooting, but yellow crime scene
tape stretched around several banks of slot machines outside the nightclub.
Debris littered the floor.
The Strip was the scene of a dramatic shooting and explosion last winter.
Authorities say verbal sparring erupted into a shooting, chase and crash that
left 3 people dead in February. A death penalty trial is set for Dec. 2 against
a man who once bragged about his lifestyle as a pimp.
(source: CBS News)
USA:
Can Big Pharma end the death penalty in the US? Someone on death row might have
an excellent innocence claim or an excellent police corruption claim, but what
is saving their life is shortages or litigation over execution drugs.
A man walks into a pharmacy with an execution warrant and is given the drugs
necessary for execution by lethal injection. This sounds like a very bad joke,
but is in fact what is going on at the moment in Ohio. And here is why.
32 states retain the death penalty in the US, but a new obstacle is making it
increasingly difficult for them to carry it out. Pharmaceutical companies are
taking a moral stand. The manufacturers of the drugs required by state
departments of corrections for executions are saying they will not allow their
products to be employed in this way. Manufacturers in the UK, US, Denmark,
Israel, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and India have taken steps to prevent
their drugs being used in executions.
This has had an astonishing effect. Shortages of lethal injection drugs and
attendant litigation have resulted in moratoria - an official halting of
executions - in Arkansas, California, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri,
Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oregon, and Tennessee. Historically, state
entities do not move directly from having the death penalty to abolition. They
begin with a moratorium on killing and then, when the population has grown
unused to executions, the death penalty can be abolished. Of the states
mentioned above, Maryland abolished the death penalty this year and abolition
bills have been put forward in Nebraska, Colorado and California. California
came very close to passing its abolition bill - voting against by 52 to 48.
Meanwhile, the media coverage of the issue has exposed the unsavoury details of
the execution process and created opportunities for serious debate about
abolition.
As the Executive Director of a legal action charity that handles a number of
death penalty cases, I speak to colleagues in the US who say that their client
has an excellent innocence claim or an excellent police corruption claim, but
what is saving the client's life is drug shortages or litigation over execution
drugs. Here, I think, is why this initiative is so beautifully effective. The
pharma companies are maintaining an intellectually coherent position: they
manufacture medicines which they sell to doctors and health practitioners.
Their raison d'???tre is the saving of lives. They absolutely should take this
stance on their product being used by the State to kill people, and they have.
Last week, the governor of Missouri, not a liberal at all when it comes to the
death penalty, said: "As Governor, my interest is in making sure justice is
served and public health is protected. That is why, in light of the issues that
have been raised surrounding the use of propofol in executions, I have directed
the Department of Corrections that the execution of Allen Nicklasson, as set
for October 23, will not proceed. I have further directed the Department to
modify the State of Missouri's Execution Protocol to include a different form
of lethal injection."
This means that executions in Missouri will be halted until an alternative
method can be found - and each proposed alternative method will be litigated to
see whether or not it meets humane requirements. In California, the Chief
Justice of the California Supreme Court has publicly stated that she predicts
it will be three or more years before the state is in a position to carry out
any executions due to lethal injection issues. Granting Nathan Dunlap a
reprieve in Colorado, state governor John Hickenlooper agreed with Justice
Harry Blackmun that "the death penalty experiment has failed", concluding:
"Recent restrictions imposed by pharmaceutical companies and the Food and Drug
Administration make procuring these drugs challenging. We must ensure that
individuals facing the death penalty are afforded certain guaranteed rights of
due process before a state proceeds with an execution."
Texas and Ohio are also currently having trouble sourcing execution drug
supplies. Their solution? Currently, they are turning to compounding pharmacies
to get their drug supplies - effectively they are asking a local pharmacy to
knock up some makeshift drugs so that the local prison can kill someone. This
is clearly inappropriate, but if there were any doubt about that one has only
to look at some of the results: one warden is asking that the prescriptions be
filled in his name - and he will then use the drugs on his prisoners. Another
is using as the authorising medical authority a local hospital which has been
closed for 20 years. And, as per my opening shot, Ohio has stated that
pharmacists can fill prescriptions based on an execution warrant. At least some
compounding pharmacies have said that they don't want anything to do with the
death penalty - one Texan pharmacy refused to fill an order for compounded
pentobarbital when it found out the drugs were for executions, and another
requested that its drugs be returned when it found out the purpose for which
the drugs had been ordered.
Is there, then, a danger that states will go back to more brutal methods of
execution? To hanging, the gas chamber, the firing squad, or even the electric
chair? First, any such suggestion would open excellent litigation challenge
opportunities. And more interestingly, executing states have invested a lot of
time and energy in persuading the world that death by lethal injection is
humane. In the face of that, it would be difficult to introduce an obviously
barbaric alternative - should we expect a return of that most efficient engine
of destruction, the guillotine? Will the heads of murderers fall into a basket
whose specification the Texas legislature will have to decide? Will
basket-weavers have to require end-user licences if they dissent from the death
penalty? I think that even the most bloodthirsty states might have a job
getting that onto the books. (Just on the humane-ness of lethal injection -
because I cannot let it pass unsaid - there are so many examples of botched
executions and improperly administered drugs that the process is nowhere near
humane much of the time, even if you believe - as I do not - that there is a
priori any means of humane execution.)
The execution drug project began at the end of 2010, when it became apparent
that a UK company, Dream Pharma (housed behind a driving school in Acton) was
manufacturing and supplying execution drugs to death rows in the US. Now, in
less than three years, the industry has taken significant, concrete, and
effective action and poses the largest threat to execution within the US. It is
not often that pharmaceutical companies are celebrated for their good deeds in
the world, for straight up moral choices, but now is one of those times -
please be upstanding, and raise your coffee in the general direction of
Lundbeck, Fresenius Kabi, Hospira, Teva, Naari and many more. . . Thank you.
(source: Clare Algar is executive director of the charity Reprieve, which has
been working with pharmaceutical companies on strategies to prevent their
medicines being supplied to execution chambers----New Statesman)
_______________________________________________
DeathPenalty mailing list
DeathPenalty@lists.washlaw.edu
http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty
Search the Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/deathpenalty@lists.washlaw.edu/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A free service of WashLaw
http://washlaw.edu
(785)670.1088
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
