Dec. 1
FLORIDA:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=6oJCLQPAJiJUG&b=6645049&aid=520453
(source: Amnesty International)
************************
Man convicted of racial murder 38 years ago in Jacksonville getting new trial
The man convicted of one of the most notorious killings in Jacksonville history
may soon get off death row and get a new trial. It has been 38 years since he
was found guilty in a murder that prosecutors said was designed to start a race
war.
Jacob John Dougan, 66, had his conviction and sentence thrown out earlier this
year by Circuit Judge Jean Johnson in the death of 18-year-old Stephen Orlando
in 1974.
Johnson's 239-page ruling found that Dougan's original trial attorney, Ernest
Jackson, had a conflict of interest because he was cheating on his wife with
Dougan's sister, Thelma Turner, at the time of the trial. Jackson later left
his wife and married Turner.
The judge also found that the prosecutors hid evidence of a deal they had with
another defendant in the case, William Lee Hearn, who testified against Dougan.
Orlando's mother, Marian Mallory, told the Times-Union she plans to be in court
every day if Dougan goes to trial again. But her view of the government has
changed radically over the years.
"Back then I had faith in the system," Mallory said. "Now that faith is gone."
State Attorney Angela Corey and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi are
appealing Johnson's ruling to the Florida Supreme Court. But if the Supreme
Court upholds the ruling, prosecutors will have to figure out how to prosecute
Dougan 4 decades after Orlando's death.
That will be very hard to do, said George "Bob" Dekle, former prosecutor of
serial killer Ted Bundy and now a law school professor at the University of
Florida.
"People die, memories get fogged, evidence is lost," he said. "It's very
difficult to put everything back together so long after the original case."
Assistant State Attorney Stephen Siegel said his office would not comment on
the particulars of the case.
"As the matter is now on appeal I do not believe it would be appropriate to
comment beyond saying that while the state respects the court's order, the
state is seeking review of various appellate issues arising out of this
difficult and complicated post-conviction relief proceeding," Siegel said.
JoAnn Orlando, Stephen Orlando's sister, is succinct about how she would react
to Dougan going on trial again after all these years.
"That depends on the result," she said. "But our family still hopes to see him
executed."
A DIFFERENT TIME
There are 403 people on death row right now in Florida. While 5 people have
technically been awaiting death longer than Dougan, the June 1974 murder of
Orlando happened before any of the other crimes.
Dougan and a handful of accomplices who called themselves the "Black Liberation
Army" went out to kill a white person to protest racial inequality in the
Jacksonville area. Orlando had been hitchhiking home from his job because his
car wasn't working when he was picked up by the group.
His body was found on a dirt road at a trash dump in St. Johns County that is
now part of Marsh Landing Country Club. The Jacksonville Beach 18-year-old was
stabbed 12 times in the chest, stomach and back, and then Dougan placed his
foot on Orlando's neck and fired 2 bullets into his head.
Dougan and his followers also sent tape recordings to Mallory and media outlets
describing how Orlando begged for his life.
"You should be proud your son was the 1st to die for our black cause," the tape
to the mother said, according to news reports at the time.
The viciousness and cruelty of those tapes show that Dougan is a remorseless
killer who deserves to die, Mallory said.
"He bragged about killing my son and said I should be proud," she said. "What
type of animal does that?"
4 days after Orlando's body was found, the body of Stephen Lamont Roberts, 17,
was found shot and stabbed numerous times behind a Seventh Street industrial
plant in Springfield. Dougan was never tried in the case after he got the death
penalty for Orlando's death.
During his trial, Dougan testified that he had not participated in killing
Orlando but admitted making the tape recordings. He said he was trying to
spotlight the racial inequality that existed in Jacksonville.
Circuit Judge R. Hudson Olliff sentenced him to death.
Jacksonville historian James Crooks said the trial occurred during a tense time
in Jacksonville history.
National stories on the Black Panthers and other racial unrest scared the white
majority in Jacksonville, and people were afraid about what might happen next.
"When this happened it confirmed a lot of fears that white people had," Crooks
said. "There was a strong desire to find this person and get them off the
streets."
The question of why this happened wasn't important to most people, even though
Dougan had come from a prominent African-American family and hadn???t been seen
as a troublemaker before this happened.
"To this day we really don't understand why this happened," Crooks said. "And
the odds are we'll never understand it."
Through his attorney, Dougan declined to be interviewed.
The Florida Supreme Court threw out Dougan's death sentence twice, in 1978 and
1984, and ordered him resentenced.
The sentence was overturned in 1978 because Dougan hadn't had a chance to
review his pre-sentencing report. In 1984 justices said the state was wrong to
tell the original jury about the Roberts murder when Dougan wasn't on trial for
that crime.
Olliff put him back on death row both times, at one point comparing Dougan's
plan to kill white people with Adolf Hitler's plan to exterminate all Jews in
Europe.
A VERDICT SET ASIDE
In her ruling setting aside the conviction, Johnson appeared to be especially
troubled with the role that co-defendant Hearn played in the 1975 trial. 5
people were convicted of the crime: Dougan, Hearn, Dwyne Crittendon, Elwood
Clark Barclay and Brad Evans.
Barclay's death sentence was thrown out on appeal and he was resentenced to
life; Crittendon's presumptive parole date is May 3, 2161; Evans was paroled
Oct. 24, 1989, after serving 14? 1/2 years of his 199-year sentence.
But Hearn was allowed to plead guilty to 2nd-degree murder and testified
against Dougan and the others at trial. In his motion for a new trial, Dougan's
attorneys argued that the state cut a deal with Hearn where he was promised
minimal incarceration time in exchange for his testimony.
That deal was never revealed to Dougan or his lawyers during the original
trial, and the jury also didn't know about it when they were considering the
validity of Hearn's testimony, said Dougan's current attorney, Mark Olive.
Hearn was the only eyewitness to the crime who admitted he was there, and
prosecutors acknowledged he was essential to getting convictions against the
others.
While testifying against Dougan, Hearn said he expected prosecutors to try and
put him in prison for the rest of his life. He also said the deal he cut with
prosecutors was designed to avoid getting the death penalty.
Hearn could not be reached for comment, but according to court records he was
reluctant to testify again during the 1987 resentencing of Dougan.
During Dougan's 1975 trial, Assistant State Attorney Aaron Bowden referred to
Hearn as a scoundrel and a murderer. State Attorney Ed Austin told the jury
that he wished he had a better eyewitness than Hearn, but he said what Hearn
testified to was backed up by the physical evidence.
After Dougan and the other defendants were convicted, Hearn was sentenced to 15
years at the request of prosecutors. During Hearn's sentencing hearing, Bowden
called Hearn a "gentleman who got mixed up with the wrong crowd, and not
someone who had a criminal mind."
He was paroled in 1979 after serving less than 5 years. Austin and Bowden both
wrote letters supporting Hearn for early parole.
In her ruling Johnson said there is enough evidence to suggest that Hearn knew
he wasn't getting life and lied to the jury. She also faulted the prosecution
for not acknowledging that.
"The state's failure to disclose this information may have impacted the jury's
decision in regard to Mr. Hearn's credibility," Johnson said in her ruling.
In a motion asking Johnson to reconsider her decision, prosecutors argued that
the real deal was allowing Hearn to plead guilty to second-degree murder,
guaranteeing that he would not face the death penalty, and the defense and jury
knew about that.
Bowden could not be reached for comment. Austin died in 2011.
Rod Sullivan, a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law who has studied the
Dougan case, said a potential deal with Hearn was not enough to throw out the
conviction.
"Every reasonable juror understands that a cooperating witness gets a lighter
sentence because he is giving testimony in the prosecution of his
co-defendants," Sullivan said. "I think that the error, if there is one, was
harmless."
AWKWARD CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Another troubling matter is that soon after Ernest Jackson agreed to defend
Dougan, he began having an affair with Thelma Turner, Dougan's sister.
In court filings Dougan said he was unaware of the relationship until after he
was put on death row and would have requested a new lawyer if he'd known about
it.
Olive said the situation created a conflict of interest because Turner was
ashamed of her brother, and Jackson tried to shield his lover and her family
from public scrutiny rather than defend Dougan. Turner also kept Dougan's
family from testifying during the penalty phase to avoid revealing painful
family secrets such as Dougan???s mother being an alcoholic and his father
being a philanderer who fathered a child with another woman.
Those issues could have been used as mitigation to argue that Dougan shouldn't
get the death penalty.
A conflict also existed because Jackson's wife, Lougenia Jackson, was his legal
secretary. She was assisting her husband on the case of the man whose sister
was ruining her marriage. Olive argued that Lougenia Jackson began to despise
Dougan and his family as her marriage was breaking up.
After they were divorced, Lougenia Jackson testified she walked in on her
husband and Turner having sex in the office library one night. The 2 women
would later have several physical altercations with each other, and people who
worked in the office testified that they often heard Ernest Jackson and his
wife having loud arguments about the relationship.
Other attorneys working in the office also said Ernest Jackson was distracted
by the affair and his mind was not on the case. Jackson, who was prominent in
the civil rights movement in the 1950s and ???60s, died in 1979.
Johnson ruled the situation was clearly a conflict of interest for Jackson, and
he should not have been defending Dougan.
WHAT NOW?
Harry Shorstein, who succeeded Austin as state attorney, said the entire
situation is a travesty.
"If you're sentenced to death in 1975 and you haven't been executed in 38
years, something is wrong with the system," Shorstein said.
Around 2005 Shorstein sought a deal that would get Dougan off death row under
the provision that he would be resentenced to life in prison with no chance to
ever get out. Some family members of the victims were supportive, while others
opposed, and Shorstein said he didn???t feel comfortable cutting a deal without
the full backing of the families.
It's unlikely Dougan will ever be executed, no matter what happens now,
Shorstein said.
JoAnn Orlando said her father and stepmother supported that deal, but she, her
mother and her sister, Wendy Barkoskie, were against it. The father, Everett
Orlando, is ill and the family members asked the Times-Union not to contact him
for this story.
While Orlando hopes to see Dougan executed, Barkoskie said she no longer thinks
it will happen. But even if he's never executed, Dougan should remain on death
row.
"3 different juries recommended he be sentenced to death," Barkoskie said,
referring to the jury in the original case and juries that recommended death in
both resentencing hearings. "I know they'll never execute him, but it's another
travesty of justice to let him off death row."
And Dougan is still a threat to her family, and the public, Barkoskie said.
Olive said his client is still willing to consider an agreement that would
bring this issue to a conclusion, but no offers are on the table.
But JoAnn Orlando said her family continues to suffer from what Dougan did.
"We have several relatives now that are named after my brother," Orlando said.
"Sometimes I look at them and wonder where Stephen would be now if he'd lived."
Would he be a grandparent? What car would he drive? Would he have gone into the
Army?
"Those are questions I'll never have an answer to," Orlando said. "And that's
because of what Jacob Dougan did to my family."
(source: The Florida Times-Union)
MISSOURI:
What Others Are Saying: Missouri should stop state-sanctioned killing
Of the many reasons to oppose the death penalty, the simplest and most
compelling is that it is morally wrong for the state to take a human life.
That was the case on Nov. 20 when Missouri executed Joseph Paul Franklin, a
paranoid schizophrenic who hated blacks and Jews. He was convicted of killing 8
persons between 1977 and 1980. And it will be the case if Missouri carries out
its scheduled Dec. 11 execution of Allen Nicklasson, known as the "Good
Samaritan killer" because he murdered a man who stopped to help him after his
car broke down.
Both men committed horrible acts and deserved to live out their lives in
prison. But executions do nothing to cure mental illness, prevent brokenness in
human beings or make the public any safer. They are acts of state-sanctioned
vengeance, and they are wrong.
That belief - held by growing numbers of people - is what forced Missouri to
conceal important information about the identity of the compounding pharmacy
that prepared the dose of pentobarbital used to kill Franklin. The company was
listed as a member of the execution team, which by state law is granted
anonymity.
Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly unwilling to be partners in
executions. Pentobarbital's manufacturer, Akorn Inc. of Illinois, won't
authorize its product to be used for executions. But the drug can be mixed in
small doses by a pharmacy that prepares specialty medicines. These places,
compounding pharmacies, are unregulated and controversial. Some have been
responsible for outbreaks of illness. In Kansas City, former pharmacist Robert
Courtney is in prison for diluting chemotherapy medications.
Missouri is on shaky ground here, enlisting an unnamed pharmacy to mix a drug
normally used to euthanize animals and injecting that drug into the veins of a
condemned man. The secrecy and the act itself are wrong.
Studies have consistently shown the death penalty is costly, used
disproportionately against minorities and risky as an irreversible outcome of a
flawed criminal justice system. Missouri legislators should end it in favor of
strict life sentences for those who commit the most heinous crimes.
--Kansas City Star
(source: Des Moines Register)
IDAHO:
Idaho Innocence Project loses federal funding
Sarah Pearce, a young Idaho woman convicted of savagely beating a motorist in
2003 in what may be a wrongful conviction based on mistaken identity, has a key
hearing coming up in February that could win her a new trial.
Christopher Tapp, convicted in 1996 of an Idaho Falls murder in which DNA
points to a different perpetrator, has the victim's mother among his advocates
seeking to free him and find the real killer.
But the Idaho Innocence Project, which has worked on both cases for at least 5
years, learned this month that its federal funding won't be renewed. The
project, housed at Boise State University, will continue to work on both those
cases, but won't take any more.
"We haven't left anybody high and dry, but there are other prisoners writing
us, and I'm sending out form letters saying our intake is on hold," said
project director Greg Hampikian, a Boise State University professor of biology
and criminal justice and a DNA expert. "Every week, I get calls from the
mothers."
The Idaho Innocence Project was awarded 2 multiyear grants from the U.S.
Department of Justice's Wrongful Conviction Review Program, in 2009 and 2011,
for work to represent people who potentially have been wrongfully convicted.
Those grants, totaling nearly $450,000, allowed the hiring of a staff attorney
and legal assistants; law students and others also participate. But this year,
when the project applied for the next round of grants, 38 groups applied and
just 8 were accepted. Boise State wasn't among them.
"I'm busy trying to find out where I can get funding," Hampikian said. The
project receives some other grants and donations; it gets no state allocations.
A portion of its grants go to BSU to cover indirect costs such as use of
university office space.
Innocence projects like BSU???s started in 1992, when the 1st Innocence Project
formed in New York to tap new DNA technology to determine if prisoners had been
wrongly convicted. To date, more than 300 have been freed as a result, many
after long terms of wrongful imprisonment.
Hampikian worked with the Georgia Innocence Project before he moved to Idaho,
then established the Idaho Innocence Project at BSU in 2005. "We work on cases
all over the country, because I'm the only DNA expert that's heading one of
these projects," Hampikian said. "Almost all of this is volunteer work."
He's been in the news for his work on the Amanda Knox case, involving the young
Washington woman who was convicted, then freed on appeal after 4 years in
prison, for the murder of her roommate while both were exchange students in
Italy.
Hampikian has pending patents and has done research work on contamination
theories related to DNA; his work led him to conclude that DNA evidence was
mishandled in Knox's case and led to a wrongful conviction. He consulted with
Knox's defense team and co-wrote a report on the case, but the Italian court
didn't allow it to be submitted, relying instead on its own court-appointed DNA
experts, who reached similar conclusions.
Hampikian said errors happen in criminal cases. "The fact of the matter is it's
a process that will always have a significant degree of error," he said. "I
don't think it's that anyone's unjust." It's "human nature," he said, to try to
find answers and to right wrongs, and sometimes that process goes awry.
Idaho's highest-profile DNA exoneration case came in 2001, before Hampikian
arrived. Death row inmate Charles Fain, a Vietnam veteran who had been
convicted of raping and murdering a 9-year-old girl based on hairs found on the
victim that resembled his, was cleared of involvement in the crime when the
same hairs were DNA tested. He was released from prison after 18 years.
The Idaho Innocence Project last year sponsored a well-received seminar for
Idaho law enforcement officials on best practices in eyewitness identification;
questionable identification in a video lineup was what snared Sarah Pearce.
The victim in that case had reported that the woman who joined her 3 male
attackers was petite, pretty and spoke Spanish to 1 of the men, who could have
been her boyfriend. Pearce is 5 feet 6 inches tall, doesn't date men, was 17 at
the time, and doesn't speak Spanish. Also, 30 minutes after a witness claimed
to have spotted Pearce at a motel with the 3 men, a group matching the
attackers' descriptions ??? 3 Hispanic men and a Hispanic woman in a maroon car
- used the victim???s stolen credit card 60 miles away in Jordan Valley, Ore.
In the Tapp case in Idaho Falls, Tapp, who at first maintained his innocence,
confessed to participating in the killing of Angie Dodge after more than 13
hours of interrogation by police. He agreed to name the murderer in exchange
for immunity. But the numerous names he supplied never matched the DNA at the
crime scene; he ended up being the only one convicted in the case.
"You cannot exhaust people and expect to get the truth," Hampikian said.
"That's why about 25 to 30 % of DNA exonerations include false confessions or
incriminating statements by the victims of these wrongful convictions."
The staff attorney for the Idaho Innocence Project has agreed to continue
working Sarah Pearce's case; Hampikian is scrambling to find a way to pay him,
at least in part. In Tapp's case, the national Innocence Project from New York
has stepped in; Hampikian is continuing the DNA work in the case.
(source: The Spokesman-Review)
CALIFORNIA:
Man accused of killing baby in Desert Hot Springs heads to trial
Opening statements are scheduled Monday in the trial of a Vermont man accused
in the death of his 2-month-old daughter, who was killed in Desert Hot Springs
several years after another of his children met the same fate, with both
infants' bodies found in storage units in 2 different states.
Jason Michael Hann, 38, is charged with one count of murder, with a special
circumstance allegation of having a previous murder conviction, and 1 count of
assault on a child causing great bodily injury. He could face the death penalty
if convicted.
Krissy Lynn Werntz, the baby's 34-year-old mother and Hann's then-girlfriend,
is also charged with murder and will be tried separately.
In February 2002, the decomposed remains of the couple's 2-month-old daughter,
Montana, were found in a storage unit in Arkansas after they failed to pay the
bill and the unit's contents were sold. The person who bought the contents
"made the gruesome discovery while cleaning out a plastic container," which
contained a trash bag holding Montana's remains, according to John Hall of the
Riverside County District Attorney's Office.
The Arkansas State Medical Examiner's Office determined Montana died by
"homicidal violence by undetermined means."
Her injuries included skull fractures and a leg fracture, although it was
unclear if they were sustained before or after death, according to a
declaration filed in support of an arrest warrant.
An "all-points bulletin" was sent to law enforcement agencies around the
country, and Hann and Werntz were arrested in April 2002 at a motel in
Portland, Maine.
The day after they were arrested, police found the remains of another of their
children, a boy less than 2 months old, in a storage unit in Arizona, Hall
said. That baby, named Jason, had been killed in July 1999 in Vermont.
His remains were placed in a plastic container and kept by the couple for about
a year before they rented the Arizona storage unit, Hall said. In February 2006
in Vermont, Hann entered a no-contest plea to 2nd-degree murder in the baby's
death and was sentenced to 27 to 30 years in prison. Werntz wasn't charged in
that case, Hall said.
Authorities investigating the couple determined that their third child, a boy
about a month old, had "life-threatening injuries consistent with child abuse,
including a dozen rib fractures and retinal hemorrhages," Hall said. While
being questioned, Hann told police that the couple's daughter Montana had died
in Desert Hot Springs, Hall said.
Montana was born in Arizona on Dec. 1, 2000, and the family moved to California
about a month later. Werntz told Riverside County sheriff's Investigator Gary
LeClair that on Feb. 10, 2001, she went to work and Hann stayed at their motor
home with Montana. When Werntz returned home, she picked up Montana, but the
baby was dead, LeClair wrote in a declaration in support of an arrest warrant.
Hann told a Maine detective in 2002 that he had lost his temper and hit Montana
on the side of the head with his hand, and the baby died later that day,
LeClair wrote.
Werntz said Hann decided to keep Montana in a trash bag "so they could keep her
with them," and they left California 2 months later, according to LeClair, who
said the couple eventually left the baby's remains a in a trailer at the
storage facility in Wynne, Ark.
Hann was in prison for his son Jason's death when officials in Vermont agreed
to extradite him to California to stand trial for Montana's death. He and Hann
were indicted by a grand jury in September 2009, according to court records.
(source: mydesert.com)
USA:
This is not justice----Inside many prisons, nonviolent offenders and the worst
of the worst often get equal treatment
"Let the punishment fit the crime." We have mouthed this for centuries as our
fundamental credo - the summary of our commitment to justice. But do we really
mean what we say? Our so-called system of justice mocks the very idea of just
and proportional punishment.
How? By treating thousands of nonviolent offenders and sadistic serial
murderers exactly the same once they're behind bars. It's long past time we
started making intelligent, moral distinctions about how we handle convicted
criminals in America's prisons.
I say this as more than a casual observer or armchair academic. During the past
25 years, I've spent thousands of hours inside maximum-security prisons and on
death rows in seven states. This has taught me a fundamental perversity of the
American criminal justice system: Convicted murderers play softball and
ping-pong. Vicious predators who raped and murdered children watch soap operas
on color TVs.
There's a simple and entrenched reason for this: Inside prisons, it's nobody's
job to punish. I found that difficult to believe at first. But it's true. In
prison after prison, correctional officers from the commissioner, or a warden
down to the line officer uniformly declare it: "What a man did out there is
simply not my concern."
What is their concern? "How a prisoner behaves once he's inside." Thus,
corrections officials reserve the worst prison conditions - punitive
segregation - not for the criminals who committed the worst crimes outside, but
for those prisoners who misbehave inside.
And so, I have witnessed condemned killers pounding away at leather work with
sharpened chisels, while an NFL game plays on a large color TV - in Tennessee
death row's arts and crafts room! Yes, you read it right. A death-row
arts-and-crafts room. Condemned killers, the worst of our worst, play
basketball and dominos on Oklahoma's death row.
"I wake up - I don't go to work until 1 p.m., so I have the cell to myself."
That's James Perruquet describing his daily routine to me as a lifer inside
Illinois' Stateville Prison.
"I watch 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?' - try to answer the questions. Then I
go back to the news until I work in the kitchen."
Years before, Perruquet sexually abused and murdered a young boy. He was
eventually paroled, and murdered again.
After work, "I go back to the cell house, take a shower, go in and watch some
prime time. I like '24,' 'Lost,' 'Prison Break.' I'm trying to determine which
season finale I want to watch the most. So I watch. And go to bed."
An avid sports fan, Perruquet did have his grievances: His prison job schedule
forced him to miss too many afternoon Cubs games on TV.
I have seen "inmates" - they don???t call them prisoners anymore - clowning
around in the barbershop, or "shopping" (yup, that's what the sign says) at an
Illinois maximum security prison commissary, their sacks stuffed with Norelco
electric razors, Nike running shoes and all sorts of goodies. Oklahoma State
Penitentiary, also a maximum security prison, advertises the "World's Largest
Prison Rodeo."
It doesn't matter how gruesome the murder that lands you in prison; if you're
perfectly well behaved once inside, under a "progressive" corrections
philosophy, you move up to less and less restrictive levels, even within a
maximum security facility.
Thus I sat on the grass, wide eyed and open mouthed, disbelieving, as my video
camera recorded maximum security prisoners, including convicted murderers - in
uniforms, not prison but baseball uniforms - playing softball on a field with
lined base paths and umpires in uniform, swinging for the fences and
high-fiving it when their teammate hit a home run.
True, the fence was topped with barbed wire, but during that softball game,
none of that mattered. These prisoners, including convicted murderers, were
free to play.
How have we come to this? Partly through genuine moral development. For
centuries, governments violated human dignity, condemned and tortured their
criminals. In the United States, this land of liberty, punishment long ago
morphed from inflicting bodily pain to depriving convicted criminals of
freedom, matching units of time in prison with the seriousness of the crime.
In the 19th century, we began to treat crime more like disease. Treatment
replaced punishment as the "enlightened" response. We kept punishment out of
sight, and it became a source of shame, not justice.
So if punishment isn't the primary mission of our prison system, what is?
Safety and security - keeping the public and the staff safe from the inmates,
and the inmates safe from each other. Thus, although once upon a time we
reserved the worst punishment for the worst criminals, today the big threat
inside prisons is "We'll take away your privileges."
Officers justify this by pointing to their mission statements. I've read them
all. Not one mission statement of any state or the federal government contains
the word "punishment." Not one. Take New York's, for example: "To improve
public safety by providing a continuity of appropriate treatment services in
safe and secure facilities where offenders' needs are addressed and they are
prepared for release..."
Exercise? Fine. But sports, for mass killers?
Fair enough. Those we will someday release we should prepare to re-integrate
into society. When they have paid their dues, we should welcome them back.
Some would suggest that the denial of freedom is punishment enough, and that
the very features of prison that outrage me demonstrate our serious concern
with preserving a person???s essential humanity inside a correctional facility.
But human dignity also consists in remembering the victims and asking how they
would feel looking down on these vicious killers now playing volleyball and
ping-pong.
If we really care about human dignity, those who committed aggravated murders,
who killed for a living, or randomly for kicks, those who we have sworn to
ourselves we will never release, should live (or die) as they deserve.
But inside prison neither the length of the sentence nor the quality of their
daily lives reflects this. Lee Mann, the warden's assistant at Oklahoma State
penitentiary, summed it up best to me: "We make it easy for them because it's
easy for us when it's easy for them."
So that's our dirty little secret.
And here's what makes it even worse: It is only half the problem.
At the same time that we fundamentally disconnect the punishment from the crime
for the worst of the worst - serial killers, sadistic rapist murderers, child
killers, hired killers and terrorists - we equally and oppositely defile
justice.
In a shocking report, "A Living Death: Life without Parole for Nonviolent
Offenses" the American Civil Liberties Union reveals that 79% of the 3,278
prisoners serving life without parole will spend the rest of their lives
imprisoned for non-violent drug crimes.
Worse still, the ACLU documents life-without-parole sentences in other states -
but happily not New York - for attempting to cash a stolen check; a junk-dealer
possessing stolen metal (10 valves and 1 elbow pipe); siphoning gasoline from a
truck; shoplifting three belts from a department store; shoplifting several
digital cameras, and breaking into a closed liquor store in the middle of the
night.
In many of these cases, the federal government sentenced these non-violent
criminals to life without parole through mandatory sentencing rules, or
3-strikes-and-you're-out laws, that remove all discretion from the sentencing
judges. Some of these criminals who committed trivial crimes are sick, not evil
- in need of treatment, not punishment.
Others made mistakes and got caught up in the periphery of drug conspiracies,
or were coerced to carry drugs by violent and abusive boyfriends.
They shouldered the blame while the big fish cooperated, testified against them
and received lesser sentences. Many of them - hardworking citizens, parents
desperately trying to make ends meet, supplementing subsistence wages by
dealing drugs - have paid for their mistakes by serving more than 20 years in
prison while remaining devoted to their families.
Others have simply been abandoned by a society that no longer cares about them
or what they've done.
We claim to presume our accused innocent before trial. Yet we maintain places
like Rikers Island in New York City and Cook County Jail in Chicago, hellishly
confining these people we claim to presume innocent in conditions much more
harsh than what they might face once convicted and sentenced to prison.
Congress and state legislatures could more nearly approach justice by revoking
the absurd legislation that ties our judges??? hands. The executive branch
could do its part if the Justice Department and the President would examine
each of these sentences case by case, and commute these grotesquely
disproportionate federal sentences. State governors too, could commute their
own undeserved life sentences. The ACLU rightly calls for such a case by case
review.
So let's commit ourselves to justice. Let's review the cases of the worst of
the worst who we have condemned to die or serve a life without parole. Let's
move forward more quickly with executions: Worst first. And let's really punish
those vicious murderers who were spared the death penalty - no softball, no
color TV, no Hershey bars, no play. I call it "permanent punitive segregation."
At the same time, let's review the cases of every non-violent criminal
sentenced to life without parole. Let's give them hope. Let's give them the
chance to reintegrate back into society and resume the humane lives they
deserve to have an opportunity to live.
Those of us who believe in retribution - that people should get what they
deserve - should embrace this. Let's mean what we say: Let the punishment fit
the crime.
(source: Opinion; Robert Blecker, a professor of criminal law at New York Law
School is the author of a just-released crime-and-punishment memoir, "The Death
of Punishment."----New York Daily News)
**************************
DNA and Death Row
In this time of economic strain anyone who doesn't look at ways to cut their
personal or business budget is just not being responsible. Same goes for the
justice system.
For nearly 2 decades lawyers working with death row inmates have spent
countless hours, court time and multiple tens of millions of dollars fighting
for access to DNA testing. These attorneys work right up until execution time
to win court orders for DNA tests on crime scene evidence or DNA of the
condemned prisoner him or herself.
I could never figure out why so much time and money was spent fighting a
condemned person's last chance to establish their innocence. Don't we want to
make sure we're executing the right person? Now that DNA technology has become
so advanced isn't that one extra step the necessary and honorable thing to do?
Since 1992 when the Innocence Project was founded -- designed to help prisoners
who could be exonerated through DNA testing -- more than 300 convicts have been
set free, including 18 from death row.
Some might see the death row DNA fight as a stalling tactic by crafty lawyers
for an obviously guilty person. That might certainly be true in some cases. But
ask the 18 death row inmates the Innocence Project got exonerated if their
final DNA fight was worth it.
Most states have statutes allowing post-conviction DNA testing access but none
are automatic and almost all of them come with strict restrictions or absolute
deadlines for use. District Attorney's offices routinely fight defense requests
for DNA testing -- as if to say each of their prosecutions were perfect and
never needs review. What are they afraid of?
Well, here's an idea that could reap double dividends. First, Congress needs to
get past its partisan paralysis and pass a federal law mandating automatic DNA
testing of inmates who have been sentenced to die. No questions asked, just
test each of America's 3,125 death row inmates who have never had their DNA
collected and register it with the national database CODIUS.
The argument, of course, will be that DNA tests are costly. Really? Compared to
what? Research shows they average between $350 and $1,800, depending on the
laboratory used. Compared to the accumulated big ticket costs of lawyers,
judges, prosecutors and court staff and it is easy to see that paying a bit up
front could actually save taxpayer dollars in the long run. It could also save
an innocent person's life.
Most importantly, mandated DNA tests could more quickly identify innocent
inmates which, in turn, could alert police to the fact that there is still a
dangerous criminal on the loose. It's estimated that the exonerated spend about
13 years in prison before they are released. That's too many years to allow a
guilty party to roam the streets preying on others.
Another budget point: The longer you keep a wrongfully convicted person in
prison the more the state is liable to pay out in compensation. Isn't it
smarter to spend a bit of money today (on DNA tests) and spare the state a
potential big payout later?
About 1/2 the states have no actual statute for compensation on the books but
that doesn't mean they don't payout huge sums. In California, for example, a
state law awards up to $100 for each day a wrongfully convicted person spent in
prison. (Multiply that by the average 13 years and it totals more than
$475,000. Realize, many of the exonerated have languished in prison for 25
years or more. For a quarter century of wrongful imprisonment a California
inmate could receive more than $912,000.) Missouri is less generous, offering
$50 for each day. In Florida, an exonerated person can get $50,000 for each
year they spent behind bars with a maximum of $2 million.
Here's that second dividend I mentioned: DNA testing could help solve cold
cases and provide answers to families that have waiting years for news on what
happened to their loved one.
While there are some wrongfully convicted inmates in prison most of the people
who populate death row didn't get there by being choir boys. A vast majority
committed multiple crimes before winding up where they did -- crimes that range
from burglary and robbery to bank robbery and murder. By including their DNA in
the CODIS network law enforcement agencies around the country could tap into it
to see if there's a connection to their cold cases.
There has been a recent push to take DNA from all newly arrested citizens and
those results automatically wind up in the national data base. But, there are
prisoners who have been incarcerated for decades who never got the cheek-swab
test for DNA.
Can you imagine the backlog of criminal cases that might be solved if each and
every prisoner were included in the CODIS system? A study of 41 serial rapists,
for example, showed that before they were imprisoned they admitted they had
collectively raped 837 times and attempted the crime against more than 400
others. If DNA was left behind at the crime scenes those open cases could be
closed and victims could be assured their attacker was behind bars.
Yes, it would take money to accomplish such an all-inclusive prisoner DNA
system. But, I maintain there's nothing more important than good solid
information, a guide to identifying the known criminal element. It would be
money much more wisely spent than endless court fights because it would reap
definitive evidence that goes toward the common good.
It's way past time for justice system bean counters to think outside the box.
(source: Diane Dimond; Television journalist, author, syndicated
columnist----Huffington Post)
******************
Death penalty for Boston bomber a complicated question
When gang members Richard Tipton, Cory Johnson and James Roane were sentenced
to death in 1993 for their roles in multiple murders, they took their places on
federal death row, where they have remained for 2 decades.
A series of appeals and a more recent challenge to the lethal injection
protocol used in federal executions have helped prolonged their lives in a
place where - despite its designation - executions are rarely carried out.
The high-security wing at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., now
represents an increasingly complicated backdrop for a decision Attorney General
Eric Holder is set to make in the next several weeks on whether to pursue the
death penalty in the federal government's prosecution of Boston Marathon
bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
There is little argument about the strength of the case against Tsarnaev,
charged with 30 criminal counts in connection with the blasts that killed three
and wounded more than 260 others. There are photographs of Tsarnaev allegedly
planting explosives at the site of one of the bombings. Yet the government's
record in carrying out the death penalty is mixed at best, and there are
conflicting views about whether the often-delayed penalty is an appropriate
punishment if the 20-year-old defendant is convicted in the bombing case.
Since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, only three offenders
have been executed and none in the past 10 years.
Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh marked the first federal execution in
nearly 40 years when he was put to death in 2001. But even the execution of
McVeigh, whose conviction was swift and who had abandoned last-ditch appeals,
was delayed when it was discovered that the government had failed to turn over
documents to the bomber's defense attorneys.
In the case of Tsarnaev, there are other potentially complicating factors at
play for the federal government in Massachusetts, a state long opposed to the
death penalty.
In September, less than six months after the attack, a poll commissioned by The
Boston Globe found that 57% of Boston residents favored Tsarnaev's facing life
in prison without parole, while only 33% supported death. The opposition, in
the city deeply scarred by the bombing, crossed political lines with Democrats
overwhelmingly favoring life in prison at 61%-28% and Republicans more narrowly
supporting prison over death at 49%-46%.
"It's one thing for the government to be willing to impose the death penalty;
it will be a lot harder to find people in Massachusetts to serve on a jury who
would vote for the death penalty," said Andrew Smith, director of the
University of New Hampshire Survey Center, which conducted the poll. "It's not
terribly surprising given that it is Massachusetts."
Aitan Goelman, a former federal prosecutor who assisted in the Oklahoma City
prosecutions, said the federal government's rarely used execution chamber
reflects a system "slanted against" execution.
From the mandatory pre-prosecution review to determine whether to pursue the
maximum punishment to the actual prosecution, Goelman said, there are required
thresholds in the federal system that don't exist in most states.
In most death penalty states, the decision to seek death is left solely to
local district attorneys. In the federal system, meanwhile, those decisions are
consolidated within the Justice Department and ultimately left to the attorney
general.
"The system seems to bend over backwards not to have executions," said Goelman,
though he said he believes that "at the end of the day," Holder will likely
certify the Tsarnaev prosecution as a death penalty case.
"If you put a bomb down in a crowd, it becomes one of those cases where you
say, 'If not now, when do you ever certify a case as a death penalty case?'"
Goelman said.
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center,
which advocates against the death penalty, said possible considerations that
could work in Tsarnaev's favor are his relative youth and whether Tsarnaev's
older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, may have pushed him to take part in bombings.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a confrontation with police after the brothers
were publicly identified as the bombing suspects by the FBI.
"Justice might approve seeking the death penalty just to keep their options
open," Dieter said, referring to a possible strategy to exact a guilty plea
from the defendant.
Among those who have little doubt that death should be pursued against Tsarnaev
is a former top Boston police official who worked closely on the investigation.
"I don't believe in the death penalty in most cases," former Boston Police
commissioner Ed Davis said. "I believe it is appropriate in this case. I would
caution everyone to wait until all of the evidence comes out. ... There is no
explanation for what happened here."
(source: USA Today)
_______________________________________________
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
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
