April 2
OHIO:
Anti-capital punishment group's report criticizes selectiveness of Ohio death
penalty law
A report by an anti-death penalty group criticizes the selectiveness of Ohio's
capital punishment law, saying death sentences owe as much to an individual
prosecutor's philosophy as the nature of the crime.
The analysis by Ohioans to Stop Executions says Cuyahoga County, with the most
capital indictments in the state, once charged numerous individuals with death
penalty counts each year but now charges very few.
The report released Wednesday notes a similar trend in Franklin County, while
pointing out that Hamilton County indicts few individuals but has a high
death-sentence rate because it won't accept plea bargains in capital cases.
The report also highlights the role of race, noting that 2 of every 3 Ohio
death sentences since 1981 involved the killing of a white victim.
(source: Associated Press)
OKLAHOMA:
Oklahoma to use secretly-sourced, experimental lethal injections in spite of
court ruling; Would unprecedented drug cocktail constitute cruel and unusual
punishment?
Oklahoma revealed plans Tuesday to use an experimental mix of lethal injections
from a secret source to execute two men later this month.
The state plans to use midazolam, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride in
the April 22 and April 29 executions of Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner.
Despite a ruling last week that secrecy around Oklahoma's purchases of lethal
injections is unconstitutional, the state's attorney general's office still
won't identify the source of the drugs it plans to use in the upcoming
executions, said Colorado Assistant Federal Public Defender Madeline Cohen, who
represents Warner.
Warner was convicted of raping and killing an 11-month-old child in 1997.
Lockett was convicted of the 1999 murder of a 19-year-old woman, plus other
crimes, including rape.
Like many states, Oklahoma has been carrying out its executions - at a rate of
about 4 to 5 times a year - using a 3-drug "cocktail" consisting of
pentobarbital or sodium thiopental, followed by vecuronium bromide and
potassium chloride.
But some of those drugs have been yanked off the market by drug companies
unwilling to have them used for capital punishment. European countries, which
abolished the death penalty, have refused to allow exports of drugs for
executions, and anti-death penalty groups in the U.S. have campaigned to expose
pharmaceutical companies involved in executions. These factors have left states
scrambling to find willing suppliers.
As Oklahoma searched for lethal injection doses, an investigation by Katie
Fretland for The Colorado Independent found that state has killed at least 9
inmates with an overdose of the 1st drug in the "cocktail", pentobarbital -
which is intended to induce unconsciousness. Prison officials then injected the
remaining 2 drugs into the dead bodies for "disposal purposes," according to
documents.
As doses for the 3-drug cocktail become increasingly scarce, Oklahoma changed
its protocol late last month to allow 5 different methods of lethal injection
chosen by the warden of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Okla.
Warden Anita Trammell can choose from 4 3-drug methods or a large dose of 1
drug - pentobarbital, the anesthetic.
No other state is known to have used the menu of execution options that
Oklahoma officials announced Tuesday.
"The new protocol raises grave concerns about its safety and efficacy," Cohen
said.
"This creates a serious and substantial risk that the condemned prisoner will
not be adequately anaesthetized before he is injected with the paralytic,
pancuronium bromide, or with potassium chloride to stop his heart, both of
which indisputably will cause excruciating pain and suffering to someone who is
sensate upon their administration," Cohen added. "This protocol also carries a
substantial risk that the condemned prisoner will suffer a lingering and
torturous death from suffocation, due to the effects of both midazolam and
pancuronium bromide."
Concerned about violations of 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and
unusual punishment, lawyers plan to ask for a stay of execution for Lockett and
Warner as court cases continue. In March, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal
Appeals granted a stay for both men, moving their executions from March 20 and
27 to April 22 and 29 because the state did not have the drugs to carry out the
executions. Lawyers want to ask for another stay.
Last week, an Oklahoma judge ruled that the state law concealing the source of
lethal injection drugs is unconstitutional. Exhibits in that proceeding
included documents uncovered in The Colorado Independent's investigation.
The state is appealing the judge's ruling. It continues refusing to discloses
details about where the drugs are from, citing a rule that entitles the state
to a stay of the judge's ruling.
Oklahoma Assistant Attorney General John Hadden wrote in a letter to attorneys
that the Oklahoma Department of Corrections has secured the drugs for Lockett
and Warner's lethal injections and that a pharmacist will hold them until their
executions. He said 2 of the drugs - midazolam and pancuronium bromide - were
made by a compounding pharmacy. So-called compounding pharmacies are
manufacturing and selling lethal injection drugs now that big drug companies
have pulled their products from the market. Such pharmacies - which made the
drugs in small batches by special order - have come under fire for lax
oversight after one was linked to a deadly meningitis outbreak in 2012.
Hadden told lawyers for Warner and Lockett that the state will have the
compounded drugs inspected before the executions. "A qualitative analysis of
these drugs has been ordered and will be completed approximately fourteen (14)
days from today's date," he wrote. "(The corrections department) will provide a
copy of these test results to you as soon as they become available."
The Colorado Department of Corrections faced challenges last year procuring
lethal injection drugs for the execution of Nathan Dunlap, which was planned
for August. Even after Gov. John Hickenlooper indefinitely delayed Dunlap's
execution, the state wouldn't disclose information about which drugs it planned
to use and where it was buying them. A lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties
Union of Colorado resulted in more transparency around Colorado's execution
protocols.
(source: Colorado Independent)
SOUTH DAKOTA:
Jurors to weigh death penalty for man who pleaded guilty but mentally ill in
carjack killing
A man who could face the death penalty for killing a South Dakota hospice nurse
as part of a plan to assassinate President Barack Obama has a history of mental
illness and his life should be spared, his attorney argued Wednesday.
James McVay, 43, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to murder for the 2011
stabbing of 75-year-old Maybelle Schein. McVay said he killed Schein and stole
her car as part of his plot to drive to Washington and kill the president.
Jurors are deciding whether McVay should die by lethal injection or face life
in prison without parole.
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center,
said the death penalty is traditionally reserved for the worst of the worst,
and it's rare for a state to seek the punishment of death after finding someone
guilty but mentally ill.
"I just don't know of any cases in which you have (such) a verdict, and then
the state still seeks the death penalty," he said.
For a jury to consider giving McVay a death sentence, prosecutors must prove
one of two aggravating circumstances. One would be that the offense was
outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible, or inhuman in that it involved
torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated battery to the victim.
McGowan said McVay stabbed Schein 9 times, with the final blow cutting her
vocal cords and carotid artery, causing her to bleed to death within 16
seconds.
"She cried for help, yelled for help," McGowan told jurors.
Amber Eggert, McVay's public defender, said McVay wasn't looking to make Schein
suffer.
"It wasn't something he was trying to draw out," Eggert said.
For the other aggravating circumstance, the defendant must have committed the
offense for his or her own benefit or the benefit of another, for the purpose
of receiving money or any other thing of monetary value. McGowan said McVay
killed Schein to steal her car.
"That was why he was in the house in the first place," McGowan said during his
opening statement.
Authorities say McVay had just walked away from a minimum-security unit in
Sioux Falls on a grand theft sentence and had been mixing cough syrup and
alcohol on July 2, 2011, when he climbed under Schein's slightly open garage
door, entered her house, killed her and drove off in her car.
Eggert said McVay has suffered from mental illness as well as alcohol and drug
issues for much of his life, and the night before the killing he mixed alcohol
with a DXM-based cough syrup, which causes hallucinations. He awoke briefly at
3 a.m. to find spiritual entities surrounding him and awoke again hours later
to find them still there, telling him to follow through on his plan, she told
jurors.
"That was the sign he was going to get the transportation and the final stuff
he needed before going to Washington, D.C.," Eggert said.
After Schein's car was reported stolen, police used the tracking service in the
vehicle to locate McVay on Interstate 90 near Madison, Wis., later that day and
he was arrested after a brief chase.
Madison Police Officer Kipp Hartman had been trying to get the suspect to
reveal his name when McVay began saying that he "killed a little old lady" in
South Dakota and stole her car to get to Washington, D.C., to kill the
president, the officer testified.
Dieter said the guilty but mentally ill verdict gained popularity in a dozen
states as part of the public outcry over John Hinkley being found not guilty by
reason of insanity in 1982 in the attempted assassination of President Ronald
Reagan.
A defendant's mental illness should be a mitigating factor in sentencing, he
said, "something that can lessen the degree of culpability."
(source: Associated Press)
WYOMING:
In the interim, legislators discuss death penalty methods; Sheridan Rep. says
review is necessary
A legislative committee will continue discussing Wyoming's options to execute
inmates convicted of capital crimes in the coming months.
Sen. Bruce Burns, R-Sheridan, believes the state needs to review its death
penalty options in light of problems other states are having acquiring drugs
for lethal injections.
Wyoming doesn't store lethal injection drugs, said Mark Horan, spokesman for
the Department of Corrections. Like other states, it has to obtain them before
an execution.
"It's an issue, really, across the country," he said.
The drugs used in lethal injection, the primary method of death penalty in
Wyoming, are becoming scarce because the European Union has banned
pharmaceutical companies in member countries from exporting them for
executions. Burns wants to look at other forms of execution in the Cowboy
State. He sponsored a bill in the 2014 session to make death by firing squad
the alternative form of execution, but it failed an early vote to earn more
discussion during the session.
Now the topic will be studied by the Joint Judiciary Interim Committee, which
has meetings tentatively scheduled for May, July and September. The
Legislature's Management Council, which assigns topics for discussion, has
ordered the Wyoming Department of Corrections to provide information about
whether the executions law needed to be amended.
According to state law, execution must be carried out by an injection of a
barbiturate alone or in combination with a chemical that would cause paralysis
and potassium chloride or other substances that would cause death. The drugs
are administered continuously and intravenously until a physician pronounces
the inmate dead.
If a court finds lethal injection unconstitutional, executions can be carried
out with lethal gas, the law states.
Burns believes firing squads are the cheapest and most effective alternative to
the death penalty, he said.
Burns doesn't like hanging because it's too susceptible to mistakes, he said.
To properly hang someone, an inmate's weight and the amount of drop must be
perfectly calculated, he said.
"They've miscalculated that a number of times, either dropping too far and
beheading them or not breaking their neck and a person chokes to death," he
said, explaining that an inmate's neck must break to die.
Burns' bill would have substituted firing squads for gas chambers, since the
state doesn't have a working chamber.
"We do have one that was used 3 or 4 times that was sitting in Rawlins at the
old Frontier Prison," he said. "But the expense of building an operating one
would be exorbitant."
Electric chairs are costly, too, Burns said.
Burns believes the graphic nature of the death penalty conversation could draw
some Wyomingites to committee meetings to speak out against the court-ordered
practice.
"But I'm going on the assumption that the majority of people in Wyoming want to
maintain the death penalty, for a couple of reasons," he said. "Sometimes you
have crimes that are so heinous the death penalty is called for, and the 2nd
reason is the state of Wyoming doesn't execute people very often. We haven't
executed a person in over 20 years."
On Friday, the Pew Research Center released the results of a 2013 survey that
found the majority of Americans -- 55 % -- supported the death penalty, but
support had declined since 2011, when it was 62 %. The survey results did not
break down death penalty support by state.
The last execution was in 1992, Mark Hopkinson.
Dale Wayne Eaton is the only person on Wyoming's death row. He was sentenced to
death in 2004 for the rape and murder of 18-year-old Lisa Marie Kimmell of
Billings, Mont.
(source: Casper Star-Tribune)
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