June 22
FLORIDA:
Death penalty law legal but falls short
The state's Timely Justice Act was an attractive target for death penalty foes
looking to bring attention to Florida's flawed execution process.
They claimed the law, passed in 2013, wrongly shifted authority from the courts
to the governor and compromised due process rights by imposing deadlines for
death warrants to be signed. Attorneys representing death row inmates sued,
hoping to have the law declared unconstitutional.
But the law is far more benign than its critics would have the public believe.
And last week the Florida Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law, finding
there was nothing in the Timely Justice Act that limits an inmate's chance to
have all appeals heard and for the governor to fully consider clemency before
signing a death warrant.
That should quiet the over-the-top rhetoric that accompanied the legislative
debate over the law. Lawmakers had hoped to lessen the time it takes to carry
out a death sentence, a process that can leave the victims' families to suffer
for decades awaiting an execution.
Opponents made exaggerated claims that it would increase the risk of executing
someone wrongly accused. After all, 24 death row inmates have been exonerated
over the past 40 years while awaiting execution in Florida, more than in any
other state.
But the Timely Justice Act doesn't speed the appellate process or encroach upon
the rights of the accused. In fact, it leaves the post-conviction legal reviews
unchanged. Those include a review by the Florida Supreme Court, an appeal to
the U.S. Supreme Court, a round of post-conviction proceedings, another appeal
to the Florida Supreme Court, a federal court review and a clemency process.
The Timely Justice Act simply instructs the Supreme Court clerk to notify the
governor when appeals are exhausted and orders the governor to sign a death
warrant within 30 days of that notification, provided the clemency process is
completed. Additionally, the law requires the Supreme Court to produce an
annual report to the Legislature on cases pending more than 3 years, and
establishes an office in North Florida to represent death row inmates.
Those changes should help the process, but aren't likely to shorten it.
As lawmakers debated the law last year, 155 inmates had been on death row for
20 years or longer; 10 had been there for more than 35 years. Such numbers are
frustrating, particularly for victims' families. But lawmakers also should
tread lightly when considering laws that affect due process rights.
The average time for Florida's death row inmates to await execution is 13
years, below the national average. Rather than focus simply on ways to
legislate a shorter wait time, the state also should address the startling
number of faulty convictions.
An American Bar Association review from 2006 called upon the state to create
independent commissions to examine the causes of wrongful convictions, to
better compensate attorneys for the accused and to bring Florida in line with
other states by requiring that jury recommendations for death be unanimous,
rather than a simple majority. The review found glaring racial, socioeconomic
and geographical disparities in death sentences.
So far, the state hasn't moved to address the more pressing issues surrounding
its flawed death penalty process. This neglect can contribute to the legal
delays in executions.
The Supreme Court got it right. The Timely Justice Act is constitutional, and
largely inconsequential. State lawmakers have more work to do to strengthen the
death penalty and justice in Florida.
(source: Editorial, The Tampa Tribune)
*****************
Man receives hearing to avoid death sentence----Man also receives hearing to
determine mental capacity
A Florida judge has ruled that a man convicted of murder will receive an
evidentiary hearing to avoid the death penalty.
A jury recommended a death sentence by 10-2 vote for Dennis Thurnado Glover,
50, after being convicted of killing Sandra Jean Allen, 51.
The Florida Times-Union reported Glover's defense team will argue he suffers
from intellectual disabilities. The U.S. Supreme court ruled that executing the
intellectually disabled amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and violates
the eighth amendment.
Circuit Judge Mallory Cooper was scheduled to rule Friday on whether Glover
received life in prison or the death penalty. Assistant public defender Michael
Bateh argued the Supreme Court ruling allows him the opportunity to present
more evidence of Glover's mental capacity. Cooper agreed.
The hearing is scheduled for the week of July 28 with the exact date to be set
that Monday.
Glover told police he discovered Allen, who lived 2 doors away from his home,
dead, saw 2 men running away and went to get help with other neighbors.
DNA tests showed that Allen's blood was on Glover's shoes. His DNA was found on
her face, neck and left hand. Allen was beaten, strangled and stabbed in the
neck.
(source: Associated Press)
INDIANA:
Death penalty caught in web of pharmacy ethics
A series of executions over the past few months in the U.S. has gone horribly
awry. Each torturous death has caused growing doubts about the use of lethal
injection as a form of capital punishment.
Executions by lethal injection have long been problematic - 1 in Indiana took
83 minutes - in part because most medical professions consider it unethical to
participate. The primary reason for the recent botched executions, however, is
that pharmaceutical companies have declared that use of their products in
executions violates their core mission to sustain and improve life.
Every state's supply of lethal drugs has now expired due to the embargo. Those
states intent on carrying out executions have had to substitute drugs that have
never been used before in executions, or turn to "compounding pharmacists" to
create their own lethal cocktails.
Indiana is pursuing the 1st strategy. Last month, the state announced that it
had obtained a supply of Brevital, a powerful anesthetic, to use as an
experimental part of its execution protocol. Par Pharmaceutical, the maker of
Brevital, immediately protested, citing both medical and ethical concerns. The
company noted that use of its drug in executions is "inconsistent with
(Brevital's) medical indications as outlined in its U.S. Food and Drug
Administration reviewed and approved product labeling." It would also violate
Par's mission to "help improve quality of life."
A state spokesman claimed that officials had consulted with "pharmacists, other
states and other experts" before Brevital was selected, but declined to
identify which these were. Perhaps they consulted with those who also approved
the experimental drug cocktails that Ohio, Florida, Missouri and Oklahoma have
each tried with such disastrous results. We won't know until we try it. And
therein lies a major problem.
Our Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishments. That would seem to
preclude experimenting on humans to test various ways to kill them. The U.S.
has a long, regrettable history of experimenting on prisoners and other
marginalized groups. As a result, Congress has passed stringent laws
prohibiting the use of human subjects in experiments against their will,
especially those that are antithetical to the subject's well-being. However
Indiana's experiment with Brevital may turn out, it will violate these
fundamental protections of a free society.
In any case, Indiana's experiment will be short-lived. Par Pharmaceutical has
now joined the embargo on use of its products in executions. Eventually,
Indiana will be forced to take the second option: to search for a "compounding"
pharmacist who will create his own deadly brew that will, however painfully or
slowly, cause the death of the recipient.
Only a handful of pharmacists in the entire nation have entered into such a
bargain and all have insisted that it be done "on the down low." In agreeing to
kill the recipients of their drugs, these pharmacists violate all the key
tenets of the pharmacists' own Code of Ethics. The code states unequivocally
that the primary obligation of a pharmacist is to individual patients, that
concern for the well-being of the patient be at the center of professional
practice, and that the pharmacist promote the right of the drug recipient to
self-determination and participation in decisions about his or her own health.
(source: Kelsey Kauffman is a retired teacher living in Greencastle, Ind. She
started a national campaign through SumOfUs.org in February to ask pharmacists
to stop participating in executions; South Bend Tribune)
******************
100 years after relative's execution, a woman's self-discovery
Latonya Collier walks quietly down the long hallway, the click of her heels
echoing the last few steps in a 10-year journey of self-discovery.
The Indianapolis woman moves slowly, almost apprehensively, through the
windowless passage leading to a small room in a training center just outside
the razor-wire fence that surrounds New Castle Correctional Facility.
Reaching a heavy steel door at the end of the hall, Collier stops. She exhales
and draws in a deep breath. Then she pushes through the door.
Tears well in her eyes.
There, only a few feet in front of Collier, is the killer of a member of her
family: Indiana's electric chair.
The once-prolific killing machine is the most tangible connection yet to
Collier's great-great-grandfather, Robert Collier. A century earlier, shortly
after midnight on Oct. 16, 1914, Robert Collier became the first black man to
be executed in Indiana's then-new electric chair.
His execution was something that few in Collier's family knew about or spoke
of, yet Robert Collier had come to be a central character in Latonya Collier's
life over the past decade. A jackhammer operator and college student, she had
stumbled onto her great-great-grandfather's role in Hoosier history.
She learned that Robert Collier had killed a white police officer and claimed
to have helped build the electric chair while an inmate at the Indiana State
Prison in Michigan City.
Latonya Collier would go on to discover much more about Robert Collier - and
about herself - as she continued to dig into his long-forgotten, troubled past.
A quest begins
Collier, 46, was drawn to Robert Collier's story while looking for a research
paper topic for a criminal justice class she was taking at Martin University.
As she often did, Collier turned to her great-aunt Mildred Gill.
"Why don't you write about your great-great-grandfather?" suggested Gill.
"Who?"
"Robert Collier," said Gill, Robert Collier's granddaughter. "Do your
research."
Intrigued, Collier took up Gill's challenge.
"No one in my family ever talked about it," Latonya Collier said. "My father
didn't even know about it. His father didn't either."
Over the next decade, her college project evolved into a personal quest to
share his story in a way that it had never been told.
First, came tidbits from Gill, who was raised by Robert Collier's widow.
Collier searched through public records in libraries, scoured prison archives
and state records, and pored over thousands of pages of old newspapers copied
onto microfilm.
When she found a mug shot of her great-great-grandfather, Collier nearly
fainted. It was an image she had seen in a dream years earlier, she said, right
down to the prison number on his coat. Until that moment, though, she had no
idea who the strange man was.
Every new discovery pushed Collier to dig deeper.
What she discovered was a man of contrasts, defined not just by his violent
actions and death in the electric chair but also by a tenderness toward family
and concern for others.
'A bad man'
Robert Collier had a short fuse, and his temper kept him in trouble most of his
life.
Collier's run-in with the law began as a boy, when he shot another youth in the
leg. Over the next 22 years, he would be arrested at least 60 more times - most
involved assaults and fighting - and spent much of his adult life locked behind
bars.
A conviction for battery with intent to kill landed Collier at Michigan City in
1910. Prison records show Collier struggled with tuberculosis and spent part of
his sentence in the prison infirmary. But he also worked in the prison's yard
and construction shop. He was paroled in February 1914.
He quickly returned to his old ways after returning to Evansville. Collier
wounded a black acquaintance during an argument but claimed self-defense.
2 weeks after winning an acquittal in that case, however, Collier was involved
in another shooting. This time the victim was white - and a police officer.
There are differing versions, according to newspaper accounts of court
testimony, about what happened. Collier claimed patrolman John Cain stuck him,
unprovoked, with a night stick as he stood on a street corner talking with a
group of black men and women. He shot the police officer, Collier said, in
self-defense.
Cain's partner and other witnesses testified that Collier fired on the
unsuspecting police officer without warning or cause.
There is no disputing the outcome: Cain lay mortally wounded as Collier ran
from the scene.
Collier - described in newspaper accounts as having a reputation as "a bad man"
- was taken into custody a few hours after he shot Cain. Justice was equally
swift.
3 days later, Judge Duncan C. Givens sentenced Collier to die in the electric
chair. As the sentence was delivered, the Evansville Courier reported, Collier
chuckled and grinned.
"The packed courtroom was astonished," the newspaper reported, "at the attitude
of the convicted negro."
Instrument of death
Hanging had long been the mode of execution in Indiana, but that changed in
1913 when the General Assembly updated the state's death penalty law in the
wake of a new technology.
Following the lead of other states, including New York and Ohio, Indiana's new
law called for executions to be carried out by electrocution.
Collier's death sentence was set for the early morning hours of Oct. 16, 1914,
in Michigan City. He became only the 3rd person - and the 1st African-American
- executed in Indiana's then-new instrument of death.
Records at the Indiana State Archives reveal the electric chair was built with
lumber salvaged from the hangman's scaffold. The back and legs of the blocky
chair were crafted from the scaffold's braces and uprights, while the seat and
arms were made from the platform. The records also reveal that 2 prisoners
helped build the electric chair, but they are not identified.
In a prison interview shortly before his execution, Collier proudly claimed he
was one of those prisoners.
"Yes sir I helped build the chair, and I was the 1st man to sit in it after it
was completed," Collier said. "Now I am going to spend my last moments in it."
Face to face
In her decade of extensive research, there was one central component of her
great-great-grandfather's story that had eluded Collier.
She had never - except in small, grainy photographs - seen the electric chair.
Collier had been curious, she admitted, but also leery. She was afraid how she
might react. Visiting Robert Collier's unmarked grave in Evansville had taken
more of an emotional toll than she had expected.
There also was a more practical matter.
Until 2013, the electric chair had been stored out of public sight at Michigan
City. But last fall, the retired, primitive killing machine dubbed "Old Betsy"
was moved to a small museum in the training facility at the New Castle
Correctional Facility about 55 miles east of Indianapolis.
Earlier this year, Collier decided she was finally ready to see it.
"It is kind of creepy, and I am nervous and scared," Collier said as she sat in
the training center lobby, waiting to be escorted to the museum.
"But on the other hand I am really looking forward to it, and I'm glad my
father and son will be there with me."
She had imagined this moment many times over the past decade, replaying it in
her head like a scene from a favorite movie, but that failed to prepare her for
the reality of the experience when she pushed through the doorway and came
face-to-face with the electric chair.
"Oh my," Collier exclaimed, drawing her hands to her face.
She slowly moved closer to the glass cube encasing the chair. With her left
hand, Collier reached out, tentatively touching the case. Then she silently
leaned forward until her head was resting against the glass. Just inches away,
on the other side of a thin sheet of glass, was the electric chair where Robert
Collier drew his final breath 100 years earlier.
Tears ran down her cheeks.
"I didn't expect it to hit like that. Reality really just set in. All the work
and research. This was the final step and it just made everything so real,"
Collier sobbed, her voice trailing off.
She paused to regain her composure, then continued.
"I could just feel him. Walking down the hallway to see this chair, it was like
when he was walking to his execution. It was like he was there with me, like he
wanted me to feel what he felt, to make me even more passionate to spread his
message."
Other face of a killer
Robert Collier's criminal past and execution were well-documented, but
Collier's research also turned up another side to the hot-tempered killer - a
loving son, father and husband.
After he was paroled Collier spent his first few months back home reconnecting
with his family.
He loved the outdoors and spent time fishing with his daughter Rosalie. But
their excursions were about much more than catching fish for dinner. They
discussed religion, race and life.
He tried to assist his elderly parents and mend broken relationships with
estranged siblings, including a brother he had threatened to shoot when they
were youths.
And in a jailhouse interview with the Evansville Courier the day after he was
sentenced to death, Robert Collier made a dramatic plea to other young black
men heading down a path similar to his own.
"I never had an education because I did not like to study. Now I am going to
die in the electric chair, but I hope nobody in this world will follow my
example," he said.
"My advice to my colored brethren is to take care of themselves, study until
they get an education, and when they get it, use it to make better men out of
themselves."
The message resounded with Collier, who was the first person in her extended
family to graduate from college. Education had always been a priority to the
single mother, who had pushed to see that all of her children got an education.
It was a message, she determined, that was too important to leave buried in a
library archive. So she turned her research paper into a book - "Show No Fear,
The 1914 Execution of Robert Collier" - that told his story, both the bad and
the good.
One audience she hopes to reach with Robert Collier's story about the value of
education is Indiana students, particularly young African-Americans. She is now
working on a curriculum plan to help teachers incorporate it into history
courses.
"It is a legacy," Collier said, "to be remembered, and it is just as important
today, maybe even more, than it was 100 years ago."
The process of researching and writing the book also affected Collier in ways
she never imagined. Her quest evolved into a journey of self-examination and
personal discovery. It brought her family closer together. And, Collier admits,
it helped her overcome some of her own demons.
For years, her views of whites had been tainted by bad experiences she and
other family members and friends had with police. But her research into Robert
Collier - a violent man who also had good in him - helped her realize that
there are 2 sides to every story.
It was an epiphany, Collier said, that helped her understand she may have been
seeing only one side of other people. And that allowed her to walk away from
years of hard feelings and racial distrust.
"I was slumped in prejudice just as a lot of other people who've had bad
experiences. But educating myself, reviewing his history and learning about
people got me out of that slump," she explained.
"I can't tell you how much this experience has changed me and my family."
(source: Indianapolis Star)
MISSOURI:
Wood case stirs death penalty passions
The murder case of Craig Wood is bringing the death penalty debate to the
forefront. Prosecutors want him to pay the ultimate price if a jury convicts
him of kidnapping and killing 10-year-old Hailey Owens.
Some say he should get life in prison while prosecutors push for death.
5 convicted killers in Missouri have been put to death in the past 6 months,
with 41 more are reportedly still sitting on death row.
KSPR's Sheena Elzie reports there's a debate behind those numbers - one that
surrounds Craig Wood's murder case, a grieving family and a group of
protestors.
The Springfield chapter of the group Missourians For Alternatives to the Death
Penalty has protested every recent execution. Protesters say death row inmates
should stay in prison and get life without parole.
A family from Republic is trying pushing their side of the debate too. They say
their son didn't get justice when the man convicted of killing him in 2011 was
not given the death penalty. Wesley North, whose son, Westin, was murdered,
says, "I think anybody that harms a child should automatically be put on death
row."
The last time Missouri executed someone from a Greene County case was more than
15 years ago. It will likely take a few more years to find out whether that
will happen in Craig Wood's case. The Greene County prosecutor says it could be
at least a year before Craig Wood's death penalty case goes to trial. Wood's
defense attorney says it could take even longer - up to 2 years before a jury
hears the case.
(source: KSPR News)
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