July 13
FLORIDA:
He was a death row survivor----In an obituary written for the New Abolitionist,
Lily Hughes remembers the 1st death row prisoner exonerated in the modern era
of the death penalty.
Florida death row survivor Dave Keaton died this past week at the age of 63.
Dave was the 1st death row prisoner to be exonerated in the U.S.
Dave was part of a group of young men known as the Quincy 5, a group of young
Black men accused of murder of an off-duty police officer and robbery of a
Tallahassee convenience store. The young men were all convicted based on false
eyewitness testimony and coerced confessions.
Dave was the 1st of the group to be convicted, by an all-white jury, based
solely on a confession that was obtained by the use of beatings, threats and
lies.
Convicted when he was 18 years old, Dave spent 2 years on death row. Physical
evidence eventually led to the actual culprits, while the coerced confession
was thrown out by the courts upon appeal. Like many prisoners, Dave never
received compensation from the state for the time he spent on death row.
After his release from death row, Dave joined the recently founded Witness to
Innocence (WTI) in 2005. WTI is an organization based on the membership of
exonerated death row prisoners and their families. WTI Executive Director
Magdalene Rose-Avila described Dave's activism, "Dave Keaton was the 1st death
row exoneree to begin speaking out against the death penalty. His false
imprisonment and the life struggles he faced as an exoneree demands that we
abolish capital punishment."
Dave is also known as an accomplished poet and singer, performing around the
country as a part of his work. His story was immortalized The Exonorated, the
renowned play about death row survivors.
As Kathy Spillman, director of programs and outreach for WTI said of Dave:
His life was very difficult. He was sentenced to death row as a teenager. And
like all exonerees, he struggled with issues related to being on death row and
integrating back into a society that does not provide support for these men and
women. Yet he was stoic and very gentle. He was a poet and a singer and
whenever he got the chance, he participated in activities against the death
penalty so that nobody else had to go through what he did.
(source: socialistworker.org)
OKLAHOMA:
Death Penalty foes schedule Capitol press conference for Monday morning
Opponents of the ultimate sanction have slated a press conference on Monday
morning (July 13) to present their case against execution of Richard Glossip,
now on death row at the state prison in McAlester.
Participants will include Don Knight, an attorney who believes Glossip was
wrongly convicted of procuring murder.
A press release announcing the Monday morning meeting with reporters detailed
that Knight wants help from the public as he makes the case for Glossip's
exoneration:
"There were many people at the Best Budget Inn during the early morning hours
of January 7, 1997 who may have knowledge of the crime, or who may have
interacted with individuals who were there at the time. Mr. Knight will be
asking these, and other, members of the public to come forward and speak the
truth to prevent another tragedy from occurring."
House Democratic staff summarized the focus of Monday's event in a press
release: "A team of lawyers has volunteered to work on behalf of Mr. Richard
Glossip because he has always maintained his innocence and the evidence against
him is paper thin. Knight will discuss evidence the team is attempting to
uncover that would exonerate Richard Glossip, as no one wants an innocent man
to be executed."
Since the start, Glossip has asserted his innocence in the murder of Barry Van
Treese, owner of the hotel where he was manager.
The admitted killer is Justin Sneed, who beat Van Treese to death with a
baseball bat. Sneed said Glossip was afraid of losing his job at the Inn, and
promised to pay him $10,000 to kill their boss. Sneed testified against
Glossip, and received a life sentence without parole.
Former state Sen. Connie Johnson, D-Oklahoma City, serves as chair of the
Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (OK-CADP), the group sponsoring
Monday's press conference, slated for 10 a.m. in Room 432B, in the broadcast
media press room.
In a statement to The City Sentinel concerning capital punishment and the
scheduled execution, Johnson said:
"Once again, Oklahoma has set a date, September 16, to kill for its citizens as
punishment for the killing of one of its citizens. It's ironic that this
particular choice of punishment only applies to citizens and not law
enforcement as Oklahoma once again notoriously leads the nation - this time in
the number of deaths at the hands of law enforcement - but that's a
conversation for another article.
"The difference this time is that this particular citizen who is sentenced to
die appears to be innocent.
"The date-setting - coming on the heels of the Supreme Court's decision
upholding Oklahoma's lethal injection drug's constitutionality - while
expected, is no less disappointing.
"Our advocacy opportunity in the next eight weeks is to educate people, in
order to support Mr. Glossip's legal team in shedding new light on information
that proves his innocence; information that the criminal justice system has
refused to allow to be presented.
"There is so much wrong with this case, the system, and the penalty. If it's
wrong to kill, it's always wrong to kill."
Sister Helen Prejean, a leading foe of the death penalty, will return to
Oklahoma for Monday's event. Also scheduled to attend and participate are Sen.
Johnson, state Rep. George Young, D-Oklahoma City, and OK-CADP spokesperson
Rev. Adam Leathers.
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Oklahoma's death penalty
protocols (including use of the drug midazolam), were constitutional. That
allowed the state to move forward with 3 executions, with Glossip slated to be
the 1st.
At the time, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt commented, "This marks the
8th time a court has reviewed and upheld as constitutional the lethal injection
protocol used by Oklahoma. The Court's ruling preserves the ability of the
Department of Corrections to proceed with carrying out the punishment of death.
The state appreciates the justices' thoughtful consideration of these important
issues."
Pruitt said, "The families in these three cases have waited a combined 48 years
for justice. Now that the legal issues have been settled, the state can proceed
with ensuring that justice is served for the victims of these horrible and
tragic crimes."
As Johnson hinted, the affirmation of capital punishment - rebuffing a case
brought by death row inmates - was expected in the case of Glossip v. Gross.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, with these essential
conclusions: "First, the prisoners failed to identify a known and available
alternative method of execution that entails a lesser risk of pain, a
requirement of all Eighth Amendment method-of-execution claims. ... Second, the
District Court did not commit clear error when it found that the prisoners
failed to establish that Oklahoma's use of a massive dose of midazolam in its
execution protocol entails a substantial risk of severe pain."
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the primary dissent, in which three of her
colleagues joined. She argued lawyers "presented ample evidence showing that
the State's planned use of this drug poses substantial, constitutionally
intolerable risks." She and other justices pointed, among past precedents, to
the U.S. Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual" punishment to support their
dissent.
Going a step further, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer wrote (with Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg joining) that the Court should move toward ending capital
punishment.
In support of his reasoning, Breyer observed, "Last year, in 2014, 6 death row
inmates were exonerated based on actual innocence. All had been imprisoned for
more than 30 years."
(source: The City Sentinel)
MISSOURI----impending execution
The lethal injection ruling that takes America another step away from banning
executions ---- A recent Supreme Court ruling has breathed new life into the
lethal injection - what does this mean for the anti-death penalty lawyers
defending David Zink, who's due to be executed tomorrow?
Next week is the year anniversary of Joseph Wood's execution. A convicted
murderer, he was given a cocktail of drugs by the state of Arizona - a lethal
injection. It took 2 hours for him to die. It was the 3rd highly problematic
execution in 2014, after the similarly harrowing deaths of Dennis McGuire in
Ohio and Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma.
The execution induced wildly different reactions from states. Arizona suspended
its death penalty programme. Utah re-introduced the option of execution by
firing squad. Nebraska outlawed the death penalty completely earlier this year.
They were all responding, at least in part, to the same possibility - that the
lethal injection in America would be ruled as unconstitutional. Last month that
very nearly happened.
On 29 June, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Glossip vs Gross. 3 Oklahoma
inmates on death row argued that the use of Midazolam - used in the 3 bungled
executions last year - should be ruled as a "cruel and unusual punishment". The
8th amendment of the American constitution expressly forbids this. They lost by
5 votes, to 4.
Crucially, however, the details of the ruling have consequences for attorneys
defending people on death row up and down the country.
Rick Sindel and Kay Parish represent death row inmate David Zink. In 2001, he
murdered 19-year-old Amanda Morton after he had rear-ended her car off a
freeway in Missouri. After raping her he admitted to strangling Morton and then
cutting her spinal cord so that she would "remain that way". He buried her body
in a graveyard. The state of Missouri has set his date of execution for 14 July
- tomorrow.
David Zink is due to be executed this week.
His legal team are in the last stages of appeal. His confession means that
their main focus falls on the type of drugs that Missouri intends to use to
kill Zink.
Sindel and Parish are one of the first, if not the first, lawyers who have to
work with the ramifications of the Supreme Court's ruling.
The most notable problem they have is with a specific judgement - that lawyers
using the "cruel and unusual punishment" defence must suggest an alternative
form of execution that is not cruel and unusual. Or as Parish says "lawyers
must tell a court how to kill our clients".
It puts lawyers like Sindel and Parish, who are viscerally against capital
punishment, in a difficult position.
"It's a pretty nasty ruling in my opinion, and one that puts those of us trying
to prevent our clients from being forcibly subject to this human
experimentation in quite an ethical quandary", says Parish.
The decision suggests that method x cannot be cruel and unusual because you
have not explained a better method. Or to put it another way, it asks people
who believe that all methods of execution are cruel and unusual to accept the
court's contention that there are humane and dignified forms of execution.
After much deliberation Zink's team decided last week not to suggest an
alternative form of capital punishment.
It's left Sindel and Parish in a fairly desperate position. Previously they had
argued that Missouri's lethal agent - a form of "pentobarbital" - was illegal.
They claimed the drug was made by an unknown compounding pharmacy and was a
"copy" of an FDA-approved drug, rather than a directly approved agent. They
also put forward the argument that the method of execution violated state and
federal controlled substance laws because the compounded pentobarbital is
procured by an invalid "prescription" - written by a doctor who is
contractually-bound to write the prescription and who conducts no medical
examination.
It didn't work.
As a result, another lawyer has decided to take one last roll of the dice.
Justin Gelfand is an attorney with a very different legal specialism to Sindel
and Parish. He's a former federal tax prosecutor. Counterintuitively he thinks
he might be able to save Zink's life using his own specialisms in tax law.
Gelfand has prepared a public interest lawsuit using an obscure law, a
Taxpayers Suit. The law has never been used in this context in Missouri legal
history. It allows an action to be brought by a private individual to prevent
state or federal government from unlawfully diverting public funds. It is
generally used in cases of corruption or impropriety. It's been filed by four
(carefully chosen) plaintiffs, including a former member of the Missouri Senate
and a Catholic nun, no less.
They argue that the suit "is not about the general legality of the death
penalty in Missouri or elsewhere," but has been filed because "Missouri public
officials responsible for overseeing and administering executions are violating
federal and state law using the tax dollars of hardworking Missourians."
The suit makes particular reference to arguments made by Sindel, Parish and
others - that the state of Missouri's use of compound pentobarbital is illegal
- arguments that had previously been dismissed by Missouri courts.
The hearing for the lawsuit will continue today, less than 24 hours before
Zink's execution date. We'll know by tomorrow whether it's been successful,
though as it's never been used before it's a bit of a long shot. It marks the
penultimate day of years of appeals that have fallen on deaf ears in Missouri
courts.
The Supreme Court's decision won't stop lawyers like Sindel and Parish, but it
does make their lives harder. "There are those of us who just won't give up as
long as there is breath in our bodies", says Sindel. It's the language of hope,
perhaps, over expectation.
(source: New Statesman)
CALIFORNIA:
Driving getaway car ruled not a life-without-parole crime
Driving a getaway car in a fatal armed robbery is grounds for a murder
conviction. But it's not enough for a capital crime, the state Supreme Court
has ruled in a case that defines new limits on California's death penalty law.
Thursday's unanimous decision overturned the life-without-parole sentence of
the getaway driver in an October 2008 break-in at a Los Angeles medical
marijuana dispensary in which a security guard was fatally shot. The court said
the driver, Lovie Troy Matthews, though guilty of the murder, was not a "major
participant" subject to a no-parole sentence - or to a death sentence, which
the prosecution did not seek.
There was no evidence that Matthews "knew his own actions would involve a grave
risk of death," Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar said in the 7-0 ruling. She
said the driver may have known he was taking part in an armed robbery but did
not supply the weapons, attend or play any direct role in the fatal shooting,
intend to kill, or conspire with those he knew had killed others.
Matthews is still likely to spend the rest of his life in prison, as he faces a
sentence of up to 80 years to life, based on his previous record, said his
appellate lawyer, Danalynn Pritz. But she said the ruling would benefit other
defendants and was a sign of change on a court that recently added 2 new
justices, Mariano-Florentino Cu???llar and Leondra Kruger, both appointees of
Gov. Jerry Brown.
"It's encouraging from a defense perspective," Pritz said. "I feel like they're
listening to what we're saying."
Evan Lee, a constitutional law professor at UC Hastings in San Francisco,
agreed that the ruling should make defense lawyers "cautiously optimistic"
about the newly composed court.
The guard at the La Brea Collective, Noe Gonzalez, was shot and killed by one
of the robbers, Leon Banks, during a struggle as Banks and 2 other men were
trying to flee, the court said. Matthews then drove up in an SUV and 2 of the
robbers jumped in. Police soon stopped the vehicle and arrested the robbers.
Banks and a 2nd man, Brandon Daniels, were sentenced to life without parole for
the murder, and the 3rd robber, David Gardiner, got 45 years to life.
Matthews, a member of the same gang to which Daniels and Gardiner belonged, was
found guilty of 1st-degree murder as a participant in a felony in which someone
was killed. But the court said he was not guilty of murder with "special
circumstances," as California defines capital crimes, because he was not a
major participant in the fatal shooting.
A 1990 ballot measure authorized a sentence of death or life without parole for
accomplices in fatal crimes without proof that they intended to kill. But
Werdegar said the court was bound by the constitutional standard set by the
U.S. Supreme Court in 1987, which allowed a death sentence only when a driver
or other accomplice is substantially involved in the fatal crime and shows a
"reckless indifference to the grave risk of death created by (his) actions."
That generally isn't the case for someone whose only role is driving the
getaway car, she said.
(source: sfgate.com)
USA:
Death penalty doubts
As questions mount over whether the death penalty can be applied fairly or
effectively, the U.S. Supreme Court has again taken up the issue. Ruling 5 to 4
in late June, it turned back a challenge by 3 condemned men seeking to block a
specific drug from being administered in executions. The inmates argued that
including the sedative midazolam in a 3-step lethal injection process could
expose subjects to excruciating pain, thereby violating the Eighth Amendment's
prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments.
Lethal injection came into use in the late 1970s, when Oklahoma embraced it as
a supposedly humane alternative to such methods as electrocution or hanging.
However, it did so without much research. Other death-penalty states soon
followed along, making lethal injection by far today???s most common method of
executing a human being in the United States.
In recent years, as misgivings about the death penalty grew, suppliers of
sedatives commonly used in executions began refusing to sell them for that
purpose. Midazolam slipped in to fill the void, but, as the defense in Glossip
v. Gross argued, it cannot reliably render a person unconscious. It has not,
for instance, been federally approved for general anesthesia during surgery.
A grisly series of executions last year seemed to support the defense. Among
them was the case of Clayton Lockett, executed in Oklahoma. He woke after
midazolam was administered and appeared to writhe in pain as the 2 subsequent
drugs (a paralyzing agent and one aimed at producing cardiac arrest) were
injected. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing in dissent, suggested that Lockett
had endured "the chemical equivalent of burning alive." Today, in their search
for workable drug combinations, death-penalty states are essentially performing
experiments on live human beings, a thought that should chill every American.
Rhode Island is among 19 states that have no death penalty, and for compelling
reasons. Heading the list: the risk of killing an innocent person is simply too
great. Nor is the penalty imposed fairly. Blacks are more likely to be executed
than whites, suggesting bias and inadequate legal representation may contribute
to the ultimate penalty. There is little proof that capital punishment deters
crime. It arguably coarsens societies that practice it.
Dissenting justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg seized on Glossip v.
Gross to invite a broad review of capital punishment by the high court. The
death penalty itself, Justice Breyer wrote, is "unfair, cruel and unusual."
While capital punishment remains constitutional, surely the United States would
be better off without it. Polls show a majority of Americans still favor it,
but the margin has narrowed significantly, to just over half. In May, Nebraska
joined the growing number of states that have abolished the death penalty.
Others have suspended its use.
We join the dissenting justices in wondering whether justice can reliably be
achieved through capital punishment.
(source: Editorial, Providence Journal)
************************
Death penalty's biggest fan reinforces every reason to be against it We didn't
need any more reasons to abolish the death penalty in America. At least 152
sentenced to death have now been exonerated since the early 1970s. That should
be enough.
But consider this, too: The death penalty does not land on those who most
deserve ferocious punishment. It is inconsistent and arbitrary, as Justice
Stephen Breyer pointed out in his compelling dissent on the Supreme Court's
ruling to allow lethal injection last week.
One defendant gets sentenced to death for a single-victim murder, while another
does not, despite having kidnapped, raped and killed a young mother while
leaving her baby to die at the crime scene. It often depends on who the victim
is and where the crime occurred. Defendants are more likely to be sentenced to
death if their victims were white, and society's ultimate punishment is
frequently a matter of simple geography.
Was the crime committed in a state, or even county, where the prosecutor has a
taste for this punishment? And should a matter of life and death hinge on such
random chance?
Consider the case of Dale Cox, a 67-year-old prosecutor in Louisiana with a
serious vindictive streak, who unintentionally made a great case against the
death penalty during a recent rant. Capital punishment is primarily and rightly
about revenge, he says, and the state needs to "kill more people."
This is the man who essentially decides who lives and who dies in Caddo Parish
county. 2 harrowing profiles, published recently in The New York Times and The
New Yorker, detail how his bitter views and aggressive courtroom behavior have
helped turn a county with a history of racism into a major outlier on capital
punishment.
Juries in Caddo, where Cox is first district attorney, have sentenced more
people to death per capita than those in any other county in the United States.
Since 2011, he has been responsible for more than 1/3 of the death sentences in
Louisiana. It is, as one law professor told the Times, "a personality-driven
death penalty."
Cox is known to demand death verdicts on the basis of Biblical passages, and to
be wildly unstable. Locals say he has changed on the job from an amiable man to
a sullen, solitary one known for angry outbursts - even threatening defense
lawyers with criminal contempt for filing opposing motions.
He reinforces every reason to be against capital punishment, even as he
trumpets it. Take the disturbing conviction of a black man in 2014 by a
primarily white jury, for murdering his infant son. Cox's evidence against the
man, now on death row, seemed dubious at best. It was hotly disputed among
forensic experts. He used all kinds of irrelevant, racially loaded details to
assail the man's character, including his marijuana smoking and joblessness.
And not only did he demand capital punishment, he wrote that the man "deserves
as much physical suffering as it is humanly possible to endure before he dies."
Cox later showed no misgivings about any of this, even though he could barely
remember the facts of the case. The society we live in allows a man like him to
play God. So what can we do when he chooses the Old Testament?
(source: Editorial, Star-Ledger)
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