July 13
MISSOURI----impending execution
Missouri inmate pressing 11th-hour appeals he hopes derails scheduled execution
Tuesday
A Missouri inmate who abducted and killed a 19-year-old woman in 2001 is asking
state and federal appeals courts to spare him from execution.
Attorneys for 55-year-old David Zink has appeals pending Monday with the
Missouri Supreme Court, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S.
Supreme Court. A clemency request also was in Gov. Jay Nixon's hands.
Zink is scheduled to face lethal injection Tuesday.
He was sentenced to death in 2004 after being convicted of tying Amanda Morton
of Strafford to a cemetery tree and snapping her neck before slicing her spinal
cord to make sure she would not survive.
Zink served as his own attorney at trial but was assisted by a public defender
during the trial's punishment phase.
(source: Associated Press)
OKLAHOMA:
Triple murder defendant says he deserves death penalty
A 20-year-old Duncan man said he deserves the death penalty for the October
shooting deaths of his newspaper publisher father, his mother and his sister.
Defendant Alan Hruby made the statement in response to a letter mailed to him
in prison by The Oklahoman ) seeking information about the killings.
Hruby, who is serving time in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester for
credit card fraud, is charged with 1st-degree murder in the Oct. 9 shooting
deaths of his father, John Hruby, 50, his mother Joy "Tinker" Hruby, 48, and
his sister, Katherine Hruby, 17.
Prosecutors allege Hruby, then a student at the University of Oklahoma, was a
shopaholic who killed his family for his inheritance after his parents cut off
his finances.
Hruby's 1-page, handwritten letter is dated June 29 and arrived last week in a
stamped envelope sent to him with the newspaper's inquiry. The paper asked
Hruby if he thought he should die.
"I 100% welcome the death penelty! What occured is so horrible it is deserved.
It is so unspeakable," he replied, misspelling "penalty" and "occurred."
When asked by the paper why he did it, Hruby responded that he "didn't feel
like (him)self that day" and is "trying to figure all of this out."
"This was not something that seemed like a concieveable option," he wrote,
misspelling "conceivable."
Hruby also told the paper that his remorse was genuine when he cried repeatedly
during his preliminary hearing last month. Hruby wept the most when a
housekeeper described finding the bodies and then again when a police
investigator testified he had confessed. A prosecutor had said that Hruby was
only remorseful about getting caught and was only crying "crocodile" tears.
Hruby disputed that in the letter, saying his "tears have all been REAL!"
"I lost my entire family at once!!! How could they not be real," he wrote. "Not
taking a shot at you. It's just hard to hear that somehow I am faking all of
this."
(source: Associated Press)
NEVADA:
Nevada pursues death chamber, controversial drug
Nevada has no executions on the immediate horizon but is pushing ahead to build
a new death chamber at Ely State Prison and would use a drug at the heart of a
recent U.S. Supreme Court case to carry out lethal injections.
Brian Connett, deputy director at the Nevada Department of Corrections, said
department lawyers were reviewing the June 29 decision over the use of
midazolam in Oklahoma executions "to determine what, if any, impact it may have
on Nevada."
"Nevada would use the drugs midazolam and hydromorphone to administer a lethal
injection and has an adequate supply of these drugs to carry out an execution
if ordered," he said in an email.
But death penalty watchdogs said use of the drug almost assuredly would spawn
lawsuits after highly publicized incidents of botched executions.
Three Oklahoma death row inmates sued after that state first used midazolam
last year in the execution of Clayton Lockett. Witnesses reported Lockett
writhed, gasped and moaned. Prison officials tried to halt the execution
process, but Lockett died after 43 minutes.
Midazolam, an anti-anxiety drug, is intended to put inmates in a comalike state
before other drugs to bring about death are administered. Critics argue it does
not guarantee unconsciousness to avoid pain from the subsequent drugs.
Similar prolonged executions using midazolam occurred in Ohio and Arizona in
2014.
LETHAL DRUG RULING
In its 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court said the use of midazolam does not
violate Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. The
majority also noted that midazolam had been used in other executions about a
dozen times without complications.
About 10 days later, Oklahoma set new execution dates in September and October
for the 3 inmates who challenged the use of the drug.
A 2-drug injection of midazolam and the painkiller hydromorphone, the same
combination planned for use by Nevada, was 1st used for lethal injection by
Ohio in January 2014. Witnesses said that it took about 25 minutes for
condemned killer Dennis McGuire to die and that during the process he made loud
snorting or choking noises while his midsection convulsed.
Rob Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a
Washington-based nonprofit group, said the court's decision doesn't settle the
question over midazolam's use.
"That doesn't mean that there will not be challenges to midazolam elsewhere,"
he said.
Dunham said that while justices found the Oklahoma inmates didn't meet their
burden of proof to halt the use of the drug, "it doesn't mean that midazolam is
constitutional."
He said a state "that is concerned about the execution process would have
serious doubts about using midazolam."
The last execution in Nevada was April 26, 2006, at the now-shuttered Nevada
State Prison in Carson City. Daryl Mack was executed for the 1988 rape and
murder of Betty Jane May in Reno.
Starting at least 11 years ago and up through Mack's execution, Nevada used a
combination of pentobarbital, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride in its
execution protocol. But Nevada and other states have been pressed to find
alternatives after death penalty opponents pressured manufacturers not to sell
them for executions.
Nevada has executed 12 inmates since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital
punishment in 1976. About 80 men are on Nevada's death row.
NEW DEATH CHAMBER
Besides the issue of lethal drugs, Nevada is building a new death chamber at
Ely State Prison after Nevada State Prison, where executions were conducted,
closed in 2012.
Less than a week after Gov. Brian Sandoval signed a capital improvement bill on
June 15 that included $860,000 to remodel a prison administrative building into
a new death chamber, the state Public Works Board published a notice seeking
statements of qualifications from architectural and engineering firms to
perform the work.
The deadline for submitting those statements was Thursday, and it is unclear
how many were submitted. The prison project was one of dozens of maintenance
projects approved by state lawmakers for the next 2 years.
State lawmakers, who rejected funding for a new execution chamber in 2013,
approved the expenditure this year despite reservations about the cost and
lingering uncertainty over the death penalty.
Critics have called the new execution chamber "an outrageous boondoggle."
"This proposed new facility may sit unused forever, or it could require further
remodeling if lethal injection is rejected in court," Nancy Hart, president of
the Nevada Coalition Against the Death Penalty, and Tod Story, executive
director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, wrote in a May 27
opinion piece.
"Even if lethal injection is upheld, there are serious doubts about the
availability of the lethal drugs needed for an execution," they wrote.
Plans call for remodeling 1,900 square feet of visitation and courtroom areas
of an administrative building at the Ely Prison to accommodate an execution
chamber.
During legislative hearings, Chris Chimits, deputy administrator with the state
Public Works Board, said the chamber would be modeled after California's San
Quentin State Prison execution facility, the construction of which was overseen
by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Mary Woods, spokeswoman for the Nevada Department of Administration, said a
design contract could be presented to the Board of Examiners for approval in
November.
After that, the design, permitting and construction process is expected to take
about a year.
(source: las Vegas Review-Journal)
USA:
Some major U.S. religious groups differ from their members on the death penalty
When the Nebraska Legislature voted in May to ban the death penalty in the
state - overriding the governor's veto - supporters of the ban shared some of
the credit with religious leaders who had spoken out on the issue, including
several Catholic bishops. In fact, many large religious groups have taken
positions in opposition to the death penalty even though that stance is
sometimes at odds with the opinions of their adherents.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says the death penalty is acceptable if it
is "the only possible way of effectively defending human lives." In recent
years, however, both the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Pope Francis
have spoken firmly against capital punishment.
Where Religious Groups Stand on the Death PenaltyThey are not the only
religious leaders to take this position; when it comes to the official
teachings of large U.S. religious groups, opposition to the death penalty is
more common than support for capital punishment. This is in contrast with
public opinion: A majority of U.S. adults (56%) still favor the death penalty,
although support has been dropping in recent years.
There also is a disparity between religious groups' positions and the views of
their adherents, particularly among mainline Protestants. 2/3 of white mainline
Protestants (66%) favor the death penalty, but several of the biggest mainline
churches are against it. This includes the United Methodist Church, the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the American Baptist Churches USA, the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and many others.
Roughly 1/2 of U.S. Catholics (53%) - including a majority of white Catholics
(63%) - also favor the death penalty, in contrast with church leaders' stance.
7-in-10 white evangelical Protestants in the U.S. (71%) support the death
penalty, a position held by many of their churches. 2 of the largest U.S.
evangelical denominations - the Southern Baptist Convention and the Lutheran
Church-Missouri Synod - teach that the death penalty is acceptable. The
Assemblies of God, a major Pentecostal denomination, does not have an official
stance on the issue, although the church's website cites a "common
interpretation that the Old Testament sanctions capital punishment."
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon church) also does not
take an official position on the death penalty. Neither does the National
Baptist Convention, the largest historically black Protestant denomination,
although most black Protestants (58%) oppose the death penalty (in contrast
with the U.S. public overall).
Indeed, there is a significant racial divide when it comes to views on the
death penalty, with blacks and Latinos more likely than whites to oppose it.
The National Latino Evangelical Coalition recently came out against the death
penalty.
Among non-Christian faiths, teachings on the death penalty vary. The Reform and
Conservative Jewish movements have advocated against the death penalty, while
the Orthodox Union has called for a moratorium. Similarly, Buddhism is
generally against capital punishment, although there is no official policy.
Hinduism also does not have a clear stance on the issue. In Islam, the death
penalty is widely seen as acceptable (based on the Quran), and Islamic courts
in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran routinely hand down death sentences.
Some U.S. Muslim groups, however, have spoken out against the death penalty;
for example, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has called for a
moratorium.
Religiously unaffiliated Americans - atheists, agnostics and those who say
their religion is "nothing in particular" - are split on the death penalty,
with 48% in favor and 45% opposed.
(source: pewresearch.org)
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