Oct. 22
TEXAS:
E. Texan among historical low on Texas death row
A Smith County man is officially on Texas death row for the murder of his
ex-wife and abduction of their child
James Calvert was taken from the Smith County Jail on Oct. 16 and transferred
to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Polunsky Unit in Livingston.
Calvert was sentenced to death on Oct. 14 for killing his ex-wife, Jelena
Sriraman, on Halloween 2013.
Calvert is the 2nd inmate to be sent to death row in 2015, making it the lowest
number of inmates to receive that sentence the lethal injection death penalty
started in Texas in 1976. Gabriel Hall, 22, of College Station was sent to
death row on a capital murder conviction from Brazos County just weeks before
Calvert. A 3rd person has been sentenced to death, pending a competency trial,
according to the San Antonio Express-News.
Calvert will be the 7th person from Smith County to be on death row. The last
person from the county to be sent to death row was Kimberly Cargill, she is at
the women's death row in Gatesville.
According to figures from the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice
Statistics, Texas death sentences have dropped significantly after hitting a
record number of 48 in 1999. Prior to 2015, the lowest number to receive the
death penalty in Texas was 8 in both 2010 and 2011.
Inmates from Smith County on currently on death row include:
--Allen Bridgers, received: 05/1998
--Troy Clark, received: 03/2000
--Tracy Beatty, received: 08/2004
--Clifton Williams, received: 10/2006
--Demontrell Miller, received: 11/2009
--Kimberly Cargill, received: 06/2012
--James Calvert, received: 10/2015
(source: KLTV news)
NEW HAMPSHIRE:
Addison lawyers raise questions in appeal to U.S. Supreme Court----Lawyers cite
judge's decisions, 8th Amendment in appeal
New Hampshire's only inmate on death row is seeking to have the U.S. Supreme
Court overturn his sentence.
Michael Addison was sentenced to death in December 2008 for killing Manchester
police Officer Michael Briggs. Addison's appeal was rejected by the state
Supreme Court, so he is now raising federal issues about his sentence.
Addison's attorneys raised four main questions for the U.S. Supreme Court to
consider. The first question involves a statement that Addison made in which he
cried and said he didn't purposely shoot Briggs. The judge found the statement
to be full of lies and excluded it from the jury.
Defense attorneys asked whether a court can bar the admission of evidence based
on the court's belief that the defendant lied.
The 2nd question has to do with Addison's life in prison. During sentencing,
the jury heard that Addison would be able to watch cable TV and would have
access to other amenities.
"By admitting this evidence, (the court) permitted the jury to weigh in its
sentencing decision whether the privileges (that) may be afforded are too good
for Addison," defense attorneys wrote. "That ruling violates the Eighth
Amendment."
The defense also claims that the victim impact statements were excessive,
saying that the state "made a cradle-to-grave presentation about the victim's
life that included 5 photographs of the adult victim as a child, stories about
the victim's childhood, 20 photos of the victim with his children and 3 video
clips of the victim playing with his children."
The defense said lower courts are divided on how much testimony is appropriate,
and the Supreme Court should resolve the issue.
The final question is whether the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment's
guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment.
The defense said there have been 3 other recent cases eligible for the death
penalty, but Addison is the only one who was sentenced to death.
"His case thus frames the questions of arbitrariness, deterrence and continued
utility of capital punishment," the defense wrote.
The state has 30 days to file a response or waive its right to respond.
(source: WMUR news)
GEORGIA:
The secrets of the death penalty----Georgia's execution process is a
'classified' information under law
In the shadow world of Georgia's death penalty, a doctor who is not practicing
medicine writes a prescription for a patient who is certain to die.
The doctor's role in this part of the execution process is shrouded in secrecy
and wrapped in contradiction, an examination by The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution has found.
The doctor violates the canon of medical ethics simply by issuing the
prescription, so the state has rewritten the law to stipulate that the doctor
is not practicing medicine when prescribing an execution drug. If the doctor's
name were to get out, lawsuits and harassment would probably follow, so the
state has declared the doctor's identity - and any document that includes his
name - a "state secret."
The killing drug is pentobarbital, a barbiturate commonly used by veterinarians
to euthanize dogs and cats, but manufacturers refuse to sell it to states for
executions. So the drug must be created by a "compounding" pharmacist, whose
identity is also a state secret, and sold to the Department of Corrections.
The only way for the state to legally obtain pentobarbital, however, is to have
a doctor prescribe it. For this reason, court records show, the Department of
Corrections hires a physician on a contract basis to write those prescriptions.
(Yes, the contract is also a state secret. The state would not even provide a
copy with all the names redacted to the AJC.)
Georgia's execution process is a 'classified' information under law
The prescription itself apparently resembles most others. It spells out the
drug and the dosage and contains the name of the "patient" - the state's
instructions identify the condemned as a patient - plus his birthdate, Social
Security number and address on death row. But it also concludes: "Administer as
ordered per execution order."
The state has blacked out this process for obvious reasons: public disclosure
of the doctor's identity would expose him or her to lawsuits and harassment by
anti-death penalty forces, as well as possible sanctions within the medical
profession.
For example, most records relating to the execution of Kelly Gissendaner last
month are locked away. But the AJC has found partial records from an earlier
case, that of the last man executed in Georgia. These documents include a
redacted copy of the state's contract with the doctor: he or she was to be paid
$5,000 a year to write prescriptions for lethal injection drugs. The state also
provided a reserve fund of up to $50,000 for legal representation and up to $3
million in liability insurance should the doctor's identity be revealed and
lawsuits follow.
'It's wrong for a doctor to do that'
Whether the doctor is known or not, however, medical experts question the
ethics of a physician prescribing an execution drug - or a pharmacist filling a
prescription for one.
"It's wrong for a doctor to do something like that - to help take someone's
life," said Stephen Brotherton, a Texas surgeon who chairs the American Medical
Association's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs. "It's against the
guidelines of the AMA's code of ethics for a doctor to do that."
John Banja, a medical ethicist at Emory University's Center for Ethics, sees
arguments on both sides of the issue.
"Physicians are licensed by the state, and if the state believes there's a
legitimate reason to carry out an execution, I do not have an objection to
physicians participating if it doesn't violate their conscience," Banja said.
"If it is in the public interest to have the death penalty, it would seem to me
to be legal for them to participate."
He then added, "But whether it violates the Hippocratic Oath, that's another
question."
Under the oath, which dates to the 5th Century B.C., physicians have sworn for
millennia: "To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug."
A court motion filed last year by lawyers for a former death-row inmate
contends the practice violates state and federal law.
The doctor "is merely performing data entry in the prescription pad that he or
she has sold to (Corrections) for $5,000," the motion said.
'How else would you get the medication?'
Lawyers from the state attorney general's office have countered that the prison
system's procurement of lethal-injection drugs is legal. In court filings, they
cite the 2000 Georgia law that replaced the electric chair with lethal
injection as the state's mode of execution. That legislation says the
"prescription, preparation, compounding, dispensing or administration of lethal
injection ... shall not constitute the practice of medicine or any other
profession relating to health care."
For this reason, regulations regarding prescription drugs do not apply, state
lawyers assert.
Michael Madaio, who chairs the Department of Medicine at the Medical College of
Georgia in Augusta, said the state's argument "doesn't seem entirely correct."
"But how else would you get the medication?" he asked. "And if you believe in
capital punishment and you're a physician hired by the state and it's your job,
I guess that's what you have to do."
When asked about the medical ethics of writing prescriptions for
lethal-injection drugs, Madaio said, "It's certainly not something I would do."
Under legislation passed in 2013, the names of all those who help prepare for
an execution are shielded from public view. In upholding the law last year, the
Supreme Court of Georgia said there are good reasons for the secrecy law. If
the names are publicly disclosed, "there is a significant risk that persons and
entities necessary to the execution would become unwilling to participate," the
court said.
'Such information is a classified state secret'
The AJC recently filed an Open Records Act request for the current contract the
state Department of Corrections has with the prescribing physician. When that
was denied, the newspaper filed another request to the agency, asking for a
redacted copy that shielded the physician's name and any other identifying
information.
That request was denied as well.
"Because (Corrections) believes that the entire record containing such
information is a classified state secret, it lacks the legal authority to
release redacted copies of the document," Errin Wright, the agency's assistant
counsel, told the AJC in an email message.
The secrecy law was enacted after Georgia and several other states with capital
punishment scrambled to find lethal-injection drugs because pharmaceutical
companies refused to let their drugs to be used for executions. In Georgia, the
prison system has turned to a compounding pharmacy to get its supply of
pentobarbital.
Under the Controlled Substances Act, pentobarbital can only be obtained with a
valid prescription because it is a Schedule II drug. And Georgia law says a
licensed physician can prescribe a controlled substance "for a legitimate
medical purpose" and when the doctor is "acting in the usual course of his
professional practice."
Last year, lawyers for condemned inmate Tommy Waldrip argued that the state was
fraudulently obtaining pentobarbital because those conditions were not being
met. But Waldrip's litigation became moot when the State Board of Pardons and
Paroles granted him clemency in July 2014.
In their court filing, Waldrip's lawyers attached documents obtained from the
Corrections Department by death-penalty lawyers representing another death-row
inmate, Warren Hill. These records offer a glimpse of the arrangement between
the prison system and the doctor who writes the prescriptions.
'Just wanted to give you a heads-up'
1 document, a draft "professional services agreement," says corrections would
pay the doctor $5,000 for services rendered from July 1, 2013, to June 30,
2014.
The documents also include a number of email exchanges from a corrections
official to the pharmacy and the prescribing doctor in July 2013, about 6
months before Hill's execution in January. The names of those sending and
receiving the emails were redacted.
In one, the corrections official told the doctor that the pharmacist had just
let the agency know what had to be on the prescription, such as the name of the
"patient."
"I will be happy to forward this information along to you when you are
preparing to write the prescription," the official wrote. "I just wanted to
give you a heads up."
An email the next day instructed the doctor that, in addition to listing the
patient's name, birthdate, Social Security number and address, the prescription
should call for 50 milligrams of pentobarbital solutions and 6 syringes. The
prescription's directions should say: "Administer as ordered per execution
order."
'Georgia is saying 2 contradictory things'
The U.S. Supreme Court has not addressed the issue of whether doctors may
lawfully prescribe an execution drug. But a decade ago, the high court ruled
that then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft could not threaten to revoke the
licenses of Oregon doctors who prescribed lethal doses of medication to help
terminally ill patients end their lives.
Ashcroft contended the Controlled Substances Act required every prescription
for a Schedule II drug to be issued "for a legitimate medical purpose (and) in
the course of professional practice." In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court held
that Congress never gave the U.S. attorney general the "extraordinary
authority" Ashcroft claimed he had.
Robert Atkinson, the state attorney who argued the case, noted that Oregon's
Death With Dignity Act considered assisted suicide to be a valid medical
procedure. He questioned whether Georgia could prevail in the dispute about
prescriptions by simply declaring lethal injections is not the practice of any
profession relating to health care.
"It seems to me that Georgia is saying 2 contradictory things," said Atkinson,
who is now retired. "It's saying that writing prescriptions for lethal
injections is not the practice of medicine, while only those who are engaging
in the practice of medicine can write prescriptions. How do you reconcile
that?"
(source: Atlanta Journal Constitution)
UTAH:
Gov. Herbert supports death penalty in Utah
Governor Gary Herbert weighed in on the idea of eliminating the death penalty
in Utah, telling reporters he is a supporter of the death penalty, with some
parameters.
"It should be extremely rare and be done for the most heinous of crimes,"
Herbert said at his monthly news conference Thursday on KUED.
The governor went further to call on the appeals process to be shortened.
"The process should be in fact, streamlined. It is not right to have someone on
death row for 20, 25, 30 years. Justice delayed is justice denied," he said.
Herbert was responding to a hearing Wednesday at the Utah State Legislature's
Interim Judiciary Committee that began exploring whether or not the death
penalty should be eliminated in the state. The discussion comes less than a
year since the legislature passed a bill (and Herbert signed) bringing back the
firing squad as a method of execution.
(source: Fox news)
USA:
US States Must Start Making Death Penalty Program Accountable to Public
US states like Arkansas should cease operating without accountability when
applying capital punishment, advocacy group National Coalition to Abolish the
Death Penalty Executive Director Diann Rust-Tierney told Sputnik on Thursday.
"The raft of botched executions and the trauma caused to everyone involved can
be traced directly to states operating in secrecy and without public
accountability," Rust-Tierney said. "Our ability to trust the government to do
the right thing is a direct function of the degree of government
accountability."
On Wednesday, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said the state's
Supreme Court has postponed indefinitely the executions of 2 convicted
murderers that were scheduled for Wednesday.
The Arkansas Supreme Court issued its own stays of execution after striking
down the stays that had earlier been authorized by a judge in Pulaski County,
Arkansas.
The death penalty has not been carried out in Arkansas since 2005 because of
legal cases challenging the existing law on using lethal injections as well as
the lack of drugs to prepare the lethal injection cocktail.
"The Court's decision to examine the state's new secrecy laws surrounding
executions is entirely appropriate," Rust-Tierney said. "This type of secrecy
is not consistent with our values as Americans."
Rust-Tierney argued US citizens should always be weary when their government
suggests not to worry about what it is doing to other citizens, including that
they deserve their fate for they are "bad".
"And by the way, we [the government] get to decide who's bad,???" Rust-Tierney
concluded.
Despite growing popular and legal pressure to scrap the death penalty across
the United States, many US states still practice it.
More than 800 people have been executed in the United States in the past 15
years, according to the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center. The state
of Texas has put to death 329 people since 2000.
In the 1st week of October, 3 convicted murderers were executed in 3 different
US states.
(source: sputniknews.com)
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