Oct. 30
NEW JERSEY:
Jackson Council Urges State To Pass Death Penalty Bill
Council President Barry Calogero strongly voiced his support for bills making
their way through Trenton that would establish the death penalty for those
convicted of certain crimes.
He urged his fellow council members to join him in supporting sister bills
S1741 and A2429, which have been sitting in the state Senate and Assembly
judiciary committees since last year. The original bill, S2674/A3814 was
introduced Jan. 1, 2011, and was motioned to table by Democrat Barbara Buono
later that year. The bill was introduced the following year with 11 sponsors in
the senate, and only 4 of the original sponsors in the latest round.
"I think it is an absolute shame that such an important Bill is not getting the
attention it deserves. I wrote this resolution to let Trenton know that Jackson
supports it and demands they take action. I am hopeful other municipalities
will follow suit and write their own resolutions supporting this bill,"
Calogero said.
The 16-page bill, sponsored by Senators Anthony Bucco, Robert Singer, Steven
Oroho and Gerald Cardinale, and Assemblymen Ronald Dancer, Parker Space and
Alison Littell McHose, would allow for the death penalty for the murders of
police officers, persons under 18 years of age, and persons murdered by the
crime of terrorism. Every sentence of death will be automatically appealed all
the way to the Supreme Court.
Execution would occur by lethal injection.
"It is this Council President's desire to ask for the full support of Council
to send a message that the Township of Jackson urges the passage of S-1741 /
A-2429 to reenact the death penalty for the murder of Police Officers,"
Calogero said. "It is extremely important to let the brave men and women who
protect us 24 hours a day know that we stand behind them and support the most
significant punishment possible for this heinous crime. This year, sadly there
has been 29 police officers assassinated while performing their sworn duty to
serve and protect."
The death penalty was reinstated in 1982 by Governor Thomas Kean until December
17, 2007, when Governor Jon Corzine signed into law a bill once again
abolishing the practice. Those on death row had sentences commuted to life
without the possibility of parole. While the death penalty was legal in the
state those years, no one was executed in New Jersey.
The state commissioned a death penalty report which was published in January
2007. John Russo, once an Ocean County Prosecutor and Democrat state senator,
in that report stated: "My goal in getting the death penalty legislation
adopted was not to establish a system of wholesale executions, but rather to
make the penalty of death available in cases of extraordinarily vile and
heinous crimes."
His was a minority opinion, and the majority recommended life in prison without
the possibility of parole, and any savings to the state be used to help
surviving victims of homicide.
A 2005 New Jersey Policy Perspective report broke down the figures and
estimated the state spent nearly $11 million annually on capital punishment
system.
The Jackson Township Council unanimously approved its resolution supporting the
bills.
"I just want to add, next time you're in Washington, DC, find the time, go find
the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and look at the thousands of
names of police officers that have been killed in the line of duty in this
country," Councilman Robert Nixon said. "When somebody is going to assassinate
a police officer while they're on duty, or because they know they're a police
officer, they will stop at nothing to kill anybody else in society. While you
can argue about the legitimacy of the death penalty as a deterrent, you
certainly can't question the heinousness of that crime. I think it was a
mistake that we abolished the death penalty for law enforcement officers back
when we did. We need to reinstate it. I hope the Legislature takes us up on
this request."
The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial is on the 400 block of E Street,
NW, Washington, DC.
(source: micromediapubs.com)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Judge to rule today on death penalty motion in slayings of East Liberty sisters
More of Allen Wade's murder trial started to take shape Thursday, but it
remained unclear whether it will start as scheduled next week and whether the
prosecution can seek the death penalty if he's convicted.
Three marathon hearings Thursday before Common Pleas Judge Edward Borkowski
addressed a slew of unresolved motions in the case, in which Wade, 44, is
charged with killing Susan and Sarah Wolfe in their East Liberty home in
February 2014. The judge will rule Friday on the defense's request for a
postponement and a motion that the prosecution be barred from seeking the death
penalty because they improperly dug into Wade's personal records.
After hours of argument spread out over three sessions Thursday, Borkowski was
weighing a motion to toss out the death penalty because prosecutors used
subpoenas to get personal information - including Wade's medical, school and
employment records - despite the fact that the court had denied them that
information until they could show it was relevant to the case.
"What evidence of homicide, robbery, burglary... did the commonwealth believe
would be found in the defendant's medical records?" defense attorney Lisa
Phillips said. "The commonwealth can't unlearn what it may have learned."
Assistant District Attorney Bill Petulla said the medical records were relevant
because Wade had complained to investigators that he'd suffered head injuries
and had trouble with his memory; the rest were "due diligence" as the
prosecution prepared for the trial and possible death penalty phase.
Borkowski chided the prosecutors for their methods, noting they should have
come to the court for search warrants instead. He will decide Friday morning on
whether to grant the defense's motion to quash the death penalty or impose some
other penalty on the prosecutors.
Borkowski ruled the defense couldn't challenge scientific tests used to link
Wade to DNA recovered from a sock, a pair of sweatpants and blood under Susan
Wolfe's fingernails.
Wade's attorneys were seeking a special hearing to dispute the tests a
third-party laboratory used to connect Wade to the scene, claiming that North
Oakland-based Cybergenetics' methods weren't generally accepted enough for the
results to be admitted as evidence.
Borkowski denied the hearing on the grounds that other court cases had upheld
the lab's methods. The defense was reviewing the raw data from the DNA tests,
having sent their only copy to their own expert witness in Philadelphia, and
have requested more time before trial.
The judge ruled that 2 prior robberies on Wade's record cannot be introduced as
"signature" crimes, because they weren't unusual or unique to Wade, nor were
they similar to the Wolfe sisters' deaths.
"The 2 cases and instances you want are not so similar in a point-by-point
correlation ... as to make it a signature crime or series of crimes," Borkowski
said.
Prosecutors argued Wade's 2002 robberies of a PNC Bank in Wilkinsburg and a
Payless ShoeSource in Robinson were similar in that he used a handgun, wore a
sweatshirt, targeted female victims and made them get down on the ground as he
fled.
(source: triblive.com)
DELAWARE:
Panel: Delaware's death penalty is unjust
African-American community leaders spoke out against the death penalty in Dover
Thursday, saying it is the most egregious injustice occurring in Delaware's
criminal justice system.
Their calls to repeal the death penalty came during a town hall meeting to
address the disproportionate number of African-Americans in the criminal
justice system and on death row.
There were 5,667 people incarcerated in Delaware as of December 2014. About 56
% were black, even though only 22 % of the state's population is black,
according to data from the Department of Correction.
Death row is no different: nine of the 15 people now being held are black.
"In African-American communities, we investigate too much, we incarcerate too
much, we kill to many," said Rev. Donald Morton at the Whatcoat United
Methodist Church. "Today is the day that we are gathering to say 'let's repeal
Delaware's death penalty.' Let's do something about an egregious law that is
affecting people that look like me."
Legislation to repeal Delaware's death penalty passed the Senate, but was
blocked by the House Judiciary Committee in a 6-5 vote in May.
Rep. Sean Lynn, D-Dover, was the bill's main sponsor in the House. He told the
approximately 50 people at Thursday's town hall that he plans to file a motion
to suspend House rules to bypass the committee. This would allow the measure to
be heard by House lawmakers.
"What makes the repeal effort a civil rights effort is that decades of evidence
show that, here in Delaware, capital punishment depends more on the color of
someone's skin than the crime he committed," Lynn said. "Black defendants who
kill white victims are seven times as likely to receive the death penalty as
are black defendants who kill black victims. That is unacceptable."
Others on the town hall panel agreed with Lynn.
"It is the black people that are on death row; it is the black people who are
afraid to go outside in a hoodie because they are afraid of being killed," said
Delaware State University senior Mary Batten. "It is the black men that are
being sentenced."
Batten said the Black Lives Matter movement doesn't devalue the lives of people
of other races, but instead points out that too many black people are being
hurt or killed at the hands of the police. She pointed to the recent video of a
South Carolina officer slamming a black high school student to the ground.
"It makes the communities of color less likely to respect the police," she
said.
Rev. Jack Sullivan, director of Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation,
said his sister was murdered in Cleveland, Ohio nearly two decades ago. Had her
murderer been found, his family would have not wanted the suspect put to death.
"We believe in restorative justice because human dignity dictates that we give
everyone a chance," he said.
Rev. Michael Rogers called on those at the town hall to be more vocal about
issues of discrimination, racial profiling, police use of force and the death
penalty.
"The things going on with our young people today, the way they are targeted by
law enforcement ... it is time that the black church and the community come
together and begin to focus our attention on these types of matters," he said.
"We have to be more vocal now. We have to stand up and speak up and say 'this
is wrong.'"
Thursday's town hall meeting was hosted by the Complexities of Color Coalition,
Delaware's NAACP, the Delaware Repeal Project and the Southern Coalition for
Social Justice.
Another panel discussion will take place Nov. 17 at the Tabernacle Full Gospel
Baptist Church in Wilmington.
(source: The News Journal)
****************
Forum on race and justice calls for repeal of Delaware's death penalty
A conversation about racial tensions with police and inequalities in the
justice system honed in on the death penalty Thursday night at a town hall
meeting in Dover.
It was the 2nd of 4 sessions being held around the state by the Complexities of
Color Coalition and the NAACP, and came just days after the state Supreme Court
heard arguments in the high-profile death penalty appeal of Jermaine Wright.
State Rep. Sean Lynn, a Dover Democrat who's the primary sponsor of the state's
stalled death penalty repeal bill, said at the forum that Delaware is 3rd in
the nation for executions per capita, with 16 since the 1970s.
And disproportionately, he said, the most likely death row defendant is a black
man convicted of killing a white person. What's more, he said, about one in ten
inmates put to death nationwide is innocent.
"Decades of evidence show that here in Delaware, and elsewhere, capital
punishment depends more on the color of someone's skin than the crime he was
convicted of," Lynn said. "Laws and practices based on racial bias have been
wiped from our society, and the death penalty should be treated the same."
Panelists from Delaware's black church community and legal and activist groups
said it was high time.
"It creates more discomfort, hatred and habits than it benefits us in," said
Rev. Michael Rogers, the pastor of Central Baptist Church in Dover and
president of the Dover-area Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance. "And
what's the benefit in -- just because this person took a life, you turn around
and take a life? You're just as bad as they are."
Mary Batten is a Delaware State University senior and president of the college
Democrats there. She said the idea that the death penalty deters violence
against police isn't true. And the same goes for police violence against black
people, she said:
"In an environment where the police are supposed to protect you and serve you
and make you feel safe, you feel threatened," she said. "And for those officers
that are not out to threaten, it's harder for them to do their job."
She said the death penalty isn't the only issue at the heart of movements like
Black Lives Matter, but that it is overdue for action.
Rep. Lynn said he's gearing up to get his repeal bill to the House floor next
spring. It stalled in the House Judiciary committee after passing the state
Senate in April.
Complexities of Color's next town hall meeting is Nov. 17 in New Castle County.
That panel will include state Supreme Court Chief Justice Leo Strine.
(source: Delawlare Public Media)
VIRGINIA:
Weighing the Death Penalty----Death sentences in capital murder cases have
become rarer in recent years. Some experts wonder if the end of capital
punishment could be coming.
The crimes have horrified our community. 2 young women plucked from the streets
and killed. A mother and daughter bludgeoned to death and a house fire set to
destroy the evidence. But as the 2 men charged in the murders face the
possibility of death sentences, legal experts say the chances of them actually
going to death row if they're convicted are getting less likely.
"Since 2011, not a single one of those capital murder cases has gone forward
and resulted in a death penalty in Virginia," said UVA Law Professor Brandon
Garrett, a leading expert on the death penalty.
He says prosecutors might be seeking the death penalty less often, because the
trials and appeals are so much more expensive than a typical murder trial.
Shifting public sentiment is also making it harder to seat a jury in a death
penalty case. And there's much better legal defense for those accused of
capital murder since the creation of Capital Defenders Office in 2003.
Virginia's death row is at Sussex I State Prison in Waverly Virginia. It's
where Jesse Matthew and Gene Washington will go if they're convicted and
sentenced to death for the slayings of Hannah Graham and Robin and Mani
Aldridge in local courts next year. They'd be among an-ever shrinking group.
Death row is a 44-bed unit, but only 6 of those bunks are currently occupied.
"The question is why are we going forward and spending tens and tens of
millions of dollars on a punishment that isn't used."
According to a report by the American Bar Association, the state spends upwards
of 5 million dollars just on capital defense each year. That doesn't include
other expenses, like keeping condemned prisoners in a separate unit. With
overcrowding at state prisons forcing local jails to house prisoners at
taxpayers' expense, 1 local attorney says those empty death row beds don't make
sense.
"WIthout a capital system, you'd have all those beds occupied. You may even
double bunk some of those cells," said Steve Rosenfield, an attorney who is
representing current death row inmates in a lawsuit for improved conditions.
Rosenfield also worked on the legal team for Earl Washington, who was convicted
of murder in 1984 and spent 17 years on death row before he was exonerated in
2000. Rosenfield says high-profile exonerations like Washington's have helped
sway public opinion against the death penalty.
Charlottesville Commonwealth's Attorney Dave Chapman declined to comment on
this story, citing the ongoing Gene Washington case. But Albemarle's prosecutor
Denise Lunsford says there's a good reason to choose to pursue a capital murder
conviction: it doesn't allow for a possible geriatric release like 1st Degree
murder does.
"That's sort of the ultimate decision that you're making," she said. "Is this
someone that I want coming back to the community, do I think if this person
comes back to the community, it's going to be a less safe community? Those are
the considerations."
Lunsford points out that prosecutors can wait until they've heard all the
evidence at trial before deciding whether to ask for a death sentence.
But Rosenfield wonders if removing the possibility of geriatric release for
certain convictions might eliminate the need for capital punishment.
"It's become a very sophisticated kind of litigation that is extremely
expensive," he said. "Is it worth it?"
(source: newsplex.com)
GEORGIA:
Jury and racial bias debate comes to the Supreme Court
Lawyers for a death row inmate say they have obtained racially charged evidence
-- notes from the prosecution team -- that should win their client a new trial
some 30 years after his original conviction.
The case dates back to 1987 when Timothy Tyrone Foster, an African-American
19-year-old, was sentenced to death by an all-white jury for the murder of an
elderly white woman. At the time, the lead prosecutor urged the jury to impose
a death sentence to "deter other people out there in the projects."
Nearly 20 years later -- through an open records request -- Foster's lawyers
obtained the notes the prosecution team took while it was engaged in the
process of picking a jury. Foster's lawyers, led by Stephen Bright, from the
Southern Center for Human Rights, say the notes reflect that the prosecution
illegally took race into consideration as it struck every potential black
juror.
Monday, the Supreme Court will take up Foster's case and grapple with the
allegation that race discrimination persists in jury selection nearly 3 decades
after the Supreme Court famously reaffirmed that jurors cannot be struck
because of race.
"The evidence of racial motive by the prosecution in this racially charged
capital case is extensive and undeniable," Bright told the justices in court
papers.
The notes at the center of the case are disputed, and Georgia Attorney General
Sam Olens argues he can refute any charges of improper discriminationatory
intent.
One thing is clear, however. The notes are not color blind.
Back in 1987, as the legal teams were preparing to pick a jury, they were
granted "peremptory challenges" that allowed them to dismiss potential jurors
without explanation. But Supreme Court precedent -- reaffirmed in 1986 -- says,
however, that jurors cannot be struck because of their race.
In the Foster case, the state and the defense used their peremptory strikes to
reduce the pool to 12 jurors and 4 alternates. The state struck the 4 black
potential jurors.
One set of documents from the prosecution files shows that potential jurors who
were black had a "B" written by their name and their names highlighted with a
green pen. On some juror questionnaire sheets, the juror's race "black,"
"color" or "negro" was circled. One juror, Eddie Hood, was labeled "B #1.
Others were labeled B#2, and B#3.
Another set of the prosecution notes contains a coded key to identify race.
There is a list of 6 "definite no's" --the top 5 are black. Another note
suggests that, "if we had to pick a black, I recommend that Ms. Garrett be one
of the jurors."
Bright told the justices in legal briefs, that the notes reveal that the
prosecution meant to prevent, "all of the black prospective jurors from serving
on the jury."
Olens denies any misconduct in briefs and references the brutality Foster's
murder of Queen Madge White, a 79-year-old retired elementary school teacher
who lived alone. In court papers, Olens says Foster "broke her jaw, coated her
face with talcum powder, sexually molested her with a salad-dressing bottle and
strangled her to death."
In 2013, a lower trial court conducted an examination of Foster's claims and
found no error.
Justifications for removing jurors
It was in 1986 in Batson v. Kentucky that the Supreme Court held that once a
defendant has produced enough evidence to raise an inference that the state
impermissibly excluded a juror based on race, the state must come forward with
a race-neutral explanation for the exclusion.
According to Bright, the states' race-neutral justifications don't hold up. For
example, the prosecution said one reason it struck a 34-year-old black woman
was that she was near the age of Foster. He was 19. A white man was accepted
who was 21.
Bright said the prosecution notes from the time "reveal a sharp focus on the
race of prospective jurors and a determination to prevent black citizens from
serving on the jury."
In briefs, Olens says the jurors weren't struck based on their race. He said
the notes "are not evidence of the state's intention to engage in purposeful
discrimination as alleged by Foster." Instead, he said the notes are the
"result of the state's effort to rebut contentions of discrimination" that the
team was anticipating.
"How could the prosecution respond to a challenge to the racial composition of
the jury," Olens wrote, "without noting which prospective jurors were black?"
"Each black prospective juror had characteristics entirely apart from their
race that would have put any prosecutor on notice that they may well be
inclined against the state's case," Olens said.
Foster is supported by former state and federal prosecutors, who say that
prosecutorial miscounduct was at play. The prosecutors argue in briefs that
while some conduct across the country is "shockingly blatant" most
discrimination occurs under the guise of purportedly "race neutral"
justifications.
"The court's decision in Foster will impact how easy it is for prosecutors to
get away with excluding prospective jurors on the basis of race" said John
Rappaport, an assistant professor of law at the University of Chicago Law
School. He believes the court should rule in favor of Foster and emphasize that
trial courts should not accept prosecutors' implausible explanations for
race-based strikes. Rappaport notes Justice Stephen Breyer has suggested
abolishing peremptory strikes altogether.
In 2010, the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit organization that provides
legal representation to prisoners, reviewed jury selection procedures of 8
southern states and uncovered what it called "shocking evidence" of racial
discrimination in jury selection in every state.
"In many cases, people of color not only have been illegally excluded but also
denigrated and insulted with pretextual reasons intended to conceal racial
bias," the report concluded. The authors found that African-Americans had been
excluded because they "appeared to have 'low intelligence'; wore eyeglasses;
were single, married, or separated; or were too old for jury service at age 43
or too young at 28."
(source: CNN)
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