Nov. 12
TEXAS:
Woman gave birth before being charged in connection with son's death
A 21-year-old mother went into labor Tuesday before she could be charged with
capital murder in connection with the death of her 10-month-old child.
Fabiola Lopez was more than 9 months pregnant when she was arrested Tuesday in
connection to the death of her son and went into labor while in custody. She
was taken to a local hospital, where she delivered, according to Hidalgo County
Sheriff's Office spokesman J.P. Rodriguez.
After giving birth, she was charged with capital murder of person under 10
years old, a capital felony, by Justice of the Peace Marcos Ochoa. She remained
in the custody of the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office with a $500,000 bond at a
local hospital Wednesday night.
The sheriff's office began their investigation Nov. 3, when they were called to
Rio Grande Regional Hospital in reference to a 10-month-old boy suffering from
critical injuries. The child died Nov. 6 after spending several days on life
support, Rodriguez said.
Lopez told doctors her child had fallen off the bed at their home near
Edinburg. An autopsy determined the cause of death as blunt force trauma to the
head, but during the investigation deputies found probable cause that Lopez
caused the death of her child, Rodriguez wrote in an email Tuesday.
Investigators obtained an arrest warrant for Lopez and took her into custody.
If convicted of a capital murder, Lopez faces the death penalty or life in
prison.
(source: The Monitor)
FLORIDA:
Admitted cartel hit-man faces death penalty trial for 2 murders in Florida
An admitted Mexican cartel hit-man convicted of murders in California and
Alabama is also facing a possible death sentence in Florida for 2 additional
killings.
Authorities say 53-year-old Jose Manuel Martinez is being charged with
1st-degree murder in the slayings of 20-year-old Javier Huerta and 28-year-old
Gustavo Olivares-Rivas in Florida.
The victims were found in a pickup truck bound and shot multiple times on a
road in Ocala National Forest.
Martinez has already been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility
of parole after pleading guilty to 9 murders in California over 3 decades. Last
year, Martinez pleaded guilty in Alabama to killing a man for making derogatory
remarks about his daughter.
The Ocala Star-Banner reports (http://bit.ly/1ROM2KP) that prosecutors in
Marion County will seek to extradite Martinez from California.
(source: Associated Press)
OHIO:
Youngstown murder now death penalty case
A Mahoning County grand jury indicted a Youngstown man in what is now a death
penalty murder case.
Lance Hundley, 46, of Warren, was charged with aggravated murder, aggravated
attempted murder, aggravated felonious assault, and aggravated arson in
connection to the Nov. 6 beating death of 41-year-old Erika Huff.
Prosecutors say Hundley beat Huff inside a Cleveland Street house and then set
it on fire to cover up the crime.
Huff's mother was also beaten by Hundley, but survived the attack, according to
police.
Police say Hundley went to the house and beat Huff, leaving her unconscious.
The victim's mother came later after her daughter's medic alert alarm went off
and encountered Hundley and was assaulted.
Hundley set fire to the house and tried to leave as police were arriving.
Hundley is being held in the Mahoning County Jail on $2 million bond.
(source: WKBN news)
OKLAHOMA:
Tulsa County prosecutors no longer seeking death penalty against 1999
double-murder convict
Tulsa County prosecutors are no longer seeking the death penalty for a man who
remains convicted of murdering a retired Tulsa banker and an Owasso trucking
company owner in 1999.
Victor Cornell Miller, 52, has been fighting a legal battle against the state
since before a jury first convicted him in 2002.
First Assistant District Attorney John David Luton announced in court Tuesday
that he will no longer seek the death penalty for Miller.
Luton said the decision came after talking with the victims' family members.
"The consensus of the family was that this was a way to create some finality in
the case," Luton said, noting that the matter is already 16 years old.
Miller was convicted in the shooting deaths of Mary Agnes Bowles, 77, a retired
Tulsa banker and a former Saint Francis Hospital Auxiliary president, and
Jerald Thurman, 44, the owner of an Owasso trucking company.
Prosecutors maintained that Miller shot Thurman before Miller's accomplice,
John Fitzgerald Hanson, shot Bowles.
Thurman's son, Jake Thurman, said Wednesday that while this was not his
preferred outcome of the case, he and his family are ready to move on.
"I'm not really happy with all of it, but at the same time I'm happy that the
family will get some closure and not have to keep opening the wound and
stitching it closed again," he said.
At a trial in 2002, Miller was convicted of both murders and was sentenced to
die for killing Thurman. He got a no-parole life term for Bowles' murder.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals court overturned those convictions and
sentences in 2004 and granted Miller a new trial. He was convicted by another
jury in 2008 and was sentenced to death for both murders.
The appeals court in 2013 affirmed Miller's 2 1st-degree murder convictions but
modified his death sentence for one of the murder convictions to life in prison
without the possibility of parole.
In that decision, the Court of Criminal Appeals directed the Tulsa County
District Court to resentence Miller for the other murder conviction, with the
death penalty still on the table.
Since the state is no longer seeking the death penalty, a Tulsa County judge
will have the option of sentencing Miller to life without parole or life with
the possibility of parole after serving at least 85 % of his sentence in
prison. For calculation, a life sentence is usually equated to 45 years.
Jake Thurman said he and his family hope the judge will sentence Miller to life
without parole.
"As long as he can't ever get out, he won't be able to do this to someone
else's family," Thurman said.
Closing the case will allow the family to finally heal, he said.
"We can pick up the pieces and start putting the puzzle back together and move
on," Thurman said.
District Judge Dana Kuehn is scheduled to sentence Miller on Dec. 18, court
minutes show.
(saource: Tulsa World)
CALIFORNIA:
Federal appeals court reverses ruling that said California's death penalty
system is unconstitutional
A federal appeals court upheld California's death penalty system Thursday,
reversing a judge's order last year that had decried the state's system as
unconstitutional because of its extensive delays.
The ruling impacts a state with the largest death-row population in the
country, and while California has rarely carried out executions in the modern
era, it has shown signs recently that it may be inching closer to resuming
lethal injections.
In an order last year, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney had said
California's system was "completely dysfunctional."
"California's death penalty system is so plagued by inordinate and
unpredictable delay that the death sentence is actually carried out against
only a trivial few of those sentenced to death," Carney wrote in his July 2014
order.
That order was reversed Thursday by a unanimous 3-judge panel of the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which said that while many people agreed with
Jones's argument "that the delay between sentencing and execution in California
is extraordinary," the district court was not allowed to consider "novel
constitutional theories" in reviewing cases like this.
The opinion from Judge Susan P. Graber also added that because it was asked to
consider this type of theory, the court could "not assess the substantive
validity of [Jones's] claim."
California has more death-row inmates than any other state, with more than 740
inmates currently sentenced to death. That is more than the combined death-row
populations of the next 2 states on the list (Florida and Texas, both of which
regularly put inmates to death). Inmates on California's death row have been
there for an average of a little more than 16 years, a little more than a year
longer than the national average, according to the Bureau of Justice
Statistics.
And while California has not executed an inmate since 2006, the state proposed
a new execution protocol last week that would involve using a single drug,
replacing the 3-drug combination that had been struck down by a judge.
Carney's order, and the appeals court's ruling Thursday, involve the case of
Ernest Dewayne Jones, who was sentenced to death in 1995 for raping and killing
Julia Miller in 1992. Carney had vacated Jones's death sentence in the order,
writing that letting California's system threaten Jones with death nearly 2
decades after his sentencing "violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition
against cruel and unusual punishment."
California authorities had argued in favor of overturning Carney's ruling,
which the state called "fundamentally misguided" in 1 filing submitted by
Kamala D. Harris, the state's attorney general, and Edward DuMont, its
solicitor general, among others. The state had argued that there was "no legal
basis" for the district court to declare a system they described as thorough,
careful and necessary.
In a concurring judgment Thursday, Judge Paul J. Watford said that Carney's
order should have been reversed because Jones has not exhausted his appeals
through the state courts.
The case is Jones v. Davis.
(source: Mark Berman, Washington Post)
**************
Federal Appeals Court Upholds California's Deliberative Death Penalty Process
A federal appeals court has upheld California's deliberative death penalty,
which keeps prisoners on death row for decades.
Last year, a federal judge ruled that the long and dysfunctional process
violated the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
As we reported at the time:
"[U.S. District Judge Cormac] Carney noted that the death penalty has been
imposed more than 900 times since 1978, but only 13 of those prisoners have
been executed.
"Carney, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, wrote that Jones was
far from alone in waiting decades to find out when and whether he would be put
to death.
"Such uncertainty and systemic delays are unconstitutional, he decided. Carney
wrote that 'the random few' who are put to death wait so long to face execution
that capital punishment serves 'no retributive or deterrent purpose.
"'No rational person can question that the execution of an individual carries
with it the solemn obligation of the government to ensure that the punishment
is not arbitrarily imposed and that it furthers the interests of society,'
Carney wrote."
2 of the 3 judges on the panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals called
that constitutional interpretation "novel," and reversed the judgment.
"Many agree with Petitioner that California's capital punishment system is
dysfunctional and that the delay between sentencing and execution in California
is extraordinary," the judges wrote.
However, they added, the idea that the delay has turned sentences from "one of
death to one of grave uncertainty and torture" is not "supported by logic."
(source: npr.org)
*********
Calif. Seeks Comment From Death Row Inmates About Lethal Injection
Prisoners on death row in California are being invited to comment on the
procedure that could kill them.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has proposed a
single lethal injection to replace the 3-drug method struck down by courts. The
state created the rule after a legal settlement to restart the death penalty
process, which has stalled since 2005.
The public has until January to comment on the proposal.
"The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has an additional
and a unique requirement that no other state agency has," says deputy press
secretary Terry Thornton. "Under the law we also must notice the inmate
population, and that includes condemned inmates."
Thornton says the rule is designed to give inmates a voice in the policies that
govern them and all 747 on death row have received copies.
The state must consider and respond to public comments before finalizing the
rule.
(source: capradio.org)
USA:
Death Penalty and the Law
To the Editor:
Re "Death Penalty Foes Torn on When to Press Case" (front page, Nov. 4):
It's not surprising that opponents of the death penalty are "bitterly divided"
after Justice Stephen G. Breyer's powerful dissent about whether to urge the
Supreme Court to decide if capital punishment is constitutional. Even when the
death penalty was overwhelmingly accepted, it was administered in so
contradictory a manner as to suggest deep ambivalence.
It was supposed to deter, but executions were conducted privately after the
crime was forgotten. The condemned were thought depraved but rarely treated as
mentally ill. Many people talked tough on crime, but then jurors picked only a
random few for execution.
The dissent makes the failure to create a just system clear, but I don't think
that we will see abolition until the focus is on the system - costly,
discriminatory and error-prone - rather than on any particular offender's
horrendous crime.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy has shown in his landmark opinions that he
understands the difference between a single case and the social costs of a
broad policy, but none of the lawyers cited in your article presented the
slightest evidence of how he would vote if a test case came before the court.
MICHAEL MELTSNER
Cambridge, Mass.
(source: Letter to the Editor; The writer, the author of "Cruel and Unusual:
The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment," was one of the lawyers in Furman v.
Georgia, the 1972 case that decided capital punishment laws violated the Eighth
Amendment----New York Times)
**************
Talk It Out: Death Penalty
Say no to the death penalty----By Madison Teague
No one should hold the right to take another person's life.
The death penalty is a barbaric practice that does nothing but seek vengeance
against one person to appease the feelings of another. It is not justice.
Deciding the fate of another human being by taking their life makes one no
better than the criminal they are condemning.
A major defense of the death penalty is that it is okay because it is legal.
Legality does not equal morality, and the law does not define what is right.
Besides, the death penalty is only legal in 31 states, which shows how
abhorrent 19 states believe the death penalty to be.
The opposition would assert the death penalty is a better option than life in
prison because it saves citizen tax dollars. This statement is simply untrue.
In California, keeping each death row prisoner costs taxpayers $90,000 more per
year than an inmate in general population. This wouldn't seem like too much of
a problem if the execution happened in a timely manner. However, that is not
the case.
According to a 2011 New York Times article, the typical prisoner on death row
has spent 13 years in prison. Because of this long stay on death row, more than
1/4 of all inmates sentenced to death died of a cause other than execution from
2000 to 2013.
Do those who die awaiting their execution escape justice?
Not only is it cheaper to house regular inmates, but also giving the offender
the option of pleading guilty in exchange for life without parole saves
taxpayers millions in court fees.
It is ridiculous to claim a person who has been caught and held in the custody
of the law is somehow a great threat to anyone. We have the ability to contain
criminals so they are no longer a threat. Death is not necessary.
All human beings possess the right to life, but not the right to take life
away. To claim it is justifiable to revoke someone???s natural-born right to
life simply because it would make the victim or their family feel better is
asinine.
Humans make errors. For every 10 people executed on death row, 1 has been
exonerated and set free. If there is even a chance an innocent life could be
taken by the death penalty, it should not be seen as a good or moral practice.
Innocent people should not be put to death to pacify the masses.
I have seen firsthand how murder can tear apart a family, but what continues to
torture the victims of a crime is not the misconduct itself but the inability
to forgive. I do not want to be a part of a society that does not believe in
forgiveness. Forgiveness should not be seen as a novelty one can turn to if
they wish, but as a necessity.
Killing the assailant will do nothing to help a family heal after the murder or
attack of a loved one. The only way those family members, and society as a
whole, can move on is if they make peace with what happened.
Death allows a criminal to escape the reality of what they have done. It is a
far better punishment to force a person to acknowledge the wrong they have
inflicted on another and live with the consequences of their actions.
The death penalty is an expensive, inhumane and immoral practice that should be
illegal in not just part, but all of the United States.
***********
Why we need the death penalty---- By Shannon Davies Special to The Star
The death sentence has been used by most societies for centuries. While it is
not a new concept, the ways people are put to death are far less gruesome than
they have been in years past.
Granted, the American justice system is highly flawed. The death penalty should
not be taken lightly and just handed out to anyone who commits a crime.
Imposing stipulations on the practice is a necessity to ensure no
mismanagement. However, enforcing the death penalty nationwide remains up to
each state. In each case, the crime must fit the punishment and the jury must
be sure of their sentencing.
According to data from the Vera Institute of Justice, taxpayers pay an average
of $31,286 per inmate in order to provide shelter, medical care and food for
the incarcerated. Relegating the money of citizens to the housing and bedding
of someone who has committed murder or rape is not something society should
stand for.
Detractors often assert that the death penalty does not serve as a real
deterrent, but this kind of thinking could be applied to any law on the books.
Fining motorists for texting while driving does not deter them from committing
the offense. People still routinely text and drive, but the thought of a pretty
hefty fine probably prevents some from doing it. Minimization is all we can
aspire to when attempting to resolve criminal activity.
Studies about the deterrence are inconclusive. Not killing gruesome murderers
could result in a total lack of deterrence, so instead of weighing the odds, it
is better to use the death penalty for whatever small benefit it provides.
Without it, who knows the number of innocent targets who could be victimized?
During less modern times, being put to death used to range from actions like
hanging or a firing squad, which are all very cruel ways to die. Lethal
injection is basically dosing the criminal with a combination of drugs to give
them a fairly simple death.
The three-shot system includes sodium thiopental, which is meant to put the
inmate to sleep. The inmate is then injected with pancuronium bromide, which
paralyzes the entire muscle system and stops the inmate's breathing, and the
process finishes with potassium chloride to still the heart.
Compared to the deaths of their victims, most perpetrators get off fairly
easily. While violence is never the answer, there needs to be some kind of
system in place to keep the offenders at bay.
While states try to figure out what they want to do about having the death
penalty, the people who are currently waiting on death row will be met with a
relatively painless death. Criminals who commit capital offenses will always be
around, and what to do with them punishment-wise will always be up for debate.
Until the death penalty has its own fate decided, I'm all for it.
(source: The (Texas State) University Star)
*********************
Vets suffering from PTSD need our help: Column
The 1st person executed in the United States this year, Andrew Brannan, was a
Vietnam veteran who had been granted 100% disability because of his
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other problems stemming from his military
service. Approximately 300 other veterans remain on death row and face
execution. As retired Army general officers, lawyers and a psychiatrist, these
facts concern us greatly, and they should disturb many other Americans, as
well.
On Veterans Day, we honor those who bravely served their country and offer our
helping hand to assist those who have returned from war with wounds and
physical disabilities. Countless veterans have endured violence and trauma that
few others can fully imagine. They deserve our thanks. But some are left
behind.
Our hospitals and therapists have performed wonders in assisting wounded
veterans who lost limbs. A prosthetic is not the same as the original, but with
the courage of service-members, combined with an understanding and supportive
community, we are making progress. We wish the same could be said for our
veterans who come back with deep brain and mental wounds. Their requests for
understanding and compassion are too often dismissed.
A new report from the Death Penalty Information Center is a wake-up call for an
issue that few have focused on. Even as the use of capital punishment is
declining, veterans suffering with PTSD and other service-related problems
languish on death rows across the country.
Brannan was executed in Georgia this year for one irrational act of violence
that occurred 17 years ago. He killed a police officer who had stopped him for
speeding. That is a terrible crime, but as the Veterans Administration had
determined, Brannan was mentally disabled with deep scars from his combat in
Vietnam.
James Davis is also a Vietnam veteran with PTSD. He belatedly received his
Purple Heart medal on death row in North Carolina, thanks to the work of a
fellow veteran and therapist and a pastor, Jim Johnson, who visited Davis. When
Johnson pinned the medal on him, Davis saluted proudly, before retreating back
into the darkness of his mental problems. He could still be executed today for
the murders he committed in 1995, and he has all but given up his appeals.
John Thuesen is on death row in Texas - a veteran of the Iraq conflict. His
PTSD was not properly diagnosed or treated, and his lawyers did not do enough
to explain his condition to the jury that convicted him of murdering his
ex-girlfriend. Texas executes far more people than any other state in the
country, so there is a real concern that his current appeal could be denied.
PTSD is not as obvious as a missing limb, but it can be deeply debilitating.
The trauma from combat can simmer under the surface for years, then erupt in
violence, often against family members. It can be triggered by anything that
jars a memory of a time when a person was under violent attack, demanding
immediate and forceful reaction. Years later, the previous danger is no longer
present, but the memory may set off a similar reaction, with deadly
consequences. PTSD can be treated, but in one study only about half of the
veterans who needed treatment received it.
In a criminal sentencing hearing, PTSD should be a strong mitigating factor.
It's not an excuse or a demand for acquittal. However, the very symptoms that
define PTSD can be frightening to a jury if not carefully explained by a mental
health expert familiar with the illness. Defense attorneys are often not
adequately prepared to investigate and present this kind of evidence;
prosecutors or judges might dismiss it because others with similar combat
experiences did not murder anyone. Perhaps some of the blame should be more
broadly shared because we sometimes choose to look away when a veteran's scars
are not the kind that we know how to cope with.
We are not arguing here about the morality or the utility of the death penalty.
But at a minimum, when a judge or jury is weighing a person's life or death,
they should have full knowledge and understanding of that person's life
history. Veterans with PTSD - and, in fact, all those with serious mental
illness at the time of their crime - deserve a complete investigation and
presentation of their mental state by the best experts in the field.
Decision-makers - jurors, judges and governors - should be informed that such
information is a valid reason to spare a defendant from capital punishment.
There are alternatives, such as life in prison without parole. We should begin
by determining the exact scope of this problem: Who are the veterans on death
row? How could their military experience have affected their commission of a
crime? How well were their disabilities investigated and presented in court?
And what should be done when the system fails them? Veterans facing the death
penalty deserve this assistance. (source: Opinion; Brig. Gen. (Ret.) James P.
Cullen, USA, is a former judge for the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals.
Brig. Gen. (Ret.) David R. Irvine, USA, is a former Deputy Commander of the
96th U.S. Army Reserve Command. Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Stephen N. Xenakis, USA, M.D.
is an adjunct clinical professor at the Uniformed Services University of Health
Sciences----USA Today)
***************
An Invitation to End the Death Penalty----The time is now, and this opportunity
might not present itself again soon.
The death penalty in the United States will end.
In the scholarly community, the debate is over. The proof that capital
punishment doesn't work is as conclusive as the evidence that human activities
have caused global warming. After 50 years of research, we know that capital
punishment either doesn't deter or deters very little, and then only if
practiced with such regularity that it virtually guarantees errors. We know
that since 1973, 156 people have been sentenced to die and subsequently
exonerated. We know that whether a murderer is executed is largely the product
of the victim's race and geographic bad luck. We know that the penalty is
expensive to implement and, if one is serious about preventing mistakes,
cruelly slow.
For these reasons, among others, the international community has largely
rejected capital punishment. Of the 193 United Nations members, 137 have
abolished the death penalty either by law or practice. In 2013, only 22
countries conducted an execution. Only 8 conducted 10 or more: China, Iran,
Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and the United States. It's simply
impossible to imagine the United States remaining on this list for much longer.
The question is how much longer.
Those who hope that the end will come sooner rather than later have reached a
momentous crossroads. One path requires a plodding march to eradicate the death
penalty state by state. This route isn't entirely hopeless. Indeed, Maryland,
Nebraska, and Connecticut have abolished the death penalty since 2013, and 4
other states have governor-imposed moratoriums. But most of the low-hanging
fruit has been picked, and the remaining states will be increasingly
intransigent. It's easy to imagine Texas, which has executed 530 people since
1976, holding out for a very long time.
The potentially faster track is to seize upon Justice Stephen Breyer???s
dissent last term in Glossip v. Gross - in which he comprehensively challenged
the constitutionality of capital punishment - and push a case to the Supreme
Court. This path is not without its own perils, which need to be understood in
historical context. In 1963, Justice Arthur Goldberg issued his own maverick
dissent against the death penalty. Perceiving an opportunity, the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund began a systematic litigation campaign, culminating in a 1972
decision, Furman v. Georgia, ruling that the death penalty as it was then
practiced was unconstitutional. The victory was short-lived. Following a
massive backlash, the Supreme Court reversed direction four years later and
upheld revised capital punishment laws that included modest procedural
protections.
Breyer is saying that he believes Kennedy's vote is available.
Many observers believe that the net of the Legal Defense Fund???s
well-intentioned efforts was negative and that the 1976 decision, Gregg v.
Georgia, set back the death penalty abolition movement by decades. In the last
Gallup poll before Furman, 50 % of respondents said they favored capital
punishment. After Gregg, support soared to 66 % and reached an all-time high of
80 % in 1994. The numbers have been dropping since then - down to 61 % in the
latest poll. The risk is that if abolitionists do press a case to the Supreme
Court and lose, public opinion might surge again, believing that the court has
somehow fixed the problems with the death penalty.
Following Breyer's dissent, the need to confront this dilemma has taken on an
increased sense of urgency. In the New York Times, Adam Liptak made public the
split in the death penalty community over whether a case should be pressed to
the Supreme Court. As I reported last year here in Slate, it's a complicated
gamble with reasonable arguments on both sides. But those who urge caution
today are drawing the wrong lesson from history.
Breyer's dissent means more than Goldberg???s did. When Goldberg and his law
clerk Alan Dershowitz penned the opinion, only one legal scholar had ever
advanced the argument that the death penalty constituted cruel and unusual
punishment. Certainly no Supreme Court justice believed it to be
unconstitutional. Quite consciously, Goldberg was beginning a conversation.
Breyer's dissent, by contrast, is situated in a judicial-political conflict
that has been running for nearly four decades. The modern battle turns entirely
on Justice Anthony Kennedy. On one side, it's clear that Justices Samuel Alito,
Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts will never
vote against the death penalty. On the other side are Breyer and Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg, who joined Breyer in saying that the death penalty violates the
Constitution. Though they didn't sign on to Breyer's dissent, Justices Elena
Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor are safe bets to reject capital punishment if and
when the issue is ever put before the court again. Everything comes down to
Kennedy.
Over the past 13 years, Kennedy has joined a series of decisions limiting the
use of the death penalty for juveniles, child rapists who did not kill, and
people with mental retardation. In the juvenile and child rapist cases, Kennedy
wrote the majority opinions and cast the decisive vote. In Hall v. Florida,
another 5-4 case, he again wrote the majority decision holding that mental
retardation couldn't be determined by a hard-and-fast numeric rule, which
Florida and other states had used to limit the impact of the Supreme Court's
ban. Executing an intellectually disabled individual, Kennedy wrote, with the
colorful rhetoric that characterizes his most passionate opinions, "violates
his or her inherent dignity as a human being" and serves "no legitimate
penological purpose."
Breyer isn't beginning a conversation. He is saying that he believes Kennedy's
vote is available. A student of history, Breyer knows the impact that
Goldberg's dissent had on the bar. Breyer wouldn't issue a dissent so clearly
evocative of Goldberg's unless he wanted to send a loud and clear message that
he believes the time is right for abolitionist leaders to push an Eighth
Amendment challenge to the Supreme Court.
Breyer could be wrong, of course. Any student of this history knows that it has
been fraught with unpredictable twists and turns. But abolitionists have more
reason for optimism than the Legal Defense Fund did in 1972, when no one
believed they had a chance of winning Furman v. Georgia, and they also have
less to lose. For one thing, there are few, if any, lesser battles to be
contested before the Supreme Court. Almost all the exceptions to the death
penalty one could imagine have already been carved out. For another, it's hard
to imagine an adverse decision galvanizing support for the death penalty, as it
did in 1976.
The truth is that despite decades of public education campaigns by
abolitionists and abundant evidence that the death penalty is unreliable and
ineffective, the public opinion dial hasn???t moved very much. Since Gregg,
support for the death penalty has never dipped below 60 % in Gallup's annual
poll, and for each of the past seven years it has come in between 61 and 65 %
in favor.
More importantly, public opinion is firmly entrenched in the states that drive
the "American" death penalty. Really, it makes no sense to speak of capital
punishment as national policy. The death penalty is almost entirely a Southern
phenomenon, driven by a handful of states - and really, as research by the
Death Penalty Information Center shows, a handful of prosecutors in a handful
of counties within those states. Since 1976, Texas has accounted for 37 % of
American executions. Texas plus 2 other states - Oklahoma and Virginia - are
responsible for a majority of executions. In Texas, polling shows 73 % support
for the death penalty. In Oklahoma it's 74 %. If capital punishment is going to
end in these outlier Southern states, the U.S. Supreme Court will need to act.
Today's opportunity may not present itself again soon. Justices die.
Presidential elections and Senate confirmations are unpredictable. It's
possible to imagine that a stronger majority against the death penalty will
emerge on the court someday. It's just as possible to imagine that another bare
majority won't again emerge this century. That's why Breyer's invitation needs
to be taken so seriously.
The direction of history's arrow is clear. Capital punishment will end. But to
finish this fight once and for all, abolitionists at some point will need to
seize the moment and force the Supreme Court to a decision. There may not soon
again be another moment so promising as this one.
(source: Evan Mandery is a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice
and author of A Wild Justice: The Death and Resurrection of Capital Punishment
in America----slate.com)
***************
GOP Candidates Suck Up to Hatemongers
Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and Mike Huckabee fete a man who thinks the Bible says
we should execute gays.
Sometimes I think Republicans get a bad rap from mainstream journalists, who
tend to be more sympathetic to liberals and Democrats. The problem may be
particularly acute when it comes to social conservatives, whose views seem
especially unpopular among journalists.
But right now 3 conservative Republican presidential candidates are mostly
getting a free pass from the media on their appalling judgment over the
weekend.
Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and Mike Huckabee spoke at a conference in Des Moines
called "Freedom 2015: National Religious Liberties Conference," a 2-day event
that began last Friday. Now, that doesn't sound so bad. In fact, my colleagues
at the Cato Institute and I have recently defended the rights of Hobby Lobby,
the Little Sisters of the Poor, and the bakers and photographers who don't want
to participate in same-sex weddings.
But this conference was about something far different from liberty, although
you wouldn't know that from bland media coverage like this CBS News article. So
it's a good thing that The Daily Beast and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC picked up the
story, with video from People for the American Way's RightWingWatch.
The conference was organized by Kevin P. Swanson, a minister in Colorado and
host of the Generations Radio Show. Swanson is part of the Orthodox
Presbyterian Church and the far-right fundamentalist Christian
Reconstructionism movement, which author Walter Olson wrote about at length in
1998. Swanson gave the conference's opening and closing talks and interviewed
Cruz, Jindal, and Huckabee. And in his closing keynote address, Swanson ranted
at length about topics that would hardly be characterized as religious liberty:
YES! Leviticus 20:13 calls for the death penalty for homosexuals. YES! Romans
Chapter 1, Verse 32, the Apostle Paul does say that homosexuals are worthy of
death. His words, not mine! And I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
And I am not ashamed of the truth of the word of God. And I am willing to go to
jail for standing on the truth of the word of God.
To be sure, he did say that "civil leaders" should not apply the death penalty
today, not until the culture has changed and gays have been put on notice that
they must repent or be put to death. Thanks for small favors, I suppose. But
it's also worth noting that at least 2 other speakers at the conference
likewise have advocated the death penalty for gay people.
And as Maddow notes, this is not just something that the conference host has
said in the past, though he had said it plenty of times, as a Google search
would have revealed. This is what he said in the keynote address at the
conference attended by 3 candidates for president.
That wasn't the full extent of the crazy at the conference. As the gay website
Towleroad reported:
Swanson has also said that the government should put gay people to death,
warned that the Girl Scouts and the movie "Frozen" turn girls into lesbians and
blamed natural disasters on gay people and women who wear pants. Swanson has
also said that churches accepting gay couples will lead to the persecution,
imprisonment and murder of Christians, and wished for the good ole days when
country singer Kacey Musgraves would have been hanged for her pro-gay lyrics.
Jake Tapper asked Cruz about his attendance at the conference, and Cruz
responded that he did not "know what this gentleman has said" but that
religious liberty is a very important issue. Would Cruz accept that answer from
a presidential candidate who spoke at a conference where the host and keynoter
yelled "God damn America" or said that Christians should be executed? I doubt
it. He should be asked about his participation again, as should Jindal and
Huckabee.
And American conservatives should be asked if they find all this acceptable.
Can you actually support presidential candidates who stand on such a stage,
answering questions from such a person?
If the 3 Democratic presidential candidates accepted the invitation of, and
answered the questions of, an equally extreme leftist, a person who advocated
the execution of peaceful people he disliked, conservatives everywhere would be
outraged. I hope they start holding their own candidates to the same standard.
(source: David Boaz is executive vice president of the Cato Institute and
author of The Libertarian Mind----The Daily Beast)
***************
Reform leaders advocate 'restorative' justice for US offenders
Hopeful that the death penalty in the U.S. is reaching its demise, justice
reform advocates affiliated with the U.S. Catholic church are shifting efforts,
in part, to tackle the massive problems beleaguering the country's criminal
justice system.
Capital punishment, in fact, sits atop a highly retributive criminal justice
system, like the jewel in the punitive crown, reserved -- in theory -- for the
worst cases and irreversible. But many systemic, and arguably more intractable,
problems lie beneath it: mass incarceration and high rates of recidivism among
them.
"Once we get rid of the death penalty, all the problems in our criminal justice
system are going to rise up and we will have to deal with them," said Karen
Clifton, executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Use
of the Death Penalty at the "New Path to Justice: Criminal Justice Reform in
the Year of Mercy" on Nov. 6 at Catholic University of America in Washington,
D.C.
The approach -- supported by Pope Francis, the U.S. Bishops Conference and a
growing numbers of secular experts -- is an alternative, "restorative," type of
justice. In his statements, the pope has made clear that for a society to be
humane, justice is justice only if it is restorative, that is, without
retaliation or revenge.
Trudy Conway, emeritus professor of philosophy at Mount Saint Mary's
University, presented the underlying principles of restorative in philosophical
counterpoint to the current U.S. justice system.
Under a restorative lens, crime is viewed as a violation against people and
relationships, rather than simply a violation of the law, Conway explained.
Offenders have an obligation to repair the harm they have done.
However, today's system generates no incentive for offenders to admit
wrongdoing, said Tim Wolfe, associate professor of sociology and criminal
justice at Mount St. Mary's University. Instead, they are pitted in a war
against the state with the express goal of avoiding punishment. Offenders never
get to come into personal contact with the consequences of their offenses and
therefore never fully understand the harm they have caused. This, in turn,
severely lowers their chances of rehabilitation.
"Cops, courts, corrections: our current system is criminogenic -- it creates
more crime instead of reducing it," Wolfe said.
But practicing restorative justice doesn't mean offenders can't be punished --
it's just that punishment isn't the whole picture.
"Restorative justice is not being soft on crime, it's being smart: it will
improve safety, and hold people accountable," said Wolfe.
Janine Geske, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice, knows a lot about what
restorative justice looks like in action. She leads Marquette University Law
School's Restorative Justice Initiative and regularly facilitates restorative
encounters between offenders and victims at the Green Bay Correctional
Institution. These can take months of preparation, depending on the readiness
of victims, she said.
With support from Marquette law students, she oversees highly delicate "circle"
dialogues between victims and offenders. At the heart of them: deep listening
and personal story telling -- on both sides. In some dialogues, victims or
victim family members meet the offenders who were not involved in same crime.
In others, victims and family members meet their actual offenders.
And while it's clear that rehabilitation of offenders is a positive long-term
outcome of restorative justice, Geske emphasized that the victims are the
focus. She prefers to call victims of crime "survivors." Many of them do too,
Geske said.
"It's about what survivors want," Geske said. "It's their chance to tell the
person responsible for the crime about the harm they caused. Often victims will
have questions they want to ask like 'What were the last words of the loved
one? What were their last moments like?'"
And forgiveness doesn't necessarily have to be a part of it, she said, because
some survivors aren't ready for it.
"It's an incredibly healing process for both sides to go through this. But
these are really, really tough conversations," said Geske who called her work
"a ministry of presence."
Geske and other practitioners at the conference are still outliers in the U.S.,
where restorative justice is rarely introduced into the system unless by
motivated individuals. Instead, some countries, most notably New Zealand, have
integrated restorative justice methods systematically into some of their
criminal justice processes. Howard Zehr, of Eastern Mennonite University, is
considered the grandfather of the modern restorative justice movement and his
work was cited liberally at the conference.
Margaret Pfeil, of the University of Notre Dame's theology department and
Center for Social Concerns, said the spiritual foundation of restorative
justice is the Golden Rule. She referenced Francis' speech before Congress,
where he connected the Golden Rule to advocating for the abolition of the death
penalty and the rehabilitation of those convicted of crimes.
But how to build up the restorative justice movement? Pfeil said it's not just
about implementing a "set of practices." It's a way of being in the world, one
that everyone can adopt.
"The restorative path might start with each of us opening our hearts to those
on the fringes of society, and to the outer edge of those fringes, which are
those in the incarceration system and on death row," Pfeil said.
(source: Dani Clark is a writer and editor at an international development
organization in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Community of
Sant'Egidio----National Catholic Reporter)
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