Dec. 17
NEBRASKA:
Nebraska Death Penalty Foes Focusing on Practical Problems
A group that wants to keep Nebraska's death penalty off the books said
Wednesday it will focus on the practical problems of carrying out the
punishment in the build-up to next year's statewide vote on capital punishment.
State Senator Colby Coash, of Lincoln, said when Nebraska moved to lethal
injection in 2009, it had the support of top officials in the state. However,
the state still hasn't been able to carry out the executions.
"There has been the will to do it," Coash said, "and even with the will to do
it, it was unsuccessful."
Coash and University of Nebraska law professor Eric Berger outlined several
arguments Wednesday at an event sponsored by Nebraskans for Public Safety.
Nebraska's last execution was in 1997, using the electric chair.
Coash said constituents often refer to Texas and ask why Nebraska can't carry
out executions like they do. Texas has had 13 executions in 2015.
"Texas has a secrecy provision in their law that says whatever the department
of corrections does in Texas," Coash said, "they don't have to share it with
the media, they don't have to share it with their citizens.
"And in Nebraska, we pride ourselves on a very open and transparent
government."
Berger said approving capital punishment again also does not guarantee a
long-term fix.
"There could be state constitutional challenges," Berger said, "federal
constitutional challenges, administrative procedure challenges, challenges to
the legality of particular drugs.
"The only thing that's sure is that there would be expensive and time consuming
litigation."
Gov. Pete Ricketts has said the state will not try to obtain lethal injection
drugs until voters decide in November whether to keep capital punishment, but
his administration is looking at changes to the protocol.
"If other states are doing it, we can do it here in Nebraska as well," Ricketts
said.
"It's one of the reasons why I've asked the Dept. of Corrections to look at the
protocols other states use to see what we might have as options going forward
in the future."
Berger says changing the protocol would be difficult and expensive.
"The problems the state is having right now in finding the right drugs is
likely to be a problem that recurs over and over again if we keep the death
penalty," Berger said.
(source: Associated Press)
COLORADO:
Faces of Death: Capital punishment in Colorado could be the year's big
issue----A brewing battle over transparency and the true costs of the death
penalty is starting to boil over
Questions about the death penalty in Colorado are bubbling up before the start
of the legislative session that begins next month.
They include: How much does capital punishment cost Colorado taxpayers? Should
the state keep the death penalty or scrap it like neighboring state Nebraska?
Might a statewide ballot initiative in 2016 emerge to put the question to
voters? And if we keep the death penalty, should prosecutors get a 2nd chance
with a new jury if they can't convince the 1st to put someone to death?
Another question: Gov. John Hickenlooper has said Colorado needs to have a big
statewide conversation about capital punishment. Did we ever really have it?
Last night this boiled over on Twitter when the district attorney for the 18th
Judicial District, George Brauchler, who prosecuted the Aurora theater shooting
death penalty case, took his complaints about transparency in the costs of
capital punishment to social media.
So what was Brauchler's tweet storm about last night?
First, let's note the Arapaho County DA and Twitter have history.
Earlier this year, the judge in the Aurora theater shooting trial reprimanded
Brauchler for a tweet he'd sent during court proceedings. Brauchler said he
meant to send it as a direct message and apologized.
Now, 6 months later, one of Colorado's rising stars on the Republican depth
chart is again mixing it up on social media. And it still has to do with that
high-profile death penalty trial from over the summer.
Brauchler snarked on Colorado's Office of the State Public Defender for lack of
transparency.
The Arapahoe County DA was responding to criticism that he'd spent too much
taxpayer money to unsuccessfully persuade a jury to execute theater shooter
James Holmes.
He didn't stop with his remarks about the state public defenders and
transparency.
And he indicated taxpayer costs in the trial are being inaccurately portrayed
in media. Responding to someone who asked if figures quoted by a source in a
newspaper article were inaccurate, Brauchler tweeted:
Brauchler pointed to his office's website when asked to reveal costs the
prosecution incurred during the trial.
So do we already know the true costs of the Aurora theater shooting death
penalty case or not?
No.
Both Brauchler and Doug Wilson, who heads the Office of the State Public
Defender, say the public hasn't seen the total costs. Wilson's office released
an aggregate figure showing how much was spent on capital cases - $6.3 million
on 10 cases since 2002 - but didn't break them down by case. Wilson says he's
ethically bound not to divulge information about particular cases. Brauchler
says that seems silly.
Well, how can we find out the true costs for everything?
Likely it will take a lot of open records requests. But there could be another
way.
Lawmakers this session could convene a legislative hearing if they are so
inclined. That process could happen formally or informally. It could come in
the form of an existing committee or a new select committee set up by
leadership specifically to deal with this issue.
Committee members could invite all the stakeholders to the table: prosecutors,
public defenders, agency employees from the departments of Corrections, Human
Resources, Public Safety and others, staffers from the attorney general's
office, local sheriffs, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, members of the
judicial department and local law enforcement - whoever. They could bring in
every government entity involved in dealing with death penalty cases (or just a
specific case) to ask about particular costs.
One important point is that legislative committees can obtain subpoena power
and can put people under oath, but it's not necessarily easy and is rarely
done. In Colorado, to issue a subpoena for someone to testify before a
committee would require approval from the General Assembly.
Ugh. Haven't we talked enough about the death penalty in Colorado?
Well, that depends on who you ask.
In 2013, Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper said he hoped to start a
conversation about capital punishment when he granted a reprieve of Nathan
Dunlap who killed 4 people at a Chuck-E-Cheese in 1993. Since then,
Hickenlopper won re-election during a race that at times seemed to revolve
wholly around Dunlap's fate. At one point the state's largest newspaper ran a
headline about how pro-death penalty supporters could make Hickenlooper pay.
2/3 of Coloradans polled agreed with the death penalty.
2 years ago, Hickenlooper indicated he would veto a bill to repeal the death
penalty that was being supported by Democrats. The measure failed. A Democratic
lawmaker's bill to let voters in 2014 decide whether to keep or scrap the death
penalty in Colorado also didn't pan out.
In July, The Denver Post published a story under the headline "The death
penalty in Colorado: Has there been enough conversation?" In it Hickenlooper
indicated there had. Others disagreed.
Now, 5 months later, DA George Brauchler and Public Defender Doug Wilson can at
least agree on one thing: The state has not had a real conversation about
capital punishment.
So what might that conversation look like?
Brauchler says he'd like to see a statewide ballot measure for 2016.
"What I'd like to see is, if we're going to have this discussion, one way to do
it is put something on the ballot for the voters to discuss," he told The
Colorado Independent in a recent interview. "You want to end the death penalty?
Put a ballot initiative on there ... I would think that you???re going to get
the best turnout and the best sense of people in a presidential year."
If a ballot measure does emerge, Brauchler says he'd likely be involved.
"I'd want to participate in the information part of that and say 'Look, here's
why I think the death penalty is appropriate to have,'" he says.
For his part, Wilson has floated the idea of a possible statewide task force or
blue-ribbon commission to examine capital punishment in Colorado in depth.
In 2006, the New Jersey legislature created a study committee that was charged
with researching all aspects of the death penalty in that state. The following
year, the panel recommended abolishing capital punishment and replacing it with
life in prison without the possibility of parole. The New Jersey legislature
abolished the death penalty that year.
Wilson says he'd also like to see a legislative committee bring everyone to the
table. What he doesn't think counts is "trying to to impact legislation by
tweets."
The legislative session begins next month, and already at least one lawmaker
has said she plans to carry a measure dealing with the death penalty.
Republican Rep. Kim Ransom of Douglas County is looking at whether prosecutors
should get a 2nd chance with a jury if the first doesn't reach a unanimous
execution verdict in a death penalty case. In Colorado, death sentence verdicts
must be unanimous.
(source: Colorado Independent)
****************
DA Pursues Death Penalty in Mary Ricard Murder Over Daughter's Objections
Prosecutors in southeastern Colorado are seeking execution for a 36-year-old
inmate in the 2012 murder of corrections officer Mary Ricard at the Arkansas
Valley Correctional Facility. The announcement came this week during a court
hearing in the long-delayed case - despite persistent pleas from members of
Ricard's family not to pursue the death penalty for her alleged killer.
Investigators say inmate Miguel Contreras-Perez fatally stabbed Ricard and
badly injured another female officer in the prison kitchen. Ricard's daughter,
Katie Smith, says that she and other family members have met with Sixteenth
Judicial District Attorney Jim Bullock several times and have been frustrated
by Bullock's determination to make it a capital case.
"We had begged the district attorney to offer life without parole," she says.
"Their constant rebuttal to us is that we are not the only victims. They're
claiming that the [Colorado] Department of Corrections is a victim in my
mother's case. My opinion is that the the DOC could have prevented the murder
to begin with."
DOC administrators have been sharply criticized for allowing Contreras-Perez to
work in the prison kitchen, where he had access to a butcher knife and other
weapons. A native of El Salvador, Contreras-Perez is currently serving a
sentence of 35 years to life for kidnapping and raping a 14-year-old girl in
2002; he also had a history of harassing female staff at the prison before
Ricard's murder. He reportedly boasted that the attack on the female officers
was "all about the body count."
The case bears strong similarities to a previous murder in the Limon prison
kitchen a decade earlier, when Edward Montour, an inmate with a history of
mental problems, fatally attacked officer Eric Autobee with a heavy soup ladle.
In that case, the victim's parents became disillusioned by the prosecution's
multiyear effort to seek the death penalty; Autobee's father Bob even picketed
the courthouse in protest. Thirteenth Judicial District Attorney George
Brauchler ultimately took death off the table and agreed a sentence of life
without parole - but only after the badly flawed case had progressed to trial.
Although Colorado currently has 3 people on its moribund death row, the state
hasn't had an actual execution in nearly 2 decades. 3 times in the past few
years prosecutors have sought the ultimate penalty for homicides that occurred
inside state prisons, arguing that they need to send a "strong message" that
such violence won't go unpunished. All 3 were unsuccessful. Critics of the
death penalty say that chasing it drags out the ordeal for victims' families
over years of appeals, even if a DA can persuade a jury to vote for execution -
which didn't happen even in the James Holmes case. Smith says she doesn't want
to see the proceedings drag on in her mother's case, for many reasons.
"Had they killed him in the act of attacking people, I'm okay with that," she
says. "But 3 1/2 years later, why would they try to justify killing him? In
court they mentioned the Attorney General's Office, they mentioned DOC. Not
once did they mention my mother's name. It's all political."
According to Smith, the officer who survived the attack doesn't support death
for Contreras-Perez - and her mother wouldn't, either. "My mother was very
passionate about working with inmates," she says. "Her brother was in prison
from the time he was 14 until he was 40; he couldn't come out to society and
stay out. She wanted to make a difference in inmates' lives."
Contreras-Perez has fired his attorneys twice and currently has no legal
representation. A judge entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf several
weeks ago.
District Attorney Jim Bullock has not yet responded to a request for comment.
We will update this post if we hear from him.
Here is the entirety of Katie Smith's statement in response to this week's
decision.
Today is a sad day for our family. As the daughter of Sergeant Mary Ricard, I
am disgusted with the justice system. Colorado's justice system is neither
swift nor just. It has been over 3 years since my mother's murder. There have
been countless court hearings pertaining to my mother's murder, yet nothing has
been resolved. Now, after many communications with the district attorney's
office, the Crowley County District Attorney has disregarded our family's
request to not pursue the Death Penalty. They have chosen to not respect our
wishes and will continue to revictimize our family for at least the next few
years with their decision to pursue the death penalty.
Here we are 10 days from Christmas, the celebration of Christ's birthday.
Christmas was also the day that represents Christ's life, which God gave to us
for peace, love & forgiveness. Christmas was also my mother's birthday. My
mother was a very forgiving person, and I know this is not what she would have
wanted.
When Christ hung on the cross in front of his murderers, he said in Luke 23
verse 24 to forgive them. I believe my mother also offered mercy of
forgiveness. When Christ died on The Cross he paid for ALL SIN!!! I have
forgiven my mother's murderer!! I do this for my self so I can feel peace. I
pray daily for Mr. Contreras-Perez for God to forgive him. If the people take
his life through the death penalty, he may lose the opportunity to receive
forgiveness for his sins. As Christians we are to be Christlike, and that means
offering forgiveness and giving mercy to those who have hurt us. It's been
three years with no resolution. It's time to end this and let our family heal.
(source: Westword.com)
CALIFORNIA:
Riverside County leads the nation in death sentences
Riverside County led the country in death sentences in 2015, sending more
people to death row than 48 states - despite the fact no county convict has
been executed since at least 1978 - according to a new study of capital
punishment.
8 convicted murderers were sentenced to death in county courts this year,
including 3 men from the Coachella Valley. That's 16 % of all U.S. death
sentences, and more than twice as many sentences as any other county in the
United States, said the Death Penalty Information Center, a watchdog group
based in Washington D.C.
The next highest death sentence total was a 2nd place tie between Maricopa and
Los Angeles counties, both of which are far more populous than Riverside.
Neither Riverside nor Los Angeles have followed through on any of their death
sentences, however, since the state hasn't carried out any executions in 9
years. California executed 13 convicts between 1978 and 2006, with none from
Riverside County.
Riverside has simply poured more inmates into a bloated death row. California's
death row now holds nearly 750 inmates, and 94 of those inmates were sent there
by Riverside County.
"The system is broken," said Steve Harmon, Riverside County public defender, an
opponent of the death penalty. "The debate over the death penalty has moved
beyond whether one believes in it or not. At this point, you can believe in the
death penalty and still be opposed to it because it's not working."
"Even if you were to start executing people at the rate of once a month - which
is light speed - look at how long it would take for all of these inmates to be
executed," Harmon said, doing the math in his head. "It would take more than 60
years."
The Death Penalty Information Center describes Riverside County as an "outlier"
in a nation that is moving away from the death penalty. Nationwide, death
sentences dropped by a third in 2015, and executions dropped by 1/5.
Increasingly, sentences and executions are clustered in a few states and
counties that "overuse" capital punishment, said Robert Dunham, the center's
president.
Dunham said these outlier counties consistently have other problems too - like
frequent allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and high rates of police
killings. In recent years, Riverside County has had both.
"What generally happens in counties like these is that the person in charge
tolerates practices that should not be tolerated, and that works its way
throughout the entire system" Dunham said. "The single most important factor in
changing these practices is the changing the district attorney."
In Riverside, that change has already happened.
District Attorney Mike Hestrin, who took office in January, has taken a more
cautious approach in capital punishment cases, and ultimately sought the death
penalty less often than his predecessors.
Hestrin inherited 22 death penalty cases from his predecessors, but abandoned
pursuit of a death sentence in 6 of those cases. He has considered 11 new cases
this year, but pursued the death penalty in only 4.
Hestrin has also changed how the decision is made. Defense attorneys are now
invited to the meetings where prosecutors decide whether or not to pursue a
death sentence.
"The death penalty is a hard thing, and it should be rare," Hestrin said. "It
should be used only when necessary ... and obviously I have a little different
standard than my predecessor."
Harmon, the public defender, agreed that Hestrin has taken a more "measured"
approach to death penalty decisions than his predecessors, former DAs Grover
Trask, Rod Pacheco and Paul Zellerbach.
However, Harmon said he still worried that Riverside County's long-established
penchant for the death sentence - plus the widespread knowledge that California
has halted executions - might make jurors more willing to hand down death
sentences.
"What I fear is that jurors, when trying to decide a capital case, a matter of
life and death, might find it easier to vote for death knowing that the person
would never be executed because of what's going on in California," Harmon said.
"They think, 'What's the harm?' And that's not right."
Executions halted in California in 2006 after a federal judge forced review of
the state's lethal injection procedures. That legal moratorium continues today,
while death penalty supporters and opponents are stuck in a deadlock, trying to
either restart executions or end them completely. Last month, opponents
launched a signature-collecting campaign in an effort to repeal the state's
death penalty through a 2016 ballot initiative.
DEATH SENTENCES
Riverside County sent 8 people to death row in 2015, more than twice as many as
any other county in the United States.
Coachella Valley cases
-- Miguel Enrique Felix, who was convicted of killing Armand Gonzalez in
Desert Hot Springs in 2004. Felix, a robber who targeted drug dealers, shot
Gonzalez in his driveway in front of his wife and children.
-- Robert Dunson, who was convicted in March for the 2007 murder of William
George Dobbs, an Indio snowbird. Dunson slashed Dobbs to death during robbery,
nearly decapitating him.
--Angel Anthony Esparza, who was convicted killing a 16-year-old boy and 2
Thermal farmworkers. All 3 victims killed in execution-style murders, and the
farm workers bodies were burnt with gasoline.
Other Riverside County cases
-- Francisco Roy Zavala was convicted of fatally stabbing 16-year-old Eric
Sargeant during a robbery in January 2013.
-- Tyrone Hart was convicted of shooting his ex-girlfriend, Brandi Morales,
while her six children were present at her home in Moreno Valley in February
2011.
-- Belinda Magana and her boyfriend Naresh Nadine, both of Corona, were
convicted of abusing and killing Magana's 2-year-old son in 2009, then burying
his body and pretending he went missing.
--Juan Coronado Jr. was convicted of beating and shooting 85-year-old Lupe
Delgadillo during a robbery in Perris 2008.
[source: Riverside County Superior Court files and Desert Sun archives]
(source: desertsun.com)
******************
Actor Found Guilty of Murder, Faces Death Penalty
A community theater actor was convicted of 1st-degree murder Wednesday in
Orange County for killing and dismembering a neighbor, then trying to cover up
his crime by killing a female friend of the victim.
Daniel Patrick Wozniak, 31, faces a possible death sentence. His trial will now
enter a penalty phase to recommend whether Wozniak should be sentenced to death
of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
During the trial, Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy told jurors that
Wozniak was deep in debt in May 2010, facing eviction and without money for his
pending wedding, so he came up with a plan to kill his neighbor and throw
police off his trail by making it look like the victim murdered and raped a
female friend.
He further tried to confound investigators by dismembering his first victim,
26-year-old Samuel Eliezer Herr of Costa Mesa, and dumping his body parts in
the El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach, Murphy said.
After killing Herr at the Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base, Wozniak used
1 of the victim's phones to lure his 2nd victim - 23-year- old Julie Kibuishi -
to Herr's apartment so he could shoot her to death and stage the crime scene,
Murphy said.
He also tricked a 16-year-old boy who looked up to the defendant into
withdrawing cash from Herr's bank account so Wozniak could pay his rent, avoid
eviction and have money for his wedding and honeymoon, the prosecutor said.
The complex scheme worked initially, as Costa Mesa police continued to focus on
Herr as a suspect in Kibuishi's killing, Murphy said.
According to the prosecutor, Wozniak ultimately confessed and told
investigators, "I killed Julie and I killed Sam. Sam came first. It was all
just about money and that's it."
The case took a long route to trial, with Wozniak's attorneys trying to make a
case of outrageous governmental misconduct based on the defendant's encounter
with a jailhouse informant.
Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders sought to have Orange County Superior
Court Judge John Conley and the Orange County District Attorney's Office
removed from the case, but the effort failed.
(source: nbclosangeles.com)
USA:
Who killed the death penalty?----Many suspects are implicated in capital
punishment's ongoing demise. But one stands out
EXHIBIT A is the corpses. Or rather, the curious paucity of them: like the dog
that didn't bark in Sherlock Holmes, the bodies are increasingly failing to
materialise. Only 28 prisoners have been executed in America in 2015, the
lowest number since 1991. Next, consider the dwindling rate of death sentences
- most striking in Texas, which accounts for more than 1/3 of all executions
since (after a hiatus) the Supreme Court reinstated the practice in 1976. A
ghoulish web page lists the inmates admitted to Texas's death row. Only 2
arrived in 2015, down from 11 the previous year.
There is circumstantial evidence, too: the political kind. Jeb Bush, a
Republican presidential candidate - who, as governor of Florida, oversaw 21
executions - has acknowledged feeling "conflicted" about capital punishment.
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, said she "would breathe a sigh of
relief' if it were scrapped. Contrast that stance with her husband's return to
Arkansas, during his own campaign in 1992, for the controversial execution of a
mentally impaired murderer. Bernie Sanders, Mrs Clinton's main rival, is a
confirmed abolitionist.
The proof is overwhelming: capital punishment is dying. Statistically and
politically, it is already mortally wounded, even as it staggers through an
indeterminate - but probably brief - swansong. Fairly soon, someone will be the
last person to be executed in America. The reasons for this decline themselves
form a suspenseful tale of locked-room intrigue, unexpected twists and unusual
suspects. So, whodunnit? Who killed the death penalty?
12 less angry men
Where politicians follow, voters often lead. Capital punishment is no longer a
litmus test of political machismo because public enthusiasm for it is waning.
Most Americans still favour retaining it, but that majority is narrowing. And
one critical constituency - the mystery's 1st prime suspect - is especially
sceptical: juries.
Take the case of Eric Mickelson. In 2011 a jury in Louisiana sentenced him to
death for murdering and dismembering an elderly man. Problems with the original
trial led to a rerun this year: the new jury gave him life without the
possibility of parole. According to a tally by the Death Penalty Information
Centre (DPIC), a lobby group, overall only 49 people were sentenced to death in
America in 2015, the lowest total in modern records. This despite the fact
that, to serve in a capital trial, a juror has to be willing in principle to
hand down a death sentence. (Actually doing so can be traumatic: Stewart Dotts
"had always considered myself a reasonably tough guy", but serving on a jury
that passed a death sentence in New Jersey gave him many sleepless nights.
"It's an unfair burden to place on ordinary citizens," Mr Dotts concludes.)
The widely available alternative of life without parole - which offers the
certainty that a defendant can never be released - helps to explain that trend.
So does the growing willingness of jurors, in their private deliberations, to
weigh murderers' backgrounds and mental illnesses; ditto the greater skill with
which defence lawyers, generally better resourced and trained than in the past,
muster that mitigating evidence. But the biggest reason, says Richard Dieter of
the DPIC, is juries' nervousness about imposing an irrevocable punishment.
Behind that anxiety stands another, unwilling participant in the death-penalty
story: the swelling, well-publicised cadre of death-row exonerees.
People like Harold Wilson, who served over 16 years for a ghastly triple
homicide in Philadelphia before being exonerated in 2005. A decade later he is
still fighting for compensation, as well as campaigning with Witness to
Innocence, an exonerees' organisation. He has "walked through hell", Mr Wilson
says. Ironically he thinks he might still be inside, doing life, if prosecutors
hadn't overreached in their quest to kill him. It's a "broken-down system", he
believes. In 2015 alone, 6 more prisoners have been freed from death row.
Those mistakes implicate another suspect in the death penalty's demise:
prosecutors. The renegades who have botched capital cases - by suppressing
evidence, rigging juries or concentrating on black defendants -have dragged it
into disrepute. But some responsible prosecutors have also contributed, by
declining to seek death in the first place. They have been abetted by another
unlikely group: victims' relatives.
Bethany Webb's sister was among 8 people killed in a Californian hair salon in
2011; her mother was shot, but survived. She wants the culprit to die "alone
and unnoticed", rather than being euthanised in an execution-night circus. The
way prosecutors messed up the case - by needlessly deploying a jailhouse
informant -has alerted her to the risks of injustices in others. Then there is
the attritional legal rigmarole: the killer would smile at the victims'
families at court appearances, Ms Webb says; her mother is obliged to relive
the trauma at each fresh hearing. A life sentence would have meant that "next
time we see his face in the paper, it would be for his obituary".
To avoid that protracted agony, says James Farren, district attorney of Randall
County in Texas, "a healthy percentage" of families now ask prosecutors to
eschew capital punishment. Mr Farren also fingers another key player in the
death-penalty drama: the American taxpayer.
Capital cases are "a huge drain on resources", spiralling costs that -
especially given juries' growing reluctance to pass a death sentence anyway -
have helped to change the calculus about when to pursue one, Mr Farren says. In
2011 a Californian study estimated that death-penalty trials cost the taxpayer
an extra $1m a pop. Guilty verdicts mean lengthy and pricey appeals; death-row
prisoners are often incarcerated in expensive isolation. Prosecutors are
sometimes explicit about the trade-off between punishment and payment: in
Arizona one withdrew his bid for a death sentence, court documents show, to
help the county "meet its fiscal responsibilities". Defence lawyers can be
equally frank. Katherine Scardino says that, on being appointed in Texas, "the
1st thing I do is, I go start spending the state's money" - on psychologists,
investigators, the lavish cast of capital trials. Ms Scardino included an
estimate of the cost of going to trial in a recent plea bargain.
The mystery of the empty vial
Even in vengeful Texas, she thinks, voters will eventually say of egregious
villains, "Let him rot" in prison instead. Like exonerations, says Cassandra
Stubbs of the American Civil Liberties Union, the exorbitant costs are a flaw
that attracts widespread disapproval. They create an extra injustice: just as
it was once unfair for death sentences to be reserved for the poorest criminals
with the worst lawyers, so it is equally unjust for some to be spared on
account of being tried in poor jurisdictions. A further upshot is an average
delay between sentencing and executions that, at the last count, had risen to
16 years. The experience of Dale Cox, a prosecutor in Caddo Parish, Louisiana,
is emblematic. He has been characterised as a juridical angel of death because
of his outspoken advocacy of the ultimate punishment. Nobody prosecuted by Mr
Cox has ever been executed.
Even when the appeals are exhausted, enacting a death sentence has become
almost insuperably difficult - because of an outlandish cameo by the
pharmaceutical industry. Obtaining small quantities of drugs for lethal
injection, long the standard method, might seem an easy task in the world's
richest country; but export bans in Europe, American import rules and the
decision by domestic firms to discontinue what were less-than-lucrative sales
lines has strangled the supply. Arizona's latest chemical misadventure is
typical of the resulting travails. As Dale Baich, a public defender there, puts
it, with several others the state was recently caught in "a drug deal gone
bad", after it tried to buy a deadly compound from a middleman in India; the
batch was impounded by federal officials at Phoenix airport. This squeeze has
obliged states to experiment with new concoctions and suppliers, not all of
which are reputable. Those manoeuvres have given rise to gruesomely protracted
executions - and still more litigation.
Lethal injection was intended to be reassuringly bloodless, almost medicinal
(as, once, was electrocution). Should it become impractical, it is unclear
whether Americans will stomach a reversion to gorier methods such as gassing
and shooting: they are much less popular, according to polls. The death
penalty's coup de grace may come in the form of an empty vial.
Or it may be judicial rather than pharmaceutical: performed in the Supreme
Court, the most obvious suspect of all. In an opinion issued in June, one of
the left-leaning justices, Stephen Breyer, voiced his hunch that the death
penalty's time was up. He cited many longstanding failings: arbitrariness (its
use varying widely by geography and defendants' profiles); the delays; the
questionable deterrent and retributive value; all those exonerations (Mr Breyer
speculated that wrongful convictions were especially likely in capital cases,
because of the pressure to solve them). He concluded that the system could be
fair or purposeful, but not both. Meanwhile Antonin Scalia, a conservative
justice, recently said he would not be surprised to see the court strike
capital punishment down.
Cue much lawyerly soothsaying about that prospect. Yet the legal denouement is
already in train: a joint enterprise between state courts, legislatures and
governors. Of the 19 states to have repealed the death penalty, 7 have done so
in the past 9 years. Others have imposed moratoriums, formal or de facto,
including, in 2015, Arkansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Montana and Pennsylvania. The
number that execute people - 6 in 2015 - is small, and shrinking. (After their
legislature repealed the death penalty in May, Nebraskans will vote in 2016 on
reinstating it; but their state hasn't executed anyone since 1997.) These
machinations may help to provoke a mortal blow from the Supreme Court. After
all, the fewer states that apply the punishment, the more "unusual", and
therefore unconstitutional, it becomes.
Juries; exonerees; prosecutors, both incompetent and pragmatic; improving
defence lawyers; stingy taxpayers; exhausted victims; media-savvy drugmakers:
in the strange case of the death penalty, there is a superabundance of
suspects. And, rather as in "Murder on the Orient Express", in a way, they all
did it. But in a deeper sense, all these are merely accomplices. In truth
capital punishment is expiring because of its own contradictions. As decades of
litigation attest - and as the rest of the Western world has resolved - killing
prisoners is fundamentally inconsistent with the precepts of a law-governed,
civilised society. In the final verdict, America's death penalty has killed
itself.
(source: The Economist)
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