May 20
NORTH CAROLINA:
Former Republican North Carolina Chief Justice Comes Out Against the Death
Penalty
In a Huffington Post blog yesterday that was reposted by NC Policy Watch today,
I. Beverly Lake III - a former justice on the N.C. Supreme Court who served as
an associate for from 1994-2000 and then as its chief justice until 2006, and
who unsuccessfully ran for governor against Jim Hunt in 1980 - wrote that
"protecting the innocent from a death sentence isn't enough" and implied that
the death penalty "probably cannot" ever be constitutional under the Eight
Amendment.
Lake sat on the court during 34 of the 43 executions carried out in North
Carolina since 1977; since leaving the court, he's become an advocate for
criminal justice reform through his work in helping to establish the Innocence
Inquiry Commission, but this op-ed is his strongest stance against the death
penalty yet.
After establishing his former bonafides as a "tough on crime, pro-law
enforcement individual," he writes:
After decades of experience with the law, I have seen too much, and what I have
seen has impacted my perspective. First, my faith in the criminal justice
system, which had always been so steady, was shaken by the revelation that in
some cases innocent men and women were being convicted of serious crimes. The
increased availability of DNA testing in the early 2000s highlighted this
problem so clearly to me. I spent the next decade working with others to devise
systems and develop task forces dedicated to the prevention of wrongful
convictions in North Carolina. I take, I believe, justifiable pride in the fact
that North Carolina established the 1st state Innocence Inquiry Commission in
the country. Numerous legal experts publicly acknowledge that the safeguards
that have been implemented in North Carolina are wildly successful. However,
one thing we did not adequately address is that individuals with intellectual
disabilities, mental illness, and other impairments are more likely to be
wrongfully convicted. The case of Henry McCollum and Leon Brown makes that
point vividly clear. McCollum was 19 and Brown was 15 when they confessed to
the rape and murder of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie. Both men are intellectually
disabled, which greatly increased their susceptibility to false confession. As
a result, they spent 31 years in prison, including time on death row, for a
crime they didn't commit.
Lake's op-ed comes as the Supreme Court this week deices whether or not to take
up the case of Lamondre Tucker, a Louisiana man with an IQ of 74 who murdered
his ex-girlfriend when he was 18. Back in September, the Louisiana Supreme
Court upheld his death sentence. Lake mentions Tucker specifically:
Taken together, these factors indicate that he is most likely just as impaired
as those individuals that the Court has determined it is unconstitutional to
execute. Yet, because of a variety of systemic factors, including ineffective
legal representation, Tucker sits on death row. Ten former State Supreme Court
justices signed an Amicus brief last month questioning the constitutionality of
Tucker's death sentence due to his impairments. Today I join my colleague's
call. In conclusion, he writes:
Our inability to determine who possesses sufficient culpability to warrant a
death sentence draws into question whether the death penalty can ever be
constitutional under the Eighth Amendment. I have come to believe that it
probably cannot.
Over the past several years, the abolition movement has picked up steam;
although 31 states have the death penalty, 6 states since 2007 have repealed
it, and 4 states have a governor-imposed moratorium. Last year, the
conservative Nebraska unicameral legislature overrode the governor's veto to
repeal the death penalty; later, a petition drive forced the issue to the
ballot in November.
North Carolina hasn't executed anyone since 2006 due to a decision by the North
Carolina Medical Board to bar its doctors from being present, but last year,
the General Assembly passed the "Restoring Proper Justice Act," designed to
restart executions.
(source: indyweek.com)
ALABAMA:
Hideous flaws in Alabama's death penalty
The case of Vernon Madison, a convicted murderer who sits on Alabama???s death
row, exemplifies much of what is wrong with the state???s capital punishment
process.
As the Montgomery Advertiser's Brian Lyman reported, a federal appeals court
last week stayed the scheduled execution of Madison, who killed Mobile police
officer Julius Schulte in April 1985, to consider the convict's mental state.
Madison's attorneys argue state and federal courts haven't sufficiently
considered if his stroke-related dementia has rendered him incompetent to face
execution. They say his condition must be studied vis-a-vis his rights under
the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment and its guarantee
of equal protection.
The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently rejected a request from the Alabama
Attorney General's office to lift the stay. That office argues lower courts
have already reviewed evidence of Madison's dementia and the federal court
ruling is invalid.
While Madison's guilt is unquestioned and he is rightly incarcerated, the
state's eagerness to dispatch him is unseemly, given the history of his trip
through the justice system.
First convicted of capital murder in September of 1985, Madison was granted a
new trial because prosecutors apparently excluded blacks from the jury pool.
His 2nd conviction, in 1990, was also set aside because prosecutors improperly
used testimony from an expert witness.
He was convicted a third time in 1994, but the jury handed down a life
sentence, after hearing the defendant had a history of mental illness. The
presiding judge, however, used a loophole known as judicial override to give
Madison a death sentence.
Judicial overrides are still legal in Alabama, but only barely. The nation's
high court recently ruled Florida's similar allowance of judge-imposed death
penalties violates Sixth Amendment guarantees of an impartial jury trial.
It's likely only a matter of time before Alabama's judicial override rule is
also struck down, necessitating appeals and resentencing procedures for inmates
like Madison, who arrive on death row only because of a judge's whim, prejudice
or political corruption.
Election-year concerns too often play a role in judges' disregarding life
sentence recommendations - they want to show voters they're tough on crime. And
research has shown judges are more likely to ignore a jury's advice when a
white victim or black defendant is involved.
Madison hit the trifecta in shabby prosecutorial and judicial conduct - racial
bias in court proceedings, tainted testimony at trial and a questionably
motivated judicial override sentencing him to death.
Surely, his attorneys from the Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative are
correct that the incompetency question must be thoroughly addressed.
Just as surely, Madison's case illustrates the underlying inequities and
hideous flaws of Alabama's death penalty process and why the state should ban
execution in favor of life sentences without chance of parole.
(source: Editorial, Montgomery Advertiser)
TENNESSEE:
Inmate's Attempt To Prove Innocence Backfires
In an attempt to prove his innocence, a Tennessee prisoner on death row
inadvertently provided more evidence that he committed the crime.
In 2003, Marlon Kiser was sentenced to death row for killing Hamilton County
Deputy Donald Bond, Times Free Press reports.
Yet the man has repeatedly denied the charges, saying his former roommate -
James Michael Chattin - framed him.
Kiser took to his website, FreeMarlonKiser.com, to make his claim:
... James Michael Chattin had discovered that a Hamilton County Sheriff's
Deputy named Donald Kenneth Bond Jr. was seemingly having an affair with Tina
Chattin who was Mike Chattin's wife. On several different occasions, Mike
Chattin has stated to several different individuals that his wife was seeing a
cop and that he was going to kill him, and in the early morning hours of
September 6th, 2001, that is exactly what Mike Chattin did.
And then, to throw suspicion off of Mike Chattin, he ran to police pointing his
finger at me because I had a pending police brutality lawsuit against the
Chattanooga Police Department since 1998 which was scheduled to be heard on
September 17th, 11 days after Deputy Donald Bond's death.
Kiser added that after he found out about Chattin's drug habits, he asked him
to vacate the premise.
That was the straw that broke the camel's back, he said.
"In Mike Chattin's perry old mind, he could not allow me to leave because I
knew entirely too many secrets about him," Kiser wrote, adding that Chattin had
also previously asked him to kill the police officer.
Kiser also started a petition to get him off the death penalty, which has
received over 470 signatures as of May 19. The petition's stated goal is 1,000
signatures.
"Marlon Kiser is on death row, because of police corruption, and police
ineptness," one person who signed the petition wrote in the comments section.
"Marlon knew about Mike Chattin's criminal activities, and therefore Marlon was
a liability to Mike Chattin."
Kiser also petitioned the court for post-conviction relief, Times Free Press
notes. As part of that petition, in March 2015, his attorneys had authorities
test palm and fingerprints on Bond's flashlight and car.
The results revealed the prints were Kiser's. Previous evidence linking Kiser
to the crime reportedly included fibers from Bond's clothes.
(source: opposingviews.com)
ARKANSAS:
Arkansas Supreme Court hears arguments in challenge to death penalty
The Arkansas Supreme Court heard oral arguments Thursday in the state's appeal
of a Pulaski County circuit judge's ruling that a provision in the state's
lethal-injection law protecting vendors of execution drugs from disclosure
violates the state constitution.
Lee Rudofsky, solicitor general for the state, argued that the state has
sovereign immunity from the suit and that a group of death-row inmates who
challenged the law failed to demonstrate that the secrecy provision is
unconstitutional. He asked that the state be allowed to proceed with eight
planned executions, saying the 3-drug cocktail used by the state has survived
numerous court challenges around the country.
"I think the question here is, 'Has the legislation violated Article 19 with
this provision?'" said Justice Courtney Goodson, referring to the
constitutional requirement that state expenditures be public.
Rudofsky argued that the state constitution requires that state expenditures be
disclosed "from time to time," with no timeline requirement.
"It's not a self-executing article," he said. "You need legislation to enable
that clause."
He also said the inmate's arguments about disclosure are irrelevant in light of
their claim that midazolam, the anesthetic the state wants to use in the
lethal-injection process, often fails to cause complete unconsciousness,
leaving inmates to suffer pain from the drugs used to arrest respiration and
the heart.
"The prisoners argue that midazolam in general doesn't work ... not a specific
kind doesn't work or ... from a specific provider doesn't work," said Rudofsky.
"So I don't know why it would matter who the supplier is."
John Williams, arguing for the inmates, received several questions from Justice
Rhonda Wood regarding the use of the drugs on constitutional grounds.
"Are you saying the 3-drug protocol is cruel and unusual in Arkansas but not
cruel and unusual in 16 other states?" she asked, referring to numerous rulings
across the country and the U.S. Supreme Court affirming the protocol.
"Why do we have to keep re-litigating it?" asked Wood."
Because this constitution is different," said Williams. "The text forbids cruel
punishment. Cruel punishment is punishment that will cause a substantial risk
of harm to a prisoner."
Rudofsky, in closing, said the 3-drug protocol is proven effective in causing
death while shielding inmates from excessive pain and said the lawsuit has 1
purpose.
"They want this information for the same reason anti-death penalty activists
want it. To harass suppliers and inhibit the ADC's access to these drugs," he
said.
It is unknown when justices will rule, but the state may be unable to carry out
the executions even if the ruling is in its favor. The state's supply of
vecuronium bromide, the paralytic agent in the 3-drug protocol, expires on June
30, giving the state 5 weeks to either carry out the 8 executions or begin
searching for a new supply.
The last execution carried out in Arkansas was in 2005.
(source: swtimes.com)
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