July 15
FLORIDA:
New video shows murder suspect escaping Broward County Courthouse
Deputies are searching for a murder suspect who escaped the Broward County
Courthouse.
Authorities say Dayonte Resiles slipped out of his jail jumpsuit and handcuffs
and escaped at 9:30 a.m. from the courthouse in Fort Lauderdale.
Courthouse officials say he was in the process of being unshackled when he
broke free.
The courthouse is on lockdown, according to the Broward County Sheriff's
Office. Deputies are reviewing surveillance video and K-9 units can be seen
searching the courthouse.
Resiles was last seen wearing a white T-shirt and black shorts.
Authorities say he killed a woman in Davie in 2014. Police found her in her
home with her hands and feet bound. She had multiple stab wounds.
He was in court for a hearing over whether the death penalty applies to his
case, according to media reports.
(source: WWMT news)
CALIFORNIA:
Abolish the death penalty; Vote yes on Proposition 62
California's death penalty has been a failure on every level.
Capital punishment is barbaric, unfairly applied and does not prevent crime any
more effectively than the prospect of life in prison. Since it was reinstated
in 1978, the state has spent more than $4 billion on just 13 executions:
Imagine if, instead, the money had been spent on education, on rehabilitating
young offenders or on catching more murderers, rapists and other violent
criminals.
That's how to reduce crime and prevent more people from becoming victims.
Proposition 62 in November would make California the 20th state to abolish the
death penalty in favor of life in prison with no chance of parole. It's time.
No, past time. Vote yes.
A competing ballot measure, Proposition 66, aims to remedy some of the costs
and delays in the current system by speeding up the process of killing
convicts. Speed is the hallmark of places like China, where the average length
of time on death row is estimated at 50 days. It is the opposite of what
nations concerned with actual justice would do.
In the United States, for every 10 prisoners who have been executed since the
death penalty was reinstated in 1973, 1 person on death row has been set free.
One in 10. California has 748 inmates on death row, and the likelihood of
uncovering mistakes continues to grow with advances in DNA and other forensics.
Why not just lock up killers for life? Costs will plunge. The guilty will never
see the daylight of freedom again.
District attorneys throughout the state argue that the death penalty is a tool
to condemn society's most vicious criminals. But this claim flies in the face
of actual evidence: For every year between 2008-2013, the average homicide rate
of states without the death penalty was significantly lower than those with
capital punishment.
Those same district attorneys have unfairly applied the death penalty in
California.
In the past 10 years, Riverside County has condemned murderers to death row at
more than 5 times the statewide rate. Residents of Alameda County are nearly 8
times as likely to be sentenced to death than residents of Santa Clara County.
And juries in California are much more likely to recommend a death sentence for
a black defendant than a white defendant.
The independent Legislative Analysts Office estimates that abolishing the death
penalty would reduce state costs by $150 million every year. The money could be
used to prevent crime by, as one example, solving more homicide and rape cases,
putting away predators who otherwise would claim more victims. It could be used
for education -- lack of a high school diploma is one of the best predictors of
a life of crime -- and for addiction and mental health programs that keep
people out of the penal system, giving police more time to deal with serious
crime.
Donald Heller wrote the 1978 proposition that brought back capital punishment.
He now favors abolishing it. He knows that it costs California $90,000 a year
more per prisoner on death row than it costs to jail our worst criminals for
life.
No other Western nation has the death penalty. California shouldn't share the
values of places such as North Korea, China, Pakistan, Libya, Iran and Saudi
Arabia.
It should shed this dehumanizing and costly practice -- and not speed it up, as
Proposition 66 aims to do. That would actually magnify the inequity and
sometimes outright injustice in the death penalty's application.
Vote no on Proposition 66 -- and vote yes on Proposition 62. Abolish the death
penalty in California.
(source: Editorial, Mercury News)
USA:
Mike Pence's Stance On The Death Penalty Rubs A Growing Number Of Americans The
Wrong Way
With Donald Trump's recent announcement of Mike Pence as his 2016 running mate,
people are rushing to scrutinize the Indiana governor's policy positions and
voting record. One position that has not received much attention, however, is
Pence's stance on the death penalty - perhaps because it appears to fairly
predictably fall in line with the rest of his conservative views. In a
televised CNN governor's panel in February of 2014, Pence expressed his
perspective on the death penalty in his home state of Indiana. In response to
the question of the death penalty ever being removed from the law there, Pence
responded:
I don't see that prospect in the state of Indiana. I support the death penalty.
I believe justice demands it in our most heinous cases.
This may not be pleasing to the increasing number of Americans over the past
decades that, as noted by a Pew Research Center study, do not support the death
penalty. According to the study, in 2013, 55 % of Americans supported the death
penalty. While that marks a majority, it was down from 62 % just 2 years
earlier in 2011. Meanwhile, by 2013, 37 % of Americans opposed the death
penalty, up from 31 % in 2011. Advocates against capital punishment contend
that capital punishment results in the execution of innocent people each year,
has been shown to cost taxpayers more money than it saves, and has not been
proven to deter crime in any significant way.
What is also significant is that in his response on CNN, Pence explained his
stance on the death penalty in Indiana as an extension of his passion for
states' rights, in true Republican style. He says that Indiana's protection of
the death penalty is supported by the "part of the American experiment" that
allows states to craft their own policies, and be "laboratories of innovation"
independent of the federal government.
(source: bustle.com)
*********************
Rutland hearings begin death penalty review
2 weeks of hearings on the constitutionality of the death penalty opened
Monday, July 11, in U.S. District Court in a case that has the potential to
lead to the 1st-ever U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the legality of capital
punishment.
Defense lawyers for Donald Fell, who is facing his second trial in the murder
of North Clarendon resident Terry King almost 16 years ago, are seeking to
strike down the death penalty on the grounds that it is cruel and unusual
punishment. Vermont has no state death penalty - it was abolished in 1965 - but
because the victim was taken across state lines into New York, the case comes
under federal jurisdiction.
Fell was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 2005. However, the
verdict was overturned after revelations of juror misconduct. A retrial is
scheduled for early next year.
U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford said Monday that the hearings have the
potential to "create a rich factual record for higher courts with broader
authority to rule on the big questions."
"The death penalty is one of those handful of topics in the law where morality,
our common history, our views on life and death, and crime and punishment all
come together," said Crawford. "It is a kind of intellectual tinderbox with an
influence on our national discourse somewhat in disproportion to its actual
application."
The case could reach the nation's top court.
"Some people feel this could be queuing up the issue for review by the U.S.
Supreme Court," said Allen Gilbert, former executive director of the Vermont
chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The significance of the hearing lies in the fact that it is before a federal
judge. Although similar arguments are routinely made by attorneys defending
death penalty clients across the country in state courts, this could have
broader implications and lead to the Supreme Court's 1st opportunity to
consider abolishing capital punishment altogether. The high court has ruled in
the past on aspects of capital punishment.
"It could be a very significant series of arguments that are made over the next
two weeks in Rutland," Gilbert added. Fell and an accomplice were accused of
killing King, 53, who worked at a Price Chopper in Rutland, after hijacking her
car and driving it across state lines in 2000. In hearings preceding Fell's 1st
trial, Judge William K. Sessions III ruled the federal death penalty law
unconstitutional. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling,
and Fell was sentenced to die.
King's sister Barbara Tuttle said she and other family members have attended
every court hearing over the past 16 years. "I hope that the judge rules
appropriately in our favor. Donald Fell should've been executed years ago," she
said outside court Monday. "It's just like reliving the whole thing over."
Fell wasn't present for the hearing. He is imprisoned in New York City.
Since King's death in 2000, seven states have abolished the death penalty. In
2005 the Supreme Court ruled that executing anyone younger than 18 was
unconstitutional. Fell was 20 when King died.
Much of Monday's hearing focused on the impact of solitary confinement on
inmates such as those on death row and issues surrounding the selection of
jurors in death penalty cases. Craig Haney, a social psychologist at the
University of California Santa Cruz and the author of "Reforming Punishment:
Psychological Limits to the Pains of Imprisonment," testified on conditions at
the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., where Fell was held while on death
row.
Haney toured the facility last week and presented a series of photographs,
several of which were marked confidential. There were 3 photos Haney said were
of the cell Fell occupied in 2012. It was a rare glimpse inside the walls of a
maximum-security solitary confinement unit. Haney described the Terre Haute
penitentiary as especially restrictive even among solitary confinement units,
with prisoners allowed only 1 hour of exercise a day, 5 days a week. Some
prisoners are also allowed up to 2 hours of leisure time a week, he said.
The cells, about 60 square feet, have solid steel doors with a narrow
rectangular window. Meals are eaten in the cells, which also contain showers
and toilets - thus minimizing contact with other inmates or staff. When family
members visit, they are separated from the inmates by glass and communicate by
phone.
As of 2015, according to Haney, 39 of the 62 prisoners on death row at the
Terre Haute facility had been in solitary confinement for 10 years or longer,
and 10 had been in solitary for 18 years.
Fell's attorney Michael Burt described it as a "prison within a prison."
(source: mountaintimes.info)
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