Sept. 2
PENNSYLVANIA:
Taunting defendant in Easton death penalty case fires his lawyers
Northampton County Judge Emil Giordano allowed alleged Easton killer Jeffrey
Knoble to fire his lawyers Friday.
And that means the new attorneys won't have enough time to prepare for Knoble's
scheduled Sept. 6 trial date. The judge pushed back the trial to January.
Knoble, 26, is charged with killing Andrew "Beep" White on March 11, 2015, at
the Quality Inn in Downtown Easton. Police say White felt sorry for Knoble and
got him a place to stay.
Knoble surrendered to police hours later after a standoff at 1318 Liberty St.
in Easton's West Ward, according to police.
Knoble faces the death penalty.
He has asked to fire his attorneys and then relented multiple times. This time
Giordano granted his request.
The attorneys will come from the conflict counsel list, a list of attorneys
willing to stand in as public defenders but have no ties to the public
defender's office. Knoble formerly had Chief Public Defender Robert Eyer and
public defenders Matt Goodrich and Matt Potts.
Knoble wasn't in court Friday for the decision. His appearances have been
marked with profane outbursts and erratic behavior.
He was scheduled to plead guilty last month to killing White, then showed up
and stuck his tongue out at the victim's family, professed his innocence and
said "Ha ha! Ha ha! Ha ha!"
Assistant District Attorney Terence Houck said he remains prepared to prosecute
Knoble, whether the trial is in September or January.
(source: lehighvalleylive.com)
****************
Easton hotel murder trial delayed until next year
The capital murder trial of Jeffrey S. Knoble Jr. has been delayed until next
year, after a Northampton County judge stuck with his decision to allow
Knoble's public defenders to withdraw from the case.
Knoble will be tried in January, instead of next week, and he will be appointed
a new defense team, Judge Emil Giordano said on Friday.
The order represented the latest delay in the trial of Knoble, who faces the
death penalty if convicted of shooting a man last year inside a downtown Easton
hotel room, then making a cellphone video of the corpse. It came as Knoble has
repeatedly clashed with his lawyers and had outbursts in court, including
mocking the family of the man he is accused of killing.
The delay marked a reversal for Giordano, who had previously said that the
trial would be held in September "come hell or high water." But on Monday,
Giordano allowed Chief Public Defender Robert Eyer and 2 other defense lawyers
to get out of the case, after Eyer cited a "complete breakdown" of the
attorney-client relationship.
Giordano reiterated his decision on Friday, after a closed-door meeting with
the defense in which prosecutor Terence Houck was kept out of the room - a rare
occurrence, given that court rules frown upon ex-parte communications, in which
one side meets with a judge without the other side present.
After the meeting, for which Knoble was not brought into court, Giordano
announced the delay until Jan. 9. Giordano chided the 26-year-old Riegelsville
man's behavior, but said he is nonetheless entitled to new lawyers.
"He has deliberately disrupted the scheduling of this trial and he has made it
impossible for counsel to effectively represent him," Giordano said.
Knoble is charged in the early March 11, 2015, death of 32-year-old Andrew
"Beep" White, who was shot in the back of the head at the former Quality Inn on
South Third Street. Authorities call White a good Samaritan who had rented a
room for Knoble that night because he had no place to stay, then was killed for
his kindness.
In granting the trial's delay, Giordano did so over the objections of Houck,
the county's first deputy district attorney. Houck has repeatedly accused
Knoble of trying to sabotage the justice system through his courtroom antics.
In February, Knoble called his public defenders "bums" and "corrupt." A week
later, he cursed at Giordano, telling him to "Go [expletive] yourself." In May,
Knoble insisted he is a sovereign man who isn't subject to the reach of the
justice system.
More recently, Knoble was in court last month for what was expected to be a
guilty plea in which he would admit to murdering White and accept a sentence of
life without parole. But instead, Knoble asserted his innocence, turned to
White's family, stuck out his tongue and repeatedly said, "Ha ha, ha ha" to
them.
Before Monday, Giordano had rejected prior attempts by Knoble to replace his
defense lawyers. Houck said he had "no idea" why the judge was persuaded this
week that Knoble's relationship with his attorneys was irreconcilable.
"Whatever it was, was kept between the judge and Mr. Eyer, and was sealed,"
Houck said.
Afterward, Eyer declined to discuss the basis for the private meeting.
"There are circumstances that require it, that's all I can say," Eyer said
(source: The Morning Call)
DELAWARE:
Keep death penalty for mass murderers, cop killers
Sunday, Sept. 11, is Patriot Day, the National Day of Service and Remembrance,
as we mourn the date 15 years ago when almost 3,000 people lost their lives and
the United States lost its innocence.
When those 4 planes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the
Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, we realized that worldwide terrorism had
reached our shores.
Since then the United States has had mass murders of innocent children, women
and men in schools, nightclubs, workplaces, churches and theaters by
self-professed terrorists or unhinged individuals.
We usually haven't had a chance to bring these murderers to trial as they
committed suicide or fell to police bullets. None of these killers deserved to
live, which is why if they are caught, complete elimination of the death
penalty is a big mistake.
The death penalty must be retained for especially heinous crimes such as
unprovoked mass killing of innocent people, the murders of police and others
who have sworn to protect us, and especially for the leaders of countries
killing their own people like Syria's Assad. Who would spare murdering
dictators like Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot?
Of course, such callous killers would not come under Delaware law but do any of
the well-motivated individuals and groups seeking to end all capital punishment
really believe these people should not pay the ultimate penalty for their
crimes?
Whenever I hear about the anti-death penalty movement, I think about Barbara
Keating, a friend of my wife and me, who was a passenger on that 1st plane to
hit the World Trade Tower. I cannot imagine the terror she and the others on
that flight must have experienced as they realized terrorists were flying them
to their fiery deaths.
9/11 Rescue
A new book by two University of Delaware professors chronicles the little-known
volunteer evacuation efforts from lower Manhattan by a fleet of boats on
9/11/2001.
"American Dunkirk: The Waterborne Evacuation of Manhattan on 9/11" details the
findings of the Disaster Research Center, a 53-year-old unique institution that
examines and solves complex social problems related to disasters. The center
has been based in Delaware for 30 years.
This rescue can certainly be compared to the 1940 evacuation of 340,000 Allied
troops from the French beaches of Dunkirk.
The book tells us how boat operators and waterfront workers formed a rescue
fleet for tens of thousands of people unable to flee from the towers disaster
by the usual routes of subways, bridges, tunnels and trains. These survivors
were trapped at the water's edge just 350 yards from the collapsed trade center
until hundreds of boats brought them to safety.
The maritime response was perhaps the greatest water evacuation in history,
write James Kendra and Tricia Wachtendorf, directors of the research center.
The book asks, "What can the people and lessons teach us about not only
surviving but thriving in the face of calamity?"
(source: Harry Themal, The News Journal)
ARIZONA:
Study: Maricopa County Near Top In Death Penalty Cases
The U.S. Supreme Court barred execution of intellectually disabled prisoners in
2002.
Since 2006, about 62 % of defendants in Maricopa County death penalty cases
were intellectually disabled, had a mental illness or brain damage, according
to the study.
There are 3 reasons why the percentage is so high, said Dale Baich, an
assistant federal public defender who represents plaintiffs in an ongoing
lawsuit against Arizona's death penalty.
"First, I think the county attorney is skeptical of claims of mental
impairment," Baich said. "The view may be that the accused is somehow faking
it."
The 2 other reasons are: Some defense lawyers have not effectively explained
their client's mental issues to the jury, and the state legislature made it
more difficult for the Arizona Supreme Court to reverse a death sentence, Baich
said.
Authors of the study also named several attorneys as having provided an
inadequate defense of clients facing the death penalty in Maricopa County
courtrooms.
One lawyer wrote that a client with a low IQ "looks like a killer, not a
retard," according to the study. Another didn't tell the jury his client was
born addicted to heroin, had symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome and suffered
head injuries caused by physical abuse.
"Some of the lawyers that were mentioned in this report are still being
appointed to death penalty cases in Maricopa County," Baich said. "I think the
state Supreme Court really needs to take a careful look at who is qualified to
handle these cases."
Arizona has not carried out an execution since 2014.
(source: KJZZ news)
USA:
The death penalty killed Jesus. Is it killing us, too?
Amid the seismic shifts happening within American Christianity, a growing
number of the faithful now oppose the death penalty. The Catholic Church has
long repudiated the death penalty, and many mainline Protestant denominations
do too. Though evangelical Christians have generally favored the death penalty,
even the National Association of Evangelicals has shrunk back from its
previously supportive stance.
Enter Shane Claiborne, an evangelical leader and author who has recently
released a book, "Executing Grace: How the death penalty killed Jesus and why
it is killing us." Unlike some of his progressive Christian compatriots,
Claiborne's approach is Jesus-centric. He wrestles with the issue through the
lens of Jesus' story, teachings, and crucifixion. On the latter, Claiborne
emphasizes that Jesus was himself killed by means of capital punishment. Here
we discuss what how he believes the executed first-century rabbi changes the
way we should think about state-sanctioned death.
RNS: You admit in Executing Grace that you have an agenda, so let's get that
out of the way. What is your agenda exactly?
SC: I want to abolish the death penalty. And I believe we can. Death sentences
are the lowest they've been in 40 years, and executions the lowest in 20 years.
Every year a new state abolishes the death penalty, and only a handful of
states are actually executing. I don't think the question is if will abolish
the death penalty but when.
We're also seeing many conservative and evangelical voices rising to the
occasion. One study has shown 80 % of millennial Christians are against the
death penalty. I'd love to see Christians be a part of making history. We can
do better than killing to show that killing is wrong.
RNS: You say "the nagging problem of Jesus" is the greatest obstacle for
pro-death penalty Christians. Explain. SC: First, it must be noted that the
death penalty has succeeded in America not in spite of Christians, but because
of us. Wherever Christians are most concentrated is where executions have been
most concentrated. 85% of executions take place in the Bible belt. As my friend
Dale Recinella, chaplain on Florida's death row puts it: "The Bible belt is the
death belt." This troubles me. Many of my fellow Christians have lost the
centrality of Jesus, and we've used - and misused - Scripture to contradict
Christ.
RNS: You mention Jesus, but what about the Hebrew scriptures? Didn't God
establish the death penalty?
SC: The problem with this line of reasoning is that murder was not the only
crime that warranted death in the Old Testament. There were some 30
death-worthy crimes listed including working on the Sabbath, witchcraft,
adultery, and disrespecting your parents. But here's the catch. The law also
made it nearly impossible to execute someone. The criteria was so strict that
executions rarely happened. The rabbis of old said that if a high court
executes more than one person in 70 years it is a bloody court.
But that is where Jesus becomes so important. For Christians, Jesus is the lens
through which we read Scripture and understand how we are to live. And it is
Jesus who becomes the "nagging problem" for pro-death-penalty Christians. Jesus
said things like "Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy" and
"inasmuch as you forgive you will be forgiven." It becomes impossible to
justify the death penalty with Jesus. When asked if Jesus would support capital
punishment only 5 % of Americans think he would.
RNS: Get specific. The Old Testament mentions an "eye for eye" standard of
justice. How do you understand this and how does Jesus factor in?
SC: The "eye for an eye" law was intended to be a limit to retaliation, not a
license for it. The goal was to stop the cycle of violence rather than validate
or escalate it. One way of thinking of it would be "an eye for an eye ... no
more." If someone broke your arm, you couldn't go break both of theirs, or burn
their house down. Even today, we don't rape those who rape to show that rape is
wrong. But somehow in the most severe case of murder we sometimes still cling
to this idea that we can kill those who kill to show that it is wrong to kill.
Ironically, it's Christians - not Jewish people - who use the Hebrew law to
justify the death penalty. Even though there were 30 death-worthy crimes in the
Old Testament, the Jewish community didn't like execution and did away with
capital punishment hundreds of years ago.
Jesus comes along and says, "You've heard it said 'an eye for an eye ... but I
tell you." He says that even if you have a legal right to retaliate, that
doesn't make it right. Limiting violence, as God did in the Old Testament, was
a good start. And Jesus fulfills that by saying we shouldn't harm those who
harm us at all. Moses's law limited violence. Jesus wanted to heal us from
violence altogether.
RNS: The subtitle of your book stuns me like ice water: "How the death penalty
killed Jesus and why it's killing us." What about Christians who say - ala
Isaiah - that God, not the death penalty, killed Jesus?
SC: It's so important to see Jesus as one who was executed. At the heart of
Christianity is an executed Savior, one who was convicted, jailed, shamed, and
sentenced to die at the hands of the state beside 2 other convicted felons.
This has held the secret power of the Gospel to oppressed people around the
world.
During slavery and lynching, black folks in America looked at Jesus hanging on
the tree and saw him as one who was lynched. What if we thought of the cross
like we think of a noose, or an electric chair? For centuries, the cross was a
terrible symbol of horror, humiliation, and torture. Colossians says that as
Jesus willfully dies forgiving those who kill him, he makes a spectacle of
death. He triumphs over them with love, forgiveness, and grace. Love steals the
show, and turns this tragic story into a love story. Now, any time we rejoice
in death, we disgrace the cross.
RNS: Fine. But how could a loving God sacrifice his son, as Christianity holds,
unless that God believed in capital punishment?
SC: I once received an email that asked, "How can God be against the death
penalty when God used it to save the world?" How we understand Jesus's death -
his execution - is a critical question. Some ways of understanding why Jesus
died are toxic and confusing. There are versions of theology that would suggest
God had a gun pointed at humanity, and then turned the gun away from us and
killed Jesus. I believe Jesus is doing something much different, much deeper
and much more beautiful on the cross.
The Bible is full of messed up people, even people who have committed terrible
crimes like murder. One of the first murders in the Bible is none other than
Moses. Then, there's David who took another man's wife and ended up killing
that man to cover his tracks. Saul of Tarsus was by every definition a
terrorist, a religious extremist, who went door to door trying to kill the
early Christians. He oversaw the execution of a young man named Stephen, one of
the church's first martyrs. But he has a radical conversion. If we believe
murderers are beyond redemption, then we can rip out half the Bible. Jesus
?comes in the middle of this story to expose the violence and evil we are all
capable of, and triumphing over it in love, forgiving even those who kill him.
The Bible would be much shorter with out grace. In the end, this is a love
story. It is about imperfect people falling in love with a merciful God. It
reminds that none of us are beyond redemption - not Moses, or David, or Saul,
or you, or me. God's grace is bigger than we can ever imagine.
RNS: Like you, I oppose the death penalty. But I struggle when people ask me
about justice for the victims of violent crimes. How is an anti-penalty
position compassionate to victims and their families?
SC: This is exactly the right question that must be asked. Violence and evil
are real. We see people who are capable of unimaginable brutality, and innocent
people must be protected. God is a God of grace, but also a God of justice.
Sometimes folks ask, "What if someone killed your wife or mom?" Actually it is
the victims of violence who are against the death penalty that captured my
heart. They have become some of the most credible voices in the abolition
movement and have taught me that the death penalty is not the best form of
justice. It sentences the families to relive the horror for 10 to 20 years,
since our system is so broken. The death penalty is much more expensive than
alternatives like life in prison, which means less resources available for the
victims' service and prevention.
Some of the most stunning examples of healing I've ever seen are families of
the murdered who have decided against execution and found better forms of
justice and closure. They are living testimonies to the power of grace and
forgiveness to heal the heart. They have taught me that when we kill those who
kill, we become the very thing we hate. We promote violence, revenge, and
retaliation. Dr. King said that capital punishment is "society's final
assertion that we will not forgive." Violence is the disease, not the cure. The
death penalty creates a whole new set of victims.
(source: Opinion, Jonathan Merritt, Religion News)
**************
Life Requires More From Us Than Death: Ending The Death Penalty In Charleston,
Too
The United States of America was born in violence. The brutality, severity, and
ubiquity of violence during slavery preceded and followed our country's
founding. It was, indeed, inscribed and fundamentally baked into the parchment
of our constitution. For many of us this is a difficult and disturbing truth to
face, but one we know too well. It persistently unsettles the meaning of our
democracy and search for a more perfect union. It too often disturbs
long-cherished beliefs and practices and disrupts visions of what our future
holds. The death penalty has been and remains an essential and consistent form
of this American violence - often its messenger - and it is time to stop.
For the first peoples of this land, communities of African descent, other
communities of color and poor people, news about America the violent, is not
really news at all. Ours is a different recognition grounded in a historic set
of oppressions established through searing social custom, legislative fiat,
religious teachings, and racial taxonomies. Enslavement, segregation,
discrimination, criminalization, removal, poverty, second-class citizenship,
and all manner of brutality and violation are its legacy. It is a legacy that
continues still, nowhere more prominently than in the continued administration
of the death penalty.
Oppressions based on race, gender, class, sex, ethnicity and so much more have
had deep material and spiritual consequences for our national community life.
Long before ascending to the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall battled the death
penalty on behalf of Black lives in the South that were diminished and treated
as inconsequential, cheap, abbreviated, and expendable. Marshall's 1940's
heroics in the killing fields of Lake County, Florida, included exposing and
challenging brandings, lynchings, rape, abuse, burnings, and bombings. Today,
many of those atrocities have given way to predatory lending, redlining, mass
incarceration, health disparities, voter exclusion, 3 strikes, stop and frisk,
and stand your ground. The struggle against state-sanctioned violence,
homegrown terror, sexual aggression, bullying, profiling, shootings, killings,
and assassinations racks the increasingly fragile American psyche. The death
penalty, then as now, is the tip of this iceberg.
"Death and the instruments of death must be eliminated from our criminal
justice system. Our historic struggle against state-sanctioned terror requires
it."
Americans are not alone in the urgent struggle to reclaim our deeper humanity.
The world over is seized with dehumanizing pain. It has long been so. Nelson
Mandela, and all of Africa, bore the pain and scars of violent imperialism and
systems that by law and practice denied African humanity. Mandela saw that
there could be no future for South Africa or its Black population if the death
penalty, as instrument or symbol remained. Today, indifference and hatred seems
to grow more debilitating by the moment. Violence and terror is without
boundary. From Palestine and Paris to African Mediterranean refugee routes and
Syria, the refrain is agonizingly personal and distressingly the same. Old
divisions have become new. We have seen "all the oppressions that are practiced
under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 4:1)
There is so much in our experience as African Americans, as a people who have
undergone the terror, who were once forcibly enslaved, the raped and the
lynched, the foreclosed and the incarcerated, to warrant our hatred of this
country. This simple and seldom-expressed truth courses through our veins and
has always been known and feared in this land by others, including the
perpetrators. Yet somehow, African America remains true to itself, waging
justice in the face of this nation???s grave shortcomings, and our own
apprehensions no less, declaring that we will find a way to live together in
this rainbow nation and world and not perish together as fools. We care enough
to advocate for right, to challenge institutional racism, to be collectively
angry and morally indignant over the senseless loss and devaluation of Black
lives. In critical solidarity with other communities of struggle, we are
forging new meanings of justice and the birth of a new nation.
Truth telling, the call for public conversations on race, racism, and
recognition of intersectional realities - state and domestic forms of violence,
police shootings and the shootings of police, health and gender equity, queer
and transgender equality, Islamophobia and immigration, to name a few - is
terribly important. We must learn how to talk meaningfully about and act
effectively against the complex realities of racism. No death penalty trial,
whether in Charleston, Boston, or Texas, will contribute one iota, to this
necessary national conversation. A new vocabulary and a new resolve in this
present moment are required.
Truth telling also requires something even more courageous of us. Sometimes, we
have to commit to do the unnoticed restorative work of laying the foundation,
of walking the talk, of consensus-building, of consciousness-raising, one
individual at a time, of sustaining the movement toward a more just,
sustainable, and inclusive world that is ours to envision even if it has not
yet appeared on the horizon.
1 year ago in Charleston, South Carolina, 9 people were killed during Bible
study and prayer, by a 21 year old self-professed white supremacist; 5
survived, including a child. In the current maelstrom, there are those who seek
to hold the killer accountable by death. Such a response is certainly
understandable. In some quarters it may even be accepted wisdom. But successful
prosecution of the death penalty extends our national cycle of violence and
death and the almost certain continued disproportionate execution of people who
are Black, Brown, poor, and impaired - the traditional subjects of capital
punishment, a penalty rooted in racial terrorism.
We, therefore reject the notion that you offer reparations to those who have
suffered racial violence by offering more violence. Our just obligation is to
hold the killer fully accountable, honor the legacy of the lives lost, and
promote the restoration of health and well-being to a devastated community. A
severe prison sentence of life without possibility of release, and ultimately
death in prison is a devastating, lifelong punishment that powerfully,
importantly, rejects the barbarism of state-inflicted death. It also allows for
redemption. Death and the instruments of death must be eliminated from our
criminal justice system. Our historic struggle against state-sanctioned terror
requires it. The God of life expects no less.
There is a resurgent movement today insisting it is time to end state violence
and systemic oppression, to break the endless cycle of racial animus, trauma,
and death. 19 states have abolished the death penalty, 7 in the last decade. 4
Governors have imposed moratoria on executions and new death sentences and
executions have been reduced nationwide. The Democratic Party platform during
this critical election year calls for abolition and public support for the
death penalty is at an all-time low. Dismantling the death penalty is a crucial
component for communities of struggle to reach their full potential.
A wellspring of strength is found in the most incredible of places: The
historic Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The 9 murdered
saints. The 5 survivors.
There is an opportunity to unite with countless courageous others who have
called on our nation and our world to learn to return love for hate at this
crossroads in history. Nelson Mandela. Martin Luther King, Jr. Coretta Scott
King. Bernice King. Daddy King. Thurgood Marshall. Desmond Tutu. William
Barber. Bryan Stevenson. Cornel West. Harry Belafonte. KRS-One. Big Boi.
Ta-Nehisi Coates. Michelle Alexander. Angela Davis. Some of those others have
directly lost loved ones to violence. Some have directly challenged the
prison-industrial complex. All have opposed the death penalty. All are
champions for justice. All have said that the death penalty only perpetuates
the endless cycle of death. All say Not in Our Name. All have testified that
the right to life and dignity is greater than retribution and fear. Life
requires more from us than death. Let us work for such a world above all else.
(source: Alton B. Pollard, III, Ph.D.--Dean and Professor of Religion and
Culture at Howard University School of Divinity; Henderson Hill Veteran
criminal defense and civil rights attorney and trial advocacy instructor based
in Charlotte, NC.----Huffington Post)
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