Nov. 11
CONNECTICUT:
William Petit is elected to Connecticut state senate 9 years after his wife and
daughters were killed in a vicious home invasion
The doctor whose wife and 2 daughters were murdered in a horrific home invasion
in 2007 has been elected to the Connecticut state senate.
Dr William Petit, the sole survivor of the attack that claimed the lives of his
family, defeated Betty Boukus in the 22nd District, which covers Plainville and
New Britain.
His wife Joanna Hawke-Petit, 48, and their daughters Michaela, 11, and Hayley,
17, died in their family home at the hands of Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven
Hayes.
Mrs Hawke-Petit was raped and strangled and the 2 daughters were both sexually
assaulted before being tied to their beds and burned alive.
Dr. Petit was beaten with a baseball bat, tied up and taken to the basement,
but he managed to escape and crawl to a neighbor's house for help.
The trial in 2011 heard how his wife was forced to withdraw $15,000 from a bank
after the criminals threatened to harm her family.
When they returned, Mrs Hawke-Petit was raped before being strangled to death.
Her 11-year-old daughter was also sexually assaulted.
Komisarjevsky and Hayes then doused the home in Cheshire, Connecticut, with
gasoline and set it ablaze.
Hayley and Michaela died on 23 July 2007 of smoke inhalation while tied to
their beds - unable to escape.
Dr Petit revealed the details of what happened on that fateful night in his
book, The Rising, Murder, Heartbreak, and the Power of Human Resilience in an
American Town, by Ryan D'Agostino.
Komisarjevsky and Hayes were both initially sentenced to death, but they were
taken off death row and re-sentenced to life imprisonment.
Dr Petit, a Republican, said he has no plans to try to revive Connecticut's
death penalty when he won his state senate seat.
The race hit the headlines last month when a labor union's political action
committee ran an advert that tried to link Petit to Donald Trump and 'attacks
on women and families.'
Speaking at the time, Dr Petit said: 'I feel they're quite malicious and attack
my character and reputation and have absolutely no truth.
'I'm appalled that anyone would stoop this low.'
(source: dailymail.co.uk)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Death penalty sought for Cumberland County dad accused of shaking, beating
infant son
In the 6 weeks that Connor Howard-Bee was alive, he was shaken, beaten,
squeezed and even had thumbs pressed into his eyes, all in an effort to get him
to stop crying, authorities say.
The young boy died from his injuries a year ago, and his 23-year-old father,
John Tyler Howard-Bee, is facing the death penalty.
But his trial in Cumberland County Court won't come for yet another year.
Howard-Bee, of South Middleton Township, is facing charges that include
1st-degree murder, aggravated assault and child endangerment in the death of
his son, whom police say had multiple skull fractures, brain swelling,
hemorrhages, a broken femur, fractured ribs and bruises on his body that were
too numerous to count.
A pre-trial hearing was held on Thursday, and Judge Thomas A. Placey set a
trial date for Nov. 6 - a year away at the request of the Cumberland County
Public Defender's Office as they prepare for the death penalty case.
1st-degree murder is the only crime in Pennsylvania that is punishable by
death, and at least 1 of a list of 18 possible aggravating circumstances must
be present in order to seek the death penalty.
Senior Assistant District Attorney Nathan Boob said he gave notification
earlier that the office is seeking the death penalty because the aggravating
circumstances of torture and the child's young age are present in this case.
When charges were first filed last year, Cumberland County District Attorney
David Freed said, "If you look at the injuries that took place and you consider
the short time [the baby] was on the planet, and the healing fractures, you can
draw a reasonable conclusion that this was going on from very, very early on
and it was sustained."
Connor was also malnourished, making this one of the worst cases local law
enforcement has seen, he added.
Medical personnel found the child unresponsive in Howard-Bee's mobile home a
year ago today, and police say Howard-Bee denied causing the injuries, telling
police the baby had fallen off of a bed and possibly hit his head.
But investigators say Howard-Bee shook his son and yelled, "Why won't you let
me sleep?" when he was bothered by the child's crying. Connor continued to cry,
and his father struck him and jammed his thumb into the baby's eye socket in an
attempt to stop him, according to police.
Connor was pronounced dead 2 days later at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey
Medical Center.
An autopsy revealed the boy died of multiple traumatic injuries.
His heart was donated to the Gift of Life Donor Program, Freed said, adding,
"We are going to do our utmost to get justice for this little boy."
(source: pennlive.com)
FLORIDA:
Florida Supreme Court upholds death row inmate's sentences in 2007 Polk County
murders
The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the death sentences of a man
convicted of committing 5 murders in the span of a week in Polk County.
The rulings come less than a month after the court ruled in Hurst vs. Florida
that Florida juries must unanimously decide to put a defendant to death.
In 1 ruling, the court upheld the death sentences Leon Davis Jr. received for
the murders of 2 men. That was in part because he waived his right to have a
jury in the penalty phase of that case. Instead, Davis, now 38, opted to let
the judge impose the sentence.
Those murders took place on Dec. 7, 2007, when Davis fatally shot Dashrath
Patel and Pravinkumar Patel at a BP gas station on Interstate 4. He was
convicted of those crimes in October 2012.
In another ruling, the court upheld the death sentences for Davis for burning 2
women to death on Dec. 13, 2007. The jury in that case unanimously recommended
that he be put to death.
That was the day Davis robbed an insurance office in Lake Wales and set 2
employees, Yvonne Bustamante and her pregnant sister-in-law Juanita "Jane"
Luciano, on fire.
They both died. Davis was found guilty in 2011. A jury unanimously recommended
the death sentence for the murders of both women. Luciano's newborn son,
Michael Bustamante Jr., was delivered but eventually died. For that, the jury
voted 8-4 for the death penalty, but the trial judge reduced it to a life
sentence.
"The unanimous recommendations here are precisely what we determined in Hurst
to be constitutionally necessary to impose a sentence of death," the court's
opinion read. "Accordingly, Davis is not entitled to a new penalty phase."
Davis is among the 43 death row inmates who filed direct appeals with the
state's highest court after the U.S. Supreme Court found that the way Florida
condemned people to die was unconstitutional because it allowed a judge to
overrule a jury verdict and impose a death sentence. State legislators
responded in March, rewriting the law to require at least a 10-2 death vote.
But last month, the state Supreme Court went a step further by requiring that
juries must be unanimous in imposing the death penalty.
(source: Tampa Bay Times)
*******************
Justices order hearing for death row inmate in 1976 murder
4 decades after a woman died of injuries suffered in a brutal beating, the
Florida Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a hearing to determine whether one of
her killers should be spared the death penalty.
Justices, in a 5-2 decision, said Death Row inmate William Thompson, 64, should
receive a hearing to determine if he is intellectually disabled.
The ruling stems largely from a 2014 U.S. Supreme Court decision, in a case
known as Hall v. State, that required changes in Florida's system of
determining whether inmates have intellectual disabilities.
In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court found that executing people who are
intellectually disabled, or in the common terminology at the time, mentally
retarded, violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
The 2014 decision rejected Florida's practice of using an IQ score of 70 as a
"bright-line" standard for whether inmates are intellectually disabled.
In Thursday's ruling, the Florida Supreme Court said Thompson had a range of IQ
scores over his life, with several below 75, and that courts had improperly
used the previous standard of 70 in his case.
"Because Thompson's eligibility or ineligibility for execution must be
determined in accordance with the correct United States Supreme Court
jurisprudence, this case is a prime example of preventing a manifest injustice
if we did not apply Hall (v. State) to Thompson," said the majority opinion
supported fully by Chief Justice Jorge Labarga and justices Barbara Pariente,
Peggy Quince and James E.C. Perry.
Justice R. Fred Lewis concurred with the result but did not sign on to the
majority opinion.
Justices Charles Canady and Ricky Polston dissented.
The ruling will send the case back to Miami-Dade circuit court for an
evidentiary hearing about whether Thompson is intellectually disabled.
He and another man were convicted of fatally assaulting Sally Ivester in 1976
in a motel room because she was not able to get as much money from her family
as the men had hoped. Ivester died of internal bleeding and other injuries, the
Supreme Court opinion said.
(source: news4jax.com)
*************
FSU Frat Guy Who Ate Man's Face Off Could Now Face The Death Penalty
The 19-year-old FSU frat brother who had to be pulled off a man's face he was
eating while high on a drug could face the death penalty.
At the time, officers said Austin Harrouff displayed abnormal strength when
four officers and a police dog wrestled him off John Stevens III on the
victim's driveway in Jupiter, Florida.
Authorities think Harrouff was high on flakka when he attacked and killed
Stevens and his wife, Michelle Mishcon, on August 15.
He was originally arrested and charged with 2nd-degree murder.
But the Sun Sentinel reports Assistant State Attorney Nita Denton said the
charge has been upgraded to 1st-degree murder.
It is reported Stevens' son is pushing for the death penalty.
On the night of the attack, Harrouff left a family meal and walked 3 miles
where he stumbled upon the couple outside their home.
He leapt on them in their garage. A neighbor who tried to intervene was also
injured.
Florida State University frat student Austin Harrouff "was on flakka" when he
ate a man's face in the double homicide of John Stevens and Michelle Mishcon.
It's a man-made drug created primarily from a chemical called alpha-PVP.
This is a synthetic version of cathinone, the stimulant made from the plants
Somalians eat in the movie "Captain Phillips."
The sensation and long-term effects it causes are said to be comparable to
high-grade crystal meth or cocaine, with the addition of kidney failure.
The crystal pebbles that make up flakka can be snorted, injected, smoked or
ingested.
Some of the 1st reported cases of flakka use emerged more than a year ago in
Florida.
(source: elitedaily.com)
ALABAMA----impending execution
Federal judge may allow Alabama to execute inmate using new 1-drug method
A federal judge may allow Alabama to change its lethal injection method for the
Dec. 8 execution of Alabama death row inmate Ronald Bert Smith.
U.S. District Court Judge Keith Watkins, in an order issued Wednesday, tells
Smith's attorneys to submit in writing, on or before noon on Nov. 16 why he
should not order Alabama to execute Smith using "a large initial dose of
midazolam, followed by continuous infusion" of that drug.
Smith is among a group of Alabama death row inmates who have been challenging
Alabama's 3-drug lethal injection protocol for executions. Alabama, along with
other states, have developed different drug combinations after drug
manufacturers started refusing to supply execution drugs the states had been
using.
When death row inmates file lawsuits challenging a state's method of execution
as cruel and unusual punishment, they must offer suggestions to the court of
alternate methods of execution. Among the suggestions by Alabama inmates have
been firing squad and hanging - both options Watkins dismissed because they are
not set out in Alabama law. One lawmaker, however, last week said he will
introduce a bill to make firing squads an option.
Efforts to reach Smith's attorney were unsuccessful prior to publication of
this story. A spokeswoman for the Alabama Attorney General's office said that
office would not comment.
Earlier in the litigation Alabama offered death row inmate Christopher Brooks
the opportunity to be executed by a 1 large dose of midazolam, Watkins noted in
his order. That drug - a sedative - is the 1st drug administered in the state's
3-drug protocol.
Brooks refused and on Jan. 21 became the 1st inmate executed in more than 2
years, using the state's new 3-drug lethal injection method.
After his execution, a witness in the viewing room testified one of Brooks'
eyes opened after the consciousness assessment and remained open until the
curtain was closed in the viewing room, according to the judge's order.
"The eye episode has become a central component of the Eighth Amendment (cruel
and unusual punishment) claim in the current complaint of Mr. Smith, in the
motion to dismiss, and in the response to it - particularly in Mr. Smith's
objection to midazolam as a sedative in the 3-drug protocol," the judge states.
"Mr. Smith argues that midazolam will inadequately anesthetize him, thereby
causing severe pain upon the infusion of the 2nd and 3rd drugs in the protocol,
rocuronium bromide and potassium chloride, respectively."
"It is undisputed that potassium chloride causes severe pain to a conscious
person," Watkins states.
Attorneys for 8 Alabama death row inmates have discussed other methods of
executions in recent court filings in their lawsuits that claim the state's
current lethal injection method is painful and would violate the constitutional
protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The Alabama Attorney General's
Office in July sought to have all seven lawsuits dismissed.
While they feared midazolam wouldn't sedate them enough for the next 2 drugs,
the inmates argued that 1 large dose of midazolam would be enough to kill them
anyway.
Watkins writes that he ultimately dismissed the notion of a one-drug protocol
in Brooks' case as "fraught with peril" arising out of a number of unanswered
concerns.
Use of a single dose of midazolam to execute an inmate has apparently never
been tried elsewhere. But legal arguments in the inmates' lawsuits have cited
expert testimony that a single large and continuous dose of midazolam could be
used to cause death.
Pittman said the Tommy Arthur case prompted him to introduce the bill.
But it's time to reconsider it, according to Watkins. "Changes in the posture
of the case dictate that the court explore the midazolam option pled and urged
by Mr. Smith and presently offered by defendants (Alabama Attorney General's
Office)," Watkins states.
Watkins writes that: Alabama's "offer" for one mega dose of midazolam is not
contingent on Smith executing a consent as was the case with Brooks; "a year of
reflection on the issue brings it to the forefront"; and that a 1-drug
midazolam protocol exists.
"Because Mr. Smith has pled it and offered the option as viable, readily
implemented and available, defendants (Alabama) have accepted the offer,"
Watkins writes in his order.
All the parties agree that midazolam is available, it is feasible, it is
readily implementable, and it is not risky with regard to unnecessary pain and
suffering, Watkins writes in his order.
Watkins also ordered the Alabama Attorney General's Office on or before Monday
to submit to him its plan for administering 1 large dose of midazolam, along
with a copy of its 3-drug protocol for comparison.
Smith, who has been on death row since Oct. 6, 1995, was convicted in Madison
County in the November 1994 slaying of Circle C convenience store clerk Casey
Wilson during a robbery. A judge overrode a jury recommendation for life
without parole and imposed the death penalty.
(source: al.com)
CALIFORNIA:
Death penalty foes move to block measure in court
Death penalty opponents are asking the California Supreme Court to block a
ballot measure that would speed up executions in California.
Former state Attorney General John Van de Kamp says in a petition filed
Wednesday that the death penalty reform measure would create confusion and
upheaval in the courts.
Proposition 66 would reform the death penalty by assigning more lawyers to
appeals and having trial court judges hear some appeals.
The measure was leading with about 51 % of support in ballots counted, but was
too close to call. A dueling measure to repeal the death penalty failed.
The court petition says the measure will cost more money and limit the ability
to mount a proper appeal.
Supporters of a measure to speed up the death penalty say a lawsuit against the
effort is a slap in the face to voters.
The Yes on 66 Campaign said Wednesday that the proposition came about because
voters are sick of lawyers constantly undermining the system with lawsuits.
Opponents of the measure asked the California Supreme Court to block it
Wednesday.
(source: KPCC news)
OREGON:
Man sentenced to death for fatally stabbing inmate at Marion County jail
A Marion County jury sentenced a 45-year-old member of the Krude Rude Brood
gang to death for fatally stabbing a fellow inmate while incarcerated in 2013.
It took the jury less than an hour to reach their verdict after hearing the
prosecution's and defense's closing arguments on Thursday
The victim's family silently teared up as Judge Tracy Prall read the sentence
aloud for David Ray Bartol.
In October, Bartol was convicted of aggravated murder for stabbing Gavin
Siscel, 33, to death with a homemade knife in the Marion County jail's day
room. Siscel was serving a 30-day sentence for contempt of court at the time of
the attack.
Bartol had been incarcerated since March 2013 while awaiting trial for a
robbery. The day before he stabbed Siscel, Bartol was arraigned on attempted
murder charges in connection with a January home invasion shooting in South
Salem.
During closing arguments, Marion County Deputy District Attorney Matthew Kemmy
argued that Bartol deliberately and intentionally murdered Siscel.
Kemmy said the attack was random and unprovoked. He was mad at his former
co-conspirator for talking to investigators, Kemmy said, but the man was in
protective custody, so Bartol lashed out at a random inmate. Siscel was in jail
for contempt and had struggled with mental illness since he was young.
Bartol braided threads from his uniform together and used it to saw through a
plastic tote bin and form a shank. He sharpened the shank by rubbing it against
concrete and dipping it into his toilet bowl. Kemmy said he slept with it
hidden in his mattress.
On the morning of the stabbing, he wrote, "It's a good day for a (expletive) to
die."
According to reports, Bartol walked up to Siscel, who was watching TV in the
jail's day room, and hit him in the jaw with a stolen flashlight.
After stabbing Siscel in the eye, he repeatedly pounded the shank into his eye
socket with a shower sandal until it reached his brain.
Siscel was taken to the hospital, where he died 5 days later.
Afterword, Bartol wrote that the death was a "free kill for my trophy room."
Kemmy said Bartol's attack on Siscel was just one example of his violent and
dangerous behavior. The prosecution brought in 160 witnesses and 330 exhibits
to illustrate his history of threats, assaults and intimidation.
"David Bartol is a frightening, dangerous person.... that will not change," he
said.
In August, a Multnomah County jury found Bartol guilty of 24 counts - including
aggravated attempted murder and kidnapping - for torturing 2 fellow Krude Rude
Brood gang members. The group, a White supremacist gang, became notorious in
Portland for dealing methamphetamine and torturing its enemies. Bartol was
accused of sanding gang members' tattoos off, injecting them with heroin and
shooting them. He was sentenced to 55 years in prison.
Bartol's arrest record spans almost 3 decades and includes convictions for
attempted murder, robbery and assault. Previous court records listed Bartol as
Salem resident.
Kemmy played a recording of Bartol talking about one of the gang-related
attacks on the phone.
"I made him sing me happy birthday after I shot him," Bartol said and laughed.
Bartol was already set to live out his life incarcerated for the attempted
murders. Kemmy said sentencing him to life in prison for Siscel's murder would
be the equivalent of not punishing him at all.
"Gavin Siscel's life is worth more than that," he said.
During the sentencing closing arguments, Bartol's defense attorneys argued that
he should be spared the death penalty because he was intellectually disabled
and has a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. The untreated symptoms of the
disorder caused him to act violently and irrationally, said defense attorney
David Kuhns.
"Each of you will make a life or death decision," Kuhns told the jury.
He said Bartol's mother drank every day and did drugs while she was pregnant
with him, causing him to develop partial fetal alcohol syndrome, a disorder
that can cause sufferers to have limited mental capacities, no concept of risk,
be physically brutal, have difficulty empathizing and be prone to bragging.
Bartol's disorder went un-diagnosed for most of his life, Kuhns said. He lagged
behind at school, began using drugs and ran into trouble with the law as a
teenager. From ages 14 to 45, Bartol received more than 20 different mental
health diagnosis ranging from obsessive compulsive disorder to sociopathy.
Kuhns likened life to running a marathon and the disorder to having a
refrigerator strapped to someone's back during the race.
"It explains why he behaved the way he did," he added.
Since receiving treatment and medication for fetal alcohol syndrome, his
infractions have gone down. Kuhns asked the jury to consider mercy a mitigating
factor and sentence Bartol to life in prison.
"It matters because David Bartol is a broken and damaged person, not an evil
person," he said. "I'm asking that you not give up on (him). He's not a lost
cause."
Kemmy countered that Bartol would not change, and he needed to be held
accountable for the "nauseatingly violent" attack.
"This is a serious thing we're asking you to do," he told the jury.
The trial was rescheduled to run until Nov. 18, but the jury needed less than
an hour to deliberate. After unanimously sentencing Bartol to death, the jurors
were relieved of their duties.
"These are difficult cases," Marion County District Attorney Walt Beglau said
in a statement. "We respect the work of the jury, the court and the parties."
Bartol's defense attorney Steven Gorham expressed his dismay after the verdict.
"It's unfortunate the jury came out with this decision," he said.
The prolonged trial wasted more than $1 million, he added.
"That money should've been spent on something more positive that trying to kill
David Bartol," Gorham said.
After an official sentencing date on Nov. 15, Bartol will join 34 others on
Oregon's death row. No inmate has been executed since 1997. In 2011, then-Gov.
John Kitzhaber placed a moratorium on all executions.
Gorham said he expected to appeal the death sentence.
USA:
Capital punishment ignored
There has been almost no meaningful political conversation this election about
capital punishment. Why have American voters been content to allow another
election season to pass by without addressing the broken death penalty system
that continues in our country in 2016? This is especially puzzling in the view
of the reduction in public support for the death penalty, which is at a 40-year
low. In 1996, 78 % of Americans supported the death penalty. In 2015, only 56 %
were in favor.
In 2016, mass incarceration, police violence toward communities of color and
the failed war on drugs have entered the speeches of both the Republican and
Democratic candidates. It is a human-rights violation, it is cruel and unusual
punishment, it is an ineffective deterrent to crime, it is racist, it is
classist, it is a judgment decided by humans, and therefore imperfect, and it
is incredibly expensive, they would force the candidates to address what they
will do to fix the system.
The fact that it continues to exist in this country, in 2016, matters. It is
time for politicians and the public to give this costly punishment a hard look.
Voters need to make that clear.
Jami Warner, Spokane
(source: Letter to the Editor, Spokesman-Review)
****************
Fell is denied death penalty exemption for disability
A judge has denied a motion that would have spared Donald Fell the death
penalty when he is retried on murder charges early next year.
The defense motion argued that fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which medical
experts said Fell suffered from, should be added to the list of categorical
exemptions to capital punishment.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2002, in the Atkins v. Virginia decision, that the
execution of people with intellectual disability (then referred to as "mental
retardation") violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual
punishment. Fell's defense argued that fetal alcohol spectrum disorder was the
functional equivalent of intellectual disability, even though Fell did not meet
all the criteria as outlined in Atkins. A 2005 Supreme Court ruling also
exempted juveniles under the age of 18 from capital punishment.
In the Fell case, the government disputed the notion that fetal alcohol
spectrum disorder and intellectual disability could be equated. It also argued
there are no agreed-upon diagnostic criteria for the disorder, as required by
Atkins.
In his ruling Monday, U.S. District Judge Geoffrey Crawford wrote, "The court's
sole concern here is whether FASD should be added to the list of categorical
exemptions to capital punishment." Crawford has yet to rule on the defense
team's motions regarding the constitutionality of the death penalty, the
subject of 2 weeks of hearings in July.
Fell was charged in the killing of North Clarendon resident Teresca King in
November 2000. He was later convicted of murder and sentenced to death, but the
outcome was overturned due to juror misconduct. His retrial is scheduled to
begin early next year.
According to John Blume, a professor at Cornell University and the director of
the Cornell Death Penalty Project, very few defense teams have made the
argument that fetal alcohol spectrum disorder - or other cognitive disorders -
should fall under the umbrella of intellectual disability.
"It's not as if that argument is being made in hundreds of cases, but there
have been a few," said Blume. In a 2014 paper Blume reviewed hundreds of cases
that made use of the Atkins defense and said its overall success rate has been
high, about 40 %.
Fell's defense drew on medical records, witness testimony and
neuropsychological assessments to argue that his history of fetal alcohol
disorder was a form of intellectual disability. According to testimony, Fell's
small size and abnormal behavior as a child were consistent with exposure to
alcohol as a fetus.
A neuropsychologist who assessed Fell said he'd experienced "significant
prenatal exposure to alcohol" that potentially damaged his brain. After
reviewing an MRI scan of Fell's brain, a 2nd doctor concluded there was "strong
evidence of prenatal brain damage consistent with a diagnosis in the fetal
alcohol spectrum."
The Atkins ruling established 3 broad criteria to define intellectual
disability, including an IQ score no higher than 70 to 75. On 2 occasions Fell
tested higher, with scores of 93, according to court documents.
However, Dr. Stephen Greenspan, who reviewed Fell's records for the defense,
said the higher IQ scores should not rule out a diagnosis of intellectual
disability. According to Greenspan, the IQ statistic itself is "insufficient to
understand a person's level of cognitive functioning," and there is a growing
consensus within the scientific community that fetal alcohol spectrum disorder
is equivalent to intellectual disability even with the variation in IQ scores.
Crawford said there are too many variables when considering FASD as an
exemption. He wrote that, along with other conditions, it "may provide grounds
for death penalty mitigation" but is not recognized as a "categorical
disqualifier."
"In short, not all people with FASD are intellectually disabled for Eighth
Amendment purposes," Crawford wrote.
According to Blume, the Atkins ruling has not been misapplied by death row
inmates, as Justice Antonin Scalia had warned in his dissent. Scalia predicted
the intellectual disability claim would be used by defense teams to delay
executions. "That in fact did not turn out to be true at all," Blume said.
Blume's research found that only about 7 % of people on death row took up the
Atkins ruling after it was issued in 2002.
However, Blume did say there is strong evidence that in many cases the
prosecution has opted not to pursue the death penalty in light of Atkins.
The Supreme Court is to rule on another Atkins-related case this term. In Moore
v. Texas the court will decide if outdated medical criteria and what 1 Texas
judge has called the "Lennie standard" should be used to determine intellectual
disability. The Lennie standard is based on Lennie Small, the fictional
character in John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men."
(source: vtdigger.com)
***********************
The Death Penalty Thrived at the Ballot Box, but It's Still Declining
When voters took to the polls on Tuesday, there wasn't a major party
presidential candidate on the ballot opposed to the death penalty. That's not
unusual, and although Barack Obama has called it "deeply troubling," the 44th
president also supports capital punishment, as has every commander in chief
before him.
In spite of its declining public support, a majority of Americans still favor
capital punishment as well. That majority was reflected in Nebraska,
California, and Oklahoma on Tuesday, when voters passed pro-death penalty
measures in all 3 states.
In Nebraska, voters brought back capital punishment just a year after state
legislators repealed it. In California, a measure to repeal the death penalty
failed, while another proposition that alleges to speed up the execution
process passed. Meanwhile, Oklahoma became the 1st state to amend its
constitution to protect the death penalty, declaring it legally impossible for
state courts to consider it cruel and unusual punishment.
Considered together, the ballot measures seem to strike a heavy blow against
the decline in use and popularity of the death penalty - but experts caution
against reading too much into 1 election's outcome.
"Certainly it would have been significant if we had won all or any of these
ballot initiatives, but these were a point along a broader continuum," said
Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the
Death Penalty. "These ballot initiatives are not the whole story."
Though the movement to end the death penalty was dealt a setback on Tuesday,
Rust-Tierney urges onlookers to consider the path of another progressive
movement: the ultimately successful fight to legalize same-sex marriage.
Progress was made state by state, starting with a 2003 court ruling in
Massachusetts that legalized same-sex marriage. Yet that victory was followed
by a rash of policy obstacles in other states, as state constitutions were
reactively amended to define marriage as between a man and a woman. After many
gains and setbacks, 12 years later, the Supreme Court issued a ruling
legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. What mattered, Rust-Tierney said, is
that the movement "kept moving forward."
In California, where voters not only rejected capital punishment's abolition
but voted to speed up the process, Elisabeth Semel believes that what appears
at first glance to be support may actually be indicative of confusion. Semel is
the director of the Death Penalty Clinic at the University of California,
Berkeley, School of Law. Proposition 62, which would have eliminated the death
penalty, was supported by 53.9 % of California voters. Proposition 66, which
imposes time limits on the death penalty appeal litigation process, won
narrowly with support from 50.9 % of voters. Semel, who opposed Prop. 66, told
TakePart that the law imposes "absolute disregard for due process." But she
thinks its success reflects the cumbersome nature of the ballot initiative
rather than a surge of death penalty support.
"As I talked to [voters] who were not lawyers, I found they generally
understood Prop. 62 but were absolutely flummoxed by 66," she said. "Some of
them thought, 'Well, if we can't get rid of it, perhaps we can remedy it,'
without understanding the particulars of the initiative."
Though Semel acknowledged that clearly Californians are "not universally in
support of repeal," she anticipates that the "chaos" in the courts that will
result from Prop. 66 will surprise some voters who supported it without
understanding the complexity of the law. "If you look at other things
Californians support in terms of transparency, this is a provision that will
accomplish the opposite," she said. "I don't think it's necessarily of a fair
measure of where people stand."
In spite of the losses at the ballot box on Tuesday, Rust-Tierney expects the
downward trends in capital sentencing to continue. As a report published in
October found, fewer than 1 % of counties where capital punishment is legal
still frequently impose death sentences. While nearly 1/2 of Americans still
support the death penalty, that support is the lowest it has been in more than
4 decades, according to Pew Research Center - a trend that isn't likely to
reverse overnight.
"1 step forward, 2 steps back is not the end of the race," said Rust-Tierney.
"Now is the time to redouble our efforts."
(source: Yahoo News)
***************
How Donald Trump Could Revitalize The Death Penalty----Trump could have a
serious impact on the death penalty if he wanted to. Here's how.
Over the past several decades, President-elect Donald Trump has proved
malleable on a wide array of policy - from Iraq and abortion, to marriage
equality and immigration.
But he has been steadfast in his support for the death penalty.
Back in 1989, Trump paid for a full-page ad calling for the reinstatement of
New York's death penalty to be used on 5 young black men after a grisly and
violent rape in Central Park. Even after the 5 men were exonerated and another
man confessed to the crime, Trump expressed skepticism that the men were
actually innocent, as recently as this fall. More broadly, Trump continued to
advocate for the death penalty in the time since 1989.
Now that Trump will become president, he will have a chance to revitalize the
death penalty. Here's how he could do it.
The Supreme Court
Trump's most obvious effect on the death penalty will be through the US Supreme
Court. The prospect of the court ruling the death penalty unconstitutional in
the near future was already a longshot. Now, abolition would dependent on
support from all 4 more liberal justices and Justice Anthony Kennedy - with no
likelihood of getting a supportive 6th possible vote over the next 4 years.
In practice, the high court's actual interaction with the death penalty is much
more mundane than a hypothetical sweeping ruling on its constitutionality. The
court deals with questions about how the death penalty is carried out: from
decisions about who is even eligible for the death penalty to issues with trial
procedure and sentencing rules to challenges to the methods of execution.
These are the questions that, absent outright abolition, have a massive effect
on how the death penalty works in practice. Another conservative vote (or more)
could have a lasting effect. This is particularly true when it comes to
challenges relating to sentencing law. Justice Antonin Scalia had been a leader
on the court in advancing a resurgent jury trial right, which - in one of his
last votes - was solidly, and broadly, applied to provide the protection of a
jury vote not just for guilt but also as to the sentencing part of a death
penalty trial. Whether that area of law continues to advance - as criminal
defense lawyers hope - could change dramatically depending on Trump's nominee
or nominees to the court.
Reinvigorating The Federal Death Penalty
A Trump administration - from Trump and his attorney general on down - likely
will be more supportive of the death penalty across the board.
The federal death penalty exists, but is extremely rare currently. There are
only 64 people on federal death row, and there's hasn't been a serious prospect
of them being executed in years. There have only been 3 federal executions in
the modern era.
Obama has called the death penalty "deeply troubling" and his former Attorney
General, Eric Holder, was an outspoken critic of it. His current attorney
general, Loretta Lynch, still has not announced findings of a review of the
death penalty that was begun during Holder's tenure. Needless to say, the
outcome of the review - even if it comes before the end of the Obama
administration and is critical of the death penalty - likely will not form the
basis of a Trump administration's implementation of it.
These effects wouldn't only be seen in the higher echelons of the
administration, either. Trump almost certainly will appoint U.S. attorneys more
eager for the death penalty than those under Obama.
Across the country, this could have a broader effect as well. Currently, new
death sentences are way down. The sentences that are given out now are sought
by just a handful of prosecutors, and the cases are incredibly expensive. A
Trump administration could be more eager to help provide assistance to state
death penalty prosecutions - or to seek the death penalty more frequently when
it is possible to do so under federal law.
Allow States To Get (Illegal) Execution Drugs
An important reason executions have been on decline is because there's been a
difficulty in obtaining lethal injection drugs. For years, states have
struggled to find a consistent supply of them after manufacturers began
enacting stringent guidelines to keep their products away from lethal
injections.
Trump's largest impact on executions in the United States could be getting
involved in an ongoing, but little noticed, feud between death penalty states
and the federal government over importing illegal execution drugs.
The states' reliable lethal injection drug for decades, sodium thiopental, has
been impossible for states to get. The sole Food and Drug
Administration-approved manufacturer stopped making the drug to keep it out of
the hands of executioners.
States have turned to illegal suppliers of the drug. Last year, BuzzFeed News
reported that Texas, Arizona, and Nebraska all purchased illegal sodium
thiopental from a supplier in India. Nebraska's shipment never left India. The
Texas and Arizona shipments were detained by the FDA once they entered the US.
2,000 vials of execution drugs have sat in a government warehouse for well over
a year while the states and the FDA argue behind the scenes over whether the
drugs can be released. The FDA argues that there is a court order preventing
them from releasing the drugs.
The decision over what to do with these execution drugs involves the
highest-ranking people at the FDA. Documents obtained by BuzzFeed News show the
commissioner of the FDA asked to be briefed on the issue last year.
With a Trump-appointed FDA head, the decision could be different.
The FDA, under Obama, initially wanted no part of the issue. Years ago, the FDA
allowed drugs to be imported by states wishing to carry out the death penalty,
with the federal agency saying it wasn't its role to regulate execution drugs.
But a federal appeals court panel ruled the FDA didn't have discretion to
ignore a law that says unapproved drugs aren't allowed into the country -
leaving in place a court order that mandates such continued enforcement.
If Texas and Arizona were to sue over such drug importation while Obama was
president, they would not only have to argue that the drugs should be allowed
to come in - they'd have to go much further. They'd also have to argue that the
court order doesn't apply and that the FDA doesn't have discretion to bar the
drug.
Under an FDA commissioner that's more sympathetic to the states' argument,
however, their case could become significantly easier to make. If the FDA wants
to allow the drugs in, states would just need to convince the court that the
earlier injunction doesn't apply now and that the court should defer to the
FDA's interpretation and expertise on what drugs should be allowed into the
country.
Large drug manufacturers in the US and Europe take great lengths to keep their
products away from executioners. That would not be true of small manufacturers
and distributors in countries like India. The change could be huge - and could
allow for a steady supply of execution drugs.
(source: Chris McDaniel is a death penalty reporter for BuzzFeed News and is
based in New York----BuzzFeedNews)
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