Dec. 4
OKLAHOMA:
DA to seek Death penalty for Stanford in double-slaying
District Attorney Craig Ladd says he plans to file a "Bill of Particulars"
against the 30-year-old man charged with the May 17 double gunshot slayings of
2 Ardmore men.
Ladd confirmed he would seek the death penalty against Craig Stanford following
Special District Judge Carson Brook's ruling binding the local man over for
trial Friday. Brooks' order was based on evidence Ladd presented during
Stanford's preliminary hearing on charges of the 1st-degree murder that link
him to the gunshot killings of Aaron Lavers, 28, and Anthony Rogers, 28.
The DA called 5 witnesses during the hearing including Matthew Wells, who
discovered the bodies of the 2 slain men inside the residence they were
occupying in the 100 block of A Street NW. In addition, Wells testified
concerning items that had been stolen from the victims??? home and found in
Stanford's possession just days after the murders.
Darryl Newberry, a neighbor, also testified he was awakened during the early
morning hours by multiple gunshots. (The charges accuse Stanford of shooting
Lavers, "... in the head 3 times and the chest once ..." and Rogers, "... in
the head 3 times and in the torso twice...")
Ladd also called Dylan Lewis to the stand. Lewis told the court he was an
acquaintance of Stanford. He said he had been awakened what was apparently was
a short time before the killings by a knock on his door. He said he got up,
looked out and saw Stanford outside his door, but did not answer the door and
went back to bed. He said he later looked outside and saw Stanford's parked
car, went outside but could not find the defendant, who had allegedly walked
from Lewis' residence to the victims' house.
Cpl. Dustin Ragland, Ardmore Police Department Patrol Division, and Det. Matt
Dunn, APD Criminal Investigations Division, also provided testimony that led to
Brooks' ruling he found probable cause to believe Stanford had committed the
crimes.
Court documents show the 5 who testified are among the more than 40 witnesses
endorsed as state witnesses in the case.
Formal arraignment, in front of District Judge Dennis Morris, is set for
Wednesday.
Ladd says it's possible the "Bill of Particulars" could be filed before
Stanford makes his Wednesday court appearance.
Currently Stanford is detained without bond in the Carter County Detention
Center.
(source: The Daily Ardmoreite)
NEBRASKA:
Popularity doesn't equal morality
"Nebraskans were decisive in their choice to maintain the death penalty, and it
is now our duty . . . to carry it out." So states our governor, who contributed
hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money to reinstate capital
punishment "Lethal injection protocol would allow secrecy," Nov. 29
World-Herald).
One of the first things I learned in philosophy class in college many years ago
is that the majority is not necessarily right. If Adolf Hitler had asked the
German people to vote on exterminating the Jews, and the vote had passed, would
we say, "Well, OK, then. So long as the people voted it."
I think not.
The members of the Nebraska Legislature studied the issue of capital
punishment. Many members changed their position on capital punishment through
listening and learning the facts. Our senators abolished the death penalty for
the good of Nebraska.
Now our governor and other prison officials want to veil this heinous procedure
in secrecy? This is abominable!
The state should never be allowed to kill except in defense. Never as
punishment. And never veiled in secrecy.
Marylyn Felion, Omaha
----
Make death penalty cheap, quick
The people have spoken, and Nebraska will retain the death penalty. I oppose
the death penalty from both a moral standpoint and an economic one, but, since
the issue has been decided, let's get on with it.
Lethal injection is a waste of time, energy and money. The state will not be
able to get the required drugs. If the drug protocol is changed, then the state
will undoubtedly face legal challenges.
If Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts is so intent on carrying out an execution, then
he should focus on the quickest and easiest way to accomplish it. The state
should switch the method of execution to firing squad.
A federal judge rejected arguments that it is cruel and unusual punishment. An
Alabama state senator has introduced a bill to use a firing squad.
If the firing squad isn't to the governor's liking, why not the gas chamber
using nitrogen asphyxiation? It's a process that uses no toxic or poisonous
chemicals. The University of Nebraska uses it to euthanize rats for biology
labs. If it's good enough for animals with their zealous ASPCA representation,
then why not for death row?
I urge the governor to work with the Legislature to enforce the death penalty
in the quickest and least expensive way. If we're going to waste money on the
death penalty, can we just waste the least amount possible, please?
Nathan Rice, Omaha
(source: Letters to the Editor, Omaha World-Herald)
****************
Don't cloak executions in secrecy
About 6 out of every 10 Nebraskans who voted in November wanted state
government to continue to try to implement the death penalty.
So it's no surprise that Gov. Pete Ricketts has taken a step toward that end.
It's disappointing that the administration wants to make some parts of the
execution process secret.
The Journal Star editorial board, we should quickly acknowledge, was among the
4 in 10 Nebraskans who favored replacing the death penalty with a sentence of
life in prison.
We continue to think that it's a sad day for justice in Nebraska that the death
penalty is back on the books despite the irrefutable evidence that innocent
people sometimes are put on death row and that the death penalty is applied
arbitrarily.
The immediate question, however, is how the death penalty will be implemented
now that voters have spoken.
The state of Nebraska has never executed a person using lethal injection. The
last person executed here died in the electric chair, which was ruled cruel and
unusual punishment by the Nebraska Supreme Court.
The previous system proved to be unworkable. 1 of the 3 drugs it specified -
sodium thiopental - can no longer be purchased for executions in the United
States.
Now the Ricketts administration is trying devise a new system.
There's no quick fix for the process. A drug now commonly used for executions
is pentobarbital. But the only injectable form of the drug licensed for sale in
the United States is Nembutal, made by the Danish firm of Lunbeck, which
refuses to sell it to prisons. The firm said in a statement in 2011 that it
"adamantly opposes the distressing misuse of our product in capital
punishment."
States, like Texas, use pentobarbital made in a "compounding pharmacy."
The proposed new protocol would keep secret the source of the execution drugs,
although Attorney General Doug Peterson has pointed out that it could be
supplied "internally" by state government, which has pharmacists on its
payroll.
The execution drug and a chemical analysis would be made public 60 days prior
to an execution, according to the protocol that will be the subject of a public
hearing on Dec. 30 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the State Office Building.
The ACLU of Nebraska has already promised to fight in court the Ricketts
administration to keep part of the execution process secret from the public.
"Regardless of how people feel about the death penalty, we should all agree
that Nebraskans value government transparency and accountability in all
matters, said Executive Director Danielle Conrad. She's right.
(source: Editorial, Rapid City Journal)
COLORADO:
Death penalty sought for man accused of killing son, 6----Brandon Johnson is
accused of raping his ex-girlfriend at knifepoint and killing his 6-year-old
son.
Prosecutors in Arapahoe County will seek the death penalty against a man
accused of raping his ex-girlfriend at knifepoint and killing his 6-year-old
son.
The Aurora Sentinel reports 27-year-old Brandon Johnson faces several charges,
including 1st-degree murder of a child and sexual assault, stemming from the
Feb. 10 attack. His attorneys do not dispute that he killed his son, but they
say he acted impulsively and without deliberation.
They also say Johnson would have pleaded guilty and accepted life in prison
without parole if the death penalty were to be taken off the table, but
prosecutors declined the offer.
Investigators say Johnson's ex-girlfriend ran to a neighbor's house, where she
called police to say she had been attacked. The couple's 2-year-old son was
physically unharmed.
(source: Associated Press)
NEVADA:
While an inmate asks to die, Nevada searches for lethal injection cocktail
Scott Dozier wants to die.
And Nevada wants to kill him.
He is 1 of 81 men on death row, but the state Department of Corrections can't
find the drugs to carry out lethal injection, even after spending $860,000 to
build a new execution chamber in Ely.
? After sitting on death row for more than nine years, Dozier sent a
handwritten, two-page letter to his attorneys and District Judge Jeniffer
Togliatti on Oct. 31 requesting that his appeal process cease and he "be put to
death."
The 46-year-old, also known as Chad Wyatt, Raymond Dozier, Scott Raymond Dozier
and Chadwick Quincy Wyatt, offered no explanation for giving up on the legal
system and, in turn, life.
State prison officials recently said that obtaining the drug cocktail for
lethal injection has proved nearly impossible.
Less than a month before Dozier delivered his letter, prison officials
announced that they had sent out 247 requests for proposals after a stockpile
of at least one drug used in executions expired, and not one response was
received. It's unclear whether the state has other options to obtain the drug.
Nevada's last execution, by lethal injection, occurred at the Nevada State
Prison in April 2006.
The state has executed 12 inmates since capital punishment was reinstated by
the Nevada Legislature in 1977. All but 1 were inmates who, like Dozier,
voluntarily gave up their appeals.
A Michigan Law Review article written 2 years before Dozier was sent to death
row analyzed cases of death penalty volunteers and found that nearly 88 percent
of those inmates "struggled with mental illness and/or substance abuse,"
according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The prison has no execution orders pending, but Dozier's could be the next.
When asked what would happen if Dozier's execution were ordered by a judge, a
Corrections Department spokeswoman responded in an email, which stated: "We've
exhausted all current options of obtaining drugs for executions. NDOC is
working closely with the Attorney General's Office, the Governor's Office and
will be working with the Legislature to establish our direction moving
forward."
Officials with the Nevada attorney general's office declined to comment.
Gov. Brian Sandoval said in October that a lawmaker could propose to abolish
capital punishment in the state, but the governor added that he would not make
the suggestion.
Meanwhile, the Clark County district attorney's office filed court documents
asking Togliatti to decide whether Dozier is mentally capable of understanding
his death wish.
Dozier "has the right to stop litigating his case," wrote Chief Deputy District
Attorney Jonathan VanBoskerck , "even if his choice is to submit to a death
sentence."
"We don't force people to undergo invasive competency evaluations just because
we disagree with their decision," VanBoskerck said in an interview with the Las
Vegas Review-Journal.
Meanwhile, defense lawyer Christopher Oram argues that Dozier should be
evaluated by doctors through a separate competency proceeding, which could take
months.
Oram declined to comment further on the case.
A 2-time killer, Dozier was given the death penalty in October 2007 after a
4-week trial for the murder and mutilation of an Arizona man in a Strip hotel.
Dozier was convicted of killing 22-year-old Jeremiah Miller at the now-closed
LaConcha Motel and robbing him of $12,000 that Miller had brought from Phoenix
to Las Vegas to purchase materials to make methamphetamine.
Miller's torso, cut into 2 pieces, was found in April 2002 in a suitcase in a
trash bin at an apartment complex. His head, lower arms and lower legs were
never recovered.
In 2005, Dozier was convicted in Arizona of 2nd-degree murder and given a
22-year prison sentence. In that case, prosecutors said he shot and killed a
27-year-old man, stuffed his body into a plastic container and dumped it in the
desert near Phoenix.
The Nevada Supreme Court upheld Dozier's death sentence in 2012.
Life on death row can be lonely and boring, with the inmates isolated in a cell
for all but 1 hour a day, and Dozier explained as much in a fan letter he sent
to Vice magazine in 2013.
"I've written the magazine before to no avail," he stated, "and will likely
continue to until the government-sanctioned murder of my corporeal being (and
maybe my "soul" too, guess we'll see), as I've got a surplus of time on my
hands and a catastrophic dearth of intelligence, hilarity, and awesomeness. I
can only draw and work out so much."
Another defense attorney, Scott Coffee, who has handled roughly 20 death
penalty cases in the past 15 years, called the pursuit of capital punishment in
Nevada "a catastrophic waste of money."
"The current state of affairs is we don't have the means to execute people,
irrespective of what new building we may have put up," Coffee said. "We're
pushing forward with something we don't have the means of carrying out. And you
have to wonder what the money's being spent for."
Coffee, who analyzes death penalty cases across the country, said the issue is
not exclusive to Nevada.
"It's simply pulling us in line with the rest of the civilized world," he said.
(source: Las Vegas Review-Journal)
CALIFORNIA:
Will California resume executions under Gov. Jerry Brown?
Although he has served as governor longer than anyone else in California
history, Jerry Brown has never been forced to make one of the weightiest
decisions governors face: whether to spare a convicted criminal from execution.
California has executed more than 500 people, but the death penalty has been on
hold pending legal challenges during both of Brown's 2-term stints as governor.
It's been a politically convenient coincidence for the Democrat who rose to
prominence as an outspoken opponent of capital punishment, even as California
voters repeatedly demonstrated support for it.
Their most recent affirmation came this November. Voters rejected Proposition
62, which would have abolished capital punishment, and passed Proposition 66,
which seeks to expedite death penalty appeals. The outcome means California may
resume executions during Brown's final 2 years as governor, potentially
challenging the legacy of the former Jesuit seminarian who was once so morally
opposed to capital punishment that he protested outside the gates of death row.
It's not certain that executions will resume; death penalty opponents have
filed a lawsuit trying to block Proposition 66 and a separate challenge of a
law that gives corrections officials broad authority to establish execution
procedures. A federal court would need to lift a decade-old stay on lethal
injections in California.
But supporters insist they will prevail in court, and that executions will
begin next year.
They were suspended in California in 2006 when a federal court ruled that the
state's 3-drug lethal injection process amounted to cruel and unusual
punishment. Since then, corrections officials have been drafting a new
execution procedure using only 1 drug, while also responding to a tangle of
lawsuits challenging the way they were planning to reinstate the death penalty.
The single-drug plan introduced last year, like many proposed state
regulations, doesn't go into effect until after a public review period. But one
piece of Proposition 66 removes that review period - allowing prison officials
to more swiftly move ahead with single-drug lethal injections.
"The (corrections department) should be able to begin use of the protocol that
it's already established, which means that execution dates can be set," said
Kent Scheidegger, a Sacramento attorney who helped write Proposition 66, and
whom The Atlantic once called "Mr. Death Penalty" for his advocacy on the
issue. "I'm sure it will be an intensely fought battle. But we'll certainly
make the argument that there's been far too much delay and courts shouldn't
delay any further."
If courts allow Proposition 66 to proceed - more action on the suit is expected
after election results are certified in mid-December - execution dates would be
established after district attorneys seek death warrants from the trial courts.
18 of the 748 death row inmates have exhausted all their appeals, making them
likely to be executed soonest.
They include Harvey Heishman, who raped an Oakland woman and then murdered her
in 1979 before she could testify against him; Richard Samayoa, who broke into a
San Diego home in 1985 and beat a young mother and her toddler to death with a
wrench; and Tiequon Cox, who murdered four Los Angeles family members of Kermit
Alexander, the former pro football player who put Proposition 66 on the ballot.
Despite his activism against the death penalty as a young man, Brown never
weighed in publicly on the November initiatives.
"I think he just felt he would be compelled to do whatever the voters decide
and therefore did not enter into the fray," said Cruz Reynoso, a former
California Supreme Court justice and death penalty opponent.
Reynoso - 1 of 3 Brown appointees tossed off the Supreme Court in a 1986
campaign that targeted them for overturning death sentences - said if
executions are scheduled before 2018, he wouldn't expect Brown to block them.
"Jerry Brown, like yours truly, may have a moral position," he said, "but as a
public official will enforce the law."
The governor's staff declined to answer questions about potential executions.
But Brown biographer Chuck McFadden said if executions did resume in his final
term, "He wouldn't like it, not one bit.
"It's an open question whether he would say anything publicly decrying the
execution But he would certainly be unhappy about it, even though he's a far
different person today than he was in 1960."
In that year, Brown famously lobbied his father, then-Gov. Pat Brown, to stay
the execution of a convicted rapist. 7 years later, the younger Brown stood
vigil outside of San Quentin as a cop-killer was put to death inside the
prison.
Governors have broad authority under state law to block executions. The elder
Brown spared 23 death row inmates by commuting their sentences but allowed 36
to be executed. In his biography "Public Justice, Private Mercy: A Governor's
Education on Death Row," Pat Brown described the difficulty of being "the last
stop on the road to the gas chamber."
"It was an awesome, ultimate power over the lives of others that no person or
government should have, or crave," wrote Pat Brown, who contended that his
qualms about it helped Ronald Reagan unseat him in 1966.
After 1967, legal challenges put the death penalty on hold in California for 25
years. Because Jerry Brown's 1st 2 terms as governor (from 1975-1983) came
during this hiatus, he avoided the clemency decisions that had racked his
father.
(source: bakersfield.com)
USA:
Roof trial cannot become racist spectacle
History is not on the side of accused murderers who act as their own attorneys
in high-profile trials. Serial killer Ted Bundy, Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., who
killed 3 people at 2 Jewish centers in Overland Park, Kan., and Fort Hood,
Texas, mass shooter Nidal Hasan represented themselves in court; all were
sentenced to death. It is curious, then, that Dylann Roof, indicted for the
2015 murders of 9 African-Americans in a Charleston, S.C., church, has chosen
to defend himself.
Last Monday, shortly after he was declared mentally competent to stand trial,
Roof requested permission to serve as his own lawyer. Though US District Judge
Richard Gergel called it "a decision you have a right to make," he also warned
Roof his stance was "strategically unwise." That's especially true in a federal
death penalty case, yet there's even greater reason for concern about this
particular defendant's choice.
Roof is a self-avowed white supremacist who allegedly targeted the historically
black Emanuel A.M.E. Church and its parishioners. Prior to the murders, he is
believed to have written a 2,500-word manifesto in which he denigrated
African-Americans and credited himself with having the "bravery" to take his
violent racist crusade "to the real world." On that June night, parents,
grandparents, sons, daughters, and the church's pastor, who was also a state
senator, were slaughtered.
Acting as his own attorney, Roof won't need a rambling statement posted on an
obscure website to garner attention for his ugly beliefs. He's already helping
to choose his own jury; so far, he has objected only to the sole black person
among prospective jurors. Soon he'll have a captive courtroom audience forced
to listen to him, with hundreds of thousands more following along on social
media and news sites. Massacre survivors will endure the particular torment of
being questioned by the stranger welcomed into their Wednesday night Bible
study, where he stayed for an hour before allegedly shooting their friends and
relatives to death.
The Roof trial comes at a precarious time, with white nationalists feeling
emboldened to spew hate without repercussions. Since Election Day, the Southern
Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes, has received more than 900
reports of harassment and intimidation nationwide. In Massachusetts, a hate
crime hotline set up by Attorney General Maura Healey's office fielded 400
calls in its 1st week.
Waving a careless flame in our tinderbox nation, Roof's trial could spark into
a racist spectacle. Even with his life in the balance, Roof may relish a
sideshow to cement himself as a white supremacist hero. While Roof has a
constitutional right to self-representation, Gergel cannot allow him to make a
mockery of the trial, those who were murdered, or those who will forever mourn
them.
Hate delivered this terrible moment; it can't be allowed free rein in the
courtroom.
(source: Editorial, Boston Globe)
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