January 16
TEXAS:
8 years on Texas' highest criminal court turned Elsa Alcala into a death
penalty skeptic. How will the court change without her?----Judge Elsa Alcala
ended her tenure critical of the death penalty and often pleading for policy
changes from the state Legislature.
3 weeks before Julius Murphy was set to die in 2015, the nine Republican judges
of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stepped in.
The court stopped Murphy's execution and later ordered a lower court to take
another look at his case, pointing to allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
But one judge went even further. In a long separate written opinion, she urged
her colleagues to look beyond the specifics of Murphy's case, and to evaluate
something broader: She pointed to the arguments of a national decline in the
punishment, racial disparities on death row and inmates' lengthy stays in
solitary confinement.
In short, Judge Elsa Alcala wanted Texas' highest criminal court to consider
whether the Texas death penalty was even constitutional.
“In my view, the Texas scheme has some serious deficiencies that have, in the
past, caused me great concern about this form of punishment as it exists in
Texas today,” she wrote.
It was a stark split from her court, which handles all Texas death penalty
cases and whose members regularly make life-or-death decisions, sometimes hours
or minutes before a scheduled execution. The opinion, which drew the attention
of the media and reform advocates, wasn't an isolated case of Alcala straying
from her colleagues. In the last few years, she became known for writing the
most opinions of any judge on the court. And her writings often slammed a
system she came to see as deeply flawed.
At the end of 2018, Alcala left her seat on the court, opting not to run for
reelection. Her departure leaves the court without its most outspoken judge and
biggest critic of the current criminal justice system. Advocates wonder whether
the court will now be without a voice pushing for change. But Alcala said she's
not so sure her exit will leave a lasting void. With a relatively young court
(6 of the 9 members have been there less than 5 years), she said it’s too early
to tell if someone will follow in her footsteps.
“The ones that have come in, it’s unpredictable what they’re going to do, and
that’s a fair thing to say because they’ve never seen this before,” she said in
an interview with The Texas Tribune last week. “It took seeing the same kind of
things several times before I finally had done enough of the research and
enough of the background to realize I wanted to step out and actually say
something.”
When Alcala first got to the court in 2011, she was an unknown. The 1st new
judge on the bench in a decade, she was appointed by then-Gov. Rick Perry to
fill an empty seat. She had previously served as an appellate judge, a district
judge and a Harris County prosecutor who had tried death penalty cases, but
when she got to what has been called the busiest court in the country, she said
it took her at least a year to fully understand the complexities of the
caseload in front of her.
The court rules in thousands of cases a year, and Alcala said on a given week
there could be a hundred cases that needed decisions. In the state with the
busiest execution chamber in the country, those decisions regularly involve
deciding whether a person will live or die.
After a year or 2, Alcala said she began noticing what she believed were flaws
in the system, and gaining the confidence to speak out about them, like how
appointed attorneys aren't required late in an appellate process, which she
felt enabled more bad lawyers at the trial level. She wrote more over time —
with her dissents sometimes reaching around 100 pages — and she believed it led
to her colleagues writing more as well, making the court more transparent.
“When I got there, all of a sudden you started seeing all these opinions coming
out, and I thought, ‘Well, they’re coming out because I wrote on it, and at
least the other side is coming out,’” she laughed, adding that she was happy to
have the debate. “I liked the good fights.”
Her fights were applauded by criminal justice reform advocates who rallied
behind her opinions. Aside from her 2016 ruling casting doubt on the death
penalty, she has also publicly opposed the court’s decisions on issues like how
the courts should decide whether a death row inmate is intellectually disabled.
“Judge Alcala’s judicial career was one of thoughtfulness and courage,” said
state Rep. Joe Moody, an El Paso Democrat who has sought reforms to capital
punishment. “On death penalty issues in particular, she let ethics and science
guide her jurisprudence on a topic few understand and fewer still are willing
to take a stand on when it isn’t politically expedient."
Alcala’s evolution on the death penalty wasn’t necessarily unique to the court.
In recent years, two other former judges denounced the punishment at the end of
their decades on the court: Republican Tom Price said in 2014 that the
punishment should be abolished, and Larry Meyers, a Republican turned Democrat,
said 2 years later that a life sentence without parole should be the state’s
harshest punishment.
Meyers' lost his seat in 2016. His challenger, Judge Mary Lou Keel, criticized
him for advocating for policy changes from the bench. Alcala, who also did not
shy away from that, often pleaded with the Legislature in her filings to take
action on things she said the court couldn’t or wouldn’t take up.
In the case of Bobby Moore, where the U.S. Supreme Court has already knocked
down the Court of Criminal Appeals’ old method of determining if an inmate is
intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution, she has
repeatedly asked state lawmakers to set the method of determination and take it
out of the courts’ hands.
And Murphy, the man whose case prompted Alcala's attention-grabbing opinion
questioning the death penalty, recently had his case come back to the Court of
Criminal Appeals. Despite his local prosecutor agreeing to change his sentence
to life in prison, the court still ruled against him, reinstating his death
sentence in November. Alcala addressed state lawmakers directly in her
dissenting opinion, saying they could consider passing a law that would allow
prosecutors and inmates to lower an inmate's sentence if the victim's family
agreed.
Now a former judge, Alcala has officially moved to advocacy, working this
legislative session as a policy director for the Texas Defender Service, a
nonprofit that represents capital defendants and seeks death penalty reforms.
She laughed when explaining her switch to a lobbying position, saying she
wasn’t persuading her colleagues on the court.
“Maybe I can have more success at the legislative level to get somebody to
understand that there are some real true problems,” she said.
As for what will happen to the court, Alcala noted that she has seen Keel and
Judge Scott Walker, both elected in 2016, begin to "step out" away from the
court majority more often. Does that mean someone else will take over as a
voice for reform? She said it's too soon to tell.
“If you ask me what’s going to happen to the court in the future, I don’t
know,” she shrugged. “Maybe someone else is going through that same kind of
evolution, and one day will look in the mirror and he or she will say, ‘I’m not
doing it anymore.’”
On Friday, Alcala sat near the front of the Texas House of Representatives and
watched intently as her replacement, Judge Michelle Slaughter, took the oath of
office. In her remarks, Alcala assured Slaughter she was 100 % behind her and
was excited to see where the court would head.
So far, Slaughter has identified herself as a constitutional conservative who
won’t legislate from the bench. She had a big conservative backing during her
campaign last year, gaining endorsements from Tea Party groups and lawmakers in
the House Freedom Caucus.
“I cannot promise that I will always be right or that you will always like my
decisions, but what I can promise you is that I will work hard,” she said from
the podium in the House chamber. “I will do my absolute best to strictly
interpret and apply United States and Texas Constitution and our Texas laws the
way our founders and legislators originally intended.”
On Monday, the court halted the 1st execution of the year — ordering Blaine
Milam’s case back to the trial court based on changes in science to determine
bite marks and intellectual disability determinations after the Moore ruling.
Slaughter dissented from the order.
(source: Texas Tribune)
VIRGINIA:
Bill would exempt mentally ill from death penalty
A Senate committee has agreed to advance a bill that would protect individuals
with a severe mental illness from the receiving the death penalty.
On a 8-6 vote Monday, the Senate Courts of Justice Committee approved SB 1137,
which states that “a defendant in a capital case who had a severe mental
illness as defined in the bill, at the time of the offense is not eligible for
the death penalty.”
The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Barbara A. Favola, D-Arlington, is being
considered by the full Senate this week.
The bill would establish procedures for determining mental illness (such as
expert evaluators), would require judges and juries to take illness into
account in sentencing procedures and would mandate that it is the
responsibility of the defendant to prove his severe mental illness by a
“preponderance of evidence.”
Under current Virginia law, the jury can take mental illness into consideration
when deciding to apply the death penalty. This bill aims to remove the option
of the death penalty for those with a proven severe mental illness.
“This is really a sentencing bill,” Favola. “It doesn’t say that the person
would have to be ruled not guilty.”
30 states have the death penalty. According the Death Penalty information
Center, Virginia carried out the 2nd highest number of executions, 113, since
1976, coming in 2nd to Texas, which carried out 558 executions.
In 2017, Virginia executed 2 inmates and has 3 prisoners on death row.
“The U.S Supreme Court over time has issued decisions that really talk about
culpability and the fact that the death penalty should only be applied when an
individual has full understanding of his actions and consequences,” Favola
said.
In the 2002 case of Atkins v. Virginia, the court maintained that the legal
execution of defendants with intellectual disabilities was unconstitutional. In
2005, the Supreme Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons that applying the death
penalty to defendants 18 years of age or younger was “cruel and unusual
punishment” and therefore prohibited by the U.S Constitution.
However, there is no federal law or ruling that extends that protection to
individuals who have been deemed to have a severe mental illness, despite
pressure from medical associations and human rights groups.
Mental illness “is a whole category that has never really been dealt with by
the courts and needs to be dealt with by this legislation,” Sen. John Edwards,
D–Roanoke, told the Courts of Justice Committee. “I think this is an important
bill.”
Organizations supporting the legislation included the Virginia Catholic
Conference, the National Alliance of Mental Illness, the Virginia Interfaith
Center for Public Policy, Mental Health America of Virginia and the Disability
Law Center of Virginia.
Speaking in opposition to the bill was John Mahoney of the Virginia Association
of Commonwealth Attorneys. Mahoney said the measure is equivalent to “attacking
the death penalty from the sides” and would “take things out of the hands of
the jury.”
“We see this as making cases unendable,” Mahoney said. “The whole focus, then,
is going to be mental health and what is a mental illness.”
(source: WTVR news)
OHIO:
Prosecutor considers death penalty for Cleveland man accused of deadly beating
of 94-year-old Honduran woman
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley is considering whether to pursue
the death penalty in the case of a man accused of beating a 94-year-old woman
to death during a home invasion.
A grand jury on Tuesday handed up an indictment charging Cornelius Pames, 25,
with aggravated murder, murder, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery,
kidnapping, felonious assault, and attempted murder in the Sept. 17 death of
Eucebia Garcia Gutierrez.
Pames is being held on $50,000 bond on an unrelated case in which he is accused
of propositioning a 13-year-old girl for sex, according to court records.
He is set to for a Thursday arraignment hearing on the murder charges.
O’Malley said in a news release statement that the office’s capital review
committee, which looks at cases that meet the legal threshold necessary to seek
the death penalty, is reviewing the case.
“Eucebia was a loving mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother,” O’Malley
said in the release. “We will hold Pames accountable for his horrific actions.”
Pames broke into the home abut 1:45 a.m. by pulling out a window
air-conditioning unit and climbing through the window, according to police. He
attacked Garcia Gutierrez and her 74-year-old daughter, Marina Garcia, as they
slept in their beds, court records say.
Marina Garcia was severely beaten during the home invasion and was in intensive
care for several days with bleeding on her brain. She eventually recovered and
was released from the hospital, but had lasting emotional and psychological
damage from the beating, family members said.
Pames ransacked the home and stole an iPad, iPhone and jewelry and change,
court records say.
Garcia Gutierrez and her daughter visited their family in Cleveland every year,
typically for about 6 months, in order to spend time with their grandchildren
and great-grandchildren. They were set to return to Honduras about 2 weeks
after Garcia Gutierrez was killed.
The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office connected Pames’ DNA to the scene
of the crime, O’Malley’s office said in a news release.
(source: cleveland.com)
******************
Nelson arraigned in death penalty case for Timmons murder
Bond was set at $2 million for a Newark man accused in the aggravated murder of
a Londonderry man in 2016.
James D. Nelson II, 39, is accused of shooting 62-year-old Theodore "Ted"
Timmons 2-to-3 times while a 2nd suspect fired 3-to-4 shots, Ross County
Prosecutor Jeff Marks said during Nelson's arraignment on Tuesday. Timmons died
as a result of the shooting at his home in June 2016.
Since Nelson faces the death penalty if convicted, he was appointed
Columbus-based attorneys Kort Gatterdamn and Diane Menashe who are certified to
represent defendants in capital murder cases.
Nelson pleaded not guilty to 3 counts of aggravated murder and 1 count each of
aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, and having a weapon under disability.
Marks told Judge Mike Ater that Nelson had an extensive prior record back to a
1998 burglary conviction in Licking County and had been on post-release control
from a 2014 conviction on felony drug possession charges when Timmons was
killed.
Soon after Timmons' death, a local woman - Whitney Kuhn - was arrested and
sentenced to 5 years in prison on charges of complicity to aggravated burglary
and aggravated robbery. Kuhn's attorney previously said she had known Timmons
and while she aided in the robbery and burglary, did not know of any intent to
kill him.
Meanwhile, Nelson and the other shooting suspect - Jesse Hanes - turned up in
New Mexico where Hanes was convicted of several charges including killing a
police officer and Nelson was convicted of trafficking charges.
Nelson was sentenced to 3 years in prison and currently is on parole from the
New Mexico charges while Hanes is serving life without parole in a federal
prison in Kentucky. Hanes also is expected to face aggravated murder charges
but he has yet to be returned to Ross County.
Nelson is set to appear in court again for a pretrial hearing on Feb. 25.
(source: Chillicothe Gazette)
INDIANA:
Roy Lee Ward files lawsuit to block death penalty in Indiana
Another lawsuit has been filed by Roy Lee Ward.
Ward was sentenced to death in 2002 for the brutal rape and murder of
15-year-old Stacy Payne of Spencer County.
His conviction and sentence was overturned due to pre-trial publicity, but he
was sentenced to death for a 2nd time in 2007 after pleading guilty.
Ward’s most recent lawsuit says the death penalty violates Indiana’s
Constitution.
It asks for a permanent injunction to stop Indiana from carrying out any
executions.
Ward previously sued Indiana over the newest lethal injection cocktail approved
for the state. That suit claimed the decision making process didn’t follow the
rules before adopting it.
Indiana’s Supreme Court ruled against that suit.
Right now, there are no scheduled dates for executions in Indiana, but there
are 12 people on death row. One of them is being held in a prison out of state.
The last person put to death in Indiana was Eric Wrinkles in 2009. He was 94th
person executed according to records that go back to 1897. Indiana became a
state in 1816.
Hanging was the state’s 1st form of corporal punishment. That lasted until
1907. Electrocution was used until 1994.
(source: WFIE news)
OKLAHOMA:
Glossip v. Gross: the Eighth Amendment and the Torture Court of the United
States
On June 29, 2015 the United States Supreme Court argued in Glossip v. Gross
that executions may continue with the use of lethal drug cocktails including
the use of midazolam, an extremely painful drug, which in effect, burns to
death the condemned by scorching internal organs. The use of midazolam,
according to the Court, does not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment”
under the Eighth Amendment. The Court found that condemned prisoners can only
challenge their method of execution after providing a known and available
alternative method.
In dissenting views justices opened the legal door for future challenges to the
death penalty. In a meticulously crafted dissent Justice Stephen G. Breyer
joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg initiated a timely counterargument to
capital punishment. This was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor
in diverging dissents of their own. The dissents were significant in that they
outline the legal framework for the abolition of the death penalty based on the
Eighth Amendment. Nevertheless, Sotomayor and Kagan argued in separate opinions
that the use of lethal chemicals in executions was intolerably painful.
In turn this begged the question, for many, as to whether or not executions
could ever be legitimized since executions must necessarily involve physical or
mental pain. In all democratic societies, intentionally inflicting pain on
another human being is torture.
This article addresses the Court’s concerns, expressed in Justice Samuel
Alito’s majority opinion, that protests against Glossip’s anticipated execution
was a “guerilla war” against the death penalty and that inflicting physical or
mental pain intentionally on a human being is an acceptable component of
execution and consistent with the U.S. Constitution.
*****
In Gregg v. Gerogia (1976) the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in a
7-2 decision that capital punishment did not violate the Eighth Amendment.
This, in effect, reversed Furman v. Georgia (1972) which placed a moratorium on
capital punishment in the United States. Robert Bork argued the case for the
United States, that capital punishment and judicious use of the death penalty
may be appropriate if carefully used. The Supreme Court argued that the Court
was not prepared to overrule the Georgia legislature who has by law defined
capital punishment an effective tool in the deterrence of future capital crimes
and as an appropriate means of social retribution (retributive justice) against
the most serious offenders
On April 29, 2015, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Glossip v. Gross,
a case which challenged the use of the anti-anxiety drug midazolam in lethal
injection executions. Petitioners argued in their brief to the Court that there
is “undisputed evidence . . . that midazolam cannot reliably ensure the ‘deep,
coma-like unconsciousness’ required where a State intends to cause death with
painful drugs” (Brief for Petitioner at p. 29). Use of this drug to carry out
executions by lethal injection does not comport with the Eighth Amendment’s
prohibition on cruel and unusual suffering. In the last year alone, midazolam
was used in several botched executions. Then on June 29, 2015, in a 5-4
decision, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Glossip v. Gross, ruling that
the anti-anxiety medication midazolam is constitutional for use as the 1st drug
in a t3-drug lethal injection formula. The case was brought by death row
prisoners in Oklahoma, who argued that the state’s use of midazolam in this
manner creates an “objectively intolerable risk of harm.”
The Glossip ruling evidenced two Justices directly challenging the legal
foundation of capital punishment based on the Eighth Amendment which prohibits
“cruel and unusual punishment.” Indeed, states such as Nebraska have recently
abolished the death penalty based on the Eighth Amendment, making it the 19th
state to do so, and the 7th to abolish capital punishment since 2007.
Nonetheless, a majority of justices on the Supreme Court at the time – John
Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito –
still maintain the constitutionality of the death penalty, as argued in
Glossip.
In Baze v. Rees (2008), the Supreme Court reviewed the 3-drug protocol then
used for lethal injection by at least thirty states, in which the 1st drug, an
short-acting barbiturate, rendered the prisoner unconscious, and the second and
third drugs, a paralytic and potassium chloride, paralyzed the prisoner and
stopped the heart. The Court noted that the 1st drug, the barbiturate, causes a
“deep, coma-like unconsciousness” and therefore “ensures that the prisoner does
not experience any pain associated with the paralysis and cardiac arrest caused
by the 2nd and 3rd drugs.” The Oklahoma drug protocol challenged in Glossip was
also a 3-drug protocol that uses a paralytic and potassium chloride as the 2nd
and 3rd drugs, but it substitutes the benzodiazepine midazolam for the 1st
drug, creating risk of “severe pain, needless suffering and a lingering death.”
As the Brief for Petitioner states:
In Baze, there was consensus that sodium thiopental, if properly administered,
would produce deep coma-like unconsciousness. With midazolam, the opposite is
true. Midazolam is not approved for use as the sole anesthetic for painful
surgery. Clinical studies showed that midazolam does not reliably induce deep
unconsciousness; when used in surgery, patients felt pain. The medical
consensus is that midazolam cannot generate deep, coma-like unconsciousness.
There is also no substantial practice among the states of using midazolam for
lethal injections. Although sodium thiopental was widely used in lethal
injections for years, only 4 states have used midazolam in an execution, and
only two have tried to use it as anesthesia. On these undisputed facts, the use
of midazolam to create deep coma-like unconsciousness presents an “objectively
intolerable risk of harm” (Baze, 553 U.S.). *****
Midazolam is not a barbiturate, but a benzodiazepine commonly used in
pre-operative settings to alleviate anxiety. It is the shortest-acting drug in
the same class of anti-anxiety drugs as Xanax, Atavan and Valium. All of the
experts who testified in a 3-day hearing in Oklahoma in December 2014,
including the state’s expert, agree that midazolam has a ceiling effect, above
which additional dosing has no additional effect, and no analgesic
(pain-relieving) qualities (Joint Appendix to Brief for Petitioner, medical
testimony from 3-day hearing at pp. 199, 256, 274). The 4 states which have
used midazolam in lethal injection executions are Arizona, Florida, Ohio and
Oklahoma. 3 executions that used midazolam triggered formal state
investigations into why they did not go as planned (Brief for Petitioner at p.
31). In all of these botched executions, the prisoners initially appeared to
lose consciousness, but then started moving and demonstrating signs of struggle
and suffering.
Glossip v. Gross originated in federal court in Oklahoma as a response to the
botched execution of Clayton Lockett on April 29, 2014. Charles Warner was
originally one of the Petitioners, but the Court denied a stay of execution in
his case, and he was executed using midazolam in a 3-drug formula on January
15, 2015, just 8 days before the Court accepted this case for review. On
January 28, 2015, the Court stayed the executions of the 3 Petitioners, Richard
Glossip, John Grant and Benjamin Cole, who are Oklahoma death row prisoners. In
their Petition for Certiorari, Petitioners asked the Court to “provide urgently
needed guidance” to prisoners and courts addressing new, experimental lethal
injection protocols.
In her dissent from the denial of a stay for Charles Warner, Justice Sonia
Sotomayor, joined by three other justices, recognized that the district court
relied on a “single purported expert” who testified from suspect sources and in
a manner that contradicts empirical data. Justice Sotomayor explained, “In
contending that midazolam will work as the State intends, Dr. Evans cited no
studies, but instead appeared to rely primarily on the Web site www.drugs.com.
Here, given the evidence before the District Court, I struggle to see how its
decision to credit the testimony of a single purported expert can be supported
given the substantial body of conflicting empirical and anecdotal evidence.”
Justice Breyer, who has served 20 years on the Supreme Court, never argued that
the death penalty was unconstitutional. What both Breyer and Ginsburg argued
was that new evidence over the past 2 decades had convinced them that the death
penalty is costly, ineffective, and unreliable, not that it was necessarily
inhumane. Their argument was based on cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and the
real possibility of wrongful execution. More than 100 death row inmates had
their convictions or sentences dismissed in the last decade.
Nevertheless, in the majority opinion Justice Alito countered Sotomayor and
Kagen’s view arguing that pain is simply part of what constitutes an execution.
He states, “Because some risk of pain is inherent in any method of execution,
we have held that the Constitution does not require the avoidance of all risk
of pain. After all, while most humans wish to die a painless death, many do not
have that good fortune. Holding that the Eighth Amendment demands the
elimination of essentially all risk of pain would effectively outlaw the death
penalty altogether.”1 Breyer, nevertheless argued, that the broader issue of
wrongful convictions takes greater precedence since executing innocent people
can never be remediated. Moreover, Breyer and Ginsburg argued that
“increasingly lengthy delays” of several decades between convictions and
executions undermined the deterrence argument that executions deter crimes.2
Prior to Glossip, Justices Breyer and Ginsburg, in essence, echoed the opinion
of Justice Harry Blackmun who, in 1994, argued that the death penalty in the
United States was unable to be impartial toward minorities, specifically
African Americans. Likewise, in 2008, Justice John Paul Stevens concluded that
the death penalty was arbitrary and unreliable as a deterrent and ineffective
in terms of punishment. However, in Glossip, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena
Kagen, while not joining in Breyer and Ginsburg’s dissent, nevertheless wrote
what could arguably be the strongest dissent. The 2 justices claimed that the
majority on the court allowed a “method of execution that is intolerably
painful – even to the point of being the chemical equivalent of burning alive.”
*****
Alito’s position is one in which the inflicting of pain on others, as torture,
is a necessary component of execution. This is a plausible position to hold.
However, in that Alito and the majority argue that torture does not contradict
the U.S. Constitution and the Eighth Amendment is subject to serious question.
*****
As stated earlier, torture is the act of deliberately inflicting severe
physical or psychological pain on a human being by another as a punishment or
in order to fulfill some desire of the torturer or force some action from the
victim. Torture, by definition, is a knowing and intentional act; deeds which
unknowingly or negligently inflict suffering or pain, without a specific intent
to do so, are not typically considered torture. But under U.S. law, ignorance
of the law is no excuse.
Torture has been carried out or sanctioned by individuals, groups, and states
throughout history from ancient times to modern day, and forms of torture can
vary greatly in duration from only a few minutes to several days or longer.
Reasons for torture can include punishment, revenge, political re-education,
deterrence and even coercion.
Alternatively, some forms of torture are designed to inflict psychological pain
or leave as little physical injury or evidence as possible while achieving the
same psychological devastation. The torturer may or may not kill or injure the
victim, but torture may result in a deliberate death and serves as a form of
capital punishment. Depending on the aim, even a form of torture that is
intentionally fatal may be prolonged to allow the victim to suffer as long as
possible, such as half-hanging or even inadvertently seizing in pain from
lethal injections.
In other cases, the torturer may be indifferent to the condition of the victim
or simply take delight in the sadistic gratification of torture in whatever
form.
This indifference best fits the Alito majority. On one hand, indifference may
be its most compassionate form of torture, while on the other it very well
could mean that sociopaths exist on the highest court in the land. And in
Glossip the Eighth Amendment is once again desecrated and Alito’s majority
decision exalts the deviant status of the Torture Court of the United States.
(source: dissidentvoice.org)
WYOMING:
Bill to repeal death penalty proposed Wyoming Legislature
Legislation that would repeal the death penalty in Wyoming has been introduced
in the state Legislature.
Republican Rep. Jared Olsen, of Cheyenne, and Republican Sen. Brian Boner, of
Douglas, are the main sponsors of House Bill 145, which would leave life in
prison without parole as the most severe penalty available.
Olsen says the death penalty is costly and ineffective, noting that the state
public defender office spends about $750,000 a year in taxpayer money on
capital cases.
The Legislative Service Office estimates the elimination of the death penalty
would save the state that amount of money each year.
Boner says the state has not executed anyone in 27 years and currently has no
inmates on death row.
(source: Associated Press)
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