May 24
NORTH CAROLINA:
NC man once on death row sees conviction overturned -- 4 decades later
A North Carolina man who once was on death row and then served more than 40
years in prison for a shopkeeper's slaying in a failed robbery attempt was
headed home Thursday.
Attorney Theresa Newman, co-director of the Duke Wrongful Convictions Clinic,
said 81-year-old Charles Ray Finch was released Thursday from Greene
Correctional Institution. He was picked up by relatives and the clinic's other
co-director, attorney Jim Coleman, who were taking him to Wilson, Newman said.
Video from WRAL-TV showed Finch, dressed all in white and wearing sunglasses,
leaving the prison in a wheelchair.
U.S. District Court Judge Terrence Boyle had ordered Finch's release earlier
Thursday. In January, an appeals court ruled that evidence casts doubt on
Finch's murder conviction. Newman said Finch's conviction was overturned and
that prosecutors have 30 days to decide whether to retry him.
The Wilson Times reports that Finch's daughter, Kay Jones Bailey, said after
the hearing Thursday that she "knew the miracle was going to happen just didn't
know when. It's been worth the wait. It's been worth the fight."
In 1976, Finch was sentenced to die, according to the Death Penalty Information
Center . The state Supreme Court reduced his sentence to life in prison after
the U.S. Supreme Court that the state's death penalty law unconstitutional.
In an interview earlier this week, Finch told WNCN that he forgives the person
who identified him as the killer "because he didn't know what he was doing."
That person had said the killer was wearing a three-quarter length jacket.
Finch said a detective had him wear a coat in the police lineup - and Finch was
the only one wearing a coat in that lineup.
"When I was picked up, they didn't question me or nothing. The put me there in
a lineup. Straight in a lineup. And they put me in a lineup with a black
leather coat on," Finch said.
Coleman told WNCN that a highlight of the evidentiary hearing came "when we
were able to expose that he had lied about the lineup and he had dressed Ray in
a coat, and he was the only one wearing a coat in the lineup."
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal ruled in January that it was unlikely that
jurors would have convicted Finch if they had known about flaws in a police
lineup and questions about key witness testimony. The three-judge panel
returned the case to federal district court for a fresh look at innocence
claims that the lower court previously dismissed because of technical reasons
including timeliness.
The unanimous opinion said Finch succeeded in "demonstrating that the totality
of the evidence, both old and new, would likely fail to convince any reasonable
juror of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."
Finch, who maintained his innocence, was convicted of 1st-degree murder in the
death of Richard Holloman, who was shot inside his country store on Feb. 13,
1976.
Finch's case was the first case handled by the Duke clinic.
(source: The Associated Press)
FLORIDA----execution
Serial killer who murdered 10 women in Florida executed by lethal injection
A serial killer who terrorized Florida with a murderous spree that claimed 10
women in 1984 was put to death Thursday, his execution witnessed by a woman who
survived one of his attacks and aided in his capture.
Bobby Joe Long, 65, was pronounced dead at 6:55 p.m. Thursday following a
lethal injection at Florida State Prison. Long had no last words, simply
closing his eyes as the procedure began, witnesses said.
The killer terrified the Tampa Bay area for eight months in 1984 as women began
showing up dead, their bodies often left in gruesome poses. Most were
strangled, some had their throats slit, and others were bludgeoned.
Law enforcement had few clues until the case of Lisa Noland, who survived one
of Long's attacks. She witnessed Thursday's execution from the front row.
Just 17 in 1984, Noland was abducted by Long outside a church that year. He
raped her but ultimately let her go free. She left evidence of his crimes on
the scene and gave police details leading to his capture. Long confessed to the
crimes, receiving 28 life sentences and one death sentence for the murder of
22-year-old Michelle Simms.
Noland positioned herself in the witness room where she hoped Long would see
her.
"I wanted to look him in the eye. I wanted to be the 1st person he saw.
Unfortunately, he didn't open his eyes," she said. "It was comforting to know
this was actually happening."
She said she began to cry after she left the room once it was over.
“The peace that came over me is a remarkable feeling,” she said.
DeSantis and the death penalty. Why Florida’s Catholic governor supports it.
Another witness wore a polo shirt with a photo of one victim on the front and
the words "Gone But Not Forgotten." On the back were photos of all 10 slaying
victims and the words, "The Ones That Matter."
Noland was the victim Long let go. The day before her abduction, she said, she
had written a suicide note, planning to end her life after years of sexual
abuse by her grandmother's boyfriend.
But she ended up making heroic use of that history.
"At the time he put the gun to my head, it was nothing new to me," she told The
Associated Press earlier this week.
She said she knew from her past abuse that if she fought Long, it would enrage
him.
“I had to learn who he was, what made him tick. If I did the wrong move, could
it end my life? So literally, the night before I wrote a suicide note out, and
now I was in a position where I had to save my life,” she said on Wednesday.
Investigators were baffled by the trail of bodies Long left around Tampa Bay.
Artiss Ann Wick was the 1st killed, in March 1984. 9 others followed.
Law enforcement had few clues until Noland told her story.
Noland said beforehand that she knew what she would have said if she could have
addressed Long. Said Noland: "I would say 'Thank you for choosing me and not
another 17-year-old girl.'"
"Another 17-year-old girl probably wouldn't have been able to handle it the way
that I have," she said.
Long moved from West Virginia to the Miami area as a child and was raised by
his mother, a cocktail waitress. After high school, he married his childhood
sweetheart, but later became violent. The ex-wife, Cindy Brown , told AP she
recalls fearing for her life as the attacks grew worse, including a day he
choked her and knocked her unconscious.
In the AP interview Wednesday, Noland described her attack in excruciating
detail: the church where Long abducted her, the gun he pressed to her head, the
bright light she could see on the car's dashboard beneath the edge of her
blindfold. It said Magnum, as in Dodge Magnum.
She was menstruating and made sure she left blood evidence on the car's
backseat. She could tell when they were on an interstate north of Tampa. When
she was brought to the killer's apartment, she counted the steps up to the 2nd
floor. When he let her use the bathroom, she made sure she left fingerprints
everywhere.
She knew she couldn't make him angry. She appealed to a glimmer of kindness he
showed while he washed her hair after raping her repeatedly. She asked what
made him do what he did. He said he had suffered a bad breakup and hated women.
She told him he seemed nice and that maybe she could be his girlfriend. She
wouldn't tell anyone.
Long later got Noland dressed. He let her loose and told her not to take the
blindfold off for five minutes. She got out of the car and tripped on the curb.
Long caught her before she fell. She waited for what seemed like an eternity
and pulled off the blindfold. She was in front of a tree in another churchyard.
Today, she claims that tree as hers, and included it in the design of a T-shirt
she made to mark Long's execution.
And she’s joined the ranks of the law enforcement officers who captured Long.
She’s a deputy with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, the same
department she helped lead to Long’s arrest.
The execution was the first under Gov. Ron DeSantis, who took office in
January.
(source: Associated Press)
****************************
It's past time to end the death penalty
As this is written, Kenova native Bobby Joe Long is scheduled to be executed in
Florida Thursday evening for the murders of 9 women in the Tampa Bay area in
the 1980s. Long is 65 years old and has been on death row for 34 years - more
than 1/2 his life.
Long received the death penalty for the May 1984 stabbing and beating death of
22-year-old former beauty contestant Michelle Denise Simms. He also pleaded
guilty to killing 8 other women in the Tampa area and claimed to have raped 40
women in 3 states. His killing spree lasted from March to November 1984.
His arrest came after the Nov. 3, 1984, kidnapping of Lisa McVey, 17, who
persuaded him to let her go, after which she gave police information that led
to his arrest.
His known murder victims are Artiss Ann Wick, Ngeun Thi Long, Elizabeth
Loudenback, Vicky Marie Elliott, Chanel Devoun Williams, Karen Beth Dinsfriend,
Kimberly Kyle Hopps, Virginia Lee Johnson, Kim Marie Swann and Simms.
McVey is now a sheriff's deputy in Florida. She survived being raped at
gunpoint and held in captivity for more than a day before Long blindfolded her
and drove her home. McVey told Mirror.com she plans to attend the execution.
Long was known as the "Classified Ad Rapist" because he met his victims through
newspaper advertisements, raping dozens of them in Florida in the 1970s. He
also lived in California, where he is suspected to be responsible for several
sexual assaults involving classified ads for which he was never prosecuted.
As reported by The Herald-Dispatch reporter Courtney Hessler, Long had a
tortured life before he went on his killing spree. He was bullied as a
youngster. His parents divorced when he was 2. After that he bounced between
Florida and West Virginia. He attended Cammack Elementary School until he
suffered a head injury when he was hit by a car. Long's ex-wife said his
personality seemed to change after he received head, back and leg injuries in a
motorcycle crash while serving in the U.S. Army in the early 1970s. She has
since said in television interviews that he was an abusive husband.
There were other things in his life that prevented him from living the life a
person in a stable, caring home environment would experience.
None of that excuses his crimes, of course.
The crimes for which Long was found guilty or for which he pleaded guilty were
heinous. If anyone deserves the death penalty, he would be on the list. But it
still does not justify the death penalty itself.
There are two reasons to execute a criminal: to protect society from him and to
deter other people from committing similar crimes. Neither holds up in this
case. While Long is in prison, women are safe from him. And the existence of
the death penalty in Florida did not prevent Long from committing his terrible
acts.
We cannot be sure that innocent people have not been executed because of a
mistake in the justice system or from a deliberate action by a prosecutor to
frame a person he knew was not guilty.
30 states still have the death penalty on the books, but 20 of them have not
carried out any executions in the past 5 years. There is too much potential for
innocent lives to be lost. That, not compassion for murderers and rapists, is
why West Virginia is wise to be one of the 20 states that does not have the
death penalty, and it is why Ohio, Kentucky and others should consider doing
away with it themselves.
(source: Letter to the Editor, Herald-Dispatch, May 23)
**********************
Is execution persecution?
“It’s absolutely clear that whatever cruel and unusual punishments may mean
with regard to future things, such as death by injection or the electric chair,
it’s clear that that the death penalty, in and of itself, is not considered
cruel and unusual punishment.” – Antonin Scalia, former U.S. Supreme Court
Justice
In January of 1989, The Record’s banner was drawn in an interesting state
lottery. We did not win money. The lottery was held for admittance to a
killing. It was the most hyped execution, perhaps since that of Richard
Hauptmann back in 1936 for the kidnap and murder of Charles and Anna
Lindbergh’s 20-month-old son.
It was the end of Ted Bundy.
According to law, the Florida Department of Corrections selects — by lottery —
5 print journalists, 5 TV/radio reporters and 1 representative each from The
Associated Press and the Florida Radio Network as official witnesses to
executions.
Newspapers across the country lit up the telephone lines at The Record, all
seeking some kind of deal that would transfer the credentials to them. They in
turn would give us their story, generally speaking, “done well.”
We said no.
A young, female, reporter got the job. Prior to the days of cellphones or
iPads, she filed her story from a bank of payphones at Raiford Prison in
Starke, Florida. Lethal injection was not the approved method of execution
until 2000. Bundy was strapped into “Old Sparky” and electrocuted Jan. 24.
Staffer Anne Heymen took the story transcription on a landline at the old
building downtown, while the reporters and editors gathered around the soft,
green glow of her word processor.
The reporter’s lead read “Only one woman watched Ted Bundy die. There should
have been more.” (It was done well.)
Move ahead 30 years. Today, inmate Bobby Joe Long is scheduled to die by lethal
injection at 6 p.m. His rap sheet includes armed burglary, aggravated assault,
first degree murder, rape, robbery and sexual battery. Authorities say he is
suspected of more than 50 rapes across the country. He was charged in Florida
with eight counts of rape and murder in the Tampa Bay area perpetrated within
the span of less than a year — and the abduction and rape of another woman here
in Florida. She became the key to bringing him down.
This afternoon Florida will execute Long, now 65 years old. He spent 34 years
on death row. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant April 23. His appeals
are finished. Since 1974, when a Supreme Court decision was reversed, Florida
has executed 97 inmates, including two women. John Spenkelink was the first
back on rotation in 1979.
The death penalty is a lightning rod for opinion. Political pundits believe
some major changes may be on the way. In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court (The
Hurst decision) ruled Florida’s death sentencing method unconstitutional. The
court ruling led to new laws requiring unanimous jury findings of facts and
unanimous jury verdicts.
Later in 2016 Florida’s Supreme Court ruled the Hurst decision had to be
applied retroactively — in cases closed after 2002 (when the Hurst verdict
initially occurred).
That retroactive decision was made by a 5-2 majority. Since that time, the
complexion of the high court has seen a drastically conservative bent, with
three more liberal Justices age-limiting out in January 2019. It’s a good bet
the issue will arise again, this time with a different ending. We’ll see, but
for certain, it’s open season on Florida’s death penalty and/or sentencing
laws.
According to The News Service of Florida and the Death Penalty Information
Center, there are 341 death row inmates in Florida prisons. After the 2016
Florida ruling 154 were eligible for resentencing — not retrial. Of those, 29
have had death sentences overturned — receiving, instead, life without parole.
When dusk draws near today the ground outside Raiford will be cluttered with
death penalty protestors and supporters. The Florida Catholic Diocese has
officially asked DeSantis to stay the execution. He has not.
For a man with as many as 58 suspected rapes and murders, we have little
sympathy or remorse.
Given the state’s new law in which all jurors must find both fact and
substantial evidence and reason for the death penalty unanimously, safeguards
are more in place than ever. Just the threat of the death penalty can close a
capital murder case with life in prison without parole. It’s an avenue widely
available for the accused. It’s both a carrot and a stick. And until we see
evidence to the contrary, it is essential in both instances.
(source: Editorial, St. Augustine Record, May 23)
************************
Conservative Court Eyes Key Death Penalty Issue
More than 100 inmates condemned to death could face a major upheaval, as a
revamped Florida Supreme Court ponders whether to undo a 2016 ruling that
allowed nearly half of the state’s death row prisoners to have their death
sentences revisited.
The process of reconsidering whether changes to Florida’s death
penalty-sentencing system should continue being applied retroactively to cases
dating to 2002.
The court’s reopening of the retroactivity issue, which came in an April 24
order, sent shockwaves through the state’s death-penalty legal community.
“This is judicial activism. The right has always complained about judicial
activism and not wanting judicial activist judges. But when you don’t respect
precedent, that really is the judicial activism,” Marty McClain, a lawyer who
has represented hundreds of defendants in death-penalty cases, told The News
Service of Florida in a telephone interview.
The high court’s latest move is part of continuing fallout from a January 2016
U.S. Supreme Court decision, in a case known as Hurst v. Florida, which found
the state’s method of sentencing prisoners to death was unconstitutional.
McClain and other defense lawyers who specialize in the death penalty point to
a legal principle, known as “stare decisis,” in which judicial decisions are
based on precedent. Courts rarely depart from the doctrine.
“The reason for precedent is to bring stability and predictability to the law.
And when you stop respecting precedent, it’s like, what? There’s no stability.
You have no idea what you can and cannot do,” McClain said.
But Brad King, the state attorney for the 5th Judicial Circuit, which is based
in Ocala, told the News Service that reversing the current process “will no
more destabilize the law than the current, crazy, retroactivity rule has
destabilized the law.”
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling found the state’s process of allowing judges,
instead of juries, to find the facts necessary to impose the death penalty was
an unconstitutional violation of the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury.
The decision in the Hurst case, premised on a 2002 case known as Ring v.
Arizona, led to a change in Florida law requiring unanimous jury findings of
fact and unanimous jury recommendations for death sentences to be imposed.
The revised law, however, did not address the issue of whether the unanimous
requirements should be applied retroactively to older cases, so the state court
stepped in.
In a pair of critical death penalty decisions issued Dec. 22, 2016, the Florida
Supreme Court decided the Hurst decision should apply retroactively to cases
that were final after the 2002 Ring ruling. Re-sentencing should only be an
option for cases in which jury recommendations for death were not unanimous,
the court also decided.
“In this instance … the interests of finality must yield to fundamental
fairness,” the majority wrote in the case of John Mosley, convicted of
murdering his girlfriend and their infant child in 2004. “Because Florida’s
capital sentencing statute has essentially been unconstitutional since Ring in
2002, fairness strongly favors applying Hurst, retroactively to that time.”
But in a sharply worded dissent joined by Justice Ricky Polston, Canady scolded
the majority for departing from precedent in the 5-2 decision that applied
Hurst retroactively.
As it did in previous cases, the court should have viewed Hurst as “an
evolutionary refinement,” and thus “a new rule that should not be given
retroactive application,” Canady argued.
“A decision that simply ignored existing precedent will rarely be entitled to
any more weight as a precedent than the weight it afforded to the authority it
ignored,” he wrote.
Canady, a former Republican state representative and congressman from Lakeland,
at the time was one of two justices who frequently parted ways with the court’s
more-liberal majority.
But 3 members of the longstanding court majority, Barbara Pariente, R. Fred
Lewis and Peggy Quince, were required to step down early this year because of a
mandatory retirement age. New Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis quickly replaced
them with justices Robert Luck, Barbara Lagoa and Carlos Muniz.
As a result, Canady now presides over a conservative bloc of 6 jurists, with
Justice Jorge Labarga the lone holdover from the old majority.
Late last month, the court ordered lawyers in the case of death row inmate
Duane Eugene Owen to file briefs addressing the retroactivity issue.
In a brief filed last week, lawyers for Owen argued that retroactivity should
apply to all death penalty cases, not only to those that were final after Ring
was decided. That would mean also applying the new sentencing requirements to
cases that became final before 2002.
But they also stressed that the court, at a minimum, should keep in place the
current process of reconsidering cases after 2002. They said the analyses
involved in whether to overturn precedent “bolster the strong presumption in
favor” of maintaining the process.
Declaring Hurst “entirely non-retroactive would do serious injustice to the
scores of capital defendants who have spent countless time and energy
challenging their unconstitutional death sentences,” they added.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 154 of the state’s death row
prisoners were eligible for resentencing following the 2016 rulings. Since
then, 29 inmates have had death sentences overturned and received sentences of
life in prison without parole, and four have been resentenced to death. Many
prosecutors may not have sought the death penalty a second time, because the
cases were too old or because juries were narrowly split on whether to
recommend death the 1st time.
“I think the issue comes down, in my view, to justice versus procedural
finality. And this court seems to be more concerned about procedural finality,”
said Florida International University law professor Stephen Harper, executive
director of the school’s Florida Center for Capital Representation.
But prosecutor King, who was instrumental in crafting the state’s response to
Hurst, said the Florida majority’s 2016 decisions ignored long-standing
precedent on when retroactivity should be applied.
The Canady court will have to balance “which is more important — having the law
stable and not changing the law, or having the law be right,” said King, whose
circuit is made up of Citrus, Hernando, Lake, Marion and Sumter counties.
The court’s order for briefs in the Owen case has rattled defense lawyers, some
of whom are scurrying to seek rehearings for death row inmates in the hope of
having sentences reduced to life in prison before the court finalizes a
decision on retroactivity.
“The lawyers with pending resentencing cases are concerned about what the court
might do. The people who have had their clients already resentenced are in a
state of confusion about how the court’s opinion might impact them, as well,”
Pete Mills, an assistant public defender in the 10th Judicial Circuit who also
serves as chairman of the Florida Public Defenders Association Death Penalty
Steering Committee.
Judicial decision-making that abandons the doctrine of stare decisis — in any
area of the law — is troubling, defense lawyers said.
“It reduces the legitimacy of the courts, as opposed to the far more political
process of electing a governor, electing a Congress or a legislature. The
judiciary’s supposed to be more neutral and see things more in the long-term,”
Harper said in a telephone interview. “You have to respect precedent, even if
you don’t agree with it.”
(source: newstalkflorida.com)
LOUISIANA:
Louisiana House ends death penalty ban debate without vote
Louisiana's annual debate over whether to abolish the death penalty appears to
have ended, after a House lawmaker shelved his proposal Thursday without a
vote.
In a quiet, often emotional debate, House lawmakers discussed the legislation
by Rep. Terry Landry, talking about exoneration rates and detailing murder
cases.
But after he made his closing argument, Landry — a New Iberia Democrat and
former state police superintendent — didn't seek a vote on the bill,
anticipating that he didn't have the votes for passage.
The measure would have ended Louisiana's use of the death penalty for offenses
committed starting in August.
The Senate rejected a similar proposal from Sen. Dan Claitor, a Baton Rouge
Republican, earlier in the session. Only 13 senators supported the ban, while
25 opposed it.
Louisiana held its last execution in 2010.
The corrections department says it can't get lethal injection drugs because
companies don't want their products associated with capital punishment.
An effort to make the drug supplier information secret, aimed at restarting
executions, has won House support and awaits debate in the Senate.
House Bill 215: www.legis.la.gov
(source: Associated Press)
*******************
Don't shroud Louisiana's death penalty drug providers in secrecy
A bill in the Louisiana Legislature to hide the names of companies that provide
drugs for lethal injections on the state’s death row has had smooth sailing so
far.
Anything that might speed the execution of hardened criminals is bound to be
popular among lawmakers, and concerns about transparency don’t typically furrow
a lot of brows at the State Capitol.
We hope cooler heads prevail, and we urge lawmakers there to kill this
ill-conceived bill. Whatever one feels about capital punishment, the public has
a right to know how those convicted of the most heinous crimes are being put to
death. It’s the only way to keep the process accountable to the public the
justice system is supposed to serve.
Louisiana officials have had a hard time finding drugs for lethal injections
because companies don’t want to be associated with the practice. The state
hasn’t executed an inmate since 2010.
By hiding the roles of pharmaceutical firms in the gravest act a state can
perform, officials hope drug companies will be more inclined to sell the lethal
concoctions needed to carry out a death sentence.
But doing controversial work in secret is a gesture of dictatorships, not
democracies. It compromises a procedure meant to bring justice to anguished
families, and it lessens accountability when the process goes wrong. The
history of capital punishment has involved a number of botched executions, and
it’s hard to sort out responsibility for such mishaps when the names of key
players are hidden from public view.
Numerous recent scandals within Louisiana’s prison system involving
double-dealing among key leaders should give lawmakers further pause about
lessening any aspect of transparency at the Department of Corrections.
The work of justice in a free republic has never been advanced through
shortcuts. HB 258 is such an expedient, and we call on lawmakers to reject it.
(source: Editorial, The Advocate)
OHIO:
Do not execute mentally ill
As Ohio takes a break from executions while questions surrounding the lethal
drugs used in the process are hashed out, it’s a good time to consider ending
execution of people who have serious mental illness.
Separate bills to enact such a ban are sitting in committees in the Ohio Senate
and House of Representatives. They deserve consideration, and we hope they’ll
see hearings soon.
Gov. Mike DeWine’s decision earlier this year to pause executions is in line
with the nation’s changing view of capital punishment. DeWine, a former
prosecutor generally regarded as a law-and-order politician, was responding to
a U.S. magistrate’s opinion that the drugs currently used in executions could
cause “senseless pain and needless suffering.” DeWine ordered that executions
be halted until the state can find a drug or combination of drugs that a court
would find constitutional.
Americans’ views on the matter, as measured by Gallup Inc., have evolved over
the decades. In 1960, 53 % supported the death penalty and 36 % opposed it. As
crime rates rose, support for capital punishment also rose and peaked at 80 %
in 1994. By October 2017 it had declined to 55 % supporting and 41 % opposing.
That change is attributed in part to the growing use of DNA evidence and its
revelation of wrongful convictions of innocent defendants. But another key
factor has been growing research into and understanding of mental illness and
its role in criminal behavior.
People with mental illness should face consequences for harming others, and of
course the public must be protected from people whose behavior is dangerous,
whatever its motivation. But neither of those requires imposing the ultimate,
irreversible penalty on someone who was too impaired to understand and control
his actions or who is too ill after the fact to help defend himself in a trial.
Unfortunately, some research suggests that lingering misunderstanding and
stigma associated with mental illness sometimes causes jurors to see the
mentally ill as more deserving of capital punishment rather than less.
Barring execution of the mentally ill would fulfill a recommendation of the
Ohio Supreme Court Joint Task Force on the Administration of the Death Penalty,
which completed its work in 2014.
If they want to avoid the moral catastrophe of an innocent person being killed
in the public’s name, lawmakers also should consider other recommendations of
the task force. For example, one would take the death penalty off the table in
cases where prosecutors lack definitive evidence such as biological or DNA
evidence linking the defendant to the crime, a videotaped voluntary confession
or a video recording conclusively implicating the defendant.
For now, though, ending executions of people too ill to understand their
actions should be an uncontroversial choice. Legislators of both parties have
supported such a ban for years.
Some prosecutors oppose the change, saying courts would be overwhelmed by
petitions for reconsideration from death-row inmates who wouldn’t qualify.
If so, that’s unfortunate but an acceptable price to pay for a morally
repugnant practice that never should have been Ohio policy.
(source: Editorial, Akron Beacon Journal)
ILLINOIS:
Reinstate the death penalty
To the Editor:
It’s time to bring the death penalty back to Illinois. With such horrific
crimes against children and pregnant Marlen Ochoa-Lopez being butchered to take
her unborn child, we need a strong deterrent against committing serious crimes.
I don’t want my taxpayer dollars supporting depraved criminals in jail for
40-plus years. In some cases, jail is a step up from their living conditions,
so criminals may not mind being provided food, clean linens and medical care
for the rest of their lives.
By now, the Illinois criminal justice system must have learned from past
mistakes. To set an example, they can put the parents of AJ Freund at the top
of the list.
Linda Morton
Harvard
(source: Letter to the Editor, Northwest Herald)
NEBRASKA:
Sentencing bill, execution witness measure advanced from Judiciary Committee
The Judiciary Committee advanced a bill Thursday to the full Legislature that
would change sentencing rules to affect prison overcrowding.
It also sent out a bill (LB238) on an 8-0 vote that would require that two
members of the Legislature witness any execution from the time the condemned
prisoner enters the execution chamber to the time he or she is pronounced dead
or the execution is halted.
During that time, no one would be allowed to obstruct the view of any of the
witnesses to the execution process.
During the execution of Carey Dean Moore last summer, the first administration
of the death penalty in Nebraska in 20 years, witnesses were shielded from
viewing 14 minutes of the process. Death penalty observers said it hindered
transparency and true reporting of the effects of the drugs.
With the end of the session looming, the bills advanced Thursday would not be
debated until next year, but could be addressed early in the 2020 session. They
have no priority designation at this time. Both were introduced by Lincoln Sen.
Patty Pansing Brooks.
Proposed as the 1/3 rule sentencing bill (LB131), it would allow release of a
prisoner in one-half of the original term imposed by the court, if adopted as
amended by the committee Thursday.
For example, if an offender was sentenced to 50 years in prison, he or she
would get a minimum sentence of 25 years and be eligible for parole in half of
that lower sentence, or 12.5 years, and could be mandatorily released in 25
years.
It would give incentive for an inmate to get required programming and have good
conduct while in prison, said Judiciary Chairman Steve Lathrop.
"It certainly falls in the category of sentencing reform that would go quite a
ways in helping with overcrowding," he said.
The way it works now, he said, is that offenders often get a mandatory release
date and parole eligibility date that are so close they opt to serve a little
more time for the mandatory release to avoid parole.
A 1/3 sentencing rule was in effect in Nebraska from the early 1970s until
1992. It would provide, if reinstituted, that a minimum term would not be less
than the statutory minimum or mandatory minimum, and not be more than one-third
of the statutory maximum.
When it was taken out of law, it was done so without a hearing or discussion on
the floor, Pansing Brooks said.
Since then, prison population has continued to rise, she said.
This is the 3rd time Pansing Brooks has introduced the bill. She first
introduced it in 2015, when it was opposed by the Attorney General's office and
prosecutors. At that time opponents said the Legislature needed to give a major
sentencing bill (LB605) time to reduce the prison population.
But LB605 hasn't reduced the population, and more recently the number of
Nebraska prisoners has gone up, she said.
Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers explained that the repeal of the one-third rule was
part of an omnibus crime bill in 1992, and senators seldom read repealer
clauses in bills that include multiple pieces of legislation. It wasn't
discovered for a year, he said.
The bill, as amended, advanced from committee on a 7-1 vote, with Sen. Julie
Slama voting no. The committee also advanced a sentencing bill (LB132) on a 7-0
vote that eliminates mandatory minimum sentences for juveniles who are tried in
adult court.
(source: Lincoln Journal Star)
SOUTH DAKOTA:
Gov. Noem not planning to stop inmate's execution
Gov. Kristi Noem said Wednesday that she does not plan to stop the execution of
a death row inmate who claims jurors were biased against him because he's gay.
The American Civil Liberties Union is urging Noem to grant clemency to Charles
Rhines. He was convicted of stabbing 22-year-old doughnut shop employee
Donnivan Schaeffer to death during a 1992 burglary at the business in Rapid
City.
A Pennington County jury decided in 1993 that Rhines was guilty of premeditated
1st-degree murder for stabbing Donnivan Schaeffer, a 22-year-old Black Hawk
man, in the stomach, back and skull. Rhines attacked Schaeffer, his former
co-worker, at the Rapid City doughnut shop he was recently fired from. The jury
then decided that Rhines should be given the death penalty rather than life in
prison.
In a statement to The Associated Press, Noem said the state Board of Pardons
and Paroles reviewed Rhines' application for clemency in December and denied
it.
"I agree with the Board of Pardons and Paroles' decision," said the Republican
governor, who was elected in November.
In a letter to Noem dated Monday, the ACLU contends that anti-gay bias against
Rhines "factored into the jury's decision to sentence him to death." The
organization asks Noem to "exercise compassion and commute Mr. Rhines's
sentence to life imprisonment without parole in this case."
"Our position is that Charles Rhines's execution would violate a basic premise
of our criminal justice system: Our law punishes people for what they do, not
who they are," Ria Tabacco Mar, senior staff attorney for the ACLU, told the AP
in an email Wednesday.
Rhines has asked the courts to halt his lethal injection, which according to
the ACLU is scheduled for early November. A spokesman for the South Dakota
attorney general's office said the office is looking at a November execution
date.
A hearing to help determine the execution date is planned for June 25.
Rhines' appeal followed a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017 that
evidence of racial bias in the jury room allows a judge to consider setting
aside a verdict. Rhines, now 62, claims 1 juror said Rhines should not be
sentenced to life in prison because he is gay and would be housed with other
men.
The Supreme Court has rejected Rhines' appeal twice, with the latest decision
coming last month.
Rhines' execution would be South Dakota's first since Rodney Berget's lethal
injection in October. Berget was sentenced to death for killing corrections
officer Ronald "R.J." Johnson during a 2011 prison escape attempt. His
execution was the state's 4th since it reinstituted the death penalty in 1979.
(source: Associated Press)
CALIFORNIA:
South Bay Murderer's Death Penalty Conviction Upheld
The California Supreme Court decided Thursday to uphold a death penalty
conviction for a man who molested and murdered 2 South Bay boys in 1993.
Scott Erskine has been on death row at San Quentin State Prison since 2004
after a jury convicted him of the murders of Charlie Keever, 13, and Jonathan
Sellers, 9. Erskine was already serving a decades-long prison sentence for rape
at the time.
Keever and Sellers disappeared while on a bike ride along the Otay River in
1993. Their bodies were later found days later in a riverbed in the South Bay
neighborhood of Palm City. Investigators said they had been beaten, raped and
murdered.
In a 40-page unanimous decision released Thursday, the state supreme court
justices rejected all arguements made by Erskine’s appellate attorney, Kimberly
Grove.
In the appeal, Grove argued that a judge wrongly removed a juror who opposed
the death penalty and that the judge gave an an incorrect instruction that
prejudiced the jury.
The court also rejected arguments that the death penalty is unconstitutional
and was wrongly applied to Erskine in this case.
Erskine's appeal came months after Governor Gavin Newsom signed a moratorium on
death penalty for the more than 730 condemned inmates in California.
The order meant a reprieve for all individuals sentenced to death, a withdrawal
of the state's lethal injection protocol, and the closing of San Quentin's
never-used execution chamber. It did not mean a release of inmates or change in
their conviction, a spokesperson for the governor's office said.
The mothers of the 2 boys, Maria Keever and Milena Sellers-Phillips, who have
been fighting for decades to see Erskine's death sentence run its course,
feared the moratorium rendered their efforts useless.
The order did very little to change the death penalty process, which hasn't
executed a condemned inmate since 2006 when the state indefinitely suspended
capital punishment to rework its lethal injection policies and procedures.
Under Newsom's order, condemned inmates remain on death row, sentenced to
death, and their appeals continue. But no executions will be scheduled while
the governor's moratorium remains in effect.
The last inmate to be executed was Clarence Ray Allen, killed Jan. 17, 2006 at
age 76. Allen, sentenced to death on 3 counts of 1st-degree murder, was on
death row for more than 2 decades before a lethal injection was administered.
Prior, the state had executed 13 inmates since the time the death penalty was
reinstated in 1978.
Newsom’s executive action is only temporary. Repeal of capital punishment would
be up to California voters, who have consistently rejected statewide ballot
measures to repeal the death penalty.
(source: nbcsandiego.com)
USA:
2 Foreign Nationals Receive New Trials as U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Hear
State Death-Penalty Appeals
2 foreign nationals who were sentenced to death in unrelated cases will receive
new trials after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear appeals of lower court
rulings overturning their convictions. Jose Echavarria (pictured, left), a
Nevada prisoner originally from Cuba, and Ahmad Issa (pictured, right), an Ohio
prisoner originally from Jordan, each were awarded new trials by federal
appellate court decisions in 2018. The states petitioned the Supreme Court
seeking review of the cases, but on May 20, 2019, the Court denied the
petitions, allowing the lower court rulings to stand. Echavarria and Issa were
among 130 foreign nationals from 35 countries under sentence of death across
the United States.
Echavarria, who was sentenced to death in Clark County, Nevada for the 1990
killing of FBI agent John Bailey during an attempted bank robbery, was granted
a new trial on his claim that his trial had been tainted by judicial bias.
Echavarria fled to Mexico after the crime, and later alleged that he had been
tortured and beaten by Mexican police until he confessed. He moved to suppress
the confession, but the trial judge, Jack Lehman, denied the motion. Unknown to
the defense, Lehman had been the subject of an FBI investigation into issues of
possible corruption, fraud, and perjury and that investigation had been
conducted by Agent Bailey. The FBI ultimately referred the case to state
authorities in 1988, who brought no charges against the judge. Lehman met with
the prosecutor and the lawyer representing Echavarria’s co-defendant prior to
trial, asking whether they wanted him to recuse himself. According to the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, “Judge Lehman did not fully explain …
the nature and extent of the FBI’s investigation,” and neither party requested
recusal. Echavarria’s counsel did not learn about the FBI investigation until
well after trial and sentencing.
The Ninth Circuit ruled that Judge Lehman’s participation in the trial created
“a constitutionally intolerable risk of bias” that violated Echavarria’s right
to due process. It wrote that “[a]n average judge in [Lehman’s] position would
have feared that rulings favoring Echavarria, tipping the outcome towards
acquittal or a sentence less than death, could cost him his reputation, his
judgeship, and possibly his liberty.” The court found that “the risk of bias
was extraordinary in both its nature and severity … [and] was obvious to all
who had complete information about Agent Bailey’s investigation.” It upheld a
federal district court ruling that vacated Echavarria’s conviction and death
sentence and required the state to retry or release Echavarria. This was the
second case in 2 years in which the Supreme Court had been asked to intervene
in a Clark County case alleging judicial bias. In 2017, the Court reversed a
Nevada court ruling that had upheld the capital conviction of Michael Rippo
after a judge who was the subject of a federal bribery investigation in which
Clark County prosecutors were playing a role refused to recuse himself from the
trial.
Issa was granted a new trial by the Ohio federal courts based on Hamilton
County prosecutors’ improper use of hearsay evidence. Issa was convicted of
capital murder for allegedly hiring Andre Miles to kill Maher Khriss, Issa’s
boss, at the behest of Khriss’ wife, Linda. Miles also killed Zaid Khriss,
Maher’s brother, when he shot Maher. Miles, Issa, and Linda Khriss were all
charged with aggravated murder. Linda Khriss was acquitted in a trial in which
Miles—who had received a life sentence in his trial—testified against her.
Miles subsequently refused to testify at Issa’s trial and the trial court
allowed Cincinnati prosecutors to instead present testimony from 2 friends of
Miles, who said Miles had told them that Issa had hired him to kill someone.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit found that this testimony
violated the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, which states, “[i]n
all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be
confronted with the witnesses against him.”
The 2 cases illustrate the heightened risks facing foreign nationals in state
courts in the U.S. 6 foreign nationals have been exonerated from U.S. death
rows since the 1990s, 3 of them since December 2017. Overall, there has been 1
exoneration for about every 9 executions in the U.S. However, for foreign
nationals on death row, there has been one exoneration for every 6.17
executions. Foreigners facing capital charges in the U.S. are also frequently
denied their right to consular assistance, which is guaranteed under the Vienna
Convention on Consular Relations. International human rights courts have ruled
that the U.S. has breached its treaty obligations by allowing states to impose
death sentences on more than 50 foreign nationals without providing them access
to consular assistance.
(Echavarria v. Filson, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, July 25,
2018; Issa v. Bradshaw, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, September
21, 2018; Order List, U.S. Supreme Court, May 20, 2019.)
(source: Death Penalty Information Center)
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