July 9
TEXAS----new execution date
Execution date set for ‘Texas 7’ prisoner who accused judge of anti-Semitism
A “Texas 7” escapee who filed an appeal alleging his trial judge was racist and
anti-Semitic is now scheduled for execution this year, despite 2 pending legal
claims still winding through the courts.
Dallas County Judge Lela Mays on Wednesday approved an Oct. 10 death date for
Randy Halprin, a Jewish prisoner who in May accused ex-Judge Vickers Cunningham
of routinely using obscenity-laced language and racial slurs to describe Jewish
and minority defendants.
“In case after case, the U.S. Supreme Court has clearly and consistently
enforced defendants’ constitutional right to a judge free of bias,” defense
attorney Tivon Schardl said Monday in a statement. “Yet, Mr. Halprin’s trial
judge, who presided over the death penalty trial, made critical decisions about
what evidence the jury would hear, and sentenced Mr. Halprin to die, was biased
against Mr. Halprin, referring to him as a ‘f****n’ Jew’ and a ‘G*****n k**e.’”
Now 41, Halprin was originally sent to death row for his role in a 2000 prison
escape and crime spree that left dead Irving police Officer Aubrey Hawkins.
That December, Halprin and six other men took hostages and broke out of the
Connally Unit south of San Antonio.
They stole a prison van, then switched it out for a getaway vehicle and fled to
Houston, where they pulled off two robberies to stock up on supplies, guns and
money. Afterward, they drove toward Dallas, hoping to get away from the search
teams hunting for them.
On Christmas Eve, the escapees held up an Oshman’s sporting goods store in
Irving - and Hawkins was the 1st officer who responded to the call. In a
chaotic scene, 5 of the men started firing at the lawman.
When it was over, Hawkins lay dead in the parking lot, shot 11 times and
dragged 10 feet by an SUV as the panicked prisoners fled with $70,000 and 44
guns.
Some of the men admitted to to their roles, but Halprin has consistently
maintained that he never fired a shot and that he didn’t even want to bring a
gun. Still, he and the other 5 survivors - 1 man killed himself before he could
be captured - were sentenced to die under the controversial law of parties, a
Texas statute that holds non-shooters as criminally responsible as triggermen.
After more than 15 years spent fighting his conviction and sentence, Halprin’s
legal team learned of Cunningham’s alleged bias last year when he admitted to
the Dallas Morning News that he’d set up a living trust that rewarded his
children if they married a fellow white Christian.
“I strongly support traditional family values,” he told the paper in a video
interview during his 2018 campaign for county commissioner. “If you marry a
person of the opposite sex that’s Caucasian, that’s Christian, they will get a
distribution.”
He lost the Republican run-off by just 25 votes. Afterward, defense
investigators began interviewing people who knew him to find out more about his
views toward Jewish people and minorities.
“If someone were actually African-American he would call them (N-word) and
their 1st name,” childhood friend Tammy McKinney recounted. “It was his
signature way of talking about people of color.”
The May appeal and attached statements detailed a slew of other alleged
expressions of bias toward Catholics, Jews, Latinos and black people.
Previously, Cunningham did not respond to the Chronicle’s requests for comment.
In early June, even before the federal courts ruled on that appeal, the office
of Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot asked for the October execution
date. A district attorney’s office spokesperson did not respond Monday to a
request for comment.
The Texas Office of the Attorney General - which represents the state instead
of the district attorney once a case reaches federal appeals - last month filed
a response brief both arguing that Halprin wasn’t legally entitled to relief
and condemning Cunningham’s alleged bigotry.
“To be clear, the details of Cunningham’s living trust and the accounts of
those who knew Cunningham regarding his bigoted statements and beliefs are
troubling to say the least,” state attorneys wrote. “The Attorney General’s
Office does not condone or excuse Cunningham’s creation of his living trust,
and the racist and religiously-bigoted statements he is alleged to have made
are abhorrent.”
Aside from Halprin, only one other Texas 7 prisoner who’d been sentenced to die
- Patrick Murphy - is still alive on death row. The others have all been
executed.
(source: Houston Chronicle)
***********************
Texas 7 death row inmate fighting for religious freedom
Execution halted, a convicted cop killer's lethal injection on hold minutes
after what would have been his last meal.
It's a result of a major Supreme Court decision which led to changes in how
death row inmates die in Texas Prisons.
In an exclusive interview, Texas Seven's Patrick Murphy tells us his religious
rights are being violated.
It was December in the year 2000.
Seven inmates escaped from a state prison south of San Antonio then committed
several robberies and murdered a police officer in North Texas.
Aubrey Hawkins, had just left Christmas Eve dinner with his family responded to
burglary in progress.
Gunned down, by the infamous group now known as the Texas 7.
Police eventually caught 6 of the 7 after 1 of the members killed himself, all
but 2 have been executed.
"I regret being involved in the whole Texas 7," Patrick Murphy said.
After 17 years on death row, Murphy said he's a changed man.
He attributes his revelation to Buddhism, a way of life he took on 8 years ago
that helps him cope with the dark reality of his eventual execution.
"Don't get me wrong," Murphy said. "There's a portion of my mind saying 'you
fool they're fixing to kill you' but I was able to have that portion and still
stay focused on my emotions."
In March, Murphy and his faith made national headlines.
In a last-minute ruling, the Supreme Court halted his execution on the grounds
of religious discrimination.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice wouldn't allow Murphy to have his
Buddhist monk inside the chamber with him because the monk isn't employed by
the state.
Though, Christian and Muslim chaplains are and have routinely been right next
to inmates on the gurney.
So, Justice Brett Kavanaugh gave TDCJ 2 choices.
Allow Murphy to die with his Buddhist chaplain inside the chamber or no longer
allow any inmates too have a spiritual adviser with them.
Prison officials chose no more chaplains for anyone.
"I think it reflects badly on Texas," Murphy said. "Here they are denying men
the right to religious counsel at their ultimate judgement."
Murphy believes the state's changes are still targeting his religious freedom.
"It's totally unfair," Revered Hui Yong said.
His Buddhist chaplain, Reverend Yong said if security is a concern, the state
can interview and run a background check on him.
"These guys really need all the help they can get and they need to be as calm
as they can be," Reverend Yong said.
Still, Murphy's critics said this is a tactic to delay lethal injection.
Since, he doesn't believe he should be executed to begin with because he didn't
pull the trigger in the first place.
"I think my level of involvement should exclude me from the law of parties,"
Murphy said.
The law of parties allows the death penalty for anyone involved in a murder,
trigger-man or not.
For now, the state hasn't scheduled his new execution date.
So, Murphy is focused on family and getting away from the Texas 7 label.
"Eventually Patrick Murphy the Buddhist is how I would like to be remembered,"
Murphy said.
He's still holding onto hope with a civil lawsuit against the prison system.
As well as a life after this one.
"What Buddhism does is the possibility of the next life, reincarnation," Murphy
said.
(source: Fox News)
***********************
Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----43
Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----561
Abbott#--------scheduled execution date-----name------------Tx. #
44---------Aug. 15----------------Dexter Johnson----------562
45---------Aug. 21----------------Larry Swearingen--------563
46---------Sept. 4----------------Billy Crutsinger--------564
47---------Sept. 10---------------Mark Anthony Soliz------565
48---------Sept. 25---------------Robert Sparks-----------566
49---------Oct. 2-----------------Stephen Barbee----------567
50---------oct. 10----------------Randy Halprin-----------568
51---------Oct. 16----------------Randall Mays------------569
52---------Oct. 30----------------Ruben Gutierrez---------570
53---------Nov. 6-----------------Justen Hall-------------571
(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Books: Lethal State — A History of the Death Penalty in North Carolina
The death penalty and lynching were instruments of “white supremacist political
and social power” in North Carolina, diverging in form but not in function. So
writes University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill American Studies Professor Seth
Kotch In his newly released book, Lethal State: A History of the Death Penalty
in North Carolina. Lethal State tracks North Carolina’s use of the death
penalty from post-Civil War Reconstruction to the present. Kotch summarizes the
through line of capital punishment, saying, “The death penalty’s habits in
North Carolina included preying on the mentally compromised, people of color,
and people in poverty … and above all, expressing the cruelties and prejudices
of white supremacy by asserting through its uneven outcomes the rule that white
lives — especially educated, white lives of means — mattered most.”
Kotch’s book shines a light on the continuing patterns of racial injustice from
the Carolina colony’s first execution — that of a Native American accused of
killing a white woman — through the era of lynching and Jim Crow, and on to the
disproportionate use of capital punishment against racial minorities in North
Carolina today. In the second half of the 1800s through the establishment of
Jim Crow apartheid in the first half of the 1900s, Kotch writes, “the death
penalty and lynchings were symbiotic,” with lynching “provided a scaffolding on
which to build a death penalty—one that disproportionately targeted African
American men … until the death penalty was strong enough to stand on its own.”
The state’s Jim Crow death penalty “felt more like an expression of state power
than a blow against it, and that threat of racial violence, Kotch writes, “was
fundamental to its existence.”
Experts on North Carolina’s death penalty have lauded the importance and power
of the book. Ken Rose, a longtime death-penalty defense attorney at the Center
for Death Penalty Litigation, said, “Seth Kotch fills his well-documented and
exhaustively researched book about North Carolina’s history of executions with
spectacular tales of the state’s failure to mete out justice reliably and to
treat persons of color and the poor fairly.” Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, a professor
of history at UNC-Chapel Hill, said, “Few historical studies have so thoroughly
refocused my understanding of one of the foremost issues of our time: the
criminal justice system’s persistently inequitable treatment of African
American men.”
Kotch provides stark data to support his thesis: “Between the end of the Civil
War and 1910, 74 percent of those executed were African Americans, although
their proportion of the population never exceeded 38 percent. From between 1910
and 1961, 78 percent of those executed were black men, most for crimes with
white victims. Adding American Indians, a full 80 % of those executed were
people of color and just 1 white person was executed for a crime against a
person of color.” The North Carolina death penalty of the early twentieth
century “overwhelmingly continued to punish the same people (African Americans)
for the same crimes (murder, rape, burglary) against the same people (white
victims) as did lynching.” First-degree burglary, he writes, made it unlawful
for a black man to be present in a home occupied by white women, and “[t]hose
executed for burglary in North Carolina were always black, their victims were
always white, and the crimes that resulted in executions almost always carried
the hint of interracial sexual violence.” North Carolina conducted 67
executions for rape between 1910 and 1950, nearly all involving black men
accused of raping white women. Overall, 78% of those executed in North Carolina
between 1910 and 1961 were black men, most accused of crimes against white
victims.
In a June 19 radio interview on WUNC, Kotch said he wrote Lethal State because
“it seemed like this hugely important moral decision that a state…would make,
that seemed to happen in darkness and without a good deal of discussion, and so
I wanted to provide a little bit of light.” Kotch also discusses the state’s
abortive implementation of a Racial Justice Act, which legislators passed to
allow death-row prisoners to present statistical evidence of racial bias to
challenge their death sentences and then repealed after a court found systemic
evidence of discriminatory practices across the state. The interview also
covers the de facto execution moratorium in place in North Carolina, which has
not carried out an execution since 2006 because state law requires a doctor to
participate in executions, but the North Carolina Medical Board has said it
will punish physicians who participate because their involvement violates
medical ethics.
(source: Death Penalty Information Center)
FLORIDA:
‘I’m a homicidal maniac’: Scott Nelson tells jurors he wants death penalty
following murder conviction
A man convicted of kidnapping a woman from her employer's Winter Park home and
killing her testified Monday during the penalty phase of his trial.
Scott Nelson was convicted in late June of 1st-degree murder, kidnapping,
carjacking and robbery with a firearm.
Nelson previously testified during the trial and claimed the death of Jennifer
Fulford was his parole officer’s fault.
Nelson talked Monday about all the alleged abuse he claims to have suffered
over the years in federal prison. He said at one point a guard dressed as Santa
beat him up. He's tying to avoid the death penalty.
After he testified on Monday, Nelson asked the judge for a "Nelson Hearing,"
which is a hearing that is requested when a defendant feels their court
appointed attorney is ineffective.
Nelson is told the judge that his attorneys refuse to ask him two questions
that he feels are key. He referred to them as "landmines" and said he wants
them asked of him on the stand.
In making the demand Nelson essentially forced his own defense attorney to ask
him on the stand how his years in prison have affected his mental health and he
says, "I am a homicidal maniac." The state then asked Nelson if he wants the
death penalty and Nelson said "yes."
(source: WESH news)
LOUISIANA:
‘Worst thing you can hear’----Other troopers tell of hearing ‘officer down’
message
The trial of a man accused of 1st-degree murder in the fatal shooting of a
state trooper began Sunday in Lafayette with emotional testimony from
witnesses.
Kevin Daigle, 57, is accused in the death of Louisiana State Trooper Steven
Vincent in 2015.
Vincent, a 13-year veteran of the Louisiana State Police force, was 44 when he
died Aug. 24, 2015, the day after he was shot. Sgt. Ben Fox, a state trooper
with Troop D, told the court Sunday he knew Vincent well and the two were
partners on the force and worked together every day.
He said on Aug. 23, 2015, the department received multiple calls about a
traffic incident on Fruge Road in the Bell City area.
Fox said Vincent was dispatched to check it out and it wasn't long before calls
began coming in that an officer was down.
"It's the worst thing you can hear," Fox said. "I knew it had to be Steven."
He told jurors he saw Vincent on the ground and could tell his injuries were
"pretty bad. Steven had severe head trauma, blood was everywhere, and people
were trying to render aid."
Fox said "an older white male was on the ground with two people on top of him
and I could tell he was handcuffed. At that point, I picked him (Daigle) up and
read him his Miranda rights." He said a medical helicopter arrived and a team
tended to Vincent before he was airlifted to Lake Charles Memorial Hospital.
A dash cam video from Vincent's vehicle was shown to the jury and the nearly
45-minute video revealed the entire interaction between Vincent and Daigle
after the trooper had been dispatched to the scene.
Vincent asked Daigle how his truck ended up in a ditch and if he had been
drinking. Daigle told him someone else had been driving. After a lot of
discussion and Daigle refusing to admit he was the driver, Vincent radioed his
office and told them he would call a tow truck and let Daigle call for a ride.
As he went to tell Daigle, the defendant got out of his truck and came toward
Vincent and a loud "pop, pop, pop" was heard as the trooper was shot.
Trooper Joey Babineaux told jurors on the day of the shooting he had been
working a traffic fatality in another area when he got the "officer down"
message. He said he rushed to the scene, driving 140 mph at times.
Babineaux said he and Vincent had been very close friends and their families
also spent time together. Becoming emotional, he said when he got to the scene
he immediately went to Vincent to try and give aid. "There was a lot of blood
and I observed two holes. It looked like he had been shot. I also observed
brain matter and I didn't want the other officers to see what I was having to
see."
Babineaux said he went with the medical helicopter that transported Vincent. "I
sat by his side and assisted him with breathing, " he said. "I also prayed with
him twice on the way."
The courtroom was packed with family and friends of Vincent's, including his
wife Katherine. Robert LeDoux, a good Samaritan who arrived on scene that day
before any law enforcement, told jurors about subduing Daigle by tackling him
and holding him down.
Once other bystanders arrived to help, LeDoux used Vincent's vehicle radio to
call for help. He also called 911, secured Vincent's service revolver, and got
a towel to put on Vincent's head and tried to render aid. "That day is etched
in my mind," he said.
The prosecution team is composed of Lea Hall, Jacob Johnson, and Charles
Robinson of the Calcasieu Parish District Attorney's office. The defense team
is made up of Kyla Romanach and Bruce E. Unangst.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
Trial is expected to continue today in 15th District Court in Lafayette.
(source: American Press)
TENNESSEE:
The Cruel Durability of Capital Punishment----I went to Tennessee and found out
why the last days of the death penalty may never come.
On the warm May evening when the state of Tennessee executed Don Johnson for
having murdered his wife, Connie, in 1984, there were 2 demonstrations taking
place outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. Prison officials fenced
off the area around the perimeter, and in a surreal moment that is part of
death penalty vigils whenever an execution takes place in Tennessee, a
correctional officer, dressed head to toe in tactical gear, asked, as if he
were separating the guests at a wedding, if we were for or against the death
penalty. He then directed us to the appropriate part of the field.
Technically, I’m neither. I am a reporter who, for the last few years, has been
covering the death penalty for Mother Jones. I’ve spoken to activists and
experts. Once, I interviewed an Alabama death row inmate a few days before he
was executed for a murder he insisted he didn’t commit. After he was put to
death, a friend texted me: “Wow, your guy is gone,” suggesting a personal
connection to him that I confess our conversation had created. I remember his
thick Southern accent, the intensity with which he was making his case as if I
could make a difference, and the haunting realization that this man who seemed
so fiercely alive would soon be dead not from natural causes but from a state
that administered a powerful drug combination that his lawyers insisted would
cause undue suffering.
There have been many nights I’ve stayed up late to find out whether the Supreme
Court would spare a man’s life. Readers have sent me emails accusing me of
“loving black murderers,” implying something insidious about my own blackness.
(I thank them for reading Mother Jones.) I’ve written about the herculean
efforts that states will make just to obtain lethal injection drugs at a time
when European drug manufacturers refuse to continue their involvement in state
killing. I have become both intellectually engaged in the questions surrounding
the death penalty and personally unsettled by the continued insistence in more
than half the states in our nation that this is a reasonable punishment, even
as nearly every other country we consider peers have eliminated it. And many of
those countries whose values we consider inimical to ours—North Korea, Iran,
Iraq—continue it. But I have never visited a community where an execution was
about to take place and never stood outside a prison with a crowd of crying,
praying people at the moment the state kills someone several hundred yards
away.
After an identification check and a quick pat down, I walked up to about 50
people in the middle of a solemn prayer vigil. Johnson spent half of his 68
years on death row and during that time experienced a religious turning point
that finally led to his ordination as an elder in the Seventh-day Adventist
Church. As his execution date drew near, he refused any further appeals. His
sole final and failed effort was a request to Republican Gov. Bill Lee for
clemency. On the pro–death penalty side of the field was 1 man. Dressed in a
long dark coat and a cowboy hat, he alternated between pacing and playing on
his phone like someone in a crowded bar trying desperately not to look lonely.
By the time I had arrived, Johnson had about half an hour left to live.
I decided to visit Nashville the day before Johnson’s execution because if
there is such a thing as a “perfect” state to visit to understand the
durability of capital punishment in America, Tennessee fits the bill. It has
increased its rate of executions—after a 9-year hiatus—while other states, like
Washington and New Hampshire, are abolishing the death penalty. Between 1960
and 2000, Tennessee didn’t execute anyone, but when “tough-on-crime” policies
intensified and red-state lawmakers felt pressured to do something, Tennessee
revved up its death chamber in 2000 and killed Robert Coe for the 1979 rape and
murder of 8-year-old Cary Ann Medlin. Another 6 years would pass before the
state put Sedley Alley to death, despite the pressing questions surrounding his
possible innocence. Between 2007 and 2009, 4 more men were executed. Johnson’s
execution will likely be followed by 2 more this year.
There are other ways Tennessee is representative of some broader themes that
politicians, society, and the courts have grappled with surrounding this issue.
As pharmaceutical companies worldwide decline to sell their drugs to US
prisons, dozens of inmates, represented by Nashville’s Supervisory Assistant
Federal Public Defender Kelley Henry (who also represented Johnson), filed a
lawsuit against the state to halt its plans to use a controversial sedative
responsible for several botched executions. (They lost.) And as DNA evidence
has resulted in scores of exonerations of people who had spent years on death
rows across the country as the result of wrongful convictions, the family of
Sedley Alley is trying to get DNA testing done that could prove that Tennessee
killed an innocent man. Then there is the fact that people of color are
disproportionately represented on death row. Tennessee is no exception. Of the
55 men and 1 woman who are on death row there, 50 % are black; Tennessee’s
black population stands at 17 %. But in contrast to so many death penalty
stories, Don Johnson is white and healthy. He has admitted he was guilty of a
terrible crime. This might have all the hallmarks of an uncomplicated
execution.
My 1st stop was far from the bars that draw aspiring country music singers and
the neighborhoods where future brides ride roofless buses with dozens of their
closest friends. I drove to the far east part of town to the offices of
Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, a nonprofit dedicated to
ending capital punishment. With more than 10,000 supporters, the group mainly
works out of Nashville but has chapters throughout the state. It’s similar to
the other anti–death penalty organizations that have formed throughout the
country.
I wanted to know what the hours before an execution were really like for
activists so staunchly opposed to the death penalty, so I met with Stacy
Rector, who has been executive director of TADP for the last 13 years. She’s an
ordained Presbyterian minister with experience in ministering to death row
inmates.
Rector is tall and speaks with a comforting Southern drawl. The statement
“Honoring Life by Abolishing the Death Penalty” is emblazoned on a poster. TADP
joins other organizations to educate the public about the death penalty and
work to end it. Rector also served as a spiritual adviser to Steve Henley, who
was convicted of the 1985 murders of Fred and Edna Stafford but insisted he was
innocent and that his accomplice, Terry Flatt, had killed the couple. In
exchange for his testimony against Henley, Flatt was given a 25-year sentence
and paroled after 5 years. Rector and Henley both grew up on farms in rural
Tennessee, so he “was very similar to many of the people I grew up with,” she
said. “It just became a friendship.”
The system is broken,” she told me. “It is not fairly applied, it continues to
risk executing innocent people.”
The last time Rector saw Henley was in the execution chamber. She led his
family members in prayer as they wept. “I’d like to say that I hope this gives
Fred and Edna’s family some peace. My experience in life is it won’t,” Henley
said to his family before he died. “All my love to my mother and father, my
sister and children. I’m an innocent man.” Henley’s story is replicated nearly
everywhere that the death penalty is still practiced, Rector said.
“The system is broken,” she told me. “It is not fairly applied. It continues to
risk executing innocent people.”
Johnson didn’t want to mount any last minute legal challenges. His clemency
petition relied heavily on how he was transformed in prison from a violent
murderer to a gentle person of faith. What that meant on a practical level was
that there were no desperate last-minute appeal efforts, but there were more
conversations about religion and forgiveness. “This is what Don wanted to do,”
Rector said about his final request to the governor. He wanted the opportunity
to be in front of the governor, fall “upon his knees,” and ask for forgiveness.
When a jury sentences a defendant to death, it begins a process that can take
decades, cost millions of dollars, and require a small army of lawyers, many of
whom end up growing close to their clients in the process of trying to keep
them alive. Johnson was scheduled to be executed in 2006 and 2015, but both
executions were stayed because of legal questions surrounding the methods the
state uses to kill inmates. Kelley Henry has represented a number of death row
inmates, including Don Johnson. I visited her at a large office building just
across the street from the federal courthouse. Nestled in her cozy office,
decorated with pictures of her family and comfortable chairs for lounging,
Henry reflected on having gotten to know Don Johnson since she first became
involved in his case in 2006. “I’ve come to care for him quite a bit,” she
said. She’s come to think of Johnson and his supporters as her friends. “It has
been humbling to get to know them and to see their goodness.”
“Goodness” is not a word that would immediately come to mind when looking at
Johnson’s record. Like most people who end up on death row, he was raised in a
chaotic household. His mother, Ruby, was only a teenager when she met James Lee
Johnson, who was, according to the clemency petition, a “grown man.” They began
a relationship but James Lee quickly became abusive. Ruby briefly ran away, had
an affair, and got pregnant with Don. Worried about finances, she returned to
James Lee. Don, who was born in January 1951, was raised to believe that James
Lee was his biological father.
Then the cycle of abuse extended to the next generation. James Lee beat Don and
Ruby, and Ruby, in turn, beat Don. As a teenager, Don spent time in a juvenile
facility and an adult prison where physical violence was routine. According to
his clemency petition, by the time Don left home for good at 18, he had learned
little in school and was belligerent and violent; he believed women were meant
to be abused. The petition contains scant detail about his life leading up to
the crime that would land him on death row, but he describes himself as a liar,
thief, and con man. In 1977, he married Connie, who had a young daughter named
Cynthia. Together, they also had a son they named Jason. According to court
documents, Don and Connie’s marriage was floundering, and Connie threatened to
leave him.
A few weeks before Christmas in 1984, Johnson suffocated Connie to death,
shoving a plastic bag down her throat. His accomplice, Ronnie McKoy, helped him
put her body in the family van and move her to a shopping center. The next day,
Johnson filed a missing person’s report and asked his boss to look for Connie’s
van. Johnson’s boss discovered her body. 3 days after the murder, Johnson was
questioned by police and arrested. At his October 1985 trial in Shelby County,
he was sentenced to die by the electric chair. Reading the reports of this
brutal murder makes it easier to understand why, to death penalty proponents,
Johnson is a monster.
But “goodness” somehow appeared during his 3 decades behind bars. In February
1985 while being held in the Shelby County jail, he heard an inmate preach, and
converted to Christianity. While on death row, he joined the Seventh-day
Adventists after 2 inmates introduced him to it, and in 2008 he became an
ordained elder at Riverside Chapel, which routinely sent its members to build
relationships with incarcerated people.
“I am heartbroken,” Henry says. “I think it’s going to be very hard tomorrow
night to witness his execution,” That’s not only because she cares for Johnson,
but because she has seen the effects of the drugs before.
For decades, most states used the 3-drug combination containing sodium
thiopental to render the inmate unconscious, pancuronium bromide to paralyze
the inmate, and potassium chloride to stop the heart. Presumed to be a painless
and more humane alternative to the electric chair, there is no scientific
evidence proving that lethal injection is either. When the shortages of sodium
thiopental began, states turned to Midazolam, a drug that would prove to be
dangerous for executions because the sedative is not strong enough to render
the inmate unconscious before the next dose of drugs. By 2009, death penalty
states were struggling to find drugs, since European drug manufacturers refused
to sell their product to American prisons. In 1 case, a state received a
“donation” from a drug supplier after the Arkansas Department of Corrections
director drove to meet an anonymous supplier in an undisclosed location.
Tennessee was not exempt from the problems of procuring the drugs, so the state
attempted a workaround. In 2014, 5 years after the state’s last execution,
former Gov. Bill Haslam signed a law that, in the event that legal drugs were
unavailable, permitted the use of the electric chair—a method widely employed
in the 1980s and 1990s but that’s considered inhumane today. 3 years later,
Henry represented 32 death row inmates in a lawsuit against the state over its
3-drug protocol, alleging that their executions would amount to torture.
Henry has witnessed the executions of several clients and paints a gruesome
picture of prisoners’ experiences. “When you hear people talking about coughing
and gasping and snoring…that’s pulmonary edema beginning,” Henry says about the
condition that feels like drowning. “And when you see them straining against
the strap, grimacing, clenching their fists? That’s them starting to have that
suffocation feeling from the paralytic.”
But still Tennessee pressed on and won its Midazolam case against the inmates.
Executions resumed on August 9, 2018, nine years after the last one. Billy Ray
Irick was put to death for the 1985 murder of 7-year-old Paula Dyer. According
to media witnesses, during his execution Irick “jolted” and made a coughing or
choking sound and briefly strained his arms against the restraints. He was
pronounced dead at 7:48 p.m. His execution meant that after nearly a decade,
the legal battles that were keeping Henry’s clients alive were no longer mostly
symbolic. Her defense of her clients was literally a matter of life or death in
Tennessee.
Connie Johnson was not the only victim of Johnson’s crime. The couple had two
children, Cynthia (whom Johnson adopted when he married Connie) and Jason, the
couple’s biological child. At the time of the murders, the children were 7 and
4 years old, respectively. In the days leading up to an execution, family
members of the victims will often ask why so much attention is being paid to
the person who committed the crime, rather than the people who are suffering.
It’s also common rhetoric from death penalty supporters.
Unlike abolitionist groups, there is no organized pro–death penalty movement,
but Kent Scheidegger has made a name for himself by explicitly supporting
capital punishment and pushing for more executions. As legal director of the
Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a right-wing think tank that opposes
reforming the criminal justice system, Scheidegger has written more than 200
amicus briefs supporting the harsh punishments and the death penalty. He
believes that the documented racial disparities on death row are “smoke and
mirrors” and that the appeals process shouldn’t be dragged on for too long
because “nearly all death-row inmates are clearly guilty.”
A large part of Don Johnson’s clemency petition to the governor was based on
his adopted daughter’s forgiveness, but it was not always that way. When
Johnson was first scheduled for execution in 2006, Vaughn was pleased. “I want
the freak to burn,” she said in the clemency petition. The execution was called
off because of the legal implications around using the electric chair. 6 years
later, when she was 35 years old, Vaughn decided to visit him in prison and
confront him. As they sat together, she described what he had robbed her of,
what it was like to go through life’s milestones—her high school graduation,
her wedding, the birth of her child—without her mother by her side. Johnson
cried while he listened.
And then that was it. Vaughn heard a voice telling her to let it go. “I forgive
you,” she said to the man who killed her mother, and she meant it. In contrast,
Jason Johnson, Vaughn’s brother, believes, like many victims, that this
execution will bring closure, that it will somehow offer some solace for all
the pain that was inflicted. “He’s an evil human being,” he told the Memphis
Commercial Appeal a week before the execution. “That is all my father is.
That’s all he’s ever been, is a con man.”
Retribution for a heinous crime, and the opportunity to offer the victims some
consolation, has been a time-tested justification for the death penalty, as
District Attorney Jody Pickens said when Urshawn Miller was sentenced to death
in Jackson last year: “Justice was served and the citizens of Jackson will be
protected from someone whose criminal history shows he is a very violent
person.” But increasingly, victims of crimes are pushing back and asking that
the death penalty not be an option. One such person is Charles Strobel, a
Catholic priest who runs Room in the Inn, an organization that provides
services for homeless people in Nashville. Dressed in a T-shirt and jeans,
Strobel sits across from me at the large Room in the Inn complex. The
76-year-old Germantown, Tennessee, native speaks slowly and softly and
apologizes for the tremor in his hands. He has Parkinson’s disease.
In the winter of 1985, Strobel was at his parish in Nashville when he noticed a
group of homeless people in the parking lot, looking for somewhere to stay
warm. He decided to open the doors and let them in. A year later, several
congregations had decided to provide shelter and food to homeless people, and
it grew to a large organization with 7,000 volunteers that house 1,500 homeless
men during the winter. The following year, just as Room in the Inn was starting
to grow, his mother Mary Catherine Strobel was abducted and murdered by a man
who had escaped a facility for people with mental illness.
When I asked him about his mother’s death and his family’s push to spare the
life of her killer, his voice remained steady. He described the night of
December 9, 1986, when Mary Catherine disappeared after finishing some
shopping. The 76-year-old, who was active in the Catholic church, was well
known in the community as someone who was always giving food, clothes, and
supplies to those in need.
“I can think of no way that his execution would bring us satisfaction.”
William Scott Day, an inmate who had escaped from a facility for people with
mental illness, grabbed her in the Sears parking lot, stabbed her, put her in
the trunk of her car, and left the body at a bus depot outside of Nashville.
Her body was found a day later. After Day was apprehended and convicted,
Tennessee wanted to pursue the death penalty. “I already had a response in my
head about what we needed to do going forward,” Strobel said, and organized his
family to lobby against it. “We believe in the miracle of forgiveness. That’s
what we said at the beginning of the grieving process and all the attention
that came to us.” When I asked Strobel if people thought the family was “out of
their minds” for opposing the death penalty, he chuckled. “That’s probably a
good way of putting it.” He then opened up a folder and pulled out a document
from 1986 and read me the statement he made on behalf of his family when
Tennessee wanted to pursue the maximum punishment for Mary’s killer. In it he
reiterates his belief in mercy and forgiveness, concluding, “I can think of no
way that his execution would bring us satisfaction.”
Since then, he has met with families who can’t overcome the relentless anguish
that comes with being the family member of a victim. “They were so close to the
raw pain and the grief,” he says. “I didn’t feel that way. As hard as it is to
forgive the person, it allowed us to move on and make some sense out of the
rest of our lives.” Day died in prison.
Hearing stories like Strobel’s always brings me back to a central question:
Would I have the capacity to forgive such a crime? The Strobel family not only
asked Tennessee to spare his life, but also believed he was a “child of God,
created in the image of God, and loved by God.” Too many of us struggle to
forgive people who lie or cheat or steal. But Strobel is so steadfast in what
he believes that forgiving the man who murdered his mother almost came as
second nature.
Don Johnson only had a few requests at the end of his life. In lieu of a last
meal, he wanted the money to be given to a homeless person. He also asked the
governor to pray with him and his fellow inmates before his death. I left Room
in the Inn and headed to the Legislative Plaza at the state capitol to meet
with Christian faith leaders Jeannie Alexander and Shane Claiborne, who
gathered with a small group outside the governor’s office. They wanted to
persuade Republican Gov. Bill Lee to talk to Johnson before he died, and had
already made a failed attempt to enter his office the day before. They’re all a
part of a loose network of faith leaders who actively oppose the death penalty.
Alexander and Claiborne both have developed personal relationships with Johnson
and would regularly visit him on death row.
While someone stood outside holding a big poster with a picture of Johnson’s
face on it, the rest of the group went through security and gathered outside
the office where they figured the governor was. Before I arrived in Nashville,
Gov. Lee said the execution would go forward, but they hadn’t given up. Even if
they couldn’t get Lee to change his mind, maybe they could at least persuade
him to give Johnson and the other death row inmates a call. After a few minutes
that felt maddeningly long, someone from the governor’s office came out to say
the governor wouldn’t talk to the activists or pray with Johnson and the other
death row inmates. Claiborne’s voice begins to crack. “We can do better for the
victims than creating new victims,” he said. The group thanked the spokesperson
for his time, and as he started to walk away, Claiborne shouted, “It’s not too
late!”
Their last hope had been extinguished. Don Johnson was going to die in four
hours. We wandered down to the Nashville Public Library and sat in the civil
rights room, surrounded by posters of Martin Luther King Jr. and the great
Georgia civil rights leader Rep. John L. Lewis. Claiborne and Alexander begin
to reminisce about Don Johnson not as a murderer about to be executed, but as a
friend about to die. “I don’t know how to talk about when someone that you’ve
known and loved is about to be killed,” Alexander says through tears. “It’s not
like he was sick or there’s been a car wreck. There’s nothing wrong with him.”
Claiborne is weeping as well. “We’re literally watching someone that we love,
someone who is a living testament of God’s redemption and grace be killed by a
fellow Christian,” he says. “In this one, that’s what feels incredibly heavy to
me.”
I’d already met Claiborne in Lynchburg, Virginia, at a progressive evangelical
revival. He’s well known in these circles for being anti-gun violence,
anti-war, and, of course, anti–death penalty. While prominent evangelicals like
Gov. Lee talk a lot about religion, Claiborne lives his life the way he thinks
Jesus would. Alexander is a friend of Claiborne’s and was a regular on the
prison abolitionist circuit in Tennessee, showing up to protest during
executions.
To the outside observer or those who support the death penalty, Don is a
criminal on death row who senselessly murdered his wife. But when talking to
Alexander and Claiborne, a more three-dimensional man emerges. “He’s really
funny,” Alexander says with a laugh. “He’s got a great sense of humor and he
gives really good hugs.” Just a few days earlier, during their last visit
together, Johnson gave Claiborne a giant hug and teased him about how thin he
is. Claiborne asked Johnson how he was doing. “I’m too blessed to be stressed!”
he replied. Even though he was scheduled to die in four days, he was more
concerned about how his visitors were handling the situation. “He’s the kind of
person who wasn’t angry or bitter,” Alexander says. “And maybe, most
importantly, he’s just like us in most ways.”
“He’s the kind of person who wasn’t angry or bitter. And maybe, most
importantly, he’s just like us in most ways.”
In Johnson’s clemency petition, everyone—from his spiritual advisors to his
fellow inmates—had nothing but praise for the man he had become. “The last half
of his 67-year life has been a journey to redeem himself and help others,” said
Stephen Schaffer, a Methodist who’s been involved in prison ministry for more
than 20 years. “Don is a human being whose flame for good has been reignited.”
It’s not uncommon for incarcerated people to find religion while behind bars.
There aren’t many statistics about just how many prisoners end up embracing
faith, but a 2011 Pew Research survey of prison chaplains found that 73 % of
them say religious programming is critical to rehabilitation.
While listening to Claiborne and Alexander shed tears over the impending
killing of their friend, I forgot about how he brutally and senselessly
murdered his wife. How was it possible that one person could embody the two
greatest extremes of human behavior? And how is it possible for those around
him to reconcile those two extremes? In writing about so many men—and they are
usually men—on death row, the enormous cruelty of their crimes becomes their
identity. Clearly, that is only part of the story.
Vigils for death row inmates on the night of their executions are about as
common as a last meal. Capital punishment abolitionists use them as a public
demonstration of their opposition to the execution. There were two vigils in
Nashville for Johnson. The one at his home church at the Riverside Chapel was
explicitly endorsed by Rector and TADP. The other was held outside the prison
and organized by the group that Alexander and Claiborne were a part of. When I
wondered why there were 2 different vigils, my audio producer told me about a
metaphor for activism someone had once told her. Let’s say there are a bunch of
babies in a river coming downstream and they need to be saved. One group will
be preoccupied trying to immediately get the babies out of the water, while the
other will go upstream to investigate how the babies are ending up in the river
in the first place. Rector and TADP are the ones investigating the source of
problem, while Alexander and Claiborne are plucking the babies out of the
water.
Don Johnson’s execution was scheduled to start at 7 p.m. when he was led into
the execution chamber and strapped to a gurney. An hour earlier, members of
Riverside Chapel Seventh-day Adventist Church started gathering for a prayer
vigil. It’s unclear how many have actually met Johnson, since he’s never been
to the church, but Rector is there along with dozens of others. The pastor
begins with music, first a few choruses of the “Hallelujah” medley, followed by
the group singing Johnson’s favorite hymn, “Amazing Grace.” In front of the
pulpit were 2 large identical posters. At the top was a photo of Johnson’s face
and a verse from Romans, “For the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is
eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.” On the bottom half, photos
depicting the electric chair and the type of gurney used in lethal injection,
with the words “Our Donnie Johnson only has 2 choices!”
I left the church at about 6:20 p.m. to head to the prison, and 20 minutes
later I stood among the demonstrators. Everyone from the earlier action at the
state capitol was present, as well dozens of other people who’d come out to
support Johnson and express their opposition to capital punishment. Inside the
prison walls, the execution had begun.
Media witnesses would later report that after being strapped to the gurney and
while the executioner began administering the lethal drugs, Johnson asked the
warden if he could sing. First was “They’ll Know We Are Christians” (“And
they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love…”). Then he began the
old spiritual “Soon and Very Soon.” His voice was strong when he starting
singing, “Soon and very soon we are going to see the King,” but after singing
“no more dying here,” it gave out. At this point, according to media witnesses,
for 3 minutes Johnson made what some said sounded like gurgling and gasping
sounds, and others compared to snoring. Then he let out a high-pitched scream.
Outside the prison, night had fallen after a colorful sunset. Someone who was
in contact with those inside informed the crowd that Don Johnson was dead.
The group exchanged hugs and handshakes and slowly wandered back to their cars.
On the drive back home, I wondered what it was like for the witnesses of the
execution. Those in the viewing room are usually a combination of family
members of the victims, or of the inmate, or sometimes both, plus prison
chaplains and media witnesses. In Johnson’s case, Henry and a few members of
the media were present as he died. I tried to imagine what it would be like to
watch someone take those last, struggling breaths.
I don’t know if I could handle it.
The ever-present threat of executing an innocent person is the kind of worry
that can keep you up at night. According to a 2014 study by researchers in
Michigan and Pennsylvania, 4 % of defendants sentenced to die are actually
innocent. Since 1973, 166 inmates have been exonerated from death row, and the
Death Penalty Information Center estimates that at least 15 innocent people
have been executed.
The next morning, I met April Alley, the daughter of Sedley Alley, who, in
2006, was executed even though pressing questions about his possible innocence
remained. We met at a downtown coffee shop. Alley is in her 40s now and lives
in Louisville with her dogs. She has a slight Southern drawl and speaks with
the soft voice of someone who’s seen enough tragedy to last a lifetime. It’s
been 13 years since Tennessee executed her father for the rape and murder of
19-year-old Suzanne Collins near Millington Naval Base. On July 11, 1985, at
around 10:30 p.m., Collins, who was set to graduate from aviation school the
next day, went for a jog and never returned. Two witnesses, Mark Shotwell and
Mike Howard, described seeing a brown station wagon driving erratically and
hearing Collins’ screams.
“My dad was always very gentle and protective of me,” April told me. It was her
first time back to town after her father’s execution in 2006. She thought that
after more than a decade she’d be more composed, but the tears started almost
immediately. “For several years, I didn’t visit him,” she said. “I allowed a
family member to persuade my thinking in assuming he was guilty.” But after
reading more about the case and talking with Sedley’s lawyers, she started to
doubt his guilt.
Sedley Alley, who was 6 feet, 4 inches tall, with light skin and long red hair,
was driving a brown station wagon with his wife when he was pulled over by law
enforcement, who were looking for a similar car. After some questioning, the
officers decided that Sedley and his wife were in a domestic dispute and sent
them home.
Collins’ body was discovered along with physical evidence including clothing
believed to be worn by the perpetrator. The hunt for the brown station wagon
driver was back on, and Sedley was arrested and interrogated at the naval base.
At first, he denied killing Collins, but just 12 hours later he signed a
statement admitting that while black-out drunk, he hit Collins with his car,
stabbed her in the head with a screw driver, and then killed her with a tree
branch. There was just one problem: Sedley’s confession did not match the
physical evidence at the crime scene, which, according to the autopsy report,
revealed Collins had been struck in the head and neck more than 100 times and a
30-inch tree branch had been inserted into her vagina, perforating her lungs.
Sedley took law enforcement officers to the location where he said it happened,
but it was not the location where the witnesses had said the victim was
abducted. Jurors heard about Alley’s confession at trial but did not know that
he initially denied it, nor about the differences in the physical evidence, or
his unsuccessful request for an attorney during the interrogation.
For some of us, our anger and frustration comes out loud and uncontrolled, but
April’s voice was steady and soft. She swallowed back tears recounting a
conversation she had with her dad in prison. “He told me that if he did it…he
did not remember doing it. And if it [his guilt] could be proven to him with
DNA testing, he didn’t want to fight his execution…but we never got that
chance.”
In 2001, Tennessee passed a law allowing people convicted of crimes to apply
for DNA testing at any time. Central to the Suzanne Collins murder was red
underwear believed to belong to the perpetrator but was much too small for
someone the size of Sedley. There were also other items of clothing recovered
at the scene that could be tested for DNA. Sedley’s lawyers concluded their
client had been the victim of a false confession. Despite filing two petitions
to have the DNA at the crime scene tested, Sedley was denied.
On June 28, 2006, Sedley Alley was executed at Riverbend Maximum Security. His
last words were for his son and daughter. “I love you, David. I love you,
April. Be good and stay together. Stay strong.” It’s hard for April to contend
with a reality in which her father was executed for a crime he didn’t commit.
“How many other families, daughters, or sons are going to have to go through
what I’ve gone through?” she wonders. “How many more are innocent?”
Last fall, the Innocence Project received a tip about a serial offender in
Missouri. Thomas Bruce, who has been indicted in Missouri, could be the person
who actually killed Collins. The Innocence Project relaunched the effort to
test vital DNA that could prove Tennessee executed an innocent man. “I felt
like someone punched me in the stomach as hard as they could,” April says about
hearing from Kelley Henry that they were going to try to prove Sedley didn’t
kill Suzanne Collins. “It ripped me apart.”
I don’t know if I expected the governor of Tennessee to immediately assemble a
commission to discuss capital punishment, but as I drove away from my interview
with April Alley, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of “Is that it?” Even though
I’d spoken to so many people about Don Johnson, the family members of victims,
and faith leaders, and attended a vigil at a prison, I felt like I had only
scratched the surface. There was still the prosecutor who pursued the death
penalty 30 years ago, the jury of Johnson’s peers who’d decided that death was
a fitting punishment for his crime, and the prison staffer who injected the
inmate with a lethal dose of drugs. A lot of those aspects about the death
penalty are shrouded in secrecy. This is not by accident.
The day Johnson was executed, Henry went back to her office to secure her files
on everything that had happened that evening. The strange coughing noises
Johnson made in the execution chamber, Henry believed, indicated suffering. His
files could be used in future challenges to the death penalty. “Don believed
that his death must have some greater meaning,” Henry told me. At 5:30 the next
morning, she and her team flew to Miami for a conference. At 11 a.m., Charles
Wright, a 64-year-old death row inmate, died while awaiting execution. Wright,
who Henry represented, had been dying of terminal cancer and was scheduled to
die on October 10. Johnson and Wright had grown close over their decades behind
bars. “I can’t help believe that when Don was killed, he finally gave up,”
Henry says. She was sitting in a meeting about another case when she got the
news about Wright’s death, and everything that had happened over the last 24
hours sunk in. “I was just overwhelmed at that point,” she said. “I just burst
into tears.”
Right before an execution, it’s easy to focus on the inmate or the
anti-abortion Christian governor whose beliefs don’t quite extend to opposing
capital punishment. But visiting Nashville, I saw vividly how an execution
resonates far beyond the perpetrator, the criminal justice system, and perhaps
the victim’s family. And yet, it is a system in equilibrium, with a strange
interdependence between those opposed and those in favor. Capital punishment
tears families apart, forces people to reckon with what they believe in, and
affects many people: prison chaplains, local religious institutions, the legal
community, family members, and friends of the victims. We know that the death
penalty is racially biased, that there’s an unknown number of innocent people
waiting to die, and that it does nothing to prevent more victims from being
created. I keep thinking of what Jeannie Alexander said about Johnson: “And
maybe, most importantly, he’s just like us in most ways.”
And the system grinds on in Tennessee. Stephen West is scheduled to die at
Riverbend on August 15.
(source: Nathalie Baptiste, Mother Jones)
ARIZONA:
Death penalty hearing for man accused of 4 Arizona murders
1 of 2 men accused of killing 4 people in Casa Grande in 2017 will have a court
hearing next month to determine if he's eligible for the death penalty.
A Pinal County Superior Court judge has set Aug. 12 for a status hearing on
quadruple murder charges against Rodney Ortiz.
Ortiz and Alec Perez are accused of killing 2 men and 2 women at a housing
complex in October 2017.
Prosecutors also are seeking the death penalty against Perez.
They say one of the victims, 29-year-old Crysta Proctor, was married to Perez.
According to the Casa Grande Dispatch, police reports show Perez and his
estranged wife had a history of domestic violence.
Ortiz was 22 years old at the time of the quadruple murder while Alex Perez was
31.
(source: Associated Press)
CALIFORNIA----death row inmate dies
San Quentin Death Row Inmate John Brown Dies At 71
An inmate who had been on death row since 1982 was found unresponsive in his
San Quentin State Prison cell at 6:18 p.m. on Sunday.
Custody and medical staff performed CPR but the inmate was pronounced dead at
6:47 p.m.
John George Brown, 71, was sentenced to death in Orange County for the 1980
murder of a 27-year-old police officer and assaulting 2 other officers who had
tried to serve him a felony arrest warrant.
Since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978, 26 inmates have
committed suicide, 80 have died from natural causes, 13 have been executed in
California, 1 was executed in Missouri, 1 was executed in Virginia, 12 have
died from other causes and 6 are pending cause of death, including Brown.
There are currently 734 offenders on California’s death row.
(source: CBS News)
**********************
Kamala Harris Has a Distinguished Career of Serving Injustice
Kamala Harris is rising in the polls after dramatically confronting Joe Biden
during the Democratic primary debate about his opposition to federally mandated
busing for desegregation. The following week, however, Harris backed away from
saying that busing should always be federally mandated, calling it just one
“tool that is in the toolbox” for school districts to use. When asked to
clarify whether she would support federal mandates for busing, she said: “I
believe that any tool that is in the toolbox should be considered by a school
district.” But Biden’s poll numbers are falling as a result of Harris’s
theatrical attack.
Harris, who served as San Francisco District Attorney from 2004 to 2011 and
California Attorney General from 2011 to 2017, describes herself as a
“progressive prosecutor.” Harris’s prosecutorial record, however, is far
from progressive. Through her apologia for egregious prosecutorial misconduct,
her refusal to allow DNA testing for a probably innocent death row inmate, her
opposition to legislation requiring the attorney general’s office to
independently investigate police shootings and more, she has made a significant
contribution to the sordid history of injustice she decries.
Harris Tried to Whitewash Jail Informant Scandal in California
For years, perhaps decades, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, in
cooperation with the Orange County District Attorney (OCDA), planted teams of
informants in the jail to illegally elicit confessions.
Deputy sheriffs placed informants near defendants who were represented by
counsel to obtain statements from them. Prosecutors were aware of this program
and explicitly or implicitly promised benefits to informants. This violated the
defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
In People v. Dekraai, an informant in this program illegally obtained
statements from the defendant. After the prosecutor agreed not to use the
statements, Dekraai pled guilty to murder and was preparing his defense for a
trial on whether he would get the death penalty. He asked the judge to find
that the OCDA had a conflict of interest because of its involvement in the jail
informant program.
Over a 6-month period, the judge held 2 hearings and heard from 39 witnesses.
Harris favored criminalizing truancy, raising cash bail fees and keeping
prisoners locked up for cheap labor.
The judge found that many witnesses, including prosecutors and law enforcement
officers, were “credibility challenged” about the nature of the informant
program and their role in it. Some couldn’t remember, the judge determined, but
“others undoubtedly lied.”
Thus, the judge concluded that the OCDA had a conflict of interest and recused
the entire OCDA office, removing it from any further involvement in Dekraai’s
case.
Kamala Harris, who at that time was serving as State Attorney General, would
then take over the prosecution of the death penalty phase of Dekraai’s trial.
But Harris appealed the judge’s ruling and opposed the recusal of the OCDA.
In 2016, the Court of Appeal rejected Harris’s argument and upheld the trial
judge’s recusal of the OCDA. The appellate court wrote in its opinion:
On the last page of the Attorney General’s reply brief it states, “The trial
court’s order recusing the OCDA from prosecuting Dekraai’s penalty phase trial
was a remedy in search of a conflict.” Nonsense. The court recused the OCDA
only after lengthy evidentiary hearings where it heard a steady stream of
evidence regarding improper conduct by the prosecution team. To suggest the
trial judge prejudged the case is reckless and grossly unfair. These
proceedings were a search for the truth. The order is affirmed.
Attorney Jerome Wallingford represented a man who, like Dekraai, was a victim
of the illegal Orange County jail informant program. “Harris should’ve done her
job and investigated the informant program based on the findings of the Court
of Appeal in the Dekraai case,” Wallingford told Truthout. “But instead, she
tried to whitewash the scandal by protecting the DA and blaming the sheriff.”
The job of the attorney general is not to protect the DA. As chief law
enforcement officer of the state, the attorney general’s duty is “to see that
the laws of the State are uniformly and adequately enforced,” as mandated by
Article V of the California Constitution. Harris violated her legal duty in
this case.
Harris Minimized “Outrageous Government Misconduct”
Harris minimized “outrageous government misconduct” in People v.
Velasco-Palacios. The trial court found the prosecutor “deliberately altered an
interrogation transcript to include a confession that could be used to justify
charges carrying a life sentence, and he distributed it to defense counsel
during a period of time when [the prosecutor] knew defense counsel was trying
to persuade defendant to settle the case.” After the prosecutor snuck the
fabricated confession into the record, it caused the defense counsel to urge
the defendant to plead guilty, which undermined the trust the client had in his
lawyer.
The trial judge determined that the prosecutor’s action was “egregious,
outrageous, and shocked the conscience,” and dismissed the case. Harris’s
office appealed. The Court of Appeal affirmed the dismissal, noting that
“dismissal is an appropriate sanction for government misconduct that is
egregious enough to prejudice a defendant’s constitutional rights.”
Significantly, the appellate court stated that “egregious violations of a
defendant’s constitutional rights are sufficient to establish outrageous
government misconduct.”
Harris opposed legislation requiring the attorney general’s office to
independently investigate police shootings resulting in death.
But the Court of Appeal rejected Harris’s argument that if the conduct wasn’t
physically brutal, it would not satisfy the “shock the conscience” standard
required for dismissal.
Once again, Harris was covering up prosecutorial misconduct and ignoring the
Supreme Court’s admonition in Berger v. U.S. that the duty of a prosecutor “is
not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.”
Harris Opposed Attorney General Investigations of Police Shootings
These cases are not isolated examples of Harris’s less-than-progressive record
as a prosecutor.
“Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice
reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms.
Harris opposed them or stayed silent,” University of San Francisco School of
Law Professor Lara Bazelon wrote in a New York Times article titled, “Kamala
Harris Was Not a ‘Progressive Prosecutor.’” Bazelon added, “Most troubling, Ms.
Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been
secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false
testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.”
After a federal judge ruled in 2014 that California’s death penalty system had
become so dysfunctional it “violate[d] the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition
against cruel and unusual punishment,” Harris appealed the decision. As a
result, California’s death penalty was upheld and remains in place today.
Harris refused DNA testing that could exonerate Kevin Cooper, a likely innocent
man on death row, and she opposed statewide body-worn police cameras. Harris
favored criminalizing truancy, raising cash bail fees and keeping prisoners
locked up for cheap labor. She also supported reporting arrested undocumented
juveniles to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, covering for corrupt police
lab technicians and blocking gender confirmation surgery for a transgender
prisoner. A U.S. District Court judge concluded that withholding the surgery
constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
Many of Harris’s prosecutorial actions disproportionately hurt people of color.
Harris opposed legislation requiring the attorney general’s office to
independently investigate police shootings resulting in death. In 2016, members
of the California Legislative Black Caucus called on Harris to do more to
strengthen accountability for police misconduct. Assemblyman Kevin McCarthy
(D-Sacramento), a member of the Black Caucus, told the Los Angeles Times, “The
African American and civil rights community have been disappointed that
[Harris] hasn’t come out stronger on this.”
Harris Refused to Prosecute the “Foreclosure King”
Although many of Harris’s prosecutorial actions harmed people of color, a
notable one helped the white “foreclosure king” — Steve Mnuchin, now Trump’s
Treasury secretary.
Mnuchin was CEO of OneWest Bank from 2009-2015. A 2013 memo obtained by The
Intercept alleges that “OneWest rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes
by violating notice and waiting period statutes, illegally backdated key
documents, and effectively gamed foreclosure auctions.”
After a yearlong investigation, the California attorney general’s Consumer Law
Section “uncovered evidence suggestive of widespread misconduct.” In 2013, they
recommended that Harris prosecute a civil enforcement lawsuit against the bank.
“Without any explanation,” Harris’s office declined to initiate litigation in
the case.
Mnuchin donated $2,000 to Harris’s Senate campaign in February 2016. It was his
only donation to a Democratic candidate.
In January 2017, the Campaign for Accountability claimed that Mnuchin and
OneWest Bank used “potentially illegal tactics to foreclose on as many as
80,000 California homes,” and called for a federal investigation.
Harris wrote in her memoir, The Truths We Hold, “America has a deep and dark
history of people using the power of the prosecutor as an instrument of
injustice.” She added, “I know this history well — of innocent men framed, of
charges brought against people without sufficient evidence, of prosecutors
hiding information that would exonerate defendants, of the disproportionate
application of the law.”
Indeed, the public record indicates that as district attorney and later as
attorney general of California, Harris has contributed to the injustice she
claims to abhor.
(source: truthout.org)
USA:
USA----impending/scheduled executions
With the execution of Marion Wilson Jr. in Georgia on June 20, the USA has now
executed 1,500 condemned individuals since the death penalty was re-legalized
on July 2, 1976 in the US Supreme Court Gregg v Georgia decision.
Gary Gilmore was the 1st person executed, in Utah, on January 17, 1977. Below
is a list of further scheduled executions as the nation continues its shameful
practice of state-sponsored killings.
NOTE: The list is likely to change over the coming months as new execution
dates are added and possible stays of execution occur.
1501------Aug. 15-------------Dexter Johnson-----------Texas
1502-------Aug. 15------------Stephen West-------------Tennessee
1503-------Aug. 21------------Larry Swearingen---------Texas
1504-------Aug. 22------------Gary Ray Bowles----------Florida
1505-------Sept. 4------------Billy Crutsinger---------Texas
1506-------Sept. 10-----------Mark Anthony Soliz-------Texas
1507-------Sept. 12-----------Warren Henness-----------Ohio
1508-------Sept 25------------Robert Sparks------------Texas
1509-------Oct. 1-------------Russell Bucklew----------Missouri
1510-------Oct. 2-------------Stephen Barbee-----------Texas
1511-------Oct. 10------------Randy Halprin------------Texas
1512-------Oct. 16------------Randall Mays-------------Texas
1513-------Oct. 30------------Ruben Gutierrez----------Texas
1514-------Nov. 3-9-----------Charles Rhines-----------South Dakota
1515-------Nov. 6-------------Justen Hall--------------Texas
(source: Rick Halperin)
************************
Prosecutor says death penalty warranted in Yingying Zhang’s killing
The legal battle over whether a former University of Illinois doctoral student
should live or die for the kidnapping and slaying of a Chinese scholar began
with a prosecutor on Monday telling jurors that the crime was so vicious that
the death penalty is warranted.
"It was cold, calculated, cruel and months in the making," Assistant U.S.
Attorney James Nelson told jurors on Monday afternoon.
Reminding jurors that Brendt Christensen has never revealed what he did with
Yingying Zhang's body after he brutally killed and decapitated her in June of
2017, Nelson spoke of what that has meant to the still-suffering family of the
young woman.
"There will be no burial. There will be no closure," he told the jury that last
month found Christensen guilty. "You will see the anguish."
But The (Champaign) News-Gazette reported that in the effort to convince jurors
to spare the 30-year-old Christensen's life, a court-appointed attorney called
by the defense attorneys tried to convey to them that a sentence of life in
prison without the possibility is punishment enough.
Christensen "will die in prison, alone, with strangers," said Julie Brain. "The
only question that remains is when his death occurs — at the end of his natural
life or at a date the government chooses."
Defense attorneys were expected to detail Christensen's mental problems in the
hopes of convincing the jury to spare Christensen's life and Brain did just
that. She explained how Christensen has struggled with mental health issues
such as night terrors and debilitating migraine headaches his whole life. And
she told of how Christensen did not get the help he needed when he sought
mental health treatment at the U of I.
The opening statements come after a morning hearing in which the judge told the
attorneys he would allow jurors to watch videos made by Zhang's mother, several
of her friends, as well as watch a video that shows Zhang singing.
The beginning of the penalty phase of Christensen's trial comes days after the
same jury found Christensen guilty . During the current hearing, Christensen's
attorneys — who acknowledged at the beginning of the trial that Christensen was
guilty — will argue that their client's life should be spared. They are
expected to tell jurors that Christensen knew his homicidal fantasies months
before he killed Zhang weren't right and sought help from U of I mental health
counselors. They have alleged the school didn't do enough to help.
But prosecutors have already during trial told jurors that Christensen in June
2017 kidnapped Zhang from a bus stop, took her into his apartment in a duffel
bag where he raped, stabbed and choked her before beating her to death with a
baseball bat. They could use that information to show Christensen's meticulous
planning of the crime and how he even seemed to express pride in what he had
done to argue for the death penalty — something Zhang's family members already
have said they support.
On Monday, the judge also said he would allow jurors to hear a recording of a
phone call that Christensen made from jail. Prosecutors told the judge Monday
that Christensen asserts his innocence — something The (Champaign) News-Gazette
reports that prosecutors want jurors to hear because they believe it shows
Christensen's lack of remorse.
The 30-year-old Christensen could testify during the hearing that is expected
to last several days. If he does, one big question is whether he will reveal
what he did with Zhang's body, which has never been found, as part of an effort
to convince jurors to spare his life and sentence him instead to life in prison
without the possibility of parole.
(source: WGN TV news)
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