July 27
USA:
The Government’s Arguments for Restoring the Death Penalty All Fail
Thursday, Attorney General William Barr announced that the federal government
would begin executing people for the 1st time since 2003. He seemed to justify
this decision in 4 ways: 1st, the death penalty is what the American people
want, 2nd, these people have committed acts so heinous that no one should care
if they live or die, 3rd, the system is fair and accurate, and 4th, killing
prisoners will bring peace to victims. “Congress has expressly authorized the
death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in
both houses of Congress and signed by the president,” Attorney General Barr
said. “Under administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has
sought the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these 5
murderers, each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and
fair proceeding. The Justice Department upholds the rule of law—and we owe it
to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our
justice system.”
All of these arguments fail.
The death penalty in the U.S. is dying. New death sentences are plummeting, and
the few that do come down are coming from a handful of outlier jurisdictions,
with 31 percent of the sentences coming from three counties: Riverside in
California, Clark in Nevada, and Maricopa in Arizona. 2 % of counties
nationwide now account for the majority of prisoners on states’ death rows.
Even when prosecutors seek the death penalty, juries around the country are
often resisting them. In Wake County, North Carolina, home to Raleigh, juries
have declined to sentence a defendant to death in eight out of eight cases over
the last decade. After the last life sentence, the elected prosecutor stated:
“At some point, we have to step back and say, ‘Has the community sent us a
message on that?’”
A Gallup poll in October 2018 found that 56 % of Americans still favor the
death penalty for murder. But these numbers have trended downward since the
mid-1990s. And, as Matt Ford noted in The New Republic, “While most Americans
may favor the death penalty in theory, the actual practice is a remote
abstraction for them.” According to Rob Smith, executive director of The
Justice Collaborative (publisher of the Daily Appeal), the more revealing
metric for public support is that when asked to make real life-or-death
decisions about a real person in a real case, prosecutors increasingly don’t
seek and jurors don’t return death sentences.
Curiously, only 49 % of Americans told Gallup they thought the death penalty
was applied fairly. This might prompt a person to ask: What’s going on with the
7 % of people who don’t agree that the death penalty is applied fairly but are
still in favor of it? We might wonder why we don’t defer more to experts, who
tell us that the death penalty is not only unfairly applied, but it also
accomplishes none of its stated goals.
Recently, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has asked the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court to declare that the death penalty violates the
state’s Constitution. “Because of the arbitrary manner in which it has been
applied, the death penalty violates our state Constitution’s prohibition
against cruel punishments,” his office argued in a brief. “It really is not
about the worst offenders,” Krasner told The Appeal. “It really is about
poverty. It really is about race.”
Out of the 45 people on death row from Philadelphia, 37 are Black, and 4 are
from other “minority groups,” according to the brief. 72 % of Philadelphia’s
death cases have been overturned, almost 1/2 due to ineffective assistance of
counsel. Among those on death row, 62 % were represented by an attorney found
to be ineffective in another capital case. “These were people too poor to
afford their attorneys,” Krasner told The Appeal. “These attorneys did a dismal
job.”
These patterns are not unique to Philadelphia. Even though the Supreme Court
has ruled that capital punishment must be limited to those “whose extreme
culpability makes them the most deserving of execution,” and that it is cruel
and unusual punishment to execute the insane, the intellectually disabled, and
people under 18, people in the first 2 of those groups continue to be sentenced
to death. Of those executed in 2017, 20 of the 23 men had one or more of the
following impairments: significant evidence of mental illness; evidence of
brain injury, developmental brain damage, or an IQ in the intellectually
disabled range; serious childhood trauma, neglect, or abuse.
Prosecutors also keep sending innocent people to be killed. “As of Oct. 17,
2017, 160 people have been exonerated from the nation’s death rows, and
numerous executions have taken place despite strong evidence of innocence,”
according to The Appeal. “According to one study, 1 out of every 25 people
sentenced to death is most likely innocent.”
And many victims and their families aren’t on board with the executions. “Yes,
he killed my grandma, and he killed a little girl,” said Michael Slim, whose
grandmother was killed by Lezmond Mitchell, one of the men that is now slated
for execution. At the trial, Navajo officials asked federal officials not to
seek death, but federal prosecutors did so anyway. At the time, Slim was
pleased with that decision. “Looking back on it, yes, I did believe in it when
it first happened,” he told Martin Kaste of NPR. “I felt happy, but that was
the wrong kind of happy, because God should make that decision, not me.”
“We know that the death penalty is deeply flawed, with a terrible history of
racism in its implementation and an equally terrible history of errors,
resulting in many innocents on death row,” death penalty activist Sister Helen
Prejean wrote in a statement yesterday. “We also know that it does not offer
the healing balm to victims’ families that is promised. And let’s think about
the power to take the life of our fellow citizens. What confidence can we have
that our governments can be trusted with such power? When a penalty is
absolutely final, surely we must seek a flawless system, and what government,
what group of people, can deliver that?”
(source: theappeal.org)
************************
Cuomo Trashes 'Demagogue' Trump for Bringing Back the Death Penalty
CNN host Chris Cuomo devoted his closing argument Thursday night to trashing
President Trump for bringing back the death penalty. Not surprisingly, he used
the occasion to refer to the President as a “demagogue.”
The closing argument began with Cuomo declaring “this President wants to start
killing people again on the federal level in the name of justice.” Cuomo tried
using religion to make the point that the death penalty is morally wrong: “this
new appeal to vengeance sounds powerful, but is taking a life a show of
strength? Let’s look at it different ways. Not to Jesus. His core message for
believers was love, mercy.” According to Cuomo, “if you’re pro-life and
pro-death penalty, you’ve got an inconsistency. And if you argue, well, fetuses
are innocent and these people are guilty, then send any Christian back to the
source. Did Jesus say you decide who lives and dies?”
Cuomo proceeded to argue that the death penalty was racist; providing
statistics showing that the death row population has about the same amount of
blacks and whites before arguing “half of homicide victims are African-American
but the death penalty is way more prevalent when the victim is white.” The CNN
host also provided statistics showing that the death penalty is applied far
more often when a black person kills a white person than when a white person
kills a black person. Later, Cuomo referred to the death penalty as “a vestige
of a less evolved society,” pointing to the fact that the United States joins
China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, and Somalia as the countries
with the highest number of confirmed executions.
As the hour came to a close, Cuomo proclaimed that in America, “the popularity
of killing people has fallen and we are now split about 50/50 and that is the
stage for this election. This President knows we are divided and he is pushing
on prejudice. That’s what a demagogue does.” He devoted the final seconds of
his monologue to chanting phrases he associates with President Trump: “Muslims
stay out! Brown folks go home…Insult the free press if you don’t like what they
report. And now, the ultimate new appeal to harshness: here we kill people.”
Channeling his inner Joe Biden, Cuomo proclaimed “this is about the soul of
society.”
While the televised version of his closing argument came to a close following
the conclusion of Thursday’s edition of Cuomo Prime Time, the debate over the
death penalty continued on Cuomo’s Twitter feed. Responding to a Twitter user’s
claim that violent criminals “deserve” the death penalty, Cuomo asked, “are you
ok with brutality being our rule…because that’s what killing is.”
(source: newsbusters.org)
*******************
A 1994 law Joe Biden wrote put these 4 men on death row----Biden sponsored a
bill that expanded death penalty-eligible crimes. He’s now trying to undo his
“tough on crime” legacy.
A few hours after the Trump administration announced it was bringing back
federal executions, former vice president and 2020 candidate Joe Biden had a
single message: abolish the death penalty.
“Because we can’t ensure that we get these cases right every time, we must
eliminate the death penalty,” he tweeted.
In criticizing these federal executions, Biden is fighting a monster he helped
create.
On Thursday, US Attorney General William Barr announced that the federal
government would resume executions for the first time in nearly two decades,
scheduling execution dates for five inmates who have been convicted of murder
and other crimes.
Several 2020 candidates swiftly criticized the government for its decision,
which isn’t surprising considering all candidates but Montana Gov. Steve
Bullock are opposed to the death penalty. Biden, too, joined the crowd to call
for the abolishment of the death penalty.
4 of the 5 prisoners are eligible for federal executions because of the 1994
crime law Biden wrote and shepherded to passage while he was the chair of the
Senate Judiciary Committee.
The federal death penalty was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in
Furman v. Georgia in 1972. When it was reinstated in 1988, only those convicted
of murder in federal court while engaging in containing criminal enterprise
were eligible for the death penalty.
The 1994 crime law changed that. Among the law’s many provisions was the
Federal Death Penalty Act, which expanded federal law to make 60 crimes,
including drug crimes that do not involve homicide, eligible for the death
penalty. Crimes could fall under three broad categories: homicide offenses,
espionage and treason, and non-homicidal narcotics offenses.
Because the 4 prisoners were convicted after 1994, they received the death
penalty under the updated crime law
These 4 prisoners, all of whom were convicted after 1994, were not convicted of
murder while engaged in a criminal enterprise — therefore, they would not have
been eligible for the death penalty if not for the 1994 anti-crime bill.
The 1994 crime law was an attempt to establish Democrats as the “tough on
crime” party at a time when crime was high.
“Let me define the liberal wing of the Democratic Party,” Biden had said at the
time. “The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is now for 60 new death
penalties.”
Biden’s campaign highlighted that he also supported funding for prevention
programs in the bill, which was necessary to tackle the root of the problem,
though not as popular among Republicans. Yet the bill is not remembered kindly
by criminal justice activists, who say it was ineffective and unfairly targeted
black and brown men. As criticism has mounted, Biden, too, has acknowledged
that his 1994 bill wasn’t perfect.
“I haven’t always been right,” he said in January of his criminal justice
record. “I know we haven’t always gotten things right, but I’ve always tried.”
Now Biden is trying to undo his legacy. On Tuesday, the presidential candidate
revealed his criminal justice reform plan — one of the most comprehensive ones
to come out of the 2020 cycle so far. He tackles multiple issues, such as
decriminalizing marijuana, reforming the police, and establishing a $20 billion
grant to encourage states to reduce incarceration and crime.
Most notable may be his change of heart on the death penalty: Despite his long
support of capital punishment, Biden said on Tuesday that he would abolish the
death penalty at the federal level and incentivize states to follow suit.
As Vox’s German Lopez notes, this is an opportunity for Biden to show voters he
can change with time:
For Biden, then, his criminal justice plan isn’t just a chance to line up with
the preferences of most Democratic voters. It’s also an opportunity to try to
make up for the mistakes of his past. (source: vox.com)
******************************
Execution scheduled for member of the Navajo Nation for 2001 murders
When the U.S. Department of Justice announced this week that the federal
government will resume capital punishment and scheduled executions for 5
inmates, the list included a member of the Navajo Nation.
The Navajo Nation has taken a stance against the death penalty since 1991
because it does not comply with Diné culture, tradition and values, including
the belief in restoring harmony by restitution and not by taking human life for
vengeance.
Lezmond Mitchell was convicted in 2003 of murdering Alyce Slim, 63, and her
9-year-old granddaughter, Tiffany Lee.
The victims were members of the Navajo Nation, having lived in Fort Defiance,
Arizona, and their dismembered bodies were found in 2001 near Tsaile, Arizona,
according to The Daily Times archives.
In January 2002, the Navajo Nation Department of Justice opposed the plan by
federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Mitchell, according to The
Daily Times archives.
Since his case involved a carjacking, it gave prosecutors the ability to seek
capital punishment without the tribe's permission because of interstate laws,
according to the archives.
Guilty of murder
A federal jury found Mitchell, from Round Rock, Arizona, guilty of several
offenses, including first-degree murder, carjacking resulting in death and
felony murder, according to court records.
He is the only Native American among 62 federal death row prisoners and the
last federal execution happened in 2003, according to the Death Penalty
Information Center.
The July 25 press release from the DOJ states that U.S. Attorney General
William Barr directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to execute the 5 men by a
single drug, pentobarbital.
3 executions are scheduled for December, including Mitchell on Dec. 11, and the
remaining 2 in January.
"The Justice Department upholds the rule of law – and we owe it to the victims
and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice
system," Barr said in the release.
When the federal government amended capital punishment laws 25 years ago, a
provision was made for tribes to choose to opt in to the federal death penalty.
Tribe opposes capital punishment
The tribe's point of view has been repeatedly expressed in letters written by
the tribe's attorneys general and by a chief justice to congressional members
and to federal attorneys in Arizona and New Mexico.
The latest was a July 2014 letter by then-Chief Justice Herb Yazzie to John
Leonardo, who served as U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona from 2012 to
2017.
"Capital punishment is a sensitive issue for the Navajo people. Our laws have
never allowed for the death penalty. It is our belief that the negative force
that drives a person to commit evil acts can only be extracted by the creator.
People, on the other hand, are vehicles only for goodness and healing," Yazzie
wrote.
(source: Farmington Daily Times)
*****************************
Death penalty decision answers lingering questions about how Barr’s faith
affects his politics
U.S. Attorney General William Barr is, by all accounts, a very committed
Catholic. He’s a Knight of Columbus and served for several years as a member of
its Supreme Board. He served on the board of the Catholic Information Center in
Washington, D.C. until 2017 and serves on the board of the New York
Archdiocese’s Inner-City Scholarship Fund. He reportedly donates $50,000 of his
own money to pay for Catholic education for needy students each year.
His wife goes to Bible study regularly (and now, one presumes, somewhat
awkwardly) with the wife of Robert Mueller.
Barr’s Catholicism is so well known that it came up in his confirmation hearing
for attorney general when Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, chastising Democrats who
had made an issue of a judicial nominee’s Catholic associations, rhetorically
asked if Barr’s religion should disqualify him for the job. (Barr said no.)
But Barr himself has long been criticized by secular groups for mixing church
and state, particularly for his declaration that “society’s moral culture is
based on God’s law,” in a speech to a Catholic group in 1992.
The worry that Barr might impose his private religious views on federal matters
has apparently been overblown, at least judging from his decision this week to
reinstate the federal death penalty.
Since at least 2005, when they issued their statement, “A Culture of Life and
the Penalty of Death,” America’s Catholic bishops have condemned the death
penalty as inconsistent with the pro-life teaching of the Catholic Church.
The federal government has not used the death penalty in nearly 20 years,
making it hard for Barr to claim that his decision is demanded by law. No one
is forcing him to make the change, in other words. It appears to be his
specific, individual choice alone.
As one might imagine, the powers that be in the Catholic Church are not happy.
Speaking for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Frank
Dewane said, “I am deeply concerned by the announcement by the United States
Justice Department that it will once again turn, after many years, to the death
penalty as a form of punishment, and urge instead that these Federal officials
be moved by God’s love, which is stronger than death, and abandon the announced
plans for executions.”
The USCCB is on very strong ground. The Catechism of the Catholic Church
teaches that the “dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission
of very serious crimes” and notes that “more effective systems of detention
have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the
same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of
redemption.”
The only moral possibility for the death penalty comes from, as St. John Paul
II put it, a situation where it is the only way to “defend society.” But in
1995, the Holy Father noted that “such cases are very rare, if not practically
non-existent” given the capacities of most penal systems. Today’s U.S. supermax
federal prisons, it hardly needs saying, fall into the “practically
non-existent” category.
Given Catholic teaching, what Barr has done by instituting the death penalty at
the federal level in the United States is manifestly and gravely sinful. He is
freely and publicly instituting an inadmissible punishment that directly
attacks the inherent dignity of the human person. A very serious sin, indeed.
As always with moral questions of state, Barr’s decision raises the question,
on the one hand, of how the church should respond. In other contexts, bishops
have asked public figures who persevere in grave attacks against the dignity of
the human person to refrain from seeking Holy Communion. A decade ago,
then-Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis said that then-presidential
candidate John Kerry should refrain from the Eucharist until he repented of his
support for abortion rights.
Does Barr’s order fall into this category? That is ultimately up to his local
ordinary bishop — in this case, as Barr is a native of Virginia, Bishop Michael
Burbidge of the diocese of Arlington. One hopes he will ask to sit down with
Barr and respectfully insist on his faithfulness to the teaching of the church.
If Barr obstinately refuses to live out his Catholic faith in his very public
position, his bishop would be justified in asking him to refuse to present
himself for communion until he confessed this sin and began to repair the
serious disruption to the moral order. It’s important to note that this would
not be a punishment. Instead it’s an invitation and motivation to do what is
necessary to return to full communion with Christ and his Church.
There is also the question of what Barr’s responsibility is to his country. It
may be that Barr believes he is duty bound by his office to impose the death
penalty. In his announcement, he said, “Congress has expressly authorized the
death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in
both houses of Congress and signed by the President … The Justice Department
upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims and their families to
carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
For a long time, as on the abortion issue, politicians have claimed that their
personal principles should not override their duty to the public. But the
thinking in this regard is evolving. A 1998 law review article by Amy Coney
Barrett, now a federal appellate judge, and John Garvey, now president of the
Catholic University of America, argued that “judges cannot — nor should they
try to — align our legal system with the Church’s moral teaching whenever the
two diverge. They should, however, conform their own behavior to the Church’s
standard.”
With regard to the death penalty, this meant Catholic judges recusing
themselves in many and perhaps most situations.
If Barr truly believes his position as attorney general requires him to seek an
inadmissible punishment as a matter of law, then his own words loom large as to
what should come next.
At his confirmation hearing, he said that if his Catholicism demanded he do
something inconsistent with serving in the government, Barr insisted he
wouldn’t impose the Catholic view on others. Before doing that, he said rather
dramatically, “I would resign my office.”
(source: Religion News Service)
**************************************
Catholic Leaders Object to Reinstatement of Federal Death Penalty
The July 25 announcement by the Justice Department that it is reinstating the
federal death penalty for the first time in 16 years was unwelcome news for
Catholic leaders who have advocated against capital punishment.
“The United States’ death penalty system is tragically flawed. Resuming federal
executions—especially by an administration that identifies itself as
‘pro-life—is wrongheaded and unconscionable,” said Krisanne Vaillancourt
Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, a group that
champions restorative justice and an end to the death penalty.
The execution of five inmates on federal death row will take place from
December 2019 through next January.
Attorney General William Barr said in a statement: “The Justice Department
upholds the rule of law—and we owe it to the victims and their families to
carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
The last time there was a federal execution was in 2003.
In 2014, President Barack Obama directed the Bureau of Prisons to conduct a
review of federal capital punishment cases and issues surrounding the use of
lethal injection drugs. According to the July 25 announcement, that review is
complete and the executions can proceed.
Currently, there are 62 inmates—61 men and 1 woman—on federal death row,
according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Most of the federal
death-row prisoners are at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind.
Inmates in the group include convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
and Charleston, S.C., church shooter Dylann Roof.
In a July 25 statement released by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops,
Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Fla., chairman of the USCCB Committee on
Domestic Justice and Human Development, said that Pope Francis in 2015 called
for “the global abolition of the death penalty,” which he said the U.S. bishops
also have supported for many years.
“In light of these long held and strongly maintained positions, I am deeply
concerned by the announcement by the United States Justice Department that it
will once again turn, after many years, to the death penalty as a form of
punishment, and urge instead that these federal officials be moved by God’s
love, which is stronger than death, and abandon the announced plans for
executions.”
Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph of Medaille, who is a longtime
opponent of capital punishment, tweeted a brief reaction to the July 25
announcement saying that as she was about to “board a plane to Alaska to join
the celebrations of 62 years without the death penalty in that state” when she
learned “the federal government plans to restart executions later this year
after a 16-year hiatus.”
“The DOJ regresses as the rest of our country evolves,” she added.
Other Church leaders also reacted on Twitter to the announcement.
In a July 25 tweet, Chicago Cardinal Blase J. Cupich called Barr’s announcement
“gravely injurious to the common good, as it effaces the God-given dignity of
all human beings, even those who have committed terrible crimes.”
He also pointed out that last year Pope Francis ordered a revision to the
Catechism of the Catholic Church to say that capital punishment is
“inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the
person.”
The Sisters of Mercy called the Justice Department’s decision “tremendously
disappointing” and said in a July 25 tweet that they would continue to uphold
Catholic social teaching regarding the dignity of human life with education and
advocacy efforts to “continue to work for the death penalty’s abolition.”
In a statement released the afternoon of July 25, Sister Prejean described the
Justice Department’s announcement as a “seemingly measured statement,” which
“belies the fact that this is a rush to kill: They plan three executions in one
week using a new, untested—and not yet approved—lethal injection protocol.”
She also said it is “disheartening that the administration has chosen to follow
the death road, when the life road calls us to work for justice for all.”
Sister Prejean, echoing a message she has said before, added: “The death
penalty is deeply flawed, with a terrible history of racism in its
implementation and an equally terrible history of errors, resulting in many
innocents on death row. We also know that it does not offer the healing balm to
victims’ families that is promised.”
Federal death penalty cases are authorized by the Department of Justice in
consultation with local U.S. Attorney Offices.
Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy said in her July 25 statement that in the 16 years
since the federal government executed a death-row prisoner, the American public
has changed its collective thinking on the death penalty. Last October, she
said 49 % of Americans said they believed the punishment is applied fairly and
currently, 25 states have distanced themselves from the death penalty in some
capacity, most recently, California, with its governor-imposed execution ban in
March and New Hampshire’s repeal of capital punishment by legislative veto
override in May.
Hannah Cox, national manager of Conservatives Concerned about the Death
Penalty, offered a similar response saying the reinstatement of federal
executions “goes against the trend we have seen in states across the nation,
where executions and sentences are at historic lows.”
She also pointed out that a growing number of conservative state lawmakers
“realize that capital punishment goes against their principles of valuing life,
fiscal responsibility and limited government, and that the death penalty does
nothing to make the public safer.”
Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy reiterated that the Catholic Church’s teaching is very
clear on capital punishment, noting the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls
it “inadmissible” in all cases “because it is an attack on the inviolability
and dignity of the person.”
She said the Justice Department’s announcement “flies in the face” of American
values of equality and fairness “and for Catholics, above all, a belief in the
sanctity of all human life.”
She said the decision also “promotes a culture of death where we so desperately
need a culture of life.”
(source: Catholic New York)
**************************
Trump’s Death Penalty Obsession Won’t Stem the Tide Against Executions----The
decision to resume federal executions may play well to Trump’s base, but the
rest of America is growing disillusioned with capital punishment.
Attorney General William Barr claimed that it was the rule of law that inspired
the Trump administration’s decision to resume federal executions after 16
years. His plan calls for executions of five death row inmates in rapid
succession starting in December using a controversial, single-drug protocol.
“Under Administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought
the death penalty against the worst criminals … each of whom was convicted by a
jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding,” he said in a statement
announcing the decision Thursday. “The Justice Department upholds the rule of
law—and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the
sentence imposed by our justice system.”
Given the administration’s generally cavalier attitude toward the “rule of
law,” it is more likely that this decision was the result of a raw political
calculus rather than anything that the law requires.
As the Chicago Tribune noted in its coverage of Barr’s announcement, “The move
is likely to stir up fresh interest in an issue that has largely lain dormant
in recent years, adding a new front to the culture battles that President
Donald Trump already is waging on matters such as abortion and immigration in
the lead-up to the 2020 elections.”
The resumption of federal executions is a logical outgrowth of President Donald
Trump’s enthusiasm for capital punishment. As a private citizen in 1989, he
took out advertisements calling for the death penalty for five young men
accused in the infamous Central Park Jogger case.
The resumption of federal executions is a logical outgrowth of Trump’s
enthusiasm for capital punishment.
More recently, in late 2015, in the run-up to his presidential campaign, he
reacted to the shooting deaths of 2 police officers in Mississippi by saying,
“We have people who are, these 2, animals who shot the cops … the death
penalty, it should be brought back and it should be brought back strong.”
In March of last year, the president called for enacting the death penalty for
drug dealers and proudly said that he had gotten this idea from Chinese
President Xi Jinping.
That the president is using the death penalty to play to his base is also
suggested by the sharp partisan divide in support for that punishment and the
fact that 80 % of self-identified Republicans support it.
Yet whatever the motives of Trump or Barr, today’s political climate is far
less hospitable to red-meat appeals to restore and expand the death penalty
than it has been in the past.
The United States has come a long way from the time when Democratic candidates
for president showed that they would be tough on crime by trumpeting their
support for the death penalty, or leaving the campaign trail, as Bill Clinton
once did, to preside over an execution.
Yesterday, almost every major contender for the Democratic nomination for
president denounced Barr’s decision and reminded voters of their opposition to
the death penalty.
Sen. Kamala Harris, for example, tweeted, “Let me be clear: capital punishment
is immoral and deeply flawed. Too many innocent people have been put to death.
We need a national moratorium on the death penalty, not a resurrection.”
Moreover, the resumption of executions at the federal level is unlikely to slow
or reverse the momentum opponents of the death penalty have achieved in
bringing about a national reconsideration of the death penalty. Signs of that
reconsideration are everywhere.
Since 2007, 7 states have abolished capital punishment by legislative action,
and 3 by judicial decree. (Nebraska abolished it legislatively, but voters
subsequently reinstated it in a referendum.) 4 other states have a moratorium
in place preventing anyone from being executed.
This period has been one of the most successful in the modern history of death
penalty abolitionism.
Another mark of this success is that death sentences nationwide have fallen
from a modern high of 315 in 1996 to 42 last year.
Executions have followed a similar path, going from 98 in 1999 to 25 in 2018.
Abolitionists have changed their arguments in ways that can and do appeal to a
broader range of citizens. In many states, they have allied themselves with the
plight of the families of murder victims. They also effectively countered “soft
on crime” accusations with data showing that the death penalty does not make
citizens safer. And the argument that capital punishment is far more expensive
than a life sentence has won over major conservative groups and Republican
lawmakers.
Most importantly, abolitionists have highlighted the many flaws in the capital
punishment system: the large numbers of innocent people who have been sent to
death row, the racial discrimination in death sentencing, and the growing
prevalence of botched executions as drug manufacturers refuse to provide lethal
drugs.
The federal death penalty is plagued by these same issues. A study of federal
death penalty prosecutions released in 2000 by the United States Department of
Justice (the most recent data available) found “that the federal death penalty,
like its application in the states, is used disproportionately against people
of color.” It also showed that in the 5-year period from 1995–2000, “80% of all
the federal capital cases recommended by U.S. Attorneys to the Attorney General
seeking the death penalty involved people of color.” Today, 42 % of federal
death row inmates are black.
Another study conducted in 2014 in anticipation of the federal prosecution of
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber, showed that federal death
penalty prosecutions “are more expensive and time consuming, more subject to
prolonged delays, and unlikely to produce a different result than where the
prosecution seeks life without parole.” It also raised concerns about the
“inevitability of error” in federal death penalty cases.
The resumption of federal executions does nothing to repair those troubling
problems. Instead, it will provide another arena in which the death penalty’s
irredeemable defects will be vividly on display.
(source: slate.com)
***************************
3 sentenced to death in Georgia await federal executions
One bludgeoned a prison guard to death. One raped and killed a nurse
practitioner. Another fatally stabbed a postal worker.
The three men, sentenced to death by Georgia juries, are among roughly 60
inmates who sit on federal death row. While they were not listed Thursday by
the U.S. Justice Department as the first five condemned prisoners now set to be
executed since 2003, they could be scheduled to be put to death by lethal
injection sometime next year.
In 1997, Anthony George Battle became the 1st Georgia man to receive a federal
death sentence since Congress restored capital punishment in 1988 under U.S.
law.
Battle was sentenced to die by an Atlanta jury for the Dec. 21, 1994, killing
of 31-year-old guard D’Antonio Washington. Battle repeatedly struck Washington
in the back of the head with a ball-peen hammer at the Atlanta Federal
Penitentiary.
At the time, Battle was already serving a life sentence for the 1987 murder of
his wife, a U.S. Marine stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C.
Battle, whose lawyers said he was schizophrenic, was given a chance at the end
of his trial to ask jurors to spare his life. Instead, he told them that
Washington “died like a dog.”
In 2003, Meier Jason Brown received a death sentence from a federal jury in
Savannah. On Nov. 30, 2002, the Liberty County man showed up at a post office
in Fleming and stole $1,175 in money orders.
As the robbery unfolded, Brown stabbed postmistress Sallie Gaglia 10 times as
she tried to defend herself. He left the 48-year-old woman to die lying face
down on the floor, according to court records.
A year after Brown’s trial, a federal jury in Gainesville sentenced William
LeCroy Jr. to death for raping and killing a nurse practitioner after she
arrived at her Gilmer County home from a shopping trip with her fiancé. On Oct.
7, 2001, LeCroy slit Joann Tiesler’s throat and repeatedly stabbed her in the
back before driving off in her Ford Explorer.
LeCroy’s case became highly unusual because 6 years after he was sentenced to
death, his brother, Georgia State Trooper Chadwick LeCroy, was shot and killed
by a career criminal who should have been in jail without bond for a pending
criminal case.
On Dec. 27, 2010, during a routine traffic stop for a broken taillight, Gregory
Favors sped away from Chadwick LeCroy and crashed his car near the intersection
of Hightower Road and St. Paul Avenue in Atlanta. When LeCroy, 38, approached,
Favors pulled out a gun and opened fire, fatally striking the trooper in the
neck.
Fulton County prosecutors sought the death penalty against Favors. In 2014,
however, they allowed Favors to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of life
in prison without parole.
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
*****************************
With the federal government starting to execute inmates again, what does this
mean for Arizona?
The death penalty is back on the table as punishment for federal crimes.
In a somewhat surprising announcement today, U.S. Attorney General William Barr
directed the Bureau of Prisons to begin scheduling the execution of 5 inmates.
One of those inmates is Lezmond Mitchell, who killed a 63-year-old woman and
her 9-year-old granddaughter on the Navajo Nation back in 2001.
Barr says the government owes it to the victims and their families to carry out
the punishment handed down by the justice system.
While the death penalty is legal in 30 states, including Arizona, the state has
been unable to execute anyone since a botched execution in 2014.
The latest move from Barr is reigniting the debate over whether states should
be in the business of putting people to death.
This decision has people wondering if states that have put executions on hold
will now follow through with them.
The announcement was met by praise by at least one Arizona congressman, Andy
Biggs. Biggs applauded the move in a statement saying in part, "Government has
a solemn responsibility to administer justice for the most loathsome crimes,
committed by some of our most hardened criminals."
There hasn't been a federal execution since 2003 after problems with the
three-drug cocktail that was being used. A botched execution in 2014 led to a
Department of Justice review, and now 5 people are set to be federally executed
with a one drug cocktail starting later this year.
"You know, the federal government hasn't been doing this for awhile. Exactly
what are their protocols? What happened to their practice and procedures and
policies? Have they been renewed? Have they been revamped?" Ray Krone said.
FOX 10 reached Ray Krone by phone. Krone spent 10 years in prison and time on
death row before being exonerated by DNA evidence for an early 1990s murder he
didn't commit.
He says the announcement today has him concerned.
"It's new what just happened. I can pretty much promise you there will be a
number of suits filed by whether its by Amnesty International, the ACLU, or
other groups. Again, what is the federal government prepared to do? What have
they done in preparing to resume execution? Krone said.
The decision only effects federal crimes, not state. Here in Arizona, there
hasn't been an execution in 5 years, and there are 116 people currently sitting
on the state's death row with no executions scheduled.
(source: 10foxphoenix.com)
*******************************
Juror recounts day in the life of a juror in a capital punishment case
It has now been just over a week since the jury could not unanimously decide
what the punishment of the kidnapper and killer of visiting scholar Yingying
Zhang’s should be.
It’s a life or death decision not many people think about having to make in
their lifetime. However, for 12 people this decision was on their minds for
almost 4 weeks.
Brendt Christensen was found guilty toward the end of June, for kidnapping
resulting in death by the same jury that could not unanimously decide if he
should be sentenced to death or life in prison, ending their deliberations on a
10-2 vote for the death penalty, according to one of the alternate jurors from
the trial, Bob, who did not wish to disclose his last name for the article but
was willing to speak with The Daily Illini about his experience.
The jury consisted of 12 jurors and 6 alternates. The alternates did not
participate in any of the deliberations or verdicts but were required to sit
through the trial just in case one of them needed to step in. The alternates
were also required to follow the same rules as the other jurors.
Every day, Bob would leave his house in Bloomington, Illinois, around 7 a.m. to
get to the courthouse in Peoria by the latest 9 a.m. Before that, however, Bob
had a job and canoeing trip in Canada to look forward to this summer.
“I immediately knew when I pulled it from the mailbox that (it was) a jury
summons,” Bob said.
He informed his brother, who he had planned the trip with he may not be able to
go on the trip, and he eventually found out that he was right. He officially
canceled his trip to be an alternate juror for the case U.S. v. Christensen.
At the very beginning, when opening statements first began in the guilty or not
guilty phase, Christensen’s attorneys said right away they would not deny his
guilt in Zhang’s murder.
“From a jury’s perspective … isn’t that the whole reason we’re here: for us to
hear the evidence and make that decision?” Bob said.
He said after the entire trial ended on July 18, prosecutors Eugene Miller and
James Nelson as well as Judge James Shadid, spoke with the jury and answered
any questions they may have had post the trial.
The admission of Christensen’s guilt by his attorneys was brought up to the
prosecutors during this time, Bob said. They said they were supposed to expect
anything but didn’t know what the defense would essentially come out with, so
it was a surprise but wasn’t completely unexpected.
After Christensen was found guilty by the jury, the sentencing trial didn’t
begin until about a week and half later, after the Fourth of July. This is when
Bob was able to catch up on some work he might have missed, but he also got to
go on his canoeing trip with his brother.
During the canoeing trip in Canada, there was no service and no electronics, so
it was easy to stay away from any media coverage of the case, and he said his
brother was good about not asking him about it as well.
“There we’re back in the bush. There is no communications. There is no
electricity. There’s nothing,” he said. “It was a great way to destress and be
out in the wild and go fishing and not think about or discuss the case.”
But eventually it was time to come back for the start of the sentencing phase.
At the start of this phase each juror was asked if he or she had read, seen,
heard or discussed anything about the case and every single juror had not.
Bob said as a jury, everyone was really good about paying close attention to
all the evidence and to what was being said, adding the majority of the jurors
also had some form of college education.
During the numerous and often emotional testimonies, Bob said there was
discussion of possibly needing one of the alternate jurors to step in because
one of the other sitting jurors had to leave the courtroom during a testimony
from Zhang’s family. However, she was questioned by the judge and both sides of
counsel and was cleared to stay on.
Bob said depending on who was on the witness stand at the time, there was often
a swing of emotion.
“You would hear the testimony of Yingying’s parents and brother and boyfriend
and friends, and that was extremely emotional,” he said. “Then you’d hear
testimony of Brendt Christensen’s friends and family and I would say that was a
little less emotional because he was the killer, but you’d have a shift (of
emotion) then depending on who was talking at the time.”
He said his emotions did ebb and flow, but his position stayed pretty steady
throughout the sentencing phase, and he is respectful of the decision the jury
ended up with.
Although Bob did not wish to say if he would have voted for either death or
life, he did say this: “If I could trade Brendt Christensen for Yingying, I
would undoubtedly, immediately.”
(source: The (Univ. Illinois) Daily Illini)
*****************************
'Execute justice, not people...' Sisters of Providence speak out against
Federal Executions----The Attorney General announced Federal Executions will
begin again in Terre Haute in December. Sisters of Providence at
Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods said they're still against the act.
Attorney General William Barr made the announcement yesterday. He directed the
Federal Bureau of Prisons to adopt an addendum to the Federal Execution
Protocol. That makes way for capital punishment to resume after nearly 2
decades. Death row on the Federal level is located right here in Terre Haute,
at the Terre Haute Federal Penitentiary.
The Sisters of Providence have always been outspoken when it comes to federal
executions. They've had silent protests at each one in the past. Now that
federal executions will start again they said they'll be at each one.
"We don't believe that killing is right whether it's done in anger or whether
it's done by law enforcement," Sister Rita Clare Gerardot of Sisters of
Providence said. "Killing is killing."
Sister Rita Clare Gerardot has been in the Sisters of Providence congregation
since 1944.
So you can imagine she's seen a lot of things going on in the Wabash Valley,
the state, country and the world. One of those things is the death penalty.
"I don't believe in the death penalty. As a community, we don't believe in the
death penalty," she said.
Now, after almost 2 decades the capital punishment will start again, right here
in Terre Haute and sister Rita Clare said she will still fight against it.
"What they've done is detestable, certainly, and they deserve to be punished
but killing them is not the answer to that," she said. "Life in prison without
the possibility of parole is certainly a punishment that they have to live with
day after day after day."
She said she's been to all of the executions that have happened in the past at
Terre Haute's federal prison.
"It was very very solemn. There was no chit chat back and forth it was a very
solemn gathering of people. And sobering very sobering," Sister Rita Clare
said.
She hopes to have no more, but if they continue she will be at the next.
"We should never judge a person by the worst thing that they've ever done and
I'm sure that most of these men who are there that is probably the worst thing
that they have ever done," she said.
There are 5 death row inmates already scheduled for execution. Those will start
in December at Terre Haute's Federal Prison.
Sister Rita Clare sais the Sisters of Providence and other clergy members will
be there to pray for the prisoner, their families, and the people they killed.
(source: WTHI TV news)
********************************
Editorial: The new life in the death penalty
The death penalty is alive and well in the federal government.
On Thursday, U.S. Attorney General William Barr resuscitated the punishment
that has languished since 2014 when the Obama administration began a review.
That review is complete and executions are being scheduled. The first 5 death
row inmates who will be executed have been announced. 3 are set to die in
December.
So is this just another reversal of an Obama policy?
Not quite. It goes back further. The federal government hasn’t executed anyone
in 16 years, according to the Bureau of Prisons. That’s almost as long as
Pennsylvania has gone without an execution.
Kidnapper Louis Jones received lethal injection in 2003 at USP Terre Haute, the
same prison where Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and murderer Juan Raul
Garza met their ends in 2001.
Then this is a return to prior practice?
Not so much. Before McVeigh, the U.S. government hadn’t executed anyone since
1963. While states have wielded the needle, the electric chair and the gas
chamber more liberally, the federal government has executed only 37 people
since 1927. Texas executed 40 in 2000 alone.
The change comes from a Trump administration that has turned in different
directions on crime during his first campaign and since taking office.
On the one hand, President Trump has advocated hard stances against criminals
while also having son-in-law Jared Kushner work successfully on popular,
bipartisan prison reform. In 2018, the president suggested drug dealers should
get the death penalty.
“Other countries don’t play games. … But the ultimate penalty has to be the
death penalty,” he said.
The announced list includes no Pennsylvania inmates, although Philadelphia drug
kingpin Kaboni Savage is on federal death row, which has to be a more uncertain
place to live than it was 2 days ago.
But Pittsburgh could be an early focus of a new spotlight on the federal death
penalty because of Robert Bowers, who is facing 63 federal charges — 22 of them
death penalty crimes — for the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in October.
Prosecutors have not decided whether they will seek the death penalty, but
until Barr’s announcement, it was moot.
Now it’s not. Now a decision should be made, because the death penalty is no
longer a distant threat. It’s a pending promise.
(source: Editorial, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)
******************************
Legal Expert Lambastes William Barr’s Death Penalty Move as ‘Thunder Signifying
Nothing’
A couple of Duke University Law professors were quick to respond to U.S.
Attorney General William Barr’s Thursday announcement that he was bringing
federal executions back. One of the scholars went so far as to say that the
move was “thunder signifying nothing.”
In case you missed it, Barr announced earlier Thursday that the the Federal
Bureau of Prisons (BOP) would lift the moratorium on federal executions. Barr
directed Hugh Hurwitz, the Acting Director of the BOP, to schedule the
executions of five inmates currently on death-row who were convicted of
“murdering and in some cases torturing and raping, the most vulnerable in our
society – children and the elderly.”
“Under Administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought
the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these 5 murderers,
each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair
proceeding,” Barr said. “The Justice Department upholds the rule of law—and we
owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed
by our justice system.”
The last federal execution occurred in 2003.
Duke University law professor James E. Coleman Jr. said the DOJ move was “just
one more effort by the administration to pick off low-hanging fruit that gives
its political base a sense that something is happening.”
“Like the president’s heated rhetoric, however, it is just thunder signifying
nothing. The public is rapidly losing faith in the death penalty. This move
will not change that trend,” Coleman Jr. said.
The group Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty (CCATDP) also noted
the national trend away from the death penalty.
“Resumption of executions by the federal government goes against the trend we
have seen in states across the nation, where executions and sentences are at
historic lows,” Hannah Cox, National Manager of CCATDP, said in a statement to
Law&Crime. “A growing number of conservative state lawmakers are driving that
trend because they realize that capital punishment goes against their
principles of valuing life, fiscal responsibility and limited government, and
that the death penalty does nothing to make the public safer.”
Coleman Jr.’s colleague, Duke University law professor Brandon L. Garrett,
agreed that the Barr announcement sounded “dramatic,” but pointed out that
previous Attorneys General have tried this before and failed.
“However dramatic it may sound, the announcement that federal executions will
resume certainly does not mean that we should expect to see them any time
soon,” Garrett said. “First, lawyers will challenge the execution protocol;
indeed there is already pending federal litigation. Second, jurors are
increasingly rejecting death sentences in federal cases and in the states. The
federal death penalty has continued to decline, and although Attorneys General
have tried to revive it over the years, they have not succeeded.”
(source: lawandcrime.com)
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