Sept. 9
TEXAS:
Forensic testing backlog at issue in RGV courts
Gabriel Keith Escalante has been incarcerated in Hidalgo County for 18 months.
His chances of making the $1.25 million bond on charges of capital murder of
multiple persons are slim to none.
And as he sits behind bars, a serious question remains unanswered.
Will the Hidalgo County District Attorney’s Office seek the death penalty
against the 40-year-old Edinburg man on accusations that he, along with his
girlfriend, 41-year-old Irene Navejar, beat 53-year-old Alejandro Salinas Sr.
to death and suffocated the man’s mother, 73-year-old Oliva Salinas, on April
23, 2018.
The answer depends on what the analysts at the Texas Department of Public
Safety’s Weslaco Crime Lab find when those officials test forensic evidence in
the case.
As of Aug. 21, the crime lab hadn’t even started.
At a court hearing in Escalante’s case last Thursday, Hidalgo County Assistant
District Attorney Andrew Almaguer could only tell Judge Linda Reyna Yáñez that
the DPS crime lab told him that officials there would begin analysis on several
items.
That’s a problem for Escalante’s defense attorney, O. Rene Flores.
“There currently exists an epidemic of delay with forensic analyses of evidence
at the Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Lab — the crime lab of choice
for prosecutions in Hidalgo County, Texas,” he said in a motion filed on Aug.
21, the day DPS notified the state testing would begin on several pieces of
evidence in the case. “Several announcements have been made by the State in the
instant case, effectively placing the accused and this Court on notice that
there is a chronic delay in the forensic analysis of evidence across the board
in criminal cases in Hidalgo County.”
The state, through Almaguer, didn’t disagree. Neither did the judge, Yáñez.
“This is an issue for many cases,” she said, while listening to Flores’
argument.
But Flores suggested a solution: send the samples to a private lab since
forensic testing is “backlogged” at the DPS crime lab in Weslaco.
Yáñez is considering the motion, but agreed to give Almaguer until Sept. 16 to
provide her with a status of where DPS is at with the forensic analysis.
Escalante wasn’t the only defendant at the Hidalgo County Courthouse this week
where delays in evidence testing at the crime lab impacted their cases.
Take 23-year-old Alamo resident Alex Arevalo, who has admitted to shooting and
killing 41-year-old McAllen resident Nicolas Anthony Bazan on June 19, 2017.
Court records indicate he agreed to a plea agreement on March 27 to a charge of
murder, escaping a capital murder charge. The state in this case said it would
recommend a 45-year prison sentence, court records indicate.
He was scheduled to receive his sentence Wednesday morning. But he didn’t.
Flores also represents Arevalo and said that case has fallen victim to the
“crime lab epidemic.”
Arevalo’s sentencing was rescheduled until Nov. 6.
The spector of the DPS crime lab backup also raised its head on Thursday
afternoon during a hearing for 25-year-old Mission resident Guadalupe Garcia
Vela, who is accused of gunning down Yvette Garza and Natalie Hernandez on Dec.
20, 2015 during a botched drug deal.
Vela has been in jail since January 2016.
Nereyda Morales-Martinez and Regina “Regi” Richardson, Vela’s attorneys, said
during a pre-trial hearing that DPS began testing cannisters found at the crime
scene in early August. The crime happened more than three years ago.
Vela’s jury trial, which was scheduled for late September, was canceled in part
to wait for the forensic analysis of the cannisters. There was also a delay due
to additional ballistic testing that may be conducted in the case due to a
request made by the defense on Thursday to test the service weapon of a police
officer who may have had a relationship with one of the victims.
PROCEDURAL DISMISSAL
In the early morning hours of April 11, 2018, after 38-year-old Brownsville
resident Robert Galvan finished cutting hair at the Mr. Flawless barbershop and
having some beers at a friend’s house, he took a ride that sent him right back
to state prison.
The Brownsville Police Department arrested Galvan, who was on probation for a
violent assault against his former girlfriend, and charged him with murder and
aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for killing 54-year-old Horacio Eguia
and seriously injuring 43-year-old Brian Scott during an argument over gas
money in the 200 block of East 10th Street.
From the moment police began interrogating Galvan, the man maintained that he
acted in self defense when he used a pair of scissors from his barber kit to
slash Eguia and Scott, who he claimed were the agressors.
Galvan told police that the men offered to give him a ride to a residence and
once at the location, demanded gas money. Galvan claims they jumped him, but
Scott, who survived, told investigators that a quarrel between Galvan and Eguia
over the victim smoking marijuana near Galvan boiled over into violence.
His defense attorney, Nat C. Perez, prepared a self defense argument and told
state District Judge Gloria Rincones that he was ready for trial.
But there was a problem. The DPS Weslaco crime lab hadn’t tested fingerprints
on the knife used to kill Eguia. The Cameron County District Attorney’s Office
wanted results of the forensic evidence testing from the crime lab back before
going to trial.
For Galvan, that wasn’t a problem. Testimony showed he readily admitted his
fingerprints were likely on the murder weapon because he said he acted in self
defense. He even stipulated to it.
Galvan also invoked his right to a speedy trial instead of waiving it. He
wanted his day in court.
When that day neared, Rincones, the judge, ordered the DA’s office to find a
lab that could return the forensic analysis by January of this year. Cameron
County Assistant District Attorney Oscar Guzman told Rincones the DA’s office
was unable to find one that could and the state filed what Cameron County
District Attorney Luis V. Saenz said was a procedural dismissal because of
delays in the testing.
“Once we get that completed, the case will be re-represented to a grand jury
for indictment,” Saenz said at the time.
As of Friday afternoon, a search of public court records did not reveal a new
indictment against Galvan.
Approximately 7 months after his arrest, Rincones found him guilty of violating
his probation because of substance abuse and sentenced Galvan to 4 years in
prison. Rincones also ruled Galvan acted in self defense.
SPEEDY TRIAL VIOLATION
On April 30, 31-year-old San Juan resident Rafael Puebla had been in jail for
18 months.
The Pharr Police Department accused the man of sexual assault and arrested him
on Oct. 26, 2017, and a Hidalgo County grand jury indicted the man on Jan. 23,
2018.
Puebla, dissatisfied with his attorney’s inability to get him a trial, filed a
hand-written motion for a speedy trial on April 16.
“In 18 months still no trial,” Puebla wrote in a letter. “Constant resets and
motion for delays. The state has dragged its feet in gathering evidence to
prove its case.”
Flores, the defense attorney, was Puebla’s lawyer.
Transcripts of hearings held on April 25 and 30, detail what happened next.
During that April 30 hearing in front of Yáñez, the judge, Flores said the DPS
crime lab in Weslaco had the sexual assault kit in Puebla’s case in its
possession since Aug. 16, 2017, more than a month before the man was arrested.
By that April 30 hearing, the crime lab had still not compared Puebla’s DNA to
a small amount of DNA recovered from the sexual assault kit.
The minimum sentence Puebla faced in the case was 15 years because he had a
previous conviction for possession of more than 50 pounds, but less than 2,000
pounds of marijuana out of Victoria County.
Five days before the April 30 setting, the state announced that it had offered
a deal of two years in prison to Puebla, who had already spent nearly 2 years
in jail.
Puebla rejected the deal. He wanted to go to trial.
And on April 30, Flores asked Yáñez to dismiss the indictment against Puebla
over a speedy trial violation.
At the hearing, the state argued that the backlog is not its fault, though
testimony showed authorities never obtained a warrant for a DNA sample from
Puebla and that the man voluntarily provided a sample in August 2018.
“And, so, although … the State had nothing to do with the analysis of the
samples, they sure have the authority, at the very least, to either expedite
the matter or for that matter, take those samples to a private lab in order to
expedite their analysis, especially given a defendant who was so angry with his
trial counsel, he’s filing his own Motion for a Speedy Trial and they chose not
to do that,” Flores said during the hearing.
Puebla even took the stand during two hearings in April, telling the court that
at the time of his arrest he was gainfully employed and since his
incarceration, he had not fostered any relationships with his family.
“I think if the Court would set a very dangerous precedent here if we were to
suggest that the backlog of the Department of Public Safety trumps one’s right
to a speedy trial,” Flores said during the hearing.
At the end of the hearing, Yáñez told the attorneys she was leaning one way and
would issue a ruling on May 1.
Like in Galvan’s case, the Brownsville man, Puebla’s demand for a speedy trial
conflicted with an apparent backlog in testing at the DPS crime lab in Weslaco.
The day after the hearing, Yáñez dismissed Puebla’s charges based on speedy
trial violations.
(source: The Monitor)
PENNYSLVANIA:
Atty Funding Woes Key In Pa. Death Penalty Fight
After working as a court-appointed lawyer on a death penalty case during his
tenure with the Pennsylvania Capital Defense Resource Center in the 1990s,
Robert Dunham learned that his time, at least by one judge's standards, was not
particularly valuable.
For the hundreds of hours he spent working on the case, not including time put
in both by a fellow attorney and by three mental health experts he tapped as
part of his defense strategy, a Philadelphia County judge agreed to award him
only $1,500 on the $11,000 reimbursement request he'd filed with the court.
"When I calculated the value, it was less than I would've gotten if I'd spent
that time flipping burgers at McDonald's," he told Law360.
The lack of funding for court-appointed attorneys and public defenders is a
familiar story across the United States, but it's an issue that experts say is
particularly pronounced in Pennsylvania and is expected to factor prominently
into arguments the state's Supreme Court is set to hear on Wednesday over
whether the death penalty should be declared unconstitutional.
The case in Pennsylvania comes before the high court following a petition from
two death row inmates, Jermont Cox and Kevin Marinelli, who argue that the
death penalty as applied in Pennsylvania runs afoul of state constitutional
protections against cruel punishments.
The justices have previously upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty,
but the current appeal comes in the wake of a report released by a non-partisan
state legislative commission in June 2018 outlining serious flaws in
Pennsylvania's administration of capital punishment, including not only
problems with funding for court-appointed counsel but also racial disparities
in sentencing decisions.
A decision striking down the death penalty would put Pennsylvania in line with
a growing number of states that have, through a combination of legislative and
judicial action, ended capital punishment in recent years citing concerns
similar to those raised in the commission's report last year.
Last year, for example, the high court in Washington state struck down the
death penalty there after ruling that capital punishment had been "imposed in
an arbitrary and racially biased manner."
The federal government, however, is taking a different tack as it announced at
the end of July that it was planning to carry out its first executions in
nearly 20 years.
Dunham, who now serves as executive director of the Death Penalty Information
Center in Washington, D.C., said the commission's findings in Pennsylvania are
just the latest in a yearslong string of reports from the American Bar
Association and other entities that have identified problems with capital
punishment in the state.
"Although the conclusions that the commission reached in its report are not
new, they are extraordinarily significant because they indicate that, despite
years of information suggesting that the death penalty system in Pennsylvania
is in shambles, nothing has been done to correct it," he said.
While 441 death sentences have been handed down by Pennsylvania juries since
capital punishment was reinstated in the 1970s, a total of 270 — more than 1/2
— have ended up being overturned either on appeal or as a result of other
post-conviction proceedings.
The most frequently cited reason for the reversals: ineffective assistance of
counsel.
Dunham blamed the high rate of such findings on what he said was Pennsylvania's
"Balkanized" system of funding for court-appointed counsel.
"For much of the period in which Pennsylvania has had the death penalty, it has
been the only state in the country that provided no state funding for indigent
capital defense at any level of the proceedings," he said.
Instead of providing funding on the state level, it's left up to individual
counties in Pennsylvania to apportion funding for indigent capital defense
services. Of all the states where the death penalty remains on the books, only
South Dakota has a similar system for funding court-appointed capital
defenders.
To show the impact of adequately resourced legal representation on capital
cases, Dunham pointed to outcomes in homicide cases handled by Philadelphia's
public defender system.
The Defender Association of Philadelphia, which has its own budget and does not
rely on judges to approve fees and costs for defense counsel, has been allowed
to handle 20% of all homicide cases in the city since 1993.
And while Dunham said that 90 death sentences had been returned in homicide
cases in Philadelphia in that time, he said none had been handed to defendants
represented by the Defender Association.
"If counsel didn't make a difference, then you would've expected 20% of those
death sentences to have come in public defender cases," he said.
David Rudovsky, a civil rights attorney with Kairys Rudovsky Messing Feinberg &
Lin LLP in Philadelphia, said the comparison between poorly and adequately
funded legal counsel helped to prove an old adage.
"You get what you pay for," he said.
Dunham said it would take an outlay of millions of dollars a year to provide
thorough representation to the 137 people with active death sentences in
Pennsylvania.
In addition to funding problems for indigent capital defense, the commission's
report pointed to findings that death sentences in Pennsylvania have been
predominantly handed down to poor and minority defendants, and were also more
likely to come in cases where the victim was white.
In all, Cox and Marinelli, the petitioners in the high court case, say that the
seemingly arbitrary factors at play in who is sentenced to death in
Pennsylvania mean the justices should declare the penalty unconstitutionally
cruel.
"Pennsylvania administers a system of capital punishment that is replete with
error, a national outlier in its design, and a mirror for the inequities and
prejudices that plague American society," the pair said in a brief filed in
February.
Notably, Philadelphia's reform-minded district attorney, Larry Krasner, has
sided with Cox and Marinelli in pushing to have the death penalty struck down
in Pennsylvania.
"We have a system in which wealthy, white defendants can buy their way out of
the system and evade consequences for years or decades, while poor black
defendants sit on Pennsylvania's death row for an average of 17 years — on the
taxpayers' dime — before their death sentences are overturned," Krasner said in
a statement in July announcing his support for ending capital punishment.
"Anyone who claims to believe in the sanctity of life, truth, or justice cannot
seriously defend the application of the death penalty in Pennsylvania," he
added at the time.
Kransner is a formal respondent in the appeal, as it was his office that
prosecuted Cox in the 1990s.
Gov. Tom Wolf, meanwhile, issued a moratorium on the use of the death penalty
in Pennsylvania just a month after taking office in January 2015 until the
Legislature had an opportunity to read and respond to concerns raised in the
commission's report.
Those lined up in opposition to Cox and Marinelli's challenge, including
Attorney General Josh Shapiro and the Pennsylvania District Attorneys
Association, say that it should be left up to the Legislature to fix any
problems with the state's death penalty.
Shapiro, whose office was responsible for prosecuting Marinelli, argued in a
brief in July that the courts had no basis to intervene in matters best left to
the Legislature.
"The General Assembly is addressing myriad concerns … regarding capital
punishment," Shapiro's brief said. "It is the proper role of that body to
determine whether the people want the death penalty to continue to be an option
for jurors, and to decide what changes may be needed going forward."
The PDAA agreed in an amicus brief that the commission's findings could not be
the basis for judicial action, and that the report needed to be "properly
vetted by the legislative body which commissioned it."
The only problem, experts say, is that the Legislature has taken no action to
respond to any of the recommendations offered up as part of the commission's
report last year.
Marc Bookman, the co-director of the Philadelphia-based Atlantic Center for
Capital Representation, said the only concrete proposal offered up by the
General Assembly was a $500,000 pool of money to allow each of Pennsylvania's
67 counties to seek reimbursement for capital defense costs.
"It gives you a sense of the Legislature's insincerity in trying to fix a
system like this," he said.
That failure to take action makes the state's system of capital punishment fair
game for intervention by the courts, according to Rudovsky.
"The court has made it clear that a lot of things are legislative prerogative,
but if they fail to take that prerogative then the courts have the power to
intervene," he said.
(source: law360.com)
*********************
State Supreme Court to hear arguments on death penalty
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments about the
constitutionality of the death penalty in Pennsylvania on Wednesday in the
Philadelphia City Hall.
The legal effort to find the death penalty unconstitutional is tied to two
death-row inmates: Kevin Marinelli, who was convicted in the 1994 torture death
of Kulpmont resident Conrad Dumchock, and Jermont Cox, who was ordered to die
for a 1992 murder in Philadelphia.
The Northumberland County District Attorney's office is seeking the death
penalty for Jose Colon, 43, for the killing of Kasandra Ortiz, 23, on Feb. 26,
2018. The case is temporarily delayed pending the results of the Supreme Court
hearing.
Colon is charged with 65 criminal counts from two cases related to the fatal
shooting of Ortiz. He is also facing charges related to a 7-hour standoff with
police in which he fired 11 shots.
He allegedly confessed to the murder during an interview on March 7 at the
Stonington state police station, according to a criminal complaint. Colon
admitted to striking Ortiz in the head and face outside her apartment on Rock
Street and continuing the assault after she was knocked to the ground,
according to documents. Colon told police he dragged the bloodied woman to a
nearby dirt lot at Rock and Spurzheim streets where he shot her once and left
her body before fleeing the scene, the complaint states.
Colon is charged with criminal homicide and 11 counts of attempted homicide of
law enforcement officers, as well as 25 felony charges of aggravated assault,
illegally possessing a firearm and assault of a law enforcement officer. The
remaining charges are misdemeanor counts.
On Feb. 13, 2015, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced a halt to all
executions, saying he was concerned about “flawed system that has been proven
to be an endless cycle of court proceedings as well as ineffective, unjust, and
expensive.”
(source: dailyitem.com)
FLORIDA:
Jury selection begins for man accused of killing 9-year-old
Jury selection will begin Monday in the trial of Granville Richey who is
accused of killing 9-year-old Felecia Williams in 2014.
Police say Felecia disappeared on May 16, 2014 after leaving her home with a
family friend and going to an apartment in Temple Terrace where she met Richie.
Investigators found her body the next day on the east side of the Courtney
Campbell Causeway.
In late summer 2014, Ritchie was charged with murder, sexual battery, and child
abuse.
According to a Tampa Bay Times article, prosecutors are seeking the death
penalty, which will be the 1st death penalty case in Hillsborough County due to
a new state law in which a unanimous decision must be reached if the jury
recommends death.
(source: WFLA news)
OHIO:
Danny Lee Hill death penalty hearing set for December
A panel of federal judges has set a date to hear whether or not Danny Lee Hill
should be executed for torturing,raping, and murdering a 12-year-old Warren boy
scout.
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in the Hill case on
December 5.
Hill was sentenced to death for the 1985 murder of Raymond Fife in a field in
Warren. However, the sixth circuit court found earlier that Hill shows signs of
being mentally deficient, including an IQ ranging from 48 to 71 and childlike,
confused and irrational behavior.
Because a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling declared that executing people with
intellectual disabilities is unconstitutional, the death penalty for Hill was
taken off the table.
The Trumbull County Prosecutors Office took the appellate court ruling to the
U.S. Supreme Court which refused to hear the case, but found several "deficits"
in the Sixth District Court of Appeals ruling and sent the case back to the
appellate judges for reconsideration.
At the center of the debate is how the appeals court came to their decision.
The Supreme Court argues that the Sixth District "relied repeatedly and
extensively" on a capital murder case dealing with intellectually deficient
individuals.
However, the Supreme Court justices ruled that that specific case Moore v.
Texas wasn't decided until well after Hill's case.
Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins argues that all nine U.S. Supreme
Court agreed that the Sixth District Court of Appeals "did not appropriately
apply the law".
The question now, according to Watkins, is whether the "correct law" would
bring about the death penalty when applied to the Hill case.
Watkins says the state courts which ruled on the case under the current laws
found that Danny Lee Hill should be executed for the crime.
Hill, who was 18 years old at the time of the crime, went to prison when he was
19 and is now 33 years old.
Background
According to court records, on September 10, 1985, at approximately 5:15 p.m.,
Raymond Fife left home on his bicycle to visit a friend, Billy Simmons.
After learning that the 12-year-old had not arrived at his friend's home by
5:50 pm, Fife's family began searching for him.
Raymond Fife's father found his son more than 4 hours later in a wooded field
behind the Valu-King supermarket on Palmyra road.
The child was naked and appeared to have been severely beaten and his face was
burned. Raymond's underwear was found tied around his neck and appeared to have
been lit on fire.
Raymond died in the hospital 2 days later.
The coroner, who ruled Raymond's death a homicide, testified during the trial
that the victim had been choked and had a hemorrhage in his brain. The coroner
also said that Fife sustained several burns, damage to his rectal-bladder area
and bite marks on his penis.
Through testimony from three Warren Western Reserve High School Students, the
jury learned that Danny Lee Hill and Timothy Combs were in the area of the
Valu-King and the bike trails on the evening Raymond Fife was assaulted. One of
the students had also seen Fife riding his bike in the store parking lot.
A student who said he saw Combs on the trail also said he heard a child's
scream. Another student says he saw Combs pulling up the zipper of his blue
jeans.
2 days after Fife was found, Danny Lee Hill, who was 18-years-old at the time,
went to the Warren Police Station to inquire about a $5,000 reward that was
being offered for information concerning the murder.
According to Police Sergeant Thomas Stewart, Hill told him that he had just
seen some he knew riding Fife's bike. When Stewart asked Hill how he knew the
bike belonged to Fife, Hill replied, "I know it is."
Sergeant Stewart testified that during their conversation, it became apparent
that Hill knew a lot about the bike and the underwear that was found around
Fife's neck.
On the following Monday, September 16, Hill went to the police station
accompanied by his uncle, Warren Police Detective Morris Hill.
Police say after waiving his Miranda rights, Danny Lee Hill admitted on audio
and videotape that he was present during the beating and sexual assault of
Raymond Fife, but that Timothy Combs did everything to the victim.
Combs was eventually convicted of felonious sexual penetration, arson, rape,
kidnapping and aggravated murder.
Since Combs was 17-years-old at the time of the crime, he was not eligible for
the death penalty and is serving a life sentence. He will be eligible for his
first parole hearing in 2049.
Hill was convicted on the same charges, but since he was 18-years-old at the
time Fife was assaulted, he was sentenced to death.
(source: WFMJ news)
ARIZONA:
Pima County prosecutor to discuss death penalty views at UA law school
A Pima county prosecutor and University of Arizona law professor will be
discussing his changed opinion on the death penalty during a Wednesday
meet-and-greet.
Deputy Pima County Attorney Rick Unkelsbay, who heads up the office's
Conviction Integrity Unit, has tried more than 100 murder cases. 1 of the
people whose cases he tried received the death sentence, which Unkelsbay now
says doesn't work.
6 Unkelsbay recently wrote a book detailing his views and changed perspective
called "Arbitrary Death: A Prosecutor's Perspective on the Death Penalty,"
which Unkelsbay will discuss with UA Professor Jason Kreag. The book highlights
several Pima County homicide cases, with survivors sharing their experiences
with capital punishment cases.
During the event, Unkelsbay, who says our justice system is fundamentally
flawed, will discuss the book, his changing opinions and his arguments for why
capital punishment should be abolished.
Arbitrary Death will be available for sale at the event, with all proceeds
benefiting Tucson nonprofit Homicide Survivors Inc.
(source: Arizona Daily Star)
CALIFORNIA----2 fefmales may face death penalty Suspects in Casino Killing
Could Be Eligible For Death Penalty
The 2 female defendants charged in the robbery and killing of an 84-year-old
Long Beach woman at the Pechanga Resort Casino in Temecula could be eligible
for the death penalty if convicted, officials said Sunday.
One of the suspects, 35-year-old Kimesha Monae Williams, is believed to be the
sister of Los Angeles Clippers star forward Kawhi Leonard. Williams’ aunt told
the Riverside Press-Enterprise on Saturday that Williams and Leonard are
siblings.
John Hall, spokesman for the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office, would
not confirm the relationship, but told City News Service that Williams and
39-year-old Candace Tai Townsel were charged with murder with a special
circumstance that makes them eligible for the death penalty.
However, a decision has not yet been made by the District Attorney’s Office on
whether to pursue the death penalty for either defendant, according to Hall.
According to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, Williams and Townsel
followed Afaf Anis Assad of Long Beach into a bathroom at the casino on Aug.
31, where the duo attacked her and stole her purse, which contained $800 to
$1,200.
Assad was found unconscious on the bathroom floor and later died of her
injuries at Inland Valley Medical Center in Wildomar.
“She didn’t even get a chance to play,” Assad’s son-in-law told CBS2. “I mean,
she had some money in her wallet because she was ready to play that day, and I
don’t know if they targeted her because she just walked through the door and
they knew she had money in her wallet.”
Sgt. Steve Brosche said detectives obtained leads pointing to Williams and
Townsel as the alleged assailants, and both were taken into custody — Williams
in Perris and Townsel in Hemet.
Both suspects are being without bail — Williams at the Indio Jail and Townsel
at the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside.
The Press-Enterprise reported that a sheriff’s investigator requested that a
judge hold Williams without bail because she may flee and “has family that are
well-off and could post her bail.”
Any defendant in a potential death penalty case is typically held without bail,
Hall said.
(source: mynewsla.com)
USA:
White House contender Kamala Harris calls for abolition of death penalty
Senator Kamala Harris, whose record as a prosecutor has been under scrutiny
since she entered the presidential race, has unveiled a criminal justice plan
that calls for abolishing the death penalty, ending cash bail and collecting
more data on officer-involved shootings.
Ms Harris condemns the death penalty as “immoral, discriminatory, ineffective,
and a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars”.
The California Democrat also calls for eliminating mandatory minimum sentencing
at the federal level and ending the use of private prisons as well as solitary
confinement.
Ms Harris says a national standard should be established to allow the use of
deadly force only when “necessary” and when no reasonable alternatives are
available.
She also wants to create a National Police Systems Review Board, which would
collect data and review police shootings and cases of alleged severe
misconduct.
The board would issue recommendations and implement safety standards based on
evidence revealed in reviews.
Ms Harris’ plan comes in the same week that Democrats are set to meet for the
third presidential primary debates, the first with all leading candidates
sharing the same stage.
During the round of debates in July, Ms Harris found herself on the defensive
as former Vice President Joe Biden and Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard
attacked her record as a prosecutor.
Ms Gabbard focused on Ms Harris’ stance on the death penalty and said Ms Harris
had “blocked evidence” that could have helped “innocent people” on death row.
Ms Harris spent 7 years as district attorney for San Francisco and 6 years as
the state’s attorney general, the 1st black woman in that position.
As a prosecutor, she tended to defend the status quo or take a cautious
approach to reforms rather than advocate for bold changes.
While some now question the timing of her call for criminal justice reforms,
her supporters say she was expected as an official to represent the government
and uphold the law.
Her campaign has sought to cast her as a change agent, dedicated to improving a
flawed system from the inside.
In her stump speech, she argues that she is uniquely qualified to “prosecute
the case” against President Donald Trump, who she says has a long “rap sheet”.
Ms Harris was not the only candidate pressed on her criminal justice record in
the second round of debates.
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker ripped into Mr Biden and suggested that the
former senator, a long-time member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and for
several years its chairman, is partly responsible for the criminal justice
system that he is seeking to reform as a presidential candidate.
The winner of the Democratic Party primaries is expected to duel with Mr Trump
for the presidency in November 2020.
(source: Press Association)
**************************
At 80, Prejean still a witness to what others haven’t seen
Sister Helen Prejean has some advice for Pope Francis, who, 6 years into his
papacy, still encounters resistance to his efforts to shake up the Catholic
Church: “Be patient - it takes time!”
Just over 1 year ago, the pope officially declared the death penalty to be
“inadmissible” and updated the catechism, the official compendium of Church
teaching, to reflect the development. It’s something Prejean has been pushing
for since she first began getting to know death row inmates in the 1980s.
Along the way, she’s learned a few lessons in patience, but also in
persistence.
Prejean’s remarks came in an interview with Crux upon the release of her new
memoir, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey, published last month by Random
House.
While she first found herself in the national spotlight for her
memoir-turned-film, Dead Man Walking - in which she was famously played by
Susan Sarandon - the Congregation of St. Joseph nun’s latest book is, in some
respects, an effort to account for how she transformed from an introspective
religious sister to a social justice warrior, and what’s sustained her along
the way.
At age 80, Prejean isn’t slowing down. She’s still crisscrossing the country,
she’s actively texting, using her iPad, Tweeting, and, perhaps most
importantly, she’s still preaching - just not from a Catholic pulpit (more on
that later).
Speaking to Crux, she says that in many ways, River of Fire is her effort to
make sense of her own “slow awakening” to the needs around her in the world and
the Second Vatican Council’s calling for engagement with them.
Until her forties, she recalls living a quiet life focused on prayer, leading
and organizing retreats, limited to her “cocoon.”
Meanwhile, she began to see the work of religious sisters among the poor and
marginalized in Latin America, risking their lives to work against dictators,
and providing a Catholic witness in places where others were withdrawing.
Back in New Orleans, she began slowly to confront the fact that the poor were
around her at home. Perhaps in addition to praying for God to help them, she
began to think, she could actually do so herself.
Prejean began working in the housing projects, and eventually was asked if
she’d be willing to correspond with an inmate on death row. She would go on to
visit him and serve as his spiritual advisor, eventually accompanying him to
his execution - an experience that would catapult her into becoming one of the
world’s most vocal opponents of the death penalty.
Looking back, she credits the “unleashing” of the spirit of the Second Vatican
Council with spurring her to action. Her memoir, she says, “shows how Vatican
II pointed us back to social justice and to the gospel.”
“It also brought us back to the scriptures - it took us to the original
source,” she continued. “And it reminded us that human experience shapes
perspectives. When you move to the margins, or to the field hospital as Pope
Francis says, you encounter people where they are.”
Drawing on her own experience of working with death row inmates and families
who have experienced violence, Prejean has been no stranger to resistance,
including those within the Church skeptical of her call for a total abolition
of the death penalty.
But her involvement both with inmates in their final moments of life, as well
as with family members who have been victims of heinous crimes yet see the
death penalty as a state-sanctioned way of perpetuating violence and injustice,
have led her to push ahead.
“That experience bubbles up and then finally you reach a point where you change
it on paper,” she says, describing how, over time, the Church has reached a
position of full and total opposition to the death penalty.
“Here’s what I discovered,” she recalls. “Even pro-life Catholics would draw a
line between the innocent and the guilty,” saying this distinction was the
“crux” of her conversation on the subject with Pope John Paul II in the
nineties.
“Where is the dignity in that?” she asks of the idea that there are some crimes
so terrible that the individuals who commit them must be killed.
“It’s a very arrogant assumption that the only option we have is to kill them,”
says Prejean. “Who are we to make that assumption?” she asks.
Pope John Paul II would go on to agree with Prejean, saying that it was “both
cruel and unnecessary.” Just over 20 years later, Francis would take it one
step further, deeming it “inadmissible.”
For Prejean, this is proof that people - even popes - can eventually change
their minds, and it’s worth trying to persuade them.
“People are not wedded to the state killing people,” she insists. “But people
have been made to be afraid,” adding that the physical distance between
prisoners and the general public often leads to a dehumanization.
“We need to see them face to face,” she says.
While she’s still keeping her eye on the fight against the death penalty, as a
woman in the male-dominated Catholic Church, she’s also using her platform to
advance the cause of women’s leadership, including writing a letter to Francis
on the matter.
For Prejean, the fact that she’s traveled the globe preaching in pulpits of
every Christian tradition but her own is “so blatantly, inherently sexist.”
“It’s also not healthy for the Church’s decision-making,” she said, noting the
absence of women in senior positions of leadership in dioceses in the U.S. and
in Rome.
Yet if her 4 decades long battle tangling with Church officials over the death
penalty has taught her anything, it’s that “when you love a community, you stay
at the table and dialogue and that’s how in time things can change.”
“Just think - it took 1,600 years for the Church to change on that front,” she
says.
And looking ahead, she has no intentions of slowing down or staying silent,
paraphrasing the Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel: “When we’re a
witness to what others have not seen, we have a moral imperative to tell
others.”
“That’s still my job,” says Prejean.
(source: cruxnow.com)
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A service courtesy of Washburn University School of Law www.washburnlaw.edu
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