October 14
ILLINOIS:
State lawmaker files bill to reinstate death penalty in Illinois
A state lawmaker filed a bill Thursday calling for the reinstatement of the
death sentence in Illinois.
Republican Rep. David McSweeney's bill, HB 3915, would "serve as a deterrent to
violent crime with the specific goal of reducing mass shootings, serial
killings, and gun violence," according to the measure.
McSweeney first introduced the bill in August after the El Paso, Texas and
Dayton, Ohio shootings, according to the Capitol News Illinois.
Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011 and in 2018, former Republican
Gov. Bruce Rauner proposed reinstating it for mass killers and people who gun
down police officers.
(source: KMOV news)
CALIFORNIA:
California must take the final step by abolishing the death penalty
I do not believe in coincidence. Too many of the events along my journey from
death row to exoneration were filled with deeper meaning.
In 1985, I was a 24-year-old honorably discharged Marine who was in the wrong
place at the wrong time. I was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to die in
Maryland for a crime I did not commit. Then in 1989, I got “The Blooding” by
Joseph Wambaugh from the prison library. It was a book about a new forensic
breakthrough called DNA fingerprinting.
I later became the 1st person exonerated from a death sentence through the use
of DNA evidence. In a bizarre twist of fate, I discovered that the true
perpetrator of the crime had lived in a cell right below mine for years.
Oct. 10 was World Day Against the Death Penalty. It was also California Gov.
Gavin Newsom’s birthday. I believe it is very auspicious that these two events
share a day.
It seems fitting for a man who has used his authority as governor to take the
bold stand that “the intentional killing of another person is wrong,” and
declare that as governor, he “will not oversee the execution of any
individual.”
I am now the executive director of Witness to Innocence, an organization led by
exonerated survivors of death row with similar stories to my own.
There are at least 166 of us, men and women who have been exonerated from death
row in the U.S. since 1973.
We thank Gov. Newsom for remembering our stories when he said “we’ve created a
system that allows for innocent people to be put to death.” We don’t think
that. We know that.”
We, the survivors of death row, also know that the problems with the death
penalty go far beyond the real risk that we will execute an innocent person.
As Gov. Newsom said: “It’s a racist system. You cannot deny that. It’s a system
that is perpetuating inequality. It’s a system that I cannot in good conscience
support.”
California’s death row, the largest in the nation by far, is emblematic of
those problems. The majority of people sentenced to death in California are
people of color.
Many suffer from severe mental illness, intellectual disabilities, brain
injury, or long histories of abuse and trauma, and nearly a quarter were age 21
or younger at the time of their alleged crimes.
Whether a person will be sentenced to death depends more on which county he or
she is from and who their attorney was than on the facts of the case.
California spends $150 million a year on this problematic system, which is a
vivid illustration of the deep flaws that remain in our criminal justice
system.
Gov. Newsom’s moratorium on executions is a great first step, and the journey
toward justice must continue. I hope next year on his birthday and World Day
Against the Death Penalty we have more to thank the governor for, and I look
forward to the day when we count California among the jurisdictions in the U.S
and the vast majority of countries that have come to recognize that death can
never advance justice. (source: Commentary; Kirk Bloodsworth is the executive
director of Witness to Innocence, a national organization of death row
exonerees in Philadelphia with a mission to abolish the death penalty. He wrote
this commentary for CalMatters, a public interest journalism venture committed
to explaining how California’s Capitol works and why it matters----Napa Valley
Register)
OREGON:
A 2nd childhood for a cold-blooded killer?: Steve Duin
Since murdering Rod and Lois Houser in 1987, Randy Guzek apparently has had one
hell of a time finding a decent lawyer.
It took him 32 years to find attorneys willing to argue he should have been
tried as a child, not an adult.
Guzek’s new legal champions are Jeffrey Ellis and Karen Steele. Hoping to free
him from Oregon’s death row, they first filed a court document listing the
“deficiencies” of his previous legal counsel.
It runs 1,856 pages
. Guzek’s former defense attorneys, we’re told, screwed up time and again.
They failed to counter allegations that Guzek sexually abused his younger
sister, Tammy. They botched their cross-examination of Lynn Fredrickson, the
lead detective in the case, and failed to raise objections to jury
instructions.
Heck, it’s even argued his original trial attorneys erred in “refusing to allow
Mr. Guzek to testify in his own defense.”
All told, Ellis and Steele post 284 claims of “inadequate assistance of
counsel” in the 4 death-penalty trials. In the quest for “post-conviction
relief,” they toss the full bowl of legal linguine at the wall, knowing only
one strand need stick.
If it does, Guzek – one of the smarter and most calculating sadists on death
row – will be granted a new trial, one in which he is no longer eligible for
the death penalty.
“What the defense lawyers are doing, on the taxpayers’ dime, is shooting the
moon,” says Josh Marquis, who three times prosecuted Guzek for those 1987
murders
. “They make 284 claims. If just one of them finds its mark, their guy has the
potential of walking out of prison.”
The post-conviction relief festivities continued last week in the Marion County
courtroom of Circuit Judge Thomas Hart.
Steele and Ellis asked, in a 192-page “brief,” for an evidentiary hearing on
their belief that the death penalty is unfairly applied to “late adolescents.”
In 2005, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Roper vs. Simmons that the
Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments exempt anyone under the age of 18 from the
death penalty.
Guzek was 30 days past his 18th birthday when he and Mark Wilson arrived at the
Housers’ door in Terrebonne, armed with a .22 caliber rifle and a .32-caliber
pistol.
But Steele and Ellis asked Hart to ponder testimony from a half-dozen esteemed
psychologists. They contend Roper established that juvenile offenders are (a)
more vulnerable to peer pressure; and (b) have a “lack of maturity” that
results in “impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions.”
They further argue that because the brain’s development continues well into
one’s early 20s, Guzek shouldn’t bear full responsibility for the impetuousness
he brought to the bloodbath.
Their expert witnesses included Erin Bigler, a professor of psychology and
neuroscience at Brigham Young; Ruben Gur, a tenured professor at the University
of Pennsylvania Medical School; and Laurence Steinberg, a Temple University
professor billed as “one of the world’s leading experts on adolescence.”
They were a relaxed, collegial group, sitting comfortably together in the
courtroom for the 3-day hearing.
They were in their wheelhouse answering questions about myelination and pruning
in the human brain. And, of course, they were well-paid. Bigler said he was
billing $275 an hour, and estimated his three-day Salem sojourn would cost
Oregon taxpayers a minimum of $7,000.
Gur noted Tuesday that the college campus is quite the showcase for brain
development: “These undergraduates come to us at age 18, and they’re really not
fully baked.”
But sitting a few feet from the 50-year-old Guzek, Gur also conceded he has
never examined the guy and knew nothing about his crimes.
He couldn’t know, in other words, that Guzek was one of the alpha males at
Redmond High. He applied the peer pressure. He aced most of his classes,
notching a 3.9 GPA his junior year. He was sufficiently inventive to join the
local Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation so the could burglarize the members’
homes when they were on vacation.
It’s difficult to imagine why anyone, after all these years, would offer Guzek
the sanctuary of prolonged adolescence.
But that’s the state of crime and punishment in Oregon these days. The
Legislature moved deliberately to not only limit death penalty cases in the
future, but sabotage death penalty cases from the past.
Randy Guzek and his lawyers are so damn grateful.
(source: oregonlive.com)
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