[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----VA., CALIF., USA, COLO., WYO.
June 14 VIRGINIA: Meaningless execution Re: 'Kaine commutes death sentence, cites mental issue,' front page, June 10: I agree with Gov. Kaine's decision to commute the execution of Percy Walton to life with no parole. Both as the brother of a murder victim and an activist for human rights, I believe that killing Walton would have served no purpose other than to flex our judicial muscle. This is the 2nd commutation in the U.S. in just as many weeks. It reinforces the shifting public opinion and the evolving societal standard of decency and that human life is valuable under all circumstances. And my heart goes out to the families of Walton's three victims. My sister's murder leaves me with the deepest empathy. Ryan NixonNorfolk (source: Letter to the Editor, Virginian-Pilot) CALIFORNIA: S.F. appeals court overturns death sentence A federal appeals court overturned a San Joaquin County man's death sentence for the third time Friday in the battering death of a 19-year-old woman during a 1981 burglary, saying his lawyer failed to present evidence that might have led jurors to spare his life. Two previous rulings by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that would have granted Fernando Belmontes a new penalty trial on other grounds were both overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court returned the case to the appellate panel in November 2006 to consider other issues the defense raised, including the claim that Belmontes' trial lawyer represented him incompetently. Belmontes, now 47, was a month short of his 20th birthday and living in a halfway house in Stockton in March 1981 when he and two friends decided to rob a home in Victor, east of Lodi. According to trial testimony, Belmontes was confronted by Steacy McConnell and hit her 15 to 20 times with an iron dumbbell, crushing her skull. He and his accomplices took her stereo system and sold it for $100, which they used to buy beer. In previous rulings, the appeals court said the trial judge's instructions had probably kept jurors from considering evidence that Belmontes' lawyer had offered in support of a life term, including his good behavior and work on a fire crew while serving a California Youth Authority sentence for being an accessory to manslaughter. But the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in 2006 that jurors would have understood they could consider any relevant evidence when weighing his sentence. On Friday, however, the appeals court ruled 2-1 that jurors were not given evidence that could have affected their decision because of lapses by Belmontes' attorney. The ruling, if upheld, would entitle him to a retrial at which a new jury would decide between life in prison and a death sentence. Family members at the penalty phase of the trial testified that Belmontes' father was a violent alcoholic who beat his mother. But the appeals court said jurors never heard evidence of other childhood trauma and Belmontes' drug use, or of an attack of rheumatic fever at age 14 that left him with depression and a changed personality. Belmontes' trial lawyer failed to offer testimony from a psychiatrist who could have put the defendant's history in perspective, did little to prepare Belmontes or other witnesses for their testimony, and made the perverse argument to the jury that life in prison would actually be a harsher punishment than a death sentence, the appeals court said. If the jury had heard even a portion of the available humanizing ... testimony, it is likely that at least one juror would have chosen to spare Belmontes' life, Judge Stephen Reinhardt said in the majority opinion. Dissenting Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain said the evidence cited by the majority was trivial compared to the brutality of the crime and Belmontes' violent record. He said the majority's reversal of the death sentence was based on a mere desire for mercy. (source: San Francisco Chronicle) No death row at San QuentinState Sen. Jeff Denham has said death row should be moved to another prison, and now the state auditor agrees. The Legislature and the governor, like governors and Legislatures before them, are ducking hard decisions on what to do about the old death row facilities at San Quentin Prison in Marin County. Now the California State Auditor has issued a report, Building a Condemned Inmate Complex at San Quentin May Cost More Than Expected. That report, and another to follow in July on alternative sites, should cause the governor and Legislature to step back and chart a new course. San Quentin is the wrong place for a new death-row complex. This report may surprise some, but it amounts to an I told you so for state Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Merced, who has been pushing for several years for the state to close San Quentin and to move death row to another prison. In a 2005 commentary he wrote for McClatchy Newspapers, Denham pointed out that it would cost more than $200,000 per cell to expand death row. The state auditor
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----worldwide
June 14 CHINA: Will the People Choose the Death Penalty? When Chinas newly appointed top judge suggested recently that death penalties meted out in the country should adhere to popular will, many were outraged. From those who shuddered recalling the pandemonium of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) when gangs of teenagers administered peoples will by beating up their teachers on the streets to those who foresaw rows of corrupt officials being lined up and shot on the strength of prevailing public opinion, everybody had a word to say against judge Wang Shengjuns suggestion. Chinas legal system is still immature and courts mustnt blindly cater to popular will by becoming its rubber stamps, said Zhang Jianwei, legal expert at Qinghua University in Beijing. We should remember the lessons of the Cultural Revolution. All those public executions carried out by the masses made the calamity even worse. We have plenty of historical evidence to believe that public will tends to favour harsher punishments. Lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan said China was engaged in an intense battle against corruption and if public opinion was taken as basis for judging corrupt officials there would be plenty of death sentences. The irony is that in China public opinion is almost never a factor in trying corruption cases, he says. More often than not corrupt officials are given lenient sentences in belief of their repentance, while other criminal cases where public opinion is fiercely divided are resolved with the death penalty. By suggesting that popular will should be a factor in carrying out death sentences, top judge Wang Shengjun had only voiced the desire of certain legal officials and experts here to reform Chinas much criticised death penalty system. But the uproar that ensued sheds light on the hurdles the reform movement needs to overcome. Court officials and legal experts contend that the Chinese people commonly believe in retribution as an eye for an eye and a life for a life. I believe the principal of adherence to the popular will raised by the top judge refers only to this public belief, suggests legal researcher Xie Pengcheng. Sometimes nothing but the death penalty can placate peoples anger. Rights groups say China executes more people annually than the rest of the world combined. The countrys penal system has been denounced for putting people to death summarily, meting out wrongful sentences and keeping the numbers of executed secret. Since last year though, China has taken several strides forward toward reform. In January the Supreme Court took back its power of final approval on death penalties. This power was relinquished to provincial high courts in a crime-fighting campaign in the 1980s. The change has led to decline in the numbers of people executed, according to Chinas legal authorities. The Supreme Court rejected 15 percent of all death sentences handed down by lower courts in 2007 due to a lack of evidence, injustices and illegal court procedures. Death sentences were handed down only for an extremely small number of extremely serious and extremely vile criminals posing a grievous threat to society, former top judge Xiao Yang said in his report to the annual session of the National Peoples Congress in March. Xiao Yang didnt give a number of the people executed. The exact number of convicts put to death is a state secret. The Dui Hua Foundation -- a U.S.-based advocacy group that researches Chinese prisons -- has documented about 6,000 executions in 2007, a 25 to 30 percent drop from the year before. Amnesty International believes China remains the worlds most prolific executioner, sentencing to death and executing more people than other countries that practice the death penalty. But China has repeatedly defended its use of the ultimate punishment, citing broad popular support for it. The conditions are not right in China to abolish the death penalty, and it would not be supported by the majority of the people, Foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in her most recent remarks on death penalty reform. But we strictly control it and use it cautiously to ensure that it is used in only a small minority of the most serious cases. Beijing is pushing for the replacement of gunshot executions with lethal injection as the next step in its death penalty reform. Currently half of the countrys 404 intermediate peoples courts use lethal injections. It is considered more humane and will eventually be used in all intermediate peoples courts, Jiang Xingchang, vice-president of the Supreme Peoples Court (SPC) was quoted as saying in March. To help speed the reform process, the SPC has said it will begin providing the lethal cocktail used in the injection to local courts for free. In the past the toxic mixture was prepared in Beijing and local court officials were required to travel to the capital to receive it. This practice has proved too costly for many of the provinces, leading to delays in the introduction
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS
June 13 TEXAS: Killer's new execution date is July 23 Condemned double killer Derrick Juan Sonnier, who was spared from death last week by a last-minute court reprieve, has been scheduled to die by injection July 23. State District Judge Michael Wilkinson signed a court document Friday resetting Sonnier's execution date, said Roe Wilson, a Harris County assistant district attorney. Sonnier was set to die by injection June 3 when the Court of Criminal Appeals granted a stay of execution following 11th-hour appeals. The next week, the court rejected his appeals. His 1st execution date was waived to await a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Kentucky case that questioned the constitutionality of the lethal injection process. In April, the high court upheld the practice. Sonnier was sentenced to die for the 1991 murders of single mother Melody Flowers, 27, and her son Patrick, who was 2. (source: Houston Chronicle) Convicted killer of mom and child gets new death date Convicted killer Derrick Sonnier, spared a trip to the Texas death chamber a week ago by a late reprieve from the state's top criminal court, was reset on Friday to die July 23. Sonnier's lethal injection June 3 was blocked by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals about 90 minutes before he was scheduled to die for the 1991 slayings of a suburban Houston woman and her 2-year-old son. Attorneys for Sonnier, 40, cited then-unresolved cases before the appeals court that had raised questions about the constitutionality of lethal injection procedures used by Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials at a Huntsville prison. The court this week rejected appeals in those cases and lifted the reprieve given to Sonnier, clearing the way for executions to continue in the state. Texas on Wednesday evening carried out its 1st execution in nearly 9 months. Similar arguments brought by 2 condemned Kentucky inmates to the U.S. Supreme Court had halted all executions in the nation from last September, when the high court agreed to consider their appeal. The justices rejected the appeal in mid-April. With Sonnier's reprieve dissolved, Harris County prosecutors on Friday obtained the new execution date from State District Judge Michael Wilkinson. Sonnier is among at least 13 Texas inmates with execution dates in the coming months, including one next week and now 4 for next month. Last year 26 convicted killers were put to death in Texas, the most of any state. Sonnier was condemned for the fatal shootings of Melody Flowers, 27, and her son, Patrick, at their apartment in the Houston suburb of Humble. Flowers had been stabbed, beaten with a hammer and strangled. Her child was stabbed eight times. Both were found floating in a bathtub. Sonnier initially was scheduled to die in February. That execution date, however, was withdrawn by prosecutors pending the outcome of the Kentucky case before the Supreme Court. (source: The Associated Press) ** Attorneys seek reversal of execution, saying judge and district attorney were romantically involved In the 18 years since Charles Dean Hood was condemned for a double murder in Collin County, his execution has been scheduled five times including next Tuesday. On Thursday, his attorneys filed an unusual appeal, claiming Mr. Hood's conviction should be reversed, alleging the trial judge was intimately involved with the district attorney, creating an appearance of impropriety. It's very serious, said Mr. Hood's attorney, Greg Wiercioch of the Texas Defender Service. It's not a delaying tactic. Mr. Hood's attorneys don't point to any specific impact on the case, but they say the impression of possible bias was unfair. Collin County prosecutors declined to comment, but a prosecution expert says the defense must prove actual damage to the case and not rely on mere rumors. The former judge, Sue Holland, did not return calls for comment. Neither did the former prosecutor, Tom O'Connell. Rumors about a romantic relationship between the two have circulated for years, including in a Salon.com article in 2005. But Mr. Wiercioch says the issue is being raised officially for the first time five days before Mr. Hood's scheduled execution because a former assistant district attorney filed an affidavit about the alleged conflict. The former prosecutor, Matthew Goeller, said in an affidavit filed with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that the relationship was common knowledge and casts a reasonable doubt on the judge's capacity to act impartially. Mr. Goeller, who worked at the district attorney's office from 1987-96, and is now in private practice, could not be reached for comment. We had tried to get information that went beyond just speculation, Mr. Wiercioch said. This is the first time that we were able to get somebody from the district attorney's office, who worked in that office with District Attorney Tom O'Connell, who was in that office at the
[Deathpenalty] FW: Harvard's Gitmo Kangaroo Law School: from AfterDowningStreet.org
Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) fboyle at law.uiuc.edu (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2008 10:45 AM To: * All Resident Faculty Subject: FW: Harvard's Gitmo Kangaroo Law School: from AfterDowningStreet.org Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (Voice) 217-244-1478 (Fax) (personal comments only) From: david at davidswanson.org [mailto:da...@davidswanson.org] On Behalf Of fboyle at law.uiuc.edu Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 2:59 PM To: Boyle, Francis Subject: fab has sent you a message from AfterDowningStreet.org AfterDowningStreet.org http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/ fab mailto:fboyle at law.uiuc.edu thought you would like to see the AfterDowningStreet.org web site. Message from Sender: Harvard's Gitmo Kangaroo Law School Boumediene v Bush, 553 U.S. Supreme Court, June 12, 2008 Versus Harvard's Kangaroo Law School -- The School for Torturers http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/forward/emailref/34080 by davidswanson By Francis A. Boyle Not surprisingly, the January 2007 issue of the American Journal of Imperial Law--otherwise known as the self-styled American Journal of International Law but originally founded and still operated by U.S. State and War Departments' apparatchiks and their professorial fellow-travelers--just published an article by Harvard Law School's recently retired Bemis Professor of International Law Detlev Vagts (who only taught me the required course on Legal Accounting) arguing in favor of the Pentagon's Kangaroo Courts System on Guantanamo despite the fact that they have been soundly condemned by every human rights organization and every human rights official and leader in the entire world as well as by the United States Supreme Court itself in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006). I am not going to bother to recite here all the grievous deficiencies of the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts under International Law and U.S. Constitutional Law. Click here to read more on our site http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/forward/emailref/34080
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----GA., OKLA., N.C., OHIO
June 13 GEORGIA: Death penalty trial for 2002 double homicide set for AugustFirst death case tried in Hall County since 1999 Ignacio Vergarais is 1 of 2 men charged in what law officials say was a drug-related double homicide in March 2002. A judge has set a trial date for Hall County's first death penalty trial in 9 years. Jury selection could begin Aug. 11 in the long-delayed trial of Ignacio Vergara, 1 of 2 men charged in a drug-related double homicide that happened in March 2002. Vergara and co-defendant Brigido Soto were accused of shooting to death 2 25-year-old men in a car parked on a gravel road in South Hall. Alejandro Santana and Francesco Saucedo were killed for two kilograms of cocaine, authorities have alleged. A notice of intent to seek the death penalty against both suspects was filed when Jason Deal, now a Hall County Superior Court judge, was district attorney for Hall County. Soto reached an agreement with prosecutors last year to plead guilty to murder and testify against Vergara in exchange for 2 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. Soto will not be sentenced until Vergara's case is adjudicated. Senior Superior Court Judge John Girardeau issued a June 6 order setting a trial date after a Georgia Supreme Court opinion settled all remaining pre-trial issues. District Attorney Lee Darragh confirmed Friday that the state would continue to seek the death penalty in the case. It is a death penalty case, and it is scheduled for trial, beginning Aug. 11, Darragh said. He would not comment on whether any plea offers had been extended to Vergara in the case. Vergara's lead defense attorney, Lee Parks, did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Barring a negotiated plea, the 1st full week of the trial and possibly more is likely to be consumed with jury selection. Jurors in death penalty cases must be open to sentencing a person to either life in prison with the chance of parole, life in prison with no parole, or death. Potential jurors in death penalty cases are questioned extensively by lawyers in what one local attorney called a vetting process. Dan Summer, a veteran criminal defense attorney with no involvement in Vergara's case, said a larger than normal number of potential jurors are typically summoned in order to narrow the pool to a panel of 12, plus alternates. People have such strong feelings about the death penalty, that it usually takes four times the number of an ordinary criminal trial, Summer said. It was not known how many jury summonses would be sent out for the case. Clerk of Superior Court Dwight Wood did not immediately return a phone message Friday. Potential jurors who are summoned and wish to be excused for special reasons will appear before Girardeau in sessions set for July 25 and Aug. 4, according to the judge's order. The last death penalty trial in Hall County was held in June 1999. Scotty G. Morrow was convicted of murder and sentenced to death for a 1994 rampage in which he shot and killed his ex-girlfriend Ann Young, 26, her friend Tonya Woods, 21, and seriously wounded another woman. Darragh was the lead prosecutor in that case. Morrow, 41, remains on death row awaiting execution. 2 other death penalty cases are pending in Hall. Allan Robert Dickie is charged with murder and rape in the August 2007 stabbing death of 37-year-old Claudia Toppin. Cornelio Zamites is charged in the June 2005 rape and strangulation death of 4-year-old Esmeralda Nava. (source: Gainesville Times) OKLAHOMA: Murders of 2 girls makes a death penalty believer This week I toast the lawman, good Samaritan or vigilante who eventually tracks down and catches the murderer or murderers of 13-year-old Taylor Paschal-Placker and 11-year-old Skyla Whitaker. (And the murderers will be caught.) The girls bodies were found Sunday by Peter Placker, Taylor's grandfather, about a quarter-mile from his home in the countryside outside Weleetka. What kind of a monster, or monsters, kills 2 young girls who simply were out on a country walk on a warm summer afternoon during their summer break from school? The monster, or monsters, will be caught, and I hope and pray it's very soon which probably will happen given the high concentration of law enforcement attention on the case. This horrific, evil crime conjures up remembrances of the murders of the Clutter family, an innocent farm family from Holcomb, Kan., in 1959 the events that formed the basis of the Truman Capote novel, In Cold Blood. Compared to Paschal-Placker and Whitaker, the poor Clutter souls equally were innocent, blameless and victimized by consummate evil masquerading in human form. On that note, I once had a college theology professor try to explain seemingly unexplainable acts of evil like the Ted Bundy, Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer serial killing sprees, for example, and similar horrendous crimes, like the Sunday murders of Whitaker and Paschal-Placker by
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----CALIF., USA, MISS., COLO.
June 13 CALIFORNIA: Time for alternatives to San Quentin death row The Legislature and the governor, like governors and Legislatures before them, are ducking hard decisions on what to do about the old death-row facilities at San Quentin Prison in Marin County. Now the California state auditor has issued a report, Building a Condemned Inmate Complex at San Quentin May Cost More Than Expected. That report, and another to follow in July on alternative sites, should cause the governor and Legislature to step back and chart a new course. San Quentin is the wrong place for a new death-row complex. The state auditor now estimates that it will cost $395.5 million to build a 768-cell complex at San Quentin. That's an outrageous cost of more than $515,000 per cell for a complex that would reach capacity in 2014, less than three years after it is expected to open. If the state built a 1,024-cell complex (the original plan which would reach capacity in 2030), the cost would be $459.6 million a still outrageous $449,000 per cell. So what's driving the high cost at this site? Instead of solid ground, it turns out most of the site is bay muds. The unstable soils will have to be removed and replaced with rock. This will require 15- to 20-foot-deep excavations and extensive measures to prevent seawater incursions. Oh, and they'll have to use a pile foundation, not the conventional spread footing. Back in 2003, then-Gov. Gray Davis proposed a new 1,024-cell death-row complex at San Quentin. That original proposal had countless problems, as the Legislative Analyst's Office pointed out at the time. First and foremost, the department did not consider alternative sites. Legislators approved it anyway. In 2003, the estimated cost was $220 million or $215,000 per cell. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor, he could have taken a closer look at the project. Instead, his administration pressed ahead, asking for more and more money as higher costs became evident. The Legislature balked, so the project has been on hold. But now the governor is back again, asking for money so construction can begin on a 768-cell complex. Lawmakers should reject this proposal, too. Legislators should bear in mind that this is only Phase I of the San Quentin project. If the 768-cell death-row complex gets built at San Quentin, you can be sure that the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will return to the Legislature in two years for more money to build 260 more death-row cells. As the state auditor has pointed out, the administration has failed to consider the long-term, ongoing operating costs for the proposed new 768-cell facility. The existing facility at San Quentin, which houses 635 men on death row, has 169 employees. To staff the new facility the state would have to hire 156 more prison guards, plus 180 other staff. In high-cost Marin County, that adds $39.5 million in new costs for salaries, benefits and overtime for 336 new employees in the first year of operation (and an average of $58.8 million a year thereafter) adding to already out-of-control prison system budgets. As the state auditor and others have pointed out, neither the department, the governor nor the Legislature has considered alternative sites to a new death-row complex at San Quentin. It's time to end this nonsense and get some other ideas on the table. (source: Editorial, Sacramento Bee) USA: Justices Rule Terror Suspects Can Appeal in Civilian Courts The Supreme Court on Thursday delivered its third consecutive rebuff to the Bush administrations handling of the detainees at Guantnamo Bay, ruling 5 to 4 that the prisoners there have a constitutional right to go to federal court to challenge their continued detention. The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Guantnamo inmates could use the federal courts. The court declared unconstitutional a provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that, at the administration's behest, stripped the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from the detainees seeking to challenge their designation as enemy combatants. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the truncated review procedure provided by a previous law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, falls short of being a constitutionally adequate substitute because it failed to offer the fundamental procedural protections of habeas corpus. Justice Kennedy declared: The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. The decision, left some important questions unanswered. These include the extent of the showing required of the government at a habeas corpus hearing in order to justify a prisoner's continued detention, as Justice Kennedy put it, as well as the handling of classified evidence and the degree of due process to which the detainees are entitled. Months or years of continued litigation may lie ahead, unless the Bush administration, or the
