[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., DEL., FLA., ALA.
Dec. 17 TEXAS: Texas Falls Out of Love With the Death Penalty, Embraces Life Without Parole Fewer and fewer prisoners in Texas are being sent to the execution chamber. For what it's worth, Texas is still the death-penalty capital of the United States, which in turn employs capital punishment more frequently than any other western country. Only Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and China - none of them shining beacons of human rights and individual liberty - kill more prisoners. In 2015, Texas executed 13 people, just less than 1/2 of the 28 put to death nationwide. But there's another way to frame the issue: In 2015, Texas executed just 13 people, down from a peak of 40 in 2000. Even more striking, the state's courts handed out only 3 death sentences for the entire year, the lowest number since Texas reintroduced the death penalty in 1976, and went more than 9 months without issuing a single one. Dallas, Harris and Tarrant counties, collectively responsible for about 1/2 of Texas' death row population over the past 4 decades, didn't condemn a single person to death last year. As highlighted by a report released this week by the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, this is part of a long-term decline. The causes are varied, says Kathryn Kase, executive director of the Texas Defender Service. High-profile exonerations like that of Anthony Graves, who spent nearly 2 decades on death row after being wrongfully convicted of murdering 6 people in Burleson County, have sowed doubts in the public mind about the infallibility of the criminal justice system. Ditto for the expanding recognition of deep flaws in forensic science, the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, and racial disparity in prosecution and sentencing. Surprisingly enough, the death penalty in Texas is going the way of the electric chair. "Prosecutors understand there's a great deal of sensitivity on the part of juries now in terms of innocence issues and issues of lack of certainty," Kase says. Case in point: 4 of the 7 juries from whom Texas prosecutors sought the death penalty in 2015 opted for a lesser sentence, a sharp reduction from prosecutors' historic batting average of about 80 %. There's also the matter of cost. Texas has become a leader in criminal justice reform in no small part because smaller prisons saves the state money. So, for that matter, does taking the death penalty off the table. Capital cases, with their endless appeals pursued by taxpayer-funded defense lawyers, are expensive, and prosecutors, particularly in smaller counties, have become increasingly reluctant to burden their jurisdictions with the cost. But focusing only on bleeding-heart juries and budget-minded prosecutors would miss the biggest factor driving Texas away from the death penalty. Until a decade ago, Texas juries in capital cases had 2 sentencing options: death or life in prison with the distant (40 years) possibility of parole. They almost invariably chose death. "I think juries were looking for certainty in the punishment that someone that they convicted of capital murder wouldn't harm anyone else," says Kristin Houle, TCADP's executive director. A guarantee of 40 years behind bars just wasn't certain enough. Then, in 2005, Governor Rick Perry signed a bill creating a sentence of life without possibility of parole. The numbers suggest that jurors have found this to be a much more palatable alternative, with the increase in life without parole sentences more than replacing the decrease in death sentences. Death sentences peaked in 1999 at 48, then bounced between about 2 and 3 dozen over the next 5 years. Texas Falls Out of Love With the Death Penalty, Embraces Life Without Parole Life without parole took a couple of years to catch on, but recent years have averaged about 100 such sentences, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice's annual statistical reports. (Note: TDCJ doesn't report new sentences, just the total number of inmates with that sentence at the end of the fiscal year. To find the number of new sentences, we simply subtracted one year's population from the next. So it's possible, in the case that prior inmates died in custody, that the number of new sentences could actually be higher.) Together with Texas' declining violent crime rate during this period, the numbers suggest that life without parole isn't merely being employed as a replacement for the death penalty; it's also being used in place of more lenient sentences. This raises its own set of issues. Many of the same factors that make the death penalty so problematic - racial bias, shoddy science, overzealous prosecutors - almost certainly apply to life sentences as well, the difference being that life sentences receive less scrutiny and guarantee fewer opportunities to appeal. Death penalty opponents are OK with that. "You have to look at what are our alternatives here and right now in
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
Dec. 17 ANTIGUA & BARBUDA: EU official calls for A to repeal death penalty law The European Union is again urging Antigua & Barbuda to remove the death penalty from its books. Deputy Head of the EU mission for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, Silvia Kofler said it's not good enough for governments to say that no one is being hanged even though the law allows it. She said the legislation should be repealed. "We know the death penalty is not practiced for more than 10 years but to still have it on the law books is not what we think should be done. We think it should be eliminated," Kofler said. The EU official said only Barbados has made some progress in doing away with the death penalty. "Whenever I meet with the authorities I do raise the issue. It is not a plight, it is not the most pressing issue. I'd raise it, I remind people that we would like to see it coming off," she added. In 2013, following the murder of Susan Powell in Heritage Quay, the then National Security Minister Dr Errol Cort said Antigua & Barbuda would enforce the death penalty after a 22-year lull. The minister said the death penalty was still on the books and promised that all the necessary legal processes will be utilised to ensure it is enforced. The diplomat says that unfortunately Caribbean governments don't see removing the death penalty as a priority. "They say there are so many other pressing issues they have to deal with, they say if they have to abolish it they would have to explain it to the public and in country where you perhaps have crime increasing, then they think it is a very difficult undertaking,"Kofler said. (source: antiguaobserver.com) GUYANA: Abolishing the death penalty should go to referendum Dear Editor, On an almost daily basis we are treated to reports of very violent crimes being committed in our country. Along with these heinous acts of criminality, there are also the very frequent reports of suicides and road-traffic related deaths. It leads one to wonder exactly how much value do Guyanese put on this most precious thing we call life. But what about our sentencing policies? You may have a judge who hands down some lengthy sentences for heinous crimes, and while it is nice to have people like that around, as a poor nation, can we really afford to maintain vicious killers in jail for such lengthy periods - 40+ years? Even at a modest daily maintenance rate of $2,500 per prisoner (all related expenses considered) it would cost almost a million dollars a year to keep a prisoner behind bars. What is the trade-off with society in these cases; how does a poor society actually benefit? The ordinary man will conclude that to spend $40 million at today's rates on a single prisoner for the remainder of his life in jail, is a complete loss to society. Why not go the other route? Even though our legal system provides for the imposition of the death penalty, and there is nothing preventing its imposition in such cases, no death sentence has been carried out for years. A recent local report states that Guyana is set to join global efforts to abolish the death penalty (Guyana Times, November 24). Fine, you cannot pretend to be civilized yet have barbaric state-sanctioned tendencies at the same time, but what was the level of public consultation which elicited the kinds of responses that advised such a move? Are the issues of crime, criminality and applicable punishment not significantly serious enough to warrant widespread public discourse, before such decisions are taken? The outcome of broad-based and participatory public consultations is likely to be very different from consultations had among just a few social organizations which often seem to be built around elitists in our society. At the same time, let us not so willingly bow to external public pressure and quickly acquiesce without fully ventilating the issue; after all it is one of utmost public concern. The retention of the death-penalty has long been a contentious issue. So have been the independence, objectivity and effectiveness of our security, intelligence and judicial systems. As a truly democratic country, I suggest we put the issue of retaining the death penalty to a public test. The families that have had to deal with loss of loved ones have as much a stake in this issue as the ones championing human rights ideals. We will soon have a good opportunity to let John and Jane Public give their consent to the direction in which we want to go. I humbly suggest that we include a referendum on the retention of the death penalty when we go to the polls for local government elections in March 2016. Yours faithfully, Khemraj Tulsie (source: Letter to the Editor, Stabroek News) SAUDI ARABIA: Literary Group Asks Obama to Intercede for Condemned Writers in Saudi Arabia A petition from dozens of authors was sent to President Obama on Wednesday asking
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----NEB., COLO., CALIF., USA
Dec. 17 NEBRASKA: Nebraska Death Penalty Foes Focusing on Practical Problems A group that wants to keep Nebraska's death penalty off the books said Wednesday it will focus on the practical problems of carrying out the punishment in the build-up to next year's statewide vote on capital punishment. State Senator Colby Coash, of Lincoln, said when Nebraska moved to lethal injection in 2009, it had the support of top officials in the state. However, the state still hasn't been able to carry out the executions. "There has been the will to do it," Coash said, "and even with the will to do it, it was unsuccessful." Coash and University of Nebraska law professor Eric Berger outlined several arguments Wednesday at an event sponsored by Nebraskans for Public Safety. Nebraska's last execution was in 1997, using the electric chair. Coash said constituents often refer to Texas and ask why Nebraska can't carry out executions like they do. Texas has had 13 executions in 2015. "Texas has a secrecy provision in their law that says whatever the department of corrections does in Texas," Coash said, "they don't have to share it with the media, they don't have to share it with their citizens. "And in Nebraska, we pride ourselves on a very open and transparent government." Berger said approving capital punishment again also does not guarantee a long-term fix. "There could be state constitutional challenges," Berger said, "federal constitutional challenges, administrative procedure challenges, challenges to the legality of particular drugs. "The only thing that's sure is that there would be expensive and time consuming litigation." Gov. Pete Ricketts has said the state will not try to obtain lethal injection drugs until voters decide in November whether to keep capital punishment, but his administration is looking at changes to the protocol. "If other states are doing it, we can do it here in Nebraska as well," Ricketts said. "It's one of the reasons why I've asked the Dept. of Corrections to look at the protocols other states use to see what we might have as options going forward in the future." Berger says changing the protocol would be difficult and expensive. "The problems the state is having right now in finding the right drugs is likely to be a problem that recurs over and over again if we keep the death penalty," Berger said. (source: Associated Press) COLORADO: Faces of Death: Capital punishment in Colorado could be the year's big issueA brewing battle over transparency and the true costs of the death penalty is starting to boil over Questions about the death penalty in Colorado are bubbling up before the start of the legislative session that begins next month. They include: How much does capital punishment cost Colorado taxpayers? Should the state keep the death penalty or scrap it like neighboring state Nebraska? Might a statewide ballot initiative in 2016 emerge to put the question to voters? And if we keep the death penalty, should prosecutors get a 2nd chance with a new jury if they can't convince the 1st to put someone to death? Another question: Gov. John Hickenlooper has said Colorado needs to have a big statewide conversation about capital punishment. Did we ever really have it? Last night this boiled over on Twitter when the district attorney for the 18th Judicial District, George Brauchler, who prosecuted the Aurora theater shooting death penalty case, took his complaints about transparency in the costs of capital punishment to social media. So what was Brauchler's tweet storm about last night? First, let's note the Arapaho County DA and Twitter have history. Earlier this year, the judge in the Aurora theater shooting trial reprimanded Brauchler for a tweet he'd sent during court proceedings. Brauchler said he meant to send it as a direct message and apologized. Now, 6 months later, one of Colorado's rising stars on the Republican depth chart is again mixing it up on social media. And it still has to do with that high-profile death penalty trial from over the summer. Brauchler snarked on Colorado's Office of the State Public Defender for lack of transparency. The Arapahoe County DA was responding to criticism that he'd spent too much taxpayer money to unsuccessfully persuade a jury to execute theater shooter James Holmes. He didn't stop with his remarks about the state public defenders and transparency. And he indicated taxpayer costs in the trial are being inaccurately portrayed in media. Responding to someone who asked if figures quoted by a source in a newspaper article were inaccurate, Brauchler tweeted: Brauchler pointed to his office's website when asked to reveal costs the prosecution incurred during the trial. So do we already know the true costs of the Aurora theater shooting death penalty case or not? No. Both Brauchler and Doug Wilson, who heads the Office of the State Public
