[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TENNESSEE
August 9 TENNESSEEexecution Tennessee executes Billy Ray Irick, 1st lethal injection in state since 2009 Death row inmate Billy Ray Irick died at 7:48 p.m. Thursday after Tennessee prison officials administered a lethal dose of toxic chemicals. He was 59. His execution, the first in Tennessee since 2009, comes after his 1986 conviction in Knox County for the rape and murder of 7-year-old Paula Dyer. Witnesses to the execution included members of Paula's family, Knox County Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones, Tennessee Deputy Attorney General Scott Sutherland, Irick's attorney Gene Shiles and 7 members of the media. Irick is the 133rd person put to death by Tennessee since 1916. Before Irick, all but 6 executions occurred before 1961. Moments before officials began administering the fatal doses, Irick, held down by straps over his chest and arms, muttered his final words: "I just want to say I'm really sorry. And that ... that's it." The execution began later than scheduled, the blinds to the execution room being lifted at 7:26 p.m., 16 minutes later than the expected time of 7:10 p.m. Irick, dressed in a white prison jumpsuit and black socks, was coughing, choking and gasping for air. His face turned dark purple as the lethal drugs took over, media witnesses reported. "I never thought for one moment that it would come to this," Shiles said inside the prison before the execution began. "I never did." Witnesses entered the execution viewing chamber at 6:43 p.m., where prison officials turned out the lights until the blinds to the glass were lifted. Shiles and Deputy Attorney General Scott Sutherland left the viewing room at 7:12 p.m., presumably to go into the execution chamber and observe Irick's IV being adminsitered. When the 2 men returned into the observation room around 7:25 p.m., Shiles told witnesses that he kissed Irick and touched him. Moments later the blinds lifted and Irick made his statement, the administration of a combination of powerful and deadly medications commenced. First the executioner injected Irick with midazolam, a drug intended to render Irick unconscious. After Riverbend Warden Tony Mays determined Irick was unconscious, the executioner injected vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride. The drugs are intended to stop Irick's lungs and heart. Around the country, death row offenders have writhed, screamed, groaned and gasped as lethal injection drugs take longer than expected to work — or don't work at all. At least twice in Ohio, the state had to call off executions after prison staff could not find a viable vein for the intravenous injection of the drugs. Irick was a heavy-set man. Tennessee does not change its execution protocol depending on the body type of the condemned. But midazolam has a different effect on different people. Before his death, Irick ate his last meal. Shiles said earlier Thursday that Irick was in good spirits and understood he would be executed. Irick lived with Paula's mother and stepfather, Kathy and Kenny Jeffers, in 1985. Although the family allowed the then-26-year-old Irick to live with them for some time, years after the crime they reported he exhibited signs of mental illness. Kathy Jeffers was among the small group of Dyer's family members seen quietly coming and going from Riverbend Maximum Security Institute Thursday evening, walking out after the execution with a tissue in her left hand. She chose not to speak at a news conference being held afterward outside the prison. Jeffers had warned her husband she didn't want to leave the children with Irick the night of Paula's killing, that she'd seen him muttering to himself in a half-drunk rage on the porch before she left for work. Court records show the family reported Irick heard voices and was "taking instructions from the devil." He also reportedly, while carrying a machete, chased after a young girl in Knoxville in the days proceeding Paula's death. On April 15, 1985, Irick called Kenny Jeffers to say Paula would not wake up. Her parents found Paula dead on their bed. An autopsy showed she died of asphyxiation. Irick initially tried to hitchhike out of town, but was caught by police the day after Paula's death. Before and during his 32 years on death row, Irick repeatedly attempted to convince courts he was too mentally ill to be executed or that the drugs set for use in a lethal injection would violate his constitutional right not to be tortured to death. While courts did delay his execution several times, most recently in 2014, no court decided to weigh in to prevent his death this time. People came out to the site of the execution of Billy Ray Irick Andrew Nelles and Holly Meyer "I thought somebody would actually look at the facts," Shiles said Thursday just before the execution, referring to evidence supporting Irick's mental illness. "I was wrong." Roughly 5 hours before Irick's
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TENNESSEE
August 9 TENNESSEEimpending execution Supreme Court Denies Stay of Execution for Billy Ray Irick Sotomayor dissents: If law permits this execution, 'we have stopped being a civilized nation and accepted barbarism' The Supreme Court of the United States has denied Billy Ray Irick's request for a stay of execution, clearing the way for him to be executed tonight. The request was denied by Justice Elena Kagan, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a long and strongly worded dissent, citing the conclusions of medical experts who say Tennessee's three-drug lethal injection protocol will cause Irick immense pain. "In refusing to grant Irick a stay, the Court today turns a blind eye to a proven likelihood that the State of Tennessee is on the verge of inflicting several minutes of torturous pain on an inmate in its custody, while shrouding his suffering behind a veneer of paralysis," Sotomayor writes. In conclusion, she adds: "If the law permits this execution to go forward in spite of the horrific final minutes that Irick may well experience, then we have stopped being a civilized nation and accepted barbarism. I dissent." Irick was sentenced to death in 1986 for the rape and murder of 7-year-old Paula Dyer. He has a history of severe mental illness, and although he was ruled competent to stand trial, the doctor who had made that assessment later said he no longer had confidence in that decision. (source: Nashville Scene) ___ A service courtesy of Washburn University School of Law www.washburnlaw.edu DeathPenalty mailing list DeathPenalty@lists.washlaw.edu http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty Unsubscribe: http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/options/deathpenalty
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
August 9 JAPAN: The Aum Shinrikyo Executions and a Society in DenialOn July 6, former Aum Shinrikyo cult leader Asahara Shoko (Matsumoto Chizuo) was put to death, along with 6 of his senior followers. Executions of the remaining 6 death row prisoners in the case followed on July 26. Asahara never spoke during his trial, and now that he is dead the possibility of ever learning what motivated the cult's attack on the Tokyo subway has gone with him. On the morning of July 6, Aum Shinrikyo cult leader Asahara Shoko (originally named Matsumoto Chizuo), who was sentenced to death for his part in a series of deadly crimes including the sarin attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1995, finally went to the gallows. 6 other senior figures in the cult were executed the same day. The Ministry of Justice does not normally go out of its way to disclose details of executions, but on this day the ministry released the names of the executed prisoners to the press almost in real time. It was an exceptional case. Why did the ministry depart from its usual modus operandi and allow the executions to become a public drama in this way? One popular explanation is that the ministry was acting on instructions from the prime minister's office. Whether this theory is true or not, I can't say. But if the theory is correct, as many people in the media insist, then the implications are clear. The prime minister or those around him must have decided that giving the go-ahead for a mass execution of those responsible for the Aum attack would help to bolster the prime minister's wilting public support. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the real reason why the government cooperated with the media to ensure maximum coverage. No group in postwar Japanese history has been so reviled as the Aum Shinrikyo cult. The group represents Japan's first true "public enemy." As the cult's leader and guru, Asahara was so despised that even people normally in favor of abolishing the death penalty made an exception in his case. Asahara was widely seen as a "singularity"- an embodiment of evil so bereft of any normal sense of humanity that putting him to death was the only sensible solution. And then, on July 26, just as I was finishing an earlier version of this article about the executions, another 6 members of the cult went to their deaths. Interviews with the Condemned Of the 12 cult members who were recently executed, I conducted interviews with 6 during the course of their incarceration: Niimi Tomomitsu, Hayakawa Kiyohide, and Nakagawa Tomomasa (who were executed along with Asahara on July 6), as well as Hayashi Yasuo, Okazaki Kazuaki, and Hirose Ken'ichi, whose death sentences were carried out on July 26. The media often depicted Niimi as the most vicious of the cultists, but whenever I met him he always bowed politely and never spoke badly of anyone. Every now and then, the corners of his mouth would curl into an attractive smile. Hayakawa, the oldest of the former Aum believers on death row, had a real sweet tooth. I would always bring him sweets and candies when I went to interview him, and he used to jokingly blame me for making him fat: "Thanks to you, Mori, I've really put on weight," he once wrote in a letter to me. As Asahara's personal doctor, Nakagawa probably spent more time at the guru's side than anyone else. He was a painstaking, precise man - as well as being the personification of gentleness and kindness. I took my wife with me to visit him once, because I genuinely thought he was someone she should meet. Nakagawa beamed with happiness when I introduced my wife and kept bowing politely from the other side of the thick acrylic panels that separated us. The media used to call Hayashi a "killing machine." Perhaps because we were roughly the same age, we soon fell into talking to each other casually, without the distance of formal language. I once visited him in prison with his mother. She and I sat together during the visit, and when his mother started to tear up, Hayashi tried desperately to console her. Okazaki was very much an ordinary, down-to-earth character. He used to send me stacks of sumie ink wash paintings he had done in prison. Hirose spent his time in detention making mathematics reference books for schoolchildren. He was a serious, sober type of person with little time for joking around. He told me that during the attack on the subway, he kept constantly reminding himself that what he and his fellow believers were doing was for the sake of the salvation of the world. But now, none of these people are alive. They have vanished from the world. They all told me separately they thought they deserved to die for the crime they had committed. Sometimes they fought back tears when they spoke of what they had done. Talking to them made it harder for me to know what to feel about the crime and those who had been responsible for it. Individually,
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----LA., TENN., NEB., S.DAK., UTAH, NEV., USA
August 9 LOUISIANA: Man sentenced to death for 1995 slaying of Metairie cab driver to get new trial The stage is set for a man who was sentenced to death for the 1995 slaying of a cab driver in Metairie to receive a new trial later this year. Teddy Chester did not have adequate legal representation when he was convicted for the killing, so he needed to be either retried or set free by Oct. 9, a federal judge in New Orleans ruled on June 11. Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick's office had until Friday to appeal U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan's decision. But the office indicated Wednesday that it will not exercise that option, according to both the agency and Chester's attorney, Cecelia Kappel. Kappel said her client is due at Gretna's 24th Judicial District Court on Thursday for a preliminary hearing ahead of the new trial. She maintains Chester's innocence, reiterating that convicted co-defendant Elbert Ratcliff was the killer. Ratcliff is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole after exhausting his appeals. "It's our position justice has been served and that this case should be closed," said Kappel, with the Promise of Justice Initiative. Connick's office declined to elaborate on how it may move forward with Chester's case. Chester, who lived in Kenner, was found guilty in 1997 of 1st-degree murder and sent to death row for the killing of 34-year-old John Adams 2 days after Christmas in 1995, when Chester was 18. Authorities found Adams in his taxi on Calhoun Street in Metairie. He had been shot once in the back of the head. His business cards were scattered around him, and he had $300 in his pockets. Fingerprints on the business cards led authorities to Ratcliff, who had fled with Chester. Ratcliff was later convicted of 2nd-degree murder and sentenced to life. In turn, Ratcliff led investigators to Chester, with each of the men claiming they had climbed into Adams' cab to try to sell him something when the other man killed the victim to rob him. Chester, now 40, pursued an appeal in Louisiana's state court system reluctantly. He repeatedly expressed a desire to end his appellate efforts and face execution before the state Supreme Court upheld his conviction in late 2016. In extraordinary remarks, Supreme Court Justice Scott Crichton wrote that if it were solely up to him, he would have granted Chester his wish. But, with help from Kappel's team, Chester soon filed for what is known as post-conviction relief in the federal court system, which sent the case to Morgan. According to Morgan's ruling, Chester's team of court-appointed attorneys deprived him of his constitutional right to effective legal representation by missing key opportunities during the trial to undermine the prosecution's theory that Chester fired the gun that killed Adams. A man named Anthony Curtis said he was driving down the street when he heard Adams' shooting and saw Ratcliff emerge from the cab. Ratcliff, who had just rummaged through the cab, tucked a gun in his waistband, Curtis said in filings presented to Morgan. But the defense team led by attorneys Graham da Ponte and Cesar Vazquez did not call Curtis to testify about what he saw, which would likely have been favorable to Chester's defense, Morgan said. Furthermore, the defense didn't call a blood spatter expert to challenge the state's theory that 2 drops of blood on Chester's cap proved he was the shooter. A blood spatter expert consulted during the appellate process testified that the blood on the cap actually supported Chester's claim that he was a bystander and not the triggerman, Morgan noted. The defense team also didn't challenge the prosecution's assertion that it had used a DNA test to establish that the blood on the cap belonged to Adams. In fact, the test showed it was possible but "highly unlikely" that Adams was the source of the blood drops. The defense team didn't call any witnesses during the trial. It called 1 witness during the sentencing phase: Darren Chester, whose testimony essentially was that his brother Teddy didn't say anything to him about a killing. Da Ponte on Wednesday said she was pleased to learn Chester would get a new trial. Vazquez couldn't be reached Wednesday. The team that prosecuted Chester was led by Ronald Bodenheimer, who went on to become a Jefferson Parish judge and later to serve time in federal prison following a corruption scandal at the Gretna courthouse. Bodenheimer on Wednesday said Vazquez and da Ponte were good attorneys and that his devout Catholic faith made pursuing the death penalty against Chester a difficult task. "My whole career, I never sought the death penalty without talking to a priest first," Bodenheimer said. Former Judge Martha Sassone presided over Chester's trial. (source: The Advocate) TENNESSEEimpending execution Death watch inmate gets new attorneys for
