[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
May 22 SINGAPORE: NGO wants Putrajaya to stop Malaysian’s execution in Singapore Amnesty International Malaysia urged Putrajaya to intervene in a Malaysian’s scheduled execution for drug possession in Singapore this Friday. The human rights group pointed out that during Pannir Selvam Pranthaman’s trial, he had maintained his innocence by denying knowledge that he was carrying prohibited drugs and the Singapore High Court had found that he was a drug mule. According to Pannir’s lawyer, he had assisted Singapore authorities by providing information about a fellow Malaysian who alleged duped him into carrying the drugs to the city-state. Under Singapore’s Misuse of Drugs Act, the court has the discretion not to impose the death penalty if the convicted offender is a courier and has been issued a certificate by the public prosecutor stating that he had cooperated with authorities, the statement added. “Singapore authorities must immediately halt plans to kill Pannir Selvam Pranthaman and put a stop to this continuous wave of callous executions. “The Malaysian government should do all in its power to urge the Singapore government to stop the execution of another of its nationals,” Amnesty International Malaysia executive director Shamini Darshni Kaliemuthu said in a statement. Pointing out that the number of executions last year in Singapore had risen to double digits for the 1st time since 2003, Shamini had called for Singapore to emulate Malaysia’s initiative in abolishing the mandatory death penalty. “The death penalty is a degrading and inhuman punishment. We denounce its use in all circumstances. It is time for Singapore to follow the government of Malaysia’s example, who have suspended all executions and announced plans to abolish the mandatory death penalty, as a first step towards abolition,” she said. The group also noted that Singapore had carried out 13 executions in 2018 and 8 in 2017 for drug-related offences, with the hanging of another Malaysian, Michael Anak Garing, carried out on March 29 this year. In a Bernama report yesterday, Foreign Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah was quoted as saying that Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Liew Vui Keong was trying to convince the Singaporean government to save Pannir from the death penalty. Pannir was convicted of possession of diamorphine in 2017 in Singapore. (source: Malay Mail) *** Putrajaya trying to convince S'pore to spare M'sian on death row The government is seeking to help a Malaysian scheduled to hang in Singapore on Friday for drug trafficking, Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah said today. Saifuddin said Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Liew Vui Keong is attempting to try and convince Singapore to spare P Pannir Selvam from the hangman’s noose. “Just now I discussed this with Liew, and he is working on behalf of Putrajaya to try and convince the Singapore government to spare Pannir the death penalty,” he told reporters at a Ramadan programme in Kampung Tengah, Kluang today. Saifuddin was asked to comment on a request from Pannir’s family for Putrajaya to intervene, because he had allegedly not been given enough opportunity to apply for clemency under the republic’s laws. Saifuddin said in similar cases in the past, the government had also taken the same approach of trying to get lighter sentences for those on death row. This is in line with Malaysia’s move to place a moratorium on the mandatory death sentence. Asked how Putrajaya could resolve the allegedly short notice for carrying out the death sentence, he said there was nothing much it could do. “Because this is how Singapore administers their law. There is not much room for us to complain, but normally what we do is we will try our best to help our people,” he said. Today, Pannir's family through human rights group Lawyers for Liberty turned to Putrajaya as their last hope to save him from the death penalty. This followed their unsuccessful attempts to save him, including a final clemency appeal to Singapore President Halimah Yacob. Pannir, 32, was convicted of trafficking drugs by the Singapore High Court on June 27, 2017. (source: malaysiakini.com) MALAYSIA: 2 Vietnamese women arrested in Miri drug raid 3 drug pushers, including two Vietnamese women were arrested in a raid on a luxury residence in Tanjung Lobang yesterday. Sarawak Narcotic Crime Investigation Department chief Supt Sahar Abdul Latif said in the 11am raid, various types of drugs, including ecstasy, Eramin 5, and ketamine pills and powder worth RM82,201 were seized. “The 3 suspects comprise a 24-year-old local man from Jalan Pujut, Miri, and 2 Vietnamese women in their 20s,” he said in a statement here today. Sahar said also seized were jewellery and 28 pieces of gold-plated keys worth RM30,752. “Their activities began in 2018 and they focused mostly on
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OHIO, TENN., NEV., CALIF., ORE., USA
May 22 OHIOnew death sentence Cleveland man gets death penalty in Mr. Cars double murder A judge on Tuesday imposed the death penalty on a 32-year-old man convicted of the execution-style murders of a couple during a break-in attempt at their family-owned car lot. Joseph McAlpin will pay the law’s ultimate penalty in the 2017 shooting deaths of Michael Kuznik and Trina Tomola inside Mr. Cars on East 185th Street. Common Pleas Court Judge Brian J. Corrigan, who presided over the three-week trial, condemned McAlpin to death row after the jury on Thursday recommended the death penalty in the trial’s 2nd phase. McAlpin, who is believed to be the first defendant to represent himself in a death-penalty trial in Cuyahoga County’s history, thanked Corrigan and the team of county prosecutors for their patience with him during the trial. He also apologized to his own family for what he called “ignorant” declarations during trial that he would only accept full liberty or death. McAlpin offered no words to the family of Kuznik and Tomola, who packed the courtroom’s gallery but chose not to address the court. “My fight’s going to continue,” McAlpin, handcuffed in an orange jumpsuit, said. “I know people are tired of hearing that, but there’s not much else I can say.” Cleveland City Councilman Michael Polensek, whose ward encompassed the Collinwood neighborhood where the car lot sat for 40 years, called McAlpin a “demonic killer” who rocked the entire neighborhood and the business community across Cleveland. “This was never about retribution,” Polensek said. “This was about justice.” After the hearing, Polensek told reporters that he felt death by lethal injection was “too good” for McAlpin. “As far as I’m concerned he should be burned at the stake for what he did to that family,” Polensek said. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley read a statement from Kuznik’s family after the hearing in which they thanked law enforcement and the jurors who heard the case. “Our hearts will be forever broken, and we are greatly relieved that justice has been served,” O’Malley said, reading from the statement. Prosecutors put forth no additional evidence in the second phase of trial, and McAlpin called a handful of family members to testify on his behalf. The jury reached its recommendation after about deliberating for less than an hour. McAlpin has maintained his innocence throughout both phases of the trial. Corrigan on Tuesday noted that McAlpin lived a difficult childhood. He shot himself in the leg with his mother’s gun when he was 5 years old, Corrigan said. He suffered seizures after he was hit in the head with a brick as a 12-year-old, and found his mother’s body after she overdosed on heroin when he was 19. He also suffered sexual abuse. Corrigan found that mitigation was not enough to outweigh the aggravated circumstances of the killings. The car lot, which had been owned by members of Kuznik’s family since it opened in April 1975, closed after the killings. “These crimes slowly eat at a community,” O’Malley said. “It’s through sentences like this that jurors, who are composed of people from our community, are just saying ‘we’ve had enough.’ People in this county have had enough.” Prosecutors relied on DNA evidence, cellphone records and testimony from a man who admitted to helping McAlpin carry out what was supposed to be a simple burglary to steal cars and titles on April 14, 2017. It was Good Friday and the couple, who had Easter baskets for their children in the back of their car parked outside the lot, were closing up for the day, prosecutors said. Those baskets remained in the backseat as the car sits in the custody of Cleveland police as evidence, prosecutors said. Prosecutors say McAlpin entered Mr. Cars and shot Kuznik, 47, in the showroom. The bullet grazed Kuznik’s face before he ran to a backroom, where McAlpin stood over him and shot him in the top of his head, prosecutors say. Investigators found McAlpin’s DNA in Kuznik’s back pocket, where prosecutors said he had put cash from 2 car sales earlier in the day. The cash was not found on Kuznik’s body. Tomola, 46, tried to run from the building during the robbery. McAlpin shot her in the back of her head, near an exit, prosecutors said. McAlpin also shot and killed the couple’s Doberman Pinscher, Axel, disabled the business’s surveillance system and stole a BMW sedan, prosecutors said. Andrew Keener told jurors that he participated in the crime alongside McAlpin. Keener pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and is set to be sentenced after McAlpin’s trial wraps up. McAlpin’s brother, Jerome Diggs, has pleaded not guilty to charges including aggravated murder, and his case is pending. (source: cleveland.com) * Rethinking Death Penalty in Ohio It is one thing to argue about the basic morality of capital punishment.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.H., PENN., S.C., FLA., ALA., LA.
May 22 TEXAS: Supreme Court Denies Review in Death-Penalty Case Where Texas Judge Rubberstamped Prosecution’s Findings The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a case in which the Texas courts decided a death-row prisoner’s appeal by adopting the prosecution’s fact findings and legal arguments word-for-word without providing the defendant’s lawyer any opportunity to respond. In a May 20, 2019 ruling, the Court without comment denied the petition for writ of certiorari filed by Ray Freeney, thereby permitting the Harris County prisoner’s conviction and death sentence to stand. The decision was the latest in a series of cases in which the Court has refused to take up the issue of state-court rulings that are verbatim copies of proposed orders written entirely by the prosecution. In June 2018, researchers at the University of Texas School of Law Capital Punishment Center exposed the systemic rubberstamping of prosecutors’ pleadings in Harris County capital cases. The researchers found that county judges had adopted prosecutors’ proposed findings of fact verbatim in 96% of 191 capital cases in which factual issues had been contested. Harris County has executed 129 men and women, more than double the number executed in any other county in the United States and more than have been executed in any state in the country other than Texas. In a Washington Post op-ed, columnist Radley Balko said Freeney’s case not only raises questions about the practice of judges rubberstamping prosecutorial findings, but also “test[s] the absurd, outer limits of AEDPA’s deference to state courts.” AEDPA is the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the habeas corpus amendments passed by Congress in 1996. Those amendments have significantly reduced federal courts’ ability to review and redress violations of a state defendant’s right to a fair trial and sentencing by requiring federal judges to give a high level of deference to state court findings. Balko explains, “to get a federal court to review a state court’s ruling, a defendant must show not only that the state court (and the state courts that upheld the ruling) were wrong, but that the prevailing ruling was either ‘contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law,’ or an ‘unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented.’ Put plainly, you must convince the federal courts not only that the state courts were wrong, but also that they were unreasonably wrong.” When Ray Freeney’s case came before Texas District Court Judge Renee Magee, his appeal lawyers sought a new sentencing hearing because his trial lawyers had failed to investigate and present to the jury evidence that Freeney suffered from mental illness and had been the victim of chronic child abuse. Judge Magee, who had spent 19 years as a prosecutor in the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, asked for briefs, and received 204 proposed findings of fact from the prosecution, based on over 800 pages of testimony. The next day, she adopted the factfinding verbatim. Freeney’s defense attorneys were never given an opportunity to respond, or to submit their own brief containing new evidence to support their claim that his trial attorneys had provided inadequate counsel. The University of Texas study has demonstrated that “rubberstamping” of prosecutors’ proposed orders is common in Harris County, particularly in cases in which the judge was a former county prosecutor. But Feeney’s case stood out even more in that Judge Magee provided his lawyers no opportunity to respond to the prosecution’s proposed disposition of the case. “When you have such egregious inattention to facts and lack of stewardship of constitutional rights as we’ve seen in Harris County,” Balko said, “the entire system begins to look like a farce.” Under AEDPA, rubberstamped findings are routinely treated with the same level of deference as findings that judges wrote themselves. Balko explains that, “under the controlling case law for the [Texas federal courts], ‘a full and fair hearing is not a precondition to presumption of correctness to state habeas court findings of fact.’” “The message sent to state judges by the Fifth Circuit in Mr. Freeney’s case was clear,” says Richard Bourke, one of Freeney’s attorneys. “You don’t need to consider the defense’s legal arguments. You don’t need to consider the defense’s evidence. You don’t even need to wait until the defense has presented either. You can just rubber stamp the state’s brief. And you needn’t worry about the Fifth Circuit overruling you.” Rubberstamping “isn’t even all that uncommon. In some parts of the country, it’s routine,” Balko said. In several 2016 articles for The Marshall Project, Andrew Cohen noted court decisions “ghostwritten” by prosecutors in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas. On
