March 29
TEXAS:
Texas Must Broaden Death-Penalty Exemption, High Court Says
A divided U.S. Supreme Court said Texas must broaden its death-penalty
exemption for people who are intellectually disabled, ruling that the state was
violating the Constitution by using outdated medical standards.
The 5-3 ruling could mean a new sentencing hearing for Bobby James Moore, 57,
who was convicted of fatally shooting James McCarble during a 1980 grocery
store robbery in Houston.
Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that, while states
have some flexibility to determine who's ineligible for the death penalty, they
can't completely disregard current medical standards. The case divided the
court along ideological lines, with Justice Anthony Kennedy joining the court's
liberal wing in the majority.
"Texas cannot satisfactorily explain why it applies current medical standards
for diagnosing intellectual disability in other contexts, yet clings to
superseded standards when an individual's life is at stake," Ginsburg wrote for
the majority.
The Supreme Court barred the execution of intellectually disabled people in
2002 as violating the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishments. To a
large degree, however, the court left it to the states to determine who
qualifies for that exemption.
Texas is one of the nation's top death-penalty states, with 239 people on death
row, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website.
In upholding Moore's death sentence, Texas's top criminal appeals court said
the state could continue to use a 1992 definition of intellectual disability as
part of a multi-factor test for determining eligibility for capital punishment.
The state court also said it stood by a 2004 ruling that used Lennie Small, a
mentally challenged character in John Steinbeck's novel "Of Mice and Men," as
an example of someone who might be exempt from the death penalty.
Ginsburg called that test an "outlier," saying that only 2 other state courts
had adopted anything similar.
In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts said the high court had overstepped its
authority.
"Clinicians, not judges, should determine clinical standards," Roberts wrote
for himself and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, "and judges, not
clinicians, should determine the content of the Eighth Amendment."
(source: bloombergquint.com)
******************
Texas Used Wrong Standard in Death Penalty Cases, Justices Rule----The case
concerned Bobby J. Moore, who has been on death row in Texas since 1980 for
fatally shooting a Houston supermarket clerk during a robbery.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday continued a trend toward limiting capital
punishment, rejecting Texas' approach to deciding which intellectually disabled
people must be spared the death penalty.
Writing for the majority in the 5-to-3 decision, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
said Texas had failed to keep up with current medical consensus, relied too
heavily on I.Q. scores and took account of factors rooted in stereotypes.
"Texas cannot satisfactorily explain why it applies current medical standards
for diagnosing intellectual disability in other contexts, yet clings to
superseded standards when an individual's life is at stake," Justice Ginsburg
wrote. She was joined by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia
Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
The case was the latest in a series of decisions refining the court's 2002
decision in Atkins v. Virginia, which barred the execution of the
intellectually disabled as a violation of the Eighth Amendment???s ban on cruel
and unusual punishment. The Atkins decision gave states substantial discretion
to decide just who was, in the language of the day, "mentally retarded."
But the decision did set out a general framework. It said a finding of
intellectual disability required proof of 3 things: "subaverage intellectual
functioning," meaning low I.Q. scores; a lack of fundamental social and
practical skills; and the presence of both conditions before age 18. The court
said I.Q. scores under "approximately 70" typically indicated disability.
The case before the court on Tuesday concerned Bobby J. Moore, who has been on
death row since 1980 for fatally shooting a 72-year-old Houston supermarket
clerk, James McCarble, during a robbery.
Justice Ginsburg wrote that Mr. Moore's I.Q. was in the range of 69 to 79,
meaning that other factors had to be considered. In dissent, Chief Justice John
G. Roberts Jr. wrote that only 2 I.Q. scores had been found reliable, of 78 and
74.
"The court's ruling on intellectual functioning turns solely on the fact that
Moore's I.Q. range was 69 to 79 rather than 70 to 80," Chief Justice Roberts
wrote.
The reliable scores were enough, he said, to decide the case and to allow Mr.
Moore's execution.
Justice Ginsburg said the courts have more work to do when I.Q. scores are
close to the line. For instance, she wrote, Mr. Moore had reached his teenage
years without having learned the most fundamental things.
"At 13," she wrote, "Moore lacked basic understanding of the days of the week,
the months of the year, and the seasons; he could scarcely tell time or
comprehend the standards of measure or the basic principle that subtraction is
the reverse of addition."
A state judge, considering that evidence and relying on current medical
standards on intellectual disability, concluded that executing Mr. Moore would
violate the Eighth Amendment.
But the Court of Criminal Appeals, Texas's highest court for criminal matters,
reversed that ruling, saying the judge had made a mistake in "employing the
definition of intellectual disability presently used."
Under medical standards from 1992, Mr. Moore was not intellectually disabled,
the appeals court said. The court added that the young Bobby Moore "had
demonstrated adaptive strengths" by living on the street, mowing lawns, playing
pool and committing crimes. He had, for instance, worn a wig during the robbery
and tried to hide his shotgun in 2 plastic bags, which prosecutors said was
evidence of forethought and planning.
Justice Ginsburg said the appeals court had given too much weight to those
aspects of Mr. Moore's behavior and not enough to his intellectual deficits.
The appeals court relied on a set of seven factors to help determine
intellectual disability drawn from one of its earlier decisions. (One example:
"Can the person hide facts or lie effectively?") Justice Ginsburg rejected the
factors, noting that they were used almost nowhere else and that Texas itself
did not use them in determining intellectual disability in other contexts.
On this point, Chief Justice Roberts agreed, saying, "Those factors are an
unacceptable method of enforcing the guarantee of Atkins."
The case, Moore v. Texas, No. 15-797, had attracted some attention for 1 aspect
of Texas' approach, which was partly drawn from a comparison to the fictional
character of Lennie Small, the dim, hulking farmhand in John Steinbeck's
novella "Of Mice and Men."
In 2004, in the decision that set out the standards Texas uses, Judge Cathy
Cochran of the Court of Criminal Appeals wrote that Lennie should be a legal
touchstone. "Most Texas citizens might agree that Steinbeck's Lennie should, by
virtue of his lack of reasoning ability and adaptive skills, be exempt" from
the death penalty, she wrote.
When Mr. Moore's case was argued in November, Justice Sotomayor said he was at
least as intellectually disabled as Lennie. "The state had no problem in saying
that Lennie, even though he could work, earn a living, plan his trying to hide
the death of the rabbit he killed, that he could do all of those things, and
yet he was not just mildly, but severely disabled," she said.
The opinions rendered Tuesday did not mention Lennie.
In his dissent, Chief Roberts said the majority had not adequately considered
"the practices among the states."
"The court instead crafts a constitutional holding based solely on what it
deems to be medical consensus about intellectual disability," the chief justice
wrote. "But clinicians, not judges, should determine clinical standards; and
judges, not clinicians, should determine the content of the Eighth Amendment."
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined the chief justice's
dissent.
(source: New York Times)
*********************************
Supreme Court blocks Texas execution over disability
The Supreme Court tightened its rules on capital punishment again Tuesday,
ruling that Texas - the nation's leader in executions - cannot use a
decades-old definition of intellectual disability to determine who lives and
who dies.
The 5-3 decision was another in a series of high court rulings intended to
eliminate differences in how states decide who is disabled - and therefore
ineligible for the death penalty under a 2002 precedent - and who is not.
The case of Bobby James Moore was the 3rd death penalty case to reach the court
in recent months, each presenting a different issue, ranging from how sentences
were determined to how those condemned should die. In Moore's case, it involved
Texas' unique system for deciding who is intellectually disabled - one that is
not based on the latest clinical guidelines.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued the decision, backed by the court's liberal
members and Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has sided with the liberals in past
death penalty cases. Speaking from the bench, she said Supreme Court precedent
does not allow for the "disregard of current medical standards."
"Adjudications of intellectual disability should be 'informed by the views of
medical experts,' " Ginsburg wrote, quoting in part from the high court's 2014
ruling in a Florida case. "That instruction cannot sensibly be read to give
courts leave to diminish the force of the medical community's consensus."
Chief Justice John Roberts and two conservative justices dissented, arguing
that Moore failed to prove the intellectual deficits necessary for a holding
that the death penalty would be a cruel punishment. "Clinicians, not judges,
should determine clinical standards," he wrote, "and judges, not clinicians,
should determine the content of the Eighth Amendment."
Moore's case dates back to 1980, when he shot and killed a grocery store clerk
during a botched robbery. He was twice convicted, then found to be
intellectually disabled, but Texas' highest criminal court overturned that
finding, citing its own precedent, which is based on a 1992 definition of
intellectual disability. His case now returns to Texas for further
consideration.
"Today, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that all persons with intellectual
disability are exempt from execution, and that current medical standards must
be used to determine whether a person is intellectually disabled," Moore's
attorney, Cliff Sloan, said.
The Supreme Court has tightened sentencing rules for people with intellectual
disabilities since its landmark 2002 ruling in Atkins v. Virginia. 3 years ago,
it barred Florida from using a single, strict IQ standard to determine a
prisoner's competency.
That case, Ginsburg wrote, "indicated that being informed by the medical
community does not demand adherence to everything stated in the latest medical
guide. But neither does our precedent license disregard of current medical
standards."
She noted that Texas does not use the outdated standards in other contexts,
such as assessments of students' intellectual disabilities or the diagnosis of
juveniles in the criminal justice system. "Texas cannot satisfactorily explain
why it applies current medical standards for diagnosing intellectual disability
in other contexts, yet clings to superseded standards when an individual's life
is at stake," she wrote.
Justice Stephen Breyer - who, with Ginsburg's support, suggested in 2015 that
the high court consider declaring capital punishment unconstitutional - said
during oral argument that the Texas standard "would free some, while subjecting
others to the death penalty."
Kennedy, the lone conservative to voice skepticism about the Texas system
during oral argument, acknowledged that the Supreme Court's 2002 precedent
barring execution of the intellectually disabled "left some discretion to the
states." But he said Texas' method of determining disability seemed designed to
limit who can claim it.
Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller told the court that the state goes by the
Supreme Court's standard - looking at defendants' intellectual functioning,
adaptive behaviors and at what age their impairments appeared. "Texas is well
within the national consensus," he said.
But Sloan disagreed. "Texas is very extreme and stands alone," he said,
accusing the state of using "lay stereotypes" of intellectual disability such
as the character Lennie in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.
Texas leads the nation in executions with 542 since 1976, nearly 5 times the
total of runners-up Oklahoma and Virginia. Its effort to execute another
prisoner despite racially biased testimony from a defense witness was blocked
by the high court last month.
Nationwide, the pace of executions has slowed since peaking in 1999. There were
20 last year, the lowest number in a quarter century; there have been 6 so far
this year, including 4 in Texas. The trend is a result of action by
legislatures and courts, as well as problems states face getting the drugs
required for lethal injections.
Despite that trend, voters in California, Nebraska and Oklahoma decided to
retain or restore capital punishment at the polls in November.
(source: USA Today)
******************
The Supreme Court Keeps Tinkering With Death
It's been more than 2 decades since Justice Harry Blackmun renounced the death
penalty, calling it a "failed" experiment and writing that "I no longer shall
tinker with the machinery of death." By refusing to stop the use of capital
punishment, the Supreme Court has consigned itself to tinkering with the death
machine, trying in vain to make a barbaric, irrational system appear
predictable and just.
The latest tweak came Tuesday, when the court tossed out the death sentence of
Bobby James Moore, who was convicted in 1980 for murdering a supermarket clerk
during a robbery. Mr. Moore has intellectual disabilities - among other things,
his I.Q. is in the 70s, he "lacked basic understanding of the days of the week,
the months of the year and the seasons" at the age of 13, and he failed out of
9th grade.
After the Supreme Court barred the execution of people with intellectual
disabilities in 2002, Mr. Moore challenged his death sentence. A state court
ruled in his favor, finding that under current medical standards Mr. Moore was
so disabled that executing him would violate the Eighth Amendment's ban of
cruel and unusual punishments.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest court for criminal
cases, reversed that decision. The lower court, it said, had mistakenly applied
a newer definition of intellectual disability. But Texas case law relied on an
older definition, and used a 7-factor test drawn up by a judge in 2004 to
determine whether someone has sufficiently severe disabilities to be spared.
For example, it asks, "Has the person formulated plans and carried them through
or is his conduct impulsive?" Because Mr. Moore mowed lawns, played pool and
took part in the planning of the robbery, the court found that he could be
executed.
The Supreme Court gives states a good amount of room to set their own
intellectual-disability standards, but on Tuesday it found that Texas had
crossed the line.
Writing for 5 members of the court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the
state's approach was unconnected to modern medical consensus. Even the
dissenting justices - Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence
Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr. - agreed that the 7-factor test wasn't acceptable.
Instead, they argued, Mr. Moore's I.Q. score was high enough to render him fit
for execution.
Tuesday's decision was good for Mr. Moore and perhaps a handful of other
inmates, although it came too late for many others. More than anything, it
drove home the futility of the tortured, macabre exercises the court engages in
whenever it deals with capital punishment.
The real question is not whether Mr. Moore's I.Q. is 69 or 74, or whether he
knows the difference between Monday and Thursday - it's why a few states still
insist on engaging in a practice that the rest of the developed world rejected
long ago, and why the Supreme Court refuses to end it for good.
(source: Editorial, New York Times)
********************
Finally, Texas is forced to stop executing the mentally disabled based on junk
science
In a 5-3 decision Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court determined what many in Texas
have argued for years: The way the state evaluates mental disability in death
row cases is "cruel and unusual punishment."
We second that. Texas' outrageously loose, nonscientific method of assessing a
person's intelligence flies in the face of a requirement forbidding states from
executing individuals with intellectual disabilities.
Tuesday's decision means Bobby Moore, who has been on death row for more than
36 years, will see his case sent back to Texas' highest criminal court for
re-evaluation.
There is no question that Moore did the crime. In 1980, he shot and killed
James McCarble, a 73-year-old grocery clerk, during a botched robbery in
Houston. However, after he was sentenced to death, Moore's lawyers argued on
appeal that he was severely intellectually disabled.
In 2002, the Supreme Court declared the execution of individuals with
intellectual disabilities a violation of the Constitution's ban on cruel and
unusual punishment. Moore, however, remained in jeopardy because the court also
deferred heavily to the states to determine who qualified as intellectually
disabled.
And that's where Texas stumbled, spectacularly. Lawmakers failed to adopt
updated standards, which left it to the courts. The Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals reverted to obsolete evaluation techniques written 25 years ago - and
then compounded that misstep by adding several other subjective and problematic
determinations.
Those 7 factors are known as "the Lennie standard," because the court invoked
Lennie Small, the dim-witted fictional farmhand in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and
Men. "Most Texas citizens might agree that Steinbeck's Lennie should, by virtue
of his lack of reasoning ability and adaptive skills, be exempt," the court
said. That's not science.
When, at a rehearing, a judge using current medical standards found Moore to be
intellectually disabled, the Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the decision,
absurdly clinging to its old contentions ordering that only the 1992 standards
could be used.
Texas' insistence on applying outdated evaluation when better testing methods
were available - and widely in use across the country - was the height of
hubris. Courts have acknowledged the important role of modern forensic science
in the criminal justice system, but when it came to the death penalty, Texas
oddly reverted to obsolete evaluation protocols.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the majority opinion, rebuked Texas'
actions as a disregard of current medical standards. "Texas," she wrote,
"cannot satisfactorily explain why it applies current medical standards for
diagnosing intellectual disability in other contexts, yet clings to superseded
standards when an individual's life is at stake."
Regardless of whether you believe the death penalty is a deterrent, or whether
you consider it to be immoral, there is no question that the law of the land
doesn't allow states to execute the intellectually disabled. Now Texas has been
told so in indisputable terms.
(source: Editorial, Dallas Morning News)
PENNSYLVANIA:
State Supreme Court upholds murder conviction, death sentence of Charles Ray
Hicks
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania upheld a death sentence Tuesday of a man
convicted of killing a woman, dismembering her and dumping her body parts along
Interstate 80 and 380 in Monroe and Lackawanna counties.
A jury convicted Charles Ray Hicks Jr. of Coolbaugh Twp. in 2014 for
first-degree murder of 36-year-old Scranton woman Deanna Null and other crimes
in Monroe County Court. The jury, some weeping, sentenced him to death. Monroe
County President Judge Margherita Patti Worthington formally imposed that
decision weeks later.
All death penalties are automatically reviewed by the state Supreme Court,
which can cancel the sentence.
The state's highest court did not. The court's majority opinion found
"sufficient evidence" to uphold the conviction. The 7-person court ruled in
favor of the conviction and death sentence by a 5-2 vote.
"Our careful review of the record reveals the (death) sentence was not the
product of passion, prejudice, or any other arbitrary factor," the judges
wrote.
The 2 dissenting justices, Christine Donohue and David Wecht, each wrote their
own opinion.
For the case of the 2008 murder, the Monroe County district attorney's office
considered dropping the death penalty against Hicks, now 42, in exchange for
information on murders he's suspected of committing in Texas, but he failed to
provide sufficient information to seal the deal, a county detective said.
(source: thetimes-tribune.com)
**********************
Jury selection complete for Frein case
Jury selection for the capital murder trial of Eric Matthew Frein concluded
Tuesday, with the trial set to begin next week, Pike County District Attorney
Ray Tonkin said.
2 alternate jurors were selected Tuesday and three jurors were selected Monday,
bringing the total to 12 jurors and 6 alternates.
In another development, Tonkin notified Frein's attorneys, William Ruzzo and
Michael Weinstein, that he may present recordings of conversations Frein had
with visitors at Pike County Correctional Facility as evidence at the trial.
Prosecutors are required by law to notify the defense if wiretapped recordings
will be introduced. Weinstein said Tuesday that he does not know yet who Frein
spoke to or the substance of the recordings because he has not yet received
them.
"It may be just notice that they recorded every phone call," Weinstein said.
"I'm not treating it as a disaster yet. It's the practice of the jail to record
every conversation. This may be all the conversations over the last 2 1/2 years
he had with family."
Frein, 33, of Canadensis, is charged with 1st-degree murder and other crimes
for the Sept. 12, 2014, sniper attack outside the Blooming Grove state police
barracks that killed Cpl. Bryon K. Dickson II, Dunmore, and severely wounded
Trooper Alex T. Douglass, Olyphant. Frein pleaded not guilty.
Named a suspect 3 days after the shooting, Frein eluded capture until Oct. 30,
2014, when he was found outside an abandoned airport hangar in Monroe County.
He faces the death penalty if convicted of 1st-degree murder.
Lawyers picked the jury of 7 women and 5 men from Chester County partly because
of extensive pre-trial publicity.
Pike County Judge Gregory Chelak still is considering if the trial in Pike
County Court will start April 3, as scheduled, or April 4.
Chelak also has not decided when he will hold a hearing regarding a defense
motion that seeks to suppress statements Frein made to police following his
arrest. Ruzzo said he expects the judge to issue an order on both matters
today.
(source: Republican Herald)
*************************************
Butler DA weighing death penalty in 4-year-old's killing
The Butler County District Attorney said today that a "horrific" case in which
a 4-year-old boy was raped and killed calls out for capital punishment, but he
will not make the decision until the case has moved past the preliminary
hearing stage.
"It would appear on its face it asks for the death penalty," said Richard
Goldinger. "I've never seen anything like this."
Keith Jordan Lambing, 20, is accused of assaulting his girlfriend's son, who
was found bleeding and unresponsive in a car with Mr. Lambing's mother, Kristen
Herold, at a business on Renaissance Drive in Butler at 9:26 a.m. on March 21.
The boy was pronounced dead a short time later at Butler Memorial Hospital.
Police said that in addition to injuries associated with sodomy, Bentley had
bruises to the head, trunk and extremities.
"It's unimaginable someone could do something like this to any human being let
alone a 4-year-old," Mr. Goldinger said.
He said that police are still investigating and that charges could be filed
against Bentley's mother, Mackenzie Peters.
"I don't think she's going to get out of this scot-free," Mr. Goldinger said.
Ms. Herold is charged with hindering apprehension and endangering the welfare
of children.
Ms. Herold told police she had picked up the boy that morning at a Super 8
motel on Pittsburgh Road in Butler. Her her son had been living there for
several weeks with Ms. Peters, Bentley and the couple's 4-month-old son.
The infant was taken into custody by Butler County Children, Youth and
Families.
Mr. Goldinger said that CYF had been called about 2 years ago when Bentley had
a broken arm, but that the complaint was not sustained, and no case was ever
opened.
(source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
DELAWARE:
Del. Lawmakers Announce Bill to Reinstate Death Penalty
A bipartisan group of lawmakers announced Monday that they are pushing ahead
with a legislative effort to bring back the death penalty in the First State
after the Delaware Supreme Court last year struck down the state's capital
sentencing statute as unconstitutional.
Dubbed the Extreme Crimes Protection Act, the bill aims to address flaws that
led a bare majority of Delaware's 5 justices last August to rule, in the case
Rauf v. State, that the scheme violated a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to
a trial by jury.
By a 3-2 vote, the court said that the statute unconstitutionally allowed
sentencing judges to independently find the existence of aggravating
circumstances and to weigh them against mitigating factors. In light of a
recent U.S. Supreme Court case, those determinations, the justices said, can
only be made by a jury, unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt.
The ruling effectively wiped out capital punishment in the state, though the
law remains on the books. But it also left to the General Assembly the decision
of whether to fix and reinstate the statute or to scrap it altogether.
Last summer, a bloc of 15 Republican legislators vowed to rework the statute
and introduce legislation this session to revive it. On Monday, four Republican
lawmakers, joined by two Democrats, took the first public step toward realizing
that goal. The legislation, they said, was circulating for sponsorship and was
expected to be introduced sometime early next week in the House of
Representatives.
"This is a thoughtfully crafted, constitutionally sound bill. Once enacted, I
believe this legislation will serve as a deterrent against our most heinous
crimes," said state Sen. Brian Pettyjohn, R-Georgetown, one of the bill's
sponsors, said in a joint press release. "For those who do commit these vile
acts, this statute will ensure that capital sentences are justly and fairly
applied."
Specifically, the bill would require a jury to unanimously find the existence
of at least 1 aggravating factor beyond a reasonable doubt in order to make a
defendant eligible for death.
It would also apply the reasonable doubt standard to the weighing phase. Under
the stricken statute, a determination that aggravating factors outweigh
mitigating circumstances was made by a preponderance of evidence, a lower bar
that the Supreme Court found to be unacceptable. A trial judge would then have
to sign off on the jury's decision.
The bill would also keep in place a provision of the old law that allows a jury
to mitigating circumstances, even if a defendant has not proven their existence
beyond a reasonable doubt.
Bill sponsor Rep. John "Larry" Mitchell, D-Elsmere, said the measures were
enough to avoid the constitutional pitfalls of the old sentencing scheme.
"Capital punishment is the most serious sentence we as a state can carry out.
This legislation sets a higher standard, which reserves the punishment for only
the most extreme cases," said Mitchell, a retired sergeant with the New Castle
County Police Department, who chairs the House committee that will first
consider the bill.
Still, lawmakers are expecting a heated battle to unfold in Legislative Hall.
Opponents of capital punishment have argued that the practice is inhumane,
overly expensive and fundamentally tinged with racial bias.
Supporters of capital punishment say the death penalty is essential to public
safety because it acts as a necessary deterrent to committing the most heinous
crimes. Opponents, however, vigorously dispute that assessment.
But there did seem to be some early agreement on Monday that the measures, as
drafted, fit the constitutional framework laid out in Rauf.
Kathleen MacRae, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of
Delaware, said the provisions of the bill appeared consistent with the court's
landmark holding; however, she said, her organization remains "totally opposed"
to the death penalty and would lobby aggressively against it in Dover.
"From our perspective, it makes absolutely no sense to reinstate a practice we
know to be broken," she said.
MacRae said the bill's passage was likely - but not assured - in the House,
where the most recent bid to repeal the death penalty died in the House last
January after clearing a Senate vote. But she noted that the politics of the
death penalty in Delaware had changed in the past 14 months.
"To actively vote to allow the state to kill its citizens is a different vote,
and I'm hoping that will give some members pause," she said.
The 12 men previously condemned to die have been resentenced to life in prison
without the possibility of parole. Delaware's last execution occurred in 2012,
when Shannon Johnson died by lethal injection.
(source: delawarelawweekly.com)
FLORIDA:
Judge sides with governor in prosecutor removal over death penalty
Florida's governor has the right to remove a state attorney from a case after
the prosecutor said she would not seek the death penalty, a judge said Tuesday
as he denied a request to delay the proceedings.
State Attorney Aramis Ayala said earlier this month that she wouldn't seek the
death penalty for a man charged in the December slayings of his ex-girlfriend
and a police officer. After her announcement, Republican Gov. Rick Scott
removed her from the case and appointed a new prosecutor.
Ayala, a Democrat, said the governor overstepped his authority and she is
fighting to keep the case. Ayala has said there is no evidence that shows the
death penalty improves public safety and it's costly and drags on for years for
the victims' families.
She asked a judge to delay proceedings for 2 weeks while she prepares an
argument for the Florida Supreme Court. But Chief Justice Frederick J. Lauten
denied her request Tuesday and said State Attorney Brad King, who was appointed
by the governor, will remain as the chief prosecutor.
The judge said Ayala can still file her argument with the high court, but the
case against Markeith Loyd would move ahead, with the next hearing scheduled
for Monday. Loyd is charged with the 1st-degree murder in the killings of his
pregnant ex-girlfriend Sade Dixon and Orlando Police Lt. Debra Clayton.
Loyd, who has previously cursed at judges during previous court appearances,
was subdued during the hearing Tuesday. He objected to Ayala being removed from
the case.
Ayala, who is the 1st elected African-American state attorney in Florida, said
in court documents that the governor's actions are unprecedented and his
interference in the decision-making by state attorneys could undermine
Florida's judicial system.
(source: news-journalonline.com)
ARKANSAS:
Legal Battle Looms Ahead of Arkansas Executions----The state with some of the
highest incarceration rates ranks second to last for crime and corrections.
This combination of undated photos provided by the Arkansas Department of
Correction shows death-row inmates Jack Harold Jones Jr., left, and Marcel
Williams. Both men are scheduled for execution on April 24, 2017.
As Arkansas prepares to execute eight condemned convicts before an end of April
deadline, the state faces numerous obstacles, including a lack of required
execution witnesses and, most recently, a legal battle.
In the most recent turn of events, the inmates, who are set to receive lethal
injections within a 10-day span, asked a federal judge Monday for a preliminary
injunction. Their attorneys say the quick schedule of events violates their
constitutional rights, the Associated Press reports.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson is racing the clock to complete the executions, two at a
time, before the state's supply of midazolam, a drug used in the injections,
expires.
"The rushed schedule appreciably increases the risk of harm to plaintiffs,
falls far outside the bounds of modern penological practice, and disrespects
the plaintiff's fundamental dignity - defects that all run against the Eighth
Amendment's protection," the prisoners' attorneys said.
One of the inmates, Ledelle Lee, 51, was convicted of killing his neighbor by
beating her with a tire iron more than 30 times. Jack Harold Jones Jr., 52,
received the death sentence for murdering a bookkeeper, who police found naked
from the waist down with a cord around her neck, according to the Associated
Press. 4 of the convicts are black, 2 white.
Meanwhile, Hutchinson also is evaluating clemency requests from Lee and 1 of
the other prisoners, though the Arkansas Parole Board recommends that he deny
them. Three of the other inmates will hear their recommendations from the board
next week.
Due to legal issues and a lack of legal injection drugs, Arkansas hasn't had an
execution since 2006, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. If
Hutchinson's schedule remains the same, Arkansas will be the 1st state to
execute this many prisoners within 10 days.
Arkansas, which ranks 2nd to last in U.S. News' Best States rankings for crime
and corrections, ranks No. 13 on the list of most executions by state - 27
executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Texas has had the
most executions by far, with 542, followed by Oklahoma and Virginia at 112 and
Florida at 92.
These states with high execution levels also generally do not rank highly in
the Best States crime and corrections rankings, which look at state crime
levels and the efficiency of their prison systems.
Though Virginia ranks No. 6 for crime and corrections, Texas ranks No. 31,
Oklahoma No. 40 and Florida No. 37.
States with the most executions also tend to have some of the highest
incarceration rates. Texas ranks No. 44, with about 584 prisoners under state
or federal jurisdiction per 100,000 residents. Oklahoma ranks even lower at No.
49, with around 700 prisoners out of the same number of residents.
But Arkansas ranks even lower in many of the crime and corrections measures
than any of the 10 states with the most executions. It nears the bottom in
almost every category, ranking in the bottom 10 for corrections, crime,
incarceration rate, parole completion and more.
(source: US News & World Report)
**********************
Former Virginia executioner concerned about expedited schedule of Arkansas
executions
He was responsible for putting 62 people to death from 1982 to 1999 in the
Commonwealth of Virginia. Now Jerry Givens takes a strong stance against the
death penalty; his concerns center on the stress put on correctional employees
and the potential of putting innocent people to death.
Givens job as Virginia's lead executioner came to a halt in 1999 when he was
implicated and convicted in a money laundering case involving the purchase of a
vehicle - he would end up spending 4 years in prison, in the exact opposite
spot of his correctional officer position prior to conviction.
But even though Givens didn't leave his job as lead executioner on his own free
will, if given the chance to do it again, for Givens it would be a hard no.
"I killed these people," said Givens. "I took syringes and I pushed poison into
these people until they were dead - I killed them. On the death certificate it
said homicide, so that made me a murderer."
Givens said there was always immense stress both leading up to and following
each of the 62 executions he performed in Virginia - many by electrocution and
others by lethal injection.
When it comes to lethal injection, Givens said there was an extremely large
amount of room for error. Doctors would not perform the execution, given the
fact it goes against their code of ethics, meaning the job was put in the hands
of simple correctional officers without any medical training.
"You've got non-professional people, just ordinary people, doing a professional
job," said Givens. "So you're going to have mistakes."
Givens mentioned most of the mistakes he and his crew made were during electric
chair executions.
The biggest mistake Givens is concerned with is potentially putting an innocent
man to death. Givens almost did that when he was scheduled to execute Earl
Washington Jr. - a man with an IQ of 69 who confessed to a rape and murder that
he was later exonerated of due to DNA evidence.
"Just say I had taken Earl Washington's life," pondered Givens. "There's no way
I could go back and tell Earl Washington, I'm sorry for what I've done."
Washington's averted execution and the executions of the 62 people that Givens
actually did put to death, have weighed on Givens' mind ever since. Givens said
he's concerned Arkansas Department of Correction employees will experience the
same mental stress - stress that has caused suicide among some correctional
officers and others to quit the profession.
"There's other ways to make these guys suffer through the rest of their lives,"
said Givens.
(source: KATV news)
*************************
Arkansas executioners will suffer like I did, warns former corrections
head----Arkansas plans to execute 8 men in 11 days. Allen Ault, who gave the
order to kill 5 men in Georgia, says that death penalty staff's mental health
is at risk
It's been more than 20 years since Dr Allen Ault stood in a death chamber and
gave the order for the execution to go ahead.
"I said, 'It's time,' and the electrician threw the switch."
Despite the passage of so many years, he feels troubled to this day by what he
did. "I had a lot of guilt, my conscience totally bothered me," he said. "When
the switch was thrown that 1st time, and I realized I had just killed a man,
that was pretty traumatic. Then to have to do it again and again and again, it
got so that I absolutely could not go through with it."
As commissioner of the department of corrections in Georgia, Ault gave the
order for 5 executions by electric chair in 1994 and 1995. After the fifth life
was taken, the cumulative distress reached breaking point and he resigned from
the post and moved to a job in the US justice department that had nothing to do
with the death penalty.
Since then, he has found himself haunted by the memory of the 5 men whose lives
he ended. "I don't remember their names, but I still see them in my
nightmares," he said.
Now those nightmares are back in force, triggered by the knowledge that what
Ault considers to be a disaster-in-the-making is about to unfold in Arkansas.
Next month, the state's Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, has scheduled no
fewer than 8 executions over 11 days - a conveyor belt of killing dispensed at
a clip not seen in the US for at least 1/2 a century.
The executions are set to take place by lethal injection at a rate of2 a day
over 4 separate days. On 17 April, it will be the turn of the inmates Don Davis
and Bruce Ward; on 20 April, Stacey Johnson and Ledell Lee; 24 April, Marcel
Williams and Jack Jones; 27 April, Jason McGehee and Kenneth Williams.
One of Ault's prime concerns relates not to the 8 convicted capital murderers
who are set to die, but to the men and women of the execution team who are
being asked, just as he was 2 decades ago, to kill in the name of justice. "To
ask corrections officials in Arkansas to kill 8 people, 2 a day - as someone
who went through this, I can't tell you how deeply concerned I am for their
mental health," he said.
"As the old saying goes," he went on, "you dig 2 graves: 1 for the condemned, 1
for the avenger. That's what will happen to this execution team - many of them
will figuratively have to dig their own grave too."
Ault said his role at the head of the team that had killed 5 men left him
feeling "lower than the most despicable person". He felt degraded to a level
below that of the heinous murderers he was confronting, a sense that was
amplified by how much planning went into the protocols. "I had a manual about
an inch thick that I had to follow. What I did was much more premeditated than
any of the murders committed by those I executed."
Then there was the defenselessness of the man on the gurney: "You are taking a
totally defenseless person, planning, premeditating, even rehearsing, then
killing him - any sane person other than a psychopath would be dramatically
affected by that."
The Arkansas governor has so far given scant details about how he intends to
deal with the intense psychological burden he is placing on the shoulders of
the state's execution team, beyond indicating that counseling will be
available. When the Guardian put a series of questions to Hutchinson, including
what was being done to protect the execution team from potential mental or
emotional harm, a spokesman declined to answer.
All the spokesman would say was that the governor had no intention of talking
to the national or international media before next month's executions, on the
grounds that there was nothing to discuss. "There's no debate here - this is
not like the future of healthcare in America. The governor has the duty to
carry out these executions that were decided by a jury. This is the law of
Arkansas and of the federal government of the United States."
In previous statements, the governor's office has argued that it will be "more
efficient and less stressful" for those involved in carrying out the killing to
see them through in quick succession. Given his rich personal experience, that
sounds like arrogant negligence to Allen Ault.
"If the governor is so hot on this, he ought to go down to the death chamber
and do it himself. But he won't, they don't, they never do. Politicians are
never in the room when it happens, they never have to suffer anything."
Ault found that several members of his team were so troubled by the part they
played in snuffing out life that they required therapeutic help, and 1 senior
member of the corrections department had to be relieved of his job. He has seen
the same pattern of damaged psyches repeated in death penalty states across the
country. He personally knew, he said, 3 former corrections officials who
participated, to their distress, in executions and went on to take their own
lives.
The psychological impact on execution teams is one of the least discussed
aspects of capital punishment in the US, yet arguably one of the most
disturbing. There Will Be No Stay, a documentary film released last year,
profiles 2 former majors in South Carolina's department of corrections Swat
team who sued the state for allegedly pressuring them into assisting in
multiple executions with minimal training and no counselling (the case was
eventually dismissed by a judge).
Craig Baxley, who was responsible for plunging the lethal injection syringe
into at least 8 prisoners, has himself attempted suicide and is now on 6 types
of medication for PTSD and depression. One detail of his years working in the
death chamber stuck in his mind: the cause of mortality given on the inmates'
death certificates was always the same: "homicide".
The other major, Terry Bracey, told the film-makers he had struggled with the
effects of trauma for years: "I expected to be trained and counseled - none of
that took place. Taking that plunger and pushing it in set me on a course I
wasn't prepared for."
The members of the Arkansas execution team are shrouded in anonymity, as they
are in all death penalty states. Typically, the group consists of a "tie-down
team" who escort the prisoner from his cell to the death chamber and then strap
him to the gurney; medically trained personnel who set the intravenous lines;
and those, like Bracey and Baxley, who sit on the other side of a glass wall
and press the buttons to inject the lethal drugs into the prisoner once the
team leader gives the order.
Frank Thompson gave that order twice when he was superintendent of Oregon state
penitentiary - the only 2 completed executions in that state in over 50 years.
Thompson said he could not comment on the specifics of the Arkansas team, but
he was clear that based on his own experiences, they needed to be extremely
careful.
Several of the members of his own team quit their jobs in the fallout of what
they went through. Despite the intensive training he put them through, he said
he was ultimately unable to spare them the brutalizing consequences.
"There is absolutely no way to conduct a well-run execution without causing at
least 1 person to lose a little bit of their humanity, or to start at least 1
person on the cumulative path to post-traumatic stress. So for Arkansas to do
this 8 times in 10 days, to me that is unimaginable - it is compounding the
stress, laying traumatic experiences on top of each other."
Such trauma often manifests itself in fevered sleep and harrowing dreams. Rich
Robertson recalls being hounded by a recurring nightmare after the then local
TV reporter witnessed the last use of the gas chamber in Arizona in 1999 - he
watched a prisoner named Walter LaGrand being engulfed in a light fog of
cyanide, then gagging forcefully and flailing from side to side before slumping
forward into unconsciousness.
Robertson described his dream to the Guardian: "I was standing at a window with
venetian blinds just like the actual gas chamber, and the blinds opened up and
I could see a crib in the middle of the room. There was a baby in the crib with
lines running from its arms and legs that ran to a set of levers on the wall,
and standing there was an evil-looking clown throwing the switches."
It's not just potential psychological damage that is raising the alarm over the
Arkansas plans. Legal experts also fear that the unseemly rush could greatly
increase the risk of mistakes leading to botched procedures.
Arkansas's supply of the execution drug Midazolam is due to expire at the end
of April and further stocks will be hard to secure because of a boycott by
European drug companies.
Hutchinson's professed reason for the tight schedule is that the state's batch
of midazolam, a sedative used in many recent US executions, reaches its
expiration date at the end of April and fresh supplies of the drug will be hard
to secure because of the boycott of US corrections departments by
pharmaceutical companies and foreign governments. Yet even without the added
complications that can come from haste, midazolam has a patchy reputation in
capital punishment.
It was the same drug that was deployed in the gruesome killing of Clayton
Lockett in Oklahoma in 2014, in which the inmate writhed and groaned on the
gurney for 43 minutes. The state's subsequent investigation found that one
factor behind the calamity was that the execution team had been placed under
undue stress as they were primed to carry out 2 judicial killings on the same
day. "Due to manpower and facility concerns, executions should not be scheduled
within 7 calendar days of each other," the report concluded.
"The example of Oklahoma should be very troubling for Arkansas officials," said
Dale Baich, a defense attorney who represented Joseph Wood, who died in
similarly grotesque circumstances in a botched execution involving midazolam in
Arizona that same year. "What will happen if the 1st prisoner has the same sort
of reaction as Wood or Lockett - will the governor press ahead with the next
execution? This rush to execute is foolish and irresponsible."
Jennifer Moreno, a staff attorney with the Berkeley Law death penalty clinic,
said that by choosing to use midazolam, Arkansas had opted for a protocol that
had no margin of error. "When you add to that the pressure of executing 8 men
in 11 days, you are just asking for something to go wrong - they are putting
their team in a really difficult spot."
The 8 condemned men on Monday lodged a new lawsuit in a federal court in
Arkansas seeking to prevent Hutchinson from going ahead with his plan. The
complaint warns that the intense stress placed on the execution team, and the
lack of a pause between killings to allow for review, will heighten the risk of
the inmates suffering unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment as they
die.
"The people who will make up the execution team will be called upon to take
part in the killing of an otherwise healthy human being, under intense scrutiny
and pressure, in a process that they have little to no prior experience with,
using a drug that has not been used before for executions in this state. And
then they are going to be asked to do it again. And then come back to work and
do it again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And finally again, for
the 8th time."
(source: The Guardian)
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