Nov. 2
TEXAS----new execution date
John Ramirez has been given an execution date for Feb. 2; it should be
considered serious.
Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----20
Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----538
Abbott#--------scheduled execution date-----name------------Tx. #
21---------December 7---------------John Battaglia--------539
22---------January 11---------------Christoper Wilkins----540
23---------January 25---------------Kosoul Chanthakoummane----541
24---------January 26---------------Terry Edwards---------542
25---------February 2---------------John Ramirez----------543
26---------February 7---------------Tilon Carter----------544
27---------April 12-----------------Paul Storey-----------545
28---------June 28------------------Steven Long-----------546
(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Prosecutors drop death penalty in '92 killing
The York County District Attorney's Office is no longer seeking the death
penalty against a man who's waiting for a retrial in the killing of his
girlfriend, who was stabbed and cut more than 200 times and found covered in
bleach over 24 years ago.
Daniel Jacobs, 45, of York, is already serving life in prison without the
possibility of parole for the death of his 7-month-old daughter, Holly. But,
he's been waiting for another trial in the killing of Tammy Lee Mock, 18, for
about 10 years, because his case has been in limbo.
Both were found in the bathtub of the couple's apartment on West King Street
near South Richland Avenue in York on Feb. 16, 1992.
It's unclear why the District Attorney's Office made the decision, which is
mentioned in court documents dated on Friday. Chief Deputy Prosecutor Tim
Barker, one of the attorneys who's handling the case, could not immediately be
reached.
Initially, Jacobs was found guilty of 1st-degree murder in Mock's killing and
sentenced to death. But federal appeals courts threw out his punishment and
conviction, in 2001 and 2005, respectively.
In September, Common Pleas Judge Harry M. Ness ruled that Jacobs is competent
to stand trial, but that he cannot serve as his own lawyer. He has since filed
a motion asking the judge to reconsider the decision.
Kevin Hoffman, an attorney who's been appointed to represent Jacobs, said he
will most likely have to prepare for the case to go trial. But, he said, it
will be "some time" before one is held.
Now, Hoffman said it will be a "more straightforward process." That's because
the attorneys will not have to pick a jury for a death penalty case, nor
present additional testimony - if there's a conviction.
Jacobs is expected back in court on Dec. 1.
(source: York Daily Record)
NORTH CAROLINA:
Time to end NC's death penalty
There is a deadly battle going on in the courts of the United States. It has
lasted for decades. The battle is between those favoring the death penalty and
those opposed to it.
In North Carolina we have 150 people on death row. 55 North Carolina Counties
have prisoners on death row. 45 counties have no one there.
It is clear that people in certain counties have been more likely to receive a
death sentence than others. For instance, Durham County has no one on death
row. Its neighbor, Wake County has ten. Guilford County has 3 prisoners on
death row. Yet, its neighbor, Forsyth County, has 12.
The last execution in North Carolina was on August 18, 2006, 10 years ago.
There are many things that keep prisoners from being executed in North
Carolina. Here are 6 of them:
1. The legislature passed the Racial Justice Act. It made it extremely
difficult for death sentences to be upheld on appeal. That law has been
repealed, but the result is that most (if not all) death sentence cases are
under appeal. Resolution of this problem will take months - perhaps years.
2. The law requires a doctor to be present during executions. However, both the
American Medical Association and the North Carolina Medical Board have ruled
that doctors should NOT be present at executions.
In response to this, the legislature has passed a law which states that
participation in executions is not the practice of medicine. The intent was to
protect doctors who attended an execution from discipline by medical boards. It
is unlikely that this law will entice doctors to participate in executions.
Whether it is practicing medicine or not, it is still helping to kill someone.
Second, the propriety of that law will continue to be litigated.
3. The State has to find the appropriate drugs to cause death. Many companies
have refused to sell the drugs to states that will use them in executions.
Then, once the chemicals are picked, there will be legal challenges to those
particular chemicals.
4. It will be at least 2 years before executions are scheduled. The passing of
12 or more years from the last execution will make it more unpleasant to
restart executions. Judges will tend to grant stays of executions.
It is one thing to believe in the death penalty. It is quite another thing to
actually carry out the sentence. If you were a nurse or technician, would you
insert the needle?
5. Other objections to our death penalty law will arise.
6. As time goes by, people will become more opposed to the death penalty.
7. Increasingly, juries are more willing to approve the alternative of life
without parole.
It is extremely unlikely that our governor or legislature will do away with the
death penalty. Yet no executions are being carried out. Will we continue to
travel this road indefinitely? It is extremely frustrating to the families of
the victims. They have to bear up, as appeal after appeal is filed. They are
sorely tired of that, and seek a resolution. Does it make sense to reduce the
number of people on death row - and replace the death sentences to life without
parole?
Here are ways to do that:
The 1st is to remove all prisoners over 65 years old. Execution of older
prisoners can be considered gruesome. One of our death row prisoners is an 83
year old woman.
The 2nd is to remove the prisoners with the best criminal records.
The 3rd choice would be to take the cases that have been on death row the
longest and change those sentences to life without parole.
This would be a compromise. It would be a significant reduction of the number
of people on death row yet it would not do away with the death penalty. Further
reasons for this choice are:
1. It is more likely that there were improprieties in the trial of cases before
1996. Newer cases have more protections to the defendants.
2. There is a precedent to clearing out death row. In 1976. The U.S. Supreme
Court held that the NC. death sentence statute was unconstitutional. As a
result, the 120 death row prisoners had their sentences vacated, or had new
trials, or were re-sentenced to life. From 1976 to 1984, no executions took
place in NC.
3. The victims in the older cases may be more willing to accept the lesser
punishment.
Many families of the victims may have become worn out and frustrated at the
endless appeals they may want the cases to be over and done with.
(source: Op-Ed; Stanley Peele of Chapel Hill is a retired district
judge----News & Observer)
FLORIDA:
Intellectual disability at question in death-row case
A convicted murderer, Sonny Boy Oats Jr., appeared at the Marion County
Judicial Center on Tuesday. Oats, 59, sat beside his attorneys for a hearing
that followed 35 years after a local judge sentenced him to death for his role
in a local murder in 1979.
In line with a Florida Supreme Court opinion, released late last year, a local
judge is set to reconsider whether Oats is intellectually disabled. That
question has come up during a lengthy appeals process for Oats. It stands as
particularly significant because, as the Supreme Court noted in December, Oats
cannot be executed if he is found to be intellectually disabled.
Attorneys began to tackle the question on Tuesday, when they talked through the
next steps with Circuit Judge Jonathan Ohlman, who is currently assigned to the
case. The discussion included working out deadlines for prosecutors and public
defenders to identify what information they intend to present at an evidentiary
hearing that would address whether Oats is intellectually disabled.
That hearing would occur after another hearing currently slated for mid-March.
But that could yet change, as Ohlman noted during the hearing.
The case could go to another judge, Hale Stancil, who retired in December and
continues to work as a senior judge. Ohlman is set to consider a request to
transfer the case to Stancil, who most recently handled Oats' case.
Also possible is a high court ruling on whether or not recent changes to
Florida's death penalty would apply retroactively. That could steer Oats'
appeal in another direction.
Oats is convicted of killing a convenience store clerk in Martel, a community
west of Ocala, a few days before Christmas in 1979. Prosecutors at the time
presented evidence that Oats had entered the convenience store with plans to
commit a robbery.
(source: ocala.com)
ALABAMA----impending execution
Alabama inmate this week nears execution for the 7th time
Alabama death row inmate Tommy Arthur on Tuesday was still waiting for the U.S.
11th Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on whether it will grant a stay of
execution.
Arthur is set to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. on Thursday.
If the appeal is granted, it would be the 7th time the 74-year-old's execution
has been halted. 6 other times, within days or hours of the appointed time, his
execution was stopped. And other than a month on the lam after shooting a
jailer in a 1986 escape, the 2nd oldest inmate on death row has spent the
better part of his last 33 years in a small cell on death row.
Arthur denies he was paid to kill a sleeping Muscle Shoals man, Troy Wicker, in
1982.
"I didn't no more kill Troy Wicker than you did," Arthur told AL.com in a
recent telephone interview from his cell.
3 different juries in trials in 1983, 1987 and 1991, however, thought otherwise
and found him guilty. The victim's wife, Judy Wicker, was also convicted of the
murder and spent a decade in prison. She testified at one trial she paid Arthur
$10,000 of the insurance money for the killing. Judy Wicker and Arthur, who was
on work release at the time, were in a romantic relationship, court records
show.
Wicker's family has always felt Arthur was guilty, Janette Grantham, executive
director of the group Victims of Crime and Leniency (VOCAL) said this week.
"There's no doubt he's guilty," Grantham said. "He deserves to be held
accountable."
"They all called him 'Houdini' because he always seems to slip away. But
hopefully he won't this time," Grantham said.
Efforts to reach members of Wicker's family were unsuccessful.
Grantham, who once worked with victims in the Alabama Attorney General's
Office, said one of Wicker's sisters, Peggy Jones, who had closely followed the
case won't be at the execution because she is dealing with breast cancer.
"They waited so long for this ... I just hope they can all find some kind of
peace," Grantham said.
Besides seeking a stay of execution, Arthur's legal team is also appealing to
the 11th Circuit to overturn a federal judge's ruling that denied his claims
challenging Alabama's new 3-drug lethal injection combination.
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley also has not said whether he would grant clemency
to Arthur, although the governor has yet to grant clemency for an inmate in the
past. Arthur recently wrote Bentley seeking a stay of his execution, help in
getting a new hearing, and a moratorium on all executions.
Arthur, spared execution 6 times since he was convicted in a 1983 contract
killing, is asking the governor to stay his execution because he says he is an
innocent man.
If the 11th Circuit denies his request for a stay of execution, then he could
appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, Arthur was moved Tuesday into a holding cell by the execution
chamber.
Here are the highlights of Arthur's case:
-- On Feb. 1, 1982, police found Troy Wicker of Muscle Shoals shot to death in
his bed - a gunshot wound to his right eye.
-- Arthur was convicted of capital murder in 1983.
-- At the time of the Wicker murder, Arthur was serving at a Decatur work
release center for a conviction in the 1977 murder of his sister-in-law, Eloise
West, in Marion County. Having 2 murder convictions in that short a span made
him eligible for the death penalty.
-- In 1985, Arthur's conviction in the Wicker case was overturned because
details of the earlier murder had been introduced at his trial.
-- On Jan. 27, 1986, while awaiting retrial, Arthur escaped from the Colbert
County jail by shooting a jailer in the neck with a .25 caliber pistol and
forcing another jailer to open his cell. He was caught a month later by FBI
agents in Knoxville, Tenn., after robbing a bank.
-- Arthur was retried for the Wicker murder in 1987, with the case moved to
Jefferson County because of publicity. He was convicted, but the conviction was
again overturned.
-- Arthur was tried again in Jefferson County and convicted in 1991. That
verdict was upheld.
-- Before he was sentenced, Arthur asked jurors to recommend the death
penalty. He said that he did not have a death wish, but that the sentence would
provide more access to appeals. A lawyer for the state at that time said Arthur
"knows how to work the system."
-- Tuscumbia attorney William Hovater, who was appointed to defend Arthur
after he fired his first two attorneys and later escaped from the Colbert
County Jail, told a reporter after one trial that he had worked a plea
agreement for Arthur to be sentenced to life without parole, if he pleaded
guilty. Arthur declined. "He never admitted that he did it," Hovater told a
reporter.
Arthur has come close to execution 6 previous times - within days or even
hours. They include:
-- April 27, 2001. A federal court issued a stay 2 days before the scheduled
execution because of an appeal that was later dismissed.
-- Sept. 27, 2007. The day of the planned execution Gov. Bob Riley granted a
45-day reprieve so that the state could develop an assessment of whether
inmates are unconscious after the 1st drug in the 3-drug protocol is given.
-- Dec. 6, 2007. One day before, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay pending
its decision in a case challenging Kentucky's method of lethal injection. The
court later upheld Kentucky's method as constitutional.
-- July 31, 2008. 2 days before, Arthur filed a petition that he was innocent
based on an affidavit from another inmate that asserted that the inmate, not
Arthur, had killed Wicker. The Alabama Supreme Court issued a stay to allow
investigation of the claim. A Jefferson County judge later found that Arthur
had helped the other inmate to make the claim and said the 2 inmates had tried
to defraud the court.
-- March 31, 2012. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay March 28
and ordered the district court to hear Arthur's claims that Alabama's lethal
injection method violated his right to be free from cruel and unusual
punishment and his due process rights. Alabama later changed its drug
combination because one of the drugs was no longer available.
-- Feb. 19, 2015. Watkins ruled 2 days before the scheduled execution that the
2012 stay remains in place and allowed Arthur to file an amended complaint
challenging the new drug protocol.
Current appeal
Arthur's current appeal to the 11th Circuit says the district court judge
improperly denied Arthur's request to amend his complaint to request the firing
squad as an alternative execution method. When challenging a method of
execution, inmates must suggest another form of execution under a U.S. Supreme
Court ruling. Arthur's attorneys argue that the judge erroneously ruled that
the alternative method must be expressly permitted by state law.
The judge also rejected Arthur's claim that pentobarbital is a feasible and
readily implemented alternative execution drug. An Alabama Department of
Corrections official testified at Arthur's hearing earlier this year that the
state couldn't find a supply of that drug.
Among the other arguments, Arthur's attorneys claim that the judge erroneously
rejected their arguments that the first drug in the lethal injection protocol -
midazolam - would cause him to suffer a painful heart attack before being
sedated.
Arthur and his attorneys have also said there was never any physical evidence,
such as fingerprints or DNA, linking him to Wicker's death. Arthur said that
not all the evidence has been tested that might point to another person.
Arthur also points to Judy Wicker's testimony at her murder trial in which she
claimed a burglar raped her and killed her husband. Wicker, after her
conviction, testified at one of Arthur's later trials that she had given Arthur
$10,000 - part of the insurance money - to kill her husband.
Arthur and his attorneys say the rape kit performed on Judy Wicker is missing.
Arthur in June asked AL.com to conduct a videotaped in-person interview at
Holman prison. But prison officials said that is not allowed under the law.
Arthur claimed prison officials and the Attorney General's Office didn't want
publicity. "They don't want a face, they don't want a personality to reach the
public. They want to portray me as a mad dog foaming-at-the-mouth heathen
killer," Arthur said in one interview. "They don't want the public to see that
I'm a human being, that I'm not an idiot. They don't want to put what I'm
saying with a voice where the general public can see."
Efforts to reach Arthur's daughter, Sherrie Author Stone, who at one time had a
website for her father to support his appeals, were unsuccessful for this
story.
But she did talk to reporters with the Times Daily newspaper in Florence for a
story on Sunday.
"My heart goes out to the families of those he killed and to the families of
those he injured in some way. I am so sorry for your loss and pain. I pray you
find peace if you have not been able to. There are probably many others we do
not know about," Stone told the Times Daily.
Stone, who has a brother, also talked to the newspaper about how abusive her
father was to their mother.
"He beat and shot my 1st stepmother. He beat my 2nd stepmother, and shot and
killed her sister and almost killed her cousin," Stone told the Times Daily.
(source: al.com)
**************
Judge critiques ban on physicians assisting executions
A federal judge Monday denied a group of death row inmates' challenge to the
state's use of lethal injection in executions.
But then Chief U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins turned to medical
professionals.
In a critique at the end of a 29-page opinion - titled "Alternative Method
Evidence: Hippocrates and Hypocrites" - the judge accused the medical community
of using the American Medical Association's prohibition on physicians assisting
in executions to prevent testimony on execution methods that would
"compassionately ensure no measurable possibility of feeling pain during
execution."
"The medical profession may choose," Watkins wrote. "It could continue on the
side of guerrilla tactics against a clearly constitutional right of the state
to execute criminals convicted of vile human desecration and death; or, it
could choose to become part of a compassionate solution to perceived human
suffering by rendering assistance to inmates facing the final human judgment,
with 'great humbleness and awareness of [one's] own frailty.'"
The American Medical Association's Code of Medical Ethics for physicians
prohibits doctors from participating in or assisting with executions. "As a
member of a profession dedicated to preserving life when there is hope of doing
so, a physician must not participate in a legally authorized execution," the
code states.
The code does allow testimony on a person's medical history; relieving pain or
anxiety at the anticipation of an execution by a condemned person or
intervening to mitigate extreme suffering by an incompetent prisoner suffering
psychosis or any other illness.
Messages seeking comment were sent to the American Medical Association Tuesday
afternoon. John Palombi, a federal defender representing the inmates, said
Tuesday afternoon they were "very disappointed" in the decision and had filed
an appeal with the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Joy Patterson, a spokeswoman for the Alabama attorney general's office, which
represented the Alabama Department of Corrections in the case, said they had no
comment Tuesday.
The case involves 10 death row inmates who claim that midazolam, a sedative
used in the state's 3-drug execution protocol, would be unlikely to render them
unconscious before the administration of rocuronium bromide, a paralytic, and
potassium chloride, which stops the heart. Following U.S. Supreme Court rulings
that condemned inmates objecting to the method of execution must propose
alternatives, the inmates proposed single-drug methods of execution, using
injections of midazolam; pentobarbital or sodium thiopental.
The state in the past used pentobarbital and sodium thiopental as sedatives in
the lethal injection process. Hospira, the manufacturer of sodium thiopental,
stopped making it in the United States in 2011 over concerns with its use in
executions. Alabama switched to pentobarbital afterward but ran out of the drug
by early 2014. The state implemented its current protocol using midazolam in
September of that year.
Noting the absence of the drugs, the Department of Corrections argued that
using compounded pentobarbital or sodium thiopental was not workable. DOC also
said the plaintiffs failed to show that a single large injection of midazolam
would result in less pain than Alabama's current 3-drug procedure.
Watkins sided with the state, writing that witnesses failed to identify sources
of sodium thiopental or pentobarbital the DOC could get. The judge also wrote
that the plaintiffs failed to show "scientific evidence of record" to support
their arguments that midazolam alone would be a safer, less painful,
alternative to the state's current method.
Following that discussion, Watkins accused "modern medical ethicists" of
selectively reading the Hippocratic Oath to find "pure magic in unleashing the
genies of physician-assisted suicide, medical marijuana, drug and alcohol use -
even abuse - during pregnancy and without personal responsibility, all in the
name of liberty, self-determination, and choice."
The American Medical Association's current position on physician-assisted
suicide is that it is "fundamentally incompatible with the physician???s role
as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious
societal risks." The AMA has called for more studies of the impact of medical
marijuana but has not endorsed its use.
Watkins also said that the AMA's opposition to physician participation in
executions was "playing at Hippocrates and God in the same breath," and
unfavorably compared deaths resulting from medical errors - estimated by one
Johns Hopkins study at 250,000 a year - to the 57 executions that have taken
place in Alabama since 1983.
The judge also attacked the U.S. Supreme Court???s 1958 decision in Trop v.
Dulles, where the majority held that the Eighth Amendment's prohibitions
against cruel and unusual punishment "must draw its meaning from the evolving
standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." Watkins
favorably quoted the late Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion that it was "a task
for which we are imminently ill suited."
"The hollow arguments from a debased medical community in death penalty cases
are both the progeny of, and prompted by, just such standardless Trop
jurisprudence as applied to the death penalty," Watkins wrote.
Robert Dunham, the director of the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty
Information Center, which opposes capital punishment, said Tuesday Watkins'
criticism reflects "the inherent problem with lethal injections."
"It is a process by its nature that requires medical professionals to violate
their ethical codes," he said. "It's not a surprise they would be reluctant to
do that."
The state plans to execute death row inmate Thomas Arthur on Thursday. Arthur
has an appeal pending in the federal courts, arguing in part that the courts
should allow him to argue for a single-dose injection of pentobarbital or a
firing squad as an alternative method of execution.
(source: Montgomery Advertiser)
*************
Prosecutors ask jurors for death penalty in murder case
The jury in a potential death penalty case listened to testimony throughout
Tuesday from prosecutors and defense lawyers.
Jurors found David D. Martin, 31, guilty on Monday of beating and stabbing his
girlfriend Jennifer Kitchens to death in 2013. Prosecutors argued, based on his
conviction and previous criminal history, that Martin should face the death
penalty.
The state's case for the death penalty wrapped up relatively quickly. Testimony
from the defense's witnesses came to an end just before 5 p.m.
Testimony from more defense witnesses is expected to resume Wednesday morning
and last the duration of the day. The jury is expected to deliberate on
Martin's fate - life in prison or the death penalty - by Thursday, said
McIntosh County District Court Judge James Bland.
(source: Muskogee Phoenix)
LOUISIANA----new death sentence
Death sentence for man who killed a woman and 2 young daughters
A Houma man should be put to death for killing a woman and her 2 daughters then
torching their Lockport apartment, a jury decided Tuesday.
The 12-member jury reached a unanimous decision after an 8-week trial that
resulted Sunday in the conviction of David Brown, 38, on 3 counts of 1st-degree
murder.
The same jury gave Brown the death penalty for the Nov. 4, 2012, slayings of
29-year-old Jacquelin Nieves and her daughters, 7-year-old Gabriela and
1-year-old Izabela.
Prosecutors said Brown also sexually assaulted Jacquelin and Gabriela. A
forensic pathologist who conducted the victims' autopsies determined Jacquelin
and Izabela died from stab wounds, while Gabriela died of smoke inhalation.
(source: WWL TV news)
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