March 31
DELAWARE:
Prosecutors say Del. death penalty differs from Florida
State prosecutors argue Delaware's death penalty statute avoids the pitfalls of
the Florida statute.
Prosecutors are arguing to the Delaware Supreme Court that the state's capital
punishment process avoids the pitfalls that made the the U.S. Supreme Court
strike down Florida's process.
The U.S. Supreme Court in January found that Florida's scheme gave too much
power to judges, and not enough to juries. The Delaware Supreme Court is now
weighing whether Delaware's process is also unconstitutional in light of that
decision.
3 attorneys from the Delaware Department of Justice, including Chief of Appeals
Elizabeth R. McFarlan, filed a 44-page brief Wednesday refuting arguments made
by public defenders that Delaware's statute is unconstitutional.
"Delaware's capital sentencing procedure provides the constitutional safeguards
the United States Supreme Court concluded were lacking in Florida," they wrote.
The DOJ did not wish to comment beyond what was filed in court.
In Delaware, the process of sentencing someone to death requires multiple
steps.
Once a person is found guilty of 1st-degree murder, the jury must unanimously
agree that the evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt that at least one of 22
statutory aggravating factors exists.
Then, each juror has to decide whether the aggravating factors outweigh the
mitigating factors. That decision does not need to be unanimous, and the judge
is not bound by those findings.
The jury's verdict is advisory, leaving judges with the final authority in
sentencing.
"Nothing in [the Florida decision] prevents a state from having the judge
determine the sentence," the prosecutors wrote.
They said Florida's death penalty process looks similar to an older version of
Delaware's statute. However, the General Assembly in 2002 changed the statute,
barring the Superior Court from imposing a death sentence unless a jury first
determines unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt that at least one
statutory aggravating circumstance exists.
"Florida's statute retained the role of the jury as advisor, akin to the 1991
version of [Delaware's law]," they wrote.
Delaware is one of 32 states with capital punishment. The last execution in the
state was in 2012, when Shannon Johnson, 28, was killed by lethal injection.
Johnson had been convicted in the 2006 shooting death of Cameron Hamlin, 26, an
aspiring musician.
Delaware, Alabama and Florida are the only states that allow judges to override
a jury's recommendation of life and, instead, impose a sentence of death.
Following the Florida ruling, attorneys and judges questioned what they could
mean in Delaware, where there are over two dozen pending death penalty cases
and 14 men on death row.
The Delaware Supreme Court agreed to consider 5 questions of the law and to
hear arguments from both sides. President Judge Jan R. Jurden issued a
temporary stay on all pending capital murder trials while the issue is
resolved.
The court is using as a test case that of Benjamin Rauf, the Temple University
law graduate charged with gunning down classmate Shazi Uppal, 27, in the
parking lot of a Hockessin nursing home last summer. State prosecutors are
seeking the death penalty for Rauf.
(source: delawareonline.com)
GEORGIA----impending execution
Joshua Bishop waits on courts to decide if he will be executed
After taking the night to think about it, the 5 members of the State Board of
Pardons and Paroles this morning rejected Joshua Bishop's plea for clemency.
The decision was announced a little more than 9 hours before the 41-year-old is
scheduled to die by lethal injection for the 1994 murder of Leverett Morrison
in Baldwin County.
If he is put to death, Bishop will be the 3rd man Georgia has executed this
year. There is another lethal injection scheduled for April 12; Kenneth Fults,
who was convicted of murdering his neighbor in 1996.
Bishop was 19 when he and 36-year-old Mark Braxley murdered Morrison because
they wanted the keys to his Jeep.
The 3 men had spent much of June 25, 1994, drinking at a local bar before they
moved their party to Braxley's trailer where they smoked crack.
Morrison, 35, was asleep when Bishop tried to fish his keys out of his pocket.
Morrison woke and challenged him. Bishop and Braxley hit him with a car battery
and then beat him with a curtain rod. They left his body between 2 dumpsters,
set fire to his Jeep and returned to Braxley's trailer to clean the murder
scene. They they went back to the bar to drink.
While Bishop confessed to the Morrison murder - as well as one investigators
did not yet know about - he still went to trial and was ultimately sentenced to
die. Braxley, however, pleaded guilty and is serving a sentence of life without
parole.
The 2 were never tried on charges of killing Ricky Lee Wills 2 weeks before
they murdered Morrison but evidence of Wills' murder was used to secure a death
sentence for Bishop. Bishop and Braxley had killed Wills because he had, had
sexual contact with Bishop's mother, a prostitute and drug and alcohol addict.
(source: Atlanta Journal Constitution)
FLORIDA:
Jury could hear Cocoa man's death penalty case Monday
A jury could be impaneled by early next week to begin hearing opening
statements and arguments in the death penalty case of a man charged with
burying a 1-time beauty contestant in concrete and sand.
Prosecutors say 37-year-old Vahtiece Alfonzo Kirkman, already serving a life
sentence in an unrelated 2006 robbery-related shooting death, carried out the
act after suspecting 22-year-old Bahamian national Darice Knowles of sharing
information about the slaying with a Cocoa police officer.
This week, attorneys for both sides questioned dozens of potential jurors in
the Moore Justice Center courtroom of Brevard Circuit Judge Jeffrey Mahl.
The jury pool was questioned about stances on the death penalty, law
enforcement connections and other issues that could turn up in the court case.
A final 12-member jury could be impaneled by Monday.
Prosecutors want death for Cocoa man who buried woman alive
The death penalty case could last another 2 weeks as prosecutors present
evidence linking Kirkman to the slaying. On Thursday, Kirkman walked into the
courtroom wearing a cast and sling on his right arm. The injury was
unexplained.
Still in chains, Kirkman looked over to his mother in the audience and then sat
at the defense table, talking quietly with his attorney Frank Bankowitz.
Knowles disappeared in 2006 but her body was recovered by Cocoa detectives in
2010. The remains - encased in dirt and concrete - were found a heavily-wooded
site off of State Road 524 in Cocoa after a tip from a South Carolina inmate
who shared a cell with the victim's boyfriend, Christopher Pratt.
Pratt later took a plea deal in the case and could testify against Kirkman in
the death penalty trial.
(source: Florida Today)
**********************
Tommy Zeigler attorneys ask for DNA testing - again
A 40-year-old murder case that shocked Central Florida, casting a beloved
community member as a heinous killer and sending him to death row, is getting a
new set of eyes. The Medill Justice Project, an award-winning investigative
journalism center that examines wrongful convictions, has selected to work on
Zeigler's case from thousands of request it receives.
In a chilled room on the 1st floor of Orlando's courthouse, a locked steel door
holds captive what some say will prove Tommy Zeigler's innocence.
A blood-stained shirt, 8 firearms and fingernail clippings.
10 floors above in Orange-Osceola Circuit Judge Reginald Whitehead's courtroom,
attorneys on Wednesday fought over the items and whether they should be tested
again for DNA.
About half a dozen tubs house the evidence collected on Christmas Eve 1975,
when Zeigler's Winter Garden Furniture Store became a bloody crime scene. His
wife, in-laws and a store customer were beaten and killed there.
Zeigler's lawyers say never-before-done exams could exonerate the death-row
inmate. If he attacked, bludgeoned and shot the victims, his DNA should be on
them, and their blood should be on him.
"This is probably the most momentous time in the history of this case,"
attorney Dennis Tracey III said in opening statements on Wednesday. "Modern day
technology can finally resolve what has been at issue for the last 40 years."
Prosecutors oppose the DNA testing request because one was conducted in 2004.
The results were not convincing enough to free Zeigler then and they won't be
now, said Assistant State Attorney Kenneth Nunnelley. He called the techniques
"suspect" and questioned if they would provide pertinent information.
People touched by the case in different ways gathered for the post-conviction
motion, putting four decades of history on display. Zeigler's original trial
attorney Ralph Hadley sat in the front row of the courtroom, across the aisle
from Orange-Osceola State Attorney Jeff Ashton, who prosecuted Zeigler in a
1989 resentencing hearing.
Familes of the victims came too. Relatives of Eunice Zeigler and her parents,
Perry and Virginia Edwards, shared a bench with descendants of store customer
Charlie Mayes. Zeigler, now 70, did not attend, but his supporters were there
wearing "exonerate Tommy Zeigler stickers."
And newcomers have joined the case. DNA expert Richard Eikelenboom testified
about a number of new tests he could conduct that could determine if Zeigler
shot Perry Edwards at close range and dragged Eunice.
Eikelenboom of Colorado said he could find whether Zeigler's DNA was
transferred to other victims in the attack through a something called Touch
DNA.
"There will be transfer DNA if you close contact and you grab someone," said
Eikelenboom of Colorado. "If you are beating someone, then transfer of blood is
also very likely."
On cross examination, Nunnelley tried to have Eikelenboom's testimony thrown
out because he had not reviewed court transcripts. Eikelenboom testified he
learned about the case through a documentary and forensic tests conducted so
far.
(source: Orland Sentinel)
KANSAS:
Kansas jury recommends death penalty for Kyle Flack, who murdered 3 adults and
a baby
Jurors on Thursday recommended the death penalty for an eastern Kansas man
convicted of killing 4 people. FOX 4's Shannon O'Brien is in the courtroom
where last week, the jury convicted 30-year-old Kyle Flack of capital murder in
the deaths of 21-year-old Kaylie Bailey and her 18-month-old daughter, Lana.
1 of the aggravating factors for the death penalty is that he killed both of
them in 1 action. Kansas has not executed anyone since 1965.
Flack was also convicted of premeditated 1st-degree murder for killing
31-year-old Steven White and 2nd-degree murder for killing 30-year-old Andrew
Stout.
They were killed on separate days in the spring of 2013 near a rural farmhouse
where Flack sometimes stayed in Ottawa, about 50 miles southwest of Kansas
City.
Prosecutors have said it's unclear what led to the shootings. The adults'
bodies were found at the farm, while the child's body was found in a suitcase
floating in a creek.
"I do think justice was served," Andrew Stout's brother said after the jury's
sentencing recommendation. "But at the same time, you know, as a human being...
all families,including Kyle's, Kyle Flack's family, I think lost."
FOX 4's Shannon O'Brien reports that there was a gasp in the courtroom when the
jury delivered its decision. Flack had entered the courtroom in an upbeat mood,
even whistling as he was brought in. As he left, he blew a kiss to his mother.
During the sentencing phase, the intensity in the courtroom was high, with the
state arguing that Flack should die for killing Kaylee and Lana Bailey.
The defense presented Flack's difficult childhood and upbringing, highlighting
generational mental illness and abuse. His attorney cried while talking to the
jury about Flack being raped by his stepfather at 8 years old; a passionate
plea begging the jury to spare Flack's life.
"He didn't choose any of that. And so what do you expect of someone who comes
out like that? How's he supposed to make any good choices?" said defense
attorney Timothy Frieden.
Frieden was quick to follow up, stating they are not using Flack's upbringing
as an excuse for the murders, just a plea for life, not death, asking for
mercy.
"You are making a choice. Choose life. Choose it. It's your choice. Don't make
a choice that you may regret, don't make a choice you are going to have to live
with and someday say, 'the law said it was okay, it was my job,'" Frieden
pleaded.
While the defense asked for mercy, the state is pushing for justice.
"A 21-year-old mother shot in the back of the head followed by her 18-month-old
daughter shot in the back. You have to make a decision, what is appropriate
justice, what is appropriate justice?" said Deputy Attorney General Victor
Braden.
Bailey's family and friends sat in court sobbing as Braden showed the evidence
he says Flack used to bind Kaylee Bailey's hands behind her back, gag her
mouth, and forced her to her knees, before shooting her in the head, her
daughter Lana standing in front of her mother watching until Flack killed her,
too.
"He couldn't look her in the face. He shot her in the back, and Lana landed on
top of her mother," said Braden.
The judge will ultimately decide whether to accept the jury's recommendation,
and most judges do. Flack will go before the judge again for official
sentencing on May 18.
(source: fox4kc.com)
OREGON:
Push against death penalty continued ---- Florida death row chaplain appeals
for Oregon to ban the practice
Dale Recinella, a Florida death row chaplain who opposes the death penalty,
speaks at University of Portland. He said the death penalty in the U.S. is
rooted in slavery and vigilante lynchings in the south.
----
Death penalty events
-- Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty hosts a session on the
Year of Mercy 5 p.m.-8 p.m. Thursday, April 7 at All Saints Parish.
Keynote speaker will be Becky O'Neil McBrayer, who 10 years ago lost her mother
and stepfather to murder at the hands of her youngest brother.
O'Neil McBrayer, a graduate of All Saints and Central Catholic, broke years of
public silence on the tragedy in an interview last year with the Catholic
Sentinel. A former campaign manager, she is now director of community programs
at St. Andre Bessette Parish and a board member of OADP.
Also speaking at the event will be Father Tim Mockaitis, pastor of Queen of
Peace Parish in Salem and leader of pro-life activities for the Archdiocese of
Portland.
Ron Steiner, chairman of the board of OADP, will give listeners ideas for
turning faith into action.
-- Elsewhere, the Oregon Innocence Project helps convicted Oregonians prove
their innocence. In May, the organization is bringing a released death row
prisoner to speak.
Kirk Bloodsworth of Maryland was the nation's 1st death row inmate to be
exonerated using DNA evidence. He will tell the story of how he came to be
wrongfully convicted for the murder of a 9 year old in 1984 and was in prison
for almost a decade. Testing uncovered the real killer, who pleaded guilty to
the crimes and is now serving a life sentence.
Like several Oregon death row inmates, Bloodsworth converted to Catholicism
behind bars and is now advocates for an end to the death penalty.
"If it can happen to an honorably discharged Marine Corps veteran like me, it
can happen to anybody," Bloodsworth said while choking up at a Maryland State
Senate hearing on the death penalty in 2007. "1 innocent person is worth every
death-row inmate in the country."
A documentary called "Bloodsworth: An Innocent Man" has been released.
At 7 p.m., Wednesday, May 11, in the Living Room Theater in Southwest Portland,
Bloodsworth will host a screening of the film. He'll also speak at a benefit
for the Oregon Innocence Project, set for 5:30 p.m.-9 p.m. Thursday, May 12 at
Urban Studio in Northwest Portland.
For more information, go to:
http://ojrc.info/oregon-innocence-project-fundraiser-with-kirk-bloodsworth/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Even though Oregon doesn't use the death penalty it keeps on the books,
outlawing executions in the state would help topple the practice nationwide.
That's 1 message a lay Catholic death row chaplain from Florida delivered last
month on an Oregon tour. Dale Recinella spoke at Central Catholic High and the
University of Portland and met with ministers and other citizens in Salem and
Eugene.
Recinella, a retired attorney, says the Supreme Court looks at policy in the
preponderance of states when deciding cases that set national legal standards.
"I need you to get rid of the death penalty in Oregon," he told a gym full of
Central Catholic juniors. "That could help tip the balance."
Those students will be eligible to vote in 2018. That's when Oregonians for
Alternatives to the Death Penalty plans to have a ban placed on the state
ballot.
Recinella, who retired in 1989 from a lucrative post clearing big Wall Street
financial deals, calls the death penalty a "legal monstrosity" from the
pre-bronze age.
"It must have been a great idea in 4000 B.C., but we don't need it any more,"
he says.
Recinella once lived a lavish life. His bedroom was the size of three Habitat
for Humanity houses. He commuted from Florida to New York regularly. Then a bad
oyster brought him to the brink of death. A priest administered last rites.
"I found myself before Christ and he wanted to know what I was doing with his
gifts," Recinella says. "Well, I was making a whole lot of money. Jesus asked,
'What about my people who are suffering?' My selfishness became so overwhelming
I could not bear it."
He prayed for another chance and recovered.
He and wife Susan, parents of 5, began serving people on the streets in
Tallahassee and eventually began a ministry for AIDS patients. A prison warden
heard of their work and invited Recinella to serve inmates, a ministry
Recinella resisted until his daughters told him to man up and do the work. The
girls cited Matthew 25 - "what you do for the least of these, you do for me."
That led him to death row. And Susan, a clinical psychologist, began a ministry
of helping families of the inmates, especially once an execution date is set.
"To really know about the death penalty is to lose support for it," said
Recinella, who attended Notre Dame Law School. He says the death penalty most
people support is a sanitized fiction.
Recinella says the death penalty is not for inmates who commit the worst
crimes, but for those who can't afford good lawyers. New methods of criminal
investigation and legal reviews have resulted in the exoneration of scores of
death row inmates.
About 85 % of all U.S. executions in the last 40 years have taken place in
former slave states. Recinella argues that the death penalty rose in the
American south as a way to replace vigilante killings.
"The death penalty in the United States is rooted in the death penalty of
slavery, midwived into the modern era by 70 years of lynchings," Recinella
said. "The same trees, the same executions. But now it was legal."
Racial bias continues in capital punishment, he said, citing statistics showing
that, even when all else is equal, the death penalty is imposed more often when
the victim is white, especially if the killer is black.
Recinella reminded listeners that the U.S. is the only western democracy that
still imposes the death penalty.
Florida has more than 400 prisoners on death row. Recinella must give the
inmates Communion through a small hole in the thick metal door.
He has accompanied more than 30 prisoners through their executions. His worst
day on death row came when he assisted a convicted veteran who he really
believed was innocent. He had to pull the man's daughters off him when it came
time for the lethal injection, with the young women wailing, "Why do they have
to kill my daddy? Why can't they just let him live in prison?"
"It must have been a great idea in 4000 B.C., but we don't need it any more." -
Death row chaplain Dale Recinella on the death penalty
But life on death row is a dodgy affair. Florida's is often a hot and humid
place with no air conditioning. The heat index can reach 135 in the cells. Bugs
populate the block, including fire ants. Inmates stuff tissue in their noses
and ears so the biting insects won't enter those orifices in the middle of the
night.
"What is the standard of care for people we are holding until we kill them?"
Recinella asks.
Recinella was chaplain for an inmate who died in agony after a botched lethal
injection. The intravenous ports were misaligned and the man writhed for 30
minutes, suffering severe chemical burns inside both arms.
In a talk to about 60 people at the University of Portland, he debunked
biblical arguments for the death penalty, a topic on which he has written a
book. The Hebrew death penalty had more than 40 absolute requirements.
Among them, witnesses must have nothing to gain, there must be more than
circumstantial evidence and suspects are not to have confessed. The U.S. meets
none of criteria, Recinella says.
He admits that the book of Exodus calls for "life for life," but points out the
same passage also prescribes "eye for eye," "burn for burn," and "limb for
limb." People who would consider gouging out a prisoner's eye, torching his
body or amputating limbs in prison still support the death penalty he says,
puzzled. One section of the Bible demands death for those who eat forbidden
meat.
Death penalty advocates often cite Romans 13:4 to support their cause, saying
Paul's reference to the "sword" of government indicates an approval of capital
punishment. Recinella points to scholars who say the word translated as "sword"
is more like a knife, an ancient symbol of judicial authority, not a tool of
execution.
"We have to come back to people to explain to them that working from the Bible
does not lead them to the answer they think it does," Recinella says. "We can't
blame this on God."
Pope John Paul set the church on course for opposition in the U.S. in 1999 when
he said methods of incarceration are so good that the need for the death
penalty is "practically nonexistent." Recinella says homilies and other
Catholic statements against the practice exploded after that.
"I can't find anyone who can give me a good factual reason to keep the death
penalty," he says.
19 states have banned capital punishment and 4, including Oregon, have put it
on hold. Texas is by far the state executing the most prisoners, 531 in the
last 40 years.
Ron Steiner, chairman of the board for Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death
Penalty, urged students to talk to friends, write to their lawmakers and post
their beliefs on social media. He also passed wrist bands and buttons calling
for abolition.
Steiner says Oregon spends more than $28 million per year to maintain a death
penalty the state does not use, cash that goes mostly to attorneys.
"The death penalty is a welfare-to-work program for state lawyers," Recinella
quipped.
Steiner said banning the death penalty could fund better mental health
treatment and early childhood education, 2 measures that can prevent violent
crime.
"It is about the person on death row, but it's also about us as a people,"
Steiner says. "Is this the kind of image we want to project to our children?"
(source: Catholic Sentinel)
USA:
Theodore Shoebat: 'Sluts' Who Have Abortions Should Be Put To Death
Extremist right-wing activist and Donald Trump supporter Theodore Shoebat
posted a video last night praising Trump's short-lived call to punish women who
have abortions, declaring that "sluts" who have abortions should be put to
death.
"You pro-life bastards!" Shoebat screamed at the anti-choice groups who
criticized Trump's initial position. "You are useless scum. Bastards. Pigs.
Swine. Lower than the devils that you claim to be fighting against because you
do not follow the law of God."
Shoebat, who was recently featured in Janet Porter's anti-gay documentary
"Light Wins" along with several Republican presidential candidates, members of
Congress and leading anti-gay activists, then cited Leviticus as he declared
that "all these sluts who kill their own children" should be put to death.
"They had a choice to keep their legs closed," he stated. "They could have
controlled themselves, and they got the abortions and they murdered their own
children. Let me tell you something, I believe in the death penalty for these
women and I believe that God himself agrees with me."
(source: rightwingwatch.org)
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