[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----IDAHO, KAN., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

June 23



IDAHO:

State Files Intent to Seek Death Penalty for Alofa Time


In Caldwell, state prosecuters have filed an intent to seek the death
penalty for Alofa Time.

Time, 51 was formally arraigned Friday morning in Canyon County Court. Now
that the State's intentions for seeking the death penalty are known, Third
Judicial District Administrative Judge Gregory M. Culet is allowing Time
more time to make up his mind about how he will plea.

Judge Culet scheduled a hearing on Friday, June 30th for Time to answer to
charges of 1st Degree Murder. He is accused of killing his estranged wife
at their Nampa home on Wednesday, June 14th and then transporting her
severed head in the back of his pick-up truck.

Time also faces two Second Degree Murder charges in Ada County for
allegedly intentionally causing a car crash which killed a Boise woman and
her four-year old daughter. According to court records, a 6 to 8 page
suicide note was found at the scene of the crash detailing Time's motive
for allegedly killing his wife.

(source: Fox 12 News)






KANSAS:

Death row inmate pleads guilty of Granite City rape


A man on death row in Kansas pleaded guilty Thursday of raping a Granite
City woman nearly 14 years ago.

The plea, and the 20-year sentence given to Douglas Belt, are meant to
give closure to the victim, said Stephanee Smith, a spokeswoman for the
Madison County State's Attorney's Office.

Belt broke into the victim's Granite City mobile home on Nov. 22, 1992,
while she and her 2 children were sleeping.

He raped the woman, then 21, at knifepoint. She could not give a detailed
description of her attacker and no fingerprints were found.

Belt was an over-the-road trucker and never lived in this area.

The crime went unsolved for 10 years. Police in Wichita, Kan., learned of
Belt's link to the Granite City crime when they ran his DNA information
through an FBI database.

His DNA matched DNA in semen from the Granite City rape, Smith said.

Belt was sentenced to death in Kansas in November 2004 for the
decapitation murder of housekeeper Lucille Gallegos in Kansas' Sedgwick
County.

The status of the death penalty verdict against Belt, 44, is in dispute
because the Kansas Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in December
2004.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to review that decision.

(source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch)






CALIFORNIA:

Prosecutors seek death penalty for man charged in woman's slaying


Prosecutors said Thursday they would seek the death penalty for a man
accused of stabbing a woman dozens of times at her San Diego County home.

The decision was announced during a hearing for Derlyn Ray Threats, 25,
who is charged with murdering 24-year-old Carolyn Neville of Vista in
September.

District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said she chose to seek the death penalty
after meeting with the victim's family.

Threats' lawyer, Sloan Ostbye, said she was disappointed by the move.

"There are a lot of mitigating aspects to my client's childhood that I
wished (Dumanis) to consider," Ostbye said.

Vista is 30 miles northwest of downtown San Diego.

(source: Associated Press)






USA:

Doctors See Way to Cut Suffering in Executions


A flood of lawsuits challenging lethal injection as cruel and unusual has
stalled executions in some states and may prompt others to abandon them.
And a Supreme Court ruling last week made it easier for death-row
prisoners to file such suits.

But medical experts say the current method of lethal injection could
easily be changed to make suffering less likely. Even the doctor who
devised the technique 30 years ago says that if he had it to do over
again, he would recommend a different method.

Switching to an injection method with less potential to cause pain could
undercut many of the lawsuits. But so far, in this chapter of the nation's
long and tangled history with the death penalty, no state has moved to
alter its lethal injection protocol.

At the core of the issue is a debate about which matters more, the comfort
of prisoners or that of the people who watch them die. A major obstacle to
change is that alternative methods of lethal injection, though they might
be easier on inmates, would almost certainly be harder on witnesses and
executioners.

With a different approach, death would take longer and might involve
jerking movements that the prisoner would not feel but that would be
unpleasant for others to watch.

"Policy makers have historically considered the needs of witnesses in
devising protocols" for execution, said Dr. Mark Dershwitz, a professor of
anesthesiology at the University of Massachusetts who has testified about
the drugs used in lethal injection.

"There's an innumerably long list of medications that can be given to
cause someone to die," Dr. Dershwitz said. But, he added, the emphasis on
ensuring a speedy death may have prevented states from considering all the
options.

Deborah W. Denno, a Fordham University law professor who is an expert on
execution methods, said speculation about whether any states would change
their procedures was "the question of the moment." Professor Denno said
some states might tinker with their procedures just enough to avoid court
cases.

And Dr. Jay Chapman, a forensic pathologist who created the nation's 1st
lethal injection protocol, in Oklahoma in 1977, said that were he to do it
once more, he would not recommend the 3-drug concoction now in widespread
use.

Instead, Dr. Chapman said, an overdose of one drug, a barbiturate - the
method veterinarians use to end the lives of sick animals - would
painlessly cause prisoners to lose consciousness, stop breathing and die.
"Hindsight is always 20/20," he said.

Even some opponents of the death penalty favor such a change in lethal
injection technique, reasoning that if execution cannot be banned, it
should at least be made more humane.

Dr. Chapman's original approach, still the policy in the federal prison
system and in most of the 37 death-penalty states that use lethal
injection, calls for an overdose of a barbiturate, sodium thiopental,
which causes unconsciousness and in sufficient doses can also halt
breathing. The sodium thiopental is followed by two other drugs:
pancuronium bromide, or Pavulon, which causes paralysis and halts
breathing as well, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart within
seconds.

But opponents of lethal injection say that in some cases, the 2nd and 3rd
drugs may cause severe suffering. They argue that the drugs may be
mishandled because most doctors and nurses refuse to participate in
executions, leaving the responsibility to people with less training.

If the sodium thiopental did not work because the dose was too low, for
example, or if the drugs were given in the wrong order, an inmate could
still be conscious when the paralyzing drug and the potassium were
injected. In that case, the paralyzing agent would cause a feeling of
suffocation. And the potassium chloride would cause a burning sensation,
muscle cramping and chest pain like that of a heart attack.

The pain from the potassium would not last long: once the drug stopped the
heart, the person would lose consciousness in 10 to 15 seconds, Dr.
Dershwitz said. But while the pain lasted, the inmate would be paralyzed
and unable to complain, and would appear serene to witnesses.

Pavulon "gives a false sense of peacefulness," said Dr. David A. Lubarsky,
chairman of anesthesiology at the University of Miami.

Indeed, because drugs like Pavulon can mask suffering, many states outlaw
them for animal euthanasia.

Execution by barbiturate alone would take longer than the current method,
Dr. Dershwitz said. Although prisoners would quickly lose consciousness
and stop breathing, they could not be pronounced dead until electrical
activity in the heart had stopped. That could take as long as 45 minutes.

In addition, Dr. Dershwitz said, barbiturates could cause "significant
involuntary jerking" that would be disturbing to witnesses even though an
unconscious prisoner would not feel it.

Intravenous barbiturates are not the only option, Dr. Dershwitz said.
Drugs could also be injected into a muscle instead of a vein, to avoid
another source of lawsuits: pain among inmates whose veins are hard to
find. But injection into a muscle would take much longer to work than the
intravenous method.

Another possibility might be an oral dose of barbiturates, like those
doctors in Oregon can prescribe to assist suicide of some terminally
patients. But prisoners would have to swallow the pills, and Professor
Denno said there had never been a procedure in which prisoners had been
required to participate in their own executions, essentially agreeing to
commit suicide.

Dr. Chapman said that when he first proposed the three-drug technique, he
imagined that it would be carried out by people with enough medical
training to start intravenous lines, mix and measure the drugs, and give
them in the right order.

He was then Oklahoma's chief medical examiner, and came up with the
formula at the request of a legislator who was looking for a humane
alternative to the electric chair. His idea became law in Oklahoma and was
also adopted by 36 other states.

Once the lethal injection laws were passed, professional groups like the
American Medical Association, state medical societies and associations for
anesthesiologists and nurses quickly distanced themselves, saying it would
be unethical for members to participate. That creates a Catch-22 in which
the medical establishment refuses to perform lethal injections and yet
says no one else is qualified to do so.

Although some doctors and nurses do help in executions, lethal injection
in many states is carried out by paramedics, technicians or other prison
employees who do not have special training in anesthesia.

Dr. Chapman said that his original protocol had called for enough
barbiturate to cause death by itself and that he had added the Pavulon
just as a backup, and the potassium chloride to speed the process by
stopping the heart quickly. "I think the whole concept of execution is
that it's carried out rapidly," he said.

Whether inmates have actually felt pain or suffocation from lethal
injection is not known with certainty.

"I don't think any human has had a giant bolus of potassium chloride
injected and then come back to chat about it," Dr. Lubarsky said.

But in February a federal judge in California said execution records
showed that some prisoners might have suffered. He gave the state 2
options: either a doctor had to be present to make sure a condemned inmate
was unconscious before the 2nd and 3rd drugs were injected, or the
execution had to be performed with sodium thiopental alone.

California found 2 anesthesiologists who agreed to attend its next
scheduled execution, of Michael Morales, a murderer. But both doctors
later withdrew, and the state said it could not find other medical experts
to help carry out the sentence. The execution has been postponed at least
until September, when the court will examine the state's lethal injection
protocol.

In challenging the protocol, Mr. Morales's lawyer, the onetime Whitewater
prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr, cited an article published last year in The
Lancet, a British medical journal. The main author was Dr. Lubarsky.

The researchers obtained toxicology reports on blood taken after death
from 49 executed prisoners in four states, and found that 43 % had levels
of sodium thiopental so low that they might have suffered during
execution.

"The data suggest that some people are awake," Dr. Lubarsky said.

But other anesthesiology experts, even some who oppose the death penalty,
have challenged the findings, saying many of the blood samples were taken
too long after death to give a reliable measure of what the drug's level
was during execution.

Dr. Lubarsky acknowledged that the findings were being disputed and said
he and his colleagues were doing additional research.

"We may find that we're wrong," he said. "We'll continue to search for a
better understanding of what's going on, one that will hopefully help
inform and guide the discussion taking place around this issue."

(source: The New York Times)

*********************

Groups to Highlight Failures of the Death Penalty on 30th Anniversary of
Gregg Decision


News Advisory:

-- Groups to Highlight Failures of the Death Penalty on 30th Anniversary
of Gregg Decision

-- United Methodist Church Marks 50th Anniversary of its Call to End
Executions

-- As part of Starvin' For Justice 2006; The 13th Annual Fast And Vigil To
Abolish The Death Penalty At The U.S. Supreme Court

WHO: United Methodist Church Bishop Ray Chamberlain, Amnesty International
USA Executive Director Larry Cox, Death Row Survivors Gary Beeman, Kirk
Bloodsworth, Shujaa Graham, Ron Keine, and Ray Krone, Murder Victim Family
Members Bill Pelke and George White, and other leaders of various
anti-death penalty organizations.

WHAT: Press Conference

WHEN: 10:30 a.m. Friday, June 30

WHERE: On the sidewalk in front of the United States Supreme Court in
Washington, DC

WHY: July 2, 2006 marks the 30th anniversary of the Gregg V. Georgia
decision in which the United States Supreme Court upheld laws written to
reinstate the death penalty after all death penalty laws were struck down
by the Furman decision in 1972. Leaders of the anti-death penalty movement
will speak out about recent developments regarding the issue, noting how
the death penalty continues to fail as a public policy in the United
States.

Also, the United Methodist Church is this year marking the 50th
anniversary of becoming the first major Christian denomination to call for
the abolition of the death penalty in the United States.

This press conference is part of the Annual Fast & Vigil to Abolish the
Death Penalty at the US Supreme Court, wherein anti- death penalty
activists will converge on Washington, D.C. from Thursday, June 29 through
Sunday, July 2 for four days of activities commemorating the historic 1972
and 1976 Supreme Court rulings that suspended the death penalty in the
United States and later allowed executions to resume. This is the 13th
year in a row that the Abolitionist Action Committee has held its annual
Fast and Vigil between the dates of these 2 landmark decisions. Activists,
many of whom are fasting the entire 4 days, are travelling to Washington
D.C. from across the United States and beyond.

Highlights of this highly visual and interactive annual event include live
music and evening teach-ins by death row survivors, murder victim family
members, and noted activists and scholars. Please see details at
http://www.abolition.org/starvin13.html

The Abolitionist Action Committee is an ad-hoc group of individuals
committed to highly visible and effective public education for
alternatives to the death penalty through nonviolent direct action.

Contact the AAC at: 800-973-6548, aac at abolition.org or Web:
http://www.abolition.org

Contact: Abe Bonowitz of the Abolitionist Action Committee, 561-371-5204
(cell), abe at abolition.org or David Elliot of the National Coalition to
Abolish the Death Penalty, 202-543-9577 ext. 16, 202-607-7036 (cell),
delliot at ncadp.org or Bill Mefford, United Methodist Church General Board
of Church and Society, 202-488-5657

(source : U.S. Newswire)

********************************

Capital juries and legal-speak


One of the premises of this column is that language is a source of
delight, but a serious business, too. There are, after all, places where
language is a matter of life and death. The deliberation room where a jury
considers sentencing options in a capital case is one of them.

I was reminded of this a few weeks ago while reporting on a national
conference on the death penalty. One of the presenters remarked en passant
that jurors passing sentence on a defendant found guilty of a capital
crime are instructed to consider "mitigating" or "aggravating" factors.

Quite often, he said, jurors don't really know what either of those words
means.

Hmm, I thought. I feel some research coming on.

In 1972, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the death
penalty, as then administered, was imposed so arbitrarily as to constitute
"cruel and unusual punishment." As jurisprudence has evolved since, it's
become clear that for a state to be "successful," if that's the word, in
administering capital punishment, it must follow a very narrow path
between arbitrariness on one side and inflexibility on the other hand.

And jury instructions - which tell the citizens in the deliberation room
how to consider "mitigating" and "aggravating" factors - have emerged as
critically important.

But they can be utterly baffling to jurors, researchers have found.

This, for instance, is from a court in Illinois: "If you do not
unanimously find from your consideration of all the evidence there are no
mitigating factors sufficient to preclude imposition of a death sentence,
then you should sign the verdict requiring the court to impose a sentence
other than death."

In lay terms: "To impose the death penalty, all jurors must agree that the
defendant did something much worse than just plain murder."

Actually, nationally known jury expert William Bowers told me the other
day, jury instructions are written in language that is meant to be
accessible - to other lawyers, that is. Judges are trying to "insulate
themselves against legal challenges," as he put it - to avoid having
verdicts overturned in higher courts. Thus they rely on instructions that
follow closely the language of statutes themselves and the case law that
grows out of them.

But jurors don't know legal-speak, says Richard Wiener, a professor at the
University of Nebraska who has studied juries. Perhaps worse, juries may
think they know what given words mean when they don't.

"Aggravation," for instance, is widely used to mean "irritation" or
"annoyance." My dictionary tags this usage as "informal," though, and in
the courtroom, "aggravate" is used in the stricter sense, "to make more
serious."

But jurors, considering "aggravating factors" in a capital case, are
likely to think they're being asked whether they feel the victim did
anything to annoy or provoke the defendant, Mr. Wiener reports.

Similarly, legal experts say "mitigating" (lessening the gravity or
culpability, or guilt, of an action) is often misinterpreted as referring
to a factor that makes a crime worse. Here's how one of Wiener's research
subjects defined "mitigating": "Psychologically thought through, like
premeditated. Where you think about it beforehand and have it planned out
- it's conceived."

Wiener's recommendation: Lose the multiple negatives, cut the extra
adjectives, and use flowcharts to show jurors where the case is in the
legal process, and what options are available at each step.

The actual language of a set of instructions can go back 50 or 100 years,
Wiener notes, and customary usage changes over time. " 'Wantonly vile
crime' - who talks like that?" Wiener asks rhetorically. "Maybe a hundred
years ago people did, but no one does now."

This weekly column appears with links at
http://weblogs.csmonitor.com/verbal_energy.

(source: The Christian Science Monitor)

**********************************

Death penalty is outmoded response to violent crime


The "Right to Life" is a term often associated with the abortion dilemma.

Sadly, for many, that is its only association. Taken in its full meaning,
"the right to life" is a statement recognizing that all life comes from
God, and ultimately returns to God as God determines.

We are responsible for the quality of the journey, not the beginning or
end of it. This applies to the whole discussion currently taking place in
our state centering on reinstituting the death penalty. I share with you
my views, the majority view in the Catholic Church and the view held in
several other religious communities.

The death penalty is an outmoded response to violent crime.

It is beneath us as persons, and as a society, to resort to killing the
killer.

It debases us and demeans our society, because it is our society taking
part in the very behavior we abhor in others. Why is that the case? The
answer to the why is best found in another question:

"What kind of a world do you want to live in?" Do you want a world where
violence leads to violence; where our best response to aggression is to
strike back at the aggressor? Or do you want to live in a world where we
not only teach our children to live with others; but we actually show them
how to do it? It is our choice. Rejecting the death penalty is a way to
reject violence as our personal and societal response to the violent.

So much of our willingness to abandon the death penalty depends on what we
view to be the purpose of our criminal justice system. Is it there to
punish or rehabilitate? This is another debate that goes on forever and is
argued on both sides, by any number of people of good will. However you
come down on that question, the death penalty is neither punishment nor
rehabilitation. Death does not rehabilitate. It is often the escape from
the consequences of violent behavior, not the punishment of the behavior.

Zacarias Moussaoui pleaded guilty to the 911 plot. Once he was sentenced
to life in prison, he immediately wanted to reverse his plea. Osama bin
Laden chimed in recently to announce that Moussaoui had no association
with him. Of course, he did this only after Moussaouis commercial value to
bin Laden was lost. There is no glory in being in prison for the rest of
your life. The real deterrent and punishment is a life spent in a cell
behind bars. Death is a release.

What do we do in place of the death penalty? Life in prison, not 13 years,
or 20 years, or 50 years or even 100 years. Life! Let me share an
experience I had a few years ago, as a chaplain at All Saints. I was asked
to see an 85 year old man. No other information about him was given to me.
As I entered his room, the first thing I noticed was that he was chained
to the bed and a guard was sitting next to him. I had seen that many times
in younger people; but this man was 85 years old. Imagine being 85, sick
and in the hospital, and not allowed to go to the bathroom alone. You are
not allowed to move about at all. Your family cannot be notified that you
are in the hospital, and so the only person who can visit you is the
chaplain. Life in prison is a punishment, that I choose not to imagine,
yet one that is so very appropriate for the very violent criminal and for
our society.

What about the cost of imprisoning someone for life? We are short of money
in every aspect of our national life. We do not have enough resources to
provide decent healthcare for our citizens, education goes begging and
social programs are always being cut. Spend more money on people held in
prison for life? Yes. Look at all we spend on violence and the terrible
cost to us of this expenditure. We could take a small portion of that
money and spend it on teaching the result of violence  life without
family, friends or future  life spent in prison.

(source: Commentary; Rev. William J. Dietzler is pastor of St. Paul the
Apostle parish in Racine. Parson to Person is written by community
religious leaders and coordinated by the Racine Clergy Association)