Oct. 25
TEXAS:
Rally against the death penalty held at State Capitol
Despite the rain, protesters held a rally Saturday afternoon at the State
Capitol calling on State leaders to get rid of the death penalty
Terri Been says her brother should not be on death row. Jeff Wood was convicted
of capital murder for the 1996 killing of a convenience store clerk in
Kerrville.
He did not pull the trigger - and she says he didn't know his friend would. A
federal judge agreed to stay Wood's execution back in 2008.
"We came within hours of losing him. We said what we thought would be our final
goodbyes. And they had to pull me out of the prison screaming for him so it
affects us, it affects family members. We're here to kind of bring attention to
that. You know, yes we feel for the victims in the situations but we are
victims of the system itself as well," said Terri.
"The way that the law is worded, it's very poorly worded. It allows for people
like my brother to be railroaded by the system. It said that he should have
anticipated a murder, um, is the way that the law, you know, so basically he
has to be a mind-reader."
The killer, Daniel Reneau, was executed in 2002.
The family of Rodney Reed also attended Saturday's rally.
Rodney was sentenced to die after a jury believed he killed Stacey Stites in
1996. He insists he's innocent.
Saturday's rally comes just 1 day after an attorney says he has new evidence
showing Stites' boyfriend - former police officer Jimmy Fennell - actually
killed her and another police officer looked into her death.
"It makes us feel good knowing that there is an investigation going on, it
gives us hope. It shows the content of his character. You know, he's doing 10
years in prison right now," said Roderick Reed, Rodney's brother, "We're very
optimistic and hopefully the truth will prevail and justice will prevail."
(source: KXAN news)
LOUISIANA:
Stewart, Thompson in runoff for Caddo DA
Retired state appeals court Judge James Stewart and prosecutor Dhu Thompson
emerged as the top 2 vote-getters Saturday in the Caddo Parish district
attorney's election. They will meet in a runoff on Nov. 21.
Stewart led the six-candidate field but was well short of the majority of votes
needed to win outright. Thompson was a strong 2nd.
The winner will serve the remainder of the term of the late District Attorney
Charles Scott, who died in April of a heart attack.
Stewart received 41 % of the vote, according to complete but unofficial
returns. Thompson, an assistant district attorney, received 36 %. They were
followed by LaLeshia Walker Alford, with 8 % of the vote; Casey Simpson, with 6
%; Lee Harville, with 5 %; and Mark Rogers, with 4 .
The race received national attention.
Billionaire George Soros of New York, a philanthropist known for his support of
liberal causes and racial justice, put a quarter of a million dollars into a
local political action committee that backed Stewart, a Democrat. Republicans
complained about outside money being put into a local race.
Soros' money came after national media attention focused on the Caddo district
attorney's office and the number of times it seeks the death penalty.
The latest report came from CBS News' 60 Minutes, which reported on the case of
Glenn Ford, who served nearly 30 years on Louisiana's death row before he was
released when evidence showed he was not the killer. The man who prosecuted
Ford, Marty Stroud, made a public apology for how he handled the case. Caddo
Parish gets more death sentences per capita than any other parish or county in
the United States. Acting District Attorney Dale Cox ignited the firestorm
after comments he made when he was an assistant district attorney: He said the
death penalty should be sought more often.
(source: KTBS news)
OHIO:
Cost of capital punishment far exceeds its value
On Monday, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction revised its
execution schedule, canceling all executions set for next year and giving 12
men a few more years of life, including Cleveland R. Jackson, of Lima, who was
scheduled to die July 20 for the 2002 Eureka Street killings.
The state took this action because it is having difficulty obtaining the proper
drugs needed to continue its own serial killing spree. To date, the state has
killed 393 people under the color of law.
Jackson's case is the perfect example of one of the many things wrong with
capital punishment.
On Jan. 3, 2002, Jackson and his half brother, Jeronique D. Cunningham, robbed
a group of 8 people at a home on Eureka Street and then fired their weapons
into the group from close range. 3-year-old Jayla Grant and 17-year-old
Leneshia Williams died of gunshot wounds.
Jackson is scheduled to die Sept. 13, 2018 - 16 years, 8 months and 11 days
after the shooting. The likelihood that Jackson is actually executed on that
date is extremely slim.
This length of time amounts to cruelty. The Supreme Court said as much more
than a century ago in 1890 when it said long delays and a prisoner's
uncertainty of his execution date could be agonizing and result in "immense
mental anxiety amounting to a great increase in the offender's punishment."
Today's death row inmates are essentially punished twice, the death sentence
and years of living conditions that are often akin to solitary confinement,
spending as much as 23 hours a day alone in a cell.
At what point does this violate the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?
When the country was founded, the time between conviction and execution could
be counted in days, now it is counted in decades.
When Allen County conducted its only execution - the April 7, 1871, (Good
Friday) hanging of Andrew Brentlinger for the Oct. 24, 1870, brutal murder of
his wife - it took 167 days from the time of the killing, and that was only
because Gov. Rutherford B. Hayes granted a reprieve. That is 167 days compared
to the 6,098 days or more for Jackson, if he is ever executed at all.
In 2012, the average time between sentencing and execution was 190 months,
almost 16 years. It is not unprecedented to have inmates executed after
spending more than 3 decades on death row. As an example, the state of Florida
is set to kill Jerry Correll on Thursday for the June 30, 1985, killing of four
family members. More than 30 years ago. His trial began the day after the space
shuttle Challenger explosion.
Of course, this is a Catch-22 in that we must take a deliberative approach to
reduce the possibility of an innocent being executed. Just last year, Henry
McCollum was exonerated in North Carolina and released from prison after
spending more than 30 years on death row.
That leads to another great reason to abolish the death penalty, the large
number of exonerations. Since 1973, there have been 156 death row exonerations,
including 26 in Florida. That is more exonerations than Ohio has death row
inmates.
There are many other excellent reasons to end capital punishment. A practical
one is that it almost always costs more money to execute someone than it does
to incarcerate them for the rest of their lives. In this era of runaway
government spending, the cost of capital punishment far exceeds its value.
Other reasons include prolonged suffering for victims' families, the lack of
deterrence value, most civilized countries have ended the practice, the lack of
qualified defense attorneys to handle death penalty cases, the arbitrariness of
the whole thing, some 10 % of those executed are mentally ill, most religions
oppose the practice, and the wide racial disparities in its application.
Most of all, the government shouldn't kill people.
In 2009, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote: "In Baze v. Rees, I suggested that
the 'time for a dispassionate, impartial comparison of the enormous costs that
death penalty litigation imposes on society with the benefits that it produces
has surely arrived.'"
Can we finally have that dispassionate discussion?
(source: Thomas J. Lucente Jr. is an Ohio attorney and night editor of The Lima
News)
*********************
Berea Man Admits To Killing Elderly Woman In Ohio
A Berea man who was accused of killing an elderly Ohio woman admits he did it,
but prosecutors are not accepting his guilty plea.
Daniel French faces charges of aggravated murder, burglary and robbery. He has
pled guilty to charges of aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, gross abuse
of a corpse, tampering with evidence and aggravated murder.
He is accused of choking and slashing 87-year-old Barbara Howe to death and
leaving her body in the trunk of her car. The murder happened in 2012.
On Wednesday prosecutors in Butler County, Ohio said they will not accept the
murder plea.This means French will have to face trial.
In Ohio Law, because French pleaded guilty to a serious charge like robbery,
the murder count will now carry the death penalty.
French was on the run for 2 years before being captured in Rockcastle County.
He told authorities, "I seen Ms. Howe's ghost and I apologized."
The opening statements for French's trial are scheduled for Monday and he faces
the death penalty if convicted. Sentencing for the 4 charges will take place
after the trial for aggravated murder.
(source: lex18.com)
ARKANSAS:
Is 23 years enough?----Expedite review of death penalty challenges
Don Davis should die.
That's what the people of Benton County, through a set of jurors selected from
among them, decided all the way back in 1992. Death by lethal injection, they
said. And Don Davis' date with death had been scheduled for last Wednesday. As
everyone has come to expect in death penalty cases, the judicial system didn't
allow the state to carry out the penalty. Arkansas' last execution was in 2005.
What's the point?
Arkansas' judicial system should expedite a review of claims by 8 inmates
facing the death penalty.
Why did those jurors 23 years ago conclude Davis deserved to die? Living in
Bentonville in 1990, Davis had become accustomed to bringing home items stolen
from homes he burglarized. One day, he arrived with a cache of items, but
appeared frightened to his roommates. "Somebody got hurt," he told them. Later
that October day, Richard Daniel of Rogers returned from a business trip and
found his garage door open, a door into the kitchen taped open. According to
court records, he was startled to see a Kool cigarette butt in a bowl on a
kitchen counter. Neither he nor his wife, Jane, smoked. He noticed a storeroom
door was opened. When he went inside, he found Jane on the floor. She had been
shot in the head.
Police eventually traced Davis to New Mexico, but he had pawned items in Las
Vegas earlier. Among them were items from the Daniels' home. After his arrest,
he asked for a cigarette. What kind, police asked. Kool Filter Kings, he said.
Masking tape holding a door open at the Daniels' neighbors' home, just like the
tape used at the Daniels' residence, had Davis' fingerprints on it. The bullet
that killed Jane Daniel, forensic evidence showed, came from a gun stolen from
the Daniels' next-door neighbor, a gun recovered at Davis' Bentonville
residence.
On appeals, judges found the evidence "more than sufficient to prove that Davis
murdered Jane Daniel while burglarizing her home."
Don Davis has exhausted his appeals, just as 7 other death row inmates in
Arkansas have done. Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Sept. 9 set execution dates for all
8, starting with Davis and Bruce Earl Ward on Oct. 21. The others were
scheduled to follow in November, December and January.
But they won't.
Responding to a lawsuit filed by the inmates over the combination of drugs the
state planned to use, Pulaski County Judge Wendell Griffin ordered a halt to
the executions. The Arkansas Supreme Court, in response to an appeal of
Griffin's decision by the state, said he had overstepped his legal authority,
but the High Court nonetheless stepped in with its own authority and issued a
stay of the executions.
The inmates argue the state must reveal the ingredients of the medicines to be
used in their executions. They also claim there's a substantial risk of pain in
the process, which would render an execution an act of unconstitutional cruel
and unusual punishment.
Here's the rub: Arkansas' limited supply of drugs to be used in executions
expires in June. Griffin, in a move critics say is designed as a barrier to
carrying out the sentences, has set a hearing date on the issues for March 1.
Why does it take more than four months to get to a hearing? The attorney
general of Arkansas wonders that, too, and has requested an expedited hearing.
Nothing about the case of Don Davis or his other death row inmates has been
expedited so far. He's been in prison for more than 2 decades avoiding the
sentence handed down by Benton County jurors. The judicial system should not
allow itself to be manipulated into more unnecessary delays.
Certainly, the issues raised regarding the lethal drugs should be fleshed out.
Carrying out the death penalty should be carefully done. But ultimately the
state is trying to carry out the legitimate sentences of Arkansas judicial
system. If the Supreme Court has any interest in carrying out justice, its
members should respond positively to the state's request for expedited
hearings. The inmates and their attorneys know delay is their friend because
the clock is ticking on the drugs' expiration date.
How long has the clock been ticking since Jane Daniel's execution?
Arkansas has the death penalty. It has the drugs, for now, to carry it out on 8
inmates who have had their many days in court. Arkansas' judicial system should
give a fair hearing to these latest concerns, but it should do so in such a way
that, if their ruling ultimately allows it, the state can carry out the
sentences imposed so long ago.
(source: Editorial, nwaonline.com)
MISSOURI----impending execution
Fetal alcohol syndrome should be considered in death penalty case
Ernest Johnson is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Nov. 3, but has
documented intellectual disability (IQ of 67) and fetal alcohol syndrome. The
death penalty in this case is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment of the
Constitution and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Atkins v. Virginia 536
U.S. 304 (2002).
We have no argument with his conviction of 3 counts of murder committed in
1994, but Ernest has had clear deficits from the very beginning. A 2005 report
by national forensic psychologist Dr. Natalie Brown specializing in cases of
individuals diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome is replete with documented
evidence of the characteristics of a child whose mother abused alcohol during
pregnancy, including attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity and small
stature. Plus, incomplete formation of the frontal lobe where executive
functioning development occurs results in poor judgment skills and
understanding consequences of behaviors, all of which are well-documented in
the now extensive literature on fetal alcohol syndrome and fetal alcohol
spectrum disorders.
Yet, none of this report has ever been admitted in the many appeals that have
been conducted in this case over the years.
The Missouri Chapter of the National Organization of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is
an organization dedicated to providing education and training on fetal alcohol
spectrum disorders as well as advocacy for these individuals who cannot speak
for themselves. As president of the Missouri chapter, I strongly encourage Gov.
Jay Nixon to remove the death penalty from Ernest Johnson.
Leigh Tenkku Lepper -- Lohman, Mo.
(source: Letter to the Editor, St.Louis Post-Dispatch)
*****************
Johnson's execution would be a sign of collective failure
We all are called to be our brothers' and sisters' keepers. Should Missouri
execute Ernest Lee Johnson as planned on Nov. 3, we would pitifully complete
our society's neglect of that role throughout his lifetime. He was convicted of
murdering Mary Bratcher, Fred Jones and Mable Scruggs in Columbia, but we all,
including myself, bear some responsibility for their tragic deaths.
Executing Ernest would sadly perpetuate our state's preference for blind
revenge over healing in a politicized justice system. It is one that
disproportionately metes out the harshest punishments for black people and
routinely discards rather than cares for the most vulnerable among us - even
ignoring the laws of our own land.
Ernest has an IQ of 67 - when averaging the adjusted scores in 8 tests between
ages 8 and 49 - establishing him as intellectually disabled. His condition was
present well before age 18, a necessary threshold to be considered as having
the disability. Individuals who have adaptive skill deficits in at least 2
life-skill areas meet another criterion.
One psychologist reported he possesses communication skills less than those of
a typical 5-year-old child. He repeated both 2nd and 3rd grades, was in special
education classes for the 3rd through 8th grades, then was held back again in
9th grade. That year, a special education teacher determined he had the reading
abilities of a student entering 2 grade.
Decades later, I got acquainted with Ernest over a few months while serving as
pastor of Second Baptist Church. As I testified in 2004, one Sunday in February
1994 he asked our congregation to pray for him as he fought a crack cocaine
habit. We all ardently did. But we became the next people to fail him,
neglecting to provide loving longer-term shelter and community to him.
A few days later he apparently smoked over the course of several hours about 10
grams of crack - a massive amount. I only recently learned he apparently was
also deeply distressed that his girlfriend had just ended their relationship.
Ernest, because of his disability, had never been able to live independently
and always needed others - a sibling, a woman friend or a penal institution to
provide him shelter.
Wanting to continue his binging, he sought out Ron Grant, his girlfriend's son
and his drug connection. The man provided him with a gun that, Grant testified,
Ernest said he planned to use to hold up the Casey's convenience store to get
money to buy something nice for his girlfriend. To this day, Ernest says said
he doesn't recall the events of that night.
I again extend my deepest condolences - and apologies - to the grieving loved
ones of the 3 people killed nearly 2 decades ago. I pray we in Missouri focus
our energies on promoting healing for those victimized by violence, preventing
such horrible incidents and cease being agents for death.
Perhaps the Missouri Supreme Court and other state officials are blinded by
rage over the gruesome Columbia murders, but they seem to be also suffering
from amnesia. After all, Gov. Bob Holden signed in 2001 a bipartisan bill
prohibiting the execution of people then termed "mentally retarded."
The next year, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the practice in its 2002 Atkins
v. Virginia decision. The court recognized "standards of decency" had evolved
across the nation - Missouri's statutory accomplishment was cited as a
significant piece of evidence. The court determined individuals identified as
being intellectually disabled must be held to a lesser level of consequence,
such as life without the possibility of parole.
Ernest's lifetime of neglect and abuse began before birth in Charleston,
located in the impoverished Bootheel of southeast Missouri. Psychological
reports note he was born to a mother who drank alcohol heavily and consumed
sedatives throughout her pregnancy with Ernest. As a result, he has fetal
alcohol spectrum disorder, which helps explain many of his deficiencies and
behaviors.
To support her addictions, Ernest's mother prostituted herself and later her
children, including Ernest. By example she taught him to become an addict and
thief. She married a man who physically and sexually abused Ernest and his
siblings.
When he was 12, reports note, other children taunted him and his siblings
because they wore donated clothes and outfits made from flour sacks.
Consequently, Ernest and his siblings began stealing clothes from stores, as
well as food for the family to eat. At age 18, he was first incarcerated for
felony theft.
A 1979 Department of Corrections report was particularly prescient. It noted
the "successful social adjustment on Mr. Johnson's part could not be
accomplished without use of a controlled environment, strong guidance and
community support." Sadly, all of those were absent. Instead a turnstile of
substance abuse, theft to feed his addictions and incarceration began and
accelerated.
Bigotry also must be addressed. Boone County is in the heart of what's all too
fittingly called "Little Dixie." 6 men have been sentenced to death for murder
since the late 1970s in our county. All of them, including 2 already executed,
were black. As elsewhere across the country, prosecutors parlayed those
convictions to attain higher office. Joe Moseley became a state senator. Kevin
Crane - who "succeeded" in obtaining a death sentence against Ernest and the 4
other men, is now a judge.
There is no condoning what Ernest did. There are issues, however, to keep in
mind - including that he had no history of prior violent criminal convictions
before these crimes - when officials consider appropriate consequences in a
civilized society. We beseech the governor and/or the courts to show mercy and
wisdom in sparing his life.
Contact Gov. Jay Nixon to halt this execution by calling him at 573-751-3222;
write him a letter and mail it to: Room 216, State Capitol, Jefferson City,
Mo., 65101, or fax it via 573-751-1495.
Join a "Gathering for Life" from noon to 1 p.m. Tuesday in front of Columbia's
City Hall at Broadway and Eighth Street.
And urge Attorney General Chris Koster to cease pushing for executions,
including the killing of Ernest. Call his office at 573-751-3321 or write: P.O.
Box 899, Jefferson City, Mo., 652101.
If the execution has not been halted, attend Vigils for Life on Tuesday Nov. 3
in Jefferson City and Columbia. Call 449-4585 for more details.
.(source: Op-Ed; The Rev. Clanton C. W. Dawson Jr. is president of the
African-American Clergy Coalition of Mid-Missouri----Columbia Tribune)
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