Jan. 9
TEXAS----impending execution
Inmate Set to Die for Fort Worth Killings Loses Appeal
Christopher Wilkins, 48, is set to be executed for fatally shooting 2 men in
Tarrant County in 2005.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has rejected an appeal from a 48-year-old
man set for execution this week for the slayings of 2 men in Fort Worth more
than 11 years ago.
Christopher Wilkins faces lethal injection Wednesday evening in what would be
the nation's 1st execution of 2017.
Wilkins contends his lawyer at his 2008 trial in Tarrant County was deficient.
The appeals court says the appeal is improper and has dismissed it without
ruling on its merits.
Wilkins has another appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Evidence showed Wilkins fled a Houston halfway house in October 2005, stole a
truck and drove to Fort Worth. He was convicted of fatally shooting 2 men there
for duping him into buying a phony rock of crack cocaine.
(source: nbcdfw.com)
*****************************
2 deserving of death penalty
In the last few years I had begun to question the true value of the death
penalty, especially after an East Texas man whom I believe was innocent was
executed. I began to wonder if solitary confinemenet for the rest of a
murderer's miserable life might even be worse, sort of a punishment that keeps
giving.
But if the death penalty ever had merit, it is deserved for 2 people now
fighting it. They, themselves, want to continue living in spite of having
blatantly killed others.
One is Dylann Roof in South Carolina, who shot church parishioners who had
welcomed him into their Bible study with open arms and were rewarded for their
goodness by meing murdered.
The other is John Battaglia from Dallas, who shot his little girsl in cold
blood while they begged him not to and their mother listened helplessly on the
phone.
I feel both of these men are pure evil and they knew exactly what they were
doing, althought Battaglia is trying to prertned he doesn't remember it.
Roof brazenly says he has no regrets, while Battaglia has gone on to live the
15 years that he denied his duaghters. Neither man deserves to live another
day.
Beverly Rigsby, Richardson
********
Let's abolish the death penalty
I find the statistics disturbing, alarming - and encouraging. Death at the
hands of our criminal justice system remains abhorrent by any measure; its
finality is chilling. Disturbing is the fact that even in Texas, we have
executed people who have later been proved innocent -- too late for Cameron
Todd Willingham in 2004. Especially alarming are the statistics regarding a
"racial disparity" in both death sentences and in executions.
Encouraging is the fact that the number of death sentences and executions have
declined dramatically. Prosecutors, judges, juries and the Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals have been sending us a clear message for the past few years:
It is now time for Texas to abolish the death penalty. Our legislators gather
in January. It can be done!
Bob Michael, Carrollton
(source for both: Letters to the Editor, Dallas Morning News)
PENNSYLVANIA----female faces death penalty
Prosecutors to seek death penalty for woman accused of killing son, sending
photo to father
Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty for a McKeesport woman accused of
killing her son, the Allegheny County district attorney's office announced
Thursday.
Christian Clark, 21, remains jailed awaiting trial on homicide, attempted
homicide, assault and endangerment charges.
Police say Clark sent her son's father photos of the 17-month-old boy's
lifeless body during hours' worth of angry text messages Nov. 1 because she
believed he planned to be with another woman.
"Ya kids ain't safe here I don't want them here" and "Answer me or im going to
jail for child endangerment" were among dozens of texts listed in the criminal
complaint. Then came a message about an hour into the rant that said, "I'm
killing them," followed by a laughing emoji with tears coming from its eyes,
police said.
Clark called 911 more than an hour later and police found the lifeless boy.
Clark first claimed not to know how he died, then confessed to smothering him,
police said.
Clark is also charged with trying to smother the couple's 2-year-old daughter.
If she's sentenced to death, she'll become only the 3rd woman on death row in
Pennsylvania.
Andre Price Jr., 24, of McKeesport, who is accused of not calling 911 when he
received the messages, waived a preliminary hearing Monday and will go to
trial.
(source: WXPI news)
DELAWARE:
Dover murder retrial begins for former death row inmate
A former death row prisoner has rejected a plea offer and will proceed to trial
Monday morning on allegations that he killed a man during a Dover drug deal.
Isaiah McCoy, 29, told Superior Court Judge Robert B. Young that he is innocent
and would not take a deal in which he would plead guilty to manslaughter and a
gun charge, which would carry a 5- to 50-year sentence.
Instead, a non-jury trial before Young is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. in the
Kent County Courthouse. The trial could last all week.
McCoy was arrested in May 2010 in connection with the killing of 30-year-old
Jeffrey Munford during a drug deal gone awry in the rear parking lot of the
Rodney Village Bowling Alley in Dover.
A jury found him guilty of murder in June 2012, but the Delaware Supreme Court
overturned his conviction and death sentence.
The justice did so because of the prosecutor's conduct at McCoy's 1st trial.
Former Deputy Attorney General R. David Favata belittled McCoy, who was
representing himself, and lied to a judge during the trial, leading the Supreme
Court to order a retrial and suspend Favata from practicing law for 6 months
and 1 day, the court said.
(source: delawalreonline.com)
VIRGINIA:
Welch murder defense in Lyon case likely to invoke lingering death penalty
questions
When one of Central Virginia's most closely watched criminal trials in years
opens in Bedford County, so will an old legal can of worms: how the often
confusing case law on Virginia's death penalty affects the sentencing if jurors
return a guilty verdict.
Prosecutors want the option kept on the table to put Lloyd Lee "Michael" Welch
Jr. to death if he is convicted in the murders of Sheila and Katherine Lyon, 2
young sisters who disappeared en route to a Maryland shopping mall in 1975.
But the legal defense for Welch, a former carnival worker with ties to Bedford
County, cried foul in legal papers filed months ahead of the trial.
? First his lawyers called for Virginia's death penalty to be declared
unconstitutional. His attorneys also said even if it stands, the punishment
cannot be used on Welch due to the legal status of the death penalty in
Virginia at the time the alleged crimes were committed.
Welch, 60, faces 2 charges of 1st-degree murder in a trial scheduled to begin
April 18 in Bedford County Circuit Court.
He is accused of abducting the sisters on or around March 25, 1975 and
eventually killing them and disposing of their bodies in Bedford County. The
bodies have never been found.
Welch also was indicted in December on an unrelated charge of rape involving a
6-year-old girl in northern Virginia in 1996. That indictment charged him with
rape, aggravated sexual battery, indecent liberties and object sexual
penetration.
While he faces prosecution in Prince William County on those charges, the
murder charges are still pending in Central Virginia.
Lawyers in Bedford County have spent hours in recent months making arguments
before Judge James Updike Jr., who will preside over the April trial, on
pre-trial motions affecting the proceedings.
Welch's lawyer in the murder case who filed the motion to strike the death
penalty, Aaron Houchens, of Moneta, did not return a call seeking comment.
The judge already has ruled out declaring the death penalty unconstitutional,
but signaled he would consider a motion saying it could not be used in the
Welch case.
Both sides will argue over Supreme Court rulings and Virginia case law on
capital punishment, reviving hotly contested legal issues.
At its core the defense says the death penalty was unconstitutional throughout
the United States at the time of the alleged offenses.
They pointed in court papers to a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Furman v.
Georgia, and a later state decision, Huggins v. Commonwealth, which applied the
high court decision to the state statute.
Due to these decisions, Virginia's death penalty statute from March to April
1975 when the alleged offenses took place was unconstitutional, they argued.
Virginia later in 1975 amended state law to align it with the court decisions,
reinstating the death penalty, but that was effective after the alleged crimes,
they said. Using it retroactively, Welch's lawyers argued, would be
unconstitutional as ex post facto law.
Based on the legal status of Virginia's death penalty at the time of the Lyon
sisters' vanishing, "the maximum penalty the defendant is eligible to receive
is life imprisonment" if convicted, Welch's attorneys said in their motion to
strike the death penalty.
Responding in court filings, the commonwealth argued the "statute which
outlawed the crime was still in place and enforceable" at the time of the
alleged offenses.
Calling up their own case law, prosecutors cited 2 cases regarding the death
penalty in which courts upheld the punishment.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbert v. Florida (1977) that while that state
made changes to its death penalty statute between the time of a murder and the
trial, the changes were "procedural" and "ameliorative" so did not trigger the
prohibition on ex post facto laws.
In Smith v. Commonwealth (1978), the Virginia Supreme Court upheld the death
penalty for a defendant convicted of capital murder after rape, when challenged
in a similar manner to Welch's motion.
Pre-trial motions will continue to be heard in Circuit Court ahead of Welch's
trial scheduled in April, some of which could change the evidence jurors hear
and the penalties if Welch is convicted.
Bedford County Commonwealth's Attorney Wes Nance, the lead prosecutor, said he
could not comment on the case before trial.
Court records show the next step before trial is a hearing on pre-trial motions
Jan. 24 at 9 a.m.
(source: newsadvance.com)
ALABAMA:
Jeff Sessions, the Grim Reaper of Alabama
When Jeff Sessions was Alabama's attorney general, he supported the death
sentence for a Ku Klux Klan member convicted of lynching a black teenager. Mr.
Sessions, whose confirmation hearings for attorney general begin on Tuesday,
points to this to rebut the charges of racism that have followed him for
decades.
Yet we learn more about Mr. Sessions' legal mind-set from a look at the 40-plus
death sentences he fought to uphold as Alabama's attorney general from 1995 to
1997. He worked to execute insane, mentally ill and intellectually disabled
people, among others, who were convicted in trials riddled with instances of
prosecutorial misconduct, racial discrimination and grossly inadequate defense
lawyering. Mr. Sessions' eager participation in an unjust Alabama capital
system makes him a frightening prospective civil rights enforcer for the
nation.
Mr. Sessions secured the execution of Varnall Weeks, who believed he was God
and would "reign in heaven as a tortoise" after his death. After the Supreme
Court banned executions of insane people, Mr. Sessions persuaded a federal
court to defer to an Alabama court's findings that Mr. Weeks was competent
enough to be killed even though he met "the dictionary generic definition of
insanity."
Mr. Sessions also pushed for the death penalty for Samuel Ivery, a black man
convicted of decapitating a black woman. At his trial, Mr. Ivery claimed
insanity and presented evidence that he was a paranoid schizophrenic and
believed himself a "ninja of God." The prosecutor countered during closing
arguments that "this is not another case of niggeritous," that is, racism. Mr.
Ivery later argued that the slur tainted his conviction with racial bias, but
the appellate court sided with Mr. Sessions in upholding his death sentence.
By contrast, a state appellate court ruled against Mr. Sessions when it
reversed the conviction and death sentence of Levi Pace, a black man. His trial
was tainted with racial discrimination during the selection of the grand jury
foreman, and the trial court failed to strike two prospective jurors who "felt
it was their duty to recommend a sentence of death, regardless of the
circumstances."
Many of the people Mr. Sessions worked to execute had received abysmal
representation at trial. Holly Wood and Eugene Clemons, 1 black men, were both
classified as "educable mentally retarded." Yet their lawyers failed to present
any proof of their intellectual disabilities, even though mitigating evidence
of this type can be crucial to avoiding death sentences. At the time of their
trials, Mr. Wood's lawyer had practiced law for less than a year and Mr.
Clemons's jury didn't have a single black member. In 1996, Mr. Sessions
rebuffed both of their initial appeals. Alabama executed Mr. Wood in 2010, even
after a federal court found that his I.Q. met "the definition of mental
retardation."
Mr. Sessions also enforced the death penalty against James Wyman Smith, whose
appointed lawyer had admitted in court that he hadn't "even read the statute"
about the penalty phase of the trial the night before that phase started. To be
fair, the lawyer was being paid only "$4.98 per hour to prepare for the defense
of a human's life." That's because until 1999, Alabama law capped at $1,000 the
compensation court-appointed capital lawyers could receive for out-of-court
preparation.
Even when juries rejected death sentences, judges often overrode them. It is
the only state that allows such judicial overrides. 11 death sentences that Mr.
Sessions defended were imposed by judges over the will of the jurors.
For example, Larry Padgett's jury voted 9-3 for life imprisonment, in part
because of residual doubt over his guilt. The trial judge overrode the
decision, but his conviction was eventually reversed because the prosecutor
failed to promptly turn over DNA-related evidence pointing to his innocence.
Mr. Sessions appealed the reversal, but Mr. Padgett was ultimately exonerated.
Although Mr. Sessions participated in a capital system stacked against
defendants, his main policy concerns seemed to have been that Alabamians were
being executed neither quickly enough nor for enough types of crimes. He
promoted a bill seeking to eliminate a stage of the capital appeals process and
another to execute people convicted twice of drug trafficking. Neither passed.
Mr. Sessions' support for the death penalty, even in troubling circumstances,
remains unwavering. Last August, he praised Mr. Trump's 1989 newspaper ads
calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York, which appeared
shortly after 5 black and Latino teenagers were charged with raping a white
jogger. The men, known as the Central Park 5, were exonerated in 2002 and
awarded a $41 million settlement, but for Mr. Sessions, the ads proved that Mr.
Trump "believes in law and order."
Surely, Mr. Sessions isn't to blame for all the flaws in Alabama's capital
system that pervaded the cases he litigated, many of which involved horrific
crimes. But his pursuit of executions in spite of racial bias, defendants'
mental disabilities and other injustices raises concerns about how he will
oversee federal capital prosecutions, and shows his lack of commitment to due
process and equality. Mr. Sessions' ugly record in Alabama makes clear that his
nomination to be the attorney general should be swiftly rejected.
(source: Op-Ed; John J. Donohue III is a professor and Max Schoening is a
student at Stanford Law School----New York Times)
MISSOURI:
Missouri Execution Drug Purchases Revealed----Death row inmates spent years
fighting over Missouri's use of compounded pentobarbital. A sealed court filing
obtained by BuzzFeed News says they may have been fighting the wrong thing.
Missouri purchased manufactured drugs for use in recent executions that were
made by a company that enacted stringent measures to prevent any state from
doing so, BuzzFeed News has learned.
A sealed court document obtained by BuzzFeed News shows that the state had, at
least sometimes in the past 6 years, bought manufactured pentobarbital - as
opposed to the compounded version of the drug inmates spent years fighting over
in court - for use in its executions.
For years, Missouri death row inmates have waged a legal battle with the state
over the use of compounded pentobarbital. Manufactured drugs are subject to
Food and Drug Administration regulation, while compounded drugs - which have a
significantly higher failure rate - are regulated largely by the states.
But a discussion between Attorney General Chris Koster's office and a federal
judge in a sealed courtroom indicates that the state previously purchased a
manufactured version of the drug. The sole FDA-approved manufacturer of the
drug Missouri uses, pentobarbital, is Akorn. Akorn has stringent measures in
place in an attempt to keep it out of the hands of executioners, making
companies that wish to sell their drug sign an agreement that it will not go to
death penalty states. Despite those efforts, it appears the state has been able
to obtain some anyway.
Akorn did not respond to a request for comment.
The revelation comes months after Mississippi death row inmates attempted to
subpoena records from the Missouri Department of Corrections, in an effort to
discover a better method of execution than used in Mississippi. Missouri
successfully quashed the subpoena after the supplier said it would no longer
sell the drugs if its identity were revealed.
In a July court hearing, lawyers with Attorney General Koster's office argued
that even acknowledging they had documents on some of the requests in the
subpoena would reveal too much information about its supplier.
"I'm going to order a sealed proceeding and banish anyone from the courtroom
who is not a party or counsel," Judge Stephen Bough said. "And order
confidential restrictions not to discuss or file with the clients or in any
other way the information that's discussed in this proceeding, subject to
contempt order."
After the court was cleared, an attorney with the Attorney General's office
laid out his concerns with revealing whether the state had the documents.
"I'm primarily focused on request number 2 for documents about pentobarbital,"
Assistant Attorney General Greg Goodwin said, according to an excerpt in a
later court filing.
"If [we] identified whether or not there is a responsive document to that
request, that answers the question of whether it is or is not manufactured or
compounded pentobarbital because manufactured pentobarbital has that
information, and compounded pentobarbital does not have a package insert."
"So by merely saying that there exists a document that proves it's manufactured
or proves that it's compounded, that answers the question does Missouri use
compounded or manufactured pentobarbital," Goodwin said.
The judge then stated that there were 3 responsive documents to that request,
according to the court filing.
The court filing was marked that it should be sealed, but for some reason was
available on the federal courts' website, PACER. Shortly after BuzzFeed News
approached an attorney representing the execution drug supplier, the filing
became sealed.
The now-sealed court filing does not identify the supplier of the drug. When
Missouri first began using pentobarbital in Nov. 2013, the state bought the
drug from an out-of-state compounding pharmacy called the Apothecary Shoppe.
The pharmacy was not licensed to sell in Missouri, which under normal
circumstances could be a felony.
After its identity was revealed, a death row inmate sued the pharmacy in early
2014. The pharmacy settled out of court, agreeing to no longer sell execution
drugs. BuzzFeed News later revealed that the pharmacy had admitted to
committing more than 1,000 pharmaceutical violations.
When the Apothecary Shoppe dropped out, Missouri discovered a new supplier that
it has referred to only by the pseudonym "M7," and has attempted to keep all
information about the supplier secret.
Under M7, the state has mysteriously built up a considerable stockpile of
execution drugs, something that does not fit with using compounded drugs.
Compounded drugs have a shelf-life measured in weeks, while manufactured drugs
can last for years.
Using pentobarbital from the Apothecary Shoppe and M7, Missouri has executed 19
death row inmates. The leadership that oversaw those executions - Gov. Jay
Nixon, Attorney General Chris Koster, and Director of Department of Corrections
George Lombardi - are on their way out.
Nixon was term-limited out, Koster lost his bid to replace him as governor, and
both leave office on Monday. Additionally, Lombardi announced his resignation
after accusations that his employees retaliated against women who alleged they
were sexually harassed by superiors.
The 3 offices did not return a request for comment.
Missouri is scheduled to carry out another execution at the end of the month.
(source: BuzzFeedNews)
SOUTH DAKOTA:
Evaluation ordered for South Dakota man sentenced to death
A South Dakota circuit judge is asking the attorney for convicted prison guard
killer Rodney Berget to submit a report about whether his client is mentally
disabled.
State Attorney General Marty Jackley says the judge wants to review the
findings before ruling on a motion by prosecutors to dismiss Berget's death
penalty appeal. Berget told Judge Doug Hoffman in September that he wanted to
drop the appeal.
Berget and another inmate, Eric Robert, were convicted of killing guard Ronald
Johnson in 2011. Robert was executed in 2012.
Jackley says that testing throughout Berget's life has shown him to be a person
of "at least ordinary intelligence" and there's no evidence to suggest that he
isn't competent.
Berget's attorney, Eric Schulte, was not immediately available for comment.
(source: Associated Press)
CALIFORNIA:
California's top court to decide whether planned speed-up in executions is
legal
California voters in November legalized marijuana, approved a plan to reduce
the prison population and enacted gun controls.
But on one key issue - the death penalty - the liberal tide shifted. Voters
rejected a measure to ban capital punishment and instead approved an initiative
intended to hasten executions.
That measure is now before the California Supreme Court. If the court allows it
to go forward, executions are likely to resume this year, lawyers on both sides
of the debate agreed.
The court voted 5 to 0 in closed session last month to put a hold on
Proposition 66, sponsored by prosecutors and passed by 51% of voters.
The measure established strict legal deadlines for death penalty appeals and
shifted some capital punishment reviews from the state high court to county
trial courts.
Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and Justice Ming W. Chin removed themselves
from the case because they both serve on the Judicial Council, the
policy-making body of the courts and a defendant in the lawsuit.
Depending on which appellate justices are appointed to take their places, the
recusal could be good news for opponents of the death penalty. Both Chin and
Cantil-Sakauye are among the more conservative members of the court.
Death penalty opponents argue the measure violates separation of powers
requirements because the voters, acting as lawmakers, stripped authority from
the judicial branch.
Government is divided into 3 equal branches - executive, legislative and
judicial - and the Constitution says no branch may usurp the responsibilities
of another.
"The Legislature doesn't get to tell the courts how to do their job," said
Christina Von der Ahe Rayburn, who is representing former Atty. Gen. John Van
de Kamp and former El Dorado County Supervisor Ron Briggs in the lawsuit.
The measure requires appeals to be decided within 5 years of sentencing. It can
now take a decade or longer for a condemned inmate to have his or her automatic
appeal decided by the California Supreme Court.
In automatic appeals, condemned inmates challenge their convictions and
sentences based on evidence in the trial record. Rulings by the judge and how
the jury was picked may be closely examined in these appeals to the California
Supreme Court.
Condemned inmates also are entitled to a habeas corpus challenge, which is
based on evidence outside the trial record. Did the prosecutor withhold
exonerating evidence? Was the defense lawyer incompetent? Did jurors engage in
misconduct?
Getting lawyers to take death penalty appeals, particularly habeas cases, has
been a huge hurdle in California.
Relatively low pay and the emotional toll the cases take on lawyers are only
part of the problem.
They say the $50,000 the state provides for a habeas investigation is much too
low to hire the experts needed to investigate the crimes and the inmates'
lives.
In 2014, 352 inmates on death row had no habeas lawyer, said UC Berkeley law
professor Elisabeth Semel.
To resolve the lawyer shortage, Proposition 66 would require attorneys
appointed to defend low-income criminal defendants also to represent condemned
inmates in the automatic appeals.
The California Supreme Court now decides both the automatic appeal and the
habeas petitions and appoints the lawyers.
Under Proposition 66, the sentencing judge would decide the habeas challenge
and appoint a lawyer to represent the condemned.
Kent Scheidegger, legal counsel for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation and
an author of Proposition 66, said trial judges will have better luck than the
state high court in getting lawyers to take the cases.
"There are individual provisions of this measure that raise serious
constitutional issues. - Gerald Uelmen, Santa Clara University law professor
emeritus
"Lawyers who do criminal work need to stay in good" with Superior Court judges,
he said.
The death penalty advocate predicted the challengers' separation of powers
argument would fail.
"There are a large number of statues that direct how the courts process cases
and what priority they give them, and they have never been struck down," he
said.
Scheidegger said the new deadlines for deciding appeals are needed because the
cases are lingering in the courts too long.
He blamed defense lawyers for asking for too many extensions of time to file
their written arguments and the California Supreme Court for granting the
requests.
"Basically, the court needs to get tough on these people," he added. "You read
a docket of capital cases today and see 23 extensions of time. They need to
start saying no."
The law allows for extensions, and the court can decide whether to grant them.
Under Proposition 66, the court generally could grant extensions under only
extraordinary circumstances.
Semel, on the other hand, said the California Supreme Court would be spending
virtually all its time on death penalty cases if Proposition 66 were allowed to
take effect.
"The court can only handle a certain number of these cases a year," Semel said.
At the pace envisioned by Proposition 66, the court would have little time to
decide civil disputes, she said, adding, "It is not feasible. There are just
too many cases."
The backlog of fully briefed cases already is large. As of November, 77 death
penalty appeals and 89 habeas petitions were completed and ready for the
California Supreme Court to decide, Semel said.
Chapman Law School professor John Eastman said the California Supreme Court can
move faster on the cases.
Judges "sit on them because they don't like the death penalty," the
constitutional law professor said. "They don't sit on them because they are
overwhelmed with work."
Gov. Jerry Brown appointed 3 of the state high court justices. Republican
governors appointed the other 4, who include 3 former prosecutors.
For decades prior to January 2015, the court, with only 1 Democratic appointee,
was considered moderately conservative.
Santa Clara University law professor emeritus Gerald Uelmen, who served as the
chief executive of a state commission that examined California's death penalty
system, said the court's decision to put the measure on hold shows the justices
believe it needs a thorough examination.
Should California execute these 749 death row inmates?
"There are individual provisions of this measure that raise serious
constitutional issues," Uelmen said. "I would expect the court is going to
strike down at least some provisions."
California has more than 750 inmates on death row - the largest in the country
- and legal challenges over lethal injection have prevented executions since
2006.
After completing state appeals, inmates can challenge their sentences in
federal court, which also can take several years.
In addition to the separation of powers argument, the challengers say the
measure violates a rule that limits ballot measures to a single subject.
Besides setting deadlines, the measure changes the law to make it easier for
the state to adopt a method of execution.
In their lawsuit, the challengers said the change would result in the "near
immediate" execution of 20 inmates.
The court has asked for more written arguments on the case by the end of the
month and may decide to hold a hearing.
Rayburn estimated the case probably would be decided by early June. Scheidegger
said he hoped it would be sooner.
(source: Los Angeles Times)
USA:
Which Moral Principle Should Prevail In Case Of Dylann Roof?
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We're going to turn back now to that disturbing story out of South Carolina.
You'll remember that Dylann Roof was found guilty of killing nine members of
the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015. The U.S. Justice
Department charged Roof with a hate crime and is now seeking the death penalty.
During the sentencing hearing last week which will determine Roof's sentence,
Roof told jurors that he had dismissed his lawyers and was representing himself
because he rejected any claims that he is psychologically impaired.
Prosecutors are arguing that Roof deserves death because of his obvious lack of
remorse, his blatant racial animus and his stated desire to start a race war.
But there are other points of view. A number of the family members of the
victims have publicly expressed their opposition to the death penalty. Some
have said that the years of appeals that accompany a death sentence will be an
additional burden to the family and to the community trying to heal.
So that prompted us to want to consider the competing moral and ethical claims
here. Which moral principle should prevail? So to think this through, we called
Jack Marshall. He's an ethicist lawyer and the founder of the blog Ethics
Alarms, and he was kind enough to join us in our studios in Washington, D.C.
Jack Marshall, thanks so much for joining us.
JACK MARSHALL: Thank you, Michel. Always an honor.
MARTIN: So what are the ethical questions here?
MARSHALL: You know, ethics is the matter of society trying to decide what's
right and what's wrong, and we learn over time. And the idea is to come up with
standards that will lead to a more healthy society. And it's different from the
moral position. I mean, the moral position may be held by the families that
killing anyone is wrong. Society shouldn't kill people. It's hypocritical for
them to do that. It's really a Christian position.
The ethical position is a little bit more tricky, and that is isn't it
important that society express absolute revulsion at something? There is some
level that actually justifies the ultimate penalty. And we have to get by all
sorts of legal problems and basic problems, fairness problems. You don't want
to have capital punishment where it's going to be handed out in disparate ways
or on racially biased ways and you don't want to execute the wrong person. But,
you know, in a situation like Dylann Roof, there's no question that he did it,
so...
MARTIN: But when you have a situation where you have a group of people, those
who were primarily affected by this...
MARSHALL: Yes.
MARTIN: ...Whose family members were murdered, who have a moral objection, what
weight should that be given in this decision about what sentence Roof should be
given?
MARSHALL: The death penalty is not for the victims. It's not for the victims'
families. It's for society, and it's to make a statement. And it's to set a
standard. One of the important things about having a death penalty for
something - be it Osama bin Laden or Hitler or Jack the Ripper or whatever we
want - it means that then we can calibrate other heinous acts down from that.
So we can't delegate the decision to them, and we can't overweigh their
particular take on it. It's part of the consideration, but I think it can't be
given undue weight.
MARTIN: Do you feel at the end of the day - are you satisfied that the
appropriate ethical questions are being asked in this case?
MARSHALL: I think we have to ask our self what - looking at this case, what is
in the long range best interests of society as a whole? And therefore, what is
the message we need to send to all citizens to say we are drawing a strong line
in the sand that say this will not be tolerated and people that do this will no
longer have a right to anything, including life, in our society? We have to
decide if there is going to be some behavior that we are willing to say that
about, and that's the ethical issue.
MARTIN: That was Jack Marshall. He is an ethicist. He is an attorney. He's the
founder of the blog Ethics Alarms. He was kind enough to join us here at our
studios in Washington, D.C. Jack Marshall, thank you so much for speaking with
us.
MARSHALL: Thanks, Michel.
(source: KERA/NPR)
_______________________________________________
A service courtesy of Washburn University School of Law www.washburnlaw.edu
DeathPenalty mailing list
DeathPenalty@lists.washlaw.edu
http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty
Unsubscribe: http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/options/deathpenalty
