April 13
TEXAS:
Final preparations begin in Demond Bluntson trial
It's been nearly 4 years since 2 small boys were murdered inside a Laredo
hotel.
Now, the man police believe is behind the deaths will face a jury in less than
a week.
The final preparations are underway in court, as several witnesses will be
called to testifying in the trial of Demond Bluntson.
From Bluntson's family to officers who worked the case, dozens will take the
stand next week.
Bluntson is accused of killing his girlfriend's sons inside a motel room in
2012 - in what used to be the Holiday Inn Civic Center.
The District Attorney's Office said they were looking for the death penalty in
this case - the 1st since 1991.
The trial will begin April 18, at the 49th District Court
(source: KGNS TV news)
*****
Texas is banning inmates from having social media accounts
Texas is banning inmates from having any kind of social media accounts -
including accounts run in their name by friends or family members.
A new rule prohibiting all inmates from "maintaining active social media
accounts for the purposes of soliciting, updating, or engaging others" was
included in the latest version of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's
offender handbook, which was updated April 1.
Texas officials say the new measure is necessary because some inmates misuse
social media. "Offenders have used social media accounts to sell items over the
internet based on the notoriety of their crime, harass victims or victim's
families, and continue their criminal activity," spokesperson Jason Clark said
in an email. "The agency will take all of the necessary steps to prevent that
from happening."
Clark said that the department will reach out to social media companies to ask
that accounts in inmates' names be taken down, and that the new rule will
strengthen their ability to do so. Inmates who are found to have social media
accounts would be punished with a level 3 disciplinary violation, the lowest
level violation in the system.
For many inmates, social media pages can be lifelines to the outside world.
Prisoners write posts, send them to a friend or family member through snail
mail, and ask the friend post them on Facebook. (Texas inmates have no internet
access.) Some pages are diaries about their days behind bars, others serialize
autobiographies, and others write poetry or fiction.
"These pages are beyond important because this is how the average joe finds out
about the humanity of the people on death row," said Pat Hartwell, an
anti-death penalty activist in Houston who updates a Facebook page for death
row inmate Charles Flores. Hartwell said that death row inmates were told that
the new policy will start being enforced tomorrow. She took down Flores' page
yesterday to avoid getting him in trouble, and several other family members and
activists also posted on Facebook that they were taking down pages for inmates.
The rule could run up against First Amendment issues. Dave Maass, a researcher
with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who has studied inmate social media
regulations, said he thought the rule was unconstitutionally broad.
"This policy violates the free speech rights of both the inmates and the family
members and friends of inmates," Maass said. "I don't think it's appropriate
for a prison to tell someone on the outside what they can and can't post when
it doesn't involve criminal activity."
Texas isn't the 2st state to punish inmates for using social media. In South
Carolina, inmates who are caught using Facebook are punished with solitary
confinement. In Maine, inmates aren't allowed to publish a blog or any other
kind of writing online.
I've reached out to Facebook to ask for their policy on taking down inmate
accounts, and will update if I hear back.
(source: Casey Tolan, fusion.net)
PENNSYLVANIA:
16 years ago: Profile of serial killer Joey Miller
Editor's note: This story by Pete Shellem was first published in the
Patriot-News on April 30, 2000. Joseph Daniel Miller, 51, was charged with
1st-degree homicide today by Swatara Township police in connection with the
death of a woman whose skeletal remains were found along Chambers Hill Road in
1997.
There's no question that Steelton's Joseph Daniel Miller is one of the most
vicious killers in state history.
In a 5-year span ending in 1992, Miller raped and killed at least 4 women and
attacked 2 others.
"I am not the only serial killer that was killing girls," Miller said when
confronted about the slaying of Kelly Ann Ward.
In 1 case, a Harrisburg woman survived after she was stabbed in the head 25
times with a screwdriver and left for dead in a wooded area in Perry County.
Another survivor was able to describe Miller's attack -- he raped her, bound
her in duct tape, beat her on the head with beer bottles and told her no one
would be able to identify her body when he was done with her.
But there's also a pathetic side to Miller, an illiterate, retarded 4th-grade
dropout whose drunken father disciplined him by beating him and chaining him to
a bed.
Miller's upbringing included watching his retarded brother being forced by his
parents to eat under the table like a dog, his uncle making him perform oral
sex and being introduced to alcohol at age 6.
It was a home where sexual abuse was so rampant that his niece is also his
sister.
Those 2 images of Miller -- monster vs. wretch -- will clash this week as the
state prepares to execute him on Thursday.
Miller, who sports tattoos of both Jesus and the grim reaper, has alternately
asked to be executed and to have his sentence changed to life in prison.
He apparently is refusing to cooperate with his attorneys in federal appeals
that would automatically halt the lethal injection.
They have asked the state courts to stop the execution, saying evidence of the
extent of his brain damage and childhood abuse should be presented to a jury.
His trial attorneys weren't able to present the full picture in part because
Miller's family wouldn't cooperate, but his home life and mental state were
exposed in subsequent appeals.
Meanwhile, Dauphin County prosecutors are pressing to carry out the execution,
pointing to Miller's own requests to be killed and to justice for the victims
and their families.
Reveling in murder
At a time when Pennsylvania's death penalty is coming under fire, in part
because of racial bias, Miller's execution may seem politically correct.
He is white and his victims were all African-American. He told former Chief
County Detective Thomas Brennan he frequently got the urge to pick up a black
woman to rape and kill.
And his crimes were appalling enough to make even the most ardent death-penalty
abolitionist think twice.
4 women weren't as lucky as the survivors at the beginning of this story.
3 - Selina Franklin, Stephanie McDuffey and Jeannette Thomas - were bludgeoned
to death after being raped in a Swatara Twp. landfill.
A rope found around an ankle of McDuffey's skeleton led investigators to
believe she was tied up before she was raped and beaten to death. She was 23
years old and 8 months' pregnant.
Miller repeatedly ran over Kathi Novena Shenck when she bolted from his car at
a roadside dump in Perry County.
Miller had gotten away with the 4 murders and didn't know police had already
identified him in the June 30, 1992, screwdriver attack when he abducted
another Harrisburg woman a week later and tried to kill her on Conrail property
in Susquehanna Twp.
If not for a chance encounter with a Conrail security officer, that woman would
be dead and more victims might have fallen prey.
Brennan, who was trained at the FBI Behavioral Science Unit during his career
with the state police, knew exactly what he was dealing with when he came to
the Conrail property crime scene.
Miller had a "murder kit" in the trunk of his car, which included a knife, duct
tape, a cooler of beer and mats to lay the victim on, Brennan said.
During his confessions, Miller seemed proud of his crimes and would appear to
be reliving them while recounting the attacks, Brennan said.
"You could see the veins on his neck pumping," Brennan said. "It was almost
like he was working out in a gym."
He pointed out that Miller would visit the site of the McDuffey and Franklin
slayings and scatter the bones, apparently reveling in his crimes.
"What our society has to learn is that there are individuals out there who
commit these kind of crimes for no other reason than they like it," Brennan
said. "They enjoy seeing the fear that they place in the victim and the control
that they hold over that victim. And finally, they really enjoy that Godlike
feeling of taking a life."
While the surviving victims and the others' families have declined to talk
about the planned execution, Dauphin County District Attorney Edward M. Marsico
Jr. said any sympathy for Miller is misplaced.
"This is not a case where an innocent man is facing a death sentence," Marsico
said. "There is no doubt that Joey Miller committed these horrible crimes,
selected vulnerable women and brutally killed them. I have no sympathy for
him."
Despite Miller's contention that he confessed because his conscience was
bothering him, Brennan says Miller only gave up the slayings he knew he had to.
Brennan said there may be more out there.
"What bothers Joe Miller is the fact that he thought he could manipulate the
system but couldn't," Brennan said. "The only thing Joe Miller is afraid of is
that final moment."
A lifetime of abuse
The horrific lab that was Miller's home created the predator that now sits on
death row making feeble demands, his few advocates say.
It took a mentally retarded, brain-damaged child and introduced him to hatred,
sexual abuse, violence, alcohol and crime.
"You're not born a killer," said a relative who asked not to be identified.
"Joey never had a chance."
Throughout his life, Miller has consistently tested at or below the level for
mental retardation. That coupled with other neurological damage made him think
differently from others, psychiatrists in the case said.
He doesn't learn from his mistakes. And when he drinks or abuses other drugs,
he becomes violent, the psychiatrists said.
Miller also grew up in a home that was described by one judge as "a den of
incestual sexual abuse."
His sister testified that she was sexually abused by their father for 2 years
before becoming pregnant.
When she told her mother about the situation, she said her mother attacked her
with a kitchen knife. She ran away when she was 15 and Miller was 5.
Her daughter, who is both Miller's niece and sister, testified that Miller's
father, 3 brothers, 2 uncles and a half brother regularly sexually abused other
members of the family, including Miller.
By the time he entered Steelton Elementary School, Miller was already out of
control.
Speaking with a clipped lisp as the result of a childhood accident and showing
up to school dirty and disheveled, the diminutive Miller was the subject of
ridicule from his peers.
Before he reached his teens, he was involved in arsons, thefts, assaults and
even armed standoffs with police.
After being beaten by a group of youngsters at age 12, Miller went home and
grabbed a shotgun to confront his attackers. A Steelton police officer had to
fire his gun in the air before Miller would drop the weapon.
His attorney, Robert Dunham of the Philadelphia Defenders Association, said one
of the defining moments for Miller was when he was raped in a juvenile facility
when he was 14. Dunham said Miller suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder
as a result of that attack and subsequent assaults by prison guards.
He said Miller's demands to be executed are a result of his deteriorating
mental state under the pressures of death row conditions.
"Everything that Joey does has to be viewed through the prism of a mentally
retarded, brain-damaged person with the mental age of a child and the crippled
emotional state of a kid who's experienced a lifetime of serious abuse," Dunham
said.
"That's why you have someone who clearly states that he wants to live and
thinks his death sentence should be reversed but says he'd rather die than
spend more time on death row," he said.
No more crayons
From the time he was 11, Miller rarely spent more than a year outside some sort
of incarceration. He committed mostly petty crimes, usually under the influence
of drugs or alcohol.
According to court records, his father began giving him alcohol when he was 6
and he began drinking daily, sometimes before breakfast, when he was 19.
He also began experimenting with marijuana and cocaine and once overdosed on
pills on a dare.
A former employer said he fired Miller because he suspected him of breaking
into a home they were working on. The woman who owned the home, an elderly
widower, reported seeing a man standing over her bed with a knife.
Miller begged for his job back, but shortly after the employer agreed to give
him a second chance, Miller burned down a garage where the employer stored
equipment.
Working menial jobs, Miller began raising a family a few years before he
started killing people. His wife was pregnant with his third child when he was
arrested.
His wife divorced him after his convictions and is living with one of his
brothers, Dunham said.
Functionally illiterate, Miller still kept in touch with his children by
drawing them pictures.
But the Department of Corrections took away his crayons in 1998, which was one
of the reasons he cited when he told others he was willing to accept the death
penalty to get off death row.
"Not being able to draw pictures with crayons led him to the point where he was
not sure he wanted to live," said Jeff Garis, executive director of
Pennsylvanians United to Abolish the Death penalty. "That's a horrific
commentary on the state of Pennsylvania that this is who we kill in this
state."
"The people of Pennsylvania have to understand one thing and they have to
understand it very clearly," Dunham said. "If there comes a time that Joey
Miller is executed, the state will be executing a mentally retarded man. And
that's just a simple fact."
(source: pennlive.com)
NORTH CAROLINA:
DA to seek death penalty for man accused of killing mother, 1-year-old child
New Hanover County District Attorney Ben David announced Wednesday his office
would be seeking the death penalty for a man accused of killing a mother and
her 1-year-old child, and seriously injuring 2 others.
Darrell Gerard Taylor, 35, was charged with 2 counts of 1st-degree murder, 2
counts of attempted 1st-degree murder, and 1 count of robbery with a dangerous
weapon in connection to an incident on Sept. 27, 2015.
Police were called to the Greentree apartment complex in reference to a
reported assault. The attack was believed to have happened before 6:30 a.m.
Taylor is accused of killing Yawanda Felecia Doe and her child, who was 1 at
the time. Taylor is also accused of seriously injuring Doe's other child, who
was 3 at the time, and another woman during the assault.
Doe and her 1-year-old child were found dead in a car. Her three-year-old was
also found inside the vehicle with serious injuries.
Another woman, who was also seriously injured in the attack, was discovered
outside the car.
(source: WECT news)
SOUTH CAROLINA:
A South Carolina judge has delayed the state death-penalty trial of Dylann Roof
A South Carolina judge has delayed the state death-penalty trial of Dylann
Roof, who is charged with killing 9 people at a Charleston church last year.
Circuit Judge J.C. Nicholson on Wednesday granted a request by Roof's lawyers
to delay the trial until next year while additional psychiatric testing of Roof
is completed.
The defense presented information that a doctor said that he needed another 2
to 6 months to examine Roof.
No other details were released at the hearing because a judge has sealed
information about Roof's medical records.
Nicholson said the trial will begin Jan. 17, with jury selection to begin in
early December.
The state trial had been scheduled to begin July 11.
Roof also faces federal charges in the shooting last June.
(source: Associated Press)
FLORIDA:
Death-row inmate wants new jury rules applied retroactively
Mark James Asay, convicted of killing 2 people in 1987, is asking the Florida
Supreme Court to vacate his death sentence, citing a new law signed last month
by Gov. Rick Scott.
He's the 1st death row inmate to ask for a life sentence under the new death
penalty laws that went into effect March 7. The U.S. Supreme Court in January
threw out Florida's death penalty sentencing laws as unconstitutional, causing
the Legislature to write a massive overhaul.
Among the new provisions is a requirement that 10 of 12 jurors vote to impose a
death sentence. In Asay's case, just 9 did.
That, his lawyers argue in a brief filed Wednesday with the Florida Supreme
Court, is cause to change his death sentence to life imprisonment.
"Because three jurors in Mr. Asay's case formally voted to recommend life
sentences, his death sentences violate the Eighth Amendment," Asay's lawyer,
Martin McClain, wrote, referring to the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on
cruel and unusual punishments.
But the impact could be farther-reaching given the numerous questions
surrounding Florida's death penalty.
The state Supreme Court has not yet ruled in the case of Hurst vs. Florida,
which was remanded to them after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Florida's death
penalty unconstitutional.
And they have not weighed in on whether the Hurst decision or the new laws
written in its wake are retroactive.
Attorney General Pam Bondi's office has argued they are not.
If one or more parts of the Hurst ruling are applied retroactively, courts
could have to re-try or throw out the sentences of some of the 388 people on 1
of America's most crowded death rows.
And if the state Supreme Court sides with Asay, applying the new law to old
cases, it could affect hundreds of cases. Florida House staff found that from
2000 to 2012, 140 of the 320 death sentences issued in Florida were on a 7-5,
8-4 or 9-3 vote. None of those would be legal under the new system.
(source: Tampa Bay Times)
OHIO:
Seman asks judge to spare him from death penalty----Prosecutors say Seman set
fire to the house of Corrine Gump and her grandparents, Bill and Judy Schmidt,
on Powers Way in Youngstown
Robert Seman wants to throw the death penalty off the table for his upcoming
murder trial expected to begin in September.
At a pretrial hearing Wednesday morning in Mahoning County Court, Seman asked
the judge to spare him from the death penalty.
Seman faces capital murder charges in the deaths of 10-year-old Corrine Gump
and her grandparents, Bill and Judy Schmidt.<>P> Prosecutors say Seman set fire
to the family's house on Powers Way in Youngstown to prevent Corrine from
testifying at his trial charging him with raping the girl.
He has pleaded not guilty to all charges in connection to this case.
(source: WKBN news)
CALIFORNIA:
After 46 years, it's time to release a member of the Manson Family
Too often society uses a high profile crime to make a statement about the
criminal justice system; Leslie Van Houten is such a case. A former member of
the Manson Family, she has been incarcerated for 46 years and during her 21st
parole hearing on Thursday, April 14, she should be set free.
Van Houten was just 19 years old when she met an insane cult leader named
Charles Manson. She lived with him and his family out in the desert in
isolation, performed back-breaking labor, absorbed endless hours of his
brainwashing, and took LSD.
On the night of August 9, 1969, under Manson's orders, Van Houten along with
several other members of the family, broke into the house of Leno and Rosemary
LaBianca and murdered both of them. Leslie personally stabbed Mrs. LaBianca
more than a dozen times after she was dead and then stole some of her personal
belongings.
Van Houten was the youngest woman ever to receive the death penalty in the
history of the state of California, but her sentence was later reduced to life
in prison with a chance of parole. The prosecutor in the case, Vincent Bugliosi
said that his "guess" was that she'd be released in 15 to 20 years.
Her crime was gruesome, heinous, and barbaric; and she looks back on it with
utter horror, shame, guilt, and takes full responsibility.
Who she was then, a 19-year-old girl under the mind control of a murderous cult
leader, is not who she is now as a 66-year-old woman, fully rehabilitated, with
2 college degrees and a spotless prison record.
John Waters wrote in his book "Role Models" that over the years Van Houten
taught illiterates to read, stitched portions of the AIDS quilt, made bedding
for the homeless, recorded audio books for blind people, and clerked for the
administrators, nurses, and other staff members.
None of that takes away from the brutality of the crime she committed nearly
half a century ago; she recognized that during several parole hearings and has
long asked for the mercy that she didn???t show during that night in 1969.
Yet, she is no longer that girl who "would die" for the cult leader that
indoctrinated her, she has served far more than the "15 to 20" years the
original prosecution thought she would, and she is no longer a threat to
society. In fact, she's a bigger burden by staying in prison than she would be
if she were released.
If Van Houten is released on Thursday, she has said that she plans to do what
she did when she was briefly set free after her 1st retrial in 1977; live
quietly, obtain a job, and become a functioning part of society.
"I cannot find any indication where Miss Van Houten has done anything wrong in
prison," said Judge Bob Krug in 2002. "They can't keep using the crime forever
and ever. That turns her sentence into life without parole."
If the purpose of prison is retribution, then Van Houten has served her time;
if it's incapacitation, then the senior citizen has shown she has no intention
to join another murderous cult; if it's deterrence, then Leslie has shown that
she is no longer the naive girl who fell for the trappings of a raving lunatic
who offered her hallucinogens; and if it's rehabilitation, then she has shown
she is cured.
Van Houten has paid her debt to society. After 46 years it's time she is
allowed to be free, and society must re-examine the way law enforcement are so
quick to lock up prisoners and throw away the key.
(source: Ryan Girdusky, redalertpolitics.com)
*************
In California's Death Row's "Adjustment Center," Condemned Men Wait in Solitary
Confinement
"When we were sentenced to death," wrote Carlos M. Argueta from death row in
California, "we weren't sentenced to be mistreated, humiliated, discriminated
against, psychologically tortured and kept in solitary dungeons until the day
of our executions. Never once did the judge say that was to be part of our
sentence." He was speaking about life in San Quentin State Prison's Adjustment
Center, a "prison within a prison" with a name worthy of any fictional
dystopia.
The Adjustment Center is at the epicenter of California's death row system,
which The Atlantic recently called "simultaneously the most and least prolific
wielder of the death penalty." Although the state continually metes out death
sentences - there were 749 people awaiting execution last July, nearly twice as
many as the next highest state - almost no one is executed. California held
just 6 executions since the start of the 21st century, and none since 2006. In
March of this year, The LA Times reported that death row at San Quentin - home
to all men on death row in California - has literally run out of room.
The Adjustment Center, the harshest of the 3 death row units at San Quentin, is
severe even compared to other segregation units in the California prison system
and death row units in most other states. And California's long death row
delays mean these exceptionally harsh conditions can last for decades.
The average time spent on death row in California was 16.1 years in 2013, and
by the end of 2014, nearly 78 % of the male death row population had been there
for 10 years or longer. Citing excessive delays, in 2008 the California
Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice declared the state's death
penalty system "dysfunctional."
And in a 2014 decision that found the system unconstitutional (the decision was
overturned on procedural grounds in November), federal judge Cormac J. Carney
declared that in California, "the death sentence carefully and deliberately
imposed by the jury has been quietly transformed into one no rational jury or
legislature could ever impose: life in prison, with the remote possibility of
death."
A class action lawsuit filed in June 2015, Lopez v Brown, offers a rare glimpse
into the daily lives of the people who live in the Adjustment Center. Its 6
named plaintiffs - Bobby Lopez, Marco Topete, John Myles, Richardo Roldan, John
Gonzales, and Ronaldo Medrano Ayala - allege their continued detention in the
Adjustment Center violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and
unusual punishment and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
These men have been in the Adjustment Center for periods of time ranging from 3
to 26 years. Some received just one disciplinary write-up that affected their
classification during that entire period, for participating in a peaceful
hunger strike.
These men and their fellow Adjustment Center residents spend between 21 and 24
hours a day - often for years on end - inside cells roughly 6 by 9 feet,
smaller than a standard parking spot. There is no natural light or airflow;
temperatures in the cells fluctuate from very hot to very cold. Beds consist of
a thin mattress on a steel or concrete slab. There are no chairs or desks in
the cells.
According to the complaint, "When writing letters to loved ones, Roldan kneels
on his shower shoes and uses his bunk as a table. Ayala fashions a seat out of
the banker???s boxes where he keeps his property. Gonzales and Topete sit on a
blanket on the floor of their cells and write on their beds. For Topete, who
has chronic back pain, sitting in that position becomes excruciating after 15
minutes. As a result, he can only write and research in brief increments."
Those living in the Adjustment Center are continually immersed in noise. The
slamming of security gates and cell doors echo through the unit, exacerbated by
high ceilings and enclosed steel cells. Residents are constantly shouting,
banging, or screaming, either in desperate attempts to communicate with one
another or as a primal response to their unbearable conditions. The racket
continues around the clock: chronic sleep deprivation is one of many severe
mental and physical health effects of long-term confinement in the Adjustment
Center.
Access to healthcare of any kind is extremely limited, and in many
circumstances nonexistent. When an Adjustment Center resident requests a
medical appointment, it can take so long to materialize that in a letter to
Solitary Watch, one resident quipped, "By the time you see a doctor your 24-flu
has passed or you're about to pass."
Mental health assessments, when they occur at all, are often conducted through
a cell door within earshot of guards and other residents. As sensitive health
information can easily be used against them by guards and other prisoners, it
is impossible for Adjustment Center residents to be honest about their mental
health, and therefore impossible to receive appropriate treatment.
The same man quoted above commented, "I don't know the extent of my own mental
damage but I do know more people have died on death row at San Quentin from
suicide than execution." Indeed, suicide rates on death row are roughly 10
times greater than in society more broadly, and several times greater than in
the general prison population.
California is one of the few states that keep people in segregation for alleged
gang affiliation, divorced from any assessment of their actual behavior within
prison. As a result, an individual who has never violated a prison rule can end
up in the Adjustment Center for suspicion of current or former gang
involvement. There is no process for reviewing alleged affiliation, and
individuals can be held in the Adjustment Center for years on the flimsiest
evidence. Some individuals are assumed to have gang allegiances simply because
of their ethnicity or the region where they grew up.
Technically, Adjustment Center residents are entitled to a review of their
placement every 90 days, but this rarely results in a transfer to East Block or
North Segregation, San Quentin's other death row units. With no ability to
disprove gang affiliations that were never proven in the first place, continued
detention is almost a certainty.
Other residents were placed in the Adjustment Center for disciplinary
infractions committed while in one of the other death row units. For these men
as well, it is very challenging to get transferred out, even after long periods
of violation-free behavior.
Adjustment Center residents are not allowed to engage in any educational,
recreational, or vocational programming. They may leave their cells for just 5
reasons:
--Yard visits, at most 3 times per week for 3 hours each
--Showers, at most 3 times per week
--Medical visits
--Rare opportunities for visitors, which occur behind a dirty Plexiglas window
through a poor quality 2-way intercom
--Visits to the law library, which can take several months to secure
Before and after any movement within the unit, men are routinely strip
searched, often in front of other Adjustment Center residents and guards, even
if they have not come into contact with anyone else during their time out of
cell.
While in the yard, residents have access to small open yards or walk-alone
cages (roughly twice as big as a cell), along with a few handballs and the
occasional pull-up bar. Although yard time is a rare opportunity for Adjustment
Center residents to interact with others, prisoners report that any interaction
may be perceived by the guards as "gang activity" and used to justify keeping
them in the Adjustment Center - so some residents choose not to interact.
In a letter to Solitary Watch, one Adjustment Center resident lamented the
seeming interminability of the status quo: "What is happening today and
tomorrow in solitary confinement is the same stuff which has taken place 10 and
15 plus years ago.
"In fact you will be able to find the same prisoners there in continuous
solitary placement, subjected to the same inhumane conditions."
Adjustment Center residents - despite extremely restrictive conditions - joined
prisoners statewide in peaceful hunger strikes in 2011 and 2013. Not only did
the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) ignore the
strikers' reasonable demands - access to recreation activities, increased
ability to communicate with their families, meaningful review of their
detention in the Adjustment Center - officials considered participation in the
strike a disciplinary offense and used it to justify keeping participants in
the Adjustment Center.
In a letter to Solitary Watch, one Adjustment Center resident expressed
unwillingness to discuss other forms of non-violent activism for the same
reason: peaceful acts of protest, he said, are "re-interpreted as a threat to
security" and "written into the local rules to make non-violent acts of
resistance [into] a 'rule violation.'"
The strikes did, however, succeed in bringing attention to conditions in
California's prison system and exposing some cracks in its system of long-term
solitary confinement. Over the past few years, several lawsuits have challenged
the state's use of solitary confinement on and off death row, including Lopez
v. Brown.
EmilyRose Johns, working on the Lopez case with the law firm Siegel & Yee, told
Solitary Watch they are at a very early stage of settlement talks with CDCR.
She noted that these talks are taking place "in the shadow of Ashker v. Brown,"
a related case that settled with CDCR in September. Although the Ashker
settlement has no direct effect on Adjustment Center residents, it has
significant implications for litigation and policy work to reform conditions on
California's death row.
Ashker was a class action lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights
(CCR) on behalf of those who have spent a decade or more in solitary
confinement in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at California's Pelican Bay
State Prison. Like Lopez, Ashker argued that long term segregation violates the
Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and that the
lack of meaningful review of SHU placement violates the right to due process.
The Adjustment Center is not technically covered by the lawsuit - it is not
specifically classified as a SHU - but the conditions challenged in Ashker are
extremely similar to those of the Adjustment Center, including the
non-evidence-based criteria for ascertaining gang affiliation.
The Ashker settlement will transform the "status-based" system for placing
people in SHUs to a "behavior-based" system. Individuals will only be put in
the SHU if they have committed verified "SHU-eligible" rule violations, such as
violence, weapons possession, or escape attempts - not merely for alleged gang
affiliation.
The settlement also significantly limits the time individuals may spend in
solitary confinement. CCR noted that in settling Ashker, "California has
implicitly recognized the harm to prisoners from very prolonged solitary
confinement." CCR lawyer Alexis Agathocleous, speaking to Solitary Watch, noted
that CDCR has "acknowledged that other options are possible" for managing
behavior in prison, besides long-term segregation. Those working on Lopez will
look to the Ashker settlement for an understanding of what CDCR may be willing
to put on the table.
EmilyRose Johns noted, however, that there are obstacles to negotiating a
settlement for those on death row that Ashker didn???t have to grapple with,
including different regulatory context and an even greater stigma. Settlement
discussions could continue for months or even years; if discussions break down
and the case goes to trial, it will almost certainly be years before a judgment
arrives. Meanwhile, life - such as it is - will go on for the men who live in
the Adjustment Center. With executions apparently stalled indefinitely, the
severe living conditions of individuals on death row, ostensibly temporary, are
seemingly more and more permanent.
For the named plaintiffs in Lopez, however, things will be a bit different. As
a result of the lawsuit, Johns noted, they have all been transferred out of the
Adjustment Center and into slightly less stringent conditions in East Block.
Their executions continue to be nowhere in sight.
(source: solitarywatch.com)
USA:
How the Drug Shortage Has Slowed the Death-Penalty Treadmill ---- Only 4 states
are currently carrying out lethal injections, and 10 are considering other
methods.
Last year, during a U.S. Supreme Court debate over whether a specific cocktail
of drugs could be used in executions, Justice Samuel Alito accused
death-penalty opponents of pursuing a "guerrilla war" for their cause. Instead
of trying to convince legislatures or courts to do away with capital
punishment, he said during oral argument in Glossip v. Gross, activists and
lawyers were instead cutting off supplies of drugs, and then, when states got
different drugs, arguing that using them would amount to "cruel and unusual
punishment."
Opponents of the death penalty have taken exception to the term "guerilla war"
- they see their work as a legitimate effort to save individual inmates from
the kinds of botched executions that have made the news recently. "I think
Justice Alito greatly exaggerated the power and influence of these so-called
'activists,'" says Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno, while
minimizing "the sway of other forces, namely an increasingly skeptical public
and a medical community appalled by their unwitting involvement in this
process."
But if it is a war, they are clearly winning.
Using a 3-drug cocktail, state prisons carried out hundreds of lethal
injections from 1982 to 2009, when the pharmaceutical company Hospira began
having problems manufacturing one of those drugs, sodium thiopental. Activists
started alerting drug companies and governments in Europe that their drugs were
being used in executions, causing companies to withhold them. States started
scrambling for new sources and combinations of drugs and passed laws to shroud
the process in secrecy - this week Virginia's governor proposed such a measure.
Defense lawyers attacked the secrecy1 and the new cocktails in court.
In the vast majority of cases, judges have sided with the states and allowed
the drugs to remain secret. The exception is Missouri, where a circuit court
judge has ordered the state to disclose its supplier. The state has appealed
that decision, so the source remains secret for now.
There was already a decline in executions - to 52 in 2009 from a high of 98 in
1999 - but the drug issues helped the number drop further, to 28, last year.
The State of Lethal Injection Drugs
4 states with the necessary drugs have scheduled executions in the coming
weeks. Other states have been unable to acquire the lethal injection drugs or
have been temporarily stopped by litigation in the courts.
We've determined the status of executions for the 31 states that allow the
death penalty, as well as for the federal government. Here is the breakdown:
Only 4 states are currently carrying out lethal injections. Texas, Missouri,
and Georgia use a single drug, pentobarbital (Georgia is set to use the drug
for an execution on Tuesday). Alabama has scheduled an execution next month,
and uses 3 drugs in its protocol, including midazolam and pentobarbital. The
state's Department of Corrections has refused to divulge the source of those
drugs, which were used for an execution in January, the state's 1st in 2 years.
Florida has also enveloped its lethal-injection process in secrecy - and may be
able to carry it out - but executions are on hold there because of a Supreme
Court decision, Hurst v. Florida, which invalidated the state's rules
surrounding how judges hand down death sentences.
3 active execution states have drugs that are about to expire (Virginia,
Arizona, and Arkansas). Many states have turned to small compounding
pharmacies, which make a version of pentobarbital that loses its potency more
quickly than the type manufactured by larger companies.
3 states (Arizona, Arkansas, and Oklahoma) are tied up in court battles over
their drug sources. In Arizona and Arkansas, state officials have said the
drugs they have on hand could reach their expiration date before those battles
conclude.
The difficulty of finding a source of drugs has led Louisiana to halt
executions until at least July, and Ohio's execution chamber will not be in use
until 2017. Several of the 11 executions Ohio had planned for this year are
rescheduled for as late as 2019. Nebraska is also looking for execution drugs,
although the state legislature repealed the death penalty; a public referendum
on the punishment is expected in November.
Since 2010, the year the drug shortage began to take hold, 17 states and the
federal government have carried out no executions. 5 other states (Delaware,
Idaho, Mississippi, South Carolina, and South Dakota) have carried out no
executions since 2012.
At least 10 states have recently considered other methods of execution,
including the firing squad (Utah, Mississippi, Wyoming, South Carolina,
Missouri, and Arkansas), the electric chair (Louisiana, Tennessee, and
Virginia), and the gas chamber (Oklahoma). Mississippi has considered all 3.
(source: themarshallproject.org)
**************
It's time to put the death penalty on death row
Despite increased support in favor of abolishing the death penalty throughout
the world, Amnesty International released its annual report showing last year's
number of executions as the most in the last 25 years. At least 1,634 people
were executed in 2015, the number being a rough estimation because of China's
proclivity to doctor facts and figures released to the public. The most
executions took place in China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United
States.
For the 7th consecutive year, the United States is the only country in the
Americas to carry out executions - 28 in 2015, to be exact. Texas, Missouri,
Georgia and Florida are responsible for all but 2 executions last year,
according to The New York Times. In our country, 18 states and the District of
Columbia have abolished the death penalty while 12 others have not exercised
the law for years.
There is also a global trend to disavowing the death penalty. More than half of
the world - 102 countries - abolished the death penalty, and 38 others have
refrained from use of the penalty for a decade. The United States,
unfortunately, is not one amongst that number. Rather, the U.S. is listed along
countries whose oppressive regimes allow the use of the death penalty for
crimes such as adultery, blasphemy, corruption, kidnapping and dissension.
The death penalty contains many flaws, from economic to biological to social.
In an economic sense, the death penalty is an expensive process for the federal
government. It encompasses the costliest parts of our judicial system, the
lengthy and complicated trial process that also involves experts, attorneys,
pre-trial times and 1 trial just to determine guilt and another to determine
punishment. After that comes a series of appeals while inmates are held in high
security prisons funded by the tax dollars of our citizens.
From a biological standpoint, there have been multiple issues regarding cases
that wrongfully sentence the innocent to death. The Innocence Project was
started to identify the true perpetrators of cases and exonerate those who had
been wrong accused and sentenced. The Innocence Project was involved in 177 of
337 DNA exonerations due to the project, and many more since the project proved
to be wildly successful, according to The Innocence Project's website. Since
2000, there have been 263 exonerations. Since the reinstatement of the modern
each penalty, 87 death row inmates have been later proven to be innocent, thus
creating an error rate of one for every 7 people executed, according to the
dissenting opinion of Supreme Court Justice Brennan in Gregg v. Georgia.
From a social standpoint, there are issues that arise due to classism and
racism. There is an overwhelming disparity between the population of African
Americans in the U.S. and the percentage of death row inmates who are African
Americans. However, the problem goes beyond the numbers and affects due
process. If the jury is racially motivated to convict despite evidence to the
contrary, the defendant is at a disadvantage despite any evidence to his
advantage. In issues of classism, the quality of the lawyer one received would
greatly influence the outcome of the trial as well. Those with disposable
incomes can often afford lawyers who can make a case to prevent the death
penalty. Those of low socioeconomic status often struggle to obtain a lawyer
who can competently acquit them.
Also, the requirement for physicians to participate in executions violates
their oath to protect lives. The guidelines of the AMA Code of Medical Ethics
addresses physician participation in executions involving lethal injection.
Ethically, one is clearly prohibited from selecting injection sites, starting
intravenous lines, prescribing, administering or supervising the use of lethal
drugs, monitoring vital signs, onsite or remotely and declaring death.
Physician-assisted suicide, a controversial practice to help promote death in a
terminally ill patient who so wishes to die rather than be kept alive by
extreme measures, embodies the grey area of medicine. Meanwhile, the federal
government chooses to ignore the code of ethics taken amongst doctors for their
own benefit of capital punishment.
As Albert Camus so eloquently put, "But what then is capital punishment but the
most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated
it may be, can be compared?"
(source: Jesseba Fernando is a staff columnist for The Daily Campus opinion
section---Univ. Conn. Daily Campus)
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