January 17
UTAH:
Arguing The Death Penalty In Utah On Tuesday's Access Utah
A majority (55 %) of Americans support the death penalty, according to the
latest Gallup poll on the subject, but support continues to decline. In 1994,
80 % supported the death penalty.
Attitudes may be changing in Utah as well. A poll released by the Utah Justice
Coalition last year showed that 64 % of Utahns favored alternatives to the
death penalty for people convicted of murder. Support continues to decline
among Republicans and there is a relatively new development: the organization
in 2013 of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.
Tuesday, Utah Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty joined the Young
Americans For Liberty chapter at Weber State University, as well as the
Catholic Association for Social Action, for a panel discussion about capital
punishment in Utah. The event, titled "Utah's Death Penalty - A Broken System
Beyond Repair" was held from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. in the Wildcat Theater, Room
208, in the Shepherd Student Union Building on the campus of Weber State
University at 3910 West Campus Drive in Ogden.
Several members of that panel joined us Tuesday from the studios of KCPW in
Salt Lake City:
-- Kevin Greene, the state director of Utah Conservatives Concerned About the
Death Penalty
-- Darcy Van Orden, the executive director of the Utah Justice Coalition
-- Marina Lowe, legislative & policy counsel for the ACLU of Utah
-- Jensie Anderson, legal director of the Rocky Mountain Innocence Project & a
professor of law at the University of Utah
(source: Utah Public Radio)
****************************
Prosecutors to seek death penalty in 2016 trailer park murder
County prosecutors announced their intent Tuesday to seek the death penalty
against the 28-year-old charged with fatally shooting a Cedar City man in a fit
of jealousy in 2016.
Mark Mair, 28 is charged with aggravated murder, 1 1st-degree felony count of
aggravated burglary and 7 counts of felony discharge of a firearm in the death
of 34-year-old Justin Hanna.
Mair's attorney, Douglas Terry, told the court his client had just learned of
the Iron County Attorney's Office decision to pursue the death penalty shortly
before Tuesday afternoon's hearing.
"We expected this, but it's still sobering," Terry said.
A status conference in the case is scheduled for Feb. 20. The scheduling of a
jury trial has been postponed as the defense team works to review the evidence.
Terry told The Spectrum following the hearing that his team are still receiving
new evidence even more than 19 months after Mair's arrest.
"We just don't feel that the facts of this case warrant the death penalty,"
Terry said. "Even if our client is found guilty we don't believe it warrants
the death penalty."
Iron County Attorney Scott Garrett said the decision to file the notice of
intent to seek the death penalty was primarily fueled by a desire to keep every
option open as the case progresses.
Terry added there is still the possibility of accepting a plea deal -
especially now knowing that the state has made their intentions to seek the
death penalty clear.
"It certainly ups the ante as far as you can go," he said.
While both Terry and Garrett confirmed there has been discussions of a deal,
nothing has officially been accepted at this point.
Charging documents say Hanna was in bed with a woman Mair had previously been
romantically involved with on the morning of July 24, 2016. Mair had traveled
to the Reber Court Trailer Park on the 500 block of North 400 West to retrieve
some money, according to witness testimony from the November preliminary
hearing. He allegedly pushed a fan through the bedroom window as he stood
outside of the trailer before firing multiple shots at Hanna.
The Utah State Medical Examiner's Office ruled Hanna sustained 3 fatal gunshot
wounds to the left shoulder, leg and pelvis.
Mair allegedly confided in Elcha Hatch - the 19-year-old who had drove him to
the trailer park - that he had become upset after he opened the window to
discover his ex-girlfriend in bed with another man. Hatch, her mother and
another man then drove the wanted man to Grand Junction, Colo. under his
orders. The trio had previously been charged with 1 count of obstruction of
justice for helping Mair flee, but the 2nd-degree felony was later dropped
after information indicating they had been forced against their will to assist
emerged.
Mair and Hatch were arrested at a home in Grand Junction, Colorado, the next
day following a 4-hour police standoff.
If convicted, a judge or jury must weigh evidence in the case before handing
down either a death sentence, or a sentence of life in prison with or without a
possibility of parole.
In addition to the aggravated murder charge, Mair is charged with 1 count of
distribution of a controlled substance, a 2nd-degree felony.
(source: The Spectrum)
*********************
Gary Gilmore executed on this date in history
Gary Mark Gilmore was born in McCamey, Texas, on December 4, 1940, the second
of four sons, to Frank and Bessie Gilmore. The other sons were Frank, Jr.,
Gaylen, and the writer and music journalist Mikal Gilmore. Frank Gilmore Sr.
(1890–1962), an alcoholic con man, had other wives and families, none of whom
he supported.[citation needed] On a whim, he married Bessie (née Brown) (1914 –
June 1980), a Mormon outcast from Provo, Utah, in Sacramento, California. Gary
was born while they were living in Texas under the pseudonym of Coffman to
avoid the law. Frank christened his son Faye Robert Coffman, but once they left
Texas, Bessie changed it to Gary Mark. This name change proved to be a sore
point years later. Frank's mother, Fay, kept the original "Faye Coffman" birth
certificate, and when Gary found it two decades later, he assumed he must be
either illegitimate or someone else's son. He seized on this as the reason that
he and his father never got along; he became very upset and walked out on his
mother when she tried to explain the name change to him.
The theme of illegitimacy, real or imagined, was common in the Gilmore family.
Frank, Sr.'s mother, Fay Gilmore, once told Bessie that Frank, Sr.'s father was
a famous magician who had passed through Sacramento, where she was living.
Bessie researched this at the library and concluded that Frank was the
illegitimate son of Harry Houdini. In fact, Houdini was only sixteen years old
in 1890, the year of Frank Gilmore's birth, and did not begin his career as a
magician until the following year. Mikal Gilmore, Gary's youngest brother,
believes the story to be false, but has stated that both his father and mother
believed it.
During Gary's childhood, the family frequently relocated throughout the Western
United States, with Frank supporting them by selling fake magazine
subscriptions. Gary had a troubled relationship with his father, whom his
youngest brother Mikal described as a "cruel and unreasonable man." Frank
Gilmore, Sr. was strict and quick to anger, and would often whip his sons,
Frank, Jr., Gary and Gaylen, with a razor strop, whip or a belt for little or
no reason. Less often, he would beat his wife. He mellowed somewhat with age:
Mikal reported that Frank whipped him only once, and never did it again after
Mikal told him, "I hate you." In addition, Frank and Bessie would argue loudly
and verbally abuse each other. Frank would anger Bessie by calling her crazy,
and defame Brigham Young, the second president and prophet of The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as "Bring 'em Young." Bessie would retaliate
by calling him a "Cat-licker" [Catholic] and threatening to kill him some
night. This abuse continued for years and caused considerable turmoil within
the Gilmore family.
In 1952, the Gilmore family settled in Portland, Oregon. As an adolescent, Gary
began engaging in petty crime. Although Gilmore had an IQ test score of 133,
gained high scores on both aptitude and achievement tests, and showed artistic
talent, he dropped out of high school in the ninth grade. He ran away from home
with a friend to Texas, returning to Portland after several months. At the age
of 14, he started a small car theft ring with friends, which resulted in his
first arrest. He was released to his father with a warning. Two weeks later, he
was back in court on another car theft charge. The court remanded him to the
MacLaren Reform School for Boys in Oregon, from which he was released the
following year. He was sent to Oregon State Correctional Institution on another
car theft charge in 1960 and was released later that year. In 1961, Frank, Sr.,
was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer; he died at the end of June 1962, while
Gary was still in prison. A Corrections Officer told Gary when his father died.
Despite his dysfunctional relationship with his father, Gary was devastated and
tried to kill himself by slitting his wrists.
Criminal career
In 1962, Gilmore was arrested again and sent to the Oregon State Penitentiary
for armed robbery and assault. He faced assault and armed robbery charges again
in 1964 and was given a 15-year prison sentence as a habitual offender. A
prison psychiatrist diagnosed him with antisocial personality disorder with
intermittent psychotic decompensation. He was granted conditional release in
1972 to live weekdays in a halfway house in Eugene, Oregon, and study art at a
community college. Gilmore never registered and, within a month, he was
arrested and convicted of armed robbery.
Due to his violent behavior in prison, Gilmore was transferred in 1975 from
Oregon to the federal prison in Marion, Illinois, at the time a maximum
security facility.
Gilmore was conditionally paroled in April 1976 and went to Provo, Utah, to
live with a distant cousin, Brenda Nicol, who tried to help him find work.
Gilmore worked briefly at his uncle Vern Damico's shoe repair store and then
for an insulation company, but he soon returned to his previous lifestyle of
stealing, drinking, and getting into fights. Gilmore, then 35, had a
relationship with Nicole Baker, a 19-year-old widow and divorcee who had two
young children. The relationship was at first casual, but soon became intense
and strained due to Gilmore's aggressive behavior and pressure from Baker's
family to stop her seeing him.
Murders
On the evening of July 19, 1976, Gilmore robbed and murdered Max Jensen, a gas
station employee in Orem, Utah. The next evening, he robbed and murdered Bennie
Bushnell, a motel manager in Provo. Although both men had complied with his
demands, he murdered each of them. While disposing of the .22 caliber pistol
used in both killings, Gilmore accidentally shot himself in his right hand,
leaving a trail of blood to the service garage, where he had left his truck to
be repaired prior to murdering Bushnell. Garage mechanic Michael Simpson
witnessed Gilmore hiding the gun in the bushes. Seeing the blood on Gilmore's
crudely bandaged right hand when he approached to pay for the repairs to his
truck, and hearing on a police scanner of the shooting at the nearby motel,
Simpson wrote down Gilmore's license number and called the police. Gilmore's
cousin, Brenda, turned him in to police shortly after he phoned her asking for
bandages and painkillers for the injury to his hand. The Utah State Police
apprehended Gilmore as he tried to drive out of Provo, and he gave up without
attempting to flee. Although he was charged with the murders of Jensen and
Bushnell, the first case was never brought to trial, apparently because there
were no eyewitnesses.
Trial
Gilmore's murder trial began at the Provo courthouse on October 5, 1976, and
lasted two days. Peter Arroyo, a motel guest, testified that he saw Gilmore in
the motel registration office that night. After taking the money, Gilmore
allegedly ordered Bushnell to lie down on the floor and then shot him. Gerald
F. Wilkes, an FBI ballistics expert, matched the two shell casings and the
bullet that killed Bushnell to the gun hidden in the bush, and a patrolman
testified that he had traced Gilmore's trail of blood to that same bush.
Gilmore's two court-appointed lawyers, Michael Esplin and Craig Snyder, made no
attempt to cross-examine the majority of the state's witnesses, and rested
without calling any witnesses for the defense. Gilmore protested, and the
following day asked the judge if he could take the stand in his own defense,
perhaps arguing that due to the dissociation and lack of control he felt at the
time, he had a good case for insanity. His attorneys presented the findings of
four separate psychiatrists, all of whom had said that Gilmore was aware of
what he was doing and that he knew it was wrong at the time. While he did have
an antisocial personality disorder, which may have been aggravated by drinking
and drugs, he did not meet the legal criteria for insanity. Gilmore withdrew
his request. On October 7, the jury retired to deliberate and by mid-day, they
had returned with a guilty verdict. Later that day, the jury unanimously
recommended the death penalty due to the special circumstances of the crime.
Gary chose to not pursue habeas corpus relief in federal court. His mother,
Bessie, sued for a stay of execution on his behalf. In a five-to-four decision,
the US Supreme Court refused to hear his mother's claim. The Court's per curiam
opinion said that the defendant had waived his rights by not pursuing them. At
the time, Utah had two methods of execution — firing squad or hanging.
Believing a hanging could be botched, Gilmore chose the former, declaring, "I'd
prefer to be shot." The execution was set for November 15 at 8 AM.
Against his express wishes, Gilmore received several stays of execution through
the efforts of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The last of these
occurred just hours before the rescheduled execution date of January 17. That
stay was overturned at 7:30 AM, and the execution was allowed to proceed as
planned.[6] At a Board of Pardons hearing in November 1976, Gilmore said of the
efforts by the ACLU and others to prevent his execution: "They always want to
get in on the act. I don't think they have ever really done anything effective
in their lives. I would like them all — including that group of reverends and
rabbis from Salt Lake City — to butt out. This is my life and this is my death.
It's been sanctioned by the courts that I die and I accept that."
During the time Gilmore was on death row awaiting his execution, he attempted
suicide twice; the first time on November 16 after the first stay was issued,
and again one month later on December 16.
Execution
Gilmore was executed by firing squad at Utah State Prison.
Gilmore was executed on January 17, 1977, at 8:07 a.m. by firing squad at Utah
State Prison in Draper, Utah. The night before, Gilmore had requested an
all-night gathering of friends and family at the prison mess hall. On the
evening before his execution, he was served a last meal of steak, potatoes,
milk and coffee but consumed only the milk and coffee. His uncle, Vern Damico,
who attended the gathering, later claimed to have smuggled in three small, 50ml
Jack Daniel's whiskey bottles which Gilmore supposedly consumed.
In the morning at the time of execution, Gilmore was transported to an
abandoned cannery behind the prison, which served as its death house. He was
strapped to a chair, with a wall of sandbags placed behind him to trap the
bullets. Five gunmen, local police officers, stood concealed behind a curtain
with five small holes, through which they aimed their rifles. When asked for
any last words, Gilmore simply replied, "Let's do it."[8] The Rev. Thomas
Meersman, the Roman Catholic prison chaplain, administered the last rites to
Gilmore. After the prison physician cloaked him in a black hood, Gilmore
uttered his last words to Meersman: "Dominus vobiscum" (Latin, translation:
"The Lord be with you.") Meersman replied, "Et cum spiritu tuo" ("And with your
spirit.")
In Utah, firing squads consist of 5 volunteer law enforcement officers from the
county in which the conviction of the offender took place. The 5 executioners
were equipped with .30-30-caliber rifles and off-the-shelf Winchester 150-grain
(9.7 g) SilverTip ammunition. The condemned was restrained and hooded, and the
shots were fired at a distance of 20 feet (6 m), aiming at the chest.
Prison officials stated that the firing squad comprised four men with live
rounds, and one with a blank, so that the shooters could not be certain as to
who fired the fatal shots. However, upon inspecting the clothes worn by his
brother Gary at his execution, Mikal Gilmore noted five holes in the shirt.
According to his memoir Shot in the Heart, "the state of Utah, apparently, had
taken no chances on the morning that it put my brother to death."
Gilmore had requested that some of his organs be donated for transplant
purposes. Within hours of the execution, 2 people received his corneas. His
body was sent for autopsy and was cremated later that day. The following day,
his ashes were scattered from an airplane over Spanish Fork, Utah.
(source: Wikipedia)
CALIFORNIA:
Luis Bracamontes faces the death penalty if convicted in the October 2014
slayings of Deputies Danny Oliver and Michael Davis Jr.
More than 3 years after a daylong rampage left 2 Sacramento area deputies dead,
the 2 suspects in the case are due in court Tuesday for the start of a trial
that is expected to last several months.
Luis Bracamontes, 37, a Mexican citizen who had been deported repeatedly but
continued to slip back into the United States, faces the death penalty if
convicted in the Oct. 24, 2014, slayings of Deputies Danny Oliver and Michael
Davis Jr.
His wife, Janelle Monroy, a 41-year-old native of Phoenix, faces a sentence of
up to life in prison.
The trial before Sacramento Superior Court Judge Steve White and 2 juries - 1
for each of the defendants - is scheduled to begin with opening statements
Tuesday morning in a large, 1st-floor courtroom chosen to accommodate family
members of the dead deputies and the expected crush of onlookers and media,
including photographers who will be allowed record images of the suspects'
faces for the 1st time since their arrests.
White has previously kept cameras out of the courtroom, but has agreed to allow
access during the start of the trial, closing arguments, the reading of the
verdicts and any sentencing.
From the start, Bracamontes has proven to be a difficult client for public
defenders Norm Dawson and Jeffrey Barbour.
He has loudly admitted his guilt, asked to be executed, threatened to attack
them or courtroom deputies and tried to fire them in an apparent bid to
represent himself and plead guilty.
"I'm going to kill all you motherf------ if I get the chance," Bracamontes
shouted at deputies shackling him to a chair in court during a hearing in June.
He has cracked jokes, grinned broadly as the slayings were described in court
and appeared to fall asleep at various times.
"You're not helping our cause here, you're really not," Dawson told Bracamontes
at one court session after his client smiled and began staring at prosecutors
Rod Norgaard and Dave Tellman.
His lawyers sought unsuccessfully to have him declared mentally incompetent to
face trial, to have the trial moved out of Sacramento and to bar the media from
some portions of the hearings. White rejected those efforts.
The case has drawn widespread media attention, partly because of Bracamontes'
status as an illegal immigrant and his history of arrests and deportations in
Arizona. President Trump has weighed in on the case, mentioning it during a
speech to Congress last year and introducing the widow of 1 of the slain
deputies.
Bracamontes' wife has remained mostly quiet during the pretrial proceedings,
although at times she has cried at the defense table as her husband has acted
out. Her attorney, Pete Kmeto, is expected to argue that Monroy was, in
essence, Bracamontes' 1st victim.
Court filings have described Bracamontes as paranoid and abusive, and say that
while the couple drove from their Salt Lake City home to Sacramento he smoked
methamphetamine and marijuana and threatened to sell her into sexual slavery.
The trial stems from a daylong rampage that began in the parking lot of a Motel
6 near Arden Fair Mall. Oliver, a Sacramento sheriff's deputy on patrol with
his partner, was shot in the head after allegedly asking Monroy for
identification.
The suspect then unleashed a hail of bullets as he fled, carjacking vehicles
along the way until a shootout near Auburn killed Davis, a Placer County
deputy, and wounded another deputy, authorities say.
Because the slain deputies were from 2 different counties, prosecutors were
chosen from each office to work together on the case. Norgaard comes from the
Sacramento County District Attorney's Office, while Tellman comes from the
Placer County office.
After strange proceedings, hearing set for accused deputy killer Bracamontes
A preliminary hearing is scheduled to begin Monday, March 28, 2016, for Luis
Monroy Bracamontes, who is accused of killing 2 Sacramento-area deputies in
October 2014. The defendant's odd behavior, off-kilter pronouncements and
blurted admission of guilt at an earlier court appearance have created a
strange air around the case.
(source: Sacramento Bee)
*********************
Man charged in stabbing death of transgender woman in Pico-Union
Authorities have charged a Los Angeles man with the stabbing death and
attempted robbery of a transgender woman whose body was found after a house
fire in the Pico-Union district.
Kevyn Ramirez is facing charges of murder during the commission of an attempted
1st-degree robbery, as well as 2 counts of arson.
He is accused of killing Victoria "Viccky" Ramos Gutierrez. Investigators say
he met the transgender woman online, then early on Jan. 10 he allegedly stabbed
her and set her home on fire in the 1700 block of South New Hampshire Avenue.
Ramirez, 29, was arrested within 2 days of the fire and then charged on
Tuesday.
The District Attorney's Office says Ramirez could face the death penalty or
life in prison without possibility of parole. He is being held without bail.
Gutierrez's dog is still missing and her friends have been searching since the
fire.
Members of the transgender community stood with law enforcement at the press
conference announcing the latest details on the case.
"Every time a lot of community members are murdered senselessly, it's always
something else - it's always a robbery, it's always domestic violence," said
Maria Roman, an advocate for the transgender community. "For somebody to stab
you and do the things detectives said happened to her, you know it's fueled by
hate."
Investigators are not calling her death a hate crime, but they are continuing
to investigate. They also asked anyone who may have had contact with Ramirez to
come forward.
"We know there are probably people out there who have encountered this suspect,
who may be fearful and anxious. We ask them with open arms to please come
forward," said Los Angeles Police Department Assistant Chief Beatrice Girmala.
(source: KABC news)
WASHINGTON:
Death penalty is no longer needed in Washington
It is time to abolish the death penalty in Washington state.
A proposal in the Legislature sponsored by state Sen. Maureen Walsh, R-College
Place, is worthy of support.
Walsh offers strong arguments for ending capital punishment, starting with
concern that families must endure the long and emotional appeals process in
murder cases. Media coverage opens old wounds. And when the convicted killer is
executed, families don't feel vindicated, she said.
"The death penalty is not accomplishing a wonderful relief for these families,"
Walsh said.
Beyond that, the appeals process is very expensive. A Seattle University study
in 2015 found the appeals process in death penalty cases cost $1 million more
than keeping the killer in prison for life.
Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, has put a moratorium on executions while he is in
office. The public reaction, which has been essentially very little, indicates
the public either agrees or does not care.
The last execution in Washington was in 2010 at the state penitentiary in Walla
Walla. To that point this newspaper accepted the death penalty as an option to
punish those convicted of the most heinous acts imaginable.
The state has used capital punishment sparingly - and appropriately - since the
death penalty was reinstated in 1981 and used for the 1st time in 30 years in
1993. 5 inmates have been executed - 2 by hanging and 3 by lethal injection -
since capital punishment was reinstated.
A total of 110 executions have been carried out in the state (and before that
territories) since 1849.
In 2009, the Union-Bulletin did an in-depth look at the death penalty. It was
clear the costs of implementing the death penalty were enormous - about $20
million from 1981 through 2009 - with the appeals processing accounting for
most of the spending.
Sentencing some to death is far more expensive than life in prison without the
possibility of parole.
Some of the arguments for retaining the death penalty are based on the emotion
of seeing a brutal killer pay the ultimate price, rather than as a deterrent to
crime, or even justice.
A better approach, given the excessive expense and lack of relief for families,
is to bring closure to these cases more quickly.
A sentence of life in prison with no possibility of parole serves taxpayers as
well as justice.
(source: Editorial Board, Union-Bulletin)
USA:
Death to the death penalty in the U.S.
Alva Campbell was supposed to die on Nov. 15. That was the date chosen by Ohio,
which had convicted and condemned Campbell for murdering a teenager, Charles
Dials, during a 1997 carjacking in Columbus, Ohio.
Inside the death chamber that morning, prison officials spent more than an hour
searching Campbell's arms and legs for a vein into which they could inject the
lethal drug cocktail. They comforted him as they prepared to kill him,
providing the 69-year-old with a wedge pillow to help with breathing problems
related to his years of heavy smoking.
After about 80 minutes, they gave up and returned Campbell to his cell, where
he sits awaiting his next date with death, now set for June 5, 2019.
The pathetic scene was a fitting symbol of the state of capital punishment in
America in 2017, a vile practice that descends further into macabre farce even
as it declines in use. Campbell would have been the 24th person put to death
last year. That's less than 1/4 of the 98 executions carried out in 1999.
The number should be zero. As the nation enters 2018, the Supreme Court is
considering whether to hear at least 1 case asking it to strike down the death
penalty, once and for all, for violating the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel
and unusual punishments.
Whether the justices take that or another case, the facts they face will be the
same: The death penalty is a savage, racially biased, arbitrary and pointless
punishment that becomes rarer and more geographically isolated with every year.
In 2017 the total number of people sitting on death rows across America fell
for the 17th straight year. In Harris County, Texas, the nation's undisputed
leader in state-sanctioned killing, the year passed without a single execution
or death sentence - the 1st time that's happened in more than 40 years.
Still, Texas was 1 of just 2 states - Arkansas is the other - responsible for
almost 1/2 of 2017's executions. And nearly 1 in 3 of the nation's 39 new death
sentences last year were handed down in 3 counties: Riverside in California,
Clark in Nevada and Maricopa in Arizona.
It would be tempting to conclude from this litany, which is drawn from an
annual report by the Death Penalty Information Center, that capital punishment
is being reserved for the most horrific crime committed by the most
incorrigible offenders. But it would be wrong.
The death penalty is not and has never been about the severity of any given
crime. Mental illness, intellectual disability, brain damage, childhood abuse
or neglect, abysmal lawyers, minimal judicial review, a white victim - these
factors are far more closely associated with who ends up getting executed. Of
the 23 people put to death in 2017, all but three had at least one of these
factors, according to the report. 8 were younger than 21 at the time of their
crime.
More troubling still are the wrongful convictions. In 2017, four more people
who had been sentenced to death were exonerated, for a total of 160 since 1973
- a time during which 1,465 people were executed. In many of the exonerations,
prosecutors won convictions and sentences despite questionable or nonexistent
evidence, pervasive misconduct or a pattern of racial bias. A 2014 study
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences extrapolated
from known cases of wrongful convictions to estimate that at least 4 % of all
death-row inmates are wrongfully convicted. Against this backdrop, it would
take an enormous leap of faith to believe that no innocent person has ever been
executed.
This (Times) page has long opposed the death penalty, and would continue to
even if the penalty's application were completely free of bias and error. That
is an unattainable goal, as should be obvious by now. Perhaps this explains why
Americans, whose support for capital punishment climbed as high as 80 % in
1994, have increasingly lost their appetite for state-sanctioned killing.
Support is down to around 55 %, its lowest level in 45 years.
The rest of the developed world agreed to reject this cruel and pointless
practice long ago. How can it be ended here, for good?
Leaving it up to individual states is not the solution. It's true that 19
states and the District of Columbia have already banned capital punishment,
four have suspended it and 8 others haven't executed anyone in more than a
decade. Some particularly awful state policies have also been eliminated in the
past couple of years, like a Florida law that permitted non-unanimous juries to
impose death sentences, and an Alabama rule empowering judges to override a
jury's vote for life, even a unanimous one, and impose death.
And yet at the same time, states have passed laws intended to speed up the
capital appeals process, despite the growing evidence of legal errors and
prosecutorial misconduct that can be hidden for years or longer. Other states
have gone to great lengths to hide their lethal-injection protocols from public
scrutiny, even as executions with untested drugs have gone awry and
pharmaceutical companies have objected to the use of their products to kill
people.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested that the death penalty would eventually
end with a whimper. "The incidence of capital punishment has gone down, down,
down so that now, I think, there are only three states that actually administer
the death penalty," Justice Ginsburg said at a law school event. "We may see an
end to capital punishment by attrition as there are fewer and fewer
executions."
That's a dispiriting take. The death penalty holdouts may be few and far
between, but they are fiercely committed, and they won't stop killing people
unless they're forced to. Relying on the vague idea of attrition absolves the
court of its responsibility to be the ultimate arbiter and guardian of the
Constitution - and specifically of the Eighth Amendment. The court has already
relied on that provision to ban the execution of juvenile offenders, the
intellectually disabled and those convicted of crimes against people other than
murder.
There's no reason not to take the final step. The justices have all the
information they need right now to bring America in line with most of the rest
of the world and end the death penalty for good.
(source: The Philadelphia Tribune)
*********************
Ex-CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee suspected of spying for China
A former CIA officer who was charged Tuesday with unlawful possession of
secrets is suspected of a much worse crime: betraying U.S. informants in China,
sources familiar with the case told NBC News.
The former officer, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, 53, was arrested Monday after flying
into New York on a Cathay Pacific flight from his home in Hong King, federal
authorities announced.
Lee, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, was charged with a single count of
unlawfully possessing national defense information, based on a 2012 search that
found him to be in possession of 2 notebooks containing the true names of CIA
assets and covert facilities, which are some of the agency's most closely
guarded secrets.
But sources familiar with the case say he is suspected of funneling information
to China that caused the deaths or imprisonment of approximately 20 American
agents, in one of the worst intelligence breaches in decades.
The New York Times reported last year that the Chinese government
systematically dismantled CIA spying operations in the country starting in
2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over 2 years and
crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward.
CIA and FBI officials were mystified and mortified as one after another of
their best agents in China were jailed or executed.
It was considered the worst intelligence catastrophe since the 1990s, when
Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the CIA and the FBI, provided
secrets to Moscow for years that led to the deaths of multiple agents. Both men
are serving life terms in federal prison.
The Times story described a debate over a suspected mole, a former CIA case
officer now living in an Asian country.
An FBI task force launched an investigation and began to focus on Lee, sources
tell NBC News. It's unclear how the FBI lured Lee back to the U.S. but
officials say there have been several undercover attempts to incriminate him,
and at least one confrontational interview during which he denied being a spy.
In 2012, one source said, the FBI lured Lee back to the U.S. with a phony job
offer, but no charges were filed and he returned to Hong Kong.
Officials familiar with the case say it is unlikely that Lee will be charged
with espionage, which can carry the death penalty. It may be that the
government doesn't have the proof required for such a charge, or that it
doesn't want to air secrets in an open courtroom.
But sources say Lee was the subject of an intense - and extremely secret -
counterintelligence investigation. That included searches of his hotel rooms in
Hawaii and Virginia in 2012, according to the court records filed Tuesday.
"A review of photographs taken during the August 13, 2012, search in Hawaii and
the August 15, 2012, search in Virginia revealed that, during his stay in both
hotels, LEE possessed two small books (the "books") best described as a
datebook and an address book," the arrest affidavit said, adding that the books
contained classified information.
"The datebook contained handwritten information pertaining to, but not limited
to, operational notes from asset meetings, operational meeting locations,
operational phone numbers, true names of assets, and covert facilities," the
affidavit said. "The address book contained approximately twenty-one pages. The
address book contained true names and phone numbers of assets and covert CIA
employees, as well as the addresses of CIA facilities."
Some who investigated the case believed the Chinese had hacked the
communications the CIA was using to get in touch with its assets in China. A
source familiar with the case said such a hack was possible, but that it was
also clear Lee was spilling secrets to the Chinese.
Court documents say Lee had been a CIA case officer since 1994. He graduated
from Hawaii Pacific University in 1992 with a bachelor's degree in
International Business Management and in 1993 received a master's degree in
Human Resource Management, according to court documents, which do not list a
lawyer for him.
(source: NBC News)
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