[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, ILL., MD., NEB., USA

Sun Feb 3 14:08:55 CST 2008

Feb. 3

TEXAS:

Life goes on for Texas death row inmate----It took a jury 15 minutes to
convict Ronald Chambers; 31 years and 3 trials later, he's still awaiting
execution.

On an April night in 1975, 22-year-old college student Mike McMahan and
his friend Deia Sutton were robbed at gunpoint, then shot near a river
bank south of downtown Dallas.

McMahan died after one of the assailants, Ronald Chambers, bludgeoned him
with the butt of a shotgun. Sutton was left for dead after the second
attacker, Clarence Williams, choked and tried to drown her in the river.
She dragged herself to a hotel and called police.

Williams and Chambers were arrested within days of the attack. Williams is
currently serving two life sentences. Chambers was sentenced to death in
1976 by the jury that took 15 minutes to convict him.

31 years and 3 trials later, Chambers is still on death row, Texas'
longest-serving death house inmate.

In late January, 3 days before he was scheduled to die by lethal
injection, Chambers won a temporary reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court,
which is considering another case that could affect his.

"It's like there's no end in sight," the victim's sister, Janna McMahan,
said from her home in Washington state. " ... This has been never-ending
but no way in hell will I ever give up."

Chambers, now 52, has been on death row 3 times longer than the U.S.
average of about a decade between sentencing and execution.

A number of inmates have been on death row for more than 20 years,
according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In Texas, 15 of the 391
inmates on death row have awaited execution for more than 25 years; in
California, 32 of the 655 condemned have been there more than 25 years.
The longest-serving death row inmate in the United States is Gary Alvord,
a Florida killer sentenced to death in 1974.

While Chambers hasn't volunteered to die or abandon his appeals, neither
has he done anything to slow the case as it wound through the courts, said
his lawyer, James Volberding. "This is how the system works. He has not
unnecessarily dragged out his case, but here he is."

Chambers' first sentence was thrown out because a psychologist hired by
the prosecution didn't warn Chambers that his answers could be used
against him by the state. At a 2nd trial, in 1985, Chambers was again
condemned to death. That sentence was reversed when a court found that
prosecutors had improperly excluded three blacks from the jury.

Chambers was tried for a third time, in 1992, and again sentenced to die.
In January, his appeals nearly exhausted, the state prepared for his
execution when the high court issued a stay while it looks at another
Texas capital case. That case raises questions about whether jurors were
properly instructed to consider mitigating factors when deciding a death
sentence.

Volberding maintains that Chambers' sentencing instructions didn't allow
jurors to fully consider evidence that argued against death, such as his
harsh upbringing in a Dallas neighborhood known for crime and drugs.

In addition, jurors in the Chambers case did not hear that his accomplice,
Williams, was given a life sentence. The jury foreman believed "Williams
was at least as culpable as Chambers, if not more," Volberding wrote in a
Supreme Court brief. "Had [the foreman] known of Williams' life sentence,
she would have considered it a compelling mitigating circumstance
demanding equal treatment for Chambers."

Two jurors, including the foreman, have said they would have voted for
life in prison had they known a unanimous vote wasn't required for that
sentence, Volberding said.

If Chambers' case is sent back for a new sentencing trial, Dallas County
District Attorney Craig Watkins has said his office will again seek the
death penalty.

Today, Chambers is a grandfather who gets occasional visits from his grown
daughter. He has a radio, books and a small window in his 9-foot-by-9-foot
cell, where he spends up to 23 hours day in isolation.

Not a week goes by that Deia Sutton Roberts, the surviving victim, doesn't
think about the attack. "I am the one that was there; I was a part of this
violent crime," said Roberts, a wife and mother in Dallas. "As long as the
[district attorney] pursues this, I will do whatever it takes to see this
through."

(source: Minneapolis Star Tribune)

ILLINOIS:

For the 6th year in a row, University of Illinois Law and Human Rights
Professor Francis A. Boyle has nominated George Ryan for the Nobel Peace
Prize.

The nomination says "the current growing moratorium movement spreading
across the United States is a reality directly connected to Ryan's
courageous opposition to the death penalty both in the U.S. and around the
world, and to his visionary action to impose the first U.S. moratorium
against the death penalty in 2000."

Boyle cited Ryan for his "commitment to humanitarian principles and his
tireless efforts to create dialogue in support of seeking justice for the
3,350 men and women warehoused on death rows throughout the U.S." Boyle
says "George Ryan's dream to end governmental killing has temporarily come
to fruition."

Boyle says Ryan "has done more effective work against the death penalty
than the entire American Abolitionist Movement put together."

(source: The Daily Journal)

MARYLAND:

Obscured by death penalty debate is that kids need a chance

Even the judge seemed angry with the verdict.

"You are an evil man, sir," Judge Joseph Manck said to convicted
corrections officer murder Brandon Morris, while sentencing him to life in
prison and forgoing the death penalty in the process. "You took from the
Wroten family the center of their universe."

And Morris' defense attorney appeared to have his doubts. "Brandon Morris
did a very evil thing," said Arcangelo Tuminelli, who didn't speak to his
client after the sentencing.

The truth was inescapable. Jeff Wroten, a man who should be alive, is
dead. Brandon Morris, a man many believe should be dead, will go on
living.

Wroten's family released a heartbreaking statement, accurately summarizing
the state of affairs: "This killer had a choice to make and that choice
was the cold-blooded killing of Jeff Wroten, the father of 4 daughters and
1 stepson ... We will continue to deal with the fact their father left for
work and never returned."

And what must the mood have been the next day at the state prison complex
south of Hagerstown? For them, the death penalty is the fail-safe. If a
prisoner is doing life, there is precious little else for him to lose by
attacking a corrections officer - unless, of course, he is in fear of
losing his life.

Except in this case, Morris wasn't facing life; he was scheduled for
release in May. He didn't need to stage a trip to the hospital. He didn't
need to escape. After he took Wroten's gun he didn't need to shoot anyone
- who is going to try to chase down an armed man?

All this tells you a lot about Morris' thought process: He doesn't have
any.

There was no contemplative power, no sense of reason. The death penalty is
often mentioned as a deterrent, but in this case it didn't deter anything.
To be a deterrent, the death penalty depends on a rational state of mind,
a commodity that killers, almost by definition, usually lack.

So we fall back on the death penalty as a sense of justice, a due
punishment for an unspeakable act of cruelty. It's some degree of solace
for the living victims of the crime - in this case, Wroten's family, whose
views over whether Morris should live or die should carry far more weight
than yours or mine.

Judge Manck, in what some may see as a rather ineffective attempt to make
the family feel better, said that a life sentence brings closure for the
family, even if it isn't exactly the closure the family wants.

The judge has a point. Were Morris sentenced to death, the appeals would
drag on for years - years of court hearings, years of Morris' photo on the
front page, years or awful, rekindled memories. And then what if you go
through all that, and in the end his appeal succeeds? Years of
gut-churning have netted nothing.

That's a risk Wroten's family says it would be willing to take. A lot of
us would. We would like to see one little bit of sense come out of a
horribly baffling set of circumstances.

But Judge Manck did us all this favor: If we are cheated out of a sense of
order that would be established by Morris' death, we are forced to seek
out a sense of order in other places. It's a sense, or at least an
understanding, that none of us want to look for, or look at. It's too
overwhelming, too depressing.

This understanding can be found in the lawless streets of Baltimore, where
Morris' grew up with absolutely no chance. The Herald-Mail reported that
"Morris' mother was abusive to all her children, but especially him, and
his father was incarcerated in Virginia throughout Morris' childhood.
Morris suffered physical abuse from his mother, her boyfriends and his
stepfather, and sexual abuse from a man named Sam."

None of this makes Morris any less "evil." But I doubt there is a person
in America who would look at his childhood and predict that Morris' life
story would come complete with a happy ending.

Judge Manck was uniquely and sadly equipped to adjudicate this case
because his mother was murdered 12 years ago. He's been there. He isn't
some ivory tower judge gratuitously sparing Morris' life because he
doesn't understand the pain.

Perhaps in his personal reflections, the judge asked himself this: Does
Morris do the cause of civilization more good dead, or alive?

The easy answer is dead. We wipe him from this earth and from our
memories. But the hard, grating answer is that Morris life represents the
things that must be changed if we want to truly reduce the instances of
awful events similar to what the Wroten family, the corrections family and
the community have all been through.

We cannot forget Jeff Wroten, nor does it serve us to forget Brandon
Morris - in particular, his upbringing. Every child deserves a chance. It
bears repeating. Every child deserves a chance. Morris represents what we
get when children do not get that chance. We get evil.

Even considering his background, Morris may very well deserve to die. He
made his choices. And that way we could comfort ourselves, knowing that
this particular evil is gone. But there's plenty more evil where this came
from. And until we stop pretending that awful conditions for children do
not exist, families like Wroten's will continue to grieve and judges
across the country will continue to have to make these life-and-death
calls.

(source: Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist)

NEBRASKA:

Prosecutors Won't Seek Death Penalty For Convicted Murderer

Prosecutors decided not to seek the death penalty for an Omaha man
convicted last month of murdering 2 men.

The Douglas County Attorney's Office said it has withdrawn its request for
a hearing on a possible death sentence for Terry J. Sellers, 25.

The victims' families said they did not want death for Sellers, which was
one of the reasons for the withdrawal, prosecutors said.

As a result, he will likely be sentenced to life in prison during
sentencing in March.

Sellers was convicted in December of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder, 1
count of attempted murder and 3 weapons violations in a 4-day crime spree
in February 2005.

Sellers also faces charges in the November 2003 death of Vincent Vaughn,
24.

(source: KETV News)

USA:

New view of death penalty?----Support for executions is at a low ebb now,
much like in the '60s

The media are abuzz over the 40th anniversary of 1968, the year that saw
so much change in this country. But one of the most extraordinary of those
changes has been almost completely forgotten: 1968 was the 1st year in the
history of the United States that not a single prisoner was executed.
Today, we're getting closer than we have in decades to matching that
milestone.

40 years ago, the death penalty was dying off. With the injustices
highlighted by the civil rights movement prominent in the public
consciousness, polls found that more Americans opposed capital punishment
than supported it. Several states had banned the practice starting in the
early 1960s, and prominent leaders, from then-presidential candidate
Robert Kennedy to local politicians, were denouncing it. Even the U.S.
attorney general at that time, the nation's top law enforcement official,
called for its abolition. In a 1968 ruling, a U.S. Supreme Court justice
dismissed death penalty advocates as a "distinct and dwindling minority."
That year, the number of annual executions, which had been slipping into
the single digits, hit zero. Finally, in 1972, the Supreme Court
effectively banned executions.

But just a few years later, the nation began an astonishing about-face.
The Supreme Court reopened the door to capital punishment in 1976,
launching an era in which the United States didn't just bring back the
death penalty, it feverishly embraced it. By the 1990s, a record majority
of Americans favored capital punishment. Opposing it had become political
suicide for any major candidate. Courts were handing down hundreds of
death sentences every year, and dozens of new crimes were being made
capital offenses in state after state. By the start of the new millennium,
thousands of men and women were languishing on death row, and the number
of executions shot up to nearly 100 a year.

What happened? By the mid-1970s, much of middle America was deeply uneasy
about how the very fabric of society seemed to be unraveling. Drug use and
crime were rising; minorities, women and homosexuals were demanding more
power and respect. And the mighty United States was humiliated, first in
Vietnam and later by Iranian hostage-takers.

In this milieu, politicians increasingly learned that crime could pay  for
them. From federal candidates to county sheriffs, would-be officeholders
began vying to out-tough each other on law-and-order issues. One result
was the extension of the death penalty to dozens of new crimes, along with
cutbacks on appeals and other protections for capital defendants.

Today, however, the nation is again losing its enthusiasm for capital
punishment. Executions nationwide are effectively on hold until the U.S.
Supreme Court takes up a case on whether lethal injection is
unconstitutionally inhumane. If the court rules that it is, states can, of
course, find some other way to end convicts' lives. But Americans are
increasingly queasy about doing so, no matter how it's done.

Although about 2/3 of all Americans still support capital punishment in
principle, that number is considerably lower than what it was just five
years ago. In practice, we're ever more reluctant to impose it. That's
largely because of the more than 100 men and women who have been freed
from death row in recent years, thanks to DNA testing and other advances.
That shocking proof of the system's fallibility also has made juries,
judges, prosecutors and politicians much more wary about pushing for the
ultimate punishment. In 1996, courts handed down 317 death sentences; last
year, that number plummeted to 110, according to the Death Penalty
Information Center. And in December, New Jersey became the 1st state in 40
years to abolish its death penalty. At least 2 other states are
considering doing likewise.

According to Amnesty International, 133 countries have abolished the death
penalty. Last month, the United Nations voted for a worldwide moratorium
on capital punishment.

As far back as the 1960s, almost every industrialized nation had abandoned
the death penalty as a barbaric and pointless anachronism. The United
States in 1968 was on track to do the same  not because the Supreme Court
forced it on us, but because we as a nation had decided it was a bad idea.

Support for the death penalty hasn't always been a fact of American life.
That's something worth remembering in this new year.

(source: Vince Beiser is a California-based writer who often writes on
criminal-justice issues; for the Los Angeles Times)

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

Moussaoui judge says prosecutors' pursuit of death penalty made more
evidence public

The judge who presided over Zacarias Moussaoui's trial questioned the
government's decision to seek a death sentence against the Sept. 11
conspirator, and offered a strong defense of federal courts' ability to
handle terror trials.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said in a speech Friday at the
American University law school that the government's decision to seek a
death sentence against Moussaoui appeared to be politically motivated, and
that the zealous pursuit of a death sentence opened up numerous issues of
exposing classified information that otherwise could have been avoided.

"The war on terror is an important piece of political leverage," Brinkema
said. "Don't lose sight of the political realities."

Because the trial was a capital case, Moussaoui was allowed access to a
wide array of evidence that would have been irrelevant in a non-capital
case, including statements from captured al-Qaida leaders that Moussaoui
was at best a bit player in their plans.

The court struggled for nearly two years in trying to balance Moussaoui's
right to have access to those witnesses with the government's right to
continue its ongoing interrogations of those witnesses, including Sept. 11
mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, without interruption. Eventually the
4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered that summaries of the men's
statements be prepared for trial without allowing defense depositions.

At one point Brinkema barred the government from pursuing the death
penalty as a sanction for its refusal to make key witnesses available,
although an appellate court later lifted that sanction.

Moussaoui pleaded guilty in 2005 to conspiring with al-Qaida to hijack
aircraft, among other crimes. In a 2006 sentencing trial, a jury concluded
that Moussaoui's actions furthered the Sept. 11 plot. But the jury
ultimately decided to spare his life and sentence him to life in prison.

Rob Spencer, the lead prosecutor in the Moussaoui case, who is now in
private practice at Lockheed Martin Corp., agreed that the case would have
been much simpler as a non-capital case.

"But it was the greatest mass murder in our history, and it should have
been charged as a death-penalty case," Spencer said in a telephone
interview.

Both Brinkema and Spencer are in agreement, though, that the federal
courts are equipped to handle terror trials, despite suggestions by
Attorney General Michael Mukasey and others that some sort of new national
security court should be considered to handle such cases.

Brinkema, who has presided over multiple terror trials in Alexandria, Va.,
in addition to the Moussaoui case, said the notion of a national security
court should "send shivers down the spine of everyone."

The judge said she bristles at descriptions of Moussaoui's trial ? which
included frequent outbursts by the defendant and a retracted confession ?
as a circus. Instead, she said the trial included a variety of challenges,
like a defendant serving as his own lawyer and a block of classified
evidence. Individually those circumstances are not unusual, but they were
uniquely concentrated in the Moussaoui case, she said.

"I've reached the conclusion that the system does work," Brinkema said.

Spencer said a jury trial "serves a useful public purpose. It lets the
public see what a terrorist really looks like. It lets the victims
participate in the process."

David Laufman, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Alexandria who
prosecuted Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a U.S. citizen from Falls Church who was
convicted of joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate President Bush,
acknowledged that such trials can be complicated. But he said in a
telephone interview that courts have "legitimate constitutionally
defensible mechanisms to allow these cases to go forward while protecting
the rights of the accused." Laws exist, for example, to develop
declassified substitutions at trial for classified evidence under a
judge's supervision.

Brinkema also said in her speech that there is no room in the American
justice system for evidence obtained through torture, saying that "coerced
testimony is inherently unreliable."

She cited Moussaoui as an example of an individual who likely would have
cooperated with the right kind of questioning.

"I'm convinced that if someone sat down and had tea with him and could put
up with his ramblings, that they could have gotten some information from
him because he couldn't keep his mouth shut," Brinkema said.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Being pro-death penalty is pro-life, too

In a Jan. 23 op-ed piece, Liz McCloskey and Peter Leibold lament the
"dilemma" they face on pro-life issues. What they are really doing is
suppyling cover for themselves and those "Catholics" who want to vote for
Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

On the issues they feel make them uncomfortable with Republicans,
reasonable people can have different positions. There is nothing sinful in
being for the Second Amendment, backing the president on the war on
terrorism or being for the death penalty. Yet, it is sinful to support
pro-abortion choice candidates.

Regarding the death penalty, the Catechism of the Council of Trent says
the death penalty a. punishes the guilty, b. protects the innocent, c.
preserves and secures human life and d. represses outrage and violence.
Over and above these it says it is an act of paramount obedience to the
Fifth Commandment. In other words, to be for the death penalty is to be
pro-life.

Bill Cicatelli----Chestnuthill Township

(source: Letter to the Editor, Allentown (Penn.) Morning Call)