[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, GA., MASS., COLO., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 16



TEXAS:

Duane Buck and Texas's fatally flawed death penalty----Governor Rick Perry 
claims Texas's capital punishment regime is thoughtful and clear. I've seen at 
first hand it's anything but


On Thursday evening, a few hours before Duane Buck was due to be executed for 
capital murder, the US supreme court intervened to grant him a stay of 
execution. Buck was sentenced to death in part because of his ethnicity: a 
psychologist in the original sentencing hearing testified that Buck was likely 
to be a future danger to society because he was black. The supreme court was 
acting in response to an 11th-hour motion filed by Buck's lawyers to prevent 
his execution on constitutional grounds – his state clemency petition having 
been rejected earlier this week.

Distressingly, but unsurprisingly, Buck's case is entirely consistent with the 
operation of the death penalty in Texas (pdf). A study by the Capital Jury 
Project in 2001 found that "white jurors thought black defendants were more 
dangerous than white defendants and believed that black defendants could be 
paroled sooner from prison than whites even when no evidence had been presented 
as to these points."

When asked about the death penalty recently, Texas Governor Rick Perry said 
that he "never struggled" with the idea of innocent people being executed on 
his watch, arguing that "the state of Texas has a very thoughtful, very clear 
process in place." Texas has executed 235 prisoners during Perry's terms as 
governor.

The case of Anthony Graves, a man who spent 12 years on death row (as a result 
of "egregious prosecutorial misconduct") before being declared innocent last 
year, contradicts this analysis. I have been fortunate enough to meet Graves, 
who now works as an investigator at the Texas Defender Service, and, despite 
his warmth and optimism, he is adamant that the state of Texas tried "to 
murder" him. Graves was the 12th person on Texas death row to be exonerated 
since 1973.

It is not merely a possibility that innocent people have been sentenced to 
death in Texas; it is a fact.

Perry's view is reflective of the prevailing societal attitude in Texas, which 
I have observed as an intern at the Texas Defender Service, the organisation 
which is acting on behalf of Duane Buck. According to the majority public 
opinion in Texas, anyone accused of crimes such as Buck's deserves to die and 
the question of whether that person receives a fair trial is a peripheral 
issue. As a result, many of the fundamental flaws that affect the death penalty 
regime in Texas have been ignored.

One of the most significant problems is the "future dangerousness" standard 
adopted by the Texas death penalty statute. At the sentencing hearing, the jury 
has to find that the defendant poses a "future danger to society". The Texas 
appellate court has held that the facts of the original crime – which have to 
be proven at the preceding "guilt-innocence" stage of a trial – may be 
sufficient to demonstrate that the defendant could be a future danger, an 
approach that empties the sentencing hearing of any significance.

It has also been held that psychiatric testimony as to the future dangerousness 
question, often given by expert witnesses who have never examined the 
defendant, is admissible, despite the inherent uncertainty of predicting 
recidivism. This practice has come under severe criticism from the American 
Psychiatric Association, which has said that "[t]he large body of evidence in 
this area indicates that, even in the best of conditions, psychiatric 
predictions of long-term future dangerousness are wrong in at least 2 out of 
every 3 cases."

That Buck committed a terrible crime is not disputed. What is problematic is 
the notion that a person convicted of a serious crime can thereby be denied his 
constitutional rights to a fair trial and due process, and face execution on 
the basis of his ethnicity. The fact that the Texas criminal justice system was 
prepared even to contemplate proceeding with an execution given this state of 
affairs is symptomatic of the flaws that plague the death penalty regime in 
Texas – a process that is anything but clear and thoughtful.

(source: James Abbott-Thompson, The Guardian)






GEORGIA----impending execution

Emory Students Petition to Reverse Troy Davis Death Penalty Decision


5 Emory students embarked on the four-hour drive to Savannah, Ga. with other 
Atlantans from Amnesty International and Change in one of the last canvassing 
efforts to get convicted murderer Troy Davis off of death row before he faces 
the death penalty at some point between Sept. 21 and Sept. 28.

In 1989, Davis was convicted of the murder of Savannah police officer Mark 
MacPhail and has been on death row since 1991. Seven of the original 9 
eyewitnesses to the murder have since recanted their statements, and the 
prosecution never presented the jury with forensic evidence.

On Aug. 24, 2010, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia 
declared that Davis is “not innocent,” following a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court 
order for an evidentiary hearing after the recantations by trial witnesses. 
While Davis — who has maintained his innocence throughout the years — has had 
his execution date postponed on two occasions, the September execution date is 
final.

Emory students went to Savannah as part of an effort to collect 10,000 
signatures from Davis’ hometown for the parole board hearing on Monday — his 
last chance to receive clemency, according to College senior and Amnesty 
International President Alleyne Ross. They beat their original goal with an 
additional 500 signatures.

“It’s a really powerful and important message to say that the people of 
Savannah support him,” Ross said, explaining that during the 1990s Savannah was 
originally calling for Davis’ prosecution. “It’s an arbitrary number, but it 
was empowering for us to have a goal and actually beat it, and it made us feel 
that we were doing something powerful.”

Ross said she feels strongly about the issue because there is a lot of 
controversy surrounding the case. She added that she believes going through 
with the execution would represent a gross injustice.

“I care if he did it, but I don’t know,” she said. “What matters to me is that 
you cannot kill someone if you don’t know for sure.”

Ross joined College sophomore and Secretary of Amnesty International Cara 
Sandels to venture through neighborhoods, knock on doors and encourage 
community members to sign against the execution.

“Sometimes one voice or one example of success in fighting against the system 
like this can really inspire or motivate people and show or prove that this is 
not the end and that you have to keep working towards your goals and focusing 
on your collective efforts,” Sandels said.

Public motivation, Sandels explained, is the heart of organizations such as 
Amnesty International because they are oftentimes met with dissent or ridicule.

To succeed in a goal begins with catalyzing a movement and motivating people to 
become involved with a cause, whether it is through rallying support or 
spreading awareness about a cause, Sandels explained.

Ross said the canvassing effort was different from most of Amnesty 
International’s efforts in trying to enact change within a community because 
they were meeting with people who were close to Davis and intimate with the 
case, such as his neighbors and a former inmate who served prison time with 
him.

To demonstrate support for Davis, Amnesty International, Change and the 
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People are holding a march 
that will start today at 6 p.m. at Woodruff Park and end at 7 p.m. in front of 
the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

(source: The Emory Wheel)



MASSACHUSETTS:

Apologetic in the end, William Gilday dies----Inmate served life in officer’s 
slaying


Until the last days of his life, half of which he spent behind bars for killing 
a police officer, William “Lefty’’ Gilday insisted he never pulled the trigger.

Among the state’s most notorious criminals, Gilday led hundreds of police 
officers on a bullet-filled chase over a week in 1970, the largest manhunt in 
New England history.

He remained unapologetic until an interview in June, his last before he died 
last Saturday in a Boston hospital. At 82 and suffering from an advancing case 
of Parkinson’s disease, Gilday finally acknowledged responsibility for the 
slaying four decades ago of Boston Patrolman Walter Schroeder, after whom the 
city named its police headquarters.

“I’m very much concerned about my failure to render a condolence,’’ he said 
during a Globe interview in a locked hospital room at a medium-security prison 
in Shirley. He also said he wanted to address one of the patrolman’s daughters: 
“I’m terribly sorry that her father got shot, and that on behalf of myself and 
other people concerned, I would ask them to accept my heartfelt condolences.’’

After spending the day curled up on the starchy sheets of a bed in the health 
unit of MCI-Shirley, the balding inmate sat up, straightened his pajamas, and 
donned a pair of thick prison-issued glasses. His words were labored, his 
hearing fading, his hands shaking as he recalled the day that led to his final 
arrest, after years of other crimes.

Still, he had a lucid memory of the morning of Sept. 23, 1970, when he helped a 
radical group from the Weather Underground rob a Brighton branch of the State 
Street Bank and Trust Co.

“I wish we never would have gone to the bank that day,’’ he said of the group’s 
failed effort to finance their movement against the Vietnam War.

He recalled the dismal haul - $26,585 - and the others who participated in the 
infamous robbery, including Stanley Bond, who died two years later, when a bomb 
he built to escape the maximum-security prison in Walpole detonated 
prematurely; Robert Valeri and Michael Fleisher, who both testified against 
Gilday and were released after serving short sentences; Susan Saxe, who was on 
the lam for 5 years before she was arrested and sentenced to 7 years in prison; 
and Katherine Anne Power, who eluded authorities until 1993, when she turned 
herself in and served 6 years in prison.

When asked whether he would acknowledge his guilt in the shooting of Schroeder, 
who was responding to the robbery, Gilday took a long pause.

He said the copper-plated military-grade ammunition ricocheted off a brick wall 
before felling the police officer, who was considered a hero on the force for 
his bravery in responding to similar robberies. He said the officer was not 
targeted but hit accidentally, when Gilday and his fellow thieves decided it 
would be a good idea to fire a few shots at the bank to keep anyone from 
following them.

After another pause, he insisted he didn’t pull the trigger, pointing the 
finger at others in the group. But when asked if he felt at least partly 
responsible for Schroeder’s death, he bowed his head.

“Of course I do,’’ he said.

Schroeder’s relatives, reached a few weeks before Gilday’s death, said it was 
too late for any condolence.

Schroeder, who was 42 years old, had been a police officer for 19 years and was 
the father of nine children. His brother, John Schroeder, a detective on the 
force, was shot and killed in the line of duty 3 years later.

“I don’t care what he has to say,’’ said one of the officer’s daughters, Erin 
Schroeder, who became a Boston police detective, in an interview last month. 
“He’s never felt badly before. If he dies unhappy in jail, I’d be happy with 
that, especially if it was a long and painful death.’’

Other relatives did not return calls yesterday, and Erin Schroeder could not be 
reached.

Boston police and the Suffolk district attorney’s office declined to comment 
yesterday.

An aspiring baseball player from Amesbury, Gilday had a long criminal record 
before he shot Schroeder, with charges dating back to 1947 that include armed 
robbery, concealed weapons, and assault with a deadly weapon. In 1964 he was 
sentenced to serve up to 25 years for armed robbery. He served only 5.

While in prison he met Bond, and the two enrolled in a university program for 
inmates. It didn’t take long before they got caught up in the radical politics 
of the era, and the 2 joined a group called Students for a Democratic Society 
and later the Weather Underground. They allegedly robbed other banks and led an 
assault on a National Guard armory in Newburyport.

Gilday ran in part because he thought he would not have survive his arrest.

Joe Hamel, 67, a news photographer for Channel 27 in Worcester at the time, 
witnessed Gilday’s capture and said the fugitive later thanked him for saving 
his life.

“He said he thought that if I wasn’t there taking pictures, they would have 
shot him,’’ Hamel said. “I think there was a good possibility that would have 
happened. Given the chase, if he had done anything stupid, I think he would 
have been well ventilated.’’

After Gilday’s arrest in Worcester and trial in Suffolk Superior Court in 1972, 
he was sentenced to death. But his life was spared by a US Supreme Court 
decision that overturned the death penalty nationwide.

Over his 41 years in prison, Gilday made a name for himself as a smart 
jailhouse lawyer.

US District Court Judge Nancy Gertner, who represented Saxe and knew Gilday, 
described him as an “enormously talented, very smart man.’’

“His life was a tragedy on many levels,’’ she said in a phone interview 
yesterday. “His talent was wasted.’’

Jim Pingeon, litigation director at the Massachusetts Correctional Legal 
Services, a nonprofit prisoners’ rights group, said Gilday helped reform the 
prison system with lawsuits against the state Department of Correction.

With mixed success, he fought the department’s practice of listening in on 
prisoners’ phone calls and opening their outgoing mail.

“He was definitely a leader among prisoners,’’ Pingeon said.

Steven Rappaport, a Lowell lawyer who worked as an advocate for prisoner rights 
in the 1970s, said he considered Gilday a friend who taught him a lot over the 
years. The two met when Gilday served as head of the MCI-Norfolk prisoner 
advocacy council.

“Often the clients trusted him more than their own lawyers,’’ Rappaport said. 
“I think he was a real force in helping inmates.’’

The last time he heard from Gilday was in May, when he received a letter in 
which the inmate complained about inadequate medical care.

In his hospital cell at MCI-Shirley, Gilday said he took pride in fighting the 
system and took his long years behind bars in stride.

When asked how he had survived for so long in such a difficult place - he was 
among the 17 percent of state prisoners serving a life sentence - Gilday said 
simply: “You get used to it. You make do the best you can. There’s no sense 
weeping about it.’’

He described the prison system as “a big machine’’ that “gets people and keeps 
them in.’’

His advice for surviving prison: “Don’t come in.’’

(source: Boston Globe)






COLORADO:

Attorneys for Colorado death row inmate hope to chip away at sentence


Attorneys for Nathan Dunlap, who today marks his 5,600th day on Colorado's 
death row, attempted to chip away at his ultimate sentence Thursday in federal 
appeals court.

The attorneys argued that Dunlap, who was sentenced to die for killing 4 people 
at an Aurora Chuck E. Cheese restaurant, should be given a new trial in a 
separate case in which he was convicted of robbing a Burger King.

In a court filing, Dunlap's attorneys say the Chuck E. Cheese killings 
"generated a firestorm of media attention and community outrage" that made it 
impossible for Dunlap to receive a fair trial on the robbery charge in Arapahoe 
County. They contend the robbery trial should have been moved, as the murder 
trial was.

"The publicity in this case painted Nathan Dunlap as a pariah in the 
community," Dunlap attorney Madeline Cohen argued Thursday before a 3-judge 
panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals?.

The robbery trial came after Dunlap's arrest for the killings but before the 
murder trial. Prosecutors then used the robbery conviction as a building block 
in their case for the death penalty following Dunlap's murder conviction.

Dunlap's defense team hopes, by taking that block out the death penalty 
foundation, the whole lethal sentence might collapse like a Jenga stack.

But Colorado Assistant Attorney General Clemmie Engle argued Thursday that the 
publicity around the murders didn't taint the robbery trial.

"None of the seated jurors ever entertained an opinion that Mr. Dunlap was 
guilty," she said.

The appeal illustrates the deliberate way death penalty cases are litigated in 
Colorado. Dunlap is the longest-serving of Colorado's three death-row inmates. 
Next month will be the 14th anniversary of the last time a Colorado inmate was 
executed.

Dunlap was arrested the day after the Chuck E. Cheese killings, in December 
1993. He was convicted of the killings and sentenced to death in 1996.

Last year, a federal district judge in Denver rejected an appeal of that 
sentence. Dunlap's lawyers then appealed that decision to the 10th Circuit.

Earlier this month, the attorneys filed a 473-page brief in support of the 
appeal, arguing that Dunlap was not adequately represented in his trial because 
his attorneys then did not present mitigating evidence that Dunlap suffers from 
bipolar disorder.

Philip Cherner, one of Dunlap's appellate attorneys, said that appeal will 
likely be argued before the 10th Circuit next year.

(source: The Denver Post)






USA:

Justice Ginsburg discusses equality, death penalty


Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking to law students in San 
Francisco, called Thursday for equality for gays and lesbians and said the 
court should return to a 1972 ruling that halted executions nationwide.

"We should not be stopped from pursuing whatever talent God has given us simply 
because we are of a certain race, a certain religion, a certain national 
origin, a certain gender or gender preference," Ginsburg said at UC Hastings 
College of the Law.

The court has adopted constitutional barriers against discrimination based on 
all those categories except sexual orientation. It could confront that issue in 
one of several cases now pending in lower courts, including a challenge to 
California's ban on same-sex marriage that is awaiting review by the Ninth U.S. 
Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

The justices struck down state laws against gay and lesbian sexual activity in 
2003 without deciding how to review other laws that treat people differently 
based on sexual orientation. Referring to that case, Ginsburg said the court 
"recognized that consensual relations between two people do no harm to anyone 
and cannot be subject to government prohibitions."

Capital punishment

The subject of capital punishment came up when Hastings Professor Joan 
Williams, who conducted the 90-minute question-and-answer session, asked the 
78-year-old justice what she would like to accomplish in her remaining years on 
the court.

"I would probably go back to the day when the Supreme Court said the death 
penalty could not be administered with an even hand, but that's not likely to 
be an opportunity for me," Ginsburg said.

She was referring to the ruling in a 1972 Georgia case that overturned all 
state death penalty laws, which had allowed judges and juries to impose death 
for any murder. 4 years later, the court upheld another Georgia law that 
prescribed death for specific categories of murder and gave guidance to juries, 
a model that California followed when it renewed capital punishment in 1977.

Ginsburg described review of impending executions as "a dreadful part of the 
business," and said she has chosen not to follow the path of the late Justices 
Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan - who declared in every capital case that 
they considered the death penalty unconstitutional - so that she could maintain 
a voice in the debate.

Ginsburg, a pioneering women's rights lawyer with the American Civil Liberties 
Union, was appointed to the court by President Bill Clinton in 1993 after 13 
years on a federal appeals court. She has had two cancer operations but has 
expressed no intention of retiring.

She recalled that Clinton had cleared her nomination in advance with Sen. Orrin 
Hatch of Utah, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, whose 
approval paved the way for the Senate's 96-3 confirmation vote. That would 
never happen in today's bitterly divided Congress, Ginsburg said.

'Bright minds'

"Someday we will get back to the way it once was, but it will take people on 
both sides of the aisle who really care ... for making government work," she 
said.

She also said the court should not shy away from considering decisions of 
foreign and international courts - not as binding authority on the meaning of 
the Constitution, but as a recognition that "there are bright minds in other 
places struggling with the same human rights issues."

Conservative justices like Antonin Scalia have denounced references to foreign 
rulings, but Ginsburg said a majority of the court has recognized their value 
when examining universal concerns. She singled out for praise an Israeli 
Supreme Court ruling that refused to allow police to torture a man who 
allegedly knew where a bomb was set to explode.

"If we allow security concerns to so overwhelm our deep attachment to 
fundamental values, to the dignity of each person," Ginsburg told the students, 
"we will come more and more to look like our enemy."

(source: San Francisco Chronicle)

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

Death penalty debate resurrected in 2012 campaign


The death penalty is poised for a comeback. Not the practice of capital 
punishment itself -- which is very much alive and well, especially in states 
such as Texas -- but the political, hot-button wedge issue of sending people to 
death could return. And it could force President Obama to take a stand and pick 
a side.

Throughout modern U.S. history, the death penalty has proven a big political 
issue. Examples of more high-profile and controversial executions include 
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who in 1953 became the first American civilians put 
to death for espionage charges. Ted Bundy, who confessed to murdering 30 women, 
was put to death in Florida in 1989. And Timothy McVeigh faced a federal 
execution in 2001 for his role in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah 
Federal Building, which left 168 dead, including 19 children in a daycare 
center.

Politicians have manipulated the issue of state-sponsored killing to appear 
tough on crime. In 1992, Arkansas governor and then-presidential candidate Bill 
Clinton flew home to watch the execution of Rickey Ray Rector, a 40-year-old, 
mentally-impaired black man who was convicted of murdering a black police 
officer.

Clinton, who once opposed the death penalty in his youth, was influenced by 
events 4 years earlier, when then-Democratic presidential nominee Michael 
Dukakis lost the 2008 election. Dukakis had appeared soft on crime when asked 
during a debate if he would support the death penalty if his wife were raped 
and murdered. His response was "I think there are better and more effective 
ways to deal with violent crime."

But lately, as a political issue, capital punishment has not received as much 
attention in the media. And it has largely faded from public consciousness, 
even as executions have continued despite troubling questions over its use, and 
the role of DNA evidence in exonerating the innocent. Since 1973, 138 prisoners 
in 26 states have been released from death row after evidence proved they were 
innocent, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. They spent an 
average of 9.8 years behind bars for a crime they did not commit.

According to Amnesty International, more than 2/3 of the world's nations have 
abolished the death penalty. Most of the advanced world has done away with the 
practice. And the U.S. is among the top 5 countries that execute its citizens, 
putting America in league with China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

The application of the death penalty in America speaks to a history of 
violence, particularly racial violence. It is curiously coincidental that 
executions are prevalent in the Southern states, the former Confederacy, where 
dehumanization of black folks had been accomplished through slavery, Jim Crow 
lynching, and unequal justice meted out by a kangaroo court system.

With poor, black and brown defendants most likely to receive a death sentence 
-- often based on a lack of evidence, witness coercion, racial discrimination 
and inadequate legal representation -- it is no wonder that some refer to 
capital punishment as "legal lynching." And mob justice is the practical result 
in an inherently broken system that believes in expediency over affording due 
process and determining one's guilt or innocence.

A number of recent events have once again placed executions in the forefront. 
For one, on September 21, Georgia is set to execute Troy Davis, who has been on 
death row for 2 decades for the 1989 killing of a police officer, despite no 
physical evidence tying him to the crime. 7 of the original 9 witnesses in the 
case recanted or contradicted their stories, and three of those say their 
statements were coerced by the police.

(source: The Grio)