[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, GA., ALA., USA, ILL., NEV., MD.

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 22



TEXAS:

Troy Davis execution shines light on Rick Perry's execution record


Something extraordinary occurred Wednesday night as death row inmate Troy Davis 
awaited word on whether his execution at the hands of the state of the Georgia 
would go forward.

The merits of Davis’ case, as well as capital punishment, were debated on 
Twitter around the world in real time as the U.S. Supreme Court took up Davis’ 
plea for a stay and the clock ticked. Some arguments were moral. Some were 
based on evidence. And some were based on theories of governing. (Is putting a 
man to death the ultimate in “big government?” Is it an example of states’ 
rights? Can you be in favor of abortion rights and oppose the death penalty? 
Vice versa?)

The arguments raged, even as news broke that the high court had denied Davis’ 
petition and even as, finally, word came that Davis had been executed, a few 
minutes after 11 pm EDT.

To those following along on Twitter, Davis was alive and fighting for his life 
one minute and the next he was gone, maintaining his innocence to the very end. 
Those who passionately argued against Davis’ execution were shocked, 
crestfallen and shattered. Many viewed it as a defining moment in America’s 
tortuous history with capital punishment.

Whether that’s true remains to be seen, but the question has relevance now that 
campaign season is in full swing. And the ultimate sanction’s popularity with a 
wide swath of the American electorate should not be underestimated. Earlier 
this month, at the Reagan Library debate in California, the audience cheered as 
moderator Brian Williams noted that Rick Perry had presided over 234 executions 
as Texas governor. Williams was taken aback.

Perry was asked whether he ever worried that the state had executed an innocent 
man. “I’ve never struggled with that at all. The state of Texas has a very 
thoughtful, a very clear process in place of which — when someone commits the 
most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing, they go 
through an appellate process, they go up to the Supreme Court of the United 
States, if that’s required,” he said.

The crowd applauded. Williams asked Perry what he made of the crowd’s reaction.

“I think Americans understand justice,” he said. “I think Americans are 
clearly, in the vast majority of — of cases, supportive of capital punishment.”

The governor is right on that score. Polls consistently show that a majority of 
Americans support the death penalty, although the number has steadily declined. 
And while Perry has taken his hits on the issue, Democrats Bill Clinton and 
Barack Obama have also supported the sanction. (Obama, it should be noted, did 
not involve himself in the Davis case nor did the more liberal members of the 
court dissent from the decision to deny Davis’ petition. The vote was 9-0.)

While Obama was running for president, he said he disagreed with a 
controversial Supreme Court decision that held that the death penalty was 
unconstitutional in cases where a child was raped, but not killed.

“I have said repeatedly that I think that the death penalty should be applied 
in very narrow circumstances, for the most egregious of crimes,” Obama said in 
2008. “I think that the rape of a small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous 
crime, and if a state makes a decision that under narrow, limited, well-defined 
circumstances, the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that that 
does not violate our Constitution.”

Unlike Obama, Clinton served as governor of a state that carried out 
executions. In January 1992, in the heat of the presidential campaign, Clinton 
flew home to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, who had 
killed a police officer before shooting himself in the head. The shot made 
Rector mentally impaired, but the execution went forward as scheduled. A decade 
later, the Supreme Court would rule that executing the mentally retarded is 
unconstitutional.

Clinton became more comfortable with the death penalty during his time as 
governor—and if he had national ambitions, there was reason to do so. At the 
time, Michael Dukakis’ response during a presidential debate in 1988 about 
whether he would support the execution of a man who had raped and murdered his 
wife had drawn national derision.

George W. Bush presided over 152 executions while governor of Texas, including 
the death by lethal injection of Karla Faye Tucker, the first woman to be put 
to death in the state in over a century. Tucker’s conversion to Christianity 
while in prison resulted in an unusually large outcry over her sentence, but 
Bush was unpersuaded. Advocates also believe that man executed under Bush’s 
watch in Texas, Claude Jones, may have been innocent.

Twice this month, the Supreme Court has taken the unusual step of staying a 
scheduled execution in Texas after Perry and other Texas officials declined to 
intervene. In Duane Buck's case, jurors were told at trial that Buck posed a 
greater danger to public safety because he is black. Cleve Foster, the 2nd 
inmate, has maintained he is innocent of the rape and murder of a woman in 
2002.

As the GOP frontrunner, Perry’s record on executions is being closely 
scrutinized. The most controversial case involves Cameron Todd Willingham, who 
was convicted of starting a house fire that killed his three daughters. 
Willingham was executed in 2004, but several publications, including the New 
Yorker and the Texas Tribune, have raised questions about his culpability.

The Tribune has examined several other cases during Perry’s tenure that it 
argues should be reviewed “because of continuing concerns about the ability of 
prisoners facing capital charges in Texas to retain quality legal 
representation, the execution of those who were minors when they committed 
their crimes, the ability of some prisoners to intellectually understand their 
punishment and the international ramifications of executing foreign nationals.”

But if Perry does have some troubling marks on his record, will that matter to 
the Republican base—or to the voting public at large? The question may be 
revisited at Thursday night’s GOP debate in Orlando. But if the crowd there is 
similar to that at the Reagan Library, there won’t be much doubt about the 
answer.

(source: Los Angeles Times)

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

Columns Perry is right about the death penalty


It’s telling when a crowd erupts into raucous applause and praise for a 
presidential candidate. It’s a showcase of how much they approve of the 
candidate’s policies, how they feel about their take on major issues, and 
overall just how much they like that candidate. But most audiences typically 
wait for the candidate to actually finish speaking before bursting into cheers.

During the Sept. 8, 2011, Republican Presidential Debate, the crowd cut off 
NBC’s Brian Williams with candid approval over Gov. Rick Perry’s outstanding 
execution record.

“Governor Perry, question about Texas,” Williams said. “Your state has executed 
234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times.”

As soon as the record was stated, the studio audience stunned the usually stoic 
Williams with whistles and thunderous applause. They were absolutely ecstatic, 
as they should be.

Texas is known for a great many things — from cowboys, to barbecue, to rodeos. 
But the one thing we should be known for the most in this modern era is how 
willing we are to stand our ground on important issues like the death penalty.

In these modern times, the death penalty has been demonized by its opponents as 
uncivilized and obsolete. Indeed, with the exception of a few Eastern European 
nations, all of Europe, Australia, Mexico, Canada and parts of Southern Africa 
have completely abolished the death penalty in their countries, equaling 96 
countries in total.

9 countries have abolished it for ordinary crimes, and 34 have abolished it at 
least in practice. Only 58 countries in the world today still retain their 
adherence to the death penalty; among them are a vast majority of the Middle 
East, Asia, and of course the United States.

“Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might 
have been innocent?” Williams asked after the audience had died down a bit and 
the anchor himself had regained a bit of his composure.

There’s always that heavy moral implication that you just might have the blood 
of an innocent man on your hands. There is always going to be a chance that a 
man may be accidentally convicted of a crime worthy of the death penalty. 
However, in the US we have a fail-safe procedure in place to stop as many of 
those accidental convictions from occurring as possible.

We have a highly refined, well-oiled and sharp-eyed justice department ready to 
catch any mistakes that happen to fall through. Just like with any major 
operation, whether it be for surgery or for a military maneuver, there will 
always be a chance for error.

To regard a system as wholly perfect and as impossible to fail would just be 
naïve and outright foolish. There is always the possibility of death during 
surgery, but that is what medical school is for, to educate and prevent that 
from occurring.

There is always the chance of civilian casualties in a combat situation, but 
that’s why the military and the police drill relentlessly to prevent situations 
like that from happening.

And that’s why there are so many systems of appeals for death row inmates, so 
many routes for them to go through, so that if they truly are innocent, as they 
claim, they can be cleared. Too often in these modern times we worry — fear, 
even, the ends. If it even seems risky, we shy away from it.

A mistake in surgery or a mistake in combat can be instantaneously disastrous. 
A mistake in the legal system always has the chance to be caught. Instead of 
shying away from a gory proposition, hiding behind scant possibilities and 
hoping for another, easier route, we should be heading towards it with 
confidence in our ability to do things right. If we aren’t confident, then all 
that means is that we need to fix the means, not the end.

Perry is an icon for this steadfast defiance in the face of doubt. He has full 
confidence in how our legal system works.

“They get a fair hearing, they go through an appellate process, they even go to 
the Supreme Court of the United States if that’s required,” Perry said.

The same can’t possibly be said for people convicted of the death penalty in 
China, who have for the last several years been one of the targets of choice 
for various civil liberties groups. Our criminal justice system, although not 
perfect, is truly held to the highest standard, and death-row inmates are 
always given the chance to appeal the fate that they deserve.

But do they deserve it? Perry certainly thinks so.

“In the state of Texas, if you come into our state, if you kill one of our 
children, you kill one of our police officers, you commit another crime and you 
kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice and you will be 
executed,” Perry said.

Perry only needs to point to his impressive 234 person execution record to show 
how well he’s followed through on this promise. We need a steadfast man like 
Perry who is hard on crime and hard in his resolve to stand by his position on 
crime, as he showed earlier this year in his refusal to stay the execution of a 
Mexican national successfully convicted of raping and murdering a San Antonio 
teenager.

Perry has a long campaign trail ahead of him. People will always try him on his 
beliefs, as we all are tried every day.

People will try and bust him down, paint him as vile and evil for supplying 
justice to those too weak to do it themselves. Others will decry him as an 
uncouth monster with no regard of civil rights.

But Perry should pay no mind to them. The rapists, killers, and terrorists of 
the world deserve to pay for their crimes. We cannot continue to let them 
believe they can escape their due.

And with Perry at the helm, we can always be sure it will be paid in full.

(source: James Wang, The (Univ. Houston) Daily Cougar)






GEORGIA:

Execution bigger than just Troy Davis


Troy Davis was executed late Wednesday night after one of the most contested 
and controversial death-penalty cases in the country's history. The SMU and 
local community held a vigil in protest of his execution and to honor Davis' 
life.

"I was very glad we had a vigil here last night for Troy Davis," Dr. Rick 
Halperin, the director of SMU's human rights program, said. "I wish we would 
have one every night that someone in this country is executed."

However, Halperin believes that the Troy Davis case was outrageous on more 
levels that just his potential innocence.

"The media consumption with the Troy Davis case was equally outrageous," 
Halperin said. "Don't get me wrong it merited a great deal of attention, but I 
bemoan the fact that there was another execution here in Texas last night that 
received no attention at all."

Lawrence Brewer, a white supremacist, was executed Wednesday night in Texas for 
the dragging death of James Byrd Jr., a black man, in 1998.

According to Halperin, Ross Byrd, James' son, had forgiven Brewer and protested 
his execution.

"Where was the media on that case?" Halperin said. "This was a story about 
forgiveness, compassion and redemption and the murder was equally as horrific."

Another execution is scheduled for tonight in Alabama. Derrick Mason is accused 
of shooting 25-year-old Angela Cagle in the face during an early morning 
robbery.

"It's not right to out one case the way the media did on Troy Davis," Halperin 
said. "Every case needs media attention."

To Halperin, these cases are also a measure of the value of human life in 
America.

"There were a million signatures garnered across the world last night to stop 
the execution of Troy Davis," Halperin said. "He has the same value as a human 
being as Mr. Mason, Mr. Brewer and everyone else condemned or not. Where are 
the million signatures for Mr. Mason?"

Halperin also believes these executions are a reflection of the darkness of our 
country. He thinks that continuing the death penalty will lead to further 
immoral and criminal government behavior.

"The system failed Mr. Davis and it failed this country," Halperin said. "It 
will fail Mr. Mason tonight and it will fail this country again."

(sources: SMU Daily Campus & Associated Press)

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

Will the Davis Execution Fuel Opposition to the Death Penalty?


A crowd of several hundred protesters sat on the ground at the Georgia State 
Capitol to protest against the execution of Troy Anthony Davis.Let’s take one 
more moment to digest the execution last night of Troy Davis.

The level of interest that the case generated was striking — political figures, 
celebrities, and anti-death penalty opponents worldwide rallied to Davis’s 
defense, pleading in recent days for Georgia to spare his life.

The question now is whether the debate over the Davis execution will fuel a 
broader debate about the merits of the death penalty?

Before we address that, let us briefly recap that Davis was convicted for 
killing police officer Mark Allen MacPhail in 1989. The conviction rested 
largely on eyewitness testimony, and many of the witnesses later recanted or 
altered their testimony.

Davis vigorously maintained his innocence up until the time he was executed.

The jury in Davis’s murder trial was aware that some of the eyewitness accounts 
of the murder were shaky, as noted in this detailed AP account of the case. And 
many, many judges reviewed the case but declined to overturn the conviction.

The level of interest in the case seems to owe in part to the skill of Davis’s 
advocates in galvanizing broad based support. Change.org, which bills itself as 
a platform for social change, released a statement yesterday noting that it had 
helped launch petition drives that had gathered hundreds of thousands of 
signatures from Davis supporters.

Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said anti-death 
penalty groups were amazed at the public reaction to the case. “This case went 
viral,” Cox said last night, speaking to reporters in Jackson, Georgia, which 
houses the prison where Davis was executed with a 3-drug cocktail. “It took off 
globally,” Cox said. “He’s now a household name.”

Perhaps, but to what effect? This Salon article tackles the question of what 
the Davis case will mean for the broader death-penalty debate. In short, the 
piece expresses doubt that the Davis case will move the needle of public 
opinion about capital punishment. Gallup has found that support for the death 
penalty has remained consistent for the past decade, with Americans favoring it 
by a more than 2-to-1 margin, Salon reports, noting, however, that the level of 
death-penalty support has declined from the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it 
peaked at 80 %.

“The reality is that we have seen other cases like Troy Davis’ before,” the 
Salon piece posits, “and it will probably take a lot more of them before 
Americans ever give up on the death penalty for good.”

But at Slate, Dahlia Lithwick theorizes that the Davis case could tip the 
scales against the death penalty, because it has generated such an unusual 
level of attention, even reaching the likes of Kim Kardashian, who has tweeted 
about the case. (According to the Christian Post, Kim Kardashian released a 
series of tweets Wednesday expressing disgust over the possible execution. “I 
want to vent about the execution of Troy Davis! He is getting the death penalty 
tonight but I believe he is innocent!!! #TooMuchDoubt”)

Lithwick writes that the Davis case underscores the fact that the fight over 
the death penalty is now happening at a more grassroots level. “The desire for 
certainty is finally beginning to carry as much weight as the need for 
finality,” she writes. “Americans are asking not so much whether [Davis] should 
be killed as whether this whole capital system is fair.”

Meanwhile, as witnessed by the Davis execution, those advocating for the death 
penalty tend to comprise a relatively silent majority.WSJ reporter Cameron 
McWhirter, who covered the execution last night in Jackson, noted that while 
Davis supporters were barraged with media attention, a small group of 
pro-execution advocates sat at a picnic table, removed from the media crush. 
They carried signs declaring, “Georgians for Justice.” Asked about the case, 
the group declined comment.

(source: The Wall Street Journal)

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

Troy Davis execution: Did the death penalty deliver justice?----For his 
supporters, the execution of Troy Davis marked a grave injustice and showed the 
death penalty at its worst. But others found their faith in the justice system 
reaffirmed by the fact that the Davis verdict stood after an abundance of case 
reviews


A last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court pushed back Troy Davis's execution by 
several hours, but in the end, Mr. Davis died by lethal injection Wednesday 
night in a prison in Jackson, Ga.

"I am innocent," were his last words to the family of Mark MacPhail. "I did not 
have a gun."

Mr. Davis was convicted of the 1989 murder of Mr. MacPhail, a Savannah, Ga,. 
police officer.

For thousands around the world, Mr. Davis's death marked a grave injustice, 
given vexing questions and new doubts about his guilt.

But while many saw the execution as symbolic of a fallible justice system, and 
an immoral punishment, others found their faith in the system reaffirmed by an 
abundance of court and executive reviews that, time after time, let the verdict 
against Davis stand.

The Davis case is but one in a long series of death penalty cases that push 
individual states to debate the morality, legality, and efficacy of the death 
penalty.

This week alone, the US Supreme Court ordered stays for 2 men in Texas 
scheduled to be executed, while a 3rd, Lawrence Brewer, was executed Wednesday 
night for the dragging death of James Byrd near Jasper, Texas, in 1998. Alabama 
has an execution scheduled Thursday.

Davis was convicted in 1991 for the shooting death of off-duty police officer 
MacPhail, who had come to the aid of a homeless man being beaten near a 
Savannah, Ga., Burger King. A jury of 7 blacks and 5 whites found that Davis 
had shot a man earlier in the evening and used the same gun to fire into 
MacPhail's face and chest, killing the young father of 2 before he had a chance 
to draw his weapon.

The murder weapon was never found and defense lawyers cast doubt on a 
ballistics test that linked shell casings at the scene to casings found at 
another shooting for which Davis was convicted.

Since the verdict, 7 of 9 witnesses in the case changed or retracted their 
accounts, and new witnesses have pointed to the possibility that another man at 
the scene fired the weapon. But Federal District Court Judge William T. Moore 
said those new statements amounted to "smoke and mirrors" to obfuscate the 
original verdict.

On Tuesday, a Georgia clemency board, for the 4th time, declined Davis's 
request to commute the sentence to life in prison. The Georgia board has 
commuted three other death row sentences in the last decade.

President Obama, through his press secretary, said he had no jurisdiction to 
intervene in a state court matter, although experts say executive power under 
the Constitution includes the power to commute sentences.

One problem, legal analysts say, is courts are vested in jury verdicts, which 
can be fallible. Doubts alone are rarely enough to overturn a finding of guilt, 
but in cases like Davis's, where there is impassioned belief of innocence, it 
"raises doubts about whether the legal system can tolerate this potential error 
in allowing a person to be executed," says James Acker, a criminologist at 
State University New York in Albany.

But the Davis case also had powerful emotional impact that made him a cause 
célèbre among human rights activists working to end the US death penalty. A 
black man being executed for the murder of a white man in the Deep South raised 
longstanding and deep-seated concerns about racial inequities in the justice 
system.

Davis's execution stood in sharp contrast to the execution the same day in 
Texas of Mr. Brewer, a white man convicted and sentenced to death for a heinous 
hate crime against a black man.

"Can we have the death penalty and actually avoid the possibility of killing 
innocent people?" writes Rashad Robinson, executive director of the activist 
group Color of Change. "In a criminal justice system that routinely 
misidentifies black suspects and disproportionately punishes black people, 
black folks are more likely to be wrongfully executed."

Death penalty opponents often point to the fact that over 130 death row inmates 
have been released since the 1970s given new evidence, including DNA. But 
proponents of the death penalty use the same data to argue that those numbers 
validate what Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist once called 
executive branch "fail-safes," such as clemency boards, that prevent the 
execution of the innocent.

President Jimmy Carter said the Davis execution should result in the abolition 
of the death penalty in the US. "If one of our fellow citizens can be executed 
with so much doubt surrounding his guilt, then the death penalty system in our 
country is unjust and outdated," Carter told the AP.

64 % of Americans support the death penalty to punish egregious murder, 
according to a 2010 Gallup survey.

Whether the Davis case has an impact on the use of the death penalty in the US 
in the future is an open question. Already, the number of executions in the US 
has been steadily dwindling over the past 15 years, even in Southern states 
where capital cases are most common.

Meeting with activists before his execution, Davis reportedly said, "You have a 
choice. You can either fold up your bags after tomorrow and go home, or you can 
stand and continue to fight."

Some still see the uproar over Davis's execution as "manufactured" emotion 
smartly packaged by activists and the media to build opposition to the death 
penalty.

"We have consistently won the case as it has been presented in court," said 
Spencer Lawton, the original prosecutor in the Davis capital murder case. "We 
have consistently lost the case as it has been presented in the public realm, 
on TV and elsewhere."

(source: Christian Science Monitor)






ALABAMA----impending execution

Derrick Mason apologized to victim's family years ago, an anti-death penalty 
official said


An official with an anti-death penalty group said Alabama death row inmate 
Derrick Mason apologized to Angela Cagle's family years ago for killing her in 
a 1994 convenience store robbery.

Mason, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection tonight, did not wait until 
his execution date neared to apologize, Esther Brown, executive director of 
Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, said in a Wednesday email.

"He did this many years ago by letter, not prompted by an imminent execution 
date but driven by deep remorse and sadness for the parents' loss of their 
precious daughter, Angela Cagle," Brown said.

Gov. Robert Bentley on Wednesday afternoon declined to commute Mason's sentence 
to life in prison without the chance of parole. Mason's appeals lawyers have 
filed an emergency appeal with the Alabama Supreme Court asking that the 
execution be postponed for further review of the case.

Mason's execution is scheduled for 6 p.m. today at Holman Correctional 
Institute in Atmore.

A vigil for Mason is scheduled for today from noon to 1 p.m. at Good Shepherd 
Catholic Church on Chaney Thompson Road, according to Project Hope's website. 
Several vigils are set for today across the state and even one in France.

Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty was founded and is run by Alabama 
death row inmates. Mason is a member of the group's seven-member executive 
board.

Brown said Cagle's father, Steve Worsham, responded to Mason's apology a few 
years ago.

"He told Derrick to give his life to God," Brown said. "This he has done."

Cagle's brother, Scott Worsham, said in an email response to Brown's comments 
that he spoke to his father, who said he wrote Mason a letter several years 
ago. His father told him that Mason apologized in a letter to him 2 or 3 years 
later.

"My father said he then replied back to him that he forgave him as he was 
commanded to do as a Christian, but that Mason still had to face the 
consequences of his actions," Scott Worsham said. "This was a communication 
between my father and Mason and was not a reaching out to the family as a 
whole."

Bentley press secretary Jennifer Ardis said in an email statement Wednesday 
afternoon that Bentley does not plan to intervene in the execution.

"The governor will honor the decisions of the jury which recommended the death 
penalty for Mr. Mason and the trial court which ordered it, which has been 
repeatedly and consistently upheld by every appellate court which addressed 
it," Ardis said. "All courts which have been asked to stay the execution have 
denied that request."

Bentley could have commuted Mason's sentence to life without the chance of 
parole.

Mason, now 37, was convicted of killing Cagle, 25, at a Sparkman Drive 
convenience store where she worked. She was found naked on a storage room table 
with two gunshots wounds to her face.

The jury recommended by a 10-2 vote that Circuit Court Judge Loyd Little 
sentence Mason to death.

Little agreed with the jury, but recently asked in a letter to Bentley that 
Mason's life be spared. Little said he wrote the letter at the request of 
Mason's appeals lawyers. He said he changed his mind about Mason's sentence 
because the circumstances were not as "heinous, atrocious or cruel" as other 
capital murder cases where the death penalty was applied.

**********

Death row inmate Derrick Mason asks Alabama Supreme Court for emergency stay of 
execution


After being denied clemency by the governor, death row inmate Derrick O'Neal 
Mason's lawyers have filed an emergency appeal with the Alabama Supreme Court 
asking that his scheduled execution be postponed for further review of his 
death penalty sentence.

Gov. Robert Bentley on Wednesday afternoon declined to commute Mason's sentence 
to life in prison without the chance of parole.

Mason's execution for the 1994 murder of Huntsville convenience store clerk 
Angela Cagle is scheduled for 6 p.m. at Holman Correctional Institute in 
Atmore.

(source for both: Huntsville Times)

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

Ala. Governor Rejects Inmate's Clemency Request


Alabama's governor has turned down a last-minute request for clemency from an 
Alabama death row inmate scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Thursday 
evening at Holman Prison in Atmore.

Bentley said in a brief statement Wednesday that he saw no reason to overturn 
the decision of the jury that found Derrick Mason guilty and recommended that 
he be executed. Mason is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. Thursday for the March 24, 
1994 shooting death of Huntsville convenience store clerk Angela Cagle.

The 37-year-old Mason is accused of shooting 25-year-old Cagle twice in the 
face during an early morning robbery.

Mason is waiting to hear from a last minute appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court 
challenging the competency of Mason's counsel during the sentencing phase of 
his trial.

(source: Associated Press)






USA:

Residual doubt, race, federalism and finality: which death penalty legal fronts 
might the Davis case impact?


Even though Troy Davis has now been executed by the state of Georgia, there is 
plenty more to say about the case and all the attention it garnered. Because I 
expect lots of others to keep talking about the case's import and possible 
impact concerning the death penalty, I doubt I will blog that much about the 
case in the future. However, I did have a few (too quick?) thoughts about some 
legal issues implicated by the Davis case which might become a focus for 
attention and reform for those who feel strongly that justice was poorly served 
or that the legal system looked bad in Georgia last night.

1. Residual doubt: I suspect that even those persons strongly confident about 
Davis's guilt would at least acknowledge that it was reasonable for others to 
have "residual doubt" about his guilt. The problem for Davis and his supporters 
is that none of our current death penalty laws demand (or even arguably allow) 
a defendant to get a lesser sentence or to be taken off death row based solely 
on "residual doubt." Juries are told to convict unless they have a "reasonable 
doubt," and a juror or reviewing judges can sensibly assert they have a 
residual doubt but not a reasonable one. (In the hub-bub over the Casey Anthony 
verdict, I surmise that critics of the jury acquittal might recognize 
"residual" doubt about her guilt, but they still thought the jury should not 
have deemed any doubt to be "reasonable.")

Often governors or clemency boards can and will commute a death sentence based 
on what I am calling "residual doubt." Indeed, Ohio Governor John Kasich 
commuted a death sentence on this ground just three months ago (blogged here) 
in a case similar to the Davis case in some important ways. Perhaps reformers 
will want to respond to the Davis case by more formally authorizing or even 
requiring juries, judges and others involved in death sentence review to reject 
or undo a death sentence based on only "residual doubt."

2. Race and federalism: I suspect that few would deny that race and geography 
played a part at least in the way the Davis case was perceived, if not also in 
the way it was handled. I believe Davis's lawyer has already labeled the 
execution a "legal lynching," and one need not be a student of history to 
appreciate the many ways in which the fact Davis was black, the fact his victim 
was white, and the fact this was all going on in the deep south all contributed 
to the case's salience for so many.

Still, in the wake of Supreme Court's landmark McClesky ruling now a quarter 
century ago, only two states (Kentucky and North Carolina) have passed 
legislation enabling defendants charged or sentenced to death to attack their 
sentences based on claims of racial disparity. More broadly, in the context of 
the death penalty, many continue to cling to federalism concepts as a defense 
for why federal executive and legislative officials should have had no role or 
even any say in what Georgia wanted to do. (The Terry Schiavo hub-bub a few 
years back bears recalling here: the removal of life support seems to be 
clearly a state law matter, but Congress got involved based on a commitment to 
life in that case.) Perhaps reformers will want to respond to the Davis case by 
pushing harder for Racial Justice Acts or for more federal oversight of state 
capital systems (beyond judicial oversight via habeas).

3. Finality: The real fundamental issue in the Davis case was the issue of 
finality: the judicial system is understandably (and justifiably?) loathe to 
undo or even question the outcome of a fair and constitutional trial no matter 
what future evidence emerges suggesting that the initial outcome was flawed. 
The problematic practicalities (and costs) of allowing most anyone who claims 
innocence after a lawful conviction to obtain a new trial based on new evidence 
leads me to think that few reformers will seek after the Davis case to undercut 
our legal systems' strong commitment to finality after a fair and 
constitutional trial. But this critical and too often under-discussed judicial 
commitment to finality is where the rubber always really hit the road in the 
Davis case.

(source: sentencing.typepad.com----Sentencing Law and Policy, A Member of the 
Law Professor Blogs Network)






ILLINOIS:

2 faces on the death penalty coin.


Troy Davis and Nicholas Sheley. Therein lies the conundrum regarding the death 
penalty in America.

On Monday Sheley was convicted of first degree murder, among other crimes, 
regarding the slaying of 65-year-old Ronald Randall of Galesburg in 2008. The 
jury took all of about 45 minutes to reach that conclusion. He also is accused 
of killing 7 others, 5 in Whiteside County in northwestern Illinois and an 
Arkansas couple in Missouri. His alleged victims ranged in age from 93 to 2, 
which pretty much defines defenseless. While all of those were unspeakable 
tragedies for those directly involved, how anyone could purposely snuff the 
life out of a toddler ... well, that's a whole other class of human being. If 
what Sheley is accused of is true, then the death penalty was tailor-made for 
him.

Alas, Sheley is not eligible for capital punishment in Illinois because the 
state abolished the practice earlier this year after a history with it that was 
nothing if not checkered and embarrassing, with 20 people released from Death 
Row and from prison altogether who were found to be innocent following their 
convictions and many years awaiting execution. A different fate may away Sheley 
in Missouri, which still has the death penalty.

And then there is Georgia's Troy Davis, who at this writing was awaiting 
execution Wednesday - pending a literally last-minute appeal to the U.S. 
Supreme Court - following his conviction for shooting and killing a young, 
off-duty police officer in Savannah, Ga., in 1989.

Davis had long maintained his innocence, claiming that his was a case of 
mistaken identity. As more than two decades and three previous dates with 
lethal injection came and went, seven of the nine witnesses who originally 
helped convict him recanted. Multiple reports of egregious police misconduct 
surfaced, everything from leading witnesses with his photograph prior to a 
lineup to threatening those who did not give detectives the answers they wanted 
to hear. There was no physical or ballistics evidence linking Davis to the 
crime. Someone else confessed to it.

The case has drawn national attention, with the likes of Amnesty International, 
former President Jimmy Carter, 51 members of Congress, Pope Benedict, Nobel 
Prize laureate and retired Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu and former FBI Director 
William Sessions - a death penalty proponent - taking up his cause. Some 
630,000 letters were sent to Georgia's pardon and parole board, pleading for 
mercy for him. Nonetheless, prosecutors insisted they had the right guy, as 
prosecutors usually do.

Of course, many a prisoner proclaims his innocence. And many are lying. This 
page is in no position to judge one way or the other Davis' guilt or lack 
thereof. Don't know. And that's just it. The death penalty is the ultimate 
punishment. If a government is to play God, it has to know, and with uncommon 
certainty.

That's why this page ultimately sided with the abolitionists last winter, not 
with a Nicholas Sheley in mind but a Troy Davis. Far too often, Illinois came 
unforgivably close to executing the innocent.

For the longest time, though long troubled by the seeming racial bias in the 
system, the inequities in quality of defense, and the inconsistency of its 
application - a serial killer gets life, a convenience store robbery gone awry 
ends with the needle - the editors of this page argued that the death penalty 
needed to remain for those most heinous of crimes that no society can abide. It 
was not a lonely place to be, as every time one read of a crime like that which 
took out nearly an entire family in the Logan County town of Beason in 2009, 
every time one put himself in the shoes of the victims' families, that position 
was confirmed.

That resolve was eroded with one mistake after another ... after another ... in 
Illinois. In good conscience, this page could no longer tolerate if not quite 
support capital punishment, and neither could the Legislature and the governor.

What that means is that a few really awful, evil people get to spend the rest 
of their natural lives behind bars, at taxpayer expense, but no longer a threat 
to anyone outside those prison walls. It is not always easy to accept that, but 
it is still preferable to err on that side than the other - executing someone 
who didn't do it - and trying to live with yourself afterwards.

(source: Editorial, Peoria Journal Star)



NEVADA:

Death penalty sought for 1 of 3 defendants in 68-year-old Vegas mom's slaying; 
daughter sparedM


A 45-year-old will face the death penalty in the burglary-slaying of a Las 
Vegas woman at her home in July, but the woman's daughter and an alleged 
getaway driver will not.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that prosecutors decided Tuesday to seek 
capital charges against Joseph Perez in the strangulation of 68-year-old 
Katherine Cole.

Perez is accused of burglarizing Cole's home with Cole's 44-year-old daughter, 
Autumn Dudley Cole, and 38-year-old accused getaway driver Lorenzo Cardenas 
Sanchez.

The three have pleaded not guilty to felony charges including murder, 
kidnapping and robbery.

Prosecutors allege they were burglarizing the home to get cash to buy drugs.

Trial is scheduled Oct. 24 in Clark County District Court.

(source: Associated Press)






MARYLAND:

Death penalty still possible for Md. inmate: Judge


An Anne Arundel County judge has ruled that the trial of a prisoner charged 
with killing a correctional officer will remain a death-penalty case.

The Baltimore Sun reports that Judge Paul Hackner on Wednesday declined to 
eliminate the possibility of capital punishment for Lee Stephens after hearing 
that the victim’s DNA was found on Stephens’ clothing.

Stephens is 1 of 2 prisoners charged in the 2006 stabbing of Cpl. David McGuinn 
at the House of Correction.

Maryland law reserves capital punishment for murders in which there is a video 
of a confession of the crime or biological evidence linking the defendant to 
the crime.

Prosecutors say that they have DNA evidence, but his defense argues that 
evidence links Stephens and other prisoners to the scene, but not the crime.

(source: Associated Press)