[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 24



USA:

Troy Davis execution protest confronts support for death penalty----While the 
Troy Davis execution may not be a game-changer for the death penalty, it has 
become part of a growing conversation about ensuring that innocent people 
aren't killed or die in prison.


The execution Wednesday of Troy Davis, a Georgia death row inmate who convinced 
thousands across the world of his innocence, capped a sobering week of death 
penalty debate likely to play into shifting attitudes in the US over the 
ultimate sanction.

The execution, also on Wednesday, in Texas of Lawrence Brewer, convicted of 
dragging a black man to death in 1998, led to the elimination of the execution 
day "last meal" in Texas after Mr. Brewer ordered an elegant feast that he 
declined to eat.

Also this week, the US Supreme Court stayed the executions of two other Texas 
men in order to further review their innocence claims, while Alabama went 
forward with the 36th execution of the year in the US on Thursday, leading to 
the death of Derrick Mason for a 1994 murder.

And lingering anger over the execution of Mr. Davis led filmmaker Michael Moore 
to urge a boycott of Georgia, which he called "a murderous state."

Taken together, these events aren't likely by themselves to spark reforms of 
the US death penalty system, which relies largely on states to mete out 
justice. Even as Davis supporters vow to keep up the fight to abolish the 
sanction, the loose coalition of human rights groups struggled to come up with 
a plan for where to focus their appeals next.

"His case could set in motion a chain reaction that galvanizes the innocence 
movement and put even more pressure on the justice system to get serious about 
reform," writes Dax Devlon-Ross, the author of a novel, "Make Me Believe," 
about the execution of an innocent man. "Or it could just be another moment."

But while the Davis execution may not be a game-changer for the death penalty, 
it did become part of a growing conversation — more across kitchen tables than 
legislative chambers — about the courts' ability to ensure that innocent people 
aren't killed or die in prison.

Troy Davis, whose case sparked a rare Supreme Court ruling for a new 
evidentiary hearing, built a phalanx of support on the fact that 7 of 9 
eyewitnesses recanted or changed their testimony, which helped turn public 
opinion, including those of world leaders like Pope Benedict and President 
Jimmy Carter, in his favor. The European Union issued a statement against the 
execution of Davis, saying "serious and compelling doubts have persistently 
surrounded the evidence on which Mr. Davis was convicted."

But it's likely that not just the prosecutor and the victim's family were the 
only ones convinced of Davis' guilt in killing off-duty Savannah police officer 
Mark MacPhail outside a Burger King in 1989. Court after appeals court upheld 
the conviction. Last week, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles failed for 
a 4th time to be convinced by arguments of faulty ballistics testing and the 
alleged confession of another man to the crime.

Davis was convicted in 1991 after witnesses — including strangers — testified 
they saw him shoot MacPhail as the officer came to the rescue of a homeless man 
that two men, including Davis, were pistol-whipping after he refused to give 
them a beer. Davis was also convicted of shooting another man earlier in the 
evening, with a gun that ballistics testing tied to the MacPhail murder scene. 
No conclusive physical evidence tied Davis to the crime, and he maintained his 
innocence until the end, telling MacPhail's family before the execution that he 
did not "personally kill" the officer, adding, "I did not have a gun."

While the bar for convincing courts of post-conviction innocence is high, 
Federal District Court Judge William T. Moore last year found the changed 
testimony unreliable and unconvincing. Defense attorneys, moreover, were loathe 
to put 2 eyewitnesses who substantively recanted their testimony on the stand 
at that hearing because of concerns about cross-examination.

Critics say the global outpouring of support for Troy Davis was disingenious, 
an example of death penalty opponents picking sympathetic cases to tout while 
ignoring other claims of innocence, such as those expressed by Mr. Brewer, who 
was also executed Wednesday, in Texas, for the killing of James Byrd in a 
race-motivated dragging.

While protesters helped shape the coverage of the execution, they ultimately 
came up against the determination of the court system as a brief delay in the 
execution as the US Supreme Court considered an appeal gave way to a lethal 
injection after the court, after several hours' consideration, dismissed the 
plea.

"There was this invisible support for the execution that didn't need to be 
shaped or guided, and I think Troy Davis supporters were blindsided by that 
invisible support," Michael Leo Owens, a political science professor at Emory 
University, in Atlanta, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "It is the 
dominant perspective."

To be sure, support for the death penalty remains at about 60 % in the US, 
though that number dwindles to a minority, according to many polls, when 
respondents are asked to pick between the death penalty and life in prison 
without parole.

In Florida, the 4th most active death penalty state, jury-ordered death 
sentences have declined from a high of 40 a year in the late 1980s to 14 in 
2010. Meanwhile, North Carolina currently has a death penalty moratorium and 
Illinois, on July 1, closed its death row. California voters will have a 
referendum on abolishing the death penalty next year.

"Death penalty attitudes don't change suddenly," says Michael Radelet, a 
sociology professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who studies the 
death penalty. "What's more important is monitoring how arguments or 
discussions about the death penalty change, and what Troy Davis has done is 
make people, whether pro or con, acknowledge that people are executed despite 
doubts about guilt."

(source: Christian Science Monitor)



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

We Can't Fight Troy Davis With Casey Anthony


In the brutal arbitrariness that is any system conducted by humans rather than 
computers, Troy Anthony Davis was executed in Georgia last night while Casey 
Anthony is free.

Many, especially on Twitter, have noted the racial element of the disparate 
outcomes. Said one person: “Remember when people said if Casey Anthony was 
black…well, there we have it. Round of applause for living in a racist, 
ignorant world.”

Another person: “At least Casey Anthony is still alive, safe and warm and 
probably still white and cute.” And another: “If the death penalty has taught 
us anything today, it’s that Casey Anthony should’ve been black.”

Davis was executed with, reportedly, no physical evidence tying him to the 
fatal shooting of a police officer.

Yet it is the lack of physical evidence that resulted in acquittals for two 
other high profile cases: that of Casey Anthony, accused of murdering her 
two-year-old daughter, Caylee; and that of two white New York City police 
officers accused of raping a woman they had escorted home after she had too 
much to drink.

Meanwhile, there was reportedly plenty of physical evidence tying to Dominique 
Strauss-Kahn to the sexual assault of a Guinean hotel housekeeper, but 
prosecutors dropped charges after they discovered the maid has “inconsistent 
stories” and had lied on her asylum application. Strauss-Kahn has admitted only 
to a sexual encounter and a “moral failing.”

Of course, there have been other high profile acquittals despite what seems 
overwhelming physical evidence: That of the police officers in both the Amadou 
Diallo and Rodney King cases. Let us not forget there’s even been an aquittal 
of a black man, O.J. Simpson, when there was plenty of physical evidence. But 
I’d be hard pressed to think of another black man going free under similar 
circumstances. (If you know of one, comment below.)

The Innocence Project, which seeks to exonerate people in prison with DNA 
testing, has so far freed 273 people from prison, 13 of them on death row. 70 % 
of those exonerated were minorities.

All of this just underscores that the death penalty is a very final, very 
definitive, and very inhumane way of meting out justice for cases that usually 
have a built-in amount of gray area. Jurors and judges often have to make 
decisions with something less than irrefutable, in-your-face, 
no-way-of-ever-denying-it solid evidence. That doesn’t mean that everyone 
should get off scot-free with anything less than a video tape of the crime in 
progress—though even that doesn’t always make for a guilty verdict. Evidence is 
often in the eye of the beholder.

That isn’t to say that sometimes there isn’t irrefutable evidence: body parts 
in the refrigerator or buried under floor boards, for instance. In cases like 
that, should the death penalty be applied? I don’t think anyone would weep for 
someone who has that kind of physical evidence against him (or her). But even 
those raise rounds of questions, including, is the person insane or the 
mentally incompetent pawn of someone much smarter? Could the evidence have been 
planted? Was it self defense? Unfortunately, one can raise questions for just 
about anything.

But if the death penalty is undesirable and uncertain enough for Troy Davis, 
then it is for Casey Anthony too. Some on Twitter seem to acknowledge this, as 
this in this Tweet by Joseph Menter: “People keep bringing up Casey Anthony… So 
y’all want her to be executed too? Fight murder with murder? Naw, I’ll pass.”

I’ll pass too.

(source: Kiri Blakeley, Forbes)

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

Murder Is Good Politics, Bad Justice


I don't know if Troy Davis, who was executed Wednesday by the state of Georgia, 
was innocent. But I do know that the evidence demanding a re-examination of his 
conviction, including the recanted testimony of most of the witnesses against 
him, was overwhelming.

Of course, that's now beside the point, which is exactly what is so wrong about 
the use of the death penalty. No matter what evidence of innocence might be 
produced in the future, it is of consequence no longer.

That's one compelling argument against the death penalty — no room for 
correction — but there are others. The most egregious argument for capital 
punishment is the claim that the finality of officially condoned killing is a 
necessary guarantor of civilized order. It's egregious because it is not 
possible to make that case without explaining why most of the democratic 
societies that we admire shun the death penalty as contrary to their most 
deeply held values.

Or is it China, Iran, North Korea and Yemen — which, along with the United 
States, lead the world in government executions — that we most admire? There's 
something stunningly disgraceful about the company we keep on this issue.

Amnesty International is the world's premier human rights organization, and it 
deserves high marks for its anti-death penalty campaign. Amnesty points out 
that more than two-thirds of the world's nations have abolished the death 
penalty in law or practice. I defy anyone to compare the list of countries that 
have retained the death penalty with those that have abolished it and then 
conclude that it serves a needed purpose.

It's obvious from the experience of those nations without the death penalty and 
our own 17 states that have banned capital punishment that this barbaric custom 
is not a necessary, let alone efficient, means for ensuring public safety. Due 
process in the United States, which claims to have an enlightened legal system, 
requires death penalty procedures that are costlier than appropriate 
incarceration.

Governments that cling to this primitive ritual of state-sanctioned murder do 
so not to induce respect for law but rather to indulge a lust for vengeance.

Toward that end, it would be far more honest to have the bound prisoner stoned 
to death by the governors, state legislators, prosecutors and judges who 
support the death penalty rather than to employ lethal injections by disengaged 
technicians. Forcing them to be the executioners in actual practice rather than 
as a matter of legal theory would compel a far greater sense of personal 
responsibility than politicians and some others tend to exhibit on the matter.

>From my own experience as a journalist covering this issue, the vast majority 
of politicians who defend capital punishment do so out of rank opportunism, 
which they demonstrate — particularly when the conversation is off the record — 
by citing polling numbers rather than evidence of the death penalty as a 
capital crime deterrent.

As I waited for the news of Troy Davis' fate, my thoughts kept returning to 
that day in 1960 when we Berkeley students picketed the California governor's 
office, pleading for a stay in the execution of convicted rapist Caryl 
Chessman, who was never accused of murder. It didn't come because Gov. Pat 
Brown, despite his deep reservations about the case, had succumbed to public 
opinion. I never imagined then that more than half a century later, the death 
penalty would still be enforced. That it is mocks our claim to be a moral 
leader in this world.

It is appropriate that we grieve for the slain police officer, Mark MacPhail, 
but if Davis was not the one with the gun, as he claimed to the end, the true 
murderer will have gone unpunished, as suggested by Davis' haunting plea to the 
MacPhail family minutes before he died: "I did not personally kill your son, 
father, brother. All I can ask is that you look deeper into this case so you 
really can finally see the truth."

Execution is a means of summarily ending the pursuit of justice rather than 
advancing it.

This case was so freighted with contradictions that a stay of execution was 
clearly in order. As Amnesty International spokeswoman Laura Moye said, "Today 
Georgia didn't just kill Troy Davis. They killed the faith and confidence that 
many Georgians, Americans and Troy Davis supporters worldwide used to have in 
our criminal justice system."

(source: Robert Scheer is editor of TruthDig.com, where this column originally 
appeared)

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

Scalia Ruled That the Constitution Doesn't Prohibit Executing an Innocent Man 
in Troy Davis Case


Beyond the emotional punch in the gut of Troy Davis' execution - and the 
echoing cheers of a GOP debate audience for Rick Perry killing so many people - 
it is worth remembering the role of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in the 
Davis affair.

Because it was during an appeal to the Supreme Court in 2009 on behalf of Davis 
that Scalia - and BuzzFlash is not making this up - actually wrote a dissenting 
opinion that there was nothing in the Constitution that prevented a state from 
executing an innocent man (or woman).

How does BuzzFlash at Truthout know this?

Because we did a commentary back then on Scalia's jaw-dropping constitutional 
assertion when the decision was rendered. (The Supreme Court ordered a Georgia 
court to allow Davis to present new evidence.)

In that 2009 commentary, we quoted from Scalia's dissent:

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a 
convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to 
convince a habeas court that he is "actually" innocent. Quite to the contrary, 
we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable 
doubt that any claim based on alleged "actual innocence" is constitutionally 
cognizable.

If the Constitution doesn't protect us from being executed even if we are 
innocent, then, Houston, we have a fundamental problem of human rights in 
America.

Scalia is considered by some to be a "brilliant legal mind," but there is 
nothing brilliant about authorizing the murder of innocent people.

(source: buzzflash.com)

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

Troy Davis -- Time to End the Death Penalty


Troy Davis' execution must be the beginning of a new resurgence in this country 
to end the death penalty. The fight must continue forward and that's what will 
honor the legacy of Troy Davis. As Troy said, it was not just about him but for 
all the other Troy Davis that came before him and will unfortunately come after 
him.

Davis had an unprecedented amount of support that included almost 1 million 
signatures calling for his clemency including former President Jimmy Carter, 
Desmond Tutu, former FBI director William Sessions and Pope Benedict XVI. Since 
his conviction in 1991 of killing officer McPhail in 1989, 7 of the 9 witnesses 
have come forward to recant their testimony with allegations that one of the 
witnesses was the actual killer. But, this was not enough to convince the 
Georgia court system, the Georgia Board of Parole and Pardons, Larry Chisolm, 
Chatham County's first African American district attorney or the Supreme Court 
of his innocence or to spare his life. Troy maintained his innocence up to the 
time of his execution, even requesting to give a lie detector test which was 
denied.

The death penalty does not serve the interest of justice, the victim's families 
or our society. Nationally, 130 innocent persons have been condemned to die 
since the early 1970's. Some have been exonerated by DNA evidence. In Troy's 
case, there was no DNA, only tainted witness testimony. Sending one innocent 
person to their death is too many. In Maryland, a Commission on Capital 
Punishment found that for almost every 9 persons sent to death row, one 
innocent person has been exonerated.

Families of the victims wait often decades for their perceived "justice". 
Annaliese McPhail, mother of the slain officer says she wanted her family to 
"have some peace and start our lives." Unlike McPhail's mother, another 
victim's mother is advocating for repeal of the death penalty. Vicki Schieber, 
the Maryland mother of a daughter who was brutally raped and killed in 1998, 
has testified before the U.S. Senate and several states, including New Jersey 
which abolished the death penalty in 2007. She says she never wanted the death 
sentence for her daughter's killer even though she was pressured by the 
prosecutor to endorse it. She says it has brought her and her husband peace.

New Jersey became the 1st state in over 40 years to abolish its death penalty 
in 2007. But recent hard fought efforts to end in other states have failed. The 
momentum is growing and now is the time to keep it going. The Supreme Court has 
moved towards limiting the death penalty forbidding the death penalty for 
juveniles and mentally retarded and banning for crimes that did not involve 
killings.

The death penalty has not been a deterrent to crime, is expensive, racially 
biased and unfair. Taxpayers spend millions on a failed system. One Maryland 
commission found that pursuing a death penalty case is three times more 
expensive to taxpayers than pursuing a non-capital punishment case. In death 
sentences, almost half of those receiving the death penalty are black. The 
prison population is over 40 % black men while black men make up only 6 % of 
the population. Life without parole should replace the death penalty as the 
most severe punishment in America.

For the efforts led by NAACP, Ben Jealous, Amnesty International, Davis' 
attorneys, Democracy Now.org and a host of others, now is not the time to stop. 
To the family of Officer McPhail, may you find peace one day. And to the family 
of Troy Davis, you have lost a son, brother, uncle and friend but have gained 
millions of others. We are all Troy Davis.

(source: Debbie Hines.Lawyer, Political/Legal Commentator, www.Legalspeaks.com; 
Huffington Post)

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

Death Penalty Retains Support, Even With Pro-Life Catholics, Despite Flaws


Debate over the constitutionality and morality of the death penalty has long 
been an under-the-radar skirmish that occasionally emerges as part of a larger 
national conversation.

These past few weeks it has emerged in a big way.

It was first roused at a GOP presidential debate during which the record number 
of state-sponsored executions overseen by Texas Gov. Rick Perry (234 at the 
time; 235 as of this writing) was a surprisingly enthusiastic applause line for 
the candidate.

It was reanimated by this week's state executions of Troy Davis in Georgia, and 
Lawrence Brewer in Perry's Texas.

Death penalty opponents seized on the execution of Davis, whose conviction of 
killing a police officer was based on questionable eyewitness accounts, as an 
event that could turn the tide against state-sponsored executions. Brewer, a 
white supremacist, was executed for the dragging death of a black man.

History, however, suggests that despite outrage in some quarters over the 
killing of Davis, public opinion will remain firmly in favor of the death 
penalty.

Public approval for death penalty over time.

"64 % of Americans support the death penalty in cases of murder," says Frank 
Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll.

That's actually a little higher level of support than when George Gallup began 
asking Americans about their views of the death penalty back in the mid-1930s. 
Support is generally higher among Republicans surveyed, and among those who 
live in the South, he said, where 1,042 of the nation's 1,269 executions since 
1976 have occurred. (Texas has overseen the most executions, 475 since 1976. 
Virginia has killed 109 death-row inmates.)

Over the past decade, Newport says, Gallup's annual crime survey has found that 
support for state-sponsored execution has remained remarkably stable, despite 
revelations based on DNA analysis and other evidence that innocent people have 
been put to death.

"A majority of Americans agree that innocent people have been put to death, and 
they also say that the death penalty is not a deterrent to murder," Newport 
says.

The international community has also pressured the U.S. to leave the ranks of 
countries that execute. The U.S. last year, according to Amnesty International, 
trailed only China, North Korea, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia in the number of 
state-sponsored executions.

Still, support has remained consistent.

"People say, we already know these facts, and we still support it," says 
Newport. "Despite what's happened, we haven't seen a change in attitudes."

Take American Catholics, for example, who make up more than the quarter of the 
nation's electorate.

The church - from its bishops to the Pope - have long called on Congress, the 
courts and state legislatures to end the death penalty or, at least, restrain 
it as part of the denomination's stated commitment to "building a culture of 
life."

But framing the issue as a moral one has not moved rank-and-file American 
Catholics.

Their attitudes toward the death penalty are no different than others surveyed 
by Gallup, Newport says.

Gerald Uelman, Santa Clara University law professor and former dean, has been 
working on an initiative in California that would end capital punishment in the 
state and replace it with a program requiring convicted murderers to work in 
prison to provide restitution to victims' families.

A Catholic who has written extensively about the church and the death penalty, 
Uelemen says that he's found that his fellow church members are not persuaded 
by right-and-wrong arguments.

"What they find most persuasive aren't the moral arguments about the death 
penalty, but the practical arguments - like, what the death penalty is costing 
us, and what we're gaining from it," says Uelemen, who has been speaking with 
many Catholic groups about the initiative.

"You can go round and round and round on the morality of it, but the bottom 
line is it doesn't work, especially in California," he says, which is mired in 
deep budget problems and has 721 people on death row and about 3,000 serving 
life sentences without parole.

"This is one state where the dysfunction of the law is becoming the argument 
that will lead to abolition," Uelemen says.

Internal polling by supporters of the initiative found that the strongest 
support for the death penalty in California, if broken down by religion, was 
among Catholics.

"I found that quite disturbing," Uelemen says. "Retribution is the name of the 
game."

It's clear, he says, that the argument that may ultimately carry the day will 
be all about the spending and not about the killing.

Note: Among Republican presidential candidates with a position on the death 
penalty, only Texas Congressman Ron Paul opposes state-sponsored executions. He 
has said it's unjust because poor defendants are more likely to be convicted 
and executed, and because mistakes have been made and innocent people put to 
death.

(source: NPR)

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

Analysis: High-profile Davis execution raises questions


Controversy at home and abroad over the execution of Troy Davis, who was put to 
death in the United States late on Wednesday for the 1989 killing of a 
policeman, has renewed questions about the death penalty.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected his last-minute plea for a stay of execution, 
and Davis, 42, received a lethal injection at a prison in Georgia.

"The Troy Davis case is going to bring a lot of doubt into people's minds," 
said Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno, an opponent of the death 
penalty.

"It gradually erodes the death penalty more and more ... public opinion is 
changing," she said.

Defense attorneys had argued Davis was innocent, citing new evidence and 
witnesses who had changed or recanted their testimony, some even saying another 
man committed the crime. No physical evidence linked Davis to the killing.

All the judges who reviewed the case rejected Davis's claim of innocence, 
upholding his conviction and death sentence.

Other death-penalty cases have included claims of innocence, like those raised 
by Davis, and racial claims. A defense attorney said a disproportionate number 
of inmates in Georgia's prisons and on death row were black men, as was Davis. 
The victim was white.

A Pew Research Center opinion poll in 2010 found that most Americans -- some 62 
percent -- supported the death penalty for convicted murderers but Pew's 
Michael Dimock said the figure had declined slowly over the last 15 years. The 
polls show a drop from about 80 percent in the early 1990s.

The United States is the only western nation on an Amnesty International list 
of the 23 countries that imposed the death penalty last year. The countries 
were mainly in the Middle East and Africa, and China was believed to have the 
highest number of executions, followed by Iran and North Korea.

The U.S. Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, generally has supported 
the death penalty and shows no sign of placing a moratorium on executions any 
time soon. The court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 after a 4-year 
moratorium.

DOWNWARD TREND

The number of executions in the United States generally has been trending 
downward from a high of 98 in 1999. There were 46 executions last year and 35 
so far this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Richard Dieter of the center, a Washington-based group which opposes capital 
punishment, said the battle will focus on individual states.

Thirty-four of the 50 states have the death penalty, along with the U.S. 
government and the U.S. military.

"At some point, the Supreme Court might find that the standards of decency 
regarding this punishment have shifted, but for now the focus is on state 
reforms or state abolition," Dieter said.

"Litigators will continue to fight for their individual clients, raising all 
the possible issues they can. Activists will seize on a few of those cases 
because they illustrate the broader problems that the death penalty presents," 
he said.

Nearly 1 million people signed an online petition against the execution. Pope 
Benedict, Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu and former U.S. President Jimmy 
Carter were among those to express concern about the fairness of Davis's trial.

Despite attracting international attention, the case generated little comment 
from U.S. politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, the frontrunner in the race for Republican 
presidential nomination in 2012, has presided over more executions than any of 
his peers since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

He received enthusiastic applause from the audience at a debate of Republican 
presidential candidates in California this month when he strongly defended his 
state's record in meting out what he called the "ultimate justice".

Supporters of the death penalty, such as Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal 
Justice Legal Foundation in California, said a federal judge a year ago 
rejected the claims by Davis as "smoke and mirrors."

"The Davis PR machine managed to whip up a froth of outrage anyway," he said in 
a blog post. "Large numbers of people have a grossly distorted view of the 
facts of this case, and that is not good."

(source: Reuters)