[Deathpenalty] [POSSIBLE SPAM] death penalty news----OKLA., NEV., CALIF., MONT.

[Rick Halperin]

April 7


OKLAHOMA:

Expert: Guilty plea rare in Oklahoma case; activists to ask for clemency ahead 
of execution


As activists prepare to argue for clemency for a man scheduled to die next 
week, a death penalty expert said a blind guilty plea such as Garry Allen's is 
unusual in Oklahoma capital murder cases.

Allen's attorneys have argued that he was mentally impaired when he entered a 
blind guilty plea to a capital murder charge. Allen was shot in the head during 
his 1986 arrest, and he had a history of mental illness and alcohol abuse prior 
to the killing.

Activists on Monday plan to ask legal counsel for Gov. Mary Fallin to consider 
clemency for the 56-year-old man, who is scheduled to be executed Thursday.

Considering Allen's apparent combination of mental illness and alcohol abuse, 
he shouldn't have entered a blind guilty plea — a plea done in front of a judge 
without a deal — especially in a state where the death penalty is popular, said 
defense attorney James Rowan, a death penalty expert who does not represent 
Allen.

Allen has testified that he pleaded guilty to spare his family and his victim's 
family from the ordeal of a trial.

His lawyers had argued he was not sane and therefore shouldn't be executed, but 
in 2008, a jury said he was sane enough for the death penalty.

A personality test in Allen's court file shows his "probable diagnosis is 
Schizophrenic Disorder, or Anxiety Disorder in a Paranoid Personality." Allen, 
who had a history of substance abuse, had also testified that before the day of 
the killing, he got drunk whenever he could. Two hours after the killing, 
Allen's blood-alcohol level was .27— more than three times the legal limit.

Considering Allen's apparent combination of mental illness and alcohol abuse, 
he shouldn't have entered a blind guilty plea — a plea done in front of a judge 
without a deal — especially in a state where the death penalty is popular, said 
defense attorney James Rowan, a death penalty expert who does not represent 
Allen.

Attorney Charles Hoffman, another expert on death penalty cases, said a blind 
guilty plea could be the result of the defendant's insistence, "bad or lazy 
lawyering" or a strategy to argue the defendant acknowledged guilt when a 
conviction is sure to happen.

"Although entering a blind guilty plea in a death penalty case may sound like a 
very dumb thing to do, it really all depends on the facts of the case," Hoffman 
said.

In the 42 capital murder cases that Rowan has tried, only two defendants 
entered blind guilty pleas — once because Rowan was "young and didn't know any 
better." In the other case, in 1989, a man killed five people in a multi-state 
spree, including a woman in an Ardmore, Okla., flower shop.

Rowan knew the case would be hard to win and decided to plead to the judge.

"It would almost be malpractice now to do it," Rowan said. "Even if the 
defendant wanted to enter a guilty plea, I think you'd be almost incompetent to 
do that."

In 2005, the Pardon and Parole Board voted 4-1 to recommend life without parole 
instead of execution for Allen, but Fallin has decided to proceed with the 
execution.

Fallin has said she and her legal team gave Allen's case a thorough review, and 
she has no plans to change her decision.

Allen shot 42-year-old Lawanna Titsworth four days after she moved out of the 
home where she lived with Allen and their 2 sons, according to court documents. 
Titsworth and Allen had fought in the week before the shooting and he had tried 
to convince her to live with him again.

An officer in the area responded to a 911 call. Allen grabbed his gun and 
struggled with the officer, according to court documents. Allen tried to make 
the officer shoot himself by squeezing the officer's finger on the trigger, but 
the officer got control of the gun and shot Allen in the face.

(source: Associated Press)






NEVADA:

ACLU To Use New Study In Nev. Death Penalty Debate


A top American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada official says a study putting 
the cost of defending death penalty cases at $170,000 higher than non-capital 
murder cases should help state legislators when they meet next year.

ACLU executive Dane Claussen said Friday that the study by a University of 
Nevada, Las Vegas, criminology professor was commissioned by Clark County 
Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani.

It found that public defense attorneys in Clark County spend twice as much time 
-- almost 2,300 hours -- on a capital murder case, compared with non-capital 
cases.

Claussen says more study is needed.

But he says state lawmakers need to know how criminal justice resources are 
allocated, especially when they're considering bills like a proposal for a 
moratorium on death penalty cases.

(source: Associated Press)






CALIFORNIA:

Seeking an End to an Execution Law They Once Championed


The year was 1978, and the California ballot bristled with initiatives for 
everything from banning gay teachers to cracking down on indoor smoking. Both 
lost. But one, Proposition 7, sailed through: expanding the state’s death 
penalty law to make it among the toughest and most far-reaching in the country.

The campaign was run by Ron Briggs, today a farmer and Republican member of the 
El Dorado County Board of Supervisors. It was championed by his father, John V. 
Briggs, a state senator. And it was written by Donald J. Heller, a former 
prosecutor in the New York district attorney’s office who had moved to 
Sacramento.

34 years later, another initiative is going on the California ballot, this time 
to repeal the death penalty and replace it with mandatory life without parole. 
And 2 of its biggest advocates are Ron Briggs and Mr. Heller, who are trying to 
reverse what they have come to view as one of the biggest mistakes of their 
lives.

Partly, they changed their minds for moral reasons. But they also have a 
political argument to make.

“At the time, we were of the impression that it would do swift justice, that it 
would get the criminals and murderers through the system quickly and apply them 
the death penalty,” Mr. Briggs, 54, said over tea in the kitchen at his 
100-acre farm in this Gold Rush town, where he grows potatoes, peppers, melons, 
cherries and (unsuccessfully, so far) black Périgord truffles.

“But it’s not working,” he said. “My dad always says, admit the obvious. We 
started with 300 on death row when we did Prop 7, and we now have over 720 — 
and it’s cost us $4 billion. I tell my Republican friends, ‘Close your eyes for 
a moment. If there was a state program that was costing $185 million a year and 
only gave the money to lawyers and criminals, what would you do with it?’ ”

California is not the first state to reconsider the death penalty in an era of 
questions about its morality and effectiveness. And even with these unusual 
advocates — and a new argument, that the death penalty has cost the state a 
fortune but produced only 13 executions in 34 years — the repeal faces tough 
going.

This is a state with a history of colorful crimes and criminals; polls here 
invariably find strong support for executions. Indeed, the older Mr. Briggs 
says that, unlike his son, his mind remains unchanged.

But Ron Briggs and Mr. Heller bring to this campaign a powerful and evocative 
story: a bid for personal redemption and a call for renewed consideration of 
the arguments they themselves once made in favor of the death sentence.

“It’s been a colossal failure,” Mr. Heller said in his Sacramento office. “The 
cost of our system of capital punishment is so enormous that any benefit that 
could be obtained from it — and now I think there’s very little or zero benefit 
— is so dollar-wasteful that it serves no effective purpose.”

Mr. Heller said that when the elder Mr. Briggs asked him to draft the 
initiative, using skills he learned working for the legendary Manhattan 
district attorney Frank S. Hogan, he wholeheartedly supported executions. “The 
fact that it was upheld every time it went to the Supreme Court shows it was 
well drafted,” Mr. Heller said ruefully. “I don’t take pleasure in that 
anymore.”

The 2 men add a personal element to a death penalty debate that is clearly 
evolving here, as opponents marshal an argument of waste in a state that is 
bleeding money. A report last year found that California was spending $184 
million a year on a cottage industry of lawyers, expert witnesses and 
supersecure prisons to deal with the death row population created by 
Proposition 7.

“The cost is the most politically neutral argument,” said Paula M. Mitchell, a 
Loyola Law School professor and one of the authors of the report. “We’ve 
debated the morality of the death penalty for decades. We’ve tried very hard to 
focus on the objective cost issue, because that’s something that people who 
differ on all the other issues can reach a consensus on.”

Mr. Briggs said that argument “is going to capture a lot of Tea Partiers.” He 
continued: “Conservative Republicans should take a real hard look at it. I’m 
going to do my best to make sure they do. I have very good conservative 
credentials.”

A Field Poll in September found a jump in the number of Californians who would 
favor life without parole over the death penalty for someone convicted of 
1st-degree murder, to 48 % last year from 37 % in 2000. Still, over all, 68 % 
said they supported the death penalty for serious crimes. The report said that 
keeping inmates in prison for life would cost substantially less than executing 
them.

“Whenever you just ask about the death penalty in and of itself, the public 
continues to support it,” said Mark DiCamillo, the director of the Field Poll. 
So the attempt to rescind it is “going up against established opinion, which is 
a tall order,” he said.

Kent Scheidegger, the legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, 
which supports the death penalty, said cost “is probably the only argument that 
has any chance. The people have heard all the other arguments for years, and it 
has never gotten any traction.”

But he added: “Justice is what we have government for. Why forgo justice for 
dollars?”

Mr. Briggs and Mr. Heller are not the only high-profile names associated with 
the campaign to end executions. Jeanne Woodford, a former warden at San Quentin 
State Prison, is one of the leaders, along with Gil Garcetti, a former Los 
Angeles district attorney. “We’re laying off teachers, we’re laying off 
firefighters,” Mr. Garcetti said. “This is crazy.”

Mr. Briggs said his views began to change after he learned about the case of a 
woman who had been shot and sexually assaulted in 1981. The attacker — who also 
killed a woman in the assault — remains entangled in appeals, forcing the 
victim to continue to face him. “I just thought about the horror for her that 
we did,” he said. “He committed a crime in ’81. What a lousy system.”

The other factor? “I started going back to church,” said Mr. Briggs, a Roman 
Catholic.

When he wrote the initiative, Mr. Heller said, he gave no thought to its cost. 
“I am convinced now that it has never deterred anyone from committing a 
murder,” he said. “In my mind, I realized what I did was a big mistake.”

The older Mr. Briggs, who is 82, was nationally known as an advocate of 
conservative causes, especially an initiative, which failed to pass, requiring 
the dismissal of homosexuals who worked as schoolteachers. Leaning out the 
window of his pickup truck along a narrow road on the farm, Mr. Briggs said the 
other day that he was as sure of the death penalty today as he was in 1978.

“One guy said to me, ‘How do you know it works?’ ” he said. “ ‘Well,’ I said, 
‘I went to see Aaron Mitchell get executed, and I never read in the paper that 
he ever killed anybody again.’ ” He was referring to a man executed in 1967 for 
killing a police officer.

“It’s the system that doesn’t work,” Mr. Briggs said. “Your car’s not working 
either if you can’t turn the damn key on, and they’ve turned the damn key off.”

How will he vote on his son’s initiative? “I’m going to vote no,” Mr. Briggs 
said with a laugh, flipping the ignition on his truck.

Not that Ron Briggs has given up. “I have made it my mission to get his support 
for life without parole,” he said. “That may be a high bar, but that’s my 
mission.”

(source: New York Times)

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

State death penalty discussion planed at Saint Mary's College


Former San Quentin Prison Warden Jeanne Woodford and Los Angeles County deputy 
District Attorney Philip Stirling will debate California's death penalty April 
12 at Saint Mary's College.

The free forum "Dialogue about the Death Penalty: The Future of Capital 
Punishment in our State" begins at 7 p.m. and will be held at Dryden Hall, 1928 
St. Mary's Road, Moraga.

Woodford is executive director of Death Penalty Focus and spearheaded a 
campaign to place the Safe California Act on the November ballot. The 
initiative calls for replacement of the state's death penalty with life 
imprisonment without parole. Stirling is a death penalty proponent.

The forum will be moderated by author Ralph Spinelli.

(source: Contra Costa Times)






MONTANA:

Deny Canadian death row inmate Ronald Smith's clemency, letter recommends


One of the lawyers for Canadian death-row inmate Ronald Smith is expressing 
anger and dismay after accidentally receiving a Montana parole board document 
that recommends the Alberta-born killer be denied clemency at a hearing next 
month that could determine whether he is executed later this year for murdering 
2 men in Montana 3 decades ago.

The 4-page preliminary report - prepared by an official with the state agency 
ahead of Smith's May 2 clemency hearing - serves mainly as a backgrounder for 
the parole board panel that subsequently will make its own recommendation to 
Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer.

Schweitzer, assuming the issue is resolved before his term as governor runs out 
in 2013, ultimately will decide whether the only Canadian on death row in the 
U.S. should be spared the death penalty or executed by lethal injection for the 
August 1982 gunshot murders of Blackfeet Indian cousins Thomas Running Rabbit, 
19, and Harvey Mad Man, 23, in the woods south of the Alberta-Montana border.

But Don Vernay, a New Mexico-based member of the legal team trying to convince 
Montana's parole board and Schweitzer to commute Smith's death sentence to life 
imprisonment, told Postmedia News on Friday: "You don't have to be a brain 
surgeon to see where the board is coming from."

The pre-hearing report, inadvertently leaked to Vernay and Smith's 
Montana-based lawyer, Greg Jackson, "discounts all of Ron's good behaviour and 
achievements in prison," Vernay added.

He also took aim at the report's summary of Smith's psychological state - a key 
factor in the 54-year-old Canadian's bid to convince Schweitzer that he is a 
fundamentally reformed man deserving of merciful treatment despite his horrific 
crimes.

"The psychological report the board relies on is the worst I have ever seen," 
Vernay said. "All the 'psychologist' did was rely on a 1994 pre-sentence report 
by an untrained probation officer who sold toasters for a living before he 
became a parole officer. The psychologist interviewed nobody, did no testing 
and even had the name of the psychologist working on Smith's case, back in 
1994, wrong."

Vernay insisted the assessment of Smith's mental state "was nothing but a 
drive-by opinion, which is no way to conduct an evaluation when someone's life 
is at stake."

The pre-hearing report cites a psychological assessment conducted on March 5 
this year that concluded Smith "is not an individual with a strong desire to 
make amends or prove himself a good citizen."

The referenced psychological report also stated that, "to the extent that clear 
evidence of remorse and unmitigated responsibility-taking is the gateway to 
rehabilitation, the impression (is) that the extent of this individual's 
rehabilitation is limited, or questionable."

The backgrounder to the parole board panel flagged various concerns about 
Smith's behaviour in prison over the years, including an alleged 1991 threat 
purportedly made against a judge who had upheld the death sentence.

"Smith's behaviour in prison has not been abysmal, but it has also not been 
stellar," the overview states.

Finally, the advance report presented to the parole board members - and 
mistakenly mailed to Smith's lawyers on April 2 - concludes:

"Smith does not meet any of the commutation criteria" under Montana's clemency 
protocols.

"Smith hasn't demonstrated an extended period of exemplary performance, and 
there doesn't appear to be any extraordinary mitigating or exemplary 
circumstances that would constitute the exceptional remedy such as 
commutation," the report states, noting that the death sentence Smith initially 
asked for in 1982 - but later mounted a 25-year legal battle to overturn - 
"does not appear to be grossly unfair."

In a February interview with Postmedia News, Smith appealed directly to Prime 
Minister Stephen Harper to consider "who I've become" and not "who I used to 
be" in voicing Canada's support for the Montana clemency application.

"The level of maturity I've gained over the last 15 or 20 years, I think, is a 
huge difference," said Smith, whose clemency bid hinges on what his 19-page 
application described as his solid record of rehabilitation in prison and the 
"heartfelt remorse" he feels over the 1982 killings.

Smith's clemency request was accompanied by 2 lengthy letters of support from a 
Catholic priest and a retired prison teacher who had helped the Canadian inmate 
obtain credits toward a post-secondary education.

Harper's Conservative government abruptly decided in October 2007 to deny 
further official Canadian support for Smith's attempts to avoid the death 
penalty, saying he had been convicted in a democratic country and didn't 
deserve special intervention from a tough-on-crime federal cabinet.

But that decision ran counter to a long-standing foreign affairs policy of 
seeking clemency for Canadians sentenced to death in foreign countries, and the 
Federal Court of Canada later ruled the government had to back Smith.

Canada did send a letter to Montana in December asking the state parole board 
to spare Smith's life.

"The government of Canada does not sympathize with violent crime and this 
letter should not be construed as reflecting a judgment on Mr. Smith's 
conduct," the government's letter, signed by Foreign Affairs Minister John 
Baird, stated. "The government of Canada . . . requests that you grant clemency 
to Mr. Smith on humanitarian grounds."

But the Conservative government's low-key support for the clemency bid has 
prompted criticism from opposition MPs, who argue that Canada's abolition of 
capital punishment in 1976 requires the country take a more forceful stand 
against the possible U.S. execution of a Canadian citizen.

(source: Montreal Gazette)