[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, OHIO, USA, CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 20



TEXAS:

18 years on Death Row: The Consequences of the Death Penalty


Every week for 18 years, Anthony Graves was allowed to make one phone call from 
prison. And each call would be to his mother.

What was she making for dinner, he would ask. The food that they served in 
prison was mush compared to the meals his mother used to make for him. Each 
week his mother would say the same thing: why would he want to torture himself 
with memories of her home cooking when he could have none of it?

“Steak and potatoes she would say, and I would go ‘ah, Mom,’ why would you tell 
me that?” Graves said.

And then one day, he called his mom, just as he had done every week for 18 
years, to ask her what she was making for dinner. And once again, she asked him 
why in the world he would want to know.

“Because I’m coming home,” he told her. “Your son is coming home.”

Graves was wrongly convicted of a horrific multiple homicide in 1994. His 
conviction was overturned in 2006, and he was fully exonerated in 2010. He is 
the 12th and most recent death row inmate to be cleared in Texas since 1973. 
Only a small fraction of the hundreds of men that have sat on death row have 
been exonerated.

Texas is infamous for putting the most men to death since the death penalty was 
reinstated in 1976. Since then, 478 men have been put to death, with 2 more 
scheduled for the end of February, and at least 4 more by the end of the year.

Donald Newbury, a member of the Texas 7 Gang, infamous for the biggest 
jailbreak in Texas history and the shooting death of a police officer, was to 
be executed on Feb. 1. He has been given a stay of execution while the Supreme 
Court determines if death row inmates are entitled to better legal 
representation during appeals cases.

Southern Methodist University recently hosted 2 panel discussions on the death 
penalty. One of them featured Graves, another exoneree, Clarence Brandley, and 
former Death Row Chaplain Rev. Carroll Pickett.

Pickett, who is now retired, took care of the death row inmates during the day 
of their execution, sitting with them and preparing them for their impeding 
death.

“Most inmates just wanted to know what was going to happen to them; what it was 
going to be like to die,” Pickett said.

While Pickett never counseled Graves, he prepared and walked 95 other men to 
their deaths during his 15 years with the prison system, more than any other 
death row chaplain.

34 states currently impose the death penalty.

“It must not be cruel and unusual because look at how many people want it, 36 
states keep imposing it,” said Randy Johnston, a Dallas attorney who 
specializes in legal ethics.

Graves was released from death row a little over a year ago, on Oct. 27, 2010. 
Since his release, he has worked hard to rebuild his life, adjusting to living 
outside bars, and establishing a new relationship with his family.

In 1992, 6 people, 4 of whom were children, were shot, stabbed and bludgeoned 
to death before their house was set on fire to cover up the killings. The small 
community of Somerville, Texas was shocked and outraged.

“The mayor (of Somerville) said he didn’t even want to hold a trial, there was 
no need. He just wanted the criminals to hang,” Graves said.

A man wandering in the crowd at the memorial service for the victims was 
noticed by police. He had bandages over his hands, arms and face to cover 
burns.

The man, Robert Earl Carter, father to one of the young children killed, was 
immediately arrested and charged with 6 counts of homicide. Police allegedly 
said that if Carter gave up his accomplices, they would let him go. Carter gave 
the first name that came to his mind.

Within hours, Anthony Graves was arrested.

“I heard the police were looking for me. So I went looking for the police,” 
Graves said. “Don’t ever go looking for the police; it took me 18 years to get 
home.”

Graves, now 45-years-old, was 26 when he was arrested. He was a father of three 
young children. But in the time Graves was away, they have grown up to have 
children of their own.

After being convicted by a jury of 11 white men and women and 1 black man, 
Graves was sentenced to death, despite the pleas of his family, including one 
of his young son’s who was suffering from Spinal Bifida.

With 2 execution dates set during his time on death row, Graves came within 2 
months of a lethal injection.

He saw a number of fellow prisoners executed during his time on death row. Each 
time his own impending death came closer, Graves said all he wanted was for 
people to just look at the facts.

“When you know you’re innocent, in the back of your mind, you hold out hope,” 
Graves said.

An appeals court overturned his conviction in 2006, following an admission from 
the original lead prosecutor that Robert Earl Carter had admitted to committing 
the murders by himself. On Oct. 27, 2010, Graves was released from prison.

“For the 1st time, I felt the sunshine, the feeling of freedom on my face,” he 
said.

“Anthony Graves has spent as much time on death row as the average first year 
student at SMU has been alive,” said Rick Halperin, SMU Professor of the 
Practice of Human Rights, in a recent interview from his office.

Halperin, surrounded by books, papers, awards and posters with slogans 
promoting human rights, is also the Director of SMU’s Human Rights Education 
Program, which sponsored the panels. He said that despite the amount of time 
Graves spent in prison, he received little compensation and no way to ever get 
that time back.

Graves now works for a non-profit organization, The Texas Defender Service in 
Austin, which works with death row inmates. He also travels extensively to 
provide assistance to lawyers and speaks on panels to students and people on 
the impact the death penalty not only had on his life, but also that of his 
family’s.

“My whole family was on death row,” Graves said.

Despite all that has happened to him, Graves says that he does not hold onto 
any anger.

“I didn’t want the anger or animosity to take away any more of my life,” he 
said.

While Graves is rebuilding his life, and adjusting to the changes of the world 
over the past 18 years, he has worked hard to tell his story, inspire others 
and hopefully change the mind of pro-death penalty supporters along the way.

“The question isn’t that they shouldn’t be punished, but what exactly should 
the punishment be,” Halperin said.

(source: Julie Fancher is a 20-year-old junior studying Convergence Journalism 
and Political Science at Southern Methodist University; Dallas South News)






OHIO:

Is Ohio's death penalty under its own death watch? Questions, criticism mount 
about Ohio executions


Ohio's capital punishment system could be under its own death watch as scrutiny 
over how the state executes prisoners has led to calls for significant changes 
-- if not an outright repeal -- of the death penalty.

Despite the issues plaguing the state's execution process, Ohio officials say 
they are certain they are getting this call on life-or-death right.

"I feel that we have a solid protocol, and I know that we have the 
professionally trained staff to execute that protocol," Ohio Department of 
Rehabilitation and Correction director Gary Mohr told The Plain Dealer. "I have 
no reservations with saying that at all."

But Mohr knows there are plenty of people from judges to former prison 
officials to anti-death penalty activists who have heavy concerns about the 
death penalty.

They question why some criminals land on death row and others do not, whether 
the state's execution procedures are legal and whether the system can be 
revamped to restore waning public trust.

In just the past few years, Ohio has:

• Botched 1 execution, which had to be postponed, and had 2 others with lengthy 
delays, including one in which the inmate, while strapped to the gurney in the 
execution chamber, cried out, "This isn't working."

• Under legal duress, switched from a 3-drug concoction to a 1-drug dose for 
lethal injection, a change that is the subject of a lawsuit.

• Defended itself in numerous inmate lawsuits questioning whether rights 
against cruel and unusual punishment are violated during executions.

• Instituted a moratorium of sorts after a federal judge stayed an execution 
until Ohio revises its procedures, a ruling upheld this month by the U.S. 
Supreme Court.

• Been the target of critics who now include a sitting Ohio Supreme Court 
justice and 2 former state prisons directors.

• Seen 2 bills introduced in the Republican-controlled General Assembly that 
would repeal the death penalty.

Maybe most damning was a scathing order by U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost of 
the Southern District of Ohio, who stayed an execution in January because he 
said the prison system doesn't follow its own written execution procedures, 
making it likely an inmate lawsuit against the state could prevail.

"Ohio has been in a dubious cycle of defending often indefensible conduct, 
subsequently reforming its protocol when called on that conduct, and then 
failing to follow through on its own reforms," Frost wrote in the Jan. 11, 2012 
order.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, whose office is representing the prison 
department in the lawsuit, said he disagreed with Frost but that the state is 
nonetheless working to revise its death penalty procedures as instructed.

All of this seems to be feeding growing skepticism about the death penalty not 
only here in Ohio, but across the country.

The prevailing thought appears to be siding with caution, especially after some 
recent high-profile executions drew national attention: in 2011 a Georgia man 
was executed despite his claims of innocence and what supporters called 
loopholes in his case; and in 2010 Alabama executed a mentally disabled man.

34 states still have capital punishment, but in recent years, Illinois, New 
Mexico and New Jersey have gotten rid of it and Oregon's governor has said he 
won't allow another execution while he is in office.

Critics say a state that takes lives needs to be perfect in its assessment of 
doing what's right. But the mounting issues surrounding Ohio's capital 
punishment hardly inspire assurance that its system always gets it right.

"The death penalty system has to be made 100 % effective and we have to have 
the right people make the sure this is perfect, no mistakes allowed," said 
Kevin Werner, of Ohioans to Stop Executions. "But you can't make it fair. So, 
until we can, you shouldn't do it at all."

The issues raised in Ohio are twofold: first, the court challenges, which Mohr 
calls "arduous," and second, why some criminals end up on death row and others 
do not.

"For every case on death row, if you give me enough time, I can find you a 
dozen others equal to it that were never charged with capital punishment," said 
Ohio Public Defender Tim Young. "Is that a fair system? You have 88 county 
prosecutors and 88 different views on how to approach this."

In the 10-year period between 2002 to 2011, there were 770 capital punishment 
indictments in Ohio, with 307 of those in Cuyahoga County, by far the most for 
any county. Second was Franklin County, with 107, followed by Hamilton with 34.

Like Cuyahoga, Franklin and Hamilton are densely populated counties with a 
major city at its core, Columbus and Cincinnati, respectively, but obviously 
different appetites for pursuing death penalty cases.

Young said there isn't a significantly higher rate of violent crime in 
Cleveland versus Cincinnati to justify having nearly 10 times as many capital 
punishment cases. Furthermore, few of those cases ended in a death penalty 
conviction, raising the issue of unusually higher costs for prosecuting capital 
cases and whether it is worth it.

Former prisons director Terry Collins oversaw 33 executions during his career 
before retiring in 2010. He reminded himself each time that he was doing his 
job, following the letter of the law. But Collins now says that with each 
execution, he privately harbored concerns that maybe he was about to see an 
innocent man put to death.

"I wondered about it every time I left my house to drive down to Lucasville: 
did the system get it right?" Collins said, referring to the Southern Ohio 
prison the houses the death chamber. "I could only assume it was right, but 
there was always doubt."

In 1996, lawmakers allowed for life in prison without parole sentences as an 
alternative to the death penalty. Many Ohio death row inmates executed in 
recent years were convicted prior to that law change.

Since 1997, the 1st year after the law changed, 356 inmates have been sent to 
prison with life without parole sentences, whereas 74 people have been 
sentenced to death during that period. There are currently 147 men and 1 woman 
on death row.

Collins believes those figures prove that with this option, some inmates on 
death row likely would be serving life without parole instead. He also said 
life in prison allows the state to correct the low percentage mistake of 
wrongful incarceration.

"The fact that we have life without parole, if we make a mistake with that we 
can rectify it. But you won't get that chance to rectify a mistake with the 
death penalty," he said. "I think life without parole is sufficient punishment 
and in fact is a harsher punishment in that you have to live out the rest of 
your life thinking about what you've done and knowing you're not going 
anywhere."

Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer has emerged as the state's 
highest-profile critic of the death penalty. Ironic, not only because it is 
unusual for a sitting judge to be an activist on a topic that regularly comes 
before his court, but also because Pfeifer helped reinstate capital punishment 
in 1981 when he was a member of the Ohio Senate.

He blames his own court for going too far in broadening the scope of what 
constitutes a death penalty conviction.

The court has lowered the bar, he said, for example, by too broadly defining 
kidnapping to raise some murder cases to death penalty-eligible cases.

Pfeifer, a Republican, says he also worries, like Young, that county 
prosecutors do not use any uniform practice for determining what cases they 
choose to pursue as capital punishment cases, and that there are racial and 
geographical disparities.

"It has become a death lottery depending on where you committed the crime and 
depending on the attitude of the local prosecutor," Pfeifer told The Plain 
Dealer. "I'm not being critical of a prosecutor's right to choose how to pursue 
a case, but there is such a wide differentiation across the state."

Pfeifer said he no longer favors the death penalty and doesn't see how it 
serves society.

"What does it say about us as a society? What does it say about us that we 
think we need the death penalty and that locking them up for a lifetime isn't 
sufficient?" Pfeifer asked. "I think to a degree we undermine our own moral 
authority."

Pfeifer in January 2011 urged Gov. John Kasich to end capital punishment, but 
the Republican governor responded quickly, reiterating his support for the 
death penalty.

Chief Justice Maureen OConnor has taken heed of the concerns of Pfeifer and 
others and has appointed a task force to study the death penalty in Ohio. The 
task force is expected to come up with recommendations for how to improve the 
system. It is unlikely to suggest repealing the death penalty altogether.

One idea already discussed is having a state panel or commission review cases 
and recommend when the death penalty should be sought so that there is one 
standard being applied across Ohio. The idea is similar to a plan used in 
Tennessee.

There are also 2 Democratic-sponsored bills in the Ohio legislature calling for 
the repeal of the death penalty, Senate Bill 270 and House Bill 160.

The Ohio Prosecutors Association opposes both bills.

Prisons director Mohr was limited in his comments because of the ongoing 
lawsuit that has effectively stopped Ohio executions. But he said each person 
who is part of the execution team does his or her job with great care.

"Every person involved in an execution I can tell you takes their 
responsibility as seriously as they can," he said. "Just think about this, 
they're guiding a person through the last hours of his life. That team. . . 
does this with dignity and does this with professionalism, and that's a tough 
thing."

(source: The Plain Dealer)

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

Local debate over death penalty intensifies


The debate over Ohio’s death penalty laws is heating up, just as Butler County 
is about to try its 2nd capital case in less than a year.

A “random” act of violence ended the life of an elderly Middletown man last 
May. His alleged killer, Victor Gantt, faces a possible death sentence, when 
his trial begins on Tuesday.

In the last 5 years, Butler County has had 8 cases that qualified for the death 
penalty. Most recently, a jury spared Hector Alvarenga-Retana’s life after his 
murder trial last November. He was convicted of killing of 2 rival gang 
members. Warren County hasn’t had a death penalty case since 2008, after Michel 
Veillette murdered his family in Mason. He committed suicide in jail before the 
case went to trial.

Leroy Jones’ life was cut short when Victor Gantt allegedly attacked him, 
beating the 75-year-old man to death with an ax. The act was completely random, 
police said, with Gantt breaking through a glass door, attacking Jones and then 
trashing the house.

Assistant Prosecutor Brad Burress says because the murder occurred while Gantt 
was allegedly robbing and burglarizing Jones, the case qualifies as a capital 
offense.

Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser declined comment on the Gantt case.

Ohio has become a focal point because one of the senior members of the Supreme 
Court, Justice Paul Pfeifer — who helped draft the first constitutional death 
penalty laws in the state — has publicly opposed the death penalty. Now 
Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters has asked the justice to recuse himself 
in all death penalty cases and any case from his jurisdiction. Pfeifer has made 
comments about the large number of death row inmates that hail from Hamilton 
County.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor’s task force that’s studying the 
death penalty in Ohio sparked the war of words between Pfeifer and Deters. 
Pfeifer testified recently before a state House Criminal Justice Committee on a 
bill that would abolish the death penalty and has commented widely in the media 
about the issue. Deters is a member of O’Connor’s task force.

Pfeifer headed the Senate Judiciary Committee two decades ago and says he has 
always been troubled by the final compromise he had to make on the death 
penalty law then. He wanted to give juries the option of sentencing a defendant 
to life without possibility of parole, instead of life with parole eligibility 
after 20 or 30 years. The other side of the legislative fence said no.

The legislature has amended the statutes to include the sentencing option of 
life without parole, which Pfeifer says negates the need for the death penalty.

Pfeifer has pointed out that Hamilton County has the most residents on death 
row in the state with 29. By contrast, Butler County has 7 men on death row, 
and Warren County has a single resident there. He says some aggressive 
prosecutors are finding ways to turn some murders into capital crimes. Adding a 
kidnapping charge if the defendant pointed a gun at his victim is a way to 
qualify a case as a capital crime, he said. He said the fact that the death 
penalty isn’t uniformly applied in the state is also an issue.

“Joe Deters takes a very tough-minded approach on these things... Not every 
murder qualifies for the death penalty. But if it does qualify, he takes the 
position we’re going to go to trial and we’re going to try to get the death 
sentence,” the justice said.

He also added it is “grossly unfair” that probably half the people sitting on 
death row went there before juries were allowed the option of imposing life 
without parole instead of death.

3 men have gone to death row on Deters’ watch, so far. In a letter to the 
editor, Deters said between 1981 and 2010 his county “only indicted” 162 on 
capital charges, compared to 497 and 1,215 in Franklin and Cuyahoga counties 
respectively. Deters has called on the justice to recuse himself in capital and 
Hamilton County cases.

“Justice Pfeifer’s continued participation in deciding death penalty cases is 
inappropriate. It gives rise to a credible inference that he cannot be fair to 
both sides,” he wrote. “His false public criticisms of me indicate he has 
absolutely no business sitting in judgement of cases from Hamilton County.”

Pfeifer said the court considers recusal requests on a case-by-case basis and 
he will continue that practice.

“There is a huge difference between advocating the law and applying the laws 
that exist,” Pfeifer said. “He knows that I know the difference.”

Deters did not return phone calls.

(source: The Oxford Press)






USA (RHODE ISLAND):

ACLU backs Chafee in possible death penalty case


The Rhode Island American Civil Liberties Union has filed written arguments 
supporting Gov. Lincoln Chafee (CHAY'-fee) in the legal tug-of-war with federal 
prosecutors over a possible death penalty case.

The ACLU says it filed papers with the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in 
Boston, which is hearing the case of 34-year-old Jason Pleau (PLEW) in April.

Chafee opposes surrendering Pleau to federal authorities who may seek a death 
penalty prosecution in his murder case. Rhode Island does not have the death 
penalty.

The court last year vacated a decision saying Chafee has the right to keep 
Pleau in state custody. Pleau is accused of fatally shooting a gas station 
manager outside a bank in 2010.

Prosecutors have not said whether they'll seek the death penalty if Pleau is 
convicted.

(source: Associated Press)






CALIFORNIA:

Former Newark Police Chief Ray Samuels has died, officials say


Former Newark police Chief Ray Samuels, who came out against the death penalty 
after decades in law enforcement, has died, officials announced Saturday.

Samuels began his police career in 1975 in Vallejo and later worked in Concord 
before serving as Newark's chief from 2003-2008. He also spent time as the 
interim police chief at the Lodi Police Department, which announced his death 
on its Facebook page.

"While Chief Samuels was only with the department for a short period of time he 
quickly became loved and respected," according to the Lodi police statement. 
"His contributions to our department will not be forgotten."

Samuels opened a 2008 anti-capital punishment opinion piece with: "There are 3 
words you rarely hear from law enforcement: We were wrong." He goes on to 
explain that some crimes merit the ultimate punishment, but most killer simply 
deserve to live out their existence in prison.

"Despite the best intentions of law enforcement, prosecutors, defense 
attorneys, judges and jurors, innocent people have been convicted and sentenced 
to death," Samuels wrote in the piece published by the Contra Costa Times. "The 
margin for error with the death penalty is too great. Once imposed, it is a 
bell that cannot be unrung."

(source: Mercury News)