[Deathpenalty] [SPAM] death penalty news----TEXAS, CALIF., ALA., FLA., N.C., NEB.

[Rick Halperin]

March 4


TEXAS:

Fort Worth native dies after lifetime of brutality


Danielle Ramirez strongly believes that Michael Paprskar never truly paid for 
his crimes.

Paprskar, who escaped the death penalty when his conviction for ordering the 
fatal shooting of Ramirez's 4-year-old brother in 1970 was overturned on 
appeal, died of heart failure Feb. 20 in Bexar County. He was 70.

Though he served 10 years behind bars for the deaths of Ramirez's father and 
uncle, Ramirez said the time didn't even begin to compensate for the loss of 
her loved ones. Nor, she said, did it make up for the countless other violent 
acts committed by Paprskar for which he was never held accountable.

While she doesn't wish death on anybody, Ramirez said, receiving word that 
Paprskar was dead brought her some relief.

"When I got that phone call, I thought, 'Finally he's having to answer to 
somebody higher than a judge, somebody higher than attorneys,'" said Ramirez, 
who was only a few months old when her father, uncle and older brother were 
killed.

"I guess that maybe gives my heart comfort knowing he's finally having to 
answer for his actions."

Deadly past

Many considered Paprskar lucky.

Time after time, the Fort Worth native managed to avoid serious consequences 
for a half a century of violence that included four deaths. In the 1950s, 
Paprskar slashed the neck and face of a 19-year-old sailor in a dispute over a 
pint of whiskey. The assault-to-murder charge was dismissed after a Tarrant 
County jury deadlocked.

In the '60s, he was arrested but never charged for fatally shooting a 
20-year-old Irving man between the eyes. Paprskar had caught the man stealing a 
tire from his car.

In 1970, authorities say, Paprskar, upset over being sold some bad heroin, 
instigated the fatal shootings of Daniel Ramirez and his brother, Samuel 
Ramirez, inside his Fort Worth motorcycle shop. He then ordered Daniel 
Ramirez's 4-year-old son, Danny Jr., to be killed when the boy was discovered 
waiting in the men's car outside.

Paprskar's then wife, Bonnie, and 2 men who had been living with the couple in 
their motorcycle shop/home, later pleaded guilty to taking part in the slayings 
and were sentenced to prison. (All have since been released.)

Paprskar, the only one to stand trial, was sentenced to death for the child's 
slaying but never stepped foot on death row. 2 years later, while he was still 
in the Tarrant County Jail, Paprskar's conviction was overturned based on 
illegal search and seizure of evidence used in the trial. A new trial, moved to 
Houston because of the extensive publicity, was about to begin when Paprskar 
pleaded guilty to killing the boy's father and uncle. In exchange, he received 
2 20-year sentences to run concurrently. Credited with good behavior and time 
spent in the county jail, Paprskar walked out of prison a free man in 1980.

Followed by trouble

With a new name -- he had it legally changed to Abraham Fortune -- Paprskar 
left Fort Worth, eventually settling in San Antonio.

But his troubles continued.

In 1984, he was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in the 
stabbing of a 21-year-old man in a bar restroom. The case was dismissed after 
witnesses backed Paprskar's claims that he was defending himself.

In the '90s, he was sentenced to 8 years' deferred-adjudication probation for 
shooting a man who had wanted more money for mowing the grass at Paprskar's 
motorcycle shop.

And at the time of his death, Paprskar was still awaiting trial on another 
charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, stemming from the 2005 
shooting of a customer at his San Antonio motorcycle shop.

In a telephone interview in 2010, Paprskar said he had been vilified for acts 
in which he played no part or in which he was only defending himself. "I'm not 
claiming I've been an angel all my life," he said. "But all this violent stuff 
-- I never once went and started any fight with anyone. ... Almost everything 
that happened was in my car, in my house or in my businesses. It wasn't in some 
beer joint going crazy with a gun and shooting something up. I never instigated 
any trouble."

Justice delayed

Cliff Herberg, a Bexar County assistant district attorney, was skeptical when 
his office got word that Paprskar, who had claimed to be in very poor health, 
had died.

"I said, 'Confirm he's dead because we're used to him playing these kind of 
tricks,'" Herberg said.

Herberg blamed the court's backlog for the delays in bringing the 2005 case to 
trial. He said Paprskar's attorney had often tried to persuade the district 
attorney's office to dismiss the charge because of his client's poor health.

"I said, 'No way. It's my goal to see that he dies in prison,'" Herberg said. 
"I felt like he had it pretty lenient already because of the twist of events in 
the past. He needed to be in prison, and I didn't care if he died or not."

Ramirez said she's upset that Paprskar was never tried in the case and that 
Paprskar was able to live his last years "on his own terms."

"I was obviously robbed of living a life with my father," Ramirez said. "... I 
was robbed of that, but thank God I had my mother. She had to play both roles 
for me."

Her mother, Carmen Harris, was just 14 when she married Daniel Ramirez. 2 years 
later, Danny Ramirez Jr. was born, and 4 years after that, Danielle.

Harris said raising her daughter is what kept her going after her husband and 
son were killed.

"I'm a survivor, but what else was I going to do?" said Harris, who remarried 
twice and had 2 more daughters. "I couldn't give up. I had a daughter that was 
3 months old. I had to move on."

With only a 9th-grade education, Harris worked at a printing company and later 
on an assembly line at night while attending barber school during the day. Her 
in-laws and family helped care for Danielle.

In 1983, Harris opened a hair salon in downtown Fort Worth. In 1986, she opened 
a second downtown salon on Commerce Street (closing the first location about a 
year later). Danielle Ramirez works alongside her mother at the Executive Hair 
Suite.

"She is a remarkable woman," Ramirez said of her mother. "So many things I do, 
she says, 'Your dad would have been so proud.' I say, 'Yeah, he would have been 
proud, but you're the reason I am who I am today.'"

Harris said she refused to waste thoughts or feelings on Paprskar when he was 
alive and won't do so now that he's dead.

"I really believe you have to move on and make the best of everything God has 
given you," Harris said. "He doesn't have to answer to me. Even though he 
changed his name, God still knows who he is."


CALIFORNIA:

Join the Conversation: Should California abolish capital punishment or overhaul 
the death penalty process to speed up executions?


At 6:22 p.m. Wednesday, 10 minutes after the deadly intravenous drip began, cop 
killer George Rivas became the 479th person executed in Texas since the state 
resumed executions 3 decades ago.

On the following day, California capital punishment opponents delivered nearly 
800,000 signatures to election officials to place a new initiative on the 
November ballot to abolish state-sanctioned killing.

The death penalty in Texas and California couldn't be more different. It has 
become part of the fabric of Texas. In California, it is a concept. The number 
of prisoners theoretically condemned to death stands at 724. But California has 
executed only 13 people, beginning with Robert Alton Harris, who died in the 
San Quentin gas chamber on April 21, 1992.

California's system has become so ponderous that the past 2 state Supreme Court 
chief justices, both appointed by Republicans, have called it dysfunctional and 
suggested that if it can't be fixed, it ought to be scrapped. Even in Texas, 
the death penalty is not all that simple, as Dallas County District Attorney 
Craig Watkins makes clear.

On the day of Rivas' execution, Watkins arrived early at the red brick prison 
here known as The Walls. He had multiple reasons for taking the 3-hour drive 
from Dallas to Huntsville. Watkins had never seen an execution and wanted to 
fully understand the system he must help to enforce.

In December 2000, Rivas led 6 inmates on a prison break. On Christmas Eve, 
Aubrey Hawkins, a 29-year-old police officer in Irving, Texas, dined at an 
Olive Garden with his wife, 9-year-old son, mother and grandmother, and left to 
answer a call about suspicious activity at a nearby sporting goods store.

There, Rivas and his gang shot Hawkins 11 times, dragged him from his patrol 
car and crushed him with their vehicle. Hawkins never had a chance to draw his 
weapon.

Although Watkins was intent on seeing Rivas take his final breath, he needed to 
stop first a few blocks east of the prison, at a graveyard long ago named 
Peckerwood Hill, the final resting place for the unclaimed bodies of Huntsville 
State Penitentiary inmates.

There, he found a tombstone for Inmate 101, Richard Johnson. An X on the stone 
indicated he died by execution. Johnson was 31 on Aug. 10, 1932, when he was 
walked to his death in the electric chair. He was Watkins' great-grandfather.

"I didn't know the man. But I was thinking of my grandmother," Watkins told me.

Watkins said his grandmother, Myretha Clark, now 85, rarely talked about her 
father. He learned the man's name only after he took office in 2006 and 
embarked on a personal research project.

"For her, it was a stigma that her father was executed," he said. "She has been 
dealing with this her whole life."

He doesn't much want to talk about the details, other than to say times were 
very different 80 years ago. The crime involved the murder of an oilman and a 
sexual assault of the man's fiancée, racially charged given that Johnson was 
black.

"It was a tragedy on both sides," he said.

Executions halted in 1972

The old system of executions in the United States ended in 1972, when, briefly, 
some polls suggested that public support for capital punished had waned. On 
Feb. 18, 1972, California's Supreme Court, by a 6-1 vote, ruled that the death 
penalty violated California's constitution.

4 months later, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down death penalty statutes in 
other states. By 1976, however, the high court had revised its position and 
permitted states to rewrite their laws.

Since then, 1,283 people have been put to death nationwide. Increasingly, 
capital punishment is a Southern phenomenon. Southern states have executed 
1,054 inmates. Texas' 479 executions amount to 37 % of the overall number. 
California's 13 executions account for 1 % of the total.

The California Supreme Court has been controlled by appointees of Republican 
governors since the 1986 election when voters ousted three justices appointed 
by Jerry Brown, including Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, who had voted to 
overturn more than 60 capital cases to come before her.

Since her departure, the California high court has affirmed more than 290 death 
sentences. But the logjam worsens.

Bird's successors include Ronald George, an appointee of Republican Gov. Pete 
Wilson. In 1972, George was the deputy state attorney general responsible for 
overseeing capital appeals for California, and submitted briefs to the 
California high court and U.S. Supreme courts arguing for the constitutionality 
of the old death penalty statute.

As his retirement in 2010 neared, Chief Justice George concluded that the 
current death penalty system had become dysfunctional. He urged that it be 
significantly changed, though he stopped short of asking that it be scrapped. 
His successor, Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, an appointee of Republican 
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has turned up the volume.

"If the death penalty remains the will of the people," Cantil-Sakauye recently 
told The Bee editorial board, "we need to talk about priorities and costs … and 
if it still is the will of the people, then it is clear restructuring is needed 
and most likely revenue."

There are many reasons why the state has not carried out the death penalty. But 
in California, lawyers for death row inmates confound prosecutors, and state 
and federal courts.

There has been a de facto moratorium on executions since 2006 as litigation 
continues over whether lethal injection, authorized by lawmakers in 1992 as 
less painful alternative to the gas chamber, amounts to cruel and unusual 
punishment. In Texas, courts quickly disposed of similar litigation.

Significantly, Texas judges run in partisan elections for the highest criminal 
appellate court in the state, the Court of Criminal Appeals, and don't hide 
their biases. One judge, Sharon Keller, sent an election mailer showing a man's 
hands sticking through the bars of a prison cell and included these words: "He 
won't be voting for Sharon Keller on Tuesday."

In 2007, Keller, the Texas court's presiding judge, attracted attention by 
locking the courthouse doors at 5 p.m. sharp, denying attorneys for a death row 
inmate time to file a last-minute appeal. The man was executed later that 
night.

Although California's Supreme Court regularly affirms death cases, its record 
doesn't match that of the Texas court. In a 5-year period ending in 2000, the 
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld 268 of the 270 death sentences it 
reviewed on direct appeal, according the Texas Defenders Services, a nonprofit 
that represents death row inmates. That was the lowest reversal rate of any 
state.

There's a matter of attitude. California's governor and attorney general are 
moral opponents of capital punishment, though there is no evidence they've 
thwarted death sentences from being carried out.

In Texas, it's a given that politicians support the death penalty. The high 
point of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's failed presidential bid occurred in a debate 
when the audience cheered him for having presided over what then were 234 
executions. If you kill a child or a cop or commit some other heinous murder, 
Perry said in the debate, "you will face the ultimate justice in the state of 
Texas."

Despite such attitudes, the number of death sentences has declined since 2005, 
when Texas lawmakers gave jurors the option of imposing death or life in prison 
without parole. Texas juries handed out 8 death sentences last year, down from 
an average of almost 22 in the 3 years before the change, and a high of 40 in 
1996.

Since reinstating the death penalty in 1978, California has offered jurors that 
option. Juries returned nine death sentences last year, down from 29 in each of 
the preceding 2 years. The November initiative would end the death penalty, but 
leave in place sentences of life in prison without possibility of parole.

A pledge to uphold law

Lately, Watkins, the first and only African American in Texas to be elected 
county district attorney, has offered a voice of ambivalence in his state. 
Watkins told me that when he was a kid, people in his neighborhood didn't call 
police; they didn't trust them. Elected in 2006 and re-elected in 2010, Watkins 
has sought to change that by, for example, reviewing cases of people who may 
have been wrongly convicted. In all, 27 inmates sent to prison from Dallas 
County have been exonerated since 2001, including 15 during his tenure.

At a hearing 2 weeks ago for one of the exonerated men, Watkins for the 1st 
time publicly mentioned his great-grandfather's fate. The people his unit 
helped clear weren't on death row. But given findings of innocence, "any honest 
district attorney would have to have issues about whether we have executed 
someone who was innocent," Watkins said.

Watkins is morally opposed to capital punishment. But he follows the law as it 
is. He has pursued 9 death penalty cases and helped prosecute ` involving a 
defendant, since sent to death row, who stabbed his 2 young sons and their 
mother to death and raped his 2 stepdaughters. "Morally, I believe capital 
punishment is wrong. But whatever the law is, I'll enforce it," Watkins said.

To prepare himself for Rivas' execution, Watkins read final statements of other 
men who were executed at The Walls. Statements from the old days were not 
recorded, including whatever might have been said by his great-grandfather, the 
85th person to die in the Texas electric chair. "News accounts say he sang 
'Swing Low Sweet Chariot,' " Watkins said.

On the day of Rivas' execution, Watkins arrived and left Huntsville quietly, 
not talking to the reporters who had gathered. He wanted to make sure the focus 
remained on Officer Hawkins. And it was.

21 uniformed officers made sure of that, standing shoulder to shoulder outside 
The Walls as Rivas was put to death. As Rivas was hooked to the needles, 
Watkins made his way from the warden's office toward the viewing area for the 
execution. Along the way, he walked past an area where family members come to 
visit inmates. He felt as if he had been there before. It wasn't his 
imagination. As a boy, his family brought him to Huntsville to visit 2 uncles 
who were doing time.

Texas has 1 more executions scheduled this month. In California, there can be 
no execution until litigation over the legality of lethal injection ends. That 
won't happen any time soon, certainly not before voters in November decide 
whether to end California's version of capital punishment.

(source: Sacramento Bee)

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

Initiative Submitted to Abolish Death Penalty ---- There are 2 capital cases 
awaiting trial from Seal Beach and Los Alamitos that would be affected if 
voters choose to eliminate the death penalty.


Backers of an initiative that would replace the death penalty with a life 
sentence without parole will submitted signatures last week in downtown Los 
Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento and San Francisco in an attempt to qualify the 
measure for the November ballot.

What backers have dubbed as the Savings Accountability and Full Enforcement 
California Act has received ``far and above the minimum'' of the 504,760 valid 
signatures from registered voters to qualify, according to Jason Howe of 
Taxpayers for Public Safety, the campaign on behalf of the initiative.

There are 2 death penalty murder cases awaiting trial from Seal Beach and Los 
Alamitos that would be affected if voters elect to eliminate the death penalty. 
Scott Evans Dekraai, accused of murdering eight people at Salon Meritage and 
Daniel Patrick Wozniak, accused of murdering two people and dismembering one at 
the Liberty Theater in Los Alamitos, both face the death penalty if convicted.

The initiative would apply retroactively to people already sentenced to death 
and require convicted killers to work while imprisoned, with their wages to be 
applied to any victim restitution fines or orders against them. It would set 
aside $100 million in savings for DNA testing and fingerprint analysis in an 
attempt to help solve more homicide and rape cases.

Passage of the measure would result in net savings to the state and counties of 
``the high tens of millions of dollars annually on a statewide basis,'' 
according to an analysis prepared by Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor and 
Director of Finance Ana J. Matosantos.

The initiative's proponent is former San Quentin State Prison Warden Jeanne 
Woodford, who oversaw 4 executions. It is also supported by former Los Angeles 
County District Attorney Gil Garcetti and the Catholic Bishops of California.

``The death penalty in California is broken and unfixable,'' Garcetti said. 
Opponents of the initiative, including the California District Attorneys 
Association, say the death penalty deters crimes, and commuting the death 
sentences of condemned inmates is unfair to victims' families, who expect 
closure.

California's death penalty law was approved by voters in 1978 and has resulted 
in 13 executions, the most recent in 2006. Since the death penalty was 
reinstated, more death row inmates have died by suicide than by execution.

(source: Los Alamitos Patch)






ALABAMA:

Another Death Row Debacle: The Case Against Thomas ArthurBy Andrew Cohen, The 
Atlantic


In Alabama, a death row prisoner could be exonerated by a DNA test. Why are the 
courts preventing this from happening - especially when another man has already 
confessed to the crime?

Another month, another man on death row, another excruciating case that 
illustrates just some of the ways in which America's death penalty regime is 
unconstitutionally broken. This time, the venue is Alabama. This time, the 
murder that generated the sentence took place 30 years ago. And this time, 
there is an execution date of March 29, 2012, for Thomas Arthur, a man who has 
always maintained his innocence. He also has the unwelcome distinction of being 
one of the few prisoners in the DNA-testing era to be this close to capital 
punishment after someone else confessed under oath to the crime.

Late last month, I profiled the wobbly capital conviction against Troy Noling 
in Ohio and there are remarkable similarities between it and the Arthur case. 
Both involve white defendants. Both include contentions of innocence and 
allegations of bad lawyering at trial. Both include a lack of physical evidence 
linking the defendants to the crime. Both include crucial witness testimony 
that borders the farcical. And both include state officials reluctant to permit 
sophisticated DNA testing that might definitively answer questions about 
whether the defendants committed the murders they will die for.

Arthur's attorneys are even willing to pay for that testing, the few thousand 
bucks it would be, and the testing could be completed by the execution date. It 
is here where prosecutors and judges lose me when they prioritize "finality" in 
capital punishment cases at the expense of "accuracy." It would cost Alabama 
nothing to let Arthur's lawyers do the testing. And it might solve a case that 
already has cost the state millions of dollars. Instead, Alabama wants to 
finally solve its Arthur problem by executing him. No matter how the new DNA 
test could come out, the state is more interested in defending its dubious 
conviction.

The Trials of Thomas Arthur

Apart from the fact that he may have spent decades on death row for a crime he 
didn't commit - based upon the testimony of a convicted murderer with a motive 
to lie - Arthur isn't exactly a sympathetic figure. In 1986, while awaiting his 
second trial, he escaped from jail by shooting one of his guards. But any 
reasonable person looking at the tortuous history of his case through the 
decades would see that there is something wrong here. 3 times Alabama tried 
Arthur for murdering Troy Wicker on February 1, 1982. Three times the state got 
a conviction and death penalty against him. 3 times there were problems at 
trial.

Some of this has been litigated - over and over again - at both the state and 
federal level (the back story alone raises important constitutional concerns). 
What's important today, however, is that Alabama now seems to have based its 
entire case against Arthur upon the testimony of Judy Wicker, Troy's wife, who 
said at the time of the murder that she had been raped by a stranger. Over and 
over again state investigators asked her if Thomas Arthur was involved in the 
crime. And over and over again she said no. So what happened?

What happened was that Judy Wicker was lying. Turns out she had hired someone 
to murder her husband - and got caught doing so! Several months after her 
husband's death, Wicker was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in 
prison. A few years later, however, she cut a deal with prosecutors. In 
exchange for a recommended early release from prison, she would change her 
testimony and accuse Arthur of the crime. And that's what happened. Wicker's 
testimony secured Arthur's 3rd and final conviction. And this time, for over 20 
years now, all of the state and federal courts that have reviewed the case have 
endorsed that result.

The "Other Man"

Were this all to the story it would be bad enough. But in 2008 things got 
worse. A man named Bobby Ray Gilbert confessed under oath to murdering Troy 
Wicker. In a sworn affidavit, Gilbert said he started an affair with Judy 
Wicker after they met at a bar and soon agreed that he would kill Troy Wicker, 
whom Judy Wicker claimed was an "abusive" husband. They agreed, Gilbert said 
decades later on paper, that he would wear an "Afro wig" and dark make-up as a 
disguise. After he shot Troy Wicker, Gilbert wrote, he and Judy Wicker had 
unprotected sex, after which she asked Gilbert to "beat her up" so it would 
look like rape.

Citing Gilbert's detailed affidavit, here's how Arthur's pro bono lawyers, who 
work at the venerable law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, described what happened 
next: "After the murder, Gilbert drove Wicker's car back to the trade school 
parking lot to meet his cousin, still wearing the wig and make-up. He left 
Wicker's car in the parking lot. Police later recovered her car, with an 'Afro 
wig' inside it, in the parking lot of the Northwest Alabama State Junior 
College" (citations omitted by me). This is the same wig that Arthur's 
attorneys want to have DNA tested anew for a link that could scientifically 
substantiate Gilbert's confession.

Why did Gilbert wait over 25 years to come forward with his story? It's an 
important question. Arthur's attorneys phrase the answer this way: "Gilbert 
explained that he did not come forward with his confession earlier because he 
feared receiving the death penalty, and only confessed after the United States 
Supreme Court ruled that a minor at the time of the crime could not receive the 
death penalty." Gilbert is referring here to the Court's March 2005 5-4 
decision in Roper v. Simmons, which held that the execution of juvenile 
murderers - under 18 when they killed - violated the "cruel and unusual 
punishment clause" of the 8th Amendment.

The Hearing

For Arthur, Gilbert's confession came just in time. The Alabama Supreme Court 
stayed his 2008 execution date and he was given a hearing and the opportunity 
to undertake DNA testing on key evidence in the case. Nothing linked Arthur (or 
Gilbert, for that matter) to any of the evidence tested, but one key item was 
missing from the original trial list: Judy Wicker's rape kit. Evidently that 
kit, which might have revealed the critical link between Wicker and Gilbert, 
had been missing even before Arthur's final (1991) trial. And the wig? Alabama 
forensic experts found DNA on it but were nevertheless unable to develop a 
comparative DNA profile.

Predictably, Arthur called Gilbert to testify at the hearing - to repeat, in 
essence, in open court, subject to cross examination, what he had sworn to in 
the affidavit. This time, however, Gilbert chose to exercise his 5th Amendment 
right to remain silent. Arthur's attorneys say this is because Gilbert was 
punished by prison officials after his confession to the Wicker murder. Alabama 
denies that any coercion was used against Gilbert and says that Gilbert said he 
would recant his confession if he got certain prison privileges back. And Judy 
Wicker, who had for years exonerated Arthur, did testify at the hearing. She 
said Gilbert was lying.

The trial judge didn't buy Gilbert's story one bit. In fact, she ruled that 
Gilbert and Arthur were attempting to "perpetuate a fraud" upon the court. And 
she ruled that the lack of DNA evidence linking Gilbert to the crime - it also 
excluded Arthur, remember - scientifically proved that Gilbert's confession was 
false. It is this ruling, the latest of dozens since the Troy Wicker murder, 
that is still being contested by defense lawyers three years later. They are 
back. And they want more advanced DNA testing on the wig - testing they say 
wasn't available to Alabama in 2008 and 2009.

The Arguments

Arthur's lead attorney, Suhana Han, told me Sunday via email: "If new testing 
developed a DNA profile that matched someone other than Mr. Arthur ... we would 
consider that evidence that Mr. Arthur didn't wear the wig all parties agree 
was worn by the perpetrator." Why the new test? Han wrote:

The test we are proposing today (mini-STR DNA typing) may be able to detect a 
profile where standard autosomal STR typing (the test conducted by the Alabama 
Dep't of Forensic Sciences in 2009) cannot. Mini-STR DNA typing is a 
specialized form of autosomal STR typing that can produce a profile when 
standard autosomal typing fails because the pieces of DNA are too small to be 
picked up by that system. The mini-STR DNA typing "looks" at a smaller segment 
of DNA, making it more likely to get a profile out of a degraded sample.

Alabama says, in essence, that after 30 years and several execution dates for 
Arthur, enough is enough. To the state, the ongoing conspiracy here is not 
between the 2 alleged long-ago lovers, Gilbert and Judy Wicker, but between the 
2 fellow inmates, Gilbert and Arthur. "[E]vidence presented at the [2009] 
hearing established that while Arthur and Gilbert were both incarcerated at 
Holman Correctional Facility, the two men passed notes to one another so that 
Gilbert would have enough information about Troy Wicker's murder to confess to 
it." (And don't forget about that prison guard Arthur shot 25 years ago during 
his prison escape.)

Alabama says that the failure of Gilbert's credibility alone justified the 
trial judge's conclusion that Arthur was not entitled to any relief. This meant 
that the judge wasn't required to order the initial DNA testing and that no 
courts now should be required to authorize additional testing. The mini-STR DNA 
testing requested by Arthur's attorneys, Alabama contends, is just as good as 
the testing performed on the wig a few years ago. And in any event, the state 
now says that there is no more DNA left to test on the wig after all these 
years. The time has come, Alabama says, to end Arthur's litigious life on its 
death row.

Why It Matters

One day, some enterprising journalist will try to establish how much the state 
of Alabama spent over the years prosecuting Arthur, imprisoning him, and then 
defending the conviction and death sentence in his case. The figure must be 
astounding - millions upon millions of dollars - a hard cost of justice. But 
also an amount that makes ironic, and quite infuriating, the current fight over 
this last DNA test for this last bit of available evidence. You would think 
Alabama would be willing to pay just a bit more to perform the test. The fact 
that Arthur's attorneys are willing to pay for the test makes the state's 
refusal to test unconscionable.

After all these years, and all these hearings, and all these dramatic 
developments, you would think that Alabama itself would want to make sure, 
before it executes Arthur, that there isn't any of Gilbert's DNA on that wig. 
You would think after losing the rape kit decades ago that state officials 
would go out of their way to let Arthur's attorneys perform their new test. 
This is especially so now that an execution date has been set and the testing 
can be completed before March 29. Prosecutors would say that such testing will 
only result in new delaying motions from the defense. But it could also reveal 
the truth.

This is an ugly case, tracking many of the failings of the human condition, and 
one that raises questions today about long ago testimony. Why were Alabama 
jurors so willing to believe Judy Wicker? How was Arthur convicted without the 
rape kit? The case also raises questions about where we go from here on DNA 
testing. Should a state ever be able to block a new DNA test if it doesn't have 
to pay for it? The questions from the past tell us how arbitrary and capricious 
capital cases can be. The questions about the future tell us how much of a 
fight is left ahead over capital punishment in America.

(source: The Atlantic; Andrew Cohen is a contributing editor at The Atlantic 
and legal analyst for 60 Minutes. He is also chief analyst and legal editor for 
CBS Radio News and has won a Murrow Award as one of the nation's leading legal 
analysts and commentators)






FLORIDA:

Requiring unanimity for death penalty isn't being soft on crime


When Florida's death penalty process is at issue, even the most dedicated 
advocates for improvements in the administration of justice tend to retreat 
from the challenge, claiming the timing isn't right, that they don't want to 
risk being branded as soft on crime, or that they don't want to undermine their 
larger agendas by association with such issues.

Moreover, the Florida Bar Foundation, which played an instrumental role in 
advancing death penalty process reform efforts, has been less inclined to 
support such projects today given its depleted discretionary funding.

The alarming backdrop is that the Death Penalty Information Center, an 
independent nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., reports that 
since 1973, Florida has reversed more death sentences than any other state.

Frank Lee Smith was exonerated posthumously after the actual perpetrator was 
identified. He died from cancer after languishing on death row for 14 years. 
Juan Melendez was exonerated after almost 18 years on death row when a taped 
confession by the real perpetrator was discovered.

Reasonable people may disagree about the merit, efficacy and morality of 
capital punishment, but all should agree that the process must be fair, 
impartial and as timely as possible.

5 years ago, the American Bar Association released a comprehensive report 
developed by a team of 8 Florida-based experts, including a state attorney, a 
former public defender and a former Florida Supreme Court chief justice, that 
raised serious concerns about Florida's death penalty process. The report 
neither supports nor opposes capital punishment.

One of the key findings notes that Florida is an outlier insofar as allowing 
capital-case juries to find aggravating circumstances and recommend a death 
sentence by a simple majority — say, 7-5. All 33 other death penalty states 
require some form of unanimity.

Some counter that if unanimity had been required, convicted serial killers such 
as Ted Bundy and Aileen Wuornos wouldn't have received death sentences because 
both penalty-phase jury deliberations resulted in 10-2 votes.

But that is not necessarily accurate. Had those juries been instructed that 
unanimity was required, the nature of the deliberations would have changed, 
including conceivably the vote, and while the judge is expected to place great 
weight on a jury's recommendation, it is the judge who imposes death sentences 
in Florida.

We may have reached a tipping point.

Sen. Thad Altman, R-Melbourne, filed a bill in anticipation of the 2012 regular 
legislative session that would require unanimity in future penalty phase jury 
deliberations for both advisory recommendations of death and findings regarding 
the presence of aggravators, the basis for any death sentence.

He expanded the scope of a unanimous jury bill that he previously filed to 
address issues raised in a recent case out of the Southern District in which 
U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez declared related aspects of Florida's capital 
case sentencing scheme unconstitutional. The state has appealed.

Before that case, the Florida Supreme Court, in a 2005 opinion known as State 
v. Steele, had called upon the Legislature to revisit Florida's death penalty 
statute to require unanimity for jury recommendations of death. Then-Gov. Jeb 
Bush observed that the issue was "definitely worth consideration" and cautioned 
legislators not to ignore the court.

The Legislature ignored the court.

Simply put, Altman's bill would help ensure that the death penalty is reserved 
for the most heinous crimes. It has received favorable responses from certain 
prosecutors. But the Legislature has virtually ignored Altman's bill during the 
session thus far.

Legislative leadership seems to be falling prey to the notion that any change 
in Florida's death penalty statute might result in unintended consequences and 
should be resisted, essentially gambling that the ruling by Judge Martinez will 
be reversed upon appeal.

If the state's appeal is denied, the consequences of failing to act would not 
be speculative.

Regardless of the outcome of the state's appeal and apart from one's views on 
capital punishment, maintaining the status quo and thereby Florida's outlier 
status in this country does not serve the cause of justice. States such as 
Texas and Georgia, known for their pro-death penalty stance, require unanimous 
juries. So should we.

(source: Opinion; Raoul Cantero is a former justice of the Florida Supreme 
Court appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush. Mark Schlakman was a member of the ABA 
Florida Death Penalty Assessment Team----The Tampa Tribune)


NORTH CAROLINA:

North Carolina's death penalty debate----A 2009 state law allows death row 
inmates to reduce their sentences to life without parole if they can prove 
racial bias in sentencing or jury selection.


The machinery of death is ripping itself to chunks in North Carolina. Would 
that this would happen in more places — like, say, California.

Conservatives and prosecutors in the Tarheel State are up in arms over a 2009 
law that allows death row inmates to reduce their sentences to life without 
parole if they can prove racial bias in sentencing or jury selection — even if 
the bias wasn't directed at them but at others. In other words, if convicts can 
show a statistical pattern of racial bias statewide, they can use it as 
evidence that their own trial may have been skewed. And they don't have to be 
minorities to appeal; a white inmate who can show excessive dismissal of black 
potential jurors might be able to dodge the executioner.

Opponents of the law are calling it a backdoor way to end the death penalty, 
and they're probably not wrong. That's because it's not going to be very hard 
for inmates to demonstrate racial bias. A Michigan State University study found 
that, between 1990 and 2010, North Carolina prosecutors dismissed black 
potential jurors at twice the rate of nonblacks in death penalty cases. The 
case of the first inmate to test this law, convicted killer Marcus Reymond 
Robinson, is currently being heard, and as Times staff writer David Zucchino 
reported Wednesday, it's being watched carefully in other states. North 
Carolina's law may well spread if Robinson succeeds.

It's not an ideal solution. North Carolina lawmakers had good reasons for 
passing the law — there is considerable evidence of skewed juries in the state, 
killers are far more likely to be sentenced to death if their victims are 
white, and in 2009 there were a spate of cases in which death row inmates were 
exonerated by DNA evidence. But the approach is laden with complications. For 
one thing, a high dismissal rate for black potential jurors isn't necessarily 
an indicator of racism; it may be that blacks distrust the justice system and 
oppose the death penalty more than whites, so they are dismissed for of their 
beliefs rather than their race. Moreover, North Carolina has a potential 
nightmare brewing: Because the sentence of life without parole didn't exist 
there before 1994, it's possible that inmates sentenced before then who 
successfully overturn their death sentences could be set free.

The better way? Borrow a page from Illinois, New Mexico and other states that 
have done away with the death penalty and replaced it with life without parole.

Capital punishment imposes ruinous costs on states, it can't be reversed if an 
inmate is later exonerated, it's highly questionable whether it can be carried 
out in a humane manner, and it protects society from killers no better than 
putting them away for life. As for the possibility of racial bias in 
sentencing, there probably isn't a reliable way to eliminate it. North Carolina 
is going through the back door when, with more honesty and fewer complications, 
it could go through the front.

(source: Editorial, Los Angeles Times)






NEBRASKA:

Nebraska set to use India-made drug in execution


In the forthcoming week the United States is poised to make execution history 
by allowing a prison in Nebraska to use a made-in-India chemical for killing a 
death-row inmate. That the drug being used, unconsciousness-inducing sodium 
thiopental, was procured fraudulently from its manufacturer – who is “shocked 
and appalled” at its proposed use – is an additional twist to this saga of a 
growing trans-border death-trade.

Unless he is saved by a clemency petition or last-ditch legal recourse, when 
Michael Ryan, on death row for a double-murder in the 1980s, is strapped into a 
gurney and injected with lethal chemicals on March 6, he will die knowing that 
a drug made in the town of Kashipur, Uttarakhand in India probably caused his 
death.

While Ryan had earlier obtained a stay order on his execution from the Nebraska 
Supreme Court, that decision was reversed at the end of last week when a County 
District Judge, Daniel Bryan Jr., rejected his appeal. In doing so the court 
however did not specifically comment on Ryan’s challenge relating to how 
Nebraska obtained one of three lethal-injection drugs it has on hand.

Ironically the setback for Ryan will also come as a blow to the proprietors of 
Naari, a Swiss-Indian pharmaceutical company. Naari has argued, for more than 6 
months now that the 485 grams of sodium thiopental now in the possession of the 
Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (NDCS) were taken from it under 
false pretences by a middleman called Chris Harris.

The attempt of Mr. Harris to procure sodium thiopental, proved duplicitous by 
shipping documents and other paperwork in The Hindu’s possession, come in the 
wake of a similarly controversial attempt by him obtain the narcotic from a 
Mumbai-based firm called Kayem Pharmaceuticals.

Yet a U.K.-based anti-death penalty group called Reprieve, which had earlier 
tracked the NDCS’s efforts to source the drug from a shadowy firm in the United 
Kingdom, highlighted Mr. Harris’ interactions with Kayem and the intense 
pressure on the firm led to it stating publicly that it would immediately halt 
all exports of thiopental to the U.S.

The U.S. prison’s move to seek the drug in U.K. had also met with a storm of 
opposition across Europe and led to the ban of all such drug exports to the 
U.S. in that continent. However although the import from Kayem was not approved 
by U.S. regulators Mr. Harris succeeded in procuring over 500 one-gram vials of 
thiopental – enough to kill 166 men – for the NDCS.

According to sources, U.S. regulators have conveyed to the NDCS that they do 
not approve of the use of Kayem’s sodium thiopental in executions given that 
proper importation procedures were not followed. However Mr. Harris learned a 
lesson from the ban on Kayem’s drugs and would appear to have followed import 
guidelines for Naari’s drugs – although as in the case of Kayem the U.S.

Food and Drug Administration has refused to certify the Naari drugs too.

The NDCS no doubt considers this development timely. Along with Georgia, 
Arizona, Texas and other U.S. states, Nebraska is said to be facing acute 
shortages of execution drugs since the 2010 voluntary shut-down of a firm 
called Hospira, the sole producer of sodium thiopental in the U.S. at the time.

Given the regulatory issues impeding the use of foreign-made sodium thiopental 
numerous correctional facilities in the U.S. are also considering a switch to 
pentobarbital, a veterinary euthanasia barbiturate used to put down dogs, or 
using a single-drug execution procedure.

If Nebraska does not switch to some alternative then fate of Naari’s drugs 
would appear to be written, despite Naari CEO Prithi Kochhar dashing off an 
anxious letter to Nebraska Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Heavican, in 
which he expressed his dismay at by the prospect that Naari’s drugs could thus 
be used in execution procedures. Going by a response of a judicial official, 
that letter has been set aside in the consideration of the Ryan case.

Regardless, Mr. Kochhar argued that Naari’s agreement with Mr. Harris was for 
Mr. Harris to use the vials for registration in Zambia, get the product 
registered there and then begin selling it there, given that sodium thiopental 
is used widely as an anaesthetic in the developing world.

Unfortunately the most recent decision condemning Ryan to death will lead to 
Naari’s drugs being used for an entirely more macabre purpose.

(source: The Hindu)