[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, S.C., GA., OHIO, USA

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 4



TEXAS:

Federal Appeals Court Issues Stay For Panetti


A federal appeals court on Wednesday halted the execution of a Texas death row 
inmate with a history of schizophrenia, just hours before he was to be put to 
death in Huntsville.

A 2-sentence stay was released by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New 
Orleans, 1 of 2 courts considering appeals from Scott Louis Panetti's defense 
team.

"We STAY the execution pending further order of the court to allow us to fully 
consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this 
matter," the appeals court order stated. "An order setting a briefing schedule 
and oral argument will follow."

Panetti, 56, was to be executed Wednesday night for the 1992 shooting deaths of 
his in-laws, Joe and Amanda Alvarado of Kerr County.

"We are grateful that cooler legal minds have prevailed and the 5th Circuit 
wants to take a more in-depth look at this situation," said Kathryn Kase, 
Panetti's Houston-based attorney and executive director of the Texas Defender 
Service.

Kase contacted Panetti's family members to notify them of the stay. They were 
visiting with him at the state's Allan B. Polunsky Unit in Livingston on 
Wednesday morning. The Polunsky Unit houses Texas' death row. Panetti had yet 
to be transferred to Huntsville, where the execution chamber is located.

"We have spoken to his family, and they are relieved and they are speaking to 
him about it," Kase said.

Several lawyers, religious leaders and former lawmakers have asked Gov. Rick 
Perry to use his authority and stay the execution for 30 days. By late Tuesday, 
the governor's office declined to comment on whether Perry would act on the 
request.

Only action from Perry or the courts can prevent the execution from moving 
forward. On Monday, Panetti's lawyers asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the 
execution, saying their client is not competent. Executing him, they argued, 
would violate his Eighth Amendment protection to be free of cruel and unusual 
punishment.

"This Court should review this case to determine whether the imposition of the 
death penalty on offenders with severe mental illness offends contemporary 
standards of decency," wrote Panetti's lawyers, Kathryn Kase and Gregory 
Wiercioch.

It's been nearly 7 years since their client was last assessed for competence, 
the defense team argued.

But the Texas attorney general's office late Tuesday countered that claims of 
Panetti's incompetence have been "tried, appealed, reviewed in state and 
federal habeas proceedings and conclusively put to rest" by numerous courts.

The attorney general's brief included an affidavit from the state's director of 
mental health services for the Texas prison system, Dr. Joseph V. Penn, stating 
that none of the 14 mental health staff who have met with Panetti since 2004 
have "identified any clinical signs and symptoms indicating a psychiatric 
diagnosis or required the need for additional mental health or psychiatric 
treatment such as psychotropic medications."

Court filings by the defense show that the Wisconsin native was diagnosed with 
schizophrenia when he was 20. At the time of the murders, he had been 
collecting federal disability checks because the illness prevented him from 
holding down a job.

Panetti represented himself during his capital murder trial, sometimes dressed 
in a cowboy outfit. He rejected an offer to plead guilty in exchange for a life 
sentence, and instead put on an insanity defense although he called no mental 
health witnesses. Panetti did try to call President John F. Kennedy, Pope John 
Paul II and Jesus Christ as witnesses.

Appeal filings over the years detail how Panetti was 1st diagnosed with 
schizophrenia in 1978 when he was taken to Brooke Army Medical Center following 
an accident in which he suffered electrical burns while working as an 
electrical lineman.

The diagnosis came shortly after Panetti spent only 10 months in the U.S. Navy. 
He would eventually be hospitalized at least a dozen times for mental illness.

According to the filing before the U.S. Supreme Court, Panetti's 1st wife, 
Jane, had her husband committed in May 1986 to a psychiatric facility after he 
nailed curtains in their home shut, buried household furniture in the backyard 
and conducted an exorcism of the devil from their home that involved spraying 
water over valuables that he had not buried.

A flurry of subsequent hospitalizations followed at Kerrville State Hospital 
and the Veterans Administration medical centers in Waco and in Kerrville.

In 1990, 2 years before Panetti would kill the parents of his 2nd wife, Sonja 
Alvarado, he was involuntarily committed again at Kerrville State Hospital. The 
action was taken after Panetti began "swinging a cavalry sword around the house 
and threatening to kill" his wife, their baby, his wife's father and himself. 
Panetti's wife eventually left him to live with her parents.

On Sept. 8, 1992, Panetti shaved his head, put on camouflage combat fatigues 
and then, armed with a sawed-off shotgun and a deer rifle, went to the 
Alvarado's home and killed them both in front of their daughter and 
granddaughter.

(source: Texas gtribune)

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

Court Relieves Rick Perry From Death Penalty Dilemma


A U.S. Appeals Court's decision to issue a stay of a mentally ill man on Texas' 
death row just hours before he was scheduled to be executed means that Texas 
Governor Rick Perry no longer needs to make what could have been a 
controversial decision on whether the execution should proceed.

Perry could have granted a 30 day stay - the only option under his authority - 
but he remained mum on the issue, despite pressure from anti-death penalty 
groups, the United Nations and even some conservatives who don't necessarily 
oppose the death penalty. They said Scott Panetti's mental state should 
preclude him from execution. He is a schizophrenic with a long history of 
mental illness who was convicted of killing his in-laws in 1995.

The court's action means that the potential 2016 presidential candidate won't 
have to act on the case now that it has returned to the judicial system, but 
Perry's record on the death penalty during his 14 year service as governor is 
clear, and it's an issue that could come into play should he officially launch 
a presidential run.

Since Perry came into office in 2000, he has overseen 319 executions, according 
to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice - that's more than 1/2 of the 517 
executions Texas has conducted since the death penalty was reinstated in 1982. 
While the number of executions has been declining in Texas since its peak of 40 
in 2000, it far outpaces any other state in the nation.

Perry's record on the death penalty has raised plenty of concerns from 
opponents after he declined to halt executions in several controversial cases. 
One was the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, a case where the 
evidence is still in question but was recently determined by the Texas Board of 
Pardons and Paroles, the state agency that must recommend commutation before 
Perry can act, not to recommend a posthumous pardon.

Perry has commuted 30 sentences since 2000, according to Perry's office. Most 
of those occurred in 2005 when the Supreme Court ruled that minors could not be 
executed. Perry has used his allowable authority to act independently of the 
board in just three cases since 2000, when he issued a temporary reprieve.

The death penalty momentarily became a campaign issue during Perry's 2012 
presidential run. During a Republican primary debate in September of 2011 when 
moderator Brian Williams of NBC News noted that he Texas executed 234 people 
under his governorship at the time, a fact that drew loud applause from the GOP 
audience.

In his response, Perry said that he's "never struggled" with the possibility 
that an innocent person has been executed, calling Texas' justice system 
"thoughtful" and "clear."

"If you come into our state, you kill one of our children, kill a police 
officer, involved in a crime and kill one our citizens, you will face the 
ultimate justice in the state of Texas, and that means you will be executed," 
Perry said.

If Perry mounts another presidential campaign, the death penalty is unlikely to 
be a major campaign issue as big-picture ideas like the economy or foreign 
policy tend to dominate voters' moods, and public opinion is shifting. Support 
of the death penalty has dropped about 20 points over the past 2 decades, 
according to national polls. A Pew study from March of 2014 found that 55 % of 
Americans supported the death penalty - a majority but far less than the 78 % 
that supported it in 1993.

Republicans, however, are more supportive. In the same Pew study, 71 % support 
it compared to 45 % of Democrats and 57 % of independents.

"If he runs (for president), he wants to run as a staunch advocate but doesn't 
want to run as irrationally cold and heartless."

But Marc Hyden with Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty said 
conservative attitudes are shifting as well. He said that when he debuted his 
group at a popular conservative conference, CPAC, in 2012, he was concerned 
about the reception he would receive. Now Hyden points to three letters sent to 
Perry urging him to commute Panetti's sentence. One letter was sent by a group 
of evangelical pastors, another by former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and third by a 
broad group of conservatives, including former Virginia Attorney General Ken 
Cuccinelli, who don't necessarily oppose the death penalty but do in the 
Panetti case because of the proven tragic mental state of Panetti.

Cal Jillson, political science professor at Southern Methodist University in 
Dallas, said it was "probably in Perry's best interest" that the courts 
intervened, considering Perry's higher political aspirations.

"Perry's great strength has been that he channels the Texas political culture, 
the Texas swagger, pitch perfectly," Jillson said. "If he runs (for president), 
he wants to run as a staunch advocate but doesn't want to run as irrationally 
cold and heartless."

Falling public opinion has translated to mode states abolishing the death 
penalty. Since 2007, New Jersey, New Mexico, Maryland, Illinois and Connecticut 
made up the latest of the 18 states that have rid their criminal justice system 
of it. But none of those states are critical to the Republican nominating 
process and none of the those states are likely to vote for Rick Perry in a 
general election as they are all states that tend to vote for Democrats 
nationally.

(source: NBC news)

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

Ted Cruz On Scott Panetti Death Sentence: 'I Trust The Criminal Justice System'


Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) declined on Wednesday to criticize the death sentence 
of a severely mentally ill man in Texas, distancing himself from some of his 
fellow conservatives who have been calling for Scott Panetti's sentence to be 
commuted to life in prison.

"I trust the criminal justice system to operate, to protect the rights of the 
accused and to administer justice to violent criminals," Cruz, an outspoken 
critic of government overreach, told The Huffington Post after delivering a 
foreign policy speech at the Newseum.

"I don't think it's appropriate for me, as an elected official who does not 
currently have a role in the criminal justice system, to be getting involved in 
the adjudication of any particular case," he said. "It's important that the law 
be followed."

Panetti, 56, is on death row for murdering his in-laws in 1992. He was 
scheduled to be executed Wednesday at 6 p.m. CST, but just hours before, the 
5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stepped in and issued a stay on the execution 
"to allow us to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at 
issue in this matter." The court said it will be setting a schedule for oral 
arguments soon.

Panetti has suffered from schizophrenia and other mental illnesses for over 30 
years, and has been hospitalized more than a dozen times. His attorneys asked 
the circuit court and the U.S. Supreme Court to step in, arguing that executing 
him would be unconstitutional based on the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and 
unusual punishment. The attorneys also unsuccessfully pressed Texas Gov. Rick 
Perry (R) to issue a 30-day delay to the execution in order for Panetti to 
receive a new mental health assessment.

The case has attracted support from mental health reform advocates and death 
penalty opponents, as well as from a number of well-known conservatives, 
including former Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former Virginia Attorney General Ken 
Cuccinelli.

Cuccinelli was one of a group of 21 conservative leaders who recently wrote a 
letter to Perry, saying it would be immoral to move forward with the execution.

"The authority to take a man's life is the most draconian penalty that we allow 
our government to exercise," they wrote. "As conservatives, we must be on guard 
that such an extraordinary government sanction not be used against a person who 
is mentally incapable of rational thought."

Mark Hyden, national coordinator for Conservatives Concerned About the Death 
Penalty, praised the circuit court's decision in a statement Wednesday.

"A wide array of conservative and faith leaders have spoken out in record 
numbers about this case," said Hyden. "We have made it abundantly clear that 
numerous conservatives and Evangelicals view executing those who are mentally 
ill as a violation of our values as Americans. Conservatives have demonstrated 
we are firmly part of what appears to be a national consensus against executing 
people who are mentally ill."

(source: Amanda Terkel, Huffington Post)

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

Local photographer documents families of victims, executed inmates in new book


It's hard to find works of art that aren't meant to take a stance on a highly 
politicized topic like the death penalty. But that's what local photographer 
Barbara Sloan tried to do.

Since 2006, Sloan has been talking and photographing families of executed 
inmates, plus the families of victims of death row inmates. She has since 
compiled 40 cases into one book that she will begin selling Saturday at the 
Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville.

"People can relate to the themes - grieving and dealing with (death)," Sloan 
said Wednesday. "We all deal with grief and forgiveness, which is enormous."

The book "Last Statement" started out as an exhibit at the Prison Museum, which 
is still showing here. In 2006, Sloan and Kelly Prew, a Huntsville Item 
reporter at the time, approached the Texas Department of Criminal Justice 
administration, which told the pair that they wouldn't be allowed to photograph 
inmates on death row.

However, Prew, who had the job of interviewing inmates before their final day, 
spoke with Anthony Fuentes. He unknowingly gave the pair the idea that sparked 
the project. Fuentes told Prew that someone should focus on the families 
"because they are the forgotten victims."

Prew told Sloan that she had an angle for the project in lieu of the inmates. 
Sloan, whose roots are in photojournalism and drove her to the project, loved 
the idea.

Sloan was interested in doing any journalism project, but got hooked on the 
death penalty idea while living in Europe. Many people there, she said, always 
asked about Texas and the death penalty - a hot-button issue overseas.

Sloan's 1st 2 portraits were Fuentes' grandfather and mother. Prew interviewed 
the family members, wrote short biographies and histories of the cases, as well 
as writing down how the family members felt.

Sloan's mother brought the initial project before the Huntsville Arts 
Commission that year.

"They were hesitant at first," Sloan said. "They said it was a true work of 
art, but that it didn't need to support one side or the other. It had to be an 
equal balance of victims??? and offenders' families. They also had to be 
released after the execution."

The project continued until 2013 and was displayed in the prison museum, 
rotating in new portraits every now and then.

Since then, Sloan has done more than 40 cases, some of which won't be 
published. That's because of the commission's rule of post-execution release. 
Some inmates were pardoned or their execution was stayed or still being 
appealed.

Her friends and others who saw the exhibit encouraged Sloan to put it into book 
form, which Sloan had never done. Her work historically involved horses in 
other countries.

Sloan said the portraits are her "most important and significant work." She has 
had work published in Time magazine, Andy Warhol's Interview, Newsweek, People 
and The New York Times, among others.

The portrait project was actually part of a documentary film called "At the 
Death House Door."

The books will be sold for $49.99 at the Texas Prison Museum. On Saturday, 
Sloan will host a book signing and grand release. After the book signing, the 
prison museum will be the exclusive book supplier for Sloan.

She will be there from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

(source: Huntsville Item)






SOUTH CAROLINA:

Judge overturns death sentence of Fredrick Evins


A Circuit Court judge has overturned the 2007 death penalty sentence of 
Fredrick Evins after finding he is mentally retarded.

Evins will reappear in court Thursday for resentencing for the murder of Rhonda 
Ward Goodwin, and to resolve 2 other outstanding cases - the murder, kidnapping 
and rape involving the 2002 death of Damaris Huff, and the rape of an 
83-year-old woman in 1991.

Judge Gary Hill overturned Evins' death penalty conviction after a June 
post-conviction relief (PCR) hearing. A Spartanburg County jury sentenced Evins 
to death after finding him guilty of killing, raping and kidnapping Goodwin, 
whose naked body was found in an apple orchard near the Spartanburg-Greenville 
County line on Feb. 15, 2003. She had disappeared from her job at Cigarettes 4 
Less on Drayton Road two days earlier.

Although the death penalty was overturned, Evins is still serving a 35-year 
sentence on the rape and kidnapping charges.

Hill agreed with Evins' current attorneys that his defense attorneys during the 
sentencing phase didn't handle the issue of his intellectual capacity properly, 
and there is sufficient evidence that Evins is mentally retarded.

"Thus, had the issue of mental retardation/intellectual disability been 
properly handled, there is a reasonable probability that either the trial judge 
would have found Evins categorically exempt from the death penalty, or the jury 
would have found his mental retardation a statutory mitigating circumstance 
entitling him to a life sentence or the jury would have found the evidence of 
low intellectual functioning as a mitigating circumstance," the order states.

Seventh Circuit Solicitor Barry Barnette, who was part of a team who prosecuted 
Evins, declined to comment on the outcome of the PCR hearing pending the 
outcome of Thursday morning's hearing.

Evins attorney Jeffrey Bloom confirmed his client will appear in court Thursday 
morning and said Evins will likely be resentenced at that time. Evins still 
faces a murder and criminal sexual conduct charge in connection with the death 
of Huff, whose almost-naked body was found in the woods near her Duncan Park 
home on Sept. 14, 2002. Huff had been strangled.

DNA evidence linked Evins to Huff's death, but he never went to trial on the 
charges because he was already sentenced to death in the Goodwin case.

Evins also faces rape, burglary and kidnapping charges in connection with a 
November 1991 incident in which an 83-year-old Greenville County woman was 
raped in her home while her then 8-year-old granddaughter, who was bound, 
watched, according to an incident report.

Evins was linked to the Greenville case after his DNA profile was uploaded to 
the Combined DNA Index System, which matched DNA collected at the scene, 
according to an incident report.

Bloom wouldn't confirm whether Evins would plead guilty to all charges 
Thursday, but said "all cases could be resolved at the same time."

(source: goupstate.com)






GEORGIA----impending execution

Lawyers for Ga. death row inmate ask for clemency


A Georgia death row inmate set to be executed next week should be spared lethal 
injection because his original trial was mishandled by an alcoholic lawyer who 
was distracted by his own problems, his lawyers argued Tuesday.

Robert Wayne Holsey is scheduled to die Dec. 9 for the December 1995 slaying of 
Baldwin County sheriff's deputy Will Robinson. But his attorneys argue his 
trial attorney failed to provide the jury information that could have spared 
him the death penalty.

"I think this case is unique in a lot of ways, including the clear indication 
that the trial lawyer was totally unable to mount a competent defense, and 
that's not fair," one of Holsey's current lawyers, Brian Kammer, told The 
Associated Press. "We shouldn't allow an execution to proceed when we know that 
the jury did not get a fair picture of this defendant."

The prosecutor who is set to handle Holsey's clemency hearing Monday, Ocmulgee 
Judicial Circuit District Attorney Fred Bright, did not immediately return a 
phone message Tuesday seeking comment.

Holsey robbed a Milledgeville convenience store early on Dec. 17, 1995, and the 
clerk called police right after he left and gave a description of the robber 
and his car. Robinson stopped a red Ford Probe at a nearby hotel minutes later 
and radioed in the license plate number. As Robinson approached the vehicle, 
Holsey fired at him, prosecutors said. The deputy suffered a fatal head wound.

Holsey fled but sheriff's deputies found him at his sister's house and arrested 
him a short time later.

Holsey's trial lawyer at the time, Andy Prince, suffered from chronic 
alcoholism and drank heavily at night during Holsey's trial, according to a 
clemency petition Kammer filed Tuesday. His life was collapsing around him at 
the time of Holsey's 1997 trial, the petition says.

Among the missteps the petition alleges Prince made:

--He told the court that intellectual disability would not be a factor in the 
case, despite records showing Holsey was intellectually disabled.

-- He didn't give the jury details about Holsey's childhood, which was 
characterized by horrifying abuse at the hands of his mother. The Holsey home 
was known as "the torture chamber" to others in the housing project, according 
to testimony from a childhood neighbor.

-- He turned the case over to an attorney who had no experience with death 
penalty cases just before the sentencing hearing. That attorney was unprepared 
to present mitigating evidence that would likely have saved Holsey from a death 
sentence.

-- At the same time he was representing Holsey, Prince was drinking heavily 
and facing prosecution for stealing more than $100,000 from another client. 
Prince was disbarred and sentenced to serve three years in prison followed by 
seven years on probation shortly after Holsey's trial.

During civil proceedings in 2006 to review Holsey's case, Prince, who had been 
to prison and stopped drinking, testified that he "shouldn't have been 
representing anybody in any case" at the time of Holsey's trial, the petition 
says.

The judge in that proceeding upheld Holsey's conviction but ruled he should 
have a new sentencing trial. Holsey's lawyers' failure to prepare any sort of 
mitigating evidence for his sentencing trial robbed him of his constitutional 
right to effective counsel, Butts County Superior Court Judge Neal Dickert 
wrote in his ruling.

The Georgia Supreme Court reversed Dickert's ruling and reinstated Holsey's 
death sentence. Federal courts have upheld the state Supreme Court ruling.

(source: Associated Press)






OHIO:

Ohio Supreme Court scraps death penalty for Willie Herring


The Ohio Supreme Court today vacated the death sentence of a Youngstown man 
convicted in the 1996 murders of 3 people and attempted murders of 2 others 
during the robbery of a bar on Youngstown's South Side.

Lawyers for Willie Herring were deficient because they did not complete a 
thorough and adequate investigation into Herring's background to determine 
which mitigating factors to present to the jury during the penalty phase of his 
trial, Justice Paul E. Pfeifer wrote in the court's 4-3 decision. The top 
court's decision affirms the judgment of the 7th District Court of Appeals in 
Youngstown.

The case now returns to the Mahoning County Court of Common Pleas for a new 
sentencing hearing with a new jury, which will decide whether to impose the 
death penalty or a life sentence.

In April 1996, Herring and 5 others met at Herring's house to plan the robbery 
of the Newport Inn. Herring distributed guns to 3 of the men.

He wore a Halloween mask, and the others covered their faces with bandanas or a 
T-shirt. In the early morning hours of April 30, they stormed the bar, 
demanding money and shooting four patrons and the owner, who was bartending 
that night. 3 customers died from gunshot wounds.

(source: Youngstown Vindicator)






USA:

The Right Side of Death----Why some conservatives are changing their minds on 
capital punishment


The march away from support for capital punishment was a long time coming for 
Ron Paul. Years ago, the Libertarian-turned-Republican then-member of Congress 
claimed to favor the death penalty. In 1980, he moderated his position, saying 
his feelings were "not so clearly defined" as they once had been. Then, in 
2007, he announced that he'd had a change of heart and could no longer sanction 
executions "for federal purposes." But he took care to reiterate that it was 
merely the federal death penalty he opposed.

That was then. Now, his home state of Texas is preparing to put to death 
convicted murderer Scott Panetti. In recent weeks, Paul has helped to lead the 
charge against Panetti's execution, which was scheduled for mere hours from now 
until the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed it minutes ago to give the court 
time "to fully consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue 
in this matter."

Paul's evolution on the issue is not necessarily surprising. He has long been 
something of a libertarian conscience for the Republican Party, urging fiscal 
discipline and military nonintervention. Libertarians tend to be against 
capital punishment.

What is surprising is the list of conservative leaders who have joined Paul in 
asking Texas Gov. Rick Perry to reduce Panetti's sentence to life in prison. 
Individuals like tough-on-crime former Virginia attorney general, Ken 
Cuccinelli, and Gary Bauer, president of the faith-and-families group American 
Values, recently signed a letter to that end. They note that "we must be on 
guard that such an extraordinary government sanction not be used against a 
person who is mentally incapable of rational thought."

There's some evidence the larger conservative movement is also rethinking its 
knee-jerk support for the death penalty. In 1994, Republicans favored the 
practice by an enormous 73-point margin. 20 years later, that gap has narrowed 
by 19 points; 1/5 of Republicans now say they're "not in favor" of the death 
penalty for convicted murderers.

But there are idiosyncrasies about the Panetti situation that could make it a 
poor bellwether. One reason so many people are objecting to this particular 
execution is that the inmate is believed to suffer from severe mental illness. 
Per the letter asking for a commutation:

Mr. Panetti [is] one of the most seriously mentally ill prisoners on death row 
in the United States. Rather than serving as a measured response to murder, the 
execution of Mr. Panetti would only serve to undermine the public's faith in a 
fair and moral justice system.

There's a laundry list of reasons to believe Panetti is mentally impaired, 
including a history of hallucinatory episodes, some leading to forced 
hospitalizations, that predated his crime by more than a decade. He chose to 
represent himself at trial and then proceeded to babble incoherently, sleep 
through important testimony, and attempt to call Jesus Christ to the stand. 
"This was no act cooked up to get him off of murder charges," wrote several 
signatories of the letter in a subsequent op-ed for The Washington Times.

The thought of executing a man under these circumstances is clearly disquieting 
to many people. But some of the conservative leaders voicing concern in this 
instance nonetheless say they support capital punishment as a general rule. 
They see the Panetti case as an exception because they believe it would be a 
"miscarriage of justice" to put to death someone so clearly mentally unsound - 
not because they believe the death penalty is inherently unjust.

There's a problem with that type of hairsplitting, however: It trusts 
government with the awful power to separate the truly insane from the 
fraudsters. The same government that conservatives routinely blast as 
incompetent, that brought us Internal Revenue Service targeting of Tea Party 
groups, and that has repeatedly deemed the schizophrenic Panetti fit for both 
trial and execution.

A resounding lack of faith in government to get things right on matters of life 
and death is a common theme among conservative anti-death penalty activists. 
"The greatest authority you can give government is the power to take someone's 
life. I think conservatives are more and more leery of the government 
exercising that," says Pat Nolan, who works on criminal justice issues for the 
American Conservative Union (ACU). "As one of my friends says, 'Do we really 
expect the people who run the post office to be able to determine guilt or 
innocence very well, and to have somebody's life depend on it?' And I guess 
nowadays it would be the people who designed Obamacare - would we trust them 
with a person's life?" It's not at all clear that conservatives' attitudes are 
headed for a tipping point. In the poll linked earlier, three out of four 
Republicans still say they're in favor of the death penalty. Will a majority 
ever switch sides to oppose it? "Frankly, we're a long way from there," says 
the ACU's Nolan. "But among conservative leaders there's more and more concern, 
and I think they will help prompt discussion among conservatives so that it 
won't just be a lockstep support of this awesome power being ceded to 
government."

CCADP's Hyden seems even more optimistic. "Conservatives, many of us used to 
support the death penalty," he says. "We thought the one thing that government 
could do properly was kill people. We've found out they can't even do that 
correctly."

(source: reason.com)

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

The trouble with the death penalty


Capital punishment is by far the most severe legal punishment that can be 
imposed on a person and one of the few justifiable instances in which a human 
life may be taken without repercussion. The implementation of the death penalty 
is decided by the state and varies among jurisdictions, but there are constants 
taken into account when determining the necessity of an execution. The use of 
the death penalty has seen somewhat of a decline in modern times. 
Traditionally, the execution of a guilty party was far more prevalent, a great 
deal less humane, and required fewer criteria for implementation. However, gone 
are the days in which people are burned at the stake or publicly beheaded. That 
is, in the United States anyway.

In the modern context , the use of the death penalty is reserved for only the 
most heinous of crimes perpetrated by those deemed no longer conducive to 
society at large. However, the use of capital punishment is beginning on an 
alarming trend that threatens to undermine decades of progress towards a more 
humane and just society.

Given the seriousness and permanence of a capital punishment, many aspects must 
come into play when determining if a death sentence is the most appropriate 
decision. Mental competency is a pivotal decision factor because it is 
difficult to ascertain the fairness of executing people unable to understand 
the implications of their actions.

Recently, the case of Scott Panetti of Texas has made headlines. Panetti "shot 
and killed his in-laws at their Texas Hill Country Home, showering his 
estranged wife and 3-year old daughter in blood," and his execution has been 
set for today. Panetti's mental competency has come into question with many 
questioning his sanity and, by extension, the validity of his execution. A 
Supreme Court ruling on Panetti's case made an additional requirement that 
Panetti must have a "rational understanding" of his punishment. The argument 
being made is not whether Panetti is guilty but rather what makes a person 
eligible for being legally executed by the state. As a society, we have a duty 
to protect those who cannot protect themselves, but where does the attitude 
stand on an issue such as this?

The use of death as punishment has been around for centuries, but as society 
evolves, so must the measure used to maintain the structure of said society. 
The methods used to execute criminals evolved from the crude, extreme to the 
more humane such as lethal injection. I believe by extension the grounds in 
which the state chooses to implement capital punishment must evolve as well. 
There will always be circumstance in which people prove themselves consciously 
unfit to maintain a place in larger society, but unless that can be proven 
beyond an irrefutable doubt, capital punishment is not the answer.

(source: Marcus Brown, The (Univ. Iowa) Daily Iowan)

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

Death penalty challenge to be heard in '01 murders


A judge is set to begin hearing motions challenging the constitutionality of 
the federal death penalty in the case of a man who confessed to carjacking and 
killing 2 men in Massachusetts and killing a 3rd man in New Hampshire during a 
weeklong crime spree.

Gary Lee Sampson was sentenced to death, but U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf 
overturned that after finding that a juror's lies about her background deprived 
Sampson of his right to an impartial jury.

Sampson's sentencing re-trial is set to begin in February.

Wolf has scheduled a hearing Wednesday on defense motions seeking to bar the 
death penalty, including one that argues it is unconstitutional to force the 
death penalty on citizens of a state that has rejected it.

Massachusetts abolished the state death penalty in 1984. Sampson is being 
prosecuted under the federal death penalty.

The defense also has filed a motion asking to preclude death as a punishment 
because the system for imposing death sentences has an unacceptable rate of 
error.

Sampson pleaded guilty in the 2001 killings of Jonathan Rizzo, a college 
student from Kingston, and Philip McCloskey, a retiree from Taunton. He 
confessed to carjacking the men, then stabbing them to death after assuring 
each of them that he only planned to steal their cars. He was convicted 
separately in state court in New Hampshire in the killing of Robert "Eli" 
Whitney.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Why the Supreme Court Is Down on Death Penalty


The Supreme Court - the last stop for condemned prisoners such as Scott 
Panetti, a Texan who is mentally ill - appears increasingly wary of the death 
penalty.

In May, the justices blocked the execution of a Missouri murderer because his 
medical condition made it likely that he would suffer from a controversial 
lethal injection.

Later that month, the court ruled 5-4 that Florida must apply a margin of error 
to IQ tests, thereby making it harder for states to execute those with 
borderline intellectual disabilities.

In September, a tipping point on lethal injections was nearly reached when 4 of 
the 9 justices sought to halt a Missouri prisoner's execution because of the 
state's use of a drug that had resulted in botched executions elsewhere.

And in October, the court stopped the execution of yet another Missouri man 
over concerns that his lawyers were ineffective and had missed a deadline for 
an appeal. The justices are deciding whether to hear that case in full.

Now, on top of drug protocols, developmental disabilities and attorneys' 
mistakes, the court must decide in Panetti's case whether mental illness should 
be another reason to keep prisoners alive.

"There's frustration on the part of at least some of the justices about the 
death penalty, and what to do about it," said Richard Dieter, executive 
director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

At least 3 justices - Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito - 
consistently vote against blocking state executions. Chief Justice John Roberts 
and Justice Anthony Kennedy usually line up with them.

The court's 4 liberals - Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor 
and Elena Kagan - have shown the most hesitation or opposition. Ginsburg said 
in September that capital punishment cases have been the "most troubling" of 
her 21-year career on the court. Kennedy joined the liberals in May, writing 
the court's opinion in Hall v. Florida that struck down overly rigid IQ test 
requirements. "Intellectual disability is a condition, not a number," Kennedy 
wrote.

While the court has yet to hear a case on the ethics of lethal injections, it 
has moved toward the liberals' position in recent years on issues of mental 
capacity.

In Atkins v. Virginia (2002), the court ruled 6-3 that executing people with 
intellectual disabilities violated their Eighth Amendment rights against cruel 
and unusual punishment. This year's ruling in Freddie Lee Hall's case 
fine-tuned that decision.

In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the court ruled 5-4 that juveniles who were under 
age 18 when they committed their crimes are not eligible for the death penalty. 
It since has limited the use of life without parole for juvenile offenders as 
well.

The court's precedent on mental illness dates back to 1986, when it ruled in 
Ford v. Wainwright that prisoners must be deemed mentally competent before 
being executed. Determining competency was left up to the states, however.

"It's difficult to define mental illness, whereas it's easier to define mental 
retardation and quantify it," Dieter says. "Mental illness is one area where 
they could really open up a whole new exemption."

(source: charismanews.com)