[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, CONN., FLA., TENN.

[Rick Halperin]

Aug. 15



TEXAS:

Death penalty foes to hold vigil Aug. 26


The Lubbock chapter of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty will host a 
vigil from 5:45-6:15 p.m. Aug. 26 at the corner of University Avenue and 15th 
Street, in front of St. John's United Methodist Church.

The prayer vigil will coincide with a scheduled state execution of a prison 
inmate.

The public is invited.

(source: Lubbock Avalanche-Journal)

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

Former Texas DA an opponent of death penalty


Advocates looking for a death penalty opponent would be hard-pressed to find 
one more convincing than Texas lawyer Tim Cole.

Currently Cole, who has recently made headlines in his home state for speaking 
out publicly against capital punishment, is a Fort Worth-based criminal defense 
attorney.

But for 14 years, Cole was the district attorney in rural North Texas (he spent 
time as assistant DA before and after he served in that elected position). 20 
years a prosecutor, Cole has tried 36 murder cases, he tells me in a phone 
interview. Of these, he says, 3 were death penalty cases.

In another case (not one that he tried), he granted a request from a childhood 
acquaintance - to die on his birthday.

Texas is, perhaps, one of the least likely places to find a prosecutor, even a 
former one, willing to speak out publicly against capital punishment. Since 
1976, according to statistics kept by the Death Penalty Information Center, the 
state far outstrips any other in executions with 527 inmates put to death. By 
contrast, Pennsylvania has executed 3 people over that same period.

If you want to have an erudite conversation about shades of legal gray, Cole 
doesn't seem like your guy. As recounted in a wrenching essay in the Texas 
Monthly (about a decades-old murder trial that still troubles him), Cole became 
known for his uncompromising stances. As a young prosecutor, he had a man 
sentenced to a 45-year prison term for stealing a tractor.

But the DA who had few qualms about imposing tough sentences, and an evident 
and profound respect for justice, had never been a death penalty advocate, he 
says, because "it left life and death in one person's hand." Interestingly, it 
is in part the lack of clear criteria for capital punishment cases that 
bothered Cole - where he might view a certain crime as death-penalty-eligible, 
the DA in the next county over would look at the same set of circumstances and 
come to a different conclusion. "It became pretty obvious that the death 
penalty is arbitrarily decided" depending on the county and the prosecutor, he 
says.

In addition, says Cole, capital punishment cases can be ruinously expensive. 
"The increased cost of the death penalty is enormous" he says, noting that in 
Montague County, an area with few economic resources, the commissioners had to 
raise the tax rate on the heels of a death penalty prosecution.

Like others during the 1990's, when DNA evidence began to be widely available 
and used in trials, the numbers of exonerations jumped - and it became evident 
that testimony had sometimes been tainted, both by the use of jailhouse 
"snitches" and the poor judgment of a few prosecutors.

"It just showed that we prosecutors had it wrong more often than we thought," 
says Cole. "Personally I don't believe keeping the death penalty is worth the 
execution of an innocent person. We can correct incarceration. We can't bring 
someone back to life."

In addition, suggests Cole, political considerations, and the grief of the 
victim's family, may affect a prosecutor's decision to seek the death penalty 
or a less final sentence. Now, he says, prosecutors seem to be seeking death 
penalty verdicts less often, suggesting to him that it's seen as more 
acceptable to make the choice of life without parole. (Texas was one of the 
last states to adopt that as a possible sentence, he says).

Last February, Cole was the keynote speaker at the annual conference of the 
Texas Coalitions to Abolish the Death Penalty." Though he's not surprised that 
he hasn't heard from his former colleagues in DA's offices across the state, 
he's got a hunch that some of them agree that capital punishment is both 
exceedingly expensive and a long drawn-out process (on average in Texas, an 
inmate can spend 12 years on death row before he or she is executed, he says).

"As a nation we are moving away from the death penalty," says Heather Beaudoin 
one of the national coordinators for Conservatives Concerned About the Death 
Penalty, a project of the criminal justice reform group Equal Justice.

Beaudoin, who comes from a conservative religious background, works 
particularly closely with evangelicals.

"The more we know about the death penalty, the more public opinion has shifted 
away from it," she says. "It's just not worth it anymore."

While Cole also emerged from a solidly conservative religious background, he 
says that in the case of capital punishment, it's not religious conviction or 
his sense that the death penalty is immoral that drives him.

The son of a Church of Christ pastor, Cole, who attended church "religiously" 
in his younger years, doesn't do so as much anymore, he says.

"I think we've progressed to a point in our society where we don't need the 
death penalty" says Tim Cole. "We're better than that."

(source: lancasteronline.com)






CONNECTICUT:

Death penalty ruling reshapes Connecticut's political landscape


The population center of Connecticut is Cheshire, which finds itself once again 
in the middle of a politically and emotionally charged debate over the state's 
now-abolished death penalty.

Cheshire was put on the map nationally by a 2007 home invasion during which 
Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her 2 daughters, Michaela and Hayley, were raped, 
tortured and left to die in an inferno by their attackers.

The lone survivor was Dr. William Petit, the husband and father who was beaten 
with a baseball bat while the family's home was torched.

Now, the 2 career criminals who committed the murders will avoid the execution 
chamber. Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky were spared by the state's 
highest court, which Thursday struck down a grandfather clause in Connecticut's 
2012 repeal of the death penalty.

The reverberations of the ruling are far-reaching for politicians on both sides 
of the aisle, who have been divided on capital punishment.

A difficult, costly decision

"I think it's better that people rot in jail and, hopefully, we don't waste 
legal resources on them," said U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn., who is from 
Cheshire. "Hopefully, they live long enough to understand the gravity of what 
they've done, the pain that they've inflicted on others."

If anyone knows the political price of the issue, it's Esty, who lost her 2010 
re-election bid for the state Legislature when she voted to support the repeal 
of the death penalty. Petit supported her opponent.

"I knew at the time that it might well cost me my seat," said Esty, who worked 
pro bono on 2 death-penalty cases earlier in her career as an attorney and law 
student. "Knowing that it would be hurtful to the Petit family, that was hard 
on me. (But) we're elected to exercise our knowledge and best judgment and not 
to worry about our own political future."

Petit declined an interview request, but issued a statement that characterized 
the state Supreme Court's ruling as an overreach by the judicial branch in the 
legislative process.

"The death penalty and its application is a highly charged topic with profound 
emotional impact, particularly on the victims and their loved ones," Petit 
said.

To get the votes needed to pass the repeal and allay some lawmakers' concerns 
about fallout from the Cheshire killings, the Democratic-controlled Legislature 
abolished the death penalty going forward in 2012. That meant the 11 inmates on 
death row as of then would still be subject to capital punishment by lethal 
injection.

But by a 4-3 vote, the court ruled that the narrow application of the death 
penalty was unconstitutional, commuting the sentences of Komisarjevsky, Hayes 
and the others to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Republican foes of the repeal say they saw it coming.

"We knew that would be struck down by the court," said former state Senate 
Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield. "It created 2 classes of murderers. 
It treated people differently."

Partisan sparring

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy helped engineer the repeal, but couched his opposition to 
the death penalty, including during a 2010 gubernatorial debate in Greenwich.

"I think these people should have their sentence, whatever it is, carried out," 
Malloy said at the time. "And under any law that???s been proposed in the state 
of Connecticut in the past few years with respect to the death penalty, that 
remains clear, that if they're sentenced to death they're going to die."

McKinney said Democrats duped reluctant lawmakers into believing that the 
repeal could pass the muster of the courts.

"I used to joke during the campaign that when Governor Malloy says, 'let me be 
clear,' that he's going to tell you something that's either not true or is not 
going to happen," said McKinney, who ran for the Republican nomination for 
governor last year.

Malloy spokesman Devon Puglia called capital punishment a morally and legally 
complicated issue.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the surviving members of the victims' 
families," Puglia said. "This isn't a time for some to try to score cheap 
political points in order to rejuvenate their political careers."

Vincent Moscardelli, a political science professor at the University of 
Connecticut, said the Cheshire home invasion still strikes a nerve for many in 
the state.

"This characteristic of the death penalty, when combined with the gut-wrenching 
details of the Cheshire murders and Dr. Petit's high-profile, emotionally 
charged engagement of the issue in the press, has the potential to increase the 
issue's salience among voters going forward," Moscardelli said.

The last death row inmate to be executed in Connecticut was serial killer 
Michael Ross, in 2005, after he dropped his appeals. Ross was represented by 
Barry Butler, Stamford's lead public defender and the attorney for current 
death-row inmate Bob Breton.

"He's been given life since the ruling," Butler said. "Most people don't 
realize that it costs about $3 million (more) to prosecute through execution 
than to simply throw away the key for life. Some people simply don't care."

Butler said the repeal was worded clearly with Cheshire in mind.

"That case was a game-changer," Butler said.

A particularly heinious crime

House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, who opposed the repeal, wants 
lawmakers to revisit the legislation.

"I think that's the will of the state of Connecticut," Klarides said. "I just 
don't know if that's the will of the General Assembly. We knew this is exactly 
where it was going to end up because how do you say, 'These people get killed 
and these people don't?'"

State Rep. William Tong, D-Stamford, who is chairman of the General Assembly's 
Judiciary Committee but wasn't when the repeal was passed, said he disagreed 
with the court's interpretation and wanted more time to analyze the ruling.

"It seems like an obsessive rush to politicize human tragedy in this state, 
which, frankly, I don't think is productive," Tong said. "What happened to the 
Petits, I think, is the most horrific thing I can think of. The one thing to 
keep in mind is these 11 people, including Komisarjevsky and Hayes, will never 
see the light of day outside of prison walls. It upsets me that victims of 
crime in this state, including the Petits, are paraded out for political 
purposes."

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who was state attorney general at the 
time of the case, said he has long supported the death penalty for the killing 
of police and other public safety officers, as well as for the Cheshire case.

"My impression was that it would be justified in that absolutely horrific and 
heinous crime," Blumenthal said.

(source: Conn. Post)

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

With Death Penalty Abolished, Defense Attorney for Steven Hayes Speaks


Connecticut's Supreme Court has ruled the state's death penalty is 
unconstitutional. WNPR spoke to the public defender who represented one of the 
state's best known death row inmates.

Thomas Ullmann represented Steven Hayes -- 1 of 2 defendants sentenced to death 
for a 2007 home invasion that left Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her 2 daughters 
dead.

"I think the worst thing that any defense lawyer has to face is when the 
government tries to kill your client and your responsibility is to save his 
life," Ullmann said. "Let alone, protect rights. But to actually save someone's 
life."

Ullmann said it seemed everyone expected Hayes to get the death penalty.

"We defense attorneys did not," Ullman said. "We had felt that we had put on 
enough to convince the jury that they should come back with a life sentence and 
that was literally the worst hour and 10 minutes of my legal career. I was 
embarrassed. Hayes was comforting me, during that process."

Ullmann said he thinks the Supreme Court decision will save the legal system 
millions of dollars in money that would have been spent on costly appeals. "You 
know we have a criminal justice system that's starved for money in terms 
treatment. In terms of victims. In terms of alternative treatments," he said. 
"To put money down a black hole like the death penalty was just a total waste 
of funds."

As a result of the Supreme Court decision, Hayes, and the ten other inmates on 
death row, will now serve a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

(source: wnpr.org)

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

Justice Palmer's switch helped end Connecticut's death penalty

State Supreme Court Justice Richard Palmer cited the General Assembly???s 2012 
repeal of the death penalty as his reason for changing his position on the 
constitutionality of capital punishment for those who were already on death 
row.

Palmer - part of a 4-3 majority that held in a decision Thursday that the death 
penalty is unconstitutional even for those who were on death row before 2012 - 
was the only justice to change his position from a 2011 decision that upheld 
the constitutionality of the death penalty.

The other 3 justices who participated in both cases - Chief Justice Chase T. 
Rogers and Justices Peter T. Zarella and Flemming Norcott, who is no longer on 
the court - all maintained their 2012 positions in Thursday's decision.

In 2011 Palmer was part of a 6-1 majority - Norcott was the lone dissenter - 
concluding that the death penalty didn't violate the state's constitution. The 
court then rejected an appeal by Todd Rizzo, who was sentenced to death after 
pleading guilty to murder in 1999.

In 2012 the General Assembly voted to repeal capital punishment in Connecticut 
for future murder convictions but left intact the death sentences already 
imposed.

In Thursday's majority opinion Palmer wrote that the new law, "when considered 
in light of the history of capital punishment in our state and other recent 
legal developments, compels us to conclude that the death penalty now 
constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of the state 
constitution."

The decision prohibits execution of the 11 men who had been on death row, most 
notably Joshua Komisarjevksy and Steven Hayes, who were sentenced to death for 
killing a woman and her 2 daughters during a home invasion in Cheshire in 2007.

On Friday, through a spokeswomen for the Judicial Department, Palmer declined 
to comment on his change in position.

Justices Dennis G. Eveleigh, who didn't participate in the 2011 case, and 
Andrew J. McDonald, appointed to the Supreme Court in 2012, also sided with the 
majority, while Justice Carmen E. Espinosa was the 3rd dissenter.

In his opinion Palmer wrote that the 2012 legislation "not only reflects this 
state's long-standing aversion to carrying out executions, but also represents 
the seminal change in the 4-century-long history of capital punishment in 
Connecticut."

Palmer also referenced historians who have recently written about "the history 
and devolution" of the death penalty; legal scholars who have "provided new 
understandings" on the definition of cruel and unusual punishment; and social 
scientists who have found that capital punishment disproportionately falls on 
members of racial minorities and other disadvantaged groups.

Additionally, Palmer cited the decline in executions nationwide and even in 
states allowing capital punishment.

Palmer said federal requirements that juries both be given objective standards 
and be "accorded unfettered discretion" in deciding whether to impose death 
sentences "are fundamentally in conflict and inevitably open the door to 
impermissible racial and ethnic biases."

Palmer's reliance on the 2012 repeal legislation is what caught the eye of 
Republican legislators.

The bill received no support from Republicans in the Senate, passing 20-16, and 
got only 6 Republican votes when it passed the House of Representatives, 88-72.

Senate Republican Minority Leader Leonard Fasano said Thursday that he "warned 
that this would happen when we voted against" the 2012 bill, but Democratic 
leaders "assured lawmakers on the fence that the legislation repealing the 
death penalty would be prospective only."

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said Thursday that his administration will "continue to 
look to the judicial system for additional guidance on this rule," but also 
expressed doubt that the 11 men on death row would have been executed even 
without Thursday's court decision.

Connecticut has executed only 2 men in the last 54 years, and Malloy said 
prisoners are able to "take advantage of endless appeals that cost the 
taxpayers millions of dollars" to avoid execution if they so desire.

"Everyone arrives at his position on this difficult issue on his own terms, and 
everyone should have respect for differing opinion on what is a difficult and 
moral issue for both sides," the governor added.

(source: Journal Inquirer)

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

A Strong Argument Against Capital Punishment


When the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the death penalty is 
unconstitutional in the state, it reckoned squarely with the kind of questions 
that citizens often ask and that legal cases seldom answer: Is capital 
punishment moral? Is it necessary?

By 4-3, the court held that "capital punishment has become incompatible with 
contemporary standards of decency in Connecticut and, therefore, now violates 
the state constitutional prohibition against excessive and disproportionate 
punishments." It also held that "the death penalty now fails to satisfy any 
legitimate penological purpose and is unconstitutionally excessive on that 
basis as well." Justice Richard N. Palmer, a moderate liberal who has been on 
the court for 22 years, wrote the opinion.

In reaching the result it did, the court was dramatically divided: in addition 
to the majority opinion, there are 2 concurrences, agreeing on the majority's 
reasoning but emphasizing reasons of their own, and 3 different dissents. But 
the clarity, thoroughness, and persuasiveness of the majority opinion indicate 
that this landmark decision will likely be remembered not for the divisions 
among the Justices but for where the majority came out. The 2003 ruling of the 
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in the Goodridge case is a fair 
comparison: it is remembered not as a 4-3 decision, but as the first by an 
American court to legalize same-sex marriage.

The Connecticut decision drew on history:

[T]he acceptability of imposing death as a form of judicial punishment has 
declined steadily over Connecticut's nearly 400 year history. Secularization, 
evolving moral standards, new constitutional and procedural protections, and 
the availability of incarceration as a viable alternative to execution have 
resulted in capital punishment being available for far fewer crimes and 
criminals, and being imposed far less frequently, with a concomitant 
deterioration in public acceptance.

It confronted a long, consistent record of unfairness:

[W]hat has not changed is that, throughout every period of our state's history, 
the death penalty has been imposed disproportionately on those whom society has 
marginalized socially, politically, and economically: people of color, the poor 
and uneducated, and unpopular immigrant and ethnic groups. It always has been 
easier for us to execute those we see as inferior or less intrinsically worthy.

And it explained why the death penalty is unnecessary as a punishment:

[T]he legislature necessarily has made a determination that he who lives by the 
sword need not die by it; that life imprisonment without the possibility of 
release is an adequate and sufficient penalty even for the most horrific of 
crimes; and that we can express our moral outrage, mete out justice, bring some 
measure of solace to the families of the victims, and purge the blemish of 
murder on our community whilst the offender yet lives. If this is true, then, 
although the death penalty still might serve some minimal retributive function 
in Connecticut, it lacks any retributive justification.

The Connecticut Legislature seemed to make these issues superfluous when it 
repealed the state's death penalty, in 2012, but that law, identified as Public 
Act 12-5, contained a prominent exemption: it did not apply to the 11 men then 
on the state's death row, or to anyone who had committed a capital felony 
before the law was enacted. 2 of the death-row inmates had been sentenced to 
death for killing a woman and her 2 daughters 5 years earlier, in an infamous 
crime known as the Cheshire home-invasion murders, and the repeal law seemed to 
support both the abolition of the death sentence going forward and the holdover 
of capital punishment for those men. Governor Dannel Malloy described the 
signing of the law as "a moment for sober reflection, not celebration." He 
signed it, he went on, because, as a former prosecutor, he understood that "our 
system of justice is very imperfect" and because of the "unworkability" of 
Connecticut's previous death-penalty law.

A scholarly study of every murder case in the state from 1973 - when 
Connecticut enacted a new death-penalty law to comply with the Supreme Court's 
ruling that the penalty had previously been applied arbitrarily nationwide and 
was thus unconstitutional - until 2007 found that the state was still applying 
capital punishment arbitrarily. The crimes committed by defendants sentenced to 
death were no more egregious than those by defendants sentenced to life in 
prison with no chance of parole. A minority defendant who killed a white person 
was 6 times as likely to receive a death sentence as a white defendant whose 
victim was white. A murderer charged and convicted in the city of Waterbury 
whose crime made him eligible for capital punishment was at least seven times 
as likely to receive a death sentence as someone whose case was prosecuted 
elsewhere in the state.

As the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled, Public Act 12-5

held a mirror up to Connecticut's long, troubled history with capital 
punishment: the steady replacement by more progressive forms of punishment; the 
increasing inability to achieve legitimate penological purposes; the 
freakishness with which the sentence of death is imposed; the rarity with which 
it is carried out; and the racial, ethnic, and socio-economic biases that 
likely are inherent in any discretionary death penalty system.

The court interpreted the state constitution, so its ruling can neither be 
appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court nor serve as a binding precedent on any 
court outside Connecticut. But, in explaining why it is time for the demise of 
the death penalty in Connecticut, the court has a lot to say about why it is 
time for the penalty's demise throughout the country. The resolve and the 
reasoning of the Connecticut Supreme Court's ruling make it far more important 
than simply a declaration by one more state that capital punishment is cruel 
and unusual and must be ended.

(source: Lincoln Caplan, a former New Yorker staff writer, is a senior research 
scholar at Yale Law School and the author of 5 books about the law----The New 
Yorker)






FLORIDA----new death sentence

Jacksonville man sentenced to death for 2012 murder of 51-year-old neighbor


It took a month to arrest him for the crime and it took 20 months between 
conviction and sentence, but Friday, Dennis Thurnado Glover was sent to death 
row for the murder of Sandra Jean Allen.

Glover, 51, showed no emotion Friday when Circuit Judge Mallory Cooper told him 
that the brutal murder of Allen, also 51, justified his death.

"You have not only forfeited your right to live among us," Cooper said. "But 
under the laws of Florida you have forfeited your right to live at all."

Allen had been beaten, strangled and stabbed in the neck before she died. 
Assistant State Attorney John Guy said a death sentence was justified because 
of the brutality of the crime and the pain and suffering Allen went through.

Cooper agreed, and in imposing her sentence she specifically referenced the 
injuries Allen suffered. She was stabbed about 12 times, had her throat cut and 
strangled to the point that her voice box and bones in her neck broke.

Allen's friends and relatives fought back tears as Cooper described the 
violence she endured.

Glover, who was Allen's neighbor, said he found her dead in her home and went 
to get help from neighbors.

He told police he saw 2 black men fleeing and then found her door cracked open 
with Allen's body inside.

He allowed his shoes to be photographed and tested for DNA.

Glover was arrested a month after the May 2012 murder when police found Allen's 
blood on his shoes and his DNA on her face, neck and left hand.

Lawyers for Glover said their client and Allen were having an illicit sexual 
relationship, which is why his DNA was on her, but they denied he was 
responsible for the crime.

The claim that Glover and Allen were lovers visibly angered Allen's friends and 
family members, and in her sentencing order Cooper said the 2 were neighbors, 
but didn't know each other.

Allen's supporters said justice was done following the sentencing, but declined 
further comment.

Jurors convicted Glover in December 2013 and recommended death that same month 
by a 10-2 vote. But Glover's sentencing was repeatedly delayed due to questions 
over whether he was intellectually disabled.

Guy said this was the longest he'd ever seen between a conviction and death 
sentence but pointed out there were unique issues that delayed the case.

After Glover was convicted the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state of 
Florida misunderstood a previous opinion designed to protect the intellectually 
disabled from execution when the state set a strict IQ standard for death row 
inmates.

Florida law said people facing death row can only argue that they are 
intellectually disabled if they have an IQ score of 70 or below, not taking 
into account a margin of error. But the Supreme Court said the state could not 
automatically declare anyone with an IQ score higher than 70 was not 
intellectually disabled, and judges have to look at other factors as well.

Lawyers for Glover have said his IQ is about 72, and questions about whether 
Glover was intellectually disabled dominated the case for a year.

The state and defense called dueling mental-health experts at a hearing, with 
the prosecutors' expert saying Glover had below-average intelligence but wasn't 
intellectually disabled and the defense expert arguing that Glover was 
disabled.

In Friday's ruling Cooper found that Glover was not disabled. She also cited 
Glover's previous criminal history in imposing death.

Glover has previously been convicted of attempted armed robbery and multiple 
aggravated assaults in Georgia. In one 1992 case Glover was convicted of 
assaulting a woman with a wrench and causing serious bodily harm.

(source: jacksonville.com)






TENNESSEE:

Death penalty----Readers sound off on capital punishment and whether it should 
be abolished.


Capital punishment immoral

The arguments against the death penalty have all been well and forcefully made 
by previous letter writers.

It is discriminatory. It is costly. It is inhumane.

The state can never be sure of not executing an innocent person.

To that I would add two more reasons. It coarsens the entire fabric of our 
criminal justice system and does it in the name of "the people."

This member of "the people" finds it, legal or not, to be morally indefensible!

Ruth Kitchen

Smyrna 37167

-----

It's time for Tennessee to reconsider the death penalty----Death appropriate 
punishment


Criminals should suffer punishment in some measure commensurate with the 
seriousness of their crime.

In many instances they can't. For instance, there is no way Timothy McVeigh 
could suffer the pain, the grief, the anguish he inflicted on the survivors of 
his terrorist act in Oklahoma. The only reasonable punishment was death.

I believe the death penalty should be reserved for the worst of the worst. 
Without it there can be no justice.

In its absence a prisoner serving life without parole can commit murder in 
prison with impunity.

As for the cost, the long drawn-out appeals process need not exist. If we can 
put a man on the moon we can develop a process by which all avenues of appeal 
are exhausted in three years. If it means capital cases go to the front of the 
line, so be it.

For those who support abolition I pose this question: What punishment is 
appropriate for one who's serving life without parole who kills a prison guard?

A shrug of the shoulders won't do. Be specific.

Gene A. Russell

Nashville 37201

-----

Use worst punishment selectively


The death penalty should not be sought in all murder cases, but it is 
appropriate for some. Premeditated murder involving torture, rape and other 
heinous acts carried out by extremely evil people deserve death as a just 
punishment.

I am not familiar with any case in modern times where a person was erroneously 
executed, especially in this day of advanced technology (DNA testing, etc.).

One reason for the long trials in death penalty cases is to ensure that an 
innocent person is not unjustly executed.

Innocent people being executed in this day and age, I believe, is virtually 
nonexistent.

Murderers do, however, escape from maximum-security prisons (New York State) 
and could murder again; they have nothing to lose if there???s no death 
penalty. Likewise they can kill other prisoners and guards.

In federal death penalty cases the accused is well represented in court by both 
public and private attorneys, all at taxpayers' expense and no cost to the 
accused.

The death penalty should not be abolished but should be reserved for especially 
heinous crimes.

Tom Tiesler

Kingston Springs 37082

-----

Execution no deterrent to murder


The arguments against the death penalty include the following:

With the death penalty abolished in Tennessee, the state would spend less on 
investigations, trials and annual incarceration.

Execution is not a deterrent to murder, and it causes emotional distress to the 
jurors and correctional employees involved, plus the wait for execution 
deprives survivors of closure far beyond the trial.

There are innocent inmates who are released through exoneration, as the system 
is flawed and justice varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Many death row inmates were tortured and severely deprived as children and are 
able to control their emotions with time. And not least, the vengeance of 
killing by the government furthers the cycle of violence in society.

Other than Africa and the Middle East, China leads in executions per year, then 
Iran, North Korea and the U.S. is 4th.

Last month Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court commented on 
the flaws in the death penalty, and in October 2014 the pope published his 
opposition to the death penalty.

>From 1977 to 1995 the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals reversed 29% of 
capital cases.

As part of a group of older students, we sat down and spoke with some of the 
death row inmates at Riverbend. Now I am seeking to provide this experience for 
the members of the General Assembly.

Those who have never seriously considered this long-standing practice and those 
who receive occasional calls from their constituents should see for themselves 
who these inmates are now.

Tennessee can be the second Southern state to abolish the death penalty, after 
West Virginia in 1965. Life without the possibility of parole gives closure to 
families and protects our communities.

Elaine Hackerman

Nashville 37209

(source: Letters to the Editor----he Tennessean)