[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA

[Rick Halperin]

July 6



USA:

Get real


In another recent 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, the highest court in 
the land upheld the constitutionality of a 3-drug combination used to 
administer the death penalty. (The case stems from a capital punishment case in 
Oklahoma.)

At issue was whether this particular combination of drugs was indeed "cruel and 
unusual" punishment. The majority of the court ruled it was not.

There was, however, the nonsensical dissent offered by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, 
relating this process to individuals being "drawn and quartered, slowly 
tortured to death, or actually burned at the stake."

We would hope a judge on the highest court in the land would not resort to such 
absurd and irrelevant examples, especially when it comes to the administration 
of justice. Those who are found guilty (and DNA evidence, when available, 
removes all doubt) of the most heinous crimes are not "drawn and quartered," 
"tortured" or "burned at the stake," and no one is advocating for such 
treatment.

Let's stick to reality and not resort to dramatics.

(source: Editorial, amarillo.com)

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

Addressing the death penalty head-on


Passages of last week's Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty read more 
like a pharmacology treatise than new constitutional guidance on how executions 
may be carried out.

The 5-4 decision boiled down to the failure of 3 Oklahoma death row inmates to 
prove that a certain drug, midazolam, would cause needless pain and suffering 
when used to start a lethal 3-drug regimen.

Justices in the majority indicated impatience with refereeing a series of legal 
bouts over execution protocols. They seemed irked that defendants guilty of 
unspeakably cruel murders seek and get carve-outs under Eighth Amendment 
protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

The question of whether there should be capital punishment in the first place 
was not at issue, but it cast a long shadow.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote yes, the Constitution specifically "contemplates" 
the punishment. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote no, in a detailed dissenting 
opinion complete with charts and graphs.

This newspaper - an opponent of capital punishment since 2007 - agrees with 
Breyer's assessment that it's time for the court to address the core 
constitutional question "rather than try to patch up the death penalty's legal 
wounds one at a time."

Breyer's arguments should resonate in Texas, especially the parts about the 
unreliability of the justice system. Texas, the leading state in executions, is 
also the leader in DNA-proven wrongful convictions.

Breyer cited 2 Texas cases - Cameron Todd Willingham of Corsicana and Carlos 
DeLuna of Corpus Christi - in saying that convincing evidence exists that 
innocent men have been executed. He named former Texas death row inmate Anthony 
Graves in a list of exonerations.

Has a shaken confidence in the sureness of justice caused Texas to lose its 
appetite for lethal punishment? Halfway through 2015, none of Texas' 254 
counties has imposed a death sentence.

As Breyer pointed out, the death penalty is used in dwindling numbers and in a 
dwindling number of states. The constitutional question becomes: Has executing 
people become an "unusual" punishment by modern standards?

The court should address this and other questions head-on.

1 issue is the assumption that capital punishment has deterrent value; there 
are persuasive arguments that deterrence is unproven. Another issue is 
unevenness in applying the death penalty. Death sentences are more likely to be 
imposed, for example, in cases in which the victim is white. And while most 
death sentences are imposed in urban areas, there are bizarre concentrations in 
small communities.

43 years ago, a fragmented Supreme Court was so troubled by the use of capital 
punishment that it effectively imposed a moratorium that lasted 4 years. Today, 
the same core issues persist and will fester until the court agrees to take on 
the big question once again.

Justices and the death penalty

Excerpts of opinions in a decision last week in which the Supreme Court 
rejected a challenge to an execution drug used in Oklahoma:

"[Rather] than try to patch up the death penalty's legal wounds one at a time, 
I would ask for full briefing on a more basic question: whether the death 
penalty violates the Constitution."

- Dissent by Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

"A vocal minority of the Court, waving over their heads a ream of the most 
recent abolitionist studies (a superabundant genre) as though they have 
discovered the lost folios of Shakespeare, insist that now, at long last, the 
death penalty must be abolished for good."

- Concurring opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Clarence 
Thomas

(source: Editorial, Dallas Morning News)

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

Is death penalty on its death bed?


U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is a man on a mission - abolition of 
capital punishment.

A Supreme Court decision in an Oklahoma case last week gave the go-ahead to a 
lethal drug cocktail used in executions.

But it was the minority decision in that 5-4 case, one written by Justice 
Stephen Breyer, that drew considerable public attention.

In his opinion, Breyer announced his formal opposition to the death penalty and 
called for its abolition. With three other justices in his corner - Elena 
Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Breyer needs just one more 
vote on the court to abolish capital punishment in 31 states.

19 states, including Illinois, no longer have a death penalty. But, as the 
numbers indicate, it remains widespread throughout the country because of its 
support among the people through their elected representatives in state 
legislatures. The penalty is also available for some federal crimes, like that 
of the recently convicted Boston Marathon bomber.

Nonetheless, Breyer doesn't approve. He said it takes too long to impose, 
losing its deterrent effect. Further, he said, it runs the risks of wrongful 
executions and cannot be administered in a pain-free manner, thereby violating 
the constitutional prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment."

Those, of course, are all valid reasons for opposing capital punishment on 
policy grounds. Illinois legislators, no doubt, cited some or all of them when 
they decided in 2011 to repeal capital punishment.

The question for the court to decide - one Breyer & Co. have already answered 
with an emphatic "yes" - is whether those are legitimate legal, not policy, 
reasons to declare that the death penalty violates the U.S. Constitution.

The ultimate answer to that question lies in numbers. As former Justice William 
Brennan liked to point out to his clerks, what matters most in deciding cases 
before the high court is numbers. With 5 votes - a majority on the 9-member 
court - the Supreme Court can interpret the language of the Constitution any 
way it pleases.

So the court's jurisprudence is driven as much by result-oriented approaches by 
the justices as it is their careful interpretation of the language of the U.S. 
Constitution, statutes and applicable case law.

Nonetheless, death-penalty abolitionists have a problem when it comes to 
arguing that the death penalty conflicts with the U.S. Constitution. That's 
because the Constitution specifically authorizes what death-penalty 
abolitionists, including Breyer, claim that it forbids.

The Fifth Amendment to the Bill of Rights states, in part, that no person 
"shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor 
be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law."

The flip side of the constitutional guarantee that no one can be deprived of 
life - meaning to be executed - without due process indicates that one can be 
deprived of life if given due process, which includes a fair trial, legal 
representation, the right to confront witness and a conviction based on 
sufficient evidence.

Whether society - be it through the states or in the federal government - 
wishes to have a death penalty is a completely different question than whether 
the U.S. Constitution permits them to have one. The remaining 31 death-penalty 
states and the federal government could abolish their capital-punishment 
statutes next week, and those decisions would not infringe the U.S. 
Constitution in any way.

At the same time, the Constitution, through its own unambiguous language, 
clearly permits the federal government and the 50 states to decide on their own 
which path to take, as they have done for centuries.

This is not the 1st time that Supreme Court justices like Breyer have sought to 
use their powerful positions to try to impose their personal policy preferences 
on the nation. After spending years tinkering with death-penalty law, former 
Justice Harry Blackmun famously declared that he "would no longer tinker with 
the machinery of death," indicating he would forever vote to overturn any 
death-penalty case that came before him.

Former Justices Brennan, Thurgood Marshall and John Paul Stevens also wanted to 
abolish capital punishment, dressing up their personal positions in legal 
pretexts.

There is nothing new about moral objections to the death penalty. A minority of 
critics forever have complained that it is immoral to execute anyone, no matter 
how heinous his crimes, or that capital punishment risks the execution of 
someone wrongfully convicted. Indeed, wrongful conviction was a key argument in 
persuading Illinois legislators to abolish capital punishment.

But it's an argument that is best addressed to the policymaking branches of 
government - the legislative and the executive. The courts, however, cannot 
resist the temptation to act as mini-legislatures, and that's what Breyer, if 
he can get 1 more vote, clearly has in mind.

(source: Editorial, The News-Gazette)

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

No avoiding questions on death penalty


Evolved. Sophisticated. Advanced.

Those are words that we as Americans like to use when we're describing 
ourselves. We even call our presidents the leaders of the free world.

So why is it that last year we were ranked in the Top 5 for countries with the 
most executions?

Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq were right there with us. You know, those 
countries that we've either been at odds with, or stormed into with capes on 
trying to save them by implementing the "American Way."

Last week, the use of an execution drug that is used in lethal injections as 
part of the death penalty was upheld with a 5-4 vote from the Supreme Court, 
keeping it "alive" in the 31 states where it's legal, including Delaware.

But what does the death penalty mean in 2015?

Is it outdated, or is it a necessary evil?

More than 60 % of the world has killed the death penalty. 80 of those countries 
turned away from it in the last 40 years, which suggests that its time has 
passed.

But is the death penalty just or cruel?

Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg think so. They disagreed with 
the ruling that approved of one of the execution drugs known as midazolam. The 
duo said that it was "highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth 
Amendment," which forbids cruel and unusual punishment. Delaware uses lethal 
injection and it is a point of contention in the repeated efforts to repeal the 
death penalty here.

Lethal injection was created in 1982, and has turned into the leading method 
for the death penalty as the gas chamber, electric chair and firing squad have 
been retired, except for Utah in some cases. But the issue with midazolam is 
that inmates are claiming that the sedative does not do its job, which leads to 
victims suffering through the process of the last 2 steps of the 3-drug 
protocol that is a part of the fatal cocktail.

In laymen's terms, midazolam is a store-brand version of the anesthetic sodium 
thiopental that prisons in America can't get anymore. In 2014, 3 lethal 
injections had issues with executions because of the drug, which led to victims 
dying horrible deaths that lasted up to 2 hours.

The words of Breyer and Ginsburg, in addition to more countries turning away 
from the death penalty, would lead one to believe it is on death row.

But is it that simple?

Is a decision about the finality of a human life that easy to decide?

This issue has always been one with minimal gray area. People are either for 
it, or against it. But as the world changes and people evolve, so do their 
experiences.

There are no clear-cut answers here. This issue and debate are not going away 
anytime soon, no matter how close the Supreme Court's decision is.

(source: Editorial, The (Del.) News Journal)

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

The more humane drug to use in executions? Heroin


I have opposed exercising the death penalty for many years, not because certain 
criminals don't deserve to die, but because we can so very rarely know for 
certain who those criminals actually are. As a result, I support the Innocence 
Project, which has led the way in using DNA evidence whenever available to 
exonerate those falsely convicted of capital crimes and to thereby prevent the 
horrible crime of society executing an innocent person.

But, unfortunately, DNA evidence is not always available, which means that many 
who were falsely convicted based on less-certain evidence have no ready way to 
right the injustice done to them. Other steps in criminal justice reform must 
be undertaken to reduce the number of false convictions.

But the question of whether capital punishment, when justly imposed, should be 
painless to the criminal seems to be the current issue with the Supreme Court. 
We are constantly told by conservatives that marijuana kills and by liberals 
that marijuana eases pain, so why not use marijuana overdoses to execute those 
who truly deserve death?

And if both those arguments are merely feints in the culture wars, as I 
suspect, then why not use heroin overdoses to carry out painless, certain 
executions?

John Kannarr, Glendale

(source: Letter to the Editor, Arizona Republic)

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

One of the last grim scenes of the Civil War was caught on camera----Final 
justice for Lincoln, at 150


On July 7, 1865, after months of drama, 4 people faced the gallows.

It was a blazing hot July afternoon, and the condemned were led in irons from 
the Washington penitentiary about 1 p.m.

They passed the pre-dug graves and the stack of gun crates that would serve as 
their coffins and climbed the steps of the wooden gallows that had been built 
overnight.

Shuffling onto the crowded platform, they were hooded and bound with strips of 
white cloth. Nooses were slipped over their heads.

The 3 men and 1 woman had been found guilty of conspiracy in the assassination 
of "the late president, Abraham Lincoln," as official documents put it.

A century and a half ago this month - on July 7, 1865 - one of the last grim 
scenes in the tragedy of the Civil War was played out - and caught on camera - 
at what is now Fort McNair, in Southwest Washington.

Mary E. Surratt - the 1st woman to be executed by the federal government - 
Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt and David Herold had been convicted by a military 
tribunal of conspiring with John Wilkes Booth in the murder of Lincoln.

Booth had been killed 10 weeks earlier while trying to escape, after shooting 
Lincoln in Ford's Theatre on April 14.

All the condemned were local Southern sympathizers implicated in the plans, 
first to kidnap Lincoln and later to kill him, Vice President Andrew Johnson 
and Secretary of State William Seward.

Seward survived a brutal knife attack by Powell the night Lincoln was shot. 
Johnson escaped harm when Atzerodt lost his nerve and failed to execute his 
part of the operation.

Herold had helped Booth escape and was "the getaway guy," as one expert put it.

And by most accounts, Surratt knew of the plot and abetted the plotters from 
her boarding house on H Street NW.

The 4 were lined up - their arms handcuffed, their feet shackled - as an 
officer read the execution order and the photographer, Alexander Gardner, aimed 
2 cameras from about 100 feet away.

Then Gardner and his team recorded "perhaps the most striking sequence of 
historical photographs ever made," according to historians James L. Swanson and 
Daniel R. Weinberg.

Frame by frame, the photographers captured the preliminaries and hanging in 10 
stark photographs, said Barry M. Cauchon, a New York scholar who has studied 
the execution.

The hanging was one of the few acts of official retribution to come after the 
war, experts said, but it symbolized the North's collective rage over the 
rebellion and the assassination.

"Every loyal American feels that the death of Mr. Lincoln is not only a 
national, but a personal, bereavement," Washington's Daily Morning Chronicle 
wrote. "And everyone is controlled, in some measure, by revengeful feeling."

But when Gardner tried to sell the images later, they didn't do well, said John 
Elliott, another student of the execution. "Maybe the country didn't have 
enough stomach for it anymore," he said.

The 1st Gardner image shows the gallows beforehand, empty except for 4 chairs. 
Others then show the scaffold crowded with the condemned, officials and clergy, 
huddled under umbrellas to escape the sun.

In yet another picture, officials can be seen adjusting the nooses around the 
necks of the 4.

Surratt wore a dark veil and a floor-length black alpaca dress buttoned in the 
front. A Catholic priest holding a cross ministered to her as she sat in a 
chair while the warrants were read.

None of the condemned appeared to be wearing shoes.

As they stood and awaited the release of the 2 "drop" sections of the platform, 
Surratt was supported by 2 soldiers who kept her from toppling prematurely. 
"Don't let me fall," she said.

Atzerodt said, "Goodbye, gentlemen.....May we all meet in the other world! God 
help me now!" according to the Washington Evening Star's account.

At 1:26 p.m., the supports were knocked out.

"The drops fell with a heavy slam, and the 4 bodies hung suspended," the 
newspaper reported.

In one of Gardner's last shots, the 2 soldiers supporting Surratt stand with 
their arms extended, having just let her go.

"The last act in the tragedy of the 19th century is ended," the Star 
pronounced. "And the curtain dropped forever upon the lives of 4 of its actors. 
... The wretched criminals have been hurried into eternity, and tonight will be 
hidden in despised graves, loaded with the execrations of mankind."

The awful event

Paul M. Severance stood in the quiet 3rd-floor room of Grant Hall on the 
grounds of Fort McNair last month, decked out in the gold buttons and 
sweltering blue uniform of a Union general.

There was some filming equipment in a corner, left over from a weekend 
reenactment of the trial, and Severance bustled around, preparing for the 
lecture he was about to give.

Today, Grant Hall is home to the Defense Department's Africa Center for 
Strategic Studies.

In 1865, it was a wing of the old and largely vacant federal penitentiary that 
held the Lincoln conspirators. And the room where Severance stood served as the 
courtroom where the trial was held.

Much of the room is not original, although some of the floorboards are, but it 
has been restored and refurnished to the way it looked in 1865. It's open to 
the public on a limited basis.

It's also said to be haunted by Surratt's ghost, according to Severance, a 
professor of military science at the National Defense University. Lights 
inexplicably go on and off, and the disembodied sound of hammering, as if from 
gallows building, has been heard at night, he said.

There, where the Capitol can be seen from one of the windows, 8 conspirators 
were found guilty, and the 4 were sentenced to death. The others got lesser 
sentences.

The trial, which opened May 9, was a national sensation, Severance said.

The defendants were accused of "maliciously, unlawfully and traitorously ... 
conspiring ... (to murder) Abraham Lincoln, then president of the United 
States," the official charges stated.

The hot, stuffy courtroom was crammed with reporters, illustrators and 
spectators eager to glimpse the conspirators, especially the veiled Surratt, 
and the handsome Powell, a 21-year-old former Confederate soldier.

Hundreds of witnesses testified, including the top Union general, Ulysses S. 
Grant; Maj. Henry Rathbone, who was knifed by Booth seconds after Lincoln was 
shot; and Sgt. Boston Corbett, who fatally wounded Booth on April 26.

The details of the assassination were given, and links between Booth and the 
defendants were established.

The original plot had been to abduct Lincoln and use him as a hostage to gain 
the release of Confederate prisoners of war, said Severance, a retired Army 
colonel.

But as the rebel cause withered, Booth decided that something else had to be 
done, something he called "decisive and great ... which the world would 
remember for all time," according to a new biography of Booth by historian 
Terry Alford.

Defense lawyers argued that the trial should have been in a civilian court, and 
that many of the defendants were only in on the kidnapping plot, not the 
assassination.

The tribunal was unmoved.

It began deliberating June 29 and presented its verdicts to President Johnson 
on July 5, according to Swanson and Weinberg's book, "Lincoln's Assassins." 
Johnson approved.

On July 6, Powell, Surratt, Atzerodt and Herold were informed that they were to 
be hanged the next day.

2 generals went to each cell - 1st Powell's, then Atzerodt's, Herold???s and 
Surratt's, according to the account in the Star newspaper.

Powell, who used the alias Payne, seemed resigned. Atzerodt grew pale, and his 
hands began to shake. Herold admitted helping Booth escape and said he had 
always been an ardent supporter of the South.

Surratt was stunned and burst into "a violent paroxysm of grief," the newspaper 
said. Last-minute appeals to a civilian court and the White House were made for 
her. They all came to nothing.

Surratt's daughter, Anna, went to the executive mansion to beg for an interview 
with Johnson.

Told that he would see no visitors, she collapsed on a staircase, "sobbing 
aloud in the greatest anguish, protesting her mother's innocence ... 
(declaring) her mother was too good and kind to be guilty of the enormous 
crime," the newspaper reported.

"The scene was heart rending, and many of those who witnessed it ... were moved 
to tears," the Star recounted.

The next morning, the operation of the freshly built gallows designed to hang 4 
people simultaneously was tested.

Artillery shells weighing 100 pounds were placed on the drop sections, and the 
supports were knocked away, the newspaper reported. Some adjustments were 
required.

Meanwhile, the city was crowded with visitors, hoping to witness or just be in 
town for the execution. Admission was strictly limited. About 3,000 spectators, 
most of them soldiers, looked on from the ground, windows and rooftops.

The condemned emerged from the prison, accompanied by members of the clergy, 
and filed up to the scaffold platform. The death warrants were read. The 4 
stood. The nooses were affixed.

The temperature was in the mid-90s.

The executioner, Capt. Christian Rath, who had come to admire Powell's pluck, 
said in an interview many years later that he had whispered to Powell, "I want 
you to die quick."

"You know best, captain," Rath said Powell replied.

Rath told his interviewer that he was sure Surratt would be spared. And when 
his superior, Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, ordered him to proceed, Rath asked, 
"Her, too?"

"Yes," Hancock said. "She cannot be saved."

Rath gave the signal - three claps of the hand, according to the National 
Intelligencer. "As 1, the 4 bodies shot downward," he recalled.

They were lowered after about 20 minutes. The shackles and irons were removed, 
but not the execution hoods.

Each body was placed in a coffin, along with a glass bottle holding a piece of 
paper bearing the conspirator's name and the nature of the crime. The 4 were 
buried in the graves beside the gallows and over the years returned to their 
families.

The awful event was finished, the National Intelligencer wrote, as if speaking 
of the upheaval of the past 4 years.

"God grant that our country may never again witness such another one."

(source: Washington Post)