[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----FLA., LA., OHIO, WASH.

[Rick Halperin]

July 7



FLORIDA:

1st exonerated death row survivor in the US passes away


Dave Keaton, the 1st death row exoneree in the US and the 1st death row 
exoneree from the State of Florida, passed away suddenly at home in Quincy, 
Florida. He was 63.

He is survived by his siblings Elise, Thawanna, Victor and Edwardo. Keaton was 
an active and beloved member of Witness to Innocence, the nation's only 
membership organization of exonerated death row survivors and their loved ones, 
which he joined shortly after the organization's founding in 2005.

WTI Executive Director Magdaleno Rose-Avila said, "Dave Keaton was the 1st 
death row exoneree to begin speaking out against the death penalty. His false 
imprisonment and the life struggles he faced as an exoneree demands that we 
abolish capital punishment."

Dave Keaton was arrested in 1971 for the murder of an off-duty police officer 
at a Florida convenience store. Although details of the number of participants 
in the crime, the weapons used, and the location of the "getaway car" differed 
sharply from the state's evidence, an all-white jury convicted and sentenced 
Keaton to death. He was 18 years old.

Once he was on death row, the case against Keaton quickly unraveled.

Keaton was granted a new trial, but without the confession, there was not 
enough evidence to try him and the charges were eventually dropped. Ultimately, 
he spent 2 years on death row for a crime he didn't commit, yet received no 
compensation from the state for his wrongful conviction.

In addition to being the 1st man to be exonerated from death row in the United 
States, Keaton was an outstanding poet and singer, giving performances across 
the country as a member of Witness to Innocence. His story of being wrongfully 
convicted and sentenced to death is immortalized in the motion picture and 
play, "The Exonerated," in which his story has been performed by renowned actor 
Danny Glover and countless others for over a decade.

To learn more, visit www.witnesstoinnocence.org or email 
info at witnesstoinnocence.org.

(source: Herald Courier)






LOUISIANA:

Louisiana Prosecutor Becomes Blunt Spokesman for Death Penalty


In a much-discussed dissent from the Supreme Court's ruling on lethal injection 
last week, Justice Stephen G. Breyer laid out the problems, as he saw them, 
with the death penalty. Among them was "arbitrariness in application," 
including how simple geography can determine whether someone convicted of 
murder would be sentenced to death.

"Between 2004 and 2009," Justice Breyer wrote, "just 29 counties (fewer than 1 
% of counties in the country) accounted for approximately !/2 of all death 
sentences imposed nationwide."

Caddo Parish, here in the northwestern corner of the state, is one of these 
counties. Within Louisiana, where capital punishment has declined steeply, 
Caddo has become an outlier, accounting for fewer than 5 % of the state's death 
sentences in the early 1980s but nearly 1/2 over the past 5 years. Even on a 
national level Caddo stands apart. From 2010 to 2014, more people were 
sentenced to death per capita here than in any other county in the United 
States, among counties with 4 or more death sentences in that period.

Robert J. Smith, a law professor at the University of North Carolina whose work 
was cited in Justice Breyer's dissent, said Caddo illustrated the geographic 
disparity of capital punishment. But he said this analysis did not go far 
enough. Caddo, he said, has bucked the national trend in large part because of 
one man: Dale Cox.

Mr. Cox, 67, who is the acting district attorney and who has secured more than 
1/3 of Louisiana's death sentences over the last 5 years, has lately become one 
of the country's bluntest spokesmen for the death penalty. He has readily 
accepted invitations from reporters to explain whether he meant what he said to 
The Shreveport Times in March: that capital punishment is primarily and rightly 
about revenge and that the state needs to "kill more people." Yes, he really 
meant it.

And he has been willing to recount his personal transformation from an opponent 
of capital punishment, a belief grounded in his Catholic faith, to one of the 
most prolific seekers of the death penalty in the nation.

"Retribution is a valid societal interest," Mr. Cox said on a recent afternoon, 
in a manner as calm and considered as the hypothetical he would propose was 
macabre. "What kind of society would say that it's O.K. to kill babies and eat 
them, and in fact we can have parties where we kill them and eat them, and 
you're not going to forfeit your life for that? If you've gotten to that point, 
you're no longer a society."

Mr. Cox later clarified that he had not seen any case involving cannibalism, 
though he described it as the next logical step given what he at several points 
called an "increase in savagery."

Mr. Smith said that Mr. Cox's personal evolution serves not only as a window 
into the criminal justice system in Caddo Parish, but also goes to the heart of 
the questions raised by Justice Breyer.

"When you start to look underneath the counties and ask, 'Who is actually 
prosecuting these cases?' you realize in most of the counties it's 1 or a 
limited number of prosecutors," Mr. Smith said. For instance, in the 5 years 
since Lynne Abraham left the office of district attorney in Philadelphia, where 
she had secured 45 death sentences in 19 years, there were only 3 death 
sentences.

"What you've ended up with," Mr. Smith said, "is a personality-driven death 
penalty."

Mr. Cox's personality has been under scrutiny here since he returned to being a 
prosecutor after two decades in insurance law. Lawyers who knew him as a 
congenial and adroit trial lawyer said that in recent years he had become 
sullen and solitary. They also have described him as increasingly aggressive in 
the courtroom, in some cases even threatening defense lawyers with criminal 
contempt for filing opposing motions.

"It's such a dramatic change," said Ross Owen, a former Caddo prosecutor and 
assistant United States attorney who now practices law in Shreveport. "The 
behavior in and of itself might not be a big deal," he said. But given Mr. 
Cox's position, and the fact that the defendants in most of these capital cases 
are poor and black in a part of the state with a deep history of racism, Mr. 
Owen added, "he's got a loaded gun and he's pointing it at a lot of people."

Several said this was not so much Ms. Cox as the nature of the office. They 
point to a racial disparity in the application of the death penalty in Caddo. 
Or they cite an incident in 2012, when 2 senior assistant district attorneys, 
both of whom continue to prosecute capital cases elsewhere in the state, were 
forced to resign from the office after they obtained machine guns from a 
military surplus program through what an inspector general found to be 
falsified applications. The men had belonged to a group of prosecutors who 
participated in firearms exercises as part of a group known as the Caddo Parish 
Zombie Response Team, sporting arm patches around the office and specialty 
license plates on their trucks.

Mr. Cox, who rose from first assistant to acting district attorney after his 
boss died unexpectedly in April, was never part of that group and disapproved 
of it. He said he did not think the office had changed him. But he did not 
dispute that he had changed and become more withdrawn.

He describes this as a natural result of exposure to so many heinous crimes, 
saying that "the nature of the work is so serious that there'd be something 
wrong if it didn't change you." He went on to describe rapes, murders and 
dismemberments in extended detail, pointing to a box on his desk that he said 
contained autopsy photos of an infant who was beaten to death. He volunteered 
that he takes medication for depression.

"We've become a jungle," he said in an interview at his office, where he had 
been considering whether to seek death in 1 case and was preparing to seek it 
in 2 others. "If you break every bone in a 6-month-old baby's body, and then 
eat them, I don't think I'm indecent for wanting to kill you."

The number of murders in Shreveport has decreased by more than 67 % since the 
early 1990s. But Mr. Cox insisted that if the numbers were down, the nature of 
crimes had become more depraved and that it demanded a different approach.

Defense lawyers conceded that the approach was different. Mr. Cox had refused 
even to entertain pleas of life without parole in homicide cases for which he 
deemed death the only fitting remedy. In other cases, the office has prosecuted 
people for ancillary crimes even after they had made plea agreements.

After a man was convicted in 2014 of smothering his infant son, a case that 
hinged almost entirely on differing interpretations of complicated forensic 
evidence, Mr. Cox wrote that the man "deserves as much physical suffering as it 
is humanly possible to endure before he dies."

Alluding to Rousseau and Shakespeare, Mr. Cox remained unapologetic, insisting 
that he believed what he was doing was right. But he was not entirely 
untroubled.

"I am humble enough and fearful enough," he said, considering the biblical 
commandment not to kill and his own place in the afterlife, "that my God may 
say to me, 'I meant what I said, and you're out.'"

(source: New York Times)






OHIO:

Suspect tells police he saw slain woman's ghost


The man charged in the grisly 2012 death of 87-year-old Barbara Howe says he 
never meant to kill her, but he deserves to die anyway.

A Butler County judge is expected to decide Wednesday whether those and other 
statements given to police after Daniel French's 2014 arrest can be used during 
his trial later this year.

French's defense counsel argued the evidence should not be permitted because 
French was not able to waive his right to an attorney and indicated he was 
suicidal. Judge Charles Pater ruled last week three other police interviews 
taped before French's arrest could be used in court.

But none of those interviews include French describing in graphic detail how he 
killed Howe, whose body was found in the trunk of her car in Middletown.

"It wasn't my intention to choke her to death," French said shortly after his 
arrest. "I was just trying to get her to black out and she wouldn't."

The Kentucky man told detectives he just wanted Howe's money, but when she 
resisted, and a stun gun didn't work, he killed her. French told police he put 
her body in a closet crawl space and returned the next day, slitting her throat 
several times "to make it look worse."

When moving her from the crawl space, French accidentally drooled on her, so he 
stripped her naked, cut her hair and covered her body in drain cleaner, 
peroxide and vacuum cleaner contents.

"I don't know where my mind was," he said.

French needed the money because health problems made him a burden and 
embarrassment to his family, he told police. The 56-year-old left Howe's Monroe 
home with $18.

"Have you ever seen a ghost?" French asked detectives a few minutes into the 
interview. "I seen Mrs. Howe's ghost and I apologized to her."

Police spoke to French at the Rockcastle County Detention Center after his 
December arrest in Berea, Kentucky. He talked about Howe's death and the 
circumstances surrounding it for about 30 minutes.

Former Middletown police Detective Richard Bush testified in court French 
sounded depressed, but also relieved the incident was coming to an end. He had 
been interviewed by police three separate times in 2013.

"I'm a little bit confused," said Bush. "I expected a monster, Daniel, I really 
did. I expected a monster, but now talking to you a little bit - man to man - 
I'm thinking maybe something screwed up, something went bad.

"I see remorse."

French, who attended Middletown High School but did not graduate, faces the 
death penalty if convicted. He is charged with aggravated murder, aggravated 
burglary, aggravated robbery, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse.

Answering heartbroken family's questions

French gained access to Howe's apartment by saying he needed to fix her 
medical-alert system, police said.

"It was never planned," French said. "The why, I can't even explain that to 
myself because I don't know."

Although French previously worked in the Mount Pleasant Retirement Village 
where Howe lived, he told police her death was random.

Detectives found Howe's phone number on a torn-out directory page in French's 
possession. French called 2 other women before Howe agreed to let him check her 
alarm system. He walked in through the unlocked front door to the bedroom where 
he told police he killed Howe.

After replaying the events surrounding her death, French said in a quiet voice 
he deserves to die.

"A life for a life," he told police.

In addition to her money, police said French stole a 3.3-carat diamond ring 
gifted to Howe by her late husband. Police pleaded with him during the 
interview to help them find it.

He said he wanted nothing to do with her possessions and pitched them out his 
window while driving on Ohio 63.

"It looked terrible. It is terrible and maybe I am a monster," French said. "It 
was never planned to be like that."

French's trial is scheduled for October.

(source: cincinnati.com)






WASHINGTON:

Harsh prison sentences swell ranks of lifers and raise questions about 
fairness, study finds


Stricter state sentencing laws in Washington have swelled the ranks of inmates 
serving life sentences to nearly 1 in 5.

And some lifers who opted to go to trial are serving much longer sentences than 
others who committed the same crimes and plea-bargained - raising questions 
about equitable treatment of prisoners.

Those are among the findings in a new analysis by undergraduate honors students 
in the University of Washington's Law, Societies & Justice program, who sought 
to determine the number of lifers in Washington prisons, the legal processes 
that lead to life sentences and the cost of housing those inmates, many of whom 
will die behind bars.

Washington largely eliminated its parole system after the state's Sentencing 
Reform Act was enacted in 1984. The SRA was intended to increase consistency in 
sentencing and shift the goal of sentencing from rehabilitation, which research 
at the time indicated did not reduce crime, to punishment.

"At the time, the conventional wisdom was that rehabilitation didn't work, and 
that parole boards were making arbitrary decisions," said Katherine Beckett, a 
professor in the Law, Societies & Justice program and the Department of 
Sociology, who oversaw the students' research.

The upshot of the SRA was that except for a few categories of inmates - 
juveniles, certain sex offenders sentenced to life and prisoners sentenced 
before the law was enacted - most prisoners would never go before a review 
board, have their sentences reconsidered or have a chance at early release. 
Ever.

2 consequent voter-approved initiatives caused the numbers of lifers in 
Washington state to increase dramatically over the past 2 decades. The 
so-called "3 strikes" law of 1993, the 1st of its type in the nation, mandated 
life without parole for 3 serious felony convictions. The Hard Time for Armed 
Crime initiative followed 2 years later, requiring mandatory sentence additions 
for crimes involving guns. The report mentions 1 prisoner who was sentenced to 
83 years due to weapons charges alone.

The students analyzed data for all felony cases sentenced in Washington state 
from July 1985 to July 2013, more than 600,600 in total. They found that:

--Almost 1 in 5 (19.3 %) of inmates in Washington are serving life sentences.

--Of Washington's prisoners, 11.3 % are serving life with parole - most are sex 
offenders eligible for review, and a few are inmates sentenced before 1984 - 
and 8 % are serving official life without parole sentences or "de facto" ones 
of 470 months or more, based on the federal definition of a life sentence. 
--Nationally, 1 in 9 prisoners is serving an official life sentence.

--De facto lifers make up almost 1/2 the state's life without parole 
population.

--African-Americans comprise only about 4 % of Washington's population, but 
make up 28 % of prisoners serving life without parole.

--The average life without parole sentence costs taxpayers $2.4 million per 
prisoner. Before 1984, when lifers were often released, the average cost was 
$767,895 per prisoner (in 2014 dollars).

--1/2 of those serving life without parole sentences were sentenced under the 3 
strikes law, and almost 20 percent of de facto lifers are serving sentences of 
39 years or more solely due to additional weapons charges.

The students also found widespread discrepancies in the life sentences given 
for identical crimes committed by inmates who opted for trial compared with 
those who accepted plea bargains. Prisoners who were tried for homicide, for 
example, got sentences 9.6 % longer on average than their counterparts who 
plea-bargained, the students found.

The gap was even greater for less serious offenses. Inmates convicted of 
1st-degree assault through trial got sentences 45.3 % longer than those who 
accepted plea bargains. 2/3 of life without parole sentences were handed down 
after trials, the report found, while only 5 % of cases resulting in other 
sentences had gone to trial.

"This suggests that there is a correlation between [life without parole] 
sentences and the trial process, and raises the possibility that people who 
take their case to trial are being penalized for doing so," the authors write.

Alex Lynch, one of the report's authors, said the data also suggests that the 
Sentencing Reform Act's goal of reducing sentencing disparities has failed.

"We ran the data over and over and over," said Lynch, who graduated this year. 
"The ranges are remarkable. They speak to the question of how effective the SRA 
has been."

Another question is how the death penalty might impact life sentences. 
Washington is 1 of 31 states with the death penalty, which was suspended in the 
U.S. between 1972 and 1976. During that time, Beckett said, many states 
authorized life without parole sentences as an alternative to the death penalty 
but retained it even after capital punishment was reintroduced.

Opposition to capital punishment seems to have strengthened life without parole 
sentencing, she said, as opponents push for it as a more acceptable 
alternative.

"Opposition to the death penalty has made life without parole seem more 
normal," Beckett said.

The study coincides with a growing national conversation about mass 
incarceration in the United States, which has the world's largest prison 
population - about 2.2 million people, according to the Sentencing Project. 
Presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Rand Paul have made mass 
incarceration a campaign issue, and other Democratic and Republican candidates 
are calling for criminal justice reform.

The UW study makes 3 recommendations: that Washington create a review board and 
process that allows every lifer to be re-evaluated after a pre-determined 
amount of time, repeal the 3 strikes and Hard Time for Armed Crime laws and 
expand rehabilitative programs to help inmates reintegrate into society after 
release.

In February, the state house passed legislation that would ease the Hard Time 
for Armed Crime law. The UW students hope to present their report to the 
Washington State Sentencing Guidelines Commission, and Lynch said she's 
encouraged by feedback the document has received from local stakeholders.

"We've gotten overwhelmingly positive support," she said. "We've had a lot of 
positive interactions with folks that are in a position to make some change."

The study's co-authors are Dakota Blagg, Madison Brown, Alison Buchanan, Bryce 
Ellis, Olivia Gee, Andreas Hewitt, Zoe Liebeskind, Katelyn Lowthorp, Hannah 
Schwendeman and Nicholas Scott.

(source UW Today)