[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----KAN., MO., NEB., N. M.

[Rick Halperin]

July 18




KANSAS:

Judge refuses to step down from Jewish site shootings case


A judge rejected a series of defense motions Friday in the death penalty case 
of a white supremacist charged with killing 3 people last year at 2 Jewish 
sites in Kansas.

Johnson County Judge Thomas Kelly Ryan began by refusing to step down from the 
case, saying there weren't grounds for the request. Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., 
74, of Aurora, Missouri, argued that Ryan was obstructing justice by not ruling 
quickly on motions or allowing him a computer with online access.

Ryan also refused requests to let the defense speak last in the penalty phase 
and to keep jurors from seeing photos of the victims before they died.

Ryan said he would discuss later in the hearing Miller's argument that there 
was a "compelling necessity" for the killings in the Kansas City suburb of 
Overland Park. Miller, who is charged with capital murder in the killings, said 
he would be "back to square one" if the defense is denied. Jury selection is 
slated to begin Aug. 17.

The prosecution said the compelling necessity defense shouldn't be allowed, 
arguing in a motion that there's "no relationship whatsoever between these 
victims and the worldwide conspiracy" that Miller alleges.

Miller does not deny gunning down Dr. William Lewis Corporon, 69, and his 
14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, at the Jewish Community Center in 
Overland Park, and Terri LaManno, 53, at the nearby Village Shalom care center 
on April 13, 2014. He said he felt it was his duty to kill Jewish people before 
he died; he didn't know all 3 were Christians.

Miller is representing himself, but the judge has ordered defense attorneys in 
the case to remain available. The hearing was marked with frequent outbursts 
and occasional anti-Semitic remarks from Miller, who at one point called 
himself a Nazi.

"I intend to walk if I get a fair trial," Miller said, adding later, "Why don't 
you just put all the motions together, say 'denied' and save taxpayers money?"

(source: Associated Press)






MISSOURI:

Study finds racial disparity in Missouri executions


Homicides involving white victims are 7 times more likely to result in an 
execution than those involving black victims, according to a recent study on 
the racial disparities of executions in Missouri.

And homicides involving white female victims are nearly 14 times more likely to 
result in an execution than those involving black male victims.

"These disparities are so great that they call in to question the equity of the 
application of the harshest penalty, adding to growing concerns that the death 
penalty is applied in an unfair, capricious, and arbitrary manner," stated 
Frank R. Baumgartner, a political science professor at University of North 
Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Baumgartner's study, released on July 16, is titled "The impact of race, gender 
and geography on Missouri executions."

Between 1976 and 2014, the study found that the state of Missouri executed 80 
men. 81 % of these men were executed for the murder of white victims.

"This is striking given that 60 % of all homicide victims in Missouri are 
black," he wrote.

White women represent just 12 % of all homicide victims, but constitute 37 % of 
the victims in execution cases, according to the study. Black men, by contrast, 
represent 52 % of all homicide victims, but just 12 % of the individuals who 
were executed were convicted of killing black men.

Nationally, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that from 1980 through 
2008, white perpetrators killed 84 % of white victims of homicide, and 93 
percent of black victims were killed by black perpetrators. Further, this 
tendency for crimes to be within racial group remains true even among "stranger 
homicides" - where the victim does not know the offender, Baumgartner found. 
Black-on-black crimes are extremely unlikely to be punished with the death 
penalty, however.

"The importance of the victims' race in the application of the death penalty 
has created a system where whites are likely to face the death penalty only for 
within-race crimes, and blacks for cross-race crimes," he wrote. "In other 
words, the race and gender of the victim is a key determining factor in 
deciding who faces execution in Missouri."

Geography also plays an important role.

Here are a few other key findings of his research:

--A person convicted of homicide in St. Louis County is 3 times more likely to 
be executed than if they were convicted of the same crime in the vast majority 
of other counties in the state, and 13 times more likely to be executed than if 
they are convicted of the same crime in the city of St. Louis.

--Homicides committed in Callaway, Schuyler, and Moniteau counties are 30 to 70 
times more likely to result in an execution than homicides committed in the 
vast majority of state's counties.

--A majority of the state's 80 executions that occurred between 1976 and 2014 
come from just three, or 2.6%, of the state's 114 counties and the independent 
city of St. Louis.

--81 % of the individuals executed in Missouri were convicted of killing White 
victims even though White victims are less than 40% of all murder victims in 
the state.

--Even though the vast majority of murders involve an offender and victim(s) of 
the same race, 54% of the African-American men executed by Missouri were 
convicted of crimes involving White victims.

(source: St. Louis American)

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

Missouri had no right to withhold death penalty drug information, judge 
rules----Lawsuit from media outlets seen as critical test of creeping secrecy 
introduced in response to an international boycott of sales of lethal medicines 
to US states


A judge in Missouri struck a blow for public transparency in the practice of 
the death penalty by ruling that the state's department of corrections had no 
right to withhold information from the media about the source of its lethal 
injection drugs.

Judge Jon Beetem, sitting in the Missouri circuit court of Cole County, ruled 
the state had "knowingly failed, at least in part" to comply with its 
obligation to act with transparency. He ordered the state to release key 
details about its supply of deadly chemicals, pending a further hearing on what 
information should be redacted.

The case was brought in May 2014 by the Guardian and media partners after they 
were denied information by the state of Missouri under its freedom of 
information laws, known locally as the Sunshine Law.

The Guardian, together with the Associated Press and 3 prominent local news 
outlets - the Kansas City Star, the St Louis Post-Dispatch and the Springfield 
News-Leader - had asked for details of the supply route of the drugs used by 
the state to kill prisoners as well as any quality controls applied to the 
chemicals.

But the news outlets were turned down by the department of corrections on 
grounds of "institutional security".

The lawsuit was seen as a critical test of the creeping secrecy introduced by 
Missouri and several other death penalty states in response to an international 
boycott of sales of lethal medicines to US corrections departments. As supplies 
of the drugs ran short, states turned to increasingly shady and unregulated 
sources.

Fearing that public disclosure would frighten away pharmacies from making up, 
or compounding, lethal drugs to order, many states introduced secrecy rules. In 
Missouri's case, the department of corrections unilaterally revised its 
execution protocol in October 2013, to widen the net of secrecy.

Until then, the state had defined the execution team that was protected with 
anonymity as consisting of "contracted medical personnel and department 
employees" who were present in person in the death chamber. Under the new 
rules, the definition was expanded to include pharmacists and "individuals who 
prescribe, compound, prepare, or otherwise supply the chemicals for use in the 
lethal injection procedure".

Judge Beetem was scathing about the prison authorities' attempts to keep from 
the public key details of its execution procedures by tampering with the 
protocol. He said the department of corrections had acted "contrary to law" by 
widening the definition of the execution team to include drug suppliers in a 
way that went beyond the authority given to it by Missouri lawmakers.

"The person or persons who prescribe, compound, or otherwise supply chemicals 
for use in lethal injection executions are not present in person at executions 
... the [expanded] protocol including the suppliers of the lethal injection 
drugs as members of the execution team is contrary to law," the judgement 
states.

Information about the identity of pharmacies and other drug suppliers is seen 
by the Guardian and other news outlets as being in the public interest in part 
because of a spate of recent botched executions in which prisoners have endured 
prolonged and potentially agonizing deaths.

Without knowing the provenance of the lethal injection chemicals, and what 
quality controls if any were applied to them before use, it is not possible to 
monitor whether prisoners are being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment 
in violation of the 8th amendment of the US constitution.

"The execution of condemned prisoners is the ultimate act of the state and I 
can think of nothing more important for the public to know than how the state 
is carrying that out," said Bernard Rhodes of Lathrop & Gage, the attorney for 
the media group.

The Cole County ruling mirrored two other judgments issued concurrently by the 
same judge relating to similar challenges to Missouri's death penalty secrecy 
that had been brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri and the 
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

(source: The Guardian)






NEBRASKA:

Mother of murder victim gathers signatures to get death penalty refendum on the 
ballot


As Vivian Tuttle gathers signatures for a referendum to reinstate the death 
penalty, a photo is held onto her clipboard.

The photo seems like any family photo. It's of her daughter, Evonne Tuttle and 
two young children, at a fair. Then, Tuttle explains that the photo was taken 
just 5 days before her daughter died, 1 of 5 victims in the 2002 Norfolk bank 
shooting.

"My daughter went into the bank in Norfolk, Nebraska, on Sept. 26, 2002. She 
got down on her knees, bowed her head, put her hands behind her head and (Jose) 
Sandoval shot her in the back of the head. He shot 3 people that day. There 
were 5 people shot in 40 seconds."

Tuttle says she watched the film of her daughter, a bank customer, being shot 
at the trial and sentencing hearings of Jose Sandoval and 2 other gunmen - 
Jorge Galindo and Erick Vela - convicted and sentenced to death row in the bank 
robbery.

She's invested in repealing the Nebraska Legislature's striking down of the 
death penalty, she said.

Some petition circulators are receiving pay. She's simply volunteering her 
time, explaining the petition from county to county, event to event.

"I am doing this because I want justice," she said. "For justice, the families 
need it (the death penalty) to be carried out."

In May, the Nebraska Legislature repealed the death penalty in a vote on LB 
268. Opponents launched a referendum effort in the wake of the Legislature's 
30-19 override of Gov. Pete Ricketts' veto of the death penalty repeal law.

"30 legislators pushed the wrong button that day," she said. She insists that 
legislators didn't listen to their constituents when they repealed the law. She 
has been comforted by Gov. Pete Ricketts, who she believes will use the death 
penalty. She's spoken before Nebraska sheriffs at the invitation of Pierce 
County Sheriff Rick Eberhardt, a sheriff being vocal about his opposition of 
the death penalty repeal.

The availability of the death penalty isn't important to just families of 
murder victims, Tuttle said. As she has circulated the petition, she said, she 
has talked to people in communities with death penalty cases. Cases affect 
family members, friends and others who knew victims, she said. She claims that 
law enforcement have told her that they are concerned for their own lives 
because of the repeal of the death penalty, saying that law enforcement believe 
that suspects will be more likely to kill cops than ever before.

"We have to keep the death penalty," she said. "We have to keep the rest of the 
people safe. Keep Nebraska safe."

As Tuttle stood in front of the Scotts Bluff County Courthouse and Scotts Bluff 
County Administration buildings in Gering, she had a steady flow of people 
signing the petition. She explained the petition to signers and many talked to 
her about the issue.

"I had a lady who works at a nursing home who signed this," she says in one 
exchange with a signer. "She says that nursing home residents don't get as good 
of care and facilities as death row inmates."

She and the signer express that they believe that prison inmates get better 
food, medical care and even television and computers, all on the taxpayer's 
dollar, than a normal citizen.

In other exchanges, petition signers talk about the probability of an innocent 
person being on death row - one man says that its possible, "but not as likely 
because of forensics today." Others have worked in law enforcement or 
government and tell her they support her efforts. Some talk about the 2 Scotts 
Bluff County men - Raymond Mata and Jeffrey Hessler - on death row for their 
crimes. She answers questions and explains the referendum process to people.

As of Thursday, Tuttle estimated she had gathered 900 signatures on her own. 
She's been working since the middle of June, traveling across Nebraska, She has 
visited 12 of Nebraska's counties, gathering petitions in front of stores and 
at events like farm and ranch expos and rodeos.

For the issue to be on the ballot, petition circulators need to gather 
signatures from at least 10 percent of the voters in 38 of Nebraska's 93 
counties. For Scotts Bluff County to be among those counties, 2,327 people must 
sign Tuttle's or other petitions on the issue. Tuttle said that petition 
gathers have set their sights on gathering 120,000 to 150,000 signatures, 
knowing that some of the signatures will be struck because a signer is not 
registered, may have incorrect information or can't otherwise be verified. The 
effort needs 113,459 signatures to be on the ballot in the 2016 general 
election.

"It will be there. It will be on the ballot," Tuttle tells signers as they walk 
away from signing the petition.

(source: Scottsbluff Star Herald)






NEW MEXICO:

NM Gov. renews call for death penalty as justice system reform weighed


State leaders, including Governor Susana Martinez, discussed possible solutions 
to New Mexico's beleaguered justice system in the wake of an investigation 
about the state's 'boomerang thugs.'

KOB revealed how there are only 12 officers tasked with locating roughly 1,700 
absconders and learned many criminals charged with child sex crimes have 
mastered the art of receiving sweetheart plea deals.

Commit a violent crime, there should be expectations -- courtrooms, fines and 
handcuffs. However, the system that's supposed to uphold those expectations, 
and keep the worst of the worst criminals locked up, has fallen apart.

"So, the problem isn't throwing people in jail, or sending people to prison, 
it's who we send to prison," Rep. Moe Maestas, D-Albuquerque, said.

He's one of the state justice system's bigger critics. He's been calling for 
reforms for years.

"We need swift and certain justice," Maestas said.

He said too many criminals often languish in jail cells awaiting trial, leading 
judges to sign off on plea deals that raise eyebrows.

Maestas said the system is backwards when it comes to prosecuting drug crimes 
versus violent crimes. He said drug users are demonized, in need of help, as 
violent criminals go free.

"To prosecute violent crimes, it is very labor intensive," Maestas said. "You 
have to build a relationship with the alleged victim, and that's just not being 
done."

Andrew Romero. Gary Coca. Abel Monje-Cardoca. They went through a system that 
allows violent people to fall off the grid time and again. Catching them again 
is nearly impossible because there's hardly anyone to do it.

Corrections Department Secretary Gregg Marcantel is just as frustrated as the 
12 people on his fugitive task force unit responsible for trying to round up 
the absconders.

"It's a never-ending game, a revolving door," one of them said.

That comes as Secretary Marcantel struggles to keep people working in the 
state's prisons.

"I hate to admit this, but I compete with McDonald's in Santa Fe for my staff," 
he said.

Marcantel said some prospective employees to corrections facilities in Santa Fe 
would prefer to flip burgers for the city's minimum wage of $10.84 rather than 
earn slightly more, $12.35, to be a corrections officer cadet.

KOB approached Governor Martinez, a longtime prosecutor, to hear her thoughts 
on a justice system that seems badly broken.

Last year, she supported a pay raise for some corrections officers, which 
helped reduce job vacancies in one office from 50 % to 5 %. Her office said it 
improved the career ladder and offered promotion opportunities for probation 
and parole officers.

Martinez also wants to beef up the fugitive task force unit to send a message 
to absconders.

"We have got to make sure that they understand there's a unit out there looking 
for you," she said. "[The problem is] when you abscond, there's no consequence 
to absconding." She said lawmakers should step in for once to make laws and 
penalties tougher while allocating more resources to the Corrections Department 
on the whole.

Martinez also said she wants lawmakers to reinstate the death penalty in New 
Mexico, which was abolished in 2009. She said, in her experience, criminal 
offenders feel more compelled to cooperate with investigators when confronted 
with it.

She points to the case against Andrew Romero as a good reason why the death 
penalty is necessary.

Martinez is the wife of a longtime police officer.

"When I see my husband walk out the door, you don't know they're coming back." 
she said. "And I want to know that there will be justice at the end of the day 
if he doesn't come back because someone killed him."

Martinez agrees violent criminals should expect to be punished just as the rest 
of us expect to be safe.

(source: KOB news)