[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----COLO., WYO., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

July 25



COLORADO:

Judge: juror's electric chair shirt 'had no meaning'


Judge Carlos Samour decided Friday morning to investigate an alternate juror's 
decision to wear a T-shirt sporting images of an electric chair to the death 
penalty portion of the trial of the murderer who shot killed 12 people in an 
Aurora movie theater.

After investigating the matter at the request of defense attorney Dan King, 
Samour ultimately decided that the T-shirt from the band Metallica "had no 
meaning" and decided to move forward with the trial.

"To be candid, this falls into the category, for me, of 'just when you think 
you've seen it all' something that happens in this case," King said, after 
handing the judge a copy of an article published by 9NEWS on Thursday. "I, 
frankly, am at a loss, your honor, about what to do about this, if anything."

King went on to suggest that the court should try to figure out why juror 983 
wore the t-shirt for Metallica's 1984 album "Ride the Lightning" by questioning 
him.

Prosecutors said they noticed the shirt in court Thursday, and also offered the 
court a theory about the album's title track being in opposite of the imagery.

"That particular song from that album 'Ride the Lightning' can certainly be 
interpreted more as an anti-capital punishment type of song," said prosecutor 
Jacob Edson.

The judge brought in the alternate juror to ask why he wore a Metallica T-shirt 
to the trial.

"I didn't think we were actually going to get in the courtroom yesterday," 
Juror 983 said.

Alternate jurors were being kept in a separate room from jurors on Thursday 
morning, while the 12 deliberating jurors worked on a verdict to decide there 
were aggravating factors that potentially qualify the convicted mass murderer 
in the case for the death penalty.

The judge asked specifically whether the juror intended to convey any message 
by wearing the shirt.

"No, no intention of any message at all," the man replied. "Just, I like the 
group."

The juror in question has worn metal-themed shirts to court before.

"I don't think it even registers with him what was on the back of the T-shirt," 
observed District Attorney George Brauchler, after the man left the courtroom. 
"I think he felt like he was answering the court in terms of 'geez, I would 
have worn a better T-shirt had I known I was going to be in court.'"

The defense and judge agreed that the juror seemed unaware of the imagery of an 
execution on the shirt and decided there was no message intended by it.

The judge went on to opine on this reporter's motive for publishing the story 
in the first place.

"He made a story out of it because he wanted to show he's the smartest kid in 
the classroom," Samour said. "And he even mentioned that in his story, too. 
'None of the lawyers and the judge noticed it.'"

(source: WMAZ news)


WYOMING:

Judge Appoints Defense Team for Dale Eaton in Death Sentence Re-hearing


Natrona County District Attorney Mike Blonigen's desire to hold new death 
penalty hearing for murderer Dale Eaton inched forward Friday.

During a short status conference, Natrona County District Court Judge Daniel 
Forgey named 2 attorneys to handle the defense of Eaton, who was convicted in 
2004 of the 1988 murder of 18-year-old Lisa Marie Kimmell and was sentenced to 
death.

Eaton himself was not in court on Friday.

The legal wranglings began November when Wyoming U.S. District Court Judge Alan 
Johnson overturned the sentence, writing that the state violated Eaton's Sixth 
and 14th Amendment rights by failing to provide or allow effective 
representation.

That sent the case back to Natrona County District Court.

Further complicating matters is that Johnson's order required a new death 
penalty hearing to be set within 120 of his order.

Johnson gave Blonigen the choice of letting Eaton serve a life sentence without 
the possibility of parole or to again argue for the death penalty. Blonigen 
wanted the death penalty.

Eaton's murder conviction itself is not being challenged.

A new hearing for the death penalty in district court would require Eaton to 
have a defense team not related to the Wyoming Public Defender's office.

On Jan. 5, Blonigen filed a motion asking the court for an evaluating of 
Eaton's competency and for the appointment of a defense counsel, and to let the 
state district court know he was seeking the death penalty.

Terry Harris, who is representing Eaton in the federal courts, told the state 
district court 15 days later that he wanted a delay in the state proceedings 
until matters in federal court had been resolved, according to a document filed 
by Forgey. Any state district court proceedings would be premature, Harris 
wrote.

That, in effect, stopped Johnson's 120-day deadline.

On July 1, Forgey wrote that Harris had not sent state district court any 
information indicating the federal proceedings were over since Harris' Jan. 20 
request to delay the proceedings. "This court is perplexed, under these 
circumstances, to learn that there appear to be ongoing issues litigated in the 
federal court regarding this court having to yet appointed the defendant 
counsel," Forgey wrote.

Blonigen, however, wanted the state court to proceed regardless of Eaton's 
legal matters before the Wyoming U.S. District Court or the 10th U.S. Circuit 
Court of Appeals.

So Friday, Forgey held the status conference to further move along the local 
proceedings.

He appointed Harris as associate counsel for Eaton. And Forgey will name Sean 
O'Brien as the lead counsel as soon as certain paperwork is cleared through the 
Wyoming State Bar. Harris and O'Brien are part of Eaton's legal team in the 
federal habeas corpus hearing in federal court.

(source: k2radio.com)






CALIFORNIA:

Jury returns 1st-degree murder verdict in death penalty case involving Vallejo 
officer's slaying


Henry Albert Smith Jr., 41, showed no emotion as the verdicts that make him 
eligible for the death penalty were read Friday, while the wife of the Vallejo 
police officer he was found guilty of killing in 2011, sitting just feet away, 
fought to contain hers.

After a monthlong trial and weeks of deliberations that went in fits and starts 
due to repeated illnesses and other juror issues, an 11-woman, 1-man jury 
convicted Smith, a Fairfield resident, of 1st-degree murder with special 
circumstances in connection with the Nov. 17, 2011, gunshot slaying of 
Vacaville resident and veteran Vallejo police Officer Jim Capoot. Smith, the 
jury ruled, robbed a Vallejo bank that afternoon, touching off a pursuit and 
foot chase into a North Vallejo backyard where Capoot was fatally shot.

A tense courtroom prior to the reading of the guilty verdicts remained quiet 
throughout most of the proceeding as both sides of the courtroom, mostly 
representative of Smith's family and supporters on one side and the Capoot 
family and friends on the other, obeyed Judge Peter B. Foor's order to refrain 
from making any outbursts.

In the front row, where she had sat for the entirety of the trial, Capoot's 
wife, Jennifer, surrounded by her daughters and family, sat with her head in 
her hands. Barely looking up after the reading of the verdicts, prosecuting 
Deputy District Attorney Karen Jensen was standing there, offering her hand 
from across the bar.

Smith was found guilty of 1st-degree murder and robbery with enhancements for 
use of a gun, along with being a felon in possession of a firearm. The jury 
also found special circumstances which alleged: murder during the commission of 
a robbery; murder to avoid lawful arrest; and murder perpetrated against a 
peace officer lawfully performing their duty, to be true.

Life in prison without parole, or the death penalty, are the two options the 
jury will now have to decide. They will return Monday morning to discuss how 
the penalty phase will proceed.

Attorneys have indicated previously that the penalty phase could take several 
weeks, and time would be needed for both sides to line up witnesses.

Complicating matters, a juror is expected to make a move out of state at the 
end of next week. No alternates remain.

Trial testimony indicated a masked man entered a Bank of America branch on 
Springs Road on Nov. 17, 2011. A security officer testified it appeared the man 
was disguising himself to look old.

Upon robbing the bank, the suspect was followed out by a bank patron, Nabil 
Saleh, who followed the robber's gold SUV at high speeds through the streets of 
Vallejo. According to testimony, Capoot was flagged down by Saleh at a 
stoplight, and Capoot quickly found himself in a high speed pursuit of the SUV.

The chase, captured on a windshield mounted video camera, showed a PIT maneuver 
at Mark Avenue and Janice Street. Capoot could be seen chasing the suspect down 
the street until going out of view.

One of the first officers to arrive on scene, Vallejo police Officer Peppino 
Messina, testified it was Smith driving the SUV, and later running from Capoot 
on foot.

Just after Messina exited his patrol vehicle and began to call for his K-9 
partner, gunshots rang out.

Running in the direction he last saw Capoot, Messina said some bystanders 
pointed to a house across the street. Capoot's lapel microphone could be seen 
draped over the fence.

Officers made it into the backyard only to find Capoot alone, laying 
unresponsive under an apple tree.

He was shot three times from behind, according to testimony. One bullet fatally 
entered his back under the protective covering of a bulletproof vest.

It was Vallejo police Officer Alan Caragan who saw a man down the street from 
where Capoot was slain hop a fence back onto Janice Street.

Officers raced toward him and took the man, identified in court as Smith, into 
custody.

Inside his left front pant pocket was a loaded .40-caliber semi-automatic Glock 
pistol.

When test fired, the Glock firearm produced markings on the cartridge casings 
that an expert opined were an identical to those found on the shell casings in 
the backyard where Capoot was slain.

Further evidence of the bank robbery was found in the SUV, which was registered 
to Smith's wife.

A mask, bank bags with roughly $3,500, sunglasses and a set of fake teeth were 
inside.

A DNA expert testified that Smith was a contributor for the DNA on the mask and 
the DNA on the fake teeth were his.

Yet, after officers swabbed Smith's hands for gunshot residue at the Vallejo 
Police Department, the results came back absent for trace elements found in gun 
powder, an aspect Smith's defense argued pointed to his innocence.

However, after his hands were swabbed, Det. William Badour asked Smith if 
anyone else was in the SUV with him.

"He said, 'I was alone. No one else was in it,'" Badour testified.

Capoot never unholstered his weapon, according to testimony. A bullet strike to 
the slide mechanism rendered it inoperable, police testified.

The day Capoot was killed, he wore a T-shirt under his protective vest in 
memory of Art Koch, a Fairfield police sergeant killed in the line of duty in 
1984.

(source: The Reporter)

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

Oakland man arraigned Friday in Hayward officer's killing


50 uniformed Hayward police officers stood stone-faced on one side, and the 
suspect's family cried silently on the other as a dazed-looking 21-year-old 
Oakland man was arraigned Friday on capital murder charges in the killing of 
Sgt. Scott Lunger.

"We are devastated for the officer that passed away, I'm devastated for my son, 
but I believe in God, and I believe that while the investigation goes on, my 
son will be cleared," Mark Anthony Estrada's mother, Raquel Estrada, told a 
swarm of reporters outside Judge Scott Patton's courtroom. "I don't think he's 
guilty."

While police have been unable to determine why the 48-year-old father of 2 was 
shot, they've produced enough evidence to prompt the Alameda County District 
Attorney's Office on Friday to file special circumstances murder charges 
against Estrada that make him eligible for the death penalty or life in prison 
without the possibility of parole.

Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley said in a statement before the 
hearing that she is committed to doing everything within her power to ensure 
"justice will be served."

Lunger, a 15-veteran of the Hayward force, was fatally shot in the head about 
3:15 a.m. Wednesday after pulling over a driver for swerving through a 
residential neighborhood. A backup officer returned fire, hitting Estrada in 
his left side without ever seeing his face.

That officer's harrowing account of Lunger's killing was retold by his 
attorney, Michael Rains, who declined to name the 7-year Hayward veteran 
because, Rains said, investigators are looking into whether the defendant has 
gang ties that would put the officer's life in danger.

"Scott (Lunger) was very much a mentor to him," Rains said. "It's a tough 
memory to see someone you are so close to ... in that precarious situation."

The officer was just pulling up to Myrtle and Lion streets when he saw Lunger 
slowly make his way to a white Chevy Silverado truck registered to Estrada.

The officer heard Lunger say over the police radio that the truck didn't pull 
over right away, but Lunger hadn't seemed concerned, Rains said.

Lunger cautiously approached the driver's side door. He was about 10 feet away 
with his flashlight illuminating the driver's window in the early morning 
darkness, his gun holstered, when he reacted to something "disturbing," the 
officer told his attorney.

"He heard the sergeant say something that equated to 'Oh, (expletive)," Rains 
said. "Almost instantaneously, he heard what he thought was a gunshot and saw 
the sergeant just crumple to the ground.

The officer began to fire at the truck in self-defense, Rains said, but 
couldn't see who was inside.

Within a span of 30 seconds, Lunger was shot and the officer returned fire, 
emptying his clip with about 13 shots, then tending to his fallen partner as 
the suspect fled.

Rains said it was a very traumatic event for his client, who felt close to 
Lunger. Lunger was his field training officer, and he worked under him both on 
the SWAT and overnight patrol teams. He is on paid leave and receiving 
counseling.

About 20 minutes after Lunger was pronounced dead at Eden Medical Center, 
police located the Silverado. It had been abandoned at 98th and Edes avenues, 
not far from the Estrada family's East Oakland home. Detectives found a bullet 
hole and blood on the driver's seat and 2 expended 9 mm casings on the 
floorboard, according to a probable cause declaration. More bullet holes on the 
driver's side were consistent with bullets fired by Lunger's backup officer.

At a hospital, Estrada admitted he was shot in the driver's seat of his vehicle 
near A Street in Hayward but would not answer when asked who had shot him, 
police said.

A 9 mm handgun, unused rounds and an associated gun magazine were found at the 
crime scene. More 9 mm ammunition and casings were found at Estrada's house, 
police said. They also collected undisclosed evidence that Estrada is 
affiliated with a gang.

His attorney, Richard Pointer, said that Estrada has no criminal record and no 
gang connections. He is asking the public to reserve judgment against the high 
school graduate and roofer, whom his mother described as a "good boy" with a 
"good heart," as the investigation continues to unfold.

He is being held without bail and returns to court Aug. 25. Lunger's funeral is 
scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday at Oracle Arena in Oakland.

(source: San Jose Mercury News)






USA:

Fell loses bid to block death penalty trial


Donald Fell's death penalty retrial will go forward after he lost his bid to 
have the federal court address unresolved claims of prosecutor misconduct from 
his first trial.

In an opinion issued by federal Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford this week, issues 
left from a 2014 retrial hearing were put to rest and Fell will not have these 
claims heard in court.

Before Crawford's decision, Fell's defense had filed a motion claiming Fell was 
entitled to relief beyond a retrial - including dismissal of charges or 
dismissal of the death penalty - because of his accusations against the 
prosecution.

"The court concludes that the claims raised by the defense are legally 
insufficient to bar a retrial or the death notice, and accordingly denies both 
motions," Crawford wrote in his decision.

After Fell was convicted and sentenced to death in 2006 for the 2000 kidnapping 
and killing of 53-year-old Terry King of North Clarendon, he filed claims of 
juror and prosecutor misconduct.

His claims led to a retrial hearing last year. After ruling there was juror 
misconduct, federal Judge William K. Sessions III ordered a retrial for Fell; 
the remaining claims were not heard by Sessions because there would be a new 
trial.

In recent pretrial hearings, Fell's new defense team brought these unresolved 
issues to U.S. District Court and Crawford invited them to file a brief 
regarding these claims.

Fell alleges the prosecution was improper, inflammatory and included misstated 
information during his jury trial and sentencing.

"In its closing argument in the penalty phase, the prosecutor greatly 
exaggerated the nature and result of the alleged assault on a young man named 
Eike," his defense wrote, referring to an incident when Fell allegedly beat a 
man into a coma.

At issue was the use of the word "coma," which is defined as a loss of 
consciousness for more than six hours. The man was unconscious for less than 
one hour, according to court records.

The defense was seeking to prove intentional prosecutor misconduct that would 
bar a retrial, Crawford wrote in this opinion.

"The court must provide him with adequate remedies for the constitutional 
violations, which potentially include dismissal of the charges and/or the death 
notice," Fell's defense wrote in the motion to revisit the unresolved issues.

According to Crawford's decision, the court has already granted the defendant a 
new trial.

"The law of case doctrine commands that when a court has ruled on an issue, 
that decision should generally be adhered to by that court in subsequent stages 
in the same case," the judge wrote.

Fell claims his case is different because it is a death penalty case and there 
are repeated instances of alleged intentional misconduct.

"The court concluded, however, that none of the misconduct Fell has identified 
- individually or in the aggregate - was deliberately committed to provoke a 
mistrial and avoid an anticipated sentence of less than death." Crawford wrote.

Also at issue in the pretrial phase of his new trial, was whether Fell should 
be shackled during his hearings.

Crawford ruled he should, citing several violent incidents during Fell's 
incarceration, including a 2012 incident in a Terre Haute, Ind., prison where 
Fell allegedly stabbed another inmate.

"There are several reasons for this decision. The principal one is that Mr. 
Fell was involved in a serious incident involving another inmate several years 
ago," Crawford wrote in his shackling decision. "The other is that this judge 
is new to the case and to Mr. Fell. A little caution at the outset is generally 
appropriate and rarely a cause for regret."

Because the issue of Fell's "dangerousness" has come to light in the pretrial 
issues, his defense filed a motion Thursday for the release of all his bureau 
of prison documents, dating back to 2000.

A hearing is scheduled in Burlington on Sept. 11. His retrial for the death of 
Terry King is scheduled for September 2016.

Fell is currently housed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

(source: The Rutland (Ver.) Herald)

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

The Death of Capital Punishment?


On June 29, the Supreme Court's final day in session, Justice Stephen Breyer 
went out of his way to issue a 40-page opinion questioning - denying, really - 
the constitutionality of the death penalty. In addition to being rich in 
metaphorical intrigue - attacking that most final of punishments on the Court's 
final day in session - Breyer's maneuver signals what will be the latest 
installment of the Court's relentless advance against our outmoded morality.

There is good reason to suspect that the death penalty's days are numbered. 
Consider the following: Breyer's opinion was joined by Justice Ruth Bader 
Ginsburg, which means it will take just three more votes to secure a victory 
against the death penalty. Is there really any doubt as to how Justices Sonia 
Sotomayor and Elena Kagan will vote? That leaves Justice Anthony Kennedy in the 
familiar role of casting the deciding vote. Since capital punishment will soon 
be subjected to withering examination at the hands of the Court, and since 
Republican support for it is slowly decreasing, and, further, since as the 
Washington Post is reporting, President Obama might soon be adding his name to 
the death penalty's growing list of prominent detractors, now is perhaps a good 
time to consider the merits of the conservative case against it.

Historically, the death penalty has not relied on any one type of argument for 
its justification. It has been supported philosophically, as the punishment 
that justice demands, and it has been supported empirically, as the punishment 
that most reliably produces certain socially desirable outcomes, for example 
safety. Recently, conservatives have challenged both claims. Let's consider 
whether they're right.

Writing at Bloomberg View, Ramesh Ponnuru explains why we shouldn't be 
executioners. He says:

The state has the legitimate authority to execute criminals, but it should 
refrain if it has other means of protecting people from them. ... We shouldn't 
execute people. But not because we might hurt people in the process, and not 
even because we might on some very rare occasion kill innocent people. We 
shouldn't execute people who are unquestionably guilty because we don't have to 
do it.

Ponnuru's argument is that the essence of punishment is the safety of society. 
Since we can secure safety without recourse to capital punishment, we should 
abolish the latter.

Ponnuru's problem is that he misunderstands the nature of punishment. Here it 
is important to make a distinction between backward-looking and forward-looking 
conceptions. The former focuses on the act itself and asks how justice can be 
recovered through the instrumentality of punishment. The latter instead asks 
how we can, again through punishment, harness the state's monopoly on 
legitimate force to produce socially beneficial outcomes. This distinction is 
not an innovation - it pits Immanuel Kant's retributive theory of punishment 
against John Stuart Mill's utilitarian conception.

When Ponnuru cites the safety of society as his overriding consideration, he is 
adopting an entirely forward-looking approach to punishment. But what about 
considering the nature of the act committed? Ponnuru is not wrong for seeing in 
the mechanism of punishment a device capable of achieving socially desirable 
outcomes; he is wrong for failing to appreciate punishment's primary function 
as a justice-restoring response toward the law's violation. As Igor Primoratz 
put it, "the offense is the sole ground of the state's right and duty to 
punish."

Beyond his neglect of a retributive rationale for punishment, Ponnuru also 
fails to give any support for his empirical claim that the death penalty is not 
needed in order to maximize safety. But a case could be made that removing the 
death penalty could harm societal safety. A regime that proscribes capital 
punishment is one in which the surpassing value of life is insufficiently 
respected. Why shouldn't we conclude that a likely effect of such a system is a 
depreciation of how life is viewed in other contexts? When the state tells its 
citizens that life is so precious, so valuable, that to illicitly take it is to 
forfeit one's own, it heralds the significance of life, recognizing its 
weightiness and thereby resisting its devaluation, joining that class of 
governments for whom murder is not just murder, but desecration. What Ponnuru 
doesn't see is that the best way to protect society is to promote life's 
sanctity.

Jay Sekulow, of the American Center for Law and Justice, is another 
conservative critic of capital punishment. He writes:

I'm opposed to the death penalty ... because ... the taking of life is not the 
way to handle even the most significant of crimes[.] ... Who amongst anyone is 
not above redemption? I think we have to be careful in executing final 
judgment. The one thing my faith teaches me - I don't get to play God. I think 
you are short-cutting the whole process of redemption[.] ... I don't want to be 
the person that stops that process from taking place.

What is commendable about Sekulow's reasoning is also what is most startling. 
He introduces theological considerations, which are most welcome in a world 
aggressively hostile to their application in public discourse, yet they're 
entirely the wrong ones. Redemptive concerns are not, under any theological 
framework compatible with liberalism that I'm aware of, relevant to the 
justification of legal punishment. What does a punishment's bearing on the 
redemptive prospects of the criminal have to do with the punishment's 
justification? Punishment is not a ministry.

Setting aside Sekulow???s bizarre spiritual concerns, his argument against the 
death penalty is ultimately a moral one. He has a moral problem with "the 
taking of life" as a response even to "the most significant of crimes." Let's 
therefore consider whether the death penalty is morally justified.

Under a retributive theory of punishment, the death penalty has been justified 
by the lex talionis, or eye-for-an-eye principle. On this view, what makes a 
death sentence right or just is its retributive function; the offense, 
intentional destruction of human life, morally requires a proportionate loss to 
be endured by the offender. No "ransom" is to be accepted, since no amount of 
money can measure up to that which is invaluable. As GWF Hegel once put it: 
"Since life is the full compass of a man's existence, the punishment [for 
murder] cannot simply consist in a 'value', for none is great enough, but can 
consist only in taking away a second life."

What seems most secure about the death penalty is its moral justification. The 
strongest case against it comes not from a theoretical challenge to its 
rightness, but from practical or procedural concerns. The problem is that human 
error is ineradicable. We can implement all the safeguards our imaginations can 
dream up, yet injustices will continue to haunt us, inevitable as they are. 
Still, it needs to be noted that this is not an argument against capital 
punishment itself, but rather an argument against our non-ideal implementation 
of it. So long as the strongest argument against it remains procedural rather 
than philosophical, the death penalty will continue to be justified, even if 
our highest court should declare otherwise.

(source: Berny Belvedere, americanthinker.com)

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

The battle continues on that grimmest of topics, the death penalty


The death penalty is a grim topic. It's taking a forceful act of my will to set 
me to the task of writing about it. But a few events have converged, one 
involving me slightly, and I want to tell you.

The event that involves me: On July 5, I agreed to be a plaintiff in a suit 
against the Missouri Department of Corrections. Four of us petitioned Missouri 
to stop illegal procurement of the drugs being used to execute inmates 
sentenced to death. The execution of David Zink was scheduled for July 14, and 
we hoped to stop it. Our motion was dismissed by the circuit judge and is being 
appealed. David Zink was executed. The day before he was killed, Missouri set 
the date for a 6th execution of the year, that of Roderick Nunley.

In a separate suit filed a week later by news agencies, the court ruled that 
"the public has a right to know the source of the illegal drugs the state uses 
to kill people in the public's name," according to the legal director of the 
American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, Tony Rothert. However, we still 
don't know the source.

Meanwhile, a new study released by University of North Carolina professor Frank 
Baumgartner calls Missouri's application of the death penalty so arbitrary and 
so unfairly administered that it could be unconstitutional. Baumgartner said in 
an interview that it's proof that black lives don't matter: Between 1976 and 
2014, there were more than 11,000 homicides and 80 executions, 2.1 % when the 
victim is white and 0.3 % when the victim is black.

David Zink seems to me to be an example of that arbitrary application. He had a 
disturbed childhood and dismissed his attorney to conduct his case himself. As 
a prisoner, he lived in an honor wing of the institution.

Meanwhile, Nebraska citizens are gathering signatures to hold a referendum on 
the death penalty following the state legislature's abolishing it.

In January 1999, Pope John Paul II visited St. Louis when an execution had been 
scheduled. In response to the pope's request, Gov. Mel Carnahan commuted the 
death sentence of a triple murderer, Darrell Mease. As I remember it, the men 
executed right before and after Mease both might have been actually innocent, 
and neither one has the same reputation of "worst of the worst" as Mease. 
That's ironic. The governor was heavily criticized for his act of clemency.

These executions hang heavy over our society. I certainly feel a cumulative 
weight of the deaths, though I try not to read too much about the cases. So I'm 
grateful I could join in a small legal action, an effort to halt the killing. 
And I hope that Pope Francis, along with his calls for climate action and 
rejection of abortion, remembers to speak for the men and women on death row.

(Mary Ann McGivern, National Catholic Reporter)