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

[Rick Halperin]

July 27



COLORADO:

Quinnipiac Poll finds Colorado voters oppose tougher gun laws----The poll also 
found that Colorado voters support the death penalty


A Quinnipiac University poll released Monday shows Colorado voters oppose 
tougher gun control laws, especially among men and Republicans.

The poll showed voters oppose such laws 56-39 %, with a 80-18 % opposition 
among Republicans. Independent voters oppose tougher laws by 59-35 % while 
Democrats support tougher laws 76-19 %.

According to the poll, men oppose tougher laws 69-27 %, while women support 
them 51-44 %.

The poll, completed as part of a swing state gauge that also included Iowa and 
Virginia, questioned 1,231 Colorado voters with a margin of error of 2.8 % 
points.

The poll also found Colorado voters approve 51-40 % of Gov. John Hickenlooper's 
work. The voters also approved of U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet by 41-34 % approval 
rating though the poll showed voters say 40-32 % that he does not deserve 
reelection in 2016.

Voters gave U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner a 48-28 % approval rating, according to the 
poll.

"With wide partisan and gender gaps, only 26 % of Colorado voters say the death 
penalty should be abolished and replaced with life in prison with no chance of 
parole," according to a Quinnipiac University news release Monday. "67 % say 
continue the death penalty."

The finding comes as jurors in the Aurora theater shooting case weigh whether 
or not to execute James Holmes for his 2012 attack on an Aurora movie theater 
that left 12 dead and 70 injured. The jury convicted him earlier this month.

The poll found Colorado voters support 63-32 % the death penalty rather than 
life in prison without parole for Holmes.

"With James Holmes awaiting sentencing for the movie theater massacre, there is 
barely a thread of sentiment in Colorado for abolishing the death penalty," Tim 
Malloy, assistant director of the poll, said in the release.

(source: Denver Post)






CALIFORNIA:

A death sentence with no date in sight


Michael Morales was supposed to be executed February 21, 2006, in California's 
San Quentin State Prison after a jury found him guilty of killing 17-year-old 
Terri Winchell. He had been convicted of beating her unconscious with a hammer, 
crushing her skull, then dragging her to a vineyard where he raped and stabbed 
her 4 times -- all part of a love triangle gone bad.

The execution, scheduled for 7:30 p.m., never took place.

An hour before, state officials notified a federal court that it could not 
provide a licensed physician to assist because physicians were ethically 
prohibited from participating in executions. No one was able to administer the 
only legally available lethal chemicals. The case eventually led to the state's 
current moratorium on all capital punishment.

It's been close to a decade since California executed a death row inmate, 
thanks in large part to significant state and federal legal challenges to its 
constitutionality as well as the years it takes to resolve each case.

"A death sentence in this state really means life without parole," says Paula 
Mitchell, an adjunct professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

There are 751 inmates on death row in California -- more than any other state 
-- and they've spent an average 17.5 years wading through the legal system. It 
begins with extensive jury selection for capital crime cases. Defendants often 
wait up to 5 years for appeal attorneys to be assigned, and even longer for the 
state Supreme Court to begin hearing their cases.

"The average time for the California Supreme Court to decide these death 
penalty appeal cases is about 15 years, but some cases have lasted 20 to 25 
years," Mitchell says. "Other states with the death penalty, like Texas, have 
an intermediate court of criminal appeals to handle the direct appeals and 
lighten the caseload for those states' courts of last resort."

Many of California's most well-known convicted criminals are far more likely to 
die in jail than face execution. While the state executed 13 people between 
1978 and 2006, 49 died from drug overdoses, suicides and other causes such as 
cancer since the last execution took place. Richard Ramirez, the serial killer, 
rapist and burglar known as the "Night Stalker," died in jail after more than 
23 years on death row.

Other high-profile cases are adding years to the waiting list: Scott Peterson, 
who was convicted of killing his wife, Laci, and unborn son, has been on death 
row for 10 years. Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old 
Polly Klaas, has been awaiting execution for 19 years. Kevin Cooper, who was 
convicted of murdering the Ryen family and whose case is featured on this 
week's CNN Original Series "Death Row Stories," has been on death row since 
1985.

Mitchell said she believes the lengthy process exists not just to provide 
procedural protections for the defendants but also because of the lack of 
political will at the state Legislature to restart executions.

"Politicians get to say, 'We have the death penalty, look at all the people we 
have on death row,' but the delays allow them to spare the public from the 
gruesome act of an execution," Mitchell said.

Statewide support for capital punishment has been steadily declining. A Field 
Poll in September found 34% opposed to the death penalty, and 56% in favor -- 
that's the lowest level in nearly 50 years. Voters narrowly defeated 
Proposition 34 3 years ago, which sought to replace the death penalty with life 
without the possibility of parole.

In July 2014, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney ruled the state's death penalty 
unconstitutional because it violates the Eight Amendment's ban on cruel and 
unusual punishment. Carney said inmates face sentences that "no rational jury 
or legislature could ever impose: life in prison with the remote possibility of 
death."

Many families of victims who support the death penalty continue to pressure 
Gov. Jerry Brown, an opponent of capital punishment, to uphold the law by 
taking the necessary measures to restart executions. The Supreme Court recently 
upheld the use of lethal injection drug midazolam that many had argued was 
"cruel and unusual punishment," causing states such as California to move 
forward with finding a new court-approved, single-drug lethal injection 
protocol.

"The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation should announce 
the protocol this November. The state will open up the procedure to public 
comment for a year, and after that district attorneys can go to Superior Court 
to set execution dates for condemned murderers," says Michael Rushford of the 
Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

That means Morales, who was sentenced to death 32 years ago, could see his 
execution rescheduled for as early as November 2016.

"Many of these families have made reaching justice in their case their life's 
work. They see restoring enforcement of the death penalty in California as 
something bigger than justice in their particular case," Rushford said.

Brown, who voted in favor of the failed Proposition 34's bid to do away with 
the death penalty in 2012, has pledged to uphold the state's capital punishment 
law. But as governor, he holds a trump card regarding all death row cases: He 
can try to spare their lives by commuting their sentences to keep them in jail 
until they die.

That is, of course, if 4 out of 7 state Supreme Court justices agree with him.

(source: CNN)






USA----book review

Living with death: Book Review: 13 Ways of Looking at the Death 
Penalty----Author's argument against capital punishment is compassionate and 
thought-provoking, but could go deeper

If you're going to put somebody to death for a crime, you'd want to be sure 
they'd committed it, right? Yet prisoners, guards, chaplains, lawyers and 
others who are acquainted with death row estimate that a sizable percentage of 
people there - perhaps 7 % - never committed the crime for which they are 
convicted. In 1/3 of death-penalty convictions that have been overturned, 
there's been a signed confession by the accused. In 75 % of those that have 
been reversed based on DNA evidence, the accused was "identified" by at least 1 
eyewitness.

Those are some of the statistics you'll find in "13 Ways of Looking at the 
Death Penalty," by Italian activist Mario Marazziti. The book is best for 
dipping into rather than reading straight through - less an analysis than a 
series of chapters on different facets of the death penalty.

Marazziti, who projects a compassionate, reasonable tone, is at his best in 
writing about people such as the curator of the prison museum in Huntsville, 
Texas - the state with the largest prison population in the nation - who says, 
"My feelings about the death penalty are very mixed. But I guess it ... goes to 
the basics that we shouldn't be killing each other."

In a chapter about death-row inmates who have been exonerated, Marazziti 
interviews Curtis McCarty, who was on death row for 19 years: "I learned 
humility ... I do not hate. Anyone. If I did I would still be a prisoner."

In a chapter titled "Life Row," Marazziti talks with murder victims' relatives 
who have come to believe that affirming life and putting people to death, 
whatever their crimes, are contradictory ideas. As Marietta Jaeger - whose 
7-year-old daughter was kidnapped and murdered - puts it, "The loved ones who 
have been wrenched from our lives by violent crime deserve more beautiful, 
noble and honorable memorials than premeditated, barbaric, state-sanctioned 
killings." These chapters in particular give the sense of how capital 
punishment affects the people involved - the accused, the convicted, the prison 
workers, the families of victims.

Marazziti points out that retribution, as a reason for putting people to death, 
often becomes emotionally empty. The cost of a murder trial and of keeping 
someone on death row for years of appeals is counterproductive, compared to a 
life sentence in prison. The experience of being on death row is often 
transformative for those who survive it, as they learn to value their life and 
the lives of others in ways they never did before their convictions.

The experience of overseeing the application of capital punishment often has 
transformative and unexpected effects.

Also thought-provoking are the chapters of statistics and facts, most of which 
could be useful in a game of trivia. Number of countries that execute by 
beheading: 1. Number of countries that execute for drug-related offenses: 13.

Least effective are the chapters about Marazziti???s international campaign 
against the death penalty, which read as if his community of Sant'Egido 
single-handedly built the movement, which actually has risen and fallen through 
most of the 20th century. Marazziti's practice of working on the level of 
governments and international diplomacy creates strange bedfellows for him, as 
when he lauds Uzbekistan, well known for its bloody repression of protesters, 
for eliminating the death penalty. He makes it sound as if the process of 
abolition is mainly a matter of petitions to governments, rather than a change 
in hearts and minds of populations.

The book leaves some questions unasked. Is life imprisonment without 
possibility of parole really a humane alternative, especially considering the 
amount of abuse and solitary confinement that takes place in U.S. prisons? 
Elimination of execution for drug-related crimes is a gain, of course, but what 
about elimination of the drug war? And if the president can sentence somebody 
to death by drone, doesn???t that count as a kind of death penalty? Similarly, 
the author doesn't devote even one of his 13 chapters to exploring how 
intertwined the death penalty is with maintaining social control and repressing 
minorities and political oppositions.

The book suggests that nothing fundamental in our culture needs to change to 
eliminate the ultimate punishment; Marazziti's view is that abolition would be 
consistent with the values of our civilization. But underneath its advocacy of 
democracy and humanism, Western civilization has a much darker tradition that 
includes warfare, torture, repression and exploitation, which kill many more 
people than are put to death by lethal injection. One likely reason that the 
death penalty exists is that it is rooted in this darker tradition, which 
ultimately elevates social control, property rights and profit over human 
rights. Yes, the death penalty needs to be abolished. But it's only a symptom 
of a much larger problem

(source: Street Roots News)