[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----FLA., IDAHO, USA

[Rick Halperin]

my next posting to this list will be Saturday, June 13







June 1


FLORIDA:

Trial begins for Gardens man accused of killing cross-dressing man



Luis Rijo De Los Santos was haunted by bad luck the night in March 2014 that 
ended after he shot 3 cross-dressing prostitutes, 1 of them fatally, his 
attorney told a Palm Beach County Circuit Court jury this morning.

Disputing prosecutors theory that the 25-year-old lured the 3 men into his SUV 
with kind words and a welcoming smile, attorney Marc Shiner claimed Rijo De Los 
Santos was the victim of violent, drug-using prostitutes. When they tried to 
rob him, he was forced to retaliate, he told the jurors during the opening day 
of the murder trial where the death penalty is at stake.

"Mr. Rijo De Los Santos made some bad choices ... that night," Shiner said. 
But, he insisted, the Palm Beach Gardens man who held down 2 jobs while helping 
his girlfriend raise her 12-year-old daughter, is no cold-blooded killer. He 
acted in self defense, he insisted.

Looking for sex after his girlfriend fell asleep, Rijo De Los Santos thought he 
got lucky when 3 attractive blondes waved him down on North Dixie Highway, 
Shiner said.

However, when Tyrell Jackson and Michael Hunter got into his SUV, he realized 
they were men and ordered them to get out of his Buick Rendezvous. They refused 
and instead threatened him with a knife, Shiner said.

When they got out of the SUV at a convenience store on Broadway in Riviera 
Beach to meet their drug dealer, Rijo De Los Santos grabbed the gun he kept in 
the pocket of the vehicle and began firing. Jackson would later die from his 
injuries while Hunter, who was shot in the arm, recovered.

"He didn't know if he shot anyone," Shiner said. "He shoots the gun several 
times and they ran away."

Confused and dazed, Rijo De Los Santos headed south. Coincidentally, he sees 
the man who was with Jackson and Hunter when he initially encountered the trio.

"Do you know your friends almost killed me and tried to rob me?" Shiner asks 
Terence Chatman. Instead of responding, Chatman jumps into the SUV and also 
threatens Rijo De Los Santos with a knife. Again, faced with no choice, Rijo De 
Los Santos fires his .44-caliber semi-automatic handgun at Chatman when the two 
stop at a secluded area off Broward Avenue in West Palm Beach, Shiner said.

"He is not guilty of a single crime that night," Shiner concluded. "He got 
himself in a situation he never should have gotten himself in."

Assistant State Attorney Lauren Godden gave jurors a far different version of 
events. Rijo De Los Santos left his Palm Beach Gardens home with the intent of 
hunting down transgender men and punishing them, she said.

While Hunter and Jackson were friends, they didn't know Chatman, she said. 
Their only connection was that all 3 were cross-dressing prostitutes and all 
encountered Rijo Del Santos that night.

After seeing videos that captured much of what happened, she predicted jurors 
would convict Rijo De Los Santos of 1st-degree murder in Jackson???s death and 
2 counts of attempted 1st-degree murder for shooting Chatman and Hunter. The 
trial, that continues this afternoon, is expected to last a week.

(source: Palm Beach Post)








IDAHO:

Poll: End Idaho Death Penalty



Weekend Poll: A slight majority of Hucks Nation said Idaho should follow 
Nebraska's lead and become the 2nd red state to abolish the death penalty. 122 
of 241 repondents (50.62%) want the death penalty banned in the Gem State. 115 
of 241 respondents (47.22%) voted to keep the death penalty. 4 (1.66%) were 
undecided.

(source: Spokesman-Review)








USA:

Nebraska's death penalty ban is huge news



The fact that a conservative state like Nebraska has repealed the death penalty 
is a major landmark. It's a Nixon-visits-Red-China moment.

For many years, being anti-death penalty has been viewed as a liberal issue 
only. The momentum now is unmistakable. Ten states have either ended the death 
penalty or officially suspended executions in quick succession since 2007. That 
includes strong pushes for change in conservative states like Kansas and 
Kentucky.

Why? The public has seen us convict the wrong people, spend a fortune 
imprisoning people on death row - and they typically feel no safer as a result.

Little wonder public support for the death penalty has been falling for some 
time. A majority of Americans, when asked to decide between the alternative of 
life without parole or death, choose the former.

For some, like George Will, the death penalty is simply another failed 
government program. For others such as the redoubtable Sister Helen Prejean, it 
is morally wrong to kill, no matter who does it or why.

For many, it is a combination of practical factors that have pulled them away 
from support. As Justice Harry Blackmun said in his famous dissent in 1994, 
some Americans no longer wish to "tinker with the machinery of death."

American juries ruling on potential capital cases must be "death qualified" - 
that is, anyone who opposes the death penalty cannot sit. Yet at the same time, 
the jury must able to consider mitigating evidence.

These contradictions within the system itself make it unwieldy, expensive and 
prone to error.

The coalition of folks who ended the death penalty in Nebraska was similar to 
the one I had the privilege of assisting in Illinois: victims' family members, 
some law enforcement, the wrongfully convicted, fiscal conservatives, 
right-to-life advocates, and, yes, liberals.

We may not have agreed on many if not most things, but we agreed that the death 
penalty had failed. In Illinois at the time we abolished the death penalty, we 
had executed 12 people and exonerated 19, a dismal record.

That is what the Nebraska legislature found as well: The death penalty cost 
more, did not deter crime, didn't give victims' family members the peace they 
sought, and tended to draw precious resources away from other safety and public 
health issues.

Ask most of the front lines of public safety, doctors, fire fighters, police 
officers, teachers and the like if severe punishment is where we should put our 
resources, and they will tell you no. They will tell you we need better schools 
and mental health facilities, that the epidemic of drug addiction (including 
alcohol) would be better served by a public health approach.

They will tell you that the answers to questions about violence are not known, 
but that violence usually only breeds more violence. In fact the only study 
that found a discernible impact on the question of whether the death penalty 
deters crime was a study that showed that homicides went up by a few percentage 
points in the few days after an execution in the state where it occurred.

In the law there is a canon called "evolving standards of decency." What that 
means is that as we evolve as a nation and grow, we no longer find it 
acceptable to execute for theft (as we used to for horse thieves, for instance) 
or to put someone in the stocks or lash them with a whip.

The United States Supreme Court has found that those same evolving standards of 
decency forbid the execution of children or adults with mental retardation. 
What Nebraska's repeal tells us is that as a nation, we are evolving away from 
the death penalty entirely.

(source: Commentary; Andrea Lyon is dean of Valparaiso Law School----New York 
Daily News)

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

Poll: Voters evenly split on the death penalty



While American voters may be moving left on many social issues, the question of 
the death penalty continues to split voters almost down the middle.

According to a Quinnpiac University poll released Monday, by a 48-43 % margin, 
a plurality of voters said a person convicted of murder should receive a 
sentence of life without parole instead of the death penalty.

While the plurality support life without parole on some murder cases, when it 
comes to terrorism the tide shifts. The Q Poll found that voters said if a 
person is convicted of murder during an act of terror, they should receive the 
death penalty by a 58-36 % margin.

Going further, by a margin of 62-34 %, voters said Boston marathon bomber 
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should receive the death penalty for his conviction.

The issue of the death penalty has come back to the forefront in many states as 
companies continue to make it harder and harder for states to get the drugs 
used in the death penalty cocktail.

Last week, Nebraska became the latest state to outlaw the death penalty. The 
state's unicameral legislature overrode a veto from the state's governor to 
outlaw the death penalty in the state.

(source: KVUE news)