[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----VA., GA., OHIO, ARK.

[Rick Halperin]

Mar. 1


VIRGINIA:

Life or death in Virginia



With a decisive 56-42 vote on Tuesday, the Virginia House of Delegates defeated 
a bill that would have shielded manufacturers of lethal injection drugs from 
public view.

Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax, who sponsored the 
legislation, said it drew opposition from 2 potent constituencies: opponents of 
capital punishment and open-government advocates.

That's true. We opposed the legislation since it proposed to conceal a 
procurement process undertaken by state government.

But defeat of this legislation sets aside, for now, the more difficult question 
about the future of capital punishment in Virginia. And we firmly believe this 
is a discussion the state should undertake in a frank and straightforward 
manner.

It is the ultimate power of the state to carry out an execution. The subject of 
public debate since the nation's founding, it is a power too awesome to be 
exercised in our names without our knowing how, exactly, it is done.

Yet, that's exactly what our General Assembly proposed to do.

You see, states are having trouble obtaining the drug cocktail used to conduct 
lethal injections because the pharmaceutical companies fear negative publicity. 
Manufacturers spend significant sums to associate their pharmaceuticals with 
healing, so they are understandably reluctant to have those same drugs used for 
executions.

Drug-maker Hoffman-La Roche recently said it opposes the use in executions of a 
generic version of a drug developed to treat seizures. Par Pharmaceutical said 
Indiana's proposed to use one of its anesthetics in lethal injection executions 
is contrary to its mission, and moved to block its wholesalers from accepting 
orders from state departments of correction.

Virginia still wants to execute its death row inmates. So, in an effort to 
obtain the drugs needed to carry out those sentences, Sen. Saslaw and a 
bipartisan coalition came up with a plan to hire compounding pharmacies to mix 
up the 3-drug cocktail used to execute convicted murderers. It's a path several 
other states have pursued because pharmaceutical companies are balking at 
selling the drugs to them.

The problem from the viewpoint of open government advocates was that the bill 
would keep that pharmacy's name secret. It would also keep secret the names of 
the people or firms that supply the ingredients the pharmacy uses to make the 
three drugs in the state's lethal injection process. It would keep the names of 
those ingredients secret, too.

That means the people of Virginia would have no way of checking that the drugs 
the pharmacy mixed up would actually execute criminals in a way that was not 
cruel or unusual. That's the test under our Bill of Rights, the fundamental 
protection of all of our liberties and lives.

Importantly, it is not clear that every lethal injection process meets that 
constitutional test. A recent series of botched executions in Oklahoma and Ohio 
and a challenge now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court show there are big 
questions to be asked.

How can we ask, if we don't know?

On top of that, we wouldn't be able to know if taxpayers are getting a fair 
price for these deadly cocktails. We would not be able to know if the officials 
awarding the contract have any conflicts of interest in doing so.

About the only positive thing to come from this failed attempt at legislation 
was the light it shined on our squeamishness over the continued use of capital 
punishment in Virginia.

Public support for the death penalty is tested the moment Americans begin to 
question the manner in which we execute criminals. Stomachs turned when crowds 
that once viewed public hangings as entertainment were treated to the slow 
strangulation of a bungled drop, or more recently to tales such as 6 1/2 
minutes of spasms witnessed in a recent Arizona gas chamber execution.

In Virginia, there are signs of this unease. 15 years ago, we executed 14 
people. We have not executed anyone since 2013 and have no executions scheduled 
this year. If that doesn't change, we would have put to death just 2 people in 
a 5 year period, the fewest for any 5 year period since the late 1980s.

If we are to continue the death penalty, it is imperative that we trust it is 
carried out properly. The way to ensure that is to ensure our right to know 
about how it is done.

But the future of the death penalty should be central to the debate, not on the 
periphery. If we are this uncomfortable with carrying out executions - if we 
have to go to such lengths to keep the details from public view - then it's 
time to ask if capital punishment is still what's best for Virginia.

(source: Daily Press)








GEORGIA----impending female execution

After weather delay, Georgia ready to perform rare execution of a woman



After getting a temporary reprieve when her execution was postponed because of 
winter weather conditions forecast to hit the state, the only woman on 
Georgia's death row is again set for execution Monday.

Kelly Renee Gissendaner, 46, was scheduled to be executed Wednesday at the 
state prison in Jackson, but the Department of Corrections postponed it to 
Monday at 7 p.m., citing the weather and associated scheduling issues.

Gissendaner was convicted of murder in the February 1997 stabbing death of her 
husband, Douglas Gissendaner. Prosecutors said she plotted his death with her 
boyfriend, Gregory Owen.

Gissendaner told police her husband didn't return home Feb. 7, 1997, from 
dinner with friends in Lawrenceville, just outside Atlanta. His burned-out car 
was found 2 days later. His body was found about a week after that, roughly a 
mile from the car, in a remote wooded area. He had been stabbed several times.

Kelly and Douglas Gissendaner had a troubled relationship, splitting up and 
getting back together multiple times, including divorcing and remarrying, 
according to information provided by the state attorney general's office. Kelly 
Gissendaner repeatedly pushed Owen in late 1996 to kill her husband rather than 
just divorcing him as Owen suggested, prosecutors said.

Acting on Kelly Gissendaner's instructions, Owen ambushed Douglas Gissendaner 
at the Gissendaners' home, forced him to drive to a remote area and stabbed him 
multiple times, prosecutors said

Owen pleaded guilty and received a life prison sentence with eligibility for 
parole after 25 years. He testified at Gissendaner's trial, and a jury 
convicted her and sentenced her to death in 1998.

The State Board of Pardons and Paroles, the only entity in Georgia authorized 
to commute a death sentence, on Wednesday denied Gissendaner clemency. A 
federal judge in Atlanta rejected a request to halt her execution, and her 
lawyers have appealed that decision to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

If Gissendaner's execution happens, she will be the 1st woman executed in 
Georgia in 70 years.

Lena Baker, a black maid, was executed in 1945 after being convicted in a 
one-day trial for killing her white employer. Georgia officials issued her a 
pardon in 2005 after 6 decades of lobbying and arguments by her family that she 
likely killed the man because he was holding her against her will. Baker was 
the only woman to die in the state's electric chair.

Execution of female inmates is rare with only 15 women put to death nationwide 
since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed the death penalty to resume. During 
that same time, about 1,400 men have been executed, according to the Death 
Penalty Information Center.

Prosecutors offered Gissendaner the same plea deal that was offered to Owen, 
but she turned it down. Post-conviction testimony from her trial lawyer, Edwin 
Wilson, gives some insight into why, Gissendaner's lawyers argued in a clemency 
petition. They quote Wilson as saying he didn't think a jury would sentence 
Gissendaner to death.

"I guess I thought this because she was a woman and because she did not 
actually kill Doug," Wilson is quoted as saying, adding that he should have 
urged her to take the plea.

Victor Streib, a retired Ohio Northern University law professor and an expert 
on the death penalty for women, said it's clear that women are condemned to die 
far less frequently than men, but that there are so few cases that it's tough 
to draw any general conclusions.

"Statistically, yes, if you've got 2 cases and everything about them is exactly 
the same and 1 case is a woman and the other case is a man, the man is more 
likely to be sentenced to death," Streib said, but added that he wouldn't count 
on that as a legal strategy.

One reason women aren't sentenced to death as often is that they don't commit 
as many murders and when they do they generally aren't the "worst of the worst" 
murders that lead to the death penalty, Streib said.

Juries may also be more likely to believe a woman was emotionally distressed or 
not in her right mind at the time of a killing, which can spare them a death 
sentence, he said.

(source: Associated Press)








OHIO:

Prosecutor wants death penalty in Ohio pizza slaying



A county prosecutor says he will seek the death penalty for a man suspected of 
killing a pizza delivery driver in the northeast Ohio city of Lorain last 
December.

29-year-old Benjamin Davis of Lorain has been indicted on charges that include 
aggravated murder, felonious assault, aggravated robbery and tampering with 
evidence. The charges are related to the fatal shooting of 26-year-old Robert 
Caudill.

Lorain police have said Davis called the restaurant where Caudill worked on 
Dec. 1 to have food delivered to a Lorain motel. Lorain is about 30 miles west 
of Cleveland.

Davis was indicted Thursday. Prosecutor Dennis Will told the (Lorain) Morning 
Journal (http://bit.ly/1LWPH4N ) that his office will seek the death penalty 
for Davis.

Davis' attorney could not be reached.

(source: Sentinel-Tribune)

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

Death sentence in Ohio becoming rare



When a jury last week rejected the death penalty for a man who killed 3 
including brutally beating 2 women, it left Prosecutor Juergen Waldick asking 
the same questions he???s asked for a number of years.

What does it take to achieve a death sentence in Allen County?

That same question can be asked around the state.

In Allen County, Waldick said about 1/2 the cases he indicts with death penalty 
specifications go to trial. 5 have accepted plea deals for life in prison and 
in 1 a judge ruled a defendant was mentally retarded and could not face the 
death penalty under Ohio law.

In the 5 cases that Waldick has tried, he has achieved the death penalty in 2, 
the Eureka Street killings in 2002 in which 2 girls, ages 3 and 17, were shot 
and killed. 4 others were shot in the head but survived. Cleveland Jackson is 
scheduled to be executed next year for his role while the case against 
Jeronique Cunningham may be headed back to Allen County to be retried.

Waldick said achieving a death sentence is very hard and he rarely seeks the 
death penalty.

"Juries are reluctant. Locally, we found that. Not many murders get indicted 
that way," he said.

The director of the Office of the Ohio Public Defender Tim Young said only 
about 5 % of the cases indicted with a death penalty specification since 1984 
have resulted in a jury choosing the death penalty.

The big change came with Senate Bill 2 that went into effect July 1, 1996, and 
gave juries the chance to choose life in prison with no chance for parole 
instead of the death penalty.

"It dramatically changed the death penalty status," Young said.

Ohio has had a dramatic decline in the number of cases juries voted for the 
death penalty since 1996, Young said.

"It's to the point it's very difficult to accomplish the death penalty," 
Waldick said.

Before Senate Bill 2, some jurors in post-trial interviews who voted for a 
death sentence said they were worried the defendant may someday be released so 
they voted for death, Young said.

Juries now have an alternative, he said.

"Jurors reserve death sentences for very bad cases," Young said. "They want 
that person locked up but they don't want to take that person's life because of 
mitigation, that piece that makes the person human and makes them sympathetic."

Ohio Northern University Law Professor Antoinette Clarke said life without 
parole is beneficial to the prosecution as a bargaining chip.

"It gives prosecutors an out," she said.

Young said some jurors are just uncomfortable voting for the death penalty. 
There has been the execution of an innocent man in Texas that cannot be undone, 
he said.

Ohio has 141 inmates on death row with no executions planned for this year. In 
2016 there is an execution planned each month, Young said.

"In this country, for every 10 people we execute there is an innocent person 
released from death row," Young said.

But Waldick said, and Young agreed, in recent years the trend in cases going to 
trial where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty has been those where 
guilt is not in question and deciding the penalty is the main issue as it was 
in the Hager Church case in Allen County this past week where the jury chose a 
life sentence.

"The kind of cases that get a death specification are those that have 
overwhelming evidence," Waldick said.

Young believes the death penalty is slowly vanishing in the United States. In 
the past decade, at least 6 states have done away with it as a form of 
punishment, he said.

He said the process is unfair and biased, and he ultimately believes that will 
result in the end of the death penalty.

"Nobody can define the worst of the worst. In some counties someone would get 
the death penalty would not be charged somewhere else," Young said.

(source: limaohio.com)








ARKANSAS:

Arkansas lawmakers consider what's next for death penalty: Abolish it? Add 
firing squad?



Arkansas is approaching the 10-year anniversary of its last execution and 2 
lawmakers are trying to shape what comes next.

Eric Nance was executed Nov. 28, 2005 for the 1993 murder and attempted rape of 
a Malvern teenager. Legal challenges to the state's death penalty procedures 
have kept 32 other inmates out of the death chamber since.

A Senate committee last week advanced a bill that would eliminate the death 
penalty. That vote motivated a House member - the mother of a murder victim - 
to file a bill that would restart executions via firing squads.

And while legislators sort out where they want to go with the death penalty, 
the state Supreme Court is already mulling whether the Arkansas Correction 
Department can resume executions under an existing protocol.

Inmates challenged a 2013 law that they said give the department too much 
control in a process that should be reserved to legislators. Justices heard 
arguments last month and if they rule against the inmates, executions could 
resume - unless legislators change the law again.

"If there's a vacuum something is going to fill it," said Sen. Jeremy 
Hutchinson, R-Benton, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Hutchinson said he expects the abolition bill to die before the full Senate and 
that if a bill from Rep. Rebecca Petty, R-Rogers, gets out of the House, it 
would likely has a poor chance for success with his panel, where Republicans 
and Democrats are split evenly.

Petty's daughter, Andi, was murdered in 1999 at age 12 and her killer is on 
death row.

Hutchinson said it was unlikely that other capital punishment proposals will 
come up. House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Matthew Shepherd, R-El Dorado, 
said he had heard of "limited discussions" but had seen no bills.

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge last year emerged from a GOP field that 
differed not on whether Arkansas should have executions, but on which method 
should be used. She defeated a candidate who suggested a return to the electric 
chair.

Both Rutledge and Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson last week reinforced their 
support of the death penalty and indicated a preference toward lethal 
injection.

Rutledge didn't comment about how she specifically wants to restart executions, 
but her spokesman said she will continue to defend the current lethal injection 
law.

"A decision upholding the current statute is the quickest way to get the 
process back on track," spokesman Judd Deere said.

Larry Jegley, president of the Arkansas Prosecuting Attorneys Association, said 
he wasn't aware of any pending efforts to alter the state's capital punishment 
laws. 26 of the 28 Arkansas prosecutors said they were against the Senate 
effort to do away with the death penalty but Jegley said restarting executions 
isn't a legislative priority.

"There are a lot of things that have far greater and more immediate impact on 
law enforcement," Jegley said, citing the need to address prison overcrowding 
and sentences for juveniles.

If legislators and courts don't settle death penalty issues this year, it would 
likely be 2 years before the matter could come up again. Next year's session is 
reserved for fiscal issues.

"I don't think you should expect anything this session," he said. "I don't 
think there's much chance of anything changing in the interim."

(source: Associated Press)