[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----DEL., ALA., TENN., ARIZ., USA

[Rick Halperin]

May 9


DELAWARE:

Delaware announces support of legislation to abolish state's death penalty



Democratic Gov. Jack Markell has come out in support of an effort to repeal 
Delaware's death penalty.

Markell said Thursday that if a bill to abolish capital punishment reaches his 
desk, he would sign it.

In recent years, Markell has refused to say where he stands on the issue.

But Markell said the recent acknowledgment by the FBI that examiners in its 
microscopic hair comparison unit gave flawed testimony in more than 250 
criminal cases, including death penalty cases, before 2000, helped him reach a 
decision.

Legislation to abolish the state's death penalty cleared the state Senate last 
month on an 11-9 vote last month but faces an uphill battle in the House, where 
it will be heard in committee next week.

Delaware currently has 15 inmates on death row.

(source: Associated Press)








ALABAMA:

Judge vs. Jury: Overriding life in prison for death row



2 murders in 2 different counties, committed nearly 2 decades apart, which 
caused 2 families to be torn apart.

"To this day it's the most heartbreaking thing I've ever lived through," said 
Lori Holsomback, victim's sister.

"You're away from everything you love and know, it's kind of like being on a 
different planet," said Randal Padgett, who was sent to death row.

In 1990 in Arab, Alabama, Randal Padgett's estranged wife was stabbed to death. 
He was arrested and convicted of her murder.

"Well, the Judge sentenced me to death in Alabama's electric chair on my 
birthday. Which I couldn't believe because I couldn't do this thing," said 
Padgett.

Padgett said he was innocent through the entire trial, and stuck to his story 
for the 3 years that followed while on death row.

"It's not a good feeling, you think when is mine, when is my time coming? I 
didn't believe that God would let me die for something I didn't do, and God 
didn't," said Padgett.

Padgett's attorneys got him a new trial because of errors made in the blood and 
DNA tests that supposedly connected him to the crime. During a 2nd trial with a 
new attorney, Padgett still swore he was not guilty and this time, the jury 
agreed.

"All this time it seems like you're underwater and you're drowning, and if you 
don't get air soon you're gonna be gone," said Padgett. "Then, when that not 
guilty verdict, it's like you can finally surface and you can breathe."

Fast forward to 2006 in Montgomery, Alabama.

Jefferson County native and Montgomery Police Officer Keith Houts is shot and 
killed in the line of the duty.

"It's just someone that you think you're going to grow old with he's my older 
brother, he's 17 months older," said Lori Holsomback, victim's sister. "Then, 
in just 1 phone call, it was taken from me."

Mario Woodward was arrested for his murder and convicted, but a jury decided 8 
to 4 to give him life in prison.

"That was just devastating, that's what it said to me that his life is more 
valuable than your brothers," said Holsomback.

Now we get to the 1 thing these 2 cases have in common: a judge overrode the 
jury in Mario Woodward's case and gave him death. So did the judge who 
sentenced Randal Padgett.

According to the law, these 2 men would have never gone to death row in any 
other state.

"Only place he could end up on death row from an override is Alabama," said 
defense attorney Richard Jaffe.

In the United States in a capital murder case, when a jury comes back with a 
verdict, that verdict is the last word in all but 3 states. Delaware, Florida 
and Alabama have laws on the books that allow judges to make the final call, 
but it is really only happening in the state of Alabama.

"The main difference between us and Florida and Delaware, the other 2 states 
that have this system, is they have standards the judge has to follow. In this 
state, we don't have any standards, so the judge is free to do whatever they 
want to do," said retired federal judge, Judge John Carrol.

The way the law is in Alabama in a capital murder trial, a jury basically only 
recommends a sentence. The judge considers it and then issues the actual 
sentence.

There are only 2 choices: life in prison and death.

No matter what the jury chooses, judges in Alabama have the authority to 
override it and make a different call.

"It's almost used to change a sentence of life to death, and that happens in no 
other state in the country," said Carrol.

According to a report made by the Equal Justice Initiative in 2013, judges 
changing life in prison sentences to death happened 101 times. Switching a 
death sentence to prison has only happened 10 times.

So why would a judge go against a jury?

"I think most trial judges take very seriously the recommendation of the jury 
but again, sometimes we have information and I think the law takes this into 
account that the jury does not have in the final sentencing of the defendant," 
said Judge Clyde Jones of Jefferson County.

Information like a defendant's criminal history. That is what happened in the 
case of Mario Woodward.

In a copy of the judges' decision in the case, he wrote: "This court has access 
to information which the jury did not hear."

Like the fact Woodward "had an extensive criminal record involving firearms and 
the possession of a large quantity of marijuana."

In the case of Christie Scott, a woman from Russellville convicted of starting 
a fire that killed her son, when the jury recommended life in prison the judge 
basically wrote the jury got it wrong, saying "the court is a great believer in 
the jury system and following the jury when at all possible. Killing your own 
child for money by burning him alive is too much to overcome."

Because Alabama is the only place in the nation this is happening, it's getting 
a lot of national attention from the Supreme Court and news sources, saying 
Alabama judges "play god" and "appear to have succumbed to electoral 
pressures."

Even locally some say judges are using the death penalty as a political tool.

"More overrides occur in smaller areas where the judge has got to be tough on 
crime and make a statement and one of the ways to do that is to override a jury 
and say I'm for the death penalty, I'm tough on crime, I need to be elected to 
keep you safe," said Jafe.

"I can tell you right now I'm up for reelection in the next election and I just 
decided on Wednesday to give a guy life without parole so I think that shows 
you that judges are more about following the law than just an election you know 
judges are just like regular people we have to go to sleep at night and when 
you go to sleep at night you have to know you did the right thing," said Judge 
Clyde Jones of Jefferson County.

There's a lot of different opinions on whether judge overrides are right or 
wrong, unconstitutional or a necessity for justice.

In the case of these 2 families, Lori Holsomback said the judge overriding her 
brother's murderer's life sentence was an answer to her prayers.

"It was like someone stood up for my family, and someone stood up for my family 
and my brother and the Montgomery Police Department and the state of Alabama, 
and said this isn't right, this isn't fair, he's killed more than 1 person, 
he's going to death row," said Holsomback.

For Randall Padgett, now exonerated of his wife's murder, a judge override 
almost killed him.

"I used to think in the United States of America if you were innocent and had 
to go to court you had nothing to worry about. If you were innocent and told 
the truth and everything will be fine but it doesn't work that way," said 
Padgett.

No matter where you stand on the issue, for or against, in Alabama it's the 
law.

And if your life is on the line in a courtroom, the judge, not a jury, will 
decide your fate.

(source: WIAT news)








TENNESSEE:

Legal force backs inmates in electric chair challenge



Lawyers at some of Nashville's most prominent law firms are urging the state 
Supreme Court to allow inmates to move forward with a claim the electric chair 
is an unconstitutional method of execution.

22 attorneys, most of whom are from Nashville, filed a brief with the Tennessee 
Supreme Court last week citing "a common calling to promote justice and public 
good.]

"These attorneys recognize a responsibility to maintain and improve our system 
of justice," said Robert Goodrich, an attorney with Burr & Forman in Nashville 
who helped put the brief together. "The imposition of the death penalty is a 
significant challenge, if not the most significant challenge, to our justice 
system."

The state Supreme Court heard a case Wednesday and is considering whether 34 
death-row inmates can challenge the electric chair, the state's backup method 
of execution, as unconstitutional, even though none is currently facing 
electrocution.

The attorneys cite concerns that court justices also raised: There is no time 
frame for when the Department of Correction must notify inmates they'll be 
electrocuted instead of killed by lethal injection, the state's primary method. 
They say that creates a risk of inmates not having enough time to file lawsuits 
or seek last-minute stays, as is common before executions.

"Dismissal of the electrocution claims would result in tremendous uncertainty 
and insecurity in the administration of capital punishment in Tennessee," the 
filing reads.

They also cite 2 other states - Georgia and Nebraska - where courts have ruled 
electrocution is unconstitutional and say that ruling is still a possibility in 
this case in Tennessee.

"This issue needs to be fully briefed and evaluated and carefully considered," 
Goodrich said.

The way to allow that, they say, is to let the challenge move forward now when 
there is no deadline of an imminent execution.

Attorneys

The following attorneys said, via court papers, that inmates should be allowed 
to challenge electrocution protocols now, even though none is facing that 
method of death.

Knoxville area

David Eldridge, Eldridge & Blakney

Stephen Ross Johnson, Ritchie, Dillard, Davies & Johnson

Bradley MacLean

Cynthia MacLean

Nashville area

Robert Goodrich Jr., Burr & Forman

J. Patrick Warfield, Burr & Forman

L. Webb Campbell, Sherrard & Roe

C. Dewey Branstetter Jr., Sherrard & Roe

Matthew Sweeney, Baker Donelson

Donald Capparella, Dodson Parker Behm & Capparella

Jason Gichner, Dodson Parker Behm & Capparella

Gregory Smith, Stites & Harbison

William Leader, Leader, Bulso & Nolan

Edgar Rothschild, Rothschild & Ausbrooks

Christopher Slobogin, Vanderbilt University Law School

James Thomas, Neal & Harwell

Daniel Horwitz, private practice

H.E. Miller Jr (Brentwood)

John Oliva, private practice

Memphis area

Edward Bearman, private practice

Claiborne Ferguson, The Claiborne Ferguson Law Firm

William Howell

(source: WBIR news)








ARIZONA:

AZ death penalty statute upheld, for now



Arizona's death penalty statute was on trial in a Maricopa County Superior 
courtroom Friday afternoon.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers were arguing the constitutionality of the law.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that if a state is going to have a death 
penalty, the law must have a system in place to narrow down when prosecutors 
can seek the death penalty.

A group of defense attorneys have banned together on behalf of nearly 30 
defendants who could face the death penalty to fight the constitutionality of 
Arizona's statute. They have filed a motion to take the death penalty off the 
table in each case. They believe the law, as written, does not sufficiently 
narrow the circumstances of when the state can seek the death penalty.

Under Arizona's law there are 14 aggravating factors the state can consider in 
deciding whether to apply the death penalty. Only one of those factors needs to 
be present for a capital case.

That being the case, defense lawyers contend that nearly every defendant 
charged with 1st-degree murder is death penalty eligible.

Lawyers arguing on behalf of the state pointed out that the Arizona Supreme 
Court has upheld the constitutionality of the state's death penalty law in the 
past.

The prosecution believes the statute does have narrowing factors.

Judge Joseph Kreamer sided with prosecutors and denied the defense motion to 
throw out the death penalty. But Kreamer did make it clear that he believes it 
might be time for the state supreme court to review this issue again.

"When I look at the argument, the overall argument, let me first say I am 
troubled by what I believe to be a lack of narrowing in the statute. The 
aggravating circumstances have evolved," Kreamer said.

After the ruling lead defense attorney, Gary Bevilacqua said the judge's 
ruling, even though it was against him, was the most vindicated he's ever felt 
on a loss.

This now allows Bevilacqua and the other defense attorney's the opportunity to 
file a special action with the court of appeals. Their hope is that the issue 
will once again be heard by the Arizona Supreme Court.

(source: KPHO news)








USA:

Law Profs: SCOTUS Should Focus on Risky Execution Drug, Not Activists ---- 
Regardless of how execution drugs became unavailable, it's clear the drug in 
question doesn't work



Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a lethal injection case from Oklahoma, 
Glossip v. Gross, which focused on a challenge to a specific drug, midazolam. 
The case centers on whether midazolam, a drug which has been used in multiple 
botched executions, can protect prisoners from cruel and unusual suffering 
during executions, given its inherent limitations as a drug.

At oral argument, however, some Justices pursued a line of questioning that 
went beyond the fact that midazolam has no pain-relieving effects and isn't 
FDA-approved for use as a stand-alone anesthetic. Justices Scalia, Alito and 
Kennedy wondered aloud if their ruling inGlossip should consider midazolam's 
use against the alleged backdrop of anti-death penalty activists preventing 
"better" drugs from being available.

A new opinion-editorial in today's Washington Post powerfully argues that it 
should not. In "What Justices Alito and Scalia Overlooked on the Death 
Penalty," Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree and University of North 
Carolina Law professor Robert Smith argue that the issues raised about death 
penalty activists and drug shortages have no bearing on the core issue in the 
case:

"The fact that some pharmaceutical companies do not want to sell execution 
drugs to state corrections departments tells us nothing about whether Midazolam 
presents an intolerable risk that Richard Glossip will endure gratuitous 
suffering if the drug is used to render him unconscious."

The piece goes on to argue that even in the unlikely event that "some loosely 
defined group of 'death penalty abolitionists' coerced billion-dollar, 
multinational pharmaceutical corporations into doing anything not in their 
self-interest," it's crucial to remember that the Petitioners in the case had 
no hand in those hypothetical events:

"But even if you accept the premise that "death penalty abolitionists" 
convinced Big Pharma to stop selling lethal injection drugs, it doesn't change 
the fact that Glossip is not an activist member of the death penalty 
"abolitionist movement," nor did he directly or indirectly lobby pharmaceutical 
companies to stop selling lethal injection drugs. As a condemned prisoner, he 
lives in nearly complete isolation on Oklahoma's death row. He did not waive, 
and the Court should not ignore, his right to be free from gratuitous suffering 
based on the activities of some unnamed political activists whom he presumably 
doesn't even know."

As "What Justices Alito and Scalia Overlooked on the Death Penalty" argues, 
Glossip v. Gross presents an important question of whether midazolam will cause 
pain and suffering in lethal injection executions which would violate the 
Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Other 
considerations about perceived factors influencing the lethal injection drug 
supply simply aren't relevant.

(source: the-newshub.com)

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

Mistaken Identity 5 Contested Death Penalty Cases



Despite controversy, capital punishment still enjoys widespread support in the 
United States. According to a 2009 Gallup poll, 65 % of Americans support the 
use of the death penalty.

Of course, every death penalty case comes wrapped in some degree of debate, 
given deep disagreement over whether the death penalty is ever moral. Here is a 
by-no-means-exhaustive list of some of the most controversial cases of the 20th 
and 21st centuries:

Davis' case received national and international attention because of concerns 
about witness testimony. Seven of nine eyewitnesses who implicated Davis in the 
shooting later recanted their testimony, and others say that the man who 
originally implicated Davis was actually the killer. Public figures as diverse 
as death penalty opponent former President Jimmy Carter and conservative U.S. 
representative Bob Barr of Georgia called for reconsideration of Davis' 
sentence, but on Sept. 20, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to 
grant him clemency. The next day, a last-minute appeal to the Supreme Court 
failed.

Davis case triggered public ire in part because his sister has been fighting 
for his innocence for years, said UC Boulder's Radelet. Having a strong 
advocate can make the difference between an inmate who dies without much 
fanfare and one who goes out amidst widespread support. But public mood has 
shifted on the death penalty too, Radelet said.

"What's happened in the last 10 years in the United States is that there has 
been a dramatic increase in opposition to the death penalty," said Radelet. "I 
think that's part of why Troy Davis is getting attention."

The Davis case also grabbed headlines because Davis had "a strong case for 
innocence," Radelet said on the day of the execution.

"I have to admit, this one really stumps me," Radelet said. "It really 
surprises me. I'm just astonished that they're going to let this execution go 
forward."

In a rare move on Sept. 15, 2011, the Supreme Court halted the execution of 
Texas death row inmate Duane Buck. The stay was a surprise, because the Supreme 
Court rarely jumps in on death penalty cases unless there is doubt about the 
defendant's innocence; in this case, it wasn't Buck's guilt that led the 
Supreme Court to step in, but the testimony of a psychologist at his sentencing 
who said that black criminals were more likely to commit violence in the future 
than criminals of other races. (Buck was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend 
and her friend in 1995.)

The psychologist's comment has led to cries of racial bias, and in 2000, 
then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn (now a U.S. senator) recommended that 6 
cases in which the psychologist gave the racially tainted testimony be 
reopened.

All the cases but Buck's were, and all 5 of those defendants were re-sentenced 
to death. The Supreme Court will now decide whether to hear Buck's case. If it 
doesn't, Buck will have to again appeal to Texas' Board of Pardon and Paroles, 
which has once before refused to commute his sentence to life in prison. If the 
board again turns down Buck's request, only Texas Gov. Rick Perry could halt 
Buck's execution.

Death penalty controversy is not a new phenomenon. Italian immigrants 
Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in 1927 after a 
highly contested series of trials over the shooting death of 2 men during a 
1920 armed robbery.

Sacco and Vanzetti were followers of Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani, and 
anti-Italian sentiment almost certainly played a role in their execution, said 
Michael Radelet, a death penalty expert at the University of Colorado, Boulder. 
The accused men waged a then-unprecedented 6-year legal battle that went all 
the way to the Supreme Court twice, and public figures (Albert Einstein among 
them) called for new trials. But even a confession to the murders by another 
man, ex-convict Celestino Madeiros, could not save Sacco and Vanzetti's lives. 
They died in the electric chair on Aug. 23, 1927. Later, several anarchist 
leaders spoke out to say that Sacco was guilty but Venzetti was not, though 
historians still debate whether either man really pulled the trigger.

The controversy around Humberto Leal's death was not focused on his guilt, but 
on his legal rights. Leal, a Mexican citizen, was convicted of the 1994 rape, 
kidnapping and murder of 16-year-old Adria Sauceda, whose body was found 
bludgeoned on a dirt road in San Antonio, Texas. But police had not informed 
Leal of his right to call the Mexican consulate upon his arrest, putting the 
case on shaky grounds.

In 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that Leal and 
other Mexican nationals on death row had been denied their right to contact 
their consulate under the Vienna Convention. The Supreme Court in 2008 held 
that the International Court's judgment was binding, but Congress would have to 
pass a law to ensure individual states would comply. That never happened.

Citing fears that Leal's execution would harm America's standing in the world, 
the Obama administration entreated the Supreme Court to stay the execution 
until Congress could pass the binding law. The Supreme Court concluded that 
Congress had plenty of time to do so, and denied the appeal. Leal died by 
lethal injection on July 7, 2011 on death row in Huntsville, Tex..

Of the 235 people put to death during the tenure of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the 
case of Cameron Todd Willingham might be the most controversial. Willingham was 
convicted and executed for the deaths of his 3 young daughters, who died in a 
fire at the family's home. Prosecutors alleged that Willingham set the fire and 
killed the girls to cover up abuse; Willingham's wife, who was not home at the 
time of the blaze, denied at the time that he abused his children.

The crux of Willingham's case, however, revolved around whether the fire was 
set on purpose at all. Central to Willingham's conviction was an analysis by 
deputy fire marshal Manuel Vasquez concluding that lighter fluid or some other 
accelerant had been spread throughout the hallways of the home. But in 2004, a 
2nd fire investigator, Gerald Hurst, looked into Willingham's case. Hurst found 
multiple scientific errors in Vasquez's report and concluded that there was no 
evidence of arson. A 2009 report by the Texas Forensic Science Commission would 
later come to the same conclusion.

Despite Hurst's criticisms, both the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and 
Perry declined to halt Willingham's execution. He was put to death in 2004.

But that wasn't the end of the Willingham case: In 2009, the case became 
intertwined with politics after Perry replaced 3 members of the Texas Forensic 
Science Commission 2 days before a meeting on the report, leading critics to 
accuse the governor of trying to hush up talk of Willingham's potential 
innocence. When the commission released its report in April 2011, it took no 
stance on Willingham's guilt or innocence.

With Perry running for president, the Willingham case may again enter the 
public consciousness. But an admission of fault is unlikely, UC Boulder???s 
Radelet said. There have only been a handful of post-mortem pardons in the 
U.S., one in 1891 in Illinois and one in January 2011, when then-Colorado Gov. 
Bill Ritter pardoned a disabled man executed in 1939, Radelet said. With 
Presdential politics at play, he said, there is even less motive to look deeply 
at the Willingham case.

"If Rick Perry ever admitted that Willingham was innocent, his political life 
would be threatened," Radelet said.

(source: nation.lk)

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

End the use of jailhouse informants



At the Intercept, Jordan Smith reports on a bill from Texas that would end the 
use of jailhouse informants in death penalty cases.

The Northwestern Law School's Center on Wrongful Convictions found in 2005 that 
false snitch testimony is the leading cause of wrongful convictions in capital 
cases in the modern era of the death penalty, implicated in nearly 1/2 of the 
111 death row exonerations at that time. (As of May 4, there have been 153 
death row exonerations.)

"It's astounding, it really is," says Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at Loyola 
Law School in Los Angeles and the nation's leading expert on the use of 
informants. "Criminal snitching is an enormous problem for our justice system, 
in part because it's an enormous source of error." ... But a bill pending 
before the Texas Legislature would address the problem by banning all 
incentivized informant testimony in death penalty cases. Its chances are slim, 
but if passed, the law would make Texas the 1st state in the nation to 
eliminate the use of all compensated testimony in capital cases. The bill 
would, theoretically, still allow certain informant testimony, from jailhouse 
snitches, but only if the defendant's statements to the snitch are recorded - a 
measure that is akin to a model policy proposal supported by Northwestern's 
Center on Wrongful Convictions and the Innocence Project.

If the bill passes, I predict you'll see the use of informants in these cases 
dwindle to almost never. The reason: Most jailhouse snitches are lying. 
Informant testimony has become such a critical tool for prosecutors precisely 
because it allows them to put on testimony that is a) damning, b) easy to 
manufacture and c) allows b) to happen while giving them plausible deniability. 
This isn't to say that all prosecutors manufacture evidence by using jailhouse 
informants. It is to say that the way informants are treated by the courts 
makes it very easy to do so.

The whole concept of jailhouse informants defies credulity. The very idea that 
people regularly confess to crimes that could put them in prison for decades or 
possibly even get them executed to someone they just met in a jail cell and 
have known for all of a few hours is and has always been preposterous. Not to 
mention the fact that these are people whose word prosecutors wouldn???t trust 
under just about any other circumstance. When informants have later recanted 
testimony or claimed that police or prosecutors browbeat them into lying, a 
DA's office will quickly point to the informants' criminal records and lack of 
trustworthiness. But when they're helping to win a conviction, their word is 
gold.

Many prosecutors also feel that they're under no obligation to investigate the 
veracity of an informant's testimony. Here are a couple of examples of how that 
can play out at trial:

In one case I reported on several years ago, a parade of jailhouse informants 
all claimed to have sold drugs to a family. The totality of the testimony was 
implausible. If all the informants were telling the truth, this family that 
lived in a modest home in a small central Louisiana town would have been the 
biggest kingpins in the South. Yet the U.S. attorney stated at trial that it 
didn???t matter if he personally believed the informants. It only mattered what 
the jury believed. After the family was convicted, it was revealed that the 
informants had lied. Yet the U.S. attorney went on to use some of the same 
informants in other trials.

In another trial in Chesapeake, Va., a few years ago, Ryan Frederick stood 
accused of murder for shooting and killing a police officer during a drug raid 
on his home. Frederick claimed he thought the police were criminal intruders. 
There were 2 abuses of informants in that case. First, the police had probable 
cause for the raid only after 1 of their informants broke into Frederick's home 
to see the pot plants he was growing. The police claimed they had no knowledge 
of this, although there was some evidence that this had happened before. More 
troubling, during Frederick's trial, Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert put on 
a jailhouse informant named Jamaal Skeeter, who claimed Frederick admitted he 
knew the raiding cops were police, boasted about killing the officer and mocked 
the officer's widow. Ebert was named special prosecutor in the case and brought 
in from Northern Virginia. Frederick apparently made these statements 
immediately after meeting Skeeter, during their one hour per day of recreation 
at the jail. That in itself seemed improbable. But it seemed especially 
unlikely given the police station videos of Frederick sobbing with regret and 
vomiting upon learning that the officer he shot had died.

Then, something extraordinary happened. In mid-trial, another prosecutor in 
Virginia stepped forward to inform Frederick's attorney that Skeeter had a long 
history of lying and that no local prosecutor trusted him. This would seem like 
a pretty easy thing for Ebert to have discovered on his own. But again, while 
prosecutors are in theory ethically obligated to only put on evidence they 
believe is true, there's no way to enforce that obligation. In fact, there's 
some incentive for them not to investigate their informants' claims. Doing so 
could arguably put them in the role of investigators, or police. So long as 
they're performing prosecutor duties, prosecutors are protected from civil 
liability by absolute immunity. But once they take on duties normally conferred 
to cops, they're protected only by the qualified immunity given to police. 
(Qualified immunity is still tough to get past, but it's also a step down from 
absolute immunity.)

And of course, all of this is before we even get to the problem of prosecutors 
giving informants time off their own sentences in exchange for their testimony.

This Texas bill is a good 1st step. It's a pretty significant 1st step. But if 
we can admit that the use of jailhouse informants is fraught enough with 
problems that we want to keep the practice out of death penalty cases, I'm not 
sure why we'd be okay with allowing it in cases that could result in 
decades-long prison sentences.

(source: Radley Balko, Washington Post)

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

Witness describes gas-soaked rug in Holmes' apartment



A bomb expert who stepped into Aurora theater shooter James Holmes 
booby-trapped apartment testified Friday that the carpet "sloshed" with 
gasoline as he walked across it.

Sgt. Shane Heiter of the Adams County Sheriff's Office said he helped dismantle 
the explosives and incendiary devices arrayed on the apartment's floor in the 
hours after the July 20, 2012, shooting at the movie theater that killed 12 and 
injured 70. Prosecutors say Holmes rigged his apartment to explode and catch 
fire to draw first-responders away from the theater when he attacked it.

Also testifying Friday was Kaitlyn Marie Fonzi, who lived in Holmes' building 
and was awakened by loud music coming from his apartment the night of the 
attack. Fonzi said she knocked on the door, noticed it was unlocked, got a bad 
feeling about the situation, and instead decided to instead go home and call 
police. Investigators say the door was booby-trapped to set off the explosives 
inside had someone opened the door and stepped inside.

(source: USA Today)