[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ORE., USA

[Rick Halperin]

May 13



OREGON:

Mom accused of murdering her 2-year-old daughter and slashing her 13-year-old 
child's throat in motel smiles in court as defense claims she's 'lost her mind'

Jessica Smith, 41, allegedly murdered 2-year-old daughter Isabella Smith in an 
Oregon hotel room on July 29

She also allegedly slashed the throat and wrists of eldest daughter, 13

She was under court order to return the girls to estranged husband Greg Smith 
the day they were discovered in the hotel room

Her lawyers claim she suffered a 'disordered mental state' at the time



She's on trial murdering her 2-year-old daughter and allegedly attempting to 
kill her eldest child as part of a custody dispute, but Jessica Smith gave a 
smile to the cameras as she appeared in court on Tuesday.

The Oregon mom, 41, is accused of dosing up her 2-year-old daughter Isabella on 
over-the-counter antihistamines in a Canon Beach hotel room on July 31 and then 
drowning the girl in the bath, before slashing the throat and wrists of her 
13-year-old daughter Alana and fleeing.

Alana - who survived the alleged attack and was found by a cleaner who called 
police - told investigators her mother had cut her with a razor blade.

Smith has pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated murder and attempted 
aggravated murder, and defense team claim she suffered a 'disordered mental 
state' at the time.

Because of the mental illness the defense claim Smith suffers from, her lawyers 
say the prosecution should discount the death penalty, according to Oregon 
Live.

'The death penalty should be categorically barred by the Eighth Amendment, and 
certainly abolished for persons suffering from severe mental illness at the 
time of the offense,' wrote Lynne B. Morgan, one of Smith's defense lawyers.

In January the prosecution said they had not decided whether to push for the 
death penalty.

Then in March they said the defense had provided any evidence as to Smith's 
supposed mental illness.

Smith went missing after the alleged attack on her daughters.

Police found both girls in a bed in n Room 3302 of the Surfsand Resort on 
August 1.

She was then found in her car 2 days later off a remote coastal logging road 
and arrested.

According to police affadavits seen by Oregon Live, Alana told medics that her 
mother had drowned her sister and slit her throat and wrists with a razor 
blade, as she was being flown to Portland's Doernbecher Children's Hospital.

A detective also claims the youngster told him her mother used a numbing agent 
on her neck.

Smith and her husband had separated in April.

The daughters allegedly did not want to return to their father's custody, so 
the violence was, according to a court affidavit was a way to 'get out of it'.

She was in the middle of a bitter divorce with husband Greg Smith at the time, 
and was supposed to hand her children over to him that day.

KPTV reported Smith's husband, Greg Smith, 'filed to end their marriage on June 
30'.

She then filed a restraining order against him on July 17.

Smith was under court order to return the girls to him the day they were 
discovered in the hotel room.

Smith has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Isabella and has denied slashing 
the neck and wrist of Alana.

The judge said the trial will now begin on June 28.

Greg Smith requested a mental evaluation for Jessica Smith from the court after 
she missed a June 23 court hearing, reports Oregon Live.

He had received strange text messages from his estranged wife that concerned 
him. It is not known if Jessica Smith was suffering from a psychological issue.

Smith's brother Nathan Judd revealed to KPTV that she visited him in southern 
Medford, Oregon, last year, bringing her 2 daughters along and seemed in good 
spirits.

Judd said Smith was 'super happy and outgoing, all smiles' but 'sensed a lot of 
fear' in her as well.

She admitted to struggling with the divorce and asked for a place to keep her 
pets.

'I can't imagine that my sister would ever do something like that,' Judd said 
of the murder charges.

'She had a heart of gold, and growing up, she never harmed anyone or anything 
and never spoke of such a thing.'

Police began hunting for Jessica Smith after her two children were found by 
housekeeping at the Surfsand Resort, Oregonlive.com reported.

'Housekeeping at the hotel had found a 13-year-old child that had critical cuts 
and a deceased infant,' Schermerhorn said in a release. The 13-year-old, later 
identified as Alana Smith, was flown to a hospital, he said.

Police earlier said Smith may be in 'a Gold 2007 Chevy Suburban with WA license 
plate APX3141 associated with the incident.'

'Our hearts go out to the family and it's always hard when there's children 
involved,' Schermerhorn said in a Friday press conference.

Schermerhorn told reporters Smith checked into the Surfsand Resort on July 30, 
and the 2 girls were discovered Friday morning at 9:40am.

There were no signs of forced entry into the hotel room, he said.

Schermerhorn said he could not provide a time of death for the baby girl. Alana 
went into surgery, he told reporters.

The attack on Alana Smith is being ruled an attempted homicide.

'We don't know at this time what [weapons were used],' Schermerhorn said.

(source: Daily Mail)








USA:

Beyond the death penalty



After the defense and the prosecution had rested their cases in the penalty 
phase of the federal trial to either kill or imprison Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 
panel of death penalty abolitionists gathered at Old South Church in Boston.

Old South Church stands at the finish line of the Boston Marathon and is less 
than 100 yards east of the detonation point of the 1st pressure cooker bomb, 
the one placed by Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The 2nd bomb, the one placed by Dzhokhar 
and which detonated 12 seconds later, lies one block farther west.

I arrived a half-hour early for the panel discussion, in case seating was a 
problem, but I needn't have worried. The only immediate concern I had was how I 
was going to see anything. It must be some cost-saving measure in churches that 
they only use 40-watt bulbs, or perhaps it is to do with the atmospherics. I 
managed to find myself an altar boy seat off to one side of where the panel 
would sit so I would at least be close. To warm myself up for the talk I 
sketched the table and plethora of media microphones. You have to love working 
in ballpoint for making you decisive. By the time I was done, the chapel had 
filled, and the speakers took their seats.

If anyone in the world had the right to vengeance via state-sanctioned murder, 
it is this panel of speakers. New Hampshire state representative Robert Renny 
Cushing chaired the discussion. His father, Robert Cushing, was shot to death 
on his own front doorstep in 1988. Julia Rodriguez's brother Greg died in the 
World Trade Center attacks. Bob Curley's son Jeffrey was abducted and killed in 
1997. And Bud Welch's daughter Julie died in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

Bud Welch spoke first. Bud's daughter was 23 years old and working as a 
linguist in the Murrah Federal Building in April of 1995. "The bombing happened 
on a Wednesday morning and her body was not found until Saturday morning," he 
said. She had just visited the front desk to meet a Mexican man who spoke no 
English, and was walking back to her desk with him when the bomb exploded. "If 
it had happened a few seconds later she would have been back in her department 
again." All of her co-workers in the back of the building survived the blast. 
"I have thought about those few seconds a lot," he said.

After "self-medicating" himself with alcohol for almost a year Bud visited the 
bomb site as he had every day since she had died, and thought, "I have to do 
something different because what I am doing isn't working." At first Bud's need 
for revenge fueled him. In the days after the bombing he hoped that someone 
would shoot Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols dead.

"On a Monday morning, at 7 a.m. on June 11, 2001, in Terre Haute, Indiana, we 
took Tim McVeigh from his cage," he said, "and we killed him."

In the months and years since the attack, Bud's opinion of the death penalty 
has changed. He believed that the attack on the Federal Building had been 
driven by "revenge and hate." He wanted to send his vengeance in a different 
direction. "Shortly afterwards, I started speaking out against the death 
penalty," he said.

Terry Nichols will spend the rest of his life in prison.

Next to speak was Bob Curley. Bob's son was 10 years old and playing in the 
front yard of his grandmother's home in 1997 when Sal Sicari and Charles Jaynes 
abducted him. "2 weeks prior they had stolen his bicycle. On that day they 
drove by and said, 'Jeff, come with us. We are going to get you a new bicycle.' 
He got in the car with them," he said, looking down at his hands clasped on the 
table.

The 2 men then attempted to coerce Jeff into having sex with them by offering 
money and a new bike. "But my Jeff knew right from wrong." Mr. Curley said. At 
least 1 of the men sexually assaulted Jeffrey before they suffocated him with a 
gasoline soaked rag, placing his body in a concrete-filled plastic container 
dumping it in a river in Southern Maine. Police divers found his body 6 days 
later.

"Given what happened to Jeffrey, I honestly don't know if I could feel any 
other way than to be in favor of the death penalty," he said, gazing at the 
assembled crowd with eyes like hardened flint.

Mr. Curley became a staunch advocate for the death penalty, leading the fight 
in Massachusetts to bring it back. As years went by, though, Mr. Curley began 
to realize that he felt pressured to be in favor of the death penalty because 
of his son's death, and that he felt obligated by society to want to kill the 
men who had done this.

"So much anger," he said, "but all the time thinking that maybe it (death 
penalty) wasn't all it was cracked up to be."

Both Sicari and Jaynes were convicted of the murder of Jeffrey. Sicari is now 
serving life without parole, while Jaynes is serving life with the possibility 
of parole after 23 years.

Next to speak was Julia Rodriguez. Julia said it was her first time ever 
talking publicly about her brother's death. Her talk was halting and distracted 
at times by memories.. "There is just so much pain, and it is impossible to 
find answers," she said.

After the attacks Julia joined other family members of 9/11 victims in opposing 
the death penalty for Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in 
connection with the attacks. Moussaoui is serving a life sentence without the 
possibility of parole at the same Federal Supermax prison in Colorado that 
Dzhokhar may go to.

"The death penalty is seen as an easy answer," she said, "but it is harmful to 
us to be complicit in a conscious act of violence and death."

State Rep. Cushing was the last to speak to the small gathering. Cushing lost 
his father in June of 1988 when Robert McLaughlin, an off-duty police officer, 
and his wife, Susan, bent on avenging an earlier incident, shot him at his 
front door with a shotgun checked out of the police evidence locker. 10 years 
earlier, Cushing's father had witnessed Officer McLaughlin assault an elderly 
woman while on duty.

Cushing said he had always been staunchly against the death penalty. He 
recounted an incident in a local grocery store after his father had been 
killed. "An old family friend said to me, 'I hope they fry the bastards.'" His 
friend, who had known him for years, assumed that he would change his opinion 
on capital punishment because of his father's murder. "But I realized that if I 
changed my position, that would only compound the problem," he said. "If we let 
those who kill turn us into murderers, evil triumphs and we are all worse off."

Robert and Susan McLaughlin were convicted of the murder of Robert Cushing and 
are serving sentences of life imprisonment without parole.

"Sometimes people will think you must be a psycho or a saint, that there must 
be something off with you if you don't want to see this person killed," he 
said.

In 2004, Cushing founded Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights, an 
organization of family members of murder victims and family members of the 
executed who oppose the death penalty in all cases.

There was no dissent in the room, just a final call from the audience to 
continue the protest demonstration outside the courthouse where Dzhokhar 
Tsarnaev's fate will be decided.

(source: Richard Johnson, Washington Post)

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

4 Christian Denominations With the Most Conservative Stance on Death Penalty



Laws governing whether a person should be put to death for committing a serious 
crime vary widely from one state to the next in the United States.

Alongside the differing laws, Christian denominations have expressed various 
viewpoints on the issue as well.

Below are 4 faiths that trend toward the most conservative stances on the death 
penalty:

1. Assemblies of God

The Assemblies of God leaves the stance on the death penalty up to individual 
believers, but cites both Old Testament and New Testament permissions for 
capital punishment.

Within the Assemblies of God, there is a call for worshippers to balance the 
sacredness of life with the need for repentance.

The church states, "These truths must be balanced with the obligation of 
government to protect its citizens, helping them to live quiet and peaceful 
lives."

2. Southern Baptists

Several sects of the Baptist faith, including the Southern Baptist Convention, 
have weighed in on the death penalty.

Leaders within the SBC have asserted the death penalty should only be used for 
proven cases of capital crime, as outlined in this SBC resolution, justly, 
swiftly, and fairly.

The SBC refers to Romans 13:4 among other verses for justification of capital 
punishment.

"For government is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, 
because it does not carry the sword for no reason. For government is God's 
servant, an avenger that brings wrath on the one who does wrong," said the 
verse from the Holman Christian Standard Bible, the version linked from the SBC 
website.

3. Mormons

The only Christian denomination to punt on the issue, the Church of Jesus 
Christ of Latter-day Saints' official position on capital punishment is that it 
is "a matter to be decided solely by the prescribed processes of civil law" and 
that it "neither promotes nor opposes capital punishment."

4. Evangelicals

While the National Association of Evangelical is not itself a denomination, it 
claims that it is a "body of believers made up of over 40 denominations and 
thousands of individual churches, organizations, universities and individuals."

Since 1973, the NAE has taken a position of instituting the death penalty for 
use as a deterent for "heinous crimes" and a standard as to not diminish the 
atrocity of said crimes.

(source: Newsmax)

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

The death penalty paradox: Will it really bring relief?



Soon after police arrested the killer who blasted his father with a shotgun, in 
front of his mother, in the doorway of their New Hampshire home, Renny Cushing 
ran into an old family friend at the neighborhood grocery.

"I hope they fry the bastard, so you and your mother can get some peace," the 
friend told Cushing, who understood the friend was "just trying to give me some 
comfort."

Most of us simply assume that families of murder victims want the death 
penalty, even need it, Cushing said, to find comfort or peace or that overused 
cliche, "closure," which really doesn't exist. And most of us, he said, assume 
that families of the murdered who oppose the death penalty are either saints or 
misguided or perhaps deficient: maybe they didn't love their dead mother or 
father or child enough to crusade for justice.

But Cushing, who not only lost his father but also a brother-in-law to murder, 
doesn't see it that way. "A ritualized killing by public employees is not going 
to bring back anyone who's murdered," he said. Very likely it will leave the 
victim's family not better off, but worse. That's what he's learned after 25 
years of working with families of the murdered.

Call it the death penalty paradox: the executions survivors want - particularly 
in the first weeks and months after the murders - can turn out not to ease 
their grief but keep them wrapped up, entwined, even entrapped by the minute 
particulars of the killer's life - and fate.

Cushing spoke of all this Monday at a Boston forum during the death penalty 
phase in the trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. It also 
coincided with testimony for the defense by Helen Prejean, the Roman Catholic 
nun and death penalty opponent who visited Tsarnaev multiple times in jail.

Although she told reporters she could not speak outside of court until after 
the verdict, Prejean has repeatedly said before - and detailed in her classic 
book, "Dead Man Walking" - what Cushing said: that executions typically fail to 
bring about what many hope for: a sense of justice. Instead, at a time when 
families need each other most, executions can divide brothers and sisters and 
husbands and wives between those who favor death, and those who don't. They can 
turn families into unwitting pawns for politicians pushing a tough-on-crime 
agenda. They can also, as the parents of 8-year-old Marathon victim Martin 
Richard have said, delay a family's ability to put the killer out of mind as 
death appeal after death appeal keeps him on TV and in the news, a death row 
celebrity.

Also at Monday's forum was Robert Curley of Cambridge. His 10-year-old son 
Jeffrey's horrific 1997 kidnapping and murder became a rallying cry for 
Massachusetts politicians hoping to whip up outrage and reinstate the death 
penalty. Curley said he got swept up in the furor as well. He told me how he'd 
imagine slipping a straight-edged razor past metal detectors and courtroom 
officers, then leaping over the banister and slaughtering his son's killers 
before anyone could stop him. He said he felt an obligation to favor the death 
penalty since everyone around him assumed, like Renny Cushing's neighbor, that 
he had to - for his little boy. People would come up to me on the street, total 
strangers, and want to talk to about the death penalty." It got pretty angry, 
crazy, out of control, Curley said, "like they wanted the death penalty for 
somebody who just spit on the sidewalk."

When Curley began to think differently about executions - mostly because of 
injustices he witnessed in the criminal system - he was nervous about admitting 
it publicly. The pressure was huge. Was he disrespecting Jeffrey? Was he 
letting people down?

Bud Welch, whose 23-year-old daughter Julie Marie was killed in the Oklahoma 
City bombing in 1995, talked about similar pressures Monday. "How the court 
system's cure-all was to get the death penalty for Terry Nichols and Timothy 
McVeigh (the bombers). How that was going to solve everything for me and the 
other family members. But I remember very clearly June 11, 2001. In Terre 
Haute, Indiana, when we took Tim McVeigh from his cage and killed him, what I 
learned was that I was re-victimized all over again. It didn't solve anything. 
I struggled for many months after that and I guess my strong opposition to the 
death penalty is what it does and does not do for victim's families, what it 
does to us as human beings."

After a year of rage and "self-medicating with alcohol," as Welch told me, "I 
decided I had to change my life and speak of tolerance and forgiveness. The 
death penalty is all about revenge and hate. And revenge and hate is why Julie 
and 167 other people are dead."

Forums like Monday's are nothing new. They often are scheduled around death 
penalty trials, like Tsarnaev's. Welch, Curley, Cushing, and Prejean have 
spoken at many. I first met Prejean at a college near Boston months after Susan 
Sarandon played Prejean in the 1995 movie, "Dead Man Walking," which made 
Prejean famous.

That day Prejean spoke about the death penalty as a cancer that sickens 
everyone around it. The "strap down teams" at death penalty prisons who 
rehearse the killing drill: shackling the condemned in wrist and leg irons, 
walking him to the death chamber, tackling and subduing him should he resist. 
The guards retrieve the dead prisoner's used soap and toothbrush from his cell 
to give to his family. One guard told Prejean it all became too much. He could 
not eat or sleep. Eventually, he quit his job.

Prejean also talked about the families who truly believed execution would 
relieve or at least diminish their anguish. Vernon Harvey, the stepfather of an 
18-year-old who was raped and stabbed to death, watched Faith Hathaway's killer 
die in the electric chair. But he felt little relief, and said the murderer 
didn't suffer enough. A no-nonsense military man, Harvey then became a death 
penalty crusader, keeping vigils at every execution at the Louisiana State 
Penitentiary even as he grew sickly and needed a walker. But witnessing more 
deaths neither provided that elusive relief nor lessened his increasing anger. 
Instead, Prejean said, anger seemed to be what sustained him in his crushing 
grief. His wife and grown children became alienated from Harvey, who died of a 
heart attack 10 years after he watched Faith's killer die.

"We're doing these killings for the politicians while they're home asleep in 
their beds," Prejean told me then. "We're selling to families the idea that a 
2nd, state-sanctioned murder can somehow fix the murder of the one they loved. 
We're telling them that executions are right and just and will help them heal. 
But none of it," said Prejean, "is true."

(source: Margery Eagan, cruxnow.com)

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

The choice: Justice or mercy



For many years, a verse in the Book of Deuteronomy has been my guide. It 
reports that God instructed Moses and his followers to seek justice, only 
justice.

Now I am convinced mercy should sometimes trump justice.

In America, and in many other countries, justice requires government to protect 
the right of even the worst citizens to due process of legal proceedings. It 
also gives presidents the authority to cancel a death penalty or grant freedom 
from prosecution or imprisonment. President Gerald Ford used this authority, 
wisely I believe, to free Richard Nixon from prosecution for his role in the 
Watergate scandal. Mercy may have been one of Ford's reasons.

20 years ago, Timothy McVeigh was accused of killing 168 innocent people in the 
Oklahoma City bombing. Attorney Stephen Jones of Enid, Oklahoma, my longtime 
friend, agreed to be the court-appointed attorney to defend McVeigh's 
constitutional rights. For Jones, it was a courageous and costly decision. 
Although McVeigh was convicted and put to death, anti-McVeigh passions caused 
Jones' law practice to drop to near zero for months.

On 2 occasions, Jones was my assistant and leader of my congressional staff on 
Capitol Hill. When President Nixon faced impeachment in the House of 
Representatives in 1974 for his role in the Watergate scandal, I sought support 
for a motion to substitute censure instead of impeachment. I had worked closely 
with Nixon through the years and believed removal from office was too severe a 
punishment. Censure is a public ordeal in which the accused is charged with 
dereliction of duty while standing alone in the well of the House chamber. That 
punishment, I believed, should suffice in Nixon's case.

Whether on or off my staff, Jones' loyalty never slackened. At my request, he 
left his law practice in Oklahoma for 10 days to help me organize support for 
censure. Our effort was gaining strength when Nixon publicly admitted his abuse 
of the FBI for partisan purposes. It was the "smoking gun" his critics were 
seeking, and it shot down the drive for censure.

Jones, now 74, came on the national scene again on April 13 when Time magazine 
published his 2-page plea for mercy for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, born in Chechnya, 
Russia, who pleaded guilty to participation in the Boston Marathon bombing that 
occurred 3 years ago. The bombing killed 6 people and maimed severely scores of 
others.

In a gunfire exchange with police, the youth's older brother was killed. 
Tsarnaev, then 18, hid for several hours in a covered boat before his arrest. 
He scribbled a note on the boat cover. In it, he explained why he and his 
brother did the bombing. It was their pathetic revenge for the killing of many 
fellow Muslims by U.S. government forces in recent years.

In his Time article, Jones wrote: "Judy Clarke and her competent team face the 
greatest challenge of their illustrious careers: saving their 21-year-old 
client's life from the death penalty. ... Any lawyer who undertakes a similar 
brief must be willing to accept the emotional, personal and financial risks in 
so doing. But the Constitution requires that commitment of us. There are too 
many timid lawyers and neglected clients. Clarke and her team honor our 
profession by their willingness to zealously represent Tsarnaev."

Jones cited Clarence Darrow's successful defense of youthful Richard Loeb and 
Nathan Leopold nearly a century ago in Chicago. Darrow's plea freed the pair 
from execution for committing the ghoulish, senseless murder of a fellow 
student.

Noting that mercy has long outranked justice, Jones wrote that a single 
dissenting vote on the jury considering the death penalty will save young 
Tsarnnaev's life. As this article is being written, the jury is still pondering 
whether the young bomber will live or die.

Perhaps at least 1 member reads Time magazine thoroughly.

(source: Opinion; Former U.S Rep. Paul Findley of Jacksonville served in 
Congress 1961-83. He is the author of bestseller "They Dare to Speak Out" and 5 
other books----myjournalcourier.com)

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

Death Penalty for Bomber?



To the Editor:

Re "Bomber Expressed Sympathy, Jury Told" (news article, May 12):

I have heard that sweet Louisiana drawl of Sister Helen Prejean, the prominent 
death penalty opponent and the author of "Dead Man Walking," who testified that 
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the convicted Boston Marathon bomber, should not be 
sentenced to death.

I know that it deeply reflects her faith in God and in the value of human life 
- even for those like him who are guilty of heinous crimes.

She is an example of why nuns are to be feared: They speak truth to power - in 
the church and in government - with faith, conviction and commitment. These are 
blessed and dangerous women!

DAVID E. PASINSKI

Fayetteville, N.Y.

The writer is a former priest.

(source: Letter to the Editor, New York Times)

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

Will Aurora shooting trial serve as referendum on death penalty in 
Colorado?----The James Holmes trial is taking place against a backdrop of 
increasing ambivalence about the death penalty in America. Colorado, where the 
trial is taking place, has executed 1 person since 1976.

When the James Holmes trial comes to a close later this summer, jurors will 
first have to decide whether the Aurora shooting perpetrator - who killed 12 
and wounded 70 when he opened fire in a crowded movie theater - is innocent by 
reason of insanity, a defense many experts say is a long shot in a case this 
horrific.

If jurors find him guilty, they'll then have to determine whether Mr. Holmes 
should get the death penalty, as requested by prosecutors, or life without 
parole.

Meanwhile, jurors in another national death-penalty case will begin 
deliberations today as to whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was found guilty last 
month of all 30 counts against him in the Boston Marathon bombing case, should 
be put to death.

Those 2 high-profile cases are taking place against a backdrop of increasing 
ambivalence about the death penalty in America, where national support has 
dropped from close to 80 % in the 1990s to 56 percent today. That ambivalence 
is particularly apparent in the states where the trials are taking place. The 
verdicts - particularly if life sentences are returned in such high-profile 
cases - could end up offering significant insight into shifting views on the 
penalty.

"Both death-penalty supporters and death-penalty opponents are very interested 
in what will happen in these 2 trials," says Robert Dunham, executive director 
of the Death Penalty Information Center, a national nonprofit that compiles 
data and analysis related to the death penalty. Mr. Dunham emphasizes that both 
cases are extreme offenses that aren't typical of capital cases, and which 
makes extrapolating general conclusions from them challenging. But they also 
both have mitigating circumstances the juries will have to consider.

"The offenses are clearly among the worst, but the circumstances surrounding 
the offenses are troublesome," says Mr. Dunham. "You can imagine juries in both 
cases returning either verdict."

In Massachusetts, the death penalty has been abolished since 1984 (not a factor 
in the bombing trial since it's a federal case) and polls have shown a majority 
of Boston residents favor life without parole for Mr. Tsarnaev.

In Colorado, just one person has been put to death since the death penalty was 
reinstated nationally in 1976, and three inmates are on death row. Democratic 
Gov. John Hickenlooper granted a temporary reprieve to one of those inmates in 
2013, citing his concerns with the death penalty - a decision that came back to 
haunt him in the 2014 election, where he was ultimately reelected.

"It is a penalty that has been used very infrequently; it is a penalty which 
the people of Colorado do have very mixed feelings about," says Karen 
Steinhauser, a former prosecutor and Colorado defense attorney.

Still, Ms. Steinhauser emphasizes that the decision in this case will 
ultimately be about James Holmes and the evidence jurors are presented with.

"The issue is going to be first of all, if we get to the death penalty phase, 
and whether the jury decides unanimously that death is the appropriate 
sentence," Steinhauser says. "Without regard to what the governor has done, 
without regard to whether other people have or have not been executed. The 
issue for jurors in this trial right now is to decide whether this is the 
appropriate sentence, given that Colorado still has the death penalty." The 
prosecutor in the Holmes trial, Arapahoe County District Attorney George 
Brauchler, has been adamant that death is the correct sentence, telling 
Coloradans that "justice is death" at a hearing 2 years ago. Mr. Brauchler 
rejected an offer by Holmes's lawyers to avoid a trial by agreeing to plead 
guilty in exchange for life without parole. And some of the victims and their 
family members in the Aurora shooting have said they think death is the only 
acceptable punishment.

But Dan Recht, a prominent Denver defense attorney, notes that decision has 
meant greatly prolonging the legal process and spending millions of public 
money, and will take an emotional toll on jurors, witnesses, and victims. He 
cites the parents of 8-year-old Boston Marathon bombing victim Martin Richard, 
who have urged that Tsarnaev be given life without parole.

"When you have victims' families urging life in prison without parole and not 
the death penalty, that's significant, and shows I believe a shift in how 
people view the death penalty," says Mr. Recht.

In the Holmes trial, the mitigating factors involve mental illness. Even if the 
jury ignores Holmes's insanity defense, virtually everyone agrees he suffers 
from mental illness - a factor that further affects how Americans view the 
death penalty. The most recent national poll, conducted late last year, shows 
Americans opposing the death penalty for people with mental illness by a 2-to-1 
margin.

"Holmes's case raises very serious issues of mental health and the question of 
whether a person who is so extremely mentally ill should be the subject of the 
death penalty," says Dunham.

Given the constraints on jury selection, neither jury - and particularly the 
one in Boston - is actually reflective of the conscience of the community, 
Dunham says. All of which could make a life-imprisonment verdict, if it happens 
in either case, particularly noteworthy.

"If [Holmes] isn't given the death penalty, I believe that will hasten the day 
in Colorado when the death penalty is abolished," says Recht. But no matter 
what the verdict in the Holmes case is, he believes that day will eventually 
come. "In Colorado, the death penalty's death is a foregone conclusion," he 
says - whether by legislature, court decision, or ballot initiative.

Still, polling in the state suggests a large majority of Coloradans (69 % in a 
poll 2 years ago) support the death penalty, and Hickenlooper took extreme 
criticism over his decision to grant a reprieve to inmate Nathan Dunlap, the 
death row inmate who killed 4 employees at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant. It was 
a factor that nearly cost him reelection.

When he announced his decision to seek the death penalty, Brauchler said his 
office had polled more than 800 people connected to the shooting.

With Hickenlooper's decision that no death-row inmate will be executed during 
his governorship, Colorado has joined Washington, Oregon, and Pennsylvania as 
states that have capital punishment on the books but have some sort of 
governor-imposed moratorium.

"Historically, Coloradans are not viewed as vindictive people, and they don???t 
have a reputation for blood lust in prosecutions," says Dunham.

Nationally, opinion of the death penalty has been affected by increasingly 
publicized concerns about innocence, fairness, reliability, and cost of 
imposing the death penalty, he says - all of which could play into the 
decisions of jurors even when they support capital punishment.

"What makes both Aurora and Boston interesting for observers to watch is that 
they both have compelling reasons for death verdicts, and they both have 
compelling reasons for life verdicts," says Dunham.

(source: Christian Science Monitor)