[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----NEB., NEV., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

May 27


NEBRASKA:

Senator supports repeal of death penalty



This past week, the Legislature held the final round of debate over one of the 
toughest issues lawmakers face: the death penalty.

While dealing with an issue that involves so much sorrow for many families, 
lawmakers must take many viewpoints and facts into account when arriving at a 
decision. Many of you have contacted my office via email, phone, and mail to 
share heart-felt opinions both against and in support of the death penalty. 
Thank you for contacting our office. Your input truly has an impact on the 
decisions that we make in the Legislature.

During my conversations with those who are in support of keeping the death 
penalty, many people expressed frustration related to the lengthy appeals 
process that is the norm when dealing with death penalty cases. This is 
certainly one of the major problems within our broken capital punishment 
system. Many constituents shared the common opinion that the problem could be 
fixed by speeding up the appeals process through our judicial system. Though I 
wish there were a quick fix, this is not a viable solution to our problem.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to due process in civil and criminal 
proceedings. This protects the defendants' rights to work within the system and 
appeal court decisions. We can lower Nebraska's number of lengthy appeals by 
sentencing criminals to life in prison without the possibility of parole 
instead of death. Nationally, the average defendant sentenced to life in prison 
without the possibility of parole files for an appeal 1.5 times, compared to 
the 7 appeals for which the average death row inmate files.

I have also heard from many people that support repealing the death penalty. 
Some of the most important perspectives to consider are those of the victims' 
families that have endured this lengthy appeals process. Every time a case is 
appealed, the families often attend the trial and are forced to face their 
loved one's murderer once again. Reliving this past trauma makes it very 
difficult to finally move on.

It is unfair to put them through this decades-long process. This is especially 
true because the state does not possess the ability to carry out executions, so 
the criminal will just remain on death row for years. By sentencing criminals 
to life in prison without the possibility of parole, we are allowing the 
victims' families to achieve closure.

As a conservative, I am committed to protecting life and getting rid of 
government waste. I have always stood as a strong pro-life advocate. I truly 
believe that life begins at conception and should end at natural death. Also, 
as I wrote in one of my March editorials, the state has spent approximately 
$100 million on death penalty related cases since 1976, but has only executed 
three people. It is evident that the state of Nebraska cannot enforce the death 
penalty in a prompt manner and it is time to look at other avenues. For all of 
these reasons, I will continue to support the repeal of the death penalty in 
the state of Nebraska.

As always, I am honored by the faith that you, the voters of District 24, have 
placed in me. My door is open and I have made it a goal to be accessible to the 
constituents of our district. You may continue to follow me on Facebook at 
Kolterman For Legislature and on Twitter at @KoltermanforLegislature. My office 
in the State Capitol is Room 1115, which I share with my colleague Senator Bob 
Hilkemann from Omaha.

Stop by anytime. My e-mail address is mkolterman at leg.ne.gov and the office 
phone number is 402-471-2756. Kenny Zoeller, my legislative aide, and Katie 
Quintero, my administrative aide, are always available to assist you with your 
needs. If I am not immediately available, please do not hesitate to work with 
them to address your concerns, thoughts and needs.

(source: Sen. Mark Kolterman; York News Times)

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

Nebraska lawmakers to vote to override governor's veto of death penalty repeal



Nebraska lawmakers plan to hold a vote Wednesday afternoon to override Gov. 
Pete Ricketts' veto of a bill to repeal the death penalty.

Ricketts vetoed LB268 Tuesday, which was passed last week with a 32-15 vote.

"Today, I am vetoing LB268 which would repeal the death penalty in Nebraska. 
Repealing the death penalty sends the wrong message to Nebraskans who 
overwhelming support capital punishment and look to government to strengthen 
public safety, not weaken it. Under this bill, there is no guarantee that 
convicted murderers will stay behind bars for life or not harm other innocent 
victims," Ricketts said in a prepared statement.

Below is how each state senator voted when the bill passed, according to the 
legislative journal:

Affirmative: 32

Baker, Bolz, Campbell, Chambers, Coash, Cook, Crawford, Davis, Ebke, Garrett, 
Gloor, Haar, K., Hadley, Hansen, Harr, B., Hilkemann, Howard, Johnson, 
Kolowski, Kolterman, Krist, Lindstom, McCollister, Mello, Morfeld, Murante, 
Nordquist, Pansing Brooks, Schumacher, Seiler, Sullivan, Williams

Negative: 15

Bloomfield, Brasch, Craighead, Friesen, Groene, Hughes, Kintner, Kuehn, McCoy, 
Riepe, Scheer, Schnoor, Smith, Stinner, Watermeier

Present and not voting: 2

Larson, Schilz

The vote to override the governor's veto is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. 30 votes 
are needed to override the veto.

(source: KMTV news)








NEVADA:

New execution chamber an outrageous boondoggle



In a historic vote May 20, the Nebraska Legislature abolished the state???s 
death penalty. The vote was based on concerns about the high cost of capital 
punishment and a protracted appeals process that prevents families of murder 
victims from reaching closure. Nebraska is the 1st "red" state to repeal 
capital punishment, but Republicans have been leading efforts to repeal capital 
punishment in at least a half-dozen states.

Regrettably, on the same day in Carson City, and in stark contrast to 
Nebraska???s conservative Legislature, conservative members of both houses of 
Nevada's Legislature voted to spend almost $1 million to build an unneeded new 
execution chamber. Considering the other vital needs of our state that are much 
higher priorities, this boondoggle is an outrageous waste of taxpayer money.

In 2011, when the Legislature voted to close the Nevada State Prison in Carson 
City, the Department of Corrections assured lawmakers that the chamber would 
remain available should an execution be scheduled. Nonetheless, in 2013, the 
governor???s budget included a proposed "remodel" project to construct a new 
execution chamber at the prison in Ely at a cost of $760,000. However, the 
Department of Corrections acknowledged that the existing chamber was still 
functional and available if an execution were to be scheduled, and the 
expensive project was wisely and unanimously rejected. Unfortunately, 
conservative Nevada legislators imprudently approved the construction of an 
execution chamber that is unlikely to ever be used.

The constitutionality of lethal injection is being litigated in the courts, and 
no executions are scheduled in Nevada, with the last one occurring almost 10 
years ago. This proposed new facility may sit unused forever, or it could 
require further remodeling if lethal injection is rejected in court. Even if 
lethal injection is upheld, there are serious doubts about the availability of 
the lethal drugs needed for an execution.

Building an execution chamber in Ely to replace the one in Carson City will 
increase the cost of carrying out executions in Nevada because it will mean 
transporting many people (victims and official witnesses, the director of the 
Department of Corrections and others) at least 250 miles to remote Ely. 
Transporting one individual (the inmate) from death row in Ely to Carson City 
is much less expensive. Furthermore, the project is to be funded by new bonds, 
which means the state will incur almost $1 million in debt and taxpayers will 
be paying the interest on that debt via their property taxes for up to 20 
years. This $1 million in debt also reduces the amount of money that is 
available for maintenance of existing buildings.

An additional concern about building the chamber in Ely is that it makes it 
less accessible to the press and to the government institutions that should be 
monitoring its overall operation.

This is not a policy decision about whether to have the death penalty in Nevada 
- that is for another day. This is a basic budgetary issue: whether we should 
spend close to a million dollars to construct a new and unnecessary execution 
chamber. A cost audit of Nevada's death penalty recently concluded that we 
spend at least twice as much money prosecuting a death penalty homicide case as 
prosecuting a non-death penalty homicide case.

Republicans in Nevada voted to add to the cost of maintaining the death penalty 
in Nevada, something that will be hard for them to defend as their fellow 
conservatives around the country - as in Nebraska - continue to raise fiscal 
and other concerns which demonstrate the ineffectiveness of even having the 
death penalty.

(source: Opinion; Nancy Hart is president of the Nevada Coalition Against the 
Death Penalty. Tod Story is executive director of the ACLU of Nevada----Las 
Vegas Review-Journal)








CALIFORNIA----inmate commits suicide

Man on death row for Riverside pizza-store murder kills himself



Michael Lamont Jones, 44, who was convicted of murdering a Riverside pizza 
restaurant employee in 1989, committed suicide on Monday, May 25, at San 
Quentin State Prison, the California Department of Corrections and 
Rehabilitation announced Tuesday.

The cause of death is pending the results of an autopsy; however, the death is 
being investigated as a suicide, a news release said. Jones was in a cell by 
himself.

Jones was sentenced to death on Dec. 13, 1991, by a Riverside County jury, for 
the Jan. 21, 1989, murder of Herman Weeks, 24, during the armed robbery of a 
Domino's Pizza store. Jones had been on death row since Jan. 2, 1992.

Jones appealed his conviction, citing incompetent defense counsel, erroneous 
jury instructions, tainted witness identification and unconstitutionality of 
the death penalty. In 2003, the state Supreme Court affirmed the conviction.

According to trial testimony, Weeks had his hands in the air when Jones fired 2 
shots. Jones and an accomplice decided to rob the Domino's because they needed 
money for admission to a party, prosecutors said. According to court documents, 
a witness, Erin Burton, testified that in May 1989 she encountered Jones and 
asked, "Mike, about the Domino's thing, did you do it?" He replied, "Yeah." She 
asked, "How could you do it? How could you kill someone? Don't you feel any 
remorse?" He responded, "Nah. It was a good party."

A month before the Domino's robbery, Jones robbed the Mad Greek restaurant in 
Riverside and shot a customer, who survived.

Since 1978 when California reinstated capital punishment, 66 condemned inmates 
have died from natural causes, 24 have committed suicide, 13 have been executed 
in California, 1 was executed in Missouri, 7 have died from other causes, and 
the causes of death are pending for four condemned inmates, according to the 
Department of Corrections.

There are 749 people on California's death row.

(source: Press-Enterprise)








USA:

Justice Stevens Says Death Penalty Unnecessary, Wasteful, and Creates Higher 
Risk of Error



In a discussion at the George Washington University School of Law, retired 
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said the death penalty creates a higher 
risk of error than other criminal cases and is unfair, unnecessary, and a 
"terrible waste" of resources. Using the Boston marathon bomber trial as an 
example, Justice Stevens said jury selection procedures in capital cases 
produce juries who are "not representative of the community." He said that, 
under these procedures, "most of the 75%" of Bostonians who opposed the death 
penalty "could be challenged for cause and do not make it" onto the jury. 
"That's one reason that the death penalty is much more unfair than we thought 
it was at the time back when we decided the 3 cases" that reinstated the death 
penalty in 1976 after the Court had previously ruled its application 
unconstitutional. Justice Stevens went on to say, "I had expected that the 
procedures would be more protective of the defendants in death cases than in 
ordinary criminal cases. And in several respects, ... they in fact are more 
pro-prosecution. And so the risk of error is larger in death cases than it is 
in other cases, and that certainly can't be right." Finally, he compared the 
death penalty unfavorably to the alternative of life without parole: "it's 
really not necessary because life imprisonment without parole protects the 
public at least as well as execution does and so the justification for the 
death penalty is diminished. And I think if you make a cost-benefit analysis - 
the cost of the trials and all the rest - it is a terrible waste of society's 
resources to have these capital trials that go on for so long and produce an 
awful lot of unfortunate results."

Justice Stevens also mentioned a death penalty case as the vote he most 
regretted during his tenure on the Court. In Jurek v. Texas (1976), Stevens 
said, "I voted to uphold the Texas statute and I was wrong." He said that the 
Texas law should have been treated as a mandatory death penalty statute 
because, "if you read one of the instructions that they had to give the jury, a 
certain answer really required the death penalty."

(source: Death Penalty Information Center)

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

Federal judge keeps accused gang members in custody



More than a dozen suspected gang members arrested last week in a sweeping 
roundup appeared in federal court on Tuesday. As expected, U.S. Magistrate 
Judge David Keesler ordered that all 16 remain jailed.

The defendants, reputed members of the MS-13 gang, are charged with crimes 
ranging from racketeering and drugs to robbery and attempted murder. A federal 
indictment accuses 37 suspected MS-13 members of operating a criminal 
enterprise in and around Charlotte since at least 2009.

3 of the defendants face murder charges in connection with killings that took 
place in Charlotte in 2013 and 2014. If convicted, Miguel "Most Wanted" Zelaya, 
19, and Christian "Pitbull" Pena, 19, both of Charlotte, along with Luis "Big 
Boy" Ordonez, 36, of Concord, face the death penalty. They were among 16 
defendants already in state custody at the time of the federal roundup. 5 
remain at large.

The arrests mark the 2nd federal crackdown on Charlotte gangs in the last 
month. On April 22, the U.S. Attorney's Office charged 12 suspected members of 
the United Blood Nation with a series of racketeering crimes, including the 
October murders of Doug and Debbie London. Prosecutors say the Charlotte 
business couple was killed to keep them from testifying against 3 UBN members 
who tried to rob their mattress store last May.

(source: Charlotte Observer)

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

Accused Aurora shooter says he had a 'broken mind'



Aurora theater shooting defendant James Holmes declared he had a "broken mind" 
and wrote pages of nonsensical ramblings in the same notebook he used to map 
and plan the shooting, witnesses testified Tuesday.

Both prosecutors and defense attorneys are using the notebook - which Holmes 
mailed to a psychiatrist shortly before the shooting - to show his mind-set. 
Prosecutors argue Holmes methodically planned the July 20, 2012 shooting inside 
the suburban Denver movie theater, and they used portions of the notebook to 
demonstrate his preparations. Defense attorneys say it shows he suffers from 
mental illness. Holmes faces the death penalty and has pleaded not guilty by 
reason of insanity.

Reading aloud on the witness stand, Aurora police Sgt. Matthew Fyles quoted 
portions of the diary: "The obsession to kill since I was a kid, with age 
became more and more realistic. Started with nuclear bombs, then shifted to 
biological agent that destroys the mind, most recently serial murder with stun 
gun ..."

In another portion, Fyles read how Holmes wrote that he was 99% certain he'd 
get caught committing mass murder at the movie theater and said he didn't want 
to attack an airport because people would think it was a terrorist attack. "The 
message is there is no message," Fyles read aloud. Holmes wrote that people 
would think his failing university and personal life were the reasons for an 
attack but said they "both were expediting catalysts, not the reason."

Prosecutors showed how the notebook contains diagrams of the theater complex 
and notes about which specific auditorium to attack, based on part on the 
number of exits. "Embraced the hatred," the notebook says. "The Dark Knight 
Rises."

Police arrested Holmes outside the theater, dressed in black body armor he had 
amassed over several weeks, and was carrying weapons witnesses said he bought 
and practiced with well before the attack in which 12 people were killed and 70 
injured.

On cross-examination, defense attorney Dan King read aloud other passages from 
the notebook, including one in which Holmes referred to seeing flickers, crows 
or insects in his peripheral vision. King said one page of the notebook 
contained the phrase that Holmes had made a "self-diagnosis of broken mind" and 
that "my soul must be eviscerated." The notebook contains pages of the word 
"why" repeated over and over, along with infinity symbols. Defense attorneys 
say Holmes suffers from schizophrenia.

"I view myself as divided," King read from the notebook. "The real me is 
fighting the biological me."

The trial is in its 5th week out of an expected 4-month-long schedule. 
Prosecutors say they are a little more than halfway through their presentation. 
Jurors were allowed to read copies of the notebook after the presentation.

(source: USA Today)