[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----FLA., ALA., MO., KAN., OKLA., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 8



FLORIDA:

After 29-year wait, mom awaits Bolin's January execution


Kathleen Reeves will celebrate her only daughter's birthday Monday the same way 
she has for the past 29 years.

"I'll take flowers to her grave," she said.

Teri Lynn Matthews would have been 55, maybe with a family of her own. But her 
life was taken when she was just 26 by serial killer Oscar Ray Bolin Jr., who 
is scheduled to atone for her murder on Jan. 7 when he is executed by the state 
of Florida.

Reeves, a 78-year-old Spring Hill resident, said her daughter's homicide in 
1986 was the 1st in a series of deaths that have left her alone. Her 2 sons and 
a stepson have died from diseases and a car wreck since Matthews was murdered. 
Her husband died in April 2014, the victim of cancer; the same for her brother, 
who died in June.

"My family," she said, "is gone."

Reeves plans to attend Bolin's execution, but right now she would rather talk 
about her daughter, a graduate of Tampa's Robinson High School who was buried 
long ago in a Hernando County cemetery.

"She worked at night and she was learning scuba diving," Reeves said. "She just 
recently had gotten into a serious romantic relationship with a young man.

"He's gone," Reeves wistfully said, "has family of his own now."

Her daughter's future was bright.

"She had everything; all her ducks in a row, and she was headed in the right 
direction," Reeves said. "She was a happy young lady. Her life was looking 
rosy, and she was pretty excited."

Those hopes came to a violent end one winter night when Bolin abducted Matthews 
from a Land O'Lakes Post Office parking lot before stabbing and bludgeoning her 
on Dec. 5, 1986.

He brought the severely injured woman, wrapped in a sheet, to the home of his 
13-year-old half-brother, who later told authorities he saw the victim in the 
sheet on the ground outside the house and heard moaning and gurgling sounds.

Bolin then bludgeoned Matthews with a wooden club before loading her into his 
truck and driving off.

Matthews' body was found wrapped in the same blood-stained sheet on the side of 
a road in rural Pasco County later that day.

The case went unsolved for 4 years, until Bolin's ex-wife in Ohio told 
authorities he confessed to her that he had killed Matthews. When he was 
charged in 1990, Bolin was serving a 22- to 75-year prison sentence in Ohio for 
kidnapping and raping a 20-year-old waitress near Toledo.

Reeves said she has waited for what seems like a lifetime for justice. In fact, 
it has been a lifetime. The time between Matthews' murder and now - 29 years - 
is 3 years longer than her life.

On Oct. 30, Gov. Rick Scott signed a death warrant for the 53-year-old Bolin in 
Matthews' case. He also has been convicted of murdering 2 other females, 1 a 
17-year-old girl, in a 1986 murder spree. 3 times, Bolin stood trial in Pasco 
County in the slaying of Matthews. The first 2 convictions were thrown out by 
appeals courts. The 3rd conviction withstood appellate challenges, and his 
death sentence was upheld.

The former carnival worker and long-distance truck driver also was sentenced to 
death for the murder of 17-year-old Stephanie Collins, a Tampa high school 
student and is serving a life sentence for the murder of Natalie "Blanche" 
Holley, 25.

In January 1986, Holley was abducted after she left work at Church's Chicken in 
North Tampa. She was stabbed to death and her body was found the next day in a 
Lutz orange grove.

10 months later, Collins disappeared from a shopping center parking lot in 
Carrollwood. Her body was found on Dec. 5, 1986, with blunt injuries to the 
head. The bodies of Collins and Matthews were found on the same day.

Collins' mother, Donna Witmer, along with Reeves and Holley's mother, also 
named Natalie, attended trials together and became close friends.

Witmer declined to comment on the signing of the death warrant last week.

Natalie Holley died in 2012 and won't get to see her daughter's killer pay the 
ultimate price for his crimes.

Bolin's defense attorney, Bjorn Brunvand, said this case has taken a toll on 
all parties.

"Because of the number of trials and the number of appeals, it has been very 
draining for everyone involved," he said. "That being said, if it turns out 
that at some point, (Bolin) is found to be innocent, certainly it's all worth 
it."

Brunvand filed a motion for rehearing Tuesday, hoping to persuade a judge to 
take another look at what he calls discrepancies in the forensic evidence 
presented at trial and other issues.

The Clearwater attorney said he met with Bolin on Wednesday, 5 days after the 
death warrant was signed.

"How is he taking the death warrant? He's probably taking it better than (his 
wife) Rosalie and better than his legal team," Brunvand said.

Brunvand's opposition to the death penalty has grown stronger while working on 
this case.

"I've always been opposed to the death penalty for a variety of reasons," he 
said. "I don't think it deters other murders. It's barbaric, and I think that 
financially it makes absolutely no sense."

Reeves hopes Brunvand's last-ditch defense efforts to stay the death sentence 
fail. She's wants to watch Bolin breathe his last breath.

"Absolutely," she said. "I certainly plan on being there. I'm ecstatic about 
this. I'm not a fan of the governor, but I am today. I'm going to be 78 this 
month and, certainly, I was beginning to wonder if this ever would take place."

She has nothing to say to Bolin.

"These people live on a different plane than we do," she said. "There is no 
explanation for what they do. They just live in a different world."

Rosalie Martinez, a death-row inmate advocate working on Bolin's case in the 
1990s, did make a connection with the killer. In 1996, she married him in a 
wedding performed over the telephone. She left her Tampa attorney husband and 4 
daughters and has been Bolin's wife for 19 years.

Asked to comment on the case this week, she responded with an emailed 
statement, which said, in part:

"I am just beyond heartbroken," she said. "The governor, by signing Oscar's 
warrant, is creating a whole set of invisible victims that no one wants to talk 
about. That would include me, my family, the lawyers, department of corrections 
staff and anyone carrying out the death sentence.

"It's barbaric in a civilized society."

(source: The Tampa Tribune)






ALABAMA:

Prosecution to seek death penalty in Maysville murders


The prosecution announced Friday evening it will seek the death penalty for 
Christopher Henderson and Rhonda Carlson, charged with the murders of five 
members of the Smallwood/Sokolowski family.

Over the past 2 months, some of the gruesome details of those murders have come 
out in pretrial hearings.

Carlson appeared in court earlier this week. During that hearing investigators 
said Henderson left Carlson for Kristen at one point in their relationship, and 
Carlson told them she wanted Kristen to feel what it was like to be homeless as 
she had been.

Henderson's hearing took place at the end of September. Madison County 
Sheriff's Office Investigator Eugene Nash revealed that after shooting Jean 
Smallwood, Henderson allegedly told Carlson that he "took her out." Also 
revealed in that hearing was the fact that Kristen Henderson, her unborn baby 
and her son Clayton died from stab wounds, while her nephew Eli Sokolowski died 
from smoke inhalation.

Alabama is one of the only states in which a judge can overrule a jury's 
decision on the death penalty, so even if the jury decides against it, 
Henderson and Carlson could still be executed.

(source: WAAY TV news)






MISSOURI:

Missouri Executions Expected to Slow


18 convicted killers have been executed in Missouri in the last 2 years, a pace 
that is expected to slow significantly with death sentences on the decline and 
many of the 28 remaining death row inmates still filing appeals.

Only Texas, with 24, has performed more executions than Missouri since November 
2013. But execution appears to be imminent for just 1 Missouri inmate.

"They've basically run out of people to kill, to put it in an undiplomatic 
way," said Kent Gipson, a Kansas City-based attorney who represents several 
inmates.

Executions across the U.S. were largely on hold for many years due to a de 
facto moratorium as the Supreme Court grappled with the constitutionality of 
lethal injection. Once that cleared, execution drugs became hard to obtain 
because major companies refused to sell drugs for lethal use.

Missouri eventually turned to pentobarbital, obtained from a source the state 
won't disclose, in late 2013. By then, there was a backlog of inmates whose 
appeals were exhausted. Attorney General Chris Koster asked the state Supreme 
Court to set execution dates for many of them, and the court obliged, 
scheduling one a month since November 2013 (some were halted by court action or 
clemency).

At the same time, death sentences have been on the decline for many years. 
Nationally, the 72 death sentences issued last year were the fewest since 1976, 
according to Amnesty International. None were issued in Missouri.

Death penalty expert Deborah Denno, who teaches at Fordham Law School, cited 
several factors, including concern over the availability of lethal drugs and 
worries about executing the innocent.

"I think juries aren't sending people to death as much and I think prosecutors 
aren't bringing them up as often," Denno said.

Execution could be near for Earl Forrest, convicted of killing a Dent County 
sheriff's deputy and two others during a 2002 crime spree. Forrest is out of 
appeals and Koster has requested an execution date.

But 16 of the remaining 26 Missouri inmates have yet to exhaust their appeals. 
Another two have claimed innocence and their cases are being reviewed, while 
two others still technically on death row have been ruled mentally incompetent 
for execution.

Medical conditions have cast doubt in 2 cases this year alone. Ernest Lee 
Johnson was scheduled to die last week for killing 3 convenience store workers 
in 1994, but the U.S. Supreme Court sent the case back to an appeals court for 
review because his attorneys argued that the execution drug could cause violent 
seizures due to a benign brain tumor.

And in May, Russell Bucklew, convicted of killing a southeast Missouri man 
during a 1996 crime spree, was granted a stay over concerns that the execution 
drug could cause suffering due to his a congenital condition that includes 
weakened and malformed blood vessels and nose and throat tumors.

Courts have ordered new sentencing hearings for 3 inmates over attorney and 
procedural errors, and the U.S. Supreme Court remanded 1 case to the district 
court over attorney competence concerns because a federal appeal was not filed 
on time.

William Boliek is likely to live out his life on death row. His execution was 
stayed by Gov. Mel Carnahan. Carnahan died in a plane crash without acting on 
it and a ruling determined that only Carnahan could overturn the stay. A 
spokesman for Gov. Jay Nixon has said William Boliek will not be executed.

(source: Associated Press)






KANSAS:

Future of Kansas death penalty is uncertain


The Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty held a meeting Saturday to 
discuss ways of encouraging legislature to change their minds on the state's 
death penalty. One of the keynote speakers was Nebraska Senator Colby Coash who 
helped build a coalition of republican lawmakers who were for repealing the 
death penalty in Nebraska. He believes his efforts in Nebraska are applicable 
to Kansas.

"Of any place, Nebraska would be a really tough place to abolish the death 
penalty. But we did it," says Coash. "We did it because we talked about things 
that were important for Nebraskans like saving money and fixing government."

But while Nebraska repealed the penalty, the state is still trying to buy death 
penalty drugs. Nebraska prison officials unsuccessfully tried to buy the 
execution drugs from a domestic firm after trying months to get it from a 
distributor in India.

Lethal injection is the sole method of execution in Kansas and is one of the 
only states where no executions have taken place since it was reinstated in 
1976. Its last execution was 1965. Kansas currently has 9 men on death row but 
Kansas doesn't seem to be in a position to execute anyone, according to the 
Kansas Department of Corrections.

"We do not have any of those execution drugs on hand," says Adam Phannestiel. 
"At this point we've decided that we are housing those inmates and letting them 
have their due process."

The Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty says keeping them there is 3 to 
4 times more expensive than execution.

(source: KSNT news)

********

Convicted serial killer's Kansas death sentence upheld


The Kansas Supreme Court refused on Friday to remove a serial killer from death 
row who trolled for victims online, marking the 1st time the court has upheld a 
death sentence since Kansas reinstated capital punishment in 1994.

The 415-page ruling came in the case of John E. Robinson Sr., who was convicted 
of killing 7 women and a teenage girl in Kansas and Missouri in cases dating 
back to 1984. Investigators said he lured some victims with promises of work or 
sex, and stuffed some of their bodies in barrels on his rural property.

The court had faced criticism for overturning death sentences, but only 1 of 
the court's 7 justices dissented in Friday's ruling. District Attorney Steve 
Howe in Johnson County, where Robinson's case was tried, said the ruling marks 
a shift in how the court handles death penalty cases.

"My expectation is that, as we move forward, these cases will move at a faster 
pace," he said.

Investigators said Robinson used the Internet to lure two victims to Kansas: 
27-year-old Suzette Trouten of Newport, Michigan, and Izabela Lewicka, a 
21-yaer-old Polish immigrant who attended Purdue University.

Their bodies were found in June 2000, in large barrels on Robinson's rural 
property 60 miles south of Kansas City. 2 days later, 3 more bodies were 
discovered in barrels in a storage locker Robinson rented in the Kansas City 
area.

Prosecutors described Robinson as a predator who trolled the Internet as 
"Slavemaster," looking for sadomasochistic sex with women.

Robinson is among only 9 inmates on death row in Kansas, which has a checkered 
history with the death penalty. Although the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated 
capital punishment in 1976, Kansas waited nearly 20 years before reinstating 
it. And the state's current law is extremely narrow and allows for death 
sentences in only a handful of circumstances.

5 of the state's current death row inmates had their sentences overturned by 
the Kansas Supreme Court, but the cases have since been appealed to the U.S. 
Supreme Court or sent to lower courts for resentencing. The other 3 inmates 
have not had 1st rulings from the Kansas Supreme Court.

Between various other court rulings, including some that have overturned groups 
of cases, it wasn't immediately clear Friday how many other death sentences the 
state's highest court has overturned since 1994.

Robinson was sentenced to death for killing Lewicka and Trouten under a state 
law allowing capital punishment for multiple, premeditated killings that were 
part of a "common scheme or course of conduct."

The court's lengthy decision - which dealt with dozens of technical issues 
raised by Robinson's attorneys on appeal - upheld the death sentence that 
resulted from Robinson's capital murder conviction for Trouten's death in 2000.

During the same trial in 2002, Robinson also was convicted of capital murder 
for the 1999 slaying of Lewicka and of non-capital murder in the 1985 death of 
Lisa Stasi, a 19-year-old whose body has never been found.

The Supreme Court reversed those 2 convictions, saying Kansas' death penalty 
law allowed for only 1 capital murder charge covering multiple killings in the 
overall case. But that ruling "in no way" cleared Robinson in the deaths, 
Justice Caleb Stegall wrote in the majority's opinion.

Prosecutors "presented ample evidence that Robinson lured his victims with 
promises of financial gain, employment or travel; exploited them sexually or 
financially; used similar methods to murder and dispose of their bodies; and 
used deception to conceal the crimes," Stegall wrote.

"In the end, he's been found guilty of capital murder, and the sentence has 
been upheld," Howe said during an interview Friday.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said in a statement that his office was 
"cautiously encouraged," but that it was still reviewing the court's decision. 
Paige Nichols, a Lawrence attorney who argued Robinson's case before the 
Supreme Court, did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment 
Friday.

The court's lone dissenter was Justice Lee Johnson, who criticized the court 
for linking all of the killings, including ones committed when Kansas had no 
death penalty. He also argued that the death penalty violates the Kansas 
Constitution's prohibition against cruel or unusual punishment.

On appeal, Robinson's attorneys raised dozens of issues about the selection of 
the jury and what evidence was allowed, as well as whether Kansas prosecutors 
could cite the Missouri killings to support their case for the death penalty in 
Kansas.

They also argued that Robinson should be resentenced because 1 juror consulted 
the Bible after concluding Robinson should receive death. The Supreme Court 
deemed the action "harmless."

----

Online:

The Supreme Court's ruling: http://bit.ly/1XUFpu5.

(source: Associated Press)






OKLAHOMA:

The Death Penalty in Oklahoma: Nitrogen Gas as a Means of Execution


Nitrogen is often associated with soils and crop-talk. "If nitrogen taken up 
early by the crop is sufficient for yield," goes a piece from the Sidney Herald 
(MT) from May 5, 2012, "then it will get redistributed to help produce grain 
protein. In high yielding years, the in-season nitrogen addition could be 
decreased or omitted, resulting in substantial fertilizer cost savings."

Riveting stuff. Take-up rates; stem-elongation; crop yields; fertilization. 
Not, and here, the step becomes a leap, one of execution. Nitrogen, in the 
customary sense, supposedly encourages yields. But Oklahoma took a rather 
different pathway in effectively re-introducing the gas chamber. The murderous 
protagonist here, instead of previously used hydrogen cyanide, is nitrogen.

This would involve sealing the victim in an airtight chamber filled with 
nitrogen gas. In the absence of oxygen, nitrogen goes to work, producing a 
range of effects. These might, for instance, entail the "raptures of the deep," 
a term used in the context of deep-sea divers exposed to an excess of nitrogen 
(Slate, May 22, 2014). There might even be a sensation of euphoria.

Proponents for nitrogen's use, in speaking on behalf of the putative condemned 
prisoner, claim that the person would suffer nothing abnormal, would endure no 
pain, and would not, strictly speaking, suffocate, given that carbon dioxide 
build-up, rather than an absence of oxygen, is the culprit at hand.

Much of this was put forth when cyanide gas fell foul of the Eight Amendment in 
1994. Oakland technology consultant Stuart Creque was the dark knight of the 
moment, coming to the rescue of head-scratching executioners. Writing in 1995 
for the National Review, Creque argued that nitrogen "would cause neither pain 
nor physical trauma, require no medical procedure (other than pronouncing 
death), and no hazardous chemicals."

The governor of Oklahoma, Mary Fallin, had signed legislation permitting 
execution by nitrogen gas, provided drugs for lethal injection or the method 
itself, was deemed illegal. Last month, Fallin stayed the execution of Richard 
Glossip for 37 days over questions "about Oklahoma's execution protocol and the 
chemicals used for lethal injection."[1] He was scheduled to be executed on 
November 6, but this was in turn stayed indefinitely.

Humanitarian arguments are often sham ones, standard bearers for the worst form 
of moral charlatanism. They are attached to missile tips; they are aligned with 
arguments on how best to kill human beings for broader causes. We might not 
like the death penalty, but at least we can be assured that convicts are killed 
humanely. "You can oppose the death penalty and still see the merit in making 
executions more humane," argues Tom McNichol (Slate, May 22, 2014).Lawrence 
Gist II, an attorney and professor of business law at Mount St. Mary's College, 
similarly extols the virtues of more humane methods in the death industry, 
having become something of a propagandist for nitrogen-based killing. "If we're 
going to take a life, then we should do so in the most humane, civilized manner 
as is possible."

This is a false choice, bedded on some nasty logic. The oxymoronic dialogue on 
the death penalty is one of the more insidious ones in the lethal complex that 
sees states identify how best to dispatch their convicts. Death penalty 
advocates and those against the death penalty tend to find themselves at one on 
this. It is a form of tacit collusion: we will accept the death penalty, but we 
will be kind and strictly professional about it.

Absolutists against the death penalty are taken to task by such commentators as 
Boer Deng and Dahlia Lithwick for inciting officials to actually endorse 
substandard methods and techniques in killing. This is dangerous nonsense. 
Either the sanctity of human life, irrespective of how grizzly that human being 
might be, matters, or it does not. It is hardly preserved by killing the 
subject with professionally thought through methods.

The legal authorities have also been complicit in creating a fantasy of 
compassion behind killing. In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled that Kentucky's 
3-drug protocol behind lethal injections abided by the constitution. But such 
sanitised rationales of lethality ignored human incompetence in the 
administering process. The death of Clayton Lockett in April 2014 was not 
merely vicious in its outcome but in its application. (He remained alive for 43 
minutes after the injections began.) As Justice Sonia Sotomayor observed during 
oral arguments, the protocol may have entailed "burning a person alive who's 
paralysed."

Then came the stay offered for Russell Bucklew last year, similarly taking 
issue with the needle. The court rationale from 2008 was looking unsteady. 
"Every age," writes Nichol, "seems to feature a new and improved method of 
capital punishment, billed as more efficient and humane." Killing can, 
according to such thinking, be progressive.

Scientific killings, state sanctioned murder theorised and then applied, has 
been a central feature of the modern State. The State's monopoly on violence 
manifests itself as fury in cases when private citizens start appropriating 
such powers. The death penalty is a statement of sovereign selfishness, 
jealously guarded. Using nitrogen fittingly embraces the industrial complex, 
furthermore so given that the gas chamber, as a death delving device, was 
pioneered in the United States. Nazi Germany would duly take note and kill with 
even more zeal.

The internal inconsistencies of the death penalty arguments were always going 
to be evident with such constitutionally enshrined terms as "cruel and unusual 
punishment" as outlined in the Eight Amendment. Such wording has been 
interpreted by means various and exotic, always allowing for capital 
punishment. None have proven convincing, with the exception of Justice Stephen 
Bryer's dissent in Glossip v Grosswhich agued that rather than trying "to patch 
up the death penalty's legal wounds 1 at a time," we should accept "that the 
death penalty violates the Eight Amendment."[2]

The death penalty remains sadistically expressive, and its cruelty should be 
emphasised beyond a shadow of doubt. If it is to remain on the books, it should 
be exemplified, not lulled. Saudi Arabia, China and similar countries admit 
that suffering is fundamental behind having such a penalty. What, then, would 
be the point?

Bring in US-made beheadings. Bring in firing squads. Let the blood flow. Film 
it. Stream it. Demonstrate humanity's inhumanity to itself. As the sponsor of 
the nitrogen execution bill Mike Christian, Republican member of the Oklahoman 
House of Representatives explained with crude honesty, humanitarianism has 
nothing to do with it. "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and a 
former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric 
chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine, or being fed to the lions."[3] To 
embrace a supposedly kinder form of killing sanitises murder, encouraging a 
hypocrisy that salves the bleeding conscience.

(source: Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, 
Cambridge----globalresearch.ca)






CALIFORNIA:

New lethal injection protocol isn't the answer to California's death penalty 
debate


The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has finally settled 
on 4 barbiturates - amobarbital, pentobarbital, secobarbital and thiopental - 
as the poisons of choice for its proposed new method of executing people. A 
single dose from any of the 4 would replace the previous 3-drug protocol, which 
a state judge threw out in 2011 - not because killing someone by lethal 
injection would be cruel and unusual punishment but because the state failed to 
follow the proper administrative rules in adopting the old protocol.

That doesn't mean the state is about to execute its first prisoners in nearly a 
decade, however. Friday's posting of the proposed new, simpler protocol is just 
the start of a fresh review process that will inevitably draw lengthy legal 
challenges. Meanwhile, the state continues to appeal a ruling by U.S. District 
Judge Cormac J. Carney last year that barred executions in California. Carney 
found the state's system for determining whom to execute unconstitutionally 
arbitrary and so slow that executions ultimately serve no retributive purpose.

State voters may also weigh in on the subject next year; backers of 2 death 
penalty initiatives are seeking spots on the 2016 ballot. The dueling proposals 
offer a stark and unambiguous choice: Resume the "machinery of death," as 
Justice Harry A. Blackmun once called it, by speeding up the appeals process 
for death sentences, or end the barbaric practice altogether and sentence 
convicted murderers to life without parole. Given our blanket opposition to 
capital punishment, it's easy to guess which way we lean.

As things stand today, Californians have it both ways, with courts sentencing 
convicted murderers to death at a pace of about 1 every 3 weeks but with no 
executions being carried out. In fact, California has executed only 13 people 
since capital punishment was made legal again nearly 4 decades ago, while 112 
condemned prisoners have died, primarily from natural causes or suicide. As 
Carney pointed out, these days a California death sentence is in practice a 
sentence of life without parole - except with lengthy, costly appeals.

Granting the state the right to execute its citizens is an abhorrent breach of 
morality and human dignity. There also are grotesque national disparities in 
who receives a death sentence, as judgments are weighted by race, geography 
and, occasionally, politics. That's not justice. It's racially skewed vengeance 
tainted by gamesmanship, which has led to arbitrary death sentences and scores 
of wrongful convictions.

Now that California is taking the 1st steps toward resuming executions, 
Californians need to take a close look at what we are asking the state to do in 
our name. Murder is a serious crime, and it demands a serious punishment. But 
execution is not it.

(source: Editorial Board, Los Angeles Times)




USA:

Hillary Clinton Says Infamous Mass Murderers Keep Her On The Fence About The 
Death Penalty----She said some states "have gone way too far."


Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton defended her support for the 
death penalty by citing several infamous mass murders during MSNBC's Democratic 
Presidential Candidates Forum on Friday.

Clinton said cases like the June murders of black churchgoers in Charleston, 
South Carolina, should prompt "a legitimate discussion" about the death 
penalty. But she argued there are now "too many cases put into the capital 
offense category."

In October, Clinton said she doesn't support abolishing the death penalty, but 
wants it reserved for "very limited and rare" cases. During the forum on 
Friday, Clinton said she was commenting on the federal death penalty system. 
She named Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 9/11 mastermind Khalid 
Sheikh Mohammed and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh -- people who 
committed what she called "really heinous crimes" -- as those who "should 
potentially have the death penalty."

Clinton also doubled down on her earlier statements that the death penalty is 
often administered in a discriminatory way, and argued states should "take a 
really hard look" at their capital punishment laws, because some "have gone way 
too far."

(source: Huffington Post)

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

No Death Penalty For Gays ... Until They Have Time To Repent


Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal all 
spoke this weekend at the National Religious Liberties Conference in Iowa, an 
event hosted by Kevin Swanson, a Colorado-based pastor and activist who 
frequently informs his followers that the biblical penalty for homosexuality is 
death and defended a proposed law in Uganda that would have imposed life 
imprisonment or capital punishment for homosexuality.

2 other speakers invited to the conference have similarly backed capital 
punishment for gay people, and one came prepared with a pamphlet he wrote 
explaining that view.

In a closing keynote address to the conference Saturday evening, Swanson 
clarified that he is not encouraging American officials to implement the death 
penalty for homosexuality ... yet.

Instead, he said, gay people first need time to repent of their sins, as do 
people who have committed adultery, gotten divorced or looked at porn, all of 
which he said are inviting God's judgment on America.

(source: Kevin Swanson; rightwingwatch.org)