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

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 13



NEBRASKA:

UNK Hosts Death Penalty Forum


Nebraska's death penalty continues to be a hot button topic, regardless of what 
side you're on.

Representatives from each side met at UNK Thursday night for a public 
debate-one side arguing that the capitol punishment system is broken, the other 
advocating for it to stay.

"The death penalty is a lot more expensive than life without parole," said 
Nebraskans for Alternative To Death Penalty's Matt Maly. "It seems counter- 
intuitive but with the lengthy appeals process the complex and longer expensive 
trial, it's a lot more expensive and that's tax payers' money that we worked so 
hard for."

"The cost, you hear about the cost from defendents who plead guilty rather than 
have the death penalty," said Nebraskans For Death Penalty's Bob Evnan. "And we 
have a lot of those in the state as well."

Nebraska voters will ultimately have the final decision in the general election 
in November, 2016.

(source: nebraska.tv)






CALIFORNIA:

Testimony begins in death penalty case----Man accused in 2004 double murder in 
Indio


An Indio woman testified Thursday that she watched hysterically for several 
minutes as her brother bled, gasped for air and then died after being shot 
multiple times as he sat in his car near her Towne Street apartment 11 years 
ago.

Vicki Loera Castro was the 1st prosecution witness in the trial of Elias 
Carmona Lopez, charged with 2 counts of 1st-degree murder in the 
execution-style shooting deaths of Erineo Perez and Martin Garcia on Oct. 10 
and Oct. 26, 2004. Both victims were shot several times in the face, 
authorities said.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Lopez, who faces special 
circumstance allegations of lying in wait, committing multiple murders and 
murder in furtherance of a criminal street gang.

(source: KESQ news)

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

California's death penalty process upheld----747 people are on death row in 
California


A federal appeals court on Thursday announced it has reversed a lower court's 
ruling that California's death penalty process was unconstitutional because of 
systemwide delays.

Last year, District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney vacated the 1995 death 
sentence of Ernest D. Jones, who petitioned the court to determine whether his 
death sentence was valid.

Carney wrote: "Allowing this system to continue to threaten Mr. Jones with the 
slight possibility of death, almost a generation after he was first sentenced, 
violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual 
punishment."

Judge Susan P. Graber, who wrote the opinion for the 3-judge appeals panel, 
said Jones' legal team had asked the court to consider what would be a new 
constitutional rule in a habeas corpus case (ones that determine whether 
imprisonment is valid). Most are barred by a 1989 ruling in Teague v. Lane, she 
wrote.

She said the decision was based on the legal maneuvers in the case, not whether 
the many years death penalty cases take in the system was unconstitutional.

"Many agree with petitioner that California's capital punishment system is 
dysfunctional and that the delay between sentencing and execution in California 
is extraordinary," she wrote.

"But 'the purpose of federal habeas corpus is to ensure that state convictions 
comply with the federal law in existence at the time the conviction became 
final, and not to provide a mechanism for the continuing re-examination of 
final judgments based upon later emerging legal doctrine,'" she added, quoting 
a 1990 habeas case

In California, lawyers can appeal the decision of the appeals court.

There are 747 people on death row in California. No one has been executed since 
2006.

Since 1978, more than 900 people in the state have been sentenced to death row, 
where inmates spend 23 hours alone in their cells. Of those people, 13 were 
executed; as of 2014, 94 have died of other causes. Many have been on death row 
longer than 19 years.

Jones was convicted and sentenced to death 20 years ago for raping and killing 
his girlfriend's mother, Julia Miller, a 50-year-old defense industry 
accountant.

During the trial, Jones was portrayed as the product of a broken home with 
alcoholic parents. An aunt described his childhood as "a living hell." He grew 
up in poverty, and his parents used drugs in front of the children and battled 
violently. His mother beat him and his siblings. He developed a drug habit of 
his own, which included marijuana and cocaine.

The court record indicates Jones spent several years in prison for raping the 
mother of a previous girlfriend.

The California Supreme Court in 2003 upheld the conviction of Jones on 
1st-degree murder and rape charges.

(source: bigcountryhomepage.com)

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

Why California's death penalty is back in play


A federal appeals court on Thursday reversed a lower court's ruling that found 
California's death penalty was unconstitutional because of excessive delays.

In a unanimous decision, the 3-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of 
Appeals found that the long delays prisoners face on death row do not 
constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

The case centered on a novel constitutional theory that claims death row 
inmates' sentences have been transformed from one of death to one of "grave 
uncertainty and torture." The judges wrote in their decision that the theory 
has "no support" in legal precedent, "nor is it supported by logic."

US District Judge Cormac Carney put the new legal theory to the test last year 
when he called California's system "completely dysfunctional" and ruled that it 
led to arbitrary executions.

"California's death penalty system is so plagued by inordinate and 
unpredictable delay that the death sentence is actually carried out against 
only a trivial few of those sentenced to death," Judge Carney wrote in his 
order.

The appeals court said it would not weigh the validity of the claim by a 
murderer on death row for 2 decades because the lower court had to apply 
federal law at the time of his conviction and not a novel constitutional rule. 
Nonetheless, the 3-judge panel agreed that California's capital punishment 
system is dysfunctional.

Prosecutors appealed Carney's ruling in the case of Ernest DeWayne Jones, a Los 
Angeles man sentenced to die for the 1992 rape and murder of his girlfriend's 
mother.

Mr. Jones said in his appeal that the state didn't provide a fair and timely 
review of his case and that the conditions on death row constituted torture. 
His lawyer could appeal Thursday's ruling to a larger panel of the 9th Circuit, 
reports the Los Angeles Times.

California has the largest death-row population in the country, but the state 
has rarely carried out executions in recent years. Of the more than 900 people 
who have been sentenced to death since 1978, only 13 have been executed.

Yet California has shown signs that it may be getting closer to resuming lethal 
injections, reports the Washington Post. While the state has not carried out an 
execution since 2006, the state proposed a new execution protocol last week 
after a federal judge ordered an overhaul of the state's procedures for lethal 
injection.

(source: Christian Science Monitor)

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

Hijacked and Hitchhiked: America's schizophrenic attitude to the death penalty


There's no room for error in the capital punishment biz. You'd think that alone 
would inspire the country's distaste for it. Guess again.

I've asked my talk radio audiences throughout the years a very simple question: 
How many people would you allow to be erroneously killed via state-sponsored 
murder (capital punishment) before you would demand either a moratorium or 
all-out abolition of the death penalty? Silly me. I thought for sure the answer 
would be a resounding ZERO! None. Nada. Just the way the question's phrased, 
surely gives away the answer. Well, to my shock and horror the answers have 
varied from an inexplicable number (4. 4?!) to no number or amount was too 
great.

The death penalty was critical and necessary and like they say when you make an 
omelet, you have to break a few eggs. Mistakes happen. No system's perfect. You 
win some, you lose some. The appellate process is enough to weed out the 
mistakes and if some slip through the cracks, those are the breaks. Apparently 
they weren't in school for Blackstone's admonition, "For the law holds, that it 
is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that 1 innocent suffer." 
Blackstone, they'd surely posit, was another lily-livered liberal.

And, remember, these were God-fearing reasonably good and kind and 
compassionate folks, usually, but when the subject comes to our American 
pastime, hard justice, they clung to the idea of the death penalty's 
criticality with a tenacity that's inexplicable.

I'm a lawyer by profession and I've been a prosecutor and I've seen firsthand 
what the system's like. And if for no other reason than the inefficacy of the 
determination of guilt, the death process must be stopped. Now. It's meted out 
haphazardly, it's proved to be in no wise a deterrent and when it's repealed 
murder rates don't rise and when it's added the don't fall. You will ofttimes 
hear the quip that it is in fact a deterrent because the executed defendant 
will be unable to kill again.

Let's talk methodology. The means of exacting the punishment have been barbaric 
and the current illusion of compassion, lethal injection, has suffered a spate 
of problems including administering the death cocktail in reverse order 
(resulting in the wide-awake condemned suffocating without the ability to utter 
a protest).

Let me remind the reader that the reason for lethal injection was intended 
primarily to spare the witnesses having to endure a more efficacious, though 
messy, means of administering final justice. An overdose of barbiturates would 
be far more humane (after all, it's the method of choice for dispatching an 
ailing pet) as would the guillotine, which is problematic to everyone save the 
condemned.

There are a number of attendant problems associated with the American death 
penalty system that require review. First, let's look at the caliber of trial 
counsel that's usually afforded and accorded the defendant. In many 
jurisdictions court-appointed lawyers are provided who are paid by the county, 
state or local jurisdiction and in too many cases they've not the experience to 
handle the complexity of the ultimate criminal sanction. It's not beyond the 
realm of possibility for a lawyer to be handed a case, a lawyer whose main 
criterion for selection is being friends with the judge. A lawyer who might 
have never tried a criminal case in his/her life, much less a capital case. In 
these matters it's beyond critical to file the necessary pretrial motions and 
preserve the record for the inevitable appeal when the defendant will 
inevitably be found guilty and inevitably sentenced to death. If you've any 
question about this, just look at the frequency of ineffective assistance of 
counsel post-trial and post-conviction motions and appeals.

Then there's the issue of investigatory costs. The state has unlimited 
resources, law enforcement personnel, investigators, forensics experts, name 
it, at its disposal. The amount allocated for pretrial investigation, not to 
mention the de minimis legal fees involved, is never enough. Just look what 
happens when an industrious court-appointed lawyer tries to secure additional 
funds for an experienced investigator or forensics expert to assist. Good luck. 
And I haven't even mentioned the hurdles that are encountered when an 
already-convicted defendant tries to secure release or exoneration when 
newly-discovered evidence is acquired. But that's for another discussion.

And then the issue of guilt itself. Contrary to popular belief, most capital 
cases don't involve DNA or forensics but eyewitness testimony or the jailhouse 
snitch. The Judas who'll say anything to anyone to avoid or minimize his or her 
own criminal fate. And keep in mind; it's hardly rare that the defendant in 
question is not in possession of a lengthy and most significant criminal 
history. Defendants are often guilty, but not necessarily of the offense 
they're charged with. Let me remind the reader that 1st degree murder is the 
charge that accompanies the death penalty: willful, wanton, malicious, 
premeditated murder with malice aforethought. Not 2nd degree murder or heat of 
passion or depraved mind but murder one.

The issue of the imposition itself is complicated in its own right because of 
the factors that may not necessarily involve guilt per se but the frequency of 
certain demographics being sentenced. To most folks, it's merely about being 
guilty. Ah, yes. Guilt. Too bad that the chances of Black-on-White murder 
receiving the jury's recommendation of death are inordinately more likely than 
any other permutation.

In all of criminal law, the most difficult to explain is the notion of the 
insane being ineligible for guilt. Ineligible because they lack the capacity to 
form the requisite criminal intent to commit a particular specific intent 
crime. What does that mean? Mumbo jumbo to many who believe that criminal 
defendants all too often escape the necessary snare of justice. They feel that 
the actus reus, the physical act of the crime itself, is all that matters. Did 
this dirtbag shoot, stab, choke or otherwise kill the victim? If yes, case 
closed.

Next! Criminal intent, mens rea, capacity and/or mental wherewithal mean 
absolutely nothing. And to be fair, when a jury of ordinary citizens is exposed 
for the 1st time to the proverbial 8X10 glossies of the mostly mind-blowingly 
horrible murder scene imaginable, especially when involving a child, the last 
thing on their mind is mental capacity and culpability. They want justice, 
better yet; vengeance - and they want it now. And that???s completely 
understandable, if not unfortunate.

That's why the death penalty must be abolished. There's no room for error when 
a human life is involved, even when that human life took another. And it has 
nothing to do with whether anyone "deserves" it. Lock away and warehouse those 
convicted. I in no wise am arguing for the release of the dangerous. What I am 
advocating is sober reflection and a mature review of this barbaric system.

You can't appeal an execution.

(source: Op-Ed; Lionel (ne: Michael Wm. Lebron) is an Emmy Award winning trial 
lawyer----rt.com)






WASHINGTON:

Washington prosecutors want death-penalty referendum


State prosecutors say they'll ask lawmakers to send a death-penalty referendum 
to voters next year.

The Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys issued a statement Thursday 
saying prosecutors "overwhelmingly believe that the people of the state should 
vote on the question of whether the state should retain the death penalty as an 
option in cases of aggravated murder."

The death penalty has been on hold in Washington state since last year, when 
Gov. Jay Inslee issued a moratorium for as long as he's in office. 9 men are 
now on death row in Washington state.

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said a public vote would tell prosecutors 
"1 way or the other" how Washingtonians feel about the death penalty.

The impetus for the prosecutors' action, according to an email from Tom 
McBride, executive secretary of the association, were the jury decisions in the 
murder cases involving the killings of a Carnation family in 2007 and a Seattle 
police officer in 2009.

In the Carnation case, Michele Anderson is accused of joining her 
then-boyfriend Joseph McEnroe in killing six members of her family. McEnroe was 
convicted of participating in the killings and sentenced in May to life in 
prison after the jury could not agree on the death penalty.

In July, Satterberg said his office would not seek the death penalty against 
Anderson, an announcement made after Christopher Monfort was sentenced to life 
in prison for killing Officer Timothy Brenton.

The lack of pending death-penalty cases provides "a window where we don't have 
to think through" immediate impacts, McBride said in his email, noting that the 
group's Thursday statement had almost "unanimous support from elected 
prosecuting attorneys who both support and oppose the death penalty."

Rep. Reuven Carlyle, D-Seattle, said the prosecutors' statement is a "really 
important and momentous step forward" in public conversation over the law.

But Carlyle, who has sponsored bills to ban the death penalty, said he believes 
any change should come from the Legislature. There's a lot of complexity 
surrounding a change in the law, he said, and a public referendum would spur an 
expensive and difficult campaign.

Carlyle added he plans to again sponsor a bill to end the death penalty in the 
next legislative session, which starts in January.

Death-penalty cases in Washington are still being tried and continue to work 
through the system. Inslee's moratorium means that if a death-penalty case 
comes to his desk, he will issue a reprieve, which means the inmate would stay 
in prison rather than face execution.

In response to the prosecutors' Thursday statement, Jaime Smith, spokeswoman 
for Inslee, called the death-penalty debate an important one. She added that 
"The governor made clear his reasons for enacting a moratorium and his support 
for a discussion among legislators and the people."

Since 1981, most death-penalty sentences in Washington have been overturned and 
executions rare, according to the prepared remarks of Inslee's 2014 moratorium 
announcement.

"When the majority of death-penalty sentences lead to reversal," Inslee said in 
the remarks, "the entire system itself must be called into question."

The death penalty is allowed in 31 states, as well as by the federal government 
and the U.S. military, according to the National Conference of State 
Legislatures. Since 2009, 5 states - New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut, 
Maryland and Nebraska - have abolished it.

In a national Gallup poll in October, 61 % of U.S. adults said they favored the 
death penalty.

The number continues a gradual decline in support since a high of 80 % in 1994, 
according to the poll findings.

(source: Seattle Times)

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

Washington prosecutors want death penalty referendum on ballot next year


State prosecutors say they'll ask lawmakers to send a death penalty referendum 
to voters next year.

The Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys issued a statement Thursday 
saying that prosecutors "overwhelmingly believe that the people of the state 
should vote on the question of whether the state should retain the death 
penalty as an option in cases of aggravated murder."

The death penalty has been on hold in Washington state since last year, when 
Gov. Jay Inslee issued a moratorium for as long as he's in office.

Currently, 9 men are on death row in Washington state.

Death penalty cases in the state are still being tried and continue to work 
through the system.

Inslee's moratorium means that if a death-penalty case comes to his desk, he 
will issue a reprieve, which means the inmate would stay in prison rather than 
face execution.

The next legislative session begins in January.

(source: Associated Press)






USA:

Why Some Prosecutors Want All-White Juries for Death Penalty Cases----Dahlia 
Lithwick asks, "What goes on in the heads of prosecutors?"


3 decades ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Batson v. Kentucky that race cannot 
be a determining factor in the process of jury selection. But because it's so 
difficult to know what is really motivating prosecutors and defense attorneys 
to strike potential members of a jury pool, Batson has proven very hard to 
enforce.

Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Foster v. Chatman, a case in 
which the paper trail strongly suggests that race was a factor in the dismissal 
of potential jurors. On the latest Amicus podcast, host Dahlia Lithwick spoke 
with Stephen Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights and lead 
counsel for the convicted murderer at the center of Foster.

Here's an excerpt from the conversation:

Lithwick: Can you just put yourself in the head of a prosecutor for a minute, 
and explain to me why they are so confident that striking black jurors is a 
smart initial move, and that it's worth going through the contortions of 
justifying it later. Why is there such a deep, deep tradition, particularly in 
the South, of just saying, "We're going to default to all-white juries"?

Bright: Well, I think what happened in this case is what happens so often - 
that people are just not treated as individuals but put in groups. I mean, the 
prosecutors said at one time, "This woman had the most potential of all the 
blacks in the jury pool," as opposed to just treating her like one of many 
people - 50 people - in this pool from which the jury was selected. I think in 
this case, the prosecutors wanted the death penalty. They argued to the jury to 
give the death penalty, to deter people in the projects, which were 90 % 
African-American.

It is less likely that that appeal and getting the death penalty - at least the 
prosecutors figured - if they had African-Americans on the jury.

Now I think what Batson teaches is that you just have to accept people, without 
regard to race. If the jury decides not to impose the death penalty, you have 
to accept that. But I think when you've got young, ambitious prosecutors - as 
both these prosecutors were - they want to win at any cost.

And if the cost is to strike all the blacks so that you have an all-white jury 
that's more likely to impose the death penalty, that's what they're going to 
do.

Lithwick: Steve, it strikes me, listening to you talk, that there's such a 
common thread in so many of the kind of race doctrines we talk about on this 
show. And the thread is, look, we can't really search your heart. We don't 
know, at the end of the day, what's going on, but just don't be obvious, right? 
Don't be ugly about it. We see that in the affirmative action cases. We've seen 
that in so many strains of constitutional law.

It feels like, at the end of the day, the Supreme Court at Batson said, "Just 
don't be yucky about being racist. If you're going to be racist, just do it 
quietly." Certainly, it seems that the takeaway of Foster is, if you're going 
to be racist, don't put it on paper with the green highlighter. It seems like a 
very, very short-sighted and kind of naive view of how to combat entrenched 
racial discrimination in this country.

Bright: Oh, it certainly is. We've had a lot of attention in the country lately 
to relationships between law enforcement and communities of color. What there's 
been too little attention to, in my opinion, is, what happens to those people 
once they get in the criminal justice system - whether they're accused of a 
minor crime, or whether accused of a crime that carries the death penalty? 
There are all these discretionary decisions, from whether to grant bail, what 
to charge, what plea offer to make - if there's plea bargaining in the case - 
and 95 % of all cases are resolved with plea bargains and the striking of the 
jury.

You have to remember, 95 % of all prosecutors in this country - the chief 
prosecutors - are white. So, the criminal justice system does not reflect the 
society, and the decisions in these cases that have a tremendous effect on 
communities of color and are really destroying people, families, and 
communities. These decisions are mostly being made by white people and mostly 
white men.

(source: Dahlia Lithwick, slate.com)