[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----MO., IOWA, NEB., UTAH, USA

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 17



MISSOURI:

Sheley change-of-venue hearing reset for January


A change-of-venue hearing for a Sterling man facing the death sentence if 
convicted of killing his 7th and 8th victims has been moved to Jan. 8.

Nicholas Sheley, 36, of Sterling, already serving 6 life sentences for slayings 
in Sterling, Rock Falls and Galesburg, is being tried in Jefferson County Court 
in Missouri for the bludgeoning deaths of Jill and Tom Estes of Sherwood, 
Arkansas.

The couple were killed in the parking lot of a Festus, Missouri, hotel on June 
30, 2008.

(source: saukvalley.com)






IOWA:

GOP candidates face fallout over death penalty for gays conference in Iowa


The fallout from GOP candidates' attendance at a "religious liberty" conference 
in Iowa continued last week. Right Wing Watch notes that conference organizer 
Kevin Swanson has repeatedly defended the death penalty for homosexuality:

When 3 Republican presidential candidates decided to address a conference in 
Iowa this weekend organized by Colorado pastor Kevin Swanson - a radical 
activist who thinks that Girl Scout cookies and the movie "Frozen" are turning 
girls into lesbians and has defended the death penalty for homosexuality - it 
showed once again that the Republican primary seems to be a competition of who 
can move farther to the right.

Swanson cleverly focused his Iowa conference on the theme of "religious 
liberties," warning that "persecution against Christians is on the rise in 
Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan, China, Oregon, and Kentucky." It was apparently an 
invitation that Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal - who are constantly 
harping on the theme that American Christians are on the road to facing 
persecution on par with Christians living under oppressive regimes - couldn't 
pass up.

Swanson made clear what he meant by anti-Christian persecution in interview at 
the conference with Seattle-based radio host Michelle Mendoza, when he 
complained that media reports on his anti-gay comments, including his recent 
remarks that AIDS is "God's retribution" for homosexuality, is part of a larger 
attempt to "shut down Christian media."

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow devoted a segment to the conference and Swanson, the 
Advocate reports:

Rachel Maddow focused Monday night on a tale of 2 forums this past weekend: 1 
she hosted in South Carolina featuring the 3 major contenders for the 
Democratic party nomination, and an Iowa conference featuring 3 antigay 
Republican candidates for president hosted by a right wing pastor who declared 
"it's not a gay time!"

"It really was a 'kill the gays' call to arms," said Maddow on her MSNBC 
program.

The New York Times published an opinion piece taking aim at Swanson:

Earlier this month, in Des Moines, the prominent home-schooling advocate and 
pastor Kevin Swanson again called for the punishment of homosexuality by death. 
To be clear, he added that the time for eliminating America's gay population 
was "not yet" at hand. We must wait for the nation to embrace the one true 
religion, he suggested, and gay people must be allowed to repent and convert.

Mr. Huckabee later pleaded ignorance. Yet a quick web search will turn up Mr. 
Swanson's references to the demonic power of "the homosexual Borg," the 
unmitigated evil of Harry Potter and the Disney character Princess Elsa's 
lesbian agenda....

Mr. Cruz apparently felt little need to make excuses. He was accompanying 
another of the featured speakers at the conference: his father, Rafael Cruz - a 
politically connected pastor who told a 2013 Family Leadership Summit that 
same-sex marriage was a government plot to destroy the family.

(source: The Column)






NEBRASKA:

Judge hears arguments in cases challenging death-penalty ballot


Lawyers clashed in a Lincoln courtroom Monday in back-to-back hearings on a 
lawsuit challenging whether the death-penalty question should go before voters 
next year and another challenging the wording on the ballot if it does.

Lancaster County District Judge Lori Maret made no decisions in the cases.

One, filed by longtime death penalty opponents Christy and Richard 
Hargesheimer, contends the petition process should be deemed invalid because it 
failed to disclose Gov. Pete Ricketts as a sponsor.

The other, filed by Beatrice attorney Lyle Koenig, takes issue with the 
language the Secretary of State has chosen to appear as the title on the 
ballot.

At hearings Monday, the main questions for Maret were:

* whether the judge should dismiss the Hargesheimers' lawsuit.

* And whether a pro-death-penalty group should be allowed to be a party in the 
Koenig case.

At the 1st hearing, in the Hargesheimers' case, nearly a dozen attorneys -- 4 
on the plaintiffs' side and 7 for the defendants -- sat in the well.

The argument over the next 40 minutes came down, largely, to who qualifies as a 
"sponsor" of a petition.

Attorney Alan Peterson, who represents the Hargesheimers, contends that 
Nebraska law requires a sworn list of every person sponsoring a referendum.

"The plaintiff's claim is simple. They didn't do it," he said.

Peterson said the list left off Ricketts. It's Peterson's position that the 
courts haven't yet defined "sponsors," but there's strong indication Ricketts 
would meet any definition.

Ricketts and his father contributed 1/3 of the $913,000 raised by Nebraskans 
for the Death Penalty. Ricketts raised money for the campaign, and his close 
allies took roles to promote it.

In the end, Peterson said the court probably will have to come up with a legal 
definition, which can come from the legislature's intent to prevent fraud and 
to allow the public to be fully informed before deciding to support a petition.

Omaha attorney Steven Grasz, who represents Nebraskans for the Death Penalty 
and the Ballot Question Committee, said the fact that the plaintiffs can't or 
won't define "sponsor" only points out that their definition is so vague it 
would hinder rather than facilitate the referendum process.

"You can't have a gotcha game with the people's referendum rights," he argued.

Grasz said to construe the statute to encompass supporters, contributors and 
political leaders would put petition drives in a state of perpetual 
uncertainty.

He pointed to a definition in a prior Lancaster County case.

"Sponsor," he argued, refers to one who assumes statutory responsibility for 
the referendum once the petition commences.

Secretary of State John Gale interprets it that way, too.

"Your honor, there is no fraud in this case, there is no confusion," Grasz 
said.

Voters can look at Accountability and Disclosure reports to see all the 
contributors, he added.

Assistant Attorney General Ryan Post, who represents Gale, said since all 
parties agree it's a legal question, "there's no reason this court can't decide 
on a motion to dismiss."

In the Koenig case, which Maret took up next, attorney Chris Eickholt argued 
against the judge allowing Nebraskans for the Death Penalty to be joined to the 
suit, which seeks to change a single word to the title should the question end 
up before voters.

It challenges the Attorney General's proposed ballot language, which describes 
life in prison as the "maximum" sentence, when in fact it is the only sentence.

Eickholt said the pro-death penalty group didn't file within the time allowed 
to challenge the decision on the wording or provide an alternative.

On the other side, attorney Stephen Mossman argued the sponsor of the initial 
petition should have say in how it ultimately ends up on the ballot.

"If you have a problem with (the wording), you're supposed to do what Mr. 
Koenig did, right?" Maret asked Mossman.

He said the sponsor doesn't necessarily have a problem with that language, but 
the group has an interest in the outcome of the case.

Maret took motions in both cases under advisement.

(source: Lincoln Journal Star)

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

Ricketts' involvement in death penalty petition argued in lawsuit


An attorney for a pro-death penalty group urged a judge Monday to toss out a 
lawsuit by capital punishment opponents that attacks a voter petition drive 
because it did not list Nebraska's governor as a sponsor.

The lawsuit seeks to invalidate a petition that would ask voters if they want 
to reverse the death penalty repeal enacted by state lawmakers this spring.

Nebraskans for the Death Penalty properly listed three sponsors when the group 
submitted official paperwork for the petition, said Omaha attorney Steve Grasz. 
Gov. Pete Ricketts' political and financial support of the petition drive - to 
the tune of $200,000 - did not constitute sponsorship, Grasz argued.

The Nebraska Constitution says state laws should make voter petitions easier, 
not harder, to achieve. Allowing death penalty opponents to vaguely define a 
petition sponsor as someone who contributes money would discourage citizen 
participation in the referendum process, Grasz said.

"You can't have a 'gotcha' game with the people's initiative and petition 
rights," he said.

Lawyers for death penalty opponents, meanwhile, argued that citizens should 
know the extent of the governor's involvement in an initiative petition he 
helped fund. The law also requires the listing of all sponsors so voters can be 
fully informed before deciding whether to sign, said Lincoln attorney Alan 
Peterson, who represents Nebraskans for Public Safety.

The proper listing of sponsors prevents fraud by holding those behind a 
petition drive legally responsible.

"The provision allows the public and the media to scrutinize the validity and 
the completeness of any list of sponsors," Peterson said.

Lancaster County District Judge Lori Maret took the matter under advisement 
Monday and will issue her ruling at a later date. But she learned all legal 
issues surrounding the death penalty petition - including any appeals - must be 
decided by Sept. 16, 2016, to meet a deadline for the Nebraska Secretary of 
State to print ballots.

Death penalty defenders collected about 143,000 valid signatures to put the 
question on the November 2016 general election ballot.

The number also was enough to put the repeal on hold until the vote.

State senators abolished capital punishment over the governor's veto. In the 
months that followed, Ricketts solicited contributions for the referendum drive 
and gave $200,000 to the $1.36 million effort. His father, Joe Ricketts, 
contributed $100,000.

Among those coordinating the drive were Jessica Flanagain, the governor's 
privately paid political consultant, and Chris Peterson, whom Ricketts hired to 
organize the inaugural ball. The governor was "the primary initiating force" 
behind the referendum, according to the lawsuit.

Alan Peterson said Monday the lawsuit should go forward so witnesses can be 
questioned about the extent of the governor's involvement in an effort to 
reverse a law with which he disagrees.

In 2003 the Nebraska Supreme Court invalidated a pro-gambling petition because 
organizers failed to include a sworn statement including the names and 
addresses of sponsors. But the majority opinion in the ruling did not define a 
sponsor.

However, in a concurring opinion, then-Chief Justice John Hendry defined a 
petition sponsor as someone who identifies himself as "willing to assume 
statutory responsibilities once the petition process has commenced." Grasz said 
the 3 sponsors in the death penalty petition meet the Hendry definition.

Secretary of State John Gale reviews petition sponsor listings using the same 
definition, said Ryan Post, an assistant attorney general.

Alan Peterson contends it was more significant that the court majority did not 
adopt the Hendry definition in its opinion.

(source: World-Herald)

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

Attorneys spar over lawsuit to keep death penalty off Neb. ballot


A group that wants to retain Nebraska's death penalty is asking a judge to 
dismiss a lawsuit that could prevent the issue from appearing on the November 
2016 ballot.

However, death penalty opponents who filed the lawsuit argued in court Monday 
that the lawsuit should proceed.

The lawsuit argues that the ballot measure to reinstate the punishment after 
lawmakers abolished the death penalty is invalid because Gov. Pete Ricketts 
wasn't listed as a sponsor.

Ricketts donated $200,000 to the effort, but has said his support for the 
petition drive didn't make him a sponsor.

Nebraskans for the Death Penalty raised more than $913,000 and spent nearly all 
of it on the petition drive. The group has said the lawsuit is politically 
motivated.

(source: KETV news)






UTAH:

Joe Hill, who was executed by firing squad in Utah 100 years ago, inspired 
generations of musicians from Woody Guthrie to Bruce Springsteen


Nov. 19, 2015, will mark the 100th anniversary of the execution of Joe Hill, a 
man who gave us the phrase "pie in the sky" and left a legacy that has inspired 
generations of musicians - from Woody Guthrie to Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Bruce 
Springsteen.

He also left an enduring mystery over whether he died a martyr or a murderer.

The crime for which Hill faced a firing squad was the shooting of a Salt Lake 
City shopkeeper and his son. The prosecution's case was based entirely on weak 
circumstantial evidence, but he was convicted anyway.

Friends wrote at a funeral that drew 30,000 mourners in Chicago that Hill was 
"murdered by the authorities of the State of Utah" because of his role in the 
workers rebellion.

The anniversary is being marked by concerts, museum exhibits and plays all over 
the U.S. and abroad, including The Subversive Theater Collective's performance 
of "Joe Hill's Last Will."

Not bad for a man who was born into poverty in Sweden, spent most of his life 
as a hobo laborer in America, and was dead at 36.

By conventional standards, he had nothing and he knew it. His last will went 
like this:

"My Will is easy to decide,

"For there is nothing To divide

"My kin don't need to fuss and moan -

"Moss does not cling to a rolling stone."

He's a folk legend today because of the rhymes and tunes he penned for the 
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the radical union known as the Wobblies.

The man who'd one day be revered as the bard of American labor was born Joel 
Emmanuel Hagglund, in Sweden in 1879. His talents emerged early. By 8, he was 
playing violin, writing poems and songs, and joining in his family's tradition 
of sing-a-longs.

That all ended when an on-the-job accident killed his father. By the time Joel 
was 12, he was laboring in a rope mill and, by 17, he had tuberculosis. After 
years of treatment, the boy recovered just in time for another blow - the death 
of his mother.

With nothing left at home, he hopped a ship to America, landing in New York 
City in October 1902, and headed West.

He drifted, an anonymous worker. There's evidence that he was in San Francisco 
for the 1906 earthquake and, in 1911, he was in Mexico for the revolution.

During those years, he hooked up with the Wobblies, just when the movement was 
setting its discontent to music. In 1909, the IWW published its inaugural 
edition of "The Little Red Songbook."

Hill's songs first appeared in the book in 1911. He started with a bang, a 
scathing satire on churches called "The Preacher and the Slave." This song 
contains a phrase familiar to everyone, even young people today who have never 
heard Hill's name.

You will eat, bye and bye,

In that glorious land above the sky:

Work and pray, live on hay,

You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

Hill kept moving around, taking jobs here and there and writing. In time, he 
became "IWW's preeminent musical voice," wrote William M. Adler in his 2011 
biography, "The Man Who Never Died."

On Jan. 10, 1914, Hill was in Salt Lake City, Utah, when a retired police 
officer-turned-shopkeeper, John Morrison, and his eldest son, Arling, were shot 
dead. Morrison's younger son, who was in the back room at the time, said he saw 
2 men with red bandanas covering their faces burst into the store and start 
shooting.

Morrison's gun was found near Arling's body. Neighbors recalled 2 men running 
from the store and that one of them cried out, "Hold on, Bob, I'm shot."

A couple hours later, Hill turned up on a doctor's doorstep, bleeding from a 
gunshot wound to his chest. The bullet had passed through his body and was 
never found. Hill told the doctor that he had been shot in a quarrel over a 
woman. The doctor turned him in to the police.

The case against Hill was flimsy. He had no motive. Even the key to the case - 
the bullet wound - was questionable, since no one could say for sure if 
Morrison had gotten off a shot. There were also other men - career criminals - 
who were more likely to have targeted the shopkeeper.

With the prosecution's weaknesses, it might have seemed easy to raise 
reasonable doubt, but Hill did not help his cause. He was surly in court and 
fired his lawyers. He refused to give the name of the man who shot him and the 
woman who allegedly provoked the jealous rage.

Hill was convicted and sentenced to death after a 10-day trial.

Pleas to spare his life poured in, including from such notables as Helen Keller 
and President Woodrow Wilson, but nothing would change Utah's decision. When it 
was apparent there was no hope, Hill wrote to IWW chief "Big Bill" Haywood, "I 
will die like a true-blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning - organize."

Hill was shot at sunrise on Nov. 19 and his body was cremated. A year after the 
execution, Haywood distributed hundreds of packets of his ashes to union 
delegates from all over the world and told them to scatter them - anywhere but 
Utah.

Hill's songs and legend endured, and even his ashes managed to stick around for 
years after his death.

One packet that had been confiscated by the post office was tucked away and 
forgotten in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. It wasn't until the 
mid-1980s that they were rediscovered and then scattered by the IWW.

(source: New York Daily News)






USA:

Ending the Death Penalty Because of, not in Spite of, Conservative Principles


A few years ago, any state ending the death penalty struck most political 
observers as an extraordinary event. Following Gregg v. Georgia (1976), which 
ended a 4-year hiatus on capital punishment nationally, state after state 
reinstated the death penalty. This trend continued into the 1990s, as even deep 
blue states like New York brought it back. In this environment dominated by 
tough-on-crime rhetoric, a state ending the death penalty seemed impossible.

That changed in 2007, when New Jersey became the 1st state since Gregg to 
repeal the death penalty legislatively. After New Jersey, other states - New 
Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland - followed suit. With each state that 
repealed the death penalty, it became less of a surprise. But one development 
this year caught people off guard: a legislature in a red state, Nebraska, 
voted to scrap its death penalty.

This move piqued the interest of commentators as diverse as George Will and 
Rachel Maddow. The news prompted The Daily Show to send a reporter to Nebraska 
to "investigate." When interviewed by The Daily Show, the lead Republican 
sponsor of repealing Nebraska's death penalty, Senator Colby Coash, explained 
to a skeptical reporter that it was because of, not in spite of, his 
conservative principles that he led the effort. In particular, this aspect of 
the Nebraska campaign - legislators ending capital punishment for conservative 
reasons - has fascinated and perplexed observers.

Specifically, the conservative case against the death penalty consists of 3 
principal arguments: the death penalty's incompatibility with (1) limited 
government, (2) fiscal responsibility, and (3) promoting a culture of life.

First, at its most basic level, the death penalty represents an expansion of 
government power. Capital punishment involves not just removing violent 
individuals from society, but taking the additional step of killing them after 
they have been incarcerated. With modern prisons, the government has available 
non-lethal means to keep society secure without resorting to executions. 
Furthermore, giving government the power to execute leads to abuse of this 
power in the form of executing likely innocent individuals and botched 
executions. After such mistakes, states have turned to keeping secret the 
details of executions, which only leads to more errors and abuse.

2nd, the death penalty costs states millions of dollars more than incarcerating 
someone for life. Studies in over a dozen states have reached this conclusion. 
Because of wrongful death sentences and other errors, the courts require extra 
due process in capital cases. Therefore whenever prosecutors seek a death 
sentence, they set in motion a longer, more complex, and costlier legal 
process. Justifying this expense proves difficult when there is no credible 
evidence that the death penalty has any impact on murder rates. Moreover, most 
death sentences are overturned, which means that states often spend extra 
resources on what ends up being a life without parole sentence.

3rd, the Catholic Church and others have questioned the death penalty's place 
in a society that values life. The over 155 wrongful death sentences and 
subsequent exonerations nationwide make clear that the death penalty threatens 
innocent life. Even for those guilty of grave crimes, their lives have value 
and there remains the possibility of redemption, which an execution 
unnecessarily cuts short.

These reasons, of course, do not persuade all conservatives. One objection 
raised is that, by definition, conservatives support the death penalty. Even if 
someone is Republican, pro-life, and fiscally conservative, they lose their 
conservative credentials by opposing the death penalty. But making capital 
punishment a litmus-test issue proves difficult to defend because it 
disqualifies as conservative no small number of figures - Robert George, Abby 
Johnson, Ron Paul, Ramesh Ponnuru, Jay Sekulow, and others - well respected by 
various conservative constituencies. This view also puts a movement committed 
to religious liberty in the uncomfortable position of expelling from its ranks 
those deeply opposed to the death penalty on religious grounds.

Another objection appeals to tradition: capital punishment has existed in 
America since its founding, and thus the conservative position is to support 
it. This argument, however, takes a selective view of history. Yes, executions 
have occurred in America since the 1600s, but at the same time the Founding 
Fathers expressed reservations about capital punishment and were influenced by 
the criminologist Cesare Beccaria, who condemned the practice in his treatise 
On Crimes and Punishments. In this environment, some states dramatically 
restricted the crimes eligible for the death penalty in sharp contrast to 
England's Bloody Code, which designated a long list of property crimes as 
capital offenses. Later in 1846, it was an America state (Michigan) that became 
the first English-speaking territory to abolish the death penalty.

Experimentation by the states has demonstrated that - contrary to some doomsday 
rhetoric - repealing the death penalty does not lead to disaster. Currently, 19 
states have abandoned the death penalty, with another 4 implementing a 
moratorium on executions. Massive crime waves have not resulted. In fact, 
states without the death penalty have lower murder rates on average than states 
with it. People in states without the death penalty appear content with the 
status quo, as they support life without parole over the death penalty by a 
wide margin.

There is a cogent conservative case, then, for ending the death penalty. It 
will be interesting to see if its impact in Nebraska was an anomaly or part of 
something larger. Developments elsewhere suggest the latter. Last month the 
National Association of Evangelicals changed its pro-death penalty position of 
over 40 years, and now recognizes that Christians have legitimate reasons to 
oppose capital punishment. In Kansas, the state Republican Party dropped its 
pro-death penalty plank from its platform, while the College Republicans called 
for the death penalty's repeal. Legislatures in other red states like Montana 
have come close to ending the death penalty.

As evidence of the death penalty's brokenness has become harder to ignore, 
support for its repeal has grown across the political spectrum. If that trend 
continues and ending the death penalty increasingly becomes a bipartisan cause, 
its days almost certainly are numbered.

(source: Ben Jones is a campaign strategist for Equal Justice USA (EJUSA) and 
works in support of Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty (CCATDP), a 
project of EJUSA. Mr. Jones was the Executive Director of the Connecticut 
Network to Abolish the Death Penalty, successfully repealing capital punishment 
there in 2012----The Harvard Law Record)