[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OHIO, KAN., OKLA., NEB.

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 7



OHIO:

Ohio bill would spare severely mentally ill from execution


A person judged to suffer from severe mental illness at the time of a killing 
that could result in a death sentence would be spared from capital punishment 
under a bill before Ohio lawmakers.

The proposed legislation would allow a hearing before trial on an offender's 
mental illness and permit a judge to rule out the death penalty if severe 
mental illness is proven.

The bill sponsored by Sen. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican, was scheduled 
for a first hearing Wednesday before the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.

The bill would also allow current death row inmates to challenge their 
sentences on the basis of mental illness at the time of their crimes.

Illnesses covered by the bill include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major 
depressive disorder.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Court vacates death sentence, upholds conviction of Youngstown man


The Ohio Supreme Court has set aside the death sentence of Bennie Adams, who 
was convicted in 2007 for the 1985 murder of a Youngstown State University 
student who lived in the same apartment building.

The state charged Adams with aggravated murder. Adams was eligible for the 
death penalty, the state alleged, because he murdered his victim while 
committing one or more underlying felonies - rape, kidnapping, aggravated 
robbery, or aggravated burglary. But the state did not ask the jury to indicate 
which of the underlying felonies Adams committed. In such circumstances, Chief 
Justice Maureen O'Connor explained in the majority opinion, Ohio law requires 
the state to produce substantial evidence to prove all four felonies. Because 
the state did not establish that Adams committed aggravated burglary, "the 
evidence is, as a matter of law, insufficient to support a death sentence," she 
wrote.

The Supreme Court upheld Adams' conviction for aggravated murder, though. The 
case now returns to the trial court for a new sentencing hearing in line with 
the decision. The chief justice noted, however, that the state is prohibited by 
the U.S. Constitution's double jeopardy clause from seeking the death penalty 
on remand.

Woman Reports Break-In

In fall 1985, Gina Tenney lived alone in a 2nd-floor apartment of a converted 
house in Youngstown. Adams resided in a downstairs apartment with his 
girlfriend. The house had a shared common area that led to the apartments.

On Dec. 25, 1985, about 1 a.m., Tenney told a friend she heard someone at the 
door with keys trying to get into her apartment. She called her ex-boyfriend 
who came over and left near 3 a.m. Again, she heard someone at the door. She 
had placed a chair against the door, and the intruder knocked over the chair 
and entered her apartment. She called the police, who later found footprints in 
the snow from her apartment to a location on a different street.

5 days later, Tenney was discovered dead in the Mahoning River.

Police Find Victim's Items in Neighbor's Apartment

Detective William Blanchard, who Tenney spoke with the day after the break-in, 
and 2 homicide detectives went to the home to investigate. Adams let them in 
the front door. When the officers found Tenney's door locked, they went back to 
Adams' apartment to ask to call the building's owner for a key. Adams allowed 
them inside his apartment to use his phone.

While 1 detective made the call, the other 2 were talking with Adams when they 
heard a noise from another room. The officers went into a back bedroom and 
found Horace Landers hiding behind a door.

One of the officers recognized Landers and recalled that a misdemeanor warrant 
was out for him. The detectives arrested and handcuffed Landers. It was cold 
outside and he was shirtless, so Blanchard put a shirt from the bed over his 
shoulders, then picked up a jacket from the floor outside the bedroom. He 
searched the jacket for weapons and discovered an ATM card with Tenney's name 
on it and a county welfare card in Adams' name. Landers said the jacket 
belonged to Adams.

The police arrested Adams. During a search of his apartment, they found a set 
of keys that opened Tenney's apartment and her car, a potholder that matched 
one in her kitchen, and her television. In Tenney's apartment, nothing was 
broken or damaged.

Her friends told investigators that Adams had been bothering Tenney for a 
while, such as calling her and wanting her to invite him to her apartment. She 
eventually changed her phone number. She began expressing fear of Adams to 
friends and also asked people to stay with her after the break-in.

Case Goes Cold

Tenney's death was ruled a homicide. While the police suspected that Adams may 
have been involved in Tenney's murder, the investigation stalled. Adams was 
charged in 1986 with receiving stolen property, because he had her ATM card and 
television, but the grand jury did not indict him. Then, in November 1986, 
Adams was convicted of kidnapping, rape, and aggravated robbery in an unrelated 
case. After 18 years in prison for that crime, he was paroled in April 2004.

DNA Testing Revives Case 2 Decades Later

In 2007, DNA testing was done by a state agency on evidence from the Tenney 
case and new samples from Tenney's ex-boyfriend and Adams. Police subsequently 
arrested Adams for Tenney's murder.

The trial court dismissed charges for rape, aggravated burglary, aggravated 
robbery, and kidnapping because they were filed past the statute of limitations 
for those crimes. However, the jury considered a charge of aggravated murder 
with a death-penalty specification, which alleged that Tenney's murder was 
committed during or immediately after committing or trying to commit rape, 
aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping. The jury found Adams 
guilty of the charge and the specification, and recommended the death penalty. 
The Seventh District Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence.

Issue of Underlying Offenses

At trial, the court told the jury that the death-penalty specification was 
proven if the jury determined that Adams committed any of the four underlying 
offenses - rape, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, or kidnapping.

Chief Justice O'Connor explained that jurors do not need to be unanimous about 
which underlying, or "predicate," offense a defendant committed, as long as 
they unanimously convict the defendant of aggravated murder. "Adams became 
death-eligible when the jury unanimously found him guilty of aggravated murder 
in the course of some predicate felony," she noted.

The 1st step in the Supreme Court's independent review of the death sentence is 
to decide whether the evidence supports the jury's finding of the aggravating 
circumstance, which is the specification involving the 4 underlying offenses 
that allows the death penalty to be imposed.

"In a case such as this one, jury unanimity is not required as to the means 
underlying the capital specification so long as substantial evidence supports 
each alternative means," the chief justice wrote. "The state assumed the burden 
of producing sufficient evidence as to each of the alternative means of the ... 
specification here, given the way the omnibus capital specification was 
presented to the jury."

State Did Not Prove Aggravated Burglary

In its review, the Supreme Court determined that the state showed sufficient 
evidence that Adams committed rape, kidnapping, and aggravated robbery. 
However, while finding items such as Tenney's television and potholder in 
Adams' possession point to him being in her apartment at some point, aggravated 
burglary requires more than proof of trespass, Chief Justice O'Connor reasoned.

"The state never committed to a single theory of where and under what 
circumstances the rape and murder occurred, and in presenting its evidence, the 
state failed to prove the essential elements that distinguish aggravated 
burglary from simple trespass," she wrote. In addition, "[a]ggravated burglary 
requires proof that the defendant trespassed 'by force, stealth, or deception.' 
R.C. 2911.11(A). Blanchard testified that he saw no fresh signs of forcible 
entry into Tenney's apartment, which undercuts a theory that Adams forced his 
way through the door. Although it is possible that Adams entered through 
stealth or deception, there was no probative evidence of either. The state 
never directly addressed the manner by which Adams secured entry to the 
apartment, and absent evidence of that type, the finding of the specification 
pertaining to that underlying offense cannot stand.

"The state chose to undertake to prove that Adams committed a specific offense, 
aggravated murder in the course of aggravated burglary, and by doing so, 
assumed the affirmative duty to prove all elements of aggravated burglary in 
proving the capital specification," she explained. "It failed to do so, and 
that failure cannot be remedied by flinging a plank of hypothesis across an 
abyss of uncertainty ....

"Given all the unknowns surrounding the commission of aggravated burglary, we 
are compelled to conclude that no rational trier of fact could find beyond a 
reasonable doubt that Adams committed that offense," she concluded. "And we are 
compelled to hold that the state's success in proving some of the alternative 
means cannot make up for its failure to prove all the suggested means by which 
Adams may have committed the aggravating circumstance."

Conviction Stands

Overturning the death sentence does not alter the conviction for aggravated 
murder, however, Chief Justice O'Connor added. While the justices dissenting on 
this issue find it "logically inconsistent" that the Court would vacate the 
death sentence without setting aside the related conviction, she reasoned that 
the Court had no authority to review the murder conviction for sufficiency of 
evidence. The Court is mandated to independently review the evidence supporting 
the aggravating circumstance. But, she noted, the Court cannot consider whether 
the evidence supported the aggravated-murder conviction unless the defendant 
has raised the issue, which Adams did not.

Votes

Joining the majority opinion were Justices Paul E. Pfiefer, Judith L. French, 
and William M. O'Neill.

Justices Terrence O'Donnell and Sharon L. Kennedy concurred in part and 
dissented in part in an opinion written by Justice O'Donnell.

Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger also concurred in part and dissented in part.

2 Justices Would Have Affirmed Death Sentence

Justice O'Donnell dissented from the majority's decision to vacate the death 
sentence and to remand for a new sentencing that precludes capital punishment. 
He noted the logical inconsistency in upholding the aggravated murder 
conviction while vacating the death sentence "because in order to prove an 
aggravated murder ... and the aggravating circumstance necessary to impose the 
sentence of death in this case, the state is required to prove the same 
elements beyond a reasonable doubt." For this reason, he added, "If the 
evidence of guilt is sufficient to support a finding of guilt of aggravated 
murder, it is also sufficient to uphold the penalty recommended by the same 
jury that found guilt."

Relying on 2 U.S. Supreme Court opinions - Griffin v. United States (1991) and 
Sochor v. Florida (1992) - along with decisions from federal circuit courts and 
other state supreme courts, Justice O'Donnell explained that "a general verdict 
is not subject to reversal when the jury is presented with alternative means 
supporting a finding of guilt, as long as at least one of those alternative 
means is supported by sufficient evidence." He pointed out that the holdings of 
Griffin and Sochor "remain binding federal constitutional law," yet the 
majority had not determined that the Ohio Constitution affords any greater 
protection in these circumstances.

"In cases of this distinction where neither a verdict form requesting a 
specific finding nor an interrogatory was submitted to the jury, we presume, as 
the Supreme Court directs us to in Griffin and Sochor, that the jury acted 
rationally, honestly, and intelligently and disregarded any alternative means 
of committing the capital specification not proven by the evidence," he 
continued. "Nothing in this record affirmatively demonstrates that the jury 
relied on the aggravated burglary allegations to support the capital 
specification charged in this case - and in his brief to this court, Adams did 
not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the aggravating 
circumstance found by the jury, likely because the jury heard overwhelming and 
compelling evidence that Adams raped and kidnapped Tenney."

"Accordingly, neither the language of the Eighth Amendment nor principles of 
due process requires this court to negate the jury's verdict that Adams 
committed the murder in the course of committing rape, kidnapping, aggravated 
robbery, or aggravated burglary...," he concluded. "And the aggravating 
circumstance in this case outweighs the mitigating factors beyond a reasonable 
doubt. Thus, there is no reason to negate the imposition of the death 
sentence."

Justice O'Donnell would have affirmed the Seventh District's judgment.

Another Justice Would Have Ordered New Trial

Justice Lanzinger, however, agreed with the majority that Adams' death sentence 
should be set aside. But she reasoned that the aggravated-murder conviction 
must also be overturned because it was invalidated by the wording of the jury's 
verdict.

"[B]ecause the jury's verdict is worded in the disjunctive - rape, aggravated 
burglary, aggravated robbery, or kidnapping - and because the verdict was not 
tested by an interrogatory to show what predicate offense or offenses were 
found beyond a reasonable doubt, it is conceivable that the jury determined 
Adams to be guilty of committing the offense of aggravated murder while 
committing, attempting to commit, or fleeing immediately after committing or 
attempting to commit only aggravated burglary," she wrote. "It is mere 
speculation that the jury found that any of the other three felonies that would 
have been an element of the aggravated-murder charge and the capital 
specification was proved. For this reason, I believe that the case must be 
remanded for a new trial rather than merely a new sentencing hearing."

Citing a line of U.S. Supreme Court cases beginning with Apprendi v. New Jersey 
(2000) and culminating in Alleyne v. United States (2013), she added, "I 
believe that upholding this defective verdict would amount to approving 
'judicial factfinding that increases the mandatory minimum sentence for a 
crime,' and would violate the Sixth Amendment [to the U.S. Constitution]."

"We cannot uphold Adams's guilty verdict when the jury did not make the 
required findings, and the ambiguity of the jury's verdict accordingly 
precludes us from affirming something that the jury may not have even decided," 
she concluded.

She noted that she did not join Justice O'Donnell's opinion because she 
determined that the 2 U.S. Supreme Court cases he relied on predated the U.S. 
Supreme Court decisions she cited and did not address a defendant's rights 
under the Sixth Amendment.

The case is cited 2011-1978. State v. Adams, Slip Opinion No. 2015-Ohio-3954.

(source: Akron Legal News)






KANSAS:

SCOTUS to hear Carr brothers case ---- The justices will hear oral arguments 
about whether or not the 2 Wichita men convicted of murdering 5 people should 
have had their death sentences overturned by the Kansas Supreme Court.


The Carr brothers case heads to the US Supreme Court Wednesday.

The justices will hear oral arguments about whether or not the 2 Wichita men 
convicted of murdering 5 people should have had their death sentences 
overturned by the Kansas Supreme Court.

Jonathan and Reginald Carr received the death penalty during their 2002 trial 
in Sedgwick County.

Last year, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled the 2 brothers should have been given 
separate trials, and threw out their sentences. Now, the state is asking the 
nation's highest court to decide their fate.

"There's only about 100 cases that are chosen each year by the Supreme Court, 
and there's probably more than 10,000 people that apply," said former Sedgwick 
County DA Nola Foulston, who prosecuted the case. "Making it to the Supreme 
Court shows these cases are very important."

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt will represent the state before the high 
court in Washington DC.

Foulston says she'll be following what happens from Wichita.

"The 2 outcomes would be the case would be reversed and remanded," Foulston 
said. "Then on the other side of that, if the Supreme Court says we don't see a 
problem, it will be left in the same position it was, which was to either 
re-try the case or not employ the death penalty."

Regardless of what happens, Foulston says the Carr brothers have no chance of 
being released. When the Kansas Supreme Court overturned the death penalty, it 
upheld a single capital murder conviction for each of them.

"They're not going anywhere," Foulston said. "The best outcome, if all things 
fall apart, is they'll still be in prison."

Foulston says it will take a few months before the Supreme Court makes its 
ruling.

The justices will also hear arguments Wednesday on the Sidney Gleason case. 
Gleason was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for the 2004 
shooting deaths of two people in Barton County. In July 2014, the Kansas 
Supreme court upheld Gleason's convictions, but reversed his death sentence.

(source: KAKE news)






OKLAHOMA:

Will Richard Glossip Kill The Death Penalty


So far, luck's been on the side of death row inmate Richard Glossip, who 
avoided execution at the hands of the State of Oklahoma again last week.

This time, OK Governor Mary Fallon, not the court, ordered a stay, just minutes 
before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection for a murder no court has 
ever said he personally committed. Indeed, a growing number of supporters, like 
those gathering in Washington, D.C. this week to protest his execution, believe 
he might not be guilty of planning the murder of an Oklahoma City hotel clerk 
either. Witnesses have come forward to say that another man, the man who 
admitted he was the one who killed the victim during Glossip's trial, framed 
Glossip. They have yet to be heard.

But the stay wasn't ordered on grounds that there should be an evidentiary 
hearing to review new evidence. Rather, Gov. Fallon said it had to do with 1 of 
the drugs ordered for the lethal cocktail. And that only highlights, Glossip's 
supporters say, how ill-equipped Glossip's executioners really are.

After Fallon stayed the September 30 execution of Glossip at the 11th hour due 
to reservations about the state's lethal injection drug protocol, we should 
note, OK Attorney General Scott Pruitt followed suit and announced he was 
seeking an indefinite stay of all scheduled executions in the state.

The Mystery of The Mystery Cocktail

The drug used for execution is supposed to be Potassium Chlorinate, but the 
state received Potassium Acetate. That might be sufficient to kill a man, 
innocent or guilty, but it isn't protocol and it was the wrong drug to order. 
So why did that drug end up in the death chamber? Oklahoma Department of 
Corrections Officer Alex Gerszewski reportedly attempted to answer this 
question in an email to Time, saying: "I still don't know why we had Potassium 
Acetate ... we can't discuss how we obtain the drugs."

In an effort to calm this perfect storm, Pruitt sat down with The O'Collegian 
yesterday evening, the student newspaper of Oklahoma State University, to 
address the growing controversy now surrounding the indefinite stay of not just 
Glossip's execution but also those of other Oklahoma death row inmates 
scheduled to die. The Department of Corrections "advised my office and the 
governor's office very late in the process barely an hour before the execution 
that they had received the wrong drug," Pruitt said, adding:

We have 3 different drug protocols - 3 different options involving different 
drugs. Potassium chloride is 1 of the drugs that is used in each of those 
protocols, and Potassium Chloride has been used by the state for a long time."

As Potassium Acetate is not part of the protocol, you'd think that, on delivery 
about 2 hours prior to Glossip's scheduled execution, officials would've gotten 
the wheels turning on delaying the execution. Reportedly, though, they briefly 
considered whether to improvise and use an improper drug again.

It's worth noting that state law here attempts to remove any ambiguity about 
the cocktail: Officials must notify the condemned and identify the specific 
substances in the protocol "in writing 10 calendar days prior to the scheduled 
execution date."

Oklahoma's lethal injection cocktail recipe had been secret since the state 
resumed executions years ago. It became public only after a United States 
Supreme Court's ruling in June, which upheld the constitutionality of the 
lethal injection protocol. Moreover, it affirmed that the current drug 
concoction includes Potassium Chloride, Rocoronium Bromide and Midazolam. 
Midazolam is the controversial sedative at the center of the recent Supreme 
Court case due to the history of other botched executions using the drug.

Oklahoma AG Pruitt called the late notice about the misordered drug troubling 
at best:

So, for the DOC to advise my office that late in the process that they had 
received Potassium Acetate as opposed to Potassium Chloride is very troubling 
and it's something we're investigating and inquiring into now to see how that 
happened."

Glossip supporters have been quick to note how consistent Pruitt's statement is 
with the defensive tone of DOC Director Robert Patton, who blamed the state???s 
drug supplier for the mix-up. Like him, Pruitt has also shifted blame to the 
provider.

But the responsibility for verification of receipt of the substances has 
nothing to do with the provider. It is incumbent upon the DOC 2 days prior to 
the execution, pursuant to internal penal procedure, which would have happened 
on Monday, September 28.

Pruitt also said:

How did the pharmacist send the wrong drug, why did they send the wrong drug 
... that process is ongoing and it's something that as far as my office is 
concerned, we have litigated successfully the use of Midazolam, the Supreme 
Court said that was constitutional, and we've also litigated the execution 
protocol which is just the procedures that the DOC has to go through in 
carrying out the death penalty."

But wasn't it the state that failed to comply with its own procedures in a 
death case, even after the Court approved the controversial drug, Midazolam? 
And wasn't it the state that in turn managed to bungle the execution protocol 
with an incorrect Potassium metabolite? Those are the questions Glossip 
supporters specifically and death penalty opponents in general want answers to 
now.

"It is mind-boggling that a state could get something this basic wrong in a 
high-profile execution following a Supreme Court challenge to a state's 
execution protocol," says Robert Dunham, who is executive director of the Death 
Penalty Information Center. He added:

"There is no excuse for a state to be so unprepared to carry out an execution."

These disturbing circumstances recall the reckless origins in the gruesome 
execution in Oklahoma of Clayton Lockett, whose execution was botched last year 
because the drugs "weren't working as they were designed to," as a state 
spokesman said at the time. Witnesses reported Lockett "had been mumbling, 
bucking, and clenching his jaw. He died of a heart attack 40 minutes after the 
botched execution began."

Why carry out executions time after time with fatal flaws in its process with 
cryptic protocols for indefinite periods? And why the rush to execute Glossip 
in any case? It's a final solution in the face of new evidence that's come to 
light. Especially considering the fact that the Oklahoma City forensic 
scientist whose findings put Glossip at the scene has been thoroughly 
discredited and shown to have sent 10 innocent men to death row during her 
tenor, there are too many doubts to rush to such a permanent punishment. 
Glossip, if he is guilty, is safely behind bars after all, and has been for the 
last 18 years. But if he's innocent, do Fallon and the rest of them really want 
the blood of an innocent man on their hands?

This is the tone of the Glossip protests we are all hearing more and more 
about, especially the one this week in Washington, D.C.

Shadowed Drugs

In Glossip's case, the latest stay resulting from lethal injection recipe 
bunglings arrives after agonizing months and years of national headlines 
blaring about innocence and guilt, constitutional issues, serious prosecutorial 
misconduct, mishandled forensics, ineffective trial and appellate defense 
counsel and, most recently, allegations of the state's tampering with defense 
witnesses who've tried to come forward to espouse Glossip's innocence.

And then there's the issue of whether penal authorities are concealing details 
of the secretive lethal injection process as a matter of law.

Especially given the embarrassments and outright torture involved in the last 
Okahoma execution, questions are being raised about the effectiveness of the 
execution protocol in any case. Consider, for instance, Oklahoma's 2011 privacy 
law. The administration of executions reads:

"The identity of all persons who participate in or administer the execution 
process and persons who supply the drugs, medical supplies or medical equipment 
for the execution shall be confidential and shall not be subject to discovery 
in any civil or communal proceedings."

Might this result from drug companies wanting to distance themselves from the 
executioner's mask? Business Insider posted a story that stated:

"In some states, including Oklahoma, compounding pharmacies (which are not 
regulated by the Federal Drug Administration) create customized forms of lethal 
injection drugs with the products available to them, the National Journal has 
reported. However, states have kept those businesses anonymous because those 
entities shy away from attention of any public link to the death penalty."

Federal Public Defender Dale Baich, who served on Glossip's team in the June 
Supreme Court challenge and for other prisoners involving the disputed 
sedative, Midazolam, reported that his team received an August 11 
correspondence confirming that the DOC had in custody "sufficient drugs" to 
administer the scheduled executions of Glossip as well as other death row 
inmates scheduled to be put down in October.

John D. Hadden wrote that the drugs "are manufactured and not compounded ... 
and none of the drugs will expire prior to the current execution dates of these 
3 inmates."

Whether the substances at issue are drugs or compounds is relevant to issues of 
transparency because compounds are not regulated as strictly as chemicals the 
FDA classifies as pharmacological "drugs." Also at issue is whether the public 
has a right to know whether to choose to boycott or protest drug or compound 
manufacturers, such as they have and do in other protests involving life and 
death and public policy issues.

According to The Miami Herald, drug content secrecy laws and policies extend 
from Oklahoma to Louisiana, Georgia, Missouri, and Texas, all of which can hide 
the content of lethal injection compounds.

Oklahoma, it's worth noting, is among a confederation of states with laws 
allowing its prison bureaus to prohibit the source where they obtain execution 
drugs.

Capital punishment expert Deborah Denno told the National Journal this shows an 
absence of state transparency and the ineffectiveness of the state penal 
system, saying:

"They choose drugs because they are available, not because they know anything 
about those drugs."

Death on The Half Shell

To many, the grave series of errors in the Glossip case raises questions. Big 
questions. For instance, Oklahoma citizens are now publicly wondering whether 
the administration of justice through execution can ever be conscientiously 
imposed. States continue to struggle to carry out lethal injection effectively, 
after all. In such states as Oklahoma, Arizona, Nebraska and Texas, the 
ordering, shipping, receiving, and correctly identifying the compounds of death 
is mangled time and again.

The current death penalty abolitionist's so called "transcendence" of 
respecting human dignity over delivering death as punishment looks is in the 
air. US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's recently expressed his own 
belief that the death penalty may be going away. That perhaps is merely a nod 
to his colleague, Justice Steven Breyer, who delivered a powerful dissent in 
the Glossip ruling. Or maybe it is more. Time will tell.

The entire Glossip's debate following the June Supreme Court ruling would never 
have happened had the majority followed the stirring voice of Justice Stephen 
Breyers's dissenting opinion. Breyes spoke to spare Glossip's life because, he 
wrote, lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. And only 
Justice Breyer would have saved Glossip in the defense team's final appeal to 
the High Court, shortly before the September 30 execution was scheduled to take 
place.

In due course, the resonance of Justice Breyer's voice may herald the chorus 
and usher in a new era for the judiciary to abolish the death penalty as 
unconstitutional.

Since 2007, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico and New Jersey have abolished the 
death penalty.

Earlier this year, conservative Nebraska legislatively relented to the 
abolition movement, a triumph of transcendence, and banned the death penalty 
and defied a gubernatorial veto.

Likewise, this August the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled the death penalty 
unconstitutional and barred all executions of inmates on death row.

Some pundits on the Hill have speculated that a better candidate for the 
Supreme Court to consider the death penalty issue arises from the US Court of 
Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In that case, a federal district judge has 
already declared California's death penalty unconstitutional because of long 
delays, inadequate funding for defense lawyers and the lack of a lethal 
injection protocol.

Openness to the idea of abolition was represented in Newt Gingrich's 
reconsidered stance on the issue in "the light" of Pope Francis' statement to 
Congress regarding the death penalty. Gingrich served as House Speaker when 
Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), 
which limited the availability of federal judicial review of death sentences 
imposed in the state courts. Now he is singing a different tune.

"We need to profoundly rethink what we've done over the past 25 years in 
criminal justice," Gingrich observed.

(source: Commentary, Jim Kelly; anewdomain.net)






NEBRASKA:

GOP political adviser who worked with AG on executions joins death penalty 
opponents


A veteran conservative political adviser who worked for Nebraska's attorney 
general during the state's last 3 executions has joined the effort to preserve 
the repeal of capital punishment.

Dan Parsons, whose political experience includes the 1986 campaign of former 
Republican Gov. Kay Orr and the 2012 Senate bid of GOP stalwart Don Stenberg, 
will serve as a communications consultant and spokesman with Nebraskans for 
Public Safety.

Parsons served as special assistant to then-Attorney General Stenberg from 1992 
to 1998 when the office litigated 3 death penalty cases. The state has not 
carried out an execution since 1997, largely because it has been unable to 
obtain lethal injection drugs.

Parsons, who described himself as a pro-life, fiscal conservative, also 
co-founded Family First, a faith-based public policy organization. He said he 
once supported the death penalty.

"I now see it is neither just or cost-effective," he said in a news release. 
"There's just no reason to go back."

The Nebraska Legislature repealed the death penalty last spring, overriding the 
veto of Gov. Pete Ricketts to do so. But since then, death penalty supporters 
have seized momentum by gathering more than enough petition signatures to put 
the issue on the 2016 general election ballot.

Nebraskans for the Death Penalty also collected sufficient signatures to put 
the repeal on hold until Nebraska voters decide the fate of capital punishment. 
Death penalty opponents have sued, arguing the petition has a fatal flaw 
because it did not list Ricketts as a sponsor as is required by the law. The 
governor's $200,000 in donations made him the largest individual donor to the 
$903,000 drive.

Nebraskans for Public Safety raised $462,000 to counter the petition drive.

(source: Omaha World-Herald)