[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.H., GA., UTAH, USA

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 22



TEXAS:

E. Texan among historical low on Texas death row


A Smith County man is officially on Texas death row for the murder of his 
ex-wife and abduction of their child

James Calvert was taken from the Smith County Jail on Oct. 16 and transferred 
to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Polunsky Unit in Livingston. 
Calvert was sentenced to death on Oct. 14 for killing his ex-wife, Jelena 
Sriraman, on Halloween 2013.

Calvert is the 2nd inmate to be sent to death row in 2015, making it the lowest 
number of inmates to receive that sentence the lethal injection death penalty 
started in Texas in 1976. Gabriel Hall, 22, of College Station was sent to 
death row on a capital murder conviction from Brazos County just weeks before 
Calvert. A 3rd person has been sentenced to death, pending a competency trial, 
according to the San Antonio Express-News.

Calvert will be the 7th person from Smith County to be on death row. The last 
person from the county to be sent to death row was Kimberly Cargill, she is at 
the women's death row in Gatesville.

According to figures from the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice 
Statistics, Texas death sentences have dropped significantly after hitting a 
record number of 48 in 1999. Prior to 2015, the lowest number to receive the 
death penalty in Texas was 8 in both 2010 and 2011.

Inmates from Smith County on currently on death row include:

--Allen Bridgers, received: 05/1998

--Troy Clark, received: 03/2000

--Tracy Beatty, received: 08/2004

--Clifton Williams, received: 10/2006

--Demontrell Miller, received: 11/2009

--Kimberly Cargill, received: 06/2012

--James Calvert, received: 10/2015

(source: KLTV news)






NEW HAMPSHIRE:

Addison lawyers raise questions in appeal to U.S. Supreme Court----Lawyers cite 
judge's decisions, 8th Amendment in appeal

New Hampshire's only inmate on death row is seeking to have the U.S. Supreme 
Court overturn his sentence.

Michael Addison was sentenced to death in December 2008 for killing Manchester 
police Officer Michael Briggs. Addison's appeal was rejected by the state 
Supreme Court, so he is now raising federal issues about his sentence.

Addison's attorneys raised four main questions for the U.S. Supreme Court to 
consider. The first question involves a statement that Addison made in which he 
cried and said he didn't purposely shoot Briggs. The judge found the statement 
to be full of lies and excluded it from the jury.

Defense attorneys asked whether a court can bar the admission of evidence based 
on the court's belief that the defendant lied.

The 2nd question has to do with Addison's life in prison. During sentencing, 
the jury heard that Addison would be able to watch cable TV and would have 
access to other amenities.

"By admitting this evidence, (the court) permitted the jury to weigh in its 
sentencing decision whether the privileges (that) may be afforded are too good 
for Addison," defense attorneys wrote. "That ruling violates the Eighth 
Amendment."

The defense also claims that the victim impact statements were excessive, 
saying that the state "made a cradle-to-grave presentation about the victim's 
life that included 5 photographs of the adult victim as a child, stories about 
the victim's childhood, 20 photos of the victim with his children and 3 video 
clips of the victim playing with his children."

The defense said lower courts are divided on how much testimony is appropriate, 
and the Supreme Court should resolve the issue.

The final question is whether the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment's 
guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment.

The defense said there have been 3 other recent cases eligible for the death 
penalty, but Addison is the only one who was sentenced to death.

"His case thus frames the questions of arbitrariness, deterrence and continued 
utility of capital punishment," the defense wrote.

The state has 30 days to file a response or waive its right to respond.

(source: WMUR news)






GEORGIA:

The secrets of the death penalty----Georgia's execution process is a 
'classified' information under law


In the shadow world of Georgia's death penalty, a doctor who is not practicing 
medicine writes a prescription for a patient who is certain to die.

The doctor's role in this part of the execution process is shrouded in secrecy 
and wrapped in contradiction, an examination by The Atlanta 
Journal-Constitution has found.

The doctor violates the canon of medical ethics simply by issuing the 
prescription, so the state has rewritten the law to stipulate that the doctor 
is not practicing medicine when prescribing an execution drug. If the doctor's 
name were to get out, lawsuits and harassment would probably follow, so the 
state has declared the doctor's identity - and any document that includes his 
name - a "state secret."

The killing drug is pentobarbital, a barbiturate commonly used by veterinarians 
to euthanize dogs and cats, but manufacturers refuse to sell it to states for 
executions. So the drug must be created by a "compounding" pharmacist, whose 
identity is also a state secret, and sold to the Department of Corrections.

The only way for the state to legally obtain pentobarbital, however, is to have 
a doctor prescribe it. For this reason, court records show, the Department of 
Corrections hires a physician on a contract basis to write those prescriptions. 
(Yes, the contract is also a state secret. The state would not even provide a 
copy with all the names redacted to the AJC.)

Georgia's execution process is a 'classified' information under law

The prescription itself apparently resembles most others. It spells out the 
drug and the dosage and contains the name of the "patient" - the state's 
instructions identify the condemned as a patient - plus his birthdate, Social 
Security number and address on death row. But it also concludes: "Administer as 
ordered per execution order."

The state has blacked out this process for obvious reasons: public disclosure 
of the doctor's identity would expose him or her to lawsuits and harassment by 
anti-death penalty forces, as well as possible sanctions within the medical 
profession.

For example, most records relating to the execution of Kelly Gissendaner last 
month are locked away. But the AJC has found partial records from an earlier 
case, that of the last man executed in Georgia. These documents include a 
redacted copy of the state's contract with the doctor: he or she was to be paid 
$5,000 a year to write prescriptions for lethal injection drugs. The state also 
provided a reserve fund of up to $50,000 for legal representation and up to $3 
million in liability insurance should the doctor's identity be revealed and 
lawsuits follow.

'It's wrong for a doctor to do that'

Whether the doctor is known or not, however, medical experts question the 
ethics of a physician prescribing an execution drug - or a pharmacist filling a 
prescription for one.

"It's wrong for a doctor to do something like that - to help take someone's 
life," said Stephen Brotherton, a Texas surgeon who chairs the American Medical 
Association's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs. "It's against the 
guidelines of the AMA's code of ethics for a doctor to do that."

John Banja, a medical ethicist at Emory University's Center for Ethics, sees 
arguments on both sides of the issue.

"Physicians are licensed by the state, and if the state believes there's a 
legitimate reason to carry out an execution, I do not have an objection to 
physicians participating if it doesn't violate their conscience," Banja said. 
"If it is in the public interest to have the death penalty, it would seem to me 
to be legal for them to participate."

He then added, "But whether it violates the Hippocratic Oath, that's another 
question."

Under the oath, which dates to the 5th Century B.C., physicians have sworn for 
millennia: "To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug."

A court motion filed last year by lawyers for a former death-row inmate 
contends the practice violates state and federal law.

The doctor "is merely performing data entry in the prescription pad that he or 
she has sold to (Corrections) for $5,000," the motion said.

'How else would you get the medication?'

Lawyers from the state attorney general's office have countered that the prison 
system's procurement of lethal-injection drugs is legal. In court filings, they 
cite the 2000 Georgia law that replaced the electric chair with lethal 
injection as the state's mode of execution. That legislation says the 
"prescription, preparation, compounding, dispensing or administration of lethal 
injection ... shall not constitute the practice of medicine or any other 
profession relating to health care."

For this reason, regulations regarding prescription drugs do not apply, state 
lawyers assert.

Michael Madaio, who chairs the Department of Medicine at the Medical College of 
Georgia in Augusta, said the state's argument "doesn't seem entirely correct."

"But how else would you get the medication?" he asked. "And if you believe in 
capital punishment and you're a physician hired by the state and it's your job, 
I guess that's what you have to do."

When asked about the medical ethics of writing prescriptions for 
lethal-injection drugs, Madaio said, "It's certainly not something I would do."

Under legislation passed in 2013, the names of all those who help prepare for 
an execution are shielded from public view. In upholding the law last year, the 
Supreme Court of Georgia said there are good reasons for the secrecy law. If 
the names are publicly disclosed, "there is a significant risk that persons and 
entities necessary to the execution would become unwilling to participate," the 
court said.

'Such information is a classified state secret'

The AJC recently filed an Open Records Act request for the current contract the 
state Department of Corrections has with the prescribing physician. When that 
was denied, the newspaper filed another request to the agency, asking for a 
redacted copy that shielded the physician's name and any other identifying 
information.

That request was denied as well.

"Because (Corrections) believes that the entire record containing such 
information is a classified state secret, it lacks the legal authority to 
release redacted copies of the document," Errin Wright, the agency's assistant 
counsel, told the AJC in an email message.

The secrecy law was enacted after Georgia and several other states with capital 
punishment scrambled to find lethal-injection drugs because pharmaceutical 
companies refused to let their drugs to be used for executions. In Georgia, the 
prison system has turned to a compounding pharmacy to get its supply of 
pentobarbital.

Under the Controlled Substances Act, pentobarbital can only be obtained with a 
valid prescription because it is a Schedule II drug. And Georgia law says a 
licensed physician can prescribe a controlled substance "for a legitimate 
medical purpose" and when the doctor is "acting in the usual course of his 
professional practice."

Last year, lawyers for condemned inmate Tommy Waldrip argued that the state was 
fraudulently obtaining pentobarbital because those conditions were not being 
met. But Waldrip's litigation became moot when the State Board of Pardons and 
Paroles granted him clemency in July 2014.

In their court filing, Waldrip's lawyers attached documents obtained from the 
Corrections Department by death-penalty lawyers representing another death-row 
inmate, Warren Hill. These records offer a glimpse of the arrangement between 
the prison system and the doctor who writes the prescriptions.

'Just wanted to give you a heads-up'

1 document, a draft "professional services agreement," says corrections would 
pay the doctor $5,000 for services rendered from July 1, 2013, to June 30, 
2014.

The documents also include a number of email exchanges from a corrections 
official to the pharmacy and the prescribing doctor in July 2013, about 6 
months before Hill's execution in January. The names of those sending and 
receiving the emails were redacted.

In one, the corrections official told the doctor that the pharmacist had just 
let the agency know what had to be on the prescription, such as the name of the 
"patient."

"I will be happy to forward this information along to you when you are 
preparing to write the prescription," the official wrote. "I just wanted to 
give you a heads up."

An email the next day instructed the doctor that, in addition to listing the 
patient's name, birthdate, Social Security number and address, the prescription 
should call for 50 milligrams of pentobarbital solutions and 6 syringes. The 
prescription's directions should say: "Administer as ordered per execution 
order."

'Georgia is saying 2 contradictory things'

The U.S. Supreme Court has not addressed the issue of whether doctors may 
lawfully prescribe an execution drug. But a decade ago, the high court ruled 
that then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft could not threaten to revoke the 
licenses of Oregon doctors who prescribed lethal doses of medication to help 
terminally ill patients end their lives.

Ashcroft contended the Controlled Substances Act required every prescription 
for a Schedule II drug to be issued "for a legitimate medical purpose (and) in 
the course of professional practice." In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court held 
that Congress never gave the U.S. attorney general the "extraordinary 
authority" Ashcroft claimed he had.

Robert Atkinson, the state attorney who argued the case, noted that Oregon's 
Death With Dignity Act considered assisted suicide to be a valid medical 
procedure. He questioned whether Georgia could prevail in the dispute about 
prescriptions by simply declaring lethal injections is not the practice of any 
profession relating to health care.

"It seems to me that Georgia is saying 2 contradictory things," said Atkinson, 
who is now retired. "It's saying that writing prescriptions for lethal 
injections is not the practice of medicine, while only those who are engaging 
in the practice of medicine can write prescriptions. How do you reconcile 
that?"

(source: Atlanta Journal Constitution)



UTAH:

Gov. Herbert supports death penalty in Utah


Governor Gary Herbert weighed in on the idea of eliminating the death penalty 
in Utah, telling reporters he is a supporter of the death penalty, with some 
parameters.

"It should be extremely rare and be done for the most heinous of crimes," 
Herbert said at his monthly news conference Thursday on KUED.

The governor went further to call on the appeals process to be shortened.

"The process should be in fact, streamlined. It is not right to have someone on 
death row for 20, 25, 30 years. Justice delayed is justice denied," he said.

Herbert was responding to a hearing Wednesday at the Utah State Legislature's 
Interim Judiciary Committee that began exploring whether or not the death 
penalty should be eliminated in the state. The discussion comes less than a 
year since the legislature passed a bill (and Herbert signed) bringing back the 
firing squad as a method of execution.

(source: Fox news)






USA:

US States Must Start Making Death Penalty Program Accountable to Public


US states like Arkansas should cease operating without accountability when 
applying capital punishment, advocacy group National Coalition to Abolish the 
Death Penalty Executive Director Diann Rust-Tierney told Sputnik on Thursday.

"The raft of botched executions and the trauma caused to everyone involved can 
be traced directly to states operating in secrecy and without public 
accountability," Rust-Tierney said. "Our ability to trust the government to do 
the right thing is a direct function of the degree of government 
accountability."

On Wednesday, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said the state's 
Supreme Court has postponed indefinitely the executions of 2 convicted 
murderers that were scheduled for Wednesday.

The Arkansas Supreme Court issued its own stays of execution after striking 
down the stays that had earlier been authorized by a judge in Pulaski County, 
Arkansas.

The death penalty has not been carried out in Arkansas since 2005 because of 
legal cases challenging the existing law on using lethal injections as well as 
the lack of drugs to prepare the lethal injection cocktail.

"The Court's decision to examine the state's new secrecy laws surrounding 
executions is entirely appropriate," Rust-Tierney said. "This type of secrecy 
is not consistent with our values as Americans."

Rust-Tierney argued US citizens should always be weary when their government 
suggests not to worry about what it is doing to other citizens, including that 
they deserve their fate for they are "bad".

"And by the way, we [the government] get to decide who's bad,???" Rust-Tierney 
concluded.

Despite growing popular and legal pressure to scrap the death penalty across 
the United States, many US states still practice it.

More than 800 people have been executed in the United States in the past 15 
years, according to the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center. The state 
of Texas has put to death 329 people since 2000.

In the 1st week of October, 3 convicted murderers were executed in 3 different 
US states.

(source: sputniknews.com)