[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----LA., OHIO, MO., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

April 17




LOUISIANA:

New details: Sensors installed at Angola's death row as part of approved 
cooling plan for inmates


Sensors have been installed on the death-row tiers at the Louisiana State 
Penitentiary at Angola to monitor summertime heat indexes that several ailing 
condemned killers successfully claimed violate their constitutional rights and 
increase their risk of heatstroke or even death, newly filed federal court 
documents show.

The heat and humidity sensors, which will calculate the heat index using a 
National Weather Service formula, will measure heat indexes from April 1 
through Oct. 31 as ordered by Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson, of Baton 
Rouge, in response to a lawsuit inmates filed against state corrections 
officials in 2013.

Those officials have provided court-appointed special master Paul Hebert with a 
laptop computer that gives him direct daily access to the temperature and 
relative humidity data on each death-row tier, according to the state's revised 
2nd heat remediation plan.

Jackson accepted the 2nd plan last month.

As part of that plan, the maximum-security prison at Angola also has installed 
2 shower water valve controllers on the tiers that allow inmates to select 
between "hot" and "cold" water.

"The 'hot' controller will supply the water at seasonally preset temperature as 
the 'regular' hygienic showers. The 'cold' controller will supply water from 
the cold water line only," the state's attorneys explained in documents filed 
April 8.

Those documents also indicate the prison has purchased an additional ice 
machine to be installed next to the current machine on death row. There also is 
an ice house on the prison grounds that can serve as another ice source for the 
death-row inmates should the need arise, the state's lawyers noted.

All death-row inmates also have received individual ice containers, the lawyers 
added, and additional fans have been installed on the death-row tiers.

Hebert is being given the current tier location for each of the lawsuit's 3 
inmate plaintiffs - Elzie Ball, Nathaniel Code and James Magee - and will be 
promptly notified if they are moved to a different tier.

"In the event the prison encounters circumstances in which it cannot continue 
the operation of the second heat remediation plan, the prison staff can 
transfer the plaintiffs to a four cell tier at Camp F (where the death chamber 
is located). That ... tier has the ability to be air-conditioned," the revised 
plan states.

Mercedes Montagnes, of The Promise of Justice Initiative in New Orleans, the 
lead attorney for Ball, Code and Magee, said Thursday she had no comment on the 
state's revised plan.

2 months ago, the inmates' lawyers characterized a daily cool shower, personal 
ice chests and more fans as "half-hearted measures" to remedy the high heat 
indexes that Jackson and the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of 
Appeals said constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

Jackson ordered in late 2013 that heat indexes on Angola's death row not be 
allowed to surpass 88 degrees, but the federal appellate court ruled last 
summer that the judge's directive effectively required the state to 
air-condition the death-row tiers.

The appeals court said Ball, Code and Magee are not entitled to air 
conditioning but suggested possible remedies such as cool showers at least once 
a day, cold drinking water and ice, personal ice chests and fans, more ice 
machines, and diverting cool air from the death-row guard pod into the 
death-row tiers.

The state rejected the latter suggestion for security and engineering reasons.

\ Ball is on death row for shooting a beer delivery man to death during the 
1996 armed robbery of a lounge in Gretna. Magee was convicted and condemned to 
die for the 2007 shotgun murders of his estranged wife and their 5-year-old son 
in a subdivision near Mandeville. Code received the death penalty for the 1985 
murders of four people at a house in Shreveport.

(source: The Advocate)






OHIO:

Judge says death penalty option stays in Seman case----Seman's lawyers had 
asked the judge to dismiss capital murder specifications against their client, 
calling the punishment "unconstitutional"


Mahoning County Judge Maureen Sweeney said Robert Seman's request to remove the 
death penalty specification from his murder trial was :meritless."

Sweeney said the death penalty will remain as a potential sentence for Seman, 
who is accused of setting the house fire that killed 10-year-old Corrine Gump 
and her grandparents, Bill and Judy Schmidt, in March of 2015.

Earlier this week, Seman's lawyers asked Judge Sweeney to dismiss capital 
murder specifications against their client, calling the punishment 
"unconstitutional."

She ruled that none of Seman's rights are being violated by the specifications.

The case against Seman is set for trial in September.

(source: WKBN news)






MISSOURI:

Inability to seat jury delays capital-murder case


The capital-murder case against Mark Gill was scheduled for trial this week in 
Boone County, Missouri, but now it seems Gill will not be in trial until late 
2016 at the earliest.

Circuit Court Judge Robert Kaufman continued the case to an unspecified date 
because the court could not seat the jury. Attorneys in the case sent out 
questionnaires to 200 respective jurors but could not get 38 jurors who could 
objectively consider life without parole or the death penalty for Gill.

Gill, 45, of Cape Girardeau originally was convicted by a jury in New Madrid 
County, Missouri, who found him guilty of 1st-degree murder, robbery, 
kidnapping, armed criminal action and tampering with a motor vehicle in 2004.

Gill is accused of abducting Ralph Lape Jr. from his home, taking him into a 
Portageville, Missouri, cornfield and shooting him in the head before he 
burying Lape in a shallow grave. A New Madrid County jury later chose to 
sentence Gill to death, also in 2004.

The death sentence was overturned in December 2009 by the Missouri Supreme 
Court, who found Gill had ineffective counsel because it failed to question 
investigators about the contents of Lape's computer, which contained child 
pornography and sexually explicit instant messages about Lape's 17-year-old 
daughter.

(source: semissourian.com)






OKLAHOMA:

Oklahoma agent testifies man admitted killing Arkansas woman


An agent with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation testified that an 
Arkansas man on trial in the slaying of a woman in eastern Oklahoma confessed 
to killing her when questioned at a hospital after his arrest.

Shawn Ward told jurors Friday in Le Flore County, Oklahoma, that Elvis Thacker 
said, "I did it," during an interview with Ward at Sparks Regional Medical 
Center in Fort Smith, Arkansas, where the defendant was hospitalized at the 
time. Ward said Thacker volunteered the information, the Arkansas 
Democrat-Gazette (http://bit.ly/20L2Vur ) reported.

"When I asked what did you do, he said 'I killed Briana.' When I asked how, he 
said, 'I cut her throat," Ward testified.

Thacker, 28, of Cedarville, Arkansas, is charged with first-degree murder and 
forcible sodomy in the death of Briana Ault, 22, of Fort Smith. Her body was 
found in 2010 in an Oklahoma pond near the Arkansas state line.

Thacker was hospitalized after police shot him during his arrest. He had 
stabbed a police officer, according to testimony.

Defense attorneys have blamed Thacker's brother, Johnathen Thacker, 27, for the 
woman's death.

Johnathen Thacker pleaded guilty to 1st-degree murder in 2014 and agreed to 
testify against his brother. He testified earlier in the week that Elvis 
Thacker killed Ault by cutting her throat with a razor after forcing her to 
perform sex acts on both brothers and trying unsuccessfully to drown her in the 
pond.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Elvis Thacker. Johnathen Thacker 
avoided a possible death sentence with his guilty plea and testified that he 
expects to be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The trial is to resume Monday.

(source: Associated Press)






CALIFORNIA:

Gov. Jerry Brown to consider clemency for death row inmate Kevin Cooper


After 33 years in jail - 31 spent on San Quentin Prison's death row - Kevin 
Cooper's last hope of avoiding execution rests in the hands of Gov. Jerry 
Brown.

The defense team for Cooper, convicted in February 1985 for the 1983 murders of 
a Chino Hills family and a neighbor, submitted a clemency petition to the 
governor Feb. 17, 3 months after a federal court reinstated the death penalty 
in California.

As Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Barry G. Silverman wrote when he stayed 
the convict's execution in 2004, Cooper "is either guilty as sin or he was 
framed by the police."

Even today, Silverman's remarks reflect the polarized feelings about Cooper's 
beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt guilt or innocence.

In 1985, a jury found Cooper - who had escaped a minimum-security prison and 
was holed up near the crime scene at the time of the murders - guilty of 
butchering Douglas and Peggy Ryen, 41-year-old chiropractors and Arabian horse 
trainers and breeders; their daughter Jessica, 10, and visiting neighbor 
Christopher Hughes, 11. He was also found guilty of the attempted murder of 
Joshua Ryen, the Ryens' then-8-year-old son who survived a slashed throat.

San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Richard Garner, presiding over the 
change-of-venue trial in San Diego, accepted the jury's recommendation for 
death. On May 15, 1985, Garner sentenced Cooper to die in the San Quentin State 
Prison gas chamber.

No one denies the murders - carried out with a hatchet, knives and either an 
ice pick or screwdriver - were horrific. But with the state???s moratorium on 
executions lifted in November, attention to the case has raised questions among 
some in the legal and law-enforcement communities as well as the anti-death 
penalty lobby.

The question of clemency stirs similarly strong sentiments on either side of 
the "guilty as sin" or "framed by police" argument. Past and present principals 
involved in the case either favor clemency or clamor for Cooper's execution. As 
for Cooper himself, he has maintained his innocence since his arrest on July 
30, 1983.

Neither Gov. Brown nor his staff would comment on the Cooper clemency petition, 
said Evan Westrup, Brown's supervising public information officer, adding the 
governor has offered no timetable to answer the clemency petition.

A mother's rage

For MaryAnn Hughes, mother of Christopher Hughes, the neighbor boy who would be 
43 now had he lived, Cooper's execution can't happen soon enough.

It was her husband, William Hughes, who found the bodies of his son, the Ryens 
and a barely alive Joshua shortly before noon June 5, 1983. Concerned that no 
one answered the phone and Christopher hadn't returned home to go to church 
after his overnight visit at the Ryens, William Hughes set out to look for his 
son.

What he found traumatized him and the entire neighborhood dotted with horse 
ranches and rural properties.

His 5th-grade classmates, teachers, parents, brother, relatives and friends 
attended the funeral Mass for Christopher, a boy described as happy and 
carefree. Her family continues to grapple with the pain of losing him, MaryAnn 
Hughes said.

"There is no new evidence," she said in response to the clemency petition. 
"There is nothing that wasn't given to the jury. This thing has been tried for 
30-plus years through every avenue we have. Even when there was almost a new 
trial in 2004, when the Ninth Circuit Court (of Appeals) sent the appeal back 
to the district court in San Diego, the new things convicted him."

There has always been "overwhelming evidence of his guilt. There is no doubt 
whatsoever that he is the guilty party," she said. "Clemency is the only thing 
left for him."

Lawyers lining up

The Hugheses were especially irate over the American Bar Association's recently 
announced support of Cooper's bid for clemency.

In a letter sent to Gov. Brown on March 14, the American Bar Association 
alleged Cooper's "arrest, prosecution and conviction are marred by evidence of 
racial bias, police misconduct, evidence tampering, suppression of exculpatory 
information, lack of quality defense counsel and a hamstrung court system.

"We therefore believe that justice requires that Mr. Cooper be granted an 
executive reprieve until the investigation necessary to fully evaluate his 
guilt or innocence is completed," ABA President Paulette Brown wrote.

The letter shows the association's "extra ignorance," Hughes said, adding that 
Paulette Brown obviously didn't understand the law because the governor 
"doesn't have the authority to order a new trial or hearing. They (Cooper's 
attorneys) have to petition the court to do that. Even the Ninth Circuit Court 
that sent this back down to the San Diego court didn't order a new hearing or 
trial.

"It's time for this to end," Hughes said. Cooper's team

The attorneys who filed the request for clemency - Norman C. Hile of Orrick, 
Herrington & Sutcliffe's Sacramento office, and Oakland attorney David T. 
Alexander - joined the Cooper defense team at the request of the Northern 
California/University of Santa Clara chapter of The Innocence Project. 
Alexander prepared the 2004 petition that resulted in the Ninth Circuit Court 
staying the Feb. 10, 2004, execution of Cooper, sending the case back to the 
district court for full DNA testing of crime-scene clothing.

"The (clemency) petition asks the governor to stay the execution and then 
undertake an independent investigation to determine if Kevin Cooper is 
innocent. That independent investigation would be through the governor's 
office, not the courts," Hile said.

Hile asked retired Federal Bureau of Investigations veteran Thomas Parker in 
2011 to lead the latest investigation. Parker spent 45 years with the FBI as an 
agent, national investigator of violent crimes and deputy chief of the Los 
Angeles regional office before retiring and founding The Sentinel Group, a 
domestic and international criminal justice investigation and analysis firm 
based in Temecula.

"I agreed because I was very interested in this case," Parker said. "Shortly 
after reviewing some of the preliminary materials in this case, I was 
absolutely convinced that Kevin Cooper was innocent, and I decided I'd work pro 
bono (for free) on this. I was totally overwhelmed by the degree and volume of 
evidence of police malfeasance I found in this case.

"Unfortunately, it appears Mr. Cooper did not receive the benefit of being 
innocent until proven guilty. Once they learned of Mr. Cooper's 'walkaway' 
escape from the minimum security section of a nearby incarceration facility 
just days before the (Ryens/Hughes) murders were committed, they presumed he 
was their man and forced the evidence to fit their prime suspect instead of 
finding the suspect who fits the evidence," Parker said.

Parker calls the Cooper case "the most grievous case of police and prosecution 
incompetency I've ever seen in more than 45 years in law enforcement. I am 
convinced evidence was planted in this case and evidence that could have lead 
to the real killers was ignored. I'm absolutely convinced Kevin Cooper is 
innocent."

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe is a global firm better known for its work in 
handling mergers and acquisitions than handling criminal cases. However, Hile 
said he and firm executives believe in Cooper's innocence so strongly, the case 
will continue to be handled on a pro bono basis.

Even if Cooper is denied clemency and executed, Hile said he will continue to 
work to exonerate Cooper posthumously.

"Our justice system cannot afford to execute someone who's innocent. We can't 
execute innocent people if people are going to believe in our justice system." 
Hile said.

Equally passionate

Dennis Kottmeier, San Bernardino County district attorney from 1981 to 1994, 
and Floyd Tidwell, who served as the county sheriff from 1983 to 1991, are just 
as adamantly convinced of Cooper's guilt as Hile, Parker and others are of his 
innocence.

Tidwell led the police investigation and international manhunt for Cooper, 
organizing a special task force of deputies to gather evidence in the case that 
led to Cooper's conviction. Kottmeier was the lead prosecutor at trial.

Kottmeier and Tidwell haven't budged from their original belief in Cooper's 
guilt in 33 years. Nor do they intend to do so, they vowed.

"He does not deserve ever to get out of jail," Tidwell declared when he heard 
about the latest clemency claim.

"That man committed the most brutal murders I've ever noted in my 40-year 
career in law enforcement," the former sheriff said. "He should stay on death 
row. His conviction could be commuted to life imprisonment, but I don't think 
even that should happen. He deserves to be imprisoned and to face the death 
penalty."

Kottmeier agreed. He called the new clemency attempt "wrong, especially since 
he was convicted of killing an entire family."

The lone survivor, Joshua Ryen, has had "to grapple with the fact that his 
father, mother, sister and best friend were murdered and he was almost 
murdered," Kottmeier continued. "Kevin Cooper should be put to death."

Those who suffered the most and who sought "justice for the victims" were 
anxious to witness Cooper's execution, said Kottmeier, who was at San Quentin 
with John Kochis, now retired San Bernardino County chief deputy district 
attorney, Joshua Ryen and lead police investigator Sgt. Bill Arthur in 2004 to 
witness Cooper's execution. They experienced bitter disappointment when Cooper 
received a temporary reprieve.

"We can wait. Am I against clemency for Kevin Cooper?" Kottmeier rhetorically 
repeated. "You bet."

Who's standing behind Cooper

But Cooper is picking up supporters, and not just among those on his team.

They include some jurors who convicted Cooper and recommended the death 
penalty, the Organization of American States' Inter-American Commission on 
Human Rights and victim Peggy Ryen's sister, Lillian Shaffer, among others.

Shaffer said her sister was an expert markswoman and both she and Doug were 
"very strong people" as chiropractors and horse trainers.

"It seems impossible that he (Cooper) could have done all of that destruction 
by himself. ... 1 person certainly did not do it alone. ... I ask that a fresh 
look be taken at Kevin Cooper and his conviction," Peggy Ryen's sister said in 
her letter to Gov. Brown supporting clemency.

Texas attorney and law professor Sam D. Millsap Jr. called Cooper "a glaring 
example of the human wreckage, the living flotsam of a system that gets it 
wrong too often." Although he believes the American criminal justice system is 
the world's finest, he said the human factor "produces mistakes that destroy 
the lives of too many innocent men and women and could in this case lead to the 
execution of a man who has been butchered by a system that undermined the 
promise that our courts are fair and guarantee the protection of the innocent."

Millsap called on Gov. Brown to "prevent this execution and say, in the 
process, that the result to date in this case is beneath the people of the 
state of California."

The Cooper clemency is "a test of sorts," Millsap added, warning "whether the 
state ... passes this test will say more about its real values than it does 
about Kevin Cooper or the miserable creatures who commit horrible crimes.

"You have the power to ensure that the judgment of history will be that, when 
it came to Kevin Cooper, the state of California passed the test. Justice in 
this case is long overdue.

A prosecutor takes Cooper's side

Assistance has come from an unlikely corner - a prosecutor from Louisiana who 
tried a similar case. The move comes in part because A.M. Stroud III has 
publicly acknowledged that he ignored evidence that would have proven Glenn 
Ford's innocence. Ford was exonerated in 2014 after spending 30 years on that 
state's death row. He died of lung cancer a year later.

"Instead of searching for the truth, I was determined to convict Mr. Ford," 
Stroud said. "Because of my actions, an all-white jury convicted Mr. Ford and 
sentenced him to death in December 1984. Thereafter, appellate courts upheld 
Mr. Ford's wrongful conviction. As a result, Mr. Ford spent 30 years on death 
row in the maximum security penitentiary at Anglola, Louisiana, one of the most 
horrible prisons in the country.

"To be frank, when I prosecuted Mr. Ford for a crime he did not commit, I was 
arrogant, narcissistic and caught up in the culture of winning. I did not seek 
truth or justice. I sought only to win," said Stroud.

The prosecutor has appeared on "60 Minutes" and in other media to apologize for 
his actions and warn other prosecutors from making "revenge for victims the 
dominate motivation and winning at all costs the goal."

A prosecutor and sheriff wait

The local lawmen currently in office, San Bernardino County Sheriff John 
McMahon and District Attorney Mike Ramos, say Cooper's conviction is just. They 
issued brief statements through their respective public information officers. 
Ramos vowed to formally fight Cooper's petition for clemency.

The district attorney and sheriff stand firmly against clemency and an 
independent investigation.

"In 1983, there was a complete and thorough homicide investigation completed by 
the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, identifying Kevin Cooper as the 
person responsible for the murder of 4 Chino Hills' residents," McMahon's 
statement says.

"Due to the efforts of the district attorney, a jury found him guilty and the 
ultimate sentence was the death penalty," McMahon wrote. "Since Kevin Cooper's 
conviction, this case has been heard in multiple appellate courts, including 
the California Supreme Court and United States Supreme Court, and the 
conviction has been upheld again and again."

Ramos' statement was similar to McMahon's:

"Using a hatchet, Kevin Cooper slaughtered Doug and Peggy Ryen, their 
10-year-old daughter Jessica and an 11-year-old houseguest Christopher Hughes 
and attempted to kill 8-year-old Joshua Ryen," Ramos charged in his statement. 
"Cooper committed these atrocities after escaping from a nearby prison. He was 
convicted by a jury and his conviction has been affirmed by every court of 
appeal to review his case, including the California Supreme Court and the 
United States Supreme Court.

"Enough is enough," Ramos said.

(source: Daily Bulletin)






USA:

State Murder and America's Soul


On April 13th, Georgia executed Kenneth Fults, who pleaded guilty in 1997 to 
killing his 19-year-old neighbor, Cathy Bounds. One juror told an investigator, 
"Once he pled guilty, I knew I would vote for the death penalty because that's 
what that nigger deserved."

Since the death penalty was reinstated and Utah killed Gary Gilmore by firing 
squad on January 17, 1977, the United States has executed 1,434 people. (35% of 
them were African Americans, who make up 13% of the population) Besides the 
Gulf Wars, no other factor has contributed more to the spiritual death of 
America than these State-sanctioned murders.

When the State murders murderers, it makes accomplices of all its citizens. As 
the Los Angeles Times said in an editorial, "The reason to oppose capital 
punishment has to do with who we are, not who death row inmates are. The death 
penalty is inappropriate in all situations because it is unbefitting of a 
civilized society."

The death penalty largely defines the cultural divide in America, reflecting 
sharply divergent worldviews by its defenders and decriers. But the debate is 
confined to secondary issues such as deterrence and fairness. That's why nearly 
all the arguments for and against miss the point.

Whether carried out by hanging, electrocution, gas or lethal injection, when 
the State kills someone, it is an act of collective savagery that saps the 
spirit of a people and stains them with the very toxins they seek to extirpate.

Why is that so? Because when the State puts someone to death, the poison of an 
individual's murder is spread throughout the society, and enters the 
bloodstream of the body politic, diminishing them and eroding the 
psychological, emotional and spiritual health of the people as a whole.

The erosion of civility, fellow feeling, and basic human concord in the United 
States in the last quarter century is directly related to the shadow of death 
that has progressively fallen over the land as the deadening drumbeat of 
executions have piled one on top another.

The atavistic impulses of hate and vengeance that give rise State-sanctioned 
murder are drawn from the same source as individual murder, even if they are 
called by the more palatable names of retribution and punishment. When the 
State kills, and it disperses throughout the land the toxins that give rise to 
despicable crimes in the first place, no citizen is immune from their effects.

The measure of the social health of a country is how it treats the least and 
worst of its citizens. The abolishment of the death penalty is a sign of 
civilization in a country; the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 was a 
huge step backward for America.

To be a civilizing influence, the State must respond with humaneness to 
inhumanness. Indeed, the more vile the crime, the more necessary it is for the 
State to be civilized in its response. That is not some high-minded morality, 
or adherence to religious injunctions against taking human life. It is simply 
because that, the deterrence canard aside, the death penalty does not mitigate 
evil, but rather degrades a people, and thereby increases the inhumanity and 
barbarity of society.

Of course, it is an outrageous hypocrisy, in this supposedly religious country, 
that many of the same people who call themselves followers of Jesus and the 
Bible are the most ardent proponents of State-sanctioned murder. As journalist 
Michael Rowland said, "A large proportion of Americans are devout Christians, 
proudly living their lives according to the scriptures. But the commandment 
prohibiting killing is conveniently ignored when it comes to punishing people 
for serious crimes."

The primeval human reaction to violent crime is one of vengeance, retribution 
and punishment. However the State's responsibility is to protect its citizens, 
not carry out their basest impulses. That's why injecting the gut-wrenching 
emotions of the victims of violent crimes into the equation of justice is wrong 
and perverse.

In addition to prevention, redressing the wrongs perpetrated upon the victims 
of crime (as much as possible) must be at the forefront of the State's 
prosecution of criminals. If not, the State is failing its citizens. Putting 
the emotions of victim's families on the scales of justice doesn???t further 
that goal. If the desire for vengeance and retribution by the victim's 
relatives are truly important factors in the equation, then the State might as 
well sanction revenge killings by the relatives.

The State, and its laws, are the expression of the entirety of the citizens 
that reside in a nation. The perennial question is, how are "law-abiding 
citizens" to deal with people who break the law, especially those who commit 
heinous crimes, such as cold-blooded murder, rape and pedophilia?

We need to rethink not only the primitive reaction of the death penalty, but 
also the entire notion of punishment, which is always tinged with retribution. 
At bottom, the choice is not between punishment and rehabilitation, but between 
vengeance and civilization.

If America wants to reclaim its soul, it can begin by abolishing the death 
penalty once and for all. It will never happen gradually.

(source: Commentary; Martin LeFevre----The Costa Rican Times)