[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----N.Y., DEL., VA., S.C., FLA., ALA.

[Rick Halperin]

April 21




NEW YORK:

Professor Lectures on Consequences of Death Penalty


Prof. John Blume, law, argued that the United States should abolish the death 
penalty because of its racial bias and global ineffectiveness at a debate on 
Tuesday.

Blume - who said he has spent the past 30 years studying this issue and 
representing people on death row - said he believes the death penalty "has run 
its course."

One in 10 people convicted of the death penalty are innocent, according to 
Blume. He added that the proportion of convicts on death row is 
disproportionately comprised of African Americans convicted of killing white 
victims.

The death penalty's legality also weakens America???s position in international 
debates about human rights, Blume said.

"When the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty for juveniles, one 
of the most important briefs was filed by U.S. ambassadors, who said they faced 
difficulties [in the past] negotiating agreements with many countries," Blume 
said. "These countries would say, 'Don't lecture us, you still kill kids.'"

Blume added that the power that the death penalty grants to the government may 
seem excessive to citizens.

"At the end of the day, one thing about the death penalty that is inescapable 
is that at the bottom, it is just another government program," Blume said. "If 
you are a person who is suspicious of government power, then why would you give 
the government the power to decide who lives and who dies?"

At the conclusion of the lecture, organizers opened the floor to students for 
public debate. Arguing against the death penalty, Jason Jeong '19 said he 
believes the punishment does not align with the U.S. criminal system's primary 
goal.

"Criminal system is not just about retribution, but also rehabilitation," Jeong 
said.

In a final vote, audience members overwhelmingly agreed that the death penalty 
should be abolished.

(source: Cornell Sun)






DELAWARE:

Public defenders: Death penalty law is unconstitutional


As the Delaware Supreme Court continues to weigh the constitutionality of the 
death penalty statute, public defenders used their last chance at written 
arguments to refute the claims of state prosecutors.

3 assistant public defenders argued in a 25-page brief Monday that the state's 
arguments failed to recognize that Delaware's capital punishment law has many 
of the same constitutional infirmities that led the U.S. Supreme Court to 
strike down Florida's sentencing law.

"The constitutional deficiencies are so fatal that they render Delaware's 
capital sentencing scheme entirely invalid," they wrote.

The U.S. Supreme Court found in January that Florida was giving too much power 
to judges - and not enough to juries - when imposing death sentences.

This decision left attorneys and judges in Delaware questioning how to proceed 
in capital punishment cases because Delaware, like Florida, allows judges to 
override a jury's recommendation of life, and, instead, impose a sentence of 
death.

The Delaware Supreme Court agreed to resolve the issue by considering five 
certified questions of the law. It is using as a test case that of Benjamin 
Rauf, the Temple University law graduate charged with gunning down classmate 
Shazi Uppal, 27, in the parking lot of a Hockessin nursing home last summer.

Monday's brief from the public defenders was the final written argument on the 
matter.

Before making a final decision, the court will likely hear oral arguments in 
Dover from the parties, but no date has been announced.

In Delaware, the process of sentencing someone to death requires multiple 
steps. Once a person is found guilty of 1st-degree murder, the jury must 
unanimously agree that the evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt that at 
least one of 22 statutory aggravating factors exists.

Then, each juror has to decide whether the aggravating factors outweigh the 
non-aggravating factors. That decision need not be unanimous, and the judge is 
not bound by those findings.

The jury's verdict is advisory, leaving judges with the final authority in 
sentencing.

Prosecutors have argued that Florida's death penalty process looked similar to 
an older version of Delaware's statute. They said that at the courts beckoning, 
the General Assembly in 2002 changed the statute, barring the Superior Court 
from imposing a death sentence unless a jury first determines unanimously and 
beyond a reasonable doubt that at least one statutory aggravating circumstance 
exists.

Public defenders pushed back against that notion this week and called the 
analysis "faulty and incomplete." They said that the 2002 change still violates 
the Sixth Amendment requirement that a jury find the factors necessary for a 
death sentence.

The public defenders also once again said the state Legislature should be the 
one to resolve the issue of making the death penalty statute fit with the 
recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.

"The statute's constitutional problems require a complete statutory 
restructuring, a task for the legislature, not the courts," they wrote.

But that could be a difficult task in a Legislature that is divided on the 
issue.

A bill to repeal the death penalty passed the state Senate but failed in the 
state House of Representatives in February. Sponsors of the bill suspended 
further legislative action and suspended a reconsideration vote until the 
court's decision is completed.

Also, as the debate rages on, President Judge Jan R. Jurden issued a temporary 
stay on all pending capital murder trials.

Delaware is 1 of 32 states with capital punishment. The last execution in the 
state was in 2012, when Shannon Johnson, 28, was killed by lethal injection. 
Johnson had been convicted in the 2006 shooting death of Cameron Hamlin, 26, an 
aspiring musician.

(source: delawareonline.com)






VIRGINIA:

Virginia Lawmakers Vote to Grant Secrecy to Companies That Provide Chemicals 
for Lethal Injection


Lawmakers in Virginia are getting close to solving their pesky death penalty 
problem. After being blocked on a proposal to bring back the electric chair as 
a way to get around the reluctance of drug manufacturers to supply state 
governments with lethal injection drugs, Virginia's House and Senate have both 
voted to accept Gov. Terry McAuliffe's counter-offer: making it possible for 
companies to sell Virginia the ingredients necessary for chemical execution in 
secret, thus protecting them from public scrutiny and criticism.

The measure, which has been condemned from commentators on the left and the 
right as an affront to the principles of government transparency, promises that 
"the identities of any pharmacy or outsourcing facility that enters into a 
contract" to provide lethal injection drugs to the Virginia Department of 
Corrections "shall be confidential." In an interview with ABC News on Monday, a 
spokesman for the governor referred to the proposal as "the only practical way" 
for Virginia to obtain the drugs it needs to execute the 7 people currently on 
death row in the state.

In an earlier interview with the AP, McAuliffe explained the stakes of the 
situation, saying that if lawmakers voted down his idea, they would be bringing 
"the death penalty to an end here in Virginia."

According to the Death Penalty Clinic at the UC Berkeley Law School, there are 
at least 12 other states that have laws granting anonymity to death penalty 
drug manufacturers: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, 
North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas.

According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Republican-controlled House 
initially rejected McAuliffe's version of the death penalty bill by a 47-51 
vote, but on a 2nd vote, 13 Republicans changed their mind and the measure 
passed. The Senate voted 22-16 in favor of the measure shortly thereafter.

The bill now heads back to McAuliffe's office, where he is expected to sign it 
into law.

(source: slate.com)

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

Virginia legislature approves plan to buy execution drugs from secret 
pharmacies

Virginia's House and Senate on Wednesday accepted Gov. Terry McAuliffe's plan 
to hire pharmacies to secretly supply the state with execution drugs, acting 1 
day after the state;s attorney general signed off on the idea.

Virginia joins Arkansas, Missouri and Ohio as states that have placed similar 
shields over the pharmacies that produce lethal drugs and have faced lengthy 
legal challenges in state and federal courts. In Arkansas, which hoped to 
resume executions after a decade-long break, the legal challenge has delayed 
several lethal injections scheduled to take place last fall and winter.

The night before the General Assembly's 1-day veto session, Attorney General 
Mark R. Herring (D) issued a legal opinion saying that the plan would not 
violate state or federal laws governing controlled substances or the practice 
of medicine and pharmacy.

McAuliffe (D), who opposes capital punishment but has vowed to support it as a 
matter of Virginia law, has said the state would not be able to carry out the 
death penalty if it does not come up with a way to obtain increasingly scarce 
execution drugs.

The Senate voted, 22 to 16, to back the governor's plan, with Sen. Minority 
Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) arguing that complaints about secrecy had 
been overblown. Had the federal government decided to put Oklahoma City bomber 
Timothy McVeigh to death the same way he killed his victims, "do you honestly 
think any of your constituents would care where we bought the dynamite?" Saslaw 
said.

The House's approval came with dramatic flip-flops. Conservative skeptics of 
government secrecy initially teamed with House Democrats to reject the 
governor's amendments by a vote of 51 to 47. But after a few minutes of 
arm-twisting by Republican leaders, and the abrupt exit of one GOP delegate, 
the House reconsidered the vote. The 2nd time, the measure passed, 59 to 40.

"It was important to preserve capital punishment," said Matthew Moran, 
spokesman for House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford), 1 of 13 Republicans 
who changed their votes to "yes."

Del. Marcus B. Simon (D-Fairfax), who attempted arcane parliamentary maneuvers 
to derail the plan, later complained that Republican leaders had whipped 
members into line on a matter that he said should be left to personal 
conscience.

"The governor didn't whip a single vote on this, unlike what I just saw across 
the aisle," said Simon, who also questioned the notion that the state could not 
execute prisoners without the measure. "Nothing's stopping the Department of 
Corrections from investigating new drug protocols. They just can't do it in 
secret."

Herring's legal opinion came a little more than a week after McAuliffe 
drastically amended a Republican bill intended to let the state use the 
electric chair when it cannot obtain lethal-injection drugs. The drugs have 
become hard to obtain amid a European export ban and public pressure on U.S. 
pharmaceutical companies not to supply them.

McAuliffe's amendment will scrap that approach and instead allow the state to 
specially order the drugs from compounding pharmacies, whose identities would 
be kept secret to shield them from political pressure.

The plan has been controversial not only among opponents of the death penalty, 
but also among conservative and liberal critics of government secrecy.

"The governor's amendments will keep secret the manufacturers of drugs used to 
kill Virginia's death-row inmates by lethal injection, as well as the chemical 
nature of those drugs," said Claire Guthrie Gasta???aga, executive director of 
the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia. "Injecting secrecy into the 
process will authorize Virginia to use new, untested, unregulated, undisclosed 
drugs on human beings against their will."

McAuliffe has said the state would not have a way to execute death-row inmates 
without the pharmacy plan and its secrecy provisions.

Virginia inmates facing the death penalty can choose between the electric chair 
and lethal injection. Del. Jackson H. Miller (R-Manassas) sponsored a bill this 
year to make the electric chair the default method of execution when the state 
cannot obtain lethal-injection drugs.

In amending Miller's bill, McAuliffe said he was trying to find a way to avoid 
the use of the electric chair, which he called a "reprehensible" method of 
execution.

Herring, who is running for reelection in 2017, passed judgment on the legality 
of the plan but did not weigh in on its merits.

His opinion disappointed some Democrats opposed to capital punishment. But it 
pleased some Republicans, who are split over the secrecy provisions but eager 
to get the attorney general to weigh in on an issue unlikely to be popular with 
the liberal Democratic base. Herring supports capital punishment but is better 
known for advancing liberal causes such as gay rights, abortion access and 
immigration.

"The opinion is a strong legal endorsement of capital punishment in Virginia," 
Moran said in an email. "The attorney general's opinion will be helpful as the 
House considers the governor's amendment Wednesday."

2 opponents of the death penalty, Simon and state Sen. Scott A. Surovell 
(D-Fairfax), also jointly sought Herring's opinion last week. Miller also 
separately asked for Herring's view last week, although he said he was inclined 
to support McAuliffe's amendment. Miller had asked Herring to address questions 
that the state's pharmacy chief had privately raised in emails in 2014.

Caroline D. Juran, executive director of the Virginia Board of Pharmacy, had 
wondered whether such a plan might violate laws requiring that drugs be 
dispensed only with a valid prescription and only for medicinal or therapeutic 
purposes. She also questioned whether the secrecy provisions could prevent 
authorities from investigating a pharmacy in the event of a botched execution.

Herring said that the federal Food and Drug Administration "has concluded that 
it lacks clear regulatory authority over the use of drugs for purposes of 
conducting executions, and courts will likely be constrained to defer to the 
FDAs reasonable construction." He also said that ordinary prescription 
requirements would not apply to drugs obtained for executions.

Surovell and Simon raised some of the same issues, and they also questioned 
whether the secrecy surrounding the drugs would violate the constitutional 
right of death-row inmates to gather information about their pending 
executions.

"Upon a showing of good cause, a judge presiding over either civil proceeding 
has the authority and discretion to fashion appropriate safeguards to allow for 
access to relevant information by party litigants," Herring wrote.

Surovell and Simon were not swayed by Herring's opinion.

"The attorney general's office has been guiding the Department of Corrections 
conduct for decades and if he had opined differently, he would expose the state 
and multiple employees to significant criminal and civil liability," Surovell 
said.

(source: Washington Post)






SOUTH CAROLINA:

State asks for mental evaluation of Dylann Roof


Prosecutors say they want an independent psychological evaluation of accused 
church shooter Dylann Roof to rebut or confirm the findings from a pair of 
evaluations performed by the defense team's experts.

The request comes about a week after a judge delayed the murder trial until 
2017 to give psychologists more time to draw conclusions about Roof's mental 
state. Defense attorneys estimated it would take another 6 months for the full 
reported to be completed.

"In the present case, recent hearings leave no doubt of the defense's 
intentions to present mental health evidence during the sentencing phase of 
this trial," Solicitor Scarlett Wilson said in the filing.

Wilson says the mental evaluation will be sealed from the State until the 
penalty phase begins to prevent self-incrimination by Roof.

Roof is accused of killing 9 black parishioners at Emanuel AME Church in 
downtown Charleston. He faces a number of murder and attempted murder charges 
for the shooting and prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty.

Roof also faces nearly three dozen federal hate crimes charges, but the 
Attorney General's office has not yet announced whether it will seek the death 
penalty also. As a result, that decision has caused a delay in scheduling the 
federal trial.

Roof's attorneys at the state and federal level have said multiple times that 
Roof is willing to plead guilty if prosecutors remove the possiblity of death 
as a sentence.

(source: WCIV news)






FLORIDA:

Priest's sister hopes for death penalty for his accused killer


The family of a slain priest is speaking out after they learned the suspect in 
his death was charged with murder.

Action News Jax Ben Becker spoke exclusively with Father Rene's family and was 
the first to tell them about murder charges against Steven Murray.

"I hope he gets the death penalty," says Deborah Bedard, Father Rene's sister. 
"I know my brother didn't believe in that but we know he killed him and I want 
the death penalty for him."

Brian Robert said he warned his brother about working with former prisoners 
like Murray who could put him in danger.

"I said, 'Father Rene, I can't be down there and sit outside your apartment or 
spend the night in your apartment. If somebody has intentions you have to be 
careful,'" said Robert.

Father Rene's sister said she also warned him.

"'Father Rene Dear God, you can't trust everybody, you can't believe every word 
you hear from them.' But he did. He wanted to trust everybody," Bedard said.

She said she has a message for Murray.

"Why did you kill my brother, who was such a good person and helping you, why 
did you kill my brother?"

Murray led investigators to Father Rene's body on Monday.

(source: actionnewsjax.com)






ALABAMA:

Death penalty law needs reform


People have very different views on the legitimacy of the death penalty. Almost 
everyone should agree, however, that the state Legislature should end the 
archaic practice of allowing our elected judges to override a jury when 
imposing the death penalty.

It's not often opposing sides can come together on the issue of the death 
penalty.

Many oppose it on religious grounds. Does the state usurp God's will when it 
takes the life of an individual? By doing so, do we interfere with a divine 
plan that would have led to the felon's salvation?

Others oppose it out of a healthy cynicism for our legal system. Can we trust 
it? Will evidence surface, too late, exonerating the defendant?

And time is an issue. Too often, the executed defendant - years removed from 
his crime - seems a different person. Is it fair to execute a person who no 
longer has the problems that led him to commit the crime?

The death penalty persists despite these and other doubts because, sometimes, 
it seems right. The crime is so heinous, the evidence so clear, the criminal so 
unrepentant, that anything short of the death penalty seems an insult to the 
victim and to society.

When not caught up in the politics surrounding the issue, however, we also know 
that imposing the death penalty is a somber affair. If our state is to execute 
individuals, it must do so with extreme deference to the Constitution.

As the U.S. Supreme Court made clear this year, in a case striking down 
Florida's similar death penalty law, Alabama is failing to meet constitutional 
requirements by allowing a judge to impose the death penalty after overriding a 
jury's recommendation of a lesser sentence. The practice violates a defendant's 
Sixth Amendment right to a trial by jury, the majority held.

Jefferson County Circuit Judge Tracie Todd pointed out the obvious last month 
when she declared the state's death penalty statute constitutionally deficient. 
Not only did she underline the inconsistency between judicial override and the 
right to a trial by jury, she discussed unique problems with Alabama's system.

Alabama trial judges - as well as the judges who hear appeals from their 
decisions - are chosen through partisan elections. Indeed, Todd wrote, Alabama 
is the only state in which trial judges are both elected on partisan ballots 
and have the power to override the jury in imposing the death penalty.

The not-surprising result, she wrote, is judicial overrides are far more common 
in election years.

This same partisanship impacts appeals of death penalty cases. State supreme 
courts like Alabama with judges elected in contested voter elections affirm 62 
% of death penalty sentences. State supreme courts comprised of judges 
appointed for life terms affirmed death sentences in only 26 % of the cases.

Alabama is in the worst of both worlds. Its trial judges have the power of life 
and death, a power in most states reserved to the jury. And its trial judges 
are necessarily partisan politicians.

Even those who are advocates of Alabama's existing death penalty system should 
see the wisdom of changing it. No prosecutor can confidently seek the death 
penalty in a capital murder case because the U.S. Supreme Court's decision 
striking down Florida's law suggests Alabama's law will meet the same fate.

Especially in a state like Alabama with partisan judicial elections, judges 
should not be able to override a jury recommendation in imposing the death 
penalty.

(source: Editorial, Times Daily)