[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., N.C., GA. LA., USA

[Rick Halperin]

July 11




PENNSYLVANIA:

Parents Torture 3-Year-Old Son To Death For One Simple Reason


Gruesome details have emerged about the death of 3-year-old Scott McMillan. 
Last week he was found unresponsive in his family's trailer, covered in cuts, 
bruises and puncture wounds. McMillian's mother Jillian Tait, her boyfriend 
Gary Fellenbaum and his wife Amber Fellenbaum were arrested in connection with 
the death. Jillian and Gary have been charged with murdering McMillian and 
Amber was charged with child endangerment.

"Little Scotty McMillan is dead. Over a 3 day period ... he was systematically 
tortured and beaten to death. He was punched in the face and in the stomach. He 
was scourged with a homemade whip. He was lashed with a metal rod. He was tied 
to a chair and beaten. He was tied upside down by his feet and beaten. His head 
was smashed through a wall," said Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan.

Authorities said they;d never seen a child abuse murder like this.The brutal 
torture and murder of Scott McMillan began when he refused to eat his 
breakfast.

Gary and Jillian confessed to the murder during police questioning. They beat 
the boy to death using a homemade whip, a curtain rod, and an aluminum strip. 
Scott was hit with both sharp and blunt objects, taped to a chair with 
electrical tape and beaten, hung up by his feet and beaten, which led to his 
death.

Scott's life was a short and violent one, according to his mother. Scott and 
his 6-year-old brother, who is now safely in the custody of a family member, 
were routinely beaten with closed fists. On one occasion, Gary tied the boys up 
by their feet and beat them while Jillian and his wife Amber laughed as they 
watched.

Hogan announced that the district attorney's office will be seeking the death 
penalty for Jillian and Gary.

(source: opposingviews.com)






NORTH CAROLINA:

Buncombe DA will seek death penalty for man charged in triple murder of 
Johnson, Diz, King


News 13 has learned Buncombe county District Attorney Todd Williams will seek 
the death penalty for Pierre Griffin, the man charged in the triple murder of 
Uhon Johnson, Alexandra King, and Tatianna Diz.

Griffin will appear in superior court Monday at 2 p.m. for what's called a Rule 
24 hearing. This hearing is where the DA puts it on record if he intends to 
file for the death penalty in the case.

Griffin's attorney Keith Hanson confirmed to News 13 that he has been in 
communication with the DA's office, and believes that is what will happen 
Monday. "Mr. Williams' office has kept the lines of communication open with us, 
and we greatly appreciate that," said Hanson.

Danny Meehan, Tatiana Diz's father, said the family was aware the DA was going 
to file for the death penalty.

"My family is all for it," said Meehan by phone from Baltimore, where he lives. 
"When it goes to trial, we will all be there."

Meehan confirmed the Rule 24 hearing was supposed to take place in February but 
was delayed. Attorney Keith Hanson, who represents Griffin, said he had a 
triple murder case in Catawba county, and had requested the delay several 
months ago.

Griffin is accused of killing Uhon Johnson, Alexandra King and Tatianna Diz on 
October 27 of last year. Johnson's body was found inside his apartment that 
night.

Later that evening, several law enforcement agencies captured Griffin after a 
car chase.

Investigators believe he also killed King and Diz that same night, and dumped 
their bodies into the French Broad River.

(source: WLOS news)






GEORGIA----impending execution

Georgia set to execute 6th inmate this year


An execution scheduled for Thursday would be the 6th in Georgia this year. That 
would be the most executions the state has carried out in a calendar year since 
the death penalty was reinstated 4 decades ago.

John Wayne Conner is scheduled to die at the state prison in Jackson. He was 
convicted of beating his friend, J.T. White, to death 34 years ago in Dodge 
County during an argument after a night of drinking and marijuana use. Conner 
is now 60.

Georgia has executed 5 people in a calendar year twice -- last year and in 1987 
-- since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

There have been a total of 14 executions nationwide this year, s6 in Texas, 5 
in Georgia and 1 each in Alabama, Florida and Missouri.

(source: news4jax.com)






LOUISIANA:

Case against New Orleans mother accused of killing her 2 small children in 2012 
remains in limbo

Accused child killer Chelsea Thornton sat quietly last week in the jury box of 
an Orleans Parish courtroom, where nothing happened with her case.

It's been like that for nearly 2 years.

Thornton faces a pair of 1st-degree murder charges for killing her 2 young 
children in their rat- and roach-infested Gert Town apartment on Oct. 17, 2012.

The death penalty remains on the table, a spokesman for District Attorney Leon 
Cannizzaro's office said.

Yet nobody appears in any rush to see Thornton tried for the double killing, 
which she admitted to police in a chilling taped confession, describing it as a 
mercy killing.

"I did the best I could for them, but I just, I didn't want them to go from 
pillar to post their whole life like I did," she told police. "It's not right."

In grim detail, Thornton described talking to her frightened children before 
she shot 3-year-old Kendall, then drowned him and 4-year-old Kelsey in the tub 
when the gun jammed.

"So I just gave them a hug and a kiss, and I said, 'I love y'all very much.'"

The tape was played in court in October 2014, a month after 2 mental health 
experts hired by the defense found that Thornton was legally insane at the time 
of the killings.

Cannizzaro's office then hired a different expert to conduct his own review. 
Dr. Michael Blue, a forensic psychiatrist, interviewed Thornton twice, in July 
and August of last year, court records show. But he has yet to submit his 
report, leaving the case in legal limbo, with no trial date set.

The case is on its 3rd set of prosecutors. It is now assigned to Laura 
Cannizzaro Rodrigue and Tiffany Tucker.

Christopher Bowman, the spokesman for Cannizzaro's office, declined to discuss 
the delay or Blue's pending report, citing office policy.

Blue did not return messages about the case.

Thornton's attorney, former district attorney candidate Lionel "Lon" Burns, 
said he fears his client is "going to end up back in a mental hospital."

"Only so many times I can tell her we're waiting on a report," Burns said. "Ms. 
Thornton is still in Orleans Parish Prison. She's been sitting back there, and 
the case is going nowhere fast."

Thornton has entered dual pleas of not guilty and not guilty by reason of 
insanity. Burns said he needs Blue's report to prepare for a trial in which a 
jury would ultimately decide her insanity claim. A verdict of not guilty by 
reason of insanity would send Thornton to a state hospital for as long as 
Criminal District Court Judge Robin Pittman or a successor would see fit.

Burns said he presumes Blue's report will say Thornton was sane - that she knew 
right from wrong - when she killed her children.

Thornton was arrested within hours after a relative discovered the 2 small 
bodies in the tub, and she quickly admitted to the killings.

She has a lengthy history of mental illness, having been diagnosed at various 
times with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia with psychotic episodes, as well 
as depression. Hospital records showed she had been off her medication for 
several months before the killings.

Her relatives and advocates have described the children's deaths as a grisly 
reminder of wide fissures in the city's mental health care framework.

Forensic psychiatrists Dr. Sarah Deland and Dr. James McConville found Thornton 
was legally insane when she picked up Kendall and Kelsey from school, fed them, 
told them she loved them and killed them, according to her own account.

Thornton was "almost getting catatonic on that day," Deland testified. "She 
feared for their future and thought going to heaven was the best thing for 
them."

Within a few months of Thornton's January 2013 indictment, Pittman ordered her 
to a state hospital despite having found her competent to stand trial, which is 
a separate determination from the question of her sanity at the time of the 
killings.

The Louisiana Department of Health appealed, and a 4th Circuit Court of Appeal 
panel ordered Thornton back to Orleans Parish in July 2013, finding Pittman had 
no authority to order her hospitalization.

"This is not to say that should Ms. Thornton decompensate on multiple occasions 
while in the sheriff???s custody, making her again unfit for trial, that it may 
not at some point in the future be appropriate to direct that she remain in the 
treatment facility until her trial," the appeals panel wrote.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Aug. 16.

(source: The Advocate)






USA:

Practically Speaking, The Death Penalty Is Disappearing In The United 
States----Although nearly 3,000 people are on death row in America, there has 
not been an execution in the country for 2 months - and few executions are 
expected in the coming months.


It has been 2 months since any state in the United States has carried out an 
execution.

This marks the longest time between executions in the U.S. since the Supreme 
Court effectively halted them in the fall of 2007 through spring 2008 while 
considering a case about the constitutionality of lethal injection.

This time, the situation is very different. Although there are pending court 
cases about the death penalty's application, the source of the 2-month stoppage 
in executions isn't the Supreme Court. It's a variety of state-specific issues, 
ranging from the aftermath of Supreme Court rulings that come down earlier this 
year to drug availability to fallout from botched executions.

The pause on executions - since it is state-specific - won't last forever. The 
stoppage could end as soon as Thursday if an execution scheduled for Georgia 
goes ahead as planned.

It isn't, however, only that there have been no executions in the past 2 
months. This year, there have been fewer executions overall - just 14 in the 
first half of the year - than in years past. It's extremely unlikely, moreover, 
that the number will be higher in the 2nd half of the year.

There are, in fact, only 3 states - Georgia, Missouri, and Texas - that have 
executed anyone since January of this year. What's more, these states appear to 
be the only ones that could hold an execution today - despite the nearly 3,000 
people on death row across the country. The only other state where executions 
still seem to be a possibility this year is Arkansas, and that is only so if 
the state obtains a new supply of execution drugs - which is by no means a sure 
thing.

Before the 2007-08 gap in executions, the next most recent time when there was 
such a gap was nearly 25 years ago, when there were no executions held between 
Nov. 12, 1991, and Jan. 22, 1992. Even then, the stoppage is not entirely 
comparable to the current one because there often have been shorter periods 
with no executions surrounding the holiday season. Gaps prior to then were more 
common, but they were due to the fact the states were still passing and 
implementing their execution process in the wake of the Supreme Court's 1976 
decision approving execution statutes after a nationwide ruling against the 
death penalty laws 4 years earlier.

In short, this is an unprecedented moment in the modern era of the death 
penalty. Why, in the absence of any overarching federal prohibition on 
executions, is this so?

The death penalty itself remains constitutional - and the justices recently 
declined to hear a handful of death-row inmates' cases asking the justices to 
revisit that question.

In the vast majority of states, executions just aren't a practical reality 
today - either because the death penalty itself is barred or because functional 
issues prevent states from carrying out executions. Executions are either 
banned by law, halted by executive action, barred from happening by court 
oversight, or unable to happen because the state lacks the drugs to conduct 
executions. In some states, an overlapping number of these apply.

Georgia, which last held an execution in April, is the next state slated to 
hold an execution in the U.S. John Connor, who killed a man in a drunken brawl 
more than 30 years ago, is scheduled to be executed on Thursday. He would be 
the state's 6th execution of the year.

The state put executions on hold in March 2015 following the scheduled 
execution of Kelly Gissendaner was canceled after the state discovered problems 
with drugs intended for use later that day. But, after reviewing what happened 
in March with the drugs, Georgia resumed executions at the end of September by 
carrying out Gissendaner's execution. Since then, it has held executions 
regularly. Even if Connor's execution goes forward, however, it is not clear 
whether the state will hold other executions this year.

Texas, living up to its reputation, remains the most active death penalty 
state. Nonetheless, this past week, even Texas announced an execution delay. 
The state will not be executing Perry Williams this week after lab results 
regarding the purity of the drugs to be used in his execution were not obtained 
in enough time to proceed with the execution.

"Perry Williams and another death row offender filed a lawsuit regarding lethal 
injection. The Attorney General's Office agreed to have the particular dose 
that was to be used on him tested shortly before his execution," Texas 
Department of Criminal Justice spokesperson Jason Clark told BuzzFeed News. 
"Because the testing results were not completed in time, the state district 
court withdrew the execution order."

Clark told the Houston Chronicle, however, that the state has a sufficient 
supply of execution drugs for several upcoming executions that already have 
been scheduled.

Missouri, which has been a very active death penalty state in recent years, has 
conducted only one execution this year - the most recent execution in the U.S. 
- when it executed Earl Forrest on May 11. It has a simple reason for having 
slowed down its rate of executions: It has executed the people whose cases were 
in a posture that they could be executed. Although the state still has about 2 
dozen people on death row, most are early enough in the post-conviction process 
or have other reasons to believe that execution dates will not be set for them 
in the near future. It has no scheduled executions on the books at this time.

Florida and Alabama are the only other 2 states that have conducted an 
execution in 2016 - each executed 1 person in January of this year.

For now, however, their executions are on hold as they deal with the Supreme 
Court's decision striking down Florida's death sentencing law. The court held 
in the January decision in Hurst v. Florida that Florida's death sentencing 
scheme was unconstitutional because the state relied on "a judge's 
fact-finding" and not "a jury's verdict" to sentence a person to death. The 
court returned Hurst's case to the Florida courts and the state's supreme court 
is considering his and several other cases raising issues about the effect of 
the ruling.

Although Alabama officials have maintained that their system is distinct from 
Florida's system, the overlap in the death sentencing laws was enough that the 
Supreme Court remanded a handful of Alabama cases to the Alabama Court of 
Criminal Appeals, asking that court to reconsider the death sentences in light 
of Hurst.

In Arizona, Ohio, and Oklahoma, botched executions - or, in Oklahoma's case, a 
botched execution, followed by an execution performed using a wrong drug, 
followed by a 2nd scheduled execution in which the wrong drug would have been 
used but for a doctor catching the issue at the last minute - have halted new 
executions. In addition, both Ohio and Arizona have had difficulties obtaining 
new execution drugs.

After the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma in 2014, inmates, 
including Richard Glossip, took a case about the state's execution method all 
the way to the Supreme Court. And while the court upheld Oklahoma's 3-drug 
execution protocol including the use of the sedative midazolam, the state has 
moved on to a different protocol. When the state attempted to execute Glossip 
under that protocol, the doctor overseeing the execution determined the state 
had received the wrong drug and the execution, eventually, was called off. 
Later, the state revealed they had used the wrong drug in an execution earlier 
in the year.

A damning grand jury report was released in May about the state's handling of 
executions, and while there were no criminal charges resulting from the 
investigation, it is clear that there will be no executions in the state for 
some time.

Arizona has not held an execution for the past 2 years, when it took the state 
nearly two hours to execute Joseph Wood. Earlier this year, when it obtained 
some necessary drugs to conduct executions again, it attempted to get court 
permission to do so before the drugs were due to expire, but a federal judge 
denied their request. The state, along with Texas, also attempted to import 
illegal execution drugs from India last year, but the FDA has detained the 
drugs. In June, the state acknowledged that its inability to secure additional 
execution drugs means it has no intention to conduct any executions for the 
time being.

Ohio has not held an execution since it executed Dennis McGuire in January 
2014, during which a witness said he "struggled and gasped audibly for air." 
The state, BuzzFeed News has previously reported, has considered importing 
drugs from India, but does not appear to have done so and the state has 
repeatedly moved execution dates back. At this point, the state's next 
scheduled execution is on Jan. 12, 2017, but there could be further delays.

3 other states have either attempted to move forward with executions or have 
conducted an execution recently. The 2 that tried - Arkansas and Mississippi - 
have been unsuccessful at doing so thus far, and the 1 that conducted an 
execution - Virginia - has no plans to proceed with another in the near future.

At the end of June, Arkansas won a court ruling that would have allowed it to 
proceed with executions for the 1st time in more than a decade, but its supply 
of execution drugs expired before the court ruling went into effect. It is not 
clear whether the state will be able to obtain more execution drugs or whether 
it will set additional execution dates.

Mississippi, which has not held an execution since 2012, had been attempting to 
begin executions again, but a stay of execution had been in place for several 
months through February of this year. Although the stay was lifted, lawsuits 
challenging the state's execution protocol continue in several courts and 
lawyers for death-row inmates don't expect any execution dates to be set by the 
state's supreme court while the litigation is pending.

Virginia has executed 3 people over the past 5 years. The state's 1 execution 
in the past 3 years was conducted with drugs it was provided by Texas. It has 
seven people remaining on death row, and no apparent plans to set execution 
dates at this time.

In the remaining states, executions are few and - especially in recent years - 
far between.

Depending on where the follow-up litigation goes relating to Hurst goes, three 
additional states - Delaware, Nebraska, and Montana - could find their way into 
the middle of post-Hurst fallout. Along with Florida and Alabama, they are the 
only states remaining that allow a non-unanimous jury to sentence a person to 
death. The issue was discussed at oral argument in Hurst, but it did not play a 
part in the ruling.

In addition to all of this, Delaware's supreme court is already considering the 
continued constitutionality of its statute in state court in light of Hurst.

Nebraska, meanwhile, is in the midst of a referendum campaign after the 
legislature repealed the death penalty over the governor's veto in 2015. The 
governor, who is backing the referendum effort, nonetheless has agreed not to 
proceed with attempting any executions until after the referendum vote.

Montana's most recent execution was nearly a decade ago, and only 2 people 
remain on the state's death row. Last fall, in a case challenging the state's 
intended use of pentobarbital in its 3-drug execution protocol, a state court 
judge issued a stay on executions that remains in effect.

Several other states with large death-row populations are not active, for 
varying reasons, in carrying out executions.

California has, by far, the largest death-row population in the country at 743 
people as of Jan. 1, but there is no court-approved execution protocol and key 
statewide officials oppose capital punishment as a policy - although they 
maintain they will enforce the law as is. The state is in the process of 
considering a new execution protocol, but no executions are likely in the near 
future.

Pennsylvania's death row stood at 180 people as of Jan. 1, but its governor, 
Tom Wolf, has, in effect, issued a moratorium on executions by granting 
continual reprieves to death-row inmates.

In 2015, North Carolina passed the Restoring Proper Justice Act in an attempt 
to help restart executions in a state that has not held an execution in nearly 
a decade and had more than 150 people on death row as of Jan. 1 of this year. 
Despite the new law, most involved in the process there say that ongoing 
litigation means they don't expect executions to resume in the state any time 
soon.

Louisiana has only conducted two executions in the past 15 years, and while it 
has more than 80 people on death row, it has no executions scheduled and the 
next court update in ongoing litigation is not scheduled to take place until 
January 2018.

In addition to Pennsylvania, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington also have 
governor-imposed moratoriums on executions.

The remaining states with a death penalty law on the books are Idaho, Indiana, 
Kansas, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and 
Wyoming. None of these states have conducted an execution in the past 4 years. 
The most recent 2 executions from these states were both in Idaho - in November 
2011 and June 2012. 2 of the states - Kansas and New Hampshire - have not 
carried out a single execution since the death penalty was reauthorized in 
1976. There is, of course, a federal death penalty - and more than 60 people 
are on the federal death row - but the federal government has only carried out 
three executions in the modern era of the death penalty and will not be 
carrying out another one any time soon.

New Mexico's death penalty was abolished in 2009, but 2 people remain on death 
row from sentences handed down prior to then. Even before abolition, the state 
had only conducted one execution since 1976.

The 18 remaining states and Washington, D.C., do not have the death penalty.

(source: Chris Geidner is the legal editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in 
Washington, D.C)

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

The 40th anniversary of the modern death penalty


This month marks the 40th anniversary of the return of the death penalty. From 
1972 to 1976 America was without capital punishment. In 1972, the U.S. Supreme 
Court decided Furman v. Georgia. The court ruled that the death penalty was 
unconstitutional, violating the Eighth Amendment ban against cruel and unusual 
punishment.

At the time, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote, "These death 
sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning 
is cruel and unusual." A year earlier, the justices had upheld the 
constitutionality of the death penalty under the due process clause of the 
Fourteenth Amendment. According to The Marshall Project, Furman seemed headed 
in the same direction until Stewart struck a deal with Justice Byron White, 
who'd been on the fence about the death penalty. Stewart agreed to abandon his 
moral statement against the death penalty and would instead say that the 
problem with capital punishment was excessive arbitrariness. The deal resulted 
in a surprising 5-4 decision overturning the death penalty.

The decision forced state legislatures to review the death penalty and 
eliminate the arbitrary, capricious and racially discriminatory aspects of 
capital punishment. The Court suggested that states establish criteria to 
direct and limit the circumstances in which the death penalty would apply and 
to overhaul the sentencing process.

In July 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court in Gregg v. Georgia, found that 3 of 5 
states that amended their death penalty statute - Georgia, Florida and Texas - 
did conform to the directives of Furman. The death penalty was back.

The 1st man executed after Gregg was Gary Gilmore of Utah. Gilmore wanted to be 
executed, and the state of Utah granted his wish. He was executed by firing 
squad on January 17, 1977. Since Gilmore, more than 1,400 men and women have 
been executed nationwide. Texas alone is responsible for more than 1/3 of those 
executions.

Executions steadily increased through the 1990s and then began to recede again 
to the present. Public support for the death penalty reached its lowest point 
in 1966, when only 42 % of Americans supported the death penalty. During the 
1990s as crime rates soared, support for the death penalty rose to as high as 
80 percent. Since then, support for the death penalty has remained steady just 
above 60 %, according to Gallup.

Executions are at the lowest level in decades. In the 1st half of 2016 there 
were 14 executions. Those executions occurred in Texas (6), Georgia (5), 
Alabama (1), Florida (1) and Missouri (1).

There are 7 executions planned for the rest of the year, all in Texas according 
to the Death Penalty Information Center. 21 executions would be the fewest 
since 1992 when there were 14 executions and a fraction of the 98 executions 
carried out in 1999.

Between 1973 and 2013, only 16.1 % of people sentenced to death were ultimately 
executed. In other words, the chance of being executed - among defendants 
sentenced to death - is only about 1 in 6. The probability of receiving the 
death penalty in the U.S. is miniscule. The Centers for Disease Control 
reported 16,121 homicides in 2013. There were 39 executions - an execution rate 
of approximately a quarter of one percent.

The decision in Gregg failed in limiting the circumstances in which the penalty 
may be applied. A California study found that 87 % of murders are potentially 
eligible for the death penalty under the state's definitions. In Colorado, the 
rate is 91.1 %.

My book, "The Executioner's Toll 2010: The Crimes, Arrests, Trials, Appeals, 
Last Meals, Final Words and Executions of 46 Persons in the United States," 
examined every execution in 2010. My research led to the conclusion that the 
death penalty was once again arbitrary.

Arbitrary - as it was in 1972 - in the manner in which it is imposed. And 
today, arbitrary in the manner in which it is carried out. 21, or fewer, 
executions in a single year out of a pool of nearly 3,000 men and women on 
death row is certainly arbitrary and capricious.

(source: Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & 
George P.C. His book, "The Executioner's Toll, 2010," was recently released by 
McFarland Publishing----Pekin Daily Times)