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

[Rick Halperin]

June 9




NORTH CAROLINA:

Judge steps aside in Racial Justice Act appeals


A Superior Court judge agreed Thursday to allow another judge to hear the 
appeals of four convicted killers in their renewed bid to get off death row.

Judge Jim Ammons was upset that defense attorneys questioned his impartiality - 
"I have lived a lifetime in the law," he said - and he refused to formally 
recuse himself. But he said he would ask the state Administrative Office of the 
Courts to assign a new judge to the case.

"I will not allow my properly presiding over any of these cases to continue to 
be an issue when the court's true task should be determining the merits of 
these claims," Ammons said.

The death sentences of Marcus Robinson, Christina "Queen" Walters, Tilmon 
Golphin and Quintel Augustine were commuted to life in prison without parole in 
2012 under the state's Racial Justice Act, which allowed death row inmates to 
use statistical evidence of racial bias in court proceedings to challenge their 
sentences.

The North Carolina Supreme Court last year reinstated the death sentences for 
all 4, ruling that retired Superior Court Judge Gregory Weeks made a mistake 
when he combined 3 unrelated cases into 1 hearing and didn't give state 
attorneys enough time to prepare.

Ammons, a former prosecutor, was appointed to hear the cases a 2nd time, but 
defense attorneys pushed to get him removed.

"All we've ever asked for is a judge that has no ties to the Cumberland County 
prosecutor's office to resolve this case, and that's what we got," said Jay 
Ferguson, a lawyer for Golphin. "All the evidence of racial bias that was 
uncovered in the last hearing is not going to change and will be presented 
again to the new judge."

State lawmakers repealed the Racial Justice Act in 2013, but the appeals will 
be handled as if the law were still in place.

Al Lowry, whose brother was 1 of 2 lawmen killed by Golphin and his brother in 
1997, said he is tired of the repeated delays in carrying out the death 
sentence.

"The decision's been made for the death penalty, and we've been 19 years and 
counting. Nothing ought to take this long," Lowry said. "No matter what judge 
they select, its always going to be an excuse on their side."

Augustine was convicted of murdering a Fayetteville police officer in 2001, 
while Walters was found guilty of kidnapping 3 girls and killing 2 of them in 
1998 in a gang-initiation ritual. Robinson, who became the 1st death row inmate 
to successfully challenge his sentence under the Racial Justice Act, killed a 
Fayetteville teen in 1991.

(source: WRAL news)






USA:

How Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders view death penalty


Capital punishment in the United States is on the wane. Fewer people, 49, were 
sentenced to death in 2015 than in any year since the Supreme Court 
reauthorized the ultimate sanction in 1976; only 28 were executed, the fewest 
in 20 years.

States find it harder to obtain lethal-injection drugs, especially now that 
pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has barred the use of its products. A recent 
Supreme Court ruling overturned the death sentence of a black man in Georgia on 
the grounds that prosecutors improperly kept African-Americans off the jury.

A death-penalty abolitionist, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, has given Hillary 
Clinton a run for her money in the Democratic presidential race; she, in turn, 
has voiced only qualified backing for capital punishment. And polls show 
downward movement in support for the death penalty.

Given all this, Barack Obama's administration, perhaps the least favorable to 
capital punishment in recent memory, might not have sought the death penalty 
against Dylann Roof, the young white supremacist charged in the massacre of 
nine black men and women as they prayed in a South Carolina church a year ago.

But on May 24, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch announced that the Justice 
Department would urge execution for Roof - and the reaction from capital 
punishment's opponents has been conspicuously muted.

The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty put a protest on its 
Facebook page. Sanders issued a generic statement of disapproval through his 
spokesman, but only in response to a question from Huffington Post. That's 
about it.

Some crimes are so ghastly that even death-penalty skeptics find it hard, or at 
least inopportune, to challenge the moral intuition that calls for capital 
punishment; thus, there will probably always be a death penalty in the United 
States, as long as that moral intuition remains widely felt, and as long as the 
people can and will express it through democratic institutions.

Agreeing with South Carolina's prosecutors, who are also seeking death for 
Roof, Lynch determined that his cold-blooded, racially motivated slaughter, 
coupled with his lack of remorse, amply fulfilled the Justice Department's 
stringent criteria for invoking this rarely used power.

2 of the most popular arguments against the death penalty - its alleged 
disparate impact on black killers of whites, and the risk of condemning an 
innocent person - patently don't apply to Roof.

All that would remain is a pure moral objection; that's Sanders's position, and 
a perfectly honorable one. Notwithstanding much commentary, however, it is not 
the view of most Americans, or even close.

Support for the death penalty in murder cases still beats opposition 61 % to 37 
% in the most recent Gallup poll. 67 % said the death penalty is applied either 
the "right amount" or "not enough," and 53 % to 41 % the public agrees it is 
applied "fairly."

What's really happening is that overall support has ebbed from an anomalous 
high in the '90s, when violent crime was also unusually high. As crime waned, 
so did the punitive backlash, and support for the death penalty settled back to 
normal levels. Since 1936, support has fallen below 50 % in the Gallup poll 
only 4 times; only in 1966 did opposition lead, 47 to 42.

To be sure, death-penalty sentiment has become partisan along with everything 
else; now only 40% of Democrats favor it, as opposed to 71 % of Democrats in 
1995 and 77 % of Republicans today, according to the Pew Research Center.

Hence Clinton's equivocations. She can't repudiate the federal death-penalty 
expansion during her husband's administration, including the law Lynch is 
wielding against Roof, and, unlike Sanders, Clinton doesn't have the luxury of 
running to the unrealistic left of the November electorate.

In a November candidates' forum, she expressed "hope" that the Supreme Court 
would somehow rid state death penalties of their lingering flaws, while 
preserving the federal version, in which she has "much more confidence," to 
deal with "particularly heinous crimes ... like terrorism."

She cited Timothy McVeigh, a Roof-like domestic terrorist against whom the 
Clinton Justice Department successfully pursued the death penalty for the 1995 
bombing in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people, including 19 children.

(Responding to my query, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon confirmed that she 
agrees with the Justice Department decision on Roof.)

Clinton left open obvious and difficult questions, starting with where to draw 
the line between the worst of the worst and merely bad, murderers.

She was, in short, wrestling with the dilemmas facing any society that would 
entrust such life and death decisions to the people - voters, legislators, 
jurors - rather than abolishing capital punishment for all cases, even for 
terrorism and genocide, as the European Union has done.

It was that rare moment when Clinton seemed to be saying something that both 
she and most Americans really think.

(source: San Diego Union-Tribune)

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

It's time to end the death penalty


The death penalty in any form - single-drug formula or 3-drug cocktail - should 
be totally banned. How can the decision by a jury decide the right of a man to 
live? There is no perfect human living on Earth and man has no right to play 
the God card. The Cameron Todd Willingham execution in 2004 is the perfect 
example that court verdicts can go wrong.

The death penalty is common in Islamic countries following Sharia law. Even 
there it has been reduced over the years. As man evolved, he has realized that 
this is indeed a barbaric act. Everybody in life deserves a 2nd chance. Of 
course, certain actions cannot be forgiven, but inducing death is in no way the 
punishment for the crime committed.

I believe a lifetime of rigorous imprisonment is enough to make the hardest of 
criminals realize their mistake. The purpose of punishing someone for his 
crimes should be to make him realize his wrongdoing, and not take away his 
life. It's time to end the death penalty.

-- Abishek Saimon, Des Moines

(source: Letter to the Editor, Des Moines Register)