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

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 7



OHIO:

Ohio legislators should enact proposed death-penalty reforms: Bob Taft, former 
Ohio govenor ---- Guest columnist Bob Taft served as the 67th governor of Ohio 
from 1999-2007. He now teaches at the University of Dayton


When I ran for governor in 1998, I hadn't given a great deal of thought to the 
duty I would be assuming to review clemency requests in death penalty cases. I 
campaigned on education, job creation and environmental issues.

However, as Governor I spent a lot of time reviewing the clemency cases that 
came before me. The death penalty is irreversible, and I wanted to make certain 
there was no question about guilt and no procedural errors.

At the time, the death penalty was an option I supported because it was 
pursuant to laws that had been enacted by the elected representatives of the 
people of Ohio. However, after reflecting on the cases I reviewed and the 
recommendations of the Ohio Supreme Court task force on the death penalty, I 
have come to have serious reservations about the effectiveness and necessity of 
capital punishment in most cases where it has been applied.

My first concern is that Ohio law allows the execution of individuals with 
serious mental illness. I believe this practice is not humane based on current 
standards of decency and the opinions of mental health experts across Ohio. 
Senate Bill 162 would end this practice, and I urge state legislators to enact 
it at the earliest possible date.

The legislature should also act to eliminate felony murders from the category 
of offenses to which the death sentence can be applied. These are murders in 
combination with other crimes often where murder was not the original intent, 
such as kidnapping, rape, aggravated arson, aggravated robbery, and aggravated 
burglary.

Felony murder cases have accounted for the vast majority of death cases in 
Ohio, and they are a major cause of the substantial racial and geographic 
disparities in the use of capital punishment, casting doubt about whether our 
criminal justice system is providing "equal protection under the laws." Fewer 
than 7 % of felony murder cases result in a death sentence, which raises the 
issue of whether they are part of a "plea bargaining" strategy pursued by 
prosecutors.

The Supreme Court Task Force on the Administration of Ohio's Death Penalty was 
comprised of judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, legislators, and legal 
experts. It completed its work in 2014 after a careful examination of Ohio's 
death penalty process; the 2 reforms I am endorsing are part of their 
recommendations.

Now is the time for the Ohio General Assembly to enact these reforms into law.

(source: Guest Column, cleveland.com)






NEBRASKA:

Uncertainty with executions looms over Neb. death penalty vote----Voters will 
have an opportunity Tuesday to reverse an action taken by the Legislature and 
reinstate Nebraska's death penalty


Voters will have an opportunity Tuesday to reverse an action taken by the 
Legislature and reinstate Nebraska's death penalty, but moving forward with 
executions could take years.

Nebraska's last execution was in 1997, using the electric chair, and the state 
has never carried one out using its current three-drug lethal injection 
protocol. Even though several executions have been scheduled, legal and 
logistical problems have kept the state from using lethal injection before the 
necessary drugs expired.

Nebraska lawmakers abolished the death penalty in May 2015 over Republican Gov. 
Pete Ricketts' veto. Supporters of the punishment responded with a citizen-led 
petition drive partially financed by Ricketts that suspended the Legislature's 
decision until voters decide the issue Tuesday.

Voting "retain" will uphold the Legislature's decision and replace the death 
penalty with life in prison, while voting "repeal" will reinstate capital 
punishment.

Death penalty supporters say Nebraska can overcome the hurdles as other states 
have recently done. One example is Ohio, where officials announced last month 
they would resume executions in 2017 after changing their 3-drug lethal 
injection protocol, said Chris Peterson, a spokesman for Nebraskans for the 
Death Penalty.

But Ohio, Texas and other states have moved forward only because they shrouded 
their processes in secrecy, passing laws that require officials to withhold the 
names of drug manufacturers, said Sen. Colby Coash of Lincoln, a leading death 
penalty opponent. Nebraska lawmakers have traditionally avoided that approach, 
erring on the side of transparency.

"Nebraskans don't want their government hiding things from them," Coash said. 
"If pharmaceutical companies want to make drugs that kill people, they ought to 
stand behind that."

Without a secrecy law, Coash said he doubts Nebraska will ever carry out an 
execution. The death penalty opposition campaign, Retain a Just Nebraska, has 
argued that no inmate will be executed even if voters reinstate the punishment.

"It puts it back on the books, but it doesn't mean we get the drugs," Coash 
said. "It doesn't mean executions begin on Nov. 10."

Death penalty proponents say strong support by voters will increase pressure on 
public officials to find a workable execution method.

"The obstacles are not insurmountable," said Bob Evnen, a Lincoln attorney who 
has worked with Nebraskans for the Death Penalty. "Other states are able to 
carry out the death penalty. Our state can, too."

Evnen said it's impossible to know when they state might be able to carry out 
an execution, but he noted officials came close eight years ago when they were 
on the verge of scheduling executions for inmates Carey Dean Moore and Ray 
Mata. Their executions were delayed when the Nebraska Supreme Court declared 
the electric chair unconstitutional.

The state's corrections department spent $54,400 last year on foreign-made 
lethal injection drugs but has not received them because the U.S. Food and Drug 
Administration blocked the shipment. State officials agreed to buy the drugs 
from Chris Harris, a distributor in India who contacted the corrections 
department in April 2015 as lawmakers were debating whether to abolish the 
death penalty. Ricketts announced he was suspending the effort to obtain the 
drugs until voters decided whether to keep capital punishment.

Harris sold execution drugs to the state in 2010, but the drugs' manufacturer 
accused him of misrepresenting how he intended to use them. Legal challenges 
prevented the state from using the drugs before they expired.

Both sides of the issue made their final push before the election with radio 
and television ads and through social media. Nebraskans for the Death Penalty 
sent more than 250,000 mailings to voters urging them to keep the punishment, 
Peterson said.

"The other side has thrown everything including the kitchen sink to try to 
eliminate the death penalty, but we believe a strong majority of Nebraskans see 
a place for the death penalty in our criminal justice system," Peterson said.

Surrogates have played a major role. Vivian Tuttle of Ewing, whose daughter 
Evonne was murdered in a 2002 Norfolk bank robbery, has traveled the state 
extensively urging voters to overturn the Legislature's decision. So have the 
relatives of 57-year-old Shirlee Sherman, who was stabbed to death along with 
an 11-year-old boy in 2008. Nebraskans for the Death Penalty has also enlisted 
the support of local sheriffs who support the punishment.

Retain a Just Nebraska has turned to church leaders, particularly the Catholic 
Church, to present its arguments to voters. Ada Joann Taylor, who was 
exonerated in a 1985 murder after serving nearly 20 years in prison, also 
joined forces with death penalty opponents.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Vote to decide future of state's death penalty


On Tuesday, Nebraska voters will decide the future of the death penalty in the 
state.

Like other issues on this year's ballot, the death penalty vote carries with it 
strong emotions and decisive opinions. The Tribune has supported the death 
penalty in the past and still does. But we understand why some opinions have 
changed.

Nebraska has not had the best leadership when it comes to capital punishment. 
The last execution in Nebraska was in 1997 with that of Robert Williams, who 
committed a rape and double murder in Lincoln in 1978. Prior to that, John 
Joubert was executed in 1996 and Harold "Wili" Otey in 1994.

Ben Nelson was governor and Don Stenberg was attorney general at the time of 
the last three executions. But Nebraska hasn't had an execution in nearly 20 
years, during the leadership of Govs. Mike Johanns and Dave Heineman and 
Attorney General Jon Bruning.

Could Nebraska's top leadership be the reason for the hiatus in executions? We 
can tell you it's not for lack of death-row inmates or heinous crimes. 10 men 
sit on Nebraska's death row, including Carey Dean Moore, who has been on death 
row since he murdered 2 cab drivers in Omaha in 1979.

Executions became more complicated in Nebraska in 2009 when the state changed 
its method of execution from electrocution to lethal injection after the 
Nebraska Supreme Court declared electrocution to be cruel and unusual 
punishment, making it unconstitutional. Lethal injection drugs are expensive 
and difficult to obtain.

Gov. Pete Ricketts, a strong supporter of the death penalty, has sought to 
obtain the drugs since he became governor in 2015. He ordered a supply from 
India, but the drugs can't legally be imported and cannot be delivered.

So the state has no way to carry out executions. Obviously there are ways 
around this, as other states have been able to obtain lethal injection drugs, 
including manufacturing the drugs themselves.

Death penalty opponents cite these issues, along with moral issues, as good 
reasons to retain LB268, the bill passed in 2015 that abolished the death 
penalty. Ricketts vetoed the bill, but the Legislature overrode that veto. A 
successful petition drive put the matter on the ballot, and now voters will 
decide whether to retain or repeal LB268.

(By the way, the ballot wording is confusing. Voters who want to keep the death 
penalty should vote "repeal," which will leave the death penalty as a possible 
maximum penalty for a crime of 1st-degree murder. Voters who want to eliminate 
the death penalty should vote "retain" to keep the legislative ban.) What it 
boils down to is this: Nebraskans must vote their conscience.

Supporters of the death penalty believe some crimes are heinous enough to 
warrant that punishment. Read about the crimes of the 10 men sitting on 
Nebraska's death row, and then decide if you, too, are among them.

If enough Nebraskans repeal LB268 and keep the death penalty, then the voters 
will have done their job.

It will then be up to Ricketts and Attorney General Doug Peterson to do their 
job to see that executions are carried out.

(source: Opinion, Hastings Tribune)






CALIFORNIA:

Man on death row 38 years fears trouble as California death penalty vote looms 
---- Douglas Stankewitz and his partner, Colleen Hicks, worry that if 
Proposition 62 passes, Stankewitz's case could be derailed as he hopes for 
freedom


Douglas Stankewitz and Colleen Hicks are worried about the election.

They are seated on mismatched blue plastic chairs in cage PB7, one of the 
padlocked wire mesh enclosures at San Quentin state prison where condemned men 
visit with friends and loved ones. They lean into each other, shoulders 
touching. He puts his arm around her. She strokes his neck.

Stankewitz was sentenced to death 38 years ago for the kidnap and murder of 
Theresa Graybeal, aged 22. He has been on death row since, longer than any 
inmate in California and all but a few nationwide. His murder conviction was 
thrown out once. His death sentence, twice. His 3rd sentencing hearing is 
scheduled for 16 October.

But California has dueling death penalty propositions on the 8 November ballot, 
and that's where things get complicated: Proposition 62 would abolish the death 
penalty and replace it with life in prison without the possibility of parole. 
Proposition 66 would streamline - and, perhaps, speed up - capital punishment 
in the state with the country's biggest death row.

Both possibilities make the unlikely couple nervous. Hicks, 69, is director of 
the Museum of the American Indian in the Bay area town of Novato. Stankewitz, 
58, is a member of the Mono tribe, goes by the nickname "Chief" and has been 
locked up - somewhere - most of his life.

They fear that if the death penalty is abolished, Stankewitz's current legal 
case could be derailed. Even though the court proceeding scheduled for October 
2017 will only address death or life without parole, Stankewitz holds out hope 
that his new lawyer can get him a new trial and prove that he is innocent.

The tall, stocky condemned man, whose black hair cascades to his shoulder 
blades, is living proof that the death penalty process in California is broken. 
At age 20, he was the first person to land on San Quentin???s infamous death 
row after the state put the modern death penalty in place in 1978. Nearly 4 
decades and 2 reversals later, he is still there.

What he wants, he said on a rainy Sunday morning nine days before the election, 
is "freedom. It sounds funny. People say, 'How do you know? You been locked up 
so long.'

"I'd love to go fishing, too," Stankewitz said. "I wouldn't have to catch 
nothing. Just fish."

"And work in the garden," said Hicks, who wants him to live with her in Marin 
County, north of San Francisco, if he is ever freed.

"Yeah," Stankewitz said, smiling, "let those gophers know who's boss."

California has executed 13 men since Stankewitz landed on death row. 104 died 
of other causes, according to the state corrections and rehabilitation 
department: 71 of natural causes, 25 from suicide, and 8 from what prison 
officials described as "other".

Today, 750 inmates await execution in San Quentin's death chamber with a pale 
green gurney on which inmates are strapped. The oldest is 86; the youngest, 24. 
California has not put anyone to death since 2006.

In phone calls, letters, and an in-person visit, Stankewitz talked about the 
night Theresa Graybeal died, about the trials that were reversed, about the 
woman he loves, and about life as a condemned man in California's oldest 
prison.

"All the days are the same here," Stankewitz said. "I try not to think I'm 
here. It's worse than an animal, I know that. An animal in a zoo or a dog pound 
has more space than us ... You're on death row. You know you're in prison. You 
don't ponder it."

He has lived in 3 E Block 62 for the past 7 years. He does not share a cell; no 
one on death row does. He does not keep a calendar. There is no reason to. He 
has typed some 15,000 letters asking for help. He watches TV, reads, follows 
politics, works out.

"A lot of guys tell you that 'poor me' stuff," Stankewitz said. "It's 
unhealthy. They got to fight to get out of the system. Even if you're innocent, 
the system don't care."

The few times that there have been executions, he said, the prison was locked 
down early, and the tense place became even more so. Some of the men who were 
put to death were his friends, inmates such as Stanley "Tookie" Williams, 
founder of the Crips gang. Williams was convicted of the brutal shotgun murders 
of 4 men but became an anti-violence crusader while waiting to die.

"Every day is the possibility to be executed, somehow, some way," Stankewitz 
said. The day of an execution "may be more intense, if you believe it's wrong 
to take a life. There's no more premeditation than this."

Stankewitz has spent about a third of his life in solitary confinement, a place 
that he says drives a lot of people crazy, pushes them "from the prison to a 
mental hospital".

"Back then, you had nothing in your cell except darkness and a hole in the 
floor that was your toilet," he said. "At 4pm they gave you a mattress and a 
pillow. 1500 calories diet a day."

But it was in solitary confinement that Stankewitz met Father Jack O'Neill, the 
prison chaplain who later became the parish priest at St Mary Magdalene, where 
Hicks is choir director and plays piano. In 2008, O'Neill asked Hicks if she 
would consider corresponding with Stankewitz.

She said yes. Stankewitz calls Hicks every morning. She visits him on Saturdays 
and every Sunday after mass.

"We're a couple now," Hicks said. "I did not see that coming."

"We talk about the case a lot," she added. "I tell him about the museum, just 
everything. He's just interested. He says, 'I just want to know what you're 
doing in that big free world of yours.'"

On this Sunday in late October, the guards are late bringing Stankewitz down 
from his cell to the visiting area. Hicks is dressed in purple. The men, she 
says, are so color-deprived that she tries not to wear black.

She has washed off a brown cafeteria tray and bought lunch from the vending 
machines. Orange juice for him, water for her. Cheez-Its. Cheesecake. Yoghurt. 
A pastrami and swiss cheese sandwich. A frozen burrito and a frozen egg 
sandwich on a muffin that she will microwave.

Hicks paces, nervous as a teenager. And frets. "This is really unusual. He's 
never this late." Then a big smile. "There he is." The guard takes off 
Stankewitz's handcuffs, padlocks them into the mesh cage. They embrace.

On 8 February 1978, Stankewitz and 3 friends were stranded in Modesto. Unable 
to find a ride back to Fresno, they staked out a Kmart parking lot, followed 
Graybeal to her vehicle, shoved her in and headed south. In Fresno, they shot 
up with heroin at a seedy hotel and headed off to score some more in a nearby 
town called Calwa.

"Ms. Greybeal was facing away from the car," court documents said. "Defendant 
raised the gun in his left hand, braced it with his right hand, and shot her 
once in the head from a distance of about 1 foot."

That version of events came from Billy Brown, then 14, who received immunity in 
exchange for his testimony, later recanted and has since died. Stankewitz says 
he did not go to Calwa with the group. He feared he had been given an overdose. 
He said he did not shoot Graybeal but instead blacked out.

Stankewitz's 1st conviction and death sentence were overturned. He was 
convicted and sentenced to death again. In 2012, the US court of appeals for 
the ninth circuit ruled that he was guilty of capital murder but threw out his 
death sentence and ordered another penalty phase.

His defense attorney, the justices wrote, "rendered ineffectual counsel".

Stankewitz's new attorney, the famed defense lawyer Tony Serra, said a number 
of documents had surfaced that could exonerate Stankewitz and were not shared 
with counsel during the earlier trials. His client, he said, was not the man he 
had been 38 years ago and didn't deserve to be killed.

Then again, Serra said, nobody did.

Californians will decide on Tuesday whether they agree. Hicks said she 
struggled over how to vote on Proposition 62, which could complicate life - and 
death - for the man she loves. Ultimately, she voted to repeal the death 
penalty.

All she wants is for Stankewitz to be freed.

(source: The Guardian)






USA:

U.S. seeking death penalty as trial begins in South Carolina church shooting


The final phase of jury selection begins on Monday in the U.S. death penalty 
trial for a white man charged with federal hate crimes after the shooting 
deaths of 9 black parishioners at a historic South Carolina church last year.

Dylann Roof, who is accused of holding white supremacist views, was indicted on 
33 federal counts of hate crimes, obstruction of religion and using a firearm 
in a violent crime after he opened fire during a Bible study session at Emanuel 
African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in June 2015.

The proceedings getting underway at the U.S. courthouse in Charleston will 
unfold as another racially-charged trial progresses across the street. Michael 
Slager, a white former police officer in North Charleston, is being tried for 
murder in state court in the shooting of black motorist Walter Scott in April 
2015.

The 2 incidents, which occurred just 2 months apart, shook the country and 
further intensified the debate over U.S. race relations.

In Roof's case, lawyers could take about 2 weeks to cull the remaining 
potential jurors. More than 700 people filled out questionnaires about the case 
when jury selection began in September, out of 3,000 summoned for the trial. 12 
jurors and 6 alternates will hear the testimony.

If Roof is convicted, the penalty phase of the trial could extend into January. 
Roof, 22, has offered to plead guilty if the death penalty was dropped, court 
filings show.

He also faces a death sentence if found guilty of murder in state court in a 
trial scheduled for next year.

Prosecutors say Roof planned the church attack for months, singling out victims 
who were black and elderly, and showing no remorse. At the federal trial, they 
plan to present racist manifestos that he purportedly wrote in an effort to 
incite a race war.

Roof's attorneys declined to comment ahead of the trial, and his family has 
asked for privacy.

"We are still struggling to understand why Dylann caused so much grief and pain 
to so many good people," the family said in a statement last week.

Relatives of the victims have been divided on the decision to seek capital 
punishment, after some tearfully offered words of forgiveness during Roof's 1st 
court appearance.

The city plans an outpouring of support during the trial, with restaurants 
donating daily lunches to family members attending court.

"How they chose to respond to the tragedy made the difference," said Helen 
Hill, executive director of the Charleston Convention and Visitors Bureau. 
"They are a model of how you can truly bring about long-lasting change."

(source: Reuters)

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

Dylann Roof Shouldn't Get the Death Penalty


Today is the start of the federal death penalty trial of Dylann S. Roof, the 
white man accused of murdering black worshipers at the Mother Emanuel church in 
Charleston, S.C. The killings of "the Charleston 9" last year were as violent 
and seared with racial hatred as the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till in 
Mississippi and the 1963 bombing of an Alabama church that killed 4 little 
girls.

Although this crime was meant to challenge the black community's right to 
exist, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund opposes the death penalty 
for Mr. Roof. Such a sentence would have the perverse effect of justifying the 
routine, racially discriminatory imposition of the death penalty on black 
people.

The Legal Defense Fund, which, despite its name, has been a wholly separate 
entity from the N.A.A.C.P. since 1957, has a long and storied history of 
opposition to capital punishment. Our founder, Thurgood Marshall, defended 
numerous black men facing death sentences and executions in the South, 
including the Groveland Boys in 1951, who were falsely accused of raping a 
white woman in Florida and condemned to death.

We also challenged the constitutionality of Georgia's death penalty in the case 
of Warren McCleskey, a black man convicted of killing a white police officer, 
by presenting evidence showing that black people convicted of killing white 
people were more likely to be sentenced to death than those convicted in cases 
involving any other racial combination of defendant and victim. The Supreme 
Court's 1987 decision upholding Mr. McCleskey's death sentence notwithstanding 
this powerful evidence of systemic racial bias remains one of the most 
controversial decisions of our time.

Last month, my colleagues and I argued Duane Buck's case in the Supreme Court. 
Mr. Buck was condemned to death in Texas after his own trial lawyers presented 
an expert opinion that he was more likely to commit criminal acts of violence 
in the future because he is black.

At the time of his 1997 trial, the district attorney's office in Harris County, 
which includes Houston, was more than 3 times as likely to seek the death 
penalty for black defendants like Mr. Buck, and Harris County juries were more 
than twice as likely to impose death sentences on black defendants than on 
comparable white defendants.

Florida, Georgia and Texas are hardly anomalous - studies repeatedly show that 
race plays a pernicious role in the administration of the death penalty across 
the country, from Pennsylvania to Washington. The Legal Defense Fund has long 
recognized that capital punishment is a deeply flawed institution that 
consistently, and unfairly, threatens and takes black lives. As a result, we 
are institutionally opposed to the death penalty in all cases.

But some will surely say Mr. Roof's case is a far cry from the Groveland, 
McCleskey or Buck cases because Mr. Roof is a young white man charged with 
murdering 9 black people while they prayed in church. As a result, this crime 
brings into sharp focus our country's fierce debates over race, criminal 
justice and capital punishment. Justice must be done, and our nation must 
recognize and condemn these killings as an attack on the very fabric of our 
society.

But the reality is that the death penalty has not only failed to serve the 
black community well, it has failed to serve any community well. Mistakes are 
common: A comprehensive study of death sentences imposed between 1973 and 1995 
found reversible errors in nearly 70 % of cases, and some 156 people who were 
condemned to death have now been exonerated.

Furthermore, a small group of prosecutors have had an outsize influence over 
the administration of the death penalty in this country: A mere 5 of the 
country's 2,400 chief prosecutors are responsible for the sentences of 1 out of 
every 7 prisoners on death row. For these and other reasons, a recent study 
from the Pew Research Center found that Americans' support for the death 
penalty is at its lowest level in more than 4 decades.

Justice Anthony Kennedy warned in a 2008 decision reiterating the 
unconstitutionality of the death penalty for non-homicide offenses that "when 
the law punishes by death, it risks its own sudden descent into brutality, 
transgressing the constitutional commitment to decency and restraint." As is 
true for Mr. Roof. His case, in all its stark egregiousness, is the exception 
that proves the rule: Supporting the death penalty for Mr. Roof means 
supporting the use of a punishment that will continue to be inflicted on people 
who are nothing like him.

In opposing the death penalty for Mr. Roof, the Legal Defense Fund does not 
speak for the survivors or the families of the victims; we grieve with and for 
the Mother Emanuel and Charleston communities. We recognize that there is a 
broad spectrum of emotions and positions on this volatile issue, and that the 
voices for justice that have emerged in the wake of these murders stand on 
their own and deserve our compassion and respect. We at the Legal Defense Fund 
can speak only for ourselves, based on our organization's 75 years of 
experience with grieving families and communities, with victims and defendants 
and our quest for racial justice.

We believe that justice can and should be served without a death sentence for 
Dylann Roof. Our communities and our country will be better off without 
executing him.

(source: Op-Ed; Christina Swarns is the director of litigation at the NAACP 
Legal Defense and Educational Fund----New York Times)