[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, VA., FLA., LA., ARK.

[Rick Halperin]

April 21



TEXAS:

Smith County District Attorney to seek death penalty in Kayla Gomez-Orozco case


When the Bullard man accused of abducting and killing 10-year-old Kayla 
Gomez-Orozco goes on trial in October, he will be facing the death penalty if 
found guilty.

Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham filed his intent to seek the death 
penalty in the case on Wednesday morning. Bingham cannot speak on the case due 
to a gag order, but a document filed in Smith County's 241st District Court 
states the prosecution's intention.

Gustavo Zavala-Garcia, 24, was arrested and charged with capital murder this 
past November after the body of Gomez-Orozco was discovered inside a water well 
outside his residence off Old Jacksonville Highway in southern Smith County. 
Family reported Gomez-Orozco missing after a church service in Bullard on Nov. 
1. Zavala-Garcia, who is related to the child through marriage, is named among 
those who were the last to see her alive.

Zavala-Garcia has remained jailed in Smith County on a $10 million bond and 
immigration detainer.

In February, Zavala-Garcia was involved in an incident in the recreation area 
on top of the Smith County Jail, when he climbed a basketball goal and refused 
to come down. Officials said the incident is not regarded as an escape attempt, 
there were no injuries and no additional charges were added to Zavala-Garcia's 
arrest record.

The 1st pre-trial hearing in the case is set for April 27, in the 241st 
District Court in Smith County. Jury selection is scheduled to begin in August 
for the Oct. 2 trial.

(source: KLTV news)






VIRGINIA----commutation of death sentence

Gov. McAuliffe commutes Ivan Teleguz's death sentence to life without parole


Ivan Teleguz's death sentence for the murder-for-hire of his ex-girlfriend in 
2001 was commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole by Gov. 
Terry McAuliffe on Thursday.

Teleguz, 38, was scheduled to be executed Tuesday for the capital murder of 
Stephanie Yvonne Sipe, the mother of their 23-month-old son. Sipe was stabbed 
to death in her Harrisonburg apartment. According to trial testimony, he hired 
2 men to kill her for $2,000 and drove them from Pennsylvania, where Teleguz 
had moved.

On July 23, 2001, Sipe's mother, Pamela Woods, went to her daughter's apartment 
because she had not heard from Sipe for 2 days. Woods found her daughter's body 
and her grandson unharmed in a bathtub full of water. A neighbor took Woods and 
her grandson out of the apartment.

Teleguz's current lawyers filed a clemency request with McAuliffe, among other 
things arguing that courts have never fully examined new evidence pointing to 
his innocence. They say 2 prosecution witnesses admitted "that they testified 
falsely in exchange for leniency in their own cases, and have no reason to 
think Teleguz was involved in the murder-for-hire."

His lawyers say that 1 of the witnesses has been deported, and the other was 
told he would lose his release date if he went back on his testimony.

In 2015, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted 
that a lower court judge held an evidentiary hearing in 2013 concerning the 
recantations. One recanter refused to testify and the other did not appear. "In 
other words, neither of the recanters testified in support of their 
recantations," said the appeals court.

Marsha L. Garst, the commonwealth's attorney for Rockingham County, has 
declined to comment on the case. However, the appeals court opinion noted: 
"Prosecutor Marsha Garst, whom (the recanters) accused of threatening them into 
testifying against Teleguz, appeared and testified that those accusations were 
false."

Some religious leaders urged McAuliffe to grant clemency and a Change.org 
petition in support of clemency has been signed by more than 114,000 people. 
Teleguz also has submitted written requests for clemency from thousands of 
supporters.

Earlier this week 3 former Virginia attorneys general - 2 of whom became 
opposed to the death penalty since leaving office - wrote to McAuliffe urging 
the death sentence be commuted, citing what they said was "unreliable 
investigative techniques, coercive tactics by both law enforcement and the 
prosecution, recantations of key trial witnesses and consideration of false 
testimony in support of a death sentence."

Virginia has executed 112 people since the death penalty was allowed to resume 
in 1976. Virginia governors have commuted eight death sentences during the same 
period.

(source: Daily Progress)

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

Governor commutes death sentence of Virginia inmate Ivan Teleguz


Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe called a 3:30 p.m. press conference to make a 
public statement "regarding his review of Ivan Teleguz's petitions for a pardon 
and for commutation of his death sentence."

Teleguz was scheduled to be executed on April 25.

"As a result of the thorough review process that we have gone through I have 
decided to deny Mr. Teleguz's petition for a pardon," McAuliffe said. "However, 
I am commuting his capital sentence to life imprisonment, without the 
possibility of parole."

"Mr. Teleguz will spend the rest of his life in a jail cell," McAuliffe added.

"What has come to light, however, in my review of the circumstances regarding 
his death sentence, is that the sentencing phase of his trial was terribly 
flawed and unfair," he said.

The governor said that false information was presented regarding an alleged 
murder and mob ties.

"Our judicial system is based upon fairness," McAuliffe said.

Teleguz, 38, was convicted in a 2001 murder-for-hire plot in Harrisonburg which 
involved ex-girlfriend Stephanie Sipe, a 20-year-old mother of a young child.

After the case went cold for years, evidence implicated Michael Hetrick as the 
person who committed the murder, and he, along with 2 others, implicated Mr. 
Teleguz as having paid for the murder of Sipe.

Prosecutors argued Teleguz ordered his ex-girlfriend murdered so he could avoid 
paying child support.

His attorneys have argued for years that Teleguz in an innocent man.

"2 witnesses critical to the prosecution's case have now admitted in sworn, 
written statements they lied at the trial," Peiffer Elizabeth, with the 
Virginia Capital Representation Resource Center, said earlier this month. "They 
have no reason to believe that Mr. Teleguz was involved in this crime."

DNA evidence linked Hetrick to the crime, and he made a deal with prosecutors 
to testify against Teleguz in exchange for an agreement not to seek the death 
penalty. Hetrick was sentenced to life in prison for the crime; however, 
Teleguz was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.

"American values demand that every person, no matter their crime, be given due 
process of law," McAuliffe said. "In this case, we now know that the jury acted 
on false information, and that it was driven by passions and fears raised - not 
from actual evidence introduced at trial - but from inference. To allow a 
sentence to stand based on false information and speculation is a violation of 
the very principles of justice our system holds dear."

(source: WTVR news)






FLORIDA:

Fla. Sheriff's Office Investigating Noose Sent to Black Prosecutor Who Refused 
to Pursue Death Penalty


The Orange County Sheriff's Office in Florida is investigating after a noose 
was mailed to the office of State Attorney Aramis Ayala, who announced last 
month that she won't pursue the death penalty in any case she handles during 
her tenure.

Orlando Weekly reports that Ayala's chief investigator, Eric Edwards, contacted 
sheriff's deputies with the court services division on March 28 and notified 
them that Ayala's downtown Orlando office had received 2 envelopes over the 
course of 2 weeks with disturbing messages.

>From Orlando Weekly:

The state attorney's office employees opened the 1st envelope, received on 
March 20, and found a white piece of paper with the message, "SOONER OR LATER A 
NIGGER WILL BE A NIGGER" in black blocked letters. The envelope also contained 
3 white business cards with the words "You are an Honorary Member of 
S.P.O.N.G.E." on one side and "Society for the Prevention of Niggers Getting 
Everything" on the other side. The 2nd envelope, received on March 28, 
contained an index card with a noose made of green twine taped to the card, 
according to the report.

Employees believed both envelopes may have been sent by the same person, but 
the Sheriff's Office says it has not been determined if they were sent by the 
same individual. Investigators said they would contact the postal inspector's 
office to see if they could conduct an inquiry into the origin of the messages, 
the report says.

According to the sheriff's report, Ayala was made aware of the envelopes and 
their contents, and she believes that not only was the noose meant to be a 
threat to her, but the March 20 envelope was meant as a racial message and 
could be a hate crime.

As previously reported on The Root, Ayala announced on March 16 that she would 
not pursue the death penalty in the case of accused cop killer Markeith Loyd or 
in any other case she handles while serving as a state attorney.

Ayala is the 1st black woman to be elected as a state attorney in Florida, and 
she received immediate backlash for her statements. A Seminole County clerk of 
the court posted on Facebook that Ayala should "get the death penalty" and be 
"tarred and feathered if not hung from a tree."

Gov. Rick Scott subsequently removed her from the Loyd case as well as 22 other 
1st-degree murder cases with the reasoning that Ayala would not "fight for 
justice."

Ayala then sued Scott, claiming that his decision violated her constitutional 
rights, marred her reputation and deprived those who elected her "of the 
benefit of their votes" after he assigned her cases to another prosecutor.

Speaking about the noose mailed to her office, Ayala told WHPB, "I have gotten 
a lot of pushback. I received a noose that was mailed to my office. I received 
several types of derogatory and racist remarks to me, personally and 
professionally."

(source: theroot.com)

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

Accused triple killer hopes mental health claims keep him off death row


To spare him the death penalty, Andres "Andy" Avalos Jr.'s defense attorneys 
said they will rely on claims he was emotionally or mentally disturbed and 
under extreme duress if he is convicted of killing his wife, neighbor and local 
pastor.

Defense attorney Andrew Crawford told Circuit Judge Diana Moreland on Thursday 
morning that as part of Avalos' intended insanity defense, he planned to rely 
on mental health claims during the penalty phase should a jury convict him of 3 
counts of 1st-degree murder in an effort to keep him off death row.

If convicted, Avalos, 36, will face either the death penalty or an automatic 
life.

The case is set to go to trial beginning May 8, as all involved wait to see how 
the Florida Supreme Court will rule on a pending appeal the defense filed 
earlier this month seeking to stop the state from seeking the death penalty.

On Dec. 4, 2014, detectives say Avalos hung his wife, Amber Avalos, 33, from a 
cord in the laundry room of their Northwest Bradenton home, beat her and then 
shot her dead. He then shot and killed his neighbor Denise Potter, 46, who had 
been visiting their home at the time.

Afterward, investigators say Avalos dropped off his then 4-year-old son off at 
day care, drove to the Walmart Supercenter on State Road 64 East, left his 
vehicle and took a taxi to Bayshore Baptist Church, 6502 14th St. W., where he 
shot and killed Rev. James "Tripp" Battle, 31, according to investigators and 
witnesses.

Avalos was arrested Dec. 6, 2014, after a 51-hour manhunt led by the Manatee 
County Sheriff's Office and a public plea from his father begging him to turn 
himself in for the sake of his 6 children. After his arrest, Avalos is reported 
to have given detectives a detailed confession.

The statement of particulars filed Wednesday regarding Avalos' mental health 
also states that he was too impaired to recognize his actions were illegal or 
to alter his behavior to stop himself from breaking the law.

Paranoid schizophrenia, delusional disorder and mild neurocognitive disorder, 
as well as an abnormal PET scan of the brain and reduced cognitive emotional 
and personality controls based on abnormal brain functioning, are also listed 
as factors that will be used by the defense should Avalos be found guilty of 
the slayings.

(source: bradenton.com)






LOUISIANA----death row inmate exonerated

Louisiana Man Who Spent 3 Years on Death Row Has Murder Charge Dismissed


Louisiana has dismissed all charges against a man who spent several years on 
death row after the his infant son died in 2012, in a case that drew national 
attention to a parish that sentenced young black men to death at an unusually 
high rate.

Rodricus Crawford, 28, a resident of Caddo Parish, La., in the northwestern 
corner of the state, was sentenced to death in 2013 after prosecutors argued 
that he had suffocated his son. But Louisiana's supreme court threw out his 
conviction in November after finding that the jury selection in his case may 
have been racially biased. Mr. Crawford was released from prison later that 
month.

In a statement announcing that it would not retry Mr. Crawford, the Caddo 
Parish District Attorney's Office acknowledged evidence suggesting that at the 
time of death, his son had pneumonia and bacteria in his blood that indicated 
sepsis. The state said that it could not meet the burden of proof to gain a new 
conviction for Mr. Crawford.

Cecilia Kappel, one of Mr. Crawford's lawyers, described him in an interview on 
Thursday as someone who should never have been facing such a stark sentence to 
begin with.

"They can't even justify prosecuting this guy for negligent homicide, let alone 
capital murder," she said. "It shows the arbitrariness of the death penalty. 
"Now he's having to start from zero at 28 years old," she added.

>From 2010 to 2014, among counties with 4 or more death sentences, more people 
were sentenced to to be executed per capita in Caddo Parish than in any other 
county in the United States. Many of those cases were prosecuted by Dale Cox, 
whose conduct attracted national interest after he told The Shreveport Times in 
a 2015 interview that Louisiana should "kill more people."

Mr. Cox, who returned to the district attorney's office full-time in 2011 and 
became the parish's acting district attorney in 2015, prosecuted 4 of the 16 
people sent to death row from Caddo Parrish in those years.

Mr. Cox, who could not be reached for comment, gained a reputation for 
inflammatory comments and behavior inside and outside the courtroom, and was 
even accused of threatening opposing lawyers. In Mr. Crawford's case, according 
to The New Yorker, he wrote a letter to state's probation department asking 
that the convicted man be forced to endure "as much physical suffering as it is 
humanly possible to endure before he dies."

Robert Dunham, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, 
who has tracked Mr. Crawford's case closely, said that Mr. Cox's behavior could 
not be understood outside the context of Caddo Parish, pointing toward the 
county's long history of lynchings and to a monument to the Confederacy that 
sits right outside its courthouse, as well as its brief status as a Confederate 
capital. He said a Confederate flag continued to fly on the monument as 
recently as 2011.

"When 1 black juror expressed his displeasure at that, he was excused for 
cause," Mr. Dunham said, referring to a case that was not Mr. Crawford's. "They 
found that his objection to the Confederate flag was reason enough for him not 
to serve on a jury."

Caddo Parish even captured the attention of the United States Supreme Court. In 
a 2016 dissent to a ruling on another Caddo Parish case, Justice Stephen G. 
Breyer noted that the parish "imposes almost half the death sentences in 
Louisiana, even though it accounts for only 5 % of that state's population and 
5 % of its homicides."

"Given these facts," he continued, the defendant in the case in question, "may 
well have received the death penalty not because of the comparative 
egregiousness of his crime, but because of an arbitrary feature of his case, 
namely, geography."

(source: New York Times)






ARKANSAS----execution

Arkansas Executes 1st Inmate In 12 Years----Ledell Lee died by lethal injection 
Thursday just minutes before his death warrant expired.


Arkansas carried out its 1st execution in 12 years on Thursday night following 
a flurry of court filings.

Ledell Lee, 51, was pronounced dead at 11:56 p.m. CDT, just minutes before his 
death warrant expired. Lee had no last words, according to the Arkansas 
Department of Corrections.

Lee is 1 of 8 men the state originally wanted to execute over 11 days before 
the supply of 1 of the drugs in its 3-part lethal injection protocol expires at 
month???s end. Four of the inmates have received individual stays of execution.

Throughout his more than 2 decades on death row, Lee maintained his innocence. 
He was convicted of the 1993 beating death of 26-year-old Debra Reese in her 
Jacksonville home.

Lee's execution came after a flurry of last-minute appeals for more time to 
test DNA evidence that his lawyers hoped could exonerate him. The Innocence 
Project and the American Civil Liberties Union represented Lee in his final 
court battles.

"Ledell Lee proclaimed his innocence from the day of his arrest until the night 
of his execution 24 years later," the Innocence Project said in a statement 
following Lee's execution. "During that time, hundreds of innocent people have 
been freed from our nation's prisons and death rows by DNA evidence. It is hard 
to understand how the same government that uses DNA to prosecute crimes every 
day could execute Mr. Lee without allowing him a simple DNA test."

It added: "While reasonable people can disagree on whether death is an 
appropriate form of punishment, no one should be executed when there is a 
possibility that person is innocent."

Lee's attorneys had raced to court Thursday with a string of filings that 
raised various issues about Lee's trials and his representation over the years. 
Among them, attorneys noted that Lee's lawyers in his 1st trial provided 
inadequate counsel and that the presiding judge didn't disclose an affair with 
the assistant prosecutor, whom the judge later married. Lee's post-conviction 
counsel showed up in court appearing drunk and slurring his words.

Lee's current attorneys further argued that Lee had an intellectual disability, 
which made him ineligible for the death penalty under the Constitution.

Other legal petitions surrounded Arkansas's use of midazolam, the controversial 
sedative that has been blamed for botched executions in states including 
Arizona and Oklahoma, and others questioned the state's hasty execution 
schedule, which shortened the defendants' time for measures such as clemency 
reviews.

The U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals voted against granting Lee clemency 
Thursday.

Notably, the U.S. Supreme Court's newest justice, Neil Gorsuch, voted with the 
5-4 majority that refused to reverse the 8th Circuit's decision to allow the 
execution to take place.

Justice Stephen Breyer, who was in favor of granting Lee a stay, lamented that 
Arkansas's driving factor - the expiration date of the drugs - seemed 
arbitrary.

"Arkansas set out to execute 8 people over the course of 11 days. Why these 8? 
Why now?" Breyer wrote. "The apparent reason has nothing to do with the 
heinousness of their crimes or with the presence (or absence) of mitigating 
behavior. It has nothing to do with their mental state. It has nothing to do 
with the need for speedy punishment."

Lee's execution was first effectively put on hold Wednesday due to a temporary 
restraining order put in place by a Pulaski County Circuit judge. The judge 
blocked the state from using its supply of pancuronium bromide, the second drug 
in the state's 3-drug cocktail. The drug supplier objected to the drug's use in 
executions and said the state misleadingly obtained its product and refused to 
return it despite being refunded by the supplier.

On Thursday, the Arkansas Supreme Court lifted the judge's restraining order.

Just before 7 p.m., when Lee's execution was scheduled to take place, the 8th 
Circuit issued a temporary stay - followed later by a temporary stay from U.S. 
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito - to take additional time to consider his 
case.

Alito's stay was set to expire at 9:30 p.m. or by a subsequent order, whichever 
was later. By 9:30 p.m., the 8th Circuit had denied all of Lee's requests, but 
Alito's stay remained in place pending the final order. The Arkansas Department 
of Corrections said the lethal injections were started at 11:44 p.m., and Lee 
was pronounced dead at 11:56 p.m. with no reported complications in the 
execution process.

An ADC spokesman told The Associated Press that Lee requested Holy Communion as 
his last meal.

Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge (R) had aggressively sought Lee's 
execution and called his death a "lawful sentence ... carried out."

"The family of the late Debra Reese, who was brutally murdered with a tire 
thumper after being targeted because she was home alone, has waited more than 
24 years to see justice done. I pray this lawful execution helps bring closure 
for the Reese family," Rutledge said in a statement.

(source: Huffington Post)

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

Dozens Protest Executions Outside Governor's Mansion


Dozens gathered outside the Governor's Mansion Thursday night to protest the 
scheduled execution of death row inmate, Ledell Lee.

Members of church groups and the Arkansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty 
held signs and a candlelight vigil. With each hour, the crowds stood in a 
circle saying a prayer - as the future of Lee's life was still unknown. Many 
staying until shortly before midnight, when Lee was officially pronounced dead.

Furonda Brasfield, with the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty 
announced the crowds disappointment saying, "We were also dismayed that our 
governing officials wouldn't allow the innocence claims to be fully explored." 
She continues, "we could have very well, have executed an innocent man tonight, 
but we will never know that now."

The group is planning to be outside the mansion next Monday for the next 
scheduled execution.

(source: arkansasmatters.com)

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

Arkansas's Legal Saga Illustrates Problems With Death Penalty


The practical and legal difficulties that have frustrated Arkansas's plan to 
execute 8 prisoners in 10 days are a vivid example of the troubled state of the 
death penalty.

"The ship has far too many leaks, large and small, to reach its destination 
reliably," said Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University. "The 
Arkansas example vividly shows the courts scrambling to patch some of them at 
the last second."

1 of the difficulties facing Arkansas and other states is practical: the lethal 
chemicals used to execute death row inmates are getting harder and harder to 
find. Another is legal: courts in even conservative states like Arkansas, which 
has not executed anyone since 2005, are receptive to claims from the defense 
lawyers who make every available argument to spare their clients' lives, even 
temporarily.

But the biggest obstacle may be cultural: Support for the death penalty, as 
measured by use, is at its lowest point since the United States Supreme Court 
reinstated it in 1976.

American courts imposed 30 death sentences last year, down from 315 in 1996, 
the largest number in recent decades. Similarly, there were just 20 executions 
in 2016, a decline from the 98 executions in 1999, the highest in the modern 
era.

Last month, in discussing Arkansas's plan to execute inmates at a pace without 
equal in modern American history, Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, sounded a 
little sheepish.

"I would love to have those extended over a period of multiple months and 
years, but that's not the circumstances that I find myself in," he said.

In the weeks that followed, state and federal courts issued rulings blocking 
some of the executions based on the inmates' mental competence, DNA evidence, 
the clemency process, the chemicals to be used and how those chemicals were 
obtained. Some of those rulings have been stayed or reversed, and the welter of 
legal actions continues to grow more complicated by the hour.

The Supreme Court declined to step in late Monday night, effectively sparing 
the life of one inmate. Other executions were scheduled for Thursday, as well 
as Monday and Thursday next week.

The inmates were all found guilty of terrible crimes. In a Supreme Court brief, 
the state decried requests for stays of execution that it said were "nothing 
more than an attempt to prevent Arkansas from carrying out petitioners' 
execution decades after petitioners brutally took the lives of young mothers, 
children and men who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

The reason for Arkansas's planned assembly line of executions struck some as 
unseemly: The state's supply of midazolam, 1 of the chemicals in its lethal 
injection protocol, was about to expire, and it was unsure whether it could get 
more.

In a brief, Arkansas officials blamed "anti-death-penalty activists" for the 
shortage, saying they had "a long history of keeping states from obtaining 
lethal drugs for use in lawful executions by subjecting manufacturers and 
suppliers to threats and intimidation."

When the Supreme Court heard arguments in 2015 in its last major death penalty 
case, Glossip v. Gross, Justice Samuel A. Alito seemed to agree, saying 
activists had engaged "in what amounts to a guerrilla war against the death 
penalty."

The upshot of those efforts, he said, was that "states are reduced to using 
drugs like" the sedative midazolam, "which give rise to disputes about whether, 
in fact, every possibility of pain is eliminated."

But at least some drug companies seem to be acting from moral conviction and 
economic self-interest in trying to prevent the use of their products in 
executions. For instance, McKesson Corporation, the nation's largest 
pharmaceutical distributor, sued to stop Arkansas from using 1 of its drugs.

Supporters of the death penalty expressed frustration over the issue.

"Execution is not difficult," said Kent S. Scheidegger, a lawyer with the 
Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. "The single-drug protocol with a barbiturate 
works very well. Texas has used it dozens of times without incident. That is 
how veterinarians euthanize animals every day."

"The problem," he said, "is that the anti-death-penalty crowd has successfully 
pressured the suppliers of these drugs to cut off the supply."

In turning to drugs like midazolam, some judges have found, states took the 
risk of subjecting condemned inmates to excruciating pain. In February, 
dissenting from the Supreme Court's decision not to hear an Alabama death row 
inmate's appeal, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that there is scientific and 
anecdotal evidence to question the use of midazolam in executions.

"Like a hangman's poorly tied noose or a malfunctioning electric chair," she 
wrote, "midazolam might render our latest method of execution too much for our 
conscience - and the Constitution - to bear."

The Arkansas experience exposed a 2nd facet of death penalty litigation, the 
inevitable flurry of last-minute appeals before any scheduled execution. With 8 
men initially scheduled to die, the flurry became a blizzard.

That was unsurprising and necessary, death penalty defense lawyers said. They 
owe their clients zealous representation, they said, and must press every 
reasonable argument.

"No one case is exactly the same," said Scott Braden, an assistant federal 
defender in Little Rock who represents several of the Arkansas inmates. "They 
don't come out of a mold exactly the same, so every case has to be approached 
differently and sometimes what's in the best interest of one client may not be 
in the best interest of another."

He said the task required flexibility, resourcefulness and stamina. "You can be 
in the county court of a state in the morning, and by the afternoon," he said, 
"you're in the United States Supreme Court."

Joshua Marquis, a prosecutor in Astoria, Ore., said the death penalty is the 
right punishment in at least some cases and that many Americans agree.

"While Arkansas's plan to execute that many inmates may have been too 
ambitious," he said, "in 2016 voters in states as diverse as California and 
Nebraska rejected calls to repeal their state???s death penalties."

Professor Freedman agreed, up to a point.

"The Supreme Court contemplates, and many members of the public would support, 
a speedy system that reliably identified a small group of the morally worst 
killers and put those few people to death humanely," he said.

But he added that "the institutions we actually have are incapable of achieving 
any part of that ideal."

(source: New York Times)

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

In Arkansas, a rush to kill


The bankruptcy of the death penalty is on full display in Arkansas this week.

State officials there are rushing to execute 7 men within 10 days. This 
potential flurry of state-ordered killings isn't happening because there's a 
significant chance the seven men pose any sort of danger in prison, or that 
they are on the verge of escaping and committing violence throughout the land.

The reason Arkansas planned to go on a binge of unnecessary killings? The drug 
it uses in executions is about to expire and the state may not be able to 
legally buy more.

In 21st century America, a man's fate could be determined by the "If used by" 
date stamped on the side of a bottle. Courts have stepped in and delayed the 
state's plans, which were to have been implemented beginning this past Monday. 
That Arkansas tried to do this at all, as disturbing as the plan was, has 
provided the nation an invaluable gift by making plain the immorality of the 
death penalty.

State-ordered executions are not an effective deterrent of potential crime. 
They don't save lives on some undetermined future date by being carried out 
today.

A state-ordered execution is not a weapon of last resort - because the state 
has other options. A life spent in prison, whether in solitary confinement or 
the general population, is stiff punishment for any crime.

In other words, there is no compelling reason to spend years, or decades, and 
millions of taxpayer dollars to end a man's life as punishment for his having 
ended another's.

Not only are the killings unnecessary and ineffective, they represent the final 
word in a system long known to be fatally flawed. There are no do-overs. A 
study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that at 
least 4 percent of the people sentenced to death have been innocent. But that's 
not the only reason the death penalty is bankrupt.

The system will never be about true justice or equality as long as men and 
women are more likely to end up on death row based upon the color of their 
skin, the race of their victim and the size of their bank account than their 
guilt or innocence. Those are problems endemic throughout the criminal justice 
system but particularly egregious on death row, given the finality of an 
execution.

In the case of the Arkansas 7, a Harvard report noted several of the men have 
serious mental health problems and had inadequate representation at trial. One 
of the men, Don Davis, believes he is about to go on a "special mission as an 
evangelist" instead of being tied down and having poisons pushed into his 
veins.

Arkansas's decision to rush executions on the flimsy basis of expiring drugs 
seems absurd in the extreme. The truth is, though, that this country has long 
committed to killing people for no good reason. Arkansas is not an anomaly.

(source: Editorial, Charlotte Observer)

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

Conservatives Stymied by Latest Arkansas Execution Setback----Arkansas' attempt 
to carry out its 1st execution in nearly 12 years wasn't thwarted by the type 
of liberal activist judge Republicans regularly bemoan here.


Arkansas' attempt to carry out its 1st execution in nearly 12 years wasn't 
thwarted by the type of liberal activist judge Republicans regularly bemoan 
here, but instead by a state Supreme Court that's been the focus of expensive 
campaigns by conservative groups to reshape the judiciary.

The court voted Wednesday to halt the execution of an inmate facing lethal 
injection Thursday night, 2 days after justices stayed the executions of 2 
other inmates. The series of 4-3 decisions blocking start of what had been an 
unprecedented plan to execute 8 men in 11 days were only the latest in recent 
years preventing this deeply Republican state from resuming capital punishment.

The possibility that justices could continue sparing the lives of the remaining 
killers scheduled to die this month has left death penalty proponents wondering 
how much longer executions will remain in a holding pattern.

"I have ultimate respect for the court and I'm not going to question individual 
decisions but I would say there is frustration among the Legislature as to the 
court's continued refusal to allow an execution to go through," said Sen. 
Jeremy Hutchinson, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Since the last execution in 2005, the state Supreme Court has at least twice 
forced Arkansas to rewrite its death penalty law. 1 of those cases spared Don 
Davis, who again received a stay Monday night. The legal setbacks at one point 
prompted the state's previous attorney general, Dustin McDaniel, to declare 
Arkansas' death penalty system "broken."

But unlike the earlier decisions, this stay came from a court that had shifted 
to the right in recent elections. Outside groups and the candidates spent more 
than $1.6 million last year on a pair of high court races that were among the 
most fiercely fought judicial campaigns in the state's history. Arkansas was 
among a number of states where conservative groups spent millions on such 
efforts.

The candidates backed by the conservative groups won both races. One of those 
winners voted for Monday's night stay.

The three stays, along with one granted earlier, have whittled down the 
execution list to four, unless the U.S. Supreme Court allows Arkansas to move 
ahead with Stacey Johnson's Thursday execution. Arkansas officials are trying 
to carry out the executions before their supply of midazolam, one of the 
execution drugs used, expires at the end of April.

It's unclear whether the new execution obstacles would have any political 
fallout for the court. Only 1 of the 7 justices is up for election next year, 
and judicial rules prevent candidates from announcing their bids until next 
month. Polling has shown strong support for the death penalty in Arkansas.

The judge facing re-election, Courtney Goodson, lost her bid for chief justice 
last year after conservative groups blanketed the state with ads attacking her. 
The groups accused her of being close to trial attorneys and for the court's 
decision to strike down Arkansas' voter ID law. None of the campaign material 
mentioned the death penalty.

But while Goodson voted to stay the 3 executions, so did the 
conservative-backed candidate who beat her in the chief justice race, Dan Kemp. 
Goodson had touted her commitment to conservative values, while Kemp said in a 
campaign ad he would be guided by "prayer, not politics."

The other 2 justices who favored stopping the executions were Robin Wynne, who 
was touted as tough on child predators when he was elected in 2014, and 
Josephine Linker Hart, who ran as a "no-nonsense judge" in 2012.

The court had indicated earlier this year that it might view the death penalty 
more favorably, ruling to allow Arkansas to keep many details of its lethal 
injection drugs secret. The court also barred an anti-death penalty circuit 
judge from participation in cases or laws involving the issue.

The court hasn't explained its reasoning in any of its one-page 
stay-of-execution orders for the three inmates. Attorneys for Bruce Ward and 
Don Davis, who had faced lethal injection Monday night, said the executions 
should be put off until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on a pending case 
involving inmates' access to independent mental health experts. Johnson's 
attorneys have sought more DNA testing that they say could exonerate him.

1 of the 3 dissenting judges issued a blistering criticism of Monday's ruling 
sparing the 1st 2 condemned inmates.

"The families are entitled to closure and finality of the law," wrote Justice 
Shawn Womack, a former Republican legislator whose rival last year was also 
targeted by conservative groups. "It is inconceivable that this court, with the 
facts and the law well established, stays these executions over speculation 
that the (U.S.) Supreme Court might change the law."

Another justice objecting to the rulings, Rhonda Wood, wrote in a dissent that 
Wednesday's stay "gives uncertainty to any case ever truly being final in the 
Arkansas Supreme Court."

The situation is a familiar one for Rebecca Petty, whose daughter's killer was 
granted a reprieve by federal courts hours before his execution in 2004.

"I just feel like, once again, these families have been re-victimized," said 
Petty, now a state representative, who said she was stunned by the latest 
ruling.

(source: US News & World Report)