[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ARK., OKLA., COLO., UTAH, USA

[Rick Halperin]

April 29




ARKANSAS:

Arkansas executions: death chamber evidence sought amid torture 
fears----Unprecedented burst of executions re-inflamed opposition to death 
penalty, with some reporting disturbing signs of distress as men were being 
killed


Lawyers for the 4 men executed by Arkansas in the past week were set on Friday 
to ask a federal judge to force the state to preserve evidence from its death 
chamber. The request, the 1st step towards a thorough investigation, came amid 
fears that the prisoners might have been subjected to excruciating pain, 
tantamount to torture.

Arkansas' unprecedented burst of executions - it tried to carry out 8 in 11 
days - is over. But it has re-inflamed opposition to the death penalty in the 
US and sparked a major legal battle, involving drug companies objecting to the 
use of their products to kill people, that could have long-term consequences.

Eyewitnesses to 2 of the 4 executions in Arkansas reported disturbing signs of 
distress on the part of the condemned men as they were being killed on the 
gurney. On Thursday night Kenneth Williams' body shook for up to 20 seconds, 
with reports of him coughing, convulsing, lurching and jerking in rapid 
succession. Even when the microphone had been turned off, he could be heard 
through the viewing glass, moaning and gasping.

3 days before that, Marcel Williams was seen to arch his back countless times 
and breathe heavily even after a consciousness check was carried out to make 
sure he was insensate.

Shawn Nolan, a lawyer for Kenneth Williams, said a joint filing would be lodged 
with a federal court on Friday to oblige the state department of corrections to 
preserve evidence including materials used in the executions and records of 
drug levels, timings and so on. He described the death of his client as 
"horrifying".

Speaking to the Guardian the morning after the execution, Nolan said: "Our 
client was effectively tortured last night and that's not acceptable. The state 
did this so haphazardly and it went horrifically wrong."

Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor who was the architect of what has been 
called a "conveyor belt of death", denied that any mishap had occurred. His 
spokesman described the Kenneth Williams execution as "flawless" and said the 
prisoner's convulsions had been the result of an "involuntary muscular 
reaction".

But the state's attempts to put the events of the past 10 days behind it are 
unlikely to be successful. Campaigners are seizing on the sudden burst of 
executions in Arkansas as a potentially crucial moment in the fight over the 
death penalty.

At the heart of that fight are the drugs that are being used by death penalty 
states across the US. Maya Foa, director of the human rights group Reprieve, 
which has led the charge against pharmaceutical drugs being used in death 
chambers, said drug companies had displayed new resolve in standing up to 
Arkansas.

"Drug companies have shown that they are absolutely prepared to do what it 
takes to enforce their contracts and ensure that their medicines are not 
misused - they will stand up to it," she said.

2 major drug companies, Fresenius Kabi USA and West-Ward Pharmaceuticals Corp, 
as well as one of the largest medical supply companies in the US, McKesson, 
sued the state over its intention to kill people using chemicals designed to 
save lives. McKesson went furthest, effectively charging the Arkansas 
department of corrections with lying in order to obtain a batch of one of the 
drugs used in its triple lethal injection cocktail.

4 of the 8 condemned inmates in Arkansas were spared execution - for now - 
through court-directed stays. They still remain on death row and could have new 
death warrants issued at any time.

However, Arkansas will struggle to proceed with further killings because its 
batch of midazolam, the sedative used in the 1st of its 3 lethal injections, 
runs out this weekend and drug companies refuse to provide new supplies.

It is thought the state still has enough of the 2nd drug, vecuronium bromide, 
to kill up to 13 prisoners by its expiry date next March, and a similar 
capacity of potassium chloride expiring in August 2018.

Focus now switches to the 5 death penalty states that have scheduled 15 
executions through the remainder of the year: Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio 
and Texas. The 1st of those planned executions, of convicted murderer Ronald 
Phillips, is set to take place on 10 May in Ohio.

The department of corrections in Ohio does have sufficient quantities of 
midazolam, rocuronium bromide and potassium chloride to carry out multiple 
executions by triple lethal injection. But condemned prisoners have challenged 
the state's death protocol, with a particular emphasis on the 1st drug, 
midazolam, that has been associated with several botched killings over the past 
few years.

The case is currently before the full bench of the federal sixth circuit court 
of appeals. Unless its judges rule for the state, Ohio's executions will remain 
on hold. Lawyers representing the death row inmates are certain to seize on 
events in Arkansas as further evidence of the problems of midazolam, which as a 
sedative and not an anaesthetic, is an unusual agent for rendering individuals 
unconscious.

Allen Bohnert, a federal public defender in Ohio who represents Phillips, said 
his legal team was looking forward "to presenting compelling evidence to the 
full sixth circuit panel regarding midazolam's unsuitability as an execution 
drug".

Question marks also remain over the secrecy now universally applied by death 
penalty states over the source of their drugs. In Arkansas, media witnesses 
were not allowed to observe the placing of IV lines in the prisoners' veins, as 
the death chamber's curtain remained closed.

The state also failed to provide public information on the precise timing of 
the 3 lethal injections. As a result, it was impossible to tell whether Kenneth 
Williams was fully unconscious at a time when the paralytic second drug and the 
final potassium chloride were administered. Were he still remotely conscious at 
the time of the potassium injection, he would have felt a sensation that has 
been described as similar to a flamethrower shooting fire down his veins.

"It is very disturbing to read witness accounts that Mr Williams was breathing 
and moving at the time of the consciousness check, because subsequent 
administration of the paralytic would hide any conscious suffering he 
experienced," said Megan McCracken of the Death Penalty Clinic at UC Berkeley 
school of law..

(source: The Guardian)

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

Arkansas gov rejects call for probe after inmate convulses during execution


The 4th death row inmate executed in Arkansas in 8 days lurched and convulsed 
before he died, witnesses said, prompting critics and the man's legal team to 
demand an investigation Friday, which the state's governor rejected.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson responded that the execution went according to 
protocol and there was no reason to conduct anything more than a "routine 
review" that takes place after an execution.

"It was obvious to me there was not any indication of pain," Hutchinson said at 
a news conference Friday. "This 10 seconds of movements on his part was 
described as coughing without noise."

The state had sought to carry out as many lethal injections as possible before 
1 of its drugs expires Sunday. The governor did not witness the execution.

About 3 minutes into the execution Thursday night, Kenneth Williams' body 
jerked 15 times in quick succession -- lurching violently against the leather 
restraint across his chest -- then the rate slowed for a final 5 movements, 
according to an Associated Press reporter who witnessed it.

Williams' attorneys released a statement calling witness accounts "horrifying" 
and demanding an investigation into what they called the "problematic 
execution."

Hutchinson said that coughing is a possible side effect according to the drug's 
packaging.

"People react to drugs in different ways sometimes but that seems to be 
consistent with the indications on the drug inserts," he said.

J.R. Davis, a spokesman for Hutchinson called the movements "an involuntary 
muscular reaction" that he said was a widely known effect of the surgical 
sedative midazolam, the 2st of 3 drugs administered.

"Midazolam's well-documented risks and role in numerous botched executions 
should have given Governor Asa Hutchinson pause. Instead, he ignored the 
dangers and undermined our state's moral standing - all to beat the expiration 
date on a failed drug," Rita Sklar, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas, 
responded.

Williams was sentenced to death for murdering a former deputy warden, Cecil 
Boren, after he escaped from prison in 1999. At the time of his escape in a 
500-gallon barrel of hog slop, Williams was less than 3 weeks into a life 
sentence for killing a college cheerleader.

Arkansas had scheduled 8 executions over an 11-day period. That would have been 
the most in such a short time since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death 
penalty in 1976, but courts issued stays for 4 of the inmates. The 4 lethal 
injections that were carried out included Monday's first double execution in 
the United States since 2000.

Williams read a prepared final statement before the execution began, 
apologizing to the families he "senselessly wronged and deprived of their loved 
ones." He also spoke in tongues, the unintelligible but language-like speech 
used in some religions. But his prayer faded off as the midazolam took effect. 
He said, "The words that I speak will forever be, will forever ..." before he 
fell silent.

The inmate breathed heavily through his nose until just after three minutes 
into his execution, when his chest leaped forward in a series of what seemed 
like involuntary movements. His right hand never clenched and his face remained 
what one media witness called "serene."

After the jerking, Williams breathed through his mouth and moaned or groaned 
once -- during a consciousness check -- until falling still 7 minutes into the 
lethal injection.

A Friday morning tweet from the account of a Republican state Sen. Trent 
Garner, who witnessed the execution, said Williams did not "seem in pain. ... 
It was not cruel, unusual, botched or torture."

"Any amount of movement he might have had was far less than any of his 
victims," said Jodie Efird, one of Boren's daughters, who witnessed the 
execution.

State officials have called Arkansas' string of executions a success, declaring 
justice served and "closure" for victims' families. Some concerns had been 
raised about Monday's execution of Jack Jones, whose mouth moved after 
attorneys said he should have been unconscious, though a federal judge 
determined it did not appear to be "torturous and inhumane."

All of the Arkansas inmates -- including Williams -- have died within 20 
minutes of their executions beginning, a contrast from troubled 
midazolam-related executions in other states that took anywhere from 43 minutes 
to 2 hours. Though witnesses to those lengthier executions also described 
hearing inmates breathe heavily, snore or snort or seeing them struggle against 
their restraints.

"The long path of justice ended tonight and Arkansans can reflect on the last 2 
weeks with confidence that our system of laws in this state has worked," 
Hutchinson said in a statement issued after Williams' execution.

Dale Baich, an assistant federal public defender who witnessed a flawed 2014 
Arizona execution that took 2 hours, said in an email early Friday that after 
reading media reports, "It appears from witness accounts that Mr. Williams was 
not fully sedated when the paralytic was administered.

"At a minimum, this was a deviation from the protocol."

Williams' lawyers had said he had sickle cell trait, lupus and brain damage, 
and argued the combined maladies could subject him to an exceptionally painful 
execution in violation of the U.S. Constitution. They argued Arkansas' "1 size 
fits all" execution protocol could have left him in pain after a paralytic 
agent rendered him unable to move. State and federal courts rejected the 
claims.

Williams was sentenced to death for killing Boren after escaping from the 
Cummins Unit prison in a barrel holding a mishmash of kitchen scraps. He left 
the prison -- where the execution chamber is located in another part of the 
facility -- less than three weeks into a life prison term for killing 
University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff cheerleader Dominique Hurd in 1998. At the 
conclusion of that trial, he had taunted the young woman's family by turning to 
them after the sentence was announced and saying "You thought I was going to 
die, didn't you?"

After jumping from the barrel, he sneaked along a tree line until reaching 
Boren's house. He killed Boren, stole guns and Boren's truck and then drove 
away to Missouri. There, he crashed into a water-delivery truck, killing the 
driver. While in prison, he confessed to killing another person in 1998.

At the time of Boren's death, investigators said it did not appear Boren was 
targeted because of his former employment by the Arkansas Department of 
Correction.

(source: Fox News)

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

Arkansas executions: What's next after the drug supply expires?


With Arkansas' supply of lethal injection drugs expiring soon, the future of 
capital punishment in the state is unclear.

The state had planned to execute 8 death row inmates in a span of 11 days in 
April before its supply of sedatives used in the process expired. The clock was 
ticking.

In the midst of legal battles with drug suppliers, inmates fighting to avoid 
executions and courts issuing temporary stays, Arkansas carried out only 4 of 
the 8 scheduled executions.

According to J.R. Davis, spokesman for Gov. Asa Hutchinson, there will not be 
any more executions this month.

Davis said the state will work on procuring the drug again and will reschedule 
the executions when the stays and court cases are resolved.

Securing new doses of the drugs will be a challenge for Arkansas, but the state 
could also change the method used to execute inmates or halt them all at once.

Find other drugs?

Death sentences are still being handed down, but many states are not scheduling 
executions because authorities don't have the drugs needed for lethal 
injection.

And pharmaceutical companies are now mounting legal challenges against the use 
of their products in executions, so Arkansas could fall into a years-long, 
expensive battle with those companies.

Supreme Court rules in favor of lethal injection drug

1 manufacturer, West-Ward Pharmaceuticals, filed a brief in support of the 
eight inmates the state planned to execute in April, saying it tries to ensure 
its midazolam isn't used in executions.

If states can't get supplies of the 3 drugs needed for the lethal injection 
cocktail currently used, authorities may have to switch to a 1-drug lethal 
injection and use drugs such as sodium thiopental and pentobarbital.

But not without running into some issues.

Manufacturers and European countries started withholding sodium thiopental and 
pentobarbital this decade, trying to prevent the use of them in executions. The 
US Food and Drug Administration also hasn't approved the use of sodium 
thiopental in the United States. The FDA recently seized a shipment of 1,000 
vials that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice had purchased for its 
executions.

Postpone executions?

The Arkansas governor could also issue a moratorium on all executions.

Governors in other states have taken that step in order to reconsider their 
state's death penalty or ask for a comprehensive review of the process.

One of them is Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, who stopped all executions in 2015.

The governor said the review was necessary and that his decision was not a way 
to express sympathy to the inmates.

"This decision is based on a flawed system that has been proven to be an 
endless cycle of court proceedings as well as ineffective, unjust and 
expensive," Wolf said in a statement, The Philadelphia Tribune reported.

Currently, Colorado, Oregon and Washington also have moratoriums in place 
against the death penalty.

Change methods?

While the 31 states with death penalty laws use lethal injection drugs as the 
main method for executions, some of them have options.

Utah to allow firing squads for executions

In 18 states, authorities have at least 1 alternative, such as the gas chamber, 
hanging or a firing squad.

In Alabama, Florida and Virginia, inmates can choose the electric chair.

Only Utah and Oklahoma allow inmates to choose a firing squad.

In 2010, Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by a firing squad in Utah. He was the 
3rd inmate in that state to be executed by that method since 1977.

It's the last option for inmates in Oklahoma if all the other methods are 
either unavailable or ruled unconstitutional by a judge.

Utah inmate asks to die by firing squad

But in Arkansas there's only 1 other option. The state may use electrocution if 
the lethal injection is "invalidated by a final and unappealable court order," 
a state code says.

If authorities want to use another method, it would require lawmakers to change 
current state law or pass a new law.

State legislators in Mississippi passed a bill in April authorizing a firing 
squad, electrocution and the gas chamber as other means of execution if lethal 
injection was not available. The law takes effect next year.

(source: CNN)






OKLAHOMA:

Document filed for death penalty


An Oklahoma prosecutor has filed formal notice that the state will seek the 
death penalty for a man charged in the killing of a deputy sheriff.

District Attorney Laura Austin Thomas filed the bill of particulars Thursday 
stating 45-year-old Nathan Aaron LeForce should be put to death if he's 
convicted of a 1st-degree murder charge in the shooting death of Logan County 
Deputy David Wade.

LeForce remains jailed and court documents don't list an attorney to speak for 
him. Prosecutors say LeForce fatally shot Wade as the deputy served an eviction 
notice in Mulhall, about 50 miles north of Oklahoma City.

(source: swoknews.com)

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

Howard Barnett: Death penalty moratorium is the right choice


For over a year, I have had the honor of being 1 of 11 members of an 
independent, bipartisan commission comprised of a diverse group of Oklahomans 
and tasked with investigating an issue of the upmost importance to the state of 
Oklahoma. Known as the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission, we spent over 
a year reviewing the death penalty system in our state - from arrest to 
execution.

As commission members, we discussed and debated and, in the end, we issued 46 
detailed consensus recommendations that affect a range of issues, including 
protecting the innocent from execution, the role of defense counsel and 
prosecution, and even the execution process itself. Given the breadth of 
concerns we uncovered, the commission unanimously recommends extending the 
current moratorium on executions in Oklahoma until significant reforms are 
accomplished.

Our decision was reached after much deliberation and many interviews with 
stakeholders working in the system and those who are affected by it, including 
the family members of both victims and exonerees, prosecutors, and public 
defenders. We reviewed scholarly articles, commissioned independent studies, 
and held 10 lengthy meetings to deliberate our findings. The investigation 
provided an eye-opening understanding of the death penalty process in Oklahoma. 
We all concluded that there must be a concerted effort to implement meaningful 
reforms to our state's system. We must be able to guarantee fairness, justice, 
and that no innocent person is put to death.

Oklahomans support our state's right to capital punishment, as was evident by 
the passage of State Question 776 in November. However, we believe we have a 
duty to let our fellow citizens know about the extensive investigation we have 
done and all that we have learned. We must help our state guarantee that true 
justice is served in cases where the defendant is charged with a capital crime. 
To hastily remove the current moratorium, which was put in place because of 
what a grand jury found was a seriously flawed process in the state's execution 
process, would be counter-productive. We now know far more about the systemic 
problems that pervade our system long before the execution process unfolds. 
Oklahoma should leave the current moratorium in place and consider the detailed 
reforms recommended in our report.

No matter how they voted on SQ 776, I encourage all Oklahomans to read the 
commission's report and ask members of the Oklahoma Legislature, executive 
branch, judiciary and bar associations to work together to address the flaws in 
our state's death penalty process. We hope this report promotes a conversation 
surrounding that process. Our state's leaders owe it to Oklahomans to review 
the commission's recommendations and enact serious reforms to guarantee 
innocence protection, procedural fairness, and justice for all. Until then, the 
current moratorium should remain in place.

(source: Howard Barnett is a member of the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review 
Commission and president of Oklahoma State University-Tulsa. He was chief of 
staff to Gov. Frank Keating 1999-2003----Tulsa World)






COLORADO:

Hickenlooper should commute Nathan Dunlap's sentence and lead on death penalty 
debate


If Colorado's courts won't allow Nathan Dunlap's legal team to lobby Gov. John 
Hickenlooper for the life of their client, we'll do it for them.

Hickenlooper - as we've said before - should commute Dunlap's death sentence to 
life in prison without the possibility of parole. As Hickenlooper noted when he 
granted Dunlap a temporary reprieve from his August 2013 execution date, the 
death penalty "has not been fairly or equitably imposed." We praised the 
governor's political courage to spare Dunlap's life, despite polling that 
showed Colorado voters supported the killer's execution and the continued use 
of the death penalty.

The governor also promised at the time, however, to lead a statewide 
conversation about the death penalty.

But that was almost 4 years ago.

Dunlap and the families of his victims have sat in limbo. And that conversation 
has not formally taken place.

Now Hickenlooper has about 18 months to decide the fate of the man convicted in 
1993 of killing 4 Chuck E. Cheese's employees, and to fulfill his promise of 
bringing this criminal justice question to the forefront. Unfortunately, it's 
unlikely now to be Hickenlooper, a man who legitimately seemed on the fence 
about this issue, who frames this public policy debate, but George Brauchler, a 
declared candidate for governor in 2018 and an unabashed fan of the death 
penalty. Brauchler is district attorney for the 18th Judicial District, which 
includes Arapahoe County, where the crimes of all 3 Colorado men on death row 
were committed and prosecuted. He most recently tried the case against 
convicted mass-murderer James Holmes, and his team of attorneys unsuccessfully 
sought the death penalty.

This month, Dunlap's attorneys requested that a U.S. District Court judge 
authorize the defense team spend $750,000 to lobby Hickenlooper to commute 
Dunlap's sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole before 
Hickenlooper leaves office and his executive order can be undone.

U.S. District Court Senior Judge John Kane's assessment of the possibility of 
Hickenlooper taking action on this issue struck us as unprofessional and 
unwise, but not altogether untrue.

"You poke the Pillsbury Doughboy in the belly, there's a giggle and that's the 
end of it," Kane was quoted saying by The Denver Post's Kirk Mitchell. "All of 
this is because we have a present governor who is not making a decision. ... 
I'm not about to endorse the present situation. ...These are not legal issues."

Occasionally, like on the governor's campaign trail in 2014, or during court 
proceedings, Dunlap's precarious state between death by lethal injection and 
life in prison has come up. Hickenlooper's best chance to address the death 
penalty came in 2013 and 2014, when Democrats held both chambers of the 
Colorado General Assembly, but bills to address the issue have never gained 
traction, or outward support from Hickenlooper, including a bill this year that 
was voted down in the Republican-controlled Senate and hardly rose to the level 
of public discourse.

Kane is right in that Hickenlooper has failed to lead on the issue of the death 
penalty. That's a shame, because Colorado's death penalty needs to be repealed.

We wish the governor had made this issue more of a priority and championed the 
question during his tenure. He still could during the 2018 legislative session.

But that shortfall in leadership doesn't preclude the governor from doing the 
right thing and sparring Dunlap's life from becoming the issue voters are 
deciding at the ballot box in 2018.

(source: Editorial, Denver Post)






UTAH:

Firing squads to be used in upcoming Utah executions


As Arkansas rushes to execute several death row inmates due to execution drugs 
expiring soon, an even more macabre immorality is developing in Utah: 3 death 
row inmates have all elected to be killed by firing squad, a method that's 
still on the books as a sort of next resort if execution drugs are unable to be 
obtained in the appropriate amount of time. As manufacturers of propofol and 
other execution drugs refuse to sell to states as a stand against the death 
penalty, death by lethal injection becomes more difficult to pull off.

Utah's execution methods are actually quite complicated: in 2004, death by 
firing squad was overturned, as the Utah legislature cited the amount of 
attention drawn as creating difficulty for the affected families. Then, in 
2015, this was partially changed. Now, if execution drugs are in short supply, 
firing squads can be used as a backup method. Furthermore, those sentenced to 
death before 2004 are grandfathered and can decide their execution method, if 
they so choose, according to the options available at the time of sentencing.

Taberon Dave Honie, Troy Michael Kell, and Ralph Leroy Menzies are all current 
death row inmates who have elected to die by firing squad. Although execution 
dates have not been set, many of them have been imprisoned for several decades. 
Convicted of heinous murders and rapes, these 3 men seem to have inflicted 
horrible pain on others. Still, why should we kill at all? Our justice system 
has overwhelming flaws, from lack of proper indigent defense to tainted appeals 
processes. It's crazy for us to openly acknowledge the error in the system and 
still put people to death. We need to stop pretending this is what dispensing 
justice looks like.

MuckRock recently obtained the Utah Department of Corrections' execution 
manual, detailing protocols currently in place. On the issue of government 
transparency, it's unbelievable that such a document wasn't public in the first 
place, but had to be obtained via FOIA request. Such a request was initially 
denied in 2015, but recently released.

The details outlined are grotesque, but the unfortunate standard in many 
states: 2 rounds must be loaded into each weapon, with 1 weapon shooting 
blanks. A target should be placed over the heart of the one being executed. 
There are countdowns and waiting periods and the last words are supposed to be 
recorded via audio, then destroyed within 24 hours of the execution. One can't 
help but think that if information like this were made more public, fewer 
people would be able to stomach the horror of the death penalty.

Some believe firing squads are more humane as lethal injection has been 
scrutinized due to the high prevalence of botched executions. Others argue that 
firing squads disallow us to be detached from the real matter at hand: the 
taking of a human life. For this reason, some death penalty abolitionists see 
firing squads as the easiest way of changing public opinion. The gruesome 
nature of firing squads reminds us that execution isn't some sanitized, 
near-medical procedure done by a phlebotomist in a dimmed room, but rather the 
killing of a human being.

Many scholars and activists think the recent controversy in Arkansas is 
bringing legal issues with the death penalty to light, exposing procedural 
problems and leaving pits in the bottoms of people's stomachs as they begin to 
realize what the death penalty looks like up close. Hopefully, as Utah's firing 
squads are examined further, people will begin to realize that our repugnant 
idea of justice needs to be reformed.

(source: deathandtaxesmag.com)






USA:

Meet the Man Leading the Push for More Executions in the U.S.----Kent 
Scheidegger has made his name as one of the country's leading opponents of 
criminal justice reform.


It's been a decade since California's last execution; the state now has 749 
people on death row. Many of them have had that designation for decades; their 
execution seems increasingly unlikely.

In November, Californians voted in favor of Proposition 66, which was billed as 
a "fix it, don't end it" reform of the death penalty. Essentially, Prop 66 
"would require the judge who originally heard a case to hear initial petitions 
challenging a death penalty conviction, instead of the petitions going to 
California Supreme Court. It also would limit the appeals process to within 5 
years of a death sentence," per the Los Angeles Times.

The question now becomes 1 of implementation: What politician or political 
action group would be motivated to actually support state-sponsored executions 
when state after state is ending the death penalty?

That's where Kent Scheidegger comes in. Scheidegger, the most famous man most 
laypeople have never heard of, has been fighting to execute people for 30 
years. He is the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a 
right-wing think tank opposing criminal justice reform. He's also the author 
not just of California's Prop 66 legislation, but also of most anti-criminal 
justice reform rhetoric heard at the state and national level.

The United States remains quite divided when it comes to the death penalty. 
Most recently, the rush by Arkansas lawmakers to execute 8 people in 11 days 
has served as a reminder of capital punishment's perseverance within the 
criminal justice system despite reform advocates' efforts to highlight the role 
mental illness, extreme childhood trauma, and poor lawyering can play in crime 
and sentencing. Yet, on the other hand, the death penalty has seen a steady 
decline in support around the country; a 2016 Gallup poll recorded the lowest 
support for the death penalty since 1972. Further, 2016 had the fewest 
executions (20) since the American death penalty was reinstated in 1978. The 
death penalty, it seems, remains as polarizing an issue as ever.

The role of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, then, is to try and swing 
the pendulum back toward pro-punishment. Founded in 1982, the CJLF bills itself 
on its website as "dispassionate, low-profile" in its quest to normalize 
executions. It's also fairly successful, with a half-million-dollar budget 
funded entirely by private donations. The group regularly intervenes in pretty 
much every criminal justice case in the country by filing amicus (friend of the 
court) briefs, and weighing in on legal issues. Scheidegger, who had previously 
worked in California state government before becoming CJLF's legal director, 
has become the talking head known for his lively, almost-bubbly defense of the 
death penalty.

Scheidegger has written nearly 200 Supreme Court amicus briefs supporting 
harsher sentences and the death penalty. His briefs provide ammunition for the 
more conservative justices who are looking for ways to justify their decisions. 
He regularly testifies before the California legislature against criminal 
justice reform issues. He is also the mouthpiece for all pro-capital 
punishment; he seems to always have a quotable quip handy for publication. Last 
month, for example, he was quoted in the Times arguing that the "anti-death 
penalty crowd" has created the drug shortages by making it hard for states to 
get midazolam.

He also penned a recent blog post claiming the expiration date for Arkansas' 
execution drug was just a suggestion, not something to be taken seriously. And, 
despite the nearly 150 people exonerated from death rows around the country, he 
maintains in amicus briefs that "nearly all death-row inmates are clearly 
guilty." He's also publicly called brain research showing the differences in 
decision-making between juveniles and adults - the very findings that have 
informed court decisions across the country to eliminate life without parole 
and the death penalty for young people -"a bunch of hooey."

But nowhere has Scheidegger been more vehement than in his defense of capital 
punishment. Consider this, from an amicus brief CJLF submitted to the Supreme 
Court in the 2015 case challenging Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol, 
Glossip v. Gross: "The Eighth Amendment does not allow torturous methods of 
execution but also does not require completely painless ones."

In the case of Bobby Moore, a man who was sentenced to death under Texas' 
statute evaluating intellectual disability, Scheidegger -lacking any scientific 
evidence - wrote an amicus brief calling the American Psychiatric 
Association???s definition of intellectual disability "social and policy 
documents" and "not science." (In the same brief, he also called developmental 
disabilities a "social construct."

Among Scheidegger's more unusual positions: his opposition to the 
evidence-based conclusion that race plays a disproportionate role in death 
sentences. "The difference between the make-up of death row and the make-up of 
the general population is attributable to the difference in offending rates, 
not bias in the system," he told a local Florida radio station, referring to 
Florida's historical racial imbalance on death row. When the Supreme Court 
ruled in favor of the defendant in the case of Duane Buck, a death penalty case 
that relied on racial bias, Scheidegger took to his blog to protest the 
decision.

Over the past 5 years, Scheidegger has used his gift with the pen to sue the 
state of California to reinstate executions. In a 2012 case, Scheidegger filed 
his own lawsuit in California state court on behalf of a brother of someone 
killed, arguing that the victim had a right to see the defendant executed. (He 
lost.)

Within California, his rhetoric is incredibly influential in the "death belt" - 
that's Kern, Orange, and San Bernardino counties - places where the death 
sentences are regularly assigned more than in any other southern state. While 
politicians who are less likely to be as un-PC as Scheidegger, who shows no 
qualms about using the word "retarded" to describe intellectually disabled 
people on death row, his influence clearly provides them support for their 
ability to make California the current death sentence leader in the U.S. 
(Scheidegger predicts that if California resumes executions, there will be "1 
or 2 a month.")

(source: Pacific Standard Magazine)

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

Can the Death Penalty Ever Be Implemented Justly?----A dialogue on the 
constitutionality - and justice - of executions.


Starting in February, Slate began a series of monthly dialogues between 2 of 
the nation's most esteemed jurists, Richard A. Posner and Jed S. Rakoff. These 
conversations will be moderated by Joel Cohen, author of the book Blindfolds 
Off: Judges on How They Decide. The subject of their last conversation was how 
to weigh the law and common sense on the bench. This month's conversation is 
about the death penalty.

Joel Cohen: The death penalty is in the news again: Arkansas is awash in 
litigation over planning to execute 8 inmates in a 10-day period - 4 having 
already been executed within 8 days. The principal obstacle, of course, is the 
controversy over midazolam, the sedative component of a drug cocktail that is 
supposed to put the subject into a state of unconscious painlessness at the 
time of death. Midazolam's efficacy has a spotty record at best.

But my question is not about those cases or executions. It is more specific: In 
his first speech to Congress, President Trump, who has previously advocated the 
death penalty in another context, continued to refer to the danger of "radical 
Islamic terrorism." And the prospect of terrorism, Islamic or not, remains a 
looming, perhaps existential, threat to America. So assume this: A terrorist is 
convicted of blowing up a university building killing 100 people, injuring many 
more. He is unrepentant. There are no mitigating factors nor any question of 
his mental competency. If anyone deserves the death penalty, it is he. But 
should the government be allowed to carry out his death sentence?

Judge Richard A. Posner: I don't see any argument against the death penalty in 
your hypothetical, which of course echoes the Timothy McVeigh case, in which 
168 people were killed. He was executed, and I'm not aware of any backlash. The 
execution of mass murderers seems to me unobjectionable.

Judge Jed S. Rakoff: No one sheds a tear for McVeigh, but that misses the 
legal, and moral, issue. After decades of trying, the legislatures and courts 
have yet to devise procedures permitting the execution of people like McVeigh 
while preventing the execution of wrongly convicted innocents. Thanks to 
organizations like the Innocence Project, DNA testing has now scientifically 
established the factual innocence of dozens of people that juries found guilty, 
beyond a reasonable doubt, of crimes so awful that judges imposed death 
sentences - only to discover, often years later, that terrible mistakes had 
been made. The fault is not with the statutes but with our fact-finding 
methods, which are far from perfect and operate particularly poorly when the 
crime is so horrific as to cry out for vengeance. So the reason for outlawing 
the death penalty in all cases, including McVeigh's, has nothing to do with 
McVeigh. It's about protecting against the virtual certainty that such laws 
will lead us to execute a great many innocent people who otherwise would be 
exonerated.

Posner: I'm not sure that "a great many innocent people" is correct. One would 
like to know the percentage of innocent people (or guilty but not responsible, 
because of mental illness, or even just believed possibly innocent) who were 
executed in the United States in the past 10 years. As you note, the most 
authoritative estimate of innocent defendants executed is 4 %. If correct, 96 % 
are guilty. Whether they "deserve" death in some philosophical sense, I imagine 
that if no one, however clearly guilty, was executed for murder (especially 
multiple or mass murder), there would be more murders - especially if life 
imprisonment were also considered too harsh a punishment. I would particularly 
like to see statistics on the percentage of multiple or mass murderer 
defendants who were executed and later found innocent. I suspect - I'm guessing 
- that it is less than 4 %.

Rakoff: Over the past 20 years, there have been no fewer than 115 people on 
death row who have been fully exonerated, not just because they were "believed 
possibly innocent," but because the courts determined they were actually 
innocent. But these were the lucky ones; since they were still alive, groups 
like the Innocence Project took up their causes. Conversely, no one can say how 
many defendants who were executed were in fact innocent, because there is not 
the same motive to investigate their cases and, in any case, DNA samples (the 
primary cause of the exonerations) do not exist in many cases. Nevertheless, a 
careful academic study published in 2014 by the National Academy of Sciences 
offered the "conservative" estimate that at least 4 % of those defendants 
executed in the U.S. since 1973 were factually innocent. This conclusion has 
been widely accepted and, so far as I am aware, has not been challenged.

Cohen: Judge Rakoff, you are troubled about innocents potentially being 
sentenced to death - you even issued an opinion saying the death penalty is 
unconstitutional on that ground. Judge Posner, you seem mildly concerned but 
don't see the injustice as so great statistically. Still, neither of you seem 
bothered - call it "cruel and unusual punishment" or not - that, in employing 
the death penalty, the state actually kills people in the name of justice. Nor 
do you argue much over its deterrent value.

Posner: I'm no more bothered by the cruelty issue than I am by killing enemy 
soldiers in wartime, or civilians in war who are in the way, so to speak 
(during World War II, we killed civilians but also shortened the war). If a 
defendant is proved to be a murderer (and was not insane when he murdered), I 
don't see the objection to executing him, especially if the threat of capital 
punishment has at least some deterrent effect - and especially if, like McVeigh 
and Dylann Roof and others, the defendant murders many people, or a child, or 
commits a racially motivated murder, or is a foreign terrorist. By the way, 
Joel, your question makes me wonder if you're a vegetarian. Personally, I think 
hunting harmless animals is worse than executing murderers.

Rakoff: The "deterrent effect" of the death penalty is at best a hunch, but 
most (though not all) academic studies suggest that it has little or no effect. 
This is because most murders (the chief offense for which the death penalty is 
imposed) are the product of violent, uncontrolled rages or mental infirmities 
and delusions. For many decades there has been general agreement among 
criminologists that deterrence is chiefly a function of the likelihood of 
getting caught rather than the penalty. And even among those small number of 
would-be murderers (if any) who take account of possible punishment in deciding 
whether to commit their crimes, can anyone really state with confidence that a 
meaningfully greater number are deterred by the death penalty as opposed to 
life imprisonment? Of course, there's greater emotional satisfaction from 
seeing a horrendous murderer put to death rather than seeing him rot in jail, 
though that emotional surge tends to be much stronger at the time of conviction 
and not when the defendant is actually executed, often years later. But as a 
practical matter, the big difference between execution and life imprisonment is 
the possibility of wrongly convicted defendants being freed and able to resume 
their lives. Before we remove this possibility from the 4 % (or more) who fit 
this category, we ought to have a pretty strong rationale for doing so. War may 
provide such a rationale, but a doubtful deterrent effect or an immediate 
emotional charge does not. In truth, in the U.S. today, survival of the death 
penalty is largely a function of cultural norms rather than rational 
reflection. That is why, in practice, it chiefly survives in the South - where, 
however, it appears to have had very little effect in deterring the relatively 
high murder rates of those states.

Posner: I am not persuaded. You imply that the death penalty has no deterrent 
effect at all. That seems improbable. The fact that Southern states have high 
murder rates should make one wonder whether those rates wouldn't be even higher 
were there no death penalty. I wonder whether you believe that the death 
penalty has always and everywhere been de trop, too much, or that something 
happened to enable us to dispense with it without thereby increasing the murder 
rate.

Cohen: Judge Posner, your position on the death penalty seems to me very 
hard-line. Just last week, the Supreme Court, 5 - 4, denied Ledell Lee of 
Arkansas a stay of execution - Lee having argued, the same as other Arkansas 
death row inmates, that the use of midazolam in the death penalty cocktail 
presents too great a risk of a very painful execution. A New York Times 
editorial last week powerfully attacked the court - and in particular Justice 
Neil Gorsuch for his (1st) significant vote as a justice in denying the stay. 
Does your approbation of the death penalty have no bounds?

Posner: Of course it has bounds! I don't approve of the death penalty for 
crimes other than murder, or for that matter for all murders, and concretely I 
don't approve of the Supreme Court's decision in the Lee case upholding Lee's 
execution. Its excoriation by the New York Times is entirely sound. There were 
2 reasons not to execute Lee. One was the use of midazolam as one of the 
execution drugs - a drug that has caused numerous botched executions by failing 
to render the person being executed unconscious promptly. The other is the 
extraordinarily bleak background of Lee coupled with his totally inadequate 
representation at his trial, summarized in the editorial as follows:

[L]ike so many others condemned to die around the country, [Lee] was a walking 
catalog of reasons the American death penalty is a travesty.

Evidence that Mr. Lee was intellectually disabled and suffered from fetal 
alcohol syndrome was never introduced into court, mainly because he had 
egregiously bad representation. One of his lawyers was so drunk in court that a 
federal judge reviewing the case later said he could tell simply by reading the 
transcripts.

Cohen: Judge Rakoff, given your views stated above, this might be a softball: 
Even if "guilt," fair trial, and sufficient mental competency were 
scientifically ascertainable, would the pain risk in using midazolam, for you, 
nonetheless be the last nail in the coffin for imposing the death penalty?

Rakoff: Like many unrealistic hypothetical questions, your question is flawed, 
Joel, because it asks the answerer to assume a set of facts - the certainty of 
guilt, competency, etc. - that are most unlikely ever to exist. It's a little 
like asking: If heaven is perfect, would a spot on Earth where there was total 
peace and tranquility still not qualify as a heaven if its inhabitants included 
lawyers? Moreover, I don't know enough about midazolam to have the basis for 
formulating an opinion about its use. But I am reminded of the fact that when 
the electric chair was first conceived - by a dentist (of course) named Alfred 
Southwick - it was touted as being painless. But when it was first actually 
used (on a man named William Kemmler), the results were so physically horrific 
that George Westinghouse, whose company made the product, stated that "They 
could have done better using an ax."

(source: Joel Cohen, a former prosecutor, practices white-collar criminal 
defense law at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP and is the author of Blindfolds 
Off: Judges on How They Decide.

Richard A. Posner is a judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, and a 
senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.

Jed S. Rakoff is a senior judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern 
District of New York and an adjunct professor at Columbia Law 
School----slate.com)





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

Why we should kill the death penalty


2 men were executed Monday night in Arkansas in the nation's 1st double 
execution since 2000. Oklahoma and Louisiana, on the other hand, have recently 
worked to end capital punishment in their states, even if only temporarily.

The sudden strides across the country in different directions have reignited 
the debate on the efficacy and morality of the death penalty in the United 
States.

This debate, though, should have been settled a long time ago. There are few 
good reasons to support the use of capital punishment, and its many flaws make 
it a nearly untenable position in today's America.

The main reason the death penalty is supported in the world today is the myth 
that it deters other violent crimes. A study found that 88 % of experts in 
criminal justice studies denied the claim that capital punishment actually 
deters future criminals.

Crimes that merit such severe punishments are often done hastily or by those in 
need of mental healthcare. Neither of these scenarios involve a careful 
weighing of the consequences of crime. The difference between life in prison or 
death probably means very little to someone considering such heinous acts.

Statistically, there is no correlation between the death penalty and lower 
crime rates. In fact, states without capital punishment have lower murder rates 
than those with it.

The death penalty does not only fail to achieve its purpose as a punishment but 
also causes a great deal of harm and injustice.

The exoneration of someone on death row is not uncommon; for every 10 people 
who have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S., 2 
person has been set free.

It's not difficult to imagine, then, the number of people who aren't recorded 
in this statistic because they were executed before they could be exonerated. 
One study estimates that for every person who was exonerated, another was 
wrongly killed.

This is the tragic irony of capital punishment: It propagates the very thing it 
hopes to destroy. In trying to eliminate murder through execution, more 
innocent lives are lost.

This begs the question: Why do we keep the death penalty around? One reason is 
the human instinct to meet violence with violence. When the public sees a 
horrific crime, the first reaction is often extreme punishment to satisfy a 
thirst for revenge.

While "an eye for an eye" worked as a justice system in ancient times, we have 
the ability to move past it for a more progressive, restorative sense of 
justice. The old ways of thinking about justice revolved around what the 
wronged felt and what revenge they desired.

Now, our views of justice should progress, being centered on the healing of all 
parties involved. Perhaps our justice system can work for the best outcome of 
the victim, criminal and public without contradiction.

The death penalty simply doesn't allow for this type of justice. Instead of 
considering the facts of what actually deters crime, it is an emotional 
reaction of meeting violence with more violence. It makes society more 
dangerous, not safer, for the innocent.

Capital punishment also rejects the notion of redemption for criminals. Instead 
of allowing them the opportunity to change their ways and become contributing 
members of society, even if that is while incarcerated, execution cuts their 
lives short.

When trying to decide what justice is, we should contemplate the goal of our 
system. If it is to make a healthier, more whole society where redemption and 
safety are priorities, we should move past the death penalty.

(source: Opinion; Daniel Payne is a freshman integrated marketing 
communications major from Collierville, Tennessee----The (Univ. Mississippi) 
Daily Mississippian)

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

Should Christians Support the Death Penalty?


Arkansas executed a 4th prisoner on death row last night. 3 days prior to that, 
the state had done 2 back-to-back executions by lethal injections in Lincoln 
County, Arkansas. 4 other executions have been blocked by court order.

As a Catholic scholar who writes about religion, politics and policy, I 
understand how Christians struggle with the death penalty - there are those who 
cannot endure the idea and there are others who support its use. Some Christian 
theologians have also observed that capital punishment could lead to the 
conversion of criminals who might repent of their crimes when faced with the 
finality of death.

Is the death penalty anti-Christian?

The 2 sides

In its early centuries, Christianity was seen with suspicion by authorities. 
Writing in defense of Christians who were unfairly charged with crimes in 
2nd-century Rome, philosopher Anthenagoras of Athens condemned the death 
penalty when he wrote that Christians "cannot endure even to see a man put to 
death, though justly."

But as Christianity became more connected with state power, European Christian 
monarchs and governments regularly carried out the death penalty until its 
abolition in the 1950s through the European Convention on Human Rights. In the 
Western world, today, only the United States and Belarus retain capital 
punishment for crimes not committed during wartime.

According to a 2015 Pew Research Center Survey, support for the death penalty 
is falling worldwide. However, in the United States a majority of white 
Protestants and Catholics are in favor of it.

In the Hebrew Bible, Exodus 21:12 states that "whoever strikes a man so that he 
dies shall be put to death." In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus, however, rejects the 
notion of retribution when he says "if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, 
turn to him the other also."

While it is true that the Hebrew Bible prescribes capital punishment for a 
variety of offenses, it is also true that later Jewish jurists set out rigorous 
standards for the death penalty so that it could be used only in rare 
circumstances.

Support for death penalty

At issue in Christian considerations of the death penalty is whether the 
government or the state has the obligation to punish criminals and defend its 
citizens.

Saint Paul, an early Christian evangelist, wrote in his letter to the Romans 
that a ruler acts as "an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer."

The Middle Ages in Europe saw thousands of murderers, witches and heretics put 
to death. While church courts of this period generally did not apply capital 
punishment, the church did turn criminals over to secular authorities for 
execution.

13th-century Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas argued that the death penalty 
could be justified for the greater welfare of society. Later Protestant 
reformers also supported the right of the state to impose capital punishment. 
John Calvin, a Protestant theologian and reformer, for example, argued that 
Christian forgiveness did not mean overturning established laws.

The case against

The deterrence value of capital punishment remains an issue of debate. In the 
United States, there are also strong arguments that capital punishment is 
unfairly applied, especially to African-Americans.

Among Christian leaders, Pope Francis has been at the forefront of arguing 
against the death penalty. Saint John Paul II also maintained that capital 
punishment should be reserved only for "absolute necessity."

Pope Francis observes that the death penalty is no longer relevant because 
modern prisons prevent criminals from doing further harm.

Pope Francis speaks of a larger ethic of forgiveness. He emphasizes social 
justice for all citizens as well as the opportunity for those who harm society 
to make amends through acts that affirm life, not death.

Jesus' admonition to forgive one's enemies is often thought to do away with the 
"law of the talion," or an "eye for an eye" retribution - a standard that goes 
as far back as the prebiblical Code of Hammurabi - a law code of ancient 
Mesopotamia.

For many, the debate is about the relationship between Christ's call for 
forgiveness and the legitimate powers of the state.

Those Christians who support capital punishment argue that Jesus was talking 
about heavenly realities, not the earthly matters that governments have to deal 
with. Christians who oppose the death penalty say that being Christian means 
bringing heavenly realities to the here and now.

This debate is not just about capital punishment, but about what it means to be 
a Christian.

(source: Mathew Schmalz, Associate Professor of Religion, College of the Holy 
Cross----The Conversation)