[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., DEL., VAL., ALA., MO., S.DAK., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 9



TEXAS----impending execution

Inmate Set to Die for Fort Worth Killings Loses Appeal


Christopher Wilkins, 48, is set to be executed for fatally shooting 2 men in 
Tarrant County in 2005.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has rejected an appeal from a 48-year-old 
man set for execution this week for the slayings of 2 men in Fort Worth more 
than 11 years ago.

Christopher Wilkins faces lethal injection Wednesday evening in what would be 
the nation's 1st execution of 2017.

Wilkins contends his lawyer at his 2008 trial in Tarrant County was deficient. 
The appeals court says the appeal is improper and has dismissed it without 
ruling on its merits.

Wilkins has another appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Evidence showed Wilkins fled a Houston halfway house in October 2005, stole a 
truck and drove to Fort Worth. He was convicted of fatally shooting 2 men there 
for duping him into buying a phony rock of crack cocaine.

(source: nbcdfw.com)

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

2 deserving of death penalty


In the last few years I had begun to question the true value of the death 
penalty, especially after an East Texas man whom I believe was innocent was 
executed. I began to wonder if solitary confinemenet for the rest of a 
murderer's miserable life might even be worse, sort of a punishment that keeps 
giving.

But if the death penalty ever had merit, it is deserved for 2 people now 
fighting it. They, themselves, want to continue living in spite of having 
blatantly killed others.

One is Dylann Roof in South Carolina, who shot church parishioners who had 
welcomed him into their Bible study with open arms and were rewarded for their 
goodness by meing murdered.

The other is John Battaglia from Dallas, who shot his little girsl in cold 
blood while they begged him not to and their mother listened helplessly on the 
phone.

I feel both of these men are pure evil and they knew exactly what they were 
doing, althought Battaglia is trying to prertned he doesn't remember it.

Roof brazenly says he has no regrets, while Battaglia has gone on to live the 
15 years that he denied his duaghters. Neither man deserves to live another 
day.

Beverly Rigsby, Richardson

********

Let's abolish the death penalty


I find the statistics disturbing, alarming - and encouraging. Death at the 
hands of our criminal justice system remains abhorrent by any measure; its 
finality is chilling. Disturbing is the fact that even in Texas, we have 
executed people who have later been proved innocent -- too late for Cameron 
Todd Willingham in 2004. Especially alarming are the statistics regarding a 
"racial disparity" in both death sentences and in executions.

Encouraging is the fact that the number of death sentences and executions have 
declined dramatically. Prosecutors, judges, juries and the Texas Court of 
Criminal Appeals have been sending us a clear message for the past few years: 
It is now time for Texas to abolish the death penalty. Our legislators gather 
in January. It can be done!

Bob Michael, Carrollton

(source for both: Letters to the Editor, Dallas Morning News)






PENNSYLVANIA----female faces death penalty

Prosecutors to seek death penalty for woman accused of killing son, sending 
photo to father


Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty for a McKeesport woman accused of 
killing her son, the Allegheny County district attorney's office announced 
Thursday.

Christian Clark, 21, remains jailed awaiting trial on homicide, attempted 
homicide, assault and endangerment charges.

Police say Clark sent her son's father photos of the 17-month-old boy's 
lifeless body during hours' worth of angry text messages Nov. 1 because she 
believed he planned to be with another woman.

"Ya kids ain't safe here I don't want them here" and "Answer me or im going to 
jail for child endangerment" were among dozens of texts listed in the criminal 
complaint. Then came a message about an hour into the rant that said, "I'm 
killing them," followed by a laughing emoji with tears coming from its eyes, 
police said.

Clark called 911 more than an hour later and police found the lifeless boy. 
Clark first claimed not to know how he died, then confessed to smothering him, 
police said.

Clark is also charged with trying to smother the couple's 2-year-old daughter.

If she's sentenced to death, she'll become only the 3rd woman on death row in 
Pennsylvania.

Andre Price Jr., 24, of McKeesport, who is accused of not calling 911 when he 
received the messages, waived a preliminary hearing Monday and will go to 
trial.

(source: WXPI news)






DELAWARE:

Dover murder retrial begins for former death row inmate


A former death row prisoner has rejected a plea offer and will proceed to trial 
Monday morning on allegations that he killed a man during a Dover drug deal.

Isaiah McCoy, 29, told Superior Court Judge Robert B. Young that he is innocent 
and would not take a deal in which he would plead guilty to manslaughter and a 
gun charge, which would carry a 5- to 50-year sentence.

Instead, a non-jury trial before Young is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. in the 
Kent County Courthouse. The trial could last all week.

McCoy was arrested in May 2010 in connection with the killing of 30-year-old 
Jeffrey Munford during a drug deal gone awry in the rear parking lot of the 
Rodney Village Bowling Alley in Dover.

A jury found him guilty of murder in June 2012, but the Delaware Supreme Court 
overturned his conviction and death sentence.

The justice did so because of the prosecutor's conduct at McCoy's 1st trial. 
Former Deputy Attorney General R. David Favata belittled McCoy, who was 
representing himself, and lied to a judge during the trial, leading the Supreme 
Court to order a retrial and suspend Favata from practicing law for 6 months 
and 1 day, the court said.

(source: delawalreonline.com)






VIRGINIA:

Welch murder defense in Lyon case likely to invoke lingering death penalty 
questions


When one of Central Virginia's most closely watched criminal trials in years 
opens in Bedford County, so will an old legal can of worms: how the often 
confusing case law on Virginia's death penalty affects the sentencing if jurors 
return a guilty verdict.

Prosecutors want the option kept on the table to put Lloyd Lee "Michael" Welch 
Jr. to death if he is convicted in the murders of Sheila and Katherine Lyon, 2 
young sisters who disappeared en route to a Maryland shopping mall in 1975.

But the legal defense for Welch, a former carnival worker with ties to Bedford 
County, cried foul in legal papers filed months ahead of the trial.

? First his lawyers called for Virginia's death penalty to be declared 
unconstitutional. His attorneys also said even if it stands, the punishment 
cannot be used on Welch due to the legal status of the death penalty in 
Virginia at the time the alleged crimes were committed.

Welch, 60, faces 2 charges of 1st-degree murder in a trial scheduled to begin 
April 18 in Bedford County Circuit Court.

He is accused of abducting the sisters on or around March 25, 1975 and 
eventually killing them and disposing of their bodies in Bedford County. The 
bodies have never been found.

Welch also was indicted in December on an unrelated charge of rape involving a 
6-year-old girl in northern Virginia in 1996. That indictment charged him with 
rape, aggravated sexual battery, indecent liberties and object sexual 
penetration.

While he faces prosecution in Prince William County on those charges, the 
murder charges are still pending in Central Virginia.

Lawyers in Bedford County have spent hours in recent months making arguments 
before Judge James Updike Jr., who will preside over the April trial, on 
pre-trial motions affecting the proceedings.

Welch's lawyer in the murder case who filed the motion to strike the death 
penalty, Aaron Houchens, of Moneta, did not return a call seeking comment.

The judge already has ruled out declaring the death penalty unconstitutional, 
but signaled he would consider a motion saying it could not be used in the 
Welch case.

Both sides will argue over Supreme Court rulings and Virginia case law on 
capital punishment, reviving hotly contested legal issues.

At its core the defense says the death penalty was unconstitutional throughout 
the United States at the time of the alleged offenses.

They pointed in court papers to a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Furman v. 
Georgia, and a later state decision, Huggins v. Commonwealth, which applied the 
high court decision to the state statute.

Due to these decisions, Virginia's death penalty statute from March to April 
1975 when the alleged offenses took place was unconstitutional, they argued.

Virginia later in 1975 amended state law to align it with the court decisions, 
reinstating the death penalty, but that was effective after the alleged crimes, 
they said. Using it retroactively, Welch's lawyers argued, would be 
unconstitutional as ex post facto law.

Based on the legal status of Virginia's death penalty at the time of the Lyon 
sisters' vanishing, "the maximum penalty the defendant is eligible to receive 
is life imprisonment" if convicted, Welch's attorneys said in their motion to 
strike the death penalty.

Responding in court filings, the commonwealth argued the "statute which 
outlawed the crime was still in place and enforceable" at the time of the 
alleged offenses.

Calling up their own case law, prosecutors cited 2 cases regarding the death 
penalty in which courts upheld the punishment.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbert v. Florida (1977) that while that state 
made changes to its death penalty statute between the time of a murder and the 
trial, the changes were "procedural" and "ameliorative" so did not trigger the 
prohibition on ex post facto laws.

In Smith v. Commonwealth (1978), the Virginia Supreme Court upheld the death 
penalty for a defendant convicted of capital murder after rape, when challenged 
in a similar manner to Welch's motion.

Pre-trial motions will continue to be heard in Circuit Court ahead of Welch's 
trial scheduled in April, some of which could change the evidence jurors hear 
and the penalties if Welch is convicted.

Bedford County Commonwealth's Attorney Wes Nance, the lead prosecutor, said he 
could not comment on the case before trial.

Court records show the next step before trial is a hearing on pre-trial motions 
Jan. 24 at 9 a.m.

(source: newsadvance.com)






ALABAMA:

Jeff Sessions, the Grim Reaper of Alabama


When Jeff Sessions was Alabama's attorney general, he supported the death 
sentence for a Ku Klux Klan member convicted of lynching a black teenager. Mr. 
Sessions, whose confirmation hearings for attorney general begin on Tuesday, 
points to this to rebut the charges of racism that have followed him for 
decades.

Yet we learn more about Mr. Sessions' legal mind-set from a look at the 40-plus 
death sentences he fought to uphold as Alabama's attorney general from 1995 to 
1997. He worked to execute insane, mentally ill and intellectually disabled 
people, among others, who were convicted in trials riddled with instances of 
prosecutorial misconduct, racial discrimination and grossly inadequate defense 
lawyering. Mr. Sessions' eager participation in an unjust Alabama capital 
system makes him a frightening prospective civil rights enforcer for the 
nation.

Mr. Sessions secured the execution of Varnall Weeks, who believed he was God 
and would "reign in heaven as a tortoise" after his death. After the Supreme 
Court banned executions of insane people, Mr. Sessions persuaded a federal 
court to defer to an Alabama court's findings that Mr. Weeks was competent 
enough to be killed even though he met "the dictionary generic definition of 
insanity."

Mr. Sessions also pushed for the death penalty for Samuel Ivery, a black man 
convicted of decapitating a black woman. At his trial, Mr. Ivery claimed 
insanity and presented evidence that he was a paranoid schizophrenic and 
believed himself a "ninja of God." The prosecutor countered during closing 
arguments that "this is not another case of niggeritous," that is, racism. Mr. 
Ivery later argued that the slur tainted his conviction with racial bias, but 
the appellate court sided with Mr. Sessions in upholding his death sentence.

By contrast, a state appellate court ruled against Mr. Sessions when it 
reversed the conviction and death sentence of Levi Pace, a black man. His trial 
was tainted with racial discrimination during the selection of the grand jury 
foreman, and the trial court failed to strike two prospective jurors who "felt 
it was their duty to recommend a sentence of death, regardless of the 
circumstances."

Many of the people Mr. Sessions worked to execute had received abysmal 
representation at trial. Holly Wood and Eugene Clemons, 1 black men, were both 
classified as "educable mentally retarded." Yet their lawyers failed to present 
any proof of their intellectual disabilities, even though mitigating evidence 
of this type can be crucial to avoiding death sentences. At the time of their 
trials, Mr. Wood's lawyer had practiced law for less than a year and Mr. 
Clemons's jury didn't have a single black member. In 1996, Mr. Sessions 
rebuffed both of their initial appeals. Alabama executed Mr. Wood in 2010, even 
after a federal court found that his I.Q. met "the definition of mental 
retardation."

Mr. Sessions also enforced the death penalty against James Wyman Smith, whose 
appointed lawyer had admitted in court that he hadn't "even read the statute" 
about the penalty phase of the trial the night before that phase started. To be 
fair, the lawyer was being paid only "$4.98 per hour to prepare for the defense 
of a human's life." That's because until 1999, Alabama law capped at $1,000 the 
compensation court-appointed capital lawyers could receive for out-of-court 
preparation.

Even when juries rejected death sentences, judges often overrode them. It is 
the only state that allows such judicial overrides. 11 death sentences that Mr. 
Sessions defended were imposed by judges over the will of the jurors.

For example, Larry Padgett's jury voted 9-3 for life imprisonment, in part 
because of residual doubt over his guilt. The trial judge overrode the 
decision, but his conviction was eventually reversed because the prosecutor 
failed to promptly turn over DNA-related evidence pointing to his innocence. 
Mr. Sessions appealed the reversal, but Mr. Padgett was ultimately exonerated.

Although Mr. Sessions participated in a capital system stacked against 
defendants, his main policy concerns seemed to have been that Alabamians were 
being executed neither quickly enough nor for enough types of crimes. He 
promoted a bill seeking to eliminate a stage of the capital appeals process and 
another to execute people convicted twice of drug trafficking. Neither passed.

Mr. Sessions' support for the death penalty, even in troubling circumstances, 
remains unwavering. Last August, he praised Mr. Trump's 1989 newspaper ads 
calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York, which appeared 
shortly after 5 black and Latino teenagers were charged with raping a white 
jogger. The men, known as the Central Park 5, were exonerated in 2002 and 
awarded a $41 million settlement, but for Mr. Sessions, the ads proved that Mr. 
Trump "believes in law and order."

Surely, Mr. Sessions isn't to blame for all the flaws in Alabama's capital 
system that pervaded the cases he litigated, many of which involved horrific 
crimes. But his pursuit of executions in spite of racial bias, defendants' 
mental disabilities and other injustices raises concerns about how he will 
oversee federal capital prosecutions, and shows his lack of commitment to due 
process and equality. Mr. Sessions' ugly record in Alabama makes clear that his 
nomination to be the attorney general should be swiftly rejected.

(source: Op-Ed; John J. Donohue III is a professor and Max Schoening is a 
student at Stanford Law School----New York Times)


MISSOURI:

Missouri Execution Drug Purchases Revealed----Death row inmates spent years 
fighting over Missouri's use of compounded pentobarbital. A sealed court filing 
obtained by BuzzFeed News says they may have been fighting the wrong thing.


Missouri purchased manufactured drugs for use in recent executions that were 
made by a company that enacted stringent measures to prevent any state from 
doing so, BuzzFeed News has learned.

A sealed court document obtained by BuzzFeed News shows that the state had, at 
least sometimes in the past 6 years, bought manufactured pentobarbital - as 
opposed to the compounded version of the drug inmates spent years fighting over 
in court - for use in its executions.

For years, Missouri death row inmates have waged a legal battle with the state 
over the use of compounded pentobarbital. Manufactured drugs are subject to 
Food and Drug Administration regulation, while compounded drugs - which have a 
significantly higher failure rate - are regulated largely by the states.

But a discussion between Attorney General Chris Koster's office and a federal 
judge in a sealed courtroom indicates that the state previously purchased a 
manufactured version of the drug. The sole FDA-approved manufacturer of the 
drug Missouri uses, pentobarbital, is Akorn. Akorn has stringent measures in 
place in an attempt to keep it out of the hands of executioners, making 
companies that wish to sell their drug sign an agreement that it will not go to 
death penalty states. Despite those efforts, it appears the state has been able 
to obtain some anyway.

Akorn did not respond to a request for comment.

The revelation comes months after Mississippi death row inmates attempted to 
subpoena records from the Missouri Department of Corrections, in an effort to 
discover a better method of execution than used in Mississippi. Missouri 
successfully quashed the subpoena after the supplier said it would no longer 
sell the drugs if its identity were revealed.

In a July court hearing, lawyers with Attorney General Koster's office argued 
that even acknowledging they had documents on some of the requests in the 
subpoena would reveal too much information about its supplier.

"I'm going to order a sealed proceeding and banish anyone from the courtroom 
who is not a party or counsel," Judge Stephen Bough said. "And order 
confidential restrictions not to discuss or file with the clients or in any 
other way the information that's discussed in this proceeding, subject to 
contempt order."

After the court was cleared, an attorney with the Attorney General's office 
laid out his concerns with revealing whether the state had the documents.

"I'm primarily focused on request number 2 for documents about pentobarbital," 
Assistant Attorney General Greg Goodwin said, according to an excerpt in a 
later court filing.

"If [we] identified whether or not there is a responsive document to that 
request, that answers the question of whether it is or is not manufactured or 
compounded pentobarbital because manufactured pentobarbital has that 
information, and compounded pentobarbital does not have a package insert."

"So by merely saying that there exists a document that proves it's manufactured 
or proves that it's compounded, that answers the question does Missouri use 
compounded or manufactured pentobarbital," Goodwin said.

The judge then stated that there were 3 responsive documents to that request, 
according to the court filing.

The court filing was marked that it should be sealed, but for some reason was 
available on the federal courts' website, PACER. Shortly after BuzzFeed News 
approached an attorney representing the execution drug supplier, the filing 
became sealed.

The now-sealed court filing does not identify the supplier of the drug. When 
Missouri first began using pentobarbital in Nov. 2013, the state bought the 
drug from an out-of-state compounding pharmacy called the Apothecary Shoppe. 
The pharmacy was not licensed to sell in Missouri, which under normal 
circumstances could be a felony.

After its identity was revealed, a death row inmate sued the pharmacy in early 
2014. The pharmacy settled out of court, agreeing to no longer sell execution 
drugs. BuzzFeed News later revealed that the pharmacy had admitted to 
committing more than 1,000 pharmaceutical violations.

When the Apothecary Shoppe dropped out, Missouri discovered a new supplier that 
it has referred to only by the pseudonym "M7," and has attempted to keep all 
information about the supplier secret.

Under M7, the state has mysteriously built up a considerable stockpile of 
execution drugs, something that does not fit with using compounded drugs. 
Compounded drugs have a shelf-life measured in weeks, while manufactured drugs 
can last for years.

Using pentobarbital from the Apothecary Shoppe and M7, Missouri has executed 19 
death row inmates. The leadership that oversaw those executions - Gov. Jay 
Nixon, Attorney General Chris Koster, and Director of Department of Corrections 
George Lombardi - are on their way out.

Nixon was term-limited out, Koster lost his bid to replace him as governor, and 
both leave office on Monday. Additionally, Lombardi announced his resignation 
after accusations that his employees retaliated against women who alleged they 
were sexually harassed by superiors.

The 3 offices did not return a request for comment.

Missouri is scheduled to carry out another execution at the end of the month.

(source: BuzzFeedNews)






SOUTH DAKOTA:

Evaluation ordered for South Dakota man sentenced to death


A South Dakota circuit judge is asking the attorney for convicted prison guard 
killer Rodney Berget to submit a report about whether his client is mentally 
disabled.

State Attorney General Marty Jackley says the judge wants to review the 
findings before ruling on a motion by prosecutors to dismiss Berget's death 
penalty appeal. Berget told Judge Doug Hoffman in September that he wanted to 
drop the appeal.

Berget and another inmate, Eric Robert, were convicted of killing guard Ronald 
Johnson in 2011. Robert was executed in 2012.

Jackley says that testing throughout Berget's life has shown him to be a person 
of "at least ordinary intelligence" and there's no evidence to suggest that he 
isn't competent.

Berget's attorney, Eric Schulte, was not immediately available for comment.

(source: Associated Press)






CALIFORNIA:

California's top court to decide whether planned speed-up in executions is 
legal


California voters in November legalized marijuana, approved a plan to reduce 
the prison population and enacted gun controls.

But on one key issue - the death penalty - the liberal tide shifted. Voters 
rejected a measure to ban capital punishment and instead approved an initiative 
intended to hasten executions.

That measure is now before the California Supreme Court. If the court allows it 
to go forward, executions are likely to resume this year, lawyers on both sides 
of the debate agreed.

The court voted 5 to 0 in closed session last month to put a hold on 
Proposition 66, sponsored by prosecutors and passed by 51% of voters.

The measure established strict legal deadlines for death penalty appeals and 
shifted some capital punishment reviews from the state high court to county 
trial courts.

Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and Justice Ming W. Chin removed themselves 
from the case because they both serve on the Judicial Council, the 
policy-making body of the courts and a defendant in the lawsuit.

Depending on which appellate justices are appointed to take their places, the 
recusal could be good news for opponents of the death penalty. Both Chin and 
Cantil-Sakauye are among the more conservative members of the court.

Death penalty opponents argue the measure violates separation of powers 
requirements because the voters, acting as lawmakers, stripped authority from 
the judicial branch.

Government is divided into 3 equal branches - executive, legislative and 
judicial - and the Constitution says no branch may usurp the responsibilities 
of another.

"The Legislature doesn't get to tell the courts how to do their job," said 
Christina Von der Ahe Rayburn, who is representing former Atty. Gen. John Van 
de Kamp and former El Dorado County Supervisor Ron Briggs in the lawsuit.

The measure requires appeals to be decided within 5 years of sentencing. It can 
now take a decade or longer for a condemned inmate to have his or her automatic 
appeal decided by the California Supreme Court.

In automatic appeals, condemned inmates challenge their convictions and 
sentences based on evidence in the trial record. Rulings by the judge and how 
the jury was picked may be closely examined in these appeals to the California 
Supreme Court.

Condemned inmates also are entitled to a habeas corpus challenge, which is 
based on evidence outside the trial record. Did the prosecutor withhold 
exonerating evidence? Was the defense lawyer incompetent? Did jurors engage in 
misconduct?

Getting lawyers to take death penalty appeals, particularly habeas cases, has 
been a huge hurdle in California.

Relatively low pay and the emotional toll the cases take on lawyers are only 
part of the problem.

They say the $50,000 the state provides for a habeas investigation is much too 
low to hire the experts needed to investigate the crimes and the inmates' 
lives.

In 2014, 352 inmates on death row had no habeas lawyer, said UC Berkeley law 
professor Elisabeth Semel.

To resolve the lawyer shortage, Proposition 66 would require attorneys 
appointed to defend low-income criminal defendants also to represent condemned 
inmates in the automatic appeals.

The California Supreme Court now decides both the automatic appeal and the 
habeas petitions and appoints the lawyers.

Under Proposition 66, the sentencing judge would decide the habeas challenge 
and appoint a lawyer to represent the condemned.

Kent Scheidegger, legal counsel for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation and 
an author of Proposition 66, said trial judges will have better luck than the 
state high court in getting lawyers to take the cases.

"There are individual provisions of this measure that raise serious 
constitutional issues. - Gerald Uelmen, Santa Clara University law professor 
emeritus

"Lawyers who do criminal work need to stay in good" with Superior Court judges, 
he said.

The death penalty advocate predicted the challengers' separation of powers 
argument would fail.

"There are a large number of statues that direct how the courts process cases 
and what priority they give them, and they have never been struck down," he 
said.

Scheidegger said the new deadlines for deciding appeals are needed because the 
cases are lingering in the courts too long.

He blamed defense lawyers for asking for too many extensions of time to file 
their written arguments and the California Supreme Court for granting the 
requests.

"Basically, the court needs to get tough on these people," he added. "You read 
a docket of capital cases today and see 23 extensions of time. They need to 
start saying no."

The law allows for extensions, and the court can decide whether to grant them. 
Under Proposition 66, the court generally could grant extensions under only 
extraordinary circumstances.

Semel, on the other hand, said the California Supreme Court would be spending 
virtually all its time on death penalty cases if Proposition 66 were allowed to 
take effect.

"The court can only handle a certain number of these cases a year," Semel said.

At the pace envisioned by Proposition 66, the court would have little time to 
decide civil disputes, she said, adding, "It is not feasible. There are just 
too many cases."

The backlog of fully briefed cases already is large. As of November, 77 death 
penalty appeals and 89 habeas petitions were completed and ready for the 
California Supreme Court to decide, Semel said.

Chapman Law School professor John Eastman said the California Supreme Court can 
move faster on the cases.

Judges "sit on them because they don't like the death penalty," the 
constitutional law professor said. "They don't sit on them because they are 
overwhelmed with work."

Gov. Jerry Brown appointed 3 of the state high court justices. Republican 
governors appointed the other 4, who include 3 former prosecutors.

For decades prior to January 2015, the court, with only 1 Democratic appointee, 
was considered moderately conservative.

Santa Clara University law professor emeritus Gerald Uelmen, who served as the 
chief executive of a state commission that examined California's death penalty 
system, said the court's decision to put the measure on hold shows the justices 
believe it needs a thorough examination.

Should California execute these 749 death row inmates?

"There are individual provisions of this measure that raise serious 
constitutional issues," Uelmen said. "I would expect the court is going to 
strike down at least some provisions."

California has more than 750 inmates on death row - the largest in the country 
- and legal challenges over lethal injection have prevented executions since 
2006.

After completing state appeals, inmates can challenge their sentences in 
federal court, which also can take several years.

In addition to the separation of powers argument, the challengers say the 
measure violates a rule that limits ballot measures to a single subject.

Besides setting deadlines, the measure changes the law to make it easier for 
the state to adopt a method of execution.

In their lawsuit, the challengers said the change would result in the "near 
immediate" execution of 20 inmates.

The court has asked for more written arguments on the case by the end of the 
month and may decide to hold a hearing.

Rayburn estimated the case probably would be decided by early June. Scheidegger 
said he hoped it would be sooner.

(source: Los Angeles Times)






USA:

Which Moral Principle Should Prevail In Case Of Dylann Roof?


MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

We're going to turn back now to that disturbing story out of South Carolina. 
You'll remember that Dylann Roof was found guilty of killing nine members of 
the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015. The U.S. Justice 
Department charged Roof with a hate crime and is now seeking the death penalty. 
During the sentencing hearing last week which will determine Roof's sentence, 
Roof told jurors that he had dismissed his lawyers and was representing himself 
because he rejected any claims that he is psychologically impaired.

Prosecutors are arguing that Roof deserves death because of his obvious lack of 
remorse, his blatant racial animus and his stated desire to start a race war. 
But there are other points of view. A number of the family members of the 
victims have publicly expressed their opposition to the death penalty. Some 
have said that the years of appeals that accompany a death sentence will be an 
additional burden to the family and to the community trying to heal.

So that prompted us to want to consider the competing moral and ethical claims 
here. Which moral principle should prevail? So to think this through, we called 
Jack Marshall. He's an ethicist lawyer and the founder of the blog Ethics 
Alarms, and he was kind enough to join us in our studios in Washington, D.C. 
Jack Marshall, thanks so much for joining us.

JACK MARSHALL: Thank you, Michel. Always an honor.

MARTIN: So what are the ethical questions here?

MARSHALL: You know, ethics is the matter of society trying to decide what's 
right and what's wrong, and we learn over time. And the idea is to come up with 
standards that will lead to a more healthy society. And it's different from the 
moral position. I mean, the moral position may be held by the families that 
killing anyone is wrong. Society shouldn't kill people. It's hypocritical for 
them to do that. It's really a Christian position.

The ethical position is a little bit more tricky, and that is isn't it 
important that society express absolute revulsion at something? There is some 
level that actually justifies the ultimate penalty. And we have to get by all 
sorts of legal problems and basic problems, fairness problems. You don't want 
to have capital punishment where it's going to be handed out in disparate ways 
or on racially biased ways and you don't want to execute the wrong person. But, 
you know, in a situation like Dylann Roof, there's no question that he did it, 
so...

MARTIN: But when you have a situation where you have a group of people, those 
who were primarily affected by this...

MARSHALL: Yes.

MARTIN: ...Whose family members were murdered, who have a moral objection, what 
weight should that be given in this decision about what sentence Roof should be 
given?

MARSHALL: The death penalty is not for the victims. It's not for the victims' 
families. It's for society, and it's to make a statement. And it's to set a 
standard. One of the important things about having a death penalty for 
something - be it Osama bin Laden or Hitler or Jack the Ripper or whatever we 
want - it means that then we can calibrate other heinous acts down from that. 
So we can't delegate the decision to them, and we can't overweigh their 
particular take on it. It's part of the consideration, but I think it can't be 
given undue weight.

MARTIN: Do you feel at the end of the day - are you satisfied that the 
appropriate ethical questions are being asked in this case?

MARSHALL: I think we have to ask our self what - looking at this case, what is 
in the long range best interests of society as a whole? And therefore, what is 
the message we need to send to all citizens to say we are drawing a strong line 
in the sand that say this will not be tolerated and people that do this will no 
longer have a right to anything, including life, in our society? We have to 
decide if there is going to be some behavior that we are willing to say that 
about, and that's the ethical issue.

MARTIN: That was Jack Marshall. He is an ethicist. He is an attorney. He's the 
founder of the blog Ethics Alarms. He was kind enough to join us here at our 
studios in Washington, D.C. Jack Marshall, thank you so much for speaking with 
us.

MARSHALL: Thanks, Michel.

(source: KERA/NPR)