[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OHIO, UTAH, WASH., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 15




OHIO:

Ohio seeks drug reversing lethal injection process if needed


Ohio's prisons agency is trying to obtain a drug that could reverse the lethal 
injection process if needed by stopping the effects of another drug previously 
used in problematic executions.

The request to use the drug would come if executioners weren't confident the 
1st of 3 lethal drugs would render a prisoner unconscious, Gary Mohr, director 
of the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said in federal court 
testimony Jan. 6.

Mohr said he would inform Republican Gov. John Kasich and ask for a reprieve at 
that point.

"Governor, I am not confident that we, in fact, can achieve a successful 
execution. I want to reverse the effects of this," Mohr testified, describing 
the language he would use in such a circumstance.

Mohr testified that Ohio planned to order the drug, flumazenil, but didn't 
currently have it.

Prisons spokeswoman JoEllen Smith declined to comment Thursday on Mohr's 
testimony, a copy of which was reviewed by The Associated Press.

Flumazenil is used to reverse the effects of a sedative called midazolam when 
that drug causes bad reactions in patients.

Midazolam is the 1st drug in Ohio's new three-drug execution method. Magistrate 
Judge Michael Merz is weighing a challenge to this method's constitutionality, 
following a weeklong hearing.

Ohio plans to put child killer Ronald Phillips to death next month with 
midazolam and 2 other drugs.

On Friday, the state acknowledged it has enough drugs for a fourth execution 
this year, in May, while staying tight-lipped about its supply beyond that.

On Monday, the AP reported that documents show Ohio has obtained enough lethal 
drugs to carry out dozens of executions. Merz then ordered the state to provide 
"a statement of its intentions" when it came to drugs used in future 
executions.

State attorneys said in a Friday court filing that the news report of multiple 
executions didn't take into account expiration dates of the drugs, which the 
state wouldn't previously disclose.

The AP requested those expiration dates Friday.

The state also said without explanation that the prison system's "contingency 
planning" needed to be taken into consideration when looking at execution 
numbers.

On Oct. 3, state lawyers told Merz that Ohio planned to execute Phillips and 
death row inmates Raymond Tibbetts and Gary Otte this year.

"The state regrets if this response left the Court with the impression that 
such efforts had only resulted in a supply of drugs sufficient to proceed with 
the executions of Inmates Phillips, Tibbetts, and Otte," state attorneys said 
Friday.

Messages were left with attorneys representing Phillips.

Ohio appears to be the 1st state using midazolam as a lethal drug to seek a 
reversal drug for it, according to experts at the Washington, D.C.-based Death 
Penalty Information Center, Berkeley Law School's Death Penalty Clinic and 
Reprieve, a London-based human rights organization that tracks capital 
punishment issues.

Florida and Oklahoma have used midazolam as the 1st in a 3-drug protocol. 
Alabama and Virginia have proposed it as part of a 3-drug protocol.

Executions have been on hold in Ohio since January 2014, when Dennis McGuire 
gasped and snorted during the 26 minutes it took him to die, the longest 
execution since the state resumed putting prisoners to death in 1999.

The state used a 2-drug method with McGuire, starting with midazolam, its 1st 
use for executions in the country.

Attorneys challenging the method say midazolam is unlikely to relieve an 
inmate's pain. The drug, which is meant to sedate inmates, also was used in a 
problematic 2014 execution in Arizona. But last year, the U.S. Supreme Court 
upheld the use of midazolam in an Oklahoma case.

The state says the 3-drug method is similar to its past execution process, 
which survived court challenges. State attorneys also say the Supreme Court 
ruling last year makes clear the use of midazolam is allowable.

Columbus surgeon Jonathan Groner, a lethal injection expert, said past problems 
with Ohio executions have come about because executioners didn't properly 
connect the IVs.

"A reversal drug will not help with that problem and could make it worse - if 
the IV is not in the vein, giving more drugs may cause more pain," Groner said.

(source: Associated Press)






UTAH:

40th anniversary: Gary Gilmore's death a milestone in nation's capital 
punishment saga ---- The state-sanctioned execution by a firing squad on Jan. 
17, 1977, became the 1st one in U.S. in 10 years.


Gary Gilmore was 36 years old when he welcomed the bullets from a 5-member 
firing squad at the Utah State Prison, becoming the 1st inmate killed following 
a 10-year national moratorium on capital punishment.

His death on Jan. 17, 1977, which reopened the gates to the death penalty, has 
been memorialized in American culture through widespread news coverage at the 
time, followed by books, a movie and even a new documentary that will air 2 
days before the 40th anniversary of Gilmore's execution

. The documentary, "Dead Man Talking: The Execution of Gary Gilmore," airs in 
Utah on REELZ at 7 and 9 p.m. on Sunday, 2 days before the 40th anniversary of 
his execution.

Raised by an abusive, alcoholic father outside Portland, Ore., before spending 
much of his life in state custody and eventually coming to Utah and killing 2 
people, Gilmore was a man the state deemed fit to kill. He agreed.

"The way he got to the front of the line - there were obviously many more 
people who committed murders in states that had state-of-the-art death penalty 
statutes," said Paul G. Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah, who 
was interviewed for the documentary. "He was a volunteer, which meant they 
didn't have the full appellate delays."

Gilmore became a household name after he used a stolen Browning .22-caliber 
automatic pistol to kill 25-year-old Bennie Bushnell, the manager of Provo's 
City Center Inn, and 24-year-old law student Max Jensen.

Cassell says Gilmore's case has persisted, in part, because he was the first 
person executed after the U.S. Supreme Court ended its own ban on executions in 
1976.

Gilmore decried attempts to prolong his life through appeals to state and 
federal court. When the process wasn't quick enough for Gilmore, he tried to 
kill himself.

Trying to persuade federal courts to prevent Utah from killing Gilmore was the 
hardest case former trial attorney Virginius "Jinks" Dabney was ever involved 
in. And it's a case that made him change his opinion of the death penalty.

When the Utah chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union approached Dabney 
in 1976, he remembers them asking him to monitor the Gilmore case for a week or 
two while another attorney on the case was out of town.

"I said, 'Well, I'm kind of in favor of the death penalty,' " the 73-year-old 
Dabney, of St. George, said Thursday.

Still, the ACLU needed help and Dabney was known in legal circles for having 
recently won a criminal trial in Salt Lake City. So he accepted the assignment, 
he said, not knowing the impact that trying to save the life of a man who 
wanted to die would have on him.

Dabney, who was also interviewed for the documentary, believes courts waived 
rules and deadlines for hearings, which sped up the process that led to 
Gilmore's execution. He also believes state officials and Robert B. Hansen, 
Utah's attorney general at the time, wanted the Beehive State to be the 1st in 
a decade to execute a prisoner.

In the hours before Gilmore's impending death, Dabney asked the U.S. District 
Court in Utah to grant a motion that would halt the execution.

"What case would be more stressful than this? Knowing I could say one thing 
wrong, get a motion denied and a man could die because of it," said Dabney, who 
argued the state was misspending tax dollars by unconstitutionally killing a 
prisoner.

While Gilmore was pleading with anyone who would listen that he wanted to die, 
the court agreed with Dabney and ruled hours before the scheduled execution to 
temporarily halt Gilmore's death.

The win was short-lived, however, as state prosecutors quickly flew to Denver 
to ask the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the order. The state's 
motion was approved. Utah could kill Gilmore, who welcomed the news.

"Let's do it," Gilmore famously said moments before he was executed.

His death preceded hundreds of other prisoner executions.

"Death penalty foes were correct in that once Gilmore was executed, a 'barrier' 
both political and psychological was broken and those states that wanted to 
actually [use] the death penalty had a path towards using it," Joshua Marquis, 
a district attorney in Oregon who, like Cassell, is a proponent of the death 
penalty, said in an email.

While Gilmore's case may have forged the path back to capital punishment, Ralph 
Dellapiana, a defense attorney who is director of Utahns for Alternatives to 
the Death Penalty, says the number of prisoners killed in recent decades has 
declined.

But Dellapiana said that as long as the death penalty remains an option, there 
is a possibility that an innocent prisoner is executed.

"Some people point to these types of cases as ones where [they say] 'See, 
that's why we have to have the death penalty,'" Dellapiana said. "But the 
problem is that it's not just those few cases where the death penalty is 
applied."

Having entered the case as a proponent of capital punishment, Dabney says he 
now opposes it, saying if prosecutors and judges didn't slow down the death of 
one man on death row, there are likely others - potentially innocent - who face 
the same fate.

"Even if some guy says, 'I don't want an attorney,' to go through that many 
courts, somebody should have said, 'Look, we need to slow this down,'" Dabney 
said. "It was a very dark day for the Utah legal system. It was just a sad 
day."

(source: Salt Lake Tribune)






WASHINGTON:

Wasahington legislators should end death penalty


The reprieve for death row inmate Clark Richard Elmore on Dec. 29 fulfilled 
Gov. Inslee's promise to maintain a moratorium on the death penalty. But, the 
governor's reprieve should not have been necessary. Washington state 
legislators should find the courage to abolish the death penalty in our state.

Elmore's crime was heinous, and his victims deserve resolution, but the death 
penalty is not about any 1 particular crime. Rather, the death penalty is an 
institution, and as an institution it is riddled with inequalities. Nationally, 
African-Americans make up approximately 14 % of the general population, but 42 
% of the death row population. Washington is no exception to this disparately. 
A 2014 study from the University of Washington found that jurors in the state 
were 3 times more likely to recommend a death sentence for a black defendant 
than they were for a white defendant guilty of a similar case.

Globally, America's use of the death is a scandal. For the past 7 years, the 
United States has been the only country in the western hemisphere to execute 
its citizens. It shares company with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan as 
1 of the top 5 executioner countries in the world.

Marco Rosaire Rossi, Olympia

(source: Letter to the Editor, The Olympian)






USA:

ID Orders Joe Berlinger Docuseries, Maria Elena Salinas News Magazine Show


ID has ordered docuseries "Killing Richard Glossip" from Joe Berlinger 
("Paradise Lost"), the Discovery-owned cable channel said on Saturday. 
Investigation Discovery has also hired investigative journalist Maria Elena 
Salinas for a new news magazine show, "The Real Story."

Both announcements were made this afternoon during the network's Television 
Critics Association press event.

"Killing Richard Glossip" dives into the 1997 Oklahoma City murder of Barry Van 
Treese. Glossip, a man with no prior felony convictions, has consistently 
maintained his innocence, insisting that he had no knowledge that anyone 
planned to kill Van Treese. He's now towards the end of his death row stay. 
Justin Sneed, who admitted to killing the victim and whose fingerprints were 
found in the room, cut a deal for a life sentence instead of risking the death 
penalty by telling the police that Glossip hired him to do it.

"9 out of 10 times, the American justice system gets it right. Sadly, it's the 
unpredictability of that 1 time it goes astray that has resulted in a 
staggering amount of people who claim their innocence as they sit on death 
row," said Henry Schleiff, group president, Investigation Discovery, American 
Heroes Channel and Destination America. "There is a growing consensus of people 
worldwide that believe Richard Glossip is innocent. Consequently, this 
convergence of forces - including the support of filmmaker Joe Berlinger, who 
is no stranger to reporting on flaws in the criminal justice system - is why 
our team at ID feels it's imperative to provide a platform for the public to 
hear all sides of the story."

"Even if you think Richard Glossip might be guilty, his 3 separate trips to the 
execution chamber is reason enough to deeply question the sanity of the death 
penalty," added Berlinger. "But when you add to the mix that the case for his 
innocence is so compelling, then Richard Glossip???s cruel odyssey through the 
justice system is a wake-up call for how broken capital punishment is in this 
country."

"Killing Richard Glossip" is produced for ID by RadicalMedia. Berlinger, Dave 
O'Connor, Jon Kamen, Justin Wilkes and Lorna Thomas are executive producers. 
Betsy Wagner is the co-executive producer and Kevin Huffman is the supervising 
story producer.

The 2-night world premiere event of "Killing Richard Glossip" debuts Sunday, 
March 5 at 9/8c on ID.

(source: Yahoo News)

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

Netflix documentaries worth watching


"Into the Abyss" is narrated and directed by the renowned Werner Herzog. He 
asks the questions no one else seems to be asking to a vast array of 
characters. The film centers around a debate about the death penalty while 
appearing unbiased enough for viewers to develop their own opinions. Priests, 
retired executioners, death penalty prisoners and families of victims play 
parts in constructing a full story about life in the face of death.

(source: redandblack.com)