[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., OHIO, ARK., OKLA., IDAHO

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 11




PENNSYLVANIA:

How Philly plans to ditch cash bail and what stands in the way----Democratic 
candidate for district attorney Larry Krasner has a plan to get rid of cash 
bail. He's not the only game in town.



Josh Glenn was just 16 when he was arrested for aggravated assault with a 
deadly weapon, charged as an adult and thrown in a Philadelphia jail cell. 
That's where he sat for 18 months, unable to post the $2,000 bail that would 
have let him out of the city's House of Correction.

Glenn's case was ultimately dismissed and he was released, sent back into the 
world having spent a year-and-a-half on State Road. Today, Glenn is 29 and a 
criminal justice reform advocate in the city who;s fighting daily to change the 
system, starting with what he considers to be a broken cash bail apparatus that 
punishes the poor just for being poor.

"We're holding folks in who haven't gone to trial, and we're treating them like 
they're guilty already," he said. "Cash bail, what it does is create more debt 
in poor and low-income houses ... it just doesn't work."

For this activist, there was only one candidate for Philadelphia District 
Attorney when the primary rolled around last May: Larry Krasner. Krasner, the 
Democratic nominee for Philadelphia district attorney and the favorite to win 
the November general election, branded himself as the outsider candidate - the 
criminal defense attorney who was going to come in as the city's top prosecutor 
and turn the Office of the District Attorney upside down. In a field of 7 
candidates, Krasner won the primary and topped the 2nd-place finisher by 18 
points on a wave of progressive support, largely through vowing to never seek 
the death penalty, to address systematic mass incarceration and, yes, to reform 
the city's cash bail system.

And though there's already work being done on the inside of Philadelphia's 
criminal justice system to reform how bail works - particularly for low-level, 
nonviolent offenders - Krasner says it hasn't yet gone far enough.

"The ideal situation," he said, "would be to eliminate cash bail entirely."

No matter the campaign rhetoric, Krasner can't do that alone. Luckily for him, 
he won't have to.

Inside Krasner's 'long-term proposition'

Krasner and like-minded criminal justice reformists point to Washington, D.C. 
as the gold standard of bail reform.

The nation's capital, which entirely eliminated money bail in the '90s, 
routinely releases 90 % of the people who have been arrested, according to data 
gathered by the U.S. Department of Corrections. Of those, 9 in 10 didn't commit 
an additional crime before their court date in 2015 and, of the ones who did, 
the vast majority were nonviolent offenses.

That's not a decision a DA can unilaterally make. ---- Republican DA candidate 
Beth Grossman on eliminating cash bail

In addition to robust monitoring services and treatment options for defendants, 
The District also established other alternatives to incarceration, including a 
system of check-ins that includes a Day Reporting Center that opened in 2004. 
In addition to supervision, the Center offers case management, job training 
services, random alcohol and drug testing and medication-assisted drug 
treatment.

Problem is: D.C., which approved eliminating cash bail through local 
legislation, is not Philly. Krasner admits that implementing a system analogous 
to D.C.'s in Philadelphia would be a "long-term proposition" that will take 
time, vetting and cash.

"Unlike D.C., we know that a Republican-dominated, pro-Trump Pennsylvania 
legislature is not going to immediately turn around and eliminate cash as an 
option," he said. "Having said that, enormous gains can be made without the 
passage of any legislation."

For decades, the Philadelphia criminal justice system has operated in a pretty 
consistent way when it comes to bail: Some defendants are released on their own 
recognizance - usually with little or no conditions - and some people are not 
released and bail is set. For Krasner, "the question is really about the 
middle."

Krasner described what he hopes would be a change in culture at the District 
Attorney's Office in which prosecutors aren't asking for "middling" amounts of 
bail, but rather they're asking for 1 of 2 things: 1. Full release, with or 
without conditions or 2. A high bail that's similar to no bail at all (think 
something like $20 million) for the most extreme of cases.

David A. Sklansky, a Stanford law professor who follows the work of progressive 
prosecutors around the country, said this approach can work.

"Judges often follow prosecutors' recommendations on bail as well as on other 
things," he said, "so prosecutors can do a lot just by changing their 
recommendations in particular cases."

The bail reform that's already happening

While Krasner branded himself as the criminal justice reformer during the 
primary election, he's not the only game in town - not by a longshot. Since 
July 2015, the City of Philadelphia has slashed its daily inmate population by 
nearly 20 % as part of a multi-year, $3.5 million grant from the national 
MacArthur Foundation, and much of that progress was made by reducing the number 
of inmates sitting on State Road awaiting trial.

About 6,700 inmates are currently housed in Philadelphia's criminal justice 
system, and generally about 1/4 of them are still awaiting trial.

Michael Bouchard, the director of pretrial services for the First Judicial 
District of Pennsylvania, is a member of a coalition of leaders in the city's 
criminal justice community tasked with carrying out the ultimate goal of the 
MacArthur grant: Reducing the overall inmate population by a third.

2 of 4 major programs aimed specifically at reducing the pretrial population 
have already been implemented: Pretrial bail advocates (a program through the 
Defender Association) and Early Bail Review, according to Bouchard. The latter 
program launched in July 2016 and allows case review within 5 days for 
nonviolent defendants who have bails of $50,000 or less and no other reason to 
be held. Since its inception, Bouchard said, 86 % of defendants who had an 
early bail review hearing were released, while 90 % of those released appeared 
at their next court date.

The other 2 programs - a risk tool and alternatives to cash bail - that are 
still the works are interconnected. City officials are working with researchers 
at the University of Pennsylvania to develop a new risk assessment tool that 
they hope will allow for a scientific approach to assigning alternatives to 
cash bail.

"The goal with implementing a new risk tool is to reduce or eliminate cash 
bail," Bouchard said. "That's been the goal since the inception of the 
MacArthur program."

There's growing recognition that a justice system that keeps people in custody 
just because they're poor is wrong. ---- Miriam Krinsky, executive director of 
Fair and Just Prosecution

Julie Wertheimer, the city's chief of staff for criminal justice and a leader 
on the MacArthur undertaking, said parts of her team have met with both Krasner 
and Beth Grossman, a former prosecutor and the Republican nominee for district 
attorney, twice each to discuss the progress they've already made and to review 
how the incoming DA can fit into the structures currently in place.

"Both seem supportive of it and understand that the current DA's office has 
played an active role in this," Wertheimer said, "and that it's our hope that 
whomever is the new DA will continue that."

Grossman said in an interview that she's "committed" to continue working with 
MacArthur grant decision-makers and said she's open to eliminating cash bail 
for low-level, nonviolent offenders. As for eliminating cash bail entirely, 
Grossman said "never say never, but that's not a decision a DA can unilaterally 
make."

Krasner acknowledges that. It's why he says if he wins in November, he's going 
to have to work to win buy-in from stakeholders across the criminal justice 
system before he can claim success in slashing Philadelphia's cash bail system 
as we know it. Fortunately for him, the city's already heading there, and has 
been for years.

"We as a system are moving in this direction," Wertheimer said of efforts to 
move toward eliminating cash bail. "That's why we've been able to absorb 
leadership changes. Everyone else in the system has already signed onto this 
plan."

Can Krasner win more buy-in?

That doesn't mean a reform-minded district attorney won't face pushback, 
according to Miriam Krinsky, a former federal prosecutor and executive director 
of Fair and Just Prosecution, a national network of progressive prosecutors.

"Change is never easy, and it's particularly challenging for lawyers and judges 
who tend to be somewhat change-averse," she said. "It does create challenges 
for newly-elected district attorneys ... It's important for them to be 
strategic and not presume they're going to be able to hit a reset button 
overnight."

Krasner said he believes it's possible to win a "high level of buy-in that 
would result in extremely different bail results." The challenge, he admits, 
will be in convincing some bail commissioners and local judges that releasing a 
defendant they would have slapped bail onto before isn't a public safety 
concern. He said if he wins the general election in November, he'll get to work 
then on that process of persuasion.

"One of our tasks will be to inform the judiciary ... and to try to achieve a 
level of buy-in based upon science," Krasner said, "as opposed to hunch and 
intuition and everything else that, frankly, has been the primary driver in the 
criminal justice system since Salem."

We're holding folks in who haven't gone to trial, and we're treating them like 
they're guilty already. ----Josh Glenn, who spent 18 months in jail before his 
case was dismissed

They'll point to positive results in D.C. and, more recently, in New Jersey, 
which upended its criminal justice system in January by essentially ending the 
cash bail system statewide. Since then, the number of inmates awaiting trial 
dropped by 20 %.

Krinsky said public sentiment surrounding cash bail has dramatically shifted. 
Save for the bail bondsman industry, criminal justice officials across the 
country on the left and the right are slowly moving toward reforming their own 
cash bail systems.

"There's growing recognition that a justice system that keeps people in custody 
just because they're poor is wrong," she said. "It's wrong for the individual, 
and it's wrong for the community."

Sklansky said as challenging as it can be to win hearts and minds outside the 
District Attorney's Office, it can be just as difficult to gain buy-in from the 
inside, particularly from career prosecutors, some of whom have worked in the 
system for decades. He said that's "another reason why it can be difficult for 
a progressive prosecutor to make good on the hope and expectations that 
surround his or her election."

Though many prosecutors in Philadelphia have indicated they're open to reform, 
gaining their support could prove especially problematic for Krasner, who spent 
the better part of his career criticizing law enforcement in the city. In a May 
op-ed in the Philadelphia Citizen, a group of 12 current and former assistant 
district attorneys urged Philadelphians to vote for anyone but Krasner, writing 
that "many of the ADAs that Mr. Krasner doesn't let go will quit, rather than 
work for someone who has branded everyone in the office a liar before even 
taking the reins."

In the end, that could simply mean there will be high turnover among the city's 
300 assistant district attorneys if Krasner takes office in January, a 
not-uncommon phenomenon when leadership changes. That doesn't seem to bother 
Krasner, who's indicated he's open to overhauling management across the board.

"To the extent that [prosecutors] share values around improving things, getting 
better results for everyone, then there will be buy-in," Krasner said. "And to 
the extent that they are opposed to the mission, maybe they are better served 
by being in a different line of work."

(source: billypenn.com)








OHIO----impending execution

Ohio prepares to put condemned killer of 2 to death



Ohio is preparing to put a condemned killer of 2 people to death this week as 
the inmate awaits word on last-minute appeals.

Death row prisoner Gary Otte was sentenced to die for the Feb. 12, 1992, 
killing of Robert Wasikowski and the Feb. 13, 1992, killing of Sharon Kostura. 
Both slayings took place in Parma in suburban Cleveland.

The state plans to execute the 45-year-old Otte on Wednesday with a lethal 
combination of 3 drugs.

A federal court is considering Otte's argument that the 1st drug in the process 
creates an unconstitutional risk of severe harm.

Ohio put the killer of a 3-year-old girl to death in July, the 1st execution in 
more than 3 years after a delay caused by a drug shortage.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Attorneys In Akron Arson Case Want the Death Penalty Removed Over Former Police 
Chief's Racial Slur



Stanley Ford has been charged with setting 3 fires that killed 9 people in 
Akron. At the time of the indictment, James Nice was chief. He resigned last 
month, and 1 of the reasons was his reported use of the N-word in a private 
conversation. Ford is black, Nice is white, and now Ford's attorneys say race 
played a part in their client facing the death penalty.

Dean Carro - a professor of law emeritus at the University of Akron - says 
proving white and black defendants were treated differently could be difficult.

"Even to get to that data, they have a tough burden. Assuming they get that 
data, they still have to prove that this was not a function of prosecutorial 
discretion, but it was motivated by race.

"It would have to be established pretty clearly that the chief not only held 
these privately held views about African-Americans, but expressed those and 
that got turned into a policy or a decision or a discretionary determination to 
charge. That seems pretty far away from the chief."

Carro adds that the defense motion could also be hampered by an unusual move 
made by prosecutors prior to the indictment. They allowed Ford's attorneys to 
present mitigating circumstances that could have influenced the decision to add 
a death-penalty specification.

(source: WKSU news)








ARKANSAS:

Inmate called unfit to face murder trial----Man accused of killing officer at 
jail



An Arkansas inmate accused of killing a female correctional officer has been 
found by mental health experts to be unfit to proceed to trial.

Tramell Mackenzie Hunter, 27, appeared Tuesday with Little Rock lawyer Ron 
Davis at a hearing before Miller County Circuit Judge Kirk Johnson.

Hunter is charged with capital murder in the Dec. 18 death of correctional 
officer Lisa Mauldin, who died after she was attacked in the kitchen of the 
Miller County jail. Hunter is also charged with battery of a peace officer for 
injuries suffered by correctional officer Damaris Allen shortly after Mauldin 
was attacked. The state is seeking the death penalty.

Johnson ordered a mental evaluation of Hunter earlier this year after Davis 
entered an innocent plea by reason of mental disease or defect. Stephanie 
Black, the prosecuting attorney for Miller and Lafayette counties, told the 
court that the psychologist who performed the evaluation of Hunter has moved to 
California since completing a fellowship in Arkansas at the State Hospital.

That doctor found that Hunter is not currently capable of assisting his lawyer 
with his defense, but the doctor expressed the opinion that further evaluation 
is needed, Black said. Davis said defendants found unable to assist their 
lawyers, and thus not fit to proceed, are typically ordered to a facility such 
as the State Hospital for 10 months in hopes that competency can be restored 
through drugs and other therapy.

However, Davis pointed out that while Arkansas law provides a mechanism for 
incompetent defendants to be treated with hopes of restoring competency, 
Hunter's case is different because he was already an inmate in the Arkansas 
Department of Correction at the time of the attacks on Mauldin and Allen.

Hunter was assigned to the Miller County jail as part of the Department of 
Correction's 309 program that allows certain offenders to serve their sentences 
in county jails in need of cheap labor.

Hunter has been serving a 15-year term for aggravated robbery and 2 counts of 
felony domestic battery. He was sentenced Feb. 22, 2011, as part of a plea 
bargain in Pulaski County.

Dr. Benjamin Silver, a staff psychologist at the State Hospital, said that 
Hunter appears to fall somewhere on the "schizophrenia spectrum" but that 
diagnosing individuals with certain disorders can require lengthy observation.

At the end of Tuesday's hearing, Johnson ordered that Hunter return to the 
State Hospital for further evaluation. Until a determination is made concerning 
Hunter's competency, the case against him in Miller County cannot move forward.

If found guilty of capital murder, Hunter faces death or life in prison without 
the possibility of parole. If found guilty of 1st-degree battery of a peace 
officer, Hunter faces 10 to 40 years or life in prison.

(source: arkansasonline.com)








OKLAHOMA:

Psychologists allowed to testify in beheading case



A nearly 3-year murder case could be getting closer to a conclusion.

Several motions and responses have been filed in accused murderer Alton 
Alexander Nolen's case, including the state's motion to suppress the testimony 
of psychologists Jeanne Russell and Antoinette McGarrahan on the defenses' 
intent to use an insanity defense at trial.

Judge Lori Walkley ruled last week that Russell and McGarrahan would be able to 
testify at Nolen's trial, which is set to start later this week. Early 
indications point towards the trial lasting about a month.

Currently, the court is working to select 60 potential jurors that can give 
meaningful consideration to all 3 potential penalties if the Nolen is found 
guilty. The penalties include life in prison with the possibility of parole, 
life without parole, or, what the prosecution is seeking, the death penalty.

Of the 60, the final 14, made up of 12 jurors and 2 alternates will be chosen 
to hear the case.

Nolen is accused of beheading Colleen Hufford in 2014, before he was shot by 
Vaughan Foods executive and Oklahoma County Sheriff's Reserve Deputy Mark 
Vaughan.

According to a Moore Police affidavit, Nolen, who had been recently fired from 
his production line job at the company, due to a complaint, entered the front 
office on Sept. 25, 2014, with a knife, stabbing coworkers and beheading 
Hufford.

Nolen faces a 1st-degree murder charge and 5 assault with a weapon charges.

(source: normantranscript.com)








IDAHO:

Trial for accused cop killer Jonathan Renfro opens in Coeur d'Alene



It was the kind of crime that a community remembers forever: Following reports 
of burglaries, a 16-year veteran Coeur d'Alene Police officer enters an area of 
the Lake City after midnight. The officer encounters an armed man and is shot 
in the head.

Sgt. Greg Moore died several hours later on May 5, 2015, after medical efforts 
to save him ended. He was later awarded the Idaho Medal of Honor in a ceremony 
that included his son and father.

Today, Kootenai County officials will gather scores of residents to the 
courthouse to begin the selection of a jury, who will decide the fate of 
Jonathan D. Renfro, 29, charged with 1st-degree murder and several other 
charges in connection to Moore's death.

The jury's task could come in 2 stages. If it eventually decides during a trial 
- which could include more than 100 witnesses and dozens of experts - that 
Renfro is guilty of 1st-degree murder, it would then be asked in a separate 
hearing whether the defendant should also face the death penalty.

The case will be prosecuted by Kootenai County Prosecutor Barry McHugh and 
deputies David Robins and Jed Whitaker. The defense includes Twin Falls 
attorney Keith Roark, who was appointed to represent Renfro along with Deputy 
Kootenai County Public Defenders Jay Logsdon and Linda Payne.

First District Judge Lansing Haynes, himself a former Kootenai County deputy 
prosecutor, has issued a gag order that prevents the attorneys from commenting 
on the case.

But last year, prosecutors alleged in a written motion that Renfro not only 
admitted his involvement in the shooting but predicted he may have been 
targeting police. The motion was filed last year to bolster the state's case 
for aggravating factors that may be used in its effort to seek the death 
penalty.

Prosecutors claimed, in the motion, that Renfro showed his girlfriend the gun 
that was later determined to be the one that killed Moore. Renfro, who was on 
felony parole at the time, displayed the gun a the day before the deadly 
encounter.

"The defendant boasted that a bullet within the magazine was a 'cop killer' 
bullet," the motion states, according to court records. "When asked about what 
he would do if stopped by law enforcement, the defendant claimed he would go 
down murdering police officers."

The motion also claims that while in jail, Renfro has laughed about committing 
certain aspects of the crime during phone conversations.

Renfro "has justified his actions as being noble - claiming that cops will now 
think twice before being aggressive with individuals," the motion read.

Shortly after he was arrested, Renfro told detecitves that on Sept. 5 he went 
looking for a car to steal and "to collect money on behalf of white 
supremacists from Native Americans."

In a 2-hour interview with investigators, Renfro first denied shooting Moore 
and blamed the crime on someone named Davis. Renfro changed his story and 
admitted to shooting Moore when a detective informed him that the incident had 
been captured on Moore's body camera.

When a detective asked Renfro why he shot Moore, the suspect replied, "Fear," 
according to a transcript of the police interview that was read in court.

"Fear of what?" the detectives asked him. "Having a gun in my damn pocket," 
Renfro answered, according to court testimony.

Moore apparently stopped to question Renfro after seeing him, dressed in dark 
clothing, walking down a sidewalk on Wilbur Avenue in a residential 
neighborhood a little before 1:30 a.m.

One of the detectives, during the court hearing in 2015, also asked Renfro how 
Moore had treated him during the encounter. Renfro said he found Moore to be a 
"really nice man," according to the transcript read in court in August 2015.

Former Public Defender John Adams questioned Idaho State Police Detective 
Michael Van Leuven, the lead investigator in the case, during the preliminary 
hearing in 2015.

Adams asked Van Leuven if Renfro told detectives he shot Moore because the 
officer had placed his hand on his service pistol. Van Leuven said yes, but he 
didn't recall the exact words Renfro used.

According to the interview transcript, Renfro told detectives, "If my intent 
was to shoot him, I would have shot him before I gave him my ID."

Renfro continued: "I was feeling scared, trapped and concerned," and as soon as 
he saw Moore place a hand on his gun, "I didn't think," and just reacted, 
according to the transcript read in court.

Prosecutors earlier had asked Judge Haynes to move the case to Boise in an 
effort to find jurors who had not heard about the case, but Haynes refused.

"This court specifically finds that the bulk of publicity in this case, as 
presented by Renfro, consists of accurate representations of the allegations 
leading to the charges against Renfro, and accurate representations of the 
various procedural stages of the case," Haynes wrote in his decision last June.

(source: The Spokesman-Review)