[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----IND., OKLA., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 29



INDIANA:

Prosecutor to seek death penalty against Jason Brown, man accused of killing 
Lt. Aaron Allan



The Marion County Prosecutor announced on Thursday that his office would be 
seeking the death penalty against accused cop killer Jason Brown.

Brown, 28, is accused of shooting Southport Police Department Lt. Aaron Allan 
multiple times after flipping his car near the intersection of Madison Avenue 
and Maynard Drive on July 27.

Lt. Allan was rushed to the hospital where he later died.

Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry said the decision to seek the death 
penalty against Brown was made after going over hours of evidence and 
interviewing everyone involved with the case.

"This is not a decision we make lightly and this is not a decision I make on my 
own," said Curry.

The aggravated circumstances cited for the death penalty request are that Brown 
murdered Lt. Allan while the officer was employed by the Southport Police 
Department and was acting in the course of his duty as a law enforcement 
officer.

Curry said over the 7 years that his he has served in the Marion County 
Prosecutor's Office, 4 officers have been lost to intentional killings: David 
Moore, Rod Bradway, Perry Renn and now, Aaron Allan.

In addition, Curry said they have had numerous officers shot, officers' houses 
shot up and shootings at 2 police districts.

"As we've said on those occasions, and we'll emphasize again: We will not 
tolerate attacks on our police officers," said Curry.

Json Brown made his 1st and only court appearance on August 9 after being 
released from the hospital where he was treated for injuries he sustained from 
the crash and gunshot wounds from the shooting.

When asked if he was sorry for what happened during that appearance, Brown said 
nothing and continued walking into the courthouse.

(source: theindychannel.com)








OKLAHOMA:

Alton Nolen's defense calls 2nd psychologist



A 2nd psychologist called by Alton Nolen's defense team testified Tuesday that 
it's possible Nolen's alleged mental illness started when he left home and had 
to fend for himself.

"Nolen had never been out on his own. He isolated himself. He wasn't well liked 
and everything started to spin out of control," Tulsa psychologist Anita Jeanne 
Russell said. "He progressively declined and he continues to get sicker."

Russell is the 2nd psychologist to testify this week to aid in defense, which 
is seeking a not guilty verdict by reason of insanity. Russell, like Texas 
psychologist Antoinette McGarrahan, who also testified, determined Nolen was 
mentally ill at the time of the offense.

"Nolen suffered from not being able to understand the wrongfulness of his 
actions," Russell said. "I found him to be extremely delusional."

Nolen, 33, graduated in 2003 from Idabel High School and later attended 
college, where he received "A" grades in 2 classes before dropping out. Russell 
said he subsequently moved away from home and worked low-skill jobs.

Nolen is charged with beheading former Vaughan Foods coworker Colleen Hufford 
and attempting to behead another on Sept. 25, 2014, after he was suspended from 
his production line job.

Since the attack, Nolen, a Muslim convert, has been adamant about pleading 
guilty and receiving the death penalty.

"I'm not dumb, I do not have a mental illness. I'm pleading guilty and I want 
the death penalty," Nolen said during a hearing in 2016. "I'm not here to talk 
about the situation; I'm here to make a plea. I'm being held captive by people 
who do not believe in the one true God."

Russell said when she first evaluated Nolen in 2015, he was cooperative, but 
that changed when she returned to talk to him in May.

"He didn't want to talk to me at all," she said. "In 2015, he made it clear 
what he wanted (the death penalty), and he saw me as a way to get it."

The way Nolen acted toward Russell when she visited him in May is similar to 
the way he has been behaving during court proceedings the last few months.

With his head down, eyes closed and ears covered, Nolen agrees to appear before 
the court each day, but his cooperation with defense counsel continues to be 
nonexistent.

Russell's testimony continues today.

(source: muskogeephoenix.com)








USA:

After Executions, Defense Attorneys Have Their Own Grief----A therapist on the 
emotional price lawyers pay to defend individuals sentenced to death.



In some human endeavors it may be reasonable to expect a correlation between 
effort and achievement, but not in capital defense, especially when you're 
defending people who have already been sentenced to death. Talent and 
dedication don't much change those odds.

"It's a tremendous feeling of helplessness," one attorney told me. "I'm doing 
everything right, I'm doing my job, I'm doing my job really well, and my client 
is still getting executed."

As a clinical mental health counselor and researcher specializing in the 
emotional impact of the death penalty, I have spoken with dozens of family 
members of homicide victims and family members of executed persons throughout 
the United States, and I've seen that the executed criminal is not the only 
person affected by an execution. The circle of people profoundly affected is 
larger than most realize.

When I conducted in-depth interviews for my book "Fighting for Their Lives" 
with 20 experienced capital defense attorneys who had lost at least one and 
often several clients, for instance, I learned that these stakeholders are 
affected in some very particular ways - and that in most cases, they hadn't 
talked to anyone about this before.

More than one attorney told me that having a client on death row is like seeing 
someone tied to tracks as a train is approaching. The defender's job is to try 
to untie the knots in time to prevent the collision, and they're attempting 
this rescue under the most difficult conditions.

The task is at once urgent and protracted - months or even years of low-grade 
anxiety punctuated by sudden crises and intense deadlines - so that death 
penalty lawyers are like some kind of a cross between emergency responders and 
end-stage oncologists. The difference is that they are fighting for lives many 
people don't consider worth saving.

And, while others might have a stake in the life of an individual facing 
execution, the defense attorneys are the ones who are supposed to have the 
tools to stop that execution. It's a legal responsibility that ends up feeling 
personal; the clients' lives are in their hands. Attorneys I interviewed told 
me that even if they might long for relief from the rising panic that fills the 
weeks and months before a client's execution date, taking time to do or even 
think about anything else can feel irresponsible.

Then come the last visits or phone calls, during which they have to admit that 
they've run out of options.

One defender I interviewed recalled her struggle to explain to her client with 
intellectual disabilities that she had not been able to save him after all. 
Another attorney could not keep from choking up as he told me the story of a 
client offering him reassurance just moments before the guards came to escort 
him to the execution chamber. "It's okay, you did your best," the client said.

Feeling that they hold their clients' lives in their hands, maintaining a 
tenuous balance between hope and despair, it's hard for lawyers not to 
experience the executions as failures, even if they can talk themselves out of 
that conclusion intellectually.

"No matter how much you tell yourself that you've done everything you could do, 
your job was to save his life and you didn't," one attorney said, remembering 
how he collapsed into sobs one morning after losing 3 clients in 3 weeks.

Another attorney offered an analogy: "You put yourself between your client and 
the execution. And so when you fail, what that means is that [the state has] 
walked over you and gotten your client in the chamber."

After an execution, attorneys have to pick themselves up, sometimes with little 
time before work on the next case must begin. There's anger and exhaustion, of 
course, and, as one put it, "an abiding sadness that never goes away." Repeated 
exposure to the inner workings of the death penalty leaves them numb but also 
raw, and shakier sometimes than anyone might realize.

They surprise themselves by panicking when they see an execution scene in a 
movie or breaking unprompted into tears when they have a few moments alone in 
the car. Sometimes they feel unable to be around other people. They worry about 
what their work might be doing to their health, or to their relationship with 
their families.

None of this leaves much time for self-reflection or belief that anything good 
would come of publicly revealing the personal impact of the work. Capital 
defenders would be the 1st to declare that they are not at the center of any 
death penalty story and can't claim the greatest suffering, and their focus is 
quite rightly on their clients rather than on themselves.

Defense attorneys are not at the center of the death penalty story, but the 
penalty's impact on these unique stakeholders is significant. It demands that 
we take seriously the wide-ranging implications of each execution.

Impact on defense attorneys matters, just as it matters that executions have 
long-term consequences for the emotional health of the family of the executed 
person, or the prison guards, or the clergy. Consideration of the death penalty 
requires consideration of all the people it ultimately harms.

(source: Susannah Sheffer is a clinical mental health counselor and researcher 
specializing in trauma and capital punishment. She is the author of "Fighting 
for Their Lives: Inside the Experience of Capital Defense Attorneys" 
(Vanderbilt University Press, 2013), from which this piece is 
adapted----themarshallproject.org)

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

Airport shooting suspect has stopped taking medication but remains competent, 
defense says



Esteban Santiago, the man accused of killing 5 people and wounding 6 others at 
Fort Lauderdale's international airport, is under increased medical scrutiny 
because he has been refusing prescription medication, court records show.

In recent weeks, Santiago has not been taking medication to treat his 
schizophrenia diagnosis, according to his attorneys.

Santiago's defense team said he remains legally competent to stand trial but 
his mental status and other issues that might possibly delay the trial, 
tentatively scheduled for January, are expected to be discussed during a 
Thursday afternoon court hearing in federal court in Miami.

"Recently, multiple weekly visits - including by the defense's mental health 
consultant - have resumed as the defendant has begun declining his 
antipsychotic medication. There has not, however, been any discernible change 
in [his] behavior during that time," his lawyers wrote in a status report filed 
in court earlier this week.

Santiago, 27, has a documented history of psychiatric problems and has been 
taking the medication Haldol since shortly after his arrest for the Jan. 6 mass 
shooting. The Iraq War veteran has pleaded not guilty to 22 federal charges 
linked to the incident.

His trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 22.

Hurricane Maria's recent devastating hit on Santiago's native Puerto Rico has 
also had an effect on preparation for the trial, the lawyers wrote in other 
court filings.

Santiago grew up in Puerto Rico and most of his family still lives there. The 
defense team said the crippling effects of the massive hurricane have limited 
their ability to communicate with potential witnesses in Puerto Rico and 
delayed officials there from supplying records that have been subpoenaed from 
the island.

Some of the records sought include medical and other records concerning 
Santiago's service with the Army National Guard in Puerto Rico and Alaska.

Federal prosecutors have not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty or 
life in prison if Santiago is convicted. A panel of experts in the U.S. 
Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., will consider presentations from the 
prosecution and defense before U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions makes the 
final decision. The decision process can take several months to more than a 
year, experts said.

The defense team has to submit an extensive package to the panel that details 
any possible "mitigation" or reasons why they believe the death penalty would 
not be the appropriate punishment for Santiago. One of the defense experts, who 
was scheduled to travel to Puerto Rico this week, had to postpone the trip 
because of the power outages and recovery efforts there, records show.

U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom agreed to give the defense team a little more 
time to submit that information. They were facing a Nov. 3 deadline but now 
have until Nov. 22.

Bloom has been closely monitoring the case and has expressed concerns about 
Santiago's competency and his prior refusal, at times, to take medication. But 
the defense has assured her in the past that Santiago remained legally 
competent because he understood the nature of the charges against him and the 
legal process, and has been able to help his attorneys to prepare his defense.

Santiago surrendered to law enforcement immediately after the shooting and 
confessed, according to the FBI.

He initially told agents that he acted under government mind control but later 
said he had been influenced by reading propaganda posted online by the Islamic 
State terrorist group. Authorities have said they found no links to organized 
terrorism.

(source: Sun-Sentinel)