[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.H., FLA., USA

[Rick Halperin]

June 28



TEXAS----execution

Texas inmate executed for 1979 rape, murder in Houston



A Texas prisoner accused of 4 killings and at least 9 rapes was executed 
Wednesday for a 1979 rape and murder in Houston that went unsolved for 2 
decades until he confessed.

Danny Paul Bible, 66, received lethal injection Wednesday evening after 
unsuccessful appeals contended his multiple health issues made it likely his 
execution would be botched and cause him unconstitutional pain. The U.S. 
Supreme Court rejected a last-day appeal about an hour before he was put to 
death without apparent complications.

Asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Bible replied: "No, sir."

His head was shaking slightly as the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital 
began. His attorneys said Parkinson's disease was among his ailments.

As the drug started to take effect, Bible started taking quick breaths, 
muttered at one point that it was "burning" and that it "hurt." His breaths 
then became snores and about a minute after the procedure began, all movement 
stopped.

Despite fears from his attorneys that a vein would not be found for the IVs, 
prison technicians had 1 needle inserted in his left hand 3 minutes after he 
was strapped to the death chamber gurney. The 2nd IV was inserted in his right 
hand after another 3 minutes.

He stared intently at relatives of 2 of his victims who watched through a 
window a few feet from him, but never said anything to them.

He was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m., about 15 minutes after the lethal dose 
started. The execution was the 7th this year in Texas, the country's most 
active death penalty state.

"Danny Paul Bible is as vile and evil a person that has ever drawn breath," 
said Larry Lance, whose sister, Pam Hudgins, was among Bible's victims. "We are 
glad to have witnessed him draw his last breath. I know he will burn in hell 
for eternity."

Bible's guilt was not disputed, but his lawyers had proposed he be rolled in 
his wheelchair in front of a firing squad or be administered nitrogen gas to 
cut off oxygen to his brain until he stopped breathing. Lawyers argued his 
deteriorating health left his veins unsuitable for IVs to be inserted.

If either of those alternatives wasn't possible - and state attorneys said 
neither was - Bible's lawyers said his punishment should be stopped.

"His unique and severe medical conditions render lethal injection an 
intolerably cruel method of execution as applied to him," attorney Nadia Wood 
told the high court. His civil rights claim "should not be barred simply 
because Texas has not authorized an alternative method of execution."

Bible's appeal went to the Supreme Court after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of 
Appeals on Tuesday refused his lawsuit seeking a reprieve, a restraining order 
and an injunction. Assistant Texas Attorney General Stephen Hoffman said in a 
court filing that the lawsuit was a "meritless tactic" to delay his 
"well-deserved execution."

Lethal injection is the only execution method allowed in Texas and changing 
that would require approval of the state Legislature, which isn't scheduled to 
meet again until next year. A handful of death penalty states allow nitrogen 
hypoxia, although the method hasn't been used. Three Utah inmates have been 
executed by firing squad, the most recent in 2010. Utah now allows that method 
if drugs for execution are unavailable.

Bible's lawyers also argued that severe tremors accompanying his Parkinson's 
disease would complicate insertion of needles. They warned of a problematic 
execution like ones in recent years in Ohio and Alabama.

Hoffman, the state attorney, noted that IVs had been used recently to draw 
blood from Bible as part of his medical care.

Bible was a drifter with a record of violence in several states when he was 
arrested in Fort Myers, Florida, in 1999 for a rape in Louisiana. He told 
detectives in Louisiana about 4 Texas killings - including the death of a 
4-month-old boy - and at least nine rapes, including 5 in San Jacinto County 
northeast of Houston.

The 4 slaying victims included 20-year-old Inez Deaton, a friend of Bible's 
cousin who was found on the banks of a Houston bayou in 1979. Investigators 
determined she had been raped and fatally stabbed with an ice pick. The killing 
went unsolved for decades before Bible linked himself to the case, and a jury 
decided in 2003 that the man who became known in Houston as "the ice pick 
killer" should die for the slaying.

The 3 other killings all occurred in North Texas on the same day in May 1983. 
The victims were Bible's sister-in-law, Tracy Powers; her 4-month-old son, 
Justin; and Powers' roommate, Hudgins.

Bible pleaded guilty to Hudgins' death and was sentenced to 25 year in prison. 
He served 7 and was released to Montana in 1992 on a form of parole known as 
mandatory supervision.

At his trial for Deaton's slaying in Texas, Harris County prosecutors presented 
evidence of robberies, thefts, assaults and abductions, including the rape of 
an 11-year-old girl in Montana and his confessions to repeated sexual assaults 
of young girls from 1996 to 1998.

"Some criminals' actions are so heinous, they earn the label 'worst of the 
worst,'" Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said.

Bible becomes the 7th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas 
and the 552nd overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 
1982.

Bible becomes the 12th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA 
and the 1,477th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 
1977.

(sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin)

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

Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----34

Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----552

Abbott#--------scheduled execution date-----name------------Tx. #

35---------July 17----------------Christopher Young-------553

36---------Aug. 30----------------Joseph Garcia-----------554

-----see story below for likely new execution date

37---------Sept. 12---------------Ruben Gutierrez---------555

38---------Sept. 26---------------Troy Clark--------------556

39---------Sept. 27---------------Daniel Acker------------557

40---------Oct. 10----------------Juan Segundo------------558

41---------Oct. 24----------------Kwame Rockwell----------559

(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)

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

Prosecutors ask to push back death date for Texas 7 escapee, citing clerical 
error



Joseph Garcia is scheduled for execution in August. Citing a court's clerical 
mistake, prosecutors are asking for a new execution date for Texas 7 escapee 
Joseph Garcia.

The condemned Dallas County killer was scheduled to die on Aug. 30, but now the 
state is asking for a Dec. 4 date after the clerk failed to issue a death 
warrant in time.

"This statutory violation could result in a last-minute stay of execution," 
prosecutors wrote in a Tuesday court filing.

State law requires that the court issue a death warrant within 10 days of 
greenlighting the execution date. But in Garcia's case, a Dallas County judge 
set the date on May 24, and the warrant wasn't issued until June 6 - 3 days 
late.

Last February, a similar issue forced the state to grant a stay in the case of 
Tilon Carter, a Tarrant County death row prisoner. In that case, defense 
lawyers were notified a day late, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ended 
up calling off the execution 4 days before he was set to die.

Paperwork errors last year also forced the cancellation of execution dates for 
Larry Swearingen and Juan Castillo. In both cases, defense wasn't properly 
given the requisite 90-day notice.

At the time of the notorious escape, Garcia was already in prison for a crime 
out of Bexar County, where he stabbed a man at least a dozen times.

In December 2000, he was serving time at the Connally Unit when he teamed up 
with 6 fellow prisoners to plot the biggest break-out in Texas prison history.

The men busted into the prison armory, stole weapons and stormed out of the 
unit in a prison truck. After orchestrating 2 robberies in Houston, they headed 
up to the Dallas area.

There, on Christmas Eve, the men held up a store in Irving and made off with 
$70,000 and 44 guns. But on the way out, they ran into a cop.

The escapees surrounded Officer Aubrey Hawkins' patrol vehicle and shot him 11 
times before running over his body with an SUV on the way out, according to 
court records.

They were captured in Colorado a month later. Though 1 of the men killed 
himself rather than surrender, the other 6 were captured and sent to death row. 
3 have since been executed.

(source: Houston Chronicle)








NEW HAMPSHIRE:

Gov. Sununu is Right



To the Editor:

I would like to thank Gov. Sununu who recently vetoed a bill that would have 
abolished New Hampshire's death penalty. I wholeheartedly believe he made the 
correct decision.

Capital punishment not only functions to preserve a just society, but it is 
also Biblical. Below are supporting quotes from the Bible (NIV).

Genesis 9:6 "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; 
for in the image of God has God made man."

Exodus 21:12 "Anyone who strikes a man and kills him shall surely be put to 
death."

Exodus 21:14 "But if a man schemes and kills another man deliberately, take him 
away from my altar and put him to death."

35 states currently have a death penalty as does the U.S. military and the U.S. 
government. In many states, including Texas, the intentional murder of anyone 
in the course of committing or attempting to commit a felony such as robbery or 
burglary is a capital offense. New Hampshire has a conditional version of the 
law. The death penalty is only applicable in cases of a contract or kidnapping 
murder and the murder of a law enforcement or judicial type person.

I would like to see our capital punishment law be expanded to include the 
murder of anyone. The prudent use of the death penalty can emphasize, as no 
other penalty can, that criminals are responsible for their own actions and 
that the deliberate, willful taking of innocent life is the most detestable of 
all crimes precisely because the right to life is the most precious of all 
rights.

There has always been concern that no legal system is perfect because human 
beings make mistakes and an innocent person might be executed. In the old days 
this was an extremely rare possibility. But now, with hi-tech surveillance, 
forensic tools and the latest DNA technology, it is practically impossible. In 
fact, the latest DNA technology is so good that 'cold cases' from many years 
ago are now being solved. In our understandable desire to be fair and to 
protect the rights of offenders in our criminal justice system, let us never 
ignore or minimize the rights of their victims. The death penalty is a 
necessary tool that reaffirms the sanctity of human life while assuring that 
convicted killers will never again prey upon others.

Racial profiling has also been mentioned as a reason for abolishing the death 
penalty. The statistics speak for themselves. Males between the ages of 14 and 
24 (less than 8 percent of the population) commit almost 1/2 of the nation's 
murders. African American males of the same age (less than 1 % of the 
population) committed some 30 % of the country's homicides in the 1990s. 
Michael Addison, a young African American man, was sentenced in December 2008 
for knowingly causing the death of Police Officer Michael Briggs. He is 
currently the only person on death row in NH. Michael Addison is on death row 
today for the actions of Michael Addison. Racial disparity had nothing to do 
with it.

It has been said that the death penalty precludes any possibility for the 
offender to repent, to amend his or her life, to seek forgiveness from God and 
from those most affected by the crime. This is not true. There is more than 
adequate time to do just that. Michael Addison has been in prison for over 10 
years and will probably be there for several more before he is executed. NH is 
fortunate to have several prison ministry groups dedicated to bringing the 
love, truth and forgiveness of Jesus Christ behind prison walls.

Those of us who favor death for murderers rely on history, on common sense, and 
on an instinctive sense of fairness. Life sentences without the possibility of 
parole too often are mere challenges for prisoners to brutalize correctional 
workers, escape, terrify law-abiding citizens and kill again. Prisoners with a 
life sentence and no possibility of parole have nothing to loose. A society 
that sentences killers to nothing worse than prison, no matter how depraved the 
killing or how innocent the victim, is a society that doesn't really think 
murder is so terrible after all. John Allard, Barrington

(source: Letter to the Editor, fosters.com)








FLORIDA:

All pending motions in death penalty case heard Thursday



Seventh Judicial Circuit Court Communications Officer Ludmilla Lelis reported 
to Historic City News today that Circuit Judge Howard Maltz is scheduled to 
hear all pending motions in the case of State of Florida v. James Terry Colley 
Jr.

Colley was indicted in September 2015 on 2 counts of 1st-degree murder in 
connection with the August 2015 shooting deaths of his estranged wife, 
36-year-old Amanda Cloaninger Colley, and her friend, 39-year-old Lindy Mosler 
Dobbins.

He is also facing 2 counts of attempted 1st-degree murder with a firearm, 
burglary with assault or battery, armed burglary and aggravated stalking after 
injunction.

The state is seeking the death penalty in the case.

The hearing is scheduled for tomorrow, Thursday, June 28th, at 2:30 p.m. in 
Courtroom 328 of the Richard O. Watson Judicial Center, 4010 Lewis Speedway 
Boulevard, St. Augustine.

Jury selection and trial in Colley's case is scheduled to begin July 9th.

(source: historiccity.com)








USA:

What Anthony Kennedy's retirement means for solitary confinement and the death 
penalty----Kennedy has voiced his opposition to both practices.

Anthony Kennedy, long the swing vote on many of the Court's most ideologically 
charged decisions, announced his retirement on Wednesday.

Among the contentious issues that will most likely be affected by his departure 
is criminal justice. Simply put, a Court without Kennedy (and with a new Trump 
appointee) will probably reject challenges to 2 practices Kennedy has 
previously opposed: solitary confinement and capital punishment.

Currently, there appears to be a 5-justice majority on the Supreme Court for 
sharply limiting solitary confinement in America. Without Kennedy, that 
majority has evaporated, likely replaced with a harder-line majority that could 
preserve the practice.

In 2015, Anthony Kennedy filed a concurring opinion in Davis v. Ayala, a 
death-penalty case in which the Court (joined by Kennedy) sided against the 
defendant. Nevertheless, Kennedy used his concurrence to unleash a bracing 
jeremiad against the evils of solitary confinement, in which the defendant had 
been held for most of his 25-plus years in prison.

"Research still confirms what this Court suggested over a century ago: Years on 
end of near-total isolation exact a terrible price," Kennedy wrote. "In a case 
that presented the issue, the judiciary may be required, within its proper 
jurisdiction and authority, to determine whether workable alternative systems 
for long-term confinement exist, and, if so, whether a correctional system 
should be required to adopt them."

The implication was clear: Kennedy wanted advocates to bring a case challenging 
the constitutionality of long-term solitary confinement on the grounds that it 
constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. He 
basically dared them to, and suggested that if such a case reached the Court, 
he???d be inclined to limit the practice.

Sharon Dolovich, a law professor at UCLA and faculty director of the 
university's Prison Law & Policy Program, told me in 2016 that solitary 
confinement was the "1 major unresolved issue" in criminal justice "that is 
definitely going to come up" in the next few years.

It's a long time coming. At any given moment, about 80,000 to 100,000 people 
are held in solitary confinement in the US; in many states, the average stint 
in solitary lasts years. And it's been that way at least since the 1980s, 
without any federal court intervention to halt it.

"There's so much data now - physiological data, psychological data, reentry 
data - there's so much data making clear the extended physical, psychological, 
and emotional trauma that people suffer in extended solitary confinement, it 
would be so easy for the Court just to point to it all and conclude there's an 
objective harm," Dolovich said.

Jonathan Simon, a law professor and director of the Center for the Study of Law 
and Society at UC Berkeley, also speaking in 2016, told me that solitary 
confinement is on "the verge of being found unconstitutional, at least in its 
most excessive forms." Just what "excessive' means there is, naturally, a 
matter of debate, and Simon cautions that the Court could err on the side of 
giving prisons too much leeway.

He noted that Ashker v. Brown, a recent case challenging solitary confinement 
in California that ended in a settlement rather than reaching the Supreme 
Court, "involved a class of inmates that had been held more than 10 years, and 
the settlement will still allow people to be held up to five years, and even 
after that they can still be held in solitary if they're given programming and 
special services." By contrast, the United Nations special rapporteur on 
torture has called for an absolute ban on solitary confinement lasting 15 days 
or more. "I'm not sure Kennedy or any justice would go nearly that far," Simon 
says.

But without Kennedy on the court, a ruling going even as far as a 5-year 
maximum becomes less likely.

Anthony Kennedy and capital punishment

Solitary confinement is not the only case where a more conservative justice 
could make a difference. In 2011, Kennedy wrote a 5-4 decision upholding a 
lower court order that California release tens of thousands of prisoners to 
reduce overcrowding, which the state itself admitted was unconstitutional. It 
was, Simon told me, "the first prisoners' rights decision to come down in favor 
of the prisoner in a long time. It ended mass incarceration in California." 
More decisions like that could come if Kennedy stays on the court.

Kennedy was also the best hope that opponents of capital punishment have for a 
ruling against the practice, even though he's often sided with conservatives in 
some past death penalty cases on the constitutionality of, say, using a 
particular lethal injection method.

Back in 2016, Simon told me that he was "somewhat optimistic" that Kennedy 
would join with Breyer and Ginsburg (who have already declared their belief 
that capital punishment is across-the-board unconstitutional), Sotomayor, and 
Kagan in an anti-death penalty case. "The reason ... goes back to his interest 
in dignity," Simon said. "The strongest of the opinions in Furman" - the 1972 
case that briefly abolished capital punishment - "was William Brennan's, and 
Brennan based it most directly on human dignity. He argued the Eighth Amendment 
bans any punishment you can't carry out without respecting the dignity of those 
being punished."

Kennedy leaned heavily on the importance of dignity in Brown v. Plata, the 
California prison overcrowding case. Simon even found an early Kennedy opinion 
from when he was a circuit court judge in the 1970s in which he quoted 
Brennan's concurrence in Furman at length.

Even if Kennedy didn't buy a dignity argument for abolishing the death penalty, 
Simon said he thought Kennedy would be swayed by the issue of delays, which 
Breyer raised in his 2015 anti-capital punishment dissent - and which were the 
entire reason for the prisoner's stay in solitary confinement that Kennedy 
assailed in his concurrence last year.

"[Kennedy] came and gave a talk at Berkeley Law about a year and a half ago, 
and one of my colleagues was rude enough to ask him point blank whether he 
thought the death penalty was compatible with human dignity," Simon told me. 
"Of course he declined to answer, but he said kind of cryptically, 'Here in 
California you guys take so long enough to execute people that we may not even 
need to reach that cliff.'"

This is all moot now that Kennedy is gone, and sure to be replaced by a more 
doctrinaire supporter of capital punishment.

Having him off the bench will also prevent incremental steps against capital 
punishment from going forward. In 2008, Kennedy wrote for a 5-4 liberal 
majority that it was unconstitutional to impose the death penalty on people 
convicted merely of rape, not murder. Without him on the Court, incremental 
limitations on capital punishment's scope become less likely.

(source: voxcom)

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

Federal prosecutors say they may seek death penalty in hate-crime charges 
against driver accused in Charlottesville car attack



The accused driver of the car that plowed into a crowd at the violent white 
nationalist rally last summer in Charlottesville was indicted on federal 
hate-crime charges Wednesday, including 1 that may carry the death penalty, 
according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

In a Wednesday afternoon news conference, federal law enforcement authorities 
announced that a grand jury returned 30 civil-rights charges against James Alex 
Fields Jr., 21, of Maumee, Ohio, in connection with the Aug. 12 rally, 
including 2 charges related to the death of activist Heather Heyer.

Thomas Cullen, the U.S. Attorney for Virginia's Western District, called the 
charges "the most serious possible under federal law."

"We're hopeful that in putting out this indictment today that folks get the 
message that if they come to Charlottesville and engage in racially motivated 
violence, there will be severe consequences," Cullen said.

As rally goers dispersed into downtown Charlottesville last summer, Fields - 
who is accused of espousing racist views before and during the rally - 
allegedly drove his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of anti-racist 
counterprotesters near the Downtown Mall, killing Heyer and injuring dozens of 
others.

"Last summer's violence in Charlottesville cut short a promising young life and 
shocked the nation," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a news release. 
"Today's indictment should send a clear message to every would-be criminal in 
America that we aggressively prosecute violent crimes of hate that threaten the 
core principles of our nation."

Attorneys representing Fields did not comment on the federal indictment.

The new charges against Fields include one hate-crime count for Heyer's death, 
28 counts for "hate crime acts causing bodily injury and involving an attempt 
to kill," and one count of "racially motivated violent interference with a 
federally protected activity."

Most of the charges carry punishments of up to life in prison, but prosecutors 
can seek the death penalty for the charge dealing with federally protected 
activity, brought because Fields is accused of using fatal violence to 
interfere with Heyer's ability to demonstrate on a public street or sidewalk.

"She wasn't looking for a fight. She was looking to lend her voice to her 
cause," said Adam Lee, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Richmond 
division. "A peaceful protest without intimidation, without the threat of 
violence, is every American's birthright."

Officials said Sessions will ultimately decide whether to seek the death 
penalty against Fields.

Sessions strongly denounced the events in Charlottesville, characterizing the 
attack as an act of domestic terrorism. His comments on the rally provided a 
stark contrast to the response of President Donald Trump, who said "both sides" 
shared some blame for the violence.

"In our view, hate crimes are the original acts of domestic terrorism," said 
John Gore, the acting assistant attorney general for the DOJ's civil rights 
division. "Because they are meant to terrorize entire communities."

Asked if there was added pressure to prosecute Fields in light of Trump's 
comments, Cullen said he doesn't speak for the president.

"But as a representative of the Department of Justice, we speak through our 
indictments," Cullen said.

Fields was already scheduled to go to trial in November for several state-level 
charges related to the rally, including first-degree murder. Fields is expected 
to be taken into federal custody next week. The two prosecutions will proceed 
on "separate but parallel tracks," Cullen said.

The Charlottesville Commonwealth's Attorney's Office said the federal 
indictment has no effect on the state charges pending against Fields.

According to the federal indictment, Fields espoused racist views on social 
media before attending the rally, including expressions of support for Adolf 
Hitler and promoting violence against racial minorities. During the rally, he 
joined other participants in racist chants, authorities said.

As Fields prepared to leave home to travel to the rally, a family member sent 
him a text message asking him to be careful, according to the indictment.

Fields responded with an image of Hitler.

"We're not the ones who need to be careful," he said.

(source: richmond.com)