[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., GA., OHIO, TENN., MO., ARIZ., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

March 20



TEXAS----2 new execution dates

Clifton Williams has been given an execution date for June 21, and Danny Bible 
has been given an execution date for June 27----both should be considered 
serious.

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

An execution date has been set for a 66-year-old man who used an ice pick to 
stab a Houston woman to death after she asked to use the telephone at his house 
in 1979.



Danny Paul Bible is scheduled to be executed June 27, according to NBC5 
(KXAS-TV).

The brutal murder of 20-year-old Inez Deaton went unsolved for nearly 2 
decades. The woman had been raped, stabbed 11 times and dumped on the bank of a 
bayou.

Bible confessed to Deaton's killing after he was arrested in 1998 for a 
Louisiana rape. He also confessed to 3 other killings in North Texas, as well 
as numerous rapes.

4 years after killing Deaton, Bible killed his sister-in-law Tracy Powers, her 
4-month-old son and her roommate, Pamela Hudgins. Their bodies were found near 
Weatherford.

He pleaded guilty to Hudgins' murder in 1984 and was paroled after 9 years in 
prison.

Bible has been linked to rapes in Montana, Louisiana and Texas. He was arrested 
in 1998 after he forced his way into a woman's motel room in Louisiana and 
raped her. He bound and gagged the woman before stuffing her into a duffel bag, 
but she was able to break free and call police, according to the San Antonio 
Express-News.

His attorneys argued in federal appeals that Bible is no longer a threat to 
society because he is confined to a wheelchair. A prison van taking him to 
death row in 2003 crashed, disabling him, killing a corrections officer and 
killing the driver of another vehicle.

"He can't get out of a wheelchair by himself. He can't lift his arms. He can't 
do anything," attorney Margaret Schmucker said after the U.S. Supreme Court 
refused an appeal from the death row inmate in 2016.

3 Texas death row inmates are scheduled for execution before Bible, including 
Erick Davila of Fort Worth.

(source: Dallas Morning News)

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

Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----30

Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----548

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

31----------Mar. 27----------------Rosendo Rodriguez III--549

32----------Apr. 25----------------Erick Davila-----------550

33----------May 16-----------------Juan Castillo----------551

34---------June 21----------------Clifton Williams--------552

35---------June 27----------------Danny Bible-------------553

(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)








FLORIDA:

Florida to seek the death penalty against Conway killer



The state of Florida is reported seeking the death penalty against Michael 
Lawrence Woodbury, the 42-year-old former Mainer who shot and killed three 
people at the Army Barracks store in Conway in 2007.

Woodbury, who is serving a life sentence for those killings, was indicted by a 
Florida grand jury on March 13 on a 1st-degree premeditated murder charge 
following a homicide that took place last September in the Okeechobee 
Correctional Institution.

On Sunday, Matteo Tullio of the Okeechobee News reported that the indictment 
referenced the Sept. 22, 2017, killing of a fellow inmate named Antoneeze 
Haynes.

Haynes had been serving 5 life sentences since 1993 for the crimes of attempted 
murder, robbery, burglary and 2 counts of kidnapping committed during a 1990 
home invasion.

The News' Tullio reported that "according to an investigative summary conducted 
by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Woodbury had barricaded the cell 
door and began to attack Haynes" with a combination lock tied to a sock.

"Woodbury also placed the lock around his middle finger and punched Haynes, 
targeted his head, hands and ankles," the story said, adding, "Woodbury also 
reportedly told correctional officers he had a large knife and would kill 
Haynes along with the first correctional officer that tried to enter the cell."

Woodbury remained barricaded in the cell for hours until Maj. Frank Gatto 
arrived and began to negotiate with him. After several more hours, he gave up 
and allowed officers to handcuff him through the cell door.

"Woodbury was taken to confinement and Haynes was taken to the infirmary and 
then transported to Raulerson Hospital, where he was pronounced dead," Tullio 
wrote.

According to the Okeechobee News, Judge Jerald Bryant of Florida's 19th 
Judicial Circuit, said Florida would seek the death penalty for Woodbury's 
latest crime.

Longtime Conway residents will remember July 2, 2007, as the day when Woodbury, 
then 31 and from Windham, Maine, walked into the Army Barracks at 347 White 
Mountain Highway and shot store manager James Walker, 34, and 2 customers from 
Massachusetts, William Jones, 25, and Gary Jones, 23.

Walker and William Jones died at the scene, and Gary Jones died later at Maine 
Medical Center. The two Joneses were not related but were close friends who had 
been camping in Maine. The 2 campers walked in on Woodbury and apparently tried 
to halt his bid to steal gas money for the stolen cars in which he had been 
living.

The day after the shootings, Woodbury gave himself up to a Fryeburg, Maine, 
patrol officer in a forested stretch of railbed in that town.

Woodbury has been serving a life sentence without parole in Florida since 2009.

Reached Monday, Jackson Police Chief Chris Perley said he would not object to 
putting Woodbury to death.

At the time of the Army Barracks killings, Perley was with the Conway Police 
and was the second officer to arrive. When Woodbury fled the scene, he helped 
search the wood line with another officer. He said police worked the case for 
18 hours straight.

"Michael Woodbury's conduct, both proven here in the state of New Hampshire and 
as alleged in the state of Florida, shows that true evil does exist in the 
hearts of some," Perley told the Sun. "Protection against those persons who 
would do harm to others is the highest order of responsibility for those of us 
that serve to protect the public from such terror.

"If his recent conduct is true, he should suffer the greatest penalty available 
to ensure no innocent persons ever suffer at his hands again," Perley said.

Asked for comment, Jane E. Young, Associate Attorney General for the state of 
New Hampshire, said Monday, "The Florida authorities are the ones to make 
charging and sentencing decisions since the crime happened in Florida.

"The Attorney General's Office has no comment on the current charges as the 
defendant pled guilty to 3 counts of 1st-degree murder for the crimes he 
committed in Conway and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility 
of parole for those crimes."

In 2012, the Sun reached out to Woodbury on the 5th anniversary of his crimes. 
He responded in a letter that he handwrote entirely in capital letters.

"I went into that place with the plan of carjacking that man's vehicle," said 
Woodbury. "This is the true reason I pled out to 3 life sentences so fast. My 
lawyer and I was worried if I did not plead out, ASAP, the Feds was going to 
try and give me the death penalty for capital murder in the commission of a 
carjacking. Besides my lawyer and I, you are the 1st to know this. I don't care 
now, the Feds missed their shot."

According to New Hampshire Attorney General's Office, which prosecuted Woodbury 
in 2007, it would be up to New Hampshire's U.S. Attorney to bring the 
carjacking charge against Woodbury.

The U.S. Attorney isn't inclined to recharge Woodbury, said Public Information 
Officer Theresa A. Leppard at the time.

"The state handled the homicide charges with life sentences, so the United 
States Attorney's office would not waste resources prosecuting the case," said 
Leppard.

In his 2012 letter to the Sun, Woodbury said he spends his days working out, 
meditating on the mind of Satan and studying astrophysics. He said he had 
renounced violence with 1 notable exception.

"I may still be a 'Satan-worshipping-predator,' but I will never again bring 
violence into the equation," Woodbury stated. "The exception being those who 
rape children."

Along with the note, Woodbury also provided a copy of a report from a Florida 
prison alleging that Woodbury bloodied and strangled another inmate who 
apparently told Woodbury he was a child molester. The report was dated May 11, 
2009.

"I observed inmate Elliot lying on the floor in what appeared to be blood," 
wrote the corrections official. Inmate Woodbury was standing beside inmate 
Elliot also covered in what appeared to be blood. When I questioned Inmate 
Woodbury as to what happened he stated 'he was a child molester.'"

Woodbury said he had served time in Florida from 1996-2002 on a bank robbery 
charge.

New Hampshire and Florida prison officials refused to comment in 2012 on the 
reason he was moved.

(source: conwaydailysun.com)








GEORGIA:

Motion: Prosecutors excluded black jurors in 7 death-penalty cases----DAs' 
notes said jurors were 'slow' or 'ignorant' or 'fat'



In handwritten notes, Columbus prosecutors described prospective 
African-American jurors as "slow," "ignorant," "con artist" and "fat." They 
also jotted a "B" or an "N" next to black people's names on jury lists and 
routinely ranked them as the least desirable jurors. This astonishing system of 
race discrimination, revealed in a court motion filed Monday, was intended to 
exclude black people from juries in 7 death-penalty cases against black 
defendants in the 1970s.

The motion was filed on behalf of Johnny Lee Gates, who is serving a sentence 
of life without parole for the 1976 rape and murder of Katrina Wright. It 
contends that Gates deserves a new trial because prosecutors made a concerted 
effort to keep black people off his jury. In Gates' case, the prosecution 
struck all 4 prospective black jurors.

"Every person accused of a criminal offense has the right to a fair trial 
that's free of race discrimination," said Patrick Mulvaney, a lawyer with the 
Southern Center for Human Rights and a member of Gates' legal team. "Mr. 
Gates's trial was undermined by race discrimination from the start."

In court filings, Gates' lawyers say the prosecution's alleged discrimination 
against black jurors "was harmful to the community and the integrity of the 
judicial system."

The Muscogee County District Attorney's Office has yet to explain or defend the 
exclusion of black jurors by its prosecutors in the 1970s. Instead, in a recent 
court filing, it said Gates' claims should be rejected because he is relying on 
just 7 capital cases. To prevail, Gates must show systematic exclusion of 
blacks "in case after case, whatever the circumstances, whatever the crime and 
whoever the defendant or victim may be," the DA's office said.

The DA's office had repeatedly refused to turn over its jury notes to Gates' 
lawyers until Senior Superior Court Judge John Allen ordered prosecutors to 
release the records to the plaintiffs in March.

Gates was convicted and sentenced to death during a 3-day trial in 1977. He was 
re-sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2003 while 
appealing his case on claims he is intellectually disabled.

Prosecutors said Gates sexually assaulted and killed Wright, a 19-year-old 
German immigrant who had moved to Columbus just 12 days earlier to be with her 
husband, a soldier at Fort Benning. Gates posed as a gas company employee to 
gain entry into the apartment, prosecutors say.

Gates took $480 in cash from Wright. He then bound her hands and gagged and 
blindfolded her before shooting her in the head with a .32-caliber pistol, 
prosecutors said.

Although Gates gave a videotaped confession, his description of what happened 
did not fully match with the physical evidence in the case, say lawyers from 
the Georgia Innocence Project, who also represent Gates. They have obtained 
court orders for DNA testing.

The 2 prosecutors who tried the case against Gates were then-District Attorney 
William Smith and his assistant DA Douglas Pullen, who later succeeded Smith as 
district attorney.

Smith was involved in 4 of the 7 death-penalty cases that were tried from 1976 
to 1979, the motion said. In 3 of those cases, all 15 prospective black jurors 
were struck by the prosecution. In the 4th case, involving defendant William 
Henry Hance, prosecutors struck 10 of the 13 prospective black jurors, allowing 
2 African-Americans to decide his fate, the motion said.

But in Hance's case, "an all-white jury was impossible because the pool of 
prospective jurors had more black citizens than the prosecutors had strikes," 
the motion noted.

Pullen was involved in 5 of the death-penalty trials, and all of them had 
all-white juries. In those cases, 27 of the 27 prospective black jurors were 
struck by the prosecution, the motion said.

Michael Lacey, a Georgia Tech mathematics professor, reviewed the jury strikes 
made by prosecutors in these seven capital cases. The probability that black 
jurors were removed for race-neutral reasons was 
.000000000000000000000000000004 %, Lacey said in a sworn statement filed by 
Gates' legal team.

Pullen's name surfaced in recent years in the case against Timothy Foster, a 
black man who was sentenced to death in Floyd County for killing a 79-year-old 
widow in 1986. Pullen, while still a prosecutor in Columbus, assisted with jury 
selection in Foster's trial in Rome. In that case, prosecutors struck all four 
prospective black jurors.

In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court condemned the prosecution for improperly 
assembling an all-white jury in Foster's case and repudiated their stated 
reasons for striking all 4 prospective black jurors. The ruling referred to the 
prosecution team's color-coded jury notes that listed potential black jurors as 
"#B1," "#B2," "#B3" and so on.

"(T)he focus on race in the prosecution's file plainly demonstrates a concerted 
effort to keep black prospective jurors off the jury," Chief Justice John 
Roberts wrote for a 7-1 majority.

In Gates' case, prosecutors' notes designated prospective white jurors with a 
"W" and prospective black jurors with an "N." One set of notes ranked 
prospective jurors on a scale of "1" to "5," with 1 being the least desirable 
and 5 being the most favored to have on the jury.

All four prospective black jurors were designated as a "1," with no explanation 
why. A note explaining why the only white juror received a "1" said he was 
"opposed" to capital punishment but could still impose the penalty.

Listed below are the 7 African-American death-penalty defendants prosecuted in 
Muscogee County in the late 1970s; the number of prospective black jurors 
removed by prosecutors; the number of African-American jurors who served as 
jurors; and the status of the defendant.

Joseph Mulligan: 1976; 4 of 4; zero; executed in 1987.

Jerome Bowden: 1976; 8 of 8; zero; executed in 1986.

Johnny Lee Gates: 1977; 4 of 4; zero; serving life sentence.

Jimmy Lee Graves: 1977; 4 of 4; zero; paroled in 2012.

Williams Brooks: 1977; 4 of 4; zero; serving life sentence.

William Henry Hance: 1978; 10 of 13; 2; executed in 1994.

William Spicer Lewis: 1979; 7 of 7; zero; serving life sentence

(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)








OHIO:

Defense attorney explains death penalty cases



Locally there are 3 death penalty cases, all in different stages of legal 
proceedings.

There's the James Worley case in the trial phase. He is accused of kidnapping 
and murdering 20-year-old Sierah Joughin.

Another death penalty case in Columbus, is against Brian Golsby and is in 
mitigation. He's accused of kidnapping and murdering Reagan Tokes, an Anthony 
Wayne High School graduate and former OSU student.

The 3rd case is near the end of the death penalty process. William Montgomery 
was found guilty of killing Debra Ogle and Cynthia Tincher in 1986.

Montgomery has been on death row for 31 years and is scheduled to die by lethal 
injection on April 11th, but the Ohio Parole Board recommended clemency so he 
now waits for Governor John Kasich with the final say on the ruling.

1 local defense attorney said having 3 death penalty cases at once is more than 
normal. He explains how they are ran much differently from a non-death penalty 
case.

"I can remember everything that happened that night crystal clear," explained 
Richard (Rick) Kerger, an attorney practicing law since 1974.

Rick Kerger is a defense attorney who has worked on several death penalty 
cases. A number of years ago, he had to watch one of his clients be put to 
death.

"I've known people who are dying," explained Kerger. "I never knew anybody who 
was going to die exactly at midnight and it's a very different sensation when 
you are going through it."

He said emotions are high during every phase of a death penalty case especially 
those that hit close to home.

"It's always about people," said Rick Kerger. "This is not some abstract 
concept. It's about those two young women who were killed, it's about the men 
that are accused of killing them, it's about their families. The emotions in 
there are raw." Kerger said death penalty cases generally involve a longer 
trial, but that's not where it ends. There's mitigation, the chance to spare 
the defendant's life, and even still what could be decades of appeals.

"The reason the process takes so long is we want to be sure we got the right 
person because if you convict somebody wrongly you have necessarily let the 
criminal get free," said Rick Kerger, a defense lawyer.

Death penalty cases do cost a lot of money too, over a million dollars on 
average. The cost covers incarceration, appeal, and much more.

"Part of the problem I see in the system is once it reaches the decision it's 
very hard to get it overturned," explained Kerger. "I think the thinking is 
look, if you had a fair trial that's all you need. You don't need a perfect 
trial."

While Rick Kerger's job is to keep his clients off death row, he does say 
jurors' other option, life in prison without parole, is also a very bleak 
sentence with little hope.

(source: WTOL news)




TENNESSEE----2 new execution dates

Edmund Zagorski has been given an execution date for October 11, and David 
Miller has been given an execution date for December 6; both dates should be 
seen as serious.

(source: RH)








MISSOURI----impending execution

This Death Row Inmate's Blood-Filled Tumors Could Make His Execution Especially 
Cruel and Unusual----Russell Bucklew suffers from a rare disease.



Missouri death row inmate Russell Bucklew is scheduled to die on Tuesday. But 
Bucklew suffers from a rare medical condition, and his lawyers say that the 
execution drug that will be used could come with gruesome consequences and 
constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

For nearly all his life, Bucklew has been afflicted with cavernous hemangioma, 
a rare disease that causes tumors to form in his face, head, neck, and throat. 
Prison staff intend to use pentobarbital, a sedative, to execute him, but this 
could cause his tumors to burst. Cheryl Pilate, one of Bucklew's lawyers told 
the Associated Press on Monday, he would likely experience "a gruesome 
execution with choking and gagging on blood and the infliction of excruciating 
pain."

Bucklew, who is 49 years old, has been on death row for more than 20 years for 
the 1996 murder of Michael Sanders in Cape Giradeau, Missouri. Sanders was the 
new boyfriend of Bucklew's former girlfriend Stephanie Ray. Bucklew shot 
Sanders in front of his children, Ray and her children, and then kidnapped Ray 
and took her to a secluded area. After raping her, he drove her to the St. 
Louis area as a hostage where a high-speed chase and shootout with a state 
trooper ensued. Bucklew was arrested and held in the Cape Girardeau County jail 
but escaped a few months later in June by hiding in a trash can that was taken 
out of the prison. While on the run, he went to the home of Ray's mother and 
attacked her with a hammer, but she survived. 2 days later, Bucklew was 
apprehended and jailed. In 1997, he was convicted of kidnap, rape, and murder, 
and sentenced to death.

Missouri first attempted to execute Bucklew in May 2014, but the US Supreme 
Court granted a stay in order to allow Bucklew's claims that his execution 
would be painful to work its way through the lower courts. Bucklew's lawyers 
argued that given his illness, he could not be humanely executed, and this 
cruel and unusual punishment would be a violation of the Eighth Amendment. In 
Glossip v. Gross, the US Supreme Court said that when the Eighth Amendment is 
used to challenge a method of execution a "reasonable alternative" must be 
proposed by the inmate.

In the 2014 appeal, Bucklew's lawyers suggested that the state use nitrogen gas 
to execute him (the state of Oklahoma recently proposed it as an alternative to 
lethal injection). According to court documents, Dr. Joel Zivot, a professor of 
surgery and anesthesiology at Emory University said that "substantial risk" 
exists that Bucklew will "suffer from extreme or excruciating pain." But last 
June, a federal judge ruled that because Bucklew could not actually show that 
death by nitrogen would reduce the risk of suffering, his execution should 
proceed.

Missouri uses a 1-drug protocol in its executions in which death row inmates 
are injected with a large dose of the sedative pentobarbital. According to a 
Buzzfeed News report, the state's drug supplier is a pharmacy with a history of 
selling contaminated drugs, and anti-death penalty advocates argue that 
contaminated pentobarbital would also cause a painful death for Bucklew.

Last week, in the appeal Bucklew's lawyers filed with the US Supreme Court, 
they asked for the court to spare his life and painted a grim picture of what 
could happen during the execution. "As he struggles to breathe through the 
execution procedure," they wrote, "Bucklew's throat tumor will likely rupture 
... filling his mouth and airway with blood, causing him to choke and cough on 
his own blood."

(source: Mother Jones)

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

3 options remain for Missouri man scheduled to be executed today



A federal court judge, the U.S. Supreme Court and Republican Governor Eric 
Greitens are the options left for convicted killer Russell Bucklew, whose 
execution is set for later today. The attorney for Bucklew says lethal 
injection could be gruesome and painful because of Bucklew's brain and neck 
tumors.

An appeal is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court that states his throat tumor 
would probably rupture, causing him to choke on his own blood. Bucklew was 
moments away from execution in 2014 when the U.S. Supreme Court intervened for 
the same argument.

The governor's spokesman, Parker Briden, says he cannot comment on whether a 
request has been made to block Bucklew's execution.

In 1996, the 49-year-old Bucklew was convicted of murdering a Cape Girardeau 
man involved with his ex-girlfriend. Police say Bucklew killed Michael Sanders 
in front of Sanders and his estranged girlfriend. He also raped the woman, held 
her hostage and got into a shootout with state troopers. Bucklew survived a 
bullet to the head during that shooting.

Missourinet is planning to cover today's scheduled execution. The procedure can 
occur anytime between 6 p.m. today and 6 p.m. tomorrow.

The last person to be executed in Missouri was Mark Christeson in January 2017.

(source: missourinet.com)








ARIZONA:

Supreme Court refuses to reconsider death penalty in Arizona case



The Supreme Court refused again Monday to decide whether the death penalty is 
unconstitutional.

The action came in a case from Arizona in which lawyers asked the court to 
strike down both the state's capital punishment system and the nation's.

The court's 4 liberal justices said Arizona's system, under which most 
defendants convicted of1st-degree murder are eligible for the death penalty, 
may be unconstitutional. But they said the case was not ready for the high 
court's review.

The justices have in recent years sided with death row defendants for specific 
reasons, ranging from racial discrimination and intellectual disability to 
incompetent lawyers. But in their most important case, they ruled 5-4 in 2015 
that even a controversial type of lethal injection can continue to be used in 
executions.

That case produced the dissent that led to Monday's order. Justice Stephen 
Breyer, backed by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said then that the nation's 
40-year-old system of capital punishment should be reexamined because a 
declining number of death sentences were sometimes unreliable, often arbitrary, 
and nearly always led to such long delays before execution that they no longer 
serve as a deterrent.

Since then, lawyers for death row inmates have tried to get the justices to 
reconsider whether capital punishment is constitutional.

"A national consensus has emerged that the death penalty is an unacceptable 
punishment in any circumstance," former U.S. acting solicitor general Neal 
Katyal argued in the latest case. "And this court's opinions, supported by 
reams of evidence, are trending unmistakably toward that consensus."

His client, Abel Daniel Hidalgo, killed 2 men in Arizona in 2001 and, by the 
time he was found and charged, had killed 2 women in Idaho in 2002.

The question in the case, as in most death penalty disputes, wasn't about guilt 
or innocence but whether the penalty is dished out fairly. Arizona lists so 
many potential aggravating circumstances in its capital punishment statute that 
almost every 1st-degree murderer is eligible for execution, Katyal claimed.

Arizona officials had asked the court to turn down the case, citing Hidalgo's 
heinous crimes and refuting claims that the death penalty is unfairly 
administered. The decline in executions, the state said in court papers, is due 
largely to problems states have had in obtaining the drugs needed for lethal 
injections.

"Despite the logistical difficulties, states have continued in their unwavering 
efforts to constitutionally impose and carry out capital sentences," the 
state's solicitor general, Dominic Draye, wrote. "If anything, the lengths to 
which states must presently go is proof of their commitment to maintaining 
capital punishment."

The court's action was unsigned, but Breyer wrote a 10-page concurrence laying 
out possible grounds for declaring Arizona's system unconstitutional. He 
concluded that the factual record was not fully developed. Justices Ruth Bader 
Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan agreed.

To back up their claim, lawyers for Hidalgo had obtained evidence through 
public records requests to claim that aggravating circumstances required to 
seek a death sentence were present in 856 of 866 1st-degree murder cases in 
Maricopa County between 2002 and 2012. That would surpass rates in other states 
with an active death penalty statute and suggest that the penalty covers too 
many crimes.

The court also heard from several groups opposed to the death penalty, such as 
Amnesty International, and from former Arizona judges, prosecutors, defenders 
and legislators who agree with opponents.

"Years of experience and study demonstrate that the death penalty serves no 
legitimate end and is a grossly disproportionate form of punishment," the Fair 
Punishment Project wrote.

(source: USA Today)








CALIFORNIA:

California's death penalty avoids legal challenge at Supreme Court



California's death penalty law sidestepped a legal challenge Monday when the 
U.S. Supreme Court denied review of a similarly wide-ranging law in Arizona.

An Arizona death row inmate had asked the court to consider whether the state's 
law violated constitutional standards because it makes virtually every 
1st-degree murderer subject to potential capital charges. When the high court 
struck down all state death penalty laws in 1972, it said those laws must 
reserve the death penalty for those convicted of the worst categories of 
murders.

If the court had taken up the inmate's case and struck down the Arizona law, 
the ruling could have overturned death penalty laws in other states including 
California, where a study found that 95 % of all 1st-degree murder convictions 
over a 25-year period could have been charged as capital crimes.

But after considering the case at closed-door conferences for 4 months, the 
justices rejected the appeal Monday, leaving intact an Arizona Supreme Court 
ruling that upheld the state law.

The vote was unanimous. But the court's 4 liberal-leaning justices, led by 
Justice Stephen Breyer, issued a separate opinion saying the case raised 
serious issues.

To meet constitutional standards, a state law "must genuinely narrow the class 
of persons eligible for the death penalty," said Breyer, joined by Justices 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

He said the Arizona court, in upholding the law, "seemed to suggest that 
prosecutors may perform the narrowing requirement" by deciding which murders 
were serious enough for capital charges. Past Supreme Court rulings require 
states, in their laws, to set those limits rather than leaving the task up to 
prosecutors, Breyer said.

But he said this was the wrong case to make the decision, because the condemned 
prisoner, whose lawyers cited academic studies on the breadth of the Arizona 
law, did not persuade the state's courts to hold hearings on the actual scope 
of the law and how it is applied. Such a record is necessary to determine 
whether the law is unconstitutionally broad, Breyer said.

In a 2015 opinion, Breyer and Ginsburg said the death penalty itself probably 
violated constitutional standards because it was applied arbitrarily, after 
long delays, and because it was likely that some innocent people had been 
executed. Breyer wrote another opinion in 2016 saying California's death 
penalty appeared to be constitutionally defective.

The Arizona case involved Abel Hidalgo, convicted of 2 2001 murders in Maricopa 
County. His lawyers said studies showed that, over an 11-year period, 99 % of 
all 1st-degree murders in that county could have been prosecuted as capital 
crimes. The state's law, originally drafted narrowly, "now provides prosecutors 
and jurors with unfettered discretion," defense lawyers said.

In response, Arizona's lawyers said the law provides "clear, objective 
standards" for capital murders.

The California death penalty law also started narrowly, covering only selected 
categories of intentional killings, such as murder of a police officer, murder 
for financial gain and multiple murders. But that law, passed by legislators 
over Gov. Jerry Brown's veto in 1977, was expanded by a 1978 voter initiative 
and later court rulings and now applies to most types of 1st-degree murders, 
including some committed unintentionally in the course of another crime.

The state has the nation's largest death row, with 746 condemned prisoners. It 
has not executed anyone since January 2006, but a number of inmates could be 
scheduled for execution within the next year because of a 2016 initiative 
limiting review of execution methods, and Supreme Court rulings rejecting 
challenges to lethal injection drugs in other states.

The case is Hidalgo vs. Arizona, 17-251.

(source: San Frtancisco Chronicle)








USA:

Trump's death penalty plan for drug dealers a 'step backwards,' experts say



President Donald Trump on Monday rolled out his 3-part plan to tackle the 
opioid epidemic -- including some programs long championed by public health 
advocates -- but it's the proposal to impose the death penalty on drug 
traffickers that has raised the most eyebrows.

"This isn't about being nice anymore," Trump told the crowd at a New Hampshire 
event. "These are terrible people, and we have to get tough on those people. We 
can have all the blue-ribbon committees we want. But if we don't get tough on 
the drug dealers, we're wasting our time -- just remember that, we're wasting 
our time -- and that toughness includes the death penalty."

Trump also offered support to policies increasing access to the opioid overdose 
antidote naloxone, calling for more medication-assisted treatment programs and 
highlighting a new high-profile advertising campaign to discourage America's 
youth from trying drugs, similar to the "Just Say No" campaigns from the Reagan 
era.

However, public health experts roundly condemned the death penalty proposal, 
with some saying it renews the failed rhetoric from the war on drugs in the 
1980s.

"We can't execute our way out of this epidemic," said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, 
co-director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis University. 
"To be talking about the death penalty sounds to me like a step backwards."

Trump's opioid plan to take 3-pronged approach, including death penalty for 
high-volume traffickers

Dr. Guohua Li, a professor of epidemiology and anesthesiology at Columbia 
University who has studied the epidemic for more than a decade, also cast doubt 
on the effectiveness of such a policy.

"Criminal justice can play a complementary role in addressing the opioid 
crisis," Li said, "but relying on the criminal justice system to address public 
health problems has proven unwise, costly, ineffective and often 
counterproductive."

The opioid epidemic claimed 64,000 lives in drug overdoses in 2016 and has 
killed more than 500,000 people since 2000, according to the US Centers for 
Disease Control and Prevention. Trump has declared the epidemic a public health 
emergency -- and public health experts said that's where the focus should be.

"Like the epidemics of Ebola and Zika," Li said, "the opioid crisis will 
ultimately be resolved through a public health approach by public health 
professionals working in the CDC, state and county health departments, and 
academic institutions in collaboration with other government agencies and 
community organizations across society."

In New Hampshire, Trump laid out his vision for tackling the opioid crisis, 
saying his approach would be 3-pronged: reducing demand through education, 
cutting off the flow of illicit drugs and saving lives by expanding 
opportunities for evidence-based addiction treatment.

But he most emphasized that it was time get tough on drug dealers.

Opioid overdose among children nearly doubles, study says

"You know it's an amazing thing. Some of these drug dealers will kill thousands 
of people during their lifetime -- thousands of people -- and destroy many more 
lives than that," Trump said. "They'll get caught, and they'll get 30 days in 
jail, or they'll go away for a year, or they'll be fined."

"So if we're not going to get tough on the drug dealers who kill thousands of 
people and destroy so many people's lives, we are just doing the wrong thing," 
the president said. "Toughness is the thing they most fear."

His comments were met with applause.

"Whether you are a dealer or doctor or trafficker or a manufacturer, if you 
break the law and illegally peddle these deadly poisons, we will find you, we 
will arrest you, and we will hold you accountable."

Trump stressed the death penalty would be sought for the "big pushers, the ones 
who are really killing people." At one point, he referenced an unspecified 
country that he claimed doesn't have a drug problem because it has "zero 
tolerance for drug dealers."

"Take a look at some of those countries," Trump said. "They don't play games. 
They don't have a drug problem."

However, he acknowledged that the United States may not support this plan. 
"Maybe our country is not ready for that. It's possible ... and I can 
understand it," he said. "Maybe, although personally, I can't understand that."

Some of the president's proposals have been endorsed by experts. Naloxone, the 
overdose antidote, is extremely effective and can start working in minutes. 
Harm reduction groups and needle exchanges have been distributing it since 
1996, and the CDC says more than 26,000 overdoses have been reversed since 
then.

Many addiction specialists consider medication-assisted treatment the gold 
standard of addiction treatment. It utilizes behavioral therapy as well as 
medications like buphrenorphine and methadone that can reduce cravings and 
withdrawal symptoms from opioid use.

A senior White House official said the administration would not be waiting for 
Congress to propose legislation on the death penalty proposal, saying it is 
something the Justice Department is "examining to move ahead with to make sure 
that's done appropriately."

Opioid Crisis Fast Facts

The official declined to give an example of when the death penalty might be 
used, referring all questions to the Department of Justice. "Obviously, there 
are instances where that would be appropriate," the official said.

Li said the government's action to impose more severe penalties for drug 
trafficking crimes is "understandable and, if implemented judiciously and with 
other more substantive and comprehensive interventions, is likely efficacious." 
But he cautioned, "the increased penalty by itself, however, is unlikely to 
make a significant impact on the opioid epidemic."

John Blume, a law professor at Cornell University and director of the 
university's Death Penalty Project, said the Federal Drug Kingpin Act, which 
allowed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in which a homicide 
occurred during the commission of a drug transaction, yielded "few kingpins or 
major dealers -- and mostly ensnared poor, African-American, mid- to low-level 
persons involved in the drug trade."

"There is no reason to believe this new call for capital punishment in homicide 
cases for drug dealers will be any more successful," Blume said.

Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, 
a nonprofit group that seeks to end the war on drugs, called the policy "deeply 
cynical."

"There's a lot Trump should be doing; instead, he's resorting to recycled drug 
war rhetoric, using his usual bombastic approach to rally his base," 
Sanchez-Moreno said. "It reveals a lack of interest in helping the people who 
are affected by this crisis, and he's using it for purely political goals."

She said Trump's announcement wasn't surprising, just disappointing. "He's been 
praising President (Rodrigo) Duterte in the Philippines forever, and that's 
somebody who advocates going out and murdering people who use drugs," she said.

The Trump administration, she said, needs to "drop its obsession with killing 
and locking people up and instead focus resources on what works: harm-reduction 
strategies and access to evidence-based treatment and prevention."

On Twitter, the reaction was similar, with people wondering whether the 
administration would seek the death penalty for executives at pharmaceutical 
companies or for doctors at so-called pill mills. Others questioned the logic 
behind the move.

Has the death penalty solved anything, ever?-- Ivan Jarden (@ivesjar) March 19, 
2018

Dr. Leana Wen, director of public health in Baltimore, echoed that sentiment. 
"The war on drugs has not worked," she said. "The last thing we need is to 
further criminalize the disease of addiction. We need for everyone to 
understand addiction is a disease, that treatment exists and recovery is 
possible." What is needed, she said, is tens of billions of new money for the 
epidemic. "We already know what works," she said. "We just need the funding to 
get us there."

Kolodny added that it makes some sense to seek stricter penalties for major 
fentanyl suppliers and pill mill doctors for pushing drugs that can kill, but 
he said that seeking the death penalty seems to be an overreach.

"The reality is, most people who are selling drugs are suffering from opioid 
addiction, and they sell drugs to support their own habit," Kolodny said.

"When I start hearing about the death penalty, it just seems to me we're going 
in the wrong direction."

(source: CNN)

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

Attorney General Sessions backs Trump call for death penalty in drug cases



U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday backed a plan outlined by 
President Donald Trump aimed at combating the opioid crisis by vowing to seek 
the death penalty "wherever appropriate" against drug traffickers.

"Drug dealers show no respect for human dignity and put their own greed ahead 
of the safety and even the lives of others," he said in a statement, adding 
that the Justice Department "will continue to aggressively prosecute drug 
traffickers."

(source: Reuters)

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

Van Jones rips Trump death penalty proposal as 'divisive' and 'stupid'



CNN's Van Jones tore into President Trump's proposal to sentence some drug 
traffickers to the death penalty.

"Nobody on the ground is saying what we really need is the death penalty for 
drug dealers, what we really need is tougher, harsher sentences," Jones said on 
CNN late Monday, noting he has met with sheriffs and pastors in the past.

"I don't know where he's getting that stuff. That is 180 degrees from what the 
people on the ground are saying."

Jones said people he's talked to are saying drug dealers need more help, 
compassion and education.

"Sometimes they see they need better Bible studies, that would be higher on the 
list than death penalty for drug dealers," Jones said.

"This death penalty thing is a complete nonstarter," he continued.

"It's divisive and it's stupid and I think it's an offense to the people who 
are really trying to solve this problem."

Trump earlier Monday spoke in New Hampshire about his plans to combat the 
opioid epidemic.

"If we don't get tough on the drug dealers, we're wasting our time," said 
Trump, who has praised other countries' use of the death penalty for drug 
traffickers for weeks.

His plan to seek stiffer penalties for high-volume drug traffickers includes a 
mandate to the Department of Justice to seek the death penalty when appropriate 
under current law.

A Justice Department official wrote in an email that "under current law, the 
federal dmcyeath penalty is available for several limited drug-related 
offenses." The move faces high hurdles with advocates and some lawmakers 
slamming the measure as the wrong approach to curbing the crisis.

(source: thehill.com)