[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ILL., TENN., USA

[Rick Halperin]

February 4




ILLINOIS:

Exoneree band doesn’t lack conviction



The Defenders of the Innocent keynote speaker isn’t really a speaker.

It packs a powerful message just the same.

The Exoneree Band, a touring group of ex-prisoners-turned-musicians, will be 
the main attraction at the March 30 fundraiser benefiting the Illinois 
Innocence Project, which was founded at the University of Illinois Springfield 
in 2001.

The band is made up of five men wrongfully convicted of other persons’ crimes. 
Totaled together, the quintet spent nearly 100 years behind bars.

The band has a couple of Illinois connections: Drummer Antoine Day of Chicago 
was convicted of first-degree murder in 1992 and served a decade in prison 
before his conviction was overturned.

One of its founding members, Darby Tillis, spent time on Illinois’ death row 
and became one of the state’s first exonerees. Tillis, who became a street 
preacher and anti-death penalty advocate, was a harmonica player in the band 
and died in 2014.

“The Exoneree Band gives people a unique perspective of the wrongful conviction 
story,” said Courtney Reed, the development director for the Illinois Innocence 
Project, who has seen the band perform. “One of the things they talk a lot 
about is promoting justice and healing and redemption through their music.”

The band plays original music and is rounded out by vocalist-guitarist William 
Michael Dillon, lead guitarist Raymond Towler, bassist Eddie James Lowery and 
rhythm guitarist Ted Bradford.

The band debuted in 2011 at an Innocence Project event in Cincinnati. While it 
has played those types of events over the years, the Exoneree Band has also 
played more commercial venues like the House of Blues in Cleveland.

“The songs are very personal,” said Reed, noting that the band works in rock, 
blues and country styles. “It’s music you can move to. It’s not a somber 
experience; it’s an energizing experience. You end up feeling positive.

“Music is a way they have chosen to tell their story. They never let go of 
their musical talent and ability.”

Towler, who doubles as the band’s manager and spent almost 3 decades behind 
bars, was a well-known musician before his imprisonment. He kept playing during 
his 29 years of wrongful conviction and was exonerated in 2010 in Ohio after a 
fourth round of DNA testing proved his innocence.

“We’re not here to sing a sad song,” Towler told the band’s website. “We want 
to bring that light to a dark place and music is the best way to do that.”

“We all know music heals and it speaks to anyone, no matter the language or 
cultural background,” added Reed. “It makes the complex issue of wrongful 
conviction understandable.

“For the past number of years, people have been used to hearing experts and 
exonerees. This is a different way to convey the experience and I think people 
are going to enjoy hearing individual cases played out through the music.”

“They are fantastic musicians and we’re really looking forward to it,” said IIP 
executive and legal director John Hanlon.

Some of the fundraiser’s past speakers have included author Scott Turow 
(“Presumed Innocent”); Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Five, whose 
conviction was set aside in 2002; and Brian Banks, a former Atlanta Falcons 
linebacker who as a teenager was wrongfully convicted of rape.

Last month, Grover Thompson was granted executive clemency by then-outgoing 
Gov. Bruce Rauner. The Innocence Project first started working on the case in 
2011.

Hanlon said at the time it was believed to be the 1st posthumous exoneration 
given in Illinois history.

The Defenders of the Innocent event will have another wrinkle: Juan A. Rivera, 
Jr., who was wrongfully convicted three times for the 1992 rape and murder of a 
Waukegan girl, is covering the expenses for the band.

No physical evidence linked Rivera to the crime scene.

Rivera comes to the annual event, according to Reed.

“This is something we couldn’t have done with him,” Reed said.

“It’s going to be something we haven’t seen in Springfield,” Reed said of the 
event. “There’s only one band like this.

“It’s a really unique opportunity.”

(source: The State Journal-Register)








TENNESSEE:

As U.S. executions wane, Tennessee moves to put more inmates to 
death----Tennessee is planning a wave of executions. Inmates have raised 
concerns about lethal injection and asked for electrocution and firing squads 
instead.



Tennessee has been waiting more than 3 decades to kill Donnie Edward Johnson, 
Stephen Michael West, Charles Walton Wright and Leroy Hall.

This year, all 4 may die.

They are next in line in a jump-started execution schedule that has suddenly 
put Tennessee among states with the most active death chambers. After going 9 
years without putting anyone to death, Tennessee executed 3 people last year, 
2nd only to Texas. In addition to the 4 this year, it has scheduled 2 more in 
2020.

This relative surge is unusual in America, where new death sentences and 
executions have dropped to historic lows and public opinion is turning against 
capital punishment. There were 42 death sentences and 25 executions nationwide 
last year.

Much of the decline has to do with questions over the use of lethal injection 
drugs, the primary execution method in the 30 states that still allow the death 
penalty. Opponents say it is inhumane, and drug companies have resisted states’ 
attempts to use their products — often obtained secretly — to end someone’s 
life. The developments have made it increasingly difficult for states to carry 
out death sentences, with only the most persistent finding ways to continue.

“The death penalty seems to be retreating from most of the country, but there 
are pockets in which it is disproportionally used,” said Robert Dunham, 
executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that 
studies the use of capital punishment.

That includes Tennessee, where objections to the state’s lethal injection 
protocols — first involving a single drug, then, after it became too hard to 
find, a different 3-drug mix — halted executions from 2009 to 2018. The hiatus 
ended when the state Supreme Court swept those objections aside last year.

The 1st of the new wave of Tennessee executions was on Aug. 9, when Billy Ray 
Irick was put to death for the 1985 rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl. On 
the eve of his death, his appeals reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which 
declined to intervene. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissenting opinion, called 
the process a “rush to execute.”

In the end, Irick was killed with a 3-drug combination that was later described 
as torturous by a doctor hired by inmates’ lawyers — and prompted the next 2 
men on the execution list, Edmund Zagorski and David Miller, to instead choose 
to die in an electric chair, a method all but abandoned for its barbarity.

“The significance of prisoners choosing a method known to be painful over 
something that is less known and could take longer, is extraordinarily 
significant and brutal,” said Megan McCracken, a lawyer at the University of 
California, Berkeley School of Law’s Death Penalty Clinic. “Prisoners are 
choosing it over the mix when they hear or see reports of other prisoners 
remaining alive, breathing, struggling, exhibiting signs of pain and 
suffering.”

Much of the opposition to the 3-drug cocktail is based on the use of midazolam, 
a sedative that is supposed to render inmates unconscious before the 
administration of the remaining drugs — 1 that paralyzes them and 1 that stops 
their heart. Legal challenges have included evidence that the midazolam doesn’t 
prevent the inmate from feeling pain, and could cause pulmonary edema, which 
can make people feel as if they’re drowning in their own fluids.

“The basic argument is that this is torture and because this is torture it 
should be considered unconstitutional,” said Brad McLean, who represents a man 
scheduled for execution in Tennessee in April 2020.

T2men with looming execution dates in Tennessee, Stephen Michael West (Aug. 15, 
2019) and Nicholas Todd Sutton (Feb. 20, 2020) have filed a lawsuit seeking to 
be killed by firing squad, an unlikely possibility that could only happen if 
the state can no longer obtain lethal injection drugs and the electric chair is 
found to be unconstitutional. Only Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah currently 
allow death by firing squads, although Utah is the only one to use it - 3 times 
- since 1977.

Tennessee death row inmates have challenged the state’s 3-drug protocol in a 
series of lawsuits and court filings. The case reached the state Supreme Court, 
which in an October hearing focused on requirements set by a 2005 U.S. Supreme 
Court ruling that inmates prove that a less painful method is available. The 
Tennessee inmates argued that the state could use a single drug, pentobarbital, 
which it had accepted in the past. But the state’s lawyers said it could no 
longer obtain the drug. The state Supreme Court ruled against the inmates, 
saying there was no clear alternative to the 3 drugs Tennessee is currently 
using.

The move to execute more people in Tennessee stands in contrast to Ohio, where 
a federal judge found in January that a similar 3-drug method caused “severe 
pain and needless suffering.” In response, Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, 
postponed an inmate’s execution and ordered the state to seek alternative 
drugs.

Later this year, another important ruling on lethal injections is expected, 
this time from the U.S. Supreme Court. It is considering a Missouri inmate’s 
claim that lethal injection would lead to a “gruesome” death because he suffers 
from a rare condition that would make it difficult for executioners to find a 
vein to administer the drugs, and would cause him to choke on his own blood. 
Lawyers say the ruling could affect other cases involving elderly or infirm 
death-row inmates.

Tennessee’s execution schedule represents the culmination of cases that began 
decades ago, when the use of capital punishment was at its height in America. 
While the state has 58 people on death row, only two of them were sentenced 
since 2013.

“It is ironic that in a time where the number of executions has decreased 
significantly, Tennessee has experienced a sudden rush to execute so many men 
in such a short period of time,” said Kelley Henry, a federal public defender 
who represents t3 of the men on Tennessee’s execution list.

Tennessee’s execution schedule:

May 16, 2019: Donnie Edward Johnson, 68, sentenced to death for murder in 1984

Aug. 15, 2019: Stephen Michael West, 66, sentenced to death for murder in 1987

Oct. 10, 2019: Charles Walton Wright, 63, sentenced to death for murder in 1984

Dec. 5, 2019: Leroy Hall, 52, sentenced to death for murder in 1991

Feb. 20, 2020: Nicholas Todd Sutton, 57, sentenced to death for murder in 1986

April 9, 2020: Abu Ali Abdur’Rahman, 68, sentenced to death for murder in 1987

(source: NBC News)








USA:

In Some States, the Death Penalty’s Days Might Be Numbered----“We’re a lot 
closer to change than people realize.”



After it reached its peak both in its use and popular support in the 1990s, the 
frequency of the death penalty has fallen. Drug manufacturers have stopped 
supplying their products to states that want to use them in executions, while 
public backing for the death penalty has steadily been waning. And 2019 may 
turn out to be a historic year for rolling back capital punishment on the state 
level.

“There are always bills to abolish the death penalty,” Gregory Joseph the 
director of communications for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death 
Penalty says. “What we’re seeing now is they are actually moving.” In New 
Hampshire and Wyoming, for instance, repeal bills are pending in the 
legislature with decent chances of passing, and even in Louisiana and Kansas, 
anti-death penalty advocates are catching winds of a growing movement to end 
the practice. Why? For the same reasons advocates have been arguing against the 
death penalty for years: It is arbitrary, racist, expensive, and does not deter 
crime.

“New Hampshire has never been in love with the death penalty,” state 
Representative Renny Cushing says. The last person executed in the state was 
Howard Long, who was hung by a noose in 1939 for the sexual abuse and murder of 
small children. After 2 high-profile murders in 2005 and 2006, former 
Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who was the attorney general at the time, decided 
to pursue the death penalty in both cases.

One of the defendants was Michael Addison, a black man who shot and killed 
Michael Briggs, a police officer with whom he had previous run-ins. Addison 
grew up in extreme poverty and court documents allege that he suffered from an 
intellectual disability. The other defendant was John Brooks, a white 
multimillionaire who hired hitmen to kill Jack Reid, a man he believed had 
stolen from him. Brooks and one of the men he hired to help him, struck the 
victim with a sledgehammer. Addison was found guilty and sentenced to death. 
Brooks was also found guilty but sentenced to life without the possibility of 
parole. Addison has been the only person on New Hampshire’s death row for the 
last 11 years.

“The fact that the one person [on death row] is black and the state is 
overwhelmingly white is making people question the system.”

“The fact that the one person [on death row] is black and the state is 
overwhelmingly white is making people question the system,” Cushing says. In 
his seven terms in the state legislature, Cushing has introduced several bills 
to abolish the death penalty. In 2018, the bill passed both the Senate and the 
House, but the measure was vetoed by Republican Gov. Chris Sununu and lawmakers 
didn’t have the votes to override the veto. “The major obstacles in the state 
is that the governor opposes it,” Cushing explains. “We know we have a 
majority, the question that remains is, will we have for vetoes?” The next 
hearing for the bill to abolish the death penalty is on February 19.

Attempts to abolish the death penalty in Wyoming have failed 5 years in a row. 
But last week, a bill, sponsored by Republican Rep. Jared Olsen garnered 36 
votes in the House—just shy of the 2 needed for it to make it to the state 
Senate. The last person executed in Wyoming was Mark Hopkinson who was given a 
lethal injection in 1992 for the murder of four people. Prior to his execution, 
30 years had passed since anyone had been put to death in the state.

Dale Wayne Eaton has remained the lone person on Wyoming’s death row since 2004 
for the 1988 murder of Lisa Marie Kimmell. In 2014, a judge overturned his 
death sentence after his lawyers argued that his trial lawyers didn’t provide 
the jury with enough information about his background. After a hearing, the 
judge nonetheless denied Eaton’s request for life without parole allowing the 
district attorney to seek the death penalty again in a new sentencing hearing, 
but his case is currently held up in a federal court.

Lawmakers in support of Wyoming’s bill have cited past failings with capital 
punishment, especially given the chance of executing innocent people. “[W]hat 
really made me change my mind is that, on so many issues, I really don’t think 
the government is always right,” Republican Rep. Sue Wilson said. “I can’t 
imagine what it would be like to be an innocent person put to death by your 
government.”

“There has always been fear of backlash,” Hannah Cox, Conservatives Concerned 
About the Death Penalty’s national manager tells Mother Jones. “But public 
sentiment is changing.” An October 2018 Gallup poll found that a record low of 
49 % of Americans thought the death penalty is applied fairly. And, despite 
President Trump’s affinity for capital punishment, the number of executions 
nationwide continues to remain at its lowest rate over the last 25 years. “I 
don’t see any obstacle that’s greater than getting people’s attention,” Joseph 
says. “And the more people pay attention, the more it turns in our favor.”

Other states are also making inroads to getting rid of capital punishment. In 
Colorado, a bill has been introduced to abolish the death penalty and the 
newly-elected Democratic governor Jared Polis is anti-capital punishment and 
said that he would sign such a bill if it came across his desk. In Indiana, 
death row inmate Roy Lee Ward filed a lawsuit against the state seeking an 
injunction to stop executions and a court ruling that the state’s death penalty 
is unconstitutional. The suit is currently pending.

As criminal justice reform becomes one of the few issues with widespread 
bipartisan support, advocates see this as an opportune moment to seize on 
repealing the death penalty state-by-state. “I think as a whole it’s a great 
zeitgeist moment with criminal justice reform,” Cox says. “We’re a lot closer 
to change than people realize.”

(source: Mother Jones)