[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OHIO, KAN., COLO, ., NEV., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

March 19



OHIO:

Ohio Supreme Court Justice Melody Stewart talks about the death penalty, bail 
bond reform, efficiency



“There are some counties in this state who have never prosecuted a case with 
death-penalty specifications. If a heinous crime is death-penalty worthy, then 
it’s death-penalty worthy, whether you’re in a small county or you’re in a big 
urban county, or we do away with the death penalty completely.” -- Ohio Supreme 
Court Justice Melody J. Stewart

One of the Ohio Supreme Court’s newest justices believes the institution should 
“tighten things up and make things better” in the state’s judicial system.

In a news conference Monday, Justice Melody J. Stewart mentioned the death 
penalty, bail bond reform and efficient handling of civil cases as topics that 
need to be addressed.

“I think our justice system can improve in a lot of ways.” she told reporters 
at the Tuscarawas County Courthouse. “I think we can be more responsive to the 
communities that we serve. I think that where justice is served shouldn’t 
depend on which county you’re in in Ohio.

“There are some counties in this state who have never prosecuted a case with 
death-penalty specifications. If a heinous crime is death-penalty worthy, then 
it’s death-penalty worthy, whether you’re in a small county or you’re in a big 
urban county, or we do away with the death penalty completely -- either/or.

(source: timesreporter.com)

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

Capital murder case to begin for man charged with murder of Cleveland couple at 
car dealership



The murder trial for Joseph McAlpin, the man accused of gunning down a couple 
who owned a car dealership in Cleveland, is set to get underway Monday.

Jury selection will begin around 9am Monday morning but they say it could take 
up to a week to select the jury because this is a capital murder case. 
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for the 31-year-old.

Police say Joseph McAlpin and 2 others broke into Mister Cars on East 185th 
Street in April of 2017. They say McAlpin killed the owners, Trina Tomola and 
her husband, Michael Kuznik. The couple’s 19-year-old son was unable to get in 
touch with them. He then found them both shot in the head at the car lot. 
McAlpin is also accused of shooting and killing their dog. Police say 2 cars, 
surveillance equipment and computers containing business records were taken 
from the business.

The 2 other men allegedly with McAlpin, Jerome Diggs and Andrew Keener, were 
arrested as well. Kenner has pleaded guilty.

Cleveland police identified McAlpin as a suspect through DNA evidence and 
arrested him on June 13th. He was originally indicted on 25 counts, including 
aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, kidnapping and cruelty to animals. A 
Cuyahoga County grand jury returned a new indictment with death penalty 
specifications against him.

(source: Fox News)








KANSAS:

U.S. Supreme Court to hear Kahler death penalty appeal



The Kansas Attorney General’s Office reported today that the U.S. Supreme Court 
has agreed to hear the appeal of James Kraig Kahler. An Osage County jury 
convicted Kahler of killing his 2 teenage daughters, his wife, and her 
grandmother at Burlingame, Kan., in 2009, and recommended he be sentenced to 
death.

The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed Kahler’s conviction and death sentence in 
February 2018. Today the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Kahler’s appeal from 
the Kansas Supreme Court decision.

In his appeal to the Kansas Supreme Court, Kahler raised 10 issues, including 
allegations of misconduct by the prosecutor and trial judge, challenges to the 
instructions given to the jury, and an argument the death penalty is 
unconstitutional when applied to a person who has a severe mental illness at 
the time he or she committed a crime.

None of Kahler’s arguments convinced the majority of the court to overturn his 
convictions or death sentence, and the court affirmed Kahler’s jury trial 
convictions of aggravated burglary and capital murder for fatally shooting his 
wife, Karen Kahler, her grandmother, Dorothy Wight, and his 2 teenage 
daughters, Emily and Lauren. The crimes occurred Nov. 28, 2009, at Wight’s home 
at Burlingame.

Kahler was sentenced to death by Osage County District Court Judge Phillip 
Fromme in October 2011.

The U.S. Supreme Court case, James K. Kahler v. Kansas, No. 18-6135, is 
expected to be scheduled for oral argument in the fall.

(source: osagecountyonline.com)








COLORADO:

Man accused of killing Adams Co. Deputy Heath Gumm arraigned; DA still seeking 
death penalty



Prosecutors are moving forward with plans to pursue the death penalty for the 
man suspected of shooting and killing Adams County Deputy Heath Gumm last year.

The 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office filed notice late last year that 
District Attorney Dave Young would seek the death penalty for Dreion Dearing, 
23.

Dearing was arraigned Monday on charges of 1st-degree murder of a peace officer 
after deliberation, 1st-degree felony murder of a peace officer, 1st-degree 
murder after deliberation, 1st-degree felony murder, 1st-degree burglary, 
possession of a weapon by a previous offender and 3rd-degree assault.

A judge entered pleas of not guilty on Dearing’s behalf on all the charges, 
prosecutors said. Dearing had previously pleaded not guilty in September.

Dearing is accused of shooting and killing Gumm on Jan. 24, 2018 when Gumm and 
another deputy responded to an assault call near 86th and Edison Street in 
Thornton. Investigators believed Dearing was lying in wait for Gumm before he 
shot him.

It’s unclear if Dearing would ever face the death penalty if convicted, as 
state lawmakers are considering a bill that would abolish capital punishment in 
Colorado.

There are only 3 people currently on Colorado’s death row, and just 1 person 
has been executed since Colorado reintroduced capital punishment in the 1970s.

Jury selection for Dearing’s trial is set to begin on Sept. 3.

(source: thedenverchannel.com)








NEVADA:

Nevada to seek death penalty for illegal alien Wilber Ernesto Martinez-Guzman



Prosecutors in 2 counties where an illegal immigrant allegedly murdered 4 
people are seeking the death penalty for his crimes. North Nevada was shaken by 
the string of murders until the alleged killer was apprehended by law 
enforcement in January.

Wilber Ernesto Martinez-Guzman, 20, was arrested January 19, 2019, by Washoe 
County Sheriff’s department and charged with multiple offenses while 
prosecutors and investigators worked on charging him for the 4 murders. They 
rarely invoke the death penalty but the severity and heinous nature of the 
crimes warrant capital punishment, according to prosecutors.

“We reserve the death penalty for the worst of the worst,” Washoe County 
District Attorney Chris Hicks said last Thursday. “We use it sparingly.”

The illegal immigrant from El Salvador is accused of shooting and killing 
Gerald David, 81, and his wife, Sharon, 80, in Reno and Connie Koontz, 56, and 
Sophia Renken, 74, in Gardnerville.

My Take

Just as traffic fines are doubled in construction zones, so too should 
penalties be increased when illegal immigrants commit crimes. His immigration 
status was not taken into account, but the crimes themselves were enough for 
prosecutors to seek the death penalty.

(source: Kerry Marasco, noqreport.com)








CALIFORNIA:

Advocate says California move is part of 'growing momentum' against death 
penalty



Capital punishment expert Robert Dunham said Monday that California Gov. Gavin 
Newsom’s (D) decision to suspend the death penalty marks a growing trend in 
states across the country.

Dunham, executive director of Death Penalty Information Center, said even 
though there has been a long-term decline in the use of capital punishment in 
the U.S. both in terms of perception and policy, he said the trend is also 
picking up steam in states like Colorado and Oregon.

“I think it’s part of this momentum that we’re seeing, especially in the 
Western United States, away from the death penalty,” Dunham told Hill.TV’s 
Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton on “Rising.”

“Colorado looks like it’s moving to abolish, the Washington Supreme Court 
declared the death penalty unconstitutional last year and the legislature is 
trying to take it off of the books this year,” he continued.

The advocate added that Oregon legislators are also pushing for a bill that 
would redefine aggravated murder crimes under state law so it would only apply 
to acts of terrorism in which multiple victims were killed. The bill, which was 
introduced by state Rep. Mitch Greenlick (D), is currently under committee 
review.

Dunham’s comments come after Newsom last week to placed a moratorium on 
executions for California death row inmates, arguing the policy overwhelmingly 
discriminated against racial minorities and the poor. California has not 
executed an inmate since 2006.

Under Newsom’s latest executive order, individuals will be spared from 
executions but will remain incarcerated.

The governor’s action affects more than 700 inmates on death row. The state’s 
death row population, meanwhile, continues to grow, boasting the largest number 
of inmates in the nation.

However, not everyone is on board with Newsom's decision. President Trump, who 
has long feuded with Newsom over various issues in the state, voiced opposition 
to the death penalty moratorium, saying he was "not thrilled" with the news.

Dunham added that Newsom’s moratorium will nevertheless last for at least as 
long as he is governor and predicted that there will be some movement in the 
state toward commuting for some of those on death row.

“I think the legislature will have a chance to sit back and see, ‘Do we want to 
provide the funding that is necessary to have a system that works?’ ” he said, 
referring to the death penalty costs. “Or what are we going to do with the $5 
billion dollars that the system has cost California so far.”

(source: thehill.com)

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

California Kills The Death Penalty — For Now. What Is Its Future?



California Gov. Gavin Newsom halts the death penalty in California and takes 
his case to the national stage. We unpack the politics and public opinion.

Phyllis Loya, opponent of Gov. Newsom's decision. Her son — Pittsburg, 
California, police officer Larry Lasater — was killed in the line of duty in 
2005. His killer is on California’s death row.

KQED: "Newsom Halts Executions, Opponents Call Move an Abuse of Power" — "Gov. 
Gavin Newsom signed an executive order Wednesday halting executions in 
California, saying that the death penalty has been a costly failure that is 
unfairly applied to people of color and the mentally disabled.

"The order grants a reprieve to the 737 inmates on California's death row, a 
move that seems likely to end the prospect of any executions during Newsom's 
term, but would allow the next governor to resume capital punishment. He also 
ordered the closure of the execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison and 
withdrew the lethal injection protocol — the legal regulatory framework setting 
out how to put a prisoner to death in California.

"California hasn't carried out an execution in 13 years, but is close to 
resuming them. Twenty-five people on death row have exhausted their appeals, 
Newsom repeatedly said."

The Atlantic: "Will the U.S. Finally End the Death Penalty?" — "The American 
death penalty is extraordinarily fragile, with death sentences and executions 
on the decline. Public support for the death penalty has diminished. The 
practice is increasingly marginalized around the world. California, with its 
disproportionately large share of American death-row inmates, announces an end 
to the death penalty. The year? 1972. That’s when the California Supreme Court 
declared the death penalty inconsistent with the state’s constitutional 
prohibition of cruel or unusual punishments—only to have the death penalty 
restored a year later through popular initiative and legislation.

"On Wednesday, again, California walked back its commitment to the death 
penalty. Though it’s not full-fledged abolition, Governor Gavin Newsom declared 
a moratorium on capital punishment lasting as long as his tenure in office, 
insisting that the California death penalty has been an 'abject failure' in its 
discriminatory, ineffective, and inaccurate application. He also declared that 
the death penalty itself is an immoral practice.

"Is this latest development in California, like the California Supreme Court’s 
decision in 1972, just a small roadblock to the continued use of capital 
punishment? Or is it a harbinger of further decline and perhaps even abolition 
of the American death penalty? We think the latter."

New Yorker: "Gavin Newsom and the New Politics of the Death Penalty" — "This 
week, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, signed an executive order 
issuing a reprieve to all seven hundred and thirty-seven prisoners on the 
state’s death row, effectively nullifying California’s policy of capital 
punishment for the near future. The moratorium, which builds on Newsom’s record 
of death-penalty opposition, was acknowledged on both sides of the political 
aisle as a bold move: 'an important day for justice,' as Kamala Harris put it, 
or a declaration of 'the terrible message that the taking of innocent life will 
not be punished to the fullest extent of the law,' as Pat Bates, a Republican 
state senator from Orange County, said. Eventually, the President felt moved to 
address the issue. 'Friends and families of the always forgotten VICTIMS are 
not thrilled, and neither am I!' he tweeted. This aimless response, at once 
grousing and lukewarm, seemed its own testament to the order’s success.

"In truth, the boldness of Newsom’s reprieve may be a little overstated. 
California as a whole has voted against repealing the death penalty, most 
recently in 2016, when it favored a ballot measure to expedite the process, yet 
voting patterns show that metropolitan Californians, the core of the state’s 
blue electorate, decisively oppose it. Meanwhile, in the past 2 decades, 
support for capital punishment in murder convictions has collapsed nationwide, 
especially among Democrats, in line with broader trends. The Pope forbade the 
practice categorically last year. The European Union won’t admit death-penalty 
states—opposition was the 1st human-rights standard that its council 
adopted—and it prohibits the trade with other nations of goods involved in 
capital punishment. (The list includes guillotines, whips, 'shields with metal 
spikes,' and, more problematically for the United States, lethal-injection 
drugs.)

"Response to Newsom’s moratorium was mixed even among the families of victims. 
One mother of a murdered daughter reported being 'pleased'; Marc Klaas, the 
father of a girl notoriously kidnapped from a slumber party and killed, in 
1993, was much less so, describing the governor’s action as 'Trumpian' in its 
willingness to curb practice to one’s 'own personal philosophy.' There is truth 
to that claim. Newsom, in presenting his order, pointed to alarming inequities 
in the way that capital punishment is meted out. (The race of both perpetrators 
and victims has repeatedly been shown to correspond to the likelihood of a 
death sentence; an A.C.L.U. study of California found wide geographic variance 
in sentencing, suggesting that a convict’s fate may depend on the county where 
he or she happens to be tried.) But the governor also leaned heavily on the 
language of personal morality. 'I will not oversee execution of any person,' 
his order said. In a press conference, he elaborated, 'This is about who I am 
as a human being. This is about what I can or cannot do.' "

(source: WBUR news)

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

Imagining a new life outside after 40 years on death row



Douglas “Chief” Stankewitz got up Wednesday in the early morning darkness. 
That’s when he meditates and exercises and reads. He turned on the television 
and caught the Channel 7 news. It was around 5:30. And he heard.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom planned to declare a moratorium on the death 
penalty that day, dismantle the death chamber. Because capital punishment, 
Newsom said, is immoral and expensive. Kills the innocent along with the 
guilty. Targets the black, the brown, the poor.

“I just thought, ‘It’s about time, about time someone stepped up who had the 
power and authority to do so,’” Stankewitz said.

He was the 1st person to land on California’s death row after capital 
punishment was reinstated in 1978. He was 20 then. He will be 61 in May.

He is still on death row, sentenced for the kidnapping and murder of Theresa 
Graybeal, 22, who had gone to the store for a bag of dog food. His case is 
making its arduous way through the courts. His next hearing is Friday in 
Fresno.

As the news about Newsom rippled through San Quentin, Stankewitz said in a 
telephone interview Thursday, there were no celebrations, no cheers among the 
737 condemned men on the largest death row in the United States.

“Some have talked about it,” Stankewitz said. “Other ones, I guess, feel 
numbed. They don’t believe what’s happening. … It’s like when people get 
sentenced to death. They get numb for a week or 2. Reality hasn’t set in.”

No matter how you feel about capital punishment, it is hard to argue that the 
system is working as originally planned — 13 years have passed since California 
administered a lethal injection in its seafoam green death chamber, with its 
rows of seats for those who wish to watch.

Stankewitz, a member of the Big Sandy Rancheria of Mono Indians, could be the 
poster child for the death penalty debate in California.

His defense team insists he is innocent. Capital punishment supporters believe 
he should have been dead a long time ago.

And Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at UC Berkeley, points to the 
Stankewitz case as proof of California’s “irrational” system and its voters’ 
doubts about the ultimate sanction. The Golden State, he says, has “an honorary 
death penalty.” And that is no accident.

“If what you have is profound ambivalence and conflict, then you’re going to 
have a system that is pushed for good reason toward an operation which is more 
symbolic than actual,” Zimring said. “That’s a wonderful political advantage 
for a governor who wants to do the right thing but is worried about paying the 
price.”

On Feb. 8, 1978, Stankewitz and three friends were stranded in Modesto, looking 
for a way to get back to Fresno. Hitchhiking didn’t work, so they walked to a 
nearby Kmart, looking for a car to steal. That’s when they saw Graybeal, a 
newlywed, walking to her car.

They followed her, and when she opened the door, Teena Topping pushed her 
inside and entered the car. Stankewitz, who was 19 at the time, Marlin Lewis, 
and 14-year-old Billy Brown followed suit. When they got to Fresno, they 
stopped at a seedy hotel to shoot up. Then they headed to a small town called 
Calwa to score more drugs, according to court documents.

That’s where Graybeal was shot in the head. Brown testified that Stankewitz 
pulled the trigger. But 15 years later, he recanted. In a 4-page declaration, 
he said he had been coerced by the Fresno district attorney, told that he would 
be charged with murder if he did not testify.

“I did not at any time see Doug Stankewitz holding a gun,” Brown declared. “I 
did not see who pulled the trigger.”

Stankewitz said Thursday that he never went to Calwa, where Graybeal was 
killed. Instead, he said, he wandered Fresno’s Chinatown in a stoned haze. “You 
just walk,” he said. “Your brain ain’t thinking.”

Stankewitz went to trial in July 1978. That October he was sentenced to die, 
according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. One 
day later, he arrived at San Quentin.

“I haven’t been on grass for (more than 40) years,” he said Thursday. “No 
grass, no mud, no dirt. Just steel and cement you’re walking on, looking at.”

Stankewitz’s 1st conviction was thrown out in 1982. He was retried in 1983, 
convicted again and sentenced to death again. In 2012, the U.S. 9th Circuit 
Court of Appeals tossed out Stankewitz’s death sentence and ordered he either 
be given life in prison without the possibility of parole or be tried again to 
determine his punishment.

That trial is scheduled for April.

Curtis L. Briggs, one of Stankewitz’s attorneys, said that since his current 
legal team took over in 2016, new evidence has come to light that would show 
the stocky Mono Indian with black hair cascading down his back was framed. 
Other evidence — including blood samples — that could help prove his innocence 
has disappeared, according to his lawyers.

They don’t just want a new sentencing trial; they want the case against 
Stankewitz to be dismissed or for him to be given a new trial.

The Fresno district attorney’s office declined to comment on the case and 
rebuked Stankewitz’s legal team for talking outside of court in a way that 
could prejudice the proceeding.

“A failure of the defense team to abide by the law does not excuse my office’s 
obligation to comply with it,” said Steve E. Wright, assistant district 
attorney for Fresno County.

Over the years, Wayne Graybeal, Theresa’s father-in-law, largely spoke for the 
family. He died of bladder cancer in 2017.

But in a 2012 interview, he told the San Francisco Chronicle that Stankewitz 
“was a bad guy and I don’t know why he’s alive. I wish they would just do what 
they have to do to him … my daughter-in-law didn’t deserve what happened to 
her. She was a nice girl. That man needs to die.”

Stankewitz gets 2 15-minute phone calls a day. He uses them to talk to Colleen 
Hicks, whom he has known for the last decade and loved for the last 7 years. 
She is 71, Cherokee and Lakota, the retired executive director of the Museum of 
the American Indian in Novato.

First they pray, repeating two benedictions Hicks wrote on Stankewitz’s behalf. 
The prayers begin and end the same way, with a call to the Great Spirit and a 
heartfelt aho, a Plains Indian’s way of saying amen.

One prayer is thanksgiving. The other is all appeal: “Great Spirit, unravel the 
web of lies and framed evidence that has kept Chief wrongfully imprisoned and 
let the truth of his innocence shine light on his path to freedom now, aho.”

Ten years ago, Father John J. “Jack” O’Neill was a pastor of St. Mary Magdalene 
in Bolinas, where Hicks plays piano and is choir director. He had spent 12 
years as a chaplain at San Quentin and asked her if she would write to 
Stankewitz, who was in isolation when O’Neill met him.

They corresponded for three years before Hicks visited San Quentin on Feb. 11, 
2012, 34 years after Graybeal’s death.

“I had prepared myself to see someone who was really defeated and needed a lot 
of just sympathy,” Hicks said. “But there was this giant.” She paused, laughed. 
“He just looked like a warrior to me. His eyes were clear and intelligent, 
alert. I couldn’t believe it.”

They talked about his case, and when the visit ended, she asked him, “‘Are you 
glad I came?’ And he said, ‘When can you come back?’ And so that started this 
slow process.”

When Stankewitz is freed — she does not say “if” — they plan for him to live 
with her in Bolinas, in her high-beamed old-growth redwood home on a leafy acre 
near Point Reyes National Seashore. She believes that nature will be an 
antidote to incarceration.

Stankewitz, Hicks and his attorneys worry that the moratorium could complicate 
his bid for freedom, that the Fresno district attorney’s office might just 
switch course and agree that he should be imprisoned for life without the 
possibility of parole.

Complications or no, Stankewitz said, Newsom’s decision was the right one.

“I talked to other prisoners,” he said. “They feel the same way I feel about 
it. … It ain’t no rich people up here, no big-name family people up here …

“To be sentenced to death and waiting 20, 25, 30, 40 years and they still carry 
it out?” he said. “That’s cruel.”

(source: heraldmailmedia.com)








USA:

Most states have the death penalty. Few actually carry out executions.



The execution chamber at the San Quentin State Prison near San Francisco has 
never been used, an $853,000 facility that has sat empty for more than a 
decade.

After a federal judge assailed the old chamber as dimly lit and “poorly 
designed,” California constructed the new one to carry out sentences for 
inmates on the country’s largest death row. But since it was completed in early 
2008, the state — facing legal challenges to its lethal injection procedures — 
has not carried out a single execution.

Then on Wednesday, after Gov. Gavin Newsom, D, signed an order declaring a 
moratorium on executions and shutting down the San Quentin chamber, officials 
began dismantling the same facility the state upgraded and never used.

While Newsom’s order effectively maintains the status quo in California, it 
means that the state will retain its place among many where death chambers have 
remained dormant in recent years. Kentucky last carried out an execution in 
2008. California and 3 other states — North Carolina, Nevada and Montana — all 
carried out their last death sentences in 2006. In Pennsylvania, the last 
execution was in 1999, when Gary Heidnik was executed by lethal injection for 
murdering two women he had held captive in his home.

The news in California highlights the broader reality of American capital 
punishment, which has dwindled dramatically in recent years. While a majority 
of states still have the death penalty on the books, only a handful regularly 
carry out these sentences. And though more than 2,600 people sit on death rows 
nationwide, many are in states where executions are on hold, leaving unclear 
how many of these sentences will ever be carried out.

In some states, the death penalty has been frozen or abolished by officials, 
the courts or a combination of both. Authorities in some states that retain the 
practice say they have no lethal injection drugs and are not trying to obtain 
any. In other places, officials have sought to carry out death sentences but 
have faced legal hurdles or been unable to obtain the chemicals needed for 
lethal injections amid resistance from drug companies.

“In some ways we are more enamored with the idea of the death penalty than the 
reality of carrying it out,” said Elisabeth Semel, director of the Death 
Penalty Clinic at the University of California Berkeley, who has represented 
many people facing the death penalty.

“It’s the notion that we should have in our back pocket the ability to kill 
that really horrible person, that person that we each envision as the worst in 
the worst,” Semel said. “There’s some emotional need to have that power. And 
yet when it comes to effectuating it, it becomes very complicated for people.”

Supporters of capital punishment argue that the death penalty is necessary as a 
deterrent and should be available for heinous crimes. Supreme Court Justice 
Stephen Breyer has questioned whether the death penalty as a whole is 
constitutional, describing it as unreliable, arbitrary and plagued by delays, 
and assailed California’s system in a 2016 dissent.

Newsom’s order gives the 737 people on California’s death row a reprieve, at 
least as long as he is in office. While the order does not prevent any planned 
executions — none were scheduled — Newsom noted that 25 death row inmates had 
exhausted their appeals and could have had execution dates set.

His order says that “death sentences are unevenly and unfairly applied to 
people of color, people with mental disabilities, and people who cannot afford 
costly legal representation.” Newsom also noted in his order that people have 
been sentenced to death and later found to be innocent. According to the Death 
Penalty Information Center, 5 of the 164 people given death sentences and later 
exonerated were in California, a statistic Newsom highlighted when he announced 
his decision.

“In an ideal world, we wouldn’t be prosecuting death any longer,” Newsom said. 
He later added: “I cannot sign off on executing hundreds and hundreds of human 
beings knowing — knowing — that among them will be innocent human beings.”

Since the turn of the century, use of the death penalty has sharply declined. 
In 1999, there were 98 executions nationwide carried out by 20 states, 
according to records kept by the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington 
nonprofit. Last year, there were 25 executions in 8 states.

30 states retain the death penalty, along with the federal government and the 
U.S. military, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Of the 20 
states that currently have no death penalty, eight shifted that way since 2007, 
including Maryland, Illinois and Washington state, where the Supreme Court last 
year struck it down.

The list of states that still have capital punishment includes places like 
California and Pennsylvania, homes to sizable death rows and governors who have 
imposed moratoriums on executions. Wyoming also still has the practice, but has 
an empty death row, and in North Carolina, a court-ordered stay has been 
blocking executions for years.

States still seeking executions have run into a sizable roadblock in recent 
years: The pharmaceutical industry, which has pushed back against using its 
drugs in executions and tightened restrictions on how such drugs are sold.

In some cases, pharmaceutical firms have gone to court to prevent their usage 
in lethal injections. The tactic prevented an execution in Nevada last year 
that would have used fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opioid, but failed to 
block a string of lethal injections in Arkansas in 2017. A month after the 
Nevada execution was halted, Nebraska carried out a lethal injection using 
fentanyl, the 1st time that happened nationwide and that state’s 1st execution 
in 21 years.

Nebraska and Nevada turned to fentanyl as multiple states have looked to new 
drug combinations or other execution methods to carry out death sentences. 
Tennessee last year resumed using the electric chair while Florida adopted a 
new anesthetic in 2017 that had not previously been used in an execution. Ohio 
Gov. Mike DeWine, R, last week said he was delaying 3 executions to give 
corrections officials more time to develop a new lethal-injection method after 
a judge denounced its existing protocol.

In Oklahoma, officials said last year they would use nitrogen gas for all 
executions going forward, an unprecedented change that has not been utilized 
yet. A spokesman for the Department of Corrections said this week the state has 
not come up with a protocol so far for carrying out such executions, writing in 
an email that officials were “still working on the method — finding the 
technology we would use to execute an inmate with inert gas.”

While this is ongoing, death row populations are getting older — and, in some 
cases, inmates are dying before sentences are carried out. California has 
carried out 13 executions since 1978. During that same span, 120 other death 
row inmates have died, mostly due to natural causes or suicides, according to 
the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

“What we have right now is a symbolic death penalty,” Michael Hestrin, the 
Riverside County district attorney, said of California’s system. “And I don’t 
think that’s a good thing. Sentences should be carried out or they shouldn’t be 
handed down.”

Hestrin, who as a prosecutor secured seven death sentences, said the death 
penalty “should be reserved for the most egregious aggravated murder cases.” He 
also criticized Newsom’s move, saying it “subverts the will” of Californians, 
who in 2012 and 2016 voted down proposals to abandon the death penalty.

Jeff Landry, the Louisiana attorney general, also criticized Newsom and 
described lengthy delays after appeals have been exhausted as unfair to crime 
victims’ relatives. He said states make promises to them when prosecutors 
decide — typically after consulting with those same relatives — to seek death.

“You’ve got to remember that behind every crime is a victim,” said Landry, a 
Republican. “Where there’s a conviction, a sentencing, that’s . . . a contract 
between the victim and the state saying, ‘Look, we’re going to make you whole.’ 
In other words, were going to do our part to make sure that justice is carried 
out.”

Semel, head of the Death Penalty Clinic, said that while the United States is 
not a monolith and different states have moved in different directions over the 
last 2 decades, there has been a clear trend during that time.

“Death sentences are down. Executions are down,” Semel said. But, she added, 
“There are clearly some states in which the death penalty is deeply 
entrenched.”

(source: News & Record)