[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----VA., N.C., MISS., TENN., OKLA., COLO., IDAHO., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

March 22




VIRGINIA:

Could A Moratorium On The Death Penalty Be Coming For Virginia?----Considering 
the waning use of the death penalty in the Commonwealth, a stay on executions 
may not even be needed.



California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) announced last week that he would take 
executive action to cease the use of the death penalty in the Golden State. The 
action would grant a stay of execution for the state’s inmates waiting on death 
row, but only for as long as Newsom is governor, which does not alter any 
existing convictions or sentences.

While this moratorium may be criticized as a progressive policy, it is 
practically par for the course for many states that have the death penalty and 
have not used it in years.

The Pew Research Center reveals that California is one of 11 states that have 
capital punishment on the books, but have not carried out an execution in more 
than a decade.

In 2018, the center conducted a survey that found just 54 % of adults said they 
support the death penalty for those convicted of murder, compared with 39 % who 
opposed it.

Support for capital punishment is also much lower than it was in the 1990s or 
the 2000s. In 1996, 18 % of Americans opposed the death penalty for people 
convicted of murder, and 78 % were in favor of it.

The issue is also partisan. In 2018, 77 % of Republicans were in favor of the 
death penalty, compared to just 35 % of Democrats, PBS reports. In 1996, 
however, 87 % of Republicans and 77 % of Democrats supported the death penalty.

Even though 30 states, the federal government, and the U.S. military authorize 
the death penalty, over 1/3 of the aforementioned have not carried out an 
execution in at least a decade, or even longer.

For example, California’s last execution took place in 2006. New Hampshire’s 
last use of the method dates back to 1939. The “Live Free or Die” state is now 
even considering doing away with capital punishment in favor of life without 
parole.

In the Commonwealth of Virginia, where capital punishment is reserved for 
criminals who commit the most heinous of crimes, executions have nearly stopped 
all together. No new death sentences have been imposed in almost 8 years, and 
only 3 inmates remain on death row in Virginia, with no pending execution 
dates.

Nevertheless, Virginia is 2nd only to Texas in the number of executions carried 
out since 1976 – 113 executions in Virginia, compared to Texas’ more than 550.

In a report from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, a spokeswoman for Governor Ralph 
Northam (D) said, “If the General Assembly passed legislation to replace the 
death penalty with life without parole, the governor would absolutely sign it.”

While there are merits both for and against capital punishment, it is unlikely 
that a moratorium will be placed on the death penalty in the Commonwealth any 
time soon. Considering the waning use of executions, teamed with a general 
decline in murder rates, better legal representation of defendants in capital 
murder trials, and the growing expense of winning death sentences and then 
defending them through appeals, it may be best left alone anyways.

(source: The Republican Standard)








NORTH CAROLINA:

Death-penalty defendant James Bradley sues New Hanover Sheriff McMahon for 
‘cruel and unusual punishment’ in jail----James Opleton Bradley was brought to 
the New Hanover County Detention Facility to stand trial for the murder of 
Elisha Tucker. While in the county jail, Bradley claims his civil rights were 
violated.



Convicted murderer James Opleton Bradley, currently facing a death-penalty 
trial for a 3rd murder, is suing New Hanover County Sheriff Ed McMahon, along 
with a detention center officer and the facility’s healthcare provider, for 
“cruel and unusual punishment.”

In his hand-written complaint, Bradley alleges “numerous” civil rights 
violations, including withholding of adequate medical care, denial of access or 
communication with his attorney, harassment over his religious behavior, and in 
general accuses the New Hanover County Detention Facility of being 
“dysfunctional.”

Bradley’s 3rd murder trial

Bradley is currently serving a 30-to-37-year sentence for the 2nd-degree murder 
of Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk, who was last seen in downtown Wilmington in early 
April of 2014. Although Van Newkirk’s body was never found, District Attorney 
Ben David secured a conviction in 2017.

Bradley has previously served 23 years after initially serving a life sentence 
for the murder of Ivy Gipson, his 8-year-old step daughter, in 1988. In late 
December 2018, Bradley was temporarily moved to New Hanover County from the 
Tabor City Correctional Institute to stand trial for a third murder; Bradley is 
accused of killing 33-year-old Elisha Tucker, who disappeared from downtown 
Wilmington in 2013. Her body was found in April of 2014, stuffed in a trash bag 
and buried on a Hampstead-area farm where Bradley worked.

The jury for the trial was sat last week, and the trial began under Superior 
Court Judge Douglas Sasser this week.

After being briefly returned to Tabor City prison, Bradley is again being held 
at the New Hanover County Detention Facility and has appeared at trial each day 
in New Hanover County Court.

This is the 1st death penalty trial in the region in 15 years; according to a 
spokesperson for the District Attorney’s office, “the last death penalty trial 
in New Hanover County was the trial of Paul Dewayne Cummings in 2004 for the 
murder of Jane Head. The last death penalty trial in Pender County was the 
trial of Terrance Campbell in 2002 for the murder of Buddy Hall.”

Bradley’s complaints

Bradley’s complaints stem from his initial stay in the New Hanover facility, 
from Dec. 17, 2018, to Jan. 8, 2019. Bradley alleges that while the writ to 
move him from Tabor City to New Hanover was lifted on Dec. 21, an “oversight” 
at the District Attorney’s office caused him to be held through for several 
weeks.

Bradley claims he was admitted to a cell with feces-smeared light fixtures and 
walls and wasn’t given cleaning supplies. He also claims he was given just one 
pair of socks and underwear for three weeks. Access to his attorney was 
blocked, Bradley claims, when detention facility staff denied his request to 
use the phone and refused to provide him writing paper, envelope, and stamps to 
mail a letter for about 2 weeks.

Bradley also claims the staff of Correct Care Solutions / WellPath, the company 
contracted by the detention center for medical services, denied him adequate 
medical attention. Bradley, who claims to be recovering from double eye 
surgery, alleges that WellPath waited over a day to treat him, charged him a 
co-pay without providing a follow-up, and failing to provide prescription eye 
drops – which had been sent from the Tabor City prison along with Bradley – for 
about a week. Bradley also claims he had an allergic reaction to the deodorant 
issued to him, although medical staff did provide hydrocortisone to treat the 
resulting rash.

According to Bradley, his “freedom of religion” was also denied; Bradley 
alleges he was denied his Qur’an and other “Islamic reference materials.” He 
also claims that while attempting to pray, detention center staff played 
Christmas carols over the intercom in his cell, an act Bradley calls 
“accursed.”

Damages and relief

Bradley is suing Sheriff McMahon personally for $5,000, alleging that McMahon 
has “allowed a vile environment of apathy, unprofessionalism, bullying and 
inadequate healthcare to develop within the detention facility.” In addition, 
Bradley requests that McMahon undertake personal “walk-throughs” to assure the 
cleanliness of the detention facility, as well as to establish protocols to 
protect freedom of religion, mental health screening, and to overhaul the 
grievance process for inmates.

Bradley is also suing an officer in the detention center for $5,000, claiming 
this deputy was responsible for depriving him of medical care and access to his 
attorney, as well as verbally assaulting him. Bradley is also asking the deputy 
be suspended pending an internal investigation.

Lastly, Bradley is requesting that the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office 
“dissolve” its contract with WellPath and contract with a new agency that can 
provide adequate care. Bradley is also suing WellPath for $2,500 for “gross 
negligence.”

The New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on pending 
litigation. Correct Care Solutions / WellPath did not respond to requests for 
comment.

(source: Port City Daily)








MISSISSIPPI:

Racism in Jury Selection Is Real. Can the Supreme Court Put an End to 
It?----The ordeal of death-row inmate Curtis Flowers will yet again test the 
court’s commitment to equal justice under law.



2 years ago, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that there existed a constitutional 
“imperative to purge racial prejudice from the administration of justice.”

In the case of the Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Flowers, which the 
justices heard on Wednesday, the court is once again poised to send a message 
that racism has no place in the courtroom — this time in the area of jury 
selection, which remains an especially urgent issue in capital cases.

Mr. Flowers has faced trial an astonishing 6 times for the 1996 murder of four 
people at a furniture store in Winona, Miss. — a crime that he has said all 
along he did not commit. At question in Flowers v. Mississippi is whether 
District Attorney Doug Evans, who tried Mr. Flowers all those times, 
unconstitutionally excluded a number of blacks from serving as jurors at the 
6th trial. (Mr. Flowers is black.)

With all-white or nearly all-white juries that Mr. Evans helped put together, 
each of Mr. Flowers’s first three trials resulted in guilty verdicts and death 
sentences. Those convictions were later reversed by the Mississippi Supreme 
Court on the basis of repeated instances of prosecutorial mischief. Mr. 
Flowers’s fourth and fifth trials resulted in mistrials because the jurors, 
some of whom were black, could not agree on a guilty verdict. And the sixth 
trial — the one the Supreme Court examined on Wednesday — resulted in Mr. 
Flowers’s conviction, again with a nearly all-white jury.

The oral arguments in Mr. Flowers’s case attracted wide notice because Justice 
Clarence Thomas, who hasn’t asked a question from the Supreme Court bench in 3 
years, broke his silence toward the end of Wednesday’s hearing. He wanted to 
know from Mr. Flowers’s attorney whether the public defender who represented 
Mr. Flowers at his 6th trial had struck any jurors on the basis of race.

It turns out that Mr. Flowers’s defense team struck 3 jurors, all of them 
white, according to Mr. Flowers’s lawyer.

But Justice Thomas’s line of inquiry misses that the real outrage of Mr. 
Flowers’s many trials, which the podcast “In the Dark” has chronicled in 
painstaking detail, is the clear racism that has visited the jury selection 
process from the start.

As versions of the case made their way through the Mississippi court system, 
judges and appellate courts took notice of Mr. Evans’s disregard for Batson v. 
Kentucky, the 1986 decision that said that prosecutors cannot use peremptory 
challenges to dismiss prospective jurors on the basis of race.

When Mississippi’s highest court reversed Mr. Flowers’s 3rd conviction, the 
judges chastised Mr. Evans for what they deemed “as strong a prima facie case 
of racial discrimination as we have ever seen in the context of a Batson 
challenge."

But Mr. Evans didn’t seem to learn his lesson. He kept targeting his peremptory 
challenges at black prospective jurors almost exclusively and with 
near-surgical finesse. At the last Flowers trial, he allowed just 1 black 
citizen on the jury; he peppered the other 5 black people being considered with 
probing, race-neutral questions, only to later strike them from the jury.

The justices on Wednesday appeared ready to chastise Mr. Evans yet again. “The 
history of the case prior to this trial is very troubling,” said Justice Samuel 
Alito, adding that Mr. Evans’s record in the case “is cause for concern and is 
certainly relevant to the decision that ultimately has to be made in the case.”

There’s little chance that the Supreme Court will do away with or put greater 
limits on the use of peremptory challenges — a radical solution not presented 
in Mr. Flowers’s case but one has been advanced by the likes of Justice 
Thurgood Marshall and legal scholars who have studied the abuse of the 
practice.

But, as Justice Brett Kavanaugh acknowledged on Wednesday, the court could once 
again uphold the principle that equality in the realm of jury selection is “not 
just for the fairness to the defendant and to the juror, but that the community 
has confidence in the fairness of the system.” That would be a worthy outcome — 
and may, at long last, give Mr. Flowers the fair trial he deserves.

(source: Editorial Board, New York Times)








TENNESSEE:

Bill to nix 1 court death penalty review goes to governor----The change would 
come at a point when Tennessee has resumed putting inmates to death after a 
nearly decade-long hiatus, even though U.S. executions are hovering near 
historically low levels.



Gov. Bill Lee appears ready to sign into law a measure that could speed up the 
implementation of a death sentence.

The change would come at a point when Tennessee has resumed putting inmates to 
death after a nearly decade-long hiatus, even though U.S. executions are 
hovering near historically low levels.

The Senate voted 26-6 Thursday for Republican Sen. John Stevens' legislation to 
skip Tennessee's Court of Criminal Appeals and provide automatic state Supreme 
Court death penalty reviews. 1 Republican voted against it.

Lee spokeswoman Laine Arnold says the governor is deferring to the 
Legislature's will on the bill, indicating he'll likely sign it.

The legislation is named for Dickson County Sheriff's Sgt. Daniel Baker, who 
was shot and killed in May before his police cruiser was set on fire with his 
body inside. Prosecutors have said they're seeking death sentences for two 
people in the case that still hasn't gone to trial.

Baker's family applauded from the gallery when the House passed the bill 
earlier this week.

The proposal drew criticisms from Court of Criminal Appeals Judge John Everett 
Williams, who said his court takes less than a year to go through death penalty 
reviews, and the last four only took three to six months. Federal courts 
account for the vast majority of the time it takes for death penalty cases to 
wend through the appeals process.

Stevens says only Alabama has a similar intermediate court review of death 
penalty cases and that the state Constitution guarantees victims a speedy trial 
and conclusion to their cases.

Senate Speaker Randy McNally and House Speaker Glen Casada also have deemed the 
bill a way to achieve more timely justice.

"We forget about the victims in this conversation today," said Stevens, a 
Huntingdon attorney. "We're focused upon the perpetrators."

Tennessee executed 3 men in 2018 - 1 by lethal injection and 2 who chose the 
electric chair, arguing the injection would be a prolonged, tortuous death.

4 more Tennessee executions are scheduled this year, starting in May.

Republican Sen. Steve Dickerson joined with Democrats in voting against the 
bill. He said that, at times, people who are innocent will accept a life 
without parole sentence rather than take their chances with a possible death 
sentence. He argued that could increase if another guardrail is removed through 
the bill.

"Government is fallible," said Dickerson, a Nashville lawmaker. "And if you put 
somebody to death, there are no do-overs."

Senate Democratic Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro of Nashville said the bill would 
remove an intermediate appeal for those on death row that others with lesser 
offenses will still have.

Williams, the appellate judge, has argued that that issue would add more 
challenges in the federal court system.

Trial court death penalties in Tennessee are overturned in more than 1/2 of 
cases, with most reversals coming from the Court of Criminal Appeals. That 
typically involves a new sentencing hearing, possibly leading to new plea 
negotiations and changes to life without parole sentences, according to the 
Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which opposes the bill.

3 of Tennessee's 202 death penalties imposed since 1977 have resulted in 
exonerations, the group has said.

(source: WBIR news)






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

Bill to nix 1 court death penalty review goes to governor



Tennessee lawmakers are sending Gov. Bill Lee a proposal to remove 1 state 
court's review before executing inmates. The Republican appears poised to sign 
it.

The Senate voted 26-6 Thursday for Republican Sen. John Stevens' legislation to 
skip Tennessee's Court of Criminal Appeals and provide automatic state Supreme 
Court death penalty reviews. One Republican voted no.

(source: Associated Press)




OKLAHOMA:

Why does state cling to death penalty?



As lawmakers slowly but surely modernize Oklahoma’s punitive, costly criminal 
justice system, the state clings to its ultimate punishment: death.

20 states now ban capital punishment. 1 others haven’t executed anyone in more 
than a decade. And California’s new governor last week imposed an indefinite 
death penalty moratorium in his state.

Yet Oklahoma swims against the national tide, remaining laser-focused in its 
quest to become the 1st state to deploy nitrogen gas as its death agent.

The question is: Why?

Years of social science research made clear that capital punishment isn’t a 
deterrent. It often costs taxpayers more to carry out an execution than to lock 
up a convicted murderer for a lifetime. And then there’s that nagging issue of 
wrongful convictions – 10 death row inmates exonerated in Oklahoma alone.

This is not news to most of the state’s political leaders. But they almost 
always invoke “the will of the people,” pointing to the 2016 general election 
when voters overwhelmingly approved State Question 776.

It amended the Oklahoma Constitution to decree “any method of execution shall 
be allowed, unless prohibited by the United States Constitution.” Moreover, the 
state-approve method, whatever it may be, “shall not be deemed to be, or to 
constitute, the infliction of cruel or unusual punishments.”

Harsh, right? Old Testament, writ large.

It’s also worth noting, however, that voters – in the very same election – gave 
lopsided approval to two other measures, State Questions 780 and 781, that 
sought to end to the state’s punitive, lock-‘em-up and throw-away-the-key 
approach to criminal justice that established Oklahoma as the world’s 
incarceration leader.

There is an obvious difference, of course, between the state questions: 776 
focused on penalties for violent crimes and 780-781 on punishment for 
non-violent offenses.

There also is a less obvious, but no less important distinction: 776 was sent 
to the ballot by a Legislature looking for political cover, 780-781 through 
initiative petitions that collected the signatures of more than 100,000 
registered voters demanding change.

Eye-for-an-eye lawmakers wanted to reinforce the narrative Oklahoma is an 
overwhelming pro-death penalty state, so they could be free to pursue other 
execution methods after a series of debacles involving the previously used 
3-drug death cocktail.

It might be smart politics to secure the patina of public support, but it 
doesn’t necessarily result in wise public policy – or reflect real leadership.

Real leadership would be to launch a serious, open-minded statewide public 
discussion about the death penalty in the 21st century. The knee-jerk default 
to violent crimes may always be the death penalty because of our natural 
empathy for victims and their families. But the emotional response often yields 
the worst results.

Rather than focusing energy on restarting the death row conveyor belt, 
shouldn’t we be identifying and taking steps to deal with poverty, mental 
health and addiction that often seem to be the underlying causes of violent 
behavior?

Shouldn’t we also be discussing the enormous costs taxpayers’ bear in carrying 
out state-sanctioned killings (think: lengthy, but necessary appeals)?

And whether rank-and-file Oklahomans are still willing to risk the possibility 
an innocent might be executed?

Legislative efforts to implement SQs 780 and 781 – coupled with discussions 
about possible Medicaid expansion – suggest an increasing recognition that 
poverty, mental health and addiction are persistent problems that no longer can 
be ignored.

There are road maps to progress. Just look at states that enacted criminal 
justice reform and expanded Medicaid.

Those experiences suggest Oklahoma could spend less taxpayer money long-term by 
helping create a happier, healthier, more prosperous and less violent society 
by investing more on the front end (health and education) than on the back 
(prisons).

Smarter public policy begets a more prosperous future.

(source: Guest Columnist; Arnold Hamilton is editor of The Oklahoma Observer; 
okobserver.org.----journalrecord.com)








COLORADO:

Lawmakers in Colorado Should Abolish the Death Penalty



In July 2012, Coloradans were devastated by the now-infamous murder of 12 
moviegoers in the town of Aurora. Despite the trauma and grief that crime 
caused, a local jury three years later refused the prosecutor’s request to 
impose the death sentence against the convicted perpetrator. At the time, The 
Denver Post observed, “The death penalty in Colorado has effectively expired. 
And it didn’t happen because of bleeding-heart lawmakers or activist judges. It 
happened because juries themselves wanted no part of it.”

Coloradans turned their back on the death penalty in one of the state’s darkest 
hours this century. They were right to do so. Now, with a new bill, the state 
has the chance to abolish the practice once and for all.

The problems with the death penalty are well known and damning. The practice is 
irreparably biased; it delays justice for victims’ families and draws out their 
suffering; and it devours millions of law enforcement dollars that would be 
better invested where they could actually protect the public — which the death 
penalty does not. The death penalty is so broken that even law enforcement 
officials have little faith in it.

Police chiefs rank the death penalty last among effective ways to reduce 
violent crime. And the data supports this belief. Between 2000 and 2010, the 
murder rate in states with capital punishment was 25-46 percent higher than in 
states without it. The death penalty does not protect or save lives — it only 
takes them. And Coloradans are paying dearly in time and money, to say nothing 
of morality, for this ineffective system.

A death penalty trial costs Colorado taxpayers about 15 times the amount of a 
life-without-parole trial, and it requires over six times more days in court. 
Colorado could save $1.5 million a year by eliminating the death penalty. These 
monies can and should instead be dedicated to addressing the 1,200 unsolved 
murder cases in Colorado.

As Gail LaSuer, a Coloradan whose daughter was murdered, explained, “I would 
rather have a larger number of people caught than to have a few executed.”

More important than its cost, the death penalty is profoundly unfair. It is 
applied randomly and discriminatorily, and it is imposed disproportionately 
upon people of color convicted of murder, people convicted of murdering a white 
victim, and people convicted in certain geographic regions of the state. For 
example, a person of color in the 18th Judicial District in Colorado is 14 
times more likely to face the death penalty than a white person in another 
district. A person’s race, the race of the murder victim, and where either 
lives should not be what decides who lives and who dies.

On top of this, our criminal justice system fails to protect the innocent from 
execution. Colorado executed Joe Arridy, who was proven innocent after 
execution and had spent the last 7 years before his alleged crime in a mental 
institution. The state’s error meant a man lost his life for no reason. By 
retaining the death penalty in Colorado, we continue to risk that the 
government will execute an innocent person. That should be unacceptable to all 
Coloradans.

Extending these harms even further, the death penalty can be traumatic for 
correctional employees as well.

Colorado Warden Wayne Patterson was forced to pull the lever himself in an 
execution, although he opposes capital punishment. He described the experience 
as emotionally wrenching. Numerous wardens, executioners, and correctional 
officers suffer from PTSD as a result of their involvement with the death 
penalty.

Furthermore, American medical bodies consider participation in executions to be 
a breach of ethics. Because of this, prison officials must call on untrained 
executioners who often inflict unnecessary pain.

Since the introduction of lethal injection, over 7 % of executions have been 
botched, resulting in agonizing deaths. This is not surprising considering the 
drugs used in lethal injections have never been validated through medical 
testing for use in executions. An unlikely anti-death penalty movement has 
arisen in the corporate world as a result.

Unwilling to be complicit in this cruel, unjust system, 2 dozen companies have 
blocked the use of their drugs in lethal injections, including the only 
U.S.-manufactured drug used in Colorado executions. Drug companies manufacture 
their drugs, as Pfizer recently said, “to enhance and save the lives of the 
patients we serve. Consistent with these values, Pfizer strongly objects to the 
use of its products as lethal injections for capital punishment.” In response 
to action by drug companies, prisons have substituted untested drugs, passed or 
attempted to pass secrecy laws barring the public from knowing which drugs are 
used, and have asked compounding pharmacies for drugs to use in executions, 
although the pharmacies then have no oversight ensuring the efficacy of their 
products.

The fact that states are taking extreme and unethical steps to procure untested 
drugs to kill people is abhorrent. Taken with everything else we know about the 
practice, it is a clarion call for change. State-authorized killing is 
inconsistent with the fundamental values of our democratic system. It is often 
cruel and unusual in violation of our Constitution, and it can risk torture.

Colorado legislators must vote to end this broken system and stop it from 
corrupting the state’s criminal justice system even more than it already has.

(source: einnews.com)

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

Time to rethink the death penalty



The death penalty risks executing the innocent or mentally ill. Though 
Americans oppose executing the mentally ill by a 2-1 margin, 43 % of people 
executed were mentally ill and 40 % suffered childhood abuse. Since 1976, over 
150 people have been exonerated from death row. A 2014 study published by the 
National Academy of Sciences estimated that for every 25 people who are 
executed, 1 is innocent. Colorado executed Joe Arridy, who was developmentally 
disabled and innocent.

The death penalty is also cruel. Medical bodies ban participation in 
executions, so the government asks public servants to kill on our behalf. 
Additionally, 7 % of executions are botched, resulting in agonizing deaths.

Death penalty drugs are increasingly hard to attain. 2 dozen companies have 
blocked the use of 13 drugs, including the only US-manufactured drug used in 
Colorado executions. In response, states pass secrecy laws and unethically 
procure untested drugs.

Finally, the death penalty is discriminatory and arbitrary. A person of color 
in Colorado is 5 times more likely to face the death penalty, more likely to be 
wrongfully convicted and less likely to be offered plea deals, which take death 
off the table. Those in Colorado’s 18th Judicial District are nearly 4 times 
more likely to face a death prosecution.

State-authorized killing is inconsistent with the fundamental values of our 
democracy. By punishing murder with murder, the death penalty compounds upon 
the tragic brutality in society. Colorado's death penalty is broken beyond 
repair, and it's time to get rid of it.

Arriana Salma Belkin, Lakewood

(source: Letter to the Editor, Lakewood Sentinel)








IDAHO:

2 ARRESTED FOR ALLEGEDLY MURDERING ELDERLY POCATELLO WOMAN COULD FACE DEATH 
PENALTY



Less than 48 hours after they began investigating the murder of an elderly 
woman, Pocatello police say they have made multiple arrests in the case and 
there is no longer a threat to the public.

Police said Dustin Alfaro, 18, of Marysville, California, is 1 of 2 people who 
have been arrested for murdering 87-year-old Arlyne Koehler inside her 
Pocatello home. Police said a male juvenile from California was also arrested. 
His name has not yet been released.

Alfaro and the juvenile have been charged with 1st-degree murder and if 
convicted could face the death penalty.

Pocatello police announced the 2 arrests during a Thursday morning press 
conference.

Pocatello police confirmed earlier Thursday morning that Koehler was murdered 
inside her home at 1055 McKinley Ave. on the city's north side and multiple 
people were in custody for the crime.

Police said they wanted to inform the community that the arrests had been made 
so people knew as soon as possible that there is no longer a public safety 
threat related to the murder.

On Wednesday, police had encouraged Pocatello area residents to lock all their 
doors and windows and report any and all suspicious activity until those 
responsible for Koehler's murder were arrested.

During a Wednesday morning press conference, police announced that Koehler's 
death was being investigated as a suspected murder but they would not release 
further details. Police also issued an unusual warning to the public at that 
press conference to take precautions and report any suspicious activity because 
no suspects were in custody at that time.

Koehler’s neighbors said authorities told them that Koehler was stabbed to 
death, fought with and injured her attacker before she died, and her attacker 
left a blood trail from Koehler’s home to nearby Eldredge Road.

Pocatello police would not confirm nor deny the accuracy of what the neighbors 
said.

Police said a family member reported finding Koehler’s body at 7:39 p.m. 
Tuesday inside her home.

“A family member had come to the location because they had not heard from the 
resident,” said Maj. Roger Schei of the Pocatello Police Department. “The 
family member discovered that their relative was deceased and called police.”

Koehler’s McKinley Avenue home is located within a residential neighborhood 
near NOP Park and busy West Alameda Road.

On Wednesday afternoon, Koehler’s well-maintained home was cordoned off with 
police tape while police investigators continued processing evidence there. 
Schei said police detectives spent Wednesday collecting evidence and 
interviewing Koehler’s neighbors.

Police would not say when they believe Koehler was killed but they had asked 
residents to report any suspicious activity they saw in her neighborhood 
Saturday through Tuesday.

Authorities said the Pocatello police officers responsible for helping to 
locate the suspects in connection to Koehler's murder were the same officers 
who on Monday evening took a man suffering from severe post-traumatic stress 
disorder into custody after he allegedly wanted to commit suicide by cop and 
threatened to shoot people in Old Town Pocatello.

No one was injured during that unrelated incident but North Main Street was 
temporarily shut down to all traffic while police took the man into custody.

Police said it is worthy of praise that the officers who responded to that 
incident 24 hours later were responding to Koehler's murder and helped locate 
the suspects in her death.

(source: Idaho State Journal)








CALIFORNIA:

California governor: Why I put a freeze on the death penalty



As the tide turns toward a more just criminal justice system, California again 
has a responsibility to lead the way -- and in doing so, show the world who we 
are and what we stand for. The death penalty as we know it represents an 
unfair, unjust and unequal system that does not make us safer.

In America, we execute more human beings than any other democracy on Earth, and 
we administer the death penalty in ways that are absolutely contrary to our 
bedrock responsibility to ensure equal justice under the law. In California, we 
have the largest death row anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, with 737 people 
awaiting execution. More than six in 10 of them are African-American or Latino. 
Racial inequity has long plagued our death penalty process, and we know our 
state has sentenced at least five innocent people to death since 1973 (they 
were freed).

Most recently, we freed a man who spent more than 25 years on death row after 
being wrongfully convicted based on false evidence that California Supreme 
Court Justice Carol Corrigan called "hair-raising." In this case and too many 
others, we almost made a fatal, irreversible mistake.

That's not leadership. That's not a state or a nation that strives toward equal 
justice for all.

Under my authority as governor, I signed an executive order last week putting a 
moratorium on the death penalty in California and closing our state's death 
chamber at San Quentin.

The crimes that have landed people on death row have inflicted deep and 
immeasurable pain on their victims and those victims' loved ones. We must not 
compound those crimes by continuing to spend billions on a system that, at 
best, does not make us safer, and at worst, risks more innocent life.

California governor: Border wall a monument to stupidity After careful 
deliberation, I concluded that the heavy cost of the death penalty is one we 
can no longer afford -- not just the financial burden on our justice system, 
but the moral cost of executing fellow Californians.

I took this action because death sentences are unevenly and unfairly applied 
based on race, income and mental disability, and because we cannot abide the 
potential execution of an innocent person.

Any human action is prone to human error. There is no amount of certainty that 
can guarantee that an innocent person will not mistakenly be put to death. The 
National Academy of Sciences estimates that one in every 25 people on death row 
is wrongly convicted. Putting an innocent person to death is a mistake we 
cannot undo.

We must no longer waste our taxpayers' dollars on an ineffective system.

Our death penalty system has cost us $5 billion since 1978. That's $5 billion 
we could have used to make our courts run more fairly and efficiently, or solve 
unsolved rapes and murders. We could have invested that money in strategies to 
decrease crime, support victims and survivors, and reduce recidivism. In fact, 
the death penalty has not proven to prevent violent crime. A Death Penalty 
Information Center analysis of US murder data from 1987 through 2015 found no 
evidence that the death penalty deters murder or protects police.

To be clear, no one currently on death row in our state is getting out of 
prison, and no one who commits a heinous crime will avoid swift and severe 
punishment, including a life behind bars. But here in California, we will no 
longer perpetuate a flawed system that delays, denies and discriminates.

Our nation again looks to California for solutions that work and reflect our 
highest moral values. I stand committed to building a justice system where 
everyone is equal in the eyes of the law, and where we do everything in our 
power to promote the safety of all communities.

(source: CNN)

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

No executions on Newsom’s watch----New governor declares a moratorium on death 
penalty while he’s in office



Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order last week putting a moratorium on 
the death penalty in California and shuttering the execution chamber at San 
Quentin, a move that overrides a decision the state’s voters made in 2016 to 
maintain capital punishment.

While campaigning for governor last year, Newsom said he was fervently opposed 
to the death penalty but didn’t “want to get ahead of the will of the voters” 
and wanted to “give the voters a chance to reconsider.”

On March 13, he said he changed his mind because his decision whether to permit 
executions had become more urgent and less abstract. The state’s lethal 
injection protocol was getting closer to being finalized and 2 dozen death row 
inmates had exhausted their appeals.

“I’ve had to process this in a way that I didn’t frankly anticipate a few 
months ago. It was an abstract question. (It became) a very real question, ” 
Newsom said at a Capitol press conference.

“I cannot sign off on executing hundreds and hundreds of human beings,”

Under the governor’s reprieve, all 737 people on death row will remain in 
prison and, on paper, sentenced to death. But executions will be halted as long 
as Newsom remains governor. A future governor would have the power to change 
their fate.

Newsom’s executive order argues that the death penalty is unfair, applied 
disproportionately to people of color and people with mental disabilities. It 
says innocent people have been sentenced to die, including 5 Californians since 
1973 who were found to have been wrongfully convicted.

His move is part of a larger swing in California away from tough-on-crime 
policies. In the last decade, Democrats who control state government and the 
state’s largely liberal voters have embraced policies to eliminate the use of 
money bail, reduce some nonviolent felonies to misdemeanors and legalize 
marijuana.

But the death penalty so far has been politically untouchable—repeatedly 
favored by voters despite their progressive tendencies on other issues. In 
2016, California voters passed a ballot measure to expedite executions and 
defeated a measure to end the death penalty. Voters also defeated a 2012 
measure to end the death penalty.

A leading supporter of the death penalty said Newsom’s action is legal but 
“contrary to basic democratic principles.”

“The decision of whether we will have the death penalty or not is one the 
people have made over and over again through the initiative process,” said Kent 
Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which 
advocates for capital punishment.

“It’s improper for an executive to use the reprieve power to frustrate the 
people’s position.”

GOP Assemblyman Tom Lackey of Palmdale said Republicans were looking for a way 
to reverse Newsom’s action but hadn’t yet figured out how. He criticized Newsom 
for changing his position from the campaign but ruled out an effort to launch a 
recall.

“He’s said conflicting statements. That’s how you lose trust,” Lackey said.

It appears Californians may yet have another chance to weigh in.

Democratic Assemblyman Marc Levine of San Rafael has introduced a measure that 
would, if approved by 2/3 of the Legislature, put the question on the ballot in 
2020. He said having a governor campaign against the death penalty could make 
the difference in convincing voters to repeal it.

“We’ve never before had that type of leadership on one of these initiatives,” 
Levine said. “We are going to learn from those failures….How do we do this 
right? How do we administer justice properly?”

Death penalty opponents urged Jerry Brown to grant a reprieve when he was 
governor, but he never did, despite his personal opposition to capital 
punishment. They have been lobbying Newsom to do the same since he was sworn-in 
in January.

Now they have their sights set on the next goal, said longtime anti-death 
penalty advocate Natasha Minsker: “The next step would be to go further and 
convert death sentences to life without parole.”

(source: newsreview.com)








USA:

4 of 5 northern NM compound suspects could face death penalty



Four of the five people who were arrested after a raid of a Taos County 
compound could face the death penalty if they are convicted of federal charges.

Jany Leveille, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, Hujrah Wahhaj, Subhanah Wahhaj, and Lucas 
Morton face were in court Thursday facing new federal terrorism and kidnapping 
charges. They also face federal gun charges.

"The allegations are serious. The allegations suggest an active plot to 
perpetrate violence in the United States and that's something we take 
exceptionally seriously," said U.S. Attorney for New Mexico John Anderson.

Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, who is the father of Abdul-ghani Wahhaj, the Georgia boy who 
prosecutors say was kidnapped and was found dead at the compound, will not face 
the death penalty.

A federal law says a parent can't get the death penalty for kidnapping their 
own child.

While the death penalty is on the table, prosecutors have not decided whether 
they will seek it. They said it's an option that would have to be signed off by 
the U.S. Attorney General.

All 5 suspects pleaded not guilty.

The suspects' defense attorneys say their clients are being targeted because 
they are Muslim.

"This is about religious freedom, the right to bear arms and core American 
values. We all stand behind our clients 100 %. They're not terrorists, they're 
innocent," said Carey Bhalla, defense attorney for Hujrah Wahhaj.

A trial is not expected to start until 2020.

(source: KOB news)

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

Death penalty sought for ex-Westchester cop charged in deaths of 4



Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty against a former Westchester 
County police officer accused in the killing of 4 men in Orange County.

The former Briarcliff Manor officer, Nicholas Tartaglione, was arrested in 
December 2016 in connection with the deaths of Martin Luna, Urbano Santiago, 
Miguel Luna and Hector Gutierrez, according to the Journal News in White 
Plains.

(source: newyorkupstate.com)