[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.C., FLA., LA., ARK., OKLA. COLO., USA

[Rick Halperin]

March 30



TEXAS:

Brett Kavanaugh Explains Why He Voted to Grant Buddhist Inmate's Stay of 
Execution----The Supreme Court ruled 7–2 Thursday night to grant Patrick 
Murphy's petition for a stay.



Patrick Murphy, whose case I wrote about yesterday, was convicted under Texas' 
law of parties in the 2000 murder of a police officer. While he didn't pull the 
trigger, Murphy was involved in the robbery that led to his compatriots 
committing murder.

"I'm not challenging the guilt of the crime," he told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth 
this week. "My role was basically really to be the getaway driver."

Despite not having been directly involved in the murder, various courts have 
refused to grant him a stay of execution. But Murphy also alleged that his 
First Amendment right to freedom of religion was being violated. He converted 
to Buddhism while incarcerated, but the State of Texas would not allow his 
spiritual adviser to be by his side in the execution chamber, since the Rev. 
Hui-Yong Shih is not an employee of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

A federal district and circuit court would not grant Murphy a stay, meaning 
only the U.S. Supreme Court (or executive clemency) could spare his life. The 
Court came through on Thursday night, ruling:

The State may not carry out Murphy's execution pending the timely filing and 
disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari unless the State permits 
Murphy's Buddhist spiritual advisor or another Buddhist reverend of the State's 
choosing to accompany Murphy in the execution chamber during the execution.

Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch were the only justices who would have denied a 
stay. While the Court as a whole did not explain its reasoning, Justice Brett 
Kavanaugh did publish a concurring opinion detailing his own decision.

"In this case, the relevant Texas policy allows a Christian or Muslim inmate to 
have a state-employed Christian or Muslim religious adviser present either in 
the execution room or in the adjacent viewing room," Kavanaugh wrote. "But 
inmates of other religious denominations—for example, Buddhist inmates such as 
Murphy—who want their religious adviser to be present can have the religious 
adviser present only in the viewing room and not in the execution room itself 
for their executions."

"In my view, the Constitution prohibits such denominational discrimination," he 
said.

There were 2 possible solutions, he added. The state could let religious 
advisers of all faiths in the execution chamber, or confine them to the viewing 
room. The key is equal treatment. The state cannot give preferential treatment 
to Christian or Muslim inmates over Buddhist prisoners, Kavanaugh said.

The Court's ruling surprised some observers, because it seemed to rule the 
opposite way in a similar case in Alabama last month. Dominique Ray, a Muslim 
inmate, wanted his imam to be by his side before he died. The state would not 
oblige for security reasons, since it does not employ any Muslim imams. But in 
that case the Court's decision didn't rest on the constitutional question: The 
justices ruled 5–4 that Ray had waited too long to file a petition for relief.

That did not seem to be an issue in this case, at least for Kavanaugh. The 
justice wrote in a note at the bottom of his concurring opinion that "Murphy 
made his request to the State in a sufficiently timely manner, one month before 
the scheduled execution."

According to UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh (of Volokh Conspiracy fame), the 
Court's most recent ruling may also reflect a backlash "from scholars whose 
views the justices respect" following their decision in the Ray case. "And of 
course justices should be open to changing their minds when they are persuaded 
that they were likely mistaken," he tells NPR.

Regardless of their reasoning, the ruling is most certainly a positive. As Ilya 
Somin notes today at The Volokh Conspiracy:

Whatever can be said about the procedural question, it's a good thing that the 
justices have taken a major step towards clearing up any confusion over their 
stance on the substantive one. Whether in death penalty cases or elsewhere, it 
is indeed impermissible for the government to discriminate on the basis of 
religion.

Murphy will now go back to death row.

(source: Joe Seyton, reason.com)

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

Why Did Brett Kavanaugh Change His Mind About the Rights of Religious 
Minorities in the Execution Chamber?



Why did the Supreme Court halt Patrick Henry Murphy’s execution and not 
Domineque Ray’s? On Thursday night, the justices barred Texas from killing 
Murphy, a Buddhist, because the state refused to let a Buddhist spiritual 
adviser accompany him in the execution chamber. Yet just last month, a majority 
of the court let Alabama kill Ray, a Muslim, even though the state would not 
let his imam accompany him during the lethal injection. At least one 
conservative justice, Brett Kavanaugh, intervened to help Murphy but let Ray 
die alone. Why?

Kavanaugh’s explanation for his change of heart—that Murphy brought his claim 
earlier than Ray—is dubious if not outright wrong. Perhaps, in truth, they feel 
duly shamed by the bipartisan public backlash to their callous treatment of 
Ray. Maybe they were stung by Justice Elena Kagan’s fierce dissent in the Ray 
case. Or maybe a white Buddhist inmate like Murphy is simply more sympathetic 
to the conservative justices than a black Muslim inmate like Ray. Whatever the 
reason, Thursday’s decision marked an overdue embrace of the basic respect for 
religious liberty that the Constitution affords religious minorities.

Murphy and Ray’s cases are, legally, nearly indistinguishable. Both men wanted 
a spiritual adviser present when the state was due to execute them. But Alabama 
would not allow an imam to accompany Ray, and Texas would not allow a Buddhist 
adviser to accompany Murphy. Both states, however, were willing to provide a 
Christian chaplain to death row inmates at execution. (Texas, unlike Alabama, 
also allows a Muslim spiritual adviser to attend executions, which would be of 
no benefit to Murphy.) Ray and Murphy sued, noting that this discriminatory 
treatment of religious minorities clearly violates the First Amendment’s 
Establishment Clause by favoring one religion over another.

In February, by a 5–4 vote, the Supreme Court turned Ray away and let Alabama 
kill him, over Kagan’s scathing dissent. The majority claimed that Ray made his 
request too late. On Thursday, the court blocked Texas from killing Murphy. The 
majority believed that Murphy, unlike Ray, made his request in what Kavanaugh 
called “a sufficiently timely manner.” And so it forbade the execution unless 
Texas “permits Murphy’s Buddhist spiritual adviser or another Buddhist reverend 
of the State’s choosing to accompany Murphy in the execution chamber during the 
execution.”

On the surface, the court’s belief that Murphy’s request was timelier than 
Ray’s might seem plausible. Murphy asked for a spiritual adviser one month 
before his execution date, while Ray asked for one less than two weeks prior to 
his execution on Feb. 7. But Ray did not discover that he could not have his 
imam present until Jan. 23. That’s because Alabama statute states that an 
inmate’s spiritual adviser of choice “may be present at an execution,” and Ray 
understandably assumed that law authorized his imam to “be present” at his 
execution. It wasn’t until Jan. 23 that the state provided Ray with 
confidential regulations that only allow a Christian chaplain in the execution 
chamber. After Ray discovered this secret rule, he filed his federal lawsuit in 
five days, seeking a stay of execution until he could secure his imam’s 
presence. As Cassy Stubbs, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s 
Capital Punishment Project, told Slate, “there is no evidence that Ray sat on 
the claim or was dilatory in any way.”

Why did the Supreme Court spare Murphy but not Ray?

Murphy, by contrast, has had notice of Texas’ death chamber regulations for 
years. Since 2012, the state’s official policy has excluded all but prison 
employees from the chamber during executions. And there are no Buddhist 
spiritual advisers who work for the prison. This rule, unlike Alabama’s, is 
public. Moreover, when the state confirmed that it would not allow a Buddhist 
spiritual adviser to attend his execution, Murphy waited more than two weeks to 
file a lawsuit. In all pertinent details, Murphy’s claim was less timely than 
Ray’s—as both the federal district and appeals court explained in denying his 
suit. And when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Murphy’s claim, one 
justice wrote separately to chastise his longtime attorney, David Dow, for his 
alleged history of attempting to thwart executions through frivolous 
last-minute suits.

So why did the Supreme Court spare Murphy but not Ray? In his brief concurring 
opinion, Kavanaugh wrote cryptically that “under all the circumstances of this 
case, I conclude that Murphy made his request to the State in a sufficiently 
timely manner”—which, again, is highly debatable. Chief Justice John Roberts 
and Justice Samuel Alito did not note their votes, so it is unclear if they 
agreed to halt the execution or dissented silently. (Only Justices Clarence 
Thomas and Neil Gorsuch publicly dissented.) Thus, we know with certainty only 
that Kavanaugh flipped.

The most generous explanation of Kavanaugh’s vote is that Kagan persuaded him 
that he failed to honor Ray’s constitutional rights. Her dissent in that case 
was so devastating, so comprehensive and meticulous, that it may have opened 
Kavanaugh’s eyes to the bigotry on display. Kagan described the court’s 
treatment of Ray as “profoundly wrong,” a direct affront to the Constitution’s 
“core principle of denominational neutrality.” Alabama’s justification for its 
flagrant “religious discrimination” was laughably pretextual. Perhaps Kavanaugh 
absorbed this dissent, along with widespread, bipartisan public backlash, and 
changed his mind. He may have also realized the horrible optics of the court’s 
insensitivity to the religious liberty of Muslims as it bends over backward to 
appease conservative Christians. Or he might just be more solicitous to the 
religious freedom of a white Buddhist than to that of a black Muslim.

Whatever the reason Kavanaugh flipped, it is gratifying that a majority of the 
court finally grasps the grave constitutional harms inflicted by discriminatory 
execution policies. Texas and Alabama seek to favor compel religious minorities 
to die without spiritual comfort. The Constitution obviously forbids such 
intentional religious inequality. And despite the best efforts of Texas, 
Alabama, and several conservative justices, executioners cannot suspend the 
First Amendment in their death chambers.

(source: slate.com)

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

The Supreme Court Just Halted This Texas Death Row Inmate’s Execution



Patrick Murphy was granted a rare stay of execution by the US Supreme Court in 
a 7-2 vote that took place two hours after he was scheduled to be executed. 
Murphy’s religious discrimination claim argued that because he was a converted 
Buddhist, he needed a spiritual adviser to help him get to the Pure Land after 
death. Only prison employees are allowed to be in the execution chamber, and in 
the Huntsville Unit in Texas only Christian and Muslim clerics are on staff.

“As this Court has repeatedly held, governmental discrimination against 
religion—in particular, discrimination against religious persons, religious 
organizations, and religious speech—violates the Constitution,” Justice Brett 
Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion. Because inmates of other religious 
denominations are provided with clerics, he wrote, allowing Murphy to have a 
Buddhist spiritual adviser by his side in the death chamber infringes on his 
religious freedom.

The court’s decision on Murphy, a white man who converted to Buddhism, sharply 
contrasts with their decision regarding Domineque Ray, a black Muslim death row 
inmate who was recently executed in Alabama after the US Supreme Court ruled 
5-4 in February to lift a stay granted by a federal court. Ray, who was 
sentenced to death for the 1995 rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl, argued 
that his religious rights were being violated because Alabama would not allow a 
Muslim cleric into the death chamber. Like Texas, Alabama only allows prison 
employees to be inside the chamber, but there are no others but Christian 
clerics on staff.

“Ray has put forward a powerful claim that his religious rights will be 
violated at the moment the state puts him to death,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote 
in a dissent. But the high court did not review the religious aspect of the 
case, instead it focused on a procedural issue, noting that the timing of the 
claim was too late for consideration—a charge the court’s liberal justices 
rejected.

Murphy is one of the last living members of a group known as the Texas 7. One 
of the men died by suicide before he was arrested, and the rest were sentenced 
to death. 4 of them have already been executed. In late 2000, Murphy and 6 
other men, escaped from the Connally Unit in South Texas and went on a crime 
spree that ended on Christmas Eve. While several members of the group were 
robbing a sporting goods store, someone called the police. Murphy was outside 
in the getaway car when he spotted police officer Aubrey Hawkins responding to 
the call. Murphy radioed his accomplices urging them to leave the store. When 
the men came outside, 5 of them started shooting, killing Hawkins.

Earlier this week, Patrick Murphy sought to halt his execution by requesting a 
30-day reprieve from Gov. Greg Abbott, which the governor did not respond to 
before the Supreme Court ruling. Although he was not the killer, Murphy was 
sentenced to death under the controversial “law of parties.” As the Texas 
Tribune explains:

Under Texas law, Murphy is just as culpable as the men who fired their weapons 
at Hawkins because he was participating in the robbery, and a jury determined 
that either Murphy was acting with the intent to help in the crime, or, even if 
he had no intent to kill anyone, the murder “should have been anticipated as a 
result” of the robbery. To be sentenced to death, the jury must have agreed 
that Murphy at least anticipated the death. Texas lawmakers have filed bills 
that are seeking to change the statute to not allow death sentences for 
accomplices.

“It is unconscionable that Patrick Murphy may be executed for a murder he did 
not commit that resulted from a robbery in which he did not participate, at the 
exact moment when lawmakers are considering whether anyone possibly convicted 
under [the law of parties] should be eligible for the death penalty,” David Dow 
and Jeff Newberry, lawyers for Murphy, said in a statement 2 days before their 
client’s scheduled execution date.

Now, Murphy gets more time argue his religious discrimination claim, but the 
state has a simple option to speed his execution. They can permit a Buddhist 
spiritual adviser to accompany him in the death chamber.

(source: Mothe rJones)








NORTH CAROLINA:

Jury seated in death-penalty case. Winston-Salem man accused of assaulting and 
murdering 2-year-old boy in 2015.



Starting Monday, a Forsyth County jury will begin hearing the graphic details 
of how a 2-year-old died in 2015.

The panel of jurors will have to decide ultimately 2 things — whether Charles 
Thomas Stacks intentionally assaulted and killed Jaxson Sonny Swain, leaving 
bite marks over his body, and if so, whether Stacks deserves to be put to 
death.

Stacks, 33, is on trial for 1st-degree murder and felony child abuse inflicting 
serious bodily injury in Jaxson’s death in August 2015. He is also facing a 
charge of heroin possession.

If he is found guilty of 1st-degree murder, a jury will then have to determine 
whether Stacks will get the death penalty or life in prison without the 
possibility of parole.

The jury of 12, plus three alternates, was impaneled just after 3 p.m. Friday. 
The alternates will participate in deliberations only if one of the 12 jurors 
cannot. Jennifer Martin, C. Ruffin Sykes, Amara Hunter and James Dornfried are 
the prosecutors. Nils Gerber and Stephen Ball are representing Stacks.

Opening statements start at 9:30 a.m. Monday in Courtroom 5A. The trial is 
expected to last 4 to 6 weeks.

According to prosecutors, Charles Stacks and his wife, Megin Stacks, lived in a 
house at 5450 Grubbs St. They were friends with Jaxson’s mother, Candace Swain, 
who had been staying at the house off and on for the last 2 weeks of Jaxson’s 
life. The Stackses had 4 children. Charles Stacks was stepfather to 3 of 
Megin’s children, and he was the biological father of 1 of her children.

Paramedics and Winston-Salem police officers were called to the Stackses’ house 
on Aug. 16, 2015, and found Jaxson unconscious and lying in a bathtub of cold 
water. He was taken to Brenner Children’s Hospital, where he died three days 
later.

Police and prosecutors say Charles Stacks was the only one taking care of 
Jaxson at the time he was found unconscious. Charles Stacks told Winston-Salem 
police that Jaxson urinated on himself and that he took the child into the 
master bedroom to change his diapers, according to testimony at a hearing 
earlier this month on pre-trial motions. Charles Stacks said he placed Jaxson 
on a coffee table and went to get the diapers.

When he turned around, Jaxson was vomiting and then fell off the table, hit his 
head and started seizing.

Forsyth County prosecutors have argued that Jaxson had catastrophic and acute 
injuries so severe that if he had lived, he would not have been able to walk or 
talk again.

Ron Davis, a retired detective with the Winston-Salem Police Department, 
testified at an earlier hearing this month that he talked to a doctor at 
Brenner Children’s Hospital and observed Jaxson briefly. He said Jaxson had 2 
black eyes and had bruises all over his body. The doctor told him that the 
right side of Jaxson’s skull had to be removed to relieve swelling of the 
brain, Davis said in court.

In previous hearings, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Martin has said 
Jaxson’s testicles were swollen. Davis said he saw bruise marks on Jaxson’s 
body that were in different stages of healing and he immediately called the 
police department’s forensic unit to send people to take photographs of 
Jaxson’s injuries.

The autopsy said Jaxson died from bleeding around his brain that was caused by 
blunt-force injuries.

A key witness in the case will be Candace Swain, who is expected to be one of 
the first people prosecutors will call to the stand.

Gerber and Ball have not publicly said whether Charles Stacks will take the 
stand. He is under no obligation to testify because he is presumed innocent and 
the burden is on prosecutors to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

In a hearing earlier this month, Martin said that Candace Swain was a heroin 
addict and that Charles Stacks was a mid-level drug dealer. She described 5450 
Grubbs St. as a drug den. She said at the time of Jaxson’s death, Candace Swain 
was working as a prostitute in exchange for money and drugs.

She also said Charles Stacks might have been angry at Candace Swain because she 
owed him $300 and he was frustrated at taking care of Jaxson. Gerber and Ball 
have vehemently denied those allegations and said Candace Swain owed $80.

An investigative report by the medical examiner indicates that Candace Swain 
maintained at one point that her son’s injuries were not the result of abuse. 
She told investigators that the bruising on Jaxson’s face happened when he was 
sliding on a bed leaned against a wall and the bed fell on him.

Megin Stacks is also facing charges. On Monday, a Forsyth County grand jury 
indicted Megin Stacks on charges of felony accessory after the fact to felony 
child abuse and misdemeanor obstruction of justice. She is accused of putting a 
diaper on Jaxson, cleaning up the crime scene and telling her children not to 
cooperate with the investigation into his death, according to the indictments. 
No trial date has been set in her case.

(source: Winston-Salem Journal)








FLORIDA:

Florida Man Exonerated 42 Years After Wrongful Conviction and Death Sentence



42 years after he and his nephew were wrongfully convicted of murder in Florida 
and he was sentenced to death, Clifford Williams, Jr. (pictured) has been 
exonerated. Submitting a report from its Conviction Integrity Unit that found 
“no credible evidence of guilt and … credible evidence of innocence,” Duval 
County prosecutors asked a Jacksonville trial court to dismiss all charges 
against Williams, now 76 years old, and his nephew, Nathan Myers, now 61. 
Williams is the 165th former death-row prisoner to be exonerated in the United 
States since 1973.

Williams and Myers were tried and convicted in 1976 for the murder of Jeanette 
Williams and the wounding of her girlfriend, Nina Marshall. Marshall told 
police that 2 men had entered their bedroom at night and fired shots from the 
foot of the bed. She identified Williams and Myers as the shooters. However, 
the physical evidence — never presented by defense counsel — revealed that the 
bullets had been fired from outside, through the bedroom window, and had come 
from a single gun. Defense counsel also ignored 40 alibi witnesses whom 
Williams and Myers had indicated would be able to testify that they had been 
next door at a birthday party at the time the shooting occurred. The defense 
presented no witnesses. The 1st trial resulted in a mistrial. In the 2nd trial, 
which lasted 2 days, prosecutors argued, without presenting any supporting 
evidence, that the men committed the murder because Jeannette Williams 
supposedly owed them a $50 drug debt. The jury convicted Williams and Myers but 
recommended that they be sentenced to life. Judge Cliff Shepard — a notoriously 
harsh trial judge — overrode the jury’s sentencing recommendation for Williams 
and sentenced him to death. Shepard accepted the life recommendation for 
18-year-old Myers.

Prosecutors began reinvestigating the case after newly elected State Attorney 
Melissa Nelson created the first Conviction Integrity Unit in the state in 
2018. The unit issued its report, authored by Conviction Integrity Review 
Director Shelley Thibodeau, in February. The report noted that no physical 
evidence linked Williams or Myers to the shooting and that “the physical and 
scientific evidence actually contradicts [Marshall’s] testimony about what 
happened.” The report also found that another man, Nathaniel Lawson, had 
confessed to several people that he had committed the killings and that a 1976 
police report noted his presence near the crime scene around the time of the 
murder. Thibodeau concluded that "[t]he culmination of all the evidence, most 
of which the jury never heard or saw, leaves no abiding confidence in the 
convictions or the guilt of the defendants.”

Williams had been trying unsuccessfully for years to get anyone interested in 
the case, and responded emotionally after the hearing. “My mother died while I 
was on death row,” he told Florida Times-Union reporter Andrew Pantazi. Through 
tears, he said, “I just wanted to get out and see my kids. There wasn’t nobody 
but them.”

29 wrongfully convicted death-row prisoners have been exonerated in Florida, 
the most in the nation. In 21 of the 23 Florida exonerations for which the 
jury’s sentencing vote is known, judges imposed the death penalty by overriding 
a jury recommendation for life or following a non-unanimous jury recommendation 
for death. Florida now requires a unanimous jury recommendation before a judge 
can impose a death sentence.

(source: Death Penalty Information Center)

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

Lawyers seeking compensation for freed death-row inmate call Seminole state 
attorney's resistance 'perverse,' 'Orwellian'



Lawyers for a former death-row prisoner who was freed last November slammed the 
efforts of the Seminole-Brevard State Attorney’s Office to deny him 
compensation for his time spent behind bars, calling them “absurd,” “perverse” 
and “Orwellian” in court documents filed this week.

After prosecutors dropped all charges against Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin during 
his 2nd murder trial in November, his lawyers requested Aguirre-Jarquin be 
compensated under Florida’s Victims of Wrongful Incarceration Compensation Act, 
a 2008 law providing $50,000 for each year somebody was wrongfully 
incarcerated.

Aguirre-Jarquin, 38, spent 14 years behind bars for the brutal slayings of his 
next-door neighbors, Cheryl Williams and her mother Carol Bareis. He would 
potentially be entitled to $700,000.

“Every single day during those 14+ unbroken years behind bars, Mr. Aguirre had 
to wake up when he was told, eat when he was told, go to bed when he was told — 
everything when he was told,” his lawyers wrote in a court document filed 
Thursday. “He missed every birthday, every anniversary, every celebration of 
his family and friends during those years, every new memory that they created 
together without him.”

In a February court filing, Assistant State Attorney Stewart Stone said he 
opposed Aguirre-Jarquin’s efforts to receive compensation and legal recognition 
as someone who was unjustly imprisoned. Stone said Aguirre-Jarquin filed his 
motion too late, and also said he has serious doubts about Aguirre-Jarquin’s 
innocence.

The law says those making claims of wrongful incarceration need to file a claim 
within 90 days of the reversal of a conviction. To be eligible for 
compensation, Stone argues Aguirre-Jarquin should have filed his claim in late 
2016, after the Florida Supreme Court ordered a new trial.

Though the state’s high court reversed his conviction, Aguirre-Jarquin remained 
behind bars because the State Attorney’s Office announced its decision to 
re-try him the same day.

“At that time, of course, Mr. Aguirre was still wrongfully incarcerated,” his 
lawyers wrote in Thursday’s court motion. “He couldn’t breathe free air, walk 
on the beach, or even watch his beloved Carolina Panthers play football — and 
yet, the State says, he should have at that time been asking for compensation 
on the ground that he had been … wrongfully incarcerated. Never mind that he 
was still incarcerated.”

“The Court should reject that State’s Orwellian interpretation of the Act, 
which is (among other apt adjectives) equal parts ironic, perverse, and 
absurd,” his lawyers said.

Stone earlier argued there is still “substantial evidence” that Aguirre-Jarquin 
is guilty of killing Williams and Bareis.

“The evidence is sufficient to show that Clemente Aguirre committed these 
murders, and the [decision to drop the charges] certainly was not an expression 
of Aguirre’s innocence in any manner whatsoever,” Stone wrote in a February 
court filing.

Aguirre-Jarquin was convicted and sentenced to die for the 2004 stabbing deaths 
of Williams and Bareis. In reversing his conviction, the Florida Supreme Court 
cited new evidence, including testimony that Williams’ daughter, Samantha 
Williams, had repeatedly confessed to the killings. Prosecutors abandoned their 
attempt to re-try him in November after testimony emerged that called Samantha 
Williams’ alibi into question.

She has not been charged in the case.

Aguirre-Jarquin became the 28th man freed from Florida’s death row. The state 
has had more people absolved from the death penalty than any other state in the 
country.

When asked for comment on Thursday’s filing, a spokesman for State Attorney 
Phil Archer’s office referred to a statement Archer gave in February.

“The Florida Statute that the Petitioner and his attorneys are trying to use to 
obtain compensation from the State of Florida does not apply in this case,” 
Archer said in the statement. “Without a change to the existing law, I am 
obligated to contest the petition, providing an opportunity for the Court to 
rule if this is an appropriate avenue to address their demands for 
compensation.”

Aguirre-Jarquin’s petition will be heard before Circuit Judge John Galluzzo 
April 4.

(source: Orlando Sentinel)

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

Here's why I'm a conservative and against the death penalty



Friends and readers generally tag yours truly as a conservative, though I do 
view some issues with a liberal lean. Capital punishment is one of those 
issues.

I’m no bleeding heart. During my 30 years with Miami-Dade Police, 16 working 
homicides, I’ve been witness to hundreds of premeditated killings, gore, deadly 
riots and inhumanity of people killing other people. For those who plot and 
carry out grisly murders, I believe they should receive the harshest of 
punishments. But not death.

Who decided death to be harsh? Is it harsh when an inmate pleads for a rapid 
end of life, as did Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing? Is it harsh 
when we condemn our pets to die by a needle because it’s “humane?” Is eternal 
sleep a punishment?

The new governor of California recently made news by banning executions for all 
its 737 death row inmates. In fact, California has not executed an inmate in 13 
years.

There are many reasons to halt executions. The top of the list is the fear and 
probability that even one innocent human being may be, or has been, executed. 
That probability is simply too high. We can look to our own justice system in 
Florida and find many cases where truly innocent persons were convicted of 
crimes they did not commit, such as William Dillon and Wilton Dedge, both 
featured in FLORIDA TODAY's podcast Murder of the Space Coast. There are others 
whose guilt is very dubious, as with another subject of the podcast, Gary 
Bennett, now in his 35th year in prison.

These cases are the ones we know about in Brevard County. What about the rest 
of the country? The men named above did not get the death penalty, though they 
wrongfully spent over 2 and 3 decades in prison.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there have been 20 death row 
inmates released since 1992 based at least in part on DNA evidence showing them 
to be innocent. DNA material only appears in a fraction of violent crimes. 
Murder cases do not always yield such evidence.

The only guarantee that innocent people will never be executed, is to abolish 
capital punishment. That’s the only guarantee.

A 2014 study by the National Academy of Sciences reports that at least 4 % of 
death row convicts are actually innocent. What are we waiting for?

There are other reasons to abolish capital punishment, such as:

• Costs: Numerous studies have been conducted that clearly show that 
maintaining the death penalty consumes at least double, or triple, the cost of 
imposing life sentences.

• No deterrent: More studies have determined that the death penalty does not 
deter violent crime.

• Death row inmates in Florida are confined to solitary confinement in a 
concrete and steel cell, 24 hours a day, with no air conditioning and no social 
interaction. Gary Alvord, 66, died of natural causes on death row where he 
spent almost 40 years. Many inmates spend more than 3 decades in isolation.

• Economic inequities: The rich get the best lawyers. The poor get the worst 
lawyers.

• Barbarism: The U.S. has the seventh highest number of executions in the 
world, among such company as Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan.

• Eighteen states have banned the death penalty. Of 32 states still on the 
books, only 5 have been active in carrying out executions, including Florida.

• Execution by injection is not punishment: The real punishment is suffering 
death row for 20 to 40 years.

• People change: Often, especially after decades in isolation, we are no longer 
executing the same person who committed the crime. Napoleon Beazley, a 
17-year-old Texas boy robbed and shot a man for his car. At his execution in 
May of 2002, Beazley spoke his final words:

“The act I committed to put me here was not just heinous, it was senseless,” he 
said. “But the person that committed that act is no longer here — I am.”

Capital punishment has one redeeming aspect. It’s often used as a wedge to 
secure guilty pleas in order to avert trials.

That’s a poor reason for maintaining the risk.

(source: Opinion; Marshall Frank is a retired police captain from Miami-Dade 
County----Florida Today)








LOUISIANA:

Bill filed to abolish death penalty



A Republican State Senator in Louisiana has pre-filed a bill that would do away 
with the death penalty.

If State Senator Bill Claitor's bill is approved in the legislature, it would 
then be up to voters to approve in the November election.

If voters approve, the changes won't take effect until January 2020.

Claitor said if this bill passes, it will not affect those currently on death 
row in Louisiana.

(source: KTAL news)








ARKANSAS:

Sister act----Prejean still opposes death penalty by Francisca Jones | Today at 
1:00 a.m.

Sister Helen Prejean, a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. 
Joseph, will speak on her opposition to the death penalty April 4 in Little 
Rock. She says she wants to "wake up ordinary people to why the death penalty 
should be an issue of concern to us average citizens."

Witnessing the execution of death-row inmate Elmo Patrick Sonnier in 1984 
sparked Sister Helen Prejean's mission of advocacy against the death penalty, 
and her experience as Sonnier's spiritual adviser would be chronicled in her 
1993 best-selling book, Dead Man Walking.

Two years later, Dead Man Walking was made into an Academy Award-winning film 
with the same name and was later adapted into an opera. Her latest book, River 
of Fire, will be released in August. A prequel to Dead Man Walking, Prejean 
says it tells the story of her "awakening" to faith while growing up in 
Louisiana.

Go & Do

Sister Helen Prejean

When: 6:30 p.m. April 4

Where: Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, 1000 N. Mississippi St. in Little Rock

Cost: $20

Information: lovesaintmarks.eventbrite.com

Awakening is also how Prejean describes the goal of her forthcoming talk and 
book signing at Little Rock's Saint Mark's Episcopal Church on April 4. She 
says she wants to "wake up ordinary people to why the death penalty should be 
an issue of concern to us average citizens."

The Death Penalty Information Center's annual survey found that there were 25 
executions carried out last year, marking the fourth consecutive year that 
fewer than 30 were conducted in the United States.

"We see a decline in the practice of the death penalty; and where it is 
happening it's because some prosecutors or governors have staked their 
political career, or they get political points for pushing for the death 
penalty," Prejean says. "That's the reason right there why we can essentially 
abolish [the death penalty], because it's arbitrary and capricious in its 
application."

Race, socioeconomic status and one's location in the United States also affect 
the use of the death penalty. Black prisoners outnumber white prisoners on 
death row by a substantial margin, Prejean says, and the poor don't have the 
resources to hire attorneys and "fight the prosecutor step for step."

"You cannot find one rich person on death row," Prejean says.

Arkansas was the focus of international attention in April 2017 when the state 
set out to execute 8 men in 11 days because the state's supply of midazolam, an 
anti-anxiety drug that wasn't originally intended to have a sedating effect, 
was expiring at the end of that month. Midazolam is 1 part of a 3-drug 
combination used by the state for executions.

4 of the men were executed, and 4 received court stays. Prejean publicly 
opposed the 2017 executions on Twitter.

Prejean's talk comes just weeks after a bill cleared the Arkansas Senate that 
would exempt records concerning the drugs used in executions from the Freedom 
of Information Act. Prejean says the lack of disclosure the bill is set to 
condone would make the secrecy around executions "even more profound."

"One of the things I've discovered ... is that because people are not close to 
what it actually means for a state to execute a citizen ... then they're not 
horrified by it, and they don't think about it very much because it doesn't 
touch them," she says.

Prejean plans to take the audience at Saint Mark's through what it means for 
the state to execute people, and explore what that execution means for victims' 
families. She will do that by offering facts and figures, but also through 
recounting her experiences and those of family members she has witnessed.

"I've found you can give all the statistics in the world to people, but it 
doesn't change minds and hearts," Prejean says. "You got to talk about real 
people."

The Rev. Patricia Matthews, an assistant rector at Saint Mark's, noted that the 
Episcopal Church has a longtime stance against the death penalty. The church 
first took its stand in 1958 and reaffirmed its stance in 2015.

"While we have compassion for victims of all crimes, we also believe that no 
one's outside of God's love," Matthews says. "We know the system is broken and 
biased [against nonwhites] ... and that it's a theological thing to kill 
someone, because that suggests that there's no chance for redemption in this 
world."

Episcopalians in Arkansas have called for a moratorium on the death penalty in 
the state in the past, and last year Saint Mark's hosted a performance of 
death-row inmates' stories through the Northwest Arkansas-based Prison Story 
Project. Art created by death-row inmates will be on display at Prejean's talk, 
and the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty will make literature 
available at the event.

Discipleship and Evangelism coordinator Kyran Pittman of Saint Mark's recalled 
seeing Prejean speak at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock 20 years ago 
and says that while the issue of the death penalty was ongoing, the Catholic 
nun has a gift for addressing audiences with warmth and substance.

"[Prejean is] very ardent and passionate in her stance against the death 
penalty," Pittman says. "What I remember about hearing her speak was her 
profound respect for the families of victims, and her very solid reasoning 
behind why she feels the state has no business administering capital 
punishment. It's not simply an emotional argument she makes."

(source: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)





OKLAHOMA:

Oklahoma state trooper's killer won't get new sentencing hearing



A man convicted and sentenced to death for the 1999 fatal shooting of an 
Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper will not receive a new sentencing hearing, a 
federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Ronald A. White, in an opinion and order issued Thursday, 
found that Kenneth Eugene Barrett’s trial counsel was “deficient” but that 
Barrett was not “prejudiced by counsel’s performance.”

Barrett, 57, has been seeking a new sentencing in the fatal shooting of David 
“Rocky” Eales on the grounds that he received ineffective counsel during the 
sentencing phase of his trial.

Eales and other members of the OHP tactical team were carrying out a no-knock 
search warrant just after midnight Sept. 24, 1999, in search of methamphetamine 
at Barrett’s Sequoyah County cabin when they came under fire.

A Muskogee federal court jury convicted Barrett in 2005 of two gun-related 
counts and of intentionally killing a state law enforcement officer during the 
commission of a drug trafficking crime.

The jury returned sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole 
on the gun charges and a death sentence for the fatal shooting of Eales.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2015 ordered that an evidentiary 
hearing be held in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma 
regarding whether Barrett’s federal trial attorneys were deficient in not 
investigating Barrett’s background and mental health during the penalty phase 
of the 2005 trial.

After listening to seven days of testimony in 2017, U.S. Magistrate Steven P. 
Shreder issued a report recommending that Barrett be granted a new sentencing 
hearing.

Federal prosecutors objected to the recommendation for a new sentencing 
hearing, arguing in court filings that evidence presented on Barrett’s behalf 
would not have affected the outcome of the trial.

The government did not object to the magistrate’s finding that Barrett’s trial 
counsel was constitutionally deficient in developing a mitigation strategy 
during the sentencing portion of the trial.

Evidence presented on behalf of Barrett during the 2017 evidentiary hearing 
indicated that he is bipolar, has had auditory hallucinations, has a history of 
brain trauma and has a family history of mental health issues going back 
several generations.

In his ruling Friday, White noted that while the magistrate found that Barrett 
had a family history of mental health problems, violence and alcohol abuse, 
that didn’t “offer any compelling mitigation evidence when weighed against the 
evidence that the jury heard regarding the petitioner’s cold-blooded and 
premeditated killing of a state law enforcement officer engaged in the 
performance of his official duties.”

“Simply because (Barrett) was able to obtain experts who described (him) as 
having mental health disorders so severe that he could not have rationally 
assisted his attorneys in the preparation of his defense, does not mean the 
jury would have given much weight to that testimony in light of the evidence it 
heard over the course of the entire trial,” White wrote.

Attorneys for Barrett and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Muskogee could not be 
reached for comment Friday.

Barrett was initially tried in state court on charges related to the fatal 
shooting of Eales.

Barrett’s 1st state court trial resulted in a hung jury.

In the 2nd state trial, Barrett again faced murder and 
shooting-with-intent-to-kill charges in Sequoyah County District Court, but 
jurors returned guilty verdicts in February 2004 on lesser offenses of 
1st-degree manslaughter and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

(source: The Purcell Register)








COLORADO:

The plan to repeal the death penalty in Colorado is coming 
undone----On-the-fence Democrats threaten to derail a bill that once seemed a 
good bet to pass



The bill to abolish the death penalty in Colorado is on life support.

The abolition measure has been delayed repeatedly since Democrats introduced it 
in the state Senate earlier this month, and the abolitionists now stand at 
least three votes shy of the majority they’d need to pass it.

Democrats hold a 19-16 edge in the Senate, but Majority Leader Steve Fenberg 
and multiple other sources said Friday that there are only 15 firm “yes” votes 
at the moment — 14 Democrats plus Henderson Republican Kevin Priola.

“Right now, I can’t count to 18,” said Senate Majority Leader Steve Fenberg, a 
Boulder Democrat.

Similar efforts have failed four times in recent years, but things seemed 
different this year: Democrats control both chambers of the legislature and the 
new governor, Jared Polis, has broken from predecessor John Hickenlooper by 
signaling clearly his intention to sign a repeal bill if it reaches his desk.

“Full steam ahead,” Sen. Lois Court told The Independent in February.

“If you’d asked me three months ago,” Fenberg said, “I’d have told you, ‘Yeah, 
we’re going to pass it this year.’”

That’s not looking likely.

Abolitionists will need to win over 3 out of 4 Democrats who say they’re 
undecided. The toss-up votes, according to those familiar with the 
negotiations, are Tammy Story of Conifer, Joann Ginal of Fort Collins, Jessie 
Danielson of Wheat Ridge and Nancy Todd of Aurora.

The Independent reached out to all 4 lawmakers on Friday. Danielson and Story 
responded, but neither was keen to discuss their positions; Danielson said she 
was busy with other work and didn’t want to talk about it, while Story said, “I 
have not invested the time (to decide) on this issue because I’ve been wholly 
focused on budget meetings.”

It’s well known, however, that Story opposes the death penalty on moral 
grounds. Sources said her present concern revolves around the timing of this 
bill — that this might not be the right year for it.

Danielson, several sources said, seems much more likely a “no” than a genuine 
undecided, at this point.

If Danielson is indeed a “no” and no other Senate Republicans join Priola on 
the repeal side, Story, Ginal and Todd all must back the bill in order for it 
to advance.

Priola told Westword that he supports the repeal for religious reasons. “I’m a 
practicing Catholic, and I believe being pro-life is important in all you do,” 
he said. Abolitionists had hoped Republican Sen. Jack Tate of Centennial, who 
has said he is conflicted on the issue, might break with his party as Priola 
has, but Tate told The Independent Friday, “I told (Fenberg) to count me as a 
‘no’.”

“If and when we get to 18 votes, it’ll come up,” Fenberg said. The bill is on 
the Senate calendar for Monday, but he acknowledged it’s almost certainly going 
to get pushed back.

“I don’t want to bring this up without knowing where the votes are, and 
potentially set (the effort) back,” he said.

Each delay diminishes the bill’s chance of passage The legislative session ends 
in early May and the Senate has been mired in partisan dysfunction for weeks, 
sparring over issues including oil and gas regulations, gun laws and Colorado’s 
potential role in upending the Electoral College.

A bill as consequential as the death penalty repeal also would bring with it an 
above-average amount of debate and process. Fields and Republican opponents of 
the bill have said that the question — literally a life-and-death one — should 
be up to voters, not the legislature, to decide.

Fenberg was blunt, too, about the fact that some in his caucus simply don’t 
feel there’s “urgency” to abolish the death penalty now.

Since a national moratorium on the death penalty was lifted in 1976, Colorado 
has executed just one man — Gary Lee Davis, a murderer and rapist, in 1997. 
There are 3 men on death in Colorado right now.

Abolitionists maintain there is a moral urgency in repealing the death penalty.

“How can we build a better society if we continue to kill people who kill 
people?” said former state Sen. Lucia Guzman, who previously led the 
unsuccessful legislative repeal effort, and whose successor, Sen. Julie 
Gonzales, is a co-sponsor of the current repeal bill.

“We are not moving forward at all. We are wallowing in violence. Our decisions 
should be about the future,” added Guzman, whose father, Tomas, was murdered in 
a robbery in 1975.

Beyond the question of urgency, many Democrats — supporters, undecided voters 
and opponents of the repeal alike — have concerns about how this bill was 
introduced. They lament that Sen. Rhonda Fields of Aurora wasn’t given an 
adequate heads-up before the bill dropped.

Fields, the only Senate Democrat confirmed as a “no” vote on the repeal bill, 
lost her son and his fiancée to murder in 2005. Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray 
were convicted and sentenced to death for their killings, and they now make up 
2/3 of the state’s death row.

Fields complained in a speech on the Senate floor that the bill’s filing, press 
conference and floor introduction happened on 3 consecutive days.

“I consider that a 1, 2, 3 punch,” she said in that speech.

Fields said Friday that she and Sen. Angela Williams, who’s driving this bill 
along with Gonzales, haven’t spoken much since the press conference March 5.

“It’s a very sensitive issue,” Fields said.

She also said that she has not been lobbying any of her colleagues to join her 
in opposing the repeal effort. But her presence looms large, whether or not her 
thumb is directly on the scale.

“One of our own was hurt,” Fenberg said. “I think that just changed the 
calculus.”

[Alex Burness]

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

Whatever the state legislature decides, there is no death penalty in Colorado



The big news from the state Capitol has been not only that it’s a new day, with 
Democrats in charge everywhere, but with the pace of change at which Democrats 
are moving — and the desperate attempts by Republicans to slow them down.

One very large exception, though, has been in the state Senate, where, not long 
ago, it looked as if the end of the death penalty in Colorado was assured. It 
has already passed the House. Jared Polis said he would sign the bill. And now?

Well, if there is another such failure — and, remember, we’ve seen this movie 
before — it would, of course, be disappointing to those who oppose the death 
penalty. But it would not be a disaster. Because the truth is that, whatever 
the legislature decides, capital punishment no longer exists in any meaningful 
way in Colorado.

Whether or not the bill passes, the death penalty is done here. Someday, a law 
will make it official. Maybe this year. Maybe the next. But when a state has 
executed only 1 person since 1997, that means the single execution was 
basically a random event — the kind that Supreme Court Justice Steve Breyer 
once rightly described as “the antithesis of justice.”

And if you need proof of that — or the fact that we’ve basically moved on from 
what most of our peer countries now accept as barbaric — all you need do is 
look back to a few weeks in 2015 when the whole concept of the death penalty 
fell apart in Colorado.

In the course of that time, 2 particularly heinous crimes were adjudicated. In 
neither case was there any doubt about the guilt of the murderers. In neither 
case was there any question about the brutality and ugliness of the crimes and 
the shock to the community. In fact, if you were asked to research arguments to 
justify the death penalty in Colorado, these two cases would probably be found 
near the top of anyone’s list.

And in both cases, a death-qualified jury — meaning jurors who swear under oath 
they don’t object to the death penalty in either principle or practice — 
refused to sentence to death the men they had just found guilty.

You know the stories, especially the one of James Holmes, the Aurora theater 
killer, who was clearly mentally ill, even if not legally insane. He gunned 
down 12 people in a massacre that somehow bookends Columbine and leaves 
Colorado as a state forever marked by this era of mass murder.

Our history of mass murders contributed to making Colorado an outlier among 
Western states in passing modest — if highly controversial — forms of gun 
control and now, it seems, a red-flag bill that would temporarily remove guns 
from those found by a judge to be a danger to themselves or others. But that 
history did not convince two juries to respond by unanimously imposing the 
death penalty.

According to one person on the Aurora jury, one of the jurors was firmly 
opposed to the state killing of Holmes and two were wavering. And when Holmes 
was taken to prison, the question would be asked and never satisfactorily 
answered: If you can’t impose the death penalty on a mass murderer, who does 
qualify?

Three weeks later, we actually did get an answer of a kind when Dexter Lewis 
was convicted of stabbing to death five people in a robbery — netting all of 
$170 — that had gone terribly wrong at what was then Fero’s Bar and Grill in 
Denver. This was a case of murdering potential witnesses, in which Lewis 
apparently went down a line, stabbing the owner and four customers who were 
being held at gunpoint by Lewis’s accomplices. Then they burned down the place 
to cover up the deaths.

The jury didn’t go for death, though, after hearing testimony of the years of 
physical abuse that Lewis had suffered during his childhood. And so, as I wrote 
back then, the jury was charged with measuring the crimes Lewis had committed 
against those committed against him as a child. What a strange system of 
justice at which we’ve arrived. The jury settled for life without parole.

Given that the 40-some % of people who oppose capital punishment are not 
eligible to serve on these juries, it must seem strange that the 12 serving 
couldn’t condemn the killers to death — unless you were being asked to make 
that decision yourself.

Lawmakers are taking that issue upon themselves again. Two who support the 
death penalty are Sen. Rhonda Fields and Rep. Tom Sullivan, both of whom lost 
children to murder and whose careers in politics can be traced to that awful 
moment in their lives. Both strongly support the death penalty, and no one 
should or could blame them.

But ask John Hickenlooper how difficult the issue is. Once a death penalty 
supporter, Hickenlooper controversially granted a “temporary reprieve” rather 
than executing Nathan Dunlap, the notorious Chuck E. Cheese killer. When 
Hickenlooper was faced with the actual fact of the death penalty, he couldn’t 
bring himself to do it. He would say it was not a matter of mercy but a matter 
of the many problems with the death penalty itself. And now, as he runs for 
president, Hickenlooper says he opposes the ultimate punishment.

There are a wide range of reasons to oppose capital punishment. Go to the web 
site of the Death Penalty Information Center for the numbers that help explain 
the opposition. Start with the issue of race (blacks who kill whites are many 
times more likely to get the death penalty than whites who kill blacks), 
gender, class, geography (since 1976, 1,220 people have been executed in the 
South as opposed to only four in the Northeast), the oft-proven lack of 
deterrence value, the fact that more than 150 prisoners have been released from 
death row since 1973 upon new evidence, the spate of botched executions, the 
reluctance nationally to impose the penalty (295 sentenced to death in 1998, 42 
last year).

For me, the most compelling argument has always been that state-approved 
killing of murderers argues that killing is a reasonable solution — that 
ultimate violence is the proper response to ultimate violence. The polls show 
that a majority of Coloradans support the death penalty. But the record shows 
that when it comes to applying the death penalty, Colorado passes.

In the end, we have to ask ourselves what point there is to a law that we have 
decided to basically reject. In the end, there can be only one answer.

[Mike Littwin, The Colorado Independent]

(source for both: The Colorado Independent)

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

Family Members of Murder Victims Urge Lawmakers to Repeal Death Penalty



Colorado could become the 21st state to repeal the death penalty. To help make 
that a reality, family members of murder victims are lobbying legislators to 
abolish capital punishment.

"The death penalty is the crime...we have the opportunity to do something right 
in the world for a change," said Bob Autobee at a rally on the State Capitol 
steps on Thursday, March 28. Autobee's son, Sergeant Eric Jason Autobee, was 
beaten to death by inmate Edward Montour at the Limon Correctional Facility in 
2002.

Following the rally, death-penalty repeal proponents delivered a letter signed 
by Autobee and 26 other family members of murder victims, detailing why they 
oppose capital punishment and urging legislators to support the death penalty 
repeal bill currently working its way through the Capitol.

The bill has already made it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but 
movement has been slow since then.

At the March 6 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, there was powerful testimony 
on both sides of the debate. Coloradans who've been directly affected by the 
actions of convicted murderers spoke, as did 6 district attorneys.

Four of the DAs testified against repeal, and one of their main arguments was 
that repealing the death penalty would be an insult to the loved ones of murder 
victims. "All you will have done is to cheapen the extraordinary evil crimes 
that take place here," said George Brauchler, district attorney for the 18th 
judicial district, who unsuccessfully sought the death penalty for Aurora 
shooter James Holmes.

But the family members of murder victims who spoke at the Capitol on March 28 
said the exact opposite is true. "The idea that executions help murder victims 
is an absolute lie," said Gail VanderJagt Rice, the sister of Denver police 
officer Bruce VanderJagt, who was murdered while responding to a burglary call 
in 1997.

Others spoke about the toll that a death-penalty sentence takes on the families 
of victims. "When someone is sentenced to death, the family is sentenced right 
along with them," said Alice Randolph, a Denver resident whose son, Loren 
Anthony Collins, was murdered in Aurora in 2010.

Speakers at the rally also mentioned the disproportionate representation of 
African-American men on death row. Approximately 12 % of Colorado's population 
is black, but all 3 men on death row in this state are African-American.

Coloradans voted to reinstate the death penalty in 1974, after the U.S. Supreme 
Court had effectively abolished capital punishment 2 years before. But despite 
having the death penalty as a punitive option, the state has executed only one 
person since then.

Governor Jared Polis has indicated that if the death penalty repeal bill is 
approved and eventually gets to his desk, he would commute the death sentences 
of the 3 men currently sitting on death row.

(source: westword.com)








USA:

High court examines potential racial bias in juries on death penalty cases



In mid-March, the U.S. Supreme Court considered possible racially biased juries 
in 2 death penalty cases. They rejected 1 case and listened to oral arguments 
in another, but in both cases, justices expressed unease.

On March 18, the court declined to hear the case of Keith Tharpe, a black man 
from Georgia who claimed his death penalty sentence was tainted by racial 
prejudice from a white juror who asked if black people have souls, among other 
disparaging comments, revealed in sworn statements.

And although the court didn’t take the Tharpe case, it did not go without 
commenting on it. Justice Sonia Sotomayor concurred with the court, saying she 
saw “little likelihood” that it would reverse prior court rulings about it, but 
in a separate opinion, she said she was “profoundly troubled” by the facts in 
this case that showed “racism can and does seep into the jury system.”

Tharpe was convicted in 1991 for the murder of his sister-in-law. His 
execution, scheduled for September 2017, was given a stay by the Supreme Court 
hours after he was to have been put to death by lethal injection and after he 
had eaten his expected last meal. Georgia can now set a new execution date for 
him.

On March 20, the court heard arguments in the case of another black death-row 
inmate, Curtis Flowers, a Mississippi man tried 6 times for the shooting deaths 
of four people in a furniture store in Winona, Mississippi, in 1996.

He was convicted on his last trail by a jury with only one black juror. Flowers 
claims the jury selection violated his Constitution right to an impartial jury 
especially since the lead prosecutor had a long history of eliminating 
potential black jurors from the jury pool.

“The history of this case, prior to this trial, is very troubling,” said 
Justice Samuel Alito.

The justices seemed convinced that District Attorney Doug Evans, who tried 
Flowers 6 times, used racial bias in selecting jurors and if that’s their final 
decision, the court will overturn Flowers’ murder conviction and send it back 
to the state to decide whether to prosecute Flowers a s7th time.

The justices zeroed-in on the Supreme Court’s 1986 decision in Batson v. 
Kentucky, which said the peremptory challenges used by prosecutors and defense 
attorneys to strike potential jurors could not be used because of race.

In 2016, the Death Penalty Information Center said 2 recent studies examining 
the effects of the Batson case found that despite the Supreme Court’s ban on 
racial discrimination in jury selection, black jurors continue to be 
disproportionately removed from jury pools in North and South Carolina.

The authors in the North Carolina study wrote: “Defendants challenging racially 
discriminatory peremptory strikes still face a crippling burden of proof and 
prosecutors’ peremptory challenges are still effectively immune from 
constitutional scrutiny.” The South Carolina study found that prosecutors 
exercised peremptory strikes against 35 % of otherwise eligible black 
prospective jurors, nearly three times the rate of 12 % that they struck 
otherwise eligible white prospective jurors.

For Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing 
Network, a group that champions restorative justice and an end to the death 
penalty, the cases of Flowers and Tharpe highlight, as she puts it, conclusions 
that “seem compellingly obvious.”

“First, the legacy of racial discrimination in America continues to rear its 
head in the practice of capital punishment; 2nd, the judicial system is 
unreliable in addressing this problem. It is for these reasons that many 
states, including Washington and California most recently, have declared a halt 
to the capital punishment process.”

Vaillancourt Murphy said these cases not only “shed light on how racism has 
permeated our judicial process” but they also show how the nation’s highest 
court can’t keep intervening for each failing within the criminal justice 
system.

“As a society, we cannot expect the Supreme Court to be the backstop for every 
case affected by bias or injustice. The inherent arbitrariness of the death 
penalty ensures that racial bias frequently influences the decision of who 
lives and who dies. The only way to avoid this gravest of injustices is to do 
away with the death penalty completely,” she said in a March 27 email to 
Catholic News Service.

She also said Catholics should take particular interest in these cases not only 
because they “demonstrate that the death penalty is incompatible with the 
sacred value of every human life” but because Catholics “have a responsibility 
to confront and combat racial injustice wherever it is found.”

She said this urgency was made clear in the U.S. bishops’ 2018 pastoral letter 
against racism which described racism as a “life issue” and urged Catholics to 
be aware of the “connection between institutional racism and the continued 
erosion of the sanctity of life.”

(source: catholicphilly.com)