[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.H., PENN., FLA.

[Rick Halperin]

May 23



TEXAS:

Death Penalty Reform Bill Gets Watered Down to ‘Nothing’ Before Passing 
Senate----After passing the House, HB 1139, meant to reform how Texas decides 
whether a defendant is too intellectually disabled to execute, was 
significantly softened in Senate committee.



A House bill meant to reform Texas’ death penalty procedures for intellectually 
disabled defendants was amended in the Senate to the point that criminal 
justice reformers are now calling it “worthless.” With the end of the 
legislative session quickly approaching, the changes will likely derail one of 
the biggest priorities for capital punishment reformers this year.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that it’s unconstitutional to sentence 
intellectually disabled people to death, but it left states to create their own 
criteria for determining whether a defendant is intellectually disabled. The 
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 2004 adopted the “Briseno factors” to 
determine intellectual disability, though they are based on outdated medical 
standards and stereotypes, including a reference to the character Lennie from 
John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.

In a 2017 ruling on the case of death row inmate Bobby Moore, the U.S. Supreme 
Court declared the Briseno factors invalid for determining a defendant’s 
eligibility to face capital punishment. The state’s highest criminal court and 
Attorney General Ken Paxton have claimed Moore is not intellectually disabled 
and fought to uphold his death sentence; the state court has twice been 
overruled by the Supreme Court, which determined in February that Moore is 
indeed intellectually disabled.

Moore’s case laid the foundation for House Bill 1139, by Houston Democrat 
Senfronia Thompson. The version that passed the House — on a vote of 102-37 on 
April 30 — would have allowed a pretrial hearing to determine whether a 
defendant has an intellectual disability and therefore is ineligible for the 
death penalty. But all language related to a pretrial hearing was stripped from 
the proposal in the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice. The change came after 
Houston Republican Senator Joan Huffman, the committee’s vice chair and a 
former Harris County prosecutor, voiced her opposition.

The version substituted in committee preserved only the parts of the bill that 
codify the Supreme Court’s decisions that intellectually disabled people are 
exempt from the death penalty and that courts must use prevailing medical 
standards. That essentially means the bill “does nothing,” said Elsa Alcala, a 
Republican and former Court of Criminal Appeals judge. Alcala gained notoriety 
after issuing opinions questioning the constitutionality of the Texas death 
penalty. She now lobbies for death penalty reforms on behalf of Texas Defender 
Services, a nonprofit that represents death row inmates.

“The whole point of the bill has now been taken out,” Alcala told Senate 
committee members on Friday. “It’s worthless. It’s not worth the paper it’s 
written on.”

The measure would have saved the state time and money, Thompson, the bill’s 
author, told the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee in March. Capital 
murder cases cost the state about $2.5 million each, she said, and they’re more 
expensive than noncapital trials because of longer jail stays for defendants 
before and during trials, pretrial preparations and higher attorney fees.

Defendants found to be intellectually disabled would not walk free; they can be 
sentenced to life without parole if convicted. The bill had support from 
criminal justice reformers and many prosecutors who said it would resolve the 
patchwork practices of courts across the state. In some cases, juries don’t 
consider a defendant’s intellectual disability until the punishment phase of a 
trial.

“It’s worthless. It’s not worth the paper it’s written on.”

Prevailing medical standards for establishing intellectual disability take into 
account a person’s everyday behavior, academic performance and age of diagnosis 
— all factors that are irrelevant to the offense the defendant is accused of, 
Alcala told Senate committee members on May 8. But it would be nearly 
impossible to convince a jury to divorce the offense from a defendant’s 
everyday behavior, Alcala said, and that is why she favors a pretrial hearing 
conducted by a judge, as prescribed by the original HB 1139.

But Huffman chafed at the suggestion, saying the bill would allow an “activist 
judge” to decide that a defendant has an intellectual disability solely to 
avoid leveling a death sentence. After a brief argument between Huffman and 
Alcala, Houston Senator John Whitmire, the Democratic chair of the committee, 
moved to close public testimony, though several witnesses — all registered in 
favor of the bill — were waiting to testify. “I’m done, I’ve made my point, and 
everybody knows where I stand,” Huffman said.

Huffman was a prosecutor in the 1997 trial of Duane Buck, a black man who was 
sentenced to death for killing his ex-girlfriend and her friend in front of the 
ex-girlfriend’s children. In cross-examination of psychologist Walter Quijano, 
Huffman asked whether “the race factor, black, increases the future 
dangerousness for various complicated reasons.” Quijano said yes.

Huffman wasn’t present when Whitmire brought HB 1139 back up in committee on 
Friday, but Houston Democrat Borris Miles, the bill’s Senate sponsor, thanked 
her for helping draft the new language of the committee substitute. Then he 
revealed that the updated bill does not address a pretrial procedure for 
determining intellectual disability.

A stunned Alcala then testified, changing her position on the bill from “for” 
to “against.” After Alcala told the committee members that the new version of 
the legislation was worthless, Whitmire scolded her for being “halfway rude.”

“You’re not going to get your way, and [Miles is] going to run with what he 
thinks is the best that he can clear the Senate floor with,” Whitmire said.

Alcala apologized, then said: “I may just join you on the bench next time to 
make sure that I prevail. In other words, maybe I’ll just run and make sure I 
can have my voice heard more clearly.”

The gutted version of HB 1139 passed the Senate Wednesday night. It now heads 
back to the House, where lawmakers who passed the original version will need to 
accept the changes before Friday for it to advance to the governor’s desk. 
Thompson, the bill author, did not respond to a request for comment about 
whether she will approve the amended version.

Another death penalty reform bill appears to have died on arrival at the 
Senate. House Bill 1936, by Dallas Democrat Toni Rose, would have exempted 
people with severe mental illnesses from the death penalty if they showed 
psychotic symptoms at the time of the offense. The original version, like 
Thompson’s bill, would have allowed a pretrial hearing to determine mental 
illness, but that provision was removed in committee. The bill passed the House 
in early May by a thin margin, 77-66, and has not been referred to a Senate 
committee, rendering it dead.

“Maybe I’ll just run and make sure I can have my voice heard more clearly.”

There’s a “centralization of power” in the Senate that has allowed a handful of 
people to control criminal justice legislation, said Amanda Marzullo, executive 
director of Texas Defender Services. And those few people “just happen to be 
more conservative than the Capitol and Texas in general.”

She said some senators, unlike most representatives, have failed to understand 
the purpose of the bills. “We’ve been very clear that both bills are not about 
the morality of the death penalty and whether we should have it,” Marzullo 
said. “It’s about ensuring that we implement it in a way that complies with the 
Constitution.”

(source: Vicky Camarillo is a legislative fellow at the Texas Observer and a 
master's candidate in the journalism program at the University of Texas at 
Austin----Texas Observer)

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

District Attorney to seek death penalty against accused killer in Thanksgiving 
day home invasion



District Attorney Jaime Esparza will seek the death penalty against the man 
accused in a deadly home invasion in Northeast El Paso on Thanksgiving Day 
2018.

"If convicted of of the offense of Capital Murder, the State of Texas wil seek 
the death penalty against the Defendant herein," wrote District Attorney Jaime 
Esparza in the State's Notice to Seek the Death Penalty, submitted to the 243rd 
District Court on May 8, 2019.

Jason A. Gibson, 38, is accused of shooting and killing two members of an El 
Paso family during a home invasion on Thanksgiving Day 2018. 58-year-old Juan 
Salas was found dead inside his home at 8324 Signal Peak in Northeast El Paso 
on Thanksgiving Day. Salas' wife, 58-year-old Lorenza Salas, and his son, 
24-year-old Johnathan Salas, were also shot. Both were hospitalized in critical 
condition. Johnathan was eventually taken off life support.

Police say Gibson, 38, was arrested by U.S. Marshals and Daytona Beach Police 
"after a brief chase" in Daytona Beach, Florida on Tuesday, November 27, 2018.

A police report obtained by ABC-7 states Gibson stole Juan Salas' car after the 
deadly home invasion on Thanksgiving Day and drove it to Daytona Beach. A 
police officer said he spotted Gibson driving Salas' car, which had been 
reported stolen. The same police officer also identified Gibson as a wanted 
fugitive out of Texas.

Hours before he was allegedly involved in the Thanksgiving Day home invasion in 
El Paso, Gibson allegedly assaulted an elderly man in Las Cruces. Police said 
Gibson forced his way into the man's home in a gated mobile home park. After 
brutally beating the homeowner, Gibson allegedly kidnapped the man's daughter 
and a friend when they arrived at the home to pick up the man for a 
Thanksgiving meal. Armed with a handgun, Gibson ordered the daughter to drive 
him to the Northeast El Paso neighborhood where he killed the Salas Family, 
police said.

(source: KVIA news)

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

‘We have serial killers living among us’: Harris County DA seeks death sentence 
in 2 more capital murder cases



In the summer of 2014, a man known as Broadway gunned down Tremayne Richardson 
in a late-night drug deal-gone-bad. It was a brazen outdoor slaying that left 
Richardson’s body riddled with gunshots, a bag of Transformers-stamped ecstasy 
pills in his hand.

Police arrested 28-year-old Jeremy Wayne Miller and charged him with murder. 
But after he got out on bond, Miller was arrested in another slaying — and this 
time prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

It’s 2 of 2 cases in recent months in which the Harris County District 
Attorney’s Office has notified defense attorneys of plans to pursue the state’s 
harshest punishment. In the other case, 22-year-old Julius Merchant is accused 
of terrorizing a woman and killing her husband during a home invasion, the last 
in a series of alleged break-ins and assaults across the county.

(source: Houston Chronicle)








NEW HAMPSHIRE:

New Hampshire House overrides veto of death penalty repeal



The New Hampshire House has taken a big step toward eliminating the state's 
death penalty by overriding the governor's veto.

The chamber on Thursday overrode Gov. Chris Sununu's veto of a repeal with the 
bare minimum votes necessary to send the issue back to the Senate.

The Senate voted 17-6 in favor of repeal last month. If that tally holds, the 
bill will become law.

New Hampshire's death penalty applies in only 7 scenarios, and the state hasn't 
executed anyone since 1939. There is only 1 inmate currently on death row. The 
repeal bill is not supposed to apply retroactively to Michael Addison, who 
killed a police officer in 2006. But capital punishment supporters argue courts 
might interpret it differently.

The Republican governor vetoed the bill last month.

(source: Associated Press)

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

It’s New Hampshire’s Time to Repeal the Death Penalty



For over 3 decades in New Hampshire, there has been a rising call to repeal the 
death penalty. That call has, until recently, gone unanswered. In 2019 that 
could all change.

Though the Granite State has come close to repeal in the past, too often we 
have missed the margin by just one or two key legislator’s votes, or were 
stifled by a gubernatorial veto, first by a Democratic governor, and later a 
Republican one. The state’s attempt at repeal last year fell just short, but 
since then, there had been an election. Going into this legislative session, 
the vote count was more promising than it had been in years.

We entered the new year believing 2019 could, just maybe, be the year for 
repeal in New Hampshire. The night of the state elections, I was counting votes 
as the results came in. Some people count party seats or sit on the edge of 
their seats over a particular candidate. I was doing death penalty repeal math. 
Because of a recount in one senate district, the math was uncertain for a 
couple of weeks. When the race was finally called, the math added up to 16 – 
the magic number for overriding a gubernatorial veto in the State Senate. We 
were also hopeful about the vote count in the House, which has consistently 
shown stronger support for repeal than the Senate in past years. From the day 
House Bill 455 was introduced, there was hope in the air. Conversations in the 
hallways of the legislative building shifted from “if” to “when.” The word 
“veto” lost its pervasive vigor and air of absolutism, and was replaced by a 
new whisper, a new conversation, and finally a new call sign: “veto-proof.”

New Hampshire, which is the last state in New England with the death penalty, 
is on the cusp of shaking off that unwanted distinction. It is not a credit to 
one party, but a recognition that in these partisan and divisive times, there 
is at least 1 issue that rises above party. Asking the government to take a 
life summons within us all our common humanity.

The New Hampshire House has 400 legislators, the fourth largest 
English-speaking parliamentary body in the world. It’s a citizen legislature, 
of which New Hampshire is very proud. This means we don’t have career 
politicians who make a living running for office. Each legislator is paid just 
$100 per year, and representatives have no staff. With roughly 350 people on 
the floor during any given session day, the House can become rowdy, boisterous, 
and contentious. Yet the day the House met to vote on HB455 stood apart.

There were lawmakers on both sides of the issue and emotions were running high. 
Nonetheless, many observing and partaking in the floor debate would later note 
that it was one of the most solemn debates they’d witnessed. Legislators kept 
their seats. Silence waited patiently when one senior Republican legislator, 
Rep. David Welch, was overtaken by emotion talking about his spouse whom he’d 
lost.

He spoke quietly, with every ear turned towards him, as he explained that he 
would be voting for repeal for the first time. He could not support a policy, 
he said, that would cause another family to go through the grief that he 
himself experienced at the loss of his wife. The death penalty, by definition, 
causes another family to experience the loss of a loved one.

Another legislator newly elected last November, Rep. Safiya Wazir, also spoke 
from personal experience, but of a different kind. As a refugee from 
Afghanistan, she detailed how she previously lived in a country where the 
government commits grave violence against its own people. The United States and 
New Hampshire are better than this, she said.

Then there was a familiar voice. Rep. Renny Cushing, whose father and 
brother-in-law were murdered, is well known by everyone in the House as a 
leader on repeal. When he rose to explain how the death penalty does not help 
family members of murder victims, the room listened, pondering whether this 
could be the last time that he would have to recall the tragedy his family had 
endured. The death penalty does not do what every family member of a murder 
victim most wants, he explained. The death penalty does not bring their loved 
one back – something Rep. Cushing knows intimately from his own family’s 
tragedy.

All the death penalty does, he said, is widen the circle of violence. And fill 
another coffin.

The House voted overwhelmingly, 279 to 88, in support of repeal. Or for those 
doing the math, more than 75 % of the vote was for repeal, far exceeding the 67 
% necessary to override a veto.

A month later, the Senate took up the bill. While the Senate floor debate 
proved more strained, the arguments in support of repeal carried a familiar 
tune. Repeal proponents beckoned legislators to rise above vengeance and listen 
to their consciences to consider all the harms and human costs involved in the 
death penalty system.

One senator, Republican Harold French, explained that when he dies and reaches 
the golden gates, he would have a basket full of regrets and misdeeds. But one 
misdeed that wouldn’t be in that basket, he said, would be that he hadn’t 
listened to the concerned citizens who came to him asking him to end this 
archaic practice.

Sen. French’s remarks were particularly noteworthy because of their contrast 
with his reasons for voting for repeal the year before. He said he first voted 
for repeal because of the cost of the death penalty. But this year, he looked 
beyond cost, to how history will view this issue.

The senator’s voice and perspective harken not to party, but to a shared human 
philosophy. The call for repeal rises above the fray: the campaign to end the 
death penalty beckons us to listen to our better angels.

17 senators voted for repeal on April 11. For those doing the math, that is 
also veto-proof. In the next few weeks, New Hampshire could very well be a 
state without the death penalty.

The criminal justice system, at its most basic level, is meant to keep our 
communities safe. It is in conception meant to deter crime by ensuring a 
consequence for it. It removes people from their communities if they break the 
law and pose a threat to other people. Incarceration, though often flawed in 
other ways, achieves those goals without the death penalty. It is this 
recognition that quietly underscores much of the conversation in New Hampshire.

Our communities, our families, and our state do not need the death penalty. We 
can live without it.

(source: Jeanne Hruska, Political Director, ACLU of New Hampshire----aclu.org)








PENNSYLVANIA:

Philly DA Krasner Abandoning Old Death Penalty Cases



Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has taken steps or signaled a 
willingness to overturn more than 1/3 of the death sentences for the 45 
Philadelphia murderers on death row, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. 
Krasner’s office has cited varying reasons, at times agreeing that defendants 
had ineffective lawyers or should have been found intellectually disabled and 
ineligible for the death penalty. Krasner, a former criminal defense attorney, 
made clear while running for office his opposition to capital punishment. “I 
will never seek the death penalty — ever,” he said in a 2017 campaign video. 
“The DA’s office is not required to do it and there’s no good reason to do it. 
It costs a fortune. We don’t execute anyone anyway, and Philadelphia does not 
have to remain the only city in the Northeast that still has the death 
penalty.”

His efforts to reverse death sentences in years-old convictions have raised 
concerns among law enforcement officials and victims’ advocates about whether 
his office has been transparent with victims’ families. They have brought 
pushback from those who say Krasner is asking courts to undo punishments 
decided by juries. A former ranking Philadelphia prosecutor now working for the 
state Attorney General said letting new district attorneys invoke 
“prosecutorial discretion” to overturn past verdicts and decisions could lead 
to “chaos” in the courts. Other so-called progressive district attorneys in the 
30 states with death penalty have taken similar stances. New St. Louis County, 
Mo., Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, who vowed never to seek the death 
penalty, has agreed to halt his office’s opposition in the handful of death-row 
appeals that have arisen this year. In Harris County, Tx., once considered the 
“capital of capital punishment,” District Attorney Kim Ogg said she would seek 
the death penalty only in rare cases, such as killings of police officers.

(source: thecrimereport.org)








FLORIDA----impending execution

Case of Bobby Joe Long: Notorious Tampa Bay serial killer to be executed 
tonight----History of one of Tampa Bay's most infamous serial killers



On Thursday at 6 p.m., convicted serial rapist and murderer Bobby Joe Long is 
scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison.

THE HISTORY

Long's killing spree started, as far as investigators know, on Mother's Day in 
1984. 2 boys playing in a field in Hillsborough County stumbled across the body 
of Lana Long, an exotic dancer in Tampa.

Her hands were bound behind her back, her body contorted. Her were legs spread 
5 feet apart.

"No one deserves to be killed like these women were killed," said Col. Gary 
Terry (ret.), the lead investigator with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's 
Office on what would become Bobby Joe Long's case.

2 weeks later, a 2nd victim was found.

"The series of homicides started, and we were finding a body...it averaged out 
about every 2 weeks," said Terry in an interview with 8 On Your Side in 2013.

For Terry and the other investigators, it was a race against time.

"You know if you don't solve it soon, someone else is going to die."

4 more women were killed through the summer. By November, the number dead had 
grown to 8.

The gruesome scenes often included bodies put in awkward positions, ligature 
marks from the victims being tied, often with the ropes still attached.

The victims had been raped, often repeatedly, before they were murdered.

THE EVIDENCE

Investigators had very few leads, but one crucial piece of evidence kept 
appearing at the crime scenes.

"Red, trilobal, nylon carpet fiber," said Terry.

Tire tracks from the suspect's car revealed one tire that was particularly 
rare.

But the clues weren't leading anywhere until a separate rape case where the 
victim survived and provided a break in the killing spree case.

Lisa Noland, then 17-years-old, was working a double shift at the Krispy Kreme 
in Tampa when she was abducted while riding her bike home around 2 a.m.

"I'm just plucked off my bicycle by God knows who," Noland said. "And I felt 
the cold, steel barrel up to the left side of my temple."

An unknown man forced her into his car and eventually took her to his apartment 
where he raped her repeatedly over a 24-hour period.

"I lost count of how many times he raped me that night," Noland said.

A previous victim of abuse, Noland knew how to handle him and did what she 
needed to survive.

"I would lie to him to appease him to keep him calm and coddle him."

She got a glimpse into his mind... and his motive.

"He said he was getting back at women in general because of a bad breakup."

He was armed, and threatened to kill her if she tried to escape. After 24 hours 
from hell, incredibly, Long said he would take her home.

While she was blindfolded for much of the encounter, she tried to put her 
fingerprints on anything she could touch, and remembered every detail about 
him, his apartment and his car that she could.

On the ride home, she kept peeking beneath her blindfold, finding the evidence 
that would catch a killer.

She saw the word 'Magnum' on the dash, white leather seats and a red carpet 
interior. She also saw and heard him stop at an ATM on the way to drop her off.

Noland told investigators everything she remembered when she was eventually set 
free.

Detectives matched local owners of a Dodge Magnum with a list of those who made 
an ATM transaction and Bobby Joe Long's name was on both.

Noland then picked Long out of a lineup. His reign of terror was over.

"If we had not captured him when we did," said Terry, "I'd hate to think what 
his body count would've been."

THE CONFESSION

Long later confessed to 8 murders over an eight-month span in 1984. He was 
given multiple life sentences and sentenced to death for the murder of Michelle 
Simms.

In a later interview, Long couldn't explain why he did it.

"A lot of lives just gone right down the tubes because of me," Long said. "One 
way or another. And it's not a good feeling, it's not a pleasant feeling. I'm 
not proud of anything I've done. And the worst thing is I don't understand why. 
I don't understand why."

Long was behind bars, but investigators and prosecutors believed there were 
many more victims. They think he raped dozens of women before his killing 
spree, answering classified ads posted by unsuspecting young women.

"Ugh, he was an absolute sicko," said Pinellas-Pasco prosecutor Allen Allweiss. 
"He is an arrogant son of a b****. He was an arrogant guy. His big start was 
rapes. He would answer ads where the parents were trying to sell their baby 
furniture. So he would go to the house hoping to find the little girl or the 
mommy there."

THE EXECUTION

For more than 30 years, Long sat on Florida's death row, until Gov. Ron 
DeSantis signed his death warrant in April.

"I was happy," Allweiss said of the moment his daughter told him Long was 
scheduled to die. "I said, 'God, it's about time.'"

Then came multiple appeals in court, including a hearing in early May in 
Hillsborough County.

Long's attorneys argued that Florida's specific lethal injection protocol, a 
3-drug sequence that starts with the anasthetic etomidate, would violate his 
constitutional rights by subjecting him to "cruel and unusual punishment."

"It's ridiculous that I'm expected to come in here and say 'here's a better way 
to kill my client,'" said Robert Norgard, one of Long's attorneys.

Norgard argued that etomidate has been known to cause seizures in smaller 
doses, and that its effect in larger doses was unknown, possibly subjecting 
Long to massive seizures because he has epilepsy and a traumatic brain injury.

In recent years, some drug manufacturers stopped supplying state departments of 
corrections with drugs for lethal injections, forcing changes to the protocol 
and introducing the possibility of adverse reactions with the newer drugs.

The state's expert witnesses disagreed, one saying "such an extreme dose would 
be lethal and would produce an extreme state of unconsciousness and suppress 
all seizure activity."

Judge Michelle Sisco disagreed and ruled against Long.

Lula Williams' daughter Chanel was one of Long's victims. She was in court for 
the hearing, and heard Long's voice as he joined the hearing by phone from the 
prison.

She says the years have not been kind to the victims who loved her, and that 
any pain Long may experience in receiving his death sentence shouldn't matter.

"To have this person find excuse after excuse to not face his judgement... no. 
It's time," said Williams. "He did that wrong. Now you got to pay for your 
sins."

As for Long's only known survivor from that 1984 killing spree, the woman whose 
keen eye and memory brought Long to justice is now an officer of the law 
herself.

Lisa Noland is now Master Deputy Lisa McVey in the same Hillsborough County 
Sheriff's Office that helped catch her attacker.

She says she'll be at the execution, hoping it may finally, 35 years later, 
bring her some closure.

"I'm hoping to get a full night's sleep without any interruptions," McVey said 
to a group of reporters after learning Long would be put to death. "I have not 
slept since 1984."

(source: WFLA news)

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

DeSantis and the death penalty. Why Florida’s Catholic governor supports it.



Gov. Ron DeSantis is highly unlikely to heed the latest calls from Florida’s 
Catholic bishops to cancel today’s scheduled execution of Bobby Joe Long, a 
serial killer convicted of murdering a woman near Tampa and who confessed to 7 
other killings and the 1st death row inmate to die since the governor took 
office in January.

It’s no surprise given that DeSantis, who is Catholic, backed the death penalty 
as a member of Congress and during his campaign for governor.

In Congress, DeSantis signed on to legislation to allow those convicted of 
killing or attempting to kill a police officer or first responder to be 
eligible for the death penalty.

During the 2018 gubernatorial campaign, DeSantis, a former federal and military 
prosecutor, railed against the Florida Supreme Court for overturning the death 
penalty for an inmate convicted in 2004 of murdering and sexually assaulting 
11-year-old Carlie Brucia of Sarasota.

The court’s decision stemmed from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the state’s 
process of allowing judges, instead of juries, to find the facts necessary to 
impose the death penalty was an unconstitutional violation of the Sixth 
Amendment right to trial by jury. DeSantis had criticized the high court’s 
ruling.

DeSantis has spoken publicly about the death penalty just once since taking 
office on Jan. 8.

Speaking to reporters after a Cabinet meeting on March 12, he said: “I’m 
supportive of it for the most serious offenses. When you look at some of these 
people who rape and murder young children, I just think it’s appropriate 
punishment. It’s not something that I take glee in supporting. I wish we didn’t 
have to. But I just can’t see any other appropriate punishment.”

The Catholic Church argues there is another appropriate punishment: life in 
prison without parole.

Executive Director Michael Sheedy of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops 
asked the governor to commute Long’s death sentence to life without parole for 
having confessed to slitting Simms’ throat. Long received a life sentence for 
each of the other 7 murders.

“When you look at some of these people who rape and murder young children, I 
just think it’s appropriate punishment.”----Gov. Ron DeSantis

“Although he caused much harm, society has been safe from his aggressive acts 
in the decades of his incarceration,” Sheedy wrote. “Without taking his life, 
society can be protected while he endures the alternative sentence of life 
without the possibility of parole.

Sheedy encouraged DeSantis to promote a consistent pro-life ethic in Florida. 
“The cycle of violence to which Mr. Long’s acts have contributed must end. His 
execution would only perpetuate it,” Sheedy said.

The Catholic Church has consistently opposed the use of capital punishment in 
Florida, to no avail. A total of 28 death row inmates were executed during the 
8-year tenure of former Gov. Rick Scott, who was succeeded by DeSantis in 
January. Florida has 341 inmates on death row, and many have been there for 
decades.

Prayer vigils are scheduled in more than 2 dozen locations on Wednesday and 
Thursday. A vigil will take place at St. Martha’s Catholic Church in Miami 
Shores following the scheduled Mass at 11:45 a.m. on Thursday.

(source: Opinion, Steve Bousquet--South Florida Sun Sentinel)

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

Convicted murderer Pablo Ibar escapes capital punishment in Florida----After 
already having spent years on death row, the American with Spanish nationality 
has been given life imprisonment for a 1994 triple murder, and plans to appeal 
this latest ruling



Spanish citizen Pablo Ibar has been spared the death penalty and sentenced to 
life in prison by a US court in Florida. Ibar, who is of Spanish descent on his 
father’s side, has been behind bars for 25 years, 16 of them on death row, for 
the brutal killing of a bar owner and 2 dancers inside the former’s house in 
Broward County, Florida in 1994. The case became known as the “Casey’s 
Nickelodeon murders,” in reference to the name of the male victim’s place of 
business.

Ibar’s family was present in the courtroom and cried and hugged each other when 
they heard the sentence read out on Wednesday. His family have been a rallying 
force for Ibar, providing crucial testimony to support his case.

“It’s a triumph,” said his father Cándido Ibar, a Basque jai-alai player who 
emigrated to the US in the 1960s, as he left the courtroom in Fort Lauderdale. 
“While there is life, there is hope,” he added.

“Pablo has been saved by the people whose lives he made a difference to,” said 
Ibar’s wife Tanya Quiñones, who was 15 when Ibar was arrested in 1994. “The 
fight continues but this is a small victory in the right direction.”

In January of this year, Ibar was found guilty for a second time of the 1994 
triple murder. But in an unexpected twist, one of the jurors who found him 
guilty reconsidered their decision a few days later. That same jury was given 
the option to sentence Ibar to the death penalty or life imprisonment.

Before leaving the courtroom, Ibar looked at his lawyers and family, and with 
his hand on his heart, said thank you.

“In this case, you are all eyewitnesses to a 22-minute nightmare that ended the 
lives of Casey [Sucharski], Marie [Rogers] and Sharon [Anderson]," said Katya 
Palmiotto, from the prosecutor's team in the 4-day trial.

The prosecutor showed the court security camera footage from June 27, 1994 that 
was taken from the home of victim Casimir “Butch Casey” Sucharski. In the 
grainy, black-and-white video, 2 individuals are seen killing the three victims 
in cold blood. At the end of the video, one of the culprits takes off the shirt 
covering his head, revealing a face with a resemblance to Ibar’s. The video and 
the shirt were key evidence in the January trial, which led to a 2nd guilty 
verdict.

“This is what the real Mr Ibar does when nobody is watching,” said Palmiotto in 
an effort to counter the positive character portraits provided by Ibar’s 
family.

Defense lawyer Kevin Kulik tried to present the trial as a “decision between 
life and death.” The lawyer read testimony from Alex Sucharski, the daughter of 
one of the victims, who spoke of how much she suffered when she lost her 
father. Kulik reminded the jury that their decision was to be made on an 
individual basis: if one opposed, there would be no death penalty. “Life 
imprisonment is not the most compassionate sentence that exists but it is a 
tiny step in the right direction,” he said.

The jury withdrew at 4pm to deliberate and returned an hour later with their 
verdict: life imprisonment. Before Ibar was handcuffed and led out of the 
courtroom, he stood up, looked at his lawyers and family, and with his hand on 
his heart, said thank you.

The next step is to appeal to the Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal. If 
that appeals fails, Ibar will appeal again to the Florida Supreme Court. Trial 
history

This latest trial marked the 4th for Ibar, whose 1st time inside a courtroom, 
in 1997, ended in a hung jury. He was found guilty and sentenced to death in 
2000, then won a Florida Supreme Court battle to be granted a retrial on the 
basis that his court-appointed counsel had mounted a flawed defense.

In 2016, the Florida Supreme Court also wrote that there was a lack of physical 
evidence connecting Ibar to the triple murders. Ibar’s DNA was not found on a 
blue T-shirt recovered from the crime scene, and which partially covered the 
face of the perpetrator according to grainy surveillance camera footage. None 
of the blood, hair and saliva samples recovered in the investigation match Ibar 
either.

The story has been widely followed in Spain, where a Pablo Ibar Association 
Against the Death Penalty was set up to raise funds for his defense. Ibar was 
born in South Florida and took Spanish citizenship after being convicted in 
2000, according to The Miami Herald.

Death penalty in the US

Since 1973, 165 people have been freed from death row, 29 of them in Florida. 
There are currently 2,721 inmates on death row in the United States, 354 of 
those in Florida. Since the beginning of 2019, 7 people have been executed 
across the 30 US states that still have the death penalty.

The state of Florida spends $51 million more a year enacting the death sentence 
than it would punishing 1st-degree murders with life imprisonment. 88 % of 
present and past head of criminology academies agree that the death penalty 
does not act as a deterrent to murder. According to a report by the Federal 
Bureau of Intelligence (FBI), the south of the United States, where 80% of 
state executions take place, has the highest murder rate, while the northeast 
of the country, where there less than 1% of executions are performed, has the 
lowest murder rate.

(source: elpais.com)