[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, DEL., OHIO, W. VA., ARIZ., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 1



TEXAS----impending execution

Will Texas Execute a Mentally Ill Man? Scott Panetti's imminent execution 
highlights deep, systemic flaws in the death penalty.


Scott Panetti is scheduled for execution in Texas on December 3, 2014. His 
attorneys found out when they read it in the newspaper. Although the execution 
date has been set 2 weeks earlier, the state provided his attorneys with no 
notice. This shortcoming was only the latest in a long series of disturbing 
events surrounding Panetti's trial, conviction, and death sentence.

Panetti has suffered from schizophrenia and other mental illness for over 30 
years. He first exhibited signs of a psychotic disorder as a teenager. 
Beginning in 1978, he was hospitalized for mental illness on 15 separate 
occasions. He developed a delusion that he was engaged in spiritual warfare 
with Satan. He tried to exorcize his home by burying furniture in the backyard 
because, he claimed, the devil was in it. He was involuntarily committed after 
swinging a sword at his wife and daughter and threatening to kill them.

In 1992, Panetti went off his medication, shaved his head, and dressed in 
camouflage fatigues. He went to his in-laws house and murdered his mother and 
father-in-law in front of his wife and daughter.

At his trial, Panetti wore a cowboy costume and subpoenaed John F. Kennedy and 
the Pope.

The subsequent trial and sentencing bordered on the unbelievable. Panetti was 
allowed to represent himself during both the guilt and penalty phases of the 
proceedings. He wore a cowboy costume and a purple bandana to court. He 
attempted to subpoena John F. Kennedy, the Pope, and Jesus Christ, among 200 
others. His statements were rambling and incoherent. He fell asleep during 
trial. While describing the shooting, he assumed the personality of a character 
he called "Sarge" and narrated the events in the 3rd person. He pointed an 
imaginary rifle at jurors, visibly frightening them. His stand-by attorney 
called the trial a "judicial farce."

Unsurprisingly, a jury convicted Panetti of murder. After calling only 1 
witness - his stand-by counsel - at the penalty phase of his trial, the jury 
sentenced Panetti to death after only one day of deliberation.

As with many individuals on death row, a long series of appeals followed, 
focusing on Panetti's mental illness. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court denied 
Panetti's petition for review, and Texas courts have thus far declined to grant 
a stay of execution to allow time for an assessment of his competency for 
execution. Panetti has not received a competency evaluation in nearly 7 years.

No one could dispute that Panetti's actions were atrocious beyond words. The 
death of 2 innocent people is an unspeakable tragedy. But the execution of a 
man grievously afflicted by mental illness for three decades would in no way 
compensate for the murder of his in-laws.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 1986 case called Ford v. Wainwright, prohibited 
the execution of people who are so out of touch with reality that they do not 
know right from wrong and cannot understand their punishment or the purpose of 
it. Panetti's attorneys argue that this holding applies to him. His severe 
mental illness causes him to believe that Satan, working through the state of 
Texas, is seeking to execute him for preaching the Gospel - and, therefore, he 
cannot possess a rational understanding of the link between his crime and his 
punishment. To most people, Panetti's lengthy history of mental illness and his 
bizarre behavior strongly suggest that Ford should prevent his execution. Yet 
in practice, Ford's guarantee is often compromised when courts refuse to order 
mental health evaluations in a timely fashion, as Panetti's 7 years without a 
competency evaluation illustrate all too clearly.

(source: Nancy Leong is an associate professor at the University of Denver 
Sturm College of Law, where she teaches and researches constitutional and civil 
rights law----The Atlantic)

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

'Delusional' Killer Scott Panetti Asks Supreme Court to Halt Execution


A Texas death-row inmate who represented himself at trial - wearing a 
cartoonish cowboy suit and trying to subpoena the pope - is asking the U.S. 
Supreme Court to stop his Wednesday execution on the grounds that he has severe 
mental illness. Lower courts have narrowly rejected a series of appeals by 
Scott Panetti, who admits he killed his in-laws in 1995. His lawyers now want 
the high court to declare that his execution would violate the Eighth Amendment 
protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

Prosecution experts have suggested that Panetti is faking, but defense lawyers 
have detailed mental problems that predate the killing, bizarre behavior during 
his trial, and his current "delusion" that Satan is orchestrating his lethal 
injection to punish him for jailhouse preaching. "Executing Scott Panetti now - 
without at least pausing to consider whether such an execution offends 
contemporary standards of decency - will irreparably harm public confidence in 
the administration of the death penalty," his lawyers wrote.

(source: NBC news)

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

Scott Panetti execution: Activists in last-ditch bid to halt death of mentally 
ill killer in Texas ---- Among those protesting against Mr Panetti's death 
sentence are more than 50 leading evangelical Christians, seven Methodist 
bishops, 10 Texas state politicians and the libertarian former presidential 
candidate Ron Paul


This week, the state of Texas intends to execute Scott Panetti, who in 1992 
shot dead his mother-in-law and father-in-law in front of his estranged wife 
and their 3-year-old daughter. That Mr Panetti, now 56, committed the murders 
has never been in doubt; he admitted as much at his trial in 1995, when he 
defended himself while dressed in a purple cowboy outfit and attempted to call 
more than 200 witnesses, including John F Kennedy and Jesus Christ.

Long before it became clear from his courtroom antics, Mr Panetti had been 
diagnosed as severely mentally ill, which is why his impending lethal injection 
- due to be carried out on Wednesday - is opposed by not only his lawyers and a 
familiar collection of human rights groups, but also by an alliance of 
conservatives.

Among those protesting against Mr Panetti's death sentence are more than 50 
leading evangelical Christians, seven Methodist bishops, 10 Texas state 
politicians and the libertarian former presidential candidate Ron Paul. Mr 
Paul, a former Republican congressman who once backed the death penalty, wrote 
last month to Rick Perry, the Texas Governor, to appeal for clemency in the 
Panetti case. It is thought to be the 1st time he has publicly opposed an 
execution.

The state's former Democrat Governor, Mark White, said: "I know very well that 
in so many instances, there are incredibly close and difficult calls that have 
to be made to either allow or prohibit the death penalty from being carried 
out. But Scott Panetti's plea for clemency is no such case. He is a severely 
mentally ill man. His trial was a sham. And executing Panetti would say far 
more about us than it would about the man we are attempting to kill."

Mr Panetti was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic by army doctors in 1978. 
Several years later, he buried all of the furniture in his home, believing the 
Devil was hiding in it. He was hospitalised more than a dozen times between his 
1st diagnosis and 1992, when his wife, Sonja, obtained a restraining order and 
took their daughter to live with her parents, Joe and Amanda Alvarado, in the 
Texas Hill Country town of Fredericksburg. She reportedly tried to have her 
husband committed, and even took his guns to the police, but they refused to 
confiscate the weapons and instead returned them to their owner.

Days later, Mr Panetti donned a camouflage uniform, shaved his head and went to 
his in-laws' home, where he shot the couple dead, showering his wife and child 
in their blood. Later that afternoon, after washing and changing into a suit, 
he gave himself up.

At trial, Mr Panetti claimed he was ordered to carry out the killings by 
Sergeant Ranahan Iron Horse, an auditory hallucination whom he called "Sarge". 
The court, which could have stepped in and compelled him to hire a lawyer, 
instead allowed Mr Panetti to continue defending himself. On death row, he 
reportedly suffers from the delusion that Satan planned his execution to 
prevent him preaching Christianity to other inmates. He also claims the prison 
dentist implanted a listening device in his tooth, and that pop star Selena 
Gomez is his daughter.

It is 7 years since Mr Panetti's mental competence was last evaluated. In 2007, 
the US Supreme Court considered his case, and in its decision said a prisoner 
who lacked "rational understanding" of why they were being executed should not 
be put to death. Yet the case was sent back to a lower federal court, which 
last year concluded that Mr Panetti was competent and that his lethal injection 
could proceed.

The state of Texas argues that Mr Panetti has exaggerated his condition, but 
Kathryn Kase, one of his lawyers, told the Associated Press news agency: "He 
cannot appreciate why Texas seeks to execute him. You have to have a rational 
as well as factual understanding of why you are being executed. In Mr Panetti's 
case, his understanding is the state wants to prevent him from preaching the 
Gospel on death row and saving their souls. And clearly that's not factual or 
rational."

Texas is responsible for almost 40 % of executions carried out in the US since 
1977, and Mr Perry has overseen more executions that any other US governor in 
history. Although he cannot commute Mr Panetti's sentence without the 
recommendation of a state pardons board, he can grant a 30-day stay of 
execution - time for Mr Panetti???s lawyers to organise a new mental 
evaluation.

The unlikely coalition of conservatives against the death penalty has found in 
Mr Panetti's case a cause celebre. Last year, Mr Paul publicly endorsed the 
campaign group Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, saying he 
believed capital punishment was "inconsistent with libertarianism and 
traditional conservatism."

Some libertarians, including Mr Paul, oppose the death penalty because they 
distrust government's ability to apply it fairly and effectively. Fiscal 
conservatives are swayed by the argument that the legal costs of executions far 
outweigh those of life imprisonment. Many religious conservatives have turned 
against capital punishment in the context of their existing opposition to 
abortion.

Abby Johnson, who once ran a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, but now leads 
an anti-abortion ministry, wrote in the Dallas Morning News last month that she 
had dedicated herself to "promoting a culture of life". She added: "A 
fundamental tenet of the pro-life ethic is that all life has value and we are 
called to protect it... By setting an execution date for Panetti, Texas is 
going entirely contrary to what we expect in a society that truly values life."

(source: The Independent)






DELAWARE:

Prosecutors ask jury to impose death in Eden Park case


Prosecutor Ipek Medford asked a jury of 12 to "let the punishment fit the 
crime" and recommend the death penalty for Otis Phillips for his slaying of 
Herman Curry on July 8, 2012, when he and a co-defendant turned Eden Park "into 
a bloodbath."

Medford, in opening statements Monday in the penalty phase of the Eden Park 
case, said Phillips was exacting revenge against the Jamaican community for the 
slaying of Kirt Williams, and as a bonus was eliminating a man who could have 
identified him as the shooter in a 2008 homicide.

Medford also revealed for the 1st time that Curry's dying words to those who 
ran to his side after he had been shot three times by Otis Phillips were "to 
tell his wife and kids that he loved them."

The slaying of 47-year-old Curry, who was unarmed, "wasn't just a murder, it 
was an execution," she said, and it terrorized hundreds of people at Eden Park 
and deserves the death penalty as punishment.

Defense attorney Michael Heyden, meanwhile, told the jury that prosecutors are 
now asking jurors "to do what they decry."

Prosecutors charge that Otis Phillips, 38, was guilty of seeking revenge and 
retaliation and Heyden now wants the jury to do the same by imposing death.

Otis Phillips and co-defendant Jeffrey Phillips were found guilty of the 
1st-degree murder of Curry, along with the manslaughter of 16-year-old 
Alexander Kamara Jr. and a number of lesser charges, including gang 
participation, on Nov. 21, following a month-long trial. Separately, Otis 
Phillips, who is not related to Jeffrey, was also convicted of the 2008 
2nd-degree murder of Christopher Palmer.

Both men now face a possible death sentence, but Superior Court Judge Calvin 
Scott ruled that each should have a separate penalty hearing. The hearing for 
Otis, which started Monday, is expected to conclude by the end of the week. 
After the jury deliberates and decides if there is a statutory aggravator 
qualifying the case for death and then votes on if death should be imposed, 
Jeffrey Phillips will have his penalty hearing.

All sides expect that Jeffrey Phillips' penalty hearing will start Dec. 10.

The vote on the death penalty does not have to be unanimous and the judge, not 
the jury, will make the final call on whether to impose death.

During the past week, Judge Scott also dismissed a defense motion seeking to 
have him either step aside or bar the imposition of the death penalty.

On Monday, Medford told the jury that they will be hearing about other violent 
crimes that Otis Phillips committed before July 2012 that were not discussed 
during the Eden Park trial. The panel also will hear from Herman Curry's 
friends and family members, who will talk about how Curry's loss has affected 
their lives.

Because this proceeding only relates to the death penalty and the single charge 
of 1st-degree murder related to the slaying of Curry, the jury will not hear 
victim impact statements from family and friends of Alexander Kamara Jr. or 
Christopher Palmer. Instead, Judge Scott will hear from family and friends of 
those victims at a later date, before he imposes sentences on the lesser, 
non-capital charges.

In his opening statement Monday, Heyden told the panel they would also be 
hearing about Otis Phillips's upbringing in a poor, violent village in Guyana 
and how at age 7 his parents abandoned him for 2 years before summoning him to 
the United States.

And 2 years after that, Heyden told the jury, Otis Phillips's mother died and 
his father abandoned him a second time, along with his brothers, to go off with 
a new wife.

Finally, Heyden said that in the short time when Otis Phillips was in school 
they discovered Otis had both a learning disability and low IQ.

Considering all that, Heyden said, Otis Phillips "was a boy who never had a 
chance. I'm asking you to give him a chance."

Medford, in her final words to the jury before testimony started, said that now 
is not the time to debate the merits of the death penalty. "This is the time 
for you to uphold the laws of Delaware and apply them to the facts and 
circumstances in this case," she said, adding that when that is done, "justice 
demands the death sentence in this case."

(source: News Journal)






OHIO:

Should Ohio impose new secrecy rules on its execution process?


State lawmakers are considering legislation that would make Ohio's 
death-penalty process among the most secretive in the nation.

House Bill 663, which passed the Ohio House last month, seeks to overcome 
problems that Ohio - like a number of other states - has had obtaining 
lethal-injection drugs.

It would grant 20 years of anonymity, upon request, to small-scale drug 
manufacturers called compounding pharmacies when they create individual doses 
of lethal-injection drugs on demand.

In addition, physicians who testify about the state's execution method would be 
protected from having their state medical license revoked, and the bill would 
void contracts or agreements prohibiting the sale of lethal-injection drugs to 
the state.

The name and quantity of the lethal-injection drugs used would still be made 
public if the bill passes as currently written.

Attorney General Mike DeWine and other proponents of the reforms say they are 
needed if Ohio is to resume executions next February, once a court-ordered 
moratorium ends.

The secrecy provisions could convince compounding pharmacies to make 
pentobarbital for the state - Ohio's lethal-injection drug of choice that 
European manufacturers have refused to continue selling for legal and moral 
reasons.

However, critics said the bill would throw a veil of secrecy over how Ohio 
executes people. Lawsuits have been filed against similar confidentiality rules 
in a number of other states.

One Ohio State University law professor questioned whether the state should 
instead look at alternative methods of execution besides lethal injection.

(source: Cleveland.com)






WEST VIRGINIA:

Pro-death values


Civilized governments should represent the finest values of humanity - so it's 
repulsive that some conservative states still kill prisoners, a custom little 
different from medieval beheadings.

Advanced democracies around the world have abandoned the death penalty. Nearly 
1/2 of America has done likewise, but hard-right places like Texas still put 
people to death. Such pro-death states make America seem brutal.

Occasionally, a death row prisoner is freed because DNA evidence shows that 
someone else committed the crime. Mostly, however, convicted murderers are 
bottom-feeders unfit to be at large among regular folks. Many are poor or 
minority, with deficient intellect.

Significantly, a large share of convicts - of all types, not just murderers - 
are mentally ill. Here's a current example: Scott Panetti of Texas became 
schizophrenic at age 20 and has been delusional ever since. He was committed to 
psychiatric hospitals repeatedly. In 1995, he was charged with killing his 
in-laws with a hunting rifle.

During his bizarre trial, he dressed in a cowboy suit, acted as his own 
attorney, and attempted to subpoena Jesus Christ. He said the case was 
"spiritual warfare" between "demons and the forces of the darkness and God and 
the angels and the forces of light."

Jurors ruled him guilty, and he was sentenced to death. Volunteer reformer 
lawyers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which said Panetti is "seriously 
mentally ill" and shouldn't be killed unless it can be shown that he 
understands crime and punishment. The high court sent the case back to Texas 
for reconsideration.

Texas officials employed technicalities and argued that Panetti is exaggerating 
his insanity. They won a new execution order - without informing his volunteer 
defense lawyers, who read about it in newspapers. Now the schizophrenic is 
scheduled for death on Wednesday.

"A civilized society should not be in the business of executing anybody," The 
New York Times commented. "But it certainly cannot pretend to be adhering to 
any morally acceptable standard of culpability if it kills someone like Scott 
Panetti."

It added that he is "no different from the estimated 350,000 inmates around the 
country with mental illness - 10 times the number of people in state 
psychiatric hospitals."

We're proud that West Virginia halted the death penalty a half-century ago. 
It's depressing to look at right-wing Texas, the killing capital.

(source: wvgazette.com)






ARIZONA:

Court denies Arizona appeal in death penalty case


The U.S. Supreme Court has denied Arizona's appeal of a lower court's order 
that an Arizona death row inmate is entitled to a hearing on whether a judge 
was biased.

The Supreme Court without comment Monday turned down the appeal of a 9th U.S. 
Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that a lower court didn't reasonably determine 
whether a Maricopa County Superior Court judge should have excused herself from 
initial reviews of Richard Hurles' trial and sentencing.

Then-Judge Ruth Hilliard sentenced Hurles to die after a jury convicted him in 
the 1992 stabbing death of Buckeye librarian Kay Blanton.

The victim was stabbed 37 times, and Hilliard, while the case was pending, 
described the killing as brutal.

(source: Associated Press)






USA:

What Death Penalty Opponents Don't Get


In 1987, when he was 23 years old and in court on a drug charge, William Blake 
shot 2 sheriff's deputies in a failed escape attempt, killing one. At his 
trial, the judge presiding over his case expressed regret that New York did not 
have capital punishment, so he could not sentence Blake to death.

Instead, for the past 27 years, Blake has lived in extreme isolation in a 7 x 9 
cell. He is fed through a slot in the solid steel door, and on some days he's 
allowed out for an hour to "exercise" alone in a small, barren pen. Because his 
sentence is 77 years to life, he is virtually certain to die in prison. Because 
he is classified as both a cop killer and an escape risk, he may well spend the 
rest of his life in solitary confinement.

Recently Blake, now 50, described his years in the "Special Housing Units," or 
SHUs, of New York's state prisons. "If I try to imagine what kind of death, 
even a slow one, would be worse than 25 years in the box - and I have tried to 
imagine it - I can come up with nothing," he wrote. "Dying couldn't take but a 
short time if you or the State were to kill me; in SHU I have died a thousand 
internal deaths."

Opponents of the death penalty have had many occasions to celebrate in the new 
millennium. 4 states have abolished the practice in the past 5 years, while 
others have legally or effectively set moratoriums on executions. Support for 
capital punishment in the United States is at its lowest point in 4 decades, 
and seems likely to fall further as the number of exonerations and gruesomely 
botched executions continues to grow.

But at what cost have these concessions been won? The NAACP's latest "Death Row 
U.S.A." report found 3,049 individuals awaiting execution in the United States. 
According to the Sentencing Project, at last count nearly 50,000 people were 
serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole - a number that has 
more than tripled since the early 1990s. Over 159,000 were serving life 
sentences - many of them, like William Blake, with minimums so long that they 
might as well be doing life without parole, too.

In many states, the expansion - and the very existence - of life without parole 
sentences can be directly linked to the struggle to end capital punishment. 
Death penalty opponents often accept - and even zealously promote--life without 
parole as a preferable option, in the process becoming champions of a 
punishment that is nearly unknown in the rest of the developing world.

In California, for example, where the latest attempt to end capital punishment 
by referendum was narrowly defeated in 2012, voters were urged not simply to 
abolish the death penalty, but to "replace" it with life without parole. In 
support of this cause, the ACLU of Northern California made a virtue of the 
similarity between the 2 punishments: "The reality is that people sentenced to 
life without parole have been condemned to die in prison and that's what 
happens: They die in prison of natural causes, just like the majority of people 
sentenced to death."

Referring repeatedly to life without parole as "death in prison," the ACLU 
resorts to language far more draconian than one might expect from any liberal 
organization: life without parole sentences have the advantage of being 
"certain" and "swift," because "[u]nlike death penalty cases [they] receive no 
special consideration on appeal" Such sentences are also "severe," since 
spending a lifetime in "California's overcrowded, dangerous prisons...growing 
sick and old, and dying there, is a horrible experience. This is especially 
true given the unconstitutional failure to provide adequate health care to 
California's prisoners."

Kenneth E. Hartman, who is serving life without parole in California, agrees 
with such an assessment - and for that reason, strongly opposed the referendum 
to replace capital punishment with life without parole. Hartman runs, from 
prison, a campaign called the Other Death Penalty Project, on the premise that 
a sentence of life without parole amounts to "a long, slow, dissipating death 
sentence without any of the legal or administrative safeguards rightly awarded 
to those condemned to the traditional forms of execution."

"Though I will never be strapped down onto a gurney with life-stopping drugs 
pumped into my veins," Hartmann has written, "be assured I have already begun 
the slow drip of my execution [which] won't come to full effect for 50, maybe 
60 years." Like William Blake in New York, he states: "I have often wondered if 
that 15 or 20 minutes of terror found to be cruel and unusual wouldn't be a 
better option."

Complicating matters is the fact that life without parole rarely takes its 
place as simply a 1-for-1 alternative to the death penalty. In New York State, 
for example, life without parole did not exist before the state's brief 
reinstitution of capital punishment from 1995 to 2004. During this period, 
there were never more than half a dozen men on New York's death row, and no 
executions took place. Yet today, nearly 250 people are doing life without 
parole in New York, and more than 1 in 6 of the state's prisoners is serving a 
life sentence.

Connecticut, in abolishing its death penalty in 2012, legislated a punishment 
even more harsh than simple life without parole. Thereafter, a new law decreed, 
those convicted of "murder with special circumstances" would be condemned to 
live out their life without parole sentences in solitary confinement. The 
measure was reportedly backed as a way to win enough support for the repeal 
bill.

Though the requirement that life/LWOP sentences be served in solitary 
confinement is codified into law only in Connecticut, it exists in practice 
throughout the nation. An unknown number of lifers have, like William Blake, 
been placed in permanent or indefinite solitary confinement by prison 
officials, without benefit of any kind of due process. So have most of the 
individuals on the nation's death rows, including the supposedly fortunate ones 
who live in states that have instituted moratoriums, and are therefore unlikely 
to ever face execution.

Research has confirmed that even brief periods in solitary alter brain 
chemistry and produce psychiatric symptoms ranging from extreme depression to 
active psychosis. Some prisoners who have spent longer amounts of time in 
isolation describe it as a condition that slowly degrades both their humanity 
and sanity, turning them into blind animals given to interminable pacing, 
smearing their cells with feces, or engaging in self-mutilation.

"I went days pacing back and forth like a zombie...I looked like I was already 
dead and I had no will to live. Day after day all I saw was gray walls and over 
time my world became the gray box," Brian Nelson has written of his 12 years in 
solitary confinement in Illinois. "Every day I went to sleep I got down on my 
knees and prayed that I would die in my sleep, yet God's will was not mine. 
When I woke up in the night I prayed harder for death."

Some people condemned to solitary have chosen a swift and certain death over a 
life of daily torture. Data suggests that as many as half of all prison 
suicides take place in some form of isolation, and 1 study in New York found 
that prisoners in solitary confinement were five times more likely to kill 
themselves than those in the general population. The disparity exists despite 
the fact that it's never simple to commit suicide in a bare cell: Some 
prisoners have resorted to jumping head-first off their bunks; others have 
bitten through the veins in their arms.

Even on death row, some choose to hasten death rather than possibly live out 
their lives in torturous isolation. In California, where over 700 people 
languish on San Quentin's death row, just 13 men have been executed since the 
death penalty was reinstated in 1977. But 22 have committed suicide - 8 of them 
after the state's moratorium on capital punishment went into effect in 2006.

William Blake has said that while he cannot bring himself to take his own life, 
he would have welcomed the death penalty 27 years ago had he known what a 
lifetime in solitary confinement would be like. Perhaps the time will come when 
people like Blake - and the American public--are not forced to choose among 
such monstrous alternatives. In the meantime, it will be a shame if people who 
oppose state-sponsored death continue to advocate for state-sanctioned torture.

(source: James Ridgeway and Jean Casella are co-founders of Solitary Watch 
(www.solitarywatch.com)----Huffington Post)