[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, GA., FLA. LA., KY.

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 6



TEXAS:

El Paso County should stop using death penalty


On Nov. 30, El Pasoans Against the Death Penalty lit the Star on the Mountain 
in observance of "Cities for Life, Cities Against the Death Penalty," when 
cities around the world light a significant monument in their city to promote 
abolition of capital punishment.

In El Paso, about 50 people assembled to reflect on how to promote a culture of 
nonviolence and restorative justice while remembering victims of violence and 
persons executed in our name.

The death penalty has not been shown to deter crime, and there is much evidence 
of wrongful convictions - and even wrongful executions.

The process is often political and is sometimes determined more by the 
jurisdiction of the crime and the quality of legal representation than by the 
facts of the crime. It is biased against the economically poor and racial 
minorities and can prolong suffering for victims' families without providing 
the promised peace.

Furthermore, the availability of a sentence of life in prison without parole 
costs the taxpayers much less than the death penalty, while keeping society 
safe.

Many counties in Texas have stopped using the death penalty because of the 
costs and flaws in the system, and we call upon El Paso County to do the same.

Pat Delgado - Northeast El Paso

(source: Letter to the Editor, El Paso Times)

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

Panetti case of cruel and unusual punishment


So what does "cruel and unusual" mean?

I once asked that of a law professor. The Eighth Amendment prohibits "cruel and 
unusual" punishment, but I figured there had to be some technical definition I, 
as a layperson, was missing. I mean, from where I sit, it's pretty "cruel and 
unusual" to execute someone, but to judge from the 1,392 executions of the last 
38 years, that isn't the case.

Scott Panetti almost became number 1,393 last week, but within hours of his 
scheduled lethal injection, he was reprieved by a federal judge. The court said 
it needs more time to consider the issues his case raises.

In a rational place, it would not be news that Panetti was not killed. In a 
rational place, they would understand that state-sanctioned execution is a 
relic of frontier barbarism that leaves us all wet with the blood of the 
damned. In a rational place, they would say there's something especially 
repugnant about applying that grisly sanction to the mentally ill, like 
Panetti.

But Panetti doesn't live in a rational place. He lives in America. Worse, he 
lives in Texas.

They love their executions in Rick Perry's kingdom. Since 1976, according to 
the Death Penalty Information Center, an advocacy group, that state has killed 
almost 520 people. That's nearly five times more than the next bloodiest state, 
Oklahoma, with 111.

There is no question Panetti deserves punishment. In 1992, he shot his 
estranged wife's parents to death as she and the couple's daughter looked on. 
He held them both hostage before releasing them unharmed.

But there is also no question that Panetti, 56, suffers from severe mental 
illness. At his trial, in which he was somehow, bizarrely, allowed to represent 
himself, he wore a purple cowboy suit with a 10-gallon hat and summoned a 
personality he called "Sarge" to explain what happened on the fateful day. His 
witness list included 200 people. Among them: John F. Kennedy, the pope, Anne 
Bancroft and Jesus Christ.

The state contends that Panetti, who was off his meds at the time of the 
killing, is faking it. During a 2004 hearing, the county sheriff called him 
"the best actor there is." In its most recent filings, Texas accuses him of 
"grossly exaggerating" his symptoms.

If it's an act, it's been going on a long time. His attorneys say Panetti was 
diagnosed with schizophrenia 14 years before the shootings and was hospitalized 
13 times between 1978 and 1991. Now a court decides on his life or death.

It's a pregnant decision in a country where, apparently, it isn't "cruel and 
unusual" to preside, as Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton did, over the execution of a 
man so profoundly impaired that he saved the pie from his last meal to eat 
later. Or to let a man gasp and snort for almost two hours as a lethal 
injection very slowly killed him, as happened in Arizona. Or to set a man on 
fire, as has happened at least twice in Florida's electric chair. Or to execute 
people for crimes committed when they were children. Or to send innocent people 
to death row. Or to choose whom to execute based on color of killer, color of 
victim, gender, geography and class.

So what, exactly, might be too cruel and unusual for us to allow? The professor 
could not answer. Which, of course, is an answer.

As flawed and broken as our system of death is, we continue to embrace the 
puritanical morality of eye for eye and blood for blood. Most of the western 
world has left this savagery behind, but we insist on it, leaving us isolated 
from our national peers, those nations whose values are most like ours, but 
looming large among the outlaw likes of Somalia and Iran.

Now we are debating whether to kill a man so addled he tried to subpoena Jesus. 
And that leads to a conclusion as painful as it is unavoidable:

What's "cruel and unusual," is us.

(source: Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald; The Newsstar)






GEORGIA----impending execution

Clemency hearing Monday for Georgia inmate


An attorney for a man sentenced to die for killing a Baldwin Count sheriff's 
deputy will argue for clemency on Monday.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles is scheduled to hear arguments Monday 
morning in the case of 49-year-old Robert Wayne Holsey. He is scheduled to die 
Tuesday. Holsey was convicted of the 1995 killing of Deputy Will Robinson in 
Milledgeville.

Brian Kammer of the Georgia Resource Center says he will argue that Holsey's 
trial attorney was an alcoholic who offered ineffective assistance at trial.

The prosecutor, District Attorney Fred Bright, told the Macon Telegraph 
(http://bit.ly/1ynIVOD ) that he will argue that Holsey's attorney was the 
go-to lawyer for death penalty defense cases and he was a tough opponent in 
court.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Should Georgia's Next Execution Be Stopped?


The State of Georgia is set to execute a man on December 9, but before that can 
happen, nagging issues of whether or not he received adequate council have to 
be put to bed.

Robert Wayne Holsey was convicted of killing Baldwin County Sheriff's Deputy 
Will Robinson after Robinson pulled Holsey over on the road while responding to 
an armed robbery call. His conviction was far from open and shut, but in the 
year's since no one has asserted his innocence.

That includes Brian Kammer, executive director of the Georgia Resource Center, 
a non-profit that represents those on death row. Kammer has argued for clemency 
a number of times, including the high-profile case of Troy Davis, whose 
execution drew international attention. He's representing Holsey in his 
clemency hearing. He said even given Holsey's apparent guilt, he might not have 
gotten a fair shake at a life sentence.

"What we claimed in his case, in Mr. Holsey's case, was that his attorney Andy 
Prince had rendered ineffective assistance and violated Mr. Holsey's 6th 
amendment right to competent council," Kammer said.

Andy Prince represented Holsey at trial and sentencing. The problems with his 
representation are well documented.

"Mr. Prince was an active alcoholic at the time of his representation of Mr. 
Holsey. He was consuming approximately a quart of vodka a night during the 
trial," Kammer said.

Not long after Holsey's conviction, Prince was convicted of stealing funds from 
another client, sentenced to his own prison stint and disbarred.

"He was a complete mess. And he was far, far from being able to provide a 
minimum of competent assistance," Kammer said.

According to Kammer, Prince's inadequacy was nowhere more important than in the 
post conviction, sentencing phase of Holsey's trial. It was there that Prince 
elected not to present to jurors evidence of terrific childhood abuse suffered 
by Holsey and his siblings. Neighbors referred to the home as the torture 
chamber.

Prince also never told jurors how Holsey's IQ was tested at 70 as early as age 
15. That's widely considered the limit for mental competency for execution 
across the country.

A later judge did hear all of that evidence as well as details of Andy Prince's 
alcoholism and disbarment. That judge reduced Holsey's sentence. But the 
Georgia Supreme Court later overturned that ruling.

Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit District Attorney Fred Bright convicted Wayne Holsey 
and will argue against clemency for him. His recollection of Prince's defense 
is far different.

"He was the go to guy for the death penalty defense lawyer at the time," Bright 
said.

Bright said from his side of the table, Prince was a tough opponent regardless 
of whether or not he was an alcoholic at the time.

"It wouldn't shock me that he drank at night. I'm not there so I wouldn't know, 
but that wouldn't shock me," Bright said.

But Bright says what Prince did at night doesn't matter. He says in court, 
Prince was formidable.

"During the day when he was in court he was sober, he was lucid, he was a 
fighter, he worked his tail off," Bright said.

Bright said Prince defended Holsey against a raft of compelling physical 
evidence that put the gun that killed Deputy Will Robinson in his hand despite 
the lack of eyewitness testimony. His defense kept 1 juror indecisive for 7 
hours of deliberation.

As for Holsey's childhood, Bright will admit it wasn't great, but it was rough 
for his sister Regina, too.

"She chose to serve her country in Desert Storm. He chose to rob a convenience 
store," Bright said, "I told the jury, 'Same Mother.'"

Holsey's sister went on to be a Baldwin County Deputy and later a Deputy U.S. 
Marshall.

As for issues of Holsey's intelligence, Bright said Prince left that out of 
court because even his experts could only give him a lukewarm maybe as to 
whether Holsey was, in the legal terminology of the day, mentally retarded.

Bright defends the legal arguments made on both sides of Holsey's case and said 
that despite his zeal for justice, the last thing he wants is to kill an 
innocent man.

"We don't take this lightly. It's not a notch on my belt or anything," he said.

No one is arguing Wayne Holsey's innocence.

(source: Georgia Public Broadcasting)






FLORIDA:

Former diplomat and founder of oldest penpal organisation in Europe pleads to 
the commission on offender review in Florida


Jan Arriens, a former diplomat and founder of LifeLines, the oldest penpal 
organisation in Europe, addresses the Commission on Offender Review in Florida 
with a video plea asking to spare the life of his friend Michael Lambrix, on 
death row in Florida. It is filed by the clemency counsel representing Michael 
Lambrix.

Jan Arriens started writing to Michael Lambrix 23 years ago, shortly after 
having founded LifeLines, a non campaigning, non political organisation, which 
purpose is to provide support through letter writing to prisoners on death row 
in the USA. According to him, the Departments Of Corrections throughout the USA 
often mention how such activity helps make prisoners become better human beings 
and easier to deal with. In Jan Arriens' words: "It extends their humanity".

Today, Jan Arriens as well as Mike's family and his small community of pen 
friends around the world are extremely worried that the State of Florida may 
decide to proceed with the execution and they hope that the Commission on 
Offender Review will give Michael Lambrix a favourable recommendation.

They all believe he is innocent of capital murder.

He says: "We would be all deeply shocked and devastated if this would proceed 
to execution. I know that Mike has had clemency reviews, but that has been a 
long time in the past, a lot of happened since then and if you are going to 
proceed towards execution, I feel that all possible avenues must be explored 
(...). I feel the case has never been looked at as an integrated whole".

M. Lambrix was indicted on 2 counts of 1st degree murder on March 29, 1983 on 
Clarence Moore and Aleisha Bryant outside his home. Clarence Moore was a 
35-year-old career criminal, and a known associate of South Florida drug 
smugglers, while Aleisha Bryant was a 19-year-old local waitress who had just 
met Moore. Clarence Moore had also a record of violence towards women.

M. Lambrix always maintained his complete innocence in the murder of Aleisha 
Bryant, and that he was compelled to act in in voluntary self-defense when he 
killed Clarence Moore, attempting to stop the violent assault of Clarence Moore 
upon Aleisha Bryant. His case is circumstancial. He has no prior record of 
violence.

At his first trial, the Glades County jury ended with the declaration of a 
mistrial on December 17, 1983, when the jury failed to reach a verdict after 
deliberating for 11 hours. The retrial jury found M. Lambrix on both counts of 
indictment on February 24, 1984. The first clemency review took place in 1987. 
At the time, Michael Lambrix was facing execution with the electric chair. 
Facing an imminent execution transformed him as a man, and he feels he has 
already met with death.

Michael Lambrix wrote: "I had reached the point of accepting death, at a depth 
of of the inner self that simply cannot be described. It's like something 
inside just lets go. And it was that "virtual reality" death. (...) There is no 
experience more intense than death and it's that experience more than anything 
else that tells me there really is a God".

Jan Arriens says: "He is an intelligent, sensitive, may I say decent person and 
I would be devastated if he were executed. To me, he has become something like 
a brother (...). So my appeal to the board is: Please recognize that and do not 
proceed to execution".

Clemency counsel, Adam Tebrugge, says: "I am hopeful that there will be a new 
investigation into the Michael Lambrix case. His court hearings have been 
plagued by repeated errors and he has never received a full and fair judicial 
review. People from all over the world have been writing to me to emphasize 
that Mike's life has value and to plead against his execution. I am optimistic 
that Michael Lambrix might be the 1st person to receive clemency in Florida in 
over 30 years."

(source: save-innocents.com)






LOUISIANA:

What's the chance that a racist system produces non-racist results?


In October 1978, jurors in Fulton County, Ga., convicted Warren McCleskey of 
shooting a police officer to death as McCleskey robbed a furniture store. 
Predictably, that jury sentenced McCleskey to death.

Why was their sentence predictable? McCleskey was black. His victim, Frank 
Schlatt, was white. And if you had to guess who in Georgia was most likely to 
be sentenced to death, you'd have guessed a black person convicted of murdering 
a white person.

You'd probably have guessed so before McCleskey appealed his death sentence, 
but afterwards, no guessing was needed. The condemned man presented rigorous 
research conducted by Professors David C. Baldus, Charles Pulaski, and George 
Woodworth. The Baldus Study, as it became known, examined more than 2,000 
murder cases in Georgia in the 1970s and concluded that defendants charged with 
killing white people were 4.3 times more likely to be sentenced to death as 
defendants charged with killing black people.

Prosecutors, according to the study, sought the death penalty in 70 % of cases 
involving a black defendant and white victim. In cases with white defendants 
and victims, prosecutors sought death 32 % of the time, that is, not even half 
as much. Cut that number in half and you get the frequency of Georgia 
prosecutors who sought death for black people killing black people: 15 %. As 
for white people accused of killing black people, the state's prosecutors 
sought the death penalty 19 % of the time.

All of the above figures were cited and accepted by U.S. Supreme Court Justice 
Lewis Powell in 1987. But he still wrote the 5-4 majority opinion denying 
McCleskey's appeal.

Statistics, at most, may show only a likelihood that a particular factor 
entered into some decisions." -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell

"Even Professor Baldus does not contend that his statistics prove that race 
enters into any capital sentencing decisions, or that race was a factor in 
McCleskey's particular case," Powell wrote. "Statistics, at most, may show only 
a likelihood that a particular factor entered into some decisions ... McCleskey 
asks us to accept the likelihood allegedly shown by the Baldus study as the 
constitutional measure of an unacceptable risk of racial prejudice influencing 
capital sentencing decisions. This we decline to do."

Who cares what the statistics show, right? Who cares if a careful analysis 
shows that in the criminal justice system black lives don't matter as much as 
white lives? That doesn't prove that race was at play in any one particular 
case. So there!

This is where we find ourselves in 2014. Stories abound of black men being 
unfairly stopped, harassed and abused by police officers. What statistics there 
are back those stories up. And yet, as one black man after another is killed by 
the police, as racism in the criminal justice system is brought into sharper 
and sharper focus, we find ourselves confronted with arguments that it can't be 
proved that racism played a part in Michael Brown's death or Eric Garner's 
death or Tamir Rice's death or John Crawford's death or Cameron Tillman's death 
or Akai Gurley's or Rumain Brisbon's.

According to a report from the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, 
between January 2009 and May 2010, New Orleans police intentionally fired their 
weapons at 27 people -- all of them black. The report called that "a troubling 
racial disparity that warrants a searching inquiry into whether racial bias 
influences the use of force at NOPD."

Whether? We need such inquiries nationwide. But even if such inquiries were 
conducted, and even if they revealed to everybody's satisfaction that the 
police are just quicker to shoot black people, you can expect this argument: 
OK, but how do we know bias played a role in this case? In siding with 
McCleskey and against the majority, Justice William Brennan wrote that 
McCleskey's appeal was unlike previous challenges to the death penalty. It was, 
he wrote in his dissent, "the first to base a challenge not on speculation 
about how a system might operate, but on empirical documentation of how it does 
operate."

And yet, a majority of justices concluded that the empirical evidence showing a 
racist application of the death penalty was not reason enough to spare 
McCleskey that penalty.

So what are the chances that reports revealing the deadly consequences of 
discriminatory policing could convert those committed to maintaining the 
system?

Years after he retired from the court, Powell said he had lost confidence that 
the death penalty could be applied fairly. He wished he could do McCleskey 
over. Despite his later regret, he gave respectability to the "Yeah, but" 
response that's popular with those who love the status quo more than they hate 
racism.

You've heard it. Yeah, racism exists. It might even be rampant, but in this 
case...

(source: Jarvis DeBerry, New Orleans Times-Picayune)

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

The Court agreed to spell out how state courts, in death penalty cases, are to 
handle the issue of whether the defendant is sufficiently mentally disabled to 
be spared a capital sentence.


In accepting a Louisiana murder case for review on Friday, the Court agreed to 
sort out whether an individual accused of a capital crime has a right to an 
independent court hearing on whether he suffers from mental incapacity, and 
thus could not be sentenced to death. In the case of Brumfield v. Cain, the 
issue of Kevan Brumfield's mental state was decided as an issue at the penalty 
phase of his murder trial, rather than at a separate inquiry.

Brumfield was sentenced to death for the shooting death of an off-duty Baton 
Rouge police officer during an attempted robbery at a night deposit box at a 
bank in 1993. The officer had used a police car to transport a store manager on 
a trip to the bank to deposit the store's proceeds. Brumfield was charged with 
killing the officer and wounding the store manager.

In taking the case to the Supreme Court, Brumfield's lawyers argued that he has 
a serious defect in his intellectual capacity, but that state courts dealt with 
his mental disability only for purposes of mitigation during the penalty phase 
of his trial. The petition contended that he was entitled to a separate hearing 
on the question whether he was, because of his mental disability, eligible for 
the death penalty at all. His petition raised a separate question on whether 
Brumfield was entitled to have the state pay for gathering evidence of his 
mental incapacity.

(source: scotusblog.com)






KENTUCKY:

Kentucky plans to seek death penalty for man accused in I-75 shooting


By the end of 2015, an Illinois man accused of shooting a mother and son could 
have to fight for his life in both Ohio and Kentucky.

Terry Froman, 41, of Illinois, is facing the death penalty if convicted of 
aggravated murder, 2 counts of kidnapping and discharging a firearm on 
prohibited premises, for the Sept. 12 fatal shooting of his ex-girlfriend. His 
3-weekend trial in Warren County is scheduled to begin Aug. 3.

Elizabeth Kimberly Thomas, 34, Froman's ex-girlfriend who kicked him out of her 
Mayfield, Ky., home about a month before the slaying, is the 2nd person he is 
accused of killing on the late summer day.

Froman allegedly shot and killed Thomas' 17-year-old son, Michael "Eli" Mohney, 
just hours before abducting Thomas and driving to Ohio with her in his GMC 
Yukon with licence plates "TRICKE1"

"I am 99 % sure (we will seek the death penalty) here," said David Hargrove, 
Commonwealth Attorney in Graves County, Ky.

Froman is charged with murder that includes aggravating circumstance, 
kidnapping, burglary and tampering with physical evidence in Kentucky.

"We know it could be a year before Ohio gets done with him and we can get him 
down here," Hargrove said. "So there is no hurry at this point."

Hargrove added officials from both states are in constant contact and just last 
week, investigators from Kentucky made a visit to Warren County to talk about 
the case.

"There's evil in the world," Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell said in 
October when the indictment against Froman was announced.

Froman is accused of going to Thomas' home and shooting Mohney twice at close 
range. He was spotted at one point forcing Thomas into his white SUV at a 
convenience store near Paducah, Ky.

Hargrove said just prior to the incident Froman had been living in Metropolis, 
Ill., just across the Ohio River from Paducah, with is not far from Mayfield.

Authorities were alerted after Thomas's friends went to her home about 10 a.m. 
- after she did not report to work - and found Mohney dead on the living-room 
floor.

Froman and Thomas were tracked using Froman's cell phone. State troopers in 
Ohio spotted Froman's SUV just before 1 p.m. and pulled him over about 20 
minutes later, according to authorities.

Thomas' body was found in the SUV, naked and bloody, shot multiple times. 
Froman was treated for a gunshot wound before being transported to the county 
jail in Lebanon.

The investigation shut down northbound I-75 between Ohio 63 and Ohio 122 for 
about 4 hours.

During the investigation of the I-75 crime scene, Ohio State Patrol 
investigators found 2 cell phone, according to court documents obtained by the 
Journal News. Froman was communicating with others by cell phone during the 
commission of the offence and investigators initiated a search warrant to get 
records from those 2 phones.

Thomas had recently gotten a new cell phone, which was missing from the crime 
scene. Investigators are also seeking records from that phone, according to 
court documents.

Froman is housed in the Warren County Jail without bond. He is scheduled to be 
back in Warren County Court before Judge Robert Peeler Froman on Jan. 7 for a 
hearing about the use of DNA samples by the prosecution.

(source: Dayton Daily News)