[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----N.C., S.C., GA., OHIO, KY., COLO., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 7


NORTH CAROLINA:

Records reveal new details in the death of woman


Pieces of a gun and ammunition were found in the road near a ditch where a dead 
woman was found, killed at the hands of her married boyfriend. The details come 
from court documents in the investigation into the death of Joyce "Jo" Price 
Eaton.

Anthony Clay Campbell, 53, of 156 Charleston Way in Mocksville, was indicted 
this week on first-degree murder in the death of Eaton , his 45-year-old 
girlfriend from High Point. Eaton was found shot and stabbed in a ditch on AT&T 
Drive in McLeansville June 12, though her identity was unknown at the time. She 
had been dragged 15 feet off the road, according to the autopsy report.

Both Campbell and Eaton were married to other people; Eaton had been separated 
for several months.

Campbell was arrested June 17. He remains in Guilford County jail without bail.

Eaton was shot once in the back, according to the medical examiner's report. 
Law enforcement found one shell casing, as well as several unspent rounds of 
ammunition in AT&T Road near a puddle of blood, according to court documents. 
Several parts of a firearms magazine, in pieces, were also found, as well as 
Eaton's shoes near her body.

Eaton was last known to be alive the evening of June 11, after getting off work 
at the Verizon Wireless store at the Alamance Crossing shopping center in 
Burlington.

The district attorney's office has requested a hearing on Jan. 12, where it 
will announce whether it will pursue the death penalty, according to a court 
filing this week.

Sheriff's investigators have said one of the motives for Eaton's death was 
money. According to court documents, the couple may have argued over $1,800 - 
the amount of monthly rent for Eaton's house.

Despite a June arrest in the homicide, investigators were still conducting 
interviews and following leads in the case as recently as November.

Eaton was last seen outside of her workplace on June 11 in her BMW. The car was 
later spotted by Orange County sheriff's deputies just after midnight on June 
12, parked on the side of the road in Hillsborough. The Guilford County 
Sheriff's Office was notified about the car the following afternoon.

Eaton, mother of 5, was reported missing by her eldest son on June 12. Her 
estranged husband realized the Jane Doe found dead in McLeansville on June 11 
was Eaton by the description the sheriff's office released, and he contacted 
the agency on June 13. The estranged husband confirmed Eaton's identity through 
photos taken after her death. Eaton was still wearing her Verizon Wireless work 
clothes, according to the sheriff's office.

According to court documents, the wife of Campbell's stepson, who lives in 
Mocksville, picked up Campbell on June 11. Driving a Buick Rendezvous, she 
drove Campbell to a Wal-Mart in Greensboro. The exact time Campbell was picked 
up is unclear.

The woman said Campbell may have been driving a red pickup.

He is seen on store surveillance video putting gas into the pickup at a nearby 
gas station about 6:15 p.m. on June 11, the day investigators said Eaton was 
killed. Campbell used a gas station loyalty card in his name, according to 
court documents. Investigators also found a receipt for the gas at his house 
when they searched it.

Campbell owns a 2001 Cadillac Deville, according to paperwork Campbell 
previously filed with the court.

The Chevrolet pickup belonged to a relative of the wife, according to court 
documents. She told law enforcement she loaned the truck to Campbell on several 
previous occasions.

Lt. Brian Hall with the sheriff's office said investigators were trying to 
determine how Campbell drove around that night, if he moved Eaton's vehicle.

"We were trying to cover every possible scenario," Hall said. "We were trying 
to fill out some loose holes for how he got home. We were looking at anybody he 
got in contact with."

The sheriff's office obtained a search warrant on Aug. 28 for the Buick SUV, 
and a warrant on Sept. 18 for the pickup, according to court documents.

According to the search warrant applications, sheriff's investigators were 
searching for any blood, fibers, bullets or casings, firearms, digital media, 
or other items that could be connected to murder. However, Hall said, nothing 
was found in either vehicle.

Investigators also sought the court's permission to search 4 USB flash drives 
that were previously seized from Campbell. The items are in evidence at the 
sheriff's office, but unexamined, according to court documents. The sheriff's 
office filed the request in November.

Campbell was one of the last people Eaton spoke with on the phone. Using cell 
tower plotting, detectives have examined Campbell's cellphone and say he was in 
the area of where Eaton works around the time she got off work on June 11, as 
well as near where Eaton's body was found and where her BMW was found in 
Hillsborough, according to court documents.

Campbell told investigators he was in Mocksville that evening.

(source: Winston-Salem Journal)






SOUTH CAROLINA:

Family of George Junius Stinney Jr. still waiting to clear his name for the 
1944 murders of Mary Thames and Betty Binnicker in South Carolina


Stinney, who was black, was charged, tried, convicted and executed in 83 days. 
He was sentenced to die by an all-white, all-male jury. A forensic psychiatrist 
called Stinney's statement 'a coerced, compliant, false confession.'

SC Department of Archives and HiGeorge Junius Stinney Jr. was charged, tried, 
convicted and executed in 83 days for the killing of two girls in South 
Carolina in 1944. No physical evidence linked him to the crimes.

The skinny black naif, posing for a mugshot in jail stripes, was on a legal 
steamroller bound for the electric chair.

And the defeated look on his face suggests he was well aware of his destiny.

The boy was George Junius Stinney Jr., 14, who was accused of killing 2 white 
girls 70 years ago in the Jim Crow south, in the company mill village of 
Alcolu, S.C.

The crime was a nightmare.

By all accounts, so was the hasty retribution.

On March 23, 1944, Mary Thames, 7, and Betty Binnicker, 11, pedaled a bicycle 
into the countryside in search of wild passion flower blossoms.

They failed to return home, and their bodies were discovered the next day in a 
watery ditch near the black side of town, where Stinney lived with his parents 
and 3 siblings. The girls had been brained with a 15-inch railroad spike.

Deputy Sheriff H.S. Newman, acting on "information I received," arrested 
Stinney, who had spoken to the girls as they passed his home.

Newman and a state cop questioned the boy and soon emerged with a full 
confession - 2 confessions, in fact.

In the 1st, the boy said he was helping the girls after Mary fell into the 
ditch. They suddenly began hitting him, so he defended himself. In the 2nd 
version, he said he killed Mary so he could sexually assault Betty, although 
there was no evidence of rape.

Stinney's trial began and ended on April 24, a month after the murders. No 
physical evidence linked him to the crime, so his prosecution hinged on the 
confession.

The defense attorney, Charles Plowden, 33, did not challenge the confession. 
Instead, he claimed Stinney was too young for a murder conviction. It was a 
wasted argument since state law said 14-year-olds could be charged as adults.

The jury, 12 white men, convicted Stinney in 10 minutes. They recommend no 
mercy, and the boy was sentenced to die.

Plowden filed none of the legal challenges that were standard in death penalty 
cases even then.

"There was nothing to appeal on," he later said.

A budding politician, Plowden had antebellum family roots there in Clarendon 
County. Some say his primary defense strategy was to avoid upsetting the white 
power structure.

And he succeeded.

With little national notice in a country distracted by World War II, Stinney 
was sent to death row - the youngest person to face legal execution in America 
last century.

Local clergymen and black leaders lobbied Gov. Olin Johnston for clemency, but 
he was not inclined to show mercy.

In a reply to one minister, Johnston suggested that Stinney got off easy: "The 
colored people of Alcolu would have lynched this boy themselves had it not been 
for the protection of the officers."

Stinney was electrocuted on June 16, 1944, not yet 3 months after the murders. 
He was 14 years, 7 months and 29 days old, stood 5-feet-1 and weighed 95 
pounds.

Most of his family, which fled Alcolu in fear in the days after the boy's 
arrest, eventually relocated to the New York area.

For decades, his siblings - Charles Stinney, Katherine Robinson and Amie 
Ruffner - have sought a reexamination of the case.

They finally got a day in court last January, when South Carolina Circuit Judge 
Carmen Mullen presided over a hearing to determine whether Stinney got a fair 
trial.

"They took my brother away and I never saw my mother laugh again," Amie 
Ruffner, now 78, testified. "I would love his name to be cleared."

Jimmy PriceStinney was electrocuted on June 16, 1944, not yet 3 months after 
the murders. He was 14 years, seven months and 29 days old, stood 5-feet-1 and 
weighed 95 pounds.

A forensic psychiatrist called Stinney's statement "a coerced, compliant, false 
confession."

Today, the sly police art of manipulating a false confession from gullible kids 
has been well documented. Judge Mullen seemed to recognize that Stinney didn't 
stand a chance in 1944.

"No one here can justify a 14-year-old child being charged, tried and executed 
in 83 days," Mullen said. "In essence, not much was done for this child when 
his life lay in the balance."

Even the prosecutor at the hearing, Ernest (Chip) Finney III, saw the case as a 
travesty.

"Back in 1944," he said, "we should have known better, but we didn't."

Most expected a quick ruling. But nearly a year after the hearing, Mullen 
remains mum.

Ray Brown, a Baltimore writer who manages a "Redeem George Stinney Jr." 
Facebook page, told the Justice Story that he sees politics at play.

"Judge Mullen had all the information she needed to make a ruling at the close 
of that hearing," said Brown, who is working on a film about the case. "I 
believe the delay was a choreographed dance to keep this thing under wraps 
during an election year ... The powers that be in South Carolina are doing 
their best to not have to deal with a very ugly bit of history. At this point, 
I think the feds have to step in if we ever hope to get justice."

Stinney's brother, Charles, 83, lives in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

After 70 years of waiting, he said he has little faith in worldly justice.

"I don't know what the delay is about with the judge," he said last week. "But 
I'm a patient man because I know that, in the end, we all get final justice 
before the Lord."

(source: New York Daily News)






GEORGIA----impending execution

Clemency hearing for Baldwin deputy's killer to center on defense lawyer's 
competency


A man convicted of killing a Baldwin County sheriff's deputy is scheduled to be 
executed next week, but first his lawyers will argue for clemency, claiming the 
man did not have adequate counsel during trial and sentencing.

The State Board of Pardons and Paroles will hear their arguments at 9 a.m. 
Monday in a special called meeting. Robert Wayne Holsey, 49, is scheduled to 
die by lethal injection at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit District Attorney Fred Bright, who prosecuted Holsey, 
will argue against clemency, saying Holsey's attorney was lucid and a 
formidable foe.

Holsey was convicted of killing Baldwin County sheriff's Deputy Will Robinson 
after the deputy pulled over Holsey in a motel parking lot in response to an 
armed robbery at a Jet Food Store in Milledgeville Dec. 17, 1995.

Brian Kammer is executive director of the Georgia Resource Center, a nonprofit 
that represents those on death row. He's representing Holsey in his clemency 
hearing, arguing he may 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 Sixth 
Amendment right to competent counsel," Kammer said.

Prince represented Holsey at trial and sentencing.

"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 found guilty 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.

In the sentencing phase, Prince did not present evidence of childhood abuse 
suffered by Holsey and his siblings. Neighbors referred to the home as the 
torture chamber, Kammer said.

Prince also did not share that Holsey's IQ tested as 70 as early as age 15, 
indicating he had intellectual disabilities, Kammer said.

Holsey's sentence was reduced on appeal. But the Georgia Supreme Court later 
overturned that ruling.

Bright's recollection of Prince's defense is far different.

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

Bright said Prince was a tough opponent. Whether Prince drank at night doesn't 
matter, he said.

"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 compelling physical evidence that 
put the gun in his hand despite the lack of eyewitness testimony. His defense 
kept one juror indecisive for 7 hours of deliberation.

Bright admits Holsey's childhood wasn't great, but it was rough for his sister, 
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 become a Baldwin County deputy and later a deputy 
U.S. marshal.

As for issues of Holsey's intelligence, Bright said even Prince's experts 
couldn't definitively say whether Holsey was intellectually disabled.

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.

(source: Macon Telegraph)






OHIO:

House Bill 663 helps safe guard Ohio execution process: Jim Buchy, State 
Representative


State Rep. Jim Buchy represents the 84th District.

Guest columnist State Rep. Jim Buchy represents the 84th District in the Ohio 
House of Representatives. He writes in favor of House Bill 663 as a way of 
preserving Ohio's execution process.

Some pieces of legislation can bring out strong opinions on both sides, not so 
much because of what is actually contained in the legislation, but simply 
because of its general subject matter. Such might be the case, I believe, for 
the Ohio House passage of a bill addressing lethal injection here in Ohio.

Whereas the attention given to House Bill 663 understandably revolved around 
capital punishment, in actuality the bill itself was much more narrowly focused 
to protecting the confidentiality of the persons who participate in the process 
of execution by lethal injection. In other words, the vote taken in the House 
chamber last week was not a vote in support or opposition to the existence of 
the death penalty in Ohio. Regardless of the outcome of that vote, the death 
penalty would have still been around in our state.

The bill was a response to state officials momentarily suspending the practice 
of capital punishment because of controversies surrounding an execution earlier 
this year. HB 663, which passed out of the House with bipartisan support, makes 
it possible to carry out state law while ensuring executions are conducted in 
an efficient and humanitarian way.

Under the legislation, manufacturers who produce the drugs used in the lethal 
injection process can request anonymity for 20 years. It also provides 
additional protections to physicians who testify on the execution process. 
Because many manufacturers - from whom the state had purchased them for many 
years - have stopped selling drug compounds for this purpose, a number of 
states have been left looking for alternative ways to administer executions.

If needed to investigate any illegal activity conducted by a manufacturer and 
other entities involved, courts will have access to the relevant information. 
That information would be under seal unless the court, after holding a private 
hearing with the Department of Rehabilitations and Corrections, finds an entity 
or individual acted unlawfully. Under that circumstance, the information would 
be subject to discovery.

I am very familiar with the story behind the murderer whose execution led to 
this problem in Ohio. The man who was put to death earlier this year raped and 
stabbed to death a 22-year-old woman in 1989 in Preble County, which I 
represented at the time. While executions in Ohio should not in any way be 
rushed or pursued in a reckless manner, it is troubling to think that the 
murderer lived for a longer period of time following that killing than did his 
victim in her entire life.

A poll conducted earlier this year by Quinnipiac University found that a 
majority of Ohioans - nearly 70 % - favored the death penalty. So it is 
unlikely that the policy is going away any time soon, and that is not what 
House Bill 663 was about. The bill simply put in place safeguards help the 
state carry out its laws and to protect those individuals who are involved in 
the process.

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

Problems outweigh need for speed on execution secrecy law: Dennis Hetzel, Ohio 
Newspaper Association


Dennis Hetzel is executive director of the Ohio Newspaper Association.

Guest columnist Dennis Hetzel is the executive director of the Ohio Newspaper 
Association. He argues for more transparency in the way Ohio conducts 
executions.

The State of Ohio botched its last execution. The convicted killer struggled 
for nearly 25 minutes before finally succumbing. Officials attributed it to the 
difficulty in obtaining the drug "cocktail" needed - drugs that few companies 
want to sell for executions in response to public pressure, their own beliefs 
or mandates from their governments overseas. Other states face similar problems 
and related lawsuits.

The answer to the problem, according to some Ohio legislators and Attorney 
General Mike DeWine, is more secrecy.

As introduced, House Bill 663 offered anonymity and immunity to all the key 
players. The names of drug suppliers were secret forever. Even the courts were 
blocked from obtaining information through subpoena or discovery. Businesses 
were restricted from the kinds of contracts they could sign with other 
businesses. The bill inserted government into the relationship between 
physicians and their professional organizations.

The latest version, which has passed the House and is in the Ohio Senate, is 
better, and we appreciate the bipartisan effort to improve it. Judges could see 
this information in some circumstances. Records would eventually become public 
- in 20 years. Lawmakers also narrowed broad language that invited the courts 
to find fresh restrictions on access to information. However, major issues 
remain.

The fundamental problem may be the lethal injection method itself. In essence, 
the state must coerce private-sector companies to do something they apparently 
don't want to do, or are saying they won't do unless they receive anonymity.

Companies say they face significant harassment and threats, but Ohio has laws 
to prosecute legitimate threats and harassment. We haven't seen evidence of 
this need for special protection. Only extreme circumstances should restrict 
your right to protest or limit your access to basic information about 
businesses that do controversial things with taxpayer dollars.

Testimony in the House made it clear that this bill will spawn new, expensive 
litigation, and witnesses demonstrated that there is no way for the state to 
guarantee total anonymity to a drug company or pharmacy. For one thing, many 
claims will occur at the federal level. Constitutional challenges remain. 
Interference by the Legislature with court procedures, the medical profession 
and private sector contracts isn't resolved.

Given these issues, it's reasonable to ask whether this bill is appropriate for 
the fast track in the closing weeks of a 2-year legislative session.

Supporters say the matter is urgent, because executions can't occur in Ohio 
until this gets resolved. Meanwhile, there has been no consideration of the 
recommendations of the Ohio Supreme Court Death Penalty Task Force that have 
been available since April. The argument that the victims of these awful crimes 
deserve swifter closure is an important one but not a compelling reason to pass 
a problematic bill. Perhaps legislators can wait a little longer to make sure 
they craft a good law.

Ohio has an important tradition of an execution process that is quite 
transparent. This is consistent with our public records law and supported by 
numerous court decisions that say records must be open with rare exceptions 
drawn as narrowly as possible.

Everyone should embrace that notion, particularly when the "problem" to resolve 
is the best process for the state to end human lives. House Bill 663 is highly 
unlikely to make the execution process faster and more humane, but it 
unquestionably will make it harder for citizens to hold government accountable 
for its actions.

(source for both: cleveland.com)






KENTUCKY:

Suspects in UC professor's death plead not guilty


Charles Black and Kevin Howard pled not guilty in a Flemingsburg courtroom 
Friday to charges of murder, kidnapping and robbery in the case of missing 
University of Cincinnati professor Randall Russ.

Housed in 2 separate jails and appearing at 2 separate times, Charles Black and 
Kevin Howard are being held on a $1 million cash bond.

In October, 2 months after Russ went missing, Black told police he helped 
Howard bury him in a shallow grave north of Lexington but denied murdering the 
professor.

Kentucky State Police recovered the body but have yet to positively identify it 
as Russ.

Friday, for the 1st time, Russ's sister Connie and daughter Katie came face to 
face with the man accused of killing their brother and father.

"Those was the last set of eyes my brother seen so therefore I wanted to make 
sure that they knew we was here," said Connie Fetters.

A hearing to determine whether that million dollar cash bond will be lowered 
has been set for early February.

The Commonwealth Attorney has not decided whether or not he will seek the death 
penalty.

(source: Fox news)






COLORADO:

Theater-shooting defense lawyers seek trial delay


Defense attorneys in the Colorado theater shooting case have requested another 
delay in James Holmes' trial, saying they don't have enough time to prepare for 
the Jan. 20 start date.

In a motion made public Friday, the attorneys asked to push the trial back 2 or 
3 months.

Arapahoe County District Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr., who did not immediately 
rule on the request, asked prosecutors to respond to the motion Friday. That 
response, if it was filed, has not been made public.

In another motion, defense lawyers said one of their witnesses won't willingly 
testify at the trial because it will be televised. They asked Samour to 
reconsider his decision to allow television coverage.

Samour rejected the request, noting the trial would be heavily publicized even 
without TV coverage.

Defense lawyers did not identify the witness who does not want to testify if 
the trial is televised, or indicate what the witness would say. Parts of the 
motion are redacted.

Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges of killing 12 people 
and injuring 70 in the July 20, 2012, attack at a Denver-area theater. 
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

He has undergone two sanity evaluations at the state mental hospital, the 
second because the judge ruled the first one was flawed.

Holmes' lawyers said they won't be ready for the scheduled start of jury 
selection next month because they are still reviewing material from the 2nd 
sanity evaluation as well as other newly received evidence.

Evidence in the case now totals 85,000 pages of documents, 366 CDs and 282 
DVDs, along with other materials in computer memory drives, they said.

Holmes' attorneys also said one member of the defense team, Daniel King, has 
spent eight days testifying under subpoena in another case, taking him away 
from preparing for Holmes' trial.

If the trial is delayed again, the new date would be the 6th one set for the 
case.

The 1st, in August 2013, was canceled after prosecutors said they would seek 
the death penalty, raising numerous issues that had to be resolved before the 
trial. The second, in February, was scratched after prosecutors asked for the 
2nd sanity evaluation.

The 3rd was Oct. 14, which Samour postponed to Monday after the doctor 
conducting the 2nd evaluation requested an extension. Samour pushed the trial 
back to Jan. 20 to give defense lawyers time to review the 2nd sanity 
evaluation.

(source: Associated Press)






CALIFORNIA:

Families of California crime victims demand faster executions----Executions 
temporarily halted in 2006, leaving death row prisoners in limbo


Crime victims groups in California are demanding that the execution of death 
row inmates be accelerated, after an 8-year moratorium on lethal injections.

California halted executions in 2006, after concerns about the cocktail of 
drugs used.

Since the death penalty was adopted in California, 900 convicted criminals have 
been sentenced to death, but only 13 have been executed. American football star 
Kermit Alexander, whose mother, sister and 2 nephews were murdered in a case of 
mistaken identity in 1984, is leading the campaign to have executions resumed.

The man responsible for the killings has on death row for almost 30 years.

Alexander told Sky News: "They won't allow me to do it, so if society has it on 
the books they have to get it done.

"Don't make us suffer the anguish of waiting to see if it is going happen.

"I'm saddened because we can't get on with our lives because this is in the 
back of our minds. Our family has been badly mauled."

Earlier this year, Judge Cormac Carney ruled that keeping prisoners waiting, in 
some cases for decades, on death row constituted a cruel and unusual 
punishment, and the death sentence was thus unconstitutional.

"For most, systemic delay has made their execution so unlikely that the death 
sentence ... has been quietly transformed into one no rational jury or 
legislature could ever impose: life in prison, with the remote possibility of 
death," wrote Judge Carney.

"As for the random few for whom execution does become a reality, they will have 
languished for so long on Death Row that their execution will serve no 
retributive or deterrent purpose."

Governor Jerry Brown recently changed state regulations to allow single drug 
executions, in an attempt to sidestep concerns about the efficacy of 
triple-drug cocktails.

The Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation is suing state officials 
for taking too long to adopt single-drug execution procedures.

However, the California corrections department says that a shortage of 
execution drugs was making the adoption of the new procedure difficult.

The backlog of executions is not limited to California, with only 1% of the 
3,000 condemned inmates in the US put to death annually.

Experts say that lengthy legal procedures and growing concerns about the drugs 
used for lethal injections are behind the delay, with lawyers appealing 
thousands of death sentences after a series of high-profile botched executions.

(source: IB Times)

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

California Bid To Resume Death Row Executions----Some victims' families say it 
is time to restart executions in California after an 8-year moratorium - but 
others disagree.


Campaigners in California are calling on the state's government to resume 
executions on America's biggest death row.

More than 740 inmates live under the threat of death by lethal injection in a 
state that has not executed anyone for more than 8 years.

California placed a moratorium on executions in 2006 over concerns about the 
cocktail of drugs used and earlier this year a federal judge declared the 
administration of it as "dysfunctional".

Judge Cormac Carney said keeping prisoners waiting for decades represented 
cruel and unusual punishment, a breach of the US Constitution's Eighth 
Amendment.

He wrote: "In California, the execution of a death sentence is so infrequent 
and the delays preceding it so extraordinary that the death penalty is deprived 
of any deterrent or retributive effect it might once have had."

It is estimated that the death penalty has cost the state more than $4bn since 
it was re-introduced in 1976.

Since then, just 13 inmates have been put to death.

Across America, opinion is divided on the death penalty.

Some states have abolished it, while others have experienced shortages of 
execution drugs and botched procedures.

This week the execution of a man said to be mentally ill in Texas was put on 
hold.

But some victims' families say it is time to restart the executions in 
California.

American football legend Kermit Alexander's mother, sister and two nephews were 
murdered by a gang member who had gone to the wrong address in Los Angeles.

He remains on death row, 30 years after the killing.

Alexander is now leading the campaign to resume executions.

He told Sky News: "They won't allow me to do it so if society has it on the 
books they have to get it done.

"Don't make us suffer the anguish of waiting to see if it is going happen.

"I'm saddened because we can't get on with our lives because this is in the 
back of our minds. Our family has been badly mauled."

Lorrain Taylor, whose twin sons were murdered in a drive-by shooting in 
Oakland, disagrees.

She runs a support group for the family of murder victims and said: "Why use 
money to take another person's life - eventually, if it ever happens - when you 
can use those same funds to help law enforcement to stop violence, to provide 
counselling for children who are left behind.

"To me it makes no sense, I think that it is also an act of violence and it is 
sending the wrong message."

She agrees with this warning from Shujaa Graham, who spent 10 years on death 
row for a murder he did not commit.

He told Sky News: "Why do we kill someone to prove that killing is wrong - and 
we say life is the most sacred thing?"

(source: Sky News)

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

O.C. Sheriff Sandra Hutchens: Poor organization, training led to mistakes with 
jailhouse informants----She says poor organization, not misconduct, led to jail 
mistakes.


Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens this week joined the county's top 
prosecutor in defending the use of jailhouse informants placed in cells wired 
to capture recorded confessions.

"The use of jailhouse informants has proven to be very effective," Hutchens 
said. "But you've got to be careful not to be taken by those guys. They're 
pretty sophisticated."

Hutchens, in an interview, weighed in on the legal battle over the 
surreptitious use of informants to question suspects after their arrest and the 
prosecution's withholding of evidence retrieved from those informants.

2 of the most prolific informants at jails in Orange and Los Angeles counties 
earned more than $70,000 apiece, paid by local police agencies, and received 
lenient treatment in cases that could have sent them to prison for life, 
according to documents obtained by the Register. Perks included Del Taco 
deliveries, cigarettes, PlayStation 3 and private cable TV.

The sheriff conceded her department could have benefited from better 
organization and training of jail deputies in how to handle informants working 
for the police.

"We didn't have a comprehensive plan for handling informants," Hutchens said. 
"The department has to take responsibility for not having a good policy in 
place. We do now."

Prosecutors and police have relied on a secret network of jail informants to 
coax confessions from inmates in scores of cases and then in some of those 
cases failed to disclose the evidence to defense attorneys. The practice 
emerged earlier this year when authorities used an informant to obtain 
information from Scott Dekraai, who pleaded guilty to gunning down eight people 
at a Seal Beach salon but is fighting a potential death sentence.

His attorney, Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, has filed a series of 
legal motions challenging the use of jailhouse snitches and the withholding of 
evidence in his bid to keep Dekraai from death row.

Under persistent questioning by Sanders, the Orange County District Attorney's 
Office conceded that evidence in other felony cases in addition to Dekraai's 
inadvertently had been withheld from defense attorneys. These "mistakes," as 
termed by prosecutors, have caused at least 3 murder cases to unravel. And more 
cases are being scrutinized.

Like District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, Sheriff Hutchens said this week some 
evidence was not given to defense attorneys in a timely manner, but it was not 
intentional.

"There was no deliberate attempt to withhold documents or keep anything from 
the public defender," Hutchens said. "It occurred, but it occurred because of 
poor practices."

The Sheriff's Department and its jail staff now keep centralized records on 
which informants are being used in what case and when, she said. Notes and 
information received from the informants also are being centrally stored. An 
investigator is now in charge of the sheriff's informant program, Hutchens 
said.

Sanders dismissed the sheriff's explanation.

"The Sheriff's Department has likely been using informants from the 1st day it 
opened the jails. Concealing for decades informant evidence and records was a 
decision, not an oversight," Sanders said.

In August, Sanders attempted to use the informant violations to persuade 
Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals to block the death penalty case against 
Dekraai, who admitted shooting his estranged wife and seven other people in a 
2011 rampage.

Goethals declined to dismiss the death penalty case, but ruled that prosecutors 
committed misconduct, though not intentionally.

Sanders, with a shackled Dekraai, was in court Friday and received Sheriff's 
Department records showing the jailhouse movement of informants used in several 
other criminal cases. Sanders said he will pore over the documents, looking for 
more evidence of mishandling of informants by police and prosecutors.

Sanders has again asked Goethals to take the death penalty off the table for 
Dekraai and is trying to document a broader pattern of misconduct by police and 
prosecutors that extends far beyond his client. His new argument is partially 
based on his allegations that three jail deputies lied while testifying before 
Goethals at a recent hearing. Sanders and prosecutors will return to court on 
the issue on Thursday.

In his latest motion, Sanders argued that 3 deputies testified they could not 
remember where and when certain informants were moved inside the jail even 
though that information could be easily retrieved from an electronic database 
kept by the Sheriff's Department.

Hutchens said this week the deputies were unprepared to testify - and for that, 
she takes the blame.

"I have not seen anything that would lead me to believe any of the deputies 
were deliberately trying to mislead anyone," Hutchens said. "I think the 
department failed them by not providing appropriate training."

She said the deputies, assigned to work in the county jail, were unaccustomed 
to testifying and had not been on patrol. Hutchens said the deputies shouldn't 
be faulted, because the department was at the time disorganized in its handling 
of informants. Not everybody knew what was available, she said.

(source: Orange County Register)






USA:

7 books about . . . Life - and death sentences


Why has Europe ended the death penalty, but we've still got it? The 
conventional answer trades on cultural divides: America is an immature cowboy 
nation, racist and trigger happy, while Europe is more measured, mature, and 
its societies, chastened by 2 world wars, are understandably keen to avoid 
further violence. They're enlightened; we're philistine. Germany, in fact, got 
rid of capital punishment in 1949 and Britain in 1969. Before I read today's 
books, I'd vaguely guessed that the Germans acted in revulsion at their Nazi 
past, and the British embraced the moral revolution of the 60s. I was flat 
wrong; in both cases, the people overwhelmingly supported the death penalty. 
But their leaders coolly, blatantly overruled them.

"Ending the Death Penalty: The European Experience in Global Perspective" 
(Palgrave MacMillan, 2010) helped me, like no other book, to understand the 
worldwide evolution of the ultimate punishment. When Andrew Hammel, a professor 
of American law at the University of Dusseldorf, asked European jurists and 
pols why they've succeeded where we've failed, he constantly heard this 
refrain: Americans are naive to think public opinion must change before the law 
changes. That's because the "desire to see murderers executed is a basic drive 
of human nature, one which only the most educated are able to overcome."

So that's their strategy: an elite fait accompli. There are long roots here, 
for the earliest calls for diminishing the death penalty came from European 
philosophers invited by European monarchs to put their ideas into practice. 
Voltaire was pivotal and so was Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria, whose 1764 
landmark treatise, "On Crimes and Punishments" (Beccaria, 2013), remains 
powerful reading today and had a marked influence on Thomas Jefferson and John 
Adams. Beccaria found it immoral and illogical to treat brutality with 
brutality: "Murder, which [judges] would represent to us as a horrible crime, 
we see practised by them without repugnance or remorse."

In our era, when those on death row in the United States are in for heinous 
crimes only, we forget that the state once killed for far less. In 19th century 
Britain, you could die for some 200 transgressions, including vagrancy and 
"theft from the premises of a calico printers." The march toward abolition was 
a slow one, steadily scratching offenses off - but it was basically a top-down 
process. Such condescension is a nonstarter in our more populist, pluralist 
society where 63 % of Americans favor the death penalty. Eastern European 
countries had similar stats but, in order to join the European Union, they had 
to end the practice. The responsive structure of American politics guarantees, 
for now, it's here to stay.

Then again, we once did stop the death penalty. It just didn't stay stopped. "A 
Wild Justice: The Death and Resurrection of Capital Punishment in America" 
(Norton, 2013) gracefully traces the 4-year period starting in 1972, when the 
Supreme Court ruled against Georgia's death penalty in Furman v. Georgia (a 
verdict that was expected to spread to other states), only to see capital 
punishment reinstated in 1976 by Gregg v. Georgia. The stats since then: 1,392 
executions, and 32 states with the death penalty.

Author Evan J. Mandery opens his story in 1963, with Alan Dershowitz clerking 
for Arthur Goldberg, as the Supreme Court justice begins his tactic of, 
essentially, pitting parts of the Constitution (capital punishment is endorsed 
in the 5th and 14th amendments) against another (the 8th, which prohibits 
"cruel and unusual punishment"). It was a radical - arguably elitist - move: At 
the time, not even the ACLU opposed the death penalty. But the NAACP Legal 
Defense Fund steps in to combat capital punishment as a civil-rights issue, not 
just for the racial imbalance in its imposition, but because "[d]eath is 
factually different." As Legal Defense Fund lawyer Anthony Amsterdam argued 
before the court: "Death is final. Death is irremediable. Death is unnullable. 
It goes beyond this world."

Here is where even death-penalty advocates recoil - at the nightmare of killing 
an innocent person. This theme has gathered much bookish steam, most recently 
with "Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption" (Spiegel & Grau, 2014) by 
Alabama death-row lawyer Bryan Stevenson, whom Desmond Tutu compares to Nelson 
Mandela and John Grisham compares to Atticus Finch. Stevenson is a sympathetic 
and impassioned narrator. His book is part memoir, part case history, and, 
echoing Beccaria, part philosophical treatise. Indeed, Stevenson offers much on 
how our legal system is rife with racial and class inequities. As a mentor 
tells him, 'capital punishment means 'them without the capital get the 
punishment.'"

The book's main murder case takes place in Monroeville, Ala., Harper Lee's 
hometown. The accused, an African-American business owner tainted by an affair 
with a white woman, is thwarted at every turn: Exonerating witnesses are 
threatened; the jury is all white; the judge turns a life sentence into a death 
sentence. Stevenson finally frees him. But he witnesses the execution of 
another client - the scene is visceral, shame-filled, and very hard to take - 
who asks that the hymn "The Old Rugged Cross" plays as he goes to the chair. 
Stevenson is soaked in sorrow and outrage: "[W]e would never think it was 
humane to pay someone to rape people convicted of rape or assault and abuse 
someone guilty of assault or abuse. Yet we were comfortable killing people who 
kill, in part because we think we can do it in a manner that doesn't implicate 
our own humanity."

2 more wrongful conviction books vary deeply in their approach. This 1st is 
personal in tone and, given its high profile, virtually anthemic: "I Am Troy 
Davis" (Haymarket, 2013) follows yet another the Georgia case (Davis was 
accused of killing a Savannah police officer) that drew nearly 1 million 
petition signatures in 2011 calling for commuting his sentence, plus appeals 
for clemency from Pope Benedict XVI, President Jimmy Carter, and 51 members of 
Congress. The book is co-written by Jen Marlow and Marina Davis-Correia, Troy's 
sister, with Davis himself, and it's highly moving.

But honestly, I was more struck by the dispassionate, cumulative power of "The 
Wrong Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution" (Columbia University, 2014) by 
James S. Liebman and the Columbia DeLuna Project. This case is examined to such 
an earth's-core depth - the book is full of site maps and footnotes and its 
website features much more - that readers will come away absolutely convinced 
that the conviction of Carlos DeLuna was a profound injustice. Troy Davis may 
have been just as innocent, but "The Wrong Carlos" benefits, somehow, by the 
fact that DeLuna lacked Davis's obfuscating charisma. It begins with a Corpus 
Christi convenience-store theft gone bad, a slain clerk, and a suspect 
misidentified by one witness. In 1989, DeLuna is put to death, when Carlos 
Hernandez should've been convicted instead.

If you write about the death penalty, you need to come clean: I'm against it. 
And though this next book, which is pro-death penalty, did not change my mind, 
it definitely unnerved me. "The Death of Punishment: Searching for Justice 
Among the Worst of the Worst" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) is a 
polemic-reportorial blend by Robert Blecker, an NYU criminal-law professor who 
calls himself a "retributivist" in that he feels the punishment should match 
the crime: "Which do you prefer for a serial killer who rapes and murders 
children: death, or a life watching television, playing sports, going to 
therapy and arts and crafts with free medical care inside prison?" He adds that 
true retributivists support the Innocence Project - the organization that, 
since 1989, has helped exonerate scores of people through DNA testing - because 
the right punishment should go to the right people. That surprised me, I must 
say. So did this fact: One reason German leaders eliminated the death penalty 
over 6 decades ago was because too many Nazis were being executed for war 
crimes. Reality can be hard on philosophy.

(source: Katharine Whittemore is a freelance writer based in Northampton; 
Boston Globe)