[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ALA., OHIO, MINN., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 10


ALABAMA:

Hearing to decide if John DeBlase will be sentenced to death rescheduled


The sentencing hearing for John DeBlase, who is facing death after being 
convicted in November in the deaths of his children, has been reset for 2:30 
p.m. Jan. 8.

The hearing was scheduled to be held Thursday in Mobile County Circuit Judge 
Rick Stout's courtroom. It was rescheduled because DeBlase's presentence 
investigation report is not complete, District Attorney Ashley Rich said.

"Because... the judge has to take that report under consideration when he makes 
his sentence, we couldn't move forward with the sentence until that report is 
complete," Rich said. "It's not an uncommon thing that they have not had an 
opportunity (to finish the report), especially in a case of this magnitude."

A Mobile County jury convicted DeBlase, 31, of three counts of capital murder 
in the 2010 deaths of 4-year-old Natalie DeBlase and 3-year-old Chase DeBlase.

The jury voted 10-2 in favor of the death penalty. The vote is a recommendation 
to Stout, who will decide if DeBlase will be sentenced to death.

DeBlase's common law wife, Heather Leavell-Keaton, 26, also is charged in the 
children's death. Her trial is scheduled for next year. The District Attorney's 
Office said the children were stuffed into a suitcase, put in a closet and 
choked to death. Natalie was dumped in a wooded area near Citronelle. Chase's 
body was hidden in rural Mississippi.

(source: al.com)






OHIO:

Ohio Lawmakers Narrow Lethal Injection Bill


Ohio lawmakers on Wednesday removed a measure from a death penalty bill that 
doctors and drugmakers warned could have led to shortages of a key drug and set 
anesthesiology back 20 years.

At issue was a requirement that would have told drugmakers they couldn't 
restrict distribution of drugs that could be used in executions. Opponents of 
the requirement expected the European Union would quickly ban the export of the 
anesthetic propofol to the U.S. if Ohio's bill became law.

Europe supplies almost 90 % of propofol used in the United states and no 
similar drug shares its safety and effectiveness, Dr. Robert Small, an 
anesthesiologist representing the Ohio Society of Anesthesiologists, told the 
Civil Justice Committee.

"A shortage of this medicine would set the medical specialty of anesthesiology 
back 20 years," he said, leading to complications from an increased rate of 
nausea and vomiting after surgery along with extended time to wake up from 
surgery.

The president of a company whose drugs include propofol said the restriction 
would have a "cascading effect" that would harm patients and their families in 
Ohio.

"This would almost certainly cause delays or deferrals of elective surgeries 
nationwide," said John Ducker, president and CEO of Lake Zurich, Illinois-based 
drugmaker Fresenius Kabi.

Last year the Missouri Department of Corrections dropped plans to use propofol 
as an execution drug because of concerns that the move could create a shortage 
of the popular anesthetic if the EU restricted its export.

The Ohio legislative committee, which scheduled a final vote Thursday, kept in 
place a requirement that companies providing Ohio with lethal injection drugs 
would have their names shielded for at least 20 years. The bill requires a 
drugmaker to specifically ask for anonymity, rather than receive it 
automatically, under an agreement that would allow release of the company's 
name 20 years after it last provides drugs to the state.

The anonymity is aimed at so-called compounding pharmacies that mix doses of 
specialty drugs.

Ohio hasn't executed an inmate since January, when Dennis McGuire gasped and 
snorted for 26 minutes before dying, during a procedure using a never-tried 
combination of a sedative and painkiller. It was Ohio's longest execution.

Further questions about those drugs, midazolam and hydromorphone, arose after 
Arizona used them during a nearly 2-hour execution of an inmate in July.

Ohio's 1st choice for an execution drug is compounded pentobarbital, a version 
of pentobarbital not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Missouri 
and Texas, which shield the identity of their drug source, have used compounded 
pentobarbital successfully several times. But Ohio has been unable to obtain 
it.

Proponents of the Ohio bill, including Rep. Jim Buchy, a Republican from 
Greenville, say the secrecy is necessary for Ohio to get supplies of the drug. 
They say it would protect companies from harassment over supplying the drugs.

Opponents, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio and the Society 
of Professional Journalists, say secrecy erodes confidence in the execution 
process. They also say threats of harassment are overblown.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Lethal injection secrecy bill changed after warnings of medicine shortages


An Ohio Senate committee pulled out a major provision of a lethal injection 
secrecy bill today after being told by a drug company executive that it would 
trigger "harmful shortages of critical medicines" in Ohio.

The Ohio Senate Criminal Justice Committee approved seven amendments to House 
Bill 663, but did not vote on the legislation. A vote is expected at a meeting 
Thursday morning.

The legislation would allow the state to buy lethal injection drugs from small 
"compounding pharmacies" which would remain anonymous from the public, the 
media, prosecution and defense attorneys in capital punishment cases. The bill 
would also shield the names of members of the execution team, including any 
licensed medical personnel who might participate.

John Ducker, president and chief executive officer of Fresenius Kabi USA, an 
international drug manufacturer with 30,000 employees based in Lake Zurich, 
Ill., testified that a provision in the bill, which would have allowed the 
state to void contract controls by drug suppliers, would have had "the 
unintended consequence of creating harmful drug shortages" for some medicines, 
such as propofol, the anesthetic mostly widely used in surgical procedures.

Ducker said if Ohio passed the contract provision, the European Union would 
almost certainly reduce the supply of drugs such a propofol to the U.S. "This 
is not a theoretical possibility," he said. More than 75 % of propofol used in 
the U.S. is made in Europe, he said.

Minutes later, Sen. John Eklund, R-Chardon, chairman of the committee, moved to 
amend the measure by taking the contract provision out of the bill. The 
amendment was approved unanimously.

Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien, the leading advocate for the lethal 
injection bill, testified that is critical that the proposal become law or else 
Ohio will not be able to proceed with the execution of condemned killer Ronald 
Phillips on Feb. 11, or any other executions next year.

He said the bill would not make the execution process secret except for 
protecting the identity of the drug supplier. He described as "scare tactics" 
the claims by opponents who label it a "secret execution bill."

The committee also added several non-controversial recommendations from the 
Ohio Supreme Court Death Penalty Task Force.

(source: Columbus Dispatch)






MINNESOTA:

Minnesota pharmacy board rejects policy aimed at making death penalty drugs 
harder to get


Minnesota regulators won't adopt a policy that would bar pharmacists from 
mixing lethal drugs that could be used in administering the death penalty 
elsewhere.

In declining to act Wednesday, state Board of Pharmacy leaders said they 
weren't aware of any cases where Minnesota pharmacists supplied execution 
drugs. They say that possibility is remote and likely would run afoul of 
existing law.

As execution drugs become harder to obtain, attention has turned to compounding 
pharmacies.

Death penalty foes wanted Minnesota to set the nation's first such policy in 
hopes others would follow. That would make it tougher for capital punishment 
states to obtain lethal supplies.

Minnesota outlawed its death penalty more than a century ago.

Advocates for the drug policy argue it is unethical for pharmacists to aid in 
death.

(suorce: Associated Press)






USA:

The True Legacy of Atkins and Roper: The Unreliability Principle, Mentally Ill 
Defendants, and the Death Penalty's Unraveling


Scott E. Sundby ---- University of Miami School of Law

December 1, 2014

William & Mary Bill of Rights, Vol. 23, (2014 Forthcoming)

Abstract:

In striking down the death penalty for intellectually disabled and juvenile 
defendants, Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons have been understandably 
heralded as important holdings under the Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence 
that has found the death penalty "disproportional" for certain types of 
defendants and crimes. This Article argues, however, that the cases have a far 
more revolutionary reach than their conventional understanding. In both cases 
the Court went one step beyond its usual 2-step analysis of assessing whether 
imposing the death penalty violated "evolving standards of decency." This extra 
step looked at why even though intellectual disability and youth were powerful 
mitigators, juries were not able to reliably use them in their decision making. 
The Court thus articulated expressly for the first time what this Article calls 
the "unreliability principle:" if too great a risk exists that constitutionally 
protected mitigation cannot be reliably assessed, the unreliability means that 
the death penalty cannot be constitutionally imposed. In recognizing the 
unreliability principle, the Court has called into serious question the death 
penalty for other offenders to whom the principle applies, such as mentally ill 
defendants. And, unlike with the "evolving standards" analysis, the 
unreliability principle does not depend on whether a national consensus exists 
against the practice. This Article identifies the 6 Atkins-Roper factors that 
bring the unreliability principle into play and shows why they make application 
of the death penalty to mentally ill defendants unconstitutional. The 
principle, which finds its constitutional home in the cases of Woodson v. North 
Carolina and Lockett v. Ohio, has profound implications for the death penalty, 
and if taken to its logical endpoint calls into question the Court's core 
premise since Furman v. Georgia, that by providing individualized consideration 
of a defendant and his crime, the death penalty decision will be free of 
arbitrariness.

(source: Social Sciene Research Network)