[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TENN., OKLA., ARIZ., NEV., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 15



TENNESSEE:

Death penalty in Tennessee



A group of inmates is fighting the death penalty protocol used in Tennessee, 
claiming it is unconstitutional and violates protections from cruel and unusual 
punishment. Execution protocol has changed several times in the past decade.

The Tennessee Supreme Court will considering Thursday whether to identify the 
names of the execution team and pharmacists working with the deadly drugs in a 
challenge to a 2013 state law that keeps almost all details of the procedure a 
secret.

A group of 11 condemned inmates and their lawyers say that law does not apply 
to court cases, which other rules guide.

"The state has a compelling interest in protecting the identities of the 
members of the execution team because the confidentiality of this information 
is vital to the proper performance of defendants' duties and to the enforcement 
of the law," according to the Tennessee attorney general's filing in the case.

The state says the names are not relevant to the execution protocol, which is 
what the inmates claim is unconstitutional.

Lawyers for the inmates challenging Tennessee's execution protocol, changed in 
2013 because supply of the existing death-penalty drugs was tightening, said 
the state cannot ensure that its death penalty is constitutional if inmates 
don't have access to where the state obtains its lethal injection drugs, the 
makeup of the chemical cocktail used to execute inmates and the names of the 
people on the execution team.

The state Supreme Court should uphold an appeals court opinion that the secrecy 
law withholds information from public disclosure but not from use in discovery 
- or evidence - proceedings in trial, the inmates' lawyers said. They contend 
that limited release would prevent any retaliation that the state argues could 
occur if the names were made public.

1 woman and 69 men are on Tennessee's death row.

"Generally speaking, a trend we see is states attempting to enhance the secrecy 
surrounding their execution procedures," saidMegan McCracken, a lawyer at the 
University of California Berkeley School of Law's Death Penalty Clinic. "That 
is a real problem for condemned prisoners but also for the public because 
without disclosure of the information there's no way to analyze the procedures 
and ensure they comport with the Constitution."

Tennessee's lethal injection protocol now calls for the use of pentobarbital, a 
barbiturate and veterinary anesthetic. At least 19 other states use or plan to 
use pentobarbital, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a private 
group that opposes the death penalty.

Some states attempting to keep their old chemical cocktail have struggled to 
find drug suppliers, tested new drug cocktails and at times turned to 
unconventional methods of procuring the deadly doses since the only federally 
approved manufacturer took steps to keep its drug out of execution chambers.

4 bungled executions in other states this year left inmates gasping on gurneys 
in front of witnesses, at times for hours, fueling further scrutiny of the 
death penalty. Pentobarbital was used in a combination of drugs in an Oklahoma 
execution where the inmate reportedly said he felt his body burning before he 
died.

Earlier this year, supreme courts in Georgia and Oklahoma upheld secrecy 
statutes similar to Tennessee's law while ruling the death penalty was 
constitutional.

(source: USA Today)








OKLAHOMA:

Botched Oklahoma lethal injection execution of Clayton Lockett described as 'a 
bloody mess'



A grisly execution of a US criminal in Oklahoma that did not go according to 
plan has been detailed for the 1st time since the ineffective lethal injection 
was administered 8 months ago.

A medic had repeatedly attempted to insert an intravenous line in the groin of 
prisoner Clayton Lockett but pierced an artery by accident and was sprayed with 
blood, according to a document filed in Federal District Court on Friday, as 
reported by The New York Times.

Lockett, a murderer and rapist who was 38-years-old when he was killed by the 
state, was also said to have been writhing around, clenching his teeth, 
groaning in agony and had even tried to lift his head off the pillow just 
minutes after he was pronounced unconscious by doctors, before he died of a 
heart attack 43 minutes later.

"It was a bloody mess," said Anita Trammell, the warden of the Oklahoma state 
prison where the execution took place on 29 April at 6.23 pm, as recorded in an 
interview with state investigators.

After the doctor had realised that there was no drugs left for the execution 
and that the needle was too short to reach the veins, Lockett's heart had 
stopped and no efforts were made to resuscitate him, The New York Times said.

Lockett had a long history of crime since he pleaded guilty of burglary at 19 
for which he received 7 years. In 1999, he kidnapped, beat and shot 19-year-old 
Stephanie Neiman before watching his accomplices bury her while she was still 
alive.

In 2000, he was convicted of murder, rape, forcible sodomy, kidnapping, assault 
and battery for which he was sentenced to death by lethal injection, which has 
the highest failure rate of all methods of execution at 7.1 %.

Robert Patton, Department of Corrections director, called for an external 
review of what went wrong in the execution of Clayton Lockett Robert Patton, 
Department of Corrections director, called for an external review of what went 
wrong in the execution of Lockett Several officials acknowledged, according to 
the court brief, that they had no contingency plans in case Lockett failed to 
die.

His execution was supposed to be followed two hours later by that of Charles F. 
Warner, who was convicted of raping and murdering an infant in 1997, but the 
state immediately suspended his execution and those of others to investigate 
what had went wrong.

Officials say they have improved training and procedures, and Warner is now 
scheduled to die on 15 January next year, followed by three other convicts on 
29 January, 19 February and 5 March. Officials have said they plan to use a 
3-drug combination similar to that used for Lockett with midazolam sedative, 
but at ten times the dose used, followed by a paralysing agent and 1 that stops 
the heart beating.

The lawyers seeking to delay the planned executions have claimed that the use 
of midazolam amounts to unconstitutional experimentation on humans and they 
plan to call upon medical experts in the hope to prove that multiplying the 
sedative dosage would not necessarily work.

Midazolam was also used during the execution of murderer Joseph Wood in 
Arizona, in July, that lasted nearly two hours while the prisoner gasped for 
breath as the executioners repeatedly injected more of the drugs.

(source: The Independent)









ARIZONA:

Cut your losses, Bill Montgomery



Our View: Justice isn't always perfect. Sometimes, prosecutors need to accept 
good enough.

Bill Montgomery is tenacious. The Maricopa County attorney does not give up a 
fight easily.

This is a good quality in a prosecutor. But a zealous prosecutor also needs to 
recognize when continuing the fight serves neither justice nor the public. 2 
current cases demonstrate.

Debra Milke spent 23 years on death row for arranging the death of her 
4-year-old son. Last year, a federal appeals court tossed out her conviction on 
grounds of prosecutorial misconduct.

Montgomery vowed to take Milke back to trial but has lost every fight since 
then. Last week, a state appeals court tossed out the charges, saying the 
prosecution's failure in 1990 to provide potentially exculpatory information 
was a "severe stain on the Arizona justice system."

Montgomery says he'll appeal to the state Supreme Court. Justice must be done.

But if he wins, he'll go to trial without the confession that was key to 
conviction in 1990. This doesn't seem like the best use of taxpayer money or 
the limited resources of Montgomery's office.. Milke spent 1/2 her life in 
prison. Perhaps that is imperfect justice, but it is punishment for whatever 
part she played in her son's death.

Jodi Arias should serve as a a cautionary tale for Montgomery. She was 
convicted of killing her boyfriend, Travis Alexander, but the jury deadlocked 
on sentencing her to death. Rather than accepting that Arias would spend the 
rest of her life in prison, Montgomery chose to take another shot at the death 
penalty.

The new trial been almost as much of a spectacle as the first. The defense 
funcovered fresh evidence that raises questions about the original verdict. And 
taxpayers just keep forking over more money.

Justice would be better served with Arias spending her many remaining decades 
in prison, forgotten.

(source: Opinion, Editorial Board----Arizona Republic)

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

Legally Speaking: The Jodi Arias evidentiary hearing is over and very little 
should change



Is Jodi Arias going to be another Debra Milke?

Will she soon see the world as a free woman?

If you would have asked me that question 2 months ago I would have said no. Ask 
me a month ago and I would have said maybe. Ask me now and I say not a chance.

2 months ago the retrial of Arias was slowly trudging along when out of the 
blue the defense filed a motion alleging that thousands of porn files were 
deleted off of the victim's, Travis Alexander's, computer.

The defense alleged that not only were the files deleted but they were deleted 
by the State, deliberately.

This was a bombshell because if it was true, then it would be within Judge 
Sherry Stephens' power to take the death penalty off the table -- or even 
dismiss the entire case.

Prosecutor Juan Martinez came back swinging and responded that it was Arias' 
own defense team that deleted the files. This resulted in a long evidentiary 
hearing that lasted 4 days spread over several weeks outside the hearing of the 
jury.

Several witnesses testified about the condition and contents of Alexander's 
computer after his death. The defense's expert witness, Bryan Neumeister, 
claimed there was so much porn on the computer the State's experts had to be 
inept to not have discovered the files. In fact, Neumeister testified this 
issue wasn't the elephant in the room it was the aircraft carrier in the room.

For some background, in the 1st trial, the State's own computer expert 
testified there were no porn files on the computer. This went a long way to 
support Martinez's argument that Arias was a liar, and since her experts relied 
on her words they were essentially liars too.

Well, if there was porn on the computer then she wasn't lying. About that 
anyway.

After the last witness testified in the evidentiary hearing, it seemed clear to 
me there was, in fact, pornographic files on Alexander's computer. I didn't 
reach this conclusion because I am a genius, no, it was clear to me because the 
State's computer expert said there was.

Yes, this was a different computer expert than the one that said those files 
did not exist.

The defense was successful in proving Detective Esteban Flores may not have 
followed proper protocol when he "woke up" the computer at the crime scene and 
when he turned on that same computer during an evidence viewing with Arias' 
previous defense attorneys.

Successful in proving negligence -- yes, successful in proving intentional 
misconduct -- no.

Now what?

Judge Stephens took the motion "under advisement." This means she will issue 
her ruling at a later date.

In my opinion, in order to rule on the motion she needs to address and answer 
the following questions:

1) Were there pornographic files on the computer?

2) Were those files deleted?

3) If so, who deleted them?

4) Was it intentional or not?

5) And lastly, what sanction is appropriate?

To be clear, this hearing and motion was not about Arias' guilt or innocence.

She admitted, and the evidence clearly showed, that she brutally killed 
Alexander. This motion was about the most recent allegation of prosecutorial 
misconduct and the plethora of similar allegations made by the defense.

In his closing argument, defense attorney Kirk Nurmi reviewed all the previous 
allegations of prosecutorial misconduct to persuade the Judge Stephens to, at a 
minimum, take death off the table and at the most, dismiss the entire case.

Prosecutorial misconduct is at the forefront of the minds of trial watchers and 
the parties in this case in light of the Arizona Court of Appeals decision 
dismissing the case against Milke.

Although Nurmi made a valiant and good faith effort, and succeeded in some 
respects, I don't believe and I don't think Judge Stephens will find any action 
of Martinez or law enforcement that has risen to the level the appellate courts 
found existed in the Milke case.

As such, the retrial will continue.

(source: KTAR news)








NEVADA:

Rethink public safety priorities



It is a commonly held belief that the death penalty is less expensive than life 
without the possibility of parole, but that's just not true.

A new study by the Nevada auditor finds that death penalty cases cost far more 
than sentencing someone to life in prison with no chance of parole - that, in 
fact, the death penalty provides no additional benefit to society. It doesn't 
deter crime and doesn't make us safer.

The money wasted on death penalty cases could be used to solve more rapes and 
murders, put more police on the streets and improve our crime labs. Why waste 
additional tax dollars trying to execute prisoners who are already safely 
behind bars?

We need to rethink our public safety priorities and get much smarter on crime.

Richard Cornstuble, Las Vegas

(source: Letter to the Editor, Las vegas Sun)








USA:

Locked away for 17 months, accused Boston Marathon bomber set to emerge in 
court this week; Court records offer glimpse into Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's life in 
near-solitary confinement



He spends most of his days in "nearly total isolation," according to his 
attorneys, locked behind a heavy steel door in a tiny cell in the most 
restricted wing at Fort Devens medical prison 40 miles outside Boston.

His only visitors have been members of his legal team and his two older sisters 
- though the sisters have come to see him only a handful of times and always 
under the observation of an FBI agent. He has not been allowed to mingle with 
or talk to any other inmates - either verbally or through notes. His only other 
regular contact has been with prison personnel, who slide meals through a slot 
within a thick glass observation window in a corner of his cell door.

The closest Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has come to experiencing the world beyond his 
cell in more than 500 days has been through "very limited access to a small 
outdoor enclosure," according to court records. And that's only "on weekdays, 
weather permitting." But that will soon change.

Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, is 
scheduled to appear in a federal courtroom in Boston this week. His attorneys 
have informed prosecutors with the U.S. attorney's office in Boston that he'll 
attend a Dec. 18 status hearing in the bombing case - the last before his 
highly anticipated trial, which is set to begin Jan. 5.

The hearing will mark the first time Tsarnaev has been seen in public since 
July 2013, when he was formally charged with helping to plot and carry out 2 
bombings near the marathon's finish line. 3 people were killed and several 
hundred more injured in the attack, which Tsarnaev is accused of having 
committed with his older brother, Tamerlan, who was killed in a confrontation 
with police four days after the bombings. The brothers are also accused of 
shooting and killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer 
while on the run from police. Tsarnaev, who has pleaded not guilty in the case, 
faces the death penalty if convicted.

Tsarnaev's appearance will undoubtedly renew public interest in the bombings, 
which are still shrouded in mystery. Nearly two years after the attacks, the 
public has gained little insight into how and why the Tsarnaev brothers 
allegedly came to commit such a terrible crime - or whether others knew or were 
involved. An FBI agent involved in the investigation testified under oath 
during an October trial of a Tsarnaev associate that investigators still did 
not know where the two bombs had been built.

Another major unknown is exactly how Tsarnaev's attorneys plan to defend their 
client in the face of what appears to be overwhelming evidence linking him to 
the attacks. Prosecutors are expected to present previously unseen surveillance 
video of Tsarnaev and his brother near the marathon's finish line. Footage 
reportedly shows Tsarnaev dropping a backpack on the ground near Martin 
Richard, an 8-year-old Boston boy who was killed by the 2nd blast, moments 
before the bomb went off.

Tsarnaev's attorneys have resisted revealing too much of their strategy - even 
fighting to delay their list of witnesses until the last possible moment. (The 
latest deadline is Dec. 29 - a week before jury selection is scheduled to 
begin.) But court records have suggested that Dzhokhar's legal team plans to 
paint Tamerlan Tsarnaev as the mastermind of the attacks and cast their own 
client as someone from an intensely troubled family who was unduly influenced 
by his older brother.

Yet it's unclear if Tsarnaev is participating in or approves of that line of 
argument - or how much help his attorneys are receiving from him or his family 
for his defense. In August, Ailina Tsarnaeva, one of the suspect's older 
sisters, who is facing legal problems of her own, told a Boston reporter, "My 
brothers were framed. Everybody knows that."

The public may get a glimpse of how the 21-year-old suspect views his defense 
at his court appearance Thursday. While Tsarnaev is not required to attend the 
Dec. 18 hearing, prosecutors with the U.S. attorney's office in Boston, who are 
handling the case, specifically requested that he attend. They argued it would 
be his last opportunity to state whether he has any problems with his case or 
attorneys before the trial formally begins - and they say his concerns should 
be raised now, as opposed to on appeal.

One of the enduring mysteries in the case is Tsarnaev himself. Many of his 
friends and former teachers have struggled to reconcile the popular teenager 
they knew with someone who allegedly committed such a terrible crime. And 
little has been revealed about Tsarnaev in the 20 months since he was captured, 
hiding and wounded by gunfire, in the back of a boat in the Boston suburbs 4 
days after the bombings.

Shortly after his arrest, a federal judge imposed a gag order, restricting what 
could be released about the evidence in the case and about the suspect. But 
some details about Tsarnaev's life behind bars have emerged, mostly in the 
hundreds of pages of court filings exchanged between federal prosecutors and 
his attorneys in advance of the January trial.

In court 17 months ago, Tsarnaev, then just 19, appeared fidgety and spoke with 
a distinct foreign accent that some of his closest friends from high school, 
who attended the hearing, said he had never used before. His left arm was 
bandaged, and the left side of his face appeared swollen and slightly frozen - 
evidence of the injuries he'd apparently sustained when being taken into 
custody by police roughly three months earlier. Even from the back of the room, 
reporters could see a large scar on his throat. Subsequent court filings have 
detailed how badly injured Tsarnaev was. In a filing from last May, his 
attorneys wrote that he arrived at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical 
Center in "critical condition ... with gunshot wounds to his head, face, 
throat, jaw, left hand and both legs." Within minutes of arrival, Tsarnaev's 
"mental status suddenly declined," and doctors had to perform an emergency 
tracheotomy to keep him alive, according to the filing. One of the shots had 
fractured the base of Tsarnaev's skull, and his attorneys, citing hospital 
records, said another gunshot "likely caused traumatic brain injury ... Damage 
to the cranial nerves required his left eye be sutured shut; his jaw was wired 
closed and injures to his left ear left him unable to hear on that side."

Tsarnaev's defense team cited the injuries in an effort to suppress written 
statements, including an apparent confession, that he made to FBI agents before 
he was read his Miranda rights. (He was unable to physically speak because of 
the intubation.) But federal prosecutors had previously said in court records 
they don't plan to use the statements he made at the hospital during the trial 
- raising the question of whether his defense team is laying the groundwork to 
use his health or mental state as a way of potentially saving him from the 
death penalty.

It is unclear how much Tsarnaev has recovered from his injuries or whether he 
continues to be under medical care. Miriam Conrad, a federal public defender in 
Boston who is one of the attorneys representing him, declined to comment on the 
case when contacted by Yahoo News. Mary Long, a public information officer at 
Fort Devens, also declined to comment on Tsarnaev.

Long and other Bureau of Prisons officials say they are limited in what they 
can say about Tsarnaev because he is being held under "Special Administrative 
Measures," known as SAMs. These measures allow the attorney general to enact 
special restrictions on prisoners whom the government considers to be a 
significant risk, and in the aftermath of 9/11, they've mainly been applied to 
terrorism suspects.

Attorney General Eric Holder ordered the restrictions placed on Tsarnaev in 
late August 2013 - more than 4 months after his arrest - describing him as a 
danger to society. The memo, personally initialed by Holder, said Tsarnaev had 
"reaffirmed his commitment to jihad" during his initial interrogation by the 
FBI and "expressed hope that his actions would inspire others to engage in 
violent jihad." It also cited his "widespread notoriety," pointing to the fact 
he'd received nearly 1,000 pieces of unsolicited mail.

Tsarnaev's attorneys, in an October 2013 filing pushing to lift the 
restrictions, pointed out that most of the letters were from individuals who 
had written him urging him to convert to Christianity and that the bombing 
suspect had not replied to any of the correspondence. And they questioned why 
the government had waited months to implement the restrictions, even though 
Tsarnaev had been a model prisoner.

Under the rules, Tsarnaev is allowed to write 1 letter - 3 pages, double sided 
- and to make one phone call per calendar week to his immediate family. His 
letters are read, and the calls are recorded by federal officials. Under the 
rules, his family is not allowed to speak about what he tells them. The calls 
also cannot be recorded by his family.

Tsarnaev is barred from speaking to the media, "in person; by telephone; by 
furnishing a recorded message; through the mail; his attorney, or a 3rd party; 
or otherwise," according to Holder's memo. He is allowed to watch television 
and listen to the radio - but his cell at Fort Devens does not offer either. If 
he reads newspapers or magazines, they are first stripped of letters to the 
editor, ads or any other elements that could be used to pass coded messages. He 
has access to books - but the prison is not allowed to say what he reads.

Court records show that Justice Department officials have seemed particularly 
concerned with Tsarnaev's communications with his family. In ordering the 
restrictions, Holder pointed to a May 2013 phone call Tsarnaev made to his 
mother in Dagestan, Russia, which she recorded and played for reporters. In the 
call, Tsarnaev, who was speaking in Russian, told his mother that he was "not 
in pain" and that supporters had deposited $1,000 into his prison commissary 
account. The call, Holder wrote, was "an apparent effort to engender sympathy" 
for the bombing suspect.

The government has refused to allow Tsarnaev to see his sisters without an FBI 
agent in the room - even when one of the suspect's attorneys is present and it 
is for his legal defense. In recent months, Tsarnaev's attorneys have pushed 
for the restrictions to be loosened, arguing it is hampering their ability to 
mount a defense with the help of his family. But the prosecutors have refused 
to let up.

In February, prosecutors said an FBI agent overheard Tsarnaev make a "statement 
to his detriment" during one visit with his sister - though they did not 
specify exactly what was said. The government mentioned the incident in a court 
filing arguing against relaxing restrictions on Tsarnaev's ability to meet with 
his family privately, suggesting it was a security risk. His defense team 
pushed back on the allegation, saying the government had distorted the remark 
and that the SAMs prevented them from specifically refuting what their client 
had said.

Later in the spring, the government again refused to loosen the restrictions, 
according to Tsarnaev's attorneys, because prosecutors said his mother, during 
a phone call with her son that was monitored by the FBI, made reference to 
"unspecified friends of his brother Tamerlan" being present during the call. 
His attorneys called the complaints "unfounded, generic speculation" and 
"paper-thin concerns about security" intended to frighten the public about 
their client.

But the restrictions have remained in place, leaving little more than snippets 
of court records to indicate how Tsarnaev has spent the last 17 months behind 
prison walls. This week in a Boston courtroom, the public will be able to judge 
for itself.

(source: (Yahoo News)