[Deathpenalty] death penalety news----TEXAS, CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 9



TEXAS----impending execution//volunteer

Death Watch: Questions of Competence----Hatten ends appeals; advocates push to 
amend state DNA testing law


18 years of appeals are ended. In April, nearly 2 decades after being sentenced 
to death by the state of Texas, now-40-year-old Larry Hatten told his attorneys 
and a Corpus Christi court that he didn't want to waste any more time with what 
he considered inevitable.

Hatten, a onetime drug dealer around the bayside city, was arrested Sept. 19, 
1995, for the killing of Isaac Jackson. Angry over a rival dealer lighting his 
stepbrother's BMW and Jaguar on fire, Hatten broke into the home of his friend 
Isaac Robinson - whom he believed had betrayed him - kicked open a bedroom 
door, and proceeded to fire 6 rounds from a .357 handgun into the bed, 
intending to shoot Robinson.

However, it was Robinson's girlfriend Tabatha Thompson and their 5-year-old son 
Isaac Jackson who were in the bed. Thompson was struck 4 times but survived the 
shooting. Jackson, hit by a single bullet, didn't. Hatten left the apartment 
and returned to the scene of the burning vehicles, where police, already on the 
lookout for his car, recognized and arrested him.

Hatten was charged with capital murder on Sept. 15, 1995, and sentenced to 
death in February 1996. Since, he's filed a number of appeals - claiming unfair 
bias and insufficient counsel - but has been unsuccessful, save for a brief 
withdrawal of his name from the execution calendar last October after Houston 
attorney Kenneth McGuire, who represents Hatten, argued that his client (then 
set to die on Oct. 16) had suffered from mental illness for upwards of a decade 
and was not competent to be executed.

McGuire's efforts were derailed in April when Hatten filed a motion to replace 
him and fellow attorney Joseph Barroso, alleging negligence and mental abuse 
from their neglect of duty. He eventually withdrew the motion, but only after 
testifying before Corpus Christi Judge Missy Medary that he was indeed mentally 
stable enough to make such a decision. Medary ordered 1 more evaluation to take 
place April 13. After being declared mentally competent, Hatten was given a 
final execution date: Wednesday, Oct. 15. He'll be the 10th inmate executed 
this year, and 518th since the reinstatement of Texas' death penalty in 1976.

DNA Test Before Testing

The state's fight over a disputed DNA testing law continues. Last week, state 
Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, together with exonerated convict Michael Morton 
and members of the New York-based Innocence Project, met outside the Capitol 
building to lobby for a less restrictive interpretation of the law.

In 2011, the Legislature enacted a law intended to provide a broader right to 
DNA testing on crime scene evidence. However, the Court of Criminal Appeals has 
most recently interpreted Chapter 64 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure to 
require a defendant be able to prove that microscopic skin cells exist on a 
piece of courtroom evidence before any testing can be done. Using this 
interpretation, the CCA has previously denied Larry Swearingen the opportunity 
to test for DNA on the weapon used to kill Montgomery County Community College 
student Melissa Trotter.

The current stipulation raises more questions than it answers - such as: How 
can the naked eye prove a microscopic entity's existence? Speaking outside the 
Capitol last Wednesday, Ellis and advocates urged lawmakers to once again amend 
the law, citing the CCA's narrow interpretation. Morton, exonerated in part 
because of DNA testing after wrongly serving 20 years in prison for the murder 
of his wife, noted how, in his case, testing eventually helped solve 2 murders: 
DNA found on a bloody bandana near the house where his wife was killed was 
linked to Mark Alan Norwood, who was also later found guilty for the murder of 
Debra Baker.

"The 1 truth I have learned in my 2 decades' work with the Innocence Project is 
that you simply can't predict what DNA testing is going to reveal," offered 
co-director Barry Scheck. "In Michael's case, testing of a bloody bandana found 
near his home led police to real perpetrator Mark Alan Norwood. In other cases 
it has confirmed guilt. But when an investigative tool can shed light on a 
criminal prosecution, those seeking to prove their innocence should have broad 
access to it."

(source: Austin Chronicle)






CALIFORNIA:

Convicted murderer sentenced to death for 1984 killings


A man convicted of killing 2 women in Los Angeles in 1984 was sentenced to 
death after a jury recommended his execution in May.

Kevin Haley, 50, sat before a judge Wednesday morning to be sentenced for the 
murders he committed 30 years ago.

Judge Kathleen Kennedy agreed with the jury's recommendation, saying the 
defendant's crimes "are among the worst this court has ever seen."

"You don't put your hands around a woman's neck and squeeze the life out of her 
accidentally," Kennedy said.

Haley was initially sentenced to death in 1988 for 1 of the murders. But in 
2004, the California Supreme Court reversed the special circumstance 
allegations, resulting in his retrial.

This time around, the jury ultimately ruled the special circumstances were 
true, saying that Haley murdered his first victim, 55-year-old Dolores Clement, 
during the commission of rape, sodomy, robbery and burglary.

He was also convicted of killing 56-year-old Laverne Stolzy under similar 
circumstances. Her daughter, Beth, was 25 years old when her mother was 
brutally murdered.

"I've battled deep depression, I've been under medical care, I've been 
diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder, and I've had years of 
nightmares," Stolzy said in court.

Her mother was getting ready for bed, when she was attacked inside her 
apartment and beat with a 2-by-4.

"Please figure out how to carry out this sentence. Don't risk him ever getting 
released or escaping. Give the taxpayers some relief and give Laverne Stolzy 
justice," she said.

Acting as his own attorney, Haley admitted he wanted a death sentence. He then 
spoke before the court and said the justice system is broken, claiming he never 
sexually assaulted his victims.

The judge responded by telling Haley that he's not the victim.

Capital punishment was declared unconstitutional by a California judge nearly 3 
months ago.

No executions have been carried out in the state since a moratorium was placed 
on the death penalty in 2006.

The district attorney's office said Haley will be sent to San Quentin, where he 
will sit and wait on death row.

(source: KABC news)






USA:

Criticizing the tenure of AG Eric Holder based on the death penalty as a human 
rights issue


This extended New Republic commentary authored by Mugambi Jouet, somewhat 
inaccurately titled "What Eric Holder - and Most Americans - Don't Understand 
About the Death Penalty," takes shots at Holder's specific record on the death 
penalty:

Attorney General Eric Holder's recent resignation announcement prompted a 
flurry of assessments on his 6 years of service under President Obama. He let 
Wall Street off too easy. He was a hero to the poor. He compromised civil 
liberties in the name of national security - and defended civil rights better 
than any attorney general before him. But the debate over Holder's record has 
overlooked one of the most important aspects of his legacy. Holder has been 
profoundly at odds with the rest of the Western world on one of the most 
significant human rights issues of our time: the death penalty.

All Western democracies except America have abolished capital punishment and 
consider it an inherent human rights violation. America further stands out as 
one of the countries that execute the most people. 39 prisoners were executed 
by the United States in 2013. While that figure marked a continuing decline in 
the annual number of U.S. executions, it still placed America 5th worldwide, 
right behind several authoritarian regimes: China, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi 
Arabia.

No federal prisoner has been executed since 2003, yet Holder's decisions could 
ultimately lead this de facto moratorium to end, as he authorized federal 
prosecutors to pursue capital punishment in several dozen cases. "Even though I 
am personally opposed to the death penalty, as Attorney General I have to 
enforce federal law," Holder has argued. Prosecutors actually have the 
discretion not to pursue the death penalty at all - at the risk of losing 
popularity - since enforcing the law does not require pursuing capital 
punishment as opposed to incarceration....

Holder notably approved the decision to seek the death penalty in the federal 
trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is accused of perpetrating the Boston Marathon 
bombings of 2013 - and whom a majority of Americans want to be executed. 
Nevertheless, the state of Massachusetts has abolished the death penalty and 
only 33 % of Boston residents support executing Tsarnaev as opposed to 
sentencing him to life in prison without parole. However, Holder's decisions 
supporting capital punishment have hardly been limited to terrorism cases. For 
example, he authorized the recent decision to seek the death penalty for Jessie 
Con-Ui, a Pennsylvania prisoner accused of murdering a federal correctional 
officer....

The death penalty is rarely framed as a human rights issue in America, unlike 
in other Western democracies. That's partly because the principle of human 
rights plays a very limited role overall in the legal and political debate in 
the U.S., where "human rights" commonly evoke foreign problems like abuses in 
Third World dictatorships - not problems at home.

The situation is different on the other side of the Atlantic, where the 
European Court of Human Rights tackles a broad range of problems facing 
European states, from freedom of speech to labor rights, discrimination, and 
criminal justice reform. National human rights commissions also exist in 
multiple countries, including Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, and New 
Zealand. These bodies focus mostly or exclusively on monitoring domestic 
compliance with human rights standards. On the other hand, the Tom Lantos Human 
Rights Commission, an arm of the U.S. Congress, focuses on the human rights 
records of foreign countries.

The relative absence of human rights as a principle in modern America is 
remarkable given how U.S. leaders actively promoted the concept in its infancy. 
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt invoked "human rights" in his "4 Freedoms 
Speech" of 1941. Eleanor Roosevelt was among the architects of the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. As the human rights movement progressed in 
later decades, Martin Luther King said in 1968 that "we have moved from the era 
of civil rights to the era of human rights."

Even though Holder regards King as one of his models - and despite his 
proposals to make the U.S. penal system less punitive and discriminatory - the 
nation's 1st black attorney general hardly put human rights at the center of 
his agenda.

The death penalty is far from the only human right issue where America stands 
apart from other Western democracies. America effectively has the world's top 
incarceration rate, with 5 % of the world's population but 25 % of its 
prisoners. America is likewise virtually alone worldwide in authorizing life 
imprisonment for juveniles. Its reliance on extremely lengthy periods of 
solitary confinement has been denounced by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on 
Torture. The extreme punishments regularly meted to U.S. prisoners are 
generally considered flagrant human rights violations in other Western 
countries. Nevertheless, Holder argued that America has "the greatest justice 
system the world has ever known."

By the same token, no other modern Western democracy has gone as far as America 
in disregarding international human rights standards as part of anti-terrorism 
measures. This trend has been epitomized by indefinite detention at Guantanamo 
and the torture of alleged terrorists under the Bush administration. These 
practices have sharply divided U.S. public opinion but only a segment of 
Americans have depicted them as "human rights" abuses....

[T]he limited weight of human rights in the U.S. legal and political debate is 
not without consequences. Human rights are a far stronger basis to oppose 
practices like the death penalty or torture than the administrative arguments 
frequently invoked in America. The human rights argument against such practices 
is largely based on the premise that they violate human dignity....

Holder's narrow focus on problems with the administration of capital punishment 
suggests that he is among the many U.S. public officials and reformers who 
believe they have no duty to assess the "moral" issues regarding the death 
penalty. Whether this stance is justified or not, it seems quite exceptionally 
American in the modern Western world. Most contemporary European, Canadian, 
Australian, and New Zealander jurists probably would disagree with the notion 
that it is not their duty to assess whether executions violate human dignity.

Martin Luther King, who considered the death penalty an affront to human 
dignity, argued that "a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a 
molder of consensus." Perhaps Eric Holder - and his boss, Barack Obama - would 
have been willing to argue that the death penalty is dehumanizing if they did 
not fear losing popularity.

(source: Sentencing Law and Policy)