[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ARIZ., WASH., US MIL., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 16


ARIZONA:

Sex, Lies And Murder: Key Dates In The Jodi Arias Case


The story of Jodi Arias, the bespectacled murderess awaiting sentencing in the 
brutal slaying of her ex-boyfriend, has routinely captured headlines around the 
world.

For 5 months in 2013, the Arias jury - and trial watchers from around the world 
- were captivated and sickened by the brutality of Arias' crimes and the 
perverse sexcapades, the most lurid details of which came directly from the 
defendant's mouth during 18 days on the witness stand.

Arias sought to portray herself as a physically and emotionally battered woman, 
forced to succumb to her boyfriend Travis Alexander's perverted desires. The 
prosecution argued that she was an eager partner, who turned into an obsessive 
stalker once rejected.

Arias' over-the-top jealousy came to a boil on June 4, 2008. Alexander was 
found dead in his bathroom shower, with more than 2 dozen stab wounds over his 
naked body. His throat had been cut from ear to ear and he was shot once in the 
head.

At first, Arias told police she simply wasn't there. She even reached out to 
her ex-boyfriend's family to mourn with them. Then, when damning photographs 
tied her to the crime scene, she maintained that masked intruders stormed 
Alexander's home, and that she kept silent in fear of reprisals.

She would later tell jurors that she'd been so abused by Alexander, she 
couldn't recall specific details of the incident. An expert called to the 
witness stand by her lawyers attributed this to post traumatic stress disorder.

Arias' changing story no doubt played a part in the jury finding her guilty of 
1st-degree murder. Her bizarre accounts of her personal life - and her 
obsessive behavior - only made it harder for the jury to sympathize with her.

"It is like a field of lies has sprouted around her as she sat on that witness 
stand ... every time she spat something out, another lie, another weed would 
grow," Maricopa County prosecutor Juan Martinez told jurors.

But when the trial reached the penalty phase, the same panel of jurors were 
deadlocked over whether to spare her life or give her the death penalty.

Next week, the penalty phase retrial is set to play out in a Phoenix courtroom 
as Martinez once again attempts to convince a new jury to send Arias to death 
row.

The retrial, which The Huffington Post will be live blogging, will take a new 
panel of jurors through the same salacious evidence. The defendant's guilt is 
no longer in question, but her sentence remains in limbo.

(source: David Lohr, Huffington Post)






WASHINGTON:

Former Justice Robert Utter dies at 84; he took a principled stand against 
death penalty


Former state Supreme Court justice Robert Utter, who had resigned in protest of 
the court's handling of death penalty cases in 1995, died late Wednesday at the 
age of 84.

The Administrative Office of the Courts announced the death, and a public 
service is planned. Utter served on the court for 23 years and in retirement 
had worked with his wife Betty in Rwanda on a University of Washington project 
that dealt with how courts approached justice in the aftermath of genocide that 
took 800,000 lives in a 100-day fury of ethnic murders by Hutus and Tutsis in 
that African state in 1994.

"One of the things about my dad is he was a humanitarian through and through - 
including with his family," son John Utter said Thursday. "He certainly never 
gave up on us. I think he showed that in his life - he never gave up on people. 
He created a lot of deep friendships that way and inspired a lot of people."

In an interview published by The Olympian and News Tribune in February, Utter 
talked about his feelings of profound relief that Gov. Jay Inslee this year had 
issued a moratorium on executions through the remainder of his term, which runs 
to January 2017. Utter had resigned in a protest of what he thought was a 
consistent failure of the court in that era to adequately consider 
proportionality in weighing capital sentences.

At the time of the interview, Utter was on hospice, living in the Budd Inlet 
home he shared with his wife. His cancer had metastasized and he also had 
Parkinson's disease. He was asked what he hoped history would remember him for, 
and in remarks not published at the time, he said:

"I think it is the consistent effort to provide the opportunity for every 
individual to utilize their capacity as a human being. And the effort that 
society places into the life of every person - the ability to utilize those 
gifts that we all have and to share them with others."

Utter indicated his remarks were in part a reference to work he???d done to 
launch a Big Brothers and Sisters organization, but which also extended to his 
Rwanda work where he saw people learning to live side by side with people who 
had killed their relatives.

"The thing I think of - I'm looking for a thread - is my belief that the 
actions of ordinary people to show love and forgiveness and charity can truly 
affect people's lives," Utter said.

Utter had co-founded the Seattle chapter of Big Brothers in 1958, the state's 
1st, according to an in-depth piece about Utter by former newspaper editor John 
Hughes for the state's Legacy Project. The project collects oral histories of 
leading state political and historical figures. Hughes wrote that Utter was "a 
tireless mentor" and also "helped launched a Thurston-Mason chapter in 1982 and 
played a key role in the YMCA's Youth & Government program, which in 1997 named 
its top award in his honor."

Utter also had written an opinion in 1978 that established a battered woman's 
right to self-defense. And he led a King County task force in 1997 that led to 
therapeutic courts that focused on mental health.

In his profile, Hughes quotes former justice Richard Sanders summing up Utter's 
legacy:

"Utter always seemed to be the judge's judge," Sanders says. "Ultimately, he 
resigned because of his abhorrence of the death penalty. That's the kind of 
justice we need - someone who really cares about this stuff. Now, in 
retirement, he's been all over the world promoting a vigorous independent 
judiciary. It's a privilege to sit in the same chair where he once sat."

Utter is survived by his wife, Betty; 3 adult children including John, Kirk and 
Kimberly; and 4 grandchildren.

(source: The News Tribune)






US MILITARY:

Airman to Face Death Penalty in Killing of Woman, Unborn Child


A senior airman at Robins Air Force Base accused of killing his fiancee and 
their unborn child for $1 million in insurance money is now facing the death 
penalty.

Charges against Charles "Charlie" Amos Wilson III were sent to a general 
court-martial as a capital referral, according to a base news release Tuesday.

"That means that, if the accused is convicted of premeditated murder, a death 
sentence would be a potential punishment that the members would consider," the 
release stated.

Lt. Gen. Bruce Litchfield, the general court martial convening authority, made 
the referral Thursday.

Wilson was arrested Aug. 31, 2013, on charges of murder and feticide after an 
investigation by the GBI and Terrell County Sheriff's Office into the shooting 
death of 30-year-old Tameda Ferguson. The body of Ferguson, who was 8 1/2 
months pregnant, was found in her Dawson home on the early morning of Aug. 29, 
2013.

The case was turned over to the U.S. Air Force at its request.

At the time of a May 6 military Article 32 hearing, Wilson was facing a 
multitude of military charges, including premeditated murder, death of an 
unborn child and obstruction of justice.

Wilson's attorney at the Article 32 hearing said Wilson is expected to plead 
not guilty. A new military attorney is expected to be appointed now that it is 
a capital case.

Arraignment is scheduled for Oct. 22 at the Naval Consolidated Brig in 
Charleston, South Carolina. A trial date has not been set, but Col. Vance H. 
Spath, the chief trial judge of the Air Force, has been assigned to the case as 
the military judge.

Wilson is a senior airman in the 461st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron.

(source: Military.com)






USA:

Studies confirm: death penalties deter many murders at far less cost


On Sept. 17, Texas executed Lisa Coleman for murdering a 9-year-old child. 
Death penalty opponents argue that, even in the most heinous cases, executions 
are just too costly, and that society would do better to substitute 
life-without-parole sentences for lethal injections.

Before examining the death penalty's costs and benefits, though, let's consider 
why Coleman landed on death row.

Devontae Williams was the son of Coleman's girlfriend. When found by 
paramedics, his emaciated corpse weighed only 36 pounds - approximately half 
the normal weight of a child his age. His body had stopped growing long before 
he starved to death.

Further examination revealed that Devontae had suffered more than 250 distinct 
injuries, including cigarette burns and scars from the ligatures that had bound 
him.

Prosecutor Dixie Bersano noted, "There was not an inch of his body that had not 
been bruised or scarred or injured." The medical examiner ruled his death was 
due to malnutrition, with pneumonia as a contributing factor.

Some crimes are so inherently evil they demand strict penalties - up to and 
including death. Most Americans recognize this principle as just.

Gallup polls show continuing broad public support for the death penalty. While 
foes of capital punishment have failed to change public opinion, they have 
succeeded in increasing the time it takes to carry out a death sentence.

The U.S. Department of Justice reports that the average length of time from 
sentencing to actual execution increased from 74 months in 1984 to 190 months - 
nearly 16 years - in 2012.

Such excessive delays fuel increased costs, which death penalty opponents then 
publicly lament without any apparent sense of irony.

It's hard to estimate death penalty costs. They vary according to state 
requirements and procedures.

That said, an Urban Institute study of Maryland cases resulting in a death 
sentence estimated that each cost taxpayers an average of $3 million in 
lifetime costs - $1.9 million more than no-death-notice cases.

That's a big cost differential. But does the punishment have any benefits?

In 2008, Drexel University economist Bijou Yang and psychologist David Lester 
of Richard Stockton College of New Jersey conducted a comprehensive review of 
capital punishment research.

They concluded that, since 1975, the majority of studies tracking effects over 
many years and across states or counties found a deterrent effect.

One particularly good study, based on data from all 50 states from 1978 to 1997 
by Federal Communications Commission economist Paul Zimmerman, demonstrated 
that each state execution deters an average of 14 murders annually.

Placing a monetary value on a life is a sensitive matter, but consider this. 
Syracuse University Professor Thomas J. Kniesner and his colleagues estimate 
that, to reduce workplace fatalities, the public is willing to pay from $4 
million to $10 million in regulatory costs for each life spared.

Based solely on monetary terms and using Professor Kniesner's lower-bound 
estimate of $4 million, the lifetime cost of a capital-eligible case that 
results in a death sentence would need to exceed $56 million for it to outweigh 
the public's willingness to avoid being murdered.

Yes, the death penalty costs money, just like any other criminal justice 
sanction. But these are expenses that protect innocents, hold society's most 
vicious criminals accountable, and are legitimate functions of federal and 
state governments.

Throughout the long, torturous murder of Devontae Williams, Lisa Coleman had 
multiple opportunities to show mercy on her victim. She had none.

Moral indignation is an appropriate response to inherently wrongful conduct, 
such as that carried out by Coleman. But in determining the proportionality of 
punishment, it is right for lawmakers to place special emphasis on the moral 
gravity of offenses.

The cost of death penalty cases is certainly not trivial. But the deterrent 
effect yields a most valuable benefit. The death penalty saves lives.

(source: David B. Muhlhausen is a research fellow in empirical policy analysis 
at The Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity at the Heritage 
Foundation, a conservative think-tank on Capitol Hill----GazetteXtra)

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

"Pulling Back the Curtain" on Lethal Injection


PLOS Medicine Associate Editor, Thomas McBride, reflects on the 2007 research 
article that investigated whether lethal injection consistently induces a 
painless death.


The December 7, 1982 execution of Charles Brooks Jr. in Texas marked the 1st 
use of lethal injection, conceived as a painless and more "humane" alternative 
to the electric chair. With the patient laying on a gurney, heart monitored by 
an ECG and an IV drip in arm, the new procedure certainly looked like a 
controlled death delivered by medical science. Over the next 3 decades lethal 
injection would become the most common form of execution in the United States 
and worldwide. But when reports of complications arose, the public and 
lawmakers began to question whether inmates were being forced to needlessly 
suffer. By 2006, 11 states had suspended executions while they considered 
changing the protocol. In a 2007 PLOS Medicine research article, Leonidas 
Koniaris and colleagues asked whether lethal injection truly delivers a 
consistently painless execution.

The article was an interesting choice for a medical journal. Despite 
appearances, lethal injection is anything but a controlled medical environment. 
Ending the life of a physically healthy person against his or her will is 
antithetical to medicine, which is why the technician who attaches the IV is 
not a doctor or nurse. The protocol was designed not based on experimental 
evidence, but the personal experience of Oklahoma state medical examiner Jay 
Chapman. Academic editor Clifford Woolf recalls the decision to publish was a 
"tough call, since it could be argued the paper better belonged in journal 
specializing in ethical or legal issues." In an Editorial that ran in the same 
issue, the PLOS Medicine Editors expressed hopes that the data presented in the 
research article would convince US lawmakers that execution is inhumane.

The topic was also a departure from the norm for Koniaris and his colleagues, 
primarily cancer researchers. Lead author Teresa Zimmers recalls it was 
difficult to fit this research around their "day jobs" but that despite the 
sacrifices, they were "excited to add knowledge about the process and to help 
shape the debate."

Adding to the authors' difficulty, while lethal injection has been practiced in 
37 different states, and a number of states collect data on their executions, 
only a few states release this information. The authors worked with what they 
could get their hands on. The states who did allow the researchers access to 
data all used versions of the three drug protocol originally devised by 
Chapman: 1) The fast acting anesthetic sodium thiopental, expected to render 
the inmate unconscious and induce death "within 1-2 minutes" by depressing 
respiration. 2) The paralytic pancuronium bromide, which should also stop 
respiration. 3) Potassium chloride, which should produce cardiac arrest. It was 
thought that any of the three drugs would be lethal on their own; the only 
reason to use them in combination was redundancy.

Data from executions told a different story. Koniaris and colleagues found 
executions that questioned the effectiveness of each of the drugs. Using data 
on body weight from the North Carolina Department of Corrections and the known 
pharmacokinetics of sodium thiopental, close to the range used for surgical 
anesthesia, and not enough to induce death on their own. [PS1] Data on the time 
course of executions from California supported this interpretation, as some 
inmates continued to breathe up to 9 minutes after thiopental was injected. In 
other cases, breathing continued after pancuronium bromide administration, and 
the heart continued to beat after potassium chloride was given.

If neither the thiopental nor the potassium chloride doses can reliably produce 
death, respiratory cessation from pancuronium bromide was likely the cause of 
death in some inmates. This was almost certainly true in cases where the IV 
line was misplaced, pancuronium bromide being the only drug of the 3 that is 
effective when delivered intramuscularly or subcutaneously. Koniaris and his 
colleagues presented the possibility that some inmates were awake but paralyzed 
through some of the execution procedure, conscious as they suffocated to death. 
The authors' call for more states to release the execution data they had 
collected echoes PLOS' dedication to open access[PS2].

Though it was not a typical article for PLOS Medicine, its timeliness and the 
political nature of the topic likely drove the attention (over 21,000 views in 
its 1st year and 50,000 views through October 2014). Not everyone agreed with 
Koniaris and colleagues. There are some people who are not sympathetic to the 
suffering of those convicted of murders, and comments made on the article make 
it clear that their support of the death penalty is unwavering. In 2008 the US 
Supreme Court upheld Kentucky's method of lethal injection against a challenge 
that it violated the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. 
However, in Justice Ginsburg's dissenting opinion, she pointed out the 
potential the inmate would not be unconscious during the injection of the 2nd 
and 3rd drugs "poses an untoward, readily avoidable risk of inflicting severe 
and unnecessary pain." An unintended consequence of the article was a call for 
research into better methodology; in a 2008 PLOS Medicine Essay, Koniaris and 
Zimmers argued such research crosses a line into unethical human 
experimentation.

And while lethal injections were approved to continue, the companies that 
formulate the sodium thiopental refused to supply it for use in lethal 
injection based on moral opposition. The supply shortage has delayed executions 
and some states are now adopting different drug protocols. Reflecting on this 
work and its impact, Dr. Zimmers expresses pride: "I feel we helped pull back 
the curtain on the shoddy medical charade that masqueraded as a humane death." 
PLOS Medicine agrees and is proud to have played our part to provide this 
information to the public.

(source: PLOS blog)

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

Benghazi Suspects Issued New Indictments Including Death Penalty


New indictments including a possible death penalty against Ahmed Abu Khatalla, 
a Libyan militant accused of involvement in the September 2012 attacks on the 
United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, have been issued by a 
federal grand jury, according to The Associated Press.

The indictment comes after earlier accusations brought against Khatalla in 
July, and adds 17 charges, including allegations he led an extremist militia 
group and conspired with others to attack the facilities and kill U.S. 
citizens, the AP reported.

The new U.S. indictment also says Khatalla had been the commander of an 
militant Islamist militia called Ubaydah bin Jarrah, according to the AP.

Khatalla, who has been already imprisoned, was captured in Libya in June by a 
U.S. military and FBI team and transported to the United States aboard a U.S. 
Navy ship to face charges in Washington federal court, CBS reported.

Khatalla's attorney, public defender Michelle Peterson, cautioned against a 
"rush to judgment," adding that "It's certainly not the first time the 
government has been wrong about Benghazi," CBS reported.

"It is important to remember that an indictment is merely a set of allegations 
or charges, it is not evidence," Peterson said, the AP reported. "We will 
vigorously defend Mr. Abu (Khattala)? in court where the government will be 
forced to prove his guilt, based upon actual evidence."

4 Americans were killed in the attack, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, 
Christopher Stevens, according to the AP. Evidence later emerged that U.S. 
agencies had been warning for months about weak security and possible attacks 
against U.S. facilities in Libya.

In media interviews before his capture by U.S. forces, Khatalla denied 
involvement in the attacks against a compound used by the State Department as a 
consular office and a nearby compound used by the CIA as its Benghazi base, CBS 
reported.

(source: Headlines & Global News)