[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, DEL., ARK., MO., USA

[Rick Halperin]

April 7


TEXAS:

Court: Man on death row for killing Corpus Christi officer can die



A federal appeals court has cleared the way for a Corpus Christi man who killed 
a police officer to get his wish to be executed.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 27-year-old Daniel Lee Lopez is 
competent to waive any future appeals and move forward with his execution for 
the March 2009 death of Lt. Stuart Alexander during a chase.

The court's decision late Monday affirms a lower finding and allows no 
additional appeal unless Lopez asks for it.

At his 2010 trial, Lopez asked for the death penalty and said he never meant to 
kill Alexander.

Alexander was struck as he tried to deploy spike strips to stop Lopez fleeing 
in a speeding SUV.

(source: Corpus Christi Caller-Times)








DELAWARE:

Don't let death penalty repeal bill die in committee



Last week, the state Senate passed a bill that would repeal the death penalty 
in Delaware. The bill now goes to the House, where, last session, a similar 
bill never made it out of committee.

In recent months I've mentioned 2 books, John Grisham's "The Innocent Man" and 
Bryan Stevenson's "Just Mercy," that described miscarriages of justice.

Stevenson's book in particular, because it deals with multiple examples, makes 
a powerful case against the death penalty.

A recent letter writer disdained what he called my "emotional appeal" against 
the death penalty. He said he "prefers reasoning." He admitted he didn't read 
either volume, but said I drew "the wrong conclusions from the wrong books."

That's one form of reasoning. Some people, however, lack the discernment 
necessary to judge books without having read them. For these people, I 
wholeheartedly recommend both books.

My column also mentioned race as a factor in the application of the death 
penalty. The letter writer, understandably, assumed I was talking about the 
race of the defendant. But I was actually talking about the race of the victim.

A review of death penalty cases in Harris County, Texas, published in the 
Houston Law Review, said "death sentences were imposed on behalf of white 
victims at 2.5 times the rate one would expect if the system were blind to 
race, and death sentences were imposed on behalf of white female victims at 5 
times the rate one would expect if the system were blind to race and gender."

These are facts. If you can dispute the facts, fine. If you can't, you have to 
admit the death penalty is applied capriciously. The state, in exercising its 
vast power, should never act capriciously.

But that's Texas, you say. We do a better job in Delaware. As it happens, 
Cornell Law School published, in 2012, "The Delaware Death Penalty: An 
Empirical Study."

Here are some statistics for Delaware. From 1977 through 2011, the study found, 
a white defendant was equally likely to receive a death sentence whether the 
victim was black or white. Race doesn???t seem to be a factor.

The numbers for black defendants, however, tell a different story.

According to the study, "Black defendants who kill white victims are 7 times as 
likely to receive the death penalty as are black defendants who kill black 
victims."

"Moreover," it continues, "black defendants who kill white victims are more 
than three times as likely to be sentenced to death as are white defendants who 
kill white people."

Surprisingly, in some ways, Delaware has a worse record handing out death 
sentences than other states.

"Even when compared to southern states," the study says, "the Delaware rate of 
death sentencing for black defendants with white victims is extremely high; it 
is 75 % higher than the closest contenders, Georgia and Nevada, more than twice 
as high as that of South Carolina or Virginia, and more than 3 times as high as 
that of its near neighbors, Maryland and Pennsylvania."

In all of those states, according to the study, the death-sentencing rate for 
black defendants killing white victims is more than twice that of white 
defendants killing white victims. In state after state, the numbers show, the 
race of the victim plays a huge role in determining if the defendant goes to 
death row.

How can this be defended?

And this is only 1 aspect of the system's flaws. The death penalty, 
effectively, does not apply to people who can afford the best lawyers.

My own epiphany regarding capital punishment came about 20 years ago, when O.J. 
Simpson was on trial. Columnist Michael Kinsely, before the verdict was 
announced, wrote, "They will never execute O.J. Simpson. They will never strap 
O.J. down in the gas chamber, seal the door, and drop the poison pellets 
(California's chosen method). Even putting it in those terms proves the point. 
It is unimaginable."

Given that situation, Kinsely asked, how can we, as Americans, subject others 
to the death penalty?

Kinsely was referring to Simpson's celebrity status more than his ability to 
field a legal "dream team," but of course he had that too.

Last week, Sen. Gary Simpson, R-Milford, and Sen. Ernie Lopez, R-Lewes, showed 
political courage in voting for repeal.

But those votes will go for naught unless people pressure their state 
representatives in the House. Don't let the death penalty repeal bill die in 
committee.

(source: Column, Don Flood ---- CapeGazette.com)








ARKANSAS:

Execution-drug veil illegal, violates '13 pact, suit says



A new law that keeps the source of Arkansas' execution drugs a secret is a 
contract-breaker and that makes it illegal, seven Arkansas death-row inmates 
contend in a lawsuit filed Monday.

The convicted killers argue in their 27-page suit in Pulaski County Circuit 
Court that they are entitled to know where the drugs come from to review their 
effectiveness. The case has yet to be assigned to a judge.

Inmate attorney Jeff Rosenzweig said the law, signed Monday by Gov. Asa 
Hutchinson, violates a 2013 contract that the attorney general, on behalf of 
the state, made with the inmates.

In exchange for keeping the prisoners and their legal counsel informed about 
the drugs that would be used, the inmates withdrew parts of a previous lawsuit, 
the agreement states.

"The state promised to provide us with information as to the source and content 
of the drugs which it plans to use to execute persons," Rosenzweig said in a 
release announcing the litigation. "This law blatantly reneges on that 
agreement."

A spokesman for Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge declined to comment 
since she has not seen the lawsuit. The agreement was approved by her 
predecessor, Dustin McDaniel.

The inmates want the Arkansas Department of Correction, which manages the 
execution process, to be court-ordered to disclose where the drugs are coming 
from, and they want the court to strike down the new death-penalty law.

The prisoners also want the court to bar any coming executions until the 
lawsuit is resolved, meaning the lawsuit has the potential to put a judicial 
freeze on capital punishment, 18 days after the state Supreme Court dissolved 
the last hold preventing executions.

The high court in March validated the Legislature's 2013 rewrite of the 
lethal-injection law, overturning the findings of a lower court that had ruled 
in response to the previous inmate lawsuit that the reworking of the law was 
unconstitutional in February 2014.

Arkansas executions have been on hold because of state and federal litigation 
for about 10 years.

Since 2008, 3 state lawsuits by Arkansas inmates challenging secrecy provisions 
in the death-penalty process have prevented the state from applying the 
punishment.

To counter litigation or to adapt to court rulings, the Legislature has had to 
rewrite sections of the law.

Monday's suit was filed shortly after Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed House Bill 
1751 into law.

Before signing, he repeated his support for the changes -- noting 
"confidentiality" provisions -- but predicted the courts would have to review 
them before executions can resume. "It provides some clarity, it provides some 
protections, some confidentiality," Hutchinson said. "But there's a long, many 
steps to go, working with the attorney general, working with the Department of 
Correction to implement those procedures, and also get the protocols in place 
and to work with the courts on it. The courts are gonna review these things. 
We'll take 1 step at a time."

The measure, which establishes what drugs would be used to execute inmates and 
how they should be applied, exempts from public disclosure "the entities and 
persons who compound, test, sell, or supply the drug or drugs, medical 
supplies, or medical equipment for the execution process."

Rosenzweig said that exemption, negating the inmates' contract, "is explicitly 
barred by the Arkansas Constitution and numerous judicial decisions."

He predicted that the courts would side with the inmates and said no one who 
supplies execution drugs to Arkansas should rely on promises that their 
identities would not be disclosed.

"No court is going to allow the state to go back on its agreement. No 
pharmacist should rely on the anonymity this bill purports to provide," he 
said. "Any pharmacist's identity certainly will be revealed in the course of 
this litigation. The prisoners, the press and the citizenry of Arkansas are 
entitled to know the drugs that the state intends to use in its executions. The 
vetting of compounded drugs necessarily entails the vetting of the compounding 
pharmacy."

Complaints about the source of the execution drugs and their effectiveness was 
raised in 2013 during inmate litigation, with the prisoners claiming the drugs 
the state planned on using would be more likely to inflict brain damage than 
death.

In 2011 litigation, death-row inmates complained that Arkansas had gotten a key 
execution drug from a "ramshackle" British driving school and questioned 
whether the medications would work.

Rosenzweig warned legislators in writing and in testimony last month that 
passing the secrecy measure, HB1751, would violate the contract and prompt a 
lawsuit as soon as the governor signed the bill into law.

The lawyers had already drafted the suit, he said in a March 27 letter to the 
Senate Judiciary Committee. The two-page contract was signed in June 2013 by 
Brad Phelps, chief deputy attorney general under the previous administration.

The inmates, represented by Rosenzweig and federal Public Defender Josh Lee, 
are Stacey Eugene Johnson, 45, sentenced in 1994 in Sevier County; Jack Harold 
Jones, 50, sentenced in 1996 in White County; Jason McGehee, 38, 1998, Boone 
County; Terrick Terrell Nooner, 44, 1993, Pulaski County; Bruce Earl Ward, 58, 
1990, Pulaski County; Kenneth Dewayne Williams, 36, 2000, Lincoln County; and 
Marcel Wayne Williams, 44, 1997, Pulaski County.

The defendants are Correction Department Director Wendy Kelley, who is 
personally responsible for procuring the execution drugs, and the department 
itself.

"I cannot comment at this time because it's pending litigation," Kelley said 
during a Board of Corrections meeting at the Arkansas Correctional School 
Central Office in Pine Bluff.

(source: ArkansasOnline.com)








MISSOURI:

Larry Flynt wins right to access Missouri execution records ---- Court allows 
Hustler magazine publisher to examine sealed records out of his interest to 
know how drugs are administered upon state's death row inmates



A federal appeals court on Tuesday said Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler 
magazine, had a right to weigh in on 2 lawsuits challenging how Missouri 
conducts executions.

The 8th US circuit court of appeals in St Louis said a lower court judge 
applied the wrong legal standard in finding that Flynt's "generalized interest" 
in the litigation did not justify his being allowed to pursue sealed court 
records.

16 media outlets and interest groups, including the New York Times, the 
Washington Post, Politico and Public Citizen, supported the appeal of Flynt, 
who was paralyzed in a 1978 shooting.

Eric Slusher, a spokesman for Missouri attorney general Chris Koster, said that 
office was reviewing the decision.

Flynt was seeking to intervene in 2 cases in which death row inmates are 
challenging the constitutionality of Missouri executions, including the 
protocol for administering drugs.

Invoking the 1st amendment of the US constitution, Flynt said he had a right to 
review various sealed records, in part to identify an anesthesiologist working 
for the state.

Flynt claimed an interest as a publisher and death penalty opponent, and also 
because Joseph Franklin, who had confessed to shooting him in 1978, was a 
plaintiff in both cases.

Missouri executed Franklin for another killing in November 2013.

The 8th circuit returned the case to the federal court in Jefferson City, 
Missouri, to decide whether to grant Flynt's bid to unseal the records, which 
is not the same as intervening.

Tony Rothert, a lawyer for Flynt and legal director of the American Civil 
Liberties Union of Missouri, said he was pleased with the decision.

"The public and the media have a right to know what's happening in the courts," 
Rothert said in a phone interview. "There has also been concern in Missouri 
about the lack of transparency concerning drugs used in executions, and the 
public has a right to know what's going on."

(source: The Guardian)








USA:

Exonerees are failed twice by the criminal justice system



Anthony Ray Hinton, a 58-year-old former warehouse worker, walked out of an 
Alabama prison late last week nearly 30 years after being sentenced to death 
for 2 murders he didn't commit.

Sound familiar?

Debra Milke in Arizona. Glenn Ford in Louisiana. Carl Dausch in Florida. 
Half-brothers Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown in North Carolina. Ricky 
Jackson, Wiley Bridgeman and Kwame Ajamu in Ohio. And those are just the 
wrongful death penalty convictions that have come to light in the past year.



Since 1973, the Death Penalty Information Center reports, 152 people convicted 
of murder and sentenced to death have eventually had their convictions tossed 
out and regained their freedom (which should serve as an indictment of that 
barbaric system in its entirety). The National Registry of Exonerations counts 
1,577 reported exonerations of all crimes since 1989.

It's impossible to measure how many of the innocent have been executed (one 
study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 
conservatively estimated 4% of death row inmates are innocent). It's also 
impossible to know, given the slow pace of the death penalty system, how many 
innocent men and women have died or been murdered in prison.

Imagine going through the experience of knowing you are innocent, yet hearing 
the guilty verdict, and the death sentence. Hinton's lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, 
talked the other day about the agony Hinton experienced over 30 years spent 
mostly in a 5-by-8-foot cell, as fellow death row inmates were occasionally led 
off to be killed, all the while knowing he was innocent of the murders for 
which Alabama wanted to execute him.

"They took something from him that they don't have the power to give back, but 
I think that they ought to, one, to initiate anything they can do to pay for 
some of the outrageous injustice this case creates," Stevenson said on the 
"Democracy Now" radio program. "But I think if there's really going to be any 
kind of meaningful response to this, not only should he be compensated, but 
people should be held accountable. People should apologize. People should do 
some soul-searching. We should create some procedures that mandate that when 
there is evidence that suggests the person is wrongly convicted, that that 
evidence has to be reviewed."

That's a valid point. But it's also a point that's been obvious for years now, 
with no significant action by the political system to fix these accountability 
problems. So they continue.

We tend to pay attention to these stories when they unfold like this. But then 
attention shifts elsewhere, barring a new news peg to revisit a case. New 
Yorker writer Ariel Levy has a new piece out about the lives of some of the 
wrongfully convicted well after their release from prison, and the struggle to 
regain some sort of life trajectory.

The gist of the article is the uneven approach to compensating those whose 
lives have been ruined by wrongful convictions, an injustice that multiplies 
when the mistaken judgment was based not on unintentional error, but on 
misconduct by police, witnesses or the prosecutor. And Levy points up an 
objectionable incongruity: Exonerees often are ineligible for programs aimed at 
reintegrating convicts into society. From the piece:

"People who spend many years in institutions tend to develop an overwhelming 
sense of helplessness. (This holds whether they are guilty or innocent - and, 
indeed, whether the institution is a prison or a mental hospital.) [Exoneree 
Cathy] Watkins, like many other exonerees, told me, 'I feel like a newborn 
baby.' She wished that she had some help navigating the world; the guilty, at 
least, had parole officers. 'I want someone to take me by the hand and say, 
"O.K., Cathy, I'm going to show you how to do this. This was our mistake. Let 
us help you."' Only 5 states provide exonerees with mental health services or 
medical treatment - and, after years of substandard care, many former inmates 
have health problems. Only four offer job-placement assistance."

So first the lives are ruined, and then once the error is corrected, the 
wrongfully convicted generally are just pushed back out into society, without a 
way to make a living, and without support from other than family or nonprofits.

The injustice committed in our names is compounded, and often without proper 
compensation by the parties - police, prosecutors and witnesses - who stole 
years from the lives of the innocent, and left them, in many cases, 
ill-equipped to deal with a much faster-paced society than the one from which 
they were plucked 10, 30, 30 or more years ago.

In the end, we, as a society, fail.

(source: Opinion, Scott Martelle----Los Angeles Times)

****************** Boston Bombing Trial Goes Into Hands Of Jurors ---- Jurors 
begin the process of determining Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's fate on 30 federal charges 
connected to the deadly twin attacks.

Jurors have begun deliberating in the federal death penalty case of accused 
Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Tsarnaev faces 30 federal charges in connection with the 15 April 2013 bombings 
that killed 3 people and injured 264 others.

The 21-year-old is also charged in the fatal shooting of an MIT police officer 
days after the attacks.

If he is convicted, jurors will hear a 2nd round of evidence before determining 
whether to sentence Tsarnaev to death or life in prison.

In closing arguments on Monday, the prosecution urged the panel to hold 
Tsarnaev accountable for the attacks they said he carried out with his older 
brother in order to "punish America" for its wars in Muslim countries.

"This was a cold, calculated terrorist act," Assistant US Attorney Aloke 
Chakravarty told jurors.

"This was intentional. It was bloodthirsty. It was to make a point.

"It was to tell America that 'We will not be terrorised by you anymore. We will 
terrorise you.'"

Tsarnaev's lawyers, who acknowledged at the trial's outset that their client 
helped orchestrate the attacks, have tried to convince jurors that he was 
pressured by his radicalised older brother.

The surprise admission was part of the defence's effort to spare Tsarnaev the 
death penalty should the jury convict him, as expected.

Defence attorney Judith Clarke on Monday told jurors it was 26-year-old 
Tamerlan Tsarnaev who "built the bombs" and "murdered (MIT police) officer 
Collier".

"Tamerlan led and Dzhokhar followed," she said.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed following a gun battle with police when his 
brother inadvertently ran him over with a car they had hijacked.

Robel Phillipos, a friend of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar 
Tsarnaev, who is charged with lying to investigators, leaves the federal 
courthouse after a hearing in his case in Boston

Over the last several weeks, the jury has heard testimony from friends and 
family of those killed in the attacks and from more than a dozen people who 
lost limbs as a result of the bombings.

Jurors even heard from police officers who described exchanging gunfire and 
dodging homemade explosive devices thrown by the Tsarnaev brothers as they 
attempted to flee the city.

The defence called just 4 witnesses over 2 days in presenting its case.

Tsarnaev's lawyers have not indicated whether he will testify during the 
sentencing phase.

(source: Sky News)