[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----N.C., S.C., USA

[Rick Halperin]

April 22



NORTH CAROLINA:

6 face death penalty after suspected gang hit killed couple



6 suspected Charlotte gang members now face a possible death penalty in the 
October killings of a Lake Wylie couple. 4 of those charged in the connection 
with the murders of Doug and Debbie London were already in custody.

2 more suspects were arrested Wednesday after an early morning FBI raid on the 
Charlotte cell of United Blood Nation, an East Coast gang with strong criminal 
ties across the region.

7 UBN members were taken into custody Wednesday on a variety of charges.

Jamell Lamon Cureton, Nana Yaw Adoma, David Lee Fudge, Daquan Lamar Everett, 
Randall Avery Hankins II, Malcolm Jarrel Hartley, Nehemijel Maurice Houston, 
Briana Shakeyah Johnson, IBN Rashaan Kornegay, Centrilia Shardon Leach, Ahkeem 
Tahja McDonald and Rahkeen Lee McDonald are the gang members listed in the 
federal indictment.

The indictment said the members engaged in criminal activity including murder, 
assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, firearms possession, witness tampering, 
obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to commit these crimes, among others.

The 12 members listed in the indictment agreed to commit at least 2 acts of 
racketeering activity for the gang, according to the document.

The indictment outlines gang activity, and what each member had to do in order 
to be initiated. It outlines crimes dating back to August 2012.

2 have been implicated in a 2nd murder, the August 2013 killing in York County 
of Kwamne Clyburn, whom authorities say was killed by UBN after trying to pass 
himself off as a member of the gang.

1 of the 2, Jamell Cureton, is accused by federal authorities of ordering the 
gang hit on the Londons from behind bars. The couple was shot to death in their 
home in October.

In February, pictures found in Cureton's jail cell prompted the protection of 2 
judges and Charlotte City Attorney Bob Hagemann.

Police said Doug London was the only witness to the robbery of a south 
Charlotte mattress store last May. Cureton was 1 of 3 men charged in the 
mattress store robbery.

Timeline of events:

--Apr. 22, 2015: FBI raids Charlotte cell of United Blood Nation, arrests seven 
gang members on variety of charges. Four of those arrested are charged in 
Connection with murder of Londons.

--Jan. 30, 2015: Police said that Malcolm Jerrel Hartley, 22, and Brianna 
Johnson, 18, are arrested in connection with the double homicide investigation 
of the Londons.

--Dec. 2, 2014: Cureton and Adoma plead not guilty in the armed robbery case, 
officials said. David Fudge, who drove the getaway car, was sentenced to 
probation after his guilty plea earlier in the year.

--Oct. 30, 2014: Federal prosecutors take over the armed robbery case that 
accuses Jamell Cureton and Nana Adoma of robbing the Londons' mattress store.

--Oct. 23, 2014: Doug and Debbie London are found shot to death in their Lake 
Wylie home.

--May 25, 2014: 2 men rob the Wholesale Mattress Warehouse on South Boulevard 
owned by Doug and Debbie London. One of the robbers and Doug London exchange 
gun fire, police said.

(source: wsoctv.com)








SOUTH CAROLINA:

S.C. lawmaker proposes firing squad as death penalty option ---- With 
lethal-injection drugs in short supply, convicts could choose a 5-man firing 
squad over the electric chair



State Rep. Joshua A. Putnam (R-Anderson) introduced a bill today that would 
allow South Carolina to administer the death penalty by firing squad if lethal 
injection drugs are not available. State law already provides electrocution as 
an alternative to lethal injection in death penalty cases, and inmates are 
allowed to pick which method of execution is used.

"You would have three options compared to two right now. That would be electric 
chair, lethal injection, or firing squad," Putnam says. "And then, if you were 
to have picked lethal injection, and for some reason the drugs or whatever 
substance we use for that is not available to the state, then instead of 
defaulting back to the electric chair, you would at least have another option 
to pick." The state of Utah enacted a similar piece of legislation in March.

According to the Post and Courier, S.C. Department of Corrections Director 
Bryan Stirling told the House Judiciary Constitutional Laws Subcommittee 
earlier this month that the state's last set of lethal injection drugs had 
expired in September 2013 and that the state had no way of executing death-row 
inmates unless an inmate chose the electric chair. There are currently 44 
inmates on death row in South Carolina.

Originally, counties administered the death penalty by hanging in South 
Carolina. The electric chair became available in 1912, and lethal injection 
became an option in 1995. Currently, convicts on death row are allowed to 
choose between lethal injection and electrocution, which are both carried out 
in the death chamber at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. 
The state has carried out 282 executions since 1912, according to the S.C. 
Department of Corrections. All but 3 of the 39 executions since 1995 have been 
by lethal injection.

Putnam's bill comes as state governments nationwide deal with an ongoing 
shortage of drugs including sodium thiopental, an anaesthetic that is often 
used 1st in lethal-injection cocktails. The pharmaceutical company Hospira 
Inc., which was the only U.S. manufacturer or the drug, ceased production in 
January 2011 following pressure by worldwide opponents of the death penalty. 
The European Union banned the export of the drug for lethal injections the same 
year.

The most recent execution in South Carolina took place in May 2011. In that 
execution, for the 1st time, the state replaced sodium thiopental with 
pentobarbital as the 1st drug in a 3-drug process. The Danish pharmaceutical 
company Lundbeck announced in June 2011 that it would no longer sell 
pentobarbital for the purpose of executions, and states including Texas have 
since announced shortages of the drug.

Rep. Putnam says he introduced his bill because death by firing squad is 
"probably the most humane way [of execution], above even lethal injection and 
the electric chair." (As the Washington Post recently pointed out, some 
evidence suggests that death by firing squad could be quicker and less painful 
than lethal injection, particularly in cases where the injected drugs do not 
work as intended.)

Putnam's bill would authorize the Department of Corrections to "promulgate 
regulations related to procedures that must be followed in administering the 
death penalty by firing squad," but Putnam says he does intend to include a few 
procedures in the bill.

"What would happen is it would be 5 people, trained marksmen, the best and most 
precise marksmen within the state we have," Putnam says. "Four of their rifles 
would have blanks in them; only 1 rifle would have a live round. I'm sure it 
would be a very high-caliber type of rifle." Blank cartridges have 
traditionally been used in firing squads to prevent individual members of a 
firing squad from knowing whether they fired the fatal shot.

Putnam's bill, H. 4038, was introduced and referred to the House Judiciary 
Committee today. Putnam is the only listed sponsor of the bill. Tyler Jones, 
spokesman for the S.C. House Democrats, has already come out against Putnam's 
bill. "Since Republicans are always in a time warp, we're wondering if Rep. 
Putnam will offer a death by guillotine option as well," Jones says.

Ron Kaz, a James Island resident and member of the advocacy group South 
Carolinians Abolishing the Death Penalty, says he was unaware of Putnam's 
proposal before it was introduced today.

"It's obviously unnecessary, and I'd like to think it's unlikely to go 
anywhere, but given the nature of some of the strange things that come out of 
our legislature, we'll never know for sure," Kaz says.

Putnam says he is not going to try to change anyone's mind on whether the death 
penalty is right or wrong.

"I know people that are against capital punishment altogether, and I understand 
where they come from, and I'm not trying to change their beliefs," Putnam says. 
"We currently have capital punishment on the books, we currently do capital 
punishment, and I'm trying to No. 1 find a solution to the problem the state 
faces right now, and also find a more human way of doing it."

(source: charlestoncitypaper.com)








USA:

The death penalty's destructive morality exposed: "We must overcome the impulse 
for vengeance" ---- Capital punishment supporters talk about victims' need for 
closure. So then why are many victims staunchly opposed?



On June 11, 2001, the federal government put Oklahoma City bomber Timothy 
McVeigh to death. "Today, every living person who was hurt by the evil done in 
Oklahoma City can rest in the knowledge that there has been a reckoning," 
President George W. Bush declared.

Actually, some of McVeigh's victims can't rest in the knowledge that the 
government took his life. Ditto for the parents of an eight-year old killed in 
the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, who have pleaded with federal authorities to 
spare the death penalty for convicted murderer Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

You rarely hear voices like these amid the drumbeat for capital punishment, 
which stresses victims' psychological need for "closure" after losing a loved 
one. But if we listened more closely, we would see that the victims themselves 
- like Americans overall - are deeply divided on the issue. And we'd question 
why 1 victim's wish for a killer to die should take precedence over another's 
desire to see him live.

Victims' suffering and loss lay at the heart of the death-penalty argument in 
the Oklahoma City attack, which marked its 20th anniversary last Sunday. In the 
sentencing phase of McVeigh's trial, jurors heard testimony from 26 relatives 
of people who were killed in the attack plus 3 injured survivors. "There are 
168 people, all unique, all individual," the prosecution declared, recounting 
the death toll. "All had families, all had friends, and they're different."

But the families differed about whether McVeigh should get the death penalty, 
too. Some said that death was too light a penalty for McVeigh, who would suffer 
more if he was forced to spend the rest of his days in prison. Others said that 
taking a life - even of someone as evil as McVeigh - was simply wrong.

Their leading voice was Bud Welch, who lost his 23-year-old daughter Julie in 
the bombing. During the first month after that, Welch recalled, he wanted 
McVeigh and his accomplices to be "fried." But then he remembered Julie's 
opposition to the death penalty, and started to campaign against it.

While Timothy McVeigh was strapped to a gurney in an Indiana prison, waiting 
for the lethal injection that killed him, Bud Welch was protesting outside. 
Since then, he has campaigned against capital punishment in 47 states; he has 
also continued to maintain a friendship with McVeigh's father, whom he met 3 
years after the bombing. In short, fighting the death penalty has become Bud 
Welch's way of keeping his daughter's memory alive.

To be sure, most family members of the murdered Oklahoma City victims insisted 
that McVeigh should die, too. 10 of them watched his execution at the limited 
spectators' space in the prison; dozens of others viewed it back in Oklahoma 
via closed-circuit television, which was provided by federal authorities so 
that more victims could witness it.

But in Boston, a few days ago, Bill and Denise Richard marked the 2-year 
anniversary of that city's bombing by pleading for federal authorities to spare 
the life of the man who killed their 8-year-old son Martin. A death sentence 
for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev would inevitably bring many years of appeals, the 
bereaved parents wrote, which would prolong rather than relieve their own 
suffering.

Then a newlywed couple who each lost limbs in the attack also asked prosecutors 
to take capital punishment off the table in sentencing trial of Tsarnaev. "In 
our darkest moments and deepest sadness, we think of inflicting the same types 
of harm on him," Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes admitted. "However, we must 
overcome the impulse for vengeance."

So do we all. Executing Timothy McVeigh didn't avenge the 168 lives he 
destroyed; it simply destroyed another life, leaving 2 more parents grieving 
for their lost son.

Let's not make the same mistake with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. His victims lost more 
than the rest of us can possibly understand. But don't pretend that killing 
Tsarnaev will bring them justice, if they say the opposite. There's no justice 
in that.

(source: Jonathan Zimmerman is a professor of education at New York 
University----salon.com)

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

America's death row population is shrinking----Death row population falls since 
2000



America's complicated, conflicted relationship with the death penalty is once 
more in the news, for a couple of reasons. First, the penalty phase for 
convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev began this week. Although 
Massachusetts abolished capital punishment in 1984, Tsarnaev is being tried in 
federal court, where the death penalty is still an option for more than 40 
federal crimes. Next week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Glossip v. 
Gross, in which 3 prisoners on Oklahoma's death row are challenging the 
constitutionality of that state???s three-drug execution protocol.

While a majority of Americans continue to favor the death penalty for people 
convicted of murder - 56%, according to a new Pew Research Center survey - far 
fewer people are receiving death sentences nowadays than in years past. As a 
result, fewer U.S. prisoners are facing the possibility of execution than at 
any time in the past 2 decades.

Though the number fluctuates almost daily, there are roughly 3,000 inmates on 
the nation's death rows. An annual report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics 
put the total death row population at 2,979 as of Dec. 31, 2013. (A quarterly 
reckoning by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund put the number at 
3,019 as of Jan. 1, 2015, using somewhat different methodology.)

Either way, there are about 600 fewer prisoners now than there were at the end 
of 2000, when the total death row population peaked following steady growth 
since 1976 (when the Supreme Court effectively reinstated capital punishment).

Death Sentences Are Becoming RarerAbout the same time as public support for the 
death penalty began to fall, so did the number of newly imposed death sentences 
- slowly at first, then accelerating around the turn of the 21st century: From 
2001 through 2013, an average of 126 prisoners were sent to death row each 
year. In 2013, the most recent year for which data are available, just 83 
inmates were sent to state and federal prisons under sentence of death, tied 
for the smallest number of death row admissions since 1973 (when there were 
44). Also in 2013, 45 condemned prisoners had their sentences or convictions 
overturned; 39 were executed; and 31 died in prison from some other cause.

The 1990s, it turns out, were a high-water mark both in support for the death 
penalty (which peaked at 78% in 1996) and in imposing it: An average of 293 
people entered death row each year from 1990 through 2000.

Most of the 32 death-penalty states have fewer people on their death rows now 
than they did in the peak year of 2000. The big exception is California, where 
dozens of convicted criminals have been sentenced to death in recent years (25 
in 2013) but no one has been executed since 2006, when court rulings forbade 
the state from using its 3-drug lethal-injection protocol. According to the Los 
Angeles Times, as of last month 751 inmates were on California's death row, by 
far the most of any state; since the last execution, 49 of these inmates have 
died in prison of other causes. As the state's main death row facility at San 
Quentin State Prison nears capacity, Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed spending 
$3.2 million to make more cells available.

The other notable exception to the trend of smaller death rows: the federal 
government. In 2000, only 20 prisoners were facing federal death sentences. 
That figure has more than tripled since, to 62 as of the beginning of this 
year, according to the NAACP report.

Who's on death row? According to the BJS data, 56% of prisoners under sentence 
of death at the end of 2013 were white and 42% were black; 14% were of Hispanic 
origin. All but 56 were men. About 2/3 had at least 1 prior felony conviction, 
and 28% were on probation or parole at the time of their capital offense, 
though blacks and Hispanics were more likely to have been on probation or 
parole (31% and 32%, respectively) than whites (24%). On average, the inmates 
had spent 14.6 years on death row.

(source: Pew Research Center)