[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----N.H., FLA., MISS., USA

[Rick Halperin]

April 29



NEW HAMPSHIRE:

State Supreme Court set to rule on Addison death penalty----Justices will 
decide fairness of death penalty



New Hampshire's highest court is set to issue a ruling on the fairness of the 
death sentence of the state's lone death row inmate.

The justices could topple the death sentence given to Michael Addison for the 
2006 killing of Manchester police officer Michael Briggs, or they could deem it 
fair when compared to death sentences handed down in similar cases nationwide.

The ruling, to be released Thursday, will mark the 1st time the state Supreme 
Court has ruled on the fairness of a death sentence.

Lawyers for Addison argued in January that the killing lacked the brutality and 
multiple shots of many other cases and that Addison was not deemed a threat to 
others if a life sentence was imposed.

The last execution in New Hampshire took place in 1939.

(source: WMUR news)



FLORIDA:

Death penalty in Florida is flawed



>From the looks of things, it seems that the Florida Supreme Court may soon stop 
the state from sending people to death row when jurors can't agree on whether 
the convicted person ought to die.

Timothy Hurst, who is on death row for killing a convenience store clerk in 
Escambia County, is arguing that his sentence violates the Sixth Amendment 
because only 7 out of 12 jurors agreed that he should be condemned.

In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court essentially ruled that if jurors are not 
convinced beyond a reasonable doubt as to whether the death penalty should be 
imposed, then that violates defendants' Sixth Amendment right to a trial by 
jury.

According to the Times-Union, if the court, which is expected to return a 
ruling next year, sides with Hurst, 62 people on death row from Northeast 
Florida could have their sentences overturned.

It will also mean that Florida, at least in that respect, will stop being an 
anachronism; it is only 1 of 3 states that doesn't require juries to be 
unanimous on seeking the death penalty.

What it may also mean, though, is that while some guilty people may get to 
live, so will some innocent people.

Florida has the highest number of exonerations from Death Row than any other 
state. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, of the 143 people 
freed from death row since the states began reinstituting the death penalty in 
1976, 24 were from the Sunshine State.

That's not all.

The Washington Post recently reported that nearly every examiner with the FBI 
Laboratory microscopic hair unit gave tainted testimony in 257 of 268 criminal 
trials in which they presented evidence for more than 2 decades before 2000. 32 
of the defendants were sentenced to death while 14 were either executed or died 
in prison.

Then there's Florida.

Of the 231 state convictions obtained by that flawed testimony, 42 were in this 
state.

That's the highest number of all the states.

10 of those convicted are currently on death row. 1 was exonerated. 1 was 
executed.

"When we see these types of numbers, it gives us great concern that a whole 
area of forensic science has been used incorrectly, and people have been 
wrongly convicted because of it," Seth Miller, executive director of Innocence 
Project of Florida, told me.

"It's beneath our criminal justice system. Florida deserves better ... it's 
disturbing that Florida leads the nation in people condemned to die based on 
flawed evidence."

What is also disturbing is that in spite of all these documented problems - 
problems which have led some states to declare a moratorium on executions - in 
Florida, officials keep trying to accelerate the process rather than fix it.

In 2013, Gov. Rick Scott signed the "Timely Justice Act," a bill designed to 
expedite executions by requiring governors to sign death warrants 30 days after 
an inmate has exhausted all his appeals and the state to execute the inmate 
within 6 months.

Also, according to the Times-Union, State Attorney Angela Corey has sent 21 
people to death row since she took office in 2009 - which is more than double 
that of any state prosecutor in Florida.

If the Supreme Court rules in Hurst's favor, if nothing else, it will slow down 
the pace of executions. Because the evidence shows that we get it wrong a lot.

And it's sad that even as state officials believe the death penalty is 
necessary to bring justice to victims, they wind up creating more.

(source: Column, Tonyaa Weathersbee----The Florida Times-Union)








MISSISSIPPI:

Why Does the State Still Want to Kill Willie Jerome Manning?



Willie Jerome Manning has been on death row for more than 2 decades, facing the 
possibility of execution for 2 sets of murders that occurred about 1 month 
apart. Law enforcement identified Manning as a suspect in the deaths of 2 
young, white Mississippi State students in December 1992 as well as in the 
murders of 2 African American women in mid-January 1993. Police and prosecutors 
said in court and have maintained over the years that the evidence against 
Manning, who had a reputation as a local hustler and went by the nickname 
"Fly," was overwhelming in both cases.

Manning has consistently claimed his innocence in both sets of homicides even 
as appeal after appeal met with failure. In the summer of 2013, Manning seemed 
to have run out of options, and the Mississippi Supreme Court set his execution 
date in early May of that year for the Mississippi State murders.

But, then, the state's case started to unravel. The state supreme court halted 
Manning's execution after the Federal Bureau of Investigation admitted its 
forensic expert overstated evidence in Manning's trial. The agency offered to 
make amends and conduct DNA testing that could prove Manning's guilt or 
innocence. More recently, information came to light that cast doubt on 
Manning's guilt in the second case, of the elderly women. Last week, an 
Oktibbeha County judge tossed that conviction.

With the state's case against Manning growing weaker by the day, the question 
now becomes: Why does the state of Mississippi still want to kill him?

1 Case Finished

Earlier this year, when the Mississippi Supreme Court ordered a new trial for 
Willie Jerome Manning, the court's reasoning seemed to be based on a mere 
technicality.

An Oktibbeha County jury convicted Manning for killing nonagenarian Emmoline 
Jimmerson and her daughter, Alberta Jordan, in the winter of 1992. The women 
were beaten and their throats slashed during an apparent robbery attempt at 
their Brookville Gardens apartment in Starkville. Manning was convicted of the 
crime at age 26 and sentenced to death.

The state's star witness, a man named Kevin Lucious, told police and later 
testified in court, that he saw Manning enter the victims' apartment from his 
own apartment, but police found the apartment where Lucious claimed to live was 
vacant at the time of the crime. The apartment manager also had no record of 
Lucious being a tenant.

Presiding Justice Michael K. Randolph, on behalf of the supreme court's 
majority, ordered the case back to circuit court for a new trial, agreeing with 
Manning's attorneys that "there is no question that defense counsel would have 
had the opportunity to meaningfully impeach Lucious' testimony that he lived in 
the apartment at the time of the crime and saw Manning enter the victims' 
apartment."

As it turns out, the flaws in the state's case went much deeper. In his April 
20 order dropping the charges against Manning, Oktibbeha Circuit Court Judge 
Lee Howard (who in May 2013 denied Manning's request for a rehearing) outlined 
a number of problems with the prosecution's case that add up to much more than 
the cops' failure to dot the Is and cross the Ts on Kevin Luscious' rental 
history.

After testifying against Manning, Luscious recanted most of his statements, 
saying he only testified because he feared being charged with the crime 
himself.

In fact, Luscious said District Attorney Forrest Allgood, who requested the 
charges be dropped against Manning, told Luscious that he would not charge him 
with capital murder if he cooperated. Howard's order also notes that Luscious 
claims he never gave the statement that became the basis for the indictment 
against Manning, but that Oktibbeha County Sheriff Dolph Bryan and Starkville 
Police Captain David Lindley already had a statement prepared for him when they 
arrived to conduct an interview, Luscious said.

Finally, Luscious claimed that he told Sheriff Bryan that another man, Tyrone 
Smith, had confessed to the murders. With the state's material witness now 
changing material parts of his story, the case had to be thrown out.

'"He is very glad that this one case is finished," Manning's attorney, David 
Voisin, told the Jackson Free Press.

But Manning is not out of the woods just yet.

Shocking Crime, Shaky Evidence

Manning's exoneration in the Brookville Gardens case came without the expected 
fanfare for death-sentence reversals. There was no weepy-eyed press conference 
with loved ones on the courthouse steps about a vindication that was more than 
2 decades in the making and the start of a new life.

But Manning, now 46, is not a free man. In fact, corrections department inmate 
No. 71931 remains housed at Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman's 
infamous Unit 29, death row, awaiting possible execution for another set of 
murders that took place months before for the Jordan and Jimmerson slayings.

In the earlier case, the bodies of 2 Mississippi State students, Jon Steckler, 
a 19-year-old from Natchez, and Tiffany Miller, a Madison native, were found in 
rural Oktibbeha County after the couple had gone missing. Miller was shot twice 
in the face at close range, 1 leg was out of her pants and underwear, and her 
shirt was pulled up. Steckler's body had abrasions that occurred before he 
died, and he was shot once in the back of the head.

A set of car tracks had gone through the puddles of blood and over Steckler's 
body, court documents state. Police arrested Manning in part because he lived 5 
miles from the crime scene and had tried to sell jewelry that officials said 
belonged to the victims. Manning was convicted and condemned to death for the 
murders in 1994.

Manning was given an execution date of May 7, 2013, and his would be the 1st 
Mississippi execution of the year, and the 7th in 15 months, which for a time 
earned Mississippi the distinction of the nation's No. 2 state for executions, 
behind Texas.

In requesting the date, Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood, a native of 
Houston, Miss., and a former prosecutor in north Mississippi, called the 
evidence of Manning guilt "overwhelming."

"Even if technologies were available to determine the source of the hair, to 
indicate someone other than Manning, it would not negate other evidence that 
shows his guilt. He is a violent person who committed these heinous murders," 
Hood said in a statement at the time. His office has not responded to a request 
for an interview.

Although the Miller-Steckler murder certainly matched the Jordan-Jimmerson 
slayings in heinousness, many believe the evidence against Manning's 
involvement is just as shaky if not more so.

The week of his scheduled execution, the Federal Bureau of Investigation 
admitted that its forensic expert erred in testimony during Manning's original 
trial. In a letter to Allgood, who prosecuted Manning, U.S. Justice Department 
officials stated "that testimony containing erroneous statements regarding 
microscopic hair comparison analysis was used" in Manning's case.

The Mississippi Supreme Court halted the execution over objections from Hood. 
Since then, the science of hair comparison and law enforcement's reliance on it 
to obtain convictions, including of Manning, has come under scrutiny.

A recent analysis by The Washington Post concluded that the FBI's hair analysis 
was used in thousands of cases. Last week, the Justice Department and FBI 
admitted that the practice went on for two decades despite the existence of 
data questioning the veracity of hair testing, which involves comparing hair 
samples under a microscope. Information from The Innocence Project shows that 
of the 329 wrongful convictions that DNA evidence has helped reverse, some 20 % 
of them also involved hair analysis.

Tucker Carrington, founding director of the Mississippi Innocence Project and 
law professor at the University of Mississippi, told the Daily Beast last week 
that he believes the state wrote Manning off a long time ago and had no 
interest in seeing that he received justice.

"'Who gives a f*ck about this guy? He's already condemned. We know he's the 
type of person who's capable of doing this. It's him,'" Carrington said they 
thought.

The FBI has offered to conduct DNA testing in the Steckler-Miller case on 
Manning's behalf. Voisin, Manning's attorney in both cases, said several items 
have been sent to a lab in Houston, Texas, for analysis. (Hood has said that no 
serological evidence from the victims' fingernail scrapings or semen on the 
vaginal swabs from the rape test kit exists for a DNA test to identify).

Voisin said the timing of the testing and issuing of results is up to the lab 
and the FBI. In the meantime, an effective moratorium on the death penalty has 
been in place for 2 years in Mississippi due to problems with prosecutions and 
execution procedures. Some other states also have suspended carrying out 
capital punishment due to the scarcity of the drugs commonly used to carry out 
executions and legal battles over the constitutionality of lethal injection.

On April 20, 2 men, who could be the next in line for an attempted execution 
filed a lawsuit challenging Mississippi's death procedures, arguing that the 
risks of excruciating pain and torture during an execution that violates the 
U.S. Constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Voisin believes continuing to have the death penalty puts states at risk for 
such potentially costly legal fights.

"Parts of the country are moving away from cap punishment," Voisin said. "I 
don't know if Mississippi is moving away from capital punishment per se, but I 
think there's a growing awareness of many significant problems (with the death 
penalty). So support in general will be there, but I think it will be applied a 
lot less."

(source: Jackson Free Press)








USA:

Supreme Court hearing about lethal injection procedures turns into heated 
debate



The Supreme Court's hearing Wednesday about the constitutionality of a lethal 
injection procedure turned into a tendentious, almost bitter battle between the 
court's conservative and liberal justices.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. accused those of trying to prevent the use of the 
drug midazolam as part of a lethal injection procedure in Oklahoma of waging a 
"guerrilla war against the death penalty." Repeated challenges of lethal 
injection procedures, he said, were meant only to delay the implementation of 
executions.

Justice Antonin Scalia agreed, saying the "abolitionist movement" had put 
pressure on drug manufacturers to stop making available to states drugs that 
would ensure executions were not needlessly painful.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were just as forceful on the other 
side. Kagan said that without proper sedation, the drug used to cause death was 
akin to being burned at the stake, except a person is being "burned alive from 
the inside." Sotomayor told the Oklahoma solicitor general she would not 
believe assertions in his brief unless she verified them herself.

The questioning of Oklahoma's Patrick R. Wyrick was so intense by the liberals 
that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. granted him additional time at the 
podium. "Hopefully we will have a chance to hear what you have to say," he 
said.

[Oklahoma recently made nitrogen gas its backup execution method]

These arguments came a year to the day after a botched execution in Oklahoma 
left an inmate writhing and grimacing on a gurney, drawing international 
attention to issues facing the lethal injection process in the United States.

The Oklahoma case centers on a particular drug that has been used by that state 
and others in executions that went awry last year. But it also touches on the 
reality that the capital punishment landscape in this country has fractured, 
pushing execution protocols further and further away from a method the court 
previously upheld.

The justices were revisiting the issue of lethal injection for the first time 
since 2008, when they upheld a 3-drug combination and said it did not violate 
the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. At the time, these 
drugs were used across the country. But an ongoing shortage of lethal injection 
drugs fueled largely by European objections to capital punishment has caused 
states to struggle to find new drugs, create different protocols and seek other 
methods.

Until 2010, lethal injections in the United States were generally carried out 
using an anesthetic, a paralytic drug and a drug that stopped the heart, 
according to the Death Penalty Information Center. But a company that produced 
sodium thiopental, the anesthetic that was commonly used, stopped making the 
drug due to capital punishment. States began using another drug, pentobarbital, 
but the Danish company that supplied it said it would stop shipping it to U.S. 
prisons that executed inmates.

So states began adopting new and different drugs. In Oklahoma, when state 
officials could no longer obtain the drug they used to rely on, they turned to 
the drug midazolam. This particular drug was used in three problematic 
executions last year, turning it into a focal point for debates about lethal 
injections.

The most high-profile of these was Oklahoma's bungled attempt to execute 
convicted murderer Clayton Lockett. The state used midazolam in one of its 
executions for the first time, and Lockett kicked, grimaced and survived for 43 
minutes after the execution began. He eventually died after officials had 
already halted the process, and a state investigation blamed the bungled 
procedure on the execution team's insertion of the needle during the injection.

"We've seen that lethal injection is not the swift, painless, effective method 
of causing death that it was made out to be," said Robert Dunham, executive 
director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "The myth that you can 
swiftly and painlessly execute somebody in a manner that is humane and 
marginally civilized seems to have evaporated."

Midazolam was also used last year in the execution of an Arizona inmate who 
gasped and snorted and took nearly two hours to die, as well as the lethal 
injection of an Ohio inmate who gasped and choked before dying after nearly 
half an hour.

Florida, the 1st state to use the drug in an execution, has utilized it 
numerous times without many witnesses reporting these kinds of issues; a media 
witness said that when the state 1st used the drug, the inmate being executed 
appeared to remain awake and moving for an unusually long period of time.

Ohio has since dropped midazolam from its protocol, and that state postponed 
its executions this year to give it time to adopt a new lethal injection 
practice. After the botched procedure last year, Oklahoma also changed its 
execution protocols, keeping midazolam but ramping up the dose to match the 
level used in Florida.

The week before the justices decided to accept the lethal injection case, 
Oklahoma carried out its first execution since Lockett was put to death. The 
inmate, Charles Warner, who was convicted of raping and murdering an 
11-month-old, had originally been set to die the same night as Lockett, but his 
execution was postponed.

The justices declined to stay that execution when the court's 4 justices who 
wanted the execution stayed were overruled (it takes 5 justices to stay an 
execution, while it takes only 4 to accept a case).

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent arguing for a stay that she found 
the idea that midazolam could "work as intended difficult to accept given 
recent experience with the use of this drug."

Experts have said it is unclear whether midazolam can produce a deep enough 
level of unconsciousness to prevent an inmate from feeling pain from the 
injections that follow. In the briefs filed for this case, midazolam's 
effectiveness takes center stage again and again.

The 3 Oklahoma death-row inmates arguing against the state's protocol now argue 
in their filing to the court that using midazolam will cause them "excruciating 
pain and suffering during their executions."

However, Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general, and other state officials 
argue in their brief that this is not the case, instead painting this argument 
as an attempt to fight the death penalty under the guise of questioning 1 drug.

"Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol does not present a substantial risk of 
severe pain and cannot be considered cruel," the state officials wrote. In 
addition, the state also calls the attacks on midazolam "unwarranted" and says 
the higher dosage of the drug would cause unconsciousness during executions.

More than a dozen professors of pharmacology also submitted a brief to the 
court, taking no side in the case but writing that midazolam cannot be 
considered "an appropriate substitute" for the drugs that had been used to 
induce unconsciousness in executions.

Meanwhile, authorities in Florida - which has halted its own executions until 
the judges issue a decision - submitted a brief to the court agreeing with 
Oklahoma and saying that their state's experiences show that midazolam can be 
used in humane executions.

The justices were facing questions of how to approach executions that involve 
substantially different protocols than the one they upheld in 2008, as well as 
whether condemned inmates should have to provide an available alternative if 
they object to an execution method.

In 2008, when the justices agreed to uphold the 3-drug method, they did not all 
come to the same conclusions about the case or what could follow. Seven 
justices ultimately filed opinions in that case. Chief Justice John G. Roberts 
Jr., writing for the court, noted that there is always some risk inherent in an 
execution, but that alone does not make it unconstitutional.

"Simply because an execution method may result in pain, either by accident or 
as an inescapable consequence of death, does not establish the sort of 
'objectively intolerable risk of harm' that qualifies as cruel and unusual," he 
wrote.

Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with the outcome but not the reasoning, instead 
determining that a method of execution is only unconstitutional "if it is 
deliberately designed to inflict pain."

(source: Washington Post)

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

The Beginning of the End----Case Could Halt Lethal Injections in US



Following a string of horrific botched executions, the US Supreme Court is 
considering a case that could lead to a ban on lethal injections. The 
alternatives are so cruel that they might bring the country closer to 
abolishing capital punishment.

On the morning of July 23, 2014, lawyer Dale Baich went to visit his client 
Joseph Wood for 1 last time in his cell at a prison in Florence, Arizona. Wood 
was set to die one hour later. In the neighboring room, officials were already 
preparing for his execution.

Baich had come with good news. The Supreme Court of Arizona had just delayed 
Wood's execution. The judge needed more time to evaluate the validity of his 
lawsuit. Baich had filed a suit about the chemical which was to be administered 
to Wood: midazolam, a sedative that had previously only been used in a few 
executions. Following decisions by a number of pharmaceutical companies around 
the world to prohibit the use of their products in executions, midazolam had 
become an emergency solution for states that allow the lethal injection.

'Cruel and Unusual Punishment'

Baich argued that injecting midazolam, which is used by doctors as a sedative 
before anesthesia, was akin to human experimentation. He argued there are 
doubts that the substance can induce a quick, deep and lasting state of 
unconsciousness. Wood, he claimed, would face a painful struggle to the death 
-- a violation of the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution, which bans 
"cruel and unusual punishment."

Sitting in his office in Phoenix, Baich recollects about Wood's euphoric 
reaction to the delay at the time. "He was emotionally overwhelmed," says 
Baich, who has been defending death row inmates for 25 years. His role often 
goes well beyond that of being their attorney given that he's one of the people 
closest to the convicts prior to their execution.

2 hours later, on July 23, Baich again entered Woods' cell, this time to say 
goodbye. The court had made its decision, and this time declared his objections 
to be baseless. At 1:54 p.m., the midazolam that Baich had filed suit against 
flowed into Woods' arm. At 1:57, a doctor declared Wood unconscious. 8 minutes 
later, Wood began to visibly gasp for air. He moved his head and looked at 
Baich behind the glass window. His chest curved as he gasped. He continued -- 
gasping for air and then expelling it -- a total of 640 times.

Botched Executions

After an hour, Baich tried to leave the witness room so he could convince 
judges and other legal authorities to call off the execution. One hour after 
that, Wood had lost his battle. If things had gone according to procedure, the 
execution would only have lasted 10 minutes. Wood's execution, however, was the 
longest in the history of the lethal injection.

Three months earlier, Clayton Lockett's execution in Oklahoma had been the most 
gruesome lethal injection ever. It had lasted 43 minutes, during which he sat 
up, moved his feet and spoke. "Something is wrong," he said. "The drugs aren't 
working."

A short while earlier in Oklahoma, Dennis McGuire had also gasped and heaved 
for a long time before he died. All 3 executions had one thing in common: 
midazolam.

"The experiment has failed," Dale Baich said in the witness room after Wood's 
execution. Nine months later, he is preparing for the trial of his life. The 
Supreme Court in Washington is finally taking on his suit opposing midazolam. 
After a hearing today, the country's highest court is expected to rule on 
whether or not the controversial compound can be used in future executions.

There's more at stake in this trial than simply the fates of the three death 
row inmates listed in Baich's suit. It's about ending lethal injection, which 
is used in all 32 US states that still allow the death penalty. At the moment, 
almost all states are dependent on the easily available midazolam.

For two decades, US executioners had used a reliable agent called sodium 
thiopental, but then its manufacturers stopped producing it. Since the European 
Union introduced export restrictions on drugs potentially used in executions, 
an alternative compound, Pentobarbital, hasn't been available either.

End of an Era?

Dale Baich drops a thick file on his desk -- expert opinions from professors, 
doctors, pharmacists. They all confirm that midazolam isn't suited for putting 
people into a deep and lasting state of unconsciousness. But without this 
anesthesia the other toxins administered during an execution would cause 
terrible amounts of pain. If the Supreme Court judges refrain from making an 
ideological decision, and instead follow scientists' findings, it could herald 
the end of the lethal injection.

Several states have already planned for that eventuality: Utah would return to 
using the firing squad, Tennessee to the electric chair, Arizona to the gas 
chamber. All of these methods would spur potentially successful lawsuits. What 
seemed medieval a few decades ago, courts may -- now more than ever -- classify 
as "cruel."

The alternate method getting the most attention is currently being debated in 
Oklahoma: execution via nitrogen, which would be administered by strapping down 
a death row inmate and forcing him or her to breathe in the gas through a mask. 
Some euthanasia activists praise this as the gentlest kind of death.

A victory at the Supreme Court won't mark the end of the death penalty, Baich 
says. But it could mark the beginning of the end.

(source: Spiegel Online)