[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----VA., MICH., MO., OKLA., CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 10


VIRGINIA:

Roberts Faces Death Penalty In Brutal 2009 Lansdowne Attack



A Loudoun grand jury Monday handed up 11 indictments against the central 
attacker in the murder of William Bennett and the beating of his wife Cynthia 
Bennett along a Lansdowne road in 2009.

Based on evidence presented by Loudoun County Sheriff's Office Detective Mark 
Bush, Anthony R. Roberts, 26, was indicted on 5 counts of capital murder, 2 
counts of robbery, 1 count of aggravated malicious wounding, object sexual 
penetration, abduction with intent to defile, and rape.

Roberts is in prison serving sentences for unrelated offenses. He is scheduled 
to appear in Loudoun County Circuit Court Monday, Feb. 23.

2 other men already have been convicted for their roles in the attack. 
Investigators have continued to build their case against Roberts and 
prosecutors have repeatedly noted that, with Roberts behind bars, they had time 
to do that.

Roberts is in prison for the April 15, 2009, break-in at Loudoun Guns in 
Leesburg and a string of commercial burglaries that took place in Middleburg 
the night before Bennett was killed.

Jaime Ayala was sentenced to life plus 40 years in August 2011 after pleading 
guilty to 2nd-degree murder in the case. Darwin G. Bowman was sentenced to 
serve 43 years and 5 months for his role in the attack. The sentence for Ayala, 
who agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, was later reduced at the request of 
the commonwealth to match Bowman's sentence.

(source: Leesburg Today)








MICHIGAN:

One Democrat Wants To Bring The Death Penalty Back To Michigan -- But It Won't 
Be Easy



A Democratic lawmaker wants to bring the death penalty back to the 1st 
English-speaking territory to abolish capital punishment, but experts -- and 1 
of the lawmakers he needs to convince -- are skeptical at best.

Michigan state Sen. Virgil Smith (D-Detroit) introduced a Senate joint 
resolution last week to allow the death penalty in the case of the 1st-degree 
murder of a police or corrections officer killed in the line of duty. Michigan 
first banned executions in 1847; because the ban has been enshrined in the 
state constitution since 1963, the change would require a 2/3 majority vote in 
the state House and Senate as well as a majority vote by the people in the next 
election.

"If you kill a cop, you're the most egregious criminal out there. ... There 
should be no mercy at that point," Smith told the Detroit Free Press. "These 
are the people at the front line trying to defend our safety, so we need to 
protect them as much as we can."

On Monday, just days after Smith made his proposal, an incident near his 
district showed the kind of danger police face. A Highland Park officer was 
injured while conducting a raid when a suspect inside the house shot him in the 
leg. He is expected to recover. In an unrelated incident Saturday morning, an 
off-duty Highland Park reserve police officer was shot to death while working 
security at a nightclub, allegedly by a man he had earlier forced to leave the 
venue.

Walter Jennings of Detroit has been charged with 1st-degree murder in the 
officer's death. If Smith's resolution were already in effect, it still 
wouldn't apply in Jennings' case, as the officer was off-duty.

Kathy Swedlow is a professor at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, 
Michigan, where she teaches death penalty law and previously ran the school's 
initiative to exonerate wrongfully convicted prisoners. She said there's some 
possibility enacting the death penalty for police murders could eventually lead 
to expanding the punishment to other crimes, but her primary concern is why 
Michigan would repeal its ban in the first place.

"It's a horrible idea," Swedlow told The Huffington Post. "It's not 
particularly well thought through, the idea that we would bring the death 
penalty back."

Swedlow cited numerous problems other states have had since the death penalty 
was federally reinstated in 1976, such as determining a method that is 
considered humane. Lethal injection has primarily been used over the electric 
chair in recent years for that reason, but several botched executions have lead 
to criticism and a challenge to Oklahoma's lethal injection procedures that 
will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"It seems to me that if we have this near-40-year history of states tinkering 
with the death penalty and not being able to get it right, Michigan citizens 
should ask why we think we're smarter and we can do something that no one else 
would be able to do," she said.

Smith does have backing from across the aisle, with co-sponsorship by Senate 
Majority Leader Arlan Meekhoff (R-West Olive) and Majority Floor Leader Mike 
Kowall (R-White Lake).

However, the resolution has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, 
where the chair, Sen. Rick Jones (R-Grand Ledge), is reluctant to bring it to a 
vote. Jones worked at a sheriff's office for several decades and was shot 
twice, according to MLive, but opposes the death penalty because of the 
possibility of false conviction.

"We cannot dig a man up and say, 'Sorry, we made a mistake,'" Jones told MLive.

Michigan Catholic Conference President and CEO Paul Long also opposed Smith's 
resolution and said in a statement that the MCC "will devote the full weight of 
its organization to oppose and defeat any effort to allow for state-sanctioned 
murder."

Over the last 4 decades, there have been numerous attempts to repeal the 
capital punishment ban in Michigan. In 2004, the deaths of 2 Detroit police 
officers shot by a motorist during a traffic stop prompted a state House 
resolution to allow capital punishment for 1st-degree murder when "the guilt of 
the defendant is proven to a moral certainty." It did not receive the required 
super-majority, and Smith, then a state representative, voted against it.

According to FBI data analyzed by the Death Penalty Information Center, a 
nonprofit that opposes capital punishment, regions of the country that allow 
execution are also the least safe for law enforcement officers.

18 states have abolished the death penalty. Last year, across the nation, death 
sentences were at a 40-year low and executions were at a 20-year low.

(source: Huffington Post)








MISSOURI----impending execution

Missouri death row inmate submits last-minute appeal over execution drugs ---- 
Appeal filed on behalf of Walter Timothy Storey argues lethal drugs used by 
state could cause unconstitutional pain and suffering



A Missouri inmate just hours away from execution is asking the US supreme court 
to step in, arguing that lethal drug could cause unconstitutional pain and 
suffering.

The appeal was filed on Tuesday on behalf of Walter Timothy Storey. He is 
scheduled for lethal injection at 12.01am on Wednesday for killing a female 
neighbor in 1990.

Missouri prison officials refuse to disclose details about how or if its main 
execution drug, pentobarbital, is tested. Storey's attorneys argue that the 
secrecy makes it impossible to know if the drug will quickly work or cause an 
unconstitutionally painful death.

The Missouri attorney general's office says 12 executions performed with the 
same drug have been "rapid and painless".

If the court doesn't step in, Storey's execution will be the state's 1st in 
2015.

Attorney Jennifer Herndon also claims Missouri violates its own protocol by 
using a second drug, midazolam. Missouri officials have said the state offers 
midazolam as a sedative to help calm the condemned inmate before the execution, 
but the state does not consider use of the sedative to be part of the execution 
process. The inmate can opt not to take it.

Storey, 47, has been sentenced to death 3 separate times in the 2 February 1990 
death of Jill Frey, a 36-year-old special education teacher.

Storey was living with his mother when he became upset over his pending 
divorce. He was drinking beer and ran out of money so he went to Frey's 
neighboring apartment to steal money for more beer.

Court records show he climbed her balcony and entered through an unlocked 
sliding glass door. He attacked Frey in her bedroom, slitting her throat, 
breaking 6 ribs and causing other injuries.

(source: The Guardian)








OKLAHOMA:

Oklahoma Republicans push for gas chamber as execution alternative



Republicans in Oklahoma are advocating for the state to become the country's 
1st to execute death row inmates with nitrogen in a gas chamber. Executions 
currently are on hold in Oklahoma, pending a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court 
on a case involving the controversial sedative midazolam.

Legislative hearings on a House and Senate bill regarding the issue are 
scheduled for this week. If a court find the state's lethal injection 
procedures unconstitutional, the new measures would make death through the use 
of nitrogen an alternative plan for execution in Oklahoma. By using nitrogen 
gas, the inmate would die from hypoxia, or the depletion of oxygen to the 
bloodstream.

Republican state Rep. Mike Christian, who conducted a hearing last summer on 
hypoxia, did not immediately respond to msnbc's request for comment. But he 
told The Associated Press that using nitrogen would be "a lot more practical" 
than requiring medical doctors for executions or using poisonous drugs like 
cyanide.

If passed, the method would become effective on Nov. 1. It would cost about 
$300,000 to build a gas chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in 
McAlester, according to a fiscal analysis.

4 states - Arizona, California, Missouri and Wyoming - currently have gas 
chamber procedures in place, but lethal injection remains the primary method of 
execution, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Since 1976, 11 
inmates have been executed in a gas chamber. Prisoners in Arizona, California, 
and Missouri can choose to die in a gas chamber. Inmates in Wyoming, however, 
are only authorized to be executed in gas chambers if the lethal injection 
statute is held unconstitutional. Lethal injection involves using drugs like 
cyanide or midazolam.

Last month, the Supreme Court decided to take up the challenge over the use of 
midazolam, which was used recently in problematic executions in Arizona, Ohio, 
and Oklahoma. The case focuses on whether the sedative effectively makes an 
inmate unconscious before officials administer the 2nd and 3rd drugs. Following 
their decision for review, the justices granted a stay of execution for 3 death 
row inmates in Oklahoma. The prisoners include Richard Glossip, who was 
scheduled to die in January, as well as Benjamin Cole and John Grant, who were 
to be executed in February and March, respectively.

Legislators in Oklahoma are "grasping at ways to kill people that at first 
blush seem an improvement or humane, but when you actually do these things is 
when the problems arise," Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death 
Penalty Information Center, told msnbc.

Dieter said it appears the lawmakers are trying to divert attention from the 
controversial drugs by introducing a new process, which remains untried and 
unexplored. "I think this is their effort to say, 'Allow us to have our lethal 
injection drugs, our old drugs, lest we go to something even more novel and 
perhaps risky,'" he told msnbc.

Inmates Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner were scheduled to be executed with 
previously untested drugs 2 hours apart from 1 another last April at the 
Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Lockett, the 1st to die, suffered a heart attack 
after officials injected him with a lethal drug. As it was being administered, 
Lockett reportedly shook uncontrollably and gritted his teeth before the 
eventual failure of his vein.

After Lockett's death, Oklahoma's attorney general agreed to stay Warner's 
execution until Jan. 15, when he became Oklahoma's 1st inmate to die by lethal 
injection since Lockett's botched execution.

Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the 
Death Penalty, said capital punishment is an outdated practice and hopes the 
introduction of the 2 bills this week begins a conversation about whether or 
not the death penalty is necessary for the country.

"We need leadership that's going to be moving the country forward and leaving 
gas chambers and electric chairs in the history books, where they belong," she 
told msnbc. "Instead of these folks looking backward, they need to be looking 
forward."

Oklahoma legislators enacted the current lethal injection death penalty law in 
1977, according to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. The first execution 
by lethal injection in Oklahoma took place in September 1990. Since then, 110 
other people have been killed using the method. The state also authorizes 
electrocution as a mean of execution if a court ever deems lethal injection 
unconstitutional. Oklahoma also allows the firing squad, but only if lethal 
injection and electrocution are found unconstitutional.

The United States saw the lowest number of executions in 2 decades in 2014, a 
year in which several high-profile, botched executions drew intense public 
scrutiny, and questions about new drug cocktails used in the procedure. 35 
people were executed nationwide last year, down from 39 who were executed in 
2013, according to a report released in December by the Death Penalty 
Information Center.

Officials in the 32 states that enforce the death penalty have scrambled to 
find new suppliers of lethal injection drugs after several pharmaceutical 
companies stopped carrying the medication because of criticism based on ethical 
concerns. In some cases, authorities have executed prisoners hastily with drugs 
- often obtained in secrecy - never before used for the purpose.

(source: MSNBC)








CALIFORNIA:

Parolee charged with teen abduction, rape could face death penalty in 3 Los 
Angeles murders



A parolee charged with raping a Los Angeles teen and trying to set her ablaze 
has been indicted on 3 counts of murder.

A grand jury indictment unsealed Tuesday says Robert Ransom Jr. killed 3 people 
over 2 days last year.

Prosecutors say 31-year-old Ransom pleaded not guilty to charges that could 
carry the death penalty.

The indictment says he fatally shot a woman March 1 and killed a woman and her 
toddler son 4 days later.

Ransom is also charged with the March 20 rape and kidnapping of a 16-year-old 
girl who managed to escape from his van after being doused in gas.

Prosecutors say Ransom was on parole at the time for being a felon possessing a 
gun.

He is being held without bail.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Save the death penalty - and put the gas on it



In my Tuesday column, I write about why California has not seen an execution 
for 9 years and 2 relatives of victims - including 17-year-old Terri Winchell 
seen above - have been forced to sue the state to follow the law - a law upheld 
by voters in 2012. Since 1977, when Californians voted to reinstate the death 
penalty in compliance with a U.S. Supreme Court decision, there have been 13 
executions of California death-row inmates. When executions resumed in 1992, 
the state used cyanide pellets in a gas chamber. To decrease any pain, 
Sacramento passed a law and new procedures to allow inmates to opt for lethal 
injection instead of cyanide in 1993.

What followed? Opponents who had argued that the gas chamber posed cruel and 
unusual punishment made the same claims about lethal injection. Some judges 
agreed. Activists went after the medical licenses of doctors who participated 
in executions. The Lancet came out with a ridiculous piece about pain and 
lethal injection.

Now a Superior Court judge has ordered the state to come up with a 1-drug 
lethal injection protocol. My fear is that by the time San Quentin schedules 
executions, activist judges will rule that any lethal injection is illegal.

While I supported lethal injection as a more humane method of execution, I can 
see federal judges in the Ninth Circuit ruling against it because it is a 
medicalized procedure. Lethal injections require doctors or nurses - who become 
targets and risk losing their licenses. And because something can go wrong in 
any medical procedure, appellate lawyers can find judges who will pounce on any 
pretext to find capital punishment unconstitutional.

One solution is to return to a method of execution that does not require 
medical personnel - gas. Not cyanide, but carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide or 
helium or some other gas that lulls inmates into the beyond.

Oklahoma is considering using nitrogen gas. State Rep. Mike Christian said:

unlike traditional gas chambers that used drugs like cyanide that caused a 
buildup of carbon dioxide in the blood, breathing nitrogen would be painless 
because it leads to hypoxia, a gradual lack of oxygen in the blood, similar to 
what can happen to pilots at high altitudes.

(source: Debra J. Saunders, sfgate.com)