[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----IOWA, UTAH, ORE., WASH., USA, US MIL.

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 18


IOWA:

Iowa Lawmakers Look At Bringing Back Death Penalty



Some elected leaders in the Iowa Senate would like to bring back the death 
penalty, but only for a certain kind of crime.

Senator Randy Feenstra from Sioux Center wants people to think very carefully 
about what a criminal might do if faced with the possibility of death.

The Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison marks the last place a criminal was 
executed in Iowa.

A look back at old newspaper headlines tells the story of Victor Feguer.

The federal government sentenced him to death.

In 1963 he was hanged at the Iowa State Penitentiary, and two years later Iowa 
abolished the death penalty.

And now there's an Iowa Senator who wants to bring it back, under certain 
circumstances.

"That would be a situation where a minor gets kidnapped and raped. Right now 
they get life in prison. If they get killed in the process they also get life 
in prison," said Sen. Randy Feenstra, of Sioux Center.

It's been 50 years since Iowa had capital punishment. Senator Feenstra says if 
it becomes law again, it might save lives.

"If we can save a life by that person thinking through, wow if I kill this 
person, I get the death penalty myself..if we can save just one or two it made 
the difference," Feenstra said.

The Senate will now take a look at this bill. The American Civil Liberties 
Union of Iowa says it shouldn't pass.

"Iowa should focus on the more affective alternative of permanent 
imprisonment," said Erica Johnson, with the ACLU of Iowa.

The lawmakers leading the charge disagree.

They say life in prison isn't enough, and the death penalty would be a better 
way to try and stop the murder of a minor.

"This most heinous crime should be looked at and say, it might need the death 
penalty," Feenstra said.

(source: ABC news)








UTAH:

Death penalty option upheld in St. George murder



The judge presiding over a St. George murder case has upheld a prior 
magistrate's decision allowing prosecutors to seek the death penalty if the 
defendant is found guilty at trial.

Fifth District Judge G. Michael Westfall filed a written decision and order 
Thursday allowing the case to proceed against Bloomington Hills resident 
Brandon Perry Smith, 33, who is accused of killing Leeds resident Jerrica 
Christensen in December 2010 at a downtown St. George townhouse.

Defense attorney Gary Pendleton had asked the court to quash prior Judge James 
Shumate's ruling allowing the death penalty based on four criteria including 
evidence that Christensen was killed incident to an event in which other people 
were murdered or victims of attempted murder, that the slaying was part of an 
attempted kidnapping, that Christensen was killed in an attempt to prevent her 
from being a witness to other elements of the crime, and that her slaying was 
"especially heinous, atrocious, cruel, or exceptionally depraved."

Pendleton has not challenged the prosecution's evidence that Smith allegedly 
murdered Christensen, but has concentrated on battling the court's decision 
that the evidence justifies the prosecution's plan to seek Smith's execution.

Smith's co-defendant, Paul Clifford Ashton, who was convicted in 2013 of 
killing St. George resident Brandie Sue Dawn Jerden in the townhome and 
seriously wounding James Fiske immediately before the pair allegedly went after 
Christensen, was sentenced to life in prison.

Pendleton has argued that Smith was coerced into playing a role in the incident 
after Ashton deceived him into thinking Ashton's life had been threatened, and 
that Smith did not plan the killings or take some type of perverse pleasure in 
making Christensen suffer.

Westfall's ruling notes that for the sake of the preliminary evidentiary 
hearing in which Smith was bound over for trial on a charge of aggravated 
murder, the court only needs to determine that believable evidence of all the 
elements of the crime exists, and that determining whether the evidence is a 
correct representation of what happened when the evidence is disputed is left 
to a jury to decide.

The Supreme Court has clarified that, "an inference (by the prosecution) is 
reasonable unless it falls 'to a level of inconsistency or incredibility that 
no reasonable jury could accept,'" and "the court may not assess whether an 
inference in favor of the prosecution 'is more plausible than an alternative 
that cuts in favor of the defense. That is a matter ... left for the jury,'" 
Westfall wrote.

Westfall found the prosecution's evidence shows Smith may have been aware of 
Ashton's plan to kidnap the victims and that the victims' deaths or injuries 
were linked together as part of a single criminal event, while leaving the jury 
to decide whether Smith was manipulated as Pendleton has argued.

Westfall also ruled the prosecution's evidence supports allegations Smith knew 
Ashton wanted to keep Christensen from being a potential witness after Ashton 
shot Jerden and Fiske, and that Smith may have beat, strangled and cut 
Christensen with a depraved state of mind that rejected a form of killing 
Christensen that wouldn't have prolonged her suffering. Westfall again notes 
that the defense's alternative theories will be left to the jury to decide 
which is more believable.

Deputy County Attorney Ryan Shaum said the ruling was "the best possible news" 
for the prosecution. No further proceedings have been scheduled yet, but 
typically the court would next establish a hearing to set deadlines for any new 
motions that may yet be filed before the trial, and possibly a date for the 
trial as well, he said.

Fiske and Christensen's mother, Ellen Hensley, have stated Christensen was 
helping Fiske move his friends out of Ashton's home during the middle of the 
night and that she didn't know any of the others she was helping. Hensley has 
expressed particular frustration at the length of time required to reach a 
resolution of the case.

"4 years ago, (my daughter) was murdered. Worse yet, she was murdered in a very 
brutal manner," Hensley said during a December courthouse vigil honoring 
Christensen and other victims of violence, describing the friendship between 
mother and daughter and the hooded sweatshirt Hensley let Christensen wear the 
night she was killed.

"The man who took her life covered her with it after he placed her in the tub 
in the bathroom because she was bleeding profusely out on the floor," Hensley 
said. "Too many times I've walked through the doors of the Washington County 
courthouse to attend hearings. Too many times, hearings have been reset or set 
at a much-delayed date. It has been one of the most frustrating and challenging 
experiences of my life, to say the least, as the entire court process is out of 
my hands."

(source: The Spectrum)








OREGON:

Commute Oregon's death sentences to life imprisonment



I know what it is like to execute someone.

I am a retired prison superintendent who conducted the only 2 executions that 
have taken place in Oregon in the past 53 years.

The death penalty in Oregon comes at a high cost to our state in both human and 
fiscal resources. I call on Gov. Kitzhaber to convert 35 death sentences to 
life without the possibility of release before he leaves office at mid-morning 
on Wednesday.

Based on my experiences as a correctional professional, capital punishment is a 
failed public policy - especially in Oregon where we have funded a death 
penalty system for over 30 years, yet only put to death 2 inmates who 
volunteered themselves for execution by abandoning their appeals. No other 
corrections program exemplifies such a complete failure rate.

During my more than 2 decades of running correctional facilities, I saw the 
population of those who are capable of extreme violence up close.

I have no doubts at all that these offenders did not think about the death 
penalty for one second before committing their violent acts. Instead, research 
has been shown that public safety is greatly improved when our limited tax 
dollars are redirected to law enforcement agencies to solve cases and prevent 
crimes.

I understand exactly what is being asked of public employees whose jobs include 
carrying out the lawful orders of the judiciary to end another person's life. 
The burden weighs especially heavily on my conscience because I know firsthand 
that the death penalty is not applied fairly or equally in Oregon. I have known 
hundreds of inmates who are guilty of similar crimes yet did not get the death 
penalty because they reached a plea bargain of life without parole simply 
because they had the means for professional legal assistance.

I also understand, from my experiences in corrections, the potential awful and 
lifelong repercussions that can come from participating in the execution of 
prisoners. Living with the nightmares is something that some of us experience. 
This is particularly the case with those of us who have had more hands-on 
experience with the flawed capital punishment process, and/or where an 
execution under our supervision did not go smoothly.

Since the last execution took place in Oregon in 1997 under my watch, 77 people 
have been released nationally from death row due to evidence that they were 
wrongfully convicted. I get a chill each time I read about new evidence 
exonerating inmates who have been sentenced to death.

Let me be clear: Converting the sentences of death row inmates to life without 
the possibility of release does not excuse the horrific acts these individuals 
have committed. Requiring decent men and women who work in our correctional 
facilities to take a human life in the name of a public policy that does not 
work is indefensible.

(source: Frank Thompson of Salem is retired from the positions of assistant 
director of institutions and superintendent of the Oregon State 
Penitentiary----Statesman Journal)

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

Nun urges Oregon death penalty repeal



The nun whose memoir of ministry on death row became an Oscar-winning film told 
a Portland audience Feb. 4 that what is true for everyone is true of murderers 
- they are better than the worst thing they've done in their lives.

Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph from Louisiana, has become the 
nation's leading opponent of the death penalty. Her 1993 book, "Dead Man 
Walking," made her a celebrity.

"What is it in us that makes us think we need to mimic the worst behavior in 
the world, to do just what they did to their victims?" she told the crowd, 
which had jammed into the chapel at Lewis and Clark College.

Sister Helen, a Sister of St. Joseph, said early in her life as a woman 
Religious, she focused on following the rules, being a good classroom teacher 
and doing charity. Then, she says, the gospel got to her.

"The bent of Christianity is to be on the side of the marginalized - radical 
inclusivity," she said.

She realized the difference between her and people who are poor and in jail is 
not virtue, but her own privileged upbringing as a white southerner in the Jim 
Crow era.

Sister Helen decided to move into a New Orleans housing project in the early 
1980s and then was asked to counsel Catholic death row inmate Patrick Sonnier. 
He and his younger brother were convicted of double murder and rape in the 1977 
slayings of 2 Louisana teens. Sister Helen's was the last face Patrick Sonnier 
saw before being hooded and electrocuted in 1984.

Sister Helen has accompanied 6 men in executions. Some of them, she is 
convinced, were wrongly convicted. That's the basis of her 2006 book, "The 
Death of Innocents." She calls the U.S. criminal justice system "broken," since 
defendants who are poor routinely have worse outcomes than those who are rich. 
She reports she has witnessed police under pressure ask leading questions and 
do biased work.

On top of that, low-income African American crime victims in the south still 
suffer neglect, Sister Helen claims.

"I know mommas whose sons got murdered and there wasn't even an investigation," 
Sister Helen told the Portland crowd. "They had to live in the projects and 
every day see the guys who killed their sons running around scot-free."

Sister Helen admits her biggest mistake was a failure to reach out to the 
parents of the teens murdered by the Sonnier brothers. She says she was afraid 
what they would think of her, since she was counseling the man who had taken 
their children. But the father of one victim reached out to her and taught her 
some lessons.

Later, she began attending support groups for survivors. She heard them say 
that they become isolated because no one wants to be around them.

Oregon now has 35 people on death row, but has not had an execution in decades. 
Gov. John Kitzhaber, who allowed the last executions in the 1990s, has said he 
will block any others while he is in office.

Sister Helen urged students to write letters to the editor and call lawmakers, 
urging Oregon to repeal capital punishment.

To hear a panel discussion on the death penalty aired by KBVM-FM radio, go to 
www.kbvm.com and find the Jan. 19 archives. It includes the story of St. Andre 
Bessette Parish staffer Becky McBrayer, whose faith pulled her through when a 
family member was murdered. Father Tim Mockaitis and Ron Steiner of Oregonians 
for Alternatives to the Death Penalty also spoke.

-----

Death penalty foes urge Kitzhaber to commute sentences



Oregonians for Alternatives to Death Penalty is urging outgoing Gov. John 
Kitzhaber to commute death row sentences, changing them to life without parole, 
before he leaves office today.

"When the governor leaves office his moratorium on the execution of death row 
inmates is extinguished," the organization said in a statement. "As the law 
provides, Secretary of State Kate Brown will becomes the governor. As it was 
with Governor Kitzhaber, the law provides the power to the new governor to 
declare a moratorium in her name. If there are still inmates under the sentence 
of death, we will then strongly encourage Governor Brown to declare a 
moratorium at her earliest possible opportunity."

The organization is asking Oregonians to phone the Capitol at (503) 378-3111 
and leave a message making the request of the governor.

(source: Catholic Sentinel)

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

Oregon death row inmate Mark Pinnell renews clemency request on last day of 
Kitzhaber's tenure



Less than 24 hours before Gov. John Kitzhaber officially resigns, a federal 
public defender is renewing a request for clemency for Mark Pinnell, who has 
been on death row since 1988.

Pinnell was among the 1st to seek clemency after Kitzhaber declared a 
moratorium on executions in November 2011.

Pinnell, who at 66 is the oldest on Oregon death row, is suffering from a 
severe case of chronic pulmonary disease, and his co-defendant is a free man 
who left prison in 2011 after serving nearly 26 years behind bars.

"Mark's case is a perfect example of how uneven and arbitrary the death penalty 
can be, and underscores the Governor's longstanding concerns about such an 
irreversible penalty,'' Teresa A. Hampton, supervising attorney in the federal 
public defender's office in Idaho, said in a prepared release Tuesday.

The Oregonian wrote about Pinnell in July 2013 when he first requested 
clemency. The federal public defender's office received no response from 
Kitzhaber's office then.

The Idaho office is representing Pinnell because a conflict of interest 
prevented the Oregon office from taking the case.

Since Kitzhaber announced his resignation under fire last week, he has not 
given any indication whether he'll exercise any last-minute executive powers to 
commute death sentences before he leaves office at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

The governor has said publicly only that he's "proud that Oregon has not 
invoked the death penalty during my last 4 years on the watch."

Meanwhile, Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty is urging the 
governor to vacate death row, while others have argued that a mass clemency 
would throw the system into disarray.

Heidi Moawad, Kitzhaber's public safety adviser, said Tuesday afternoon that 
she had no comment.

Pinnell and co-defendant Donald E. Cornell both robbed and killed 65-year-old 
John Wallace Ruffner at his Tualatin apartment in 1985.

Mark Pinnell's clemency application

A jury convicted Pinnell of multiple aggravated murder counts, including 
aggravated murder by torture, and he was sentenced to death. Cornell was tried 
later and acquitted of all aggravated murder charges by another jury.

Pinnell was appointed an attorney with no capital punishment experience, while 
Cornell was represented by a seasoned capital punishment attorney, Pinnell's 
federal public defender argues.

Cornell was found guilty of felony murder, a less serious charge, after his 
attorney successfully argued that the killing was unintentional. The attorney 
also argued at trial that the victim's death wasn't prolonged but happened 
quickly, thus not rising to torture.

Cornell was released from prison on Sept. 23, 2011, after serving a life 
sentence with the possibility of parole after 25 years. He served 25 years and 
11 months. He was released from parole a year later.

10 days before the 2 killed Ruffner, they had robbed a Clackamas County man 
they met responding to a sex ad in the Swing N Sway magazine. They gagged the 
man, but he survived and, as they suspected, did not report the crime. He was 
gay and a member of the military.

The duo then contacted Ruffner through a sex ad in the same magazine and 
arranged to meet him at his apartment on Sept. 19 , 1985. When they arrived 
about 10 p.m., Ruffner opened his door, Pinnell grabbed him and Cornell pushed 
his way in.

Cornell said he punched Ruffner in the stomach and took him to the ground. 
Together, he said, they tied his hands and feet behind his back with electrical 
cords ripped from appliances. When Ruffner began to yell, they shoved tissue 
paper in his mouth and covered it with a scarf. Ruffner died of asphyxiation.

According to the federal public defender's office, U.S. District Judge Anna J. 
Brown last month found that Pinnell's lawyers at his re-sentencing failed to 
show that the medical examiner had admitted there was "likely no intent to kill 
or torture the victim'' and that Pinnell's co-defendant had a history of 
"hog-tying'' other robbery victims.

The medical examiner during Cornell's trial conceded during a cross-examination 
that moisture may have caused the large wad of tissue paper in Ruffner's mouth 
to drift back slightly and block his airway and that his death was possibly 
accidental, Hampton said.

"Judge Brown opened the way for Mark to prove he would have been spared a death 
sentence had jurors at the re-sentencing known about this evidence,'' Hampton 
wrote.

She argues that the facts of her client's crime, the "lopsidedness of his 
sentence" as compared to his co-defendant, and his deteriorating health justify 
executive clemency.

Pinnell is asking Kitzhaber to at least spare his life or give him a chance to 
seek parole.

(source: oregonlive.com)








WASHINGTON:

House committee weighs bill to abolish death penalty



A House committee is set to hear public testimony on a bill to abolish 
Washington state's death penalty and replace it with life in prison, with no 
opportunity for parole.

House Bill 1739, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Reuven Carlyle, will be heard 
Wednesday morning before the House Judiciary Committee. The measure is seeking 
to take the next step on Gov. Jay Inslee's decision last year to impose a 
moratorium on capital punishment. The bill is scheduled to be voted on later in 
the week.

A companion bill that was introduced in the Senate has not received a public 
hearing, and the House bill is likely to have challenges gaining any traction 
in the Republican-controlled chamber if it makes it through the 
Democrat-controlled House. Inslee, who was criticized last year by several 
Republican lawmakers over his moratorium decision, has said he supports 
Carlyle's bill.

(source: Associated Press)








USA:

Holder Supports Death Penalty Moratorium in US



Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday he personally opposed the death 
penalty and would support delaying all executions until the Supreme Court takes 
up whether lethal injection is constitutional.

In his latest remarks on capital punishment, Holder, the outgoing attorney 
general in President Barack Obama's administration, said seeing an innocent 
person executed by mistake was "the ultimate nightmare."

"Our justice system is the best in the world ... but there's always a 
possibility that mistakes will be made. For that reason I am opposed to the 
death penalty," Holder said.

He said it was appropriate for there to be a delay in place until the Supreme 
Court takes up the issue of lethal injection in April.

Several death row inmates recently have undergone apparent suffering during 
their executions using this method.

After the problems arose in the executions, Obama called on the Justice 
Department to review lethal injection executions.

"That review is still under way. Unfortunately, it won't be completed under my 
time as Attorney General," said Holder, who is stepping aside. Obama has 
nominated Loretta Lynch as his replacement.

Despite his misgivings about capital punishment, Holder sought the federal 
death penalty for the suspected perpetrator of the April 2013 Boston marathon 
attack.

It is "one thing to put somebody in jail for an extended period of time... 
(but) another" to execute them, with "no ability to correct a mistake," the 
attorney general said.

In 2008, the high court ruled that lethal injection was constitutional, and not 
a violation of the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

But since then, a majority of states have changed their drug protocols due to a 
shortage of the products used in the past.

(source: Newsmax.com)

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

Justice system and death penalty both flawed



Poison gas is inhumane, but a lethal injection is acceptable.

If it takes someone 42 minutes to die, it's shocking and cruel, but 10 minutes 
is more than OK.

Killing is wrong, but killing a convicted killer is right.

Discussions about the death penalty are rife with inconsistencies, little lines 
that somehow separate civility with savagery without really making any 
difference at all.

On Feb. 13, newly elected Gov. Tom Wolf placed a moratorium on the death 
penalty in Pennsylvania, ensuring no one will be executed in the commonwealth 
until a task force investigating capital punishment completes its report.

It's absolutely the right call. But ideally, the task force will confirm what 
more and more Americans are realizing: The death penalty is arcane, and the 
fact that humans are fallible means we could be executing innocent people.

The desire for justice in families who have lost someone is understandable. 
Their pain is something I???m lucky enough to have never experienced and cannot 
fathom. For the United States government, however, execution should fall 
outside the legal definition of justice and into the category of cruel and 
unusual punishment.

According to Amnesty International, "Since 1973, over 130 people have been 
released from death rows throughout the country due to evidence of their 
wrongful convictions. In 2003 alone, 10 wrongfully convicted defendants were 
released from death row."

More than 130 people have been wrongly sentenced to death. The fact that the 
justice system will make mistakes is inevitable; it is a system orchestrated 
and overseen by humans who, by definition, are flawed.

But we cannot bet people's lives on our beingcorrect. If even one life is 
wrongly extinguished because of capital punishment, the entire system isn't 
worth whatever other justice it carries out. Killing an innocent person - 
robbing someone of a future - is the most heinous crime a person can commit. 
Our government should be held at least to the same standards as its citizens. 
The death penalty is also used disproportionately against minorities, something 
Wolf also mentioned in his Feb. 13 statement about the moratorium.

"While data is incomplete, there are strong indications that a person is more 
likely to be charged with a capital offense and sentenced to death if he is 
poor or of a minority racial group, and particularly where the victim of the 
crime was Caucasian," the statement said.

It's true. A 2007 study of death sentences in Connecticut conducted by Yale 
University School of Law revealed that black defendants receive the death 
penalty 3 times more than white defendants when charged with the same crime.

The racial inequalities this country is grappling with are well-documented. The 
recent "black lives matter" protests, and the white fear which accompanied 
them, showed how little many people of authoritycare about overt killings of 
black men and women. The entire criminal justice system, in fact, is riddled 
with racially skewed data.

According to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's 
website, African Americans represent 12 % of the total population of drug 
users, but make up 38 % of those arrested for drug offenses and 59 % of those 
in state prison for a drug offense. They are sentenced more harshly, too. 
African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense as 
whites do for a violent offense.

These miscarriages of justice are a major problem and need to be addressed. But 
with the death penalty, inequality is a life-or-death issue.

When humans stop being racist and stop making mistakes, maybe there will be a 
place for the death penalty in our society. Until then, let's send it the way 
of the firing squad: Into the cringeworthy annals of our history.

(source: Laura Byko, The Globe)








US MILITARY (historical item)

Conscientious objector sentenced to death at Camp Roberts, World War II week by 
week



Death penalty cases in San Luis Obispo County are thankfully rare. Currently 
the 4 men from the county on San Quentin's death row were found guilty of 1 or 
more grim murders.

1 man in county history was sentenced to death by a military court because he 
didn't want to kill.

Pvt. Henry P. Weber, 27, refused to drill with fellow troops at Camp Roberts. 
His stand was based on personal political conviction rather than 
constitutionally protected religious reasons.

It was a sign of wartime urgency that a draft board selected a man almost a 
decade past his teens and working productively in the critical wartime industry 
of shipbuilding.

At this moment in 1945, front-line conscripts in the Nazi and Soviet armies 
knew deserters would be shot by their own troops. Roving units behind the front 
line enforced each dictator's orders at gunpoint without benefit of court 
martial.

The Japanese code of honor at the time required either a fight to the death or 
ritual suicide. It was relatively rare for Americans to capture a prisoner in 
the Pacific. America did not need death squads or a cult of suicide to win the 
war, but the story was not simple.

A Telegram-Tribune story from Jan. 27 had said there were 18,000 troops absent 
without leave from American lines in Europe. Some were working selling black 
market goods in France.

Stories of heroic battlefront engagements were common at the time. Occasionally 
the gritty brutality of war was hinted at, but most stories were simplified. A 
few stories did not fit the template.

Telegram-Tribune Editor Elliot Curry wrote this front-page story Feb. 9, 1945, 
about an incident that had become national news.

Weber Defends His Loyalty; Welcomes Investigation

"I am as patriotic as anybody could be," declared Pvt. Henry P. Weber yesterday 
at Camp Roberts, where he is being held at the stockade under sentence of life 
imprisonment at hard labor for refusal to drill.

"My loyalty to my country is like that of Mark Twain," he added, "who once said 
that his loyalty was to his 'country, not its institutions.'"

Pvt. Weber is the 27-year-old Vancouver, Wash., soldier, whose death sentence, 
passed Feb. 2 by a Camp Roberts court martial, suddenly stirred national 
concern. Wednesday the death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment.

Informed yesterday that his case had been brought before Congress by Sen. 
Burton K. Wheeler and Congressman Savage, Pvt. Weber smiled broadly and said he 
would welcome a congressional investigation. It was also news to him that the 
Socialist Labor Party, of which he is an ardent member, has promised to "see 
that he gets justice."

Sets Precedent

Pvt. Weber's case has aroused national interest, not alone because of the death 
penalty passed by the court martial, but because it is one of the first cases 
of conscientious objection for political rather than religious reasons. 
Conscientious objectors for religious reasons are protected by well-defined 
laws, but conscientious objections based on political views present a new 
issue.

Neither the death sentence nor the prospect of life imprisonment have shaken 
Pvt. Weber in any of his views. He doesn't want to kill anybody or have 
anything to do with killing. He shows no animosity toward either his officers 
or fellow soldiers.

No violence is concerned in the case, Pvt. Weber stated. He simply declined to 
drill and told the officers that he preferred to be arrested.

Asked if he thought that his rights as a citizen had been fully protected, he 
said that the officers of the court martial had asked him if he desired 
counsel. He had declined assistance and stated his own case. He had no 
objection to the procedure of the trial, but he admitted that he thought the 
death penalty, particularly the death sentence, was "rather severe."

Socialist Views

As a member of the Socialist Labor Party since 1939, Pvt. Weber has come to 
believe that the world is decidedly out of joint.

"We have reached a place in the world where we have plenty for everybody 
without fighting," he said. "What we need is better distribution. Instead we 
are killing each other, through greed and selfishness. The little people of the 
world are being used as tools in a war that can only lead to World War III."

That's Pvt. Weber???s creed, and the record seems to indicate that he is 
sticking to it. Pvt. Weber, born in Eau Claire, Wis., was employed in the 
Kaiser shipyards at Vancouver as a foreman in the marine pipe section until his 
induction into the army last July. His wife and 4-year-old son and his parents 
all live in Vancouver.

Of husky build, and medium height, Pvt. Weber was brought from the stockade 
yesterday afternoon to pose for news pictures and make any statement he 
desired. He obliged cheerfully and talked freely.

"This country has a great future to look forward to," he said, as he headed 
back to the stockade under an armed guard.

-----

United Press updated the story Feb. 14, 1945, with word that Pvt. Weber's death 
sentence had been reduced in a series of review hearings that eventually went 
up to the judge advocate general. The sentences were reduced first to a life 
sentence of hard labor, later to 20 years, and then to 5 years' confinement.

That same day, news was reported that an Allied bombing of Dresden, Germany, 
had taken place. Other cities had been higher on the military target list 
during the war.

The city was filled with refugees fleeing the Soviet advance. The ensuing 
firestorms from the 3-day bombing killed and cremated an estimated 20,000 to 
600,000 persons, many civilian women and children.

After the war there were questions about the military value of a city known 
mainly for architectural beauty.

The headline at the time said the city was targeted in an attempt to assist the 
Soviet advance.

(source: San Luis Obispo Tribune)