[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.J., PENN., VA., GA.

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 24


TEXAS:

Rodney Reed: Texas appeals court grants stay of execution ---- Defence lawyers 
tell judges that new evidence proves Reed did not murder Stacey Stites in 1996 
case and trial testimony was false



A Texas court has issued a stay of execution for Rodney Reed 10 days before he 
was scheduled to be put to death for a murder he insists he did not commit.

In a 6-2 verdict on Monday that was a response to an appeal filed by Reed's 
lawyers, the Texas court of criminal appeals stayed the lethal injection that 
had been set down for 5 March. The court did not explain its decision. Reed's 
attorneys argued they had new evidence proving his innocence and showing that 
the prosecution in the original trial presented false and misleading testimony. 
They are also calling for more DNA testing.

"The family is overjoyed, we're happy beyond belief, but at the same time that 
it's a major victory, it is just a step towards where we're trying to go," 
Reed's brother, Rodrick, told the Guardian.

"We're confident we're going to get a new trial and that he'll get exonerated 
with all the new evidence and the new witnesses."

Stacey Stites's body was discovered by a rural roadside in Bastrop, near 
Austin, in 1996. The 19-year-old had been engaged to a police officer, Jimmy 
Fennell, who is currently in prison for kidnap and sexual assault. He was 
initially a suspect but investigators turned their focus to Reed after his DNA 
was discovered inside Stites's body.

Reed's defence was that he was having an affair with Stites that they kept 
secret because it had the potential to cause a scandal in smalltown Texas since 
Reed is black and Stites was white.

Prosecutors persuaded the jury that Reed had raped and strangled Stites in the 
early hours of the morning after intercepting her on her way to work, but the 
timeline for that version of events relied on scientific evidence at the trial 
that has since been discredited.

Reed has been on death row for nearly 17 years. "We're extremely relieved that 
the court has stayed Mr Reed's execution so there will be proper consideration 
of the powerful new evidence of his innocence. We are also optimistic that this 
will give us the opportunity to finally conduct DNA testing that could prove 
who actually committed the crime," said Bryce Benjet, a staff attorney with the 
Innocence Project.

In their 12 February filing Reed's lawyers argued that Stites was killed 
several hours earlier than the prosecution claimed - placing the time of death 
during a period when she was almost certainly at home with Fennell. "3 of the 
most experienced and well-regarded forensic pathologists in the country ... 
have re-evaluated the case and determined that Mr Reed's guilt is medically and 
scientifically impossible," they wrote.

Reed's claim to innocence has attracted vigorous nationwide support from 
anti-death penalty campaigners and last week he was the subject of a television 
show in which a retired New York police detective examined the case and 
concluded there were serious problems with the conviction.

(source: The Guardian)




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


TEXAS COURT ISSUES STAY OF EXECUTION


On 23 February, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a stay of execution 
in the case of Rodney
Reed, who was due to be put to death on 5 March for a murder in 1996 which he 
has consistently said
he did not commit.

View the full Urgent Action, including case information, addresses and sample 
messages, here.

On 23 February, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a stay of execution 
in the case of Rodney
Reed. The lawyers had filed a new petition in the court on 13 February. The 
Court decision was six
to two in favor of a stay and said: “In this application, applicant asserts 
that he has newly
discovered evidence that supports his claim that he is actually innocent, that 
new scientific
evidence establishes his probable innocence…, and that the State presented 
false, misleading, and
scientifically invalid testimony which violates his right to due process…The 
Court orders
applicant’s execution stayed pending further order of this Court”.

Rodney Reed has been on death row in Texas since 1998 after being convicted of 
the murder of Stacey
Stites, whose body was found near a road in Bastrop County in rural central 
Texas on the afternoon
of 23 April 1996. Nearly a year after the murder, DNA testing of semen from the 
body was matched to
the DNA of Rodney Reed. He had initially denied knowing the victim, but then 
said that they had been
in a consensual intimate relationship.

New expert opinion and other evidence calls into question the state’s theory of 
the crime and the
forensic evidence on which it was based. The prosecution had argued that Rodney 
Reed’s DNA had been
left during a rape contemporaneous with the murder, which the state said had 
occurred around 3am on
23 April 1996. The state’s forensic expert supported this theory at the trial. 
Since then, he has
signed a statement that his testimony was misused by the prosecution and that 
his estimate “should
not have been used at trial as an accurate statement of when Ms Stites died”, 
and that the semen
could have been left more than 24 hours before the victim’s death, consistent 
with Reed’s claim of
consensual sex in that time frame. Three leading forensic pathologists have 
also concluded from
their review of all available materials that there is no forensic evidence that 
Stacey Stites had
been sexually assaulted at the time of her murder rather than having engaged in 
consensual
intercourse 24 hours or more before. They concluded that she was killed before 
midnight on 22 April
1996, and her body kept face down for several hours before being transported to 
the location where
it was found. One of the experts concluded that the forensic evidence renders 
the state’s theory
about time of death “medically and scientifically impossible”. Another 
concluded “beyond a
reasonable degree of medical certainty that, based on all of the forensic 
evidence, Mr. Reed is
scheduled to be executed for a crime he did not commit”.

Two people also recently signed statements that they were aware of the 
relationship between Rodney
Reed and Stacey Stites. Previous witnesses who attested to the relationship 
were deemed unreliable
by the courts because of their relationship to the defendant or for other 
reasons.

Name: Rodney Reed (m)
Issues: Imminent execution, Death penalty, Legal concern Further information on 
UA: 39/15 (19 February 2015)
Issue Date: 24 February 2015
Country: USA

HOW YOU CAN HELP

No further action by the UA Network is requested at this time. Amnesty 
International will keep
monitoring the situation and will take further campaigning action when 
necessary. Many thanks to all
who sent appeals. This is the first update of UA 39/15. Further information:
www.amnesty.org/en/documents/AMR51/0010/2015/en/

We encourage you to share Urgent Actions with your friends and colleagues! When 
you share with your
networks, instead of forwarding the original email, please use the "Forward 
this email to a friend"
link found at the very bottom of this email. Thank you for your activism!

UA Network Office AIUSA │600 Pennsylvania Ave SE, Washington DC 20003
T. 202.509.8193 │ F. 202.509.8193 │E. uan at aiusa.org │amnestyusa.org/urgent


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



Explosive Allegations Provide New Hope For British Grandmother On Texas Death 
Row



New allegations in a high-profile death penalty case may help Linda Carty, a 
56-year-old British grandmother who has been on death row in Texas since 2002, 
get the appeal she so desperately needs.

"When you see the consistent pattern [of allegations] we have from every single 
witness, it just cries out for a hearing," Michael Goldberg, Carty's attorney, 
told The Huffington Post Friday.

With signed affidavits as new evidence, Goldberg has requested an evidentiary 
hearing with the Texas Court Of Criminal Appeals in hopes a favorable ruling 
paves the way for new trial in appeals court.

A jury sentenced Carty to death in February 2002 after she was convicted of 
plotting the murder of a woman and child who lived in her apartment complex. 
The 4 men convicted of kidnapping the pair testified against Carty, who worked 
as a Drug Enforcement Agency informant, to avoid the death penalty themselves.

Last week, the Houston Chronicle published a scathing investigation containing 
allegations that the prosecuting attorney coached, coerced and otherwise 
threatened witnesses into giving testimony that suited her case.

Since the Chronicle's article, Goldberg said, "a lot of people [have] come out 
of the woodwork" with "things to say" about Assistant Harris County District 
Attorney Connie Spence.

The Chronicle's report included the affidavits, which were both signed in 2014 
and supplied independent of one another to Carty's defense team. Christopher 
Robinson,1 of the 4 gunmen who testified against Carty at trial, wrote that 
Spence both coached and threatened him into giving damning testimony against 
Carty. Charles Mathis, the former DEA agent who recruited Carty in the '90s as 
a confidential informant, accused Spence of inventing a false affair between 
him and Carty to coerce him into testifying for her office.

According to court records, 4 gunmen burst into the home of Carty's neighbor, 
Joana Rodriguez, in May 2001. They demanded money and drugs before beating 
Rodriguez's husband and abducting her and her newborn son, the document notes. 
She was found dead a day later, tied and suffocated in the trunk of a car. The 
baby was found alive and reunited with his father.

Prosecutors alleged that Carty, a mother and a grandmother, was obsessed with 
having another baby to save her common-law marriage and orchestrated the kidnap 
and murder plot so she could pass off Rodriguez's newborn as her own. Carty's 
defense argued she was set up by the kidnappers - all of whom had prior drug or 
robbery convictions - as retribution for her ongoing work with the DEA.

In his affidavit, Mathis, who could not be reached for comment, wrote that 
Spence had "limited my testimony and only wanted me to testify only to a very 
tight set of facts." He wrote he was unable to speak to Carty's important work 
with the DEA, or the fact that he found her incapable of committing murder.

Though no execution date has been set, Carty's case has drawn significant 
interest and outrage in England and her native Saint Kitts. Her case has been 
well-covered by British media, and former model and human rights activist 
Bianca Jagger numbers among her supporters. In 2009, supporters staged a sort 
of demonstration in London's Trafalger Square to publicize her plea. Carty's 
case was even the subject of an episode of the Werner Herzog-directed 
miniseries, "On Death Row."

Goldberg noted the Harris County District Attorney's Office has not opened an 
investigation into the allegations against Spence; a Harris County district 
attorney told the Chronicle the office would wait for a response from the state 
before opening any kind of investigation into misconduct by the office's 
attorneys.

The Harris County District Attorney's office did not return The Huffington 
Post's calls or emails for comment.

Carty has lost a total of 3 appeals at the state and federal level, including 1 
in which the British government filed an amicus brief as a friend of the court 
to the U.S. Supreme Court. Goldberg, who has been working pro-bono on Carty's 
appeals case for almost a decade, said on top of unethical tactics by Spence's 
office, Carty's court-appointed trial attorney was inept; lawyer Gerald 
Guerinot even failed to call Mathis to the stand or contact the British 
Consulate when Carty was arrested. The Houston Chronicle notes Guerinot has had 
20 clients condemned to death row.

Goldberg said Carty is now waiting for the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals to 
grant an evidentiary hearing based on the new evidence from the affidavits.

"It is very difficult to maintain your sanity being on death row for a decade," 
Goldberg said. "Linda has had so many highs and lows through 1st round of 
appeals and now she is in one of those highs thinking 'we got this!'"

Goldberg added: "But I'm trying to temper everything, because when you're 
dealing with the criminal courts, you can never say for certain."

(source: Huffington Post)








NEW JERSEY:

'Blind Faith' killer Robert Marshall dies in prison



--

Robert Marshall timeline

June 1983: Robert O. Marshall begins affair with Saraan Krausharr. By December, 
he begins plot to kill wife of 21 years Maria Marshall, 42, the mother of their 
3 sons.

June 1984: Marshall pays Billy Wayne McKinnon, a former Louisiana sheriff's 
officer, $5,000 to meet him at Harrah's Casino and plan a murder around a faked 
robbery. Marshall offers a total of $80,000 for the job. He plans to collect 
$1.5 million on his wife's life insurance policies.

Sept. 7, 1984: Maria Marshall is murdered while the couple are on way home from 
a night out. Robert Marshall pulls into a Garden State Parkway picnic area, 
pretending to check a flat tire as Maria sleeps. He is knocked unconscious as 
part of the "robbery." She is shot twice and dies instantly.

Dec. 1984: Marshall is arrested, charged as an accomplice.

March 6, 1986: After a 6-week trial in Mays Landing, Marshall is convicted of 
contracting his wife's murder. He faints as he receives the death sentence. The 
jurors acquit Larry N. Thompson, one of three alleged accomplices and the 
suspected gunman. Other accomplices are McKinnon, who served 1 year, and Robert 
Cumber, who was sentenced to 30 years and granted clemency in 2006.

April 1988: Thompson sues Ocean County Prosecutor's Office seeking $25 million 
for improper arrest; prosecutors win.

Feb. 1989: Author Joseph McGinniss releases "Blind Faith," based on the 
Marshall case, which becomes a bestseller and NBC-TV miniseries in 1990.

Jan. 24, 1991: N.J. Supreme Court upholds Marshall's conviction and death 
sentence. His is the 1st death sentence upheld since New Jersey reinstated 
death penalty.

July 29, 1992: Marshall loses his plea for a life sentence; the death penalty 
is upheld by the Supreme Court.

Feb. 23, 1993: The U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear Marshall's initial 
appeal. A series of appeals follows.

March 5, 1997: After repeated losses for Marshall, the state Supreme Court 
rejects his appeal for a new trial.

April 4, 1997: Superior Court Judge Manuel Greenberg allows a 10-day extension 
before signing the death warrant.

June 21, 2001: Having exhausted state and federal appeals, Marshall loses 
again.

Nov. 2, 2005: Marshall, who was to die by lethal injection, wins a major 
appeal. The third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia rules 
Marshall's lawyer inadequately represented him in the death-penalty phase after 
his 1986 conviction. Court orders new a death-penalty hearing or a life 
sentence.

Dec. 9, 2005: The N.J. attorney general appeals the U.S. Supreme Court lower 
court's ruling against Marshall's death sentence.

May 12, 2006: Prosecutors drop the death-penalty hearing due to the task of 
presenting evidence after more than 20 years had passed. Marshall receives a 
life sentence.

Dec. 2007: New Jersey abolishes the death penalty.

April 2014: Larry Thompson, who had been acquitted of being the triggerman, 
confesses to the crime. In prison in Louisiana for armed robbery at the time, 
he told authorities that witnesses who said he was in Louisiana when Maria 
Marshall was killed were lying or mistaken.

January 2015: New Jersey's parole board schedules a March parole hearing for 
Marshall.

Feb. 21: Marshall, 75, dies at South Woods State Prison in southern New Jersey, 
according to state Department of Corrections.

--

James Churchill was preparing to leave for a Florida vacation Monday morning 
when he received the call that Robert O. Marshall had died, 30 years after 
Churchill helped put the Toms River man on death row for arranging the murder 
of his wife, Maria Marshall.

The case of Robert O. Marshall was the subject of author Joseph McGinniss' book 
"Blind Faith" and a subsequent TV miniseries.

"I got the call from someone in the Prosecutor's Office and then my daughter 
called to tell me he died. It wasn't a surprise. I knew he was pretty much 
incapacitated and has been for about 6 months," Churchill said. Marshallwas a 
successful insurance broker in Toms River at the time of his wife's killing. 
Churchill was an investigator for the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office who 
helped crack the case.

New Jersey's Department of Corrections says Marshall died Saturday at South 
Woods State Prison.

Churchill said he recently learned that Marshall suffered some sort of medical 
episode and was transferred to another medical facility from the prison.

Marshall's son Robby called Churchill about 6 weeks ago to let him know his 
father wasn't doing well, Churchill said.

Marshall was found guilty of conspiring with 2 Louisiana men to gun down his 
wife, Maria. Churchill's work helped prove that Marshall had been engaged in an 
extramarital affair and had taken out $1.5 million in insurance on his wife.

Churchill, 71, had been waiting for almost 30 years for a confession that he 
finally got in April, when triggerman Larry Thompson, who is in a Louisiana 
state prison on an unrelated charge, admitted his role in the 1984 killing of 
Maria Marshall. She was gunned down in a picnic area of the Garden State 
Parkway in Lacey Township as the couple drove home from an Atlantic City 
casino.

Last year, Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato brought back Churchill, who 
retired in 1995, to work the Marshall investigation and obtain a confession 
from Thompson.

In 1986, Thompson, now 72, had been found not guilty in Marshall's killing, but 
her husband was convicted and initially faced the death penalty before it was 
abolished in 2004. He was then sentenced to life in prison.

"This was truly was a life sentence for him. He went to jail on Dec. 19, 1984, 
and never came out and it was a long road to get to his appeals," Churchill 
said.

Thompson's confession last year gave some closure to Maria Marshall's sons and 
now the death of their dad gives them the ultimate closure, Churchill said.

"His (Marshall's) death doesn't give me closure. When you work in this business 
for as a long as you do, when a case comes along you try to get as much 
information as you can to solve the case. It bothered me that we did so much 
work on this and some liars and people who were mistaken got (Thompson) off," 
said Churchill.

Marshall was scheduled to have his first chance at parole during a hearing next 
month.

"I really don't know if he would have gotten out. He is the 1st person to be 
sentenced to die and then to be able to come up for parole. I hoped he would 
not have gotten out. It would not have destroyed the work we did. But if he had 
gotten out it would be because the law says you get out after 30 years," 
Churchill said.

William Schievella, former deputy director of the state Division of Parole, 
said he has followed the case for the last 30 years, and while it was possible, 
it was also highly unlikely Marshall would have been granted parole.

Schievella, who now serves as director of the Police Studies Institute at the 
College of St. Elizabeth in Morris County, said if he had to place a bet, it 
would be 80-20 that Marshall would not have been released from prison.

"It is highly unlikely that such a heinous criminal with a crime of such 
notoriety would be released. This is because the parole process is designed 
with the public's safety as a paramount consideration," he said.

(source: Press of Atlantic City)








PENNSYLVANIA:



Gov. Tom Wolf did not impose a "moratorium" on Pennsylvania's death penalty. He 
has no such authority, and he knows that.

The governor was properly advised by Judge Timothy K. Lewis, former U.S. Court 
of Appeals judge, that there exists no authority in the Office of Pennsylvania 
Governor to declare a moratorium or suspend the death penalty.

What the governor did was to grant a reprieve to one death row inmate who was 
scheduled for an imminent execution.

The granting of a reprieve is one of the governor's powers with respect to 
clemency in Article IV, Section 9(a) of the Pennsylvania Constitution. The 
other 2 are the power to commute a death sentence to life and to grant a 
pardon.

The latter 2, however, cannot be exercised by the governor unless recommended 
by the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons. With respect to commuting a death 
sentence to life, the recommendation must be unanimous.

Under Pennsylvania law, the issuance of execution warrants by the executive 
branch is a mandatory duty.

That precedent was established in Morganelli v. Casey, a case I brought in 1994 
against then Gov. Robert Casey. Today, the governor is given 90 days to sign a 
death warrant after receiving the case from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. If 
the governor does not sign the execution warrant, the execution date must be 
set by the Department of Corrections, and the execution proceeds without the 
governor's signature.

Accordingly, Judge Lewis advised the governor that executions must proceed and 
that the use of the reprieve power was the only constitutional basis for 
creating a de facto moratorium.

The governor has stated that he will grant reprieves for subsequent scheduled 
executions for each death row inmate at least until the release of an impending 
study being done by a task force established by the Legislature.

The governor's objective is unlikely to succeed.

In Morganelli v. Casey, the court held that a reprieve exists only to afford an 
individual defendant the opportunity to temporarily postpone an execution for a 
particular proceeding involving that defendant - i.e. a pending application for 
a pardon, commutation or judicial relief.

It is unlikely that a court will allow a governor to grant "reprieves" based on 
a governor's concern about the fairness of the process or the release of a 
report that has no legal significance. If this was permitted, it would in 
effect allow a governor to commute death sentences to life, bypassing the Board 
of Pardons in contravention of Article IV of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

Only the Legislature has the power to repeal the death penalty, and only the 
judiciary has the power to suspend the death penalty or declare it null and 
void as unconstitutional or in violation of due process.

Pennsylvania's death penalty was deemed constitutional by the U.S. Supreme 
Court many years ago in the case of Blystone, and, therefore, the governor will 
not be able to derail Pennsylvania's death penalty by continuously granting 
reprieves in individual cases.

As someone who has personally litigated these issues, I predict that ultimately 
the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will find the governor's action outside of the 
intended purpose and scope of a reprieve.

Northampton County District Attorney Morganelli is a past president of the 
Pennsylvania District Attorney's Association and in 1994 successfully 
prosecuted an unprecedented case against the governor of Pennsylvania to 
enforce Pennsylvania's death penalty.

(source: Opinion; John Morganelli, Lebanon Daily News)

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

DA to seek death penalty in Duquesne slaying, arson



The Allegheny County District Attorney's office announced Monday that it will 
seek the death penalty against a man accused of killing his estranged wife and 
setting her Duquesne home on fire.

James Karr, 47, is charged with criminal homicide after police said he wrapped 
his wife, Maureen Karr, 56, in wire, poured vodka on her and made a trail to 
the front door of her home on Friendship Street and set it on fire on Dec. 30.

To pursue capital punishment, the prosecution must prove at least 1 aggravating 
factor to a jury, and the jury must find that the aggravating factor outweighs 
any mitigation presented by the defense.

In Mr. Karr's case, the prosecution has identified five potential aggravating 
factors, including that the victim was a witness to another crime committed by 
the defendant and was killed to be prohibited from testifying; that he 
committed the killing while in the perpetration of a felony; that in committing 
the crime the defendant knowingly created a grave risk of death to someone 
other than the victim; and that at the time of the killing, Mr. Karr was the 
subject of a PFA by his wife.

The district attorney's office currently has 5 other death penalty cases 
pending.

Earlier this month, Gov. Tom Wolf announced a moratorium on the death penalty 
in Pennsylvania citing questions about the fundamental fairness of capital 
punishment.

Mike Manko, a spokesman with the district attorney's office, said the 
moratorium does not impact the decision to pursue capital punishment against 
Mr. Karr.

"The most immediate impact of the governor's recent announcement concerning the 
death penalty was to postpone events involving 1 defendant from Philadelphia," 
he said. "What the governor's announcement did not do was change the law. 
Capital punishment remains the law in this commonwealth and should be applied 
when appropriate as in the case of James Karr."

No one has been executed in Pennsylvania since 1999.

(source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

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

Thoughts on Pa. death penalty moratorium opposition



Many people, present company excepted, employ the wrong word in speaking, 
either because they don't know better, have misheard it, or have confused the 
meaning.

Take the word moratorium.

It appears that some people think moratorium means to kill. After all, isn't a 
moratorium like a mortuary, where they take dead bodies? It fits right in with 
execution and death penalty. Moratorium means to pause, hold or suspend.

No sooner had Gov. Wolf signed an executive order placing a moratorium on 
executions, when the elephants began to trumpet. The first 2 into the clearing 
were the district attorneys of Cumberland and Dauphin counties, Dave Freed and 
Ed Marsico. Both men are at risk of running for higher office. When we didn't 
hear from York County District Attorney Tom Kearney, we figured he was giving 
the hometown boy a pass, but that all changed with the Feb. 22 edition of the 
York Sunday News. It turns out that Kearney was not only disturbed, he was 
deeply saddened.

In his opinion piece in the YDR, the district attorney allowed as how the 
governor not only usurped roles of our Legislature, but also the will of the 
people. Now Gov. Wolf has the Legislature, at least 4 district attorneys, and 
more than 12 million Pennsylvanians, whose wills were violated, clamoring for 
the return of the death penalty. The 4th district attorney is John Morganelli 
of Northumberland County.

Kearney says Wolf's action is a slap in the face to those who served on our 
juries and to the victims and their families, and Morganelli writes in his YDR 
opinion piece that Pennsylvania's death penalty was deemed constitutional by 
the U.S. Supreme Court and "therefore the governor will not be able to derail 
Pennsylvania's death penalty."

I greatly sympathize with the families in their anguish. We all want our pound 
of flesh when we're hurting as badly as they are. It's the others who puzzle 
me, but it fits the season doesn't it, the voices shouting, "Kill him! Kill 
him!"

Bill Schmeer, Thomasville

(source: Letter to the Editor, York Daily Record)

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

Death penalty to be sought against man charged with homicide in estranged 
wife's fire death



Prosecutors in western Pennsylvania say they plan to seek the death penalty 
against a man accused of having set a fire that killed his estranged wife.

47-year-old James Karr is charged in Allegheny County with homicide and arson 
in the Dec. 30 fire in Duquesne that killed 56-year-old Maureen Karr.

The victim had sought a protection-from-abuse order, alleging that her husband 
had threatened to burn down her home.

The district attorney's office said Monday that the death penalty will be 
sought if Karr is convicted of 1st-degree murder.

Prosecutors cited as factors supporting the decision the fact that the victim 
was to be a witness and the allegations that another person was threatened, 
torture was involved and the crime occurred during commission of a felony.

Karr's attorney declined comment Monday.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Is death penalty the only justice?



After Gov. Tom Wolf announced he was halting executions until the results of a 
bipartisan study on the fairness, cost and efficacy of capital punishment in 
the commonwealth are released and addressed, I was dismayed to read comments 
from the Dauphin County prosecutor calling the governor's decision a "punch in 
the stomach" to murder victims' families.

As a former prosecutor and capital defense attorney, I have witnessed the true 
suffering of murder victims' families first hand, and there is nothing more gut 
wrenching.

But it is cruel to tell victims' families that they need the death penalty to 
achieve justice or closure, because the death penalty isn't even an option in 
the vast majority of murder cases.

In 2013, there were 594 murders committed in Pennsylvania and three offenders 
joined death row that year. If justice for the victims' families is defined as 
the imposition of a death sentence, then what of the other 591 Pennsylvanians 
that were killed and their families, all of whom have suffered the horrors of a 
murder in the family?

Many of these crimes are never even solved, let alone prosecuted with the goal 
of getting a death sentence.

Even in cases where a death sentence is handed down, the promise of an 
execution frequently goes unfulfilled.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Pennsylvanians have imposed 
412 death sentences since the death penalty was reinstated in 1974, and yet 250 
of those death verdicts have been reversed on appeal due to serious errors, 
with only 6 death sentences reinstated, and yet justice was served.

Only 3 executions have been carried out in during this same period.

If awarding the death penalty were nothing more than a calculus of weighing the 
value of a murder victim's life against that of the offender, the victim's 
virtue would tip the scale every time. But justice is much more complicated 
than simply executing an offender in retribution for a victim's life.

The U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the automatic award of a death sentence upon 
conviction for capital murder since 1976, reasoning that juries must sentence 
the offender and not just the crime. Our criminal justice system looks at 
offenders, many of whom have had wretched lives that may explain - but never 
excuse - the terrible crimes they commit. Justice demands that criminal 
sentencing weigh all relevant factors around the severity of the crime and the 
culpability of the offender. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court has determined 
that juveniles and the intellectually impaired are less capable of making 
informed decisions and sound judgments, and therefore should be exempted from 
execution.

So why is the argument made that the death-penalty moratorium robs the victims' 
families of justice? Is justice for the victims only defined by executing 
offenders? Why is the victim's value defined by what happens to the person who 
killed him or her?

Surely there have been prosecutors in Pennsylvania who could have decided to 
seek the death penalty in death-eligible 1st-degree murder cases and chose not 
to, and yet justice was served. Surely there are prosecutors in Pennsylvania 
who initially filed capital murder charges against an offender, and then 
decided to offer a plea bargain for life in prison without parole, and yet 
justice was served.

In contrast to the death penalty, life without parole is a severe and certain 
punishment that means what it says: offenders will remain in prison until their 
natural deaths. Victims' families don't have to spend decades waiting for an 
execution that may never come.

It is a popular refrain that the death penalty is reserved for the "worst of 
the worse." However, in my experience, the death penalty is a punishment 
reserved exclusively for the poor, for the mentally ill and for offenders whose 
victims were white.

I submit that achieving justice is about much more than simply getting a death 
sentence. The late writer David Foster Wallace once said that leaders "help us 
overcome the limitations of our own individual ... weakness and fear and get us 
to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own."

I urge the state prosecutors and the police who serve us all to join and 
support Gov. Wolf's leadership by making us all do the hard work to define what 
justice truly is in each and every case without resorting to the tag line that 
execution is the answer.

(source: Op-Ed; Stephanie A. Jirard is a criminal justice professor at 
Shippensburg University, but the views expressed herein are her own----York 
Dispatch)

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

Is Pennsylvania's death-penalty impasse fixable?



Sunday's editorial about Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf's resistance to the state's 
death penalty struck a nerve with readers, pro and con. Many commenters took 
issue with the idea that capital punishment should be implemented in the most 
heinous killings, in cases in which guilt is not in doubt.

Others made the case that the U.S., in refusing to abolish the death penalty, 
goes against the tide of most developed countries and has more in common with 
brutal regimes.

Supporters of the death penalty say it's a just punishment for those who kill 
and meet the "aggravating" conditions for execution -- and it prevents them 
from getting out of prison and killing again.

Here's a sampling of the comments. Free free to add your voice to the 
conversation.

smallford said:

The so-called higher ups in the government should get rid of the death penalty. 
The lawyers are the ones making the money by filing appeal after appeal and we 
the poor fools that pay and pay and etc.

van243 responded:

So your way of fixing this is to ban it completely? We need the law on the 
books even if we never have to use it. It's a deterrent. I've heard it costs 
more to execute a person than jail them for life. Why can't we correct that 
part too?

Carmello agreed:

Nothing broken about this system. We have to enforce the death penalty. Do 
people who oppose the death penalty actually believe it's cheaper to house them 
for life? Firing squad is pretty cheap. Wouldn't it be better to execute those 
monsters? Especially since most probably have no remorse for their crimes.

It's strange how people can think abortion is a choice and the death penalty is 
murder.

peterkc countered:

The U.S. is the only developed country that still uses this barbaric system. 
We're horrified when rebels execute someone by beheading them, but we put 
people on 'death row' for years and then use torturous lethal injections to 
kill them -- how is that any better?

friendly_rationalist cited the inequality in sentencing and executions:

The death penalty has never been applied uniformly. As far back as Thomas 
Paine, he wrote, "Why is it that scarcely any are executed but the poor?" 
There's no take-backs once you kill someone. If you find new evidence, then 
what? States have killed innocent folks before. Don't repeat those mistakes.

Matt_PSU said:

For all intents and purposes, Pennsylvania does not execute anyone. Our appeals 
process is so endless that there are inmates who have been on death row longer 
than I've been alive. It actually costs more for the endless appeals than it 
does to just keep someone in prison for their entire life. The main reason I 
think we should keep the death penalty is that these animals in prison are 
already in for a life term, and then they kill another inmate. They know that 
there is literally no additional consequence to killing again.

bakerdude said the editorial view was nonsensical:

"Reasonable people support capital punishment," ET opinion staff? Sorry, you 
lost me at the third sentence. That is a nonsensical statement.

Gordie also differed with the editorial:

ET staff, you made a mistake in this statement. "Last week U.S. Attorney 
General Eric Holder called for a national moratorium on lethal injection until 
the U.S. Supreme Court reviews a suit brought by death row inmates in Oklahoma.

That's not his job, either."

Calling for common sense is not a job. It is common sense that anyone has a 
right to express. Till the Supreme Court rules and the nation comes up with a 
better means to execute, a stay on executions by anyone is the right course for 
a "so- called Christian" nation.

Fred1451 said:

The one advantage of having a death row, even if no one is ever executed, is we 
never have to worry about one of these monsters coming up for parole.

(source: Opinions; Lehighvalleylive.com)








VIRGINIA:

Virginia bill shields companies producing lethal injection chemicals



Earlier this month, the Virginia state Senate passed legislation in a 23-14 
vote that would make secret "all information relating to the execution 
process." This information would include the names of companies involved in 
producing, compounding, transporting and administering chemicals used in the 
state's lethal injection protocol. The proposed state law is currently being 
reviewed by the state House and prepared for a vote.

The legislation would mandate that anyone "engaged to compound ... manufacture 
or supply the materials ... for use in [an] execution," as well as "the name of 
the materials or components used to compound drug products for use in the 
execution," would be exempt from all requirements that the state reveal their 
identities under the Freedom of Information Act. In addition, the bill would 
hide all "names, residential or office addresses, residential or office 
telephone numbers, and social security numbers" of individuals involved in the 
administering of the lethal drugs.

The bill is similar to a number of legislative motions that have passed across 
the country, including in Ohio, where early last year death row inmate Dennis 
McGuire writhed in agony for nearly a half hour before succumbing to the 
effects of an experimental drug concoction.

Although a self-proclaimed opponent of the death penalty, Virginia's Democratic 
Governor Terry McAuliffe has been named as a "chief booster" of the bill, 
according to the Washington Post. Other supposed opponents of capital 
punishment have flocked to his side, demonstrating the complete lack of 
principled opposition to the death penalty within the political establishment.

Supporters of the legislation have attempted to present the action as a measure 
to ensure security for companies doing business with the state. Department of 
Corrections spokesperson Lisa Kinney implied that such measures were being 
taken due to the possibility that manufacturers of the lethal chemicals were in 
jeopardy from the public, citing fears of "harassment, threats, or danger."

"The death penalty exists in the commonwealth, and we're merely trying to 
ensure that those sentenced to death are able to have the choice of lethal 
injection," said Secretary of Public Safety Brian Moran. "I continue to believe 
the majority of Virginians support the death penalty," he absurdly asserted, 
after having endorsed legislation that was enacted to protect executioners from 
public scrutiny.

Senate Minority leader Richard Saslaw, a Democrat, attempted to smear death 
penalty opponents by accusing them of engaging in a sadistic plot to make 
executions as painful as possible in order to bring more support to their 
movement. Claiming that it was in fact the opponents of capital punishment 
sought a return to the electric chair, he said their argument was that "if you 
make the death penalty too humane ... then people will think there's nothing 
wrong with the death penalty." He offered no evidence for this accusation.

The legislation comes as many states have had difficulty obtaining the drugs 
used to kill prisoners due in large part to a European Union ban on exporting 
drugs to be used in executions. Rather than ending the barbaric practice, 
states have sought out alternative methods, including untested drug 
combinations that often come from unregulated private sources, particularly 
compounding pharmacies that are only loosely regulated by state and federal 
authorities.

This has resulted in a number of grotesque execution scenes across the country, 
as inmates have been subjected to execution methods that violate the US Eighth 
Amendment clause barring cruel and unusual punishment. Virginia is also 
considering a bill that would authorize the use of the electric chair in cases 
where the necessary drugs are unobtainable, in addition to the law shielding 
companies from public accountability.

In January of 2014, Ohio executed Dennis McGuire with an untested two-drug 
cocktail after failing to procure the standard 3-drug combination. The result 
was a horrifying, 25-minute process in which McGuire went into convulsions and 
writhed in pain, shocking the witnesses and provoking international outrage.

Virginia was the site of the very 1st execution in the Colonial United States, 
and executed more people than any other state between 1608 and 1976, with a 
total of 1,277, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). Since 
the reinstatement of capital punishment by the US Supreme Court in 1976, 
Virginia has executed 110 people, 2nd only to Texas.

According to Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, the victims of 
Virginia's execution regime include more women, and the youngest prisoners, of 
any state. In one notorious 1998 case, a prosecutor successfully argued that 
DNA evidence that may have posthumously exonerated Joseph O'Dell should be 
destroyed, as he had already been executed and "it would be shouted from the 
rooftops that ... Virginia executed an innocent man."

(source: WSWS news)








GEORGIA----impending female execution

Parole Board hears clemency plea for Auburn woman slated for execution



The 5 gubernatorial appointees on Georgia's Board of Pardons and Paroles met 
Tuesday morning behind closed doors to hear pleas for and against granting 
clemency for the only woman on Georgia's death row.

They were to hear 21 witnesses plea for clemency on behalf of Kelly Gissendaner 
of Auburn, Ga., who is scheduled for execution Wednesday evening for the 1997 
murder her husband Doug. She would be the 1st woman executed in Georgia since 
1945.

The hearing's morning session was devoted to her supporters, while the 
afternoon session allows the victim's family and prosecutors to speak. Then the 
board members will vote by secret ballot with the agency's attorney, who will 
tally the decision probably in early evening. The board will not hear directly 
from her except through a videotape and interviews with agency staff.

Witnesses for the condemned include a son and daughter, prison chaplains, 
preachers, a former inmate and a retired prison lieutenant.

"We've reviewed all of the materials that have been given to us by her 
attorneys. We looked at all of the court documents from beginning to end, 
looked at all of the trial documents, all of the appeals all the way up as 
well," said Board Chairman Terry Barnard. "The board is quite capable, quite 
able this morning to take up this issue."

In the written application for clemency, Gissendaner acknowledged convincing 
her boyfriend to kill her husband and expressed remorse, even though during her 
trial she maintained her innocence. She also authorized attorneys to appeal her 
case, arguing that procedural violations kept her from getting a fair trial, 
but none of the courts agreed.

Officials at the prisons where she has been awaiting her execution submitted 
statements in her clemency application describing her as a sincere Christian 
whose maturity and nurturing act as a calming influence on younger inmates who 
call her Mamma Kelly.

"Most of the time, those ladies would listen to Kelly, and it certainly made 
the lives of my officers easier and safer," wrote Lt. Marian Williams, a 
retired corrections officer. "She would talk to them and get them calmed down. 
They almost always listened because Kelly had been a friend to them."

Penal experts note that long-time inmates typically mellow over the years as 
they reconcile themselves to their sentence, explaining the irony that many 
murderers become model prisoners after decades behind bars.

Prosecutors, who will make their case before the board in the afternoon 
session, said during the trial that Gissendaner hatched an elaborate plan for 
her boyfriend Greg Owen to kidnap the victim and fatally stab him on a deserted 
road. He then burned the victim's car while Gissendaner staged an alibi with 
friends. Owen confessed and testified against her, saying the idea of murder 
was hers and that she repeatedly dismissed his suggestions that she merely get 
a divorce. Owen received a life sentence.

(source: Athens Banner-Herald)

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

Georgia to execute its 1st female prisoner in 70 years



Not since Lena Baker, an African-American convicted of murder in Randolph 
County, has Georgia executed a woman. The state is scheduled to snap that 
70-year streak on Wednesday.

Kelly Renee Gissendaner, 47, was convicted in a February 1997 murder plot that 
targeted her husband in suburban Atlanta.

Gissendaner was romantically involved with Gregory Owen and conspired with the 
43-year-old to have her husband, Douglas Gissendaner, killed, according to 
court testimony. Owen wanted Kelly Gissendaner to file for a divorce, but she 
was concerned that her husband would "not leave her alone if she simply 
divorced him," court documents said.

The Gissendaners had already divorced once, in 1993, and they remarried in 
1995.

Nightstick and hunting knife

Details of the crime, as laid out at trial and provided by Georgia Attorney 
General Sam Olens, are as follows:

Owen and Kelly Gissendaner planned the murder for months. On February 7, 1997, 
she dropped Owen off at her home, gave him a nightstick and hunting knife and 
went out dancing with girlfriends.

Douglas Gissendaner also spent the evening away from home, going to a church 
friend's house to work on cars. Owen lay in wait until he returned.

When Douglas Gissendaner came home around 11:30 p.m., Owen forced him by 
knifepoint into a car and drove him to a remote area of Gwinnett County.

There, Owen ordered his victim into the woods, took his watch and wallet to 
make it look like a robbery, hit him in the head with the nightstick and 
stabbed Douglas Gissendaner in the neck e8 to 10 times.

Kelly Gissendaner arrived just as the murder took place but did not immediately 
get out of her car. She later checked on her husband to make sure he was dead, 
then Owen followed her in Douglas Gissendaner's car to retrieve a can of 
kerosene that Kelly Gissendaner had left for him.

Owen set her husband's car on fire in an effort to hide evidence, and left the 
scene with Kelly Gissendaner.

Story unravels

Police discovered the burned-out automobile the morning after the murder but 
did not find the body. Authorities kicked off a search.

Kelly Gissendaner, meanwhile, went on local television appealing to the public 
for information on her husband's whereabouts.

Her and Owen's story started to unravel after a series of police interviews. On 
February 20, Douglas Gissendaner's face-down body was found about a mile from 
his car. An autopsy determined the cause of death to be knife wounds to the 
neck, but the medical examiner couldn't tell which strike killed Douglas 
Gissendaner because animals had devoured the skin and soft tissue on the right 
side of his neck.

On February 24, Owen confessed to the killing and implicated Kelly Gissendaner, 
who was arrested the next day and charged.

While in jail awaiting trial, Kelly Gissendaner grew angry when she heard Owen 
was to receive a 25-year sentence for his role in the murder. (Owen is serving 
life in prison at a facility in Washington state, according to Georgia 
Department of Corrections records).

She began writing letters to hire a 3rd person who would falsely confess to 
taking her to the crime scene at gunpoint.

She asked her cellmate, Laura McDuffie, to find someone willing to do the job 
for $10,000, and McDuffie turned Kelly Gissendaner's letters over to 
authorities via her attorney.

Clemency to be considered Tuesday

Kelly Gissendaner has exhausted all state and federal appeals, the attorney 
general said in a statement. The State Board of Pardons and Paroles will 
consider a clemency request Tuesday.

Kelly Gissendaner is currently the only woman on Georgia's death row. She would 
be the 1st woman executed in the state since Baker in 1945. Only 15 women have 
been executed in the United States since 1977, according to the Death Penalty 
Information Center.

(source: CNN)