[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.H., FLA., OKLA., NEB.

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 15





TEXAS:

My daughter, Darlie Routier, is sitting on Texas death row and she is 
innocent--18 years now for waking up to a nightmare.



Her attorneys have set up a trust fund because she is in need of further 
testing on 3rd party dna found on her night shirt. Maybe someone will help and 
some will share. We have a direct DNA fund set up with her attorneys to pay for 
this DNA and DNA scientist.

I hope to share this on every university in Texas because my daughter is truly 
innocent. Thank you and God bless.

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=5FJLLA6S7GAJN

(source: DK)








NEW HAMPSHIRE:

After Review, Addison Can Still Appeal Death Sentence At Federal Level----Rick 
Ganley speaks with UNH Law professor Buzz Scherr about the Michael Addison 
case.



The New Hampshire Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Thursday that for the 
1st time center on the fairness of a death penalty in the state.

Michael Addison is the state's lone death row inmate. He was convicted and 
sentenced to death in 2008 for the murder of Manchester police officer Michael 
Briggs.

Thursday's arguments will focus on whether Addison's death sentence was fair 
compared to similar cases nationwide.

Buzz Scherr is a law professor at the University of New Hampshire School of 
Law.

He joined Morning Edition to talk about the case.

The Supreme Court already unanimously upheld Addison's conviction and death 
penalty sentence. So let's talk about this fairness review. What are we going 
to hear?

By statute and by the constitution in part, on appellate review of his 
conviction and sentence, the court first reviews the conviction to see if it 
was done fairly. They've done that and they've affirmed the conviction. Then by 
statute they look at the sentence, the imposition of the death sentence. And by 
statute, they look at 3 things. They look at whether the sentence was imposed 
under passion or prejudice or other arbitrary factors. They've done that and 
they found that it was not. Then they look at whether the evidence supports the 
jury's finding of an aggravated circumstance. They've done that and they found 
that the evidence did support the jury's finding of aggravated circumstance.

So there's 1 thing left by statute. The court has to decide whether the 
sentence of death is excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in 
similar cases considering both the crime and the defendant. That's called the 
comparative proportionality review.

And they're looking at these cases around the state? Around the country?

They litigated about 4 years ago what counts as a similar case and what counts 
as excessive or disproportionate. They basically said a similar case is one 
where it's the same kind of capital offense. That is, it's the killing of law 
enforcement officer. And it's a case where there has been a capital conviction 
and there has been a separate capital sentencing hearing, and there's been the 
imposition of a sentence.

Since there's no such cases in New Hampshire, since this is the 1st death 
penalty case in over 50 years in New Hampshire, they decided to look beyond New 
Hampshire, and at published opinions around the country that meet the criteria 
I just described.

The last execution in New Hampshire took place in 1939. If the Supreme Court 
side with the state, is this end of the line as far as Addison's possible 
appeals go?

I would characterize it as the end of the beginning. This is substantially the 
end of the state litigation of his direct appeal.

So what happens next?

There's several options. He can appeal this directly to the U.S. Supreme Court 
or be can file a habeas corpus petition in federal district court and proceed 
that way, eventually possibly to the U.S. Supreme Court. So this is the point 
at which primarily with some exceptions the case move into its federal phase 
and that litigation will take a substantial amount of time.

What implications could this ruling and this case have on the future of the 
death penalty in New Hampshire?

All that the court has said in the various opinions that they've issued 
interpreting the language of the statute is going to lay the foundation for 
whatever death penalty cases come in New Hampshire.

(source: New Hampshire Public Radio)








FLORIDA----impending execution

Pensacola man to be executed Thursday



A Pensacola man convicted of murder and rape is set to be executed Thursday.

Johnny Shane Kormondy, 42, has been sentenced to die of lethal injection for 
the 1993 murder of Gary McAdams.

Kormondy and 2 accomplices assailed McAdams and his wife as the couple were 
returning from a high school reunion. The trio forced their way into the 
couple's home, pulled the phone cords from the walls, sexually assaulted 
McAdams' wife multiple times and shot McAdams in the back of the head.

Kormondy - who allegedly was the mastermind behind the attack - was convicted 
and sentenced to death in 1994. He was granted a retrial in 1997 because of an 
error during his original trial. A new jury convicted Kormondy in 1999, and he 
was again sentenced to death.

The 2 co-defendants in the case, Curtis Buffkin and Johnny Hazen, currently are 
serving life sentences for their roles in the crime.

Kormondy's execution is scheduled for 5 p.m. at Florida State Prison in Starke

The execution will be the 21st under the tenure of Gov. Rick Scott. Since 1976 
- the year the death penalty was reinstated - the execution will be the 5th 
stemming from a case in Escambia or Santa Rosa counties.

Clarence Hill and Arthur Rutherford were put to death within 7 days of one 
another in October 2006.

Hill shot and killed Pensacola police officer Stephen Taylor during an 
attempted bank robbery in 1982. After 23 years on death row, Hill was granted a 
last minute stay of execution in 2006 so courts could make a determination on 
whether the lethal injection process violated his civil rights. A federal judge 
ruled it did not, and Hill was executed a few months later.

Rutherford was convicted of the 1985 murder of 63-year-old Stella Salamon, a 
Milton woman who was found asphyxiated in her bathtub. Rutherford then 
recruited 2 women to help him cash a $2,000 check in Salamon's name. Rutherford 
spent nearly 20 years on death row before being put to death by lethal 
injection.

Paul Hill was a former minister and anti-abortionist who shot and killed Dr. 
John Britton and James Barnett outside a Pensacola abortion clinic in 1994. He 
spent just shy of 9 years in prison before being executed by lethal injection 
in 2003.

Anthony Bryan was fleeing a bank robbery when he kidnapped 60-year-old 
Mississippi man George Wilson. He drove Wilson's vehicle to Santa Rosa County 
before shooting him in the head. Bryant spent nearly 14 years on death row 
before his execution by lethal injection in 2000.

(source: Pensacola News Journal)

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

Execution scheduled for Johnny Shane Kormondy in 1993 rape, murder



Florida is scheduled to execute 42-year-old Johnny Shane Kormondy, who was 
convicted of the 1993 murder of a Pensacola banker and the rape of his wife 
during a botched robbery.

The execution by lethal injection is scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday at Florida 
State Prison.

Kormondy and 2 associates invaded the Pensacola home of Gary and Cecilia 
McAdams in 1993. Gary was fatally shot, and Cecilia was raped.

The 2 other men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Cecilia, who is being identified because she has spoken publicly about her 
rape, plans to witness the execution.

Kormondy would be the 21st inmate executed under Gov. Rick Scott, tying him 
with former Gov. Jeb Bush for the most executions since the death penalty was 
reinstated in Florida in 1979.

(source: Associated Press)








OKLAHOMA----impending execution

'Truly experimentation': Oklahoma leaves drug cocktail unchanged in first 
executions since botched procedure ---- 9 months and $100,000 later, Oklahoma 
plans to execute 4 prisoners using the same controversial drugs that led to 
gruesome scenes last April



The last time Oklahoma executed a prisoner, Clayton Lockett in April 2014, the 
triple-cocktail procedure unraveled into scenes that even a skilled horror 
film- maker would be hard pressed to emulate. Blood squirted all over the 
doctor jabbing at the inmate's groin in a desperate attempt to find a vein, 
Lockett writhed and groaned on the gurney as he took 43 minutes to die, 
eyewitnesses were traumatised long after the event.

On Thursday, after an almost 1-year hiatus, Oklahoma will once again step into 
the death penalty business with its 1st post-Lockett execution. Charles Warner 
will be the 1st of 4 prisoners scheduled to die in the state in quick 
succession through early March.

The department of corrections has spent $106,000 updating the death chamber 
ahead of Thursday's spectacle in an effort to assuage public concerns after 
what happened last year. The state insists new monitoring equipment and extra 
training for the executioners will avoid any repeat tragedy. Despite having 
spared no expense, however, Oklahoma has opted to kill Warner with exactly the 
same drugs as it used with such spectacularly gruesome results on Lockett 9 
months ago. The prisoner, who was convicted in 2003 of raping and murdering his 
roommate's 11-month-old baby, will be injected with 3 drugs in order - the 
sedative midazolam, the paralytic vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride to 
stop his heart.

Medical experts and lawyers specialising in the death penalty have expressed to 
the Guardian their astonishment that the state is sticking with a drugs 
protocol that is widely understood to be deeply problematic. The choice of 
lethal chemicals risks a prolonged execution for another death row inmate, 
which would be distressing for witnesses and the American people - and could 
inflict excruciating pain on Warner in violation of the US constitution.

Experts say they are suprised by Oklahoma's decision to continue to use 
midazolam as the 1st of 3 drugs in the institution. Midazolam, which death 
penalty states started to deploy after other lethal drugs ran out in the wake 
of the European-led boycott of medical sales to US prison services, has been 
the common denominator in a spate of botched executions last year including in 
Ohio and Arizona.

David Waisel, associate professor of anaesthesia at Harvard medical school, 
explained that midazolam is a benzodiazepine, and unlike barbiturates that have 
traditionally been used in executions, do not put the individual into a deep 
state of unconsciousness. "It doesn't cause anesthesia, and it has no 
pain-relieving qualities which could be critical when you administer potassium 
that burns intensely: at that point the prisoner could still be sensate."

Lawyers acting for Warner petitioned the US supreme court on Wednesday calling 
for a stay of execution arguing that the use of a drug that could not be relied 
upon to sustain a coma-like unconsciousness was unconstitutional.

Megan McCracken, a lawyer with the Death Penalty Clinic at UC Berkeley school 
of law, said it was "very surprising" that Oklahoma had returned to midazolam. 
She said that given Ohio's recent decision to abandon midazolam, Oklahoma's 
position was "very concerning and frankly hard to understand".

Both the other 2 drugs that Oklahoma is preparing to inject into Warner are 
also potentially problematic. Vecuronium bromide is a muscle relaxant that 
effectively paralyses the inmate, thus rendering the inmate incapable of speech 
or any other movement.

That has raised fears that if the execution goes wrong, as it has on numerous 
occasions in death penalty states within the past year, the prisoner will be 
unable to express any pain or distress. "When a paralytic is used, none of the 
signs of struggle are visible - they all become hidden from sight," McCracken 
said.

The 3rd drug in the cocktail, potassium chloride, is arguably the most 
egregious element of Oklahoma's protocol on Thursday. It is used to cause 
cardiac arrest, but if the inmate is still conscious when it is administered, 
its impact, as McCracken put it, is like "a blow torch rushing through the 
veins".

Most death penalty states have over the past few years moved away from the 
conventional triple-cocktail of lethal drugs precisely because of fears that 
prisoners could be subjected to unthinkable pain having been put into a 
paralytic state which prevents them from showing distress and makes them look 
serene. Oklahoma's decision to continue the combination of paralytic and 
potassium has baffled experts who describe it as barbaric.

Writing for the Guardian, the Columbia University anaesthesiologist and lethal 
injection expert Mark Heath writes: "Whatever drug Oklahoma and other states 
decide to use to kill prisoners, they should abandon the barbaric use of 
paralyzing drugs entirely. If the state claims that midazolam will produce a 
smooth, peaceful, humane death, then they should be willing to allow witnesses 
and the courts to observe the process without the opacity of paralysis. If 
states can't be confident that midazolam will produce a smooth and rapid death 
- and they shouldn't be, given the experience so far - they shouldn't be using 
it at all."

Midazolam's ongoing use has alarmed experts because it is relatively untested 
in execution settings - and most occasions where it has been used have not 
ended well. "You have to ask: how do we learn things in medicine?" Waisel said. 
"We do so either by repeating procedures many times, or by studying the effect 
of drugs. In this case we have done neither of those things. We don't know 
what's going on here - it truly is experimentation."

(source: The Guardian)

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

Oklahoma to Resume Executions, 9 Months After a Lethal Injection Went Awry



With a renovated death chamber, new training and a higher dose of drugs, 
corrections officials in Oklahoma were ready Thursday to carry out the 1st 
execution there since April, when the slipshod, prolonged killing of Clayton D. 
Lockett forced the state to suspend lethal injections and make changes to its 
procedure.

The grisly details of Mr. Lockett's execution led to new questions, in Oklahoma 
and around the country, about the reliability of lethal injection as a humane 
procedure and about the new drug combinations being tried as once-preferred 
drugs became scarce.

But in the end, federal courts cleared the way for Oklahoma to resume lethal 
injections, using a sedative that some medical experts say may not consistently 
put prisoners into the deep coma needed to avoid suffering.

The execution of Charles F. Warner was delayed by 6 months.

Barring a last-minute reprieve from the Supreme Court, Charles F. Warner is to 
be put to death at 6 p.m. local time at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in 
McAlester. Mr. Warner, 47, was condemned for the murder and sexual assault of 
an 11-month-old girl in 1997.

Also on Thursday, Florida planned to execute Johnny Shane Kormondy, 42, who was 
condemned for the murder of a man during a home invasion in 1993, using the 
same 3-drug combination that was challenged, without success, by the Oklahoma 
prisoners' lawyers.

Mr. Warner was originally scheduled to die on April 29, 2014, 2 hours after Mr. 
Lockett. But his execution was postponed after the problems with Mr. Lockett's 
lethal injection. The prisoner seem to wake and writhed in agony after a doctor 
failed to place the intravenous line in a vein, causing the sedative, then a 
paralyzing agent and a caustic heart-stopping drug, to diffuse in his groin. 
Mr. Lockett finally died 43 minutes into a procedure expected to take no more 
than 10 to 15 minutes and after a doctor seeking to reinsert a needle punctured 
an artery, resulting in what the prison warden later called "a bloody mess."

Lawyers for Mr. Warner and 3 other Oklahoma prisoners scheduled for execution 
in the next 2 months, backed by several medical experts, argued that the 
effects of high doses of midazolam, the sedative adopted by Oklahoma, are not 
known completely and too unpredictable to justify its use. Midazolam was also 
involved in prolonged, possibly painful executions last year in Ohio and 
Arizona.

Oklahoma officials argued, in a brief on Jan. 6, that "the citizens should not 
see their criminal justice system derailed" because of "baseless speculation of 
theoretical harms."

In turning down the prisoners' motion for a delay, a federal district judge, 
and then an appeals court, noted that Florida had used the same agent 
repeatedly without apparent problems.

The execution of Mr. Kormondy would be Florida's 12th using midazolam. But 
defense lawyers in Florida argue that some of the men executed there showed 
unexpected movements after receiving the sedative, and that once the paralytic 
is administered, there is no way to know if the prisoner senses excruciating 
pain as potassium chloride, the heart-stopping agent, courses through his 
bloodstream.

Experts say that barbiturates more commonly used in executions in the past, 
sodium thiopental and pentobarbital, produce a deeper unconsciousness and can 
even be used alone to cause death. But suppliers of those drugs have refused to 
sell them for use in executions.

After an investigation of what went wrong in the Lockett execution, Oklahoma 
put new equipment in its death chamber to help ensure proper placement of 
intravenous catheters and said that if the paramedic or doctor was unable to 
place a needle within 1 hour, officials might postpone the event. They also 
decided to multiply the dose of midazolam, to the level used in Florida.

The news media and civil liberties groups have complained that Oklahoma's 
remodeled execution chamber and new procedures have limited the ability of the 
public to observe lethal injections there. Officials say there is room for only 
5 witnesses from the news media, compared with 12 before. Audio from the 
chamber will be turned off, and the state's corrections director can close the 
curtains and block the view of the witnesses at his discretion.

"The officials are addressing some of the things that went wrong, but at the 
same time they're making sure that the public doesn't know as much about what 
happens," said Brady Henderson, legal director of the American Civil Liberties 
Union of Oklahoma.

The evidence of flaws in the Lockett execution led to discussions on talk radio 
about the death penalty and how to administer it, Mr. Henderson said. But there 
is no evidence that the state's strong support for capital punishment was 
shaken.

In a poll in June, 74 % of likely voters in Oklahoma said they favored the 
death penalty for those convicted of murder. The question had not been asked in 
state polling over the previous decade because support was clearly so high, 
said Bill Shapard of ShapardResearch, which conducted the survey for the Tulsa 
World newspaper.

Nationally, 63 % of adults supported the death penalty for convicted murderers 
in a Gallup poll last October, down from a modern peak of 80 % in the mid- 
1990s but consistent with levels over the last 7 years.

If core beliefs about capital punishment have not changed much, publicity about 
repeated injection problems, exonerations of prisoners on death row and debates 
about executing the mentally ill have all raised public awareness, said 
Jennifer Moreno, a lawyer with the death penalty clinic of the University of 
California, Berkeley.

"People are taking a look at lethal injection and realizing that it isn't the 
simple, easy process many thought it was," she said.

(source: New York Times)

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

Attorneys for Charles Warner and 3 other death row inmates are asking the US 
Supreme Court for a stay of execution.



Attorneys for Charles Warner and 3 other death row inmates are asking the US 
Supreme Court for 1 more stay of execution.

They claimed the new drug protocols are still experimental.

At the center of their challenge is Oklahoma's use of the drug Midazolam, a 
drug they claim is used for anxiety and not FDA approved as a general 
anesthetic. Attorneys said the drug has been used in several highly problematic 
executions, including the one involving Clayton Lockett last year.

"There has been litigation pending in federal court in Oklahoma for several 
months," said Megan McCracken with the Berkley School of Law. "In an execution 
procedure its use is to anesthetize the prisoner that is the intent of its use 
and there's a great risk in this context that it will not work as intended in 
an execution."

Last month a federal judge ruled against a preliminary injunction, saying the 
state's newest 3 drug cocktail is constitutional.

And this week the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals denied a stay of execution for 
Charles Warner and the other 3 death row inmates set to be executed in the next 
2 months.

Warner was convicted of raping and killing his live-in girlfriend's 
11-month-old baby back in 1997. Warner was scheduled to be executed the same 
night as Clayton Lockett. But when Lockett's lethal injection went awry, it was 
put on hold.

"The sentence that the prisoner has received is a sentence of death, not a 
sentence of torture," said McCracken.

Now the state of Oklahoma has overhauled its execution procedures and had the 
DOC institute new protocols. They include: doing daily training, instituting 
the use of an ultrasound machine to make sure the drugs hit the veins, and 
having a backup set of the 3 drug cocktail on hand should it be needed.

But attorneys for the inmates claimed the current drug protocol still present a 
risk of unconstitutional pain and suffering.

Florida has used the same 3 drug combination using Midazolam in 11 of their 
executions without any problems.

So for now, Warner's execution is a go.

The 3 other death row inmates set to die are Richard Glossip on January 29, 
John Grant on February 19th, and Benjamin Cole's execution is planned for March 
5th.

(source: news9.com)

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

Death penalty opponents seek halt to Oklahoma execution



A group of clergy leaders and civil libertarians are making a last-minute plea 
to Gov. Mary Fallin to halt the upcoming execution of an Oklahoma City man for 
killing a baby in 1997.

Holding signs that read: "Don't Kill for Me," members of the Oklahoma Coalition 
to Abolish the Death Penalty and other human rights advocates on Thursday urged 
the governor to stop the execution of Charles Warner, who is scheduled to die 
at 6 p.m. at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

Former state Sen. Connie Johnson said holding an execution on the day of human 
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birth was "cruelly ironic."

The group planned to hold a protest outside the governor's mansion, followed by 
a vigil at the approximate time of Warner's death.

(source: Associated Press)



NEBRASKA:

Longtime Nebraska Sen. Chambers seeks end to death penalty



A longtime Nebraska senator who has fought for decades to eliminate the death 
penalty is trying again.

Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha introduced a repeal measure for the 38th time on 
Wednesday.

Chambers is the longest-serving state senator in Nebraska's history, having 
served from 1971 to 2009. He left the Legislature due to term limits but was 
elected again in 2013.

His measure would replace the death penalty with a sentence of life without the 
possibility of parole. In the bill, Chambers rails against the death penalty as 
a failure that has harmed the state's reputation for fairness, decency and the 
dignity of human life.

Last year, his repeal bill was voted out of committee but killed on the floor 
by a legislative filibuster.

(source: Associated Press)