[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.C., FLA., W. VA., KY.

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 21



TEXAS----impending execution

Texas To Execute Arnold Prieto Today Over Screwdriver Attack



Texas plans to execute on Wednesday a man who was convicted of stabbing 3 
people to death with a screwdriver, including his great-uncle and great-aunt, 
in a San Antonio home robbery in 1993.

Arnold Prieto's execution by injection is planned for 6 p.m. CST at the state's 
prison death chamber in Huntsville. If it takes place, Prieto, 41, will be the 
519th person executed in Texas since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the 
death penalty in 1976, the most of any state.

Prieto and 2 other men went to the home of Rodolfo Rodriguez, 72, and his wife, 
Virginia, 62, who cooked the visitors breakfast. Prieto and Jesse Hernandez 
then used screwdrivers to attack the couple, also killing Paula Moran, 92, who 
was in the house, the Texas Attorney General's Office said.

The 3 ransacked the house, stealing cash and goods valued at a few hundred 
dollars, it said.

Hernandez was under 18 years of age at the time of the crime and could not be 
sentenced to death because he was a minor. He is currently serving a life 
sentence.

The other person with the assailants, Lupe Hernandez, brother of Jesse, was not 
charged.

As of Tuesday afternoon, no appeals seeking a halt of Prieto's execution had 
been filed.

(source: Reuters)








NORTH CAROLINA:

With executions in limbo, families wait for justice



Every day, it comes to him.

Sometimes it's a momentary jolt when he sees an old friend of his son's from 
high school. Or maybe it surfaces when he glances at the framed picture of his 
son, appearing so young and strong in his red Erwin High wrestling singlet, 
looking into the camera with a young man's confidence, the kind cemented by a 
state championship.

Other times, George Lane just sort of drifts off in his mind, maybe wondering 
how many kids his boy would have now, and if they, too, would be fearless and 
fun-loving. With all his heart, Lane believes the only solace - the only real 
closure, if life truly offers such a thing - he and his wife, Dorothy, will 
ever have will come only when Mark's killer is put to death, as the state 
mandated in 1992.

"You think about it every day, every time you pick up the paper and you see a 
murder or a death penalty, not just in this state but in any state, where 
somebody has slipped through the cracks," Lane said, sitting in the office of 
his store, Leicester Pawn & Gun. "And you wonder when you're going to get the 
letter that says he slipped through the cracks and he's now been relieved of 
his death penalty.

"You think, 'Why does he have the right to do that, when 12 persons on a jury 
convicted him of 1st-degree murder and they determined that he should receive 
the death penalty?'"

Like several other states, North Carolina is struggling with its death penalty 
and what will happen to the 150 prisoners on death row, including nine men from 
Buncombe County. Another man sits on federal death row.

The Tar Heel state has not had an execution since 2006, and the death penalty 
is mired in a de facto moratorium while lawyers and judges sort out legal cases 
pinned to 2 separate issues: the makeup of juries and possible discrimination 
against blacks being litigated under the now-defunct Racial Justice Act, and 
the legality and constitutionality of our death penalty drug protocol.

"There's no official moratorium - the legislature has never said it's going to 
halt executions - there are just so many court cases and litigation that 
nothing has happened, and nothing is scheduled," said Keith Acree, a spokesman 
for the N.C. Department of Public Safety, which oversees corrections.

Historically, North Carolina has not been reluctant to employ the death 
penalty. Since 1910, when the state took over executions from the counties, 
North Carolina has put to death 404 men and women, including 43 between 1984 
and 2006, according to the N.C. Department of Public Safety.

U.S. Supreme Court action essentially eliminated the death penalty in 1962, but 
it returned nationally in 1976 and in North Carolina in 1984.

Today, Mark Lane's killer, Edward Earl Davis, remains where he's resided since 
the early 1990s: on death row at Raleigh's Central Prison.

Davis, 58, and his half-brother, Roger D. Hood, 42, were convicted in the Aug. 
16, 1991, slaying of Lane, with Davis receiving the death penalty and Hood 
getting life in prison.

"I can't even imagine what it's like to lose a child," said Dorothy Lane, who's 
been married to George for 23 years. "But now, after so many years, I've seen 
it just come over George - I've seen him become so sad, so many times - I know 
you can't ever get over the death of a child."

The legal issues at hand

Ken Rose, senior staff attorney with the N.C. Center for Death Penalty 
Litigation in Raleigh, knows victims' families continue to endure 
stomach-churning grief, and he says those feelings are valid.

"But the death penalty is a public policy that has to involve a purpose for the 
society that is more than just revenge on a behalf of a particular person or 
family, no matter how much we sympathize with their loss," Rose said.

2 separate issues have sidetracked executions since 2007 and likely will for 
the foreseeable future.

"First and foremast is the lethal injection litigation, which has been ongoing 
since 2007," Rose said. "There have been 2 important injunctions imposed; the 
most recent in 2014, and that prohibits the state from executing anybody."

Litigation on that issue started in state court but is now in the federal court 
system.

1 of the legal questions is whether the protocol for an execution - the 
specific manner in which lethal drugs are administered - has to go through the 
state rule-making process, Rose said.

Typically, any state agency enacting regulations has to put the proposed 
procedures through the public rule-making process, which usually involves 
publishing the proposal and taking public comment.

The question is whether that procedure applies in the death penalty protocol. 
That issue went to federal court and has now been remanded back to Wake County 
Superior Court for a decision.

The other related issue involves the separation of powers. The legislature has 
given "almost unlimited authority to the Secretary of Public Safety to devise 
and enact a protocol, as far as drugs can be procured, training of staff, and 
the credentials of staff," Rose said.

"All of these things may seem esoteric, but the truth is we've seen executions 
in several places that have been botched, in some cases taking over an hour or 
more," Rose said.

Death penalty opponents also have questioned if the protocol constitutes "cruel 
and unusual punishment," which the U.S. Constitution prohibits.

Before the legal challenge, North Carolina had used a 3-drug protocol to bring 
about death: a fast-acting barbiturate to relax the prisoner, followed by a 
paralytic drug, then a potassium chloride to stop the heart.

"The problem with that, we had argued, if the barbiturate does not work or is 
administered in error, then the person would be tortured and you wouldn't know 
it, because the paralytic makes a person unable to move, speak or able to do 
anything," Rose said.

In 2013, the Department of Public Safety adopted a single-drug protocol, but 
the issue remains in the court system.

The 2nd thread of legal challenges surrounds the Racial Justice Act cases. 2 
cases are pending in the N.C. Supreme Court concerning the application of the 
act, while several others remain pending in superior court.

The Lanes and other families question why the act, passed in 2009 but then 
repealed 2 years later, even applies in many of these cases in which the 
convicted murderer and victim are of the same race.

All of the 9 Buncombe County prisoners on death row filed motions under the act 
to have their death sentences converted to life without parole. Statewide, 4 of 
these cases are on appeal to the N.C. Supreme Court, and Rose said decisions 
could come down any day the court is in session.

"In general the issue does not depend on the race of the defendant or the 
victim," Rose said. "It has been a practice in the state of excluding 
African-American jurors by prosecutors using pre-emptive strikes."

The implication is that juries therefore have not been truly representative of 
the population.

"The issue is about participation in the jury," said Sean Devereux, an 
Asheville attorney who has represented Davis in his post-conviction appeals. 
"People are entitled to a jury of their peers, and there is a perception that 
African-Americans see things differently."

Hard to understand

None of this placates the Lanes, and much of it seems like legal 
hair-splitting.

"My son did not get a reduction in his death sentence to life, and the man who 
took this away from him should not have this benefit, either," George Lane 
wrote to the Attorney General's office in 2013, after being notified of Davis' 
appeal under the Racial Justice Act.

No one disputes that Eddie Davis is a bad character. Before killing Lane, Davis 
was convicted of murder in the 1975 stabbing death of a 60-year-old man in 
Columbus, Ohio. He was paroled the year before he killed Mark Lane.

He and Hood conducted armed robberies at a McDonald's in Canton, as well as 
others in Georgia and Tennessee. Davis had escaped jail in Tennessee, where he 
was being held on a robbery charge, before the Lane murder.

The Lanes said trial testimony showed that Davis and Hood had been in their 
shop, at that time located farther west in the heart of the Leicester 
community, earlier in the day. They returned just before closing at 6 p.m. on 
Friday, Aug. 16, 1991.

Mark Lane, 22 at the time and never one to back down, was shot at three times, 
once in the hand and twice in the abdomen, and died. His girlfriend was in the 
shop with him.

"They made her get down like a dog and crawl into the office," Dorothy Lane 
said.

The men were arrested more than a week later in Savannah, Georgia, after a 
high-speed chase across 2 states.

George Lane said the convicts were cold-blooded and merciless, and that lack of 
empathy weighs heavily in his mind when it comes to Davis getting the death 
penalty and any potential suffering he may endure.

"Why should I care or the society care what kind of pain or agony he goes 
through when they're putting him to death? My son had no choice of what his 
agony was when he was laying on the floor and they shot him the third time," 
Lane said. "So why does this enter into it? He's guilty. So if they shoot him 
by firing squad, or they hang him, or chop his head off, he's got it coming to 
him."

The bigger picture

Since 1976, when the ultimate penalty was reinstated in the U.S., America's 
prisons have put to death 1,397 people. But 18 states no longer have a death 
penalty, and another 3 have enacted moratoriums.

Recent exonerations of death row inmates, as well as botched executions, have 
begun to erode support for executions. Since 1973, 150 people have been 
exonerated and freed from death row in 26 states, including 9 in North 
Carolina, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Studies have also found that minorities are much more likely to receive a death 
penalty.

Public opinion also seems to be shifting. A 2013 poll of 600 North Carolinians 
by Public Policy Polling found 68 percent of respondents support replacing the 
death penalty with life without parole if the offender had to work and pay 
restitution to the victim's family, while 63 percent supported repealing the 
death penalty if the money saved was redirected to effective crime fighting 
tools.

Devereux said the country may be reaching a point where the death penalty 
simply no longer makes sense, particularly from an economic standpoint.

Duke University released a study in 2009 that found the state could save at 
least $11 million annually by abolishing the death penalty. The average cost 
for housing a standard state prison inmate in North Carolina is almost $80 a 
day, while the estimate for a death row inmate is nearly $96 daily, according 
to the N.C. Department of Public Safety.

Studies have also shown the death penalty is not an effective deterrent to 
crime.

Devereux said Buncombe County, like much of North Carolina, saw an increase in 
death penalty cases in the 1990s because of state legislation that gave 
prosecutors little leeway in pursuing life in prison instead of the death 
penalty in cases involving an aggravating factor, such as another felony being 
committed during the murder.

Statewide, the number of death sentences in North Carolina has steadily 
declined, with 3 last year, 1 in 2013 and none in 2012. In 2011, 3 were handed 
down, compared to 4 in 2010, 2 in 2009 and 1 in 2008. The trend mirrors the 
nation - Amnesty International noted the number of death sentences nationwide 
"has been lower than any time since reinstatement of the death penalty in 
1976."

Nationally, executions also have declined, from a high of 98 in 1999, to 43 
executions in both 2011 and 2012.

At their shop on New Leicester Highway, the Lanes have an extensive video 
surveillance system, and most employees carry firearms.

The Lanes hope and pray for the only type of closure that will satisfy them: a 
letter from the state telling them that Davis' execution has been scheduled. 
Both are deeply religious, and they feel the Bible calls for harsh punishment 
for those who intend to deprive others of life, as George says, those who "wake 
up in the morning intending to do bad."

Only the ending of Davis' life would allow them to move on with theirs.

"It would give me closure to know that I don't have this still hanging over me 
and wondering what's going to happen," Lane said. "It's a part of my life that 
I could close."

History of executions in North Carolina

Public hangings were common in North Carolina until the state took over 
administration of the death penalty in 1910.

Walter Morrison, a laborer from Robeson County, became the 1st man to die in 
the electric chair in 1910. Between 1910 and 1961, the state executed another 
361 people.

Since 1910, there have been 3 methods to carry out executions, all at Central 
Prison in Raleigh. For the first 28 years, the state used the electric chair. 
In 1936, the state 1st used the gas chamber. In 1983, inmates waiting for 
execution were allowed to choose lethal injection or the gas chamber. In 1998, 
lethal injection became the state's only method of execution.

(source: Citizen-Times)








FLORIDA:

Rick Scott Is About to Break the Modern Record for Most Executions by a Florida 
Governor



Next month, Rick Scott will win the distinction of "Florida's Most Deadly 
Governor" when he surpasses Jeb Bush in the number of executions under his 
watch since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

Since taking office in 2011, Scott has signed 21 death warrants -- the same 
number Bush did in 2 full terms as Florida's governor. But on February 26, 
Jerry Correll is scheduled to die for his 1986 conviction of stabbing to death 
5 people, including his own daughter, his ex-wife, and her mother, sister, and 
niece. Unless Correll's execution is stayed, Scott's death penalty tally will 
go up to 22.

Needless to say, anti-death penalty activists aren't happy with this trend.

"Gov. Scott has led Florida on a killing spree of blood vengeance that is 
ill-advised, unnecessary, and, given Florida's national record for wrongfully 
convicted people released from death row, could put the blood of innocents on 
all our hands," says Mark Elliot, executive director of Floridians for 
Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Elliot adds that many death row inmates have been exonerated, making it 
plausible that innocent people have been wrongly executed.

"Since the 1970s, 25 people have been exonerated and released from Florida's 
death row. At the same time, 90 people have been executed," he says. "That's 
more than 1 exoneration for every 4 executions."

Scott already had the distinction of ordering more executions than any Florida 
governor during a 1st term since the death penalty was brought back in 1976, 
ending a 10-year moratorium as the constitutionality of capital punishment was 
being contested in federal courts.

Bush had the previous 1st-term record with 11, but Scott beat that less than 3 
years into his term with the November 12, 2013, execution of Darius Kimbrough, 
who was sentenced to death for the 1991 rape and murder of 28-year-old Denise 
Collins.

Here's how Scott stacks up to other Florida governors since 1976:

Governor Years in Office Number of Executions

Rick Scott 2011-present 21

Jeb Bush 1999-2007 21

Lawton Chiles 1991-1998 18

Bob Graham 1979-1987 16

Bob Martinez 1987-1991 9

Charlie Crist 2001-2011 5

(source: browardpalmbeach.com)

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

Former Supreme Court Justice speaks on capital punishment, his book



Almost 5 years after his retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court, former Justice 
John Paul Stevens spoke to UF students and the general public Tuesday afternoon 
about his personal thoughts on topics ranging from the death penalty to the 
Second Amendment.

Stevens, along with 3 UF Levin College of Law professors, addressed current 
issues regarding the U.S. Constitution to a full audience at 12:30 p.m. at the 
Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

As part of a lecture series hosted by the law school, Stevens answered 
questions regarding his recently published book, "Six Amendments: How and Why 
We Should Change the Constitution," as well as advocated for states' rights to 
regulate gun control.

"I certainly believe the elected representatives of the people should be 
deciding this, not federal judges at a national level," he said.

Lyrissa Lidsky, the associate dean for international programs and a professor 
at the law school, asked Stevens whether he had any regrets during his time on 
the Supreme Court.

He then went on to discuss his role in a ruling regarding the death penalty.

"One case that I voted incorrectly in, having openly spoke about it many times, 
was the Texas capital punishment case," Stevens said, sharing the story of the 
1976 Jurek v. Texas case that led to the widespread adoption of the death 
penalty in the U.S. court system.

He brought up a separate case to further illustrate his point.

"There is a Texas case in which they executed the wrong defendant," Stevens 
said. "It is a risk that a civilized society should not allow to develop, which 
is an adequate reason to amend this practice."

Natalie Mendez, a 19-year-old UF business sophomore, said she agrees with 
Stevens and hopes to see the death penalty abolished.

"I don't think that the government should run the risk of killing innocent 
people, especially when we run the risk of jailing innocent people," she said. 
"That's something you can't erase."

(source: The (Univ. Florida) Alligator)








WEST VIRGINIA:

Will GOP in power, will W.Va. restore death penalty?



In Delegate John Overington's 30 years in the Legislature, he's always fought 
to restore the death penalty. Now that his fellow Republicans are in power, 
he's hoping this is the year he sees success.

"The Democrats have not been supportive," explained Overington, who has 
represented Berkeley County since 1985. "They knew there was public support, 
but didn't want their members on the record. There were public hearings, but 
that was it."

West Virginia abolished the death penalty in 1965.

After so many heinous crimes over the years in West Virginia and nationwide, 
the death penalty ought to be on the table in the Mountain State, Overington 
said.

Overington can point to many examples of defendants he believes deserved the 
death penalty. There's the Eastern Panhandle case of Antonio Prophet, the 
Lorton, Va., man convicted in 2012 of killing 22-year-old Angela Devonshire and 
her 3-year-old son Andre White by setting their Bunker Hill home on fire in 
2010.

He points to repeat offender Ronald Turney Williams. "He murdered a Beckley 
police officer in 1975, escaped from prison, murdered a West Virginia state 
trooper, [then] murdered a man in Arizona who caught Williams burglarizing a 
home," Overington said. "If we had the death penalty, 2 people would still be 
alive.

"When you have a repeat offender, that's a compelling reason for the death 
penalty on a number of levels. It's not revenge. It's a sense of justice."

Overington's latest death penalty bill calls for the punishment under certain 
conditions, including when a murder is especially "atrocious or cruel"; when it 
occurs while the defendant is incarcerated or is an escaped convict; when the 
victim is a firefighter, peace officer, correctional officer, parole officer, 
judicial officer or anyone killed in the performance of his or her duty; or 
when the defendant has a significant history of felony convictions involving 
violence or the threat of violence.

"The death penalty would take place when there is no question of guilt," 
Overington said.

Some opponents of the death penalty point out there's no cost-savings to 
executing convicts because the appeals process typically lasts for years and 
costs more than what's spent on decades of incarceration. Overington believes 
the appeals process needn't drag on.

"I would like to see the appeal process in death penalty cases shortened by 
making sure the defense is well-organized and funded so that there is only 1 
appeal instead of years of appeals, which is tremendously expensive," he said.

For Overington, the needs of survivors and victims' families looms large.

He cites mass murderer Richard Speck who tortured, raped and murdered 8 student 
nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital in 1966. Speck was sentenced to 
death, but the sentence was overturned due to issues with jury selection and he 
died in prison in 1991.

"1 nurse survived the attack by hiding under a bed," Overington said. "She 
lived her life in a self-imposed witness protection program. She was terrified 
while Speck was alive.

"The death penalty gives closure."

Overington said he also believes in representing the people who sent him to 
Charleston.

"I'm marveled at candidates who are elected and don't do what the public wants 
them to do," Overington said. "I have a citizens poll each year and the 
response has been overwhelmingly in favor of the death penalty."

(source: Spirit of Jefferson)



KENTCUKY:

Prosecutors continue pushing for death penalty for Ricky Kelly in 2005 murder 
case



A murder for money and drugs: that's what prosecutors say happened in 2005.

Now prosecutors want the suspect, Ricky Kelly, to face the death penalty. 
Prosecutors say Kelly killed LaJuante Jackson to protect a drug trafficking 
organization.

Prosecutors claim Kelly hunted Jackson down and shot him more than 10 times.

The case started at the state level, then went to federal court and has now 
been seen sent back to the commonwealth.

Kelly's attorney, Amy Hannah, says prosecutors have a long way to go before 
that happens.

"Stop trying to kill Ricky Kelly," Hannah said. "If they want to kill him, 
they've got to follow the rules, and they've got to do it right. Up until this 
point, that hasn't happened."

"The death penalty was sought, I believe, for the last 4 or 5 years on this 
case, in federal court and in state court," said Leland Hulbert, the lead 
prosecutor on the case.

Since 1996, Kelly has been charged with 8 murders.

Prosecutors say they are still investigating whether or not to try the other 
cases.

Both sides say they're hoping to go to trial in June.

(source: WDRB news)