[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----S.C., MISS., LA., ARIZ.

[Rick Halperin]

July 24




SOUTH CAROLINA:

Don't give the Charleston shooter the death penalty


Dylann Roof, already indicted by South Carolina on 9 counts of murder, 3 counts 
of attempted murder and a weapons charge, was charged with 33 more counts by 
the federal government, including hate crimes for which he could get the death 
penalty. Just who will get their hands on him first is not yet clear, nor is it 
clear that Uncle Sam will demand that he die. The only thing that's certain is 
that the law seems intent on getting down to Dylann Roof's level.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley had already asked for the death penalty, and 
given the progressive nature of the state - 1st out of the Union and then Strom 
Thurmond for about 100 years after that - she will probably get what she wants. 
The federal government has yet to decide whether it, too, will seek death or 
even whether it will jump to the head of the line and insist on prosecuting 
Roof first.

This would be a propitious time for President Obama to declare opposition to 
the death penalty and say he will not seek it in the case of Dylann Roof. Obama 
already seems appropriately worried about capital punishment, what with its 
sordid history of racial bias, mistakes here and there and certain botched 
executions. He has said he supports it when "a crime is so terrible" that its 
application "may be appropriate."

No doubt, Roof's alleged crimes fit the bill. He is accused of murdering nine 
people on account of their race. He allegedly killed them in church. He spewed 
racist claptrap and seems to believe in all sorts of fetid racist dogma. In 
short, if anyone should get the death penalty, it should be Roof.

But nobody should. The death penalty is an anachronism. Common sense - never 
mind all those studies - tells you it's not a deterrent. Who would be deterred 
by the prospect of death and not life in prison without the chance of parole? 
Young Roof, a mere 21, is fairly typical. After his alleged massacre, he took 
it on the lam. He expected to escape - not only capture but also the death 
penalty. But to say what he was thinking gives him too much credit. I don't 
think he thinks at all.

In remarks to a mayors' conference right after the June 17 Charleston massacre, 
Obama observed that when it comes to guns, America itself is criminally insane: 
"You don't see murder on this kind of scale, with this kind of frequency, in 
any other advanced nation on Earth." Yes.

And you don't see capital punishment, either. It remains relegated to the back 
alleys of the Earth: Afghanistan, China, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, 
Russia and some more. Missing from the list are our stout NATO allies, which is 
to say most of the advanced world. The last 3 nations on the capital punishment 
list, alphabetically, are the United States, Vietnam and Yemen. Our crowd!

A racist murder, a racist murder in a black church by a white man, a racist 
murder in a black church by a white man who spouted racism, would be the 
dramatically appropriate case for Obama to say that the government will kill no 
more. The families of some of the victims have already forgiven Dylann Roof. I 
do not - and never will. But I want him spared the noose - not for his sake, 
but for ours.

(source: Richard Cohen writes a weekly political column for The Washington 
Post)






MISSISSIPPI:

Mississippi murderer's lawsuit stalling execution


The execution of Mississippi's longest-serving death row inmate is being held 
up over a challenge to the state's lethal injection protocol.

In the past, Attorney General Jim Hood would have asked the Mississippi Supreme 
Court for an execution date shortly after Richard Gerald Jordan's appeals were 
exhausted in June.

However, Hood's office said Thursday that Jordan is a plaintiff in a lawsuit to 
stop the state from using a drug that he argues is experimental and could cause 
him great pain before he dies.

Also, Hood's office said Jordan's litigation has held up the request to set an 
execution date because the Mississippi Department of Corrections "can no longer 
obtain (the anesthetic) pentobarbital and thus will have to obtain another drug 
in (its) place."

"That change has not been made as of yet and we have informed the federal court 
we will not request an execution date prior to that change," Hood's office told 
The Sun Herald (http://bit.ly/1CZ37ig ).

Pentobarbital, which is produced in European countries, is not available 
because those countries do not support lethal injection or the death penalty.

Corrections Department officials declined comment, citing the pending 
litigation.

The state adopted the latest lethal-injection protocol in 2011 after 
manufacturers of the previous execution drug ceased its distribution to prisons 
in the United States because it did not want them used in executions.

Jordan's lawsuit, filed by the Solange MacArthur Justice Center in New Orleans, 
requested an injunction to stop the use of the current execution protocol.

In the suit, lawyer Jim Craig said Mississippi is one of the last states in the 
nation to use a compounded form of pentobarbital before injecting a paralytic 
drug and potassium chloride to execute a condemned person.

Craig questioned whether the state could mix a safe and effective form of 
pentobarbital as an anesthetic.

Jordan was convicted of capital murder committed in the course of kidnapping 
Edwina Marta in Harrison County in 1976.

Now 68, Jordan is the oldest inmate on Mississippi's death row, having won 
three successful appeals only to be resentenced to death. He's also the longest 
serving, having spent 38 years in death row.

Jordan was sentenced to death on 4 separate occasions in the case. Following 
the first 3 convictions, Jordan challenged his death sentence successfully, was 
re-tried, and was again re-sentenced to death.

In 1991, after a 3rd successful challenge to his sentence, Jordan entered into 
an agreement with the prosecution to serve a sentence of life imprisonment 
without parole in exchange for not further contesting his sentence.

Jordan appealed to the Mississippi Supreme Court, saying he had agreed to the 
sentence but it was invalid under state law.

The Supreme Court in 1997 agreed, ruling life without parole as a sentencing 
option did not exist until July 1, 1994. The justices said the only sentences 
available to Jordan were death or life imprisonment with parole. The justices 
ordered a new sentencing hearing.

Thereafter, Jordan sought a life with parole sentence. The prosecutor refused. 
The prosecutor said that, because Jordan "violated" the 1st agreement by asking 
the court to change his earlier sentence, the prosecutor would not again enter 
into a plea agreement with Jordan for a life sentence. The prosecutor instead 
successfully sought the death penalty for the 4th time in a 1998 sentencing 
trial.

(source: Associated Press)






LOUISIANA:

Prosecution pushes back in River Parishes serial killer appeal


Prosecutors pushed back Thursday against testimony that they did not give 
defense attorneys for River Parishes serial killer Daniel Blank all the 
investigative findings needed for him to challenge his 12-hour confession to a 
murderous 1-year period in the mid-1990s that left 6 people dead.

Glenn Cortello, Blank's lead defense counsel at trial, acknowledged Thursday on 
cross-examination that he had, in fact, received many of the documents his 
co-counsel Harold Van Dyke testified Monday that their defense team never 
received or that he could not remember receiving.

Attorneys with Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana have argued Blank's 
defense team did not have all the information on other suspects, about crime 
scenes and other facts that could have undercut the reliability of his 
confession and kept it from being used in his 1st trial in 1999 for the murder 
of Lillian Philippe, 72, of Gonzales.

Gary Clements, director of the post-conviction project, has raised this alleged 
failure to turn over key information as 1 reason Blank had ineffective defense 
counsel.

Long-standing U.S. Supreme Court precedent requires prosecutors to turn over 
any information that might point to a defendant's innocence.

Clements also has charged that Blank's attorneys failed to object during one 
pretrial hearing over allowing the confession at the Philippe trial. But 
Cortello testified Thursday that their strategic decision came after he had 
lost attempts to suppress the confession on different grounds following several 
days of hearings.

At the Philippe trial, prosecutors were able to show jurors all of Blank's 
confessions to 6 slayings and other armed robberies in which residents were 
shot. At the time, Blank had not been convicted of any of those charges.

Courts mostly frown on using evidence of other crimes that defendants are not 
convicted of because it tends to prejudice jurors, though exceptions exist.

Philippe was beaten to death in her home on April 9, 1997, as part of a 
burglary that prosecutors claimed was done to support Blank's gambling.

Blank was convicted of first-degree murder in September 1999 and given the 
death penalty. Project attorneys are seeking to have this death penalty 
conviction overturned. The state Supreme Court already has upheld it.

Judge Jessie LeBlanc, of the 23rd Judicial District, agreed to hold a weeklong 
evidentiary hearing at the Terrebonne Parish Courthouse in Houma, where the 
original trial was held due to pretrial publicity.

Blank, 53, who is originally from St. James Parish and lived in Sorrento at the 
time of the slayings, became the focus of a multiagency task force 
investigating the string of robberies and homicides of mostly well-to-do, 
elderly residents of St. James, St. John the Baptist and Ascension parishes.

The task force relied, in part, on an FBI profile to track him in November 1997 
to his auto shop in Onalaska, Texas, where he confessed to the slayings and 
robberies.

In addition to the Philippe murder, Blank also was convicted in 4 other 
slayings and has 4 life sentences. Blank was never tried in the 6th slaying. 
Victor Rossi, 41, of St. Amant, was beaten to death with a baseball bat on Oct. 
27, 1996.

On Thursday, 23rd Judicial District prosecutor Chuck Long took Cortello through 
document after document in voluminous pretrial discovery files that prosecutors 
had turned over to Blank's defense team.

Time and again, Long had Cortello compare those files with defense exhibits 
previously introduced this week when Van Dyke testified.

But, unlike Van Dyke on Monday, Cortello agreed with Long that many of those 
defense exhibits that Van Dyke couldn't identify did match the pretrial 
discovery files, showing Blank's defense attorneys had received the questioned 
reports years ago.

Cortello also agreed that the content of FBI reports he did not receive 
restated what local agencies already had uncovered and already were contained 
in the pretrial discovery in another format.

Long, for instance, had Cortello look at an FBI report that Cortello did not 
receive that said a friend of Rossi talked to him on the telephone about 8:30 
a.m. to 9 a.m. Oct. 27.

That fact potentially contradicted the time of death given for Rossi by the 
Ascension coroner and Blank???s own statement. Clements has argued Blank's 
attorneys could have used facts like this one to get his statement thrown out.

But Long then pointed Cortello to the pretrial discovery files. Cortello agreed 
they had substantially the same information in them. "So that's my point. This 
was not hidden to you?" Long asked.

"That???s correct," Cortello responded.

Under questioning by Clements, Cortello insisted he and his investigators 
followed up on lists of suspects law enforcement had ruled out but identified 
in pretrial discovery and turned over to defense attorneys.

Cortello told Clements that he kept meticulous notes about that work but burned 
those records several years ago after they were damaged by weather, animals and 
bugs.

The hearing is expected to resume at 8:30 a.m. Friday.

(source: The Advocate)






ARIZONA:

Prison Killer Who Severed Penis of Victim Sentenced to Death


An Arizona prison inmate who sliced off the penis of a seriously mentally ill 
inmate before killing him has been sentenced to death.

Jasper Rushing, 45, already was serving a 28-year prison sentence for the 2001 
murder of his stepfather when he mutilated and beat to death his cellmate, 
40-year-old Shannon Palmer, in 2010.

He was found guilty by a Maricopa County jury on June 1 after a 10-day trial. 
On Tuesday, a jury deliberated for 4 1/2 hours following the aggravation and 
penalty phases of the trial before sentencing him to die, according to County 
Attorney Bill Montgomery's office.

As covered in a September 1, 2011 feature article in New Times, Palmer, a 
convicted burglar, had a long history of mental illness when he re-offended in 
2008, shooting a gun in his backyard to ward off imaginary attackers. Serving a 
3-year sentence for criminal damage, he was placed in a cell in August 2010 
with Rushing, whom he proceeded to accidentally aggravate because of his 
illness. As Rushing himself told former New Times scribe Paul Rubin in the 
comprehensive article, which tied the murder to the Grand Canyon-size holes in 
Arizona's mental healthcare system as well as poor prison policy:

"It makes no sense at all to put a murderer in a cell living assholes-to-elbows 
with a guy who is crazy and probably shouldn't be in prison at all. Bad things 
can happen in a house like that.

"I can deal with just about anything within reason in prison. All I basically 
need is light, running water, and a book, and I'm okay. I guess this wasn't 
within reason.

"Day after day and night after night of his paranoid bullshit, and his 
disrespect for women and children. It was almost pitchblack in there because 
they couldn't fix the lights. I couldn???t read or think straight. This is what 
can happen." What did happen is that Jasper Rushing decided Shannon Palmer 
needed to die. It was much the same as in 2001, when Rushing, at age 20, 
murdered his stepfather because he became convinced the man had raped a young 
family member (no evidence of an assault ever emerged). Rushing shot the 
sleeping man to death inside a Yavapai County trailer."

Evidence from the trial proved that Palmer was still alive when Rushing cut off 
his victim's penis before beating him to death with a paperback wrapped in a 
sheet.

"The death penalty is a just punishment for those particular murders that 
qualify for the most severe penalty permitted under Arizona law," Montgomery 
said in a written statement about the jury verdict. "This defendant's case is 
just such an instance and also proves that incapacitating a violent offender 
does not guarantee they will not offend again, including taking the life of 
another."

(source: Phoenix New Times)