[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., N.C., GA., OHIO, NEB., ARIZ., USA

[Rick Halperin]

June 1


PENNSYLVANIA:

See reason on PA death penalty



If a conservative state like Nebraska can abolish its death penalty, surely 
Pennsylvania could follow suit. Issues of compassion and possible error are 
compelling. But for those not swayed by emotion or a sense of fairness, 
unnecessary spending ought to convince them that the death penalty is a 
dead-bang loser.

Nebraska's legislature voted 30-19 on Wednesday to override Gov. Pete Ricketts' 
veto of a bill that repealed the state's death penalty law. In the end, death 
penalty opponents won over conservative Republican legislators by arguing that, 
whatever they thought about the moral or religious justification for the death 
penalty, it was inefficient and cost the state millions through the lengthy 
appeals process.

The legislature had voted to abolish the law three times, a clear indication of 
the will of the people. Yet Ricketts described himself after the veto override 
as "appalled," calling the death penalty "a critical tool to protect law 
enforcement and Nebraska families."

Only it isn't.

Records in states that have the death penalty clearly show that death-row 
inmates rarely get executed. Their appeals can go on for decades. Nebraska has 
not put a prisoner to death since 1997. In Pennsylvania, the only inmates who 
have been executed in recent years are those who opted not to appeal: in other 
words, they went voluntarily to their deaths.

Nebraska joins 5 other states that have repealed their death penalty laws since 
2007, including Illinois, New Mexico, Maryland, Connecticut and New Jersey. 
States that still have the death penalty have met with challenges in obtaining 
the drugs used for lethal injection since some manufacturers now are refusing 
to sell them.

There is some hope in Pennsylvania, where Gov. Tom Wolf soon after taking 
office called the death penalty "error-prone, expensive and anything but 
infallible." The Keystone state should follow Nebraska's lead - and the 
leadership of every other Western nation - to abolish the death penalty. Even 
those with no misgivings about its inherent cruelty or the possibility the 
state could execute an innocent person ought to think about how much the 
torturous process costs the taxpayers.

(source: Editorial, Pocono Record)








NORTH CAROLINA:

Nebraska ends death penalty as NC tries to restart executions



Who would have guessed that Nebraska, that conservative bastion in the 
heartland, might be the state to lead the way toward a day when the death 
penalty would become a thing of the past?

Nebraska has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1968. 
Democrat Bob Kerrey did serve as governor and as a U.S. senator from Nebraska, 
but he was the exception and a recipient of the Medal of Honor.

The state seems an unlikely starting point for a national movement that would 
be declared by most as a liberal cause. That is, the abolition of the death 
penalty.

But that's exactly what happened last week when the Nebraska legislature 
narrowly overrode the veto of Gov. Pete Ricketts and abolished the death 
penalty.

The action couldn't have been achieved by liberal Democrats alone. Conservative 
Republicans were on board with abolition simply because of their skepticism 
about the death penalty.

And that skepticism everywhere is grounded both in moral belief and in 
practical science.

Plenty of doubts

There have been a number of cases, including in North Carolina, in which DNA 
evidence has demonstrated the innocence of those convicted of serious crimes, 
including murder. When that happens, it casts doubts on the fairness of the 
justice system and certainly proves its vulnerability.

When a person is wrongly convicted of a minor offense and loses time and 
perhaps a fine, it's still a serious matter. But when the death penalty is in 
play, a defendant faces the one punishment that cannot be corrected or for 
which he or she can somehow be compensated if a conviction is found to be 
wrong.

Beyond the scientific developments that have shown innocent people really do go 
to prison, there is the moral question. Should the state serve as executioner 
on behalf of the citizenry? Because make no mistake, that's what happens. The 
state doesn't operate in a vacuum, and when someone is executed, it is the 
people, all the people in effect, who are injecting that poison-filled needle. 
So what about the ones, and there are many, who don't believe in the death 
penalty at all? Their strenuous objections, grounded perhaps in their religious 
beliefs, are in effect ignored.

Smacks of revenge

The death penalty also smacks of revenge punishment, something to give 
satisfaction to the family and friends of a murder victim. That's not what the 
court system is about. It is about justice, not revenge.

And to argue, as many politicians have over many decades, that the death 
penalty is important because it is a deterrent to crime is simply disingenuous. 
It's political convenience, because there???s little evidence to show a 
connection between the establishment of the death penalty and a decrease in 
crime. States without the death penalty have lower murder rates than those with 
it.

Sadly, North Carolina's Republicans continue to lead the state away from 
enlightened thought on the issue. Legislators now are moving to restart stalled 
executions in the state by eliminating the requirement that a doctor be 
present.

North Carolina's People of Faith Against the Death Penalty offered a good 
summation here: "It is no longer conservative to support the death penalty - 
it's just outdated. The legislators in Nebraska voted their consciences. They 
voted their values. They value life and creation and justice for all and 
recognize that the death penalty is, in fact, contrary to these values."

It has been more than 40 years since a state acted to abolish the death 
penalty. Let us hope Nebraska's action will be followed by other states sooner 
than that.

(source: Editorial, News & Observer)








GEORGIA:

Death sentence thrown out for man convicted in woman's death



Georgia's highest court has tossed the death sentence given to a man convicted 
in a hotel maid's slaying.

A unanimous Georgia Supreme Court decision Monday upheld a lower court's ruling 
vacating Gregory Walker's death sentence. The lower court found Walker's 
attorneys provided "ineffective assistance of counsel" in failing to make the 
jury aware of details about Walker's life that could have led to him being 
spared the death penalty.

The state could seek another sentencing trial.

Evidence at trial showed Walker was asleep in a Brunswick motel room in June 
2001 along with Shedrick Tate and Denise Green when Janeika Murphy, a hotel 
maid and acquaintance of Walker, came into the room and stole a cigar box 
containing marijuana and cocaine.

Walker was furious when he awoke and found the money and drugs were gone and 
told his girlfriend by phone that he had determined who took them and said he 
was going "to get them."

When Murphy's body was found, she had been shot 3 times in the head and once in 
the wrist and also had blunt force wounds consistent with pistol whipping on 
her head.

Walker was convicted in 2005 of malice murder and other charges and the jury 
recommended the death penalty. His convictions and death sentence were upheld 
by the Georgia Supreme Court in 2006.

Walker challenged the constitutionality of his conviction in 2008. After 2 
hearings in 2014, a judge upheld his convictions but threw out the death 
sentence. The judge found that Walker's trial attorneys didn???t adequately 
prepare and present mitigating evidence in the sentencing phase, and the 
Georgia Supreme Court justices agreed.

The justices found that Walker's attorneys failed to make the jury aware of 
"pervasive violence" present in Walker's life beginning in childhood, which 
included his father abusing him as a child, whipping him until he had welts and 
telling him he was worthless.

"Considering the combined effect of the deficiencies discussed above, we 
conclude that there is a reasonable probability that the absence of those 
deficiencies would have changed the outcome of the sentencing phase of Walker's 
trial," the justices wrote.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Trial of accused Athens cop-killer begins today



More than 300 people are expected to gather today at the Elbert County 
Government Building for the beginning of the long-anticipated trial of a man 
who admitted to shooting two Athens-Clarke County police officers, killing one 
of them.

Jury summonses were mailed to 325 Elbert County residents for the high-profile 
death-penalty trial which is using people from that county who may be less 
exposed to publicity than Athens residents were. The trial itself is in Athens, 
where the Elbert County residents will be sequestered in a local hotel for the 
duration on the trial which could be as long as 2 months. Jury selection alone 
could take a month, officials said.

The defendant is 37-year-old Jamie Donnell Hood, who is acting as his own 
attorney. Charged in a 70-count indictment, Hood is accused of gunning down 
Senior Police Officers Elmer "Buddy" Christian III and Senior Police Officer 
Tony Howard on March 22, 2011. Christian was killed instantly and Howard 
survived getting shot in the face and has been back on the job as a police 
officer.

Hood admitted several times during open-court pretrial proceedings that he shot 
the officers. He expressed regrets for killing Christian but harbored ill-will 
toward Howard due to some previous history between them.

It is anticipated Hood will attempt to justify the shootings by arguing his 
actions were influenced by the 2001 shooting death of a brother at the hands of 
an Athens-Clarke County police officer. Authorities said the fatal shooting of 
Timothy Hood was justified because he placed a gun to the officer's head, but 
the officer was able to grab it and shoot Timothy Hood with his own gun.

When his brother was killed, Hood was in prison for a 1997 armed robbery in 
Athens. He was released from prison in 2009.

Some local police officers speculated Hood shot Christian because of a hatred 
for police sparked by his brother's death and simmered while he was prison. 
Other officers think he shot the officers because he didn't want to go back to 
prison.

Hood is going on trial for a 2nd alleged murder, stemming from the December 
2010 shooting death of Kenneth Omari Wray, a 30-year-old employee of the 
Athens-Clarke County Public Works Department.

Wray's killing was said by authorities to be drug-related, and the officers 
were shot while Hood was sought for the allegedly kidnapping of a man who 
authorities said was a witness in the Wray murder.

During a daylong session last week in Clarke County Superior Court, several 
issues were resolved pertaining to Hood's upcoming trial. Among the issues were 
prepared victim impact statements to be read, if Hood is convicted, during the 
trial's penalty phase. The statements underwent heavy editing to avoid 
inflaming the passion of jurors prior to deciding whether to vote for or 
against the death penalty.

During the hearing, Hood expressed concern for his security because he said he 
continued to receive death threats, including from law enforcement, He asked to 
have a portable camera placed on him at all times, but Superior Court Judge H. 
Patrick Haggard did not grant the request. He had earlier in May issued an 
order concerning security during Hood's trial, forbidding spectators, including 
those in law enforcement, from bringing weapons into the courtroom. Visitors 
will be screened by deputy sheriffs, according to the judge's order.

Western Judicial Circuit District Attorney Ken Mauldin stated during the 
hearing there were 384 potential witnesses, though he did not expect to call 
all on all of them to testify.

Other issues discussed during Wednesday's hearing included Hood???s inability 
to view evidence prosecutors plan to use at trial. The problem was determined 
that software was required for him to view CDs on the laptop computer provided 
to him by the Oconee County Sheriff's Office, which has maintained custody of 
Hood at its jail. Oconee County Sheriff Scott Berry told the judge he would 
immediately have his technical staff assist Hood.

Hood also complained the prosecution failed to provide him with certain 
evidence he requested, such as an Athens-Clarke County supplemental police 
report. District Attorney Ken Mauldin explained he was unable to provide what 
his office did not have, and the judge told Hood he could have his private 
investigators attempt to obtain the document from police.

The hearing did not address motions previously filed by Hood seeking to 
suppress certain evidence Hood claims was illegally obtained. Haggard indicated 
he would not hear arguments on those motions until after a jury has been 
empaneled.

The judge also ordered the unsealing of 15 search warrants that were sealed 
since 2011. That was to allow Hood to have access to them in preparing his 
defense.

The warrants did not contain any real surprises, as many aspects of Hood's case 
have been discussed in open court during pretrial hearings.

Several of the warrants were issued while Hood was on the run, for cellphone 
records for use by the U.S. Marshals Service and Secret Service in helping 
pinpoint the location of Hood's phone during the 4 days he spent on the run in 
the double-cop shooting's aftermath.

Other warrants were for the search of a home on Creekstone Drive where Hood 
allegedly held several people hostage while negotiating his surrender for 
having shot the police officers. The warrants show authorities recovered from 
the home a .40-caliber handgun and ammunition. Authorities later said in court 
Hood used the same .40-caliber handgun to shoot both police officers and Wray.

One interesting thing made public by the unsealing of the warrants was mention 
of Hood allegedly saying he was wanted for murder even prior to him shooting 
the police officers or being tied to Wray's shooting death.

Prior to taking the man hostage on the day he later shot Christian and Howard, 
Hood reportedly told the man "he was wanted for murder" and "made a comment 
about Marietta or Maryland."

(source: Athens Banner-Herald)








OHIO:

Kasich: Death Penalty About Justice, Not Revenge



Ohio Gov. John Kasich said Sunday he does not agree with his predecessor Gov. 
Bob Taft, who said recently that the death penalty in Ohio is a "dead man 
walking."

Though the state has put a moratorium on executions after several were botched, 
Kasich insisted Sunday on "Meet the Press" that the reprieve will be lifted as 
soon as a suitable drug to administer lethal injections can be found, Kasich 
said.

"In this debate we forget the victims," he said. "I review all these cases. 
Some people I've said we will let them stay for a life in prison if I wasn't 
certain of who did what, but I've had these grieving families come to see me 
... people who had their mother, who have been gunned down. ... It isn't about 
revenge, it's about justice."

That said, Kasich said the death penalty should be administered sparingly.

Kasich is a devout Catholic, and differs with his church on the issue. Still, 
he said it is consistent with his faith.

"At the end of the day, I'm the secular official," he said. "I'm also the 
governor. It doesn't mean my faith doesn't influence me. I have a job as 
administrator of the state of Ohio."

Kasich is expected to announce in a month his intentions on whether to join the 
ever-growing Republican field of presidential candidates. The only thing that 
would stop him, he said, would be if he thought he couldn't win.

"I don't want to burden my family and my friends," he said, adding that he has 
his own internal metrics to determine his chances of success.

"I don't need to do this to have a good life, but I think I can help serve my 
country," he said. "I've got the most unique resume and a terrific record."

Kasich spent nearly 20 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and touts his 
role in balancing the federal budget and military reform.

Kasich is low in the polls in a field that could end up with more than 15 
candidates. Without high national name recognition, those accomplishments could 
be looked over by the public.

Even "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd, a political junkie, accidentally 
introduced Kasich as the "former" governor of Ohio.

"I'm still the governor," Kasich reminded Todd.

(source: newsmax.com)








NEBRASKA:

USCCB, Nebraska's bishops welcome state's repeal of death penalty



The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Domestic Justice 
and Human Development has welcomed Nebraska's abolition of the death penalty.

"Even as we seek justice for these grave wrongs, our faith impels us to call 
for the building up of a culture of life where all human life is valued," said 
Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami, the committee's chairman. "We are a people 
of deep hope, even for the most lost souls among us. We continue to say that we 
cannot teach killing is wrong by killing."

In arguing for the repeal of the death penalty, the Nebraska Catholic 
Conference's executive director "made it clear that the teaching of the Church 
does not condemn use of the death penalty in principle." Citing the Catechism 
of the Catholic Church and Pope St. John Paul II's 1995 encyclical on the 
Gospel of life, he said that Nebraska's bishops "concluded that [the] primary 
condition (i.e. absolute necessity) needed to legitimize use of the death 
penalty does not exist at this time in Nebraska."

(source: catholicculture.org)



ARIZONA:

Ariz. attorney Dale Baich fights for right to humane death



At times, the federal public defender Dale Baich is brought into a 
death-penalty eligible murder case at its earliest stages. His job is to 
describe death row to the accused.

Baich describes the small cells and the solitary existence that begins to weigh 
on the convicted. How the only human contact comes when corrections officers 
reach into the cell from the outside to attach restraints. How, over time, 
death-row inmates don't know what they look like because they don't see a 
mirror.

Baich offers the unsparing glimpse so that the defendant can properly weigh 
whether to accept a plea deal and a lengthy but time-certain prison sentence, 
or go to court and risk capital punishment.

Many take the plea deal.

Those who don't and are convicted, become his clients.

As they wait out the years after sentencing, it will be Baich who will try to 
keep them out of the death chamber. Or, at least, make sure their execution is 
as humane as possible.

Baich has handled death-penalty cases since 1988 and worked out of the Phoenix 
federal public defender's office since 1996. Sometimes he's been successful. 
Sometimes his clients die.

Baich's latest efforts have focused not just on Arizona cases but on Oklahoma, 
where a group of death-row inmates has challenged the way that state plans to 
execute them.

The essential legal question in the case: Do the drugs that Oklahoma and other 
states use for lethal injection produce a tranquil and peaceful death? Or do 
the inmates actually lie fully awake and aware as lethal drugs burn through 
their bodies and stop their hearts and lungs, making the last few minutes of 
their lives a silent torture?

At the end of April, public defenders, using arguments Baich helped craft, 
stood before the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court and argued that the drug 
Oklahoma and Arizona have used does not sufficiently knock out the condemned - 
and that the resulting execution is unconstitutionally cruel.

The high court's ruling, expected in June, could change the way lethal 
injection is carried out in the 31 states that use capital punishment, forcing 
states to seek out some other combination of drugs even as pharmaceutical 
options for lethal injection are dwindling.

Arizona has put further executions on hold until judges rule on the legality of 
its execution method.

Cases like the one in Oklahoma have made Baich one of the country's leading 
legal opponents of the death penalty; in almost every setting, his arguments 
aim to change it, stall it or prevent it from happening.

But Baich doesn't describe himself as a death-penalty opponent. Indeed, when 
asked his opinion about the very existence of capital punishment, he demurs.

To him, the work is not about ideological victory.

"I don't know if victory is the right word," he said, about a possible 
high-court ruling in his clients' favor. "I think it's an opportunity for the 
courts to take a close look at what is really going on with this process."

But he does know that raising these questions can cause the public and 
politicians to re-examine capital punishment as a judicial policy. Last week, 
Nebraska's legislature voted to end the practice.

Other states have redoubled their efforts to preserve it. Utah voted on an 
alternative in case it cannot carry out lethal injections: It will bring back 
the firing squad.

"In the end," Baich said, "what we've done is ensure that clients who are 
executed by lethal injection are not going to experience pain and suffering."

Charting a course

Baich, 58, grew up in a suburb of Cleveland. His mother still lives in the 
house he grew up in.

He grew up a baseball fan, preferring the slow, measured pace of the game. As 
he matured, he became the type of fan who studies the way outfielders are 
positioned, or watches the signals the managers send in from the dugout. It's a 
long game with a lot of particulars to note.

At law school, Baich became a fan of the blues. The college radio station had a 
blues show on during the overnight hours, and the music imprinted on his brain 
as he studied.

He opened his own office in Cleveland. One of his early cases showed him that 
courts could be used to create change.

An environmental group wanted to stop the Perry Nuclear Power Plant on the 
shore of Lake Erie. By the time the case came to Baich, the plant had been 
given clearance by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Baich was concerned about the plant's ability to withstand an earthquake, 
especially after a temblor hit 10 miles away. Baich's challenge was in getting 
past the high bar set by the regulations, which were written by industry 
insiders specifically to stop challenges, he said.< "When people in the '60s 
were out demonstrating and chaining themselves to the fences to stop the 
(nuclear) plants, although that was important, what people should have also 
been doing was getting involved in the regulatory process," he said.

Baich did the unglamorous work of wading through the minutiae of regulations 
and nuclear-power licensing until he found an argument that convinced a federal 
court to halt the plant in 1987. It opened months later, but Baich had slowed 
the process enough to feel the plant had done more than just paper over the 
earthquake problem.

Baich was offered a job in the public defender's office in Ohio. He represented 
juveniles in the criminal system. Then, in 1988, he took a job with the state 
public defender's office, specializing in death-penalty cases.

He said the job also appealed to an innate sense of fairness for people caught 
up in a bureaucratic system.

"It's so wrong when someone gets screwed and there's no one standing with him 
or her and advocating for them," Baich said. In 1996, he was offered the job in 
Phoenix.

That was the same year the city demolished Cleveland Stadium. Baich was among 
the fans who took the offer to buy seats. A truck showed up outside his Central 
Avenue office with four seats covered in rust and bird droppings. Baich had 
them steam cleaned. Take away the bird poop, he said, but leave the rust. The 
row of 4 seats has moved with him to his office near Seventh Avenue and Van 
Buren Street.

On death row, he would meet clients who were real-life versions of the blues 
songs he heard in college. He would hear tales of poverty, abuse, alcohol and 
suffering.

Those stories would become one path to keeping an accused out of the execution 
chamber. Baich could argue they had an untreated mental illness, or an abusive 
childhood. He could also argue about how individual clients had been done 
wrong: procedural mistakes by the police or the courts, shoddy work by other 
attorneys.

Those arguments were unique to individual cases. But there was another set of 
arguments with bigger ramifications. Baich began to look at the procedures 
states used to execute prisoners. A ruling changing those procedures could have 
an effect beyond any single inmate.

To execution witnesses, there seemed little wrong with lethal injection. 
Inmates appeared to peacefully go to sleep.

It certainly appeared that way to Baich. The 1st time he witnessed a lethal 
injection, in 2010, it struck him as much more serene than the death by 
electric chair he saw in 1996 in Nebraska.

That state was the only one at the time that had not adopted lethal injection. 
Baich said watching that execution, his 1st, was "surreal."

He said the inmate, John Joubert, convicted of killing 3 children, bolted up 
from his chair, straining against the straps. His prison suit puffed with air, 
Baich said, and steam appeared to come out of one of his pant legs. He was 
given 3 jolts, the standard number at the time. Baich said he watched Joubert's 
skin color change from white to pink to red to blue and then gray.

By contrast, the October 2010 execution of Jeffrey Landrigan in Arizona 
appeared peaceful. When the curtain was pulled back and witnesses could see 
into the execution chamber, Landrigan's body was covered with a sheet. Only his 
head was exposed.

Landrigan said his final words, "Boomer, Sooner," and then, Baich said, the 
Oklahoma native closed his eyes and appeared to go to sleep.

Only later would Baich find out that the state imported drugs from another 
country to execute Landrigan, a move that a federal judge said showed a callous 
indifference to human life.

Which is also essentially what a judge thought of Landrigan when she sentenced 
him to death for the 1989 stabbing and strangulation of a man.

'A valuable job'

In Arizona, Baich has been assigned a rogue's gallery. The crimes of the 
convicted are a cascade of cruelty.

Randy Greenawalt was accused of killing a couple in their 20s and their infant 
son; Kevin Roscoe was accused of abducting, raping and killing a 7-year-old 
girl who had gone out searching for her runaway cat; Michael Poland was accused 
of killing 2 armored-car guards during a robbery, dumping their bodies in Lake 
Mead.

The Poland case shows some of the novel arguments Baich makes on behalf of his 
clients.

According to news stories, Baich argued that Arizona could not execute Poland 
until he first completed a 100-year federal prison sentence for the robbery and 
kidnapping. In the weeks before the scheduled execution, Baich argued that 
Poland's mental condition had deteriorated and he was too delusional to be 
killed.

Poland believed, Baich said, that he had superpowers that would allow him to 
survive the execution. Prosecutors said that was an act.

Mel McDonald, who prosecuted the Poland case, said death was deserved.

"Michael was scum," he said. "He was faking the mental thing right up to the 
end."

Still, McDonald, who has also been a judge and a defense attorney, said Baich 
played a necessary role in advocating for Poland, as frustrating as he found 
the argument.

"He does a valuable job," he said. "I want people like Dale to be there all the 
way through the process to be protecting the rights of the people involved."

Baich said he was certain Poland was not faking his delusion. As he left his 
cell on his final visit, Poland was casually using the restroom and told Baich 
he'd see him later.

"I was the last friendly face he was going to see," Baich said.

Poland's final words: "I'd like to know if you're going to bring me lunch 
afterward. I'm really hungry."

Legal challenges

McDonald had different feelings about Poland's brother, Patrick, who was 
convicted of the same crime.

Though he prosecuted him, McDonald said Patrick Poland helped authorities patch 
up holes in the case and expressed remorse. McDonald watched his execution by 
lethal injection and thought the man suffered. The vision stuck with him.

"I don't care who you are," McDonald said. "To see somebody suffer is bad."

The lethal injection protocol was developed in Oklahoma, according to a brief 
filed in the Supreme Court case by the Louis Stein Center. Doctors with the 
state medical association would not help with the effort, so the state medical 
examiner devised the procedure, the brief says.

The formulation was essentially the same that other states, including Arizona, 
would adopt, according to the legal brief. First, the inmate would be given a 
fast-acting sedative that would render him or her unconscious. Then, the inmate 
would receive the 2 lethal drugs: 1 that would paralyze their muscles, 
including the diaphragm, and another one that would stop the heart.

In 2007, Baich began filing legal challenges questioning the qualifications of 
those administering the drugs and the manner in which the drugs were injected. 
He also argued that a doctor needed to be certain that a prisoner was 
unconscious before the lethal drugs were administered.

Baich said his goal is to make sure the government follows its own rules, 
including the one that says it cannot inflict a cruel punishment.

"If we're going to do it," he said, "it has to be done in a way where the 
prisoner doesn't suffer or experience pain."

Legal challenges to lethal injection - including a case that made it to the 
U.S. Supreme Court - were succeeding in making the process more transparent. 
But the challenges didn't appear to be on track to stop any executions.

At one point, Baich withdrew a federal court challenge against Arizona's lethal 
injection method because he said the state had addressed his concerns. The 
state agreed with Baich that witnesses should be able to watch IV lines being 
administered and that the state needed to reveal sources of the chemicals.

Then, something happened that Baich neither planned nor expected. Arizona began 
running out of drugs.

Arizona had been using a drug called thiopental to knock inmates out. But it 
ran short.

A British anti-death-penalty group, Reprieve, started pressuring drug 
manufacturers, especially those in Europe, to stop their drugs from being used 
in executions. Hospira, the one company that made thiopental in the United 
States, planned to move the manufacturing of the drug to Italy, but that 
government said it would hold Hospira liable should the drug end up being used 
in an execution. Hospira announced in January 2011 that it would stop making 
the drug.

By then, the drug had already become scarce. Ohio had already announced it 
didn't have any to carry out executions. And Arizona obtained a batch of 
thiopental from a storefront pharmacy in Britain for the October 2010 execution 
of the condemned murderer, Landrigan.

A federal judge would later rule that the state, in league with the federal 
Food and Drug Administration, improperly sidestepped regulations in importing 
the drug. The judge's ruling said state and federal officials showed "seemingly 
callous indifference" to the condemned.

Arizona switched to a new knockout drug: pentobarbital. But the only 
manufacturer of that drug also blocked sales to corrections departments that 
would use it for executions. On its website, Reprieve lists statements from a 
dozen pharmaceutical companies pledging to block sale of their drugs for 
executions.

Arizona announced it would move to midazolam, a drug said to be like Valium. 
Oklahoma also adopted that drug as its first of the three administered during 
lethal injection. That drug is also made by Hospira. In a statement on its 
website, the company said it objects to its products being used in executions, 
but said it could do little to stop a prison from obtaining its drugs through 
the "gray market."

In April 2014, Oklahoma executed a prisoner, Clayton Lockett, using midazolam. 
Witnesses said Lockett was gasping, convulsing and calling out. Oklahoma 
officials tried stopping the execution. But Lockett died of a heart attack 
shortly thereafter.

The July execution of Joseph Rudolph Wood would be the 1st in Arizona using 
midazolam.

Baich was in the last of the 3 tiered rows of witnesses just outside the 
execution chamber. He said that after about a dozen minutes, it appeared Wood 
was dead. Then, Wood started to gasp. Baich couldn't hear him, but could see 
him. There appeared to be a pattern, he said. A few shallow gasps, then a 
deeper one.

Baich began writing what he was seeing using the pencil and pad of paper that 
corrections officials provided. Electronic devices and pens weren't allowed in 
the witness area.

He gave the note to an attorney in the room. It said to call the legal 
defender's office and report what he had seen. The note said the attorneys 
there would know what to do.

Within an hour, an emergency motion was filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court 
of Appeals. Wood would die before the judge could rule.

Wood's execution would take another hour. Every few minutes, Baich said, a 
medical person would walk toward Wood and examine him. Then, a voice over the 
loudspeaker would announce to the witnesses that the prisoner was still 
sedated. Baich said that, as a lawyer, he has no factual basis to dispute that 
claim. He said he didn't want to share his layman's opinion.

In a news conference following the execution, the television news anchor Troy 
Hayden, of KSAZ-TV, said Wood looked like a fish on land gasping for air.

An autopsy would later show that Wood was given 15 times the drug dose 
recommended by state prison procedures. It was information that Baich did not 
know while witnessing the execution. In a motion filed with the federal court 
in Arizona, Baich is urging prison officials to let witnesses see the plunger 
administering the lethal drugs.

In June 2014, a group of 21 death-row inmates challenged Oklahoma's 
lethal-injection procedure. 4 of those filed for a special injunction as they 
faced imminent execution. One of those men was executed before the U.S. Supreme 
Court agreed to take the case.

The case is Glossip vs. Gross. Gross refers to Kevin Gross, the chairman of the 
Oklahoma Board of Corrections. Glossip refers to Richard Glossip, who was 
convicted of ordering the beating death of the owner of a motel he managed.

Another defendant in the case was convicted of stabbing a cafeteria employee in 
prison with a shank. Another was convicted of killing his 9-month-old daughter 
by pushing her legs toward her head until her spine snapped.

Baich knows that the brutal nature of their crimes can make death-row inmates 
seem like monsters.

But, he said, the gap in time between the crime and the execution ends up 
creating a different human being.

The mentally ill get treatment in prison. So do the addicted.

"What we see is the humanity coming out in that person," Baich said. "I don't 
believe in the idea that people are evil."

Baich said that the death-row inmates he represents fit a typical profile. He 
knows that, by and large, he is not dealing with someone raised in a stable 
household with good educational and career opportunities. It is probably 
someone with undiagnosed mental illness and a history of childhood trauma or 
abuse.

"Brain damage, mental illness, combined with a bad environment and drugs," he 
said, "it just makes sense that someone is going to end up in a bad situation."

High court to decide

Baich has been a spectator at the U.S. Supreme Court for 5 of his cases. But he 
hasn't argued any himself, thinking it best for others to have the honors.

In Glossip, he said he figured he managed the complexities and details of the 
case, leaving the job of arguing to Robin Konrad, an attorney in his Phoenix 
office who had done nothing but prepare to present the case since January.

Baich took his place in the narrow seats in the spectators' gallery. He wasn't 
nervous. He watched the arguments like a learned baseball fan - studying the 
complexities of the attorneys' arguments and how the justices seemed to 
position themselves.

Justice Antonin Scalia brought up the crime of one of the defendants. He was 
already serving a life sentence for murder, Scalia said, when he stabbed a 
prison worker to death. He did not make an immediate legal point about the 
crime. But the image his words created were a stark contrast to the other 
justices' just-completed questions about a humane or painless way to execute 
the inmates.

Justice Samuel Alito blamed the dilemma on death-penalty abolitionists who have 
pressed companies to stop importing drugs that could kill painlessly. He asked 
if it was appropriate for judges "to countenance what amounts to a guerrilla 
war against the death penalty."

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said states should not feel compelled to use a series 
of drugs that have unanswered questions.

"There are other ways to kill people, regrettably," she said.

She also suggested that Oklahoma might have been disingenuous in its briefs to 
the court.

Justice Elena Kagan said that a conscious but paralyzed person might feel the 
pain of the drugs, which she said would make them feel is if they were being 
burned from the inside. She gave a hypothetical scenario involving burning 
someone at the stake as a comparison.

"So suppose that we said we're going to burn you at the stake, but before we 
do, we're going to use an anesthetic of completely unknown properties and 
unknown effects," she said. "Maybe you won't feel it. Maybe you will. We just 
can't tell. And, you think that would be OK?"

Should the court decide that midazolam is an inadequate drug, or make a broader 
pronouncement, it could create a moratorium on lethal injections.

One state, Utah, has already passed a law saying it would go back to the firing 
squad should lethal-injection drugs not be available. Utah was 1 of 2 states 
that had previously used the firing squad.

"The real question is: Does the public have the stomach for going back to the 
firing squad, to the electric chair, to the gas chamber?" Baich asked.

If Utah does institute the firing squad, Baich, whose office has been assigned 
to handle some cases out of that state, would begin preparing arguments against 
that method.

"We've not yet had those discussions," he said. But he can list off problems 
that have occurred with firing squads in the past. Suppose marksmen missed the 
target, for example, causing the inmate to suffer a lingering death?

While the public may view Supreme Court cases as solving broad ideological 
questions, Baich said he focuses on making the best case for his individual 
client. Still, he said, if the result of his work is a halt to capital 
punishment, he said he won't be disappointed.

"The last 40 years have shown us," he said, "there are problems with the death 
penalty."

(source: Arizona Republic)








USA:

The death penalty abolition movement is not limited to Nebraska



In the days since the Nebraska legislature moved to abolish the death penalty, 
it has been described as an astounding political act in a deeply red state, a 
rare moment of bipartisan collaboration and a significant victory for 
Nebraska's anti-death penalty activists.

But it's also part of a little-covered and slow-moving strategy to abolish the 
death penalty nationwide, led by a coalition of anti-death penalty, civil 
rights and criminal justice reform organizations. In the past few years, this 
coalition has begun to speak openly about the idea of repealing the death 
penalty in 26 states - a slight majority - then taking a test case to the 
Supreme Court calling for total, national abolition of capital punishment on 
the grounds that it is both cruel and unusual. And that's a strategy that has 
worked before, prompting the Supreme Court in 2005 to bar the execution of 
juveniles when they committed murder.

To understand what may be coming, let???s take the ideas of cruelty and rarity 
one at a time.

Last year, a pair of executions - 1 in Arizona and 1 in Oklahoma - drew 
national attention after witness accounts and death records indicated that the 
men put to death died slowly and painfully, after 40 minutes or more. The cases 
ignited a national debate about what had once been a matter of almost 
unquestioned orthodoxy: lethal injection offered states a humane way to carry 
out death sentences for egregious crimes.

Now, several European drug makers have refused to sell drugs in the United 
States central to many state???s lethal injection protocols, citing ethical 
concerns about the way the drugs will be used. In March, Utah implemented a law 
that made death by firing squad legal once again.

That decision has produced more than a few late-night talk show jokes. But 
those jokes are reaching an audience of Americans some legal observers say is 
increasingly convinced that DNA evidence must be available to prove irrefutable 
guilt or innocence in every case - the so-called CSI effect. The American 
public appears, then, to be at least nominally aware of some of the now-just 
over 150 cases in which prisoners have been proven innocent and freed from 
death row. In the most recent such instance, an Alabama man was freed after 30 
years on death row.

And disturbing but pervasive patterns in who is actually sentenced to die - 
most often black and poor defendants convicted of killing white victims - have 
been illuminated by multiple studies and are nearly impossible to refute.

All of that spurred, as NAACP Field Organizer Redditt Hudson told me, "organic 
shifts" in public opinion around the death penalty.

A Quinnipac poll released recently indicates that Hudson is right. Forty-eight 
percent of Americans said that a person convicted of murder should be sentenced 
to life in prison without parole, while just 43 % expressed support for the 
death penalty in such a circumstance. Support for capital punishment is 
strongest among Republicans and men. But a majority of Americans, 58 %, do 
support the death penalty for those involved in deadly incidents of terrorism.

Officially, the NAACP, the nation's largest and oldest civil rights 
organization, described the agency as engaged in the broader strategy of 
"building momentum towards banning the death penalty nationwide."

The Iowa/Nebraska NAACP State Conference, a collection of NAACP chapters in 
those states, got deeply involved as the Nebraska legislature considered 
repeal. NAACP members armed lawmakers with key facts as the debate between 
those inclined to repeal capital punishment and those determined it remain took 
shape. In Missouri, NAACP State Conference President Mary Ratliff announced in 
January that death penalty repeal will rank among that group's top priorities 
this year.

And that plan brings us to the matter of the unusual part of the death penalty 
abolitionists' case.

Niaz Kasravi, former criminal justice director at the NAACP and current deputy 
director of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC), which does not do anti-death 
penalty work, points out that the United States is part of a limited and not 
exactly ideal league when it comes to state-directed executions.

"America keeps company with countries such as Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Saudi 
Arabia and Somalia - many of which we constantly criticize for human rights 
violations," she told me.

Even inside the United States, the death penalty has become increasingly rare.

Beyond the headlines created by the Nebraska repeal, the actual number of both 
death penalty sentences and executions has declined sharply. In 1998, courts in 
states around the country handed down 295 death sentences, an all-time high. 
Last year, that figure dropped to 73. And in 1999, actual executions peaked at 
98. Last year, states put 35 people to death. And many states where the death 
penalty is legal have not executed anyone for more than a decade.

In fact, 80 % of the 35 executions carried out last year took place in just 3 
states: Texas, Florida and Missouri. Oklahoma, Georgia, Arizona and Ohio 
executed the rest, said James Clark, senior death penalty campaigner for 
Amnesty International USA.

That alone would help to bolster any case brought on the grounds that capital 
punishment is cruel and unusual, according to Diann Rust-Tierney, executive 
director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. If the same 
crime is punishable by death in one state but not in another, that's the 
definition of capricious, cruel and unusual punishment, she said.

All of that would likely be a part of any Eighth Amendment claims - the 
constitutional measure barring cruel and unusual punishment - made before the 
Supreme Court, if and when the count of states which bar the death penalty 
reaches 26.

Right now, including Nebraska, that figure sits at 19.

(source: Washington Post)

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

The Justice of the Death Penalty



This week Nebraska's legislature overrode its governor's veto of a bill to end 
the death penalty in Nebraska. Nebraska is the nineteenth US state to ban the 
death penalty. The editorial board of The New York Times celebrated this 
decision writing, "But the death penalty has never been about protecting public 
safety, only exacting hollow vengeance ...The Nebraska vote ... is an 
acknowledgment by reasonable people of all political ideologies that capital 
punishment is an abhorrent and indefensible practice. If that realization can 
happen in the deep-red heart of America, it can happen anywhere." Mainline 
Protestant churches, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Orthodox Church 
in America, and many self-identified evangelicals oppose the death penalty.

Some Christians argue that the inherent dignity of the human person precludes 
the death penalty; others argue that Christians are called to forgiveness, not 
vengeance, and that the death penalty attempts to solve vengeance with 
vengeance. These claims can be easily dismissed by a cursory glance at relevant 
texts of Scripture and the logical distinction between Christian persons and 
the office of the magistrate. Indeed, God claims that vengeance is his and that 
it is the magistrate who he uses to enact that that vengeance upon wrongdoers. 
For murder, the penalty is unequivocally death (this pronouncement applies to 
all of creation and pre-dates the Mosaic law).

A more reasonable and conservative position in opposition to the death penalty 
is taken by Cardinal Dulles in an article in First Things. Dulles notes that 
both Scripture and the Apostolic Tradition (and indeed essentially all Catholic 
theologians until about the 1950s) do not oppose the death penalty. He notes 
that opposition to the death penalty "has gone hand in hand with a decline of 
faith in eternal life" and that early abolition of the death penalty was 
usually done over the protests of believers.

Dulles, while admitting the right of the State to inflict capital punishment, 
argues that "killing should be avoided if the purposes of punishment can be 
obtained by bloodless means." These purposes of punishment are: 
"rehabilitation, defense against the criminal, deterrence, and retribution." He 
argues that, while the death penalty does not rehabilitate the criminal to 
society, it may lead him to a relationship with God; he believes defense (in 
our day and age) can be accomplished by life imprisonment without parole; he 
believes execution is not effective as a deterrent. His argument against 
retribution rests on the idea that, in our secular society, execution is viewed 
not as a ministration of justice, but as an instrument of the will and anger of 
the people. He argues that, since imprisonment serves the purposes of 
punishment as well or better and since unjust execution may occur, the death 
penalty should be avoided as a punishment (though it is not unjust in se).

Cardinal Dulles' argument, however, fails to take into account the human 
dignity of the victim who also is made in the image of God. God commands, 
"Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image 
of God made he man." Rather than being a simple proof text, this text reveals 
the nature of the evil of murder. Made in the image and likeness of God, even 
fallen man is crowned with the dignity and preciousness that his integrity as a 
distinct person demands. Human personhood is dependent for being on God, who is 
Being itself. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the only non-dependent 
beings; thus, for a man to violate the personhood of another man through murder 
is to set himself up as God, the only giver and taker of life.

In the case of government, various levels of authority over persons are 
delegated by God. This is, of course, recognized by St. Paul, but is also noted 
by our Lord when he says to Pilate, "Thou couldest have no power at all against 
me, except it were given thee from above." Government therefore, consciously or 
not, derives its authority over man - especially in the realm of capital 
punishment - from God; legitimacy is something, perhaps, that government gain 
from popular consent. Men cannot give government the power to execute, that 
power can only be delegated by God.

To deny the legitimacy or necessity of capital punishment by the proper 
authorities of a murderer convicted with surety is to elevate the life of the 
murderer over that of his victim. Assuming knowledge of the penalty for murder 
has been promulgated, by murdering another, the murderer has surrendered his 
own life. Contrary to the arguments of those that oppose the death penalty, the 
failure to apply the death penalty is a failure to recognize the human dignity 
of the victim - indeed, God's command gives no other options for punishment.

In examining punishment, the purposes Dulles listed cannot all be considered 
equal. Rehabilitation, defense, and deterrence are all secondary to the 
dispensation of justice (retribution). The blood of the victim calls out from 
the ground for justice. Indeed, there can be no rehabilitation without justice 
because without just punishment, the criminal has not expiated his crime. In 
his command, God established the principle of justice for murder. While it may 
be up to the state to weigh mitigating factors in its decision, the state is 
charged with insuring justice. Mercy belongs to God and his Church. When 
justice is removed as the primary consideration in a punishment, it becomes 
merely a means to promote good within the criminal and in society. This is 
fundamentally unjust to the victim.

It is also unjust to the criminal because this approach fails to treat him too 
as a person capable of making rational decisions and living with the 
consequences of those decisions. As C. S. Lewis notes, "Thus when we cease to 
consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or 
deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice 
altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere 
object, a patient, a 'case'." The death penalty is the only way of recognizing 
the personhood of the murderer.

This essay is not intended to argue for the death penalty always and in all 
cases. Mitigating factors do exist, and our legal system is equipped to examine 
them. To claim that capital punishment is unjust either inherently or as 
practiced today is to misunderstand the demands of justice. Capital punishment 
recognizes the inherent dignity in the personhood of both the victim and the 
murderer. Capital punishment properly places the demands of justice at the 
center of the question of punishment. Scripture and the tradition of the Church 
both proclaim the justice of the death penalty for appropriate crimes; 
Christians today do not have either the reasons or the right to disagree.

(source: The Christian Post)