[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----UTAH, NEV., CALIF., ORE., USA

Sun Mar 1 15:25:18 CST 2015

Mar. 1

UTAH:

Firing squad readies for round in state senate

A bill to restore Utah's firing squad as a death penalty option barely cleared 
the state House, and not without lots of emotion.

Now, HB11 is making its way into the state Senate for consideration, where 
emotions could rise again.

"Nobody wants to put somebody to death, period," said Rep. Paul Ray, the 
Clearfield Republican sponsoring the bill. "The only thing is, the law calls 
for it."

For now.

Ray wants a "Plan B" in case the Utah Department of Corrections must stop 
lethal injections.

"We already have it for if it's unconstitutional, so it's not a big leap to 
say, 'or if the drugs are not available,'" Ray said.

The state prison doesn't stock the lethal drugs because they have a low shelf 
life, a spokeswoman said.

Last year, death row inmates in 4 other states died slowly when the lethal 
cocktails didn't work properly.

Even so, "(A firing squad) is a particularly graphic way of killing a person, 
and it makes us as a state look terrible in the eyes of our sister states," 
said Utah House Minority Leader Brian King, D-Salt Lake City.

The option death by firing squad as an alternative to lethal injection could be 
back in Utah. We spoke with Rep. Paul Ray who says this would be used until we 
figure out where we can get our lethal injection drugs from.

King has disgust for any form of the death penalty, let alone the firing squad. 
"The state medical examiner classifies death by firing squad, or lethal 
injection, as homicide," he said.

HB 11 passed with just over half the support of the house, 39-34, and 2 
abstentions, on Feb. 13, with 22 Republicans objecting.

That's a red flag to the ACLU of Utah.

"You just missed the opportunity to have a good dialogue about continually 
looking for ways for the government to kill people," said Anna Brower, the 
ACLU's public policy advocate.

She wishes Utah would give up the death penalty altogether, saying it "is 
always a costly, lengthy legal battle because killing an innocent person is a 
mistake the government can't take back."

But Ray said Utah doesn't have that problem.

"We've never had an appeal on a death row inmate in Utah because of their 
innocence," he said. "They've all been technical appeals."

"People are comparing (the death penalty) to what's going on with ISIS, and all 
the bad things that are happening over there," said Senate Majority Leader 
Ralph Okerlund, R-Beaver.

He hasn't made up his mind about how he'll vote.

"Oftentimes, you'll find that your opinions can be swayed," Okerlund said. "And 
so, I'm looking forward to the discussion like everyone else."

8 inmates sit on Utah's death row. 3 of them elected death by firing squad 
before the Legislature abolished it in 2004.

(source: KSL news)

NEVADA:

The power of forgiveness

Sometimes, a person does something so magnanimous and so unexpected that it can 
make even the most hardened soul have renewed faith in humanity. Cynthia 
Portaro delivered such a moment last week at the Regional Justice Center. Her 
actions were so moving that veteran public defender Joseph Abood said he'd 
"never seen anything like it."

On the night of March 30, 2011, Mrs. Portaro lost her 22-year-old son, Mike. He 
was in the parking lot of the Tenaya Creek Brewery, selling tickets to his 
hip-hop group's show, when he was shot to death.

Brandon Hill was convicted of the murder, as well as robbery with use of a 
deadly weapon and grand larceny auto. After initially denying all involvement 
in the crime, Hill, before the court, apologized to Mike Portaro's family.

Mrs. Portaro could have ignored him. She could have told him to burn in hell. 
Instead, she forgave him.

On Monday, Cynthia Portaro approached prosecutors, who were seeking the death 
penalty, and told them she did not want to see Hill executed. The district 
attorney's office honored her wishes, withdrew the death penalty and now plan 
to seek a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

"I got what I wanted - an apology from Brandon," Mrs. Portaro told the 
Review-Journal's David Ferrara. "I felt a sense of relief that there is no 
hatred, animosity, anger. Because if you live in Christ, you cannot live with 
those things."

But Mrs. Portaro's compassion is more remarkable than it appears. She lost 
another child, her daughter Christina, in an ATV crash the same year Mike was 
killed. Her husband, Richard, died on Thanksgiving last year. Despite this 
loss, she found it in her heart to accept an apology from the man who murdered 
her son - and spare his life.

"I personally didn't want to see another person die," Portaro said before 
hugging members of Hill's family.

Those who support capital punishment, and those who have supported the 
executions of the killers of their loved ones, are not in the wrong. Capital 
punishment is not about revenge, and it certainly isn't a deterrent to murder. 
It's the ultimate public safety measure - it's about making absolutely certain 
a convicted killer can never harm anyone again.

That said, the public would also be a lot safer if everyone had the grace and 
gravitas of Cynthia Portaro.

(source: Editorial, Las Vegas Review-Journal)

CALIFORNIA:

2nd suspect pleads not guilty in Eastside shooting death----Riverside police 
detectives have said they believe the 2014 shooting was gang-related and 
racially motivated.

A 2nd defendant in a 2014 gang-related shooting death on Riverside's Eastside 
pleaded not guilty Friday, Feb. 27.

It is the 2nd time in a month that prosecutors have made headway in filing 
charges in homicides blamed on the East Side Riva gang. 2 suspects were charged 
in early February with the 2012 shooting death of 14-year-old Lareanz Simmons.

Then on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 19-year-old Michael Anthony Barbarin Jr. was 
charged with murder and special circumstances including gang violence and use 
of a firearm that caused great bodily injury and death.

The Riverside County District Attorney's office added Barbarin to a felony 
complaint that previously charged Anthony Cienfuegos Valadez with the same 
crimes.

Valadez was arrested shortly after the shooting, which killed Dana Parker, 40, 
of Riverside, on May 31, 2014.

Parker was found sitting in a car in the 3600 block of Cranford Avenue across 
the street from John W. North High School. He died soon afterward at the 
hospital.

Authorities say in court documents that Parker was targeted because Barbarin 
and Valadez thought he was affiliated with a rival gang.

When the murder allegation was filed, Barbarin already was in jail for a 
carjacking case from July 15, 2014.

The District Attorney's Office has not determined whether to seek the death 
penalty against Barbarin and Valadez, Supervising Deputy District Attorney Sam 
Kaloustian said. They could be eligible if they are convicted of murder and the 
sentencing enhancements.

Barbarin and Valadez are next scheduled to be in court Thursday, March 5, for a 
routine hearing.

(source: Press-Enterprise)

OREGON:

Seeking clarity on capital punishment

Gov. Kate Brown expanded this week on her views regarding the death penalty in 
Oregon, and she made a couple of points we didn't take into account in an 
editorial that ran early this week.

In an interview with The Oregonian, Brown reiterated her intent to continue 
former Gov. John Kitzhaber's moratorium on executions - but she didn't rule out 
that she might allow executions some day in Oregon. She noted in the interview 
that, as a practical matter, it might be difficult for the state to carry out 
an execution: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has asked states not to carry 
out the death penalty until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the 
constitutionality of certain drugs used in executions.

That buys Brown some time. She pledged, though, that voters would know her 
stance on the issue if (or, more likely, when) she runs in 2016 to fill the 
last two years of Kitzhaber???s term. Voters should hold her to that pledge.

(source: Editorial, Democrat Herald)

USA:

Criminal justice reform finds new champions, on the right----Once out of sync 
with tough-on-crime mentality, overhauling criminal justice gains support among 
conservatives

In a corner of the subterranean exhibition hall at the annual Conservative 
Political Action Conference this week, nestled among the booths for libertarian 
think tanks, tea party groups and the sprawling display of the National Rifle 
Association, a nonprofit organization called Families Against Mandatory 
Minimums handed out yellow squirt guns labeled with the slogan, "Sentences that 
fit."

The advocacy group, which has been working on criminal justice reform since 
1991, opposes the harsh sentencing laws that have contributed to skyrocketing 
rates of incarceration in the United States. Long associated with progressive 
politics, a criminal justice group like this one once might have been unwelcome 
at a conference for GOP party activists, but judging from FAMM's reception at 
CPAC, that is no longer the case.

Molly Gill, a government affairs counsel for the group, chatted at the booth 
with a young CPAC attendee who thanked her for giving a presentation on 
mandatory minimums. "There's been such a sea-change," she said. "In probably 
the last 3 to 4 years, conservatives have woken up to the fact that this is an 
enormous problem in their communities."

Indeed, criminal justice reform has gone from a niche issue in conservativism - 
important mainly to libertarians concerned with the government encroaching on 
individual rights - into the mainstream. Some on the right are pushing for the 
GOP to make it a signature part of conservative ideology, as much a part of the 
movement as reducing the debt or repealing Obamacare.

Gill said addressing the problem of mass incarceration and unfair sentencing 
has becoming an increasingly easy pitch to make to conservatives, who are 
concerned about the fiscal and moral cost of locking up millions of offenders 
and are increasingly persuaded by research showing that mass incarceration is 
not an effective remedy for crime.

"People have to give conservatives credit on this issue," Gill said. "They 
speak and think about it in exactly the right way. This is big government in 
the courtroom; this is Washington, D.C. telling a judge in Washington State how 
to sentence."

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, an all-but-declared presidential candidate for 2016, 
struck a similar note during his address to CPAC on Friday, telling attendees 
that the GOP would be wise to recognize the problems that government overreach 
has created for low-income and minority communities. He cited the case of 
Kalief Browder, a Bronx teenager who was held in Rikers Prison in New York for 
3 years without a trial. "If we want to get new people into our party and get 
libertarians and others who believe in privacy ... we have to say to people 
like Kalief Browder that big government is not only a problem as far as 
regulations and taxes," Paul said. "Big government is a problem for sometimes 
not giving justice to those who deserve it."

Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, a newer group, started in 
2010, was also in attendance at CPAC. They have a tougher sell, asking members 
of a party who have traditionally been staunch defenders of the death penalty 
to take a closer look at the harshest punishment the criminal justice system 
has to offer.

Marc Hyden, coordinator for the organization and a former campaign 
representative for the NRA, admitted that he was initially apprehensive about 
taking his new cause to conservative activists. "I was used to being kind of 
the darling of the conservative crowd," he said. "I was worried that my peers 
might not accept me, but it was the direct opposite. We were inundated by 
supporters that didn't know they could be conservative and against the death 
penalty."

Hyden argues that opposition to the death penalty fits perfectly with 
conservative values. "I contend the conservative thing to do is to oppose the 
death penalty because of its risk to life and the high cost compared to life 
without parole," he said. "There's nothing limited about giving an error-prone 
state the power to kill citizens."

Criminal justice reform has attracted a number of high-profile backers in 
recent years, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who made 
tough-on-crime policies a central part of his 1994 Contract with America; 
former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who, while championing the death penalty, has 
boasted of closing prisons in the state by redirecting funds to probation and 
substance-abuse programs; and Sen. Ted Cruz, who is part of a bipartisan 
coalition of lawmakers endorsing legislation to give judges full discretion in 
sentencing for certain drug offenses.

Even Charles and David Koch, the billionaire GOP donors who have poured 
millions into traditional conservative causes, have given their backing to the 
Coalition for Public Safety, a new group that brings together the right and the 
left to push for criminal justice reform.

Vikrant Reddy, senior policy analyst with the Austin-based Texas Public Policy 
Foundation, a conservative think tank that has been spearheading the "Right on 
Crime" campaign to advocate for criminal justice reforms across the country, 
said conservatives, traditionally thought of as "tough-on-crime," bring a new 
credibility to the issue.

"The reason for all the energy is conservatives," Reddy said. "Liberals have 
been working on this issue for 20 years, they didn't get anywhere. Even 
libertarians, many here at CPAC, haven't gotten any traction on the issue, but 
when conservatives started stepping forward and said, 'This is a real problem,' 
all of a sudden you started seeing real movement," he said. "This is 
conservatives' bread and butter. I certainly hope in due time this is part of 
the conservative issue set."

Still, there continue to be powerful opponents of a wholesale overhaul of the 
criminal justice system, including Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the 
Senate Judiciary Committee, who has called sentencing reforms "dangerous" and 
"lenient."

Reddy sees the divide as generational, rather than ideological. "Some of the 
legislators who have been in office for a very long time and remember a time 
when crime rates were very high, when New York City was a cesspool of crime, 
they are still crafting policy for that era," he said. "It's not a left-right 
issue."

(source: Al Jazeera)

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

Abolish the death penalty!: Here are 8 good reasons why ---- In Texas--of 
course--a man faces execution for a crime he probably didn't commit. We can do 
better, America

The death penalty is back in the news. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) has 
fulfilled a campaign promise by placing a moratorium on executions in the 
state. Citing what he calls "a flawed system," Gov. Wolf has called for a 
special task force to report on capital punishment. From the governor's 
statement.

I take this action only after significant consideration and reflection. There 
is perhaps no more weighty a responsibility assigned to the Governor than his 
or her role as the final check in the capital punishment process.

To be clear at the outset, this reprieve is in no way an expression of sympathy 
for the guilty on death row, all of whom have been convicted of committing 
heinous crimes, and all of whom must be held to account.

There are currently 186 individuals on Pennsylvania's death row.

Since reinstatement of the death penalty, 150 people have been exonerated from 
death row nationwide, including 6 men in Pennsylvania.

Numerous recent studies have called into question the accuracy, and fundamental 
fairness of Pennsylvania's capital sentencing system.

Gov. Wolf goes on to cite a study done by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that 
found gender and racial bias in the state's capital justice system as well as 
the high cost of maintaining the system.

Meanwhile, in Texas, the execution capital of the western World, Rodney Reed, 
convicted of the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites, was scheduled to be executed by 
lethal injection on March 5. As of this writing the Texas Court of Criminal 
Appeals has issued a stay. The court did not elaborate its reasoning for 
issuing this stay, but an examination of the filing by Reed's attorney, Bryce 
Benjet, shows compelling new forensic testimony.

Reed's case is a prime example of the system gone wrong. Multiple independent 
investigators have come to the conclusion that Stacey Stites was murdered by 
her fiancee, then Giddings, Texas, police officer Jimmy Fennell. A Texas jury 
disagreed.

Reed faced 2 nearly impossible hurdles in small-town Texas. Multiple sources 
confirm that Reed, an African-American, was having an affair with Stacey 
Stites, a white woman. This is dangerous enough in a small Southern town, but 
Stites was engaged to a white police officer, which sealed Reed's fate. He was 
convicted primarily on the strength of 2 pieces of evidence. Reed's DNA was 
found in the form of active semen in Stites. The other damning evidence was 
provided by medical examiner Roberto Bayardo's testimony on the time of death. 
Bayardo testified that Reed had been killed sometime after 3 a.m., which fit 
perfectly with the prosecution???s assertions. Bayardo also testified that the 
active sperm found in Stites had to have been deposited no longer than 26 hours 
prior, which contradicted Reed's claim that he had last had sex with Stites 2 
days before. An all-white jury took only four hours to convict Reed. 2 weeks 
later the same jury sentenced him to death.

Bayardo has since recanted this testimony. Investigative reporter Jordan Smith, 
who has covered the case for longer and in more depth than anyone, first as a 
reporter for the Austin Chronicle and now as a staff writer for the Intercept, 
Glenn Greenwald's investigative website, reports:

In a declaration for the court, Bayardo, the same medical examiner who 
testified for the state at Reed's trial, said that it had been incorrect to 
assume that "spermatozoa can remain intact in the vaginal cavity for no more" 
than 26 hours. The fact that Bayardo saw "very few" such sperm were found in 
Stites suggests they had been there for a longer period of time. Moreover, 
while he still concluded that there was evidence that Stites had been 
sodomized, he said that her injuries were "more consistent with penetration by 
a rod-like instrument, such as a police baton."

Based on video and photographic records of the crime scene, Bayardo has also 
recanted his time of death estimate. He now says he cannot pinpoint the time of 
death. In addition, in this latest appeal 3 eminent medical examiners have said 
Bayardo's time of death estimate is off by several hours. All 2 believe Stacey 
Stites must have been killed sometime before midnight. This is crucial, as 
Jimmy Fennell, the police officer engaged to Stites, has testified that she was 
alone with him up until 3 a.m. Fennell, who has a history of violence against 
women, also failed 2 polygraph examinations, specifically when asked if he 
strangled Stacey Stites. Investigators had considered Fennell the prime 
suspect, but dismissed this suspicion when DNA evidence linked Rodney Reed to 
Stacey Stites. This new testimony clearly incriminates Fennell, who is 
currently serving a 10-year prison term for beating and raping a woman he had 
taken into custody, on the hood of his police cruiser.

None of this means the Court of Criminal Appeals will order a new trial for 
Rodney Reed. All of Reed's previous appeals have been rejected, including an 
appeal to the Supreme Court. The Texas court can lift the stay at any time. 
That Reed's execution has been temporarily stayed is cause for guarded 
optimism, but the court may well reject his appeal. If it does reject Reed's 
appeal his options will be exhausted and he will be put to death.

Reed's case vividly highlights 2 of the major problems with the death penalty. 
Capital punishment is an issue that crosses party lines and ideologies; polls 
show support for the death penalty appears to be strong. There are liberal 
Democrats who support capital punishment and conservative Republicans opposed. 
The fact that 150 people have been exonerated from death row just since 1989 
makes it clear we have almost certainly executed innocent people. This alone is 
reason enough to reexamine our capital justice system, but it's not the only 
reason. Racism, both in small town Texas culture and in our capital punishment 
system, has been a factor in Reed's case from the beginning. An honest 
assessment of the facts leads to one inevitable conclusion: Rodney Reed is 
innocent. His case is but the latest of many that demonstrate why America 
should join the rest of the civilized world and abolish the death penalty.

8 Reasons to Abolish the Death Penalty

Ironically, the most common arguments in favor of the death penalty also 
provide the strongest arguments to abolish capital punishment. Here are the 8 
most common arguments turned on their heads.

1. America is a democracy and a clear majority of Americans favor the death 
penalty.

32 states, the U.S. military and the federal government currently have the 
death penalty on the books. Overall, the number of states with the death 
penalty has been slowly declining, but some states, like California, have 
banned and then reinstated capital punishment. Gallup has been tracking 
attitudes about the death penalty since 1936. Currently, 60 % of Americans are 
in favor of the death penalty. This number has been steadily falling from the 
all-time high of 80 % in 1994. Tellingly, support for the death penalty 
declined most rapidly after WWII and continued to fall as the baby boomers came 
of age, hitting an all-time low of 42 % in 1967.

It's clear that a majority of Americans support the death penalty. Or is it? 
Support for the death penalty appears to be strong, but a funny thing happens 
when you give people an alternative. A recent ABC/Washington Post poll found 
that given a choice, a majority of Americans, 52 %, favor life without parole 
over the death penalty. Given the current trend, it's clear that a majority of 
Americans support life without parole over the death penalty and that support 
will continue to grow.

2. Why waste money keeping a prisoner alive for life without parole when it's 
cheaper to execute someone?

On its face this seems to be strong argument, and it would be except for 1 
small detail. It's not true. When you factor in the costs of a capital trial, 
including the appeals process and the costs of maintaining a death row facility 
as well as the costs of the actual execution, it's less expensive to 
incarcerate someone for life without parole. Considerably less expensive. Costs 
vary by state, but in all cases life without parole is a less expensive 
alternative. In Texas, for example, by far the leader in executions, an 
investigation by the Dallas Morning News found that it costs about 3 times more 
to execute a prisoner than it does to incarcerate them at the highest possible 
security level for 40 years. The difference is even more pronounced in other 
states.

3. Executing a murderer guarantees he or she will never murder anyone else.

The logic of this argument is flawless, but this is the easiest of arguments to 
dispel, as the same can be said of life without parole. Nor does resentencing 
prisoners to life without parole lead to a rise in prison murders. Numerous 
studies have shown prisoners resentenced to life without parole do not present 
more of a threat to other prisoners or guards than the general prison 
population.

4. The death penalty serves as a deterrent.

There is no evidence that this is true or ever has been true. It might seem 
that it would be so to a reasonable person, but by definition murder is an 
unreasonable crime. In fact, the death penalty does not reduce murder rates. 
Nor does the lack of a death penalty increase murder rates. States that have 
abolished the death penalty have not seen a rise in murders. States that have 
abolished, and then reinstated, the death penalty, most notably California, 
have not seen murder rates fall.

5. Fair is fair. Taking a life should be punished by losing one's life.

This is a philosophical argument, and as such it's a matter of belief, but at 
its root it's a rather poor philosophical argument, as it fails one very 
important test. Essentially, this is an argument in favor of vengeance, as the 
only purpose of the death penalty is to extract the ultimate punishment, the 
ultimate price, for the ultimate crime. Revenge may have some satisfaction for 
the family and friends of victims, but it's impossible to frame as an ethical 
remedy. If taking a life is wrong, how is taking a life in return right? Or, 
put more simply, 2 wrongs do not make a right.

6. We have the finest system of justice the world has ever known, including an 
appeals process that guarantees that the rare mistake will be corrected in the 
appeals process.

We may well have the finest justice system in the word, but that does not mean 
we don't make mistakes. In recent years hundreds of convictions have been 
overturned, some decades later and long after appeals have been exhausted. 150 
death row inmates have been freed by DNA evidence that was unavailable earlier, 
recanted testimony and other means.

Earlier this year Glenn Ford was released after spending 30 years in appalling 
conditions on death row at Louisiana???s infamous Angola Prison. His conviction 
was vacated after prosecutors in Shreveport became aware of new evidence 
provided by a confidential informant. It's vanishingly rare for prosecutors to 
admit to errors in capital cases, but that's exactly what happened here. Few 
are the wrongly convicted who are so lucky. As a general rule, prosecutors 
fight tooth and nail to protect convictions, even in cases where it's clear 
that mistakes were made.

In another recent case two mentally challenged half-brothers, Henry McCollum 
and Leon Brown, were declared innocent and released after spending 31 years on 
death row in North Carolina. They were cleared by DNA evidence decades after 
being convicted of a particularly gruesome crime, the gang rape and murder of 
11-year-old Sabrina Buie, killed by having her panties shoved down her throat 
with a stick. Ironically, for years death penalty supporters, including Supreme 
Court Justice Antonin Scalia, cited this case as an example of why the death 
penalty was warranted. Justice Scalia hasn't offered comment since the 2 were 
exonerated.

How many other cases have there been where miscarriages of justice weren't 
caught? It's fairly certain that we have executed innocent men. How many is 
anyone's guess. Exoneration after 3 decades wasn't the only thing these 2 cases 
had in common. In both cases all-white Southern juries had convicted black 
defendants, which brings us to the next point.

7. Justice is blind.

We'd like to think that justice is blind, but when it comes to capital cases 
it's not colorblind. Defendants of color are convicted in capital cases at 
higher rates and given the death penalty at much higher rates than are white 
defendants. Earlier this year a University of Washington study of 3 decades of 
capital cases in Washington state found that African-American defendants were 3 
times more likely to be sentenced to death than white defendants, even though 
prosecutors sought the death penalty more often for white defendants.

In a report titled "US: Death by Discrimination - The Continuing Role of Race 
in Capital Cases," Amnesty International found that while blacks and whites are 
victims of murder in roughly equal numbers, in 80 % of the executions since the 
death penalty was reinstated in 1976, the victim was white. Amnesty also found 
that more than 20 %% of African-Americans sentenced to death were convicted by 
all-white juries.

Many other studies have found that race plays a major role in determining who 
is convicted of capital crimes and who is sentenced to death, including reports 
by the ACLU, the University of North Carolina, and a Justice Department study 
of the federal death penalty system.

8. The death penalty is carried out in a humane way. In 1972 the Supreme Court 
suspended the death penalty in the United States in the Furman v. Georgia case, 
ruling that as applied it constituted cruel and unusual punishment, a violation 
of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. 37 states sought to amend their 
laws to address the concerns of the court and in 1976 the court clarified its 
earlier ruling in Woodson v. North Carolina, effectively reinstating the death 
penalty.

In 2014 there's ample reason to believe that the death penalty is both cruel 
and usual. Among developed nations, it's extremely unusual. In fact, out of 34 
developed nations, as recognized by the Organization for Economic Co-operation 
and Development, the only other nation with a death penalty is Japan, and it 
uses it exceedingly rarely. In 2013 there were only 4 executions in Japan. By 
any possible measure or definition, in the modern world execution is an unusual 
form of punishment. But is it cruel?

There are 5 methods of execution that are legal in the United States: lethal 
injection, electrocution, firing squad, hanging and lethal gas. In current 
practice, lethal injection has become the standard, in large part to curtail 
any legal claims of cruel and unusual punishment. Recently pharmaceutical 
companies have refused to sell states drugs for execution by lethal injection. 
This has forced states to buy drugs with other medical uses and come up with 
their own lethal cocktails, which they've kept secret from the public. This has 
led to several high-profile cases where executions were botched. In a recent 
case in Oklahoma, the man to be executed wheezed and convulsed for 2 hours 
before dying. The unavoidable conclusion is there is no way to execute someone 
that isn't cruel in at least some cases. As there's no way to know in advance 
when an execution will be botched, there's no way to guarantee the rights 
granted under the Eighth Amendment.

In 2000 the State of Illinois suspended the death penalty. After careful study 
of many of the same facts presented here, Illinois abolished the death penalty 
completely in 2011. An honest reading of the facts brings one to the inevitable 
conclusion that none of the arguments in favor of the death penalty holds 
water. It's past time for us to join the rest of the civilized world in ending 
the death penalty once and for all. Better late than never.

You can find much more information at the following links:

http://deathpenaltyinfo.org/

http://www.innocenceproject.org/

https://www.aclu.org/capital-punishment/dna-testing-and-death-penalty

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/many-prisoners-on-death-row-are-wrongfully-convicted/

http://conservativesconcerned.org/why-were-concerned/innocence/

(source: salon.com)

***********

U.S. appeals court says Boston Marathon bombing trial can stay in city

A U.S. appeals court on Friday ruled the trial for the accused Boston Marathon 
bomber can go ahead in the city, over attempts from his attorneys to change the 
venue on the basis an impartial jury could not be seated so close to the site 
of the 2013 attack.

The split 3-judge panel of the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals backed 
District Judge George O'Toole, who has 3 times rejected pleas by Dzhokhar 
Tsarnaev???s lawyers to move the trial out of Boston, where the bombing killed 
3 people and injured 264.

"We are unable to conclude that it is clear and indisputable that the 
petitioner cannot receive a fair trial by an impartial jury in the Eastern 
Division of Massachusetts," the judges wrote in the 80-page opinion.

Thousands of Boston-area residents were crowded around the race's finish line 
when twin bombs went off on April 15, 2013. 4 days later, hundreds of thousands 
were ordered to remain in their homes while police conducted a massive manhunt 
for Tsarnaev.

That degree of personal connection to the incident will make it very difficult 
to empanel an impartial jury in the city, said attorney Judith Mizner, who is 
representing the 21-year-old Tsarnaev.

The final phase of jury selection is set to take place on Tuesday, when 
prosecutors and defense attorneys will whittle down the field of about 70 
provisionally-qualified jurors to 18 people, including 12 jurors and 6 
alternates.

Tsarnaev, if convicted, could face the death penalty.

In dissent, District Judge Juan Torruella supported the defense's arguments, 
saying that "almost the entire pool of potential jurors has been compromised" 
by the bombing.

"I understand what this trial means for the community: an opportunity for 
closure, a sense of justice," he said. "Rather than convicting Tsarnaev and 
possibly sentencing him to death based on trial-by-media and raw emotion, we 
must put our emotions aside and proceed in a rational manner."

(source: Reuters)