[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., S.C., GA., ALA.

[Rick Halperin]

March 18


PENNSYLVANIA:

Pushing the pause button on death penalty



Governor Tom Wolf recently announced a moratorium on the use of the death 
penalty in Pennsylvania calling the practice "error prone, expensive and 
anything but infallible." Wolf plans to maintain the moratorium until a 
legislative study is completed.

Wolf is not granting commutations of death sentences to the 186 prisoners 
currently sitting on death row. He is simply asking to study the process and to 
determine its cost and efficacy.

Pennsylvania is 1 of 32 states which still imposes the death penalty. 
Pennsylvania has executed 3 individuals since 1976 and a total of 1,043 since 
the 17th century.

But consider the bigger picture: The United States is only 1 of 37 nations that 
use capital punishment. All European countries have abolished this practice. 
With its retention of the death penalty, the United States is in the company of 
countries like Afghanistan, China, Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, 
Syria and Yemen.

Wolf is concerned about what he calls the "error-prone system." At least 150 
people nationwide, have been exonerated from death row, including 6 men from 
Pennsylvania. It is unknown how many people have been wrongly executed in the 
United States over the years. A team of legal experts, led by law professor 
Samuel Gross, found that 4.1 % of death row prisoners are falsely convicted. A 
moratorium is not unprecedented. The Supreme Court instituted a 4-year 
moratorium on the death penalty in 1972 while the court determined how a degree 
of consistency could be applied to sentencing. States were required to examine 
their implementation of capital punishment to ensure it was not being 
administered in a capricious or discriminatory manner.

Wolf is the 4th governor to institute a moratorium on executions in just the 
past 2 years. Governors of Colorado, Oregon and Washington have imposed 
moratoriums, citing similar concerns.

The death penalty is not a proven form of deterrence. This can be illustrated 
by comparing state murder rates; per capita, states that impose the death 
penalty have consistently higher murder rates than those that do not.

Perhaps its inconsistent application contributes to the lack of effectiveness. 
After all, not everyone who commits 1st-degree murder is sentenced to death. 
Many factors contribute to sentencing and fairness is not necessarily one of 
them. Studies show that the defendant's race, gender and income often have more 
influence than even the severity of the crime.

Just as judging a black defendant harsher than a white defendant is wrong, 
valuing one victim over another is also wrong. Thus, the death penalty should 
never be used in an attempt to weigh the value of one life over another.

The death penalty is costly; one study shows that seeking the death penalty can 
add an additional $1 million to prosecution costs. Another study found that 
cases applying the death penalty lasted 6 more days in court and took much 
longer to resolve than life without parole.

There has been backlash to Wolf's moratorium. The Pennsylvania State Troopers 
Association is concerned that accused murderer Eric Frein, who took the life of 
1 state trooper and critically injured another, will be spared a death 
sentence. The administration has confirmed that the moratorium would not 
prevent the jury from sentencing Frein to death. The Association is 
understandably distraught over these heinous acts, but would the death penalty, 
which obviously did not deter the crime, be simply perceived as retribution?

District attorneys have also expressed anger over Wolf's decision. Philadelphia 
District Attorney Seth Williams has filed a lawsuit against the administration 
calling it a "lawless act." Although his lawsuit suggests an over-reach, it may 
have more to do with political firepower. The death penalty is an effective 
tool that prosecutors can use when defending their tough stance on crime to 
perspective voters.

The death penalty is ineffective, inequitable, costly and inhumane. Wolf is not 
abolishing the process; he simply wants to study how the system is working. 
Pushing the pause button on a practice that has been abolished in the majority 
of nations is a reasonable action and should be praised.

(source: Opinion; Nicole Faraguna is a founding member of the Susquehanna 
Valley Progressives----The Daily Item)








SOUTH CAROLINA:

SC lawmakers advance bill to shield execution-drug sellers



The identities of drug companies that supply execution drugs to South Carolina 
would become secret under legislation approved Tuesday by a panel of state 
lawmakers.

The legislation would add drug companies to the state's execution team and 
require their identities be kept secret, in the hope that providers will resume 
selling execution drugs to the state. The proposal also would exempt the 
companies from state health and purchasing rules. A Senate subcommittee voted 
for it unanimously.

South Carolina has run out of 1 of its 3 lethal injection drugs, the anesthetic 
pentobarbital, and cannot find anyone willing to sell more. Corrections 
director Bryan Stirling has said that if their names were shielded from the 
public, as the names of individuals involved in carrying out executions already 
are, pharmaceutical companies might be willing to start selling the drugs 
again.

State Sen. Paul Campbell, R-Berkeley, chairman of the subcommittee, said the 
measure was intended to protect the companies from protests and lawsuits but 
also would enable the state's prisons agency to complete its duty of performing 
executions.

"It allows the Department of Corrections to carry out the verdict that was 
handed down by the court system," Campbell said. "Without this, they have a 
very difficult time carrying out those instructions."

No one spoke in opposition to the bill, which will be considered by the full 
Senate Corrections and Penology Committee later this week. In an interview 
after Tuesday's meeting, Stirling said he was pleased the bill was moving 
forward and that, in the meantime, his agency continues its search for more 
pentobarbital.

"We are actively trying to find a company that will sell us this drug for 
executions,'" Stirling said.

The legislation was patterned after bills in other states that have run into 
problems obtaining execution drugs. Texas, the country's most active death 
penalty state, is working to find a supplier to replenish its dwindling 
inventory amid a pending court order that would no longer allow the state to 
protect the supplier's identity.

Ohio is out of the 3 drugs it needs. In February, a federal judge dismissed a 
lawsuit filed by 4 death row inmates there who challenged a similar shield law. 
Similar fights are ongoing in other death penalty states such as Oklahoma and 
Missouri. But courts - including the U.S. Supreme Court - have yet to halt an 
execution based on a state's refusal to reveal its drug supplier.

(source: The State)








GEORGIA:

Deal: Effort to clear up Georgia's 'cloudy' lethal injection drug is on track



There's no timetable yet for Georgia to resume executions, but Gov. Nathan Deal 
said efforts to clean up Georgia's death penalty drugs could soon be completed.

He's referring to the state's decision to indefinitely postpone lethal 
injections after the chemicals that were to be used to execute Kelly 
Gissendaner for the 1997 murder of her husband were deemed to be "cloudy."

The governor said Tuesday that prisons officials have taken "extreme efforts" 
to make sure the drugs work properly.

"I am told they believe they are now on track to have a reliable source, one 
that will prevent the clouding of the drug, or any contamination or 
crystallization of the drug, which has also been a problem in the past," he 
said. "That's my only concern about it. That needs to be resolved, and 
hopefully they've found a way to do that."

Gissendaner's attorneys contend the starts-and-stops that have led to repeated 
delays in her execution amount to "cruel and unusual punishment." Her case has 
also sparked a broader debate about a 2013 law that classifies Georgia's lethal 
injection protocol as "confidential state secrets."

Death penalty critics have sought a reversal of the law, contending that the 
public deserves the right to know how executions are carried out. But Deal, who 
signed the proposal into law, cast it as an essential protection for the 
drugmakers supplying the chemicals and the doctors and nurses involved in the 
executions.

"If I had the confidence that their would not be major groups boycotting these 
individuals and trying to do undue pressure on them, I would have not problem 
with that," he said. "But we know that's not the case. The reason we have the 
secrecy is to protect these individuals or companies who are, in effect, doing 
what the state has requested them to do."

(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

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

Georgia prosecutors to seek death penalty in bus stop slaying



Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty for a man accused of gunning 
down a woman as she waited at a bus stop in metro Atlanta.

WSB-TV reports that the DeKalb County District Attorney's Office will seek the 
punishment in the case against 18-year-old Christopher Merritt of Lithonia.

DeKalb County police say Merritt shot and killed 19-year-old Marcaysia Dawkins 
on Nov. 23 while she waited for a Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority 
bus.

Police have said video surveillance evidence helped identify Merritt as a 
suspect.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Can execution be halted?



Though a variety of factors may be keeping Kelly Gissendaner alive, the local 
supporters who have waged a savvy media campaign on her behalf may be one of 
the most influential, drawing national attention.

The execution of Gissendaner, the only woman on Georgia's death row, was 
delayed in late February because of a winter storm. A second try in early March 
was canceled when the drug that was to be used to kill her didn't look right. 
Her supporters are asking for a federal stay while state execution procedures 
are investigated.

Gissendaner was convicted of the 1997 murder of her husband. She had persuaded 
her boyfriend to kill Douglas Gissendaner, and the boyfriend later testified 
against her.

Since then, she has graduated from a theology program operated by a consortium 
of divinity schools in the Atlanta region and earned encomiums from guards, 
chaplains, and teachers alike as a powerful example of religious conversion. 
Her case has drawn attention not only from progressive death penalty opponents, 
but also from mainstream evangelical media outlets like Christianity Today and 
other believers with high media profiles.

Using a multifaceted blend of digital outreach and old-fashioned local 
networking, her supporters turned a story that had already engaged many 
volunteers, both inside and outside Lee Arrandale State Prison, into a national 
clemency campaign.

"Who knows why one thing gets social media attention and another doesn't?" 
asked Mark Oppenheimer, who described Gissendaner's relationship with famed 
German theologian Jurgen Moltmann in a New York Times column the same week the 
Georgia parole board denied her clemency.

"She's a Christian in the South, and that goes far," Oppenheimer added. "It 
wins a lot of people's empathy and it's attractive to the media. It's easier to 
rally around a Christian than an atheist on death row."

"We were really expecting clemency to go through," said activist Melissa 
Browning, who teaches contextual theology at Mercer University's McAfee School 
of Theology.

But when that didn't happen - 2 requests for clemency have been denied at this 
point - Browning and others were prepared with a full-court press to save 
Gissendaner.

Between her 2 scheduled execution dates, supporters had uploaded essays to the 
Huffington Post, launched a popular Twitter hashtag, and worked alongside the 
nonprofit Faith in Public Life to recruit 1,000 religious leaders to sign a 
clemency petition. Another petition, at www.groundswell-mvmt.org, attracted 
about 84,000 signatures in two days, Browning reports.

Browning says that a number of conservative Georgia faith leaders and 
congregants (many of whom are death penalty supporters) have been advocating a 
life-without-parole sentence - on the condition that their names not be made 
public.

Part of the reason the campaign became a national one, says Mercer professor 
David Gushee, was that Gissendaner put a face and narrative to what might have 
been an abstract story. "Any system in which they are locked away, and the 
general public never sees them again, human beings become invisible," he said. 
Now, many people know Gissendaner and her story.

For Browning, who has about 700 Twitter followers, the days before 
Gissendaner's second execution date were an intense and fast education in 
creating social-media buzz. "It was a huge factor," she said, "because we did 
get information out and we got it out quickly."

"Social media expands the circle of abolitionists," said Stephen Dear, 
executive director of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty. "More and more 
people become involved, engaged on the issue or by a case. Some may not stay 
involved, but some will."

As Dear pointed out, the furor over Gissendaner takes place in a national 
environment in which death penalty cases have been on the decline.

After posting an open letter to "Georgia's Christian citizens" on Baptist News 
Global, Gushee watched as his impassioned indictment against the death penalty, 
threaded with scriptural allusions, was shared hundreds of times on Twitter and 
thousands more on Facebook.

"It certainly was a very loud campaign, and it would have been impossible for 
the decision-makers not to notice it," he said.

Activists now wait to see if their pleas will make a difference, rippling 
beyond a state in which there are numerous ties among death penalty opponents 
across party lines.

"To me, it's interesting how few clergy and theologians speak about the death 
penalty," Oppenheimer said, and "how strong a consensus there is among 
conservative evangelicals that it's acceptable. . . . The question is whether 
that will ever change."

(source: Opinion, Elizabeth Evans; philly.com)

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

Lawsuit filed in death penalty case



After the postponement of 2 executions, lawyers for Kelly Renee Gissendaner, a 
woman from the Gwinnett County portion of Auburn who is on death row for her 
role in her husband???s 1997 murder, have filed a lawsuit against the Georgia 
Department of Corrections asking the federal district court to investigate the 
what went wrong with the drugs she was supposed to be injected with.

Gissendaner, 47, was convicted in 1998 in Gwinnett County at the age of 30 for 
Douglas Gissendaner's death by stabbing and was sentenced to death, while her 
boyfriend, Gregory Owen, was sentenced to a life sentence in a plea exchange 
for carrying it out. He could eventually be paroled.

Gissendaner was initially scheduled to die by lethal injection on Wednesday, 
Feb. 25. She was denied clemency at a hearing on Feb. 24, but due to an ice 
storm, her execution was postponed and reset for March 2.

The Supreme Court, however, denied a stay of execution for in a 5-to-2 decision 
on March 2, but the execution was halted yet again, this time due to a problem 
with the lethal injection appearing "cloudy." According to the 47-page lawsuit, 
filed on Gissendaner's behalf, the attorneys are asking the court to produce a 
meaningful assessment of what went wrong with the lethal injection drugs; as 
well as to conduct a meaningful investigation into the events of March 2 and 3; 
and to "grant injunctive relief" preventing the defendants from proceeding with 
Gissendaner's execution until the court concludes that "their protocols and 
procedures are sufficient to protect her from similar and additional violations 
of her rights pursuant to the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments."

The lawsuit specifically names Homer Bryson, commissioner of Georgia Department 
of Corrections; Bruce Chatman, warden of the Georgia Diagnostic and 
Classification Prison; and unknown employees and agents as defendants. 
Attorneys for Gissendaner are Gerald W. King, Jr.; Susan C. Casey; and Lindsay 
N. Bennett.

(source: Barrow Journal)








ALABAMA:

Drugmaker asks Alabama to return lethal injection drugs



Illinois-based drug maker Akorn asked Alabama officials earlier this month to 
return any Akorn-made drugs the state may be planning to use in executions by 
lethal injection.

"If your prisons have purchased Akorn products directly or indirectly for use 
in capital punishment we ask that you immediately return our products for a 
full refund," Akorn's general counsel Joseph Bonaccorsi wrote in a letter to 
the Alabama Department of Corrections on March 4.

Akorn is a maker of midazolam, the drug Alabama has turned to in a years-long 
search for substances it can use to kill condemned inmates.

Death penalty states have been scrambling in recent years to find execution 
drugs, due to drug shortages. Drug makers in Europe, where there's strong 
opposition to capital punishment, have for years refused to sell the drugs to 
prison systems in death-penalty states. Some American companies have followed 
suit.

Alabama hasn't executed an inmate since 2013. State officials last year 
announced they didn't have the drugs on hand to perform an execution. In 
September, according to court documents, the state settled on a new 3-drug 
combination for executions: a dose of midazolam as an anesthetic, followed by 
rocuronium bromide as a muscle relaxer and potassium chloride to stop the 
heart.

Less than a month after that new formula came to light a German company 
divested itself of $60 million of stock in Mylan, an American maker of 
rocuronium bromide. British activists claimed Mylan was a potential maker of 
Alabama's rocuronium bromide.

Mylan didn't respond to reporters' questions about the issue at the time, but 
in an email to The Star on Tuesday, Mylan vice president of communications Nina 
Devlin said the drug is "not approved for, labeled for or marketed for use in 
lethal injections." Devlin said Mylan's rocuronium is made by a third party in 
India and distributed to wholesalers, and that the company doesn't sell 
directly to prisons and isn't aware of any use of its drugs in executions.

State officials haven't commented on the sources of Alabama's lethal injection 
drugs. A bill that passed the Alabama House of Representatives last week would 
make secret the names of death penalty drug suppliers; supporters of the bill 
say they intend to protect drug makers from retribution by anti-death-penalty 
activists. The bill, which has yet to reach a vote in the Senate, would block 
the names of those drug makers even from discovery in court.

Despite the lack of a current law making those names secret, corrections 
officials have denied requests by The Star and other newspapers for information 
on the sources of the state's execution drugs.

Last month, however, Akorn's name emerged in court documents in the death 
penalty case of Thomas Arthur, an inmate whose scheduled Feb. 19 execution was 
stayed by a federal court. Lawyers for the Alabama attorney general's office 
included one of Akorn's manuals for use of midazolam in a court filing, twice 
referring to it as "the manufacturer's package insert" for the drug.

After news of the court filing became public, Akorn - which had long remained 
silent on its policy on lethal injection - told The Star the company did not 
sell the drug directly to Alabama. The company also said it would not sell 
drugs to prison systems in capital punishment states, a measure intended to 
prevent their use in executions.

Bonaccorsi, Akorn's lawyer, reiterated that stance in his March 4 letter to the 
Alabama Department of Corrections.

"Akorn strongly objects to the use of its products in capital punishment," 
Bonaccorsi wrote. The letter warns that use of midazolam for lethal injection 
is "contrary to the FDA approved indications" for the drug and "may be in 
violation of the Controlled Substances act.

Attempts to reach Akorn officials Tuesday for comment on the letter were not 
successful.

Department of Corrections spokesman Bob Horton confirmed Tuesday that the 
department had received the letter, but had not yet responded to Akorn.

"We have not responded to the letter, and we have not returned any drugs," 
Horton said. Asked if Akorn is the source of Alabama's midazolam, Horton said 
"we're still not able to discuss" the sources of execution drugs.

"This appears to be a blanket letter sent to all the states with the death 
penalty," Horton said.

The Wall Street Journal reported March 4 that Akorn was asking states for the 
return of their drugs. On the same day, The Star filed a public records request 
for letters from Akorn to Alabama officials.

Corrections officials made the letter available Tuesday.

(source: The Anniston Star)