[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA

[Rick Halperin]

May 2



USA:

The weirdest moment from the Supreme Court's dramatic death penalty arguments



The Supreme Court heard a case Wednesday challenging the use of a lethal 
injection "cocktail" in Oklahoma, and the arguments bordered on the ridiculous.

Right away, conservative Justice Samuel Alito accused death penalty activists 
of mounting "a guerilla war on the death penalty."

Then Chief Justice John Roberts suggested his liberal colleague Justice Sonia 
Sotomayor spent too much time talking after she grilled Oklahoma's solicitor 
general for a while.

One point, however, stands out as the most absurd: the prisoner's lawyer Robin 
Konrad somehow concluded that burning someone alive "could perhaps be deemed 
constitutional," if there "was a way to ensure" that it was done in a "humane 
way," as Politico's Josh Gerstein noted. That was the lawyer arguing against 
Oklahoma's lethal injection methods.

In the case, 4 Oklahoma inmates - although 1 has since been executed - allege 
that the state's use of midazolam as the 1st of 3 drugs in a lethal injection 
cocktail violates the Eight Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual 
punishment.

The 1st drug in lethal injection cocktails is meant to render prisoners 
unconscious and unable to feel. But midazolam, as critics argue, doesn't always 
accomplish that goal. When Ohio used midazolam for the 1st time in early 2014 
to execute Dennis McGuire, he struggled and gasped for air for nearly 10 
minutes before his heart stopped. Arizona also used midazolam in Joseph Wood's 
lethal injection. It took nearly 2 hours for him to die.

Not only is midazolam's effectiveness in question, it might also cause 
unbearable physical pain. During arguments Wednesday, Justice Elena Kagan 
compared being injected with the drug to being burned alive at the stake, which 
"everybody agrees [is] cruel and unusual," she said.

"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 affects. Maybe you won't feel it, maybe you will. We just can't tell. 
And you think that would be okay?" Kagan inquired.

That led to a back-and-forth between Kagan and Oklahoma's solicitor general. 
The issue of burning somebody alive came up again during Konrad's rebuttal, 
when Alito posed a hypothetical scenario: Even if the person being burned alive 
could feel no pain, would it still violate the Eighth Amendment?

Konrad responded that it "could be" a violation, prompting yet another question 
from Alito.

"But you're not sure that being burned alive - that you think there are 
circumstances in which burning somebody at the stake would be consistent with 
the Eighth Amendment?" Alito asked.

That prompted a response from Konrad that seemed to contradict itself: "Well, 
what I'm saying is that this Court has - the founders say burning at the stake 
is unconstitutional. It creates an Eighth Amendment violation. It's cruel and 
unusual. But in your hypothetical, if there was a way to ensure that that was 
done in a humane way, there could perhaps be. That - I don't think that any 
State would go to try to do that, because we move forward evolving ..."

"That's an incredible answer," Alito responded. "You think that there are 
circumstances in which burning alive would not be a violation of the Eight 
Amendment?"

It's an odd exchange for a conservative justice and lawyer arguing against the 
death penalty to have.

Most states had previously used pentobarbital, a drug approved for executions, 
in lethal injections - until its Danish manufacturer refused to continue 
selling the drug to the US because of its use in the death penalty.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who admitted he opposes the death penalty, 
called for a national halt on lethal injection until the high court decided 
midazolam's relationship with the Eight Amendment.

As a result of the Supreme Court's impending opinion, Oklahoma has suspended 
executions. The state, however, reinstated the use of the gas chamber to 
execute criminals in early April, a process only legal in four other states 
currently. Florida has also also suspended executions using midazolam until the 
Supreme Court's ruling.

(source: businessinsider.com)

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

No, Justices Alito and Scalia, death penalty politics aren't the issue



Oral arguments before the Supreme Court earlier this week over Oklahoma's 
lethal-injection protocol took an unusually harsh tone (which Dahlia Lithwick 
parses nicely here at Slate). What was more jarring, though, was the theme of 
statements - er, questions - by some of the judges about the backdrop to the 
execution challenge.

The case involves 1 of the drugs Oklahoma uses to execute its condemned 
prisoners, and how that fits in with court-sanctioned protocols. Briefly, in 
2008, the court ruled in Baze v. Rees that Kentucky's 3-drug protocol (first 
developed in Oklahoma) was constitutional because the 1st drug in the 
procedure, the barbiturate sodium thiopental, rendered the prisoner insensate 
to the agonizing pain caused by the 2nd drug, pancuronium bromide, which 
paralyzes, and the 3rd drug, potassium chloride, which stops the heart. Without 
being deeply anesthetized, the person being executed would feel an intense 
burning sensation, experts have said. The court ruled that the 3-drug protocol 
starting with sodium thiopental sufficiently knocked out the inmate and so did 
not pose "a substantial risk of serious harm" or an "objectively intolerable 
risk of harm."

Since then, international opposition to the death penalty, particularly among 
European Union countries, has led pharmaceutical companies to stop selling 
sodium thiopental for use in executions. States also used pentobarbital, which 
had a similar effect on the inmate, for the 1st drug, but that is now hard to 
procure for similar reasons. So states have been scrambling to find other ways 
to kill people. Ohio, Arizona and Oklahoma, among others, replaced that 1st 
drug with midazolam, a sedative doctors use to treat patients' anxiety before 
administering general anesthesia, or for minor outpatient procedures.

But according to experts for the challengers to Oklahoma's lethal-injection 
protocol, the drug is insufficient to render the condemned insensate - and it 
has a ceiling effect, which means that after a certain amount of the drug is 
used, additional amounts are ineffective. Although midazolam was used without 
obvious incident in a dozen executions, it was part of three botched executions 
last year, including one in Oklahoma. That led to the current appeal by several 
Oklahoma death row inmates that using midazolam violates the standard set by 
the Baze ruling.

The oral arguments on Wednesday descended into a rolling skirmish among the 
court???s conservative and liberal justices, with Justice Elena Kagan coming 
across as particularly harsh. But more worrisome was Justice Samuel Alito, who 
suggested that the strategy of the anti-death penalty movement should be 
weighed in determining the constitutionality of the protocol:

"JUSTICE ALITO: Yes. I mean, let's be honest about what's going on here. 
Executions could be carried out painlessly. There are many jurisdictions, there 
are jurisdictions in this country, there are jurisdictions abroad that allow 
assisted suicide, and I assume that those are carried out with little, if any, 
pain. Oklahoma and other states could carry out executions painlessly.

"Now, this Court has held that the death penalty is constitutional. It's 
controversial as a constitutional matter. It certainly is controversial as a 
policy matter. Those who oppose the death penalty are free to try to persuade 
legislatures to abolish the death penalty. Some of those efforts have been 
successful. They're free to ask this court to overrule the death penalty.

"But until that occurs, is it appropriate for the judiciary to countenance what 
amounts to a guerrilla war against the death penalty which consists of efforts 
to make it impossible for the states to obtain drugs that could be used to 
carry out capital punishment with little, if any, pain? And so the states are 
reduced to using drugs like this one which give rise to disputes about whether, 
in fact, every possibility of pain is eliminated.

"Now, what is your response to that?"

Justice Antonin Scalia then piled on:

"JUSTICE SCALIA: And I guess - I guess I would be more inclined to find that it 
was intolerable if there was even some doubt about this drug when there was a 
perfectly safe other drug available. But the states have gone through 2 
different drugs, and those drugs have been rendered unavailable by the 
abolitionist movement putting pressure on the companies that manufacture them 
so that the states cannot obtain those 2 other drugs.

"And now you want to come before the court and say, well, this third drug is 
not 100% sure. The reason it isn't 100% sure is because the abolitionists have 
rendered it impossible to get the 100% sure drugs, and you think we should not 
view that as -- as relevant to the decision that -- that you're putting before 
us?"

Actually, it is irrelevant. Either the use of midazolam creates "a substantial 
risk of serious harm" or an "objectively intolerable risk of harm," or it 
doesn't, which is the constitutional question. The lack of sources, and the 
reason, for the states' preferred drugs has no bearing on the constitutionality 
of the chosen alternative.

It's hard to say where the court will fall on this issue. It rejected by a 5-4 
vote a stay request by Charles Frederick Warner, one of the original appellants 
in this case, and he was put to death in January. A few days later, the court 
agreed to hear this full appeal, which only takes the support of four justices 
- likely the 4 who voted for the stay.

Whether those 4 votes can pick up a 5th is the big question. And even if they 
do and rule that the midazolam protocol is unconstitutional, the underlying 
battle over the death penalty itself continues.

(source: Editorial, Los Angeles Times)

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

A Horrifying Day at Court----Death brings out the worst in the justices.



In theory, what the 9 justices of the U.S. Supreme Court were all but shouting 
about Wednesday was midazolam hydrochloride, a sedative used by Oklahoma and 
other states as part of their lethal injection protocol. The very technical 
question before the court is whether midazolam reliably causes a deep, comalike 
unconsciousness in the prisoner, or whether it does not, allowing him to feel 
the excruciating effects of the other drugs used subsequently to end his life. 
The constitutional claim is that a failure to sedate the prisoner sufficiently 
would violate the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. A 
series of botched executions in Oklahoma, Ohio, and other places in recent 
months has drawn public attention to the fact that we may - as Justice Sonia 
Sotomayor colorfully put it this week - create "a substantial risk of burning a 
person alive who's paralyzed, correct?"

It looked at first like it would be a debate about the trial court's medical 
fact-finding, a discussion that would be more Gray's Anatomy than Black's Law 
Dictionary, but the arguments quickly blew up into a proxy war about ideology 
and politics and the ugly rift between the justices on how we feel about 
killing people in America. Oral arguments are usually spirited and 
enthusiastic. But they are rarely unpleasant and embarrassing. By the end of 
the hour of arguments in Glossip v. Gross, Chief Justice John Roberts had to 
step in and scold his colleagues for both their rancor and their rudeness to 
the oral advocates appearing before them. It was a cringe-worthy last day of 
arguments of the term, but in some ways perhaps a fitting one.

There have been a lot of reports in recent years about the deep ideological 
fractures at the Supreme Court. The justices are as divided as they have ever 
been on issues ranging from race and religion to reproductive health, guns, and 
campaign finance reform. They like to tell us - to use Justice Stephen Breyer's 
preferred locution - that they are more than merely "9 junior varsity 
politicians." But Wednesday's performance certainly suggested that they were 
closer to 9 junior varsity high schoolers, with nasty tempers and bitter 
resentments.

There is a bit of history here. In 2008, in Baze v. Rees, the Supreme Court 
upheld the use of a 3-drug cocktail used by most states to administer the death 
penalty. The supply of sodium thiopental, the barbiturate sedative states used 
to use, has since dried up because of boycotts from foreign suppliers and 
companies opposed to capital punishment. Oklahoma changed its lethal injection 
protocol last year to replace sodium thiopental with midazolam. Shortly 
thereafter, that state badly botched the execution of Clayton Lockett with an 
apparently insufficient dose of midazolam. He writhed and bucked on the gurney 
for 43 minutes, as he suffered an apparently agonizing death.

Death row inmates Richard Glossip, Charles Warner, and other Oklahoma prisoners 
then filed an Eighth Amendment challenge to the use of midazolam in the 
protocol. They lost in the federal courts, which permitted the use of 
midazolam, so the prisoners sought a stay of execution at the Supreme Court, 
which was denied on Jan. 15. Justices Sotomayor, Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 
and Elena Kagan filed a rare and angry dissent from the court's refusal to hear 
the case. That same evening, Oklahoma used midazolam in the execution of 
Charles Warner. His last words were reportedly: "My body is on fire." The court 
agreed to hear the inmates' case a week later - minus the deceased Warner.

Just to be clear who's on which teams in the Glossip argument, Kagan 
establishes with his lawyer, Robin Konrad, that the central issue in the case 
is that "there is this huge range of uncertainty about what happens when 
someone is given this drug." Then Justice Samuel Alito comes out gunning for 
Konrad about the tactics of death penalty opponents: "Why is Oklahoma not using 
sodium thiopental?" he asks. Konrad starts to respond. "You don't know?" 
interrupts Alito. "Let's be honest about what's going on here." Explaining that 
capital punishment is highly controversial, he asks, "Is it appropriate for the 
judiciary to countenance what amounts to a guerrilla war against the death 
penalty, which consists of efforts to make it impossible for the states to 
obtain drugs that could be used to carry out capital punishment with little, if 
any, pain?"

In other words, Alito wants Konrad to explain why her client isn't somehow 
reasonably on the hook for the scarcity of really good execution drugs. As 
Justice Antonin Scalia frames it: All the really effective drugs have been 
rendered unavailable "by the abolitionists putting pressure on the companies 
that manufacture them so that the states cannot obtain those other drugs." 
Justice Anthony Kennedy soon interrupts to demand an answer to this question, 
pointing out that Konrad has been interrupted several times and still hasn't 
given an answer to the question about the "abolitionists" who are really to 
blame for the fact that we can't kill people more efficiently in America. 
Breyer has to step in to remind Konrad, "It's not you. You didn't purposely 
hide these other kinds of drugs."

And Roberts wonders idly (and quite creepily) whether Konrad has an opinion on 
the constitutionality of a new Oklahoma law that would asphyxiate prisoners 
with nitrogen gas.

It goes downhill from here. When Oklahoma's solicitor general, Patrick Wyrick, 
attempts to explain why the state protocol is constitutional, Kagan calls the 
reasoning of the district court judge on at least 1 issue "gobbledygook." When 
Wyrick begins to read from the record, Sotomayor stops him, saying outright: "I 
have a real problem with whatever you're reading because I'm going to have to 
go back to that article." She adds: "I am substantially disturbed that in your 
brief you made factual statements that were not supported by the cited sources 
and, in fact, directly contradicted" them and warns "so nothing you say or read 
to me am I going to believe until I see it with my own eyes." She lays out 
three areas where, in her view, the state altered or fudged data to support its 
argument. Wyrick keeps trying to explain, but she, as well as Kagan and Breyer, 
simply don't let him finish a thought. Breyer accuses Wyrick's expert - 1 of 
whose witness reports consists largely of printouts from the website Drugs.com 
- of shoddy science: "The key refutation of your expert rests on zero," he 
says. Wyrick keeps trying to talk. Kagan grows more and more furious. "Suppose 
that we said we are going to burn you at the stake, but before we do, we are 
going to give you an anesthetic before we burn you alive," the usually very 
temperate Kagan asks Wyrick. "Maybe you will feel it; maybe you won't."

When Wyrick's light goes on to show that he is out of time, Roberts addresses 
him directly: "Mr. Wyrick, to an extent that's unusual even in this court, you 
have been listening rather than talking. And so I'm happy to give you an extra 
5 minutes, if you'd like."

It's the kind of public reprimand you rarely hear at the court, and whether it 
was directed at Sotomayor alone or the scrappy triumvirate of Kagan, Breyer, 
and Sotomayor, it's the kind of sentiment that the chief justice must think to 
himself a good deal on the bench but that he rarely allows himself to speak 
aloud. As Wyrick concludes his remarks, the liberal justices glower from their 
respective bad-justice chairs. Nobody likes to be called an asshole by the 
chief.

In Konrad's rebuttal, the animosity spikes up again when she tries to address 
the burning-at-the-stake hypothetical. Alito interjects that this is "an 
irrelevant point." Kagan retorts that "potassium chloride is burning someone 
alive; it's just doing it through the use of a drug." The 2 look like they 
could happily administer to each other a little snort of lethal injection at 
this point. The tension in the chamber is palpable and unpleasant. One side 
genuinely thinks the issue here is unscrupulous death penalty abolitionists and 
their bullying tactics. The other openly accuses the state of Oklahoma of lying 
in its pleadings.

Roberts worries almost obsessively about appearances at the court - appearances 
of partisanship and politicization, and also about justices who take 
ideological swats at one another in public. In September, in a speech at the 
University of Nebraska, he said he was worried that the partisan rancor in 
Washington might "spill over and affect us. ... That's not the way we do 
business. We're not Republicans or Democrats." Judges are different in his 
view; they are always supposed to be above that kind of thing. But as long has 
been said at the court, death is different too. It seemingly brings out the 
very worst in us all.

Often when you catch the chief in a situation like Wednesday's - in which the 
justices' gloves are off and their back teeth are showing - you get the sense 
that he wishes he weren't the only grown-up in the room. Or perhaps more 
correctly, that he didn't always have to be.

(source:Dahlia Lithwick, slate.com)

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

Lawyers debate sanity defence in Colorado movie theatre massacre trial



Harrowing accounts from survivors have dominated the 1st week of Colorado's 
cinema massacre trial, and, amid the tears, a much more detailed picture of 
gunman James Holmes has emerged.

A judge sealed much of the key evidence in the mass-shooting case but both the 
defence and prosecutors sought to fill in the gaps regarding Holmes' character.

Holmes' public defenders and the prosecutors seeking the death penalty for the 
27-year-old former neuroscience graduate student painted starkly different 
pictures of the accused in the Arapahoe County District Court located in 
Denver.

Attorneys presented previously unreleased entries from a notebook Holmes' sent 
his psychiatrist, as well as videos of the southern California native 
undergoing sanity exams, and reportedly trying to injure himself in his jail 
cell.

In his opening statement, Arapahoe County District attorney George Brauchler 
depicted Holmes as a craven killer of superior intellect who planned and 
carried out the massacre because of his "longstanding hatred of mankind".

Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to multiple counts of 
1st-degree murder and attempted murder after killing 12 people and wounding 70 
at a midnight screening of the Batman film The Dark Knight Rises in Denver on 
July 20, 2012.

In court, Mr Brauchler revealed 2 court-appointed forensic psychiatrists deemed 
that Holmes was sane at the time.

In 1 video shown to jurors, Holmes told a psychiatrist the wounded victims were 
"collateral damage".

"I only count the fatalities," he said.

Mr Brauchler also disclosed that when Holmes dyed his hair red, it had nothing 
to do with the bizarre appearance of the Joker, a reference to the Batman 
films.

Holmes coloured his hair and bought black contact lenses to make himself stand 
out, the prosecutor said.

And he posted selfies of his new appearance on adult dating sites.

Mr Brauchler also divulged Holmes had a girlfriend, the "1st love of his life" 
and his "1st sexual experience", but said they split up a few weeks before the 
rampage.

"I don't see a future with you," she wrote in an online chat with the 
defendant, which the prosecutor read to the court.

Mr Brauchler also read mundane emails Holmes sent to his parents, discussing 
everyday topics, including the weather, a funny movie and opening a savings 
account all while steadily amassing an arsenal of firearms, ammunition and 
bomb-making materials.

'Nobody noticed. Why? Because he was getting straight As'

Defence lawyers laid out their diagnosis for why he launched the attack.

Attorney Daniel King said both the defendants' grandfathers and an aunt 
suffered from serious mental illness, and as an 11-year-old Holmes tried to 
take his own life.

"Nobody noticed," Mr King said.

"Why? Because he was getting straight As."

The public defender showed his own videos, including one of a naked Holmes 
running headlong into his jail cell wall, and another of him standing on his 
bed before toppling back and slamming his head on the floor.

"It sounded like Mr Brauchler was suggesting that Mr Holmes might have done 
this for notoriety," Mr King told jurors.

"Look at the video, and you tell me if you would do this for notoriety."

Mr King said Holmes thought the killings would somehow boost his self-worth, or 
"human capital".

"He still believes this stuff today, despite the fact that he's been medicated 
for over 2 years," Mr King said.

The attorney rejected the state's argument the defendant's detailed 
preparations proved he was sane.

"That's the crucible of insanity, not planning," Mr King said.

Holmes was expressionless in court, wearing a pale blue shirt and glasses, and 
tethered to the floor beneath his attorneys' desk.

Gesturing at his client, Mr King told jurors Holmes' "aloof or distracted" 
demeanour was caused by the drugs he was given, which Mr King said treated but 
did not cure his schizophrenia.

Holmes suffers delusions to this day, Mr King said.

"He thought President Obama was communicating with him through the television," 
he said.

After his arrest, Holmes was moved to a "rubber room", the public defender 
added, where he was observed eating lunch meat between 2 flattened plastic foam 
cups, licking walls, sucking his thumb, and often "crying and ranting".

Testimony is set to resume on Monday.

(source: ABC news)

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

A shocking number of mentally ill Americans end up in prison instead of 
treatment



The U.S. has 10 times more mentally ill in its prisons than in psychiatric 
hospitals.

In New York, a man with schizophrenia spent 13 years of a 15-year prison 
sentence in solitary confinement. In a Minnesota county jail, a man with 
schizophrenia stabbed out both of his eyes with a pencil in his cell. A study 
of 132 suicide attempts in a county jail in Washington found that 77 % of them 
had a "chronic psychiatric problem," compared with 15 % among the rest of the 
jail population.

In a country where the mentally ill are often incarcerated instead of treated, 
these kinds of incidents are far too common. According to a report by the 
Treatment Advocacy Center, which includes the anecdotes above, American prisons 
and jails housed an estimated 356,268 inmates with several mental illness in 
2012 - on par with the population of Anchorage, Alaska, or Trenton, New Jersey. 
That figure is more than 10 times the number of mentally ill patients in state 
psychiatric hospitals in the same year - about 35,000 people.

In a speech yesterday, Hillary Clinton urged the U.S. to reduce its prison 
population. "It's a stark fact that the United Stations has less than 5 percent 
of the world's population, yet we have almost 25 percent of the world's total 
prison population. The numbers today are much higher than they were 30, 40 
years ago, despite the fact that crime is at historic lows," she said.

A heart-breaking truth is that part of this increase is due to a widespread 
failure to treat mental illness. After public psychiatric hospitals in the 
early 20th century came to be criticized for inhumane and disturbing 
treatments, beginning in the 1950s there was a movement to deinstitutionalize 
mental health and treat patients in more community-based treatment centers. At 
their highest peak in 1955, state mental hospitals held 558,922 patients. 
Today, they hold about 35,000 patients, and that number continues to fall.

For various reasons, these community treatment plans proved inadequate, leaving 
many of the mentally ill homeless or in jail. According to the Department of 
Justice, about 15 % of state prisoners and 24 % of jail inmates report symptoms 
meet the criteria for a psychotic disorder.

In its survey of individual states, the Treatment Advocacy Center found that in 
44 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, the largest prison or jail 
held more people with serious mental illness than the largest state psychiatric 
hospital (see map below). The only exceptions were Kansas, New Jersey, North 
Dakota, South Dakota, Washington and Wyoming. "Indeed, the Polk County Jail in 
Iowa, the Cook County Jail in Illinois, and the Shelby County Jail in Tennessee 
each have more seriously mentally ill inmates than all the remaining state 
psychiatric hospitals in that state combined," the report says.

Unsurprisingly, many prisons are poorly equipped to properly deal with mental 
illness. Inmates with mental illnesses are more likely than other to be held in 
solitary confinement, and many are raped, commit suicide, or hurt themselves.

The movement to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill began from a place of 
humanity, but it hasn't ended there, at least not yet. The Treatment Advocacy 
Center report questions how much we've really learned about treating the 
mentally ill in the last 200 years, pointing out that people with mental 
illness were routinely confined in prisons and jails from 1770 to 1820. 
"Because this practice was regarded as inhumane and problematic, until 1970, 
such persons were routinely confined in hospitals. Since 1970, we have returned 
to the earlier practice of routinely confining such persons in prisons and 
jails."

(source: Washington Post)

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

A look at federal death penalty cases over the last 2 decades



Soon jurors in the trial of convicted bomber Dzohkhar Tsarnaev will be tasked 
with deciding whether he should live or die. Seventeen of the charges that the 
21-year-old was convicted of carry the possibility of the death penalty.

Tsarnaev's case is one a relatively small number that the federal government 
has chosen to seek that penalty on since it was reinstated back in 1988.

Over the last 27 years the federal government has taken 293 defendants to court 
in federal death penalty trials. Only 79 of those defendants were sentenced to 
death by a jury.

And of those only 3 have actually been executed. All of those executions taking 
place at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana by lethal 
injection.

If convicted Tsarnaev would join around 60 others on death row.

In terms of how long it could take to execute Tsarnaev, it all depends on the 
appeals process.

Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed 4 years after his sentence. 
The death penalty happening so quickly because McVeigh stopped fighting 
appeals.

It took 8 years for the other 2 people who have been executed in the past 2 
decades.

More than 1/2 of the federal prisoners on death row have been waiting more than 
t10 years for their reviews to be heard.

The death penalty is illegal in Massachusetts, this case is federal which is 
why it can be tried in the state.

The last time a person was executed for a non- federal case in the Baystate was 
1947.

(source: ABC news)

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

Legacy of lynching endures in 'Death Belt'



Christians celebrate life and the budding seeds of God's new creation through 
Easter. We jubilantly celebrate light, life and freedom this liturgical season.

We see light in the darkness of inhumanity because we interpret the world 
through the cross and suffering of Jesus, who is the seed of new life.

As M. Shawn Copeland observes in Enfleshing Freedom, the cross becomes cheap 
grace or a simplistic solution to the problem of evil if we do not interpret 
the cross in light of the "unmeasured suffering and anguish" of lynching in 
America.

Lynching is inextricably tied to how racial injustice and the death penalty are 
performed in the United States today.

Copeland invites us to remember, in the words of James Cone, how "the lynching 
tree can liberate the cross from false pieties of well-meaning Christians. ... 
The cross can redeem the lynching tree, and thereby bestow upon lynched black 
bodies an eschatological meaning for their ultimate existence." Solidarity 
begins, Copeland rightfully contends, in the intentional remembering of the 
black victims of lynching, who, with Jesus, are martyrs for freedom in this 
land.

The Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., finds in its new study, 
"Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror," that "an 
astonishing absence of any effort to acknowledge, discuss, or address lynching" 
remains in the communities where this form of racial terror was most prevalent.

Most astonishingly, this includes our churches. Forgetfulness of lynching and 
the death penalty in America demonstrate an appalling apostasy on behalf of 
Christians who tolerate this evil.

This legacy endures in the states of Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, 
Florida and my home state of Louisiana.

Scholars call these "Death Belt" states because of the high correlation they 
find between the history of lynching against African-Americans and today's 
disproportionate arrests, prosecution, and sentencing to death of 
African-Americans. We deem these unworthy of life along with the economically 
poor and people who are mentally or psychologically disabled.

The correlation between the practice of lynching and the death penalty goes 
down to the parish/county level. Phillips, Ark., leads all counties in the 
nation with 243 lynchings between 1877 and 1950, and the Louisiana parishes of 
Caddo, Lafourche, Tensas and Ouachita round out the top five counties 
nationally.

Today, Caddo leads Louisiana in death penalty convictions. Caddo provides a 
case in point of the relationship between lynching and the death penalty. It 
also offers hope.

The following is not the impassioned plea of a death row inmate fighting for 
his life or an extreme left-winger:

The clear reality is that the death penalty is an anathema to any society that 
purports to call itself civilized. It is an abomination that continues to scar 
the fibers of this society and it will continue to do so until this barbaric 
penalty is outlawed. Until then, we live in a land that condones state assisted 
revenge and that is not justice in any form or fashion.

These are the words of a former district attorney who routinely and proudly 
sought the death penalty in Caddo Parish. At least, until he recently 
recognized that he sent an innocent man to death.

A.M. "Marty" Stroud III, formerly the first assistant district attorney in 
Caddo Parish, performed a rare, courageous act: He publicly apologized to Glenn 
Ford for wrongfully convicting him more than 30 years ago and called on the 
state of Louisiana to provide a modicum of justice by paying restitution.

In a statement published in the Shreveport Times, Stroud forthrightly admits, 
"We are simply incapable of devising a system that can fairly and impartially 
impose a sentence of death because we are all fallible human beings."

Ford has claimed innocence ever since he was first arrested and charged with 
fatally shooting a Shreveport jewelry store owner during a 1983 robbery. Ford 
was released from Angola's death row on March 11, 2014, after the state 
admitted its wrongful conviction.

Louisiana's state attorney general, Buddy Caldwell, is denying restitution to 
Ford. Although Ford is dying of cancer, he is fighting for the compensation in 
order to pave the way for restitution for future exonerees.

In apologizing to Ford, Stroud said: "I end with the hope that providence will 
have more mercy for me than I showed Glenn Ford. But, I am also sobered by the 
realization that I certainly am not deserving of it."

I am sobered with Stroud and wonder: Whose side are we on?

This Easter season, do we stand on the side of the system -- the machinery of 
death -- or do we live Easter hope by proclaiming "liberty to captives" (Luke 
4:18)?

An ultimate question of our faith rests in whether and how we remember Jesus in 
the condemned of our past and present: the depth of our shared witness to the 
life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

(source: National Catholic Reporter)

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

Reflections on Lethal Drugs, Sleeping and Waking Up



I have always loved the Supreme Court.

As a law student, I made pilgrimages to the Court to listen to arguments. It 
fortified me and inspired me for the hard work and sacrifice ahead.

I proudly became a member of the Supreme Court bar and had the privilege of 
participating in briefs before the Court. Waiting in line yesterday to hear the 
arguments in Glossip v. Gross, I felt that familiar sense of anticipation: 
justice is possible here.

At issue was whether Oklahoma can use a drug called Midazolam in a 3 drug 
protocol used to kill prisoners by lethal injection. There was a disconnect 
between the nitty-gritty discussion about what it takes to kill a prisoner and 
the beauty and nobility of our surroundings:

Midazolam, the 1st drug administered, is supposed to render a prisoner 
unconscious and keep him or her unconscious until potassium chloride, the 
killing drug, has done its work.

Everyone agrees that a prisoner will die a horrible death if he or she is 
conscious when the potassium chloride is used. Potassium chloride feels like 
liquid fire.

But while Midazolam might reliably put a prisoner to sleep, there is no 
reliable scientific data to support the notion that a prisoner will remain 
"asleep" when the potassium chloride starts to burn through the body. Pain will 
wake up the prisoner. A series of botched executions in 2014 and much clinical 
and scientific evidence supports this chilling conclusion.

With no substantive response to Midazolam's uncertain utility, Oklahoma's 
lawyer made technical legal arguments about who had the burden of proof. When 
asked why a 3rd, paralyzing drug was used, he answered almost without realizing 
it: "to keep the prisoner from moving."

It saddened me to see the Court forced to sift through this rubble.

It made me wonder. Who is it that Oklahoma is really trying to put to sleep? 
And what will it take to wake up?

Should the prospect and reality of an innocent person being executed shock our 
systems to jolt us awake?

Should daily protests and palpable anger reflecting the fact that a significant 
segment of the citizenry has no confidence that it will be treated fairly by 
police, the criminal justice system or the courts provide the twinge that 
rouses us?

Should higher murder rates in regions of the country that use the death penalty 
with greater frequency enable us to discern reality from dream?

Some doze undisturbed. Or drift deeper into trance imagining that a return to 
firing squads and electric chairs will make us more civilized.

If we are not asleep, we must take the execution status quo by the shoulders 
and shake it hard to wake up.

We have the muscle to do it. According to the PEW Research Center, opposition 
to the death penalty continues to increase--now at 38%. Popular support for the 
death penalty continues to decline. Now just 56% of the public supports the 
practice in the abstract. And the devil is truly in the details.

I don't know what the Supreme Court will decide. However the Court rules, this 
struggle will not be over.

Using Midazolam in executions is a questionable practice at best. Let's make 
sure however, that it doesn't have long-term sedative effects on the public's 
consciousness.

The death penalty is preventing our nation's forward progress. It does not 
enhance public safety. It distracts us from addressing the root causes of crime 
and violence. It undermines our values of fairness and equality before the law.

Make some noise. Join the 90 Million Strong Campaign now. Learn how you can 
become engaged in ending the death penalty! Follow me at diannatncadp.

(source: Diann Rust-Tierney, Executive Director of the National Coalition to 
Abolish the Death Penalty----Huffington Post)

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

What Would Be Your Last Meal? For 600 Executed Prisoners, One Painter 
Memorializes Their Answers



"He told us he never had a birthday cake, so we ordered a birthday cake for 
him," said a prison official in 2007.

The cake and some pizza was an Indiana man's last meal request before he was 
executed on a Friday morning in May.

The name of this man and the crime he committed is discoverable within a few 
clicks on Google. But that would be missing the point, according to Julie 
Green, an art professor at Oregon State University.

Since 2000, Green has painted 600 plates depicting the last meals of death row 
inmates, "The Last Supper." In cobalt-blue mineral paint, she notes on each 
plate the state and date of the execution alongside the meal request -- but no 
name, no crime -- before the ceramic dish is kiln-fired at 1400 degrees.

"It is a memento mori representing a lot of suffering," Green said. "By putting 
a name, it makes it less accessible."

Some painted plates display more lavish meals, as seen by a Florida death row 
inmate's 2006 request for lobster tail, butterfly shrimp, a baked potato, 
strawberry cheesecake and sweet tea. Other painted plates demonstrate a 
yearning for the comforts of home or childhood, like the 2014 request for a 
peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Or macaroni and cheese, which Green has 
painted 10 times. Or fried chicken, which she has painted 84 times. Burgers, 89 
times. Other plates don't show any meal at all, indicating the inmate may have 
refused a last meal or made no request.

"Food in general is a connection for me," Green said. "It resonates with 
people."

The genesis of the project occurred during Green's morning ritual of toast and 
tea, as she read an article about a death row inmate's last meal.

"Why is this in the newspaper?" she asked herself. "You're giving somebody a 
choice, and then you're going to execute them? That's very strange to me."

15 years later, the growing gallery of painted plates is coming to The Mary and 
Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. (May 9 
to August 9). The university holds a special place in the history of capital 
punishment. In 2003, former Gov. George Ryan commuted all Illinois death 
sentences, making his historic announcement at Northwestern's law school, home 
to the Center on Wrongful Convictions. At a seminal conference in 1998, the 
center featured 29 exonerated death row inmates, calling to the governor's 
attention critical errors in the justice system. In 2011, former Gov. Pat Quinn 
abolished the death penalty in Illinois altogether.

Green's collection builds on this history, sparking discourse.

"The narrative is the work being done around Chicago on social justice," said 
Elliot Reichert, curator of special projects at the Block Museum. "We are 
trying to invite a lot of people into a larger conversation."

The museum is encouraging dialogue through a series of events, a 
justice-focused community curriculum that it is developing and a comment book 
that travels with the exhibition, inviting perspectives of all kinds, like 
these:

"As a mother, it was very sobering to read the last request by a man for his 
mother's cooking. I can't imagine making a final meal for anyone."

"Morbid. No art value."

"Why no display of the names of the victims or these criminals and their 
families?"

The conversation has no end in sight, as Green is committed to adding 50 plates 
to "The Last Supper" every year, or as long as capital punishment persists. 32 
states and the federal government allow the death penalty, despite waning 
public support, falling from 78 % in 1996 to 55 % in 2013, according to the Pew 
Research Center. In 2014, an unprecedented U.S. death row study found that more 
than 4 % of defendants sentenced to die are innocent.

But for Green's work, hope comes in the form of 1 painted plates -- fst meals 
rather than last meals. They represent 2 men, former death row inmates who were 
exonerated and released. Bucking her own trend of static blue-and-white plates, 
Green painted them in full color.

Since 1973, 152 inmates have been exonerated from death row, according to the 
Death Penalty Information Center. Beyond (and including) death row, an 
exoneration happens every 3 days in the United States, with the toll at more 
than 1,500 since 1989.

"We do not have the death penalty in Illinois anymore, but that hasn't gotten 
us out of the woods," said Sara Sommervold, an intake attorney at 
Northwestern's Center on Wrongful Convictions. "It is a cause and an issue that 
is close to the heart of many of the people that are here."

For the Indiana man whose 1st birthday cake came moments before his lethal 
injection, his last human moment will live on, immortalized on a painted plate, 
1 supper in a sea of dishes.

(source: Alison Flowers; Journalist and contributor to Chicago's NPR 
station----Huffington Post)