[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, MISS., OKLA., NEB., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

May 20



TEXAS:

Death penalty still a blight on the soul of Texas



The death sentence handed down by a jury to Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar 
Tsarnaev has brought the issue of capital punishment to the forefront of the 
nation's conscience once more.

Of course, here in Texas, executing people has become so common that most 
people barely take notice anymore.

Shortly after Tsarnaev was charged with capital murder, I proclaimed that 
then-Attorney General Eric Holder was wrong in seeking the death penalty in the 
case, and I had hoped that the Boston jury would agree instead on a sentence of 
life in prison.

Just as Holder was wrong, so is our new Attorney General Loretta Lynch in 
saying that death for Tsarnaev is a "fitting punishment."

Capital punishment should never be "fitting" in a civilized society.

Yes, the Boston bombing was a horrible crime and no doubt Tsarnaev was guilty. 
But neither a state nor the country ought to be in the killing business, which 
is why I oppose all executions, including those of other notorious criminals 
like: Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber; John Allen Muhammad, the 
Washington-area sniper; Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter; and Saddam Hussein, 
Iraq's brutal dictator.

With that in mind, you should understand why I've opposed all 525 executions 
carried out in Texas since 1982, when the state resumed putting prisoners to 
death. And with 2 more men scheduled to die next month - the 8th and 9th this 
year should their punishments be carried out - I once again raise objection to 
this brutality of the state.

The executions set for June also allow us to focus on a dilemma the state faces 
as more drug manufacturers refuse to sell the lethal products to be used in 
executing individuals, giving some of us hope that the unavailability of the 
proper pharmaceuticals might be the way to stop capital punishment.

Texas and some other states, however, have begun using unidentified pharmacies 
with the ability to compound drugs, with the states refusing to make known who 
the suppliers are.

Although a judge has ordered that Texas must identify its drug suppliers, that 
case is being appealed and the court order is on hold.

An execution this month had left Texas with only 1 remaining dose of its lethal 
drug, meaning it would have had only enough to kill 1 person in June, not 2, 
Michael Graczyk of The Associated Press reported. But it seems a new supply has 
been purchased, meaning the deaths of Gregory Russeau and Lester Bower won't be 
stopped - that is, for the lack of drugs.

The Bower case is particularly interesting because he has been on death row for 
31 years this month. Only 1 other man spent 31 years on Texas death row before 
being executed.

An Arlington resident accused of killing 4 men in an aircraft hanger near 
Sherman in 1983, Bower has maintained his innocence.

6 times his pending execution has been halted, the last time in February when 
the Supreme Court decided to take up his latest claims that included his being 
subjected to cruel and unusual punishment because of his length of time on 
death row and the number of times he faced imminent execution.

In March the high court turned down his appeal, paving the way for his seventh 
scheduled date with the executioner.

At 67, Bower would become the oldest man to be executed in Texas, another one 
for the record books in the country's leading death penalty state.

(source: Column; Bob Ray Sanders, Fort Worth Star-Telegram)








MISSISSIPPI:

Condemned Mississippi inmate wants mental health hearing



Attorneys for a Mississippi death row inmate asked the state Supreme Court on 
Tuesday to order a hearing on his mental health as a possible step toward 
overturning his conviction.

The attorney general's office opposed the request, saying a trial judge 
properly handled the capital murder case against Erik Wayne Hollie, who pleaded 
guilty in the 2009 killing of a pawn shop owner.

After listening to more than an hour of arguments, justices gave no indication 
of how or when they might rule.

Hollie, now 30, was sentenced to death by a Copiah County jury in 2010 after he 
pleaded guilty to capital murder in the killing of Wesson Pawn Shop owner 
Denmon Ward.

Hollie's public defender, Alison Steiner, who came to the case years after 
Hollie was convicted, told justices that shortly after Hollie was sent to 
prison, he was found to be suffering from "a bipolar-type situation." She said 
the condition could not have developed quickly, and indicated Hollie had been 
mentally incompetent at the time of trial, when he waived the assistance of 
another defense attorney and pleaded guilty.

"There were times he could appear perfectly normal and times he could appear 
completely irrational," Steiner said.

She said that during sentencing, Hollie underwent an evaluation by a 
psychiatrist who was agreed upon by prosecutors and defense attorneys. Steiner 
told justices that she believes Hollie was "faking" good mental health so he 
could "go to a proceeding where he could commit suicide by jury."

In a videotaped discussion with investigators, Hollie said God had told him to 
kill Ward, she said.

A circuit judge should have held a hearing to more fully examine Hollie's 
mental health, she said.

Steiner said medical records from prison show doctors have treated him for 
depression and other mental disorders with psychotropic medications including 
Prozac and Remeron.

Jason L. Davis, a special assistant attorney general, argued said the issue of 
Hollie's mental competency was "completely abandoned" by this original defense 
attorney long ago.

Davis said that although opponents of the death penalty might not like the 
circumstances, "this is a case of an individual who took responsibility - who 
took responsibility for his actions, who pled gulity and asked to be sentenced 
to death."

Mississippi law says a person can be sentenced to death for killing someone if 
there is another felony involved. Steiner said jurors in Hollie's case were 
told about 2 possible other felonies that could be used to make his a 
death-penalty case. One was a robbery that prosecutors said took place during 
the killing of Ward at the pawn shop. The other was Hollie's guilty plea to an 
earlier armed robbery.

She said jurors used his record from the previous armed robbery as the reason 
for setting a death penalty. However, she questioned whether that was proper. 
She said the trial court had not fully finished processing the earlier armed 
robbery plea before he was sentenced to death in the capital murder case.

(source: Associated Press)








OKLAHOMA:

Man will face death penalty in 2009 'Cathouse' killings trial in Oklahoma



A man accused of the killing of a drug dealer and 3 women - including 2 who 
were pregnant - will face the death penalty at trial.

Russell Lee Hogshooter, 37, will be tried on 6 counts of 1st-degree murder and 
1 count of conspiracy, Oklahoma County Special Judge Fred Doak ruled Tuesday.

Hogshooter is 1 of 2 men charged with the 2009 slayings in November. The other 
man, Jonathan Allen Cochran, 35, has pleaded guilty and is serving a 25-year 
prison sentence for his role.

1 of the victims, 22-year-old Brooke Phillips, was a prostitute featured on 
"Cathouse," a reality television show about a Nevada brothel.

Cochran testified Tuesday to what prosecutors have long alleged - Casey Mark 
Barrientos, 32, was the target of the attack.

Phillips, Jennifer Lynn Ermey, 25, and Milagros "Millie" Barrera, 22, were 
killed to eliminate them as witnesses, Cochran testified. Phillips and Barrera 
were pregnant.

The initial plan was to rob the house of money and drugs while nobody was home, 
but the assailants agreed to kill anyone they found inside the home and armed 
themselves before leaving Salina, OK, for Oklahoma City, Cochran said.

(source: The Oklahoman)

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

Miles Bench Awaits Execution in Oklahoma



Convicted Stephens County killer, Miles Bench is now in his new cell awaiting 
execution on Oklahoma's death row in McAlester.

The death warrant was signed by the judge last week.

Bench was found guilty of the beating death in 2012 of 16-year-old Braylee 
Henry in the convenience store in Velma where he worked.

His execution is set for the 1st week of August.

However, his attorneys have filed papers to appeal the sentence.

The Stephens County jury recommended the death penalty on march 6, after 
finding him guilty.

Before and during his trial, his attorneys had attempted to have him declared 
mentally incompetent, but failed.

Oklahoma's executions by lethal injection were put on hold after problems, but 
last month the governor signed a bill to allow use of nitrogen gas for 
executions if lethal injection is not reinstated.

(source: texomashomepage.com)








NEBRASKA:

Nebraska lawmakers out of touch with rest of state, Gov. Ricketts says



Gov. Pete Ricketts said Tuesday that state lawmakers are "out of touch" with 
their fellow Nebraskans on several fronts.

Ricketts said lawmakers were not listening to the public when they passed a 
hike in the gas tax. And he said they're not listening to the public each and 
every time they advance a bill to repeal the death penalty.

"The Legislature is out of touch with what Nebraskans believe," Ricketts said 
during an appearance on "The Bottom Line," The World-Herald's Internet radio 
show.

Nebraska has 11 men on death row. The last time the state executed anyone was 
in 1997.

Ricketts said he believes that most Nebraskans continue to support the ultimate 
punishment for those people who commit the worst crimes. He also said 
prosecutors often use the death penalty as leverage to negotiate plea deals 
with murderers, and it helps protect prison guards because inmates with life 
sentences otherwise would have nothing to lose if they killed while in prison.

"We use it judiciously (in Nebraska)," said Ricketts. "We don't overuse it."

Ricketts said the state will eventually have all the drugs needed to perform 
its first execution by lethal injection. 3 inmates on death row have exhausted 
their appeals.

In the past, the state has had trouble acquiring all 3 drugs needed to perform 
an execution by lethal injection. But last week, Ricketts announced that a drug 
distributor in India, HarrisPharma, agreed to sell 2 necessary drugs to 
Nebraska.

Once the drugs are delivered, Ricketts said, the state will be ready to push 
for those executions. He said Attorney General Doug Peterson also believes that 
the state will be able to perform its 1st execution in 18 years.

"We are all in lockstep with our ability to do this," said Ricketts.

Of the 3 drugs in Nebraska's lethal injection protocol, sodium thiopental has 
been the most difficult to obtain because U.S. manufacturers have quit making 
it, and several foreign suppliers have banned its use for executions.

(source: omaha.com)








CALIFORNIA:

DA: Ernesto Martinez will still face death penalty



Riverside County prosecutors have decided they will continue to seek the death 
penalty for Ernesto Salgado Martinez, an Indio man who has already been 
sentenced to execution for killing a policeman in Arizona.

District Attorney Mike Hestrin held a meeting with his top prosecutors on 
Monday to strategize about how to best prosecute Martinez, but ultimately 
decided to stay the course in the killer's stagnating court case.

"During the discussion of the factual and procedural history of this case, 
several questions arose that I believe need to be answered before I can come to 
a final decision," Hestrin said in an emailed statement to The Desert Sun on 
Tuesday. "The nature of the information I needed to make my decision was such 
that I directed my staff to take more time to research and gather the requested 
information. We plan to reconvene the staffing in the near future but, at this 
point, I have not changed our current position that we are seeking the death 
penalty for Mr. Martinez."

Martinez, 39, is in jail in Riverside awaiting trial in the death of Blythe 
storekeeper Randip Singh nearly 20 years ago, on Aug. 15, 1996. Martinez is 
simultaneously on death row in Arizona, where he has been previously convicted 
of murdering Arizona Highway Patrolman Bob Martin, about 8 hours before Singh 
was shot. Martinez shot Martin on the edge of State Road 87, then drove across 
the state line into Blythe, where police say he killed Singh in a robbery after 
running out of gas.

Martinez was extradited to California in 2010, and has since defended himself 
in county court, delaying his trial in the Blythe shooting. Today, Martinez, 
who has spent more than 1/2 of his life behind bars, is one of the most 
dangerous inmates in Riverside County.

Currently, Martinez has a pending appeal in federal court in Arizona, so the 
pending California trial is not delaying his execution. However, the local case 
is keeping Martinez in Riverside County, where he is absorbing tax dollars and 
endangering other inmates and jail staff.

Riverside County has spent more than $230,000 to jail Martinez since he was 
extradited in 2010. In addition, Martinez's court case has demanded countless 
hours from prosecutors and court employees. Martinez has also tricked an Indio 
judge into appointing his mistress as his government-funded paralegal, and 
allegedly stabbed one of his cell mates more than 50 times in 2011.

The complexities of Martinez's unusual court case were recently explored in an 
in-depth Desert Sun investigation, published earlier this month. During an 
interview for that investigation, Hestrin said he would consider abandoning the 
pursuit of the death penalty in this case, which would allow the case to 
proceed quicker, and for Martinez to return to Arizona sooner.

"He is incredibly dangerous because he is so bright," Hestrin said. "I would 
like to get him out of our system and out of our jail. And one of the ways to 
do that is to get this case to trial as quickly as possible."

Statements like that one led Sandi Martin, the window of Arizona Officer Bob 
Martin, to expect local prosecutors would change course in the Martinez case. 
On Monday, Martin said she was "surprised" when prosecutors confirmed they 
would continue to pursue death.

"It sounded crazy to me," Martin said, adding later, "I thought they would 
settle for life ... but I think they are erring on the side of caution. They 
said they want to make sure they want a death penalty hanging over his head."

Martin said she was comforted by the fact that local prosecutors have assured 
her they will not allow Martinez's local trial to delay his execution. 
Prosecutors promised that, if Martinez's Arizona appeal is resolved before his 
California trial is finished, he will be immediately sent back to Arizona for 
execution regardless, Martin said.

Still, Martin said she was concerned that Martinez would remain in Riverside.

"He's dangerous no matter where he is at, but he's much more secure over here 
(in Arizona) because he's on death row and not in a county jail," she said. 
"That bothers me."

The quickest way for Riverside County to end the Martinez case would be for 
prosecutors to simply drop the charges from the Blythe shooting. If this was 
done, Singh's murder would remain technically unsolved, but Martinez would 
immediately return to Arizona's death row, where he would await execution 
without draining Riverside County funds.

Hestrin said earlier this month that, although dropping the charges would bring 
a speedy end to Martinez's quagmire case, prosecutors would be shirking their 
"obligation to seek justice."

Martinez has declined to be interviewed by The Desert Sun. During his latest 
court hearing, on April 17, Martinez told a judge that he would like his case 
to be transferred to the courthouse in Indio, but he does not mind being jailed 
in Riverside.

"I'm housed here in Riverside," Martinez said. "All is well. Living the dream."

(source: The Desert Sun)








USA:

Don't expect executions to resume any time soon



When the U.S. Bureau of Prisons began the process of designating a federal 
death row and execution chamber back in the early 1990s, the people of Terre 
Haute were mostly ambivalent about the prospect of the local federal prison 
being used for that purpose.

That casual, pragmatic acceptance of the possibility of death row being placed 
here, combined with the rural prison's central geographic location within the 
federal system, led the riverside site on the city's south side to become the 
eventual choice.

Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed by lethal injection 
in June of 2001, the 1st federal prisoner put to death since capital punishment 
was reinstituted in 1976. (The death penalty had been ruled unconstitutional in 
1972.) Even during that high-tension period when the national and international 
media descended on Terre Haute en masse to cover the event, the community 
mostly remained stoic in the midst of the media atmospherics.

Since that 1st execution at the federal prison complex, it has become the place 
where condemned inmates come to die, even though few actually have. Only others 
have been executed here, one a week after McVeigh was put to death, and a 
second in 2003. In 2010, with controversy over the death penalty swirling 
nationwide, the U.S. Department of Justice effectively put a moratorium on 
executions in the federal system while all policies and procedures of the 
process are reviewed.

Today, there are 55 federal inmates on death row at the Terre Haute prison. But 
no executions are scheduled. Don't expect them to resume any time soon.

The most recent federal inmate sentenced to death is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 
convicted Boston Marathon bomber. The 21-year-old native of Kyrgyzstan 
conspired with his brother, Tamerlan, to detonate two powerful bombs loaded 
with shrapnel near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2013. The blasts 
killed 3 people and injured more than 200 others. While being pursued by police 
in the days following the bombings, the brothers killed a campus police officer 
at MIT. Tamerlan later was killed in a shootout with police, but Dzhokhar, 
although injured, was eventually captured, tried and convicted of a host of 
counts related to the bombings.

The imposition of the death sentence by a jury last week once again placed 
Terre Haute and its federal prison in the limelight. We doubt the glow will 
last for long. Tsarnaev and his attorneys aggressively fought the death penalty 
and will undoubtedly appeal the sentence with equal vigor. Several of the 
current death row inmates have been living under their sentences for more than 
15 years, and it is not uncommon for capital punishment appeals to last a 
decade or more.

If and when Tsarnaev is housed at the local penitentiary, he will be among the 
more high-profile inmates on death row. Still, we doubt any future execution 
could surpass the level of interest the McVeigh execution did.

Any fears that Terre Haute's image could somehow be defined, even tainted, by 
the presence of the federal execution chamber have been quelled. Given how 
things have evolved in the past 15 to 20 years, they are unlikely to re-emerge 
in the future.

(source: Editorial, Terre Haute Tribune Star)

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

The Fetishization of Revenge



Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has just been sentenced to death by a federal jury for his 
role in the Boston Marathon bombings. The sentence has been met with a lot of 
discomfort in Boston and the surrounding environs. Massachusetts is predisposed 
to rejecting capital punishment as a general rule. Even in this case, where the 
terror and horror hit so close to home, the people of Massachusetts are leery 
of the death penalty.

And for good reason.

The application of the death penalty in the United States is rife with racism, 
false guilt, and corruption. The nation is slowly but surely moving towards 
abolishing the practice. But there are still many men (and a few women) on 
death row, and it stands to statistical reasoning that at least some are 
innocent. With an average of 4 people exonerated annually from death row, it's 
impossible to believe some have not fallen through the cracks.

In light of the at best questionable guilt of many of the people facing 
execution or already killed, trusting the United States to apply the death 
penalty fairly requires a suspension of disbelief. This suspension of disbelief 
is as follows: the United States has the right to put people to death and even 
though it may have erred in the past, this time will be different. This time, 
the United States is acting in accordance to its own rules and justice will be 
served.

Unfortunately for that point of view, the US has proven again and again that it 
has little to no understanding of or care for the rule of law when it comes to 
acts of oppression against its own citizens. From surveillance to torture to 
assassination, the US acts as it wishes in relation to its citizenry (to say 
nothing of the rest of the world). In this light, it's not hard to see where 
the American love affair with the death penalty comes from at the 
administrative level.

What's even more disturbing is the fetishization of revenge that the American 
people take part in by endorsing the government's right to kill its citizens. 
Although support for the death penalty has fallen drastically in the last 
twenty years, a plurality of Americans still support it outright and many- 
paradoxically- support it with the caveat that it only be used on certain 
criminals for certain crimes. And this support comes from the public, those 
whose lives could be destroyed by false evidence or the whims of a prosecutor, 
the desire of the government to send a message or simply a misled jury. It 
boggles the mind.

Even in the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, there are inconsistencies. Tsarnaez's 
guilt in the horrific attack on the Boston Marathon is not in question. He has 
admitted his role and culpability. In fact, if there were a case that the death 
penalty could be applied with little to no worry about innocence or questions 
of justice, this might be it. But of course this is hardly the whole story

There are questions about how the jury reached the death sentence. The 
Intercept's Murtaza Hussain has already written a thorough article detailing 
the questionable practices of the judge in the case to force the jury to find 
for death. The federal government, prosecuting the case, acted to stymy any 
conceivable action by the defense to change the venue to one less emotionally 
resonant than Boston.

Even in a case as open and shut as this, where the accused has admitted his 
guilt, the government feels it is necessary to lie and prevaricate to garner 
the public's support for killing. This should be a red flag for anyone still 
holding out hope that the death penalty is a legitimate punitive measure as 
applied by the government.

Support for the death penalty is support for the government having the power of 
life and death over its citizenry. It's not a power the people should support, 
especially when the government in question has as troubled a record with 
legislative matters of life and death as the United States. Even when the 
accused is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

(source: Eoin Higgins is a writer and historian from upstate New York. He is a 
recent graduate of the Masters in History program at Fordham University's 
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences----Huffington Post)

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

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and America???s tortured death penalty system----The U.S. 
participates in a ritual that every other advanced democracy has abandoned and 
justice is rarely served



It took only 14 hours of deliberations for the 12-member jury tasked with 
deciding the fate of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to pass down 
their judgment. 7 women and 5 men, all hand-picked because of their openness to 
capital punishment, concluded this past Friday that the 21-year old deserves 
death on 6 of the 15 counts in which death was an option. The sentence has 
ignited equal amounts of jubilation as it has anger. Some of the victims of the 
2013 attack celebrated, others lamented the outcome.

The array of emotions on display at a downtown Boston courthouse reflected the 
controversy surrounding this case, one in which a state that abolished the 
death penalty 30 years ago played host to a federal trial that resulted in the 
death penalty. The contradiction sits at the heart of the capital punishment 
debate in America today and has touched off a firestorm centred around why 
exactly the U.S continues to participate in a ritual that every other advanced 
democracy has abandoned.

"Capital punishment in America today," writes sociologist David Garland in his 
book, Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition, "is 
a story of a legal norm combined with its widespread evasion." The development 
of the institution since the 19th century, he argues, has been a process of the 
proceduralization of death ???not to terrorize onlookers with a spectacle of 
suffering but to carry out the court's death sentence in an efficient, humane 
manner." On the one hand, the majority of Americans demand retribution for the 
most heinous crimes while on the other, a legal system must prove its liberal 
democratic credentials, including its adherence to humanistic values.

The lengths to which the system will go to avoid executing a death row inmate 
is astonishing. Of the 26 federal capital convictions since 1988, when the U.S. 
Supreme Court lifted a moratorium on executions, only three have been carried 
out. At the state level, besides Texas, executions are similarly rare. In 
Tennessee, for instance, where a moratorium on executions was lifted in 2000, 
more death row prisoners have died of natural causes than have been executed. 
The likelihood that Tsarnaev will actually be executed is extremely low, 
experts say.

Occasionally, the aversion to executing death row prisoners slips into the 
surreal. In one case in Pennsylvania, a man convicted of murder in 2000 became 
so distraught with the time it was taking to have his death sentence overturned 
that finally, in 2009, he wrote a letter to the governor demanding his own 
death. In a Kafkaesque twist, his state-appointed defence lawyers then had him 
declared incompetent. As of last April, he was still demanding to die.

Advocates of abolishing the death penalty point out that the dysfunction in the 
system undermines any notions of justice and retribution, and ultimately ends 
up costing taxpayers more than putting a person behind bars for life. Moreover, 
they argue, families must suffer through years of appeals that rehash the pain 
of the crime, meaning the closure they were promised when the death penalty was 
applied is never delivered.

The parents of Martin Richard, the youngest victim of the Boston marathon 
bombing, made that point when they publicly opposed the death penalty for 
Tsarnaev.

"We know that the government has its reasons for seeking the death penalty," 
they wrote in an open letter during Tsarnaev's trial, "but the continued 
pursuit of that punishment could bring years of appeals and prolong reliving 
the most painful day of our lives. We hope our 2 remaining children do not have 
to grow up with the lingering, painful reminder of what the defendant took from 
them, which years of appeals would undoubtedly bring."

Closure, they went on to argue, would mean life in prison with no possibility 
of parole, which would allow Tsarnaev to "fade from our newspapers and TV 
screens."

That remains a possibility, if the death sentence is overturned on appeal. 
Alternatively, Tsarnaev's fate could hang in limbo for decades, caught in a 
legal system committed to applying capital punishment but increasingly opposed 
to implementing it. Why that system still exists at all is a mystery to many.

(source: macleans.ca)

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

Debate Bigs Battle on UWS and Death Penalty Wins Stunning Victory----Scheck vs 
Blecker in a battle of rhetorical titans



Hell almost froze over on the Upper West Side of Manhattan the other night at a 
2-hour debate on a measure whether to abolish the death penalty. The debate was 
organized by Intelligence Squared, a non-profit, non-partisan group that has 
sponsored more than 100 such discussions since 2006.

Lincoln Center's Merkin Hall was filled, in part because of the reputations of 
2 of the 4 speakers. Barry Scheck was co-founder of the Innocence Project and a 
member of O.J. Simpson's Dream Team defense. His main opponent, Robert Blecker, 
a professor of criminal law at New York Law School and author of the book, The 
Death of Punishment, is generally considered the nation's leading proponent of 
the death penalty. Mr. Blecker had spent hundreds of hours inside the walls of 
some of the nation's toughest prisons interviewing death-row inmates and those 
condemned to life-without-parole.

Under Oxford Union-style rules, it would be the shift in audience attitudes - 
as measured by pre-and-post debate electronic tabulators - that would determine 
the winner.

The substance of the debate was familiar but passionately conveyed: Mr. Scheck 
and his partner, Diann Rust-Tierney, Executive Director, National Coalition to 
Abolish the Death Penalty, argued the death penalty was not an effective 
deterrent to crime, that it was racially biased, and that there is too large a 
risk of convicting - and executing - an innocent person. When Mr. Scheck 
reminded the audience that George Will has instructed conservatives that 
"Capital punishment is a government program, so skepticism is in order," the 
audience responded with the enthusiasm a boxing crowd exhibits when seeing 
first blood.

Mr. Blecker and his partner, Kent Scheidegger, Legal Director, Criminal Justice 
Legal Foundation, argued the studies were flawed or biased, that there is risk 
in every human (and government) endeavor, but that the risks were offset by 
automatic appeals and capable legal representation all designed to ensure 
against executing someone falsely convicted. Most importantly, the death 
penalty must be reserved for the worst of the worst of the worst - justice 
demanded it.

For most of the 2 hours the abolitionists seemed to have the upper hand, 
pounding home the question: how much risk that we'd execute an innocent man was 
acceptable? They cited the recent case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was 
executed in Texas for an arson murder - based on what now is acknowledged by 
the state itself to be bogus arson evidence.

The recent conviction of the Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was 
mentioned only by one debater, Barry Scheck, who pointed out that several of 
the victims of the attack have called for sparing Tsanarev's life. The just 
punishment, the abolitionists argue, is life without parole. That is a fate, 
they repeat, that is worse than death itself.

But it was that very alternative punishment - life-without-parole ??? that 
provided Mr. Blecker with the opening he seemed to be waiting for. Because he 
responded with the flurry of evidentiary and rhetorical punches that brought 
him back into the match.

For more than 10 of the 25 years Mr. Blecker has been given access inside 
prisons, and he has been allowed to bring a video camera with him. And his 
recordings of life behind the walls - at least for those serving life sentences 
- are far different from the perceptions most of us have from watching Oz, 
Prison Break, or Orange is the New Black. While not quite leading country-club 
lives, prisoners serving life-without-parole often enjoy TVs in their cells, 
craft rooms, music recording studios, generous commissary choices, organized 
sports leagues and other privileges not normally associated with prison life. 
Blecker described visiting prison and seeing Joshua Komisarjevsky - sentenced 
to death for the rape and murder of 3 members of the Petit family in a horrific 
home invasion in Cheshire, Connecticut - sitting on his bunk eating a Hershey 
Bar while watching a ballgame on his personal TV set.

The final round in the debate allowed each participant to make a closing 
statement. Barry Scheck pulled what seemed certain to be the trump card: he 
asked 2 members of the audience to stand. 2 middle-age African-American men 
stood, and Mr. Scheck introduced them. Both had been convicted of murder - 1 
sentenced to death - and later exonerated by DNA evidence. Could anything 
better bring to life the risks of executing an innocent man?

Mr. Blecker began his final rebuttal, and was gracious in his acknowledgement 
of the exonerated men's innocence and travesty of justice. But he quickly 
segued to his retributivist argument that "The past counts. It counts 
independently of the future benefits that derive from our actions." Justice and 
human dignity demand we honor the covenant with the dead, and he prodded the 
audience: "You're upholding the victim. You're upholding a sense of justice. 
You're upholding a sense of proportionality. You're ultimately upholding human 
dignity." This brought forth the largest burst of applause that night.

Minutes later, the audience voted, and the result seemed to unbalance the 
otherwise capable moderator, John Donvan of ABC News: he had to re-record his 
concluding remarks twice. The winners were the pro-death penalty advocates, Mr. 
Blecker and Mr. Scheidegger. Fully 40% of the post-debate audience said they 
wanted to maintain the death penalty, up from only 17% before the discussion 
began. Abolition was supported by 54% up from 49%. In fairness, a larger number 
of the 400-plus people in Merkin Hall voted in favor of abolition. But under 
the rules, it was the shift in the audience attitudes that determined the 
winner.

As people left Lincoln Center, the shock of what they had witnessed dissipated 
slowly. After all, this took place in the bluest of blue neighborhoods. Solid 
thinking and well-argued advocacy had jarred political orthodoxy.

It didn't last long. 2 weeks after the live event, Intelligence Squared 
released an edited version of the debate for NPR radio and podcast. And 
although the website accurately reported the winner, 1 would never be able to 
understand why based on the edited audio posted. In an apparent effort to allot 
equal time to each participant, the editors excluded many of the most 
convincing arguments made by Mr. Blecker and Mr. Scheidegger.

The edit was so obviously biased that an Intelligence Squared (IQ2) Board 
member who had been in the audience and later heard the truncated poscast, 
complained to the IQ2 management. He said it was a misrepresentation of what 
really happened in Merkin Hall that night. Still, the editors refused to 
re-edit the segment.

Under the guise of being "balanced", Intelligence Squared abandoned fairness. 
Apparently, while the habitues of the famously liberal Upper West Side could 
withstand the shock of contested conventional wisdom, a guardian for the larger 
NPR audience could not.

(source: Opinion...Steve Cohen is an attorney at KDLM in New York; 
observer.com)