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

[Rick Halperin]

May 29


COLORADO:

Nebraska death penalty vote gives hope to capital punishment opponents in 
Colorado----ACLU will try to sway state's GOP lawmakers



Buoyed by conservative Nebraska's decision to do away with the death penalty, 
capital punishment opponents say they will try to sway GOP lawmakers in 
Colorado to follow suit.

"It's not going to be easy," said Denise Maes, public policy director of the 
ACLU of Colorado. "I think we know that, given our attempts to repeal it in the 
past."

Maes said the ACLU is part of the Better Priorities Initiative, a coalition of 
organizations committed to repealing the death penalty in Colorado.

She said coalition members believe that the large amounts of money spent on 
death penalty cases would be better spent elsewhere.

She acknowledges that many people still support the death penalty, but said 
public opinion is changing.

"It's no longer in strong support," she said, adding that some victim's 
families don't support it.

Death Row

There are 3 people on death row in Colorado.

Nathan Dunlap has been there the longest. He was sentenced to death in May of 
1996, after killing 4 people at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Aurora, in 
1993.

Dunlap exhausted his appeals and an execution date was set, but Governor John 
Hickenlooper, described by one supporter as "essentially a Quaker," granted a 
temporary reprieve.

The other 2 inmates on death row, Robert Ray and Sir Mario Owens, were 
convicted and sentenced for the ambush slayings of Javad Marshall Fields and 
his fiance, Vivian Wolfe.

Fields' mother, Rep. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, supports capital punishment. She 
called an earlier attempt to repeal the death penalty "a slap in the face."

Maes said Republicans in Nebraska made some very good arguments for change.

She said they realized that they were spending a lot of money on death penalty 
cases when no one was getting executed.

"At the end of the day, it's a big government program that spends a lot of 
money and does very little for people," she said.

When asked if the coalition would seek to put the issue to a vote of the 
people, Maes said they would likely focus on the legislature.

"Elections are expensive," she said. "Sometimes it can come down to just a 
bumper sticker exercise and a few commercials here and there, and I worry that 
there's not enough thorough discussion, debate and good education."

When asked how soon Colorado might do away with the death penalty, Maes said 
she didn't know.

"I think if we didn't have the Holmes (theater shooting) case it would be so 
much easier," she said. "If he gets life and not the death penalty, I think 
it's a little easier, because we're going to realize that we spent north of 
$2.5 million on Holmes, before the trial started."

Coalition members didn't focus on Republicans during the last attempt to repeal 
capital punishment, in 2013, because Democrats were in control of both houses.

"We were lazy and didn't need to," she said. "We thought we had it with the 
Democrats."

The repeal effort stalled in the House Judiciary Committee after the Governor 
voiced concerns.

Maes said, what happened in Nebraska has changed their thinking.

She said it's possible that lawmakers could come up with another proposal when 
they convene in 2016.

"If Nebraska can do it, Colorado can do it," she said.

(source: thedenverchannel.com)

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

Colorado should follow Nebraska and abolish death penalty



If Nebraska can do it, why not Colorado?

Abolish the death penalty, that is.

Nebraska has a unicameral, officially nonpartisan legislature, but there is no 
doubt it is controlled by Republicans. And those red-state lawmakers last week 
voted by a lopsided 32 to 15 to abolish capital punishment.

More surprisingly, they voted Wednesday to override Gov. Pete Ricketts' veto, 
with only two senators switching their position.

Among the striking aspects of this chain of events is the pragmatism exhibited 
by senators, some of whom actually support the death penalty but recognize that 
it has become almost impossible to implement on a consistent (and therefore 
fair) basis.

Nebraska hasn't put a murderer to death since 1997.

Colorado hasn't put a murderer to death since 1997, too.

And before that in Colorado, you have to go back to 1967 to find an execution.

Other lawmakers in Nebraska worried about the possibility of false convictions, 
given recent exonerations elsewhere in the nation. And at least one 
conservative senator voted for repeal in order to "follow through with my life 
convictions, which is life from conception to natural death."

Colorado's legislature is divided between a Democratic-controlled House and a 
Republican Senate, and any attempt to repeal the death penalty is likely to get 
little traction in the upper chamber. But Republicans there might at least 
consider the arguments from Nebraska.

Do they really believe, for example, the death penalty will ever be put to 
regular use here? Do they relish the resource-consuming spectacles of endless 
motions and delays in trials when the death sentence is in play (see Holmes, 
James), or the prospect of decades of foot-dragging appeals?

False convictions in death-penalty trials are not an issue in Colorado, but 
where exactly is the justice in executing one particularly heinous murderer 
every few decades while many other equally heinous murderers are sentenced to 
life without parole?

2 years ago Gov. John Hickenlooper derailed a move in the legislature to repeal 
the death penalty, while also issuing a temporary reprieve to death-row inmate 
Nathan Dunlap and declaring that he personally opposed capital punishment.

Unlike Nebraska's Ricketts, in other words, Hickenlooper presumably would sign 
a repeal that reached his desk.

But it's got to get there first.

(soruce: Denver Post Editorial Board)








NEVADA:

Death penalty possible for woman and brother accused in hatchet attack



Prosecutors could seek the death penalty against an Idaho woman and her 
brother, who face murder charges in the death of her husband.

Prosecutor Frank Coumou said the facts of the brutal attack on Enrique 
Hernandez point to a case "we would consider seeking death" for Maria 
Hernandez, 32, and her brother, Hector Gutierrez, 22.

Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Ann Zimmerman ordered the siblings held without 
bail Thursday.

The Idaho woman and her brother were arrested Monday in Las Vegas on charges of 
murder and conspiracy to commit murder after her husband was found nearly 
decapitated.

Maria Hernandez told police she wanted her husband dead after he found out she 
was having an affair, according to police.

Police said she had planned the slaying for about a month and held her husband 
down while Gutierrez attacked him with a hatchet.

She initially called police near the intersection of Buffalo Drive and Eldora 
Avenue, just south of Sahara Avenue, about 2:30 a.m., a police report said. She 
and her husband were having car trouble, she said, when someone hacked him.

The woman told police that she and her husband, with whom she has 4 children, 
were in town for a family member's quinceanera. They drove in from Idaho on 
Saturday for the birthday party later that night. Gutierrez was in town from 
California.

(source: Las Vegas Review-Journal)








CALIFORNIA:

Convicted South Gate murderer's death sentence overturned



The California Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the death sentence of a man 
who wrote then-Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti a letter in 
which he called 2 murder victims "cowards" who "deserved what they got."

In a 67-page ruling, the state's highest court upheld Tommy Adrian Trujeque's 
1st-degree murder conviction for the June 21, 1986, stabbing of his cousin's 
boyfriend, Max Facundo, in South Gate, but reversed his 2nd-degree murder 
conviction for the Jan. 23, 1987, stabbing of Raul Luis Apodaca at an East Los 
Angeles upholstery shop.

In an opinion written by Associate Justice Ming W. Chin, the panel unanimously 
found that Trujeque was "improperly charged and subsequently convicted of 
Apodaca's murder" after the case against him was dismissed twice according to 
the government and 3 times according to the defense. The panel also set aside 
the special circumstance findings that Trujeque committed multiple murders and 
had a prior 2nd-degree murder conviction.

The Supreme Court justices ruled that Trujeque's prior murder conviction from 
1971 for the killing of Allen Rothenberg - in which the defendant was 16 at the 
time of the crime - was obtained in adult court "in violation of the double 
jeopardy clause" after he admitted an involuntary manslaughter charge in a 
juvenile court.

Trujeque was charged with the killings of Facundo and Apodaca after he spoke 
with investigators while in custody in San Diego County more than 10 years 
after the killings.

In a 1998 letter that was sent to Garcetti, the defendant "admitted he murdered 
both Apodaca and Facundo while 'fully aware of all my mental faculties'" and 
urged the prosecution to seek the death penalty against him.

The justices noted that Trujeque's letter also stated that "both of those 
cowards deserved what they got: death and an early expiration in life, to say 
the least!" and that if he "had the opportunity to do it over I would cut off 
their heads and send 'em both to their family!"

(source: my newsla.com)








USA:

The (hopefully) wobbly state of the death penalty



Let's take a count, shall we?.

With the state Legislature's razor-thin rejection of Gov. Pete Ricketts' veto 
Wednesday, Nebraska became the 19th state to formally abolish the death penalty 
-- and the 7th in the last decade. Others have come close. A single vote in a 
Delaware legislative committee derailed an abolition effort there earlier this 
month. Supporters say they will continue to push the measure, which has the 
backing of that state's governor, Jack Markell, a former supporter of the death 
penalty who recently described it as an "instrument of imperfect justice." 
Legislators in Montana, Kansas, Arkansas and elsewhere have gained traction on 
death penalty repeal bills as well.

But the nation is shifting away from capital punishment in other ways, too. 
Governors in four states -- Colorado, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington -- 
have declared a moratorium on executions, citing doubts about the process. 6 
states with the death penalty on the books haven't carried out an execution in 
more than a decade. Problems with lethal injections -- from legal challenges to 
an inability to procure the drugs -- have halted executions in at least 15 
more states, and the U.S. Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of 
a protocol using midazolam.

In fact, since January 2014, 5 states -- Texas, Missouri, Florida, Oklahoma and 
Georgia -- have conducted all but 2 of the nation's executions. Over at Time, 
journalist David Von Drehle, who has covered the death penalty for nearly 30 
years, writes this week that he thinks the atrocious system is on its way out. 
And part of the shift, as I mentioned last week, is notable because more 
conservative Republicans are backing repeal based on its expense and 
ineffectiveness.

It can't happen soon enough. Beyond the immorality of executions, the system is 
irredeemably flawed. The Death Penalty Information Center reported that through 
the end of 2013, 15 counties accounted for 30% of executions since the practice 
resumed in 1976. Yet those 15 counties "represent less than 1% of the total 
number of counties in the country, and less than 1% of the total number of 
counties in states with the death penalty."

So beyond disparities in application of the death penalty based on race and 
class (the wealthy can afford better legal representation than the poor), there 
are disparities in geography. Each state sets its own policy on capital 
punishment, but even within states there are wide differences in death 
sentences by county. Some of that can be attributed to differences in 
population, and in homicide rates, but not all. For example, the Death Penalty 
Information Center's report found that Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside 
counties account for more than 1/2 the people on the state's death row, but 
only 39% of the state???s population. And they account for only 40% of the 
state's homicides (2000-13), according to state Department of Justice 
statistics.

The decision on whether to seek the death penalty often comes down to 
individual prosecutors, which puts an inordinate amount of power in the hands 
of 1 person, further exacerbating the arbitrariness of the system. And the race 
of the victim plays a big role. According to the most recent death row report 
by the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, in cases that have led to all 1,394 
executions from 1976 to this past January, 76% of the victims were white and 
35% of those executed were black. Yet federal homicide statistics show that 
more than 1/2 the nation's homicide victims are black. As the Equal Justice 
Initiative points out:

"More than 1/2 of the 3,095 people on death row nationwide are people of color; 
42% are African American. Prominent researchers have demonstrated that a 
defendant is more likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white than 
if the victim is black. The key decision makers in death penalty cases across 
the country are almost exclusively white. Despite decades of evidence showing 
that the administration of the death penalty is permeated with racial bias, 
courts and legislatures' refusal to address race in any comprehensive way 
reveals a fundamental flaw in America's justice system."

So it's a government program that wastes tax dollars, often results in wrongful 
convictions, doesn't achieve the intended goals (deterrence and justice), is so 
arbitrarily invoked that it violates the U.S. Constitution and ultimately 
degrades human life. No wonder more conservatives are coming around to 
supporting its repeal, even as an analysis of recent polling shows the 
oft-cited support among Americans in general is not as strong as it might seem, 
especially when those surveyed are asked if they prefer the death penalty over 
life without parole.

Maybe Von Drehle is right and the end is nigh. If so, then the U.S. would 
remove itself from the uncomfortable companionship of other capital punishment 
countries like Iran and China, and align itself with Europe and most of the 
rest of the industrialized world.

Ultimately, it's hard to try to persuade the world to follow our moral lead on 
human rights issues when we fail so badly on this one.

(source: Opinion; Scott Martelle, Los Angeles Times)

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

In Iowa, Rand Paul sticks with death penalty skepticism



Rand Paul expressed deep skepticism of the death penalty Thursday as he 
repeated his position that states should be able to decide whether to keep it.

The Kentucky senator, appearing at an afternoon book signing here, responded to 
a question about the neighboring state of Nebraska's ban on capital punishment 
this week.

"My first thoughts aren't that forgiving for someone who would hurt a member of 
my family, but I also understand there have been times when we haven't gotten 
the right person," he told reporters. "And somebody who is distrustful of big 
government, like I am, is also distrustful of so much power being given to 
government to kill somebody, when there might be a mistake. A lot of eyewitness 
testimony has been shown over time not to be very good."

Paul complained that many witnesses in murder trials are not credible.

"We also have the problem of when you've got 3 thugs and they're all testifying 
against each other, and 2 of them say, 'Let's say he did it,' and the other 2 
say, 'Let's say he did it,'" he said. 'So your testimony is coming from people 
who are not necessarily the best witnesses, as far as veracity."

The Nebraska legislature voted Wednesday to override the governor's veto of 
their death penalty ban, making them the 1st red state to do so in decades but 
the 7th state since 2007.

Paul, who has said in the past that death penalty is a state issue, used his 
ideological support for federalism to avoid staking out a firm position.

"It's a tough issue," he said. "Most crimes are adjudicated at the state level 
and should be, so there really are almost no crimes at the federal level really 
under the Constitution that would require the death penalty - I think treason 
being one. It isn't a big issue, I think as far as a change in federal policy, 
and I would leave it for the most part to the states."

Paul did not take follow-up questions. The issue has been in the news recently 
in the wake of the Boston Marathon bomber being sentenced - under federal 
statutes, by federal prosecutors - to death. Paul did not mention the recent 
episodes of botched executions, another of the main reasons cited by death 
penalty critics.

Paul has made criminal justice reform, including the repeal of mandatory 
minimums, central to his presidential campaign. He spoke to a crowd of 80 here 
about an Iowa woman who was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison over her 
use of methamphetamine.

The senator's stump speech mainly focused on his fight to let the Patriot Act 
sunset on Sunday at midnight.

Speaking at a minor league baseball stadium on the banks of the Mississippi 
River, Paul told the crowd that his voice is still raspy from speaking for 
nearly 11 hours on the Senate floor last week about his opposition to the law. 
He noted that his opposition has forced the Senate to cut short its Memorial 
Day recess, reconvening Sunday evening in an 11th hour effort to prevent parts 
of the program from expiring.

"I'm expecting a very cool reception from the other senators, but these are 
important debates," he said, adding: "I don't know if I can win or not."

Paul also argued that he's the most electable candidate. He said polls have 
shown he could beat Hillary Clinton in Colorado, Iowa, Pennsylvania and New 
Hampshire.

"Quinnipiac did a national poll this week ... and only 2 Republicans, and I was 
one of them, beat Hillary Clinton in a nationwide poll," he said. "So people 
need to ask themselves, and Republicans need to ask themselves, who can win in 
the fall?"

In fact, the Quinnipiac University poll he referred to showed Clinton leading 
Paul by 4 points, 46 % to 42 %, in a hypothetical matchup.

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

How America's Death Penalty Ends----Nebraska marks an important new milestone 
in the abolition of capital punishment.



The decision Wednesday by the state of Nebraska to abolish the death penalty 
suggests that what seemed unimaginable as recently as a decade ago - namely 
that the United States would join most of the rest of the world in abolishing 
capital punishment - now seems well within the horizon of possibility.

The surprise move by the Nebraska legislature - overriding a gubernatorial veto 
with a bipartisan and sweeping 30-to-19 vote - galvanized and focused public's 
attention on America's death penalty for the 2nd time in just a month. On May 
17, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death. That 
headline though, as dramatic as it was, tells us little about the future of 
capital punishment in the United States; Tsarnaev's case reminds us that even 
in liberal Massachusetts jurors can be persuaded that death is an appropriate 
punishment for an unusually gruesome crime and a particularly unsympathetic 
defendant whose guilt was never in doubt. Yet it should not distract us from a 
clear headed appraisal of the present condition and likely future of America's 
death penalty.

Nebraska's decision, though, represents a true milestone on the road to 
abolition of the death penalty - a sweeping reversal of the 1990s 
tough-on-crime era that saw governors almost bragging about the number of death 
warrants they signed. The factors that led to abolition in staunchly 
conservative Nebraska are the very same factors now finding receptive audiences 
across the country: Put simply, conversation about capital punishment today is 
less about those we seek to punish and more about the damage the death penalty 
does to some our nation's most cherished values, to our beliefs in due process 
and equal treatment and to our commitment to insuring that no innocent person 
pays with his life for a crime he did not commit.

These concerns have, since 2007, led elected officials in New Jersey, New 
Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland and now Nebraska to end the death 
penalty in those states. In each of them political leaders focused less on 
abstract, moral arguments about who does or does not deserve to die and more on 
the realities of a death penalty system that seems in many ways to be 
irreparably broken. Thus, in December 2007 when he signed a bill making New 
Jersey the first state in a generation to abolish capital punishment, then 
Governor Jon Corzine said, "There are many reasons to ban the death penalty in 
New Jersey. None is more important," Corzine continued, "than the fact that it 
is difficult, if not impossible, to develop a foolproof system that precludes 
the possibility of executing the innocent."

18 months later,New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signed a bill ending that 
state's death penalty. Richardson - who once supported capital punishment - 
noted that at that time 130 death-row prisoners had been exonerated across the 
nation, four of them in New Mexico. He observed, "Regardless of my personal 
opinion about the death penalty, I do not have confidence in the criminal 
justice system as it currently operates to be the final arbiter when it comes 
to who lives and who dies for their crime." 4 years after Richardson's 
statement, Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois echoed these same concerns when he 
signed his state's abolition of the death penalty. "Since our experience has 
shown that there is no way to design a perfect death penalty system, free from 
the numerous flaws that can lead to wrongful convictions or discriminatory 
treatment, I have concluded that the proper course of action is to abolish it."

When Connecticut's Governor Daniel Malloy ended his state's death penalty he 
noted that he came to oppose capital punishment while working as a prosecutor. 
"I learned firsthand that our system of justice is very imperfect," he said. "I 
came to believe that doing away with the death penalty was the only way to 
ensure it would not be unfairly imposed."

Similar sentiments were heard in Nebraska. "Lawmakers and Nebraska residents," 
Stacy Anderson, executive director of Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death 
Penalty noted, "recognize the realities of an error-prone system that risks 
executing innocent people and harms murder victim family members. Conservatives 
like me want to see policies that are fiscally responsible, limit the size and 
scope of government, and value life. The death penalty fails on all counts."

(source: Austin Sarat, associate dean of the faculty and William Nelson 
Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, 
is author of Gruesome Spectacles: Botched executions and America's Death 
Penalty----politico.com)

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

Why Conservatives are Now 2nd-Guessing the Death Penalty



For decades, conservatives have generally supported the death penalty as a way 
of maintaining law and order. The nation itself has gone back and forth on the 
issue, seriously curtailing it in several court cases and affirming it in Gregg 
vs. Georgia in 1976. Since that time it has been the craze in a few states 
(with Texas and Florida as the most obvious examples) and not practiced at all 
by others (18 to be exact).

Social conservatives -- still one of the largest political blocs on the right 
-- point to the Bible as a basis for the death penalty. Between an "eye for an 
eye" in the Old Testament law, or the government's right to "bear a sword" in 
the New, the Bible definitely deals with the topic. For most Christian 
religions the New Testament is considered the basis of Christian theology, 
since the "new law" fulfilled the old. In the New Testament, the scripture says 
the death penalty is allowed but not required. Increasingly, social 
conservatives have become comfortable with that reality.

In a conservative dominated Nebraska Legislature, there was an overwhelming 
vote against the death penalty. So strong was the vote that it even survived a 
veto attempt by the governor with a solid override. A coalition of strange 
bedfellows -- individuals who would never support each other on most issues 
came together to vote for the end of the death penalty. It was an impressive 
political feat.

So what has led to such strange voting behavior in Nebraska and the rise of 
groups such as Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty?

For years, people of all political persuasions have been concerned about the 
incredible number of Americans that have found themselves incarcerated. Former 
U.S. Senator Jim Webb, has stated that the U.S. has "5 % of the world's 
population..." and "25 % of the world's known prison population." This 
statement has been verified by PolitiFact and others. It is increasingly 
obvious that governments are in the conviction business rather than in the 
justice business. This has certainly made a case for caution.

Over the last few decades there has been a dramatic increase in the use of DNA 
in convicting individuals of crimes. Often these convictions were proven false 
and overturned. For many of those, the overturning of those cases came too 
late. It is bad enough when governments warehouse people who are not guilty, 
but it is unconscionable for anyone to die for a crime they did not do. Sloppy 
crime scene investigations, disorganized labs, and innocent human error alone 
make a powerful case of stopping short of the death penalty. Life without 
parole makes so much more sense.

Many who are part of the modern conservative movement are actually, 
"conservaterians." This group is often described as individuals who "feel like 
libertarians around conservatives and like conservatives around libertarians." 
Many are libertarians who simply are looking to develop some political clout by 
working in the conservative movement. Others, like myself, are conservatives 
who have simply become more libertarian over time. Regardless of how they fell 
into the conservatarian numbers, they all have a healthy suspicion of 
government.

For years, as a foot soldier in the conservative movement, I long advocated 
support for the death penalty. Like millions of other Americans, I became 
suspicious of a government that has an inconsistent track record when it comes 
to crime, punishment and liberty itself.

What conservatives of all types have become uncomfortable with is the fact that 
the government has become abusive and intrusive altogether. In recent years the 
numbers of conservatives that blindly support the U.S. as the world police 
force has narrowed to a swath called neoconservatives, and that group is 
shrinking in numbers.

Richard Viguerie, the godfather of the modern conservative movement, may of put 
the conservative position against the death penalty best, stating: "The fact 
is, I don't understand why more conservatives don't oppose the death penalty." 
He continued saying that the death penalty "is, after all, a system set up 
under laws established by politicians (too many of whom lack principles); 
enforced by prosecutors (many of whom want to become politicians--perhaps a 
character flaw? -- and who prefer wins over justice); and adjudicated by judges 
(too many of whom administer personal preference rather than the law)." He goes 
on to say that "conservatives have every reason to believe the death penalty 
system is no different from any politicized, costly, inefficient, bureaucratic, 
government-run operation, which we conservatives know are rife with injustice."

The conservative movement against the death penalty is not reaction or 
illogical. It actually makes perfect sense for a people that fundamentally 
claim to distrust government.

(source: Kevin Price, Publisher and Editor in Chief, US Daily 
Review----Huffington Post)

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

Death penalty debate stirred by Boston sentence



The death sentence of convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 
combined with 4 allegedly botched executions in the U.S. last year and an 
anticipated Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty this summer, has fueled 
debate among evangelicals regarding the legitimacy of capital punishment.

Nebraska became the 19th state to ban the death penalty, when lawmakers 
overrode Gov. Pete Ricketts' veto of a capital punishment ban May 27.

Whether taking a convicted murderer's life is just, whether the death penalty 
is applied fairly across all races and economic classes and whether the common 
execution method of lethal injection is humane are among the issues under 
consideration. Some states have experienced difficulty obtaining lethal 
injection drugs because European manufacturers have refused to sell them based 
on moral objections to the death penalty.

A federal jury's May 15 decision to sentence Tsarnaev to death for killing 3 
people and injuring hundreds more in a 2013 terrorist attack at the Boston 
Marathon provoked a variety of responses among Southern Baptists.

"I certainly know many people who believe that in certain circumstances the 
death penalty, as a legal function of the state and as a deterrent to crime, is 
justified," Neal Davidson, pastor of the Boston-area Hope Chapel in Sterling, 
Mass., told Baptist Press. "But I don't believe there's been any momentum in 
our state to try to reinstate the death penalty. It's really quite interesting: 
you had a federal trial with the death penalty on the table taking place in a 
state that does not have the death penalty." Massachusetts is among the states 
that have abolished the death penalty for cases tried in state courts, 
according to deathpenaltyinfo.org. Individuals convicted of federal crimes in 
those states may still be sentenced to capital punishment.

On one side of the debate, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary's Daniel 
Heimbach told BP "it would violate the biblical ethic if our government did not 
apply the death penalty" in Tsarnaev's case. On the other side, New Orleans 
pastor David Crosby said he would suspend capital punishment if he could and 
noted that death row inmates he ministered to said the term "capital 
punishment" derives from the fact that people with no capital receive the 
punishment more often than people of means who commit similar crimes.

Other evangelicals endorse the death penalty in a highly qualified manner or 
are undecided about it. Davidson told BP he is "not categorically opposed [to] 
or in favor" of capital punishment. He believes there is biblical warrant for 
employing it as a means of just punishment and a deterrent to crime. But he 
worries about the possibility of human error in death penalty cases and wants 
to "err on the side of grace."

A 2000 Southern Baptist Convention resolution supported "the fair and equitable 
use of capital punishment by civil magistrates as a legitimate form of 
punishment for those guilty of murder or treasonous acts that result in death."

Other Christian groups that have affirmed capital punishment include the 
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the National Association of Evangelicals. 
The Assemblies of God has posted on its website a defense of capital punishment 
that acknowledges disagreement among members of Assemblies of God churches. The 
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the National Council of Churches, the 
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops all 
have opposed the death penalty.

A 2014 Gallup poll found that 61 % of Americans believe the death penalty is 
morally acceptable. Support has dropped below 60 % only once in the past 13 
years, according to a ReligionLink report. Most other developed nations have 
abolished the death penalty.

Whether lethal injection is humane has been one focus of debate during the past 
year, with four allegedly botched lethal injections in the U.S. in 2014, 
according to NPR. In Oklahoma, convicted murderer Clayton Lockett appeared to 
twist on the gurney after death chamber staff failed to place his intravenous 
line properly, Reuters reported.

In Arizona, convicted double murderer Joseph Wood took nearly two hours to die 
and had to be administered 15 doses of the lethal drug, according to USA Today. 
The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of the current term on a case 
challenging Oklahoma's method of lethal injection as a breach of the 
Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

Biblical arguments

Heimbach, senior professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern, offered 2 
reasons for "believing the Bible requires government to execute persons proven 
guilty of premeditated murder," though he noted there are additional reasons.

"The 1st is because in Genesis 9:5 the Creator says that anyone guilty of 
murder forfeits his own life by doing so," Heimbach said in written comments. 
"And, since the sanctity of life ethic comes from God, and derives from the 
Creator-creature relationship, this is a very strong argument. The 2nd comes 
from the last part of Ezekiel 13:19 where God says sparing the lives of 
murderers is a moral lie contrary to the sanctity of life ethic He requires."

Heimbach cautioned that governments should "never rush to judgment," "never 
place retribution in the hands of private citizens" and "never demand killing 
anyone based on feeling self-righteous anger, hate or fear." As with all 
humans, the debt murderers owe "can be truly satisfied only by the death 
penalty Jesus paid," he said.

The Boston Marathon bomber's trial illustrates how love and justice should both 
be considered during sentencing in a murder case, Heimbach said.

"Biblical love never lessens what biblical justice requires, and it is love for 
those whose lives were lost that demands the bomber forfeit his. Taking the 
bomber's life cannot possibly pay for what he stole and should not be taken 
this way. But what it can do, and should do, is tell the world and God that the 
people the bomber murdered were deeply and truly loved, and that what he did 
was irretrievably wrong," Heimbach said.

For Crosby, pastor of First Baptist Church in New Orleans, ministering to death 
row inmates in Texas helped solidify a developing conviction that the U.S. 
should abolish capital punishment. As a pastor in Texas, he led a weekly Bible 
study for death row inmates for six years at the Mountain View Unit in 
Gatesville. Among the inmates he baptized and discipled was Karla Faye Tucker, 
a convicted double murderer whose highly publicized conversion to faith in 
Christ occurred just before she met Crosby.

Tucker's 1998 execution by lethal injection marked the first time a woman in 
the U.S. had been executed since 1984.

"I remember the moment that I knew she was dead, but I did not witness the 
execution," said Crosby, who discipled Tucker 4 years and moved to New Orleans 
shortly before her execution.

Crosby told First Baptist the following Sunday, "I am a citizen of this 
republic. This is participatory government -- government of the people, by the 
people and for the people. And here's one of the people who doesn't want to 
kill these other people anymore."

The death penalty, Crosby told BP, too often is unjustly administered and does 
not serve as a deterrent to crime.

"It's pretty evident that given the same charges [and] the same conviction, 
poor people are more likely to be executed than wealthy people," Crosby said. 
"Black people are more likely to be executed than white people. That's just 
true statistically. It's undeniable."

The death penalty may be just in individual cases, Crosby said, but the racial 
and economic disparities of the system should provoke objections among 
believers.

During his doctoral studies at Baylor University, Crosby researched the death 
penalty as a deterrent to crime and found lower murder rates in jurisdictions 
without capital punishment. He also told BP it costs considerably less by most 
accounts to imprison a person for life than it does to fund extended court 
proceedings and the execution itself.

Though Scripture allows capital punishment, it is unclear how often it was 
administered in the Old Testament, and we no longer employ it, as Israelites 
were permitted to do, for offenses like adultery and rebellion against parents, 
Crosby said. Additionally, God's decision to spare Cain's life demonstrates 
that murder does not require the death penalty, he said.

Crosby cited the unjust executions of Jesus and Stephen in the New Testament as 
illustrations that systems of government can fail in the process of 
administering capital punishment.

The Gospel on death row

Regardless of their stances on the death penalty, Southern Baptists agree on 
the necessity of sharing the Gospel with death row inmates -- an emphasis 
highlighted by the 2000 resolution. New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary's 
program in the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola and Southwestern Baptist 
Theological Seminary's extension program in the Texas Department of Criminal 
Justice's Darrington Unit carry out such a ministry.

Ben Phillips, director of Southwestern's Darrington extension, told BP 2 recent 
graduates with bachelor's degrees in biblical studies were on death row before 
having their sentences reduced to life in prison. Though Phillips believes the 
death penalty is a just punishment for willfully taking an innocent, 
defenseless life, he says Christians should love mercy and take the Gospel to 
prisoners sentenced to death.

One Southwestern graduate who used to be on death row hopes to return to 
minister to inmates there, Phillips said.

"Rather than celebrate the application of the death penalty in general or any 
particular case," Phillips said, "we need to love mercy and not only in a 
general sense hope that 'those people' will come to Christ, but actively work 
to share the Gospel with them in a way that speaks to them."

(source: David Roach is chief national correspondent for Baptist Press, the 
Southern Baptist Convention's news service----The Baptist Press)