[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----DEL., VA., S.C., LA., OHIO, MO.

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 2



DELAWARE:

Dover Democrat to bring death penalty repeal bill back in January


1 state legislator plans to suspend the rules, and bring the death penalty 
repeal to the Delaware House floor.

Once the General Assembly returns to Legislative Hall in January, 
Representative Sean Lynn (D-Dover) plans to suspend rules and bring Senate Bill 
40, which would repeal the death penalty, to the House floor for a hearing and 
vote.

The bill was voted down 6-5 by the House Judiciary Committee in May, and Lynn, 
a Democrat from Dover, said it's not the Democratic way for this bill to 
languish in committee.

"It's exceedingly frustrating that it's stuck in committee--it's frustrating 
that it is denied a full and final hearing on the merits," said Lynn. "That 
really, the bill is not being dealt with substantively, but is being kind of 
hampered procedurally," Lynn told Delaware 105.9.

Lynn added that he thinks the bill, in its present form, would pass the full 
House, but he is worried amendments could be added to Senate Bill 40 that would 
cause his colleagues to vote it down.

"That may be used as a technique to essentially kill the bill or create such a 
procedural quagmire that for all intens and purposes, the bill is killed, so 
yeah, I'm absolutely fearful of that.

Lynn didn't say whether he plans to suspend the rules on the 1st day of the 
session, but he did say will do so in January.

(source: WDEL news)






VIRGINIA:

Death Penalty Support, Use Erodes in Virginia and US


The death penalty is in a long, slow decline in Virginia and nationally, 
according to opinion polls and how often it's being used.

Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, says 
surveys show support for the death sentence is at a 40-year low, and last year 
saw the lowest number of executions in 2 decades.

Dunham says people are seeing practical problems with putting people to death, 
including the costs and botched executions.

There also has been what he calls an innocence revolution - a wave of death row 
inmates later proven not guilty.

"DNA has shown people have gone to death row who clearly didn't commit the 
offense," Dunham points out. "Innocent people are being convicted. There are 
false confessions. There are fabricated confessions. That's causing people 
concern."

Death penalty supporters argue harsh justice is a deterrent to crime.

Although Virginia executed Alfredo Prieto a month ago, the number of executions 
in the state has fallen sharply.

Dunham says Virginia used to have one of the highest execution rates, until a 
court decision that changed jury instructions reduced the number of death 
sentences by 3/4.

Dunham explains there used to be the misconception that if a capital convict 
was not executed, he or she could eventually be released on parole. But he says 
court rules were changed so that juries would be informed that a life sentence 
would really mean life behind bars.

"Immediately when the juries were told that their sentencing option was life 
without possibility of parole and death, as opposed to just life or death, the 
rate of death sentencing dropped dramatically," he explains.

One Virginia death row inmate was exonerated and then pardoned in 2000.

The state has also had complex problems getting the drugs used for lethal 
injections. Dunham says FBI figures, confirmed by several studies, show the 
death penalty doesn't deter crime in any measurable way.

"There actually is no demonstrable effect at all," he stresses. "In fact, 
murder rates are higher in states that have the death penalty than in states 
that don't have the death penalty."

(source: Dan Heyman, Public News Service)






SOUTH CAROLINA:

Death penalty problems are inexcusable


Death penalty opponents have an indisputable argument that the ultimate 
punishment inflicted by the state is terrible when evidence ultimately shows 
the person executed did not commit the crime.

It has happened, and cases in which the technology of today proves cases of old 
resulted in conviction of the wrong individual makes the argument against 
putting someone to death even stronger. Amends in some way can be made by 
releasing the innocent from imprisonment, but there is no bringing the executed 
back to life.

Beyond such a mistake, the Supreme Court has decided that capital punishment is 
not cruel and unusual, and states have the right in certain cases to exact 
societal retribution on those who take the lives of others. Execution in such 
cases is justice.

But the death penalty as we know it today is not working. Cast aside any 
concept that capital punishment is some kind of major deterrent to violent 
crime. The cases drag on and on in the court system until very many violent 
offenders of today were children or as yet unborn when the crimes for which an 
execution is being conducted were committed.

Cases related to Orangeburg County and The T&D Region are an example. On South 
Carolina's death row at present are:

--Bayan Aleksey - Shot and killed Highway Patrol 1st Sgt. Frankie Lingard on 
New Year's Eve, 1997. Lingard stopped a white Mustang on Interstate 95 near 
Santee. Aleksey shot the trooper as he called in the vehicle's license plate.

--Samuel L. Stokes - Convicted of killing and sexually assaulting 21-year-old 
Connie Snipes, whose body was found near Branchville in May 1998. She had been 
shot twice in the head.

--Mikal Deen Mahdi - After pleading guilty to the 2004 shooting of Orangeburg 
Department of Public Safety Capt. James Myers, Mahdi received the death 
sentence. He was also sentenced to life in prison in the shooting death of a 
North Carolina store clerk.

--Kenneth Simmons - Sentenced to die for raping and killing an 87-year-old 
woman in Dorchester County in September 1996. --John Edward Weik - Convicted in 
1999 in the shotgun slaying of 27-year-old Susan Hutto Krasae at her home in 
Knightsville. Weik confessed to shooting Krasae 4 times.

--Marion Bowman Jr. - Shot and killed 21-year-old Kandee Louise Martin before 
placing her body in the trunk of her car and setting the car on fire in 
February 2001.

We long have argued the primary problem with capital punishment is the cases 
are not treated with the priority they are due. A capital case should push 
ahead of others on the docket, particularly with regard to appeals.

As inexcusable as it is that it takes well beyond a decade to move a capital 
case from crime to punishment, the present-day controversy surrounding 
executions is worse.

It is unfathomable that executions of individuals cannot be carried out in a 
swift and painless fashion without problems that largely stem from lethal 
injection.

Lethal injection has been challenged in the courts many times, mostly without 
success. The biggest obstacle now for death-penalty states has been obtaining 
lethal chemicals after major drug makers stopped selling drugs for use in 
executions. That forced states to seek alternative drugs.

The result has been all manner of problems with capital punishment - including 
more delays and more legal challenges.

The U.S. Supreme Court presently has a handful of capital cases before it, and 
indications are that problems surrounding the death penalty could actually push 
the conservative court to reinstitute a national prohibition.

In reality, there is practically a ban on capital punishment now. South 
Carolina, for example, has not executed anyone since 2011. And other states 
have instituted formal delays until issues surrounding lethal injection and 
other aspects of capital cases can be resolved. They may never be.

But while the death penalty remains the law here and in other states, 
punishment should be carried out and without years and years of delays.

If lethal injection has question marks, eliminate it as an execution method. It 
is inexcusable that a painless and efficient way of swiftly executing a killer 
cannot be foolproof. Death penalty opponents and proponents alike should agree 
on that.

(source: The Times and Democrat)






LOUISIANA:

Jury unanimously takes convicted killer off death row


The 2nd jury to convict a Shreveport man of strangling and dismembering an 
86-year-old World War II veteran has voted unanimously to take Eric Mickelson 
off death row and keep him in prison for life.

The verdict came after just under an hour of deliberation Friday about the 
sentence to impose on the 46-year-old man, news media reported.

Jurors convicted Mickelson on Wednesday in the death of Charles Martin, a 
retired painting contractor who was killed during a home invasion in 2007.

Mickelson was convicted and sentenced to death in 2011, but the Louisiana 
Supreme Court threw out that conviction because of an error during jury 
selection. The trial judge should have excused a potential juror who said he 
would not consider arguments that a killer's drug use could be a mitigating 
circumstance that might merit a life sentence instead of the death penalty, the 
justices found.

Prosecutors, led by Caddo District Attorney Dale Cox, began the penalty phase 
Thusrday by telling jurors about a 1996 killing to which Mickelson confessed 
during questioning about Martin's death. Like Martin, Kristi O'Pry was 
strangled, dismembered and her remains scattered throughout the parish.

"If what he did, didn't deserve the death penalty, nothing does," her sister, 
Amy O'Pry, told The Times (http://bit.ly/1MrqhMi ) afterward.

Defense attorneys called expert witnesses including a forensic psychiatrist and 
a neuropsychologist on Friday. Both testified that Mickelson suffered from a 
condition that includes symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

"Much of what he says doesn't make sense," said Dr. Bhushan Agharkar, a 
forensic psychologist from Syracuse, New York. He said Mickelson also was 
delusional, citing his claim to have made $3.6 million by stealing quarters 
from vending machines.

(source: Associated Press)






OHIO:

Visiting judge sets hearing in Akron to decide whether Warren killer gets to 
ask for new trial


A visiting judge has scheduled a hearing at 10 a.m. Dec. 21 in the Summit 
County Courthouse to allow murderer Danny Lee Hill and his attorneys to argue 
why the judge should give them permission to ask for a new trial.

Hill will be present for the hearing only through video-conferencing.

Hill, 48, has been on death row since 1986, when he was convicted of the 1985 
rape, torture and murder of Raymond Fife, 12, of Warren. Hill and co-defendant 
Timothy Combs attacked the boy while he was on his way to a Boy Scouts meeting.

Hill was sentenced to death. He attempted to be excluded from the death penalty 
by arguing he was mentally disabled, but a visiting judge ruled against it. 
Combs, who was a juvenile at the time of the crime, is serving a life prison 
sentence.

Attorneys Sarah Kostick of Tucson, Ariz., and Vicki Ruth Adams Werneke of the 
U.S. Public Defender's Office in Cleveland, filed a 400-page request in 
Trumbull County Common Pleas Court in 2014 seeking permission to ask for a new 
trial.

The grounds for the request were that bite-mark evidence used at Hill's trial 
has been deemed in recent years unreliable by the National Academies of 
Sciences.

The Ohio Attorney General's Office and Trumbull County Prosecutor's Office have 
argued that bite-mark evidence was not crucial to the state's case against 
Hill.

Judge Andrew Logan of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court voluntarily allowed 
the Ohio Supreme Court to appoint a visiting judge to handle the matter.

The Supreme Court appointed Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove, a Summit County judge, 
to the case. Judge Cosgrove issued Friday's order, which was sent to Hill's 
attorneys and the Trumbull County Prosecutor's Office.

Judge Cosgrove has not ruled on Hill's request that the prosecutor's office be 
disqualified from being involved in the matter.

(source: vindy.com)






MISSOURI----impending execution

Ernest Lee Johnson to be executed Tuesday for 1994 triple murder


Barring clemency or any granted stays, Ernest Lee Johnson will become the 7th 
death row inmate executed in Missouri this year, and the 19th since the state 
resumed lethal injections 2 years ago.

Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death in the 1994 murders of Mary 
Bratcher, Fred Jones and Mabel Scruggs. The 3 victims were all killed at a 
Casey's General store in Columbia, where they were employed at the time.

According to prosecutors, Johnson had planned to rob the convenience store. 
Police found the victims' bodies inside the store, along with a bloody hammer. 
All 3 died from blunt force trauma, and one of the victims also had stab 
wounds. A bloody screwdriver was found in a nearby field.

After obtaining a search warrant for Johnson's girlfriend's house, Columbia 
police found a pair of tennis shoes with a logo that matched bloody footprints 
at the scene, along with cash, coin wrappers and a receipt from the convenience 
store.

Other articles of clothing found by police also contained splattered blood that 
was later matched to 2 of the murder victims.

Johnson was convicted in 1995 of killing Bratcher, Jones and Scruggs, and was 
sentenced to death. However, the Missouri Supreme Court vacated his death 
sentence and ordered a new sentencing hearing, based on questions as to whether 
Johnson had insufficient representation at trial. But after the hearing, 
Johnson was sentenced to death again.

That sentence was also later tossed out by the state Supreme Court, this time 
because of questions surrounding Johnson's mental capacity. Another sentencing 
hearing, though, resulted in the death sentence being reinstated again.

The Missouri Supreme Court last month issued an execution order, which 
triggered the latest appeal, this one based on Johnson's physical health. He 
was diagnosed in 2008 with a slow-growing brain tumor and underwent surgery 
that same year. Doctors were not able to remove all of it, and the surgery 
itself scarred and destroyed part of his brain.

Johnson's attorneys argued that pentobarbital, the execution drug used by 
Missouri, could cause him to suffer violent and uncontrollable seizures and 
would thus constitute cruel and unusual punishment. They argued that their 
client would prefer to be executed by gas chamber, saying that it "would 
significantly reduce the substantial and unjustifiable risk of severe pain."

U.S. District Judge Greg Kays ruled against Johnson on Oct. 28, saying in part:

"Johnson claims that 'temporary relief may cause a short, finite delay in the 
execution,' but ... he provides no basis for his assertion that (the Department 
of Corrections) can rapidly and cost-effectively adopt his preferred method of 
execution. And because Johnson appears to have sat on his rights for some time, 
any impending harm remediable by injunction is at least somewhat of his own 
creation. He has had all facts necessary to prosecute his claim for almost 2 
years. He has known about his brain defects since 2008, and, according to him, 
the State has planned to use pentobarbital in executions since November 2013. 
Notwithstanding, he delayed filing his case until 12 days before his execution 
is set to occur.:

Kays did acknowledge in his ruling that Johnson could experience physical pain 
and seizures from the use of pentobarbital in his lethal injection execution.

Corrections officials responded by saying that Missouri has carried out 18 
executions since November 2013 that were "rapid and painless."

Johnson's attorneys have also argued that he was subjected to physical, mental, 
and sexual abuse as a child, to the point that he was unable to care for 
himself when he became an adult.

(source: St.Louis Public Radio)