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

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 3



NEBRASKA:

State fails again to get death penalty drug


Nebraska prison officials unsuccessfully tried to buy a key lethal injection 
drug from a Mississippi-based pharmaceutical company after spending months 
trying to import tens of thousands of dollars in execution drugs from India, 
according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services ordered about $825 worth of 
pancuronium bromide last month from Gulf Coast Pharmaceuticals Plus, which 
replaced a firm that was dissolved in 2013 after it faced disciplinary action 
in other states.

Documents obtained through an open records request show the order was placed 
Oct. 14, amid an ongoing challenge to lawmakers' decision to repeal the death 
penalty in Nebraska, which hasn't carried out an execution in 18 years. The 
four-box order was cancelled a day later, after the company said the product 
wasn't available.

Nebraska had already spent $26,000 to buy 1,000 doses of the drug from an 
Indian distributor, along with 1,000 doses of the anesthetic sodium thiopental, 
but the shipment was blocked in India because it didn't have proper shipping 
papers. Similar orders by Arizona and Texas that made it to the United States 
were confiscated by federal authorities.

Both drugs are required as part of Nebraska's 3-drug lethal injection protocol, 
but sodium thiopental currently has no legal uses in the U.S. Nebraska already 
has the 3rd drug, potassium chloride, which is used to stop the heart.

The latest attempted purchase reflects problems faced by many death-penalty 
states trying to buy drugs for executions amid a nationwide shortage. It also 
followed months of public statements by Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts that the 
state was working to import the drug from India-based Harris Pharma. The U.S. 
Food and Drug Administration has repeatedly said states cannot legally import 
lethal injection drugs, but Nebraska and others have attempted to do so.

A Nebraska Department of Correctional Services spokesman didn't return phone 
messages seeking comment Monday. A message left for Gulf Coast Pharmaceuticals 
Plus also wasn't returned.

Gulf Coast Pharmaceuticals Plus, based in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, bills 
itself as a pharmaceutical distributor to hospitals, pharmacies and physician 
practices. The company is owned by Debra Ritchey.

Her husband, Kenneth Ritchey, was president of Gulf Coast Pharmaceuticals Inc., 
which lost its pharmacy wholesaler license in Oklahoma in 2010 after being 
accused of shipping unusually large amounts of pain killers and relaxants to 
Oklahoma pharmacies licensed by American Indian tribes.

The company admitted selling 13.8 million doses of three different drugs to one 
pharmacy in a six-month period. It also acknowledged it didn't have procedures 
to monitor suspicious orders or seek a state license before it started doing 
business. The case triggered a wave of revocations in other states where the 
company was licensed.

The new company was granted a license in March, but regulators believe the 
management hasn't changed, said Cindy Hamilton, the Oklahoma State Board of 
Pharmacy's chief compliance officer.

"We're keeping an eye on them," Hamilton said. She said Oklahoma regulators 
revoked the old company's license because it was distributing "huge quantities 
of medication that could be abused" by the public.

In Nebraska, lawmakers abolished the death penalty in May by overriding 
Ricketts' veto. But that triggered a statewide petition drive that halted the 
repeal until voters can weigh in on the issue during the November 2016 
election.

Nebraska currently has 10 men on death row, but it hasn't carried out an 
execution since 1997. The state has never used its current lethal injection 
protocol; the last execution relied on the electric chair.

Dan Parsons, a spokesman for the anti-death penalty group Nebraskans for Public 
Safety, said the records provide more evidence that the state's death penalty 
is broken beyond repair, "and taxpayers are out tens of thousands of dollars."

(source: Associated Press)






COLORADO:

Colorado death sentence inmates moved to state penitentiary----Nathan Dunlap 
and 2 other condemned inmates were moved from Sterling to Canon City


3 inmates in Colorado facing the death penalty were moved recently from a 
prison in Sterling to Canon City, a corrections official said Monday.

Nathan Dunlap, Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray are now being housed in the 
Colorado State Penitentiary, said Adrienne Jacobson, a Colorado Department of 
Corrections spokeswoman.

The 3 were housed in the Sterling Correctional Facility for about the past 4 
years, and the move back to Canon City brings them full circle.

The 3 were moved to Sterling because of a lack of outdoor access, Jacobson 
said. That issue has been resolved and they are now back at the state 
penitentiary.

All 3 are housed in "management controlled units," among a group of 5 other 
inmates. The death sentence inmates typically are out of their cells for about 
4 hours daily.

The recent moves, within the past 2 weeks, back to Canon City were without 
incident.

(source: Denver Post)






NEVADA:

Man who killed Wash. woman in Las Vegas faces death penalty


A jury that quickly found a self-styled pimp guilty of killing 3 people in a 
spectacular shooting and fiery crash on the Las Vegas Strip returns to a Nevada 
courtroom on Monday to begin deciding whether he should receive the death 
penalty.

The jury deliberated less than 20 minutes a week ago before finding Ammar Asim 
Faruq Harris guilty of killing an aspiring rapper in a Maserati sports car and 
a cab driver and a tourist from Washington state in a taxi that exploded in a 
fireball early Feb. 21, 2013.

No one disputed during his weeklong trial that the 29-year-old Harris was the 
shooter.

Prosecutors and witnesses said Harris argued with a man at a hip-hop concert at 
the Aria resort, and video showed the black Range Rover he was driving 
jockeying with the Maserati during a short chase between stoplights on neon-lit 
Las Vegas Boulevard.

Harris didn't testify at trial, and isn't expected to testify during the 
penalty phase.

He maintained through his lawyers that he was defending himself when he shot 
into the Maserati, killing aspiring rapper Kenneth Wayne Cherry Jr., and 
wounding a passenger, Freddy Walters.

The sports car then sped through a red light and crashed into a taxi that 
ignited in flames, killing cab driver Michael Boldon and passenger Sandra 
Sutton-Wasmund of Maple Valley, Washington.


5 other people were injured in several other vehicles involved in 
chain-reaction crashes.


Dashboard video from a nearby taxi showed apparent gunshots from the black SUV 
before the carnage in front of the Caesars Palace and Flamingo resorts. Cameras 
caught the Range Rover speeding away in the night.

Although police found no gun in the wrecked Maserati, and no bullet holes were 
found in the Range Rover, Harris' lawyers, Thomas Ericsson and Robert Langford, 
maintained the shooting was self-defense.

Harris grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and lived in Miami and Atlanta. He fled 
Las Vegas the day after the shooting, and was arrested a week later in Los 
Angeles.

He was convicted in 2013 of raping and robbing an 18-year-old woman at a Las 
Vegas condominium in June 2010, and is serving 16 years to life in Nevada 
prison. That case is being appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court.

Harris was previously convicted in South Carolina in 2004 of a felony weapon 
charge, and he was convicted earlier this year of bribing a Nevada prison guard 
to smuggle cellphones, takeout chicken and vodka to him behind bars.

(source: KOMO news)






USA:

Plea hearing set for man accused of killing police informant


A Charleston man charged by federal prosecutors with killing a police informant 
is expected to plead guilty next week.

Marlon Dewayne "Ice" Dixon, 39, is accused of killing Branda Mae Delight 
Basham, 21, to prevent her from testifying or continuing to provide information 
against him to police. Basham's body was found on railroad tracks on the West 
Side in July 2014.

A plea hearing is set for Nov. 9 in front of U.S. District Court Judge Thomas 
Johnston in Charleston. Prosecutors in U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin's office 
wouldn't say Monday whether the Department of Justice has determined yet 
whether to seek the death penalty against Dixon. The charges a federal grand 
jury returned against Dixon last October made him eligible for the death 
penalty or life in prison, Goodwin has said. It's up to the DOJ to make that 
determination.

"There is a review process within the DOJ that looks at a number of factors 
under the indictment," Goodwin said last year. Charleston attorney John Carr, 
who represents Dixon, wouldn't comment Monday about the case. In cases where 
the death penalty is a possibility, a defendant is appointed 2 attorneys - one 
of whom should be experienced with handling those types of cases. Claire 
Cardwell is serving as lead counsel for Dixon because she's from Richmond, 
Virginia, where the death penalty is used. West Virginia abolished capital 
punishment at the state level in 1965, but the federal government can still ask 
for it.

A 7-count indictment charges Dixon with murder, 3 counts of distributing 
heroin, 2 counts of tampering with a witness by killing her, and being a felon 
in possession of a firearm.

According to the indictment, Dixon was convicted in federal court of 
distributing cocaine in 1999 and again in 2006. He was convicted in 2007 of 
malicious wounding in Kanawha Circuit Court.Prosecutors allege Dixon killed 
Basham in retaliation for her cooperation with police. She was shot 3 times on 
July 12, 2014. Her body was found near Breece and Madison streets. Dixon was 
arrested about a week later.

He was originally charged with 1st-degree murder in Kanawha Circuit Court, but 
federal prosecutors decided to take the case. Goodwin previously cited his 
office's crackdown on heroin distribution as a reason for filing the federal 
charges. Dixon has remained jailed without bond since he was arrested in July 
2014.

Basham was working as an informant for the Metropolitan Drug Enforcement 
Network Team, according to an affidavit police used to obtain a search warrant 
for Dixon's cell phone. At least 3 times in May 2014, Basham made controlled 
purchases of heroin from Dixon. A woman told police that Dixon showed up at her 
house the night Basham was killed and asked her to wash his clothes. Dixon can 
allegedly be seen on surveillance footage wiping down the front doorknob and 
door at the woman's home, according to police.

Police found blood on both the door and a pair of athletic shoes alleged to be 
Dixon's.

The same witness told police Dixon was carrying a black pistol in his waistband 
the night of Basham's slaying and told her Basham was killed because she wore a 
wire and was working as an informant for the police, court documents 
state.Basham's cellphone records show communication with a number police 
believe belonged to Dixon in the moments leading up to her death. Phone records 
allegedly show Dixon was the last person to communicate with Basham.

(source: Charleston (W. Va.) Gazette Mail)

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

Some find redemption on death row, but few find mercy


Strapped to the execution gurney in Huntsville, Texas, Michael Hall told those 
assembled to watch him die that he was not the same man who had shot a 
19-year-old woman to death 13 years earlier.

"The old is gone," he said. "That person is dead."

Stories of condemned inmates who find God and goodness while they await 
execution are nothing new. But in recent decades, they have become a lot more 
plausible. A century ago, the condemned counted their time on death row in 
months. Now they count it in years - and sometimes decades. Those executed in 
2011, the year Hall was put to death, had spent an average of 16.5 years on 
death row.

As a historian of the modern American death penalty, I have argued that the 
extraordinary amount of time that now elapses between sentencing and execution 
has changed the public's perception of capital punishment. It has also changed 
the condemned.

Death row transformations

The passage of time now allows those sentenced to death to do what their 
predecessors never could have done.

They publish books warning children about the dangers of gang membership. They 
earn theology certificates from divinity schools. They even fall in love and 
get married.

Those on both sides of the political spectrum have been moved by stories of a 
condemned person's transformation.

In the 1990s, conservative Evangelical minister Pat Robertson led a campaign to 
save the life of Karla Faye Tucker, a Texas woman whose "genuine change of 
heart" seemed so authentic that it forced him to rethink his support of the 
death penalty.

In the 2000s, a decidedly more progressive set of advocates tried to stop the 
execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams in California. Williams, a cofounder of 
the Crips street gang, had been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his 
antigang activism from death row. To execute him would be to execute a man who 
no longer existed, they argued.

But these well-publicized campaigns, and their less-visible counterparts, have 
failed. Tucker was executed in 1998, Williams in 2005.

Redeemed, but not saved

Just this past September, Pope Francis pleaded with the Georgia Board of 
Pardons and Paroles to spare the life of Kelly Gissendaner, a woman who planned 
her husband's murder in 1998.

In her decade-and-a-half stay on death row, Gissendaner had earned a 
theological certificate and struck up a friendship with the internationally 
renowned German theologian Jurgen Moltmann. A photo of her graduation from her 
theology program shows her proudly showing Moltmann her final project for the 
class: a devotional called "Journey of Hope by Faith."

Gissendaner's redemption did not matter. Georgia executed her on September 30.

Her death was consistent with a peculiar trend in the history of the American 
death penalty: As the growing amount of time between sentencing and execution 
has made redemption claims more plausible, mercy has ironically become more 
difficult to find.

Skepticism about jailhouse conversions and a desire to do justice for murder 
victims and their family members are certainly part of the reason. But a less 
obvious and strikingly different explanation comes from our history.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, rehabilitation was a central objective of 
execution. In Colonial America, Puritans conceived of a death sentence as a 
mechanism for inducing penitence in the wayward.

Even in the 19th century, a few supporters of capital punishment took issue 
with the notion that the punishment of death was at odds with the goal of 
reforming the wicked. The sentence of death was far more likely to bring a 
wayward sheep back into the flock than was consignment to the penitentiaries 
that were sprouting up in the nation, conservative ministers like George 
Cheever thought.

When it's made explicit, such logic may seem foreign to modern Americans living 
in a comparatively secular age. But popular culture from our recent history 
shows us that this way of thinking still holds unconscious sway over us.

In several cinematic takes on the death penalty at the end of the 20th century 
- from The Green Mile and Dead Man Walking to The Chamber - a death sentence, 
brought to its conclusion, helps guilty inmates find a goodness within 
themselves that was never before there. An execution date, these films 
suggested, prompts a degree of self-examination and personal transformation 
that incarceration cannot rival.

A holy penalty

These films suggest that a centuries-old strain of Christian thought remains 
with us, softening our collective capacity to see the death penalty as cruel. 
In a nation filled with believers in an afterlife, the redemption of a 
condemned person does not make the death penalty horrible; it makes it holy.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has suggested that Americans' religious 
character has made them more tolerant of capital punishment. Scalia, a Catholic 
defender of the death penalty, has noted that it is no surprise that the global 
movement against the death penalty took its firmest hold in "post-Christian 
Europe" rather than in the still-Christian United States. "For the believing 
Christian, death is no big deal," he has argued, not an end to all existence, 
but merely to an earthly one.

In a more secular form, we might hear echoes of such thinking in a 2007 Supreme 
Court opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy. "It might be said," Kennedy 
observed, "that capital punishment is imposed because it has the potential to 
make the offender recognize at last the gravity of his crime."

Such a sensibility helps to explain why death penalty abolitionism is difficult 
in the United States.

In our collective imagination, capital punishment has sometimes seemed like a 
sanction that brings closure not only to the family members of victims, but 
also to the condemned themselves.

"If the State of Georgia offers no mercy, she has received already the mercy of 
Heaven," the German theologian Moltmann said when the Georgia Board of Pardon 
and Paroles denied Kelly Gissendaner???s clemency last February.

In American culture, though, there has long been a symbiotic relationship 
between the harshness of the state and the mercy of heaven.

(source: Daniel LaChance, theconversation.com)





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

'Western Bandit' suspect charged with capital murder, faces death penalty


A man suspected of being the "Western Bandit" was arrested and charged with 
capital murder and dozens of counts of attempted murder, the Los Angeles County 
District Attorney's Office announced Monday.

Patrick Watkins, 51, was charged with 2 counts of murder, 26 counts of 
attempted murder, 13 counts of assault with a firearm, 5 counts of shooting at 
an occupied car, and 4 counts of 2nd-degree robbery and felon in possession of 
a firearm.

Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck said Watkins has a violent 
history during a press conference Monday afternoon. Mayor Eric Garcetti was 
also in attendance and spoke out against Watkin's suspected actions.

"In some ways just calling him a bandit doesn't begin to capture the fear and 
the actions of this man who is a cold-blooded killer," Garcetti said.

He is suspected of killing Nathan Vickers on Jan. 17, 2011 and Larise Smith on 
Dec. 8, 2014. Both charges carry special circumstances, which makes Watkins 
eligible for the death penalty.

Investigators said Watkins was linked to the series of crimes with the help of 
DNA evidence collected during a prior arrest.

The nickname "Western Bandit" comes from the series of armed robberies and 
shootings that happened along Western Avenue between November 2011 and November 
2014.

Watkins is suspected of riding his bicycle up to people sitting in cars along 
the avenue. Authorities said he demanded cash or opened fire on occupants. In 
some cases, he is said to have approached people on foot and either robbed them 
or shot them.

The case remains under investigation with the LAPD.

(source: KABC news)