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

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 4



NEBRASKA:

Nebraska tried to get lethal injection drug from Mississippi ---- Order placed 
in October for pancuronium bromide from Gulf Coast Pharmaceuticals was 
cancelled after company replied it was unavailable


Nebraska prison officials unsuccessfully tried to buy a lethal injection drug 
from a Mississippi-based pharmaceutical company after spending months trying to 
import some from India, the Associated Press has said, citing documents it 
obtained.

Nebraska correctional services ordered about $825 worth of pancuronium bromide 
in October from Gulf Coast Pharmaceuticals Plus, which replaced a firm that was 
dissolved in 2013 after it faced disciplinary action in other states.

The AP said documents obtained through an open records request showed the order 
was placed 14 October amid an ongoing challenge to lawmakers' decision to 
repeal the death penalty in Nebraska, which has not carried out an execution in 
18 years. The 4-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 US. Nebraska already 
has the 3rd drug, potassium chloride, which is used to stop the heart.

The latest attempted purchase reflects problems faced by death-penalty states 
trying to buy drugs for executions amid a nationwide shortage. It also followed 
months of public statements by Republican Governor Pete Ricketts that the state 
was working to import the drug from India-based Harris Pharma. The US 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 on Monday. A message left for Gulf Coast 
Pharmaceuticals Plus also was not returned.

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

Nebraska has 10 men on death row but has not carried out an execution since 
1997. The state has never used its current lethal injection protocol; the last 
execution used the electric chair.

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

(source: The Guardian)

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

'Daily Show' segment on Nebraska death penalty could air Wednesday night


For those who are curious about how "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah" will 
slice and dice Nebraska's death penalty wrestling match, the segment could air 
as early as Wednesday evening.

Dan Parsons, spokesman for anti-death-penalty group Nebraskans for Public 
Safety, said he's heard from a "Daily Show" producer that the segment taped in 
Lincoln will probably be on Wednesday night's show. That could change to later 
this week, he said.

The show airs at 10 p.m. on Comedy Central, Time Warner Cable channels 67 and 
113. Wednesday's show should re-air at 5:28 p.m. on Thursday.

The TV show sent one of its new correspondents, Desi Lydic, for an interview 
and walk around the Capitol with Sen. Colby Coash. The crew also went to The 
Mill in the Haymarket, and Lydic did a monologue, of sorts, with barista Alison 
Schuerman.

"They were poking fun at our death penalty mess," said Mill co-owner Tamara 
Sloan.

Nebraska hasn't used the death penalty for nearly 2 decades, but 10 men sit on 
death row in Tecumseh.

Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers, along with Coash and other senators, were successful 
in passing a bill to abolish the death penalty in May and then overriding a 
veto by Gov. Pete Ricketts.

Now, a group of death penalty supporters -- bankrolled in part with several 
hundred thousand dollars from Ricketts and his father, Joe -- have gathered 
enough petition signatures to put the repeal on hold until a public vote in 
November 2016.

In the meantime, the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services has no way to 
carry out the penalty because it can't get the drugs it needs to carry out a 
lethal injection -- but not for lack of trying.

(source: Journal Star)






ARIZONA:

Arizona says it has necessary drugs to carry out executions


The state of Arizona says it has a 3-drug combination available to use in 
executions once they resume.

In a federal court notice filed Tuesday, the state says it has midazolam, 
vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride on-hand and that it plans on using 
that combination when executions resume. It's also seeking to obtain sodium 
thiopental, a drug that's banned in the U.S. The FDA has seized a $27,000 
shipment of the drug in July, which the state is appealing.

The notice was filed after a federal judge last week said he wouldn't resume a 
civil rights lawsuit against the state until it revealed which execution drugs 
it had in its possession.

Arizona attorneys have requested that the lawsuit, filed in June 2014 on behalf 
of several death row inmates, be resumed after it was put on hold last year 
through an agreement by both parties. The state can't perform executions until 
the suit is resolved.

The death row inmates seek information about which drugs and drug suppliers the 
state planned on using in executions, which the Department of Corrections had 
refused to release.

Arizona and other death penalty states have struggled to obtain lethal 
injection drugs after European companies stopped supplying them several years 
ago. Sodium thiopental, one of those drugs, is banned in the U.S.

Executions were put on hold following the July 2014 death of convicted killer 
Joseph Rudolph Wood, who was administered 15 doses of midazolam and a 
painkiller and who took over 90 minutes to die.

His attorney, Dale Baich, says the execution was botched.

Since then, the Department of Corrections has issued new protocols that include 
4 different drug combinations that can be used in executions.

But Baich said the state shouldn't use midazolam at all anymore.

"The state's decision to use midazolam as part of a 3-drug formula and continue 
to experiment in carrying out executions is problematic," Baich said. "Arizona 
should know better and not use this drug again."

(source: Associated Press)






NEVADA:

Prosecutor contests psychologist report in death penalty hearing in Vegas Strip 
shooting-crash


A forensic psychologist testified Tuesday that a structured environment like 
prison might help a self-styled pimp convicted of killing 3 people in a 
shooting and fiery crash on the Las Vegas Strip.

But a prosecutor provided records showing that Ammar Asim Faruq Harris had 
disciplinary trouble in prisons in South Carolina and in Nevada - where he was 
convicted of bribing a guard to smuggle items to him. Prosecutor David Stanton 
undercut psychologist Shera Bradley's conclusions that Harris grew up sexually 
abused, neglected and impoverished and that the 29-year-old Harris might 
benefit from a controlled prison environment without access to drugs, alcohol 
or weapons.

"Are you aware ... that what was actually smuggled into High Desert State 
Prison involving Ammar Harris was cellphones, chicken wings, alcohol and 
methamphetamine?" Stanton asked.

Stanton and prosecutor Pamela Weckerly on Wednesday will urge the jury to 
sentence Harris to death. Defense attorneys Robert Langford and Thomas Ericsson 
will seek life in prison.

Bradley acknowledged during questioning by Stanton that most of her conclusions 
about Harris were based on his own accounts and documents collected by his 
defense team.

Harris again chose not to attend his death penalty hearing after being found 
guilty Oct. 26 of 3 counts of murder and other charges in the February 2013 
vehicle-to-vehicle shooting.

He didn't hear wrenching testimony Monday and Tuesday from mournful family 
members of aspiring rapper Kenneth Wayne Cherry Jr., who was mortally wounded 
in a Maserati, taxi driver Michael Boldon and passenger Sandra Sutton-Wasmund 
of Maple Valley, Washington.

"We're almost 2 years and 9 months into this," said James Wasmund, the 
soft-spoken husband of the 3-time breast cancer survivor and mother of 3 who 
was killed in the flaming taxi.

Wasmund, who has declined in the past to speak publicly, characterized his wife 
of nearly 20 years as a "ball of energy" and emotional center of their family - 
and a community coach and catalyst in their tight-knit town outside Seattle. He 
said it became a family joke that he became known by her maiden name, Sutton.

"We lost a year we don't even remember," Wasmund lamented. "Nobody's moved. 
Nobody's matured. I just hope she's proud of us. We're not doing well, but 
we're trying."

Bradley was the only witness in Harris' defense. She testified that she 
couldn't reach his mother about his accounts of his upbringing in a broken 
family in the New York area before he was arrested at age 17 with a stolen gun 
in a stolen car in South Carolina.

Harris' father died when he was 2, and his mother didn't enroll him or his 
younger sister in school while they moved from one public housing project to 
another or spent time homeless, Bradley said.

The mother neglected her children's medical and emotional needs, and Harris 
told the psychologist his mother was only happy when he brought her money. A 
brief enrollment in high school ended when Harris was suspended for fighting 
with another student.

Stanton noted that Harris had a chance at probation revoked for failing to 
follow rules following his weapon possession conviction in South Carolina.

Harris now is serving 16 years to life for raping and robbing an 18-year-old 
woman at a Las Vegas condominium in 2010. The jury won't hear about that case, 
which is being appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court.

(source: Associated Press)






OREGON:

Attorney says if Dayton Rogers gets death penalty again, case could last 30 
years, cost $3 million


The cost of sentencing Dayton Leroy Rogers to death could hit up to $3 million 
if the case winds its way through a potentially decades-long appeals process, a 
defense attorney told a Clackamas County jury on Tuesday.

But if Rogers instead got a true life sentence, it would offer "a real 
punishment (that) will bring this matter to an end, once and for all," attorney 
Lynne Morgan said in her opening statement.

Morgan also gave jurors a snapshot of Rogers' tormented youth rife with 
instability, perverse sexuality and unpredictable violence. Defense witnesses 
will explain how Rogers' twisted childhood led to his heinous crimes, she said.

Rogers, Oregon's most prolific serial killer, was convicted of fatally stabbing 
7 women in 1987. A jury in 1989 sentenced him to die. But the Oregon Supreme 
Court has overturned death sentences for Rogers three times, most recently in 
2012.

He again faces a 12-person jury that will decide his fate in Clackamas County 
Circuit Court.

Over the last few weeks, jurors have heard gruesome details of Rogers' murder 
spree and how he took prostitutes to a remote spot east of Molalla, where he 
tortured them before killing them, sometimes sawing off their feet.

William Long, an attorney, theologian and writer who has studied the Oregon 
death penalty, told jurors that it could take up to 30 more years if the 
Rogers' case continues to wind its way through the 10-step appeals process that 
starts when the jury renders its verdict.

A death sentence is not "the quicker, cheaper option," Long said. "The numbers 
just don't bear that out."

Many of the steps are discretionary and state and federal courts could elect to 
not hear the appeals, said Long, author of "A Tortured History: The Story of 
Capital Punishment in Oregon." But if Rogers' case were to go through all 10 
steps, it could cost taxpayers as much as $3 million more in legal costs, Long 
said.

Rogers, 62, could be in his early 90s by the time his appeals ended and is more 
likely to die of old age than lethal injection, Long said.

Prosecutor Scott Healy disputed Long's conclusions, noting that Oregon's 
appeals process is moving more quickly today and that the courts aren't 
required to the case at each step of the 10 steps.

Healy said that $3 million spent over 30 years is not excessive and noted that 
Long once called Rogers was "the worst of the worst" inmates in Oregon's prison 
system.

Morgan said defense witnesses will explain how Rogers' warped childhood turned 
him into a murderous sexual sadist.

His parents, Ortis and Jasperelle Rogers, were both "psychotic and paranoid and 
likely schizophrenic," she said.

By the time Rogers was 17, the family had moved 39 times, mostly between Oregon 
and Idaho with time in Washington, Arizona, Texas and California.

"The Rogers family was isolated from outsiders and was totally under Ortis' 
control," Morgan said.

"(Ortis) was obsessed by preaching his own interpretation of the Bible. 
Jasperelle was paranoid about the coming of the end of the world," Morgan said.

Beatings were frequent and "transgressions were violently dealt with but where 
the rules changed constantly and arbitrarily," Morgan said.

"The household was filled with inappropriate sexual behaviors," Morgan said.

Ortis Rogers gave sexualized massages to his daughters and "became sexually 
aroused by the beatings he inflicted on his children and was seen to masturbate 
after those beatings," Morgan said.

Jasperelle Rogers walked around the house in a slip and "required her children 
to brush her hair and massage her feet, moaning in pleasure while her feet were 
rubbed by her son, Dayton," Morgan said.

Ortis Rogers would kill family pets in front of his children, bashing in 
kittens' heads with a shovel or rocks, running over a dog with a car and 
placing cats in a "kitty gas chamber," an aquarium he would fill with 
automobile exhaust to asphyxiate the animals, Morgan said.

Sex was considered "dirty, nasty and a sin," Morgan said. "Ortis Rogers 
preached and raged about women, filth and prostitutes and where women who wore 
jewelry or makeup and got into cars with men were whores who deserved what they 
got," she said.

(source: The Oregonian)






USA:

see: https://www.themarshallproject.org/next-to-die

(source: the marshallproject.org)

***********

The Worst Lawyers


Death sentences are down across the country - except for where one of these 
guys is the defense attorney.

20 years ago a law professor wrote that the death penalty in America was handed 
down not "for the worst crime, but for the worst lawyer." Is that still true? 
"He looks like a killer, not a retard," Nathaniel Carr, a lawyer in Maricopa 
County, Arizona, wrote about his client, Israel Naranjo, who is now on death 
row. Naranjo has a standardized IQ score of 72, but Carr badly botched the 
introduction of this evidence at trial. The trial judge found that Carr 
"violated the rules of criminal procedure" and admonished him for both lacking 
candor and filing "offensive" and "incomprehensible" motions. The Arizona 
Supreme Court said Carr's behavior could be described as "willful misconduct." 
Carr has represented 4 of the men who currently occupy Arizona's death row.

One of Carr's capital clients, Daniel Garcia-Saenz, sent the trial judge a 
handwritten letter asking for Carr and his co-counsel to be removed from his 
case because he had "lost all trust and faith in my attorneys." Saenz explained 
that his lawyers had visited him only a few times in 15 months and that he 
became concerned after hearing that Carr had been removed from 2 of his cases 
for failing to show up in court on his clients' behalf.

Defendants get both the deadliest prosecutors in America and some of the 
country's very worst defense lawyers.

Carr might not visit his capital clients very often, but he does seem to be 
dedicated to his job - his other job as a high school football coach. People 
who knew Carr at the county courthouse told Paul Rubin of the Phoenix New Times 
that "coaching seems Carr's true passion." Indeed, Carr "often was unavailable 
to clients and co-counsel on most weekday afternoons during football season - 
and always on game days." This dual career did not stop Carr from billing the 
county an average of $370,000 per year for his services - even though some the 
hours he billed were for team meetings and prison visits that appear to be 
fictitious. (Carr did not respond to requests for comment.)

Last year marked the lowest number of new death sentences in modern American 
history. Nationwide, in the five-year period from 2010 through 2014, only 13 
counties imposed 5 or more death sentences. Maricopa County is one of those 13. 
With 24 new death sentences between 2010 and 2014, Maricopa is the nation's 2nd 
highest producer of death sentences, after Los Angeles County, which is twice 
as populous.

One explanation for why counties like Maricopa hang on to capital punishment is 
that the prosecutors in these places are outliers who continue to pursue death 
sentences with abandon, mitigating circumstances and flaws in the system be 
damned. But prisoners sentenced to death in these counties often suffer a 
double whammy - they get both the deadliest prosecutors in America and some of 
the country's worst capital defense lawyers. Nathanial Carr makes that list of 
awful lawyers, but he is not the only one from Maricopa who deserves to be 
included.

Herman Alcantar has been called, by a lawyer intervening on behalf of 1 of his 
former clients, "arguably the busiest capital defense attorney in the entire 
United States." That's not a compliment. Capital cases are notoriously complex 
and time-consuming. 1 trial-level capital case can be a full caseload for a 
defense attorney, and almost no one considers it a good idea to handle more 
than 2 active death penalty cases at a time. During the winter of 2009, 
Alcantar represented 5 pretrial capital defendants at once. He was so busy, in 
fact, that 1 month before the trial of Fabio Gomez was set to begin, Alcantar 
had neither filed a single substantive motion nor visited his client in more 
than a year. 6 of Alcantar's former clients are on death row.

After a person is found guilty of capital murder, he or she has the right to 
present mitigating circumstances to the jury in an effort to persuade jurors 
not to impose a death sentence. This 2nd phase of a capital trial often lasts 
weeks or months. Alcantar has a reputation for efficiency in these proceedings 
- the mitigation case that he put on for one of his clients, David Anthony, 
lasted less than a day.

In another case, State v. Garcia, Alcantar presented the mitigation case in 
less than 2 days - 1 morning, 1 afternoon. In a 3rd case, Alcantar's client, 
Brian Womble, decided not to present any mitigation evidence. Womble's new 
lawyers allege that Alcantar is the one who pushed Womble to forgo mitigation 
in the absence of a thorough investigation.

In post-conviction proceedings, Womble's new lawyers have discovered that he 
was born addicted to the heroin that his mother abused while she was pregnant. 
As a child, he was thrown down flights of stairs, beaten with a broomstick, and 
had his head slammed into a wooden fence. He stuttered and suffered from head 
injuries, neuropsychological impairment, and symptoms of fetal alcohol 
syndrome. He also had a difficult time in school despite trying hard. Instead 
of supporting his efforts, his mother, herself addicted to heroin and mentally 
ill, called him a "fucking retard" and beat him. Womble developed severe 
depression, tried to kill himself, and had a paranoid delusion that a religious 
organization controlled his life. He also had hallucinations that demons were 
living in his furniture. Hours before the crime that landed him on death row, 
Womble voluntarily entered a mental health treatment facility, saying that he 
wanted to kill himself and possibly others, and yet was permitted to leave. He 
then broke into an apartment and shot 2 people while they were sleeping.

Alcantar discovered almost none of this mitigating evidence; therefore, the 
jury did not know of any reason to spare Brian Womble's life. When 1 of 
Womble's jurors later heard about the new evidence in the case, he said, 
"Knowing all of that, I would have voted for life, no doubt about it."

Alcantar says he genuinely tried to serve his clients, but he was overwhelmed 
with the caseload. He blames the state of Arizona for trying so many death 
penalty cases at once during that period.

* * *

Like Maricopa, Duval County, Florida, is among the few counties in America that 
continue to regularly impose death sentences. Since 2010, it is the 2nd highest 
producer of death sentences per capita, after Caddo Parish, Louisiana.

Matt Shirk, the elected public defender for Duval, campaigned on a promise to 
be "less confrontational when dealing with police in court, ensuring his 
employees would never call a cop a liar."

When Shirk took over, he fired 10 lawyers, including senior capital litigators 
Ann Finnell and Pat McGuinness, whose stellar representation of a wrongfully 
arrested 15-year-old, Brenton Butler, was the subject of an Oscar-winning 
documentary film, Murder on a Sunday Morning. With his experienced capital 
litigators gone, Shirk hired Refik Eler to be his deputy chief and the head of 
homicide prosecutions. Since 2008, Eler has been a defense lawyer on at least 8 
cases that resulted in a death sentence. That's more than any other lawyer in 
Florida. (Eler declined to comment.)

This month, a Florida judge overturned Raymond Morrison's conviction and death 
sentence of a man named Raymond Morrison after finding that Eler failed to 
conduct a basic factual investigation of the circumstances of the crime, failed 
to secure the testimony of alibi witnesses, and also failed to investigate 
evidence of Morrison's "organic brain damage and intellectual disability." "It 
was like he had no attorney," Marty McClain, Morrison's new lawyer, told the 
Florida Times-Union.

In 2013, the Florida Supreme Court reversed death sentence of Michael Shellito 
on the grounds that he had ineffective assistance of counsel. Eler was his 
lawyer, too. Eler did not conduct a "true follow-up on the matters indicated in 
the various reports" of his mental health expert, the court found, and he only 
"made a marginal attempt to present organic brain damage and other impairment 
as mitigation." Shellito's new lawyers discovered that he has bipolar disorder, 
"a mental age of 14 or 15 years, an emotional age of 12 or 13 years, an IQ in 
the low-average range, the presence of organic brain damage," "a prior head 
injury," and that he endured "verified physical and sexual abuse." In State v. 
Douglas, the Florida Supreme Court found that Eler provided a 3rd capital 
client with ineffective assistance. A 4th claim is pending before the Florida 
Supreme Court, and pointed questioning from the justices during argument last 
month suggests that Eler might be found ineffective once again.

* * *

20 years ago, law professor Stephen Bright wrote that the death penalty in 
America was handed down not "for the worst crime, but for the worst lawyer." 
Nathanial Carr, Herman Alcantar, and Refik Eler make it seem like nothing has 
changed. But that is not the case. The quality of defense representation in 
capital cases has substantially improved in many places across the country.

Virginia used to lead the nation in per capita executions, but no one has been 
sentenced to death in the state since 2011. Law professor Brandon Garrett, who 
authored a study on the decline of the death penalty in Virginia, credits 
defense lawyers. In 2004, the state Legislature created a system of regional 
defender offices to handle trial-level capital cases. "The impact of improved 
lawyering is striking," Garrett said. It "does not take the 'best of the best' 
or some kind of 'dream team'," but it does require "a team of specialist 
capital defense lawyers and investigators, preferably working in an office, 
that understand the very different way that a death penalty case must be 
litigated from its inception."

Louisiana is another example of a state that has improved the quality of its 
defense lawyering in capital cases. In 2007, the Louisiana Legislature created 
a statewide public defender board, which included an experienced lawyer to 
serve as the capital case coordinator. More recently, Louisiana enacted 
statewide standards - establishing minimum experience and training requirements 
and governing the performance of defense representation in capital cases - that 
are worthy of national emulation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the Virginia 
study, death sentences have declined throughout Louisiana in recent years.

The quality of defense representation in capital cases has substantially 
improved in many places.

But not in Caddo Parish. Like Maricopa and Duval counties, Caddo Parish, 
Louisiana, is one of the few districts that continue to regularly impose the 
death penalty. Indeed, Caddo has become the leading per capita death-sentencing 
machine in America. Of the death sentences imposed in Caddo Parish since 2005, 
75 % of the cases involved at least 1 defense lawyer who, under the new case 
representation standards, is no longer certified to try capital cases in 
Louisiana.

Daryl Gold, who represented nearly 1 in 5 of the people sent to death row in 
the entire state of Louisiana between 2005 and 2014, is one of those lawyers. 
He has been suspended from the practice of law 3 times. Additionally, as the 
Louisiana Supreme Court explained in his latest disciplinary action, Gold has 
"received 14 private reprimands or admonitions for neglecting legal matters, 
failing to communicate with clients, failing to refund unearned fees, and 
failing to cooperate in a disciplinary investigation." Here's what is amazing: 
Though prohibited from taking on private clients, Gold was allowed to continue 
his "public service employment at the Capital Assistance Project" representing 
poor defendants in capital cases.

His most recent death sentence came in State v. Rodricus Crawford, which 
involved a father convicted of murdering his infant son despite the fact that 
the state's own medical examiner could not be certain that the death was a 
homicide. This is the case in which the prosecutor, Dale Cox, ignored doubt as 
to Crawford's guilt and told the jury to return a death sentence because "when 
it comes to a person who harms a child, Jesus demands his disciples kill the 
abuser by placing a millstone around his neck and throwing him into the sea."

Despite the fact that Caddo juries have returned eight death sentences since 
2005, Gold says he expected his client to be acquitted, and he seems not to 
have adequately prepared for the possibility that his client would be convicted 
of murder and a penalty phase would ensue. When the case ultimately did move to 
the penalty phase, Gold put on less than a day's worth of mitigation evidence.

Capital defense representation in Louisiana, then, mirrors the national 
landscape. Mostly, it is vastly improved from the days when tax lawyers with no 
relevant experience represented people facing the death penalty. As states 
adopt standards that attempt to protect against wrongful convictions and ensure 
adequate representation, though, there is resistance to this change - not just 
from lawyers like Daryl Gold, but also from prosecutors who would prefer to 
practice against the same old defense lawyers that they have steamrolled over 
for years.

In the counties with the most death sentences, prosecutors and defense lawyers, 
often abetted by judges and other local officials, fight to maintain the status 
quo that Stephen Bright wrote about 20 years ago. In these places, the death 
penalty is still a punishment reserved mostly for the people with the worst 
lawyers. Disproportionate numbers of death sentences in these few counties do 
not result from a high number of murders, or even the unique fervor of the 
residents who reside there, but instead from the operation of death's double 
whammy - bloodthirsty, overreaching prosecutors and woefully inadequate defense 
lawyers.

(source: Robert J. Smith is a senior fellow at Harvard Law School's Charles 
Hamilton Houston Institute and a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at 
Austin School of Law----slate.com)