[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., OHIO, OKLA., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 12




TEXAS:

Woman gave birth before being charged in connection with son's death


A 21-year-old mother went into labor Tuesday before she could be charged with 
capital murder in connection with the death of her 10-month-old child.

Fabiola Lopez was more than 9 months pregnant when she was arrested Tuesday in 
connection to the death of her son and went into labor while in custody. She 
was taken to a local hospital, where she delivered, according to Hidalgo County 
Sheriff's Office spokesman J.P. Rodriguez.

After giving birth, she was charged with capital murder of person under 10 
years old, a capital felony, by Justice of the Peace Marcos Ochoa. She remained 
in the custody of the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office with a $500,000 bond at a 
local hospital Wednesday night.

The sheriff's office began their investigation Nov. 3, when they were called to 
Rio Grande Regional Hospital in reference to a 10-month-old boy suffering from 
critical injuries. The child died Nov. 6 after spending several days on life 
support, Rodriguez said.

Lopez told doctors her child had fallen off the bed at their home near 
Edinburg. An autopsy determined the cause of death as blunt force trauma to the 
head, but during the investigation deputies found probable cause that Lopez 
caused the death of her child, Rodriguez wrote in an email Tuesday.

Investigators obtained an arrest warrant for Lopez and took her into custody. 
If convicted of a capital murder, Lopez faces the death penalty or life in 
prison.

(source: The Monitor)






FLORIDA:

Admitted cartel hit-man faces death penalty trial for 2 murders in Florida


An admitted Mexican cartel hit-man convicted of murders in California and 
Alabama is also facing a possible death sentence in Florida for 2 additional 
killings.

Authorities say 53-year-old Jose Manuel Martinez is being charged with 
1st-degree murder in the slayings of 20-year-old Javier Huerta and 28-year-old 
Gustavo Olivares-Rivas in Florida.

The victims were found in a pickup truck bound and shot multiple times on a 
road in Ocala National Forest.

Martinez has already been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility 
of parole after pleading guilty to 9 murders in California over 3 decades. Last 
year, Martinez pleaded guilty in Alabama to killing a man for making derogatory 
remarks about his daughter.

The Ocala Star-Banner reports (http://bit.ly/1ROM2KP) that prosecutors in 
Marion County will seek to extradite Martinez from California.

(source: Associated Press)






OHIO:

Youngstown murder now death penalty case


A Mahoning County grand jury indicted a Youngstown man in what is now a death 
penalty murder case.

Lance Hundley, 46, of Warren, was charged with aggravated murder, aggravated 
attempted murder, aggravated felonious assault, and aggravated arson in 
connection to the Nov. 6 beating death of 41-year-old Erika Huff.

Prosecutors say Hundley beat Huff inside a Cleveland Street house and then set 
it on fire to cover up the crime.

Huff's mother was also beaten by Hundley, but survived the attack, according to 
police.

Police say Hundley went to the house and beat Huff, leaving her unconscious. 
The victim's mother came later after her daughter's medic alert alarm went off 
and encountered Hundley and was assaulted.

Hundley set fire to the house and tried to leave as police were arriving.

Hundley is being held in the Mahoning County Jail on $2 million bond.

(source: WKBN news)






OKLAHOMA:

Tulsa County prosecutors no longer seeking death penalty against 1999 
double-murder convict


Tulsa County prosecutors are no longer seeking the death penalty for a man who 
remains convicted of murdering a retired Tulsa banker and an Owasso trucking 
company owner in 1999.

Victor Cornell Miller, 52, has been fighting a legal battle against the state 
since before a jury first convicted him in 2002.

First Assistant District Attorney John David Luton announced in court Tuesday 
that he will no longer seek the death penalty for Miller.

Luton said the decision came after talking with the victims' family members.

"The consensus of the family was that this was a way to create some finality in 
the case," Luton said, noting that the matter is already 16 years old.

Miller was convicted in the shooting deaths of Mary Agnes Bowles, 77, a retired 
Tulsa banker and a former Saint Francis Hospital Auxiliary president, and 
Jerald Thurman, 44, the owner of an Owasso trucking company.

Prosecutors maintained that Miller shot Thurman before Miller's accomplice, 
John Fitzgerald Hanson, shot Bowles.

Thurman's son, Jake Thurman, said Wednesday that while this was not his 
preferred outcome of the case, he and his family are ready to move on.

"I'm not really happy with all of it, but at the same time I'm happy that the 
family will get some closure and not have to keep opening the wound and 
stitching it closed again," he said.

At a trial in 2002, Miller was convicted of both murders and was sentenced to 
die for killing Thurman. He got a no-parole life term for Bowles' murder.

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals court overturned those convictions and 
sentences in 2004 and granted Miller a new trial. He was convicted by another 
jury in 2008 and was sentenced to death for both murders.

The appeals court in 2013 affirmed Miller's 2 1st-degree murder convictions but 
modified his death sentence for one of the murder convictions to life in prison 
without the possibility of parole.

In that decision, the Court of Criminal Appeals directed the Tulsa County 
District Court to resentence Miller for the other murder conviction, with the 
death penalty still on the table.

Since the state is no longer seeking the death penalty, a Tulsa County judge 
will have the option of sentencing Miller to life without parole or life with 
the possibility of parole after serving at least 85 % of his sentence in 
prison. For calculation, a life sentence is usually equated to 45 years.

Jake Thurman said he and his family hope the judge will sentence Miller to life 
without parole.

"As long as he can't ever get out, he won't be able to do this to someone 
else's family," Thurman said.

Closing the case will allow the family to finally heal, he said.

"We can pick up the pieces and start putting the puzzle back together and move 
on," Thurman said.

District Judge Dana Kuehn is scheduled to sentence Miller on Dec. 18, court 
minutes show.

(saource: Tulsa World)






CALIFORNIA:

Federal appeals court reverses ruling that said California's death penalty 
system is unconstitutional


A federal appeals court upheld California's death penalty system Thursday, 
reversing a judge's order last year that had decried the state's system as 
unconstitutional because of its extensive delays.

The ruling impacts a state with the largest death-row population in the 
country, and while California has rarely carried out executions in the modern 
era, it has shown signs recently that it may be inching closer to resuming 
lethal injections.

In an order last year, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney had said 
California's system was "completely dysfunctional."

"California's death penalty system is so plagued by inordinate and 
unpredictable delay that the death sentence is actually carried out against 
only a trivial few of those sentenced to death," Carney wrote in his July 2014 
order.

That order was reversed Thursday by a unanimous 3-judge panel of the U.S. Court 
of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which said that while many people agreed with 
Jones's argument "that the delay between sentencing and execution in California 
is extraordinary," the district court was not allowed to consider "novel 
constitutional theories" in reviewing cases like this.

The opinion from Judge Susan P. Graber also added that because it was asked to 
consider this type of theory, the court could "not assess the substantive 
validity of [Jones's] claim."

California has more death-row inmates than any other state, with more than 740 
inmates currently sentenced to death. That is more than the combined death-row 
populations of the next 2 states on the list (Florida and Texas, both of which 
regularly put inmates to death). Inmates on California's death row have been 
there for an average of a little more than 16 years, a little more than a year 
longer than the national average, according to the Bureau of Justice 
Statistics.

And while California has not executed an inmate since 2006, the state proposed 
a new execution protocol last week that would involve using a single drug, 
replacing the 3-drug combination that had been struck down by a judge.

Carney's order, and the appeals court's ruling Thursday, involve the case of 
Ernest Dewayne Jones, who was sentenced to death in 1995 for raping and killing 
Julia Miller in 1992. Carney had vacated Jones's death sentence in the order, 
writing that letting California's system threaten Jones with death nearly 2 
decades after his sentencing "violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition 
against cruel and unusual punishment."

California authorities had argued in favor of overturning Carney's ruling, 
which the state called "fundamentally misguided" in 1 filing submitted by 
Kamala D. Harris, the state's attorney general, and Edward DuMont, its 
solicitor general, among others. The state had argued that there was "no legal 
basis" for the district court to declare a system they described as thorough, 
careful and necessary.

In a concurring judgment Thursday, Judge Paul J. Watford said that Carney's 
order should have been reversed because Jones has not exhausted his appeals 
through the state courts.

The case is Jones v. Davis.

(source: Mark Berman, Washington Post)

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

Federal Appeals Court Upholds California's Deliberative Death Penalty Process


A federal appeals court has upheld California's deliberative death penalty, 
which keeps prisoners on death row for decades.

Last year, a federal judge ruled that the long and dysfunctional process 
violated the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

As we reported at the time:

"[U.S. District Judge Cormac] Carney noted that the death penalty has been 
imposed more than 900 times since 1978, but only 13 of those prisoners have 
been executed.

"Carney, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, wrote that Jones was 
far from alone in waiting decades to find out when and whether he would be put 
to death.

"Such uncertainty and systemic delays are unconstitutional, he decided. Carney 
wrote that 'the random few' who are put to death wait so long to face execution 
that capital punishment serves 'no retributive or deterrent purpose.

"'No rational person can question that the execution of an individual carries 
with it the solemn obligation of the government to ensure that the punishment 
is not arbitrarily imposed and that it furthers the interests of society,' 
Carney wrote."

2 of the 3 judges on the panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals called 
that constitutional interpretation "novel," and reversed the judgment.

"Many agree with Petitioner that California's capital punishment system is 
dysfunctional and that the delay between sentencing and execution in California 
is extraordinary," the judges wrote.

However, they added, the idea that the delay has turned sentences from "one of 
death to one of grave uncertainty and torture" is not "supported by logic."

(source: npr.org)

*********

Calif. Seeks Comment From Death Row Inmates About Lethal Injection


Prisoners on death row in California are being invited to comment on the 
procedure that could kill them.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has proposed a 
single lethal injection to replace the 3-drug method struck down by courts. The 
state created the rule after a legal settlement to restart the death penalty 
process, which has stalled since 2005.

The public has until January to comment on the proposal.

"The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has an additional 
and a unique requirement that no other state agency has," says deputy press 
secretary Terry Thornton. "Under the law we also must notice the inmate 
population, and that includes condemned inmates."

Thornton says the rule is designed to give inmates a voice in the policies that 
govern them and all 747 on death row have received copies.

The state must consider and respond to public comments before finalizing the 
rule.

(source: capradio.org)






USA:

Death Penalty and the Law


To the Editor:

Re "Death Penalty Foes Torn on When to Press Case" (front page, Nov. 4):

It's not surprising that opponents of the death penalty are "bitterly divided" 
after Justice Stephen G. Breyer's powerful dissent about whether to urge the 
Supreme Court to decide if capital punishment is constitutional. Even when the 
death penalty was overwhelmingly accepted, it was administered in so 
contradictory a manner as to suggest deep ambivalence.

It was supposed to deter, but executions were conducted privately after the 
crime was forgotten. The condemned were thought depraved but rarely treated as 
mentally ill. Many people talked tough on crime, but then jurors picked only a 
random few for execution.

The dissent makes the failure to create a just system clear, but I don't think 
that we will see abolition until the focus is on the system - costly, 
discriminatory and error-prone - rather than on any particular offender's 
horrendous crime.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy has shown in his landmark opinions that he 
understands the difference between a single case and the social costs of a 
broad policy, but none of the lawyers cited in your article presented the 
slightest evidence of how he would vote if a test case came before the court.

MICHAEL MELTSNER

Cambridge, Mass.

(source: Letter to the Editor; The writer, the author of "Cruel and Unusual: 
The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment," was one of the lawyers in Furman v. 
Georgia, the 1972 case that decided capital punishment laws violated the Eighth 
Amendment----New York Times)

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

Talk It Out: Death Penalty


Say no to the death penalty----By Madison Teague


No one should hold the right to take another person's life.

The death penalty is a barbaric practice that does nothing but seek vengeance 
against one person to appease the feelings of another. It is not justice.

Deciding the fate of another human being by taking their life makes one no 
better than the criminal they are condemning.

A major defense of the death penalty is that it is okay because it is legal. 
Legality does not equal morality, and the law does not define what is right. 
Besides, the death penalty is only legal in 31 states, which shows how 
abhorrent 19 states believe the death penalty to be.

The opposition would assert the death penalty is a better option than life in 
prison because it saves citizen tax dollars. This statement is simply untrue.

In California, keeping each death row prisoner costs taxpayers $90,000 more per 
year than an inmate in general population. This wouldn't seem like too much of 
a problem if the execution happened in a timely manner. However, that is not 
the case.

According to a 2011 New York Times article, the typical prisoner on death row 
has spent 13 years in prison. Because of this long stay on death row, more than 
1/4 of all inmates sentenced to death died of a cause other than execution from 
2000 to 2013.

Do those who die awaiting their execution escape justice?

Not only is it cheaper to house regular inmates, but also giving the offender 
the option of pleading guilty in exchange for life without parole saves 
taxpayers millions in court fees.

It is ridiculous to claim a person who has been caught and held in the custody 
of the law is somehow a great threat to anyone. We have the ability to contain 
criminals so they are no longer a threat. Death is not necessary.

All human beings possess the right to life, but not the right to take life 
away. To claim it is justifiable to revoke someone???s natural-born right to 
life simply because it would make the victim or their family feel better is 
asinine.

Humans make errors. For every 10 people executed on death row, 1 has been 
exonerated and set free. If there is even a chance an innocent life could be 
taken by the death penalty, it should not be seen as a good or moral practice. 
Innocent people should not be put to death to pacify the masses.

I have seen firsthand how murder can tear apart a family, but what continues to 
torture the victims of a crime is not the misconduct itself but the inability 
to forgive. I do not want to be a part of a society that does not believe in 
forgiveness. Forgiveness should not be seen as a novelty one can turn to if 
they wish, but as a necessity.

Killing the assailant will do nothing to help a family heal after the murder or 
attack of a loved one. The only way those family members, and society as a 
whole, can move on is if they make peace with what happened.

Death allows a criminal to escape the reality of what they have done. It is a 
far better punishment to force a person to acknowledge the wrong they have 
inflicted on another and live with the consequences of their actions.

The death penalty is an expensive, inhumane and immoral practice that should be 
illegal in not just part, but all of the United States.

***********

Why we need the death penalty---- By Shannon Davies Special to The Star


The death sentence has been used by most societies for centuries. While it is 
not a new concept, the ways people are put to death are far less gruesome than 
they have been in years past.

Granted, the American justice system is highly flawed. The death penalty should 
not be taken lightly and just handed out to anyone who commits a crime. 
Imposing stipulations on the practice is a necessity to ensure no 
mismanagement. However, enforcing the death penalty nationwide remains up to 
each state. In each case, the crime must fit the punishment and the jury must 
be sure of their sentencing.

According to data from the Vera Institute of Justice, taxpayers pay an average 
of $31,286 per inmate in order to provide shelter, medical care and food for 
the incarcerated. Relegating the money of citizens to the housing and bedding 
of someone who has committed murder or rape is not something society should 
stand for.

Detractors often assert that the death penalty does not serve as a real 
deterrent, but this kind of thinking could be applied to any law on the books. 
Fining motorists for texting while driving does not deter them from committing 
the offense. People still routinely text and drive, but the thought of a pretty 
hefty fine probably prevents some from doing it. Minimization is all we can 
aspire to when attempting to resolve criminal activity.

Studies about the deterrence are inconclusive. Not killing gruesome murderers 
could result in a total lack of deterrence, so instead of weighing the odds, it 
is better to use the death penalty for whatever small benefit it provides. 
Without it, who knows the number of innocent targets who could be victimized?

During less modern times, being put to death used to range from actions like 
hanging or a firing squad, which are all very cruel ways to die. Lethal 
injection is basically dosing the criminal with a combination of drugs to give 
them a fairly simple death.

The three-shot system includes sodium thiopental, which is meant to put the 
inmate to sleep. The inmate is then injected with pancuronium bromide, which 
paralyzes the entire muscle system and stops the inmate's breathing, and the 
process finishes with potassium chloride to still the heart.

Compared to the deaths of their victims, most perpetrators get off fairly 
easily. While violence is never the answer, there needs to be some kind of 
system in place to keep the offenders at bay.

While states try to figure out what they want to do about having the death 
penalty, the people who are currently waiting on death row will be met with a 
relatively painless death. Criminals who commit capital offenses will always be 
around, and what to do with them punishment-wise will always be up for debate. 
Until the death penalty has its own fate decided, I'm all for it.

(source: The (Texas State) University Star)

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

Vets suffering from PTSD need our help: Column


The 1st person executed in the United States this year, Andrew Brannan, was a 
Vietnam veteran who had been granted 100% disability because of his 
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other problems stemming from his military 
service. Approximately 300 other veterans remain on death row and face 
execution. As retired Army general officers, lawyers and a psychiatrist, these 
facts concern us greatly, and they should disturb many other Americans, as 
well.

On Veterans Day, we honor those who bravely served their country and offer our 
helping hand to assist those who have returned from war with wounds and 
physical disabilities. Countless veterans have endured violence and trauma that 
few others can fully imagine. They deserve our thanks. But some are left 
behind.

Our hospitals and therapists have performed wonders in assisting wounded 
veterans who lost limbs. A prosthetic is not the same as the original, but with 
the courage of service-members, combined with an understanding and supportive 
community, we are making progress. We wish the same could be said for our 
veterans who come back with deep brain and mental wounds. Their requests for 
understanding and compassion are too often dismissed.

A new report from the Death Penalty Information Center is a wake-up call for an 
issue that few have focused on. Even as the use of capital punishment is 
declining, veterans suffering with PTSD and other service-related problems 
languish on death rows across the country.

Brannan was executed in Georgia this year for one irrational act of violence 
that occurred 17 years ago. He killed a police officer who had stopped him for 
speeding. That is a terrible crime, but as the Veterans Administration had 
determined, Brannan was mentally disabled with deep scars from his combat in 
Vietnam.

James Davis is also a Vietnam veteran with PTSD. He belatedly received his 
Purple Heart medal on death row in North Carolina, thanks to the work of a 
fellow veteran and therapist and a pastor, Jim Johnson, who visited Davis. When 
Johnson pinned the medal on him, Davis saluted proudly, before retreating back 
into the darkness of his mental problems. He could still be executed today for 
the murders he committed in 1995, and he has all but given up his appeals.

John Thuesen is on death row in Texas - a veteran of the Iraq conflict. His 
PTSD was not properly diagnosed or treated, and his lawyers did not do enough 
to explain his condition to the jury that convicted him of murdering his 
ex-girlfriend. Texas executes far more people than any other state in the 
country, so there is a real concern that his current appeal could be denied.

PTSD is not as obvious as a missing limb, but it can be deeply debilitating. 
The trauma from combat can simmer under the surface for years, then erupt in 
violence, often against family members. It can be triggered by anything that 
jars a memory of a time when a person was under violent attack, demanding 
immediate and forceful reaction. Years later, the previous danger is no longer 
present, but the memory may set off a similar reaction, with deadly 
consequences. PTSD can be treated, but in one study only about half of the 
veterans who needed treatment received it.

In a criminal sentencing hearing, PTSD should be a strong mitigating factor. 
It's not an excuse or a demand for acquittal. However, the very symptoms that 
define PTSD can be frightening to a jury if not carefully explained by a mental 
health expert familiar with the illness. Defense attorneys are often not 
adequately prepared to investigate and present this kind of evidence; 
prosecutors or judges might dismiss it because others with similar combat 
experiences did not murder anyone. Perhaps some of the blame should be more 
broadly shared because we sometimes choose to look away when a veteran's scars 
are not the kind that we know how to cope with.

We are not arguing here about the morality or the utility of the death penalty. 
But at a minimum, when a judge or jury is weighing a person's life or death, 
they should have full knowledge and understanding of that person's life 
history. Veterans with PTSD - and, in fact, all those with serious mental 
illness at the time of their crime - deserve a complete investigation and 
presentation of their mental state by the best experts in the field.

Decision-makers - jurors, judges and governors - should be informed that such 
information is a valid reason to spare a defendant from capital punishment. 
There are alternatives, such as life in prison without parole. We should begin 
by determining the exact scope of this problem: Who are the veterans on death 
row? How could their military experience have affected their commission of a 
crime? How well were their disabilities investigated and presented in court? 
And what should be done when the system fails them? Veterans facing the death 
penalty deserve this assistance. (source: Opinion; Brig. Gen. (Ret.) James P. 
Cullen, USA, is a former judge for the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals. 
Brig. Gen. (Ret.) David R. Irvine, USA, is a former Deputy Commander of the 
96th U.S. Army Reserve Command. Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Stephen N. Xenakis, USA, M.D. 
is an adjunct clinical professor at the Uniformed Services University of Health 
Sciences----USA Today)

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

An Invitation to End the Death Penalty----The time is now, and this opportunity 
might not present itself again soon.


The death penalty in the United States will end.

In the scholarly community, the debate is over. The proof that capital 
punishment doesn't work is as conclusive as the evidence that human activities 
have caused global warming. After 50 years of research, we know that capital 
punishment either doesn't deter or deters very little, and then only if 
practiced with such regularity that it virtually guarantees errors. We know 
that since 1973, 156 people have been sentenced to die and subsequently 
exonerated. We know that whether a murderer is executed is largely the product 
of the victim's race and geographic bad luck. We know that the penalty is 
expensive to implement and, if one is serious about preventing mistakes, 
cruelly slow.

For these reasons, among others, the international community has largely 
rejected capital punishment. Of the 193 United Nations members, 137 have 
abolished the death penalty either by law or practice. In 2013, only 22 
countries conducted an execution. Only 8 conducted 10 or more: China, Iran, 
Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and the United States. It's simply 
impossible to imagine the United States remaining on this list for much longer.

The question is how much longer.

Those who hope that the end will come sooner rather than later have reached a 
momentous crossroads. One path requires a plodding march to eradicate the death 
penalty state by state. This route isn't entirely hopeless. Indeed, Maryland, 
Nebraska, and Connecticut have abolished the death penalty since 2013, and 4 
other states have governor-imposed moratoriums. But most of the low-hanging 
fruit has been picked, and the remaining states will be increasingly 
intransigent. It's easy to imagine Texas, which has executed 530 people since 
1976, holding out for a very long time.

The potentially faster track is to seize upon Justice Stephen Breyer???s 
dissent last term in Glossip v. Gross - in which he comprehensively challenged 
the constitutionality of capital punishment - and push a case to the Supreme 
Court. This path is not without its own perils, which need to be understood in 
historical context. In 1963, Justice Arthur Goldberg issued his own maverick 
dissent against the death penalty. Perceiving an opportunity, the NAACP Legal 
Defense Fund began a systematic litigation campaign, culminating in a 1972 
decision, Furman v. Georgia, ruling that the death penalty as it was then 
practiced was unconstitutional. The victory was short-lived. Following a 
massive backlash, the Supreme Court reversed direction four years later and 
upheld revised capital punishment laws that included modest procedural 
protections.

Breyer is saying that he believes Kennedy's vote is available.

Many observers believe that the net of the Legal Defense Fund???s 
well-intentioned efforts was negative and that the 1976 decision, Gregg v. 
Georgia, set back the death penalty abolition movement by decades. In the last 
Gallup poll before Furman, 50 % of respondents said they favored capital 
punishment. After Gregg, support soared to 66 % and reached an all-time high of 
80 % in 1994. The numbers have been dropping since then - down to 61 % in the 
latest poll. The risk is that if abolitionists do press a case to the Supreme 
Court and lose, public opinion might surge again, believing that the court has 
somehow fixed the problems with the death penalty.

Following Breyer's dissent, the need to confront this dilemma has taken on an 
increased sense of urgency. In the New York Times, Adam Liptak made public the 
split in the death penalty community over whether a case should be pressed to 
the Supreme Court. As I reported last year here in Slate, it's a complicated 
gamble with reasonable arguments on both sides. But those who urge caution 
today are drawing the wrong lesson from history.

Breyer's dissent means more than Goldberg???s did. When Goldberg and his law 
clerk Alan Dershowitz penned the opinion, only one legal scholar had ever 
advanced the argument that the death penalty constituted cruel and unusual 
punishment. Certainly no Supreme Court justice believed it to be 
unconstitutional. Quite consciously, Goldberg was beginning a conversation.

Breyer's dissent, by contrast, is situated in a judicial-political conflict 
that has been running for nearly four decades. The modern battle turns entirely 
on Justice Anthony Kennedy. On one side, it's clear that Justices Samuel Alito, 
Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts will never 
vote against the death penalty. On the other side are Breyer and Justice Ruth 
Bader Ginsburg, who joined Breyer in saying that the death penalty violates the 
Constitution. Though they didn't sign on to Breyer's dissent, Justices Elena 
Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor are safe bets to reject capital punishment if and 
when the issue is ever put before the court again. Everything comes down to 
Kennedy.

Over the past 13 years, Kennedy has joined a series of decisions limiting the 
use of the death penalty for juveniles, child rapists who did not kill, and 
people with mental retardation. In the juvenile and child rapist cases, Kennedy 
wrote the majority opinions and cast the decisive vote. In Hall v. Florida, 
another 5-4 case, he again wrote the majority decision holding that mental 
retardation couldn't be determined by a hard-and-fast numeric rule, which 
Florida and other states had used to limit the impact of the Supreme Court's 
ban. Executing an intellectually disabled individual, Kennedy wrote, with the 
colorful rhetoric that characterizes his most passionate opinions, "violates 
his or her inherent dignity as a human being" and serves "no legitimate 
penological purpose."

Breyer isn't beginning a conversation. He is saying that he believes Kennedy's 
vote is available. A student of history, Breyer knows the impact that 
Goldberg's dissent had on the bar. Breyer wouldn't issue a dissent so clearly 
evocative of Goldberg's unless he wanted to send a loud and clear message that 
he believes the time is right for abolitionist leaders to push an Eighth 
Amendment challenge to the Supreme Court.

Breyer could be wrong, of course. Any student of this history knows that it has 
been fraught with unpredictable twists and turns. But abolitionists have more 
reason for optimism than the Legal Defense Fund did in 1972, when no one 
believed they had a chance of winning Furman v. Georgia, and they also have 
less to lose. For one thing, there are few, if any, lesser battles to be 
contested before the Supreme Court. Almost all the exceptions to the death 
penalty one could imagine have already been carved out. For another, it's hard 
to imagine an adverse decision galvanizing support for the death penalty, as it 
did in 1976.

The truth is that despite decades of public education campaigns by 
abolitionists and abundant evidence that the death penalty is unreliable and 
ineffective, the public opinion dial hasn???t moved very much. Since Gregg, 
support for the death penalty has never dipped below 60 % in Gallup's annual 
poll, and for each of the past seven years it has come in between 61 and 65 % 
in favor.

More importantly, public opinion is firmly entrenched in the states that drive 
the "American" death penalty. Really, it makes no sense to speak of capital 
punishment as national policy. The death penalty is almost entirely a Southern 
phenomenon, driven by a handful of states - and really, as research by the 
Death Penalty Information Center shows, a handful of prosecutors in a handful 
of counties within those states. Since 1976, Texas has accounted for 37 % of 
American executions. Texas plus 2 other states - Oklahoma and Virginia - are 
responsible for a majority of executions. In Texas, polling shows 73 % support 
for the death penalty. In Oklahoma it's 74 %. If capital punishment is going to 
end in these outlier Southern states, the U.S. Supreme Court will need to act.

Today's opportunity may not present itself again soon. Justices die. 
Presidential elections and Senate confirmations are unpredictable. It's 
possible to imagine that a stronger majority against the death penalty will 
emerge on the court someday. It's just as possible to imagine that another bare 
majority won't again emerge this century. That's why Breyer's invitation needs 
to be taken so seriously.

The direction of history's arrow is clear. Capital punishment will end. But to 
finish this fight once and for all, abolitionists at some point will need to 
seize the moment and force the Supreme Court to a decision. There may not soon 
again be another moment so promising as this one.

(source: Evan Mandery is a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice 
and author of A Wild Justice: The Death and Resurrection of Capital Punishment 
in America----slate.com)

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

GOP Candidates Suck Up to Hatemongers


Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and Mike Huckabee fete a man who thinks the Bible says 
we should execute gays.

Sometimes I think Republicans get a bad rap from mainstream journalists, who 
tend to be more sympathetic to liberals and Democrats. The problem may be 
particularly acute when it comes to social conservatives, whose views seem 
especially unpopular among journalists.

But right now 3 conservative Republican presidential candidates are mostly 
getting a free pass from the media on their appalling judgment over the 
weekend.

Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and Mike Huckabee spoke at a conference in Des Moines 
called "Freedom 2015: National Religious Liberties Conference," a 2-day event 
that began last Friday. Now, that doesn't sound so bad. In fact, my colleagues 
at the Cato Institute and I have recently defended the rights of Hobby Lobby, 
the Little Sisters of the Poor, and the bakers and photographers who don't want 
to participate in same-sex weddings.

But this conference was about something far different from liberty, although 
you wouldn't know that from bland media coverage like this CBS News article. So 
it's a good thing that The Daily Beast and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC picked up the 
story, with video from People for the American Way's RightWingWatch.

The conference was organized by Kevin P. Swanson, a minister in Colorado and 
host of the Generations Radio Show. Swanson is part of the Orthodox 
Presbyterian Church and the far-right fundamentalist Christian 
Reconstructionism movement, which author Walter Olson wrote about at length in 
1998. Swanson gave the conference's opening and closing talks and interviewed 
Cruz, Jindal, and Huckabee. And in his closing keynote address, Swanson ranted 
at length about topics that would hardly be characterized as religious liberty:

YES! Leviticus 20:13 calls for the death penalty for homosexuals. YES! Romans 
Chapter 1, Verse 32, the Apostle Paul does say that homosexuals are worthy of 
death. His words, not mine! And I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 
And I am not ashamed of the truth of the word of God. And I am willing to go to 
jail for standing on the truth of the word of God.

To be sure, he did say that "civil leaders" should not apply the death penalty 
today, not until the culture has changed and gays have been put on notice that 
they must repent or be put to death. Thanks for small favors, I suppose. But 
it's also worth noting that at least 2 other speakers at the conference 
likewise have advocated the death penalty for gay people.

And as Maddow notes, this is not just something that the conference host has 
said in the past, though he had said it plenty of times, as a Google search 
would have revealed. This is what he said in the keynote address at the 
conference attended by 3 candidates for president.

That wasn't the full extent of the crazy at the conference. As the gay website 
Towleroad reported:

Swanson has also said that the government should put gay people to death, 
warned that the Girl Scouts and the movie "Frozen" turn girls into lesbians and 
blamed natural disasters on gay people and women who wear pants. Swanson has 
also said that churches accepting gay couples will lead to the persecution, 
imprisonment and murder of Christians, and wished for the good ole days when 
country singer Kacey Musgraves would have been hanged for her pro-gay lyrics.

Jake Tapper asked Cruz about his attendance at the conference, and Cruz 
responded that he did not "know what this gentleman has said" but that 
religious liberty is a very important issue. Would Cruz accept that answer from 
a presidential candidate who spoke at a conference where the host and keynoter 
yelled "God damn America" or said that Christians should be executed? I doubt 
it. He should be asked about his participation again, as should Jindal and 
Huckabee.

And American conservatives should be asked if they find all this acceptable. 
Can you actually support presidential candidates who stand on such a stage, 
answering questions from such a person?

If the 3 Democratic presidential candidates accepted the invitation of, and 
answered the questions of, an equally extreme leftist, a person who advocated 
the execution of peaceful people he disliked, conservatives everywhere would be 
outraged. I hope they start holding their own candidates to the same standard.

(source: David Boaz is executive vice president of the Cato Institute and 
author of The Libertarian Mind----The Daily Beast)

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

Reform leaders advocate 'restorative' justice for US offenders


Hopeful that the death penalty in the U.S. is reaching its demise, justice 
reform advocates affiliated with the U.S. Catholic church are shifting efforts, 
in part, to tackle the massive problems beleaguering the country's criminal 
justice system.

Capital punishment, in fact, sits atop a highly retributive criminal justice 
system, like the jewel in the punitive crown, reserved -- in theory -- for the 
worst cases and irreversible. But many systemic, and arguably more intractable, 
problems lie beneath it: mass incarceration and high rates of recidivism among 
them.

"Once we get rid of the death penalty, all the problems in our criminal justice 
system are going to rise up and we will have to deal with them," said Karen 
Clifton, executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Use 
of the Death Penalty at the "New Path to Justice: Criminal Justice Reform in 
the Year of Mercy" on Nov. 6 at Catholic University of America in Washington, 
D.C.

The approach -- supported by Pope Francis, the U.S. Bishops Conference and a 
growing numbers of secular experts -- is an alternative, "restorative," type of 
justice. In his statements, the pope has made clear that for a society to be 
humane, justice is justice only if it is restorative, that is, without 
retaliation or revenge.

Trudy Conway, emeritus professor of philosophy at Mount Saint Mary's 
University, presented the underlying principles of restorative in philosophical 
counterpoint to the current U.S. justice system.

Under a restorative lens, crime is viewed as a violation against people and 
relationships, rather than simply a violation of the law, Conway explained. 
Offenders have an obligation to repair the harm they have done.

However, today's system generates no incentive for offenders to admit 
wrongdoing, said Tim Wolfe, associate professor of sociology and criminal 
justice at Mount St. Mary's University. Instead, they are pitted in a war 
against the state with the express goal of avoiding punishment. Offenders never 
get to come into personal contact with the consequences of their offenses and 
therefore never fully understand the harm they have caused. This, in turn, 
severely lowers their chances of rehabilitation.

"Cops, courts, corrections: our current system is criminogenic -- it creates 
more crime instead of reducing it," Wolfe said.

But practicing restorative justice doesn't mean offenders can't be punished -- 
it's just that punishment isn't the whole picture.

"Restorative justice is not being soft on crime, it's being smart: it will 
improve safety, and hold people accountable," said Wolfe.

Janine Geske, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice, knows a lot about what 
restorative justice looks like in action. She leads Marquette University Law 
School's Restorative Justice Initiative and regularly facilitates restorative 
encounters between offenders and victims at the Green Bay Correctional 
Institution. These can take months of preparation, depending on the readiness 
of victims, she said.

With support from Marquette law students, she oversees highly delicate "circle" 
dialogues between victims and offenders. At the heart of them: deep listening 
and personal story telling -- on both sides. In some dialogues, victims or 
victim family members meet the offenders who were not involved in same crime. 
In others, victims and family members meet their actual offenders.

And while it's clear that rehabilitation of offenders is a positive long-term 
outcome of restorative justice, Geske emphasized that the victims are the 
focus. She prefers to call victims of crime "survivors." Many of them do too, 
Geske said.

"It's about what survivors want," Geske said. "It's their chance to tell the 
person responsible for the crime about the harm they caused. Often victims will 
have questions they want to ask like 'What were the last words of the loved 
one? What were their last moments like?'"

And forgiveness doesn't necessarily have to be a part of it, she said, because 
some survivors aren't ready for it.

"It's an incredibly healing process for both sides to go through this. But 
these are really, really tough conversations," said Geske who called her work 
"a ministry of presence."

Geske and other practitioners at the conference are still outliers in the U.S., 
where restorative justice is rarely introduced into the system unless by 
motivated individuals. Instead, some countries, most notably New Zealand, have 
integrated restorative justice methods systematically into some of their 
criminal justice processes. Howard Zehr, of Eastern Mennonite University, is 
considered the grandfather of the modern restorative justice movement and his 
work was cited liberally at the conference.

Margaret Pfeil, of the University of Notre Dame's theology department and 
Center for Social Concerns, said the spiritual foundation of restorative 
justice is the Golden Rule. She referenced Francis' speech before Congress, 
where he connected the Golden Rule to advocating for the abolition of the death 
penalty and the rehabilitation of those convicted of crimes.

But how to build up the restorative justice movement? Pfeil said it's not just 
about implementing a "set of practices." It's a way of being in the world, one 
that everyone can adopt.

"The restorative path might start with each of us opening our hearts to those 
on the fringes of society, and to the outer edge of those fringes, which are 
those in the incarceration system and on death row," Pfeil said.

(source: Dani Clark is a writer and editor at an international development 
organization in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Community of 
Sant'Egidio----National Catholic Reporter)