[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., N.C., GA., FLA., COLO., ARIZ.

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 29



PENNSYLVANIA:

When a Kid Kills His Longtime Abuser, Who's the Victim?----The perplexing 
double standards of death penalty politics.


You could hardly open a Pennsylvania newspaper in 2012 without running into a 
story about the prosecution of sexual predators or their enablers. The case of 
Jerry Sandusky, the Penn State football coach convicted of abusing 10 boys, was 
all over the headlines. 2 Philadelphia grand juries, in 2003 and 2011, had 
documented a massive cover-up of sexual abuse by the Catholic Church that would 
end up with 2 priests and a Monsignor going to prison - the latter was the 
first senior church official in the United States convicted of endangering 
children by covering up abuses by priests under his supervision.

"It is extremely difficult for sexual abuse victims to admit that the assault 
happened, and then to actually report the abuse." -- Philadelphia DA Seth 
Williams

In July 2012, after yet another priest was arrested, Philadelphia District 
Attorney Seth Williams lauded the alleged victim for speaking out after years 
of silence: "As we have learned," Williams said, "it is extremely difficult for 
sexual abuse victims to admit that the assault happened, and then to actually 
report the abuse to authorities can be even harder for them."

The grand juries had made similar points. The most recent version of 
Pennsylvania's statutes of limitation, noted the 2003 grand jury report, 
required prosecutors to initiate sexual abuse cases by the child victim's 30th 
birthday, but "the experts have told us that this statute is still too short. 
We ourselves have seen that many victims do not come forward until deep into 
their thirties, forties and even later."

The 2011 grand jury was even more forceful, noting that most victims don't come 
forward "for many years, or even decades." Seven of Sandusky's victims took a 
combined 73 years to report their ordeals. The Pennsylvania legislature 
responded by passing a law allowing the use of experts at trial to help juries 
understand how sexual violence affects its victims, and how they typically 
behave.

But these sex-abuse scandals weren't the only legal dramas capturing the 
public's attention that year. In September 2012, a man named Terry Williams was 
in the final throes of an effort to survive a death sentence imposed on him for 
a crime he'd committed a few months after his 18th birthday. The Philadelphia 
DA's office was working overtime to ensure the commonwealth's 1st involuntary 
execution in half a century. But there was something about the DA's enthusiasm 
that seemed out of place: Terry Williams had been convicted, in separate 
trials, of murdering two much older men who had sexually abused him as a minor.

A DA's spokesman characterizes Williams' murders as "hate crimes," adding, "It 
is well past time for some skepticism about his self-serving claims."

In the 1st case, a jury convicted Williams of 3rd degree murder after it was 
made aware of the victim's sexual relationship with his killer. In the 2nd, the 
jurors never heard evidence of the victim's proclivity for sleeping with 
teenage boys. They convicted Williams of 1st degree murder and sentenced him to 
die.

To read a summary of the crime provided by the DA's office, some readers might 
conclude that Williams was nothing but a violent psychopath who got what he 
deserved.

Terrance Williams robbed and murdered 2 middle-aged gay men. He stabbed Herbert 
Hamilton more than 20 times and then beat him with a baseball bat. Months 
later, he lured Amos Norwood to a cemetery where Williams and a friend brutally 
bludgeoned him to death so they could steal his belongings and take a joy ride 
to Atlantic City in his car. Williams also committed other robberies, including 
one in which he broke into the home of an elderly woman on Christmas Eve with a 
rifle and threatened to blow her "f---ing head off."

But this account leaves out some salient facts. Namely, that both men were 
having sex with Williams, and that Norwood had been doing so since Williams was 
just 13. The robberies the DA describes followed years of sexual victimization. 
As the Third Circuit Court of Appeals summarized in 2011:

When Williams was very young, perhaps around the age of 6, he was sodomized by 
a neighbor boy five years his senior. In his early teens, he was repeatedly 
molested by a teacher. At 13, Williams met and began a relationship with 
Norwood. Norwood was cruel and physically abusive at times; he once allegedly 
beat Williams with a belt. When Williams was approximately fifteen, he was 
attacked by an older male while staying in a boys' home. The assailant held a 
weapon to Williams ' neck and forced him to perform fellatio.

The DA's office has contested each of these facts, claiming that "not one of 
the purported incidents was contemporaneously reported to medical or law 
enforcement officials." Even today a spokesman for the DA characterizes the 
murders as "hate crimes," adding that "It is well past time for some skepticism 
about [Williams'] self-serving claims, and some sympathy for the trail of 
victims he has left in his wake."

Yet this view ignores evidence that was present in the district attorney's own 
files even before Williams stood trial in 1986.

"By any definition - legal, ethical, psychological - a sexual encounter between 
a 13-year-old child and a 51-year-old man is rape."

When a condemned person seeks a new sentencing, the appeals court is often 
confronted with evidence that should have been presented at the original 
sentencing, but wasn't. The court's task is then to determine whether that 
evidence would have influenced the outcome. In the months leading up to 
Williams' execution date, 5 of the jurors who had condemned him wrote 
affidavits declaring that they indeed would have voted differently had they 
known of his sexual relationship with the victim.

In addition, dozens of former prosecutors signed a letter to then-Gov. Tom 
Corbett, urging him to commute Williams' death sentence, and more than 350,000 
people signed an online petition seeking clemency for Williams. After a deputy 
district attorney suggested in court that Williams' crimes were the result of 
"gay-prostitute rage," coalitions of sexual-assault survivors from 16 states 
signed a letter condemning the Philly DA for the "ill-informed stereotypes" his 
office was perpetuating. "By any definition - legal, ethical, psychological - a 
sexual encounter between a 13-year-old child and a 51-year-old man is rape," 
the letter stated. "To call this 'prostitution' and imply agency and willing 
participation on the part of a 13-year-old boy is unacceptable." But none of 
these things persuaded a court to vacate Williams' death sentence.

A few weeks before the execution date, Shawn Nolan, one of Williams' federal 
defenders, appeared at a clemency hearing before the Pennsylvania Board of 
Pardons. Yes, Williams had lost all of his appeals, Nolan acknowledged, but "is 
that a reason to kill this battered, sexually abused, barely 18-year-old kid?" 
Just the previous week, he reminded the board, one of the prosecutors had been 
asked, "Why are you fighting so hard to execute this man? After 50 years of no 
executions like that, why this man?"

Was the defense "seriously contending" that the DA's office was "pursuing this 
merely because they won the case?"asked Pennsyvania's attorney general.

Pennsylvania's attorney general, one of the presiding board members, asked 
whether Nolan was "seriously contending" that the DA's office was "pursuing 
this merely because they won the case?"

"Yes," Nolan replied.

Minutes later, an assistant district attorney representing the DA's office told 
the board that it was "no secret that the reason we're here today, and the 
reasons these proceedings are unfamiliar, is that this is the only contested 
Pennsylvania death penalty case that has not been reversed by either state or 
federal court in many years." Indeed, hundreds of death sentences had been 
overturned for reasons ranging from the hiding of evidence to the illegal 
disqualification of black jurors to just plain incompetent lawyering. But this 
case had survived the scrutiny of the courts.

As the day approached, the signatures on the clemency petition continued to 
pile up, as did the mail. Letters poured into the governor's office from 
retired judges and child advocates, law professors, mental health 
professionals, and clergy. Editorials against the execution appeared in 
newspapers across the state. Even the victim's widow wrote a letter stating 
that she had forgiven Williams and did not want to see his sentence carried 
out. Yet the prosecution pushed on, leaving the question raised at the clemency 
hearing still hanging. Was it possible that Philadelphia's District Attorney 
wanted to execute Terry Williams simply because he could?

Most crime stories are best told chronologically. But the pivotal moment in 
Terry Williams legal saga came 28 years after the crime, just days before his 
scheduled execution. The setting: The courtroom of Judge Teresa Sarmina, a 
former prosecutor assigned to oversee last-minute appeals in the case.

Sarmina (who by coincidence had presided over the landmark Catholic Church 
sex-abuse trial only months before) took what she deemed "extraordinary 
measures" to vet the fairness of Williams' death verdict. She ordered Andrea 
Foulkes - Williams' prosecutor, by then a lawyer with the US Attorney's Office 
in Philadelphia - to testify about her handling of Williams' 2 trials. Sarmina 
also ordered the police department's homicide files and the district attorney's 
trial files brought to her courtroom for examination. She wanted to be 
confident, she said, that the verdict "was what the word 'verdict' means: To 
speak the truth."

An appeals judge wrote that the documents hinting at the deviant sexual 
appetites of Williams' victim had been "sanitized" by the prosecution.

The search for the truth in a criminal case always begins with the prosecution. 
A homicide trial in particular takes shape in the DA's office long before a 
jury is selected - and sometimes before a suspect is even arrested. 
Investigations are launched, statements taken, reports completed, and by law, 
any information that might conceivably be helpful to the accused must be shared 
with the defense. This is a constitutional obligation, and yet the law books 
are replete with cases in which such exculpatory evidence is never passed 
along.

Judge Sarmina wrote in the Williams case that the paperwork involving victim 
Amos Norwood had been "sanitized." This was a polite way of putting it. The 
prosecution had omitted portions of 2 witness statements before turning them 
over, thereby eliminating the evidence of Norwood's sexual proclivities.

Although the most sordid details weren't known at the time, Norwood, 56, was 
known to have engaged in very suspicious behavior with young boys. Before it 
was redacted by the prosecutors, one police report had indicated that Norwood 
disappeared overnight with a teenage boy and, upon returning home the next day, 
told his wife he'd been kidnapped. The other censored document recounted that a 
mother from Norwood's church had complained of his sexual advances toward her 
underage son.

The prosecutor conceded that she'd suspected a "sexual connection" between 
Williams and his victim. But she didn't share that suspicion with the defense.

Prosecutor Foulkes' handwritten notes - which were also withheld from the 
defense and made reference to a now-defunct police unit nicknamed the "faggot 
squad" - indicated that she was aware of the victim's appetites. Foulkes later 
conceded to Sarmina that she suspected a "sexual connection" between Williams 
and Norwood: "Of course it occurred to me." But she didn't bother sharing this 
with the defense.

To understand why, it's necessary to look at the first murder Williams 
committed, when he was 17. The victim was 51-year-old Herbert Hamilton, who had 
a history of paying for sex with teenage boys. Hamilton had been in such a 
relationship with Williams, who ultimately beat and stabbed him repeatedly 
before dousing his body with kerosene in a failed attempt to dispose of it - "I 
loved you" was scrawled in toothpaste on Hamilton's bathroom mirror. After 
hearing the evidence, the jury acquitted Williams of 1st-degree murder and 
instead found him guilty of third-degree murder, which carried a far lesser 
penalty.

Foulkes had sought death in that case, too, but she professed to have been 
satisfied with the outcome: "I didn't care what the verdict was as long as the 
jury considered all the evidence," she later testified. Judge Sarmina didn't 
believe her: "The third degree verdict in the Hamilton case," she wrote, 
"colored Ms. Foulkes' decisions when she prosecuted [Williams] for the murder 
of Amos Norwood." Indeed, less than a year after the Hamilton trial, Foulkes 
told the Norwood jury that Williams had killed him "for no other reason but 
that a kind man offered him a ride home...

"He has taken 2 lives, 2 innocent lives of persons who were older and perhaps 
unable certainly to defend themselves against the violence that he inflicted 
upon them. He thought of no one but himself, and he had no reason to commit 
these crimes."

That jury, none the wiser, sentenced Williams to death.

Sarmina ultimately stayed Williams' execution and granted him a new sentencing 
hearing, at which a jury would be able to hear the suppressed evidence. Far 
from being chastened, the Philadelphia DA's office dug in its heels. There were 
other courts to turn to. Higher courts.

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania was no friend to capital defendants. In the 5 
years before the Williams case came onto its docket, the court, led by Chief 
Justice Ronald Castille, had ruled in favor of the death penalty 90 % of the 
time. This wasn't too surprising, given that Castille had been elected to his 
judgeship in 1993 as the law-and-order alternative to a candidate he labeled 
soft on crime. (He became chief justice in 2008.) Before joining the court, he 
had been Philadelphia's district attorney.

"Castille and his prosecutors sent 45 people to death row during their tenure, 
accounting for more than a quarter of the state's death row population," the 
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette noted in 1993. "Castille wears the statistic as a 
badge. And he is running for the high court as if it were exclusively the 
state's chief criminal court rather than a forum for a broad range of legal 
issues." Castille was pretty clear about where he stood: "You ask people to 
vote for you, they want to know where you stand on the death penalty," he told 
The Legal Intelligencer, a law journal. "I can certainly say I sent 45 people 
to death row as District Attorney of Philadelphia. They sort of get the hint."

As Philly's DA, the chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court personally 
approved Williams' capital prosecution, yet he wouldn't recuse himself from 
hearing Williams' appeals.

One of the 45 was Terry Williams. In fact, it was Castille who, in a 
handwritten note to the chief of his homicide unit, had approved Williams' 
capital prosecution in 1986. You could make a strong argument that a judge in 
his position should recuse himself from the appeals process, but Castille had a 
fraught relationship with the Federal Community Defender Office, a group of 
lawyers who represent numerous death row inmates, including Williams. Castille 
claimed that federal lawyers had no business appearing in state courts. He 
complained bitterly over the years about their "prolix and abusive pleadings" 
and about all the resources they dedicated to defending death-row inmates - 
"something one would expect in major litigation involving large law firms."

The defenders, for their part, routinely filed motions arguing that Castille 
had no business ruling on the appeals of prisoners whose prosecutions he had 
approved - particularly not in a case in which his office was found to have 
suppressed evidence helpful to the defense. But as chief justice, Castille had 
the last word. He denied all such motions, and accused the federal defenders of 
writing "scurrilously," making "scandalous misrepresentations," and having a 
"perverse worldview."

Thus it stood on October 1, 2012, when Williams' attorneys filed a motion 
asking Castille to recuse himself from their client's appeal. The chief justice 
denied it that very day, along with a second request???to let the full 
Pennsylvania Supreme Court rule on the appropriateness of his involvement.

You might assume that a prosecutor who hides key evidence, especially in a 
death penalty case, would be subject to discipline - if not criminal charges. 
But courts are as loath to punish a prosecutor as they are to assist a 
murderer. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court's ruling in Commonwealth v. Terrance 
Williams, which was released in December 2014, contained not so much as a 
footnote scolding Foulkes for what Judge Sarmina politely termed 
"gamesmanship." Instead, the court excoriated the defendant for failing to make 
an issue of his sexual abuse at the hands of the older man. These were, in 
fact, the prosecution's own arguments, coming from the same DA's office that 
had recently acknowledged how excruciatingly difficult it was for sexual abuse 
victims to go public. Of Terry Williams, the court wrote:

He could have argued Norwood's homosexual proclivities developed into sexual 
abuse, leading to rage and ultimate murder of Norwood... However, [Williams] 
chose not to do so. Instead, [he] perjured himself at trial, testifying he did 
not know the victim, had never seen him before, took no part in the murder, and 
had no reason to be angry with him or wish to harm him.

Castille, who was on his way out due to a mandatory age retirement, voted with 
the majority but couldn't resist taking a final salvo at the federal defenders' 
"blatantly frivolous" litigation. In a concurring opinion, he warned the lower 
courts not to let themselves be turned into circuses with the defenders as 
"ringmasters." And he upbraided Sarmina for letting Williams' lawyers scour the 
government's files. The information they revealed, he wrote, had smeared 
Norwood's character.

Did the prosecutors truly expect a kid facing a possible death sentence to 
discuss his sexual victimization with a lawyer he'd only met the day before 
trial?

In any case, the high court reinstated Williams' death sentence and ordered the 
court record sent to the outgoing Gov. Corbett, who just before leaving office 
set the execution date for March 4, 2015. Following it through would fall to 
his successor, Gov. Tom Wolf.

To understand why Williams might have denied knowing Norwood, it helps to go 
back to the first day of jury selection in his capital trial, when Williams 
announced to the court that he'd only met his lawyer the day before and he 
wanted a new one. The defense lawyer, assigned to Williams' case by the 
Philadelphia court system, acknowledged that this was true. Williams, he 
explained, was incarcerated at a prison far from the city, so he'd relied on 
his associate for "a lot of the detail work." When the judge asked which prison 
Williams was housed in, the lawyer had to turn to his client to ask. The judge 
nevertheless deemed the attorney "very adequate" and denied Williams' request 
for a replacement.

Whether the attorney's preparation was truly adequate - a federal judge would 
later deem his performance "constitutionally deficient" - 1 thing was clear: 
There was no trust between the client and his lawyer. Did the prosecutors truly 
expect a teenager facing a possible death sentence to have a frank discussion 
about his sexual victimization with a court-appointed lawyer he'd just met?

As the 1st Pennsylvania execution of the 21st century loomed, Gov. Wolf made an 
historic announcement: He was granting a reprieve to Terry Williams and any 
other inmate facing execution until a state task force completed a study of the 
death penalty and officials had a chance to act on its recommendations. In a 
5-page memo, Wolf listed race discrimination, bad lawyering, high costs, and 
the threat of executing an innocent man among the reasons for his decision.

The announcement was no great surprise, given that Wolf and all of his 
Democratic primary rivals supported a moratorium on executions - and that Wolf 
had handily defeated a pro-death penalty incumbent in the general election. 
Even the new chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had declared the 
system in "disrepair," and had written extensively on its failings. But death 
penalty supporters were furious. Seth Williams was among the first to lash out. 
The people who would be the "most grateful," the DA announced, "are the 
guiltiest, cruelest, most vicious killers on death row." As for Terry Williams, 
the DA was "weary of this murderer's effort to portray himself as a victim."

He failed to mention, of course, the censored police reports, or the Board of 
Pardons' 3-2 vote in Williams' favor (a unanimous vote is required for 
clemency). The DA simply reiterated that the prisoner was guilty of heinous 
crimes. "The governor's action today was an injustice to the citizens of this 
state," he concluded. "And to victims of crime."

Several weeks later, during a televised debate, Seth Williams further 
articulated his case: Terry Williams, he said, "brutally beat to death two gay 
men because he was extorting them." This was a bewildering claim from the head 
of an office that prosecuted hundreds of sexual abuse cases a year: You could 
spend decades digging through the Philadelphia court dockets and be hard 
pressed to find a case in which teenage boys hired to service middle-aged men 
were charged with extortion.

But the DA didn't stop there. Explaining that he agreed the death penalty was 
appropriate only in the "worst of the worst of the worst" cases, he attempted 
to describe how the systemic problems the governor had described did not apply 
to Williams.

"Every appellate court has said issues of racism, yes, they exist in the 
criminal justice system, but not in this case. Cases of people not being given 
the attorneys that are appropriate, that exists, but not in this case..."

14 of the 16 jurors disqualified by Williams' prosecutor were black - even 
though African Americans made up less than half of the jury pool.

Each of these statements had at best a casual relationship to the truth. Take 
the race issue. About a month before jury selection commenced in the Norwood 
case, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in Batson v. Kentucky, a case that 
led to the ban on lawyers disqualifying people from the jury pool on account of 
their race. Indeed, 14 of the 16 jurors disqualified by Williams' prosecutor 
were black - even though African Americans made up less than half of the jury 
pool. A federal judge later found that these numbers suggested discrimination, 
but he accepted prosecutor Foulkes' "race-neutral" reasons for eliminating the 
jurors and concluded that there had been no constitutional violation. (This was 
five years before Judge Sarmina determined that the prosecution withheld key 
evidence.)

The district attorney's claim that Terry Williams received appropriate counsel 
was even more incredible. Had he forgotten that Williams' court-appointed 
attorney hadn't even bothered to meet with his client until the day before the 
trial? Or the court finding that the lawyer's performance was "constitutionally 
deficient"? (He would later have his law license suspended for his role in a 
wire-fraud scheme, according to court documents; the associate who did the 
"detail work" was disbarred for other reasons.) Was this really the quality of 
lawyering appropriate for a man whose life was at stake?

Seth Williams was hardly the only elected official grandstanding over the 
reprieve. State Rep. Mike Vereb introduced a House resolution asking the 
governor to reverse his action, and he accused Wolf of "standing with some of 
the worst criminals in Pennsylvania and against their victims." Mamie Norwood, 
the victim's spouse, responded with an open letter to Vereb and DA Williams:

I read your resolution which says that Governor Wolf has caused me and my 
family unnecessary heartache by stopping Terry Williams' execution and I am 
shocked and upset that you and other politicians are using me and saying things 
that are not true. You are the ones now causing me unnecessary heartache...I am 
asking that you please stop trying to execute Terry Williams. And please don't 
use me for your own political gain or to get your name in the news. You should 
be truly ashamed of yourselves.

12 days later, Amos Norwood's daughter provided a statement supporting an end 
to the death penalty, but calling for the execution of the man who murdered her 
father. Terry Williams had become a political football.

Before the ink was dry on the reprieve, DA Williams moved to challenge it in 
court. In September, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard arguments on whether 
the governor had acted legally under the state constitution. Pennsylvania 
governors had been granting reprieves for hundreds of years and no court had 
ever struck one down. What was in dispute, from the DA's perspective, was 
Wolf's power to impose a moratorium, and his rationale for doing so - namely 
that the system of capital punishment was "riddled with flaws, making it 
error-prone, expensive, and anything but infallible."

The high court wasn't keen on analyzing the governor's conclusions. "You're 
asking us to overturn [his] political pronouncement," one of the justices told 
the chief of the DA's appeals unit. "He could easily have [granted the 
reprieve] without announcing it as some kind of policy."

The argument barely mentioned Terry Williams, and when the new chief justice 
urged Williams' lawyer to "focus on the interest of your client," the response 
was painfully obvious: "Mr. Williams has a strong interest. Indeed, his life 
depends on the court respecting the governor's constitutional reprieve power."

"Mr. Williams has a strong interest. Indeed, his life depends on the court 
respecting the governor's constitutional reprieve power."

As the Pennsylvania Supreme Court pondered Wolf's ability to grant a reprieve - 
a decision is expected by year's end - the US Supreme Court announced last 
month that it would consider the propriety of former Chief Justice Castille's 
participation in the case. The high court will have to decide whether a 
prosecutor who personally authorized a defendant's capital prosecution and then 
ran for an appeals court as a death-penalty supporter should get to vote on 
that same defendant's appeal. Throw in the suppression of evidence under his 
watch, and it's hard to imagine a more compelling case for a judge to recuse 
himself. The justices will render their ruling by next summer. (If they rule 
that Castille should have stepped aside, the justices will then have to address 
whether his participation may have changed the outcome, as his was not the 
deciding vote.)

In the meantime, the Philly DA continues to attack the governor's "flagrantly 
unconstitutional" reprieve. Andrea Foulkes - "an outstanding prosecutor with an 
impeccable record for integrity, professionalism, and dedication to public 
service," according to her supervisors - continues to work as an assistant US 
Attorney. Terry Williams, his execution on hold for the moment, remains in his 
cell on death row, awaiting the decisions of 2 courts and maybe an honest 
answer to the question first raised at the clemency hearing: Why him?

(source: motherjones.com)






NORTH CAROLINA:

LGBT defendants face bias in death penalty cases, but you wouldn't know it from 
the data available


The capital punishment trial of Calvin Burdine in Texas is famous.Burdine's 
lawyer fell asleep multiple times during the October 2000 murder trial, 
prompting a retrial.

But the fact that the lawyer made derogatory comments about his client, a gay 
man, did not garner as much attention. And the prosecutor's statement that 
"sending a homosexual to the penitentiary certainly isn't a very bad punishment 
for a homosexual" was not the cause for the retrial. While there is an 
abundance of data on racial, gender and geographic bias influencing death 
penalty convictions, data are not collected on bias against LGBT defendants - 
but case studies across the nation show that discrimination exists.

Robert Dunham, executive director of the death penalty information center, said 
the kind of argument used against Calvin Burdine is not uncommon in death 
penalty cases involving LGBT defendants.

"To convince the jury or judge that they should take the life of a defendant, 
they attempt to demonize the defendant," Dunham said.

"They do it to make the defendant 'other' than human."

Dunham said prosecutors often label LGBT defendants as sexually or morally 
deviant or bring up their sexual orientation when it is not relevant to the 
case.

Ruthann Robson, a law professor at the City University of New York and expert 
on sexuality issues and the law, said female defendants sometimes face 
implications of lesbianism regardless of how they identify.

"One way to dehumanize women, or at least defeminize them, is through their 
sexual orientation," Robinson said.

"...Lesbians are portrayed as hating men."

Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall said an argument attempting to 
dehumanize a defendant would be considered improper in North Carolina.

"That's the kind of argument that would get a case overturned," he said.

A jury of peers?

In addition to discrimination in prosecutor's arguments, jury selection in 
capital punishment cases can also work against LGBT defendants, Dunham said.

"The death qualifying process tends to impanel who are more xenophobic," said 
Dunham, citing a 2007 study from the University of South Florida. "That 
includes jurors who harbor feelings of discrimination against the LGBT 
community."

Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt, who is also a death penalty defense lawyer, stressed 
that not everyone who supports the death penalty is racist or homophobic.

"What is certainly true is that anyone who makes it to a death penalty jury 
believes in the death penalty," Kleinschmidt said. "As the number of people who 
believe in the death penalty gets smaller and smaller over time, they become 
the only people who are eligible to serve on these trials."

According to an October 2015 Gallup poll, 61 % of Americans favored the death 
penalty for those convicted of murder - a percentage that has been slowly 
falling since support for the death penalty peaked in 1994 with 80 % of 
Americans in favor.

"You start narrowing the pool, and I think it becomes more likely that you are 
identifying people who may hold other kinds of abhorrent beliefs," Kleinschmidt 
said.

It is unlawful for lawyers to ask jurors about their sexual orientation, which 
some argue might make it more difficult to find a jury of peers for LGBT 
defendants.

Kleinschmidt said a possible line of questioning would be to ask jurors if they 
know a gay person and about their relationship to that person. He said he also 
asks jurors in what kinds of cases the death penalty should be imposed.

"Often times you can hear in those explanations hints about other kinds of 
bias," Kleinschmidt said. "...I always ask them why they think the way they 
do."

In North Carolina, district attorneys can call for the death penalty if one or 
more aggravating factors are present in the case, according to Woodall. 
Aggravating factors include if the murder was especially cruel, if the murder 
was committed for financial gain and if the murder was committed during the 
commission of another felony, such as robbery or drug dealing. There are 11 
aggravating factors recognized by the state.

"Once you find an aggravating circumstance, jurors have virtually unlimited 
discretion as to whether to spare a defendant's life or sentence him or her to 
die," Dunham said.

In many places, views of homosexuality and LGBT rights have progressed in the 
last decade. According to a 2014 Pew Research survey, 62 % of Americans said 
homosexuality should be accepted by society, compared to 46 % in 1994.

And Robinson argues that even if society has progressed, these biases were 
certainly true at the time of many LGBT inmates' convictions.

"And they're still in prison."

Data on discrimination

Dunham and other death penalty experts emphasize that there is no thorough data 
on discrimination against LGBT individuals facing the death penalty. The sexual 
orientations of defendants and victims are not tracked. Robinson's research is 
all based on individual case studies.

UNC professor Frank Baumgartner, a death penalty expert, said in an email that 
there are data on the race, gender, age and other factors about those who are 
executed.

Baumgartner's research has shown that the race and gender of the defendant and 
victim both play a part in death penalty sentences. For example, between 1976 
and 2008 in North Carolina, 42 % of all homicide victims were black males.

But black males accounted for only 4 % of the victims of those executed, while 
43 % of the victims of those executed were white females.

It is also rare to find women on death row. Baumgartner said in an email that 
nationwide, females account for about 10 % of homicide offenders, yet just 1 % 
of those executed.

"They tend to be executed for crimes against family members, whereas men are 
more often executed for crimes against strangers," Baumgartner said in an 
email.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there have been 43 
executions in North Carolina since 1976. The last execution was carried out in 
2006. Currently, there are 157 inmates on death row in North Carolina, 
including 4 women.

Kleinschmidt said extreme circumstances such as a murder trial can bring out 
implicit biases, such as racism, sexism and homophobia.

"We're not any closer to ridding the criminal justice system of anti-gay bias 
than we are ridding the criminal justice system of racial bias," he said.

(source: dailytarheel.com)






GEORGIA----impending execution

Execution date for Terrell set for next week


After putting the planned execution of Brian Keith Terrell, 47, on hold earlier 
this year, the Georgia Department of Corrections announced in a press release 
that the Newton County Superior Court has now set the date for the execution to 
proceed. The court ordered the Georgia Department of Corrections to carry out 
the execution on a date between Dec. 8-15, 2015. Commissioner Homer Bryson has 
set the date for 7 p.m. next Tuesday, Dec. 8 at the Georgia Diagnostic and 
Classification Prison in Jackson.

Screen Shot 2015-11-29 at 10.36.27 AMTerrell was convicted in Walton County 
Superior Court in 2001 for the 1992 robbery and murder of John Henry Watson, of 
Covington. His execution was put on hold in March this year while an analysis 
was conducted on the drugs planned for use in the scheduled execution of Kelly 
Renee Gissendaner. Her execution was called off in the hours leading up to the 
scheduled execution due to concerns over the drugs to be used. Gissendaner was 
eventually executed on Sept. 30.

(source: monroelocal.org)






FLORIDA:

Death penalty to be discussed at diocesan prayer service


In an effort to call attention for the abolition of the death penalty, the 
Catholic Diocese of St. Augustine will be taking part in an international 
prayer service tonight.

The prayer service, which begins at 6 p.m. at the Cathedral Basilica of St. 
Augustine, is part of an international project that began in Italy, according 
to a release from the Diocese of St. Augustine.

6 Florida dioceses, including St. Augustine, are part of the project, called 
Cities for Life - Cities Against the Death Penalty, the release said.

Almost 2,000 cities in the world have declared themselves a "City for Life," 
and will show their commitment to abolish the death penalty by lighting up 
their cathedrals and other landmarks, including the coliseum in Rome, the 
release said.

In St. Augustine, Rev. Tom Willis will be presiding over the prayer service and 
Deacon Jason Roy will give the homily. Roy is the Florida Catholic Chaplain for 
inmates on death row.

Bishop Felipe J. Estevez is calling on all Catholics to stop what they are 
doing Monday at 6 p.m. to "pray for life, pray for mercy and seek 
reconciliation," the release said.

(source: St. Augustine Record)






COLORADO:

Accused gunman in Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood attack could face death 
penalty, legal experts say


Flowers have been laid, candles lit and prayers offered.

But on Monday, attention is likely to shift back to Robert Lewis Dear Jr. in 
what could be Colorado's next death penalty case.

As questions mounted Sunday ahead of the first court appearance for the man 
accused of opening fire at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood, some legal 
experts say one thing is clear: Prosecutors may seek the death penalty.

"When I saw events unfold, that was my thought: I thought this possibly could 
be a capital crime," said Colorado Springs attorney Jennifer Stock, a veteran 
defender of 1st-degree murder cases. She, like many others across the country, 
followed the mayhem in media reports.

The early legal questions came as the toll of the state's latest mass shooting 
became clear, signs of strain emerged among local law enforcement agencies, 
local agencies consoled grief-stricken witnesses and the investigation 
stretched into a 3rd day at the shooting site.

An Iraq War veteran and a stay-at-home mother of 2 were named among the dead in 
Friday's attack - an act that Gov. John Hickenlooper called a "form of 
terrorism" in a nationally televised interview.

Ke'Arre Stewart, 29, who previously served in the Army and was raising 2 
children, died in the shooting spree, as did Jennifer Markovsky, 35, who moved 
to Colorado Springs from Hawaii and had 2 children.

"I know everyone is struggling with it. It's just hard to believe," said Julia 
Miller, Markovsky's sister-in-law.

Sunday morning, parishioners held their first church service at Hope Chapel 
without Garrett Swasey, a University of Colorado at Colorado Springs police 
officer slain in the shootings. He was a church elder.

9 people - most of them law enforcement officers - were wounded by the gunfire.

The bloodshed spawned a string of services and 2 vigils in a city left reeling 
from its 2nd mass shooting in a month.

On Halloween morning, investigators say a man armed with an AR-15 and 2 
handguns killed a bicyclist and 2 women at a substance abuse recovery home 
before dying in a shootout with Colorado Springs police.

After the latest attack, a handful of people sought grief counseling at an 
American Red Cross center that opened Sunday for people struggling to deal with 
the trauma. Most of them witnessed Friday's mayhem firsthand at the clinic or 
the busy shopping center nearby, where dozens sought shelter while the 5-hour 
standoff in the clinic unfolded. Police investigators took statements from some 
of them.

Other detectives continued their investigation at the bullet-riddled clinic.

Investigators expected to finish examining the facility this week after combing 
for evidence and cataloging the bullets fired. A Planned Parenthood official 
said the facility will reopen, but could not say when.

The sheer number of officers who fired rounds Friday rendered El Paso County's 
SWAT unit short-handed. At least a dozen sheriff's deputies and an unknown 
number of Colorado Springs police were placed on paid administrative leave.

Doing so is routine after officer-involved shootings, but it left dispatchers 
scrambling Sunday morning when a man shot his father in the head before 
barricading himself inside a Gleneagle home in northern El Paso County. Douglas 
County Regional SWAT members responded instead.

While officers pieced together how Friday's Planned Parenthood shooting 
unfolded, clues have emerged about what led to the rampage.

After surrendering to officers, Dear reportedly uttered "no more baby parts" - 
a reference to videos released by anti-abortion activists over the summer 
targeting Planned Parenthood's practice of using fetal tissue for research.

Several questions emerged Sunday: Who will prosecute the case, who will defend 
Dear and will the death penalty be sought?

Dear, 57, of Hartsel, is scheduled to appear for his advisement Monday, his 1st 
appearance before a judge. He has been held in the El Paso County jail without 
bond since the attack.

El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder said Sunday that he wouldn't release Dear's 
booking information, including the names of his attorneys.

"We're not going to release it," Elder said. "We are holding that information 
until a judge tells us that we need to release that."

The hearing, expected to be held via a video feed from the jail, could signal 
that prosecutors want to keep the case in El Paso County.

Still, prosecutors have consulted with the U.S. Attorney's Office over whether 
Dear would be tried locally or in federal court, 4th Judicial District Attorney 
Dan May confirmed Sunday. He sidestepped further questions about charging 
considerations and whether local prosecutors would seek the death penalty.

"I'm not going to comment on that," he said.

A source with knowledge of defense preparations confirmed that representatives 
of the state Public Defender's Office met with Dear at the El Paso County jail. 
They obtained a signed application for legal assistance, and intend to 
introduce the document in court Monday.

The source wouldn't specify which attorneys had been assigned, or whether steps 
were being taken to gird for the possibility of the death penalty.

Local attorneys say the Planned Parenthood shooting is a likely candidate for a 
death penalty case.

Accusations in the Dear case meet at least three "aggravators," or legal 
prerequisites to pursue capital punishment, said Joshua Tolini, a Colorado 
Springs defense attorney who previously served as a deputy public defender.

The assailant allegedly targeted multiple victims, laid in wait before 
launching an ambush and killed a police officer - factors that are likely to 
weigh on the minds of Dear's attorneys.

"Any time there's a homicide with statutory aggravators, that's something for 
them to consider, and they'll staff it accordingly," Tolini said.

The death penalty was most recently sought against James Holmes in the Aurora 
theater shooting and Dexter Lewis in a Denver bar mass stabbing. Juries instead 
opted for life sentences in both cases.

Dear's attorneys also are nearly certain to file a change of venue request on 
the argument that he would be unable to receive a fair trial in El Paso County, 
Stock, the veteran defense attorney, said.

Either way, it could be a while before prosecutors' intentions for the death 
penalty are clear.

In Colorado, prosecutors must provide written notice whether they intend to 
pursue the death penalty within 60 days of the defendant entering a plea.

(source: gazette.com)






ARIZONA:

The Execution of Joseph Wood----An execution of a man in Arizona with a new 
cocktail of drugs was supposed to take about 10 minutes. It took almost 2 
hours, the longest execution in U.S. history


The following is a script from "The Execution of Joseph Wood" which aired on 
Nov. 29, 2015. Bill Whitaker is the correspondent. Ira Rosen and Habiba 
Nosheen, producers.

In July of last year, Joseph Wood was strapped to a gurney in Arizona's death 
chamber. His execution, by lethal injection with a new cocktail of drugs was 
supposed to take about 10 minutes. It took almost two hours -- the longest 
execution in U.S. history.

When lethal injections were introduced in 1977, they were supposed to be a more 
humane form of capital punishment. Instead the process has become a messy 
testing ground for unproven, toxic drugs.

At the heart of the problem: pharmaceutical companies have banned the use of 
their drugs for capital punishment -- partly under pressure from death-penalty 
opponents. Without access to the lethal agents they've used for decades, the 
states are turning to new, untried drugs.

And that's creating an execution crisis in America, making it harder and harder 
to ensure that when a state decides to end a life, things don't go horribly 
awry, as they did in the execution of Joseph Wood.

Arizona is 1 of 31 states to employ capital punishment. Cameras aren't allowed 
here, but this Department of Corrections video takes us inside death row, where 
more than 100 inmates are awaiting execution by lethal injection.

On July 23, 2014, it was Joseph Wood's turn. Wood had been convicted of 
murdering his former girlfriend and her father.

At 1:52 p.m., Arizona executioners began pumping an experimental combination of 
drugs into Wood's veins. They had never before used these drugs for execution, 
but they expected Wood to die within minutes.

Among the witnesses that day were Deacon Ed Schaeffer, Wood's attorney Dale 
Baich, and reporter Michael Kiefer.

Michael Kiefer: It seemed to go as normal. They put in the catheters. They 
announced that they would-- were administering the drug. And he closed his eyes 
and went to sleep.

Dale Baich: And about 11 minutes in, I noticed his lip quiver. And a minute 
later, he gasped. A few seconds later, he did it again and then again and again 
and again.

Ed Schaeffer: It was loud. It wasn't just, you know, some nice, peaceful 
sleeping sound.

Bill Whitaker: Were you thinking at this point, "Something's gone wrong"?

Michael Kiefer: Everybody was thinking something went wrong. You could see the 
looks on the faces of the people from the Department of Corrections, who were 
standing along the side. You know, they were looking at each other nervously.

Bill Whitaker: You tried to have the execution stopped?

Dale Baich: While Joe Wood was on the table gasping and gulping, we were 
arguing to a federal judge that he should stop the execution.

Bill Whitaker: On what grounds?

Dale Baich: That it wasn't working.

/ Ed Schaeffer: I actually said about 4 rosaries, 4 complete rosaries, and 
there's 5 decades to each rosary. And each one can take anywhere from 15 to 20 
minutes.

Bill Whitaker: And that told you that this was going on for a very long time?

Ed Schaeffer: Hour and 58 minutes.

Michael Kiefer: That's a long time to be sitting there, watching somebody die.

Before the federal judge could rule, Joseph Wood was dead. It was supposed to 
take just one dose of the drugs to kill him. Prison logs show before it was 
over executioners had injected Wood 15 times with the new cocktail of drugs.

Dale Baich: Someone made the decision to inject 14 additional doses of that 
drug into Mr. Wood. That's not something that has ever been done before. So, 
they were making it up as they went along.

In several rulings, the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the Eighth Amendment: 
punishment must not be cruel and unusual. Joseph Wood's lingering death set off 
alarms across the country and prompted an independent investigation in Arizona.

Bill Whitaker: Was Joseph Wood's execution botched?

Mark Brnovich: Well, Bill, I think "botched" is a very inflammatory word.

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich told us he sees nothing wrong in the way 
Wood's execution was carried out.

Bill Whitaker: It took almost 2 hours. That's the longest execution in U.S. 
history?

Mark Brnovich: At the end of the day, though, the independent report, the 
medical examiner, all concluded that Mr. Wood was sedated the entire time, was 
unresponsive to stimuli, and he was feeling no pain whatsoever.

Bill Whitaker: But, how do you know that?

Mark Brnovich: Well, obviously--

Bill Whitaker: Were--

Mark Brnovich: At the end of the day--

Bill Whitaker: --there sensors? Was anybody taking brain s-- you know, how do 
you know he wasn't feeling--

Mark Brnovich: Well--

Bill Whitaker: --pain?

Mark Brnovich: Ultimately, you can't know, because the person's dead.

Bill Whitaker: So if two hours isn't too long, what is? Three hours? Would that 
cause alarm? 4 hours?

Mark Brnovich: I think 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours, when someone's on the death 
gurney and they're unconscious, I don't think they're worried about the time. 
In this instance it happened to take longer but that does not mean that it was 
botched.

Bill Whitaker: What should you call it?

Mark Brnovich: I would call it that you had somebody who is a heinous killer 
that murdered people in cold blood and eventually received justice.

There's no dispute of Joseph Wood's guilt. In August of 1989, Wood, a 
31-year-old vet, addicted to methamphetamines, walked into this auto body shop 
in Tucson, Arizona, shot and killed his former girlfriend, Debra Dietz, and her 
father, Eugene Dietz, in cold blood, in broad daylight. Richard and Jeannie 
Brown remember that day well.

Bill Whitaker: You actually saw Joe Wood kill your--

Richard Brown: Sister-in-law. She's saying "No, Joe, don't do it, don't do it" 
and he shot her anyways. It was one of the worst days of my life. In 40 
seconds, Eugene Dietz and Debra Dietz were dead.

Jeannie Brown: And my mom looked at me and she walked up and gave me a hug and 
she said, "Your dad and your sister were just killed."

Bill Whitaker: You witnessed his execution?

Richard Brown: Yes.

Bill Whitaker: What was that day like for you?

Richard Brown: That day was one of the best days of my life, because he finally 
got it.

Jeannie Brown: Everybody can say he went inhumanely, it was a horrible death, I 
wonder if we were all sitting in the same room and if we all saw the same 
thing, because he went peacefully. And my-- I'm sure my dad and my sister did 
not go peacefully.

Bill Whitaker: This is a murderer. He committed a heinous crime. Why worry 
about his last 2 hours on earth?

Dale Baich: We're not medical doctors. We don't know whether Joe Wood 
experienced pain. But what we do know is that under the Constitution there 
cannot be cruel and unusual punishment. And there cannot be a lingering death. 
I witnessed other executions by lethal injection and I had never seen anything 
like that.

Lethal injections were supposed to be a civilized step up from the brutality of 
electrocutions and the spectacle of public hangings. Former President Ronald 
Reagan described execution by lethal injection as just like falling asleep.

Alex Kozinski: I just think that the whole idea of using drugs is foolish.

Alex Kozinski is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth 
Circuit which covers the West -- including Arizona, where Joseph Wood was 
executed. Kozinski was appointed to the bench by President Reagan and is one of 
the most prominent conservative judges in the country. He is in favor of the 
death penalty but is opposed to lethal injection.

Alex Kozinski: The state of Arizona and other states want to make this look 
like it's benign, want to make it look like "Oh, it's just a medical 
procedure." They ought to just face the idea that this is cruel and this is 
violent. And they ought to use some method that reflects that.

Bill Whitaker: Well, we used to do all kinds of things to kill people. We used 
to have the electric chair. We used to have the gas chamber. We used to hang 
people, even publicly.

Alex Kozinski: Many people were executed by electric chair but then it was 
switched away from that because it was thought to be something that caused 
pain.

Bill Whitaker: So, that's why most states moved to lethal injection.

Alex Kozinski: And as a result, those people who strongly opposed the death 
penalty moved to stop the flow of drugs that are available for execution. So 
now states have to scramble for ever-more-exotic drugs to try to carry out the 
death penalty.

Pharmaceutical companies also grew alarmed that drugs developed to heal were 
being used to kill and they refused to sell them for use in executions. The 
U.S. government now prohibits the import of the drugs. We found 15 states have 
begun to improvise their own lethal concoctions. The result: a number of 
bungled executions.

Last year, in Ohio, convicted murderer Dennis McGuire gasped and convulsed on 
the gurney for 25 minutes before dying. In Oklahoma, Clayton Lockett, convicted 
of rape and murder, was administered an untested combination of drugs. He 
struggled violently, groaned and writhed. A witness later said it was like 
watching a person being tortured to death. Prison officials moved to stop the 
execution, but Lockett would die of a heart attack 43 minutes after the drugs 
first entered his veins. Lockett's execution prompted President Barack Obama to 
call for a wide-ranging federal review of executions.

President Barack Obama: What happened in Oklahoma is deeply troubling. In the 
application of the death penalty in this country we have seen significant 
problems.

Most states have laws making lethal injection the only option for executions. 
With the drugs now unavailable, we have found six states have skirted federal 
law and turned to black-market dealers to get their hands on them.

Five years ago, when Arizona needed drugs to execute an inmate named Jeffrey 
Landrigan, it purchased them illegally from a supplier operating out of this 
driving school in London. On customs forms obtained by 60 Minutes, the state 
claimed the imported drugs were for animal use. We asked the current attorney 
general, Mark Brnovich, if those drugs were used for the Landrigan execution.

Bill Whitaker: The importing of the drug that you were trying to use for his 
execution was illegal. It's against U.S. law for that drug to be imported.

Mark Brnovich: It's my understanding that there was a paperwork issue. The 
proper forms weren't filled out.

Bill Whitaker: Was it used in the execution of Mr. Landrigan?

Mark Brnovich: Yes.

Bill Whitaker: This office, the state of Arizona, knew or should have known 
that it was illegal to import these drugs.

Mark Brnovich: Bill, I was not the attorney general when that happened--

Bill Whitaker: Yeah, but this--

Mark Brnovich: And I don't want to use that as an excuse. 'Cause I think 
there's--

? Bill Whitaker: But if this office--

Mark Brnovich: --a broader--

Bill Whitaker: --is-- this-- this is the top legal office.

Mark Brnovich: Right. And all I can assure you is that as long as I'm attorney 
general, we will follow all state and federal regulations and all state and 
federal laws when it comes to obtaining and using the drugs in the executions 
here in Arizona.

After our interview, newly-released documents revealed the Arizona Department 
of Corrections once again purchased banned execution drugs abroad. Federal 
authorities seized the illegal imports. Arizona now is trying to get them back.

Mark Brnovich: We execute individuals not because we want to or we get some 
sort a bloodlust out if it. We do it because we feel like we have to. And we 
will do everything we can to make sure that they're killed in the most 
efficient manner possible.

The death penalty in Arizona has been blocked by a lawsuit since the problems 
with Joseph Wood's execution. The state is fighting in court to resume capital 
punishment by lethal injection.

Alex Kozinski: I would eliminate the entire controversy. I would use a bullet 
or a series of bullets. They're fast. They're effective. Nobody ever survives.

"The death penalty is barbaric. And I think we as a society need to come 
face-to-face with that. If we're not willing to face up to the cruelty, we 
ought not to be doing it."

Bill Whitaker: Go back to the firing squad?

Alex Kozinski: Make it look like an execution. Mutilate the body. And this 
would express the sense of that's what you're doing, that we're actually 
committing violence on another human being.

Bill Whitaker: I read that you have even thought the guillotine might be a good 
way to execute.

Alex Kozinski: Oh, yes.

Bill Whitaker: Really?

Alex Kozinski: The guillotine works. Never fails. It's quick. It's effective.

Bill Whitaker: You do know what that sounds like, hearing a judge sort of be an 
advocate for the guillotine?

Alex Kozinski: Tell me.

Bill Whitaker: Barbaric.

Alex Kozinski: The death penalty is barbaric. And I think we as a society need 
to come face-to-face with that. If we're not willing to face up to the cruelty, 
we ought not to be doing it.

(source: CBS news)