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

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 4



NEBRASKA:

Death penalty verification process delayed


Incorrectly redirected death penalty petitions are delaying the signature 
verification process, the Nebraska Secretary of State's Office said Friday 
night.

An "unusually high number of petitions" were returned to the Secretary of 
State's Office and redirected to other counties, according to a release.

Laura Strimple, communications director with the Secretary of State's Office, 
said it's "not uncommon" for petition pages to be mailed to the wrong counties 
when stacked together. Approximately 60 counties are getting the wrong petition 
pages, she said, delaying the process.

The Secretary of State's Office released preliminary totals in early September 
for petition signatures verified by county officials, indicating that the 
petition drive to overturn the repeal of the state's death penalty had met the 
threshold to get the issue on the November 2016 ballot.

As of Friday, officials at the county level had verified 142,703 of the 167,724 
signatures turned in by petition organizers.

County officials had thus far rejected 22,619 of signatures reviewed.

The number of registered voters in Nebraska at the petition deadline was 
1,138,825, according to the Secretary of State's Office. Organizers needed 
signatures from 5 percent of the state's registered voters, or 56,942 verified 
signatures, to put the issue on the ballot.

Reaching 10 % of registered voters, or 113,883 valid signatures, would prevent 
the legislation from going into effect until it can be voted on.

Both thresholds further require that the 5 % or 10 % mark be met in at least 38 
of the state's 93 counties.

Strimple said at least 38 counties certified their numbers to meet the 5 % 
threshold, but not yet the 10 % threshold.

In Lancaster County, Friday's report showed, 20,128 of 23,907 signatures 
gathered were verified, with 3,598 rejected.

Douglas County signatures totaled 38,346, with 32,233 of those verified.

Signatures and information are checked against voter registration records.

Lancaster County Election Commissioner Dave Shively said his staff has a lot of 
leeway on verifying those signatures, even when they are hard to read or have 
missing or wrong information.

"It's our responsibility to prove that they're not registered, not that they 
are registered," he said.

The Secretary of State's Office has not certified any of the count totals 
released Friday. Some counties are still verifying signatures, Strimple said.

Nebraska's death penalty was repealed by the Legislature in May with the 
passage of LB268. Lawmakers then voted 30-19 to override Gov. Pete Ricketts' 
veto of the bill.

(source: Lincoln Journal Star)






UTAH:

Utah prison death investigated as homicide only after cellmate sends alleged 
confession to county attorney


For months, officials believed that 62-year-old Rolando Cardona-Gueton 
committed suicide inside his Gunnison prison cell.

It wasn't until the man's cellmate, Steven Douglas Crutcher, penned a letter to 
the Sanpete County attorney - where he allegedly confessed to killing 
Cardona-Gueton - that the probe became a homicide investigation, according to 
recently filed court documents.

Now, the man's defense attorneys are trying to keep that letter out of an 
upcoming trial for Crutcher, who is facing the death penalty for the April 2013 
murder.

Crutcher's letter, which was sent to County Attorney Brody Kiesel in July 2013, 
is sealed to the public in court records. But prosecutors say in court filings 
that the letter contains a confession from Crutcher, admitting that he 
strangled Cardona-Gueton with a ligature.

Keisel also asked 6th District Judge Wallace Lee in an April filing to take 
notice that the date of the alleged murder - April 20 - is Adolf Hitler's 
birthday.

Keisel wrote that he has asked the judge to note this because Crutcher's letter 
"contain[s] racial epithets and white supremacist slang and [Crutcher's] 
description of himself as a 'neo-Nazi skinhead.' "

Keisel also stated in court filings that Crutcher wrote in the letter that he 
killed his cellmate to get "his bolts."

"At trial, the state will argue that 'the bolts' are 'Schutzstaffel bolts,' 
which white supremacist gang members use to identify themselves," Keisel wrote, 
apparently referring to tattoos.

But Crutcher's attorney, Edward Brass, argued in court papers filed in 
September that jurors should not be able to see Crutcher's initial letter or a 
subsequent letter intercepted months later that also allegedly contained a 
confession.

The defense attorney argued that the alleged confessions were coerced because 
Crutcher had been placed in "restrictive isolation" in the prison for weeks 
after Cardona-Gueton's death. He further argued that his client had asked for 
an attorney when he was initially interviewed as a witness on the day of the 
death, but wasn't appointed an attorney until he was charged with aggravated 
murder in September 2013.

"Mr. Crutcher should have been appointed counsel from the moment he asked for 
one," Brass wrote. "... Instead, he was placed in restrictive isolation where 
he was allowed out of his cell for 15 minutes to shower three times a week. 
After six weeks of this, he began to initiate contact with the state."

But in a response filed Wednesday, Assistant Utah Attorney General Daryl Bell 
wrote that Crutcher was not placed in more isolated conditions because of 
Cardon-Gueton's death, but because of "other incidents" that Crutcher was 
involved in. (The defendant was charged in November 2013 with aggravated 
assault by a prisoner and other counts in connection to an unspecified July 
2013 incident, according to court records.)

Bell said Crutcher initially told an investigator that his cellmate had killed 
himself, and claimed that he had only asked for an attorney originally because 
he feared he would get in trouble for not reporting the suicide earlier. The 
prosecutor said that the letter was not coerced, and that because Crutcher was 
not a homicide suspect at that time, he had no inherent right to 
state-appointed counsel.

The judge heard arguments on this issue on Friday, but made no immediate 
ruling. He said that he would issue a written ruling later, and set a 
scheduling conference for Thursday in the case.

Crutcher's case is expected to go to trial on April 18, 2016 and continue 
through May 20. The alleged killing qualifies as a death-penalty eligible crime 
because it was committed inside of a prison, according to Keisel.

Keisel said last year that a bedsheet torn into strips and braided together was 
used to kill Cardona-Gueton, who had been at the prison since 2011, serving 
time for theft and drug distribution.

The county attorney said the 2 inmates had shared a cell together for just a 
few days before the alleged murder occurred.

Crutcher is currently serving a sentence of up to life in prison for an 2009 
aggravated kidnapping conviction, according to court records.

(source: Salt Lake Tribune)






OREGON:

Eliminate the death penalty, and you'll end up with killers back on the streets


The Oregonian editorial board has changed its mind on the death penalty at 
least 4 times in the last 20 years. Even more frequently than Oregon voters. In 
the 20th century, Oregonians have voted 5 times to either abolish or restore 
capital punishment. The last 2 times, in 1977 and 1984, the vote was to restore 
the penalty.

If there is, in fact, a vote, it will be interesting to see how much of the 
"abolition" money comes from billionaires opposing the death penalty (both 
right and left wing ones). First, they are trying - and sometimes succeeding - 
in buying elections in states in which they do not live. Millions of dollars in 
political advertising can sell any number of urban myths as true. More 
importantly, the families of the wealthy are usually not the victims of murder. 
The victims are poor children, women and people of color.

Second, name a single person sentenced to death since Oregon reinstituted the 
death penalty who was later found to be innocent. That number is zero. Yet, the 
myth persists that we have executed the innocent.

Opponents of the death penalty have made it clear that once that battle is won, 
their next target will be attacking life without parole (LWOP) arguing that it 
violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual 
punishment. There have already been some court decisions forbidding LWOP for 
murder in other states.

To think that taking the rarely sought death penalty off the table will save 
buckets of money is naive at best.

People like Ward Weaver pled guilty to avoid the death penalty. If that 
possibility had not been there, the trials to avoid LWOP would be just as long, 
just as expensive, just as draining for the victims' survivors.

Anyone who watches murder cases progress knows that a person who isn't facing 
the death penalty (he might, for example have been extradited from Mexico, 
which will only extradite on agreement the killer not face death) has just as 
much incentive to tap the enormous tax-paid public defense system, which 
generally offers excellent, if expensive, representation. In order to get the 
chance for parole (the next penalty down from LWOP), the defense will have at 
least 2 experienced defense lawyers, investigators, mitigation specialists, 
psychologists and jury consultants. Nobody wants to spend their life in prison. 
In the criminal justice system, where there's life, there is always hope for 
parole.

For anyone who thinks a mass commutation or changing the Constitution to forbid 
capital punishment means former death row murderers will never leave prison: 
Dream on. Apart from the fact that in the modern era Oregon's 1st death row 
inmate escaped from prison, other murderers already doing life killed again in 
prison. Without a death penalty and the announced elimination of the Intensive 
Management Unit (it had been called "the prison within the prison" for 
particularly hard cases), there is very little disincentive for someone who has 
shown a propensity to kill to change his ways.

Beyond that, 8 of the men on death row committed their murders before LWOP was 
made law. We really have no idea if the courts will even uphold LWOP as it has 
only existed for 25 years in Oregon. For those men, abolition of Oregon's death 
penalty means 2 things will happen for those inmates: First, since a punishment 
cannot be imposed ex post facto under constitutional law, those inmates will 
get the next harshest sentence available. Consequently, a parole board hearing 
will be likely and victims' families will have to listen to their loved ones' 
killers plead for freedom. Second, the minimum sentence before 1990 was 30 
years, so a quarter of those on death row could walk out of prison. If you 
think that's impossible, ask the scores of victims of murderers who were 
slaughtered across America after their killers were legally released from a 
so-called "life sentence."

Psychologists tell us that the best predictor of future behavior is past 
behavior. This doesn't just apply to people; it also applies to institutions. 
Until Measure 11 ensured that murderers sentenced to life served at least 25 
years, the average time served in Oregon for a "life sentence" for murder was 8 
years.

(source: Guest Column; Joshua Marquis, Clatsop County district attorney since 
1994, has both prosecuted and defended capital murder cases----The Oregonian)






USA:

Given risks, killing not state's purview


Recently, Kelly Renee Gissendaner, a mother, daughter and grandmother, was 
executed in Georgia after being on death row for almost 20 years. She did not 
even do the killing. Her lover did the actual killing, and he now is serving 
life in prison while she has been executed.

Have we lost our minds? Is this madness so ingrained in our society that we 
have to kill women? Couldn't she have died in jail? What has killing her 
achieved? Is vengeance so important that we as a nation have to execute a 
woman? Where is the compassion that is a hallmark of this great country? 
Killing her isn't going to bring the victim back. Killing her isn't going to 
accomplish anything, but it will satisfy the need for revenge from the victim's 
family. Are we so bloodthirsty that we as a nation have to execute women? I use 
the term "we" because all of these executions make us all a partner in her 
demise, collectively. It is premeditated state sanctioned murder that tears at 
the very soul of this country. It is an inhumane act that puts America in the 
same category as countries such as China and Saudi Arabia, which routinely 
execute their citizens by the hundreds.

The death penalty is an antiquated exercise in revenge and an unfair act 
perpetrated on the poor and indigent, who in many cases happen to be black or 
brown. Statistics have shown consistently that the death penalty is not 
administered fairly, which makes it an illegitimate exercise. Over the past 10 
years, more than 20 men on death row, mostly black men, have been found 
innocent and set free. Several of the men who were saved were on death row in 
Louisiana. Recently, Glenn Ford, who spent 30 years on death row in Louisiana, 
was found to be not guilty of the crime he was sentenced to death row for and 
was released. He died from lung cancer shortly after he regained his freedom. 
It is well documented that many people have been wrongly convicted and very 
likely that some of them may have even been executed. That fact alone says that 
America should not be executing people in a system that is so flawed. Justice 
is not blind. Justice is green, and whoever has the green, can buy their 
justice.

Whenever I see the relatives and friends of those who have been murdered or 
brutalized, my heart goes out to them, and I feel like so many of them who 
believe at that moment that the perpetrator should be executed on the spot, but 
then I ask myself the questions: Who are we to take a life? Who are we to do 
the same thing to this person that he has done to someone else? Although I am 
not a religious person, I think about all of the people who use the Bible and 
the Old Testament to justify the death penalty, as if God is a partner in this 
purely inhumane and man-made endeavor. I often wonder if they have heard of the 
verses about vengeance is mine, turn the other cheek, or forgive your fellow 
man and deal with him with charity and compassion.

The Pope, with whom I disagree on many issues, recently reaffirmed his strong 
opposition to the death penalty. He is a good man who appears to have a good 
heart. As a non-believer, I was impressed with his humility and humanity. He 
bases his opposition to the death penalty on the "belief that all human life is 
sacred" and that "a truly just and humane society is obligated to protect and 
enhance all lives at all stages of development."

Yes, this is a sensitive subject, especially here in the South, but I would 
hope that if you believe all killing is wrong and that state-sanctioned killing 
has not worked and that the death penalty is administered unfairly, then you 
also believe that it should be discontinued.

This debate will surely continue, but there are many Americans who no longer 
want to be an accomplice in any killing, as they were in the death of Ms. 
Gissendaner and countless other individuals who have been killed in the name of 
justice. There have been more than 800,000 murders since the death penalty was 
reinstated in 1976 and fewer than 1,500 executions in that same period. It 
doesn't appear that those executions have deterred any crime. Killing is 
killing is killing, whether it is done by the state, an individual, or in war - 
it is still killing. Let them die in prison. We don't have to kill them. 
State-sanctioned killing is just another form of murder. Kelly Gissendaner 
should not have been executed. Executing mothers and grandmothers is not 
something I want to be a part of. We ought to be ashamed.

(source: Prentiss Smith, Shreveport Times)

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

The execution of a US prisoner who didn't kill anyone has raised questions 
about the death penalty


Moments before the drugs that would shut down her lungs and starve her brain of 
oxygen began coursing through her veins, Kelly Gissendaner began to sob.

Strapped to a gurney, with an intravenous drip hanging from her arm, she broke 
down. Between the cries, Gissendaner apologised to the family of her husband, 
said she loved her 3 children and then, as the last flickers of her life 
drained away, she broke into song.

"I just want to say God bless you all and I love you ... let my kids know I 
went out singing Amazing Grace," Gissendaner said.

Gissendaner was put to death last Wednesday at a prison in Jackson, Georgia, in 
the southern United States. Not even a direct appeal by Pope Francis was enough 
to save her from the lethal injection.

DIDN'T KILL ANYONE

What's remarkable about Gissendaner's case is she never actually killed anyone. 
This isn't speculation; it's not a theory; everyone involved in her trial is in 
furious agreement that while her husband Douglas was certainly slain, it wasn't 
Gissendaner who did the deed. Yet, the man who did kill her husband could be 
free in 7 years.

Since 1976, the US has executed 1415 people. Last year, in the 31 American 
states that allow the death penalty, 35 people were put to death. The figure is 
the lowest in more than 20 years and pales into insignificance compared to the 
thousands of citizens China is suspected of executing annually.

However, the United States remains one of the few democratic, industrialised 
nations that continues to practise the death penalty. And questions remain 
about whether some of the prisoners on death row should be there at all.

That Gissendaner wanted her husband dead is not in doubt. In February 1997, she 
conspired with her lover, Gregory Owen, to murder the man she had married not 
once, but twice. But none of the multiple stab wounds inflicted on Douglas 
Gissendaner were administered by his wife.

Astoundingly, Owen - the man who did kill Gissendaner - is not even on death 
row. In return for testifying against his co-conspirator, the man whose hands 
were literally covered in blood can now look forward to possible parole in 
2022.

CONTRACT KILLING

According to the Death Penalty Information Centre (DPIC), Gissendaner is the 
11th person to be executed for a contract killing, where you essentially get 
someone else to do your dirty work.

Last week, Richard Glossip had his date with death postponed with just minutes 
to spare. He didn't actually kill anyone either.

In 1997, Justin Sneed beat Glossip's boss, Barry Van Treese, to death in an 
Oklahoma motel room. Sneed insists that while Glossip may not have been 
present, the killing was carried out on his orders - a claim vehemently denied 
by Glossip.

Glossip's reprieve could be short-lived, however. Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin 
has rescheduled his execution for early November.

Amnesty USA's senior death penalty campaigner, James Clark, told news.com.au 
cases like Glossip's and Gissendaner's were not uncommon.

"Several states allow executions for individuals who participate in murders but 
do not physically kill the victim. That can include participating in a robbery 
in which someone is murdered, helping to plan a murder, or commissioning 
someone else to commit murder," he said.

Mr Clark said it was shocking that, in both cases, the person who performed the 
killing had been given a lesser sentence, "This illustrates how arbitrary the 
American death penalty is, in which deals with prosecutors, rather than the 
severity of the crime, can be the difference between who is sentenced to life 
or death."

Even more disturbing are those people executed despite a high degree of doubt 
over their guilt at all.

INNOCENT, YET PUT TO DEATH

In December 1991, a fire ripped through the Texas home of Cameron Willingham 
killing his 3 daughters, 2-year-old Amber Louise and 1-year-old twins Karmon 
Diane and Kameron Marie.

Mr Willingham was accused of deliberately starting the fire and murdering his 
daughters by arson. At his execution in 2004, his last words were, "I am an 
innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit".

A year later, the Texas Forensic Science Commission ruled that the evidence 
that proved an act of arson was based entirely on "flawed science". It's likely 
the fire was caused by a simple electrical fault.

According to Save Innocents, a group dedicated to highlighting possible death 
row miscarriages of justice, about 40 people have been put to death since the 
mid-1970s despite serious doubts about their guilt.

Meanwhile, a 2014 study by academics in Michigan and Pennsylvania found up to 
4.1 % of prisoners sentenced to death since 1973 may well be innocent. If 
accurate, and some say it is closer to 2 % of cases, it could mean more that 
300 people have either languished or perished on death row.

"Legislators and the public have to make their own judgments about whether a 
policy that risks killing innocent people is acceptable, but what is clear is 
that the death penalty as administered in the United States does place innocent 
lives at risk," DPIC executive director Robert Dunham told news.com.au.

DEATH PENALTY SUPPORT

An April 2015 poll by the Pew Research Centre found American support for the 
death penalty was at its lowest ebb for four decades. But while 71 % said they 
believed there was a risk of executing the innocent, 61 % said they were still 
in favour of its use in murder cases.

In Nebraska, pro-execution supporters recently amassed 167,000 signatures in a 
move to prevent the state government from unilaterally repealing the death 
penalty, according to the Lincoln Journal-Star. It will now be put to a popular 
vote.

Just this week, Robert Blecker, a criminal law professor at New York Law 
School, told the Chicago Sun-Times that Illinois should reinstate the death 
penalty for crimes that were "the worst of the worst:.

Apologies to those wrongly imprisoned on death row are rare. But they do 
happen. In March, lawyer Marty Stroud penned a letter to Louisiana newspaper 
the Shreveport Times where he said he regretted his role in the trial of Glenn 
Ford.

In 1984, Mr Ford was wrongly convicted for the death of 56-year-old jeweller 
Isadore Rozeman. He would spend 3 decades on death row before the case 
collapsed in tatters in 2014.

"I now realise, all too painfully, that as a young 33-year-old prosecutor, I 
was not capable of making a decision that could have led to the killing of 
another human being," Mr Stroud told the paper.

Mr Ford, who according to the group the Innocence Project received no 
compensation from the state of Louisiana, died of lung cancer in June, little 
more than a year after his release.

Campaigners sense light at the end of the tunnel. Amnesty's Mr Clark said it 
was possible that the US Supreme Court would soon rule that the death penalty 
is unconstitutional.

Leslie Fulbright, of campaign group Death Penalty Focus, said momentum was 
building against the death penalty, partly fuelled by the stories of people put 
to death while other killers go free or those executed by mistake.

"Executions in any instance are wrong," she said, "executing an innocent person 
is an injustice that can never be corrected."

(source: news.com.au)