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

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 16




TEXAS:

A police widow witnesses the execution of her husband's killer


For veteran Dallas Police Officer Frederick Frazier, the state's execution of 
convicted cop killer Licho Escamilla wasn't an occasion for celebration.

It was about justice for the family of Kevin James, the officer who was shot 
mercilessly the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 2001.

And it was about closure - for the family of officers that James left behind 
and for his widow, Lori, and his daughter Shelby, who was only 8 when her 
father was killed.

"The only closure this family has is that the guy who did this is now gone," 
Senior Cpl. Frazier said Thursday, after returning late Wednesday night from 
Huntsville where the execution occurred.

"I asked Lori if this feels better and she just shook her head 'yes' and 
started crying," said Frazier, the First Vice President of the Dallas Police 
Association and chairman of the Kevin James Endowment Fund, which benefits the 
Assist the Officer Foundation.

The intense pain, that deep indelible sense of loss, is often lost on those who 
don't just stand steadfastly against the death penalty, but mock or malign 
those who support it.

No one is gloating here; no one is dancing over Escamilla's dead body.

I'm sure not.

Nor is Lori James, the slain officer's widow, who had been waiting for this day 
for nearly 14 years. But when the moment finally arrived, she didn't even want 
to go into the room where she could watch Escamilla take his last breath.

"At the last minute," Frazier said, "Lori did not even go in there. She did not 
want to see him."

And Shelby, the officer's daughter, didn't even make the trip to Huntsville.

"This really messed her up," Frazier said, explaining how the brutal and sudden 
loss of her father damaged the young woman.

Frazier and 21 other current and former Dallas police officers drove down to 
Huntsville for the execution. They were joined by law enforcement from the 
federal Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. Marshal's Office and other Texas 
police departments.

They all met at a Mexican restaurant before the execution, and the gathering 
was not what many might expect. They were there to comfort each other and, 
above all, to reflect on the life of the victim of this heinous crime.

"Lori went and brought about 6 big photo albums in the room, and we all just 
started passing them around," said Frazier. "And every time we opened one, 
someone said 'remember this, remember that.'"

"No one talked about the execution," Frazier said. "No one talked about the 
night of. We talked about Kevin and Lori, and it was good."

One of the books they thumbed through was a wedding album, which showed how 
happy Lori and Kevin were on their wedding day about 6 weeks before he was 
killed.

"You have to remember," Frazier said, "they had a wedding and funeral within 6 
weeks."

So they all laughed and cried. And then they parted ways. The James family 
headed to the prison to prep for the execution - "They had to go through some 
videos of what to expect," Frazier explained.

Most of the officers, Frazier included, stayed outside the prison, ready to 
show support for the victim's family and friends as they came out.

They all agreed to not say or do anything when Escamilla's family came out, 
including avoiding eye contact. They didn't want to provoke that family, which 
they realize was losing someone close to them, too.

"We wanted to keep it as professional as possible," Frazier said, adding, "No 
one was there to condemn them, the [Escamilla] family, they were there to 
condemn the murderer."

A group of Houston-area officers called the Thin Blue Line Law Enforcement 
Motorcycle Club showed up about 20 minutes before the set execution and lined 
up by the prison.

"They only come for cop-killer executions," Frazier said. "And when they got 
the word that he [Escamilla] was strapped down" and all the witnesses were 
present, "they light up their motorcycle and rev them for 10 minutes straight 
as loud as they can go."

They rev the bikes until they get word the execution is done.

"When they did it," Frazier said, "I almost started to cry. The emotions that 
ran through me were overwhelming."

It was the 1st execution Frazier has attended.

"The pressure of waiting," is over, he said, and that's a relief "because 
there's always a doubt that justice won't be served."

For those with serious misgivings about the death penalty - with legal, 
practical or moral objections to it - Wednesday's state-sanctioned killing was 
another tragic turn of the screw.

But for those who lost a husband/father/friend/colleague in James, it was a 
necessary and long-overdue day of reckoning.

It was a day to which they were entitled.

(source: James Ragland, Dallas Morning News)



GEORGIA:

Georgia death-row inmate: 'I'm still kicking'


Death-row inmate John Wayne Conner was eager to talk.

Introducing himself, with a broad grin that displayed several missing teeth, 
Conner said his name was the same as the "little Terminator." That would be 
John Connor, the character in the "Terminator" movies who will lead a human 
revolt against the machines that have taken over the world.

Conner, 59, has been on death row for 33 years. As for his appeals, they've 
almost run out, he said.

"I'm hanging in there," he said. "I'm still kicking. In here, that's a good 
thing."

Conner was 25 years old in January 1982 when he got into a drunken fight with a 
friend and wound up killing him. Conner became angry when his friend told 
Conner he wanted to sleep with his girlfriend.

Conner was charged with murder by a Telfair County grand jury and the district 
attorney sought the death penalty. A jury sentenced him to death in 1982.

33 years later, Conner was eager to talk to his new visitors.

I met Conner during a tour of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison 
in Jackson on Thursday. The tour, led by Warden Bruce Chatman, included 1 of 
the 4 pods that house the 80 inmates on death row.

As Conner talked on, Chatman told the group it was time to move on.

"He will engage with you all day," the warden said. "But there are some here 
who won't engage with you at all."

(source: Atlanta Journal Constitution)






FLORIDA:

Why Florida's death-sentencing law is likely in trouble


It can be perilous to predict the outcome of a U.S. Supreme Court case by the 
questions justices ask during the oral argument, but this once I'll hazard a 
guess: Florida's death-sentencing law is in deep trouble.

The better question, in fact, is not whether Pensacola killer Timothy Hurst 
will win his appeal but how many more death row inmates might be spared on his 
account.

Unlike any other state, Florida requires neither a unanimous jury 
recommendation for death nor any declaration by the jurors as to the 
aggravating factors that the law specifies to justify the ultimate penalty. 
Those decisions are left to the trial judge, who assumes why the jury voted as 
it did.

This appears to conflict with the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Ring v. 
Arizona, which held 7-2 that only the jury, not the judge, can find such 
aggravating circumstances. To rule otherwise, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg 
wrote, would leave the Sixth Amendment's right to a jury trial "senselessly 
diminished."

It wasn't only the liberal justices who posed questions helpful to Hurst's case 
when it was argued Tuesday. Justice Antonin Scalia, who concurred in Ring, 
expressed concern that the merely advisory role of Florida jurors may cause 
them to take their responsibility less seriously than they should.

6 other states amended their laws to conform to Ring, but Florida's Legislature 
blissfully ignored it.

The state Supreme Court, meanwhile, has consistently held that Ring doesn't 
matter in Florida. In 2005 it overruled a decision by Pinellas-Pasco Circuit 
Judge Lynn Tepper to require the jury to indicate on a special verdict form 
which aggravating factors it would find and by what votes.

"Specific jury findings on aggravators without guidance about their effect on 
the imposition of a sentence could unduly influence the trial judge's own 
determination of how to sentence the defendant," said the Florida court's 
majority opinion. "The trial court alone must make detailed findings about the 
existence and weight of aggravating circumstances."

When that was read to the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday, Justice Anthony Kennedy - 
often the swing vote in major cases - sounded shocked as much by the timing as 
the language.

"Is that a - post Ring?" he asked. "What's the date of that?"

"Yes, this is post Ring," said Seth Waxman, a former U.S. solicitor general who 
is Hurst's lead attorney.

That's a pregnant point; it would invite the high court to apply a decision in 
Hurst's favor to everyone sent to death row since Ring was handed down 13 years 
ago. As no other state would be affected, it would be a relatively easy call.

Although the court refused to extend Ring to inmates who had exhausted their 
direct appeals, some states did so on their own.

Florida, on the other hand, has continued to hand down sentences as if Ring had 
never happened. Of the 394 people on death row, 143 were sent there after 2002.

Hurst was convicted of the 1998 murder of Cynthia Lee Harrison, a coworker at a 
Popeye's restaurant and the Florida Supreme Court narrowly upheld his sentence, 
4-3. Only 7 of the 12 jurors had voted to recommend a death sentence. The trial 
judge then concluded that there were two aggravating circumstances - that the 
crime was heinous, atrocious and cruel, and carried out in the course of a 
robbery. But the state had not charged Hurst with robbery. Moreover, it was 
possible that a majority of the jury had voted for neither factor. As few as 4 
could have found one and as few as three the other.

"There is no other state that permits anyone to be sentenced to death other 
than by a unanimous determination by the jury," Waxman said Tuesday. "And the 
State of Florida requires unanimity for shoplifting, just not for death."

In the 2005 special verdict form opinion, the Florida Supreme Court urged the 
Legislature to "require some unanimity in the jury's recommendation ... to 
decide whether it wants Florida to remain the outlier state."

That case involved Alfredie Steele, charged with the murder of Pasco Sheriff's 
Lieutenant Charles "Bo" Harrison. The prosecution successfully appealed the 
pretrial order in his favor.

As Steele was subsequently sentenced to life rather than death, he had no 
grounds for a federal appeal. Dozens of other death-sentenced inmates have 
appealed on the basis of Ring, but Hurst's case is the first to be accepted by 
the U.S. Supreme Court.

The shakiness of Florida's situation has not gone entirely unnoticed in the 
Legislature, but as with so many hot-button issues, it's one that most 
legislators fear to touch until something forces them to.

Their timidity isn't unfounded. For co-sponsoring legislation the past two 
years to require unanimous recommendations and specific findings, state Rep. 
Jose Javier Rodriguez, D-Miami, drew an election opponent who accused him of 
coddling murderers. He won nonetheless, and is sponsoring it again this year 
with state Rep. Clovis Watson, D-Gainesville. State Sen. Thad Altman, 
R-Rockledge, has offered it again in the Senate, but it is reportedly dead on 
arrival with the House leadership.

By next June, when the Supreme Court's current term ends, Florida more likely 
than not will find itself without an enforceable death penalty. The politicians 
who cling to that practice will wish they had listened to the colleagues who 
have tried to save it.

(source: Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the St. Petersburg 
Times; saintpetersblog.com)






OHIO:

Slaying suspect returns to Ohio to face possible death penalty----Clayton 
accused of killing man, wounding 4 children


A man accused of stabbing a man and 4 children in a Springdale apartment was in 
a Hamilton County courtroom Friday.

Akihiko Clayton, 20, had been in custody in Northern Kentucky on unrelated bank 
robbery charges since his arrest in late July.

He was indicted in August in connection with the July 2 assault that killed 
Emilio Ramirez and left 4 children with stab wounds.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters has said he intends to seek the death 
penalty for Clayton.

Clayton was arraigned late Friday morning, where he pleaded not guilty. No bond 
was set.

(source: WLWT news)






LOUISIANA:

Race, justice and the death penalty: Louisiana plays host next week to the 
biggest local election of 2015


District attorney races are often fiercely competitive.

For starters, the candidates are lawyers, temperamentally inclined enjoy a good 
bout of non-lethal combat. And chief prosecutor jobs (most of which are 
elected) don't come open all that often. That's part of the reason that, in 
major metropolises and tiny rural hamlets alike, the DA's name is often one 
that a lot of people know.

But in Caddo Parish, La. (population: 253,00, biggest city: Shreveport), there 
is a district attorney's race that seems utterly suited for something straight 
out of a Jim Crow period piece about justice, bias and Southern politics. And 
although this might sound like an oxymoron, this could also be a relatively 
gripping story about campaign finance.

What's happening in Caddo centers around Glen Ford, a black man convicted of 
murder, sentenced to die then locked away in solitary confinement for 30 years 
before a court declared him innocent and set him free. There would have to be a 
mention of the fact that the until-recently predominantly white Caddo sentences 
more people to death, per capita, than any other place in the country. And 77 % 
of those who have been so condemned over the last 40 years were black.

Any retelling would spend some time -- probably too much time if produced by 
Hollywood -- on a white and deeply apologetic junior prosecutor who now admits, 
decades later, that ambition and narcissism helped produce a horrific 
miscarriage of justice. He also staked the jury with white members and knocked 
blacks out of contention. He has asked the state bar for punishment.

One of the remaining central characters would have to be Dale Cox, Caddo's 
interim DA, appointed after the parish's elected prosecutor was discovered dead 
in a Shreveport hotel room. (No foul play is suspected.) Cox, who is white and 
in possession of a central-casting kind of Southern drawl and an affinity for 
the death penalty, is resolute that Ford's case does not indicate a single ill 
in Caddo Parish.

Cox believes the state owes Ford nothing. Nothing at all. To hear Cox tell it, 
nothing illegal happened. Nothing immoral happened. In fact, the system worked. 
Cox doesn't know why that junior prosecutor has even apologized. Louisiana 
should, according to Cox, execute more people. And hey, at least Ford made it 
out of prison alive.

This is all precisely what Cox has said publicly, most recently on last 
weekend's "60 Minutes." But Cox has already (i.e. before "60 Minutes" but 
shortly after the New York Times ran a story titled, "The Prosecutor Who Says 
Louisiana Should 'Kill More People'") bowed out of a special election scheduled 
for Oct. 24. So 6 people are seeking Caddo's DA seat.

Now, enter the final character. That would be George Soros, a 
Hungarian-American known for his support of liberal causes and concern about 
race-related injustice.

Soros is another white hero or a villain here, depending on your notion of 
fairness, your politics and your feelings about campaign finance law. Soros 
already ranks among the county's biggest billionaire federal campaign 
financiers. And on Oct. 5, he dropped $256,000 into a Louisiana super PAC that 
promptly put ads on the air in support of one of the Caddo DA candidates. Soros 
appears to be the super PAC's only donor.

Now, picture some tense courtroom scenes, corridors and offices. The super 
PAC's ad (see below) has started working to support a black judge and Democrat 
named James Stewart. Stewart retired from the bench in September after a 
somewhat shadowy source financed billboards encouraging him to run for Caddo 
DA. A local lawyer filed a suit against Stewart saying Stewart had to resign if 
he was going to run.

On Oct. 2, at Stewart's request, a court instead sanctioned that local lawyer, 
describing his suit as politically motivated and possibly nothing more than a 
publicity stunt since the court did not have jurisdiction to rule on the legal 
questions raised. The lawyer knew this, the court ruled, because he has done 
something similar before. So, the court ordered Stewart's would-be foil to pay 
court costs and take 10 hours of training in ethics and professionalism.

Even before the Soros donation to that super PAC, Stewart seemed to have some 
advantages over other candidates. Stewart might have entered the race last, but 
he worked as a junior and then senior prosecutor in Caddo Parish before he was 
elected to the bench in the early 1990s. Both his older brothers are lawyers. 
One, a Clinton appointee, is chief judge of the U.S. Fifth Court of Appeals.

So Stewart knows the local justice system and has broader contacts too. There's 
some expectation that if elected DA, he would be far less interested than Cox 
in sending people -- an overwhelming majority of them being black -- to death 
row.

The New Yorker magazine and the aforementioned New York Times and "60 Minutes" 
have all come to town. The Washington Post wrote about the case, too.

And partisan outlets have weighed in, too, in about the ways you'd expect. The 
conservative Washington Free Beacon said Soros is trying to "buy" the election 
for Stewart, in contrast to the objections that Soros and many other Democrats 
often raise about the corrupting influence of big money in politics.

All that drama has been compounded by a personal story of the man involved that 
is nothing short of tragic.

The day Ford was released from jail, the state did give him a $20 gift card. He 
used it to by fried chicken, iced tea and french fries. He emerged with $4 and 
some change. 2 weeks later, Ford was diagnosed with an advanced form of lung 
cancer and has since died, just more than a year after his release. The 
Louisiana Innocence Project announced his late-June death on July 4. Donors 
covered the cost of his funeral, as Ford was penniless.

The state still hasn't paid Ford or his heirs anything, even though a state law 
indicates he's eligible for about $330,000. Cox insists Ford knew the robbery 
which lead to the murder was going to happen and did not inform police and thus 
isn't entitled to the payout. Ford has never been charged in connection with 
Cox's allegation or convicted. But Cox says it's true and that, according to 
Cox, is good enough reason for taxpayers to avoid a $330,000 bill.

In the end, an innocent man spent 30 years on death row. The local interim 
prosecutor is bordering on proud. Some members of the local press seem 
perplexed about the national outrage and suggestions that racism may have 
something to do with all that's gone on.

Mostly, the consensus concern seems to be the "bad press" interim DA Cox has 
brought to Caddo. Now, big outside campaign cash and a special election have 
made what would otherwise be a local race into a national story involving race, 
death, wrongful convictions and partisan politics.

We'll find out next weekend -- Oct. 24 -- what the next chapter holds.

(source: Janell Ross is a reporter for The Fix who writes about race, gender, 
immigration and inequality----Washington Post)






OKLAHOMA:

All executions may be put on hold until 2016, court documents show----Attorneys 
for death row inmates and the attorney general's office jointly filed a motion 
in federal court Friday requesting that executions and a legal challenge to the 
state's death penalty be put on hold.


State executions are on hold until at least early next year, a judge ruled 
Friday.

Attorneys for death row inmates and the Oklahoma attorney general's office 
jointly filed a motion in federal court early Friday morning requesting that 
executions and a legal challenge to the state's death penalty be put on hold.

All of Oklahoma's scheduled executions were put on hold last month after the 
execution of inmate Richard Glossip was halted when corrections officials 
noticed they'd received the wrong drug for the procedure.

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt said the indefinite stay made it 
unnecessary to litigate challenges to the state's execution protocol brought by 
Glossip's attorneys.

"As I have previously stated, my office is conducting a full and thorough 
investigation into all aspects of the Department of Corrections' handling of 
executions," Pruitt said. "The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals granted the 
state's request for an indefinite stay of all scheduled executions. My office 
does not plan to ask the court to set an execution date until the conclusion of 
its investigation."

In the filing, both parties agreed the state should not seek any new execution 
dates until all ongoing federal and state investigations into Oklahoma's death 
penalty have been completed, any investigations and changes to protocol are 
made available to the extent they are public, and the Oklahoma Department of 
Corrections is able to comply with its execution protocol.

A multicounty grand jury will hear testimony on Tuesday from Corrections 
Department Director Robert Patton and other officials as part of a state 
investigation, and the attorney general's office is conducting an internal 
inquiry into recent lethal drug mix-ups.

The attorney general's office also agreed to not seek an execution date until 
after those stipulations are met. At that point, the public defenders 
representing Oklahoma's death row inmates could reopen their federal challenge 
to the state's method of execution.

Given that the grand jury investigation could take months, it is likely the 
state will not conduct an execution for more than a year. That's if the state 
is able to acquire the drugs necessary to perform another lethal injection.

Oklahoma has run into a series of problems in recent years with its lethal 
injection process. In 2014, outdated protocol and a lack of basic equipment led 
to the controversial 43-minute execution of Clayton Lockett, the first inmate 
in Oklahoma to be executed using the sedative midazolam.

Midazolam came under fire across the country when it was used in a string of 
problematic lethal injections that year.

Glossip's execution has been stayed 4 times, the most recent on Sept. 30, when 
Gov. Mary Fallin postponed his death sentence when it was discovered 2 hours 
before the procedure that the state Corrections Department had received the 
wrong combination of lethal drugs. The state needed potassium chloride but was 
provided with potassium acetate, a drug not authorized for executions in 
Oklahoma.

This month, documents provided to The Oklahoman revealed the state executed 
Charles Warner in January using potassium acetate.

The state Corrections Department says it is still searching for pentobarbital, 
the drug preferred by state corrections departments for lethal injections. That 
drug has become increasingly difficult for those departments to acquire since 
its maker restricted its use in capital punishment, and pharmacies that can 
make it have come under public scrutiny.

State Corrections Department spokeswoman Terri Watkins said given the ongoing 
inquiries, she was unable to comment on whether the state is searching for 
either midazolam or potassium chloride.

(soruce: The Oklahoman)






USA:

Recusal Fight in Boston Death Penalty Case


Federal prosecutors are not taking no for an answer in their quest to have a 
judge recuse himself from the upcoming resentencing of convicted killer Gary 
Sampson.

"By moving for this court's recusal, the government seeks only to ensure public 
confidence in these proceedings and a record that, in the event of another 
death sentence, will withstand scrutiny," a motion filed Tuesday states. 
"Accordingly, the government respectfully submits that the interests of justice 
compel reconsideration of the court's recusal decision."

Sampson, now 55, was originally sentenced to death in 2003 after pleading 
guilty to 3 people in New England over the course of a week.

U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf vacated Sampson's sentence in 2011, however, 
after he discovered that 1 of the jurors had lied about her past encounters 
with law enforcement.

Death-penalty trials are uncommon in Massachusetts, and prosecutors worry that 
Sampson could capitalize Wolf's recent disclosure regarding his professional 
relationship with a potential defense witness.

Sampson's resentencing had initially been scheduled to occur last month but it 
has been held in limbo since Wolf's disclosure that he took part in a panel 
discussion last year after the screening of "The Life and Mind of Mark 
DeFriest."

The animated documentary follows the story of DeFriest, whose numerous attempts 
at escaping prison transformed a 4-year sentence for theft into 34 years behind 
bars.

Sampson was joined on the panel by noted attorney Alan Dershowitz and 
prisoner's rights advocate James Gilligan.

Prosecutors note that like Sampson, DeFriest had claimed that the brain damage 
he suffered as a child explains his violent behavior.

They say Gilligan earned praise from Sampson for an argument about the 
treatment of inmates that Sampson's defense attorneys may use for their client.

The material could create an opportunity for the defense to appeal whatever 
sentence is rendered, according to a motion from prosecutors.

Though Wolf refused to recuse himself last month, Assistant U.S. Attorney 
Zachary Hafer moved for reconsideration Tuesday.

"A reasonable person might question whether each of those rulings will be 
affected by the court's promotion of a 1-sided defense movie and panel linking 
head injury, prison abuse, and violent behavior, its extra-record contact with 
Dr. Gilligan, and its praise of Dr. Gilligan and Professor Dershowitz as being 
'literally like the 2 world's leading experts on the subject' after they had 
offered opinions consistent with evidence Sampson will present in this case and 
adverse to evidence the government will present," Hafer wrote.

On Wednesday, Wolf gave Sampson until Oct. 28 to respond to the government's 
motion.

(source: Courthouse News)

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

The Rosenbergs Live: On Nostalgia and Red Scare Realities


"Judge Irving Kaufman, of Rosenberg Spy Trial and Free-Press Rulings, Dies at 
81." The 1992 New York Times obituary stated that Judge Kaufman hoped "he would 
be remembered for his role not in the Rosenberg case ... but as the judge whose 
order was the 1st to desegregate a public school in the North." Kaufman was 
appointed to the federal bench in Manhattan in 1949. 2 years later, the 
"espionage trial of the century" landed in his courtroom.

Consider the backdrop. America, flush with victory, was pivoting to Cold War 
politics. Redbaiting was in; Fireside Chats out. Against the shiny orange roofs 
of proliferating Howard Johnsons and the pulsating floors of teenage sock hops, 
the country was off to war again. This time on the Korean peninsula, fighting a 
new enemy called Communism.

covercoverOur literary imagination remains captive to this era, as if we could 
jump in a Studebaker and road trip past the nostalgic caricature of ourselves 
to discover something new. In her seminal The Future of Nostalgia, Svetlana 
Boym opines: "Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also 
a romance with one's own fantasy ... The 20th century began with a futuristic 
utopia and ended with nostalgia." We may not be stuck mid-century, but if Mad 
Men is an indication, we're still trying to figure a few things out.

"Damn Cold in February," part of Joni Tevis's stunning new essay collection, 
The World Is on Fire, combs the 1950s for atomic kitsch. Tevis lines up Buddy 
Holly with choice snippets of U.S. government operating manuals (and 
propaganda), artifacts to underscore the era's cultural ironies. In 1957, The 
New York Times "explained how to plan one's summer vacation around the 
'non-ancient but none the less honorable pastime of atomic-bomb watching.'" 
After winning Miss Atomic Bomb, "a local woman poses for photos with a 
cauliflower-shaped cloud pasted to the front of her bathing suit." Tevis clicks 
through the slides of an atomic view-master toy and concludes, "Not only do 
Americans want to see the bomb, we want to become it, shaping our bodies to fit 
its form."

It turns out, however, that it's much less fun once the Russians have it. In 
1949, a successful Soviet nuclear test threatened our self-image as supreme in 
the world, invoking terror around the country. Treason took on new meaning with 
rumors of espionage and leaks of classified documents to our former ally 
Russia. Everyone, it seemed, was building a fallout shelter - public buildings, 
apartment houses, families. School children practiced for bomb attacks.

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was all about the Russian 
threat. HUAC revved up in the late-'40s, holding hearings the broadcasts of 
which stoked public fear and paranoia. Congressman Richard Nixon cut his teeth 
crushing the distinguished public servant Alger Hiss, convicted of perjury - 
not espionage - charges the merits of which are still debated. Wisconsin 
Senator Joseph McCarthy fulminated, wielding a list of alleged Reds lurking in 
the State Department. HUAC pitted neighbor against neighbor and colleague 
against colleague, destroying careers in Hollywood and plenty of others too. 
Old Blue Eyes may have been ascendant, but celebrated actor/singer Paul Robeson 
went down for his politics.

Enter Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They bonded over the Communist Party the 
tenets of which, they believed, would level the playing field between the haves 
and have-nots. Julius, an electrical engineer, and Ethel, an aspiring 
actress/singer turned secretary, were struggling to provide for their 2 young 
sons on New York's Lower East Side when the FBI set them in its crosshairs. The 
Rosenbergs were indicted in 1950 - Julius on atomic espionage charges for 
passing secrets to the Russians, and Ethel as his accomplice. Ethel was 
denounced on apparently false charges by her brother, David Greenglass, an Army 
machinist at the weapons installation in Los Alamos. To state the barest facts 
- the Rosenbergs were tried in 1951, found guilty of conspiracy to commit 
espionage, and given the electric chair on June 19, 1953.

Jillian Cantor steps into this space with her forthcoming novel, The Hours 
Count, narrated by Millie Stein, fictional neighbor to the Rosenbergs. Millie's 
consuming interest is her son, David, who appears to be autistic. Largely 
estranged from her family, Millie is unable to connect to her husband, Ed, a 
surly and often drunk Russian, who may or may not be entangled in nefarious 
political activities.

This isn't the 1st time Cantor has fictionalized history. In Margot, Cantor 
imagines Anne Frank's older sister to have survived, living in Philadelphia. 
Like Margot, The Hours Count is narrated by a woman who declines to swim 
through history's riptides, but instead bobs passively along. Perhaps the 
passivity of these narrators is meant to bring the surrounding characters into 
focus. In The Hours Count, Ethel Rosenberg is such a character, portrayed as a 
devoted wife and mother, and a caring friend.

Much of The Hours Count is taken up with Millie's strange and conflicted 
relationship with a man who promises to help her disabled child. Dramatic 
scenes from the Rosenbergs' execution at Sing Sing are spliced throughout the 
novel. But the main part of the story breaks off when Ethel departs for the 
grand jury, leaving her 2 young sons in Millie's care.

Ethel never returned. She refused to testify against her husband and was taken 
straight to prison, leaving her boys behind. Michael and Robert Rosenberg were 
6 and 10 when their parents were electrocuted 3 years later. They were 
ultimately adopted by Abel and Anne Meeropol, changing their last names to 
Meeropol. (Abel Meeropol, incidentally, wrote both the words and music to the 
iconic song, "Strange Fruit.")

What of those children, purposefully orphaned by the State? E.L. Doctorow takes 
them on in The Book of Daniel, tackling the whole raging tragedy. Reimagining 
them as Daniel and Susan Isaacson, Doctorow explores the agonized years between 
their parents' arrest and execution when they moved among harsh grandparents, 
private homes, and an orphanage. He gives us the lawyer who not only had the 
thankless task of representing their parents, but also worked tirelessly to 
find an appropriate home for Daniel and Susan. (The lawyer's widow accuses the 
Isaacsons of causing her husband???s untimely death.) And the anguished 
stepparents, who cannot staunch Daniel's fury, nor heal his sister, a former 
radical dying in a mental institution. "Today Susan is a starfish," Daniel 
says. "There are few silences deeper than the silence of the starfish. There 
are not many degrees of life lower before there is no life."

Published in 1971, The Book of Daniel remains as charged as a live wire. This 
big meaty book follows Daniel as he plunges into the radical 1960s, an angry 
young father on a quest to confront the people in his parents' and thus his own 
drama. He suggests his parents mistook shared political ideology for 
friendship, and socialist doctrine for life advice. Of lessons learned from his 
father, who "ran up and down history like a pianist playing his scales," Daniel 
says, "I heard about the framing of Tom Mooney and the execution of Joe Hill, 
and all the maimed and dead labor heroes of the early labor movement. The 
incredibly brutal fate of anyone who tried to help the worker."

Cousin Linda, whose father betrayed Daniel's mother and got 10 years instead of 
death, tells him, "neither you nor I was responsible for what happened. But 
we've borne the brunt ... This is what happens to us, to the children of 
trials; our hearts run to cunning, our minds are sharp as claws."

The real children, Michael and Robert Meeropol, have dedicated their lives to 
bringing justice to their executed parents. Their continued presence on the 
public stage subverts nostalgia; if you're paying attention, it's pretty tough 
to get sentimental about this time period. In August 2015, The New York Times 
ran a lengthy Op Ed by the Meeropols, pleading their mother's case and urging 
her posthumous exoneration. Their father might have been "legally guilty of the 
conspiracy charge, but not atomic spying," but their mother "was prosecuted 
primarily for refusing to turn on our father."

"The government held her life hostage to coerce our father to talk, and when 
that failed, it extracted false statements to secure her wrongful execution ... 
[with] disturbing implications in post-9/11 America."

What about the judge who meted the sentence, Irving Kaufman? Doctorow portrays 
him as an ambitious man who saw the trial as a means to advance his career. 
Here's Daniel's father, describing the fictional Judge Kaufman. "Not having 
known of [the judge's] existence even a few short months ago, [he] knows a good 
deal more about him now, including [the judge's] most intimate professional 
secret, that he hopes to be appointed to the Supreme Court. All the lawyers in 
the corridor know this. [The judge] has heard more cases brought by the 
government in the field of subversive activities than anyone else."

In 1960, Judge Kaufman published a lengthy piece in the Atlantic Monthly called 
"Sentencing: The Judge's Problem," in which he asserted his belief that judges 
should have wide discretion in sentencing. "In no other judicial function is 
the judge more alone," Kaufman wrote. Judges take their role seriously; every 
judge "is painfully aware of what 5 years without a father may mean to a 
prisoner's son." Moreover, sentences that are too harsh "have historically had 
an effect opposite from the one intended." A judge should have the 
"satisfaction" of saying "to oneself, 'I have never consciously rendered an 
unjust decision.'"

It's not a leap to read this article today as post hoc justification for 
sending the Rosenbergs to their deaths. Whatever its intent, the following year 
Kaufman received a promotion to the Second Circuit Federal Court of Appeals 
where he served more than a quarter century.

The trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are sobering reminders of 
how public sentiment can affect the wheels of justice. The Rosenbergs were 
tried within a particular context: Congress inflaming the Red Scare, the 
country again at war, and mounting fears about the A-bomb. Ideally a judge 
would take extra precaution to separate hysteria from legitimate danger. Judge 
Kaufman, it seems, thought he would do well to embrace the times - "The general 
attitude of the public toward a particular type of crime ... must be taken into 
consideration if respect for the law is to be upheld."

Perhaps we'd best let the Meeropols have the last word: "Neither of our parents 
deserved the death penalty."

(source: Martha Anne Toll, The Millions)