[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ALA., OHIO, ARK., KAN., NEB., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 20



ALABAMA:

VanPelt's application for new hearing denied


A Colbert County man on death row in connection with the 2004 death of his 
wife, has been denied a new hearing.

The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals issued the ruling in the case of Kim 
VanPelt.

VanPelt, 54, of Tuscumbia, was convicted of killing Sandra Ozment VanPelt, 40, 
in order to collect a $300,000 life insurance policy. He was convicted in 
December 2006 and sentenced to death in March 2007.

In 2012, VanPelt filed a Rule 32 petition with the Court of Criminal Appeals 
seeking a new trial. That petition was denied in August this year. He later 
filed an application with the state appellate court for a rehearing in the 
case.

The Court of Criminal Appeals, in its latest ruling, denied his application for 
a rehearing.

Colbert County District Attorney Bryce Graham Jr., who prosecuted the case, 
said he was pleased with the appellate court's latest ruling. "This was a 
terrible case and a sad situation.

"This is one case that deserves the sentence that was handed out."

The victim's body was found Nov. 24, 2004, by a hunter at the edge of some 
woods close to Marion 53 near Hackleburg. An autopsy revealed she died from 
suffocation.

"This was one of the most senseless and heinous crimes we had ever had," Graham 
said.

VanPelt's conviction was upheld by the Court of Criminal Appeals in 2009. The 
Alabama Supreme Court declined to review the case in 2011.

Testimony during the trial pointed out VanPelt met his wife on the Internet and 
they lived briefly in Muscle Shoals before he reported his wife missing Nov. 
22, 2004.

Prosecutors said VanPelt lured the woman into marrying him, which was all a 
part of his plan. After that, they said VanPelt's plan included killing his 
wife to collect her life insurance policy.

Court officials said that element of the case elevated it to capital murder. It 
also was an aggravating factor that, according to state law, made him eligible 
for the death penalty.

Following the trail, the jury that found VanPelt guilty of capital murder, also 
recommended the death sentence.

During his March 2007 sentencing hearing, Colbert County Circuit Judge Jackie 
Hatcher did not override the jury's recommendation and sentenced him to death.

VanPelt is being housed on death row at Homan Prison in Atmore.

(source: Times Daily)






OHIO:

Ohio's lack of lethal drugs highlights death penalty dilemma


Ohio's decision to delay executions another full year while it hunts for lethal 
injection drugs underscores an ongoing dilemma faced by the remaining death 
penalty states.

While support for capital punishment continues, states are struggling to find a 
legal means to carry it out.

That struggle has created an opening for opponents hoping to end the death 
penalty permanently.

Kevin Werner, who leads Ohioans To Stop Executions, says the shortage bolsters 
a national debate about whether capital punishment is worth it.

But Ohio state Sen. Bill Seitz, a death penalty supporter, says hanging, 
electrocution and the firing squad are all still viable options.

Ohio has 25 death row prisoners with execution dates, with some now scheduled 
as far out as 2019. The state last executed an inmate in January 2014.

(source: Associated Press)






ARKANSAS:

Arkansas's highest court keeps executions on hold, for now


The Arkansas Supreme Court says a lower-court judge overstepped his 
jurisdiction by halting the executions of 8 death row inmates, but then granted 
its own stay so the inmates have enough time to challenge a state law that 
shields the source of death penalty drugs from the public.

The justices issued the ruling Tuesday, granting the state's request to toss 
out a stay granted this month by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen. 
But justices also immediately granted their own stay.

The executions were set to begin Wednesday, but Griffen had called them off and 
scheduled a hearing in March. The executions remain on hold, and justices 
didn't order Griffen to adopt a faster timetable.

One of drugs to be used in Arkansas' executions expires next June.

(source: Associated Press)






KANSAS:

Scalia Is Wrong About Kansas----His speculation that voters would oust judges 
who "don't like the death penalty" was dead wrong.


Truman Capote's In Cold Blood hit bookshelves in 1965. The magazine series, 
turned into a book, detailed the grisly murder of the Clutter family and how 
the crime upended the sleepy prairie town of Holcomb, Kansas. The 2 men who 
committed the murders, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, were hanged a few 
months before the story's release. A few months later, on June 22, 1965, Kansas 
hanged spree killers George York and James Latham. Those executions - which 
took place 50 years ago - are the most recent executions in Kansas history. Of 
the 31 states that formally retain the death penalty, only New Hampshire has 
gone longer without an execution.

Kansas' lukewarm relationship with the death penalty has a long history. The 
state abolished the death penalty in 1907, only to reinstate it in 1935. In the 
1972 case Furman v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the 
then-existing death penalty statutes, and Kansas did not enact a new death 
penalty statute until 1994. Of the states that retain the death penalty today, 
no state took longer to do so than Kansas. In 2010, a Republican-led effort to 
once again repeal the death penalty fell short by a single vote in the state 
senate.

Despite this long history of ambivalence and disuse, Justice Antonin Scalia 
suggested during arguments this month that Kansans "very much favor" the death 
penalty. His proof? There are nine men on the state's death row.

There have been more than 1,000 homicides in Kansas in the past decade. How is 
it possible to infer that Kansans "very much favor" anything that they opt in 
to less than 1 % of the time? In 1972, when the court decided Furman, 15-20 % 
of homicides resulted in death sentences. Even under those comparatively bloody 
statistics, Justice Byron White observed how infrequently death-eligible 
homicides translated into death sentences, and explained that "the death 
penalty could so seldom be imposed that it would cease to be a credible 
deterrent or measurably to contribute to any other end of punishment."

It appears that Kansans do not "very much favor" the death penalty after all.

The Eighth Amendment permits the death penalty so long as it serves a 
penological purpose and remains consistent with prevailing contemporary norms, 
so it is troubling when the justices do not seem to possess an accurate 
conception of how the death penalty is used (or not used) in practice. The 
bigger problem, though, has to do with the point that Scalia was trying to 
make.

There are 3 Kansas death penalty cases pending before the U.S. Supreme Court - 
Kansas v. Gleason, Kansas v. Jonathan Carr, and Kansas v. Reginald Carr. The 
Kansas Supreme Court reversed the death sentence in each of these cases. In 
2013, in Kansas v. Cheever, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated a conviction and 
death sentence that the Kansas Supreme Court had vacated. In Kansas v. Marsh, 
decided in 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Kansas Supreme Court's 
holding that its state capital punishment statute violated the Eighth 
Amendment.

Scalia remarked that these decisions by the justices of the Kansas Supreme 
Court have a common theme: "They don't like the death penalty." He then said of 
the citizens of Kansas: "a retention election that goes before such people 
would not come out favorably for those justices who create Kansas law that - 
that would reverse these convictions. I'm just speculating, of course."

This speculation taps into a historical narrative that has played out in other 
states. In 1986, for the 1st time in California history, voters ousted three 
justices on the California Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Rose Bird, 
after Republican Gov. George Deukmejian spearheaded a campaign to unseat them 
that focused on their votes to overturn death sentences. One of the campaign 
ads described a horrific murder and then claimed: "Bird let the killers go 
free," even though the defendant had not been released from custody. When Bird 
died of cancer more than a decade after her ouster, an obituary in the New York 
Times remarked that in California the name Rose Bird remained a synonym for 
"soft-on-crime liberal."

In 1996, Penny White became the only justice ever ousted from the Tennessee 
Supreme Court. The centerpiece of the campaign against her was a vote she had 
cast in a death penalty case. The Republican Party created a brochure that 
urged voters: "Vote for Capital Punishment by Voting NO on August 1 for Supreme 
Court Justice Penny White." The brochure 1st discussed a brutal murder that 
resulted in a death sentence and then said: "Penny White felt the crime wasn't 
heinous enough for the death penalty - so she struck it down." As it turns out, 
White had voted with the majority of the court to reverse the death penalty on 
grounds that had nothing to do with the heinousness of the offense.

Would the fate of Rose Bird and Penny White repeat itself, as Scalia 
speculated, if Kansas Supreme Court justices had to answer for their votes in 
capital cases during their next retention election? Unbeknownst to Scalia, this 
was not just a hypothetical question.

Sam Brownback became the governor of Kansas in 2011, and in his first term, the 
ultra-conservative, pro-life, anti-same-sex marriage former U.S. senator 
enacted sweeping tax cuts and refused to accept federal dollars to establish 
health insurance exchanges. These cuts created a budget nightmare, and a Kansas 
Supreme Court decision requiring the state to pour more money into public 
education turned Kansas' fiscal outlook more dire. With his first term in 
office shaping up to be an unmitigated disaster, Gov. Brownback ran for 
re-election on a promise to oust liberal judges and "appoint judges who will 
interpret the law, not rewrite it as they choose to see it."

Jonathan and Reginald Carr, whose cases the U.S. Supreme Court heard this 
month, became the focal point of Brownback's attack ads. The Carr brothers 
killed 5 people in Wichita in what has become arguably the most salient 
homicide in Kansas since the murders of the Clutter family in Holcombe back in 
1959. "Like all Kansans, I was stunned by today's Supreme Court ruling 
regarding the Carr brothers conviction for a particularly brutal and heinous 
crimes," Gov. Brownback wrote following the Kansas Supreme Court decision in 
the case, "They were convicted by a jury of their peers in front of an elected 
local judge. Today's ruling unnecessarily reopens wounds of a tragic moment in 
Wichita's history."

Kansas Supreme Court Justices Erik S. Rosen and Lee Johnson, both of whom voted 
to grant new sentencing hearings for the Carr brothers, became the judges to 
target. The governor released a TV ad that focused on the brutality of the 
crime and referred to the "liberal judges who let the Carr brothers off the 
hook." Nola Foulston, the prosecutor who secured the death sentences against 
the Carr brothers, called the ad "reprehensible" and questioned whether 
Brownback, as "an attorney bound by the Rules of Professional Responsibility, 
has forgotten his legal obligations in a political last ditch effort to 
recklessly undercut the qualifications and integrity of the Kansas Supreme 
Court."

In addition to the governor, an independent group, Kansans for Justice, also 
made a pointed attack on Rosen and Johnson: "Your Kansas Supreme Court justices 
are using their political beliefs to rule against sound court cases. On 
November 4th, vote No and remove Kansas Supreme Court Justices Eric Rosen and 
Lee Johnson from the bench."

The Kansans For Justice campaign sent out a form letter that supporters could 
use to urge others to vote against the judges. It said in part:

I'm certain some of you remember the horrific crimes committed by the Carr 
brothers. ... What you may not know is that in July 2014 the Kansas Supreme 
Court overturned these sentences due to a technicality. ... 2 of the justices 
who voted to overturn these convictions will be on the Kansas ballot Nov. 4. 
This is a retention vote, so the question will ask you if you'd like to retain 
Justices Eric Rosen and Lee Johnson. I am asking you to consider voting "no."

A curious thing happened at the polls in November 2014, though. Despite 
widespread media attention focused on the most horrifying details of the 
homicides that the Carr brothers committed, a governor who declared war on 
liberal judges, and an independent organization that took direct aim at the 
justices over their decisions in capital cases, both Erik Rosen and Lee Johnson 
retained their seats on the Kansas Supreme Court.

It appears that Kansans do not "very much favor" the death penalty after all.

This is not a Kansas-specific phenomenon. Support for the death penalty has 
sharply declined nationally over the past 15 years. More importantly, though, 
the intensity with which people support the death penalty appears to have 
subsided significantly.

Consider, for instance, a recent poll that showed that only 3 % of Colorado 
voters rank the death penalty as the issue that "matters most" when deciding on 
how to vote for a gubernatorial candidate. Or consider that 4 sitting governors 
openly refuse to permit an execution to go forward on their watch - Kate Brown 
in Oregon, John Hickenlooper in Colorado, Jay Inslee in Washington, and Tom 
Wolf in Pennsylvania. The upshot is that the death penalty has lost much of its 
power as a tool for political fear-mongers to use against elected officials, 
including judges.

This cultural shift is important for prosecutors, politicians and judges to 
understand. But whether or not Scalia is right that Kansans would vote out 
judges who find constitutional error in death penalty cases, he is wrong to 
even hint that they should. Indeed, Scalia seems to fundamentally misunderstand 
the role of an independent judiciary charged with preserving the rights of 
unpopular citizens.

When emotionally charged events happen, including murder, people unsurprisingly 
tend to react with emotion. We are afraid. We are angry. We want vengeance. 
Politicians both react to and exploit these emotions. We hear, as Kansans did 
last election cycle, sound bites on the television or radio about judges 
letting murderers go free because of some technicality.

Judges are supposed to cut through the chaos and carefully analyze whether a 
trial complied with the dictates of the law. Constitutional strictures are not 
some meaningless hoops to jump through. These are the rules that help to ensure 
that innocent people are not wrongfully convicted. These are the rules that 
ensure that the punishment fits the crime. If anything, our problem is that 
these rules are not followed closely enough. When we elect judges - and 
especially when we make a matter of electoral debate whether we like or dislike 
a constitutional ruling - we subvert the intended purpose of the judiciary.

What if we turn the question around? Instead of asking whether Kansans should 
vote out judges who find constitutional violations in capital cases, we should 
ask a different question: How much of death penalty activity today is 
attributable to elected judges who arguably do not possess the distance from 
the rough and tumble of political life that the architects of the Bill of 
Rights contemplated?

In Alabama, a state where a trial judge can "override" the decision of a jury 
to return a life imprisonment sentence, 1 in 5 death row inmates were sentenced 
to death by an elected judge who imposed a death sentence against the will of 
the jury (including in cases in which the jury unanimously rejected a death 
sentence). As Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently wrote in a dissent from the 
Supreme Court's refusal to hear the case Woodward v. Alabama: "Alabama judges, 
who are elected in partisan proceedings, appear to have succumbed to electoral 
pressures," a fact that floats a "cloud of illegitimacy over the criminal 
justice system."

In her opinion, Sotomayor described a judge who ran campaign advertisements 
about how he had "presided over more than 9,000 cases, including some of the 
most heinous murder trials in our history, and expressly named some of the 
defendants whom he had sentenced to death, in at least 1 case over a jury's 
contrary judgment." This anecdotal evidence from Alabama fits with a recent 
Reuters study of more than 2,000 death penalty cases decided by the 37 state 
supreme courts that heard capital cases within the past 15 years. The study 
concluded that elected judges affirm death sentences more than twice as often 
as appointed judges, while judges who face retention elections - e.g. justices 
on the Kansas Supreme Court - land in the middle. This cannot be the handiwork 
of the impartial judiciary that the drafters of the constitution had in mind.

Justice Scalia might be correct that the Kansas Supreme Court erroneously 
decided that the Eighth Amendment demands that Reginald and Jonathan Carr 
receive a new trial. He might even be correct that the justices of the Kansas 
Supreme Court do not like the death penalty. The proper response to these 
concerns is for the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the judgment of the Kansas 
Supreme Court in individual cases where the federal constitutional compels that 
result. But it is not the role of the Court to advocate for the further 
politicization of the judiciary. That's supposed to be the difference between 
judges and legislators.

In Kansas, in contrast to Scalia's speculation, the death penalty seems to have 
fallen out of favor - a point underscored by both the state's infrequent resort 
to the punishment and the failed effort to oust Justices Johnson and Rosen.

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






NEBRASKA:

Callers Question Governor Over Death Penalty


Callers to a state-wide program with Governor Pete Ricketts Monday challenged 
the state's chief executive regarding his position on the death penalty, in 
Nebraska. One caller asked about Ricketts' $200,000 contribution made in 
support of a campaign to place the repeal issue on the ballot, and how 
Nebraskans can feel fairly represented when they don't have that kind of money 
to support their position.

Ricketts said he made the contributions to help Nebraskans for the Death 
Penalty start their petition drive.

Ricketts says Nebraska reserves use of the death penalty for those committing 
the most heinous crimes. Nebraska last carried out an execution back in 1997 
... when Robert Williams was put to death for killing 3 people.

Another caller to the Nebraska Broadcasters Association, who opposes the death 
penalty asked how Ricketts, who is Catholic ..... can be pro-life, yet favor 
the death penalty.

The caller said he was opposed to the death penalty, describing it as "society 
playing God" ....when a state has the resources to keep such persons in prison 
and provide for the safety of others.

Last week, it was officially determined by the Secretary of State's Office that 
enough petition signatures have been verified to both suspend the Nebraska 
Legislature's repeal of the death penalty, and to put the issue on the 
November, 2016 ballot.

(source: KWBE news)






USA:

Thank God: Evangelicals shrink back from support of death penalty


In 1983, a broadcaster from New Hampshire asked President Ronald Reagan about 
accusations that he had moved away from the principles that got him elected.

His response is now legendary: "I have always figured that a half a loaf is 
better than none, and I know that in the democratic process you're not going to 
always get everything you want."

What Reagan knew about political change, the National Association of 
Evangelicals knows about religious change. Which is why on Thursday (Oct. 15), 
the NAE's board of directors officially inched away from the organization's 
pro-death penalty position by approving what one might call a half-a-loaf 
resolution on the death penalty.

"Evangelical Christians differ in their beliefs about capital punishment, often 
citing strong biblical and theological reasons either for the just character of 
the death penalty in extreme cases, or for the sacredness of all life, 
including the lives of those who perpetrate serious crimes and yet have the 
potential for repentance and reformation," the resolution states. "We affirm 
the conscientious commitment of both streams of Christian ethical thought."

As America's largest coalition of evangelical Christians, the NAE represents 
more than 10 million Americans, 45,000 congregations and almost 40 different 
denominations.

Publicly acknowledging disagreement on a matter isn't exactly visionary. But it 
is a step in the right direction.

Before now, the organization's standing resolution on the matter supported 
capital punishment as a deterrent for violent criminals and called on lawmakers 
to reinstate it in places where it had been outlawed.

Support for capital punishment among Americans has fallen from a high of 78 % 
in the mid-'90s to 55 % in 2013. While evangelicals are more approving of the 
death penalty than is the general public, their support has also waned in 
recent years. Only 5 % of Americans - including 10 of practicing Christians - 
believe Jesus would support the government's ability to execute criminals.

The NAE passed its resolution on capital punishment in 1973, but we've learned 
much about the matter in the last 40 years. Studies show that the death penalty 
does not deter criminals. They also demonstrate that capital punishment is 
inefficient - costing millions more dollars than life imprisonment - and 
discriminatory, with striking disparities among racial minorities and the poor.

We also know that the innocent are often coerced to confess or wrongfully 
convicted - at least 150 people were freed from death row since the NAE's last 
resolution.

During the same period, the views of many Christians began changing alongside 
those of other Americans. Younger Christians became focused on social justice, 
which led to a generational shift.

Some evangelical scholars concluded that the New Testament does not support the 
death penalty as they once assumed. And a coalition of Latino evangelicals 
called for the abolition of the death penalty in March of this year. There were 
already rumors at that time that the NAE was considering a shift, too.

NAE's president, Leith Anderson, said that the board began considering the 
issue about 5 years ago and that there were no dissenting votes among the 
board. He declined to note his personal views on the death penalty. In addition 
to the impact on churches, Anderson said that the resolution may impact the 
NAE's political advocacy.

"What we are now able to do is to present a cross-section of evangelical 
views," he said. "When issues come up, we will speak up and say that there are 
inequities in terms of race and class and ZIP codes."

Anderson added that while the statement reflects real and growing differences 
among evangelicals, it also hints at their similarities.

"Evangelicals who endorse the death penalty value life - particularly the life 
of the victim or the potential victim," Anderson said. "Those who would abolish 
it are focused on life as well, acknowledging that everyone is made in God's 
image. While there are differences, some of the theology and assumptions are 
the same."

One of the strongest evangelical voices calling for abolition of the death 
penalty is Shane Claiborne, author of the forthcoming book "Executing Grace: 
Why It Is Time to Put the Death Penalty to Death." He said that during the 
deliberation process, he communicated with board members who were opposed to 
capital punishment. While Claiborne hoped the NAE would call for abolition, he 
also celebrates the current resolution.

"Someone that is not familiar with evangelicalism might read (the NAE's 
resolution) and think they didn't do anything," Claiborne said. "But the fact 
that they had a passionately pro-death penalty stance for 40 years and now are 
saying that they are not united on this is significant."

Claiborne is right. The death penalty has survived in America, in part, because 
of evangelicals' strong support. Evangelicals have often followed, rather than 
led, on issues of justice and equality in America. The death penalty is 
irreparably marred by improper sentencing, the possibility of wrongful 
conviction, racial bias, socio-economic discrimination and financial waste. Any 
movement by the NAE away from support of the death penalty is worthy of praise.

Some death penalty opponents may see the NAE's new position as moving an inch 
where a mile is needed. I'll take the half a loaf and thank God for it.

(source: Jonathan Merritt is senior columnist for Religion News Service)