[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., FLA., ALA.

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 2



TEXAS:

Oklahoma Chases the Texas Political Homicide Record


The question is not whether you will execute an innocent person in a state that 
executes criminals. Oklahoma and Texas are engaged in a competition right now, 
a sort of Red River Shootout off the football field, to address the real 
question.

For context, remember that Texas has the 4th largest Indian population among 
the states in the 2010 Census. Oklahoma is number 2. Since the death penalty 
was reinstated in 1976, 16 Indians have been executed, a percentage of 
executions over twice the percentage of Indians in the general population. Of 
those, Oklahoma killed one and Texas killed 2, which would put Texas ahead if 
the competition were simply how many Indians do you kill.

There are currently 31 Indians on death row. 12 are from California and the 
rest are distributed among Arizona, Florida, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, 
and there is 1 federal prisoner under sentence of death. There are no 
identified Indians currently on the Texas death row.

Can an innocent man be convicted of capital murder in these United States? 
Since 1973, 155 people have been exonerated off of death row after an average 
stay of 11.3 years. Only 20 were exonerated by DNA, but to make the list, the 
defendant must have been (1) acquitted after a new trial or (2) had all charges 
dropped or (3) gotten an absolute pardon based on new evidence of innocence. No 
American Indians appear among the 155 exonerations, but since only 60 of the 
innocent death row residents were white, the dearth of Indians is a combination 
of luck and the fact that only 1 tribe has opted in to the federal death 
penalty.

Texas

Texas is gearing up for Mark Norwood's capital murder trial. If that name is 
too obscure, try Michael Morton, the man who got life in prison for the murder 
of his wife and served 25 years before DNA evidence that exonerated him pointed 
to Norwood, who has been convicted and is serving the sentence he put off on 
Michael Morton. 6 of those years were served during the legal battle to get the 
DNA testing.

Besides the tragedy of an innocent man serving 25 years, another woman, Debra 
Baker, was killed with the same modus operandi, leading to speculation that 
Baker died because of a now-deceased sheriff and a district attorney named Ken 
Anderson too lazy to follow the evidence beyond the obvious suspect in a 
criminal homicide, the spouse.

DA Anderson was later appointed a district judge by Governor (and presidential 
candidate) Rick Perry, but after the Morton exoneration Anderson lost his 
judgeship, his law license, and did 10 days in jail, reduced to 5 for good 
behavior. While this pales before the 25 years his victim served, the fact that 
Anderson's misconduct caught up with him and destroyed his career is an 
exceedingly rare and therefore welcome result.

Anderson's protege John Bradley, the district attorney appointed by Perry to 
replace Anderson and who opposed the DNA testing that freed an innocent man for 
6 years, was defeated in the next election.

Besides keeping Michael Morton behind bars for an extra 6 years, John Bradley 
made history when Gov. Perry replaced the head of the Texas Forensic Science 
Commission with Bradley just 2 days before it was scheduled to review an expert 
report on Cameron Todd Willingham's case. Willingham was executed for homicide 
by arson after Perry refused to stay the execution on the ground that the 1st 
real expert investigation showed there was no arson. The expert Perry ignored 
would not be the last to opine on the Willingham evidence.

Huffpost published the narrative that is the Willingham story:

Willingham was executed by lethal injection on Feb. 17, 2004. Yet the efforts 
to exonerate Willingham only intensified, and in 2005, the Texas Forensic 
Science Commission decided to re-examine the case. The commission hired a 
nationally known fire scientist, Craig Beyler, to evaluate the evidence, and in 
his report, he came down on the same side as the scientists who had evaluated 
the case prior to Willingham's execution: there was no credible scientific 
basis for the conclusion that arson had been committed.

Beyler was eventually scheduled to testify before the commission on Oct. 2, 
2009. 2 days before Beyler's appearance, however, Rick Perry put a stop to it.

There was speculation at the time that Perry did not wish to grant a stay of 
Willingham???s execution because he was locked in a serious battle for 
reelection against former Senator Kay Baily Hutchinson. Perry???s appointee 
Bradley called off the review, but in spite of their best efforts, the 
Willingham case has come to represent a political execution of an innocent man, 
since the science did not go away when Bradley stopped the hearing.

Governor Perry, to be fair, was elected in a state that has been rabid about 
killing killers. Former Gov. Ann Richards took a political bath when she gave a 
man on death row a thirty-day stay to being forward evidence of innocence. Even 
former Gov. George W. Bush was criticized when he commuted the death sentence 
of a known serial killer who was shown to have been on a job site in Florida 
when the crime he was about to be killed for was perpetrated in Texas. In the 
Texas political context, the fact that the man was innocent of the crime for 
which Texas was about to take his life was "a technicality."

After Bradley's 2 run-ins with innocence in homicide cases - Morton and 
Willingham - he found himself unable to find a job. At last notice, he was an 
assistant attorney general in the Republic of Palau, an island in Micronesia of 
about 20,000 souls that is a former U.S. territory independent since 1994.

Then-Gov. Rick Perry, who had previously appointed Bradley first district 
attorney and then chair of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, visited Palau 
shortly before Bradley landed the job. Perry was on a political photo op 
mission to search for the remains of missing WWII airmen. The government of 
Palau declared Perry an "Honorary Consul" during his visit. The Houston 
Chronicle questioned whether Perry had interceded on Bradley's behalf, but 
Perry had no comment.

Since Cameron Todd Willingham, the innocent man, was killed by Texas in 2004 
and the innocent Michael Morton was released back in 2011, it's important to 
demonstrate Texas is still in the game of convicting innocent people of serious 
crimes if it's to be compared to Oklahoma.

This year, Charles Sebesta, a Texas district attorney for 25 years, followed 
ex-Judge Ken Anderson in losing his law license for using testimony he had 
reason to know was false to put a man on death row for 12 years.

I can't report this without noting that I had cases against Sebesta when 
practicing law, and while he was pretty tightly wrapped, he did not strike me 
as the kind of man to kill for political reasons. He continues to deny it, but 
his denials do not cover everything in the judgment taking his law license.

Sebesta did not handle the case that got him disbarred in a manner fitting for 
taking a man's life, but I believe to a moral certainty that Sebesta believed 
then and believes now that he was doing his best to kill a killer, a fool's 
errand demanded by the voters. As long as the voters make that irrational 
demand, it's hard to blame elected officials for catering to it.

Texas has so far 13 exonerations from death row. But remember, the question is 
not if a death penalty state will kill an innocent person.

Oklahoma

Oklahoma racked up some extra points for brutality when it botched the 
execution of Clayton Lockett on April 29, 2014. Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin had 
ignored an Oklahoma Supreme Court order to stay the execution, but that bit of 
lawlessness slipped from notice when Lockett was injected with the 1st drug in 
a 3 drug "cocktail" that was supposed to render him unconscious for the drugs 
that would first paralyze him and then stop his heart. If he were conscious, 
the 2nd drug would cause major panic and the third would cause excruciating 
pain.

Lockett was not rendered unconscious by the 1st drug, midazolam. He gasped and 
struggled for over 40 minutes as the executioners first closed the curtain to 
take the debacle out of view of the legal observers and then, finally, decided 
to stop the attempt to kill Lockett - who then, they claimed, died of a 
coincidental heart failure.

If the public was fascinated by this debacle, another audience was positively 
riveted: the other residents on Oklahoma's death row, and other death rows in 
states cued up to try midazolam for the ultimate off-label use.

The objection was to becoming human subjects in a painful science experiment 
and the case was styled Warner v. Gross, but Charles Warner was executed and it 
got to the Supreme Court as Glossip v. Gross, where the Court made Richard 
Glossip an involuntary lab rat by a 5-4 vote.

Ironically, the case that will have Richard Glossip's name on it is about 
whether the method used to kill him is "cruel and unusual punishment" and so 
unlawful under the Eighth Amendment. Glossip would rather dispute his guilt and 
ask about the propriety of executing an innocent man, apparently not having 
gotten my memo that the question is not whether a death penalty state will kill 
an innocent man.

Is it possible that Glossip is in fact innocent? It's not only possible, it's 
likely. There is no question that another individual killed the victim or that 
the guilty person is mentally challenged, although it's unclear if his 
challenges are severe enough that he cannot be executed.

The killer is not on death row because he was offered his life in exchange for 
saying that Richard Glossip hired him to kill the victim. In return for his 
testimony to that effect, Oklahoma did not seek the death penalty. He is now 
serving life without possibility of parole.

The legal and moral problem is that the self-serving testimony of the admitted 
killer did not lead to any corroborating physical evidence and there is no 
credible motive for Glossip to kill the victim, who employed both Glossip and 
the killer.

To call the case against Glossip "weak" is almost being charitable. His 
impending execution is set for what is a major holiday in much of the 
Southwestern Borderlands, Diez y Seis de Septiembre - September 16 - which 
commemorates the Grito de Dolores that kicked off the war for Mexican 
independence.

Sullying a holiday with the execution of an innocent man is one of the ways you 
know you are in Oklahoma. Glossip's impending death by homicide for a homicide 
he probably did not commit has motivated lots of supporters, including Sister 
Helen Prejean of Dead Man Walking fame and the actor who played Prejean when 
the book was filmed, Susan Sarandon.

Among the people who have spoken up for Glossip's innocence is the admitted 
killer's daughter, who has written her opinion that Glossip is innocent and her 
father wants to recant but fears that would lead to joining Glossip on death 
row.

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin has a record of doing politics with convicted 
killers without regard for the quality of the conviction that rivals Rick 
Perry's. As Mexican politicians perform the Grito de Dolores in public places 
and Texas indulges a more low key celebration with barbacoa, Indian Territory 
(now Oklahoma) marks September 16 by executing a man who is probably innocent, 
or at least by conducting a deadly science experiment even if he's guilty.

All of which leads to the question that goes begging in the death penalty 
debate, where so many people want to pretend the issue is whether a death 
penalty state will kill an innocent person.

Of course it will. Rick Perry and Mary Fallin are not outliers. The real 
question, and the subject of this ersatz Red River Shootout, is how many 
innocent people in each death penalty state will be a sacrifice to political 
ambition.

(source: indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com)






PENNSYLVANIA:

Judge dismisses 'ridiculous' appeal by Easton triple murderer


Facing the death penalty in 2011 on charges he gunned down 3 people in an 
Easton home, a New Jersey man agreed to put his fate in the hands of a judge, 
and not a jury..

Olayiwola Hollist's decision had its logic: By opting for a bench trial, the 
Newark man secured an agreement from Northampton County prosecutors that they 
would not seek his execution if he was convicted.

But Hollist, who was found guilty of 1st-degree murder and sentenced to life in 
prison, now says he had an entirely different reason for taking the deal.

Before he did so, he maintains, he was assured by an investigator for the 
defense that the judge in the case, Stephen Baratta, was predisposed toward an 
acquittal.

That claim was called "absurd" by Baratta on Tuesday, though he granted that it 
was "novel." Baratta did so as he dismissed an appeal by Hollist, who is 
seeking a new trial by claiming that his court-appointed lawyers failed him.

"Do we need to address this ridiculous theory for relief - that Hollist was 
cheated out of his constitutional right to a jury trial because he relied on 
his mitigation expert who told him to waive his right to a jury trial because 
the fix was in? ... We think not," wrote Baratta, who is now the county's 
president judge.

Hollist and a co-defendant, Demar Edwards, were convicted 4 years ago by 
Baratta of what is still Easton's bloodiest slaying ever, a gangland killing at 
an apartment on North 13th Street in the West Ward.

On Nov. 29, 2007, Hollist was 1 of 4 men who drove from New Jersey for a hit in 
which 3 people who were dressed for bed were shot execution-style, according to 
testimony. The victims were Alphe Rene, 20; Aleah Hamlin, 19; and Chanel 
Armour, 23. Authorities said they were murdered as retaliation between Bloods 
gang factions for killings in the Garden State in the days before.

In 2013, the Superior Court affirmed Hollist's conviction at appeal. That led 
to a legal challenge last year under the state's post-conviction relief act, 
which allows defendants to argue their lawyers were ineffective.

Baratta's 24-page opinion rejected all of Hollist's claims, finding that lead 
defense attorney Charles Banta gave his client sound advice and pursued a 
reasonable strategy at trial. But it was Hollist's assertion of a promised fix 
that the judge's decision spent the most time on.

In May, Hollist testified that his mitigation specialist, Harvey Ellis, made 
the claim during a private conversation advocating for him to waive his right 
to a jury.

"He said he knows that Stephen Baratta has reasonable doubt to find me not 
guilty, and if I went with Stephen Baratta, it would be in my best interest," 
Hollist said in court, according to Baratta's ruling.

"That's what he made it seem like, that the judge was going to make sure that 
everything was done right and the right thing would be to find me not guilty," 
Hollist also said.

Baratta said Hollist knew what he was doing when he opted for a bench trial, 
and he pointed to lengthy questioning that the defendant underwent before his 
decision was accepted.

"That claim that he was tricked by his expert into believing that a nonjury 
trial would be a corrupt proceeding where he would be found not guilty, and as 
a result, he foolishly waived his jury trial, is not supported by the record 
and [is] unworthy of further discussion," Baratta said.

Hollist's appellate attorney, Phillip Orlando Robertson of Altoona, Blair 
County, did not return a phone call Tuesday seeking comment.

Reached at his home in Warminster Township, Bucks County, Ellis laughed when 
told by a reporter of the allegation.

"I don't think so," said Ellis, 74, who is retired. "I don't think that ever 
would have happened."

Hollist, 31, is jailed at Houtzdale State Prison in Clearfield County. Edwards, 
36, is also under a life sentence, as is 27-year-old Ali E. Davis, who was 
convicted at trial in 2010.

A fourth defendant, Lewis A. Gray, 38, is serving 13 to 26 years in prison. He 
cooperated with prosecutors after taking a plea deal to conspiracy charges.

(source: Morning Call)






FLORIDA:

Florida Man Found Guilty of Killing Boss and Her Husband


A Tampa Bay area man faces a possible death sentence for fatally shooting his 
boss and her husband.

A Hillsborough County jury found 35-year-old Julian Ospina-Florez guilty 
Tuesday of 1st-degree murder. The same panel will reconvene later this week to 
recommend life in prison or the death penalty. A judge will make the final 
decision.

Hector and Debra Rivera were found dead at their Tampa mansion in January 2012.

Ospina-Florez had worked for Debra Rivera as her driver and helper in her 
jewelry business. He called 911 after the shootings, claiming he had been tied 
up by an unknown assailant.

But authorities say the murder weapon -- a gun found in a locked drawer -- 
belonged to Ospina-Florez, and a box of ammunition with 10 rounds missing was 
found inside his car.

(source: WCTV news)






ALABAMA:

Drug company named in lethal injection case----Firm says use of drug in death 
penalty against its policies


Add another drug company to the list of potential sources of Alabama's death 
penalty drugs - a list state officials have long tried to keep secret.

Court documents filed last month in the case of death row inmate Tommy Arthur 
suggest New Jersey pharmaceutical manufacturer Becton Dickinson could be a 
maker of the midazolam Alabama uses as the 1st element of its 3-drug execution 
protocol.

The company, in a written statement, said its drugs are not intended for sale 
to U.S. prisons, and that its distributors have been warned of that fact. The 
company will take an "appropriate course of action" against any distributor 
found selling midazolam to prisons, according to the statement.

The new documents are not the 1st time lawyers have dropped the name of a 
drugmaker in court, though state officials have long declined to publicly name 
the sources of their lethal injection drugs.

"A company that's not involved in lethal injection would be very concerned 
about the potential unfair damage done to them by their association with 
executions," said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty 
Information Center, a nonprofit which studies the death penalty. "A company 
that is involved would be rightly concerned about the consequences of being 
known to be involved."

Alabama hasn't executed an inmate in more than two years. Drugs once used for 
lethal injection have become scarce as major drug companies - particularly 
those headquartered in Europe, where there's strong opposition to capital 
punishment - have backed away from providing those drugs to prison systems.

Several inmates have challenged the constitutionality of the state's current 
execution drug protocol, which consists of midazolam to kill pain, rocuronium 
to relax the muscles, and finally, potassium chloride to stop the heart. 
Inmates claim midazolam doesn't kill the pain of execution and thus violates 
the ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

For the past 2 years, lawmakers have proposed bills to make the names of 
Alabama's lethal injection drug suppliers secret. Those bills didn't pass, but 
state officials still decline to name the sources of their drugs, citing a gag 
order in Arthur's case. Many of the documents in that case are sealed, and many 
non-sealed documents contain redacted passages.

Earlier this year, however, state officials included a "package insert" - 
essentially manufacturer's instructions - for midazolam produced by 
Illinois-based Akorn Pharmaceuticals as an exhibit in the case. The company 
denied selling any midazolam directly to the state.

More recent court documents refer to a similar package insert from Becton 
Dickinson. In a court order issued Friday, U.S. District Judge W. Keith Watkins 
ruled that Arthur's lawyers could conduct depositions to find out which 
company's insert best applies to the drugs used in Alabama's executions.

Consequences

When Akorn's package insert surfaced in court documents earlier this year, the 
company said it "strongly objects" to use of its drugs in executions. Akorn 
later announced it would restrict sale of midazolam to wholesalers who "use 
their best efforts" to prevent sale of the drug to prisons.

Becton Dickinson took a similar position in its Tuesday statement, sent by 
public relations director Troy Kirkpatrick.

"All of our distributor partners have previously received formal notification 
... that our products are not intended for use in U.S. prisons including state 
and federal penitentiaries," the statement read.

Becton Dickinson did $163,905 in direct business with the state so far this 
year, and $156,162 in fiscal 2014, but all those sales appear to have been to 
the Department of Public Health, not the Department of Corrections.

Dunham said it's possible for a drugmaker's products to be used in an execution 
without the company knowing it. But association with lethal injection is 
increasingly problematic for companies both ethically and from a marketing 
standpoint, he said.

"A company's good name is worth a fortune," Dunham said.

He cited the example of Mylan, a producer of rocuronium bromide, one of the 
drugs Alabama uses for lethal injection. According to Reuters, a Dutch public 
employees' pension fund last week divested itself of stock in Mylan. Mylan has 
said its drugs are not intended for use in capital punishment, but according to 
Reuters, pension fund managers thought the company wasn't doing enough to 
control use of its drugs.

Changing tactics

The judge's order comes as Arthur and other death row inmates search for a new 
defense in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the use of 
midazolam in executions.

An Oklahoma inmate, citing a botched 2014 execution which took more than half 
an hour, argued that midazolam shouldn't be used to kill inmates. The high 
court disagreed.

"The prisoners failed to identify a known and available alternative method of 
execution that entails a lesser risk of pain," Justice Samuel Alito wrote in 
the opening lines of the majority opinion. The death penalty itself hasn't been 
ruled unconstitutional, Alito wrote, and there must therefore be a 
constitutional way to carry it out.

Lawyers for Arthur, who was convicted in the 1980s murder-for-hire of a Muscle 
Shoals man, have since argued that Alabama does have alternatives, including 
the firing squad.

"Execution by firing squad, if implemented properly, would result in a 
substantially lesser risk of harm than the state's continued use of the d-drug 
protocol involving midazolam," wrote Suhana Han, attorney for condemned inmate 
Tommy Arthur, in a court motion.

Arthur has also argued that the state could buy sodium thiopental - once the 
1st drug in Alabama???s execution protocol - from a drugmaker in India, or 
could hire a compounding pharmacist to mix the drug pentobarbital in small 
batches.

Pentobarbital, too, was once used by the state to kill inmates. Arthur 
challenged the constitutionality of that drug in his original 2011 suit against 
the state.

"Arthur cannot pretend that he has never adopted the position ... that 
pentobarbital violates the Eighth Amendment because it will cause him to have a 
heart attack and suffer a painful death before its anesthetic effects are 
achieved," lawyers for the attorney general's office wrote in a motion for 
summary judgment. Attempts to reach a spokesman for Arthur's legal team were 
unsuccessful Tuesday. Joy Patterson, a spokeswoman for the attorney general's 
office, said the office would not comment further on the case.

The judge's Friday order blocks Arthur from directly seeking information about 
the sources of the state's drugs, their expiration dates and any effort by the 
state to adopt an alternate form of execution.

Discovery in the case must be completed by Nov. 15, Watkins ordered.

(source: Anniston Star)