[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----N.C., NEB.

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 2


NORTH CAROLINA:

Wrongly convicted brothers each get $750,000 in compensation


When 2 brothers were released after 3 decades of wrongful imprisonment, they 
struggled to adapt to an outside world neither had experienced since they were 
teenagers. The older one has managed to adjust and keep his "head up high," but 
the younger one, according to his family, is a broken man.

On Wednesday, the state of North Carolina sought to make amends, awarding each 
man $750,000 for the time they spent behind bars after they falsely confessed 
to taking part in the killing of an 11-year-old girl.

Henry McCollum, 51, appeared calm as a state official approved the maximum 
payout under the law to him and half-brother Leon Brown, 47. Brown did not 
attend the hearing; he is in the hospital, suffering from mental health 
problems including post-traumatic stress disorder, the brothers' lawyer said.

McCollum and Brown were released last September after a judge threw out their 
convictions, citing new DNA evidence that points to another man in the 1983 
rape and slaying of Sabrina Buie. McCollum had been the longest-serving inmate 
on North Carolina's death row. Brown had been sentenced to life in prison.

They were pronounced innocent in June by Gov. Pat McCrory, who issued pardons 
that made them eligible for compensation.

McCollum, who has been living with his sister in the Fayetteville area, said 
the money will enable him to support himself and help his family.

"My family, they have struggled for years and years," he said. "It's hard out 
there for them, and I want to help them."

Their attorney said the money will be put in a trust and invested so that the 
brothers can live off the earnings and won't have to work.

North Carolina is among 30 states that have laws for compensating people 
wrongfully convicted, according to the Innocence Project. But North Carolina 
stands alone with its Innocence Inquiry Commission, set up to investigate 
disputed cases. It performed the DNA testing that set the brothers free.

Sabrina's body was found in a soybean field in rural Robeson County, with a 
cigarette butt, a beer can and 2 bloody sticks nearby.

Attorneys for the 2 brothers say that they were scared teenagers with low IQs 
and that investigators berated them and fed them details about the crime before 
they signed confessions saying they were part of a group that killed the 
youngster. McCollum was 19, Brown 15.

But the DNA on the cigarette didn't match either one of them, and fingerprints 
on the beer can weren't theirs either. No physical evidence connected them to 
the crime.

The current district attorney for Robeson County, who didn't prosecute McCollum 
and Brown, has said he is considering charging the man whose DNA was found on 
the cigarette butt. That man is in prison for another murder.

McCollum listed some of the things he enjoys about freedom: "Being out here, to 
be able to breathe the air. To be able to walk around as a free man. To be able 
to walk down that street with my head up high."

Meanwhile, Brown has been hospitalized at least 6 times in the last year for 
mental health problems that include hallucinations and deep depression, 
attorney Patrick Megaro said.

Both men were bullied and attacked behind bars, and Brown was sexually 
assaulted repeatedly by other inmates, according to a lawsuit brought by Megaro 
against county authorities and others.

The brothers were initially given death sentences. In 1988, the state Supreme 
Court threw out their convictions and ordered new trials. McCollum was again 
sent to death row, while Brown was found guilty of rape and sentenced to life.

The Associated Press normally does not identify victims of sexual assault, but 
Megaro said Brown and his family were willing to make the information public to 
show how he suffered.

The men's sister, Geraldine Brown, said her brother Leon is "really sick" from 
his time in prison.

"He did not go in that way," she said. "They snatched him from my mother as a 
baby."

(source: Associated Press)






NEBRASKA:

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts (and his father) spent $300,000 to save the death 
penalty. Here's what he could have bought instead.


Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts (R) really likes the thought of his state killing 
death row inmates. He likes it so much, in fact, that he's spending his own 
money to make sure his state keeps doing it.

In May, the Nebraska legislature voted 32-15 to abolish the state's death 
penalty. This was a pretty remarkable thing. Nebraska, of course, only has 1 
legislative body, and that body is officially nonpartisan. But this is a state 
that voted 60 % for Mitt Romney in 2012 and hasn't gone Democratic in a 
presidential election since 1964.

Ricketts promised to veto the bill, and he did. The legislature then overrode 
his veto, 30-19. Classy guy that he is, Ricketts then vowed to kill as many of 
death row inmates as he can before the law takes effect, or even to carry out 
executions in spite of the new law.

Ricketts then put $200,000 of his own money toward a petition drive to put the 
death penalty on the ballot in the next election. Ricketts's father contributed 
another $100,000. This isn't a lot of money for Ricketts. In 2006, the former 
Ameritrade chief operating officer spent $11 million of his own fortune in an 
effort to unseat then-Sen. Ben Nelson. Ricketts lost by 28 points. He won the 
state's governorship last year after squeaking through a crowded GOP primary 
field.

The petition effort was successful. Pro-death-penalty campaigners collected 
nearly three times the number of required signatures to get on the ballot. It 
isn't clear how the initiative will fare. An American Civil Liberties Union 
poll taken in April found that 58 % of respondents opposed the death penalty 
when presented with alternatives; just 30 % support it. But asking the question 
while listing possible alternatives (such as life without parole) isn't how the 
issue will be presented to voters in the upcoming campaign.

So we have a sitting governor spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of his 
own money to promote a ballot initiative to overturn a law the legislature 
passed over his veto, and a law he has promised to defy. It's certainly an odd 
sight. The same guy spending all that money to keep the death penalty legal is 
the guy who, if he has his way, will be the one signing the death warrants. It 
raises some interesting ethical questions. But it also raises some questions 
about Pete Ricketts and his priorities.

Just for fun, I looked at some of the other things Pete Ricketts and his father 
could have bought instead of spending $300,000 so that Pete Ricketts can send 
men to their deaths. Here's what else $300,000 could have bought:

--45 one-year tuition scholarships to the University of Nebraska.

--One year of health insurance for 102 low-income Nebraskans.

--Ricketts supports charters and vouchers for private schools. With the money 
he has spent to re-legalize state-sanctioned killing, he could have bought a 
year of tuition at a private elementary school for 81 kids who otherwise 
couldn't afford it.

--Ricketts also opposes abortion rights. The average pregnancy costs about 
$8,800 in the United States. That means Ricketts could have paid the hospital 
and medical costs of at least 34 low-income women - probably more, given that 
the cost of health care in Nebraska is almost certainly lower than the U.S. 
average.

--From what I can tell, the average soup kitchen meal costs about $1.20. For 
$300,000, Ricketts could have purchased 250,000 meals for homeless people. He 
could feed 228 people 3 meals per day for a year.

--Alternately, he could a year of rent-free living for 45 people in an average 
1-bedroom apartment in Lincoln.

--He could employ 11 Nebraskans for a year at the state's median salary.

Nebraska currently has 10 death row inmates. (The state hasn???t executed 
anyone since 1997.) This means that Ricketts (and his father) has spent more 
per inmate trying to execute those inmates ($30,000) than the average Nebraskan 
makes in a year ($26,899).

Just 2 days ago, a federal appeals court ordered a new trial in the lawsuit 
brought by the "Beatrice 6." In 2009, the 6 Nebraskans were exonerated by DNA 
testing for a murder in 1985. Between them, they had served 77 years in prison. 
Remarkably, 5 of the 6 had confessed. 3 of them testified against the only 1 
who insisted on a trial. They later cited their motivation for confessing to a 
crime they didn't commit, then falsely implicating someone else: fear of the 
state's death penalty.

(source: Radley Balko, Washington Post)