[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----MO., OKLA., KAN., NEB., MONT., CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 3



MISSOURI:

For 1 Missouri lawyer, 8 clients executed in 18 months


At a time when other states in the US are backing away from the death penalty, 
Missouri has done the opposite. It is currently executing its death row inmates 
faster than any other state in the country, at a rate of about one per month.

At 21:09 local time on Tuesday evening, Roderick Nunley became the 6th death 
row inmate executed by the state of Missouri in 2015. He was convicted of the 
1989 kidnapping, rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl in Kansas City. His was 
the latest in a string of executions by the state since 2013.

In May 2015, Nebraska became the 19th state to abolish the death penalty. A 
federal appeals court in California is currently considering the 
constitutionality of capital punishment. Difficulty procuring the drugs 
necessary for lethal injections has halted the process in some places.

But while executions have slowed elsewhere, Missouri is ramping up, ever since 
it secured a new, secret source for the execution drug pentobarbital.

Lawyer Jennifer Herndon's caseload is a testament to that fact. Of the last 18 
men executed by Missouri, eight of them were her clients. Nunley was her final 
capital case.

No one in Missouri has had more executed clients in the last 2 years. In part 
because of this, she was profiled by The Marshall Project in an article 
entitled "The Burnout". In the story, Herndon - known once as a dedicated 
lawyer who won a landmark decision that said individuals who committed their 
crimes while juveniles can not be executed - said she no longer wanted to 
represent death row inmates. At the time, Nunley and another man named Richard 
Strong were still alive. Strong was subsequently executed in June this year.

"I'm not doing anybody any good," Herndon told the news outlet."There's no joy 
in it whatsoever. They execute people no matter what."

Missouri capital defence attorneys Lindsay Runnels and Jennifer Merrigan were 
shocked by what they read about Herndon in the story. They did not realise that 
her law licence had been suspended for a time in 2013 because she was 
delinquent on her taxes to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.

The article also went into depth about her 2nd job as a business coach and 
online marketer. In the days leading up to Nunley's execution, they tried to 
convince the Missouri Supreme Court that Herndon did not fulfil her legal 
obligations to him by failing to find his original trial files and by 
commenting to media that only a "miracle" could save him.

They say the problem is systemic.

"It's the same lawyers over and over and over again, Ms Herndon among them. We 
are involved in every execution," says Runnels. "We're outgunned and 
out-resourced. And then there is competency problems with some of the bar."

Merrigan - who helped Herndon back in 2010 with Nunley's case - has defended 
several death row clients, and says Herndon's caseload coupled with her tax 
trouble show a lawyer not able to devote significant time to clients whose 
lives hang in the balance.

Merrigan says working on even a single execution case is a tremendously 
draining experience for capital defence lawyers.

"Even for a person who is not in serious financial trouble, who has not taken 
another full-time job, it is still extremely stressful," she says. "To say that 
somebody has had 8 executions over the past 18 months, that means they've spent 
approximately 6 months in this type of crisis litigation. It's completely 
unreasonable to believe anyone could operate that way."

Together, Runnels and Merrigan filed affidavits last week with the Missouri 
Supreme Court and a motion asking it to halt the execution so that Nunley could 
be properly represented. They had many concerns beyond the ones revealed in the 
Marshall Project article, including the fact that Herndon allegedly never 
tracked down Nunley's original trial file.

According to her affidavit, Runnels says Herndon told her it was stolen, then 
later admitted she "didn't ever check with the trial attorneys" for the files.

"Mr Nunley received mental health treatment as early as 1978...Mr Nunley was 
'never the same' after his brother died suddenly as a child...he had suffered 
at least 2 gunshot wounds," wrote Runnels in her affidavit. "These red flags 
and potential lines of humanising and mitigating information were never 
developed. Additionally, no life history chronology has ever been completed for 
Mr Nunley nor has any in-depth social history ever been done."

These types of investigations are crucial, says Sean O'Brien, associate law 
professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, in order to show "a unique 
and complex human being who deserves mercy".

That, he says, is the "heart and soul" of the work of capital defence lawyers 
trying to convince a jury to hand down a life sentence instead of death. He 
says it takes a huge amount of time and is accomplished mostly pro bono after 
funding dries up over the years it takes for death penalty cases to be 
resolved.

"A good lawyer wouldn't find herself appointed on seven death cases," he says. 
"No lawyer could do that. No lawyer could financially survive that."

The Missouri Supreme Court overruled Runnels and Merrigan's motion. A half hour 
before his execution would be allowed to proceed, final appeals to the US 
Supreme Court sent by Herndon were denied, and Runnels and Merrigan submitted 
their final writ to the US Supreme Court.

"Ms Herndon appears to lack the time and capacity to competently represent Mr 
Nunley," they wrote. "She also claims to no longer want to do capital defence 
work and claims to not be able to conduct the work her clients require."

Herndon declined BBC's interview request on Tuesday. "I'm busy with my client," 
she wrote in an email.

O'Brien says with the tiny defence bar, the wave of executions and the 
pro-death penalty politicians in power in Missouri, there is a "perfect storm" 
raging in the state.

In March of this year, 4 lawyers who served on the American Bar Association's 
Death Penalty Assessment Team wrote that the Missouri Supreme Court should only 
allow lawyers to have a client facing execution once every six months. One of 
them was the group's co-chair, University of Missouri School of Law associate 
dean Paul Litton.

"It is obviously increasing the chances of due process denials," he says of the 
pace of executions. "We're talking about a time where we're seeing not just 
fewer executions in general, we're seeing fewer juries sentencing people to 
death every year."

Litton's recommendations were not taken up by the Missouri Supreme Court and 
the executions have continued at roughly the same pace.

Shynise Nunley Spencer, Nunley's daughter, also submitted an affidavit to the 
Missouri Supreme Court on behalf of her father before he was executed.

"Despite the ongoing, close relationship that my father and I share, I have 
never, not once, spoken with Jennifer Herndon. She has never called me. She has 
never returned my calls," Spencer wrote. "The simple truth is that I love my 
father and talk to him almost everyday. My children love my father. His death 
will be devastating for me and for them."

After the US Supreme Court denied the final petition, Roderick Nunley was given 
a lethal injection at 20:58 and died 11 minutes later. He gave no final 
statement. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon reminded the public of Nunley's crime in 
a press release announcing he had denied Nunley clemency.

"On the morning of March 22, 1989, 15-year-old Ann Harrison was waiting for the 
school bus at the end of the driveway of her Raytown home when she was 
abducted, raped, and then stabbed to death by Roderick Nunley and Michael 
Taylor. The capital punishment sentence given to Taylor for his role in these 
brutal crimes was carried out last year," Nixon's statement reads. "Nunley also 
pleaded guilty to these heinous crimes and was sentenced to death. My decision 
today upholds this appropriate sentence."

Herndon did not respond to subsequent interview questions about whether she 
will ever represent a capital client again.

Another execution is scheduled in Missouri for next month.

(source: BBC news)






OKLAHOMA:

Oklahoma Man Handed Life Sentence in Machete Killing


An Oklahoma man who pleaded guilty to murder in a gruesome machete attack on 
his friend was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without the possibility of 
parole.

Payne County Special Judge Phillip Corley sentenced 22-year-old Isaiah Marin 
after Marin waived his right to a preliminary hearing and entered a plea of 
guilty to first-degree murder. Prosecutors say Marin nearly severed 19-year-old 
Jacob Andrew Crockett's head during the Oct. 29 attack in Stillwater.

District Attorney Laura Austin Thomas described Marin as an "extremely 
dangerous person." She had been seeking the death penalty but said she agreed 
to the plea agreement after consulting with Crockett's family.

"The appeal possibilities on a verdict of death from a jury are very, very 
broad. For the next 15 to 18 years, you're in an appeal process and they can 
allege everything under the sun," Thomas said.

"There are members of the (victim's) family that really were ready for the 
criminal proceedings to be at an end."

Marin's attorneys initially sought a competency hearing that had been scheduled 
to begin Wednesday, but court records show Marin's attorneys stipulated that 
Marin was competent to stand trial. Defense attorney Peter Astor didn't 
immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.

According to police, Marin called 911 and told the dispatcher he had just 
killed someone, adding: "I hacked him to death with a machete." An officer 
reported finding Marin walking along a highway holding the weapon.

Thomas described Marin as a heavy drug user from a "highly dysfunctional 
family," but said the motive for the attack was unclear.

"We're never going to know what the motive was," Thomas said. "He's mean."

(source: Associated Press)






KANSAS:

Death penalty will prolong Frazier Glenn Cross's public show, son 
says----Family, friends testify in penalty phase of Jewish center shootings 
trial


Friends and family members of Frazier Glenn Cross took the witness stand during 
the penalty phase of his trial in the murders of 3 people at the Jewish 
Community Center and Village Shalom.

Cross, who also goes by the name Frazier Glenn Miller, was convicted of capital 
murder on Monday. Jurors are now deciding whether he should get the death 
penalty or life in prison.

One of those testifying was Cross's son, Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. He spoke with 
KMBC about growing up with a father who embraced anti-Semitism.

He said his family doesn't share those beliefs.

"No matter how much he tried to condition us to believe that way, none of my 
family believes the way he believes," he said. "Including my mother."

On the stand, he talked about growing up on a farm with a father who built his 
children a treehouse and helped neighbors in need. However, he said he had no 
answers for why his father killed William Corporon, Reat Underwood and Terri 
LaManno on that April day in 2014.

"I'll never understand the reasons why he did what he did, but people look at 
this, and they look at him like he's a horrible person," Miller said. "But he's 
done good in his life that not everybody has seen."

Cross asked his son if he loved him.

"Yes, I do love you, Dad," Miller said.

He said that love comes from memories from before the shootings in Overland 
Park.

"I think he regrets what he did and made mistakes in what he did, but he's 
trying to use it to further his beliefs," Miller said.

Miller said it was a tough decision to testify on his father's behalf, and he 
and the rest of the family are heartsick for the families of the victims. He 
said he opposes the death penalty for his father but not out of any sense of 
mercy.

"Give him life in prison and the whole thing will be over," Miller said. 
"Otherwise, he's just going to continue, and these news stories are just going 
to continue, and it's going to be a pointless show for the public. It's not 
worth it."

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

Death penalty remains tough issue for Kansas juries----Kansas hasn't executed 
anyone since 1965 hangings


If a Johnson County jury sentences Frazier Glenn Cross to die for murdering 
William Corporon, Reat Underwood and Terri LaManno, he will go to a Kansas 
death row that has seen no executions for a half-century.

Cross, an avowed white supremacist who says his anti-Semitic beliefs prompted 
him to target Jews at the Jewish Community Center and Village Shalom, is trying 
to convince the jury to give him a sentence of life in prison instead.

"I don't think anyone ever wants to go to the execution chamber, and I think 
he's among those also. So I think he'll fight hard to keep that from 
happening," said David Langston.

Langston, a defense attorney, said he's been watching the trial as it has 
played out in Olathe.

"(The victims) were gunned down for no reason, so sometimes terrible things 
deserve terrible punishment," Langston said.

Many states are easing away from executions. The prospect of DNA exonerations 
has made some juries reluctant to sentence someone to die.

In this case, Cross has admitted to the crime and even boasted about it. Jurors 
are still facing a tough call whether to sentence him to die.

Kansas hasn't executed a prisoner since George Ronald York and James Douglas 
Latham were sent to the gallows in 1965. The Army privates were convicted in a 
murderous crime spree that crossed state lines.

Kansas is among 30 states that have not carried out an executive in the last 5 
years. Many states are in a holding pattern as lawyers battle over lethal 
injection drugs. Some states have backed up lethal injection with other 
methods, including Utah, which just approved the use of a firing squad last 
year.

Missouri, Cross' home state, has been executing inmates through lethal 
injection at a rate of about 1 per month for more than a year. Roderick Nunley, 
who kidnapped and killed a Kansas City girl in 1989, was put to death Tuesday 
evening.

(source for both: KMBC news)






NEBRASKA:

Nebraska's death penalty: repealed or not?


Is Nebraska's death penalty repealed, or not? Events of the past week raise 
fundamental questions about the state's ultimate punishment.

You can go online and look up the law that sets the penalty for 1st-degree 
murder in the state: it's Nebraska Revised Statute 28-105. You'll see the 
maximum penalty for a class 1A felonies - the most serious crimes, including 
1st-degree murder - is life imprisonment. And you'll see this law took effect 
August 30, 2015.

That's 3 months after the Legislature adjourned, after voting to repeal the 
state's death penalty. That's when the Nebraska Constitution says bills become 
law.

But Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson says the repeal bill is not the 
law. "Repeal of the death penalty - efforts to do that through the statutory 
process - have been halted," Peterson said.

Last Wednesday - 4 days before repeal was to take effect, death penalty 
supporters turned in nearly 167,000 petition signatures to repeal the repeal.

That's more than 10 % of the state's registered voters. The Nebraska 
Constitution says that's enough to suspend the repeal law. The attorney general 
says those signatures are presumed valid, meaning the repeal never took effect.

Not so, says defense attorney Jerry Soucie, who's defended death row inmates. 
"The reality is, is that the repeal goes into effect, and then you have a 
situation where there may or may not be actions on the part of the secretary of 
state to retroactively suspend the repeal," Soucie said.

It will be a month or so before county officials finish checking whether the 
signatures match voter registration information. After that, Secretary of State 
John Gale will announce whether death penalty supporters got enough signatures 
to suspend the repeal, and put the issue before Nebraska voters next November.

What difference does this make? Former Attorney General, now State Treasurer 
Don Stenberg alluded to one reason it could be important when and if the repeal 
of the death penalty is suspended. "It removes a possible argument that repeal 
of the death penalty by the Legislature, had it gone into effect, would affect 
those cases currently on death row.

10 men are currently on death row in Nebraska. Defense attorney Soucie says 
even if the repeal is suspended, none of them will be executed if Nebraskans 
are going to vote on the death penalty. "As a practical matter, I think it is 
rather a fanciful conjecture that the Nebraska Supreme Court would be willing 
to order the execution of someone, even if they do have the lethal drugs, if 
there is pending a vote of the people regarding whether to let the repeal 
effort stand," he said. "Nothing's going to happen for the next year and a 
half."

Attorney General Doug Peterson isn't so sure. "I don't think we can speculate. 
I'm sure that those who are in favor of repealing the death penalty believe 
that position. I'm not going to step into that process and tell you what I 
think the Supreme Court would do in that regard."

The state does not have any current requests into the Nebraska Supreme Court to 
set execution dates for inmates on death row. Officials have so far been unable 
to legally import the drugs needed to carry out lethal injections. Sen. Ernie 
Chambers, who sponsored the death penalty repeal bill, says that effectively 
pushes any potential execution back even more. "If any drugs are imported, then 
the whole panoply of appeals - remedies available to anybody under the sentence 
of death - will occur," Chambers said. "So for a minimum period, I would say, 
of a decade, there could not be an execution even if a death warrant somehow 
were procured."

Peterson doesn't concede that point, either. "I wouldn't speculate like that 
with respect to what the future holds. I do think there are processes that can 
be put in place. But I'm not going to speculate on how quickly that would work 
at this point in time," he said.

With about a month to go before signatures are verified; with possible legal 
challenges to the petition drive; and with almost a year and a half before it 
could go before voters, the death penalty in Nebraska still faces an uncertain 
future.

(source: KVNO news)






MONTANA:

Trial over execution drug begins in Helena


An anesthesiologist testifying on behalf of Montana's 2 death row inmates said 
Wednesday that 1 of the drugs used to execute state prisoners by lethal 
injection does not meet the standard set by lawmakers.

Dr. Mark Heath of Columbia University Medical Center testified in a trial over 
Montana's execution methods. The state's two death row inmates are challenging 
those methods, saying that if the barbiturate pentobarbital does not take 
effect quickly enough, a condemned inmate could remain conscious while he 
suffocates to death.

Pentobarbital is one of two drugs that would be used in a Montana execution now 
that the barbiturate previously used, sodium pentothal, is no longer available 
in the U.S. The state's last execution was carried out in 2006, and 
pentobarbital has been used in its lethal injection cocktail.

In a lethal injection, pentobarbital would be administered first to render the 
inmate unconscious, followed by pancuronium bromide. Together, the two drugs 
are meant to stop the inmate from breathing and cause death by asphyxia.

State law requires the use of an "ultra-fast-acting" barbiturate to make the 
inmate lose consciousness. Lawmakers did not define what they meant by 
"ultra-fast-acting" when they passed the law in the 1980s, but District Judge 
Jeffrey Sherlock interpreted it to mean the amount of time for the drug to take 
effect after entering the system.

Pentobarbital is not used by doctors in clinical practice to induce anesthesia, 
and it takes longer for the drug to take full effect compared to sodium 
pentothal, which is also known as sodium thiopental, Heath told Sherlock.

"With thiopental, it's lights out," Heath said. "Whereas with pentobarbital, 
the prisoner continues to talk and increasingly slurs their words."

Heath said the medical community classifies only 3 drugs as "ultra-fast-acting" 
because of their molecular structures. Thiopental is one of those three, but 
pentobarbital isn't," he said.

"Nobody ever called pentobarbital ultra-fast or ultra-short-acting because it 
isn't," Heath said. "It's not in that category of drugs."

Assistant Attorney General Pam Collins attempted to paint Heath as an 
anti-death penalty advocate and pointed out a medical reference that says 
pentobarbital takes effect in under a minute, which is the same amount of time 
it takes sodium pentothal to take effect.

Under questioning by Collins, Heath acknowledged that high doses of 
pentobarbital can produce anesthesia but he added that the drug is not used 
that way by doctors.

The trial is expected to last through part of Thursday, and state attorneys 
plan to present their own witness to counter Heath's testimony.

The state's lethal injection protocols were changed in 2013 in response to the 
lawsuit by death row inmates Ronald Allen Smith and William Gollehon.

Sherlock previously ruled that the changes satisfied all of the issues raised 
by the defendants in their constitutional challenge of how the state carries 
out its executions except for the question of pentobarbital.

(source: Associated Press)






CALIFORNIA----death row inmate dies

California inmate dies of natural causes after 26 years on death row

A California prison inmate who spent 26 years on death row for murder has died 
of natural causes, the 4th so far this year in a state that hasn't carried out 
an execution since 2006.

Ronald Harold Seaton, 69, died last week at Marin General Hospital near San 
Francisco, state prison authorities said on Wednesday.

He had been on death row at San Quentin State Prison since 1989.

The death penalty is technically legal in California, but legal challenges to 
the state's lethal injection practices along with political reticence to push 
the issue in a liberal state have instead left condemned inmates in a limbo 
that in many cases has lasted for decades until their natural deaths.

Since 1978, when the death penalty was reinstated in California, the state has 
executed only 13 people.

69, including Seaton, have died of natural causes while on death row, and 24 
have committed suicide. Still awaiting execution are 747 others, who are housed 
on death row at San Quentin, in Marin County near San Francisco.

Last year, a federal judge said the lengthy wait for execution was 
unconstitutional, amounting to cruel and unusual punishment in the case of 
Ernest Dewayne Jones, who was condemned to death in 1995 but has not been 
executed.

The judge overturned Jones' death sentence, but the case is under appeal, with 
arguments taking place this week.

Support for the death penalty has dropped in California and other states, amid 
concerns that the drugs used for lethal injections have led to botched and 
painful deaths.

The exoneration of some inmates by the Innocence Projects and other legal 
activists has also prompted skepticism.

Last year, a Field Poll showed support for capital punishment at a 50-year low 
in California, with 54 percent of voters supporting the death penalty, down 
from 68 % in 2011.

Seaton was sentenced to death in 1986 for murder, robbery and burglary in 
connection with the death of Willis Paul Jones in Riverside County.

San Quentin has been experiencing an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease over the 
past week, with 6 confirmed cases and 95 inmates under observation for the 
severe form of pneumonia.

But the state said on Wednesday that there are no indications that the disease 
was a factor in Seaton's death.

(source: Reuters)

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

Time to kill death penalty in California


In 2012, California voters had a chance with Proposition 34 to end the death 
penalty in California. But they voted instead to keep it.

Our Editorial Board supported the measure, which ultimately lost by 4 % points.

Since then, not a single person has been executed in the state.

Our argument at the time was that if the death penalty was somehow shown to 
have been a deterrent to heinous criminals, and if the ultimate punishment was 
being applied in a fair and timely manner that furthermore served the equitable 
administration of justice in California, we might be persuaded to support the 
official sanction of capital punishment.

But that wasn't true in 2012 and it's not true now. The death penalty in 
California is an expensive legal albatross perched upon our criminal justice 
system.

In California, abolishing the death penalty will take a vote of the people - 
unless the courts step in.

There are currently 750 people on death row in our state. Since voters passed 
Proposition 7 in 1978 to restore capital punishment, California has wasted $4 
billion to execute 13 prisoners. A state report in 2008 found it costs an extra 
$90,000 a year per prisoner on death row than it would cost to put offenders in 
prison for life without the possibility of parole. Meanwhile, hundreds of 
homicides statewide go unsolved due to lack of funding.

Not only is state-sanctioned killing barbaric (do we really want to be like 
Iran?), but California also leads the nation in exonerations of convicted 
prisoners, many of whom served time on death row.

In his ruling last year declaring the death penalty unconstitutional in the 
state, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney wrote, "As for the random few for 
whom execution does become a reality, they will have languished for so long on 
Death Row that their execution will serve no retributive or deterrent purpose 
and will be arbitrary." The ruling essentially held that judicial reviews of 
death sentences were so prolonged - and executions so rare and seemingly random 
- that prisoners were subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. If the ruling 
is allowed to stand, it could have repercussions for capital punishment across 
the country.

Attorney General Kamala Harris says she is an opponent of the death penalty, 
but is appealing the judge's ruling. Monday, California asked a federal appeals 
panel to overturn the 2014 court ruling.

At Monday's hearing, a lawyer from Harris' office argued that the 2014 decision 
violated legal procedures and mislabeled as a sign of dysfunction what were 
actually the state's careful efforts to protect the rights of those sentenced 
to death, such as appointing well-qualified defense lawyers.

"We do not believe that there is any evidence that the system is arbitrary or 
random," said Michael J. Mongan, a deputy solicitor general.

But a lawyer for a condemned inmate responded that the contested ruling had 
rested on sound legal ground and that California's post-conviction review 
process, which commonly lasts 2 decades or more, had become agonizingly slow 
and arbitrary because the state did not provide enough funds for defense 
lawyers.

While the 3 appeals court judges seemed skeptical of the 2014 ruling, mainly 
because the state Supreme Court had not first stepped in, we still hope the 
2014 ruling is allowed to stand. Overturning the death penalty would save state 
taxpayers the spiraling costs of funding extended appeals and incarceration of 
people on death row and put a stop to the legal maneuvering and entanglements 
that have resulted in no executions in California since 2006.

No one is advocating leniency for murderers, but throwing out the death penalty 
also would end the racial and class imbalances that make capital punishment in 
California and other states unfair and inequitable. And most importantly it 
would end once and for all the possibility of an innocent person being 
executed.

It's long past time to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment without 
the possibility of parole.

(source: Editorial, Monterey Herald)