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

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 8



KANSAS:

Amman Reu-El files pleading claiming he had ineffective assistance of counsel 
in capital murder retrial----No date scheduled to hear his filing


Claiming he received ineffective assistance from the 2 attorneys appointed to 
defend him in the retrial of his death penalty case, King Phillip Amman Reu-El 
is asking a Shawnee County District Court judge to conduct an evidentiary 
hearing.

Besides ineffective assistance of counsel, Amman Reu-El, 42, is asking District 
Court Judge Richard Anderson to void his 2 consecutive sentences and his 
convictions based on his no-contest pleas.

In effect, Amman Reu-El is starting the process to seek a 3rd trial based on an 
allegation he received ineffectiveness of counsel, which got his case into 
court for a retrial starting in 2013.

10 years ago Tuesday, a jury convicted him of capital murder and other charges 
in the killings of 2 women in Topeka. Those convictions were overturned, and 
the case was sent back for retrial.

During his 2nd trial, Amman Reu-El's defense attorneys were Paul Oller, of 
Hays, and John Val Wachtel, of Wichita. Both have worked on multiple death 
penalty cases.

Amman Reu-El said his no-contest plea was the result of advice of counsel and 
was "involuntary in character and unintelligently made made as (Amman Reu-El) 
was misled" by Oller and Wachtel.

Amman Reu-El said he was misled into thinking the no-contest plea wouldn't be 
used by the Kansas Supreme Court as grounds to deny a pre-trial habeas corpus 
action filed by the defendant on Dec. 30, 2014.

Via the mail, Amman Reu-El wrote and filed the request, which was date-stamped 
in district court on Monday. As of Friday, a date hadn't been selected for 
Anderson to hear Amman Reu-El's filing seeking a hearing.

When Amman Reu-El made the "no contest" pleas on Feb. 27, a jury was being 
chosen to hear his retrial in the slayings of Annette Roberson, 38, and Gloria 
A. Jones, 42, on Dec. 13, 2003, in a southeast Topeka house. The pleas removed 
the death penalty as a sentence.

Amman Reu-El was charged with capital murder in the shooting deaths of Roberson 
and Jones; 2 alternative counts of premeditated 1st-degree murder of Roberson 
and Jones; attempted first-degree murder of Annetta D. Thomas; aggravated 
battery of Thomas; and criminal possession of a firearm. The Kansas Supreme 
Court previously ordered a new trial on the basis of ineffective assistance of 
counsel following Amman Reu-El's trial conviction in the 2003 murders of 2 
women and severe wounding of a 3rd.

Amman Reu-El formally changed his name from Phillip D. Cheatham Jr. while 
awaiting retrial in the capital murder case.

Amman Reu-El's interview

In a face-to-face interview with The Topeka Capital-Journal, Amman Reu-El said 
he entered a no-contest plea Feb. 27 because he had lost faith in his attorneys 
and the legal system. He said pretrial publicity had tainted the jury pool, and 
entering a plea was the only way to avoid the death penalty.

The interview occurred March 4 at the Shawnee County Jail.

"If I couldn't get a fair trial the 1st time," Amman Reu-El said, "and 
throughout the course of the delay leading up to the setting aside of 
convictions, then how was I supposed to get a fair trial now?"

Ozawkie attorney Dennis Hawver represented Amman Reu-El at the 1st trial and 
later was disbarred based on his legal work.

But Amman Reu-El in March said his attorneys "couldn't protect my rights as 
they were obligated."

"I knew from the start that the state has left me in a position that I couldn't 
receive my constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel anyway," 
Amman Reu-El said. "Because no matter how hard Mr. Hawver, no matter how hard 
Mr. Wachtel would have tried, they couldn't protect my other rights - as in my 
right to confrontation, my right to present the theory of my defense in its 
entirety - and they were just pushing forward in total disregard of my rights."

The retrial

A retrial was ordered for Amman Reu-El in 2013 after the Kansas Supreme Court 
overturned his capital murder convictions and death penalty based on a finding 
he received ineffective assistance by Hawver in 2005.

A jury convicted him of the charges on Sept. 8, 2005.

After months preparing for the 2nd trial, prosecutors and defense attorneys 
began choosing a jury in February.

The plea

Then, abruptly on Feb. 27, the judge was told a plea agreement had been 
reached.

"We told the judge at 11:30 (a.m.) that we had come to an agreement," Oller 
said.

Amman Reu-El pleaded no contest to capital murder and attempted murder, and the 
other charges were dismissed.

With the plea, the death penalty was removed as a sentencing option.

"It was a very difficult and thought-out decision by Phillip," Oller told a 
reporter on the day of the plea. "He doesn't come into this decision lightly."

When sentenced on March 20, Amman Reu-El received a life term for the capital 
murder conviction and a sentence of 13 years and 9 months for the attempted 
murder. He would have to serve a minimum of 25 years on the life term before he 
was parole eligible, the nearly 14-year term.

After he served 25 years, he could apply to the Kansas Prisoner Review Board to 
release him from the capital murder sentence, and if the request was granted, 
then he would begin serving the 2nd sentence for attempted murder.

Since he was first convicted, Amman Reu-El has served almost 12 years.

At the earliest, Amman Reu-El has a little more than 13 years.

Speaking in March, Amman Reu-El said he would be out of prison "well before 14 
years."

"It really didn't matter what the deal was or how much the time was because I 
have faith in Allah in that the truth will be revealed that the state in the 
process and in their treatment of me has been very unfair," Amman Reu-El said.

(source: Topeka Capital-Journal)

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

Prosecutors want Bennett's statement played during his trial


Prosecutors in a quadruple murder case in Parsons are working to include a 
statement by the defendant at a jury trial.

The Kansas Attorney General's Office, which is prosecuting David Cornell 
Bennett Jr., 23, filed a request for a hearing in the future on the issue of 
offering evidence at trial of Bennett's statements to law enforcement. 
Bennett's attorney, Timothy Frieden, has not filed a response.

Bennett is accused of strangling Cami Umbarger and her three children, Hollie 
Betts, 9, Jaxon Betts, 6, and Averie Betts, 4, in November 2013. Their bodies 
were discovered on Nov. 25, 2013, at Umbarger???s home in Parsons after she 
didn't show up for work.

Bennett is charged with capital murder or in the alternative 4 counts of 
11st-degree murder. The punishment for capital murder is death by lethal 
injection or life in prison without parole, but the punishment requires an 
additional hearing after a finding of guilt. The prosecution filed notice that 
it is seeking the death penalty in the case. Bennett also faces a rape charge, 
3 counts of criminal threat, all felonies, and 4 misdemeanors, 2 counts of 
phone harassment and 2 counts of criminal deprivation of property.

Bennett's trial is scheduled for Sept. 7, 2016.

Assistant Attorney General Jessica G. Domme filed the motion in late August in 
Bennett's case. She requested a hearing, called a Jackson v. Denno hearing, to 
determine the voluntariness of Bennett's statement to law enforcement. The AG 
would have to argue separately if the statement itself could be admitted at 
trial.

Domme's motion indicates that Bennett spoke to KBI Senior Special Agent Steve 
Rosebrough and then Parsons Police Chief Scott Gofourth on Nov. 27, 2013. The 
interview took place at the Parsons Police Department after Bennett was advised 
of his Miranda rights.

The motion doesn't mention any information that Bennett supplied, but indicated 
Bennett spoke freely with the officers and volunteered his statements.

No hearing date has been scheduled on the voluntariness of Bennett's statement.

Frieden filed a request for additional discovery in the case, but the AG's 
office objects to various parts of the motion, saying the requests go beyond 
what the prosecution may have collected or what a defendant is allowed. No 
hearing date for that has been scheduled.

Frieden motion says he's received 4,246 pages of discovery, as well as more 
than 100 CD/DVDs and one flash drive.

(source: Parsons Sun)

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

Jurors set to decide fate of Frazier Glenn Cross this week----Death penalty 
possible for man convicted in Jewish center shootings


The jury deciding whether Frazier Glenn Cross should be sentenced to die for 
murdering 3 people at the Jewish Community Center and Village Shalom will 
resume its work Tuesday.

The jurors will hear closing arguments and instructions from the judge and then 
begin their deliberations.

The same jury convicted Cross one week ago of killing William Corporon, Reat 
Underwood and Terri LaManno in April 2014. Cross never denied committing the 
crimes, but had argued that his anti-Semitic views left him no other choice.

Cross, who served as his own defense attorney, said he was driven by his 
beliefs to kill Jews. He found out a week after the shootings that all 3 of his 
victims were Christians.

During the penalty phase, prosecutors presents a swift case, saying that every 
argument for giving Cross the death penalty was made in the trial.

In his own defense, Cross played anti-Semitic videos for the jury and called 
his son to testify. His son, who spoke out against his father's crimes, told 
the jury to sentence him to life in prison instead so that Cross won't get any 
more public platforms to share his views.

A doctor also testified that Cross' emphysema makes it unlikely that he will 
live long enough to exhaust all appeals in a death sentence.

Cross has told the court that he doesn't expect or want mercy from the jury.

The judge said he wanted jurors to hold off on their deliberations until 
Tuesday so that they didn't feel pressured to make a quick decision before the 
holiday.

(source: KMBC news)

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

Convicted neo-Nazi murderer F. Glenn Miller Jr. should get life in prison


Life in prison without parole would be an appropriate sentence for F. Glenn 
Miller Jr. following his capital murder conviction for fatally shooting three 
persons last year in Overland Park, Kan.

A jury is considering arguments in the penalty phase of his trial and will 
decide whether to put Miller to death.

Given that Kansas has not carried out the death penalty since 1965, and given 
that Miller, 74, suffers from emphysema, even a life sentence would essentially 
be a death sentence.

A life sentence might well reduce the opportunities for an appeal and shield 
the public from more courtroom drama starring Miller and his despicable 
white-supremacist rants.

In addition, life imprisonment would deny Miller, also known as Frazier Glenn 
Cross Jr., the satisfaction of touting execution as a kind of martyrdom in his 
neo-Nazi killing spree.

A Johnson County District Court jury deliberated less than 2 hours before 
reaching the verdict in the 6-day trial.

District Judge Kelly Ryan deserves praise for deftly maintaining courtroom 
decorum and keeping Miller's outbursts to a minimum.

The jury convicted Miller for fatally shooting William Corporon, 69, and Reat 
Underwood, 14, on April 13, 2014, outside the Jewish Community Center in 
Overland Park, and Terri LaManno, 53, outside the nearby Village Shalom care 
center, where she had gone to visit her mother.

Miller had driven from his home in Aurora, Mo., and scouted out the locations 
intent on killing Jews. But his shooting victims were Christian. Acting as his 
own attorney, Miller's defense included expressing the regret that he had not 
killed more people.

In an opening statement, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Christopher McMullin 
called Miller's killing spree "heinous, cruel and atrocious" and asked jurors 
to impose the death penalty.

But a long, isolating imprisonment could serve to be a rancid hell of Miller's 
own making. And it would give the public and his victims' families a better 
chance to get beyond the nightmare he wrought.

(source: Opinion, Kansas City Star)






OKLAHOMA----impending execution

Death Row Inmate's Attorneys Search For New Evidence


Richard Glossip's attorneys admit they are feeling the pressure. With just 8 
days until his scheduled execution Glossip's attorneys are frantically working 
to save his life.

"I don't even want to think about this execution going through, I can't," 
Glossip's attorney Don Knight said.

Knight is 1 of 3 attorneys from across the country working pro bono to try and 
save Richard Glossip's life.

Gov. Mary Fallin said the execution will go forward ... unless she is presented 
with new information in the case.

Knight and defense investigators are currently in Oklahoma looking for that new 
evidence.

Knight is from Colorado and said he plans to be in Oklahoma up until the 
execution date interviewing witnesses connected 1997 murder of Barry Van 
Treese.

"What we have been finding in the course of our investigation is many key 
players have never been talked to by any defense lawyer at all or any defense 
investigator, which is stunning since there have been 2 trials in this case," 
Knight said.

Glossip's attorneys are also looking for information from someone who did time 
with Justin Sneed. Sneed testified Glossip masterminded the murder.

"If they would come forward and say let me tell you about something Justin 
Sneed has said, something that I overheard or that he said to me or something a 
friend told me he said about this situation that doesn't go along with this 
idea that Richard Glossip is guilty," Knight said.

Knight said Glossip's legal team has not met yet with Fallin to discuss the 
case, but hope to before the execution.

"She seems to be a substantive person so I think we need to respect that and 
come to her when we are absolutely ready to give her the information that we 
think gives her the ammunition she needs to give us the 60 say stay," Knight 
said.

With the world now watching what happens in this case, it's up largely to 
Oklahomans to put pressure on the governor to issue the 60 day stay, Knight 
said.

"When the rest of the world is looking at a state that is about ready to kill 
an innocent man, it really should make all Oklahomans pause and say 'Do we want 
that? Why are we doing this to ourselves?' Only Oklahomans can stop this," he 
said.

Glossip's execution is scheduled for Sept. 16.

(source: newson6.com)






NEBRASKA:

Ballot Measure Raises Stakes for Death Penalty Foes


The Nebraska Legislature's vote to abolish the death penalty was hailed as a 
sign that red-state conservatives are turning away from the punishment, but 
opponents now face the much greater challenge of persuading voters.

National death penalty experts say the campaign could test the notion that 
conservative sentiment has shifted. Even some opponents of capital punishment 
acknowledge they face an uphill battle.

Ohio State University law professor Doug Berman, a death penalty expert, says 
the vote drew national attention because it played into the notion that capital 
punishment was losing support in a deeply conservative state.

Nebraskans for the Death Penalty announced last month it had gathered nearly 
167,000 signatures, nearly three times the minimum number needed to place the 
issue on the November 2016 ballot.

(source: Associated Press)






CALIFORNIA:

Issues with CA death penalty result from improper funding


Last year, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney ruled the death penalty in 
California unconstitutional, resulting on a temporary ban on capital 
punishment. His decision is up for review by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of 
Appeals and, if turned back to the California Supreme court, another 4 years of 
waiting for a decision is to come.

Michael Laurence, a lawyer defending the ban, and Carney alleged that the death 
penalty is unconstitutional because of the length of time a prisoner must wait 
before being put to death. The average amount of time a prisoner spends on 
death row in California is 25 years because the judicial branch, among others, 
is underfunded. It only received 1.4 % of the state's budget for the 2015-2016 
year. Of this small sliver of budget, the Court of Appeals gets 6.2 percent, 
according to the California State Budget.

The way to go about fixing the process for the death penalty is to talk about 
funding. If California could reallocate some funds from other sections of the 
budget, even if the budget was only to make an even 2 %, it would help quite a 
bit.

A botched lethal injection occurred in 2006, causing the state to reevaluate 
the method of death. In 2007, it was decided in Morales v. Tilton that lethal 
injection was an issue because of "inconsistent and unreliable screening of 
execution team members; a lack of meaningful training, supervision and 
oversight of the execution team; inconsistent and unreliable record keeping; 
... and inadequate lighting, overcrowded conditions and poorly designed 
facilities in which the execution team must work."

Executions are carried out through the Department of Corrections and 
Rehabilitations, which is receiving 8.7 % of State General Funding for the 
2015-2016 year, according to the California State Budget. What this department 
needs is more appropriate funding to make up for the shortcomings of 2006.

California has not executed anyone on death row since 2006 because of the 
botched execution, which adds to the controversy surrounding the death penalty 
being considered a cruel and unusual punishment.

Methods of death include lethal injection, gas chamber, hanging, firing squad 
or the electric chair. From the perspective of a prisoner, all methods have 
their benefits and disadvantages.

Saying the death penalty is unconstitutional because specific areas of 
government are underfunded does not make sense. The state just has to figure 
out how it can get better facilities, better funding for lawyers and training 
for technicians scheduled to supervise executions.

(source: Daily Titan)

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

Is Southern California the New Deep South?----Los Angeles County has sentenced 
more people to death than 5 Southern states combined.


San Bernardino is among the top 15 counties that produce the highest number of 
death sentences nationally.

"Texas is called the Death Belt. Harris County is the buckle." That's how one 
judge described the death penalty in the Lone Star State 15 years ago. In those 
days, Texas produced 40 death sentences per year, and no one blinked if Harris 
County accounted for 10 of them. These days, Texas is at the epicenter of a 
different trend: The Deep South has witnessed a sharp, sustained, and 
unmistakable drop in death verdicts. So far this year (as of Sept. 6, 2015) 
Texas has not had a single new death sentence. Neither has Georgia, North 
Carolina, South Carolina, or Virginia.

While the Deep South has moved away from capital punishment, Riverside County, 
California, has become the buckle of a new Death Belt. It produced 7 new death 
sentences in the 1st half of this year. That's more than California's other 57 
counties combined, more than any other state, and more than the whole Deep 
South combined. An hour's drive from Los Angeles, with a population of 2.3 
million (6 % of California's population), Riverside has produced more death 
sentences since 2010 than any other county in America except 1 - Los Angeles 
County, which is 4 times its size.

Unfortunately, most of these counties have more in common than overzealous use 
of the death penalty.

Los Angeles County voters supported Proposition 34, a measure that would have 
replaced California's death penalty with a sentence of life without parole, 
53.7 % to 46.3 %. Nonetheless, Los Angeles County has sentenced 33 people to 
death row since 2010, which is more than any other county in America. Sure, Los 
Angeles County has 10 million residents, but if you combine the death sentences 
of 5 Southern states with an aggregate population of 40 million people - 
Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia - Los Angeles 
still has more death sentences over the same time period.

In addition to Riverside and Los Angeles, 3 other Southern California counties 
- Kern, Orange, and San Bernardino - are among the top 15 counties that produce 
the highest number of death sentences nationally out of 3,144 counties 
nationwide. With an aggregate population of 6 million people, these 3 
California counties have produced more death sentences since 2010 than three 
Texas counties - Harris (Houston), Dallas, and Bexar (San Antonio) - which have 
an aggregate population of 8.5 million.

The irony is that California is very unlikely to execute any of these people. 
On Jan. 17, 2006, Clarence Ray Allen, a 76-year-old man who spent 23 years on 
the state's death row, became the 13th and last person executed in California. 
Last year, in an order declaring the California death penalty unconstitutional, 
Judge Cormac Carney, whom President George W. Bush appointed to the federal 
bench, wrote:

In fact, just to carry out the sentences of the 748 inmates currently on death 
row, the State would have to conduct more than 1 execution a week for the next 
14 years. Such an outcome is obviously impossible for many reasons, not the 
least of which is that as a result of extraordinary delay in California's 
system, only 17 inmates currently on death row have even completed the 
post-conviction review process and are awaiting their execution. For all 
practical purposes then, a sentence of death in California is a sentence of 
life imprisonment with the remote possibility of death - a sentence no rational 
legislature or jury could ever impose.

Yet last week California Deputy Solicitor General Michael Mongan urged a 
federal appellate court to reverse Carney's decision, arguing, in part, that 
the long delays in the system are a sign that California has a careful and 
deliberate death penalty scheme. Whatever makes taxpayers sleep at night - but 
the bottom line is that although California averages 2,000 homicides per year, 
it counts its executions not in weeks or months, but in years or decades.

Much like a Hollywood movie script, then, new death sentences in California are 
just for show. And it is an expensive one: The death penalty costs California 
about $184 million per year, well above what it would cost to incarcerate these 
prisoners for the rest of their natural lives. Gil Garcetti, former Los Angeles 
district attorney, recently explained the opportunity cost of pursuing these 
purely symbolic sentences: "Spending our tax dollars on actually preventing 
crimes, instead of pursuing death sentences after they've already been 
committed, will assure us we will have fewer victims." Alternately, money 
currently used on the death penalty could be redirected to investigate unsolved 
murders. An astonishing 4,862 homicides, all of them occurring in Los Angeles 
County between 2000 and 2010, remain unsolved. This translates into a 54 % 
solve rate, which is an embarrassing figure that falls 9 percent below the 
national average.

The greatest costs do not come attached to a dollar sign. In 2011, Bethany 
Webb's sister, Laura, was murdered in Orange County. She openly opposed death 
penalty proceedings and said that it's "torturous to have to keep going to 
court" and "there's no end in sight." Webb said of her sister's killer, "He's 
going to die of old age in jail. We know that." Aba Gayle, whose daughter was 
murdered in 1980, felt ignored when, after a court overturned the death 
sentenced imposed upon the person who murdered her daughter, prosecutors 
rejected her request that the case be settled with a sentence of life without 
the possibility of parole: "Over and over," she said, "I've been told that what 
we feel and what we think is not important." Now 3 decades after the crime, 
Gayle questions what the point is of executing a person for "something they did 
30 years ago."

Unwisely marshaling limited public resources and purposelessly traumatizing 
many victims' family members in support of a punishment that most prosecutors 
have chosen to forego are reason enough to question the wisdom of California 
prosecutors who continue to seek the death penalty with reckless abandon. 
Unfortunately, most of these counties have more in common than overzealous use 
of the death penalty.

Earlier this year, a federal appellate court reversed the murder conviction of 
a Riverside County man, Johnny Baca, due to flagrant prosecutorial misconduct. 
One former Riverside prosecutor, Robert Spira, testified that a jailhouse 
snitch had not received any incentive to testify against Baca. It turns out he 
was lying. The prosecutor doing the questioning, Paul Vinegrad, apparently knew 
that Spira was lying and solicited the informant's testimony anyway.

A federal magistrate judge, Patrick Walsh, said that the "Riverside County 
District Attorney's Office turned a blind eye to fundamental principles of 
justice to obtain a conviction." During oral argument in the federal 9th U.S. 
Circuit Court of Appeals, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski agreed. He asked the 
government's lawyer to ask Kamala Harris, the attorney general of California, 
"if she really wants to stick by a prosecution that was obtained by lying 
prosecutors." He also asked aloud why the former prosecutors were not being 
prosecuted for perjury. Mike Hestrin, who personally obtained seven death 
sentences before he took the helm of the Riverside County District Attorney's 
Office this year, refused to admit that either prosecutor intentionally 
committed misconduct. He also promised to retry Baca, a man who already has 
spent 20 years in prison.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, Kern County has wrongfully 
convicted 24 men and women. Of those 24 cases, 22 involved misconduct by a 
government official. Just this year, a state appellate court found that a 
prosecutor in Kern County, Robert Murray, "clearly engaged in egregious 
misconduct that prejudiced the defendant's constitutional right to counsel" 
when he "deliberately altered an interrogation transcript to include a 
confession that could be used to justify charges that carry a life sentence." 
Back in 2008, the same prosecutor appears to have hid unfavorable blood 
evidence results produced by a state crime lab and lied about having asked a 
state lab technician to preserve the (subsequently destroyed) evidence.

The person who killed Bethany Webb's sister pleaded guilty. However, before the 
cased moved into the penalty phase, in which the jury would be asked to choose 
between the death penalty and life without parole, the trial judge recused the 
entire Orange County District Attorney's Office because of the extensive 
misconduct that the office had committed in the case. "The District Attorney 
cannot or will not in this case comply with the discovery orders of this court 
and the related constitutional and statutory mandates that guarantee this 
defendant's right to due process and a fair trial," the judge wrote. Among 
other misuses of discretion evident in the case, Orange County prosecutor Erik 
S. Petersen failed to turn over a host of material about what appears to be an 
illegal jailhouse informant program that the county used to secure testimony 
against defendants. This is not the DA office's 1st brush with misconduct. As 
Radley Balko reports, "Between 1997 and 2009, prosecutors in Orange County, 
California, were cited for misconduct 58 times."

In 2010, the 9th Circuit reversed the murder conviction of a Los Angeles man, 
Bobby Joe Maxwell, because the prosecution failed to disclose that its star 
witness, a jailhouse informant named Sidney Storch, received a lighter sentence 
in exchange for his testimony against Maxwell. Storch, who had been discharged 
from the military for being "a habitual liar," was also in hot water for 
"impersonating a Central Intelligence Agency ('CIA') officer and Howard 
Johnson, the son of the well-known Howard Johnson hotel chain.' A detective 
once testified that he "would not trust anything Sidney Storch said unless you 
could corroborate the information with some source." Nonetheless, the Los 
Angeles District Attorney's Office used Storch as a jailhouse informant in 
multiple cases up until he was ???caught fabricating lies as he testified for 
the prosecution" in a different case.

This summer, Justice Stephen Breyer penned a dissent, joined by Justice Ruth 
Bader Ginsburg, in Glossip v. Gross in which the duo urged the Supreme Court to 
revisit the broad question of whether the death penalty remains consistent with 
evolving standards of decency. One of the linchpins of their argument was that 
the country has abandoned the death penalty in practice, and "the number of 
active death penalty counties is small and getting smaller." Since 2010, "only 
15 counties imposed 5 or more death sentences." If 1/3 of the active death 
sentencing counties are in Southern California - places where those death 
sentences do not mean anything, and prosecutors don't seem to play by the rules 
- then it is truly time to end the death penalty charade once and for all.

(source: Robert J. Smith is an assistant professor of law at the University of 
North Carolina at Chapel Hill----slate.com)






USA:

Dismantle the machinery of death


"We need to kill more people," said a man responsible for at least 4 deaths in 
the past 5 years. "... [R]evenge is important for society as a whole."

Are these chilling words from the manifesto of a mass murderer or an ISIL 
insurgent? Actually, these telling statements were recently uttered by Dale 
Cox, one of the nation's most efficient death penalty prosecutors. When put in 
Cox's blunt terms, the motivations behind the death penalty become clear: 
revenge and bloodlust. With Cox's words in mind, if our nation seeks to be a 
fair arbiter of justice and a moral example to the world, we must end the death 
penalty without delay.

But that fight will not be easy. The Supreme Court ended an otherwise fruitful 
term with a barbarous ruling in the case Glossip v. Gross. 5 justices found the 
execution drug midazolam neither cruel nor unusual - the same drug behind a 
number of horrendous botched executions that Justice Sonia Sotomayor LAW '79 
described as "the chemical equivalent of being burned at the stake." To add 
insult to (literal) injury, the majority also decided that the burden is on the 
prisoner to find an alternative execution method, failing which the state can 
essentially kill him or her by whatever method it wishes.

But other events of the summer offered some hope. Here in Connecticut, while 
Governor Dannel Malloy and the legislature had ended death sentencing, 11 
prisoners remained on death row for past crimes. But in August, the state 
Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in all cases. Meanwhile 
in Nebraska, a state as conservative as Connecticut is liberal, a supermajority 
of the right-leaning legislature voted to repeal the death penalty in May. "The 
death penalty today is a broken and ineffective government program," wrote a 
group of Nebraska conservatives. "The time has come [for repeal]."

Indeed, conservatives of all stripes should oppose the death penalty. For the 
libertarian, capital punishment is big government at its worst, allowing the 
state to meddle not just with taxes, but with lives. For the fiscal 
conservative, study after study has shown the death penalty to cost far more 
than life sentences. In one study, the death penalty costs up to 10 times more 
than sentencing criminals to life behind bars. For the religious conservative, 
capital punishment violates the values of many faith traditions. As Pope John 
Paul II preached, "the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in 
the case of someone who has done great evil." I applaud those in the pro-life 
movement, particularly at Yale, who realize that a true pro-life stance 
necessitates opposition to the death penalty.

People across the political spectrum can agree that capital punishment is 
inaccurate, ineffective and racially biased. Astonishingly, over 150 death row 
inmates have been proven innocent and officially exonerated in the past 42 
years - though even one would be too many. Scores of studies and the American 
Society of Criminology concur that the death penalty fails to deter crime. 
Sometimes, it even has the opposite outcome, desensitizing people to death via 
the "brutalization effect." And on top of all this, state after state has 
uncovered systemic racial biases in death penalty sentencing. For instance, a 
University of Washington study found black defendants three times more likely 
to be sentenced to death than whites, all other variables controlled, and a 
Government Accountability Office review of 53 different studies conclusively 
showed that those who killed white victims disproportionately receive the death 
penalty.

Maybe, just maybe, these astounding statistics would be excusable if the 
punishment could be revoked. But the death penalty can't admit its mistakes. Of 
course, the crimes of the truly guilty on death row are unimaginably horrible. 
Homicide violates the most basic tenets of our society and causes untold trauma 
for the victim's loved ones. But if we collectively condemn those who take a 
life, why should our government stoop to the same level? How can our nation 
have written into its laws that the appropriate response to one killing is 
another? Surely homicidal criminals deserve severe punishment, but to have the 
death penalty in a democracy puts blood on all of our hands.

Yet since we live in a democracy, collective action can remove this national 
moral stain. With states across the nation reconsidering their stances, the 
time is ripe for action. If you hail from a state where the death penalty has 
already been done away with, urge your federal representatives to do the same.

In 1994, Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun came to realize the horrors of 
capital punishment, declaring "from this day forward, I no longer shall tinker 
with the machinery of death." While his statement rings powerfully to this day, 
it is not enough. 2 decades later, we cannot just sit back and "no longer 
tinker." We must actively dismantle the machinery of death, or it will continue 
to grind on.

(source: Guest Columnist; Jacob Wasserman is a senior in Saybrook College and 
vice president of the Yale College Democrats----Yale Daily News)