[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ILL., OKLA., NEB., ARIZ., CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 15



ILLINOIS:

Should Illinois Reverse Its Death Penalty Ban?


Illinois repealed capital punishment in 2011. 4 years and scores of horrific 
crimes later, a state legislator wants to bring it back.

Sen. Bill Haine. D-Alton, was against Illinois' abolishing capital punishment a 
few years ago, in 2011; after all, he's a former Madison County prosecutor. 
Haine says since then, times have changed that have only buttressed his 
position.

"There have been some dramatic, and terrible acts committed," he says. "Not 
only in Illinois, but in the United States, that have brought the attention of 
the citizens back to 'how do we establish order and justice for the innocent? 
And how do we punish grave evil-doers?'"

Haine says next month he'll introduce legislation that would once again allow 
criminals to be sentenced to death -- but only in limited cases; he says the 
ultimate punishment should be reserved for serial killers, the premeditated 
murder of police, those who kill children, and mass murderers.

"The law should be a force reckoned with. And part of that is to have 
available, to a prosecutor and to a jury, the option of asking for the death 
penalty -- if someone forfeits one's life if they cross that line," he says.

Critics of the death penalty argue it's not an effective deterrent. They also 
say the system is prone to racial prejudice and flaws that could send innocent 
people to their deaths.

(source: WUIS news)






OKLAHOMA----impending execution

Oklahoma district attorney dismisses efforts to exonerate Richard Glossip ---- 
David Prater accused Glossip's attorneys who claim to have new evidence to 
prove innocence of trying to abolish death penalty in 'bullshit PR campaign'


An Oklahoma district attorney has denounced claims that a death row inmate 
scheduled to die this week is innocent as "a bullshit PR campaign", saying that 
legal representatives for the condemned prisoner have failed to produce any new 
documentation supporting their argument.

Attorneys for Richard Glossip, who are appealing to Governor Mary Fallin for a 
60-day stay of execution, held a press conference at the Oklahoma state capitol 
on Monday to present new information they claim supports efforts to exonerate 
him. Glossip - whose high-profile supporters include former senators, the actor 
Susan Sarandon and anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean - is 
scheduled to die by lethal injection on Wednesday for the 1997 murder of his 
boss, Barry Van Treese.

"All they are trying to do is abolish the death penalty in the state of 
Oklahoma and this country by spreading a bunch of garbage," Oklahoma County 
district attorney David Prater told the local Fox 25 TV station after attending 
Monday's press conference. Prater, who did not prosecute Glossip, told Fox 25 
he believes Glossip is guilty and said the man's attorneys have refused to hand 
over to him any of the evidence they presented on Monday.

The evidence produced on Monday by defense attorney Don Knight includes a sworn 
affidavit from a man who claimed to have heard a confession from the man on 
whose testimony Glossip was convicted, Justin Sneed. It also includes a 
statement from another man who claims the prosecution's argument that Glossip 
controlled Sneed was false.

Sneed is currently serving a sentence of life without parole at Joseph Harp 
Correctional Center, a medium-security prison in Lexington, Oklahoma. Glossip 
was convicted twice of Van Treese???s death, once in 1998 and again in 2004 
after his first verdict was thrown out for ineffective council.

Richard Allan Barrett, a man who claims to have been a friend of Glossip's 
brother, Bobby, and a drug dealer at the Best Budget Inn the year Van Treese 
was killed, claimed Sneed had regularly used robbery to finance a 
methamphetamine addiction that was more severe than prosecutors had admitted.

"Bobby Glossip told me to always keep my car locked when I was at the hotel," 
Barrett said. "Later I learned this was because the maintenance man (Sneed) 
broke into cars at the motel parking lot and stole items from the car."

Barrett said that Sneed traded items - like car stereos and radar detectors in 
exchange for drugs - he believes were stolen.

"I was present when Justin Sneed told Bobby Glossip that he had taken these 
items from occupied rooms at the motel and cars in the parking lot of the motel 
and other businesses near the hotel."

Barrett also said he "saw nothing to make me believe Justin Sneed was 
controlled by Richard Glossip", or that Glossip was aware of Sneed's alleged 
heists.

Barrett's statement appears to suggest that Sneed had robbed people before, and 
supports the claim that Van Treese's death was not a premeditated homicide 
orchestrated by Glossip, as prosecutors had argued, but the result of a robbery 
gone wrong.

A separate affidavit signed by Dr Richard A Leo, a professor at the San 
Francisco University School of Law, said Sneed's implication of Glossip was 
coerced by police and therefore unreliable.

"It has been well-documented in the empirical social science research 
literature that hundreds of innocent suspects have confessed during police 
interrogation to crimes (often very serious crimes such as murder and rape) 
that it was later objectively proven they did not commit," Leo wrote.

Leo said that investigators used false claims and intimidation to lead Sneed to 
believe that implicating Glossip would save him from a harsher sentencing.

Like Glossip's attorneys, Leo stressed that Sneed told eight different versions 
of the murder, four of which were given during his interrogation. At various 
points during his police interrogation a week after the murder, Sneed, then 19, 
said he didn't know Van Treese, then that he didn't kill Van Treese, then that 
he had killed him accidentally, and then that he had killed him intentionally, 
under Glossip's instruction. Eventually, Sneed agreed to a plea deal in which 
he would testify against Glossip to save himself from the death penalty.

"These accounts do not fit with one another, or the crime scene facts, and thus 
are one indicator of the potential unreliability of Sneed's statements 
implicating Richard Glossip in this case," Leo wrote.

Another affidavit produced on Monday was from Michael Scott, who spent time in 
the cell across from Sneed and claims to have heard Sneed admit to making up 
testimony.

"I clearly heard Justin Sneed say that, in his statements and testimony, he set 
Richard Glossip up, and that Richard Glossip didn't do anything," Scott's 
affidavit reads.

Knight said attention to their investigation was producing witnesses that 
exonerate Glossip, but would benefit from more time.

Fallon's office has so far consistently denied efforts to secure a stay of 
execution.

(source: The Guardian)

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

Oklahoma should delay the Richard Glossip execution


Did Richard Glossip hire or order Justin Sneed to kill their mutual boss, Barry 
Van Treese, 18 years ago in Oklahoma City? It???s unclear -- the best evidence 
against Glossip is the testimony of Sneed, who, after cooperating with police, 
received life in prison instead of the death penalty. Glossip wasn???t so 
lucky. Oklahoma intends to execute him Wednesday, despite a drought of 
corroborating evidence..

This is where the death penalty gets its full exposure as a ludicrous practice.

If the name Glossip sounds familiar, he was the main plaintiff in the recent 
case in which the Supreme Court ruled that using midazolam, a light sedative, 
as the 1st drug in a 3-drug execution cocktail does not expose the condemned to 
the risk of unconstitutionally excessive pain. That was after the original 
plaintiff in the 4-plaintiff filing, Charles F. Warner, was executed while the 
case was pending, and reportedly said as the process was underway, "my body is 
on fire." In fact, the executions of 4 other people that appeared to involve 
significant pain -- Joseph Rudolph Wood III writhed for nearly 2 hours in 
Arizona's death chamber -- began with midazolam, the reason for the legal 
challenge.

The issue now, though, is not cruel and unusual punishment, but the veracity, 
and reliability of a conviction. The short version is the lawyer appointed to 
represent him at the initial trial did such a poor job that a second trial was 
ordered, and Glossip was once again convicted, though now, as his execution 
date nears, a third team of pro bono lawyers argue that they have found 
sufficient evidence that the 2nd team missed to raise fresh questions about the 
competency of his legal representation throughout the process. And fresh 
questions about whether he did, in fact, direct Sneed to kill Van Treese.

The case has picked up some celebrity/activist focus (Susan Sarandon, Sister 
Helen Prejean and Richard Branson, among others). More significantly, a roster 
of high-profile folks, including Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who supports the 
death penalty, in a letter urged Gov. Mary Fallin to order a 60-day reprieve to 
give the new legal team a chance to develop the evidence they have found.

"We share a deep concern about the integrity of the criminal justice system in 
Oklahoma and throughout the United States. We are particularly concerned about 
the danger of executing an innocent man. Could that really happen? In the 
United States, in 2015?" the letter says. "We also don't know for sure whether 
Richard Glossip is innocent or guilty. That is precisely the problem. If we 
keep executing defendants in cases like this, where the evidence of guilt is 
tenuous and untrustworthy, we will keep killing innocent people."

The case also exposes one of the recurring, and highly objectionable, aspects 
of the death penalty: It falls disproportionately on those with limited means 
(and on people of color although in this case Glossip is white). And it also 
hinges on one person playing angles to limit his own exposure to the death 
penalty or other lengthy sentences, in return for testimony.

My opposition to the death penalty is absolute, and I hope that at some point a 
majority of the Supreme Court comes to recognize, as many justices have, that 
the system is too screwed up, and too prone to manipulation, to be relied on 
when it comes to the execution of someone. Did Sneed lie? It's hard to say. 
Which is exactly why Fallin should grant this reprieve. After all, Oklahoma can 
always kill Glossip later. But if the new evidence shows, post-execution, that 
he is innocent, the damage is already done, and irreparable.

And I should note that the Death Penalty Information Project counts 112 
executions in Oklahoma since 1976, with 49 people currently on death row -- 
and 10 death row exonerations. That's a pretty high failure rate for any state 
to be rushing people to the death chamber.

(source: Opinion, Scott Martelle----Los Angeles Times)

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

Glossip's actions hardly paint picture of innocence


If nothing changes, Richard Glossip will reach the end of the line Wednesday 
and be executed for his role in the murder of Oklahoma City motel owner Barry 
Van Treese. This will upset death penalty opponents, who have made Glossip a 
national poster child for their cause.

We understand those who oppose the death penalty for anyone based on moral 
objections. In the Glossip case, many supporters insist he's innocent. Yet the 
reason Glossip's execution is likely to occur as scheduled is because those 
arguments are largely based on the idea that you can't trust the word of 
someone serving a life sentence for murder, but can unquestioningly believe the 
word of someone on death row for murder.

Glossip's defenders dispute much of the record in this case, but even the 
events they concede hardly paint a portrait of an innocent man.

In January 1997, Glossip worked for Van Treese as a manager at a Best Budget 
Inn in Oklahoma City. An audit had just found more than $6,000 missing; Glossip 
was suspected of stealing it.

At that point, prosecutors say, Glossip offered $10,000 to Justin Sneed, a 
maintenance worker who lived rent-free at the motel, if he would kill Van 
Treese. Sneed did so, murdering Van Treese with a bat in one of the motel 
rooms.

Sneed says he and Glossip then worked to cover up the killing. Sneed drove Van 
Treese's car to a nearby parking lot. They covered a broken window in the 
murder room with a shower curtain, covered the body, turned the air conditioner 
on high, broke the key off in the door, and planned to return later to use 
chemicals and a saw to dispose of the body.

Glossip's defenders say Sneed cannot be trusted because he testified against 
Glossip in order to avoid the death penalty. How then to explain Glossip's 
actions?

Why did Glossip make arrangements for the housekeeping crew to clean other 
rooms? Why would an innocent man try to prevent the discovery of a murder he 
had nothing to do with?

Why did Glossip give conflicting statements to police investigating Van 
Treese's disappearance? Why not tell the police that Sneed killed Van Treese, 
if Glossip was innocent?

Why did Glossip make plans to leave town before police found Van Treese's body?

The aforementioned tidbits aren't seriously disputed. In a 2005 appeal hearing, 
a judge noted that Glossip "admitted knowing Sneed killed Van Treese" and "knew 
about the broken glass" in the murder room, yet "never told anyone that he 
thought Sneed was involved" until after Glossip was taken into custody after 
police had discovered the body.

Glossip's defenders need to explain why an innocent man would take numerous 
steps to cover up a crime he had nothing to do with, and then do nothing to 
alert police to the identity of the killer despite numerous opportunities to do 
so.

Glossip's attorney said Monday, in seeking a 60-day say of execution, that 
there is new evidence to vindicate his client. But it's telling that his 
defenders still don't offer a compelling explanation for Glossip's behavior.

For most Oklahomans, a rational explanation is obvious: Glossip acted like a 
murderer and tried to cover up a killing because he was involved in the murder 
and committed the crime for which he was convicted. The simplest explanation is 
usually the correct one.

(source: The Oklahoma Editorial Board)

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

The execution paradox: When a doctor is not a doctor


Clayton Lockett was executed by lethal injection on April 29, 2014, in 
Oklahoma. The process was an abject failure, as the execution doctor repeatedly 
failed to correctly place an IV.

As a result, Lockett writhed, moaned and gasped in apparent consciousness and 
pain for almost 45 minutes, before ultimately dying of a heart attack. The 
procedure was visibly and shockingly cruel. This was not the way the execution 
was supposed to go.

Lockett's family has sued the state and the doctor in charge of the execution. 
For the purpose of that suit, the doctor has been tagged, "Dr. Doe." In that 
suit, the state of Oklahoma has invoked a state law requiring that the names of 
members of the execution team, including Dr. Doe's, be kept confidential, which 
could prevent (or deter) any doctor or patient from complaining to the Oklahoma 
Medical Board about Dr. Doe's competence in connection with the execution.

The negligence of every other physician in Oklahoma, in every other 
circumstance, is accessible to the public through hearings and published 
findings. But the Oklahoma board has no way of investigating the negligent 
practice of medicine during executions unless the name of the treating 
physician can be disclosed. And while one incident may not be representative of 
a doctor???s competence, accumulated incidents may tell a different story.

Prisoners are particularly vulnerable to malpractice and negligence; indeed, 
many prison doctors have disciplinary or criminal records themselves. And the 
subject of a botched execution cannot exactly file a complaint. Dead men, after 
all, tell no tales.

If Oklahoma continues to require the participation of a physician in an 
execution, then the actions of that physician must be reviewable, just as they 
are with respect to any other patient.

I am sensitive to the understandable, but false, equivalence of whether 
Lockett???s death was at least as merciful as the one he was convicted of 
visiting upon his victim, Stephanie Nieman. But as a country, we do not, and 
should not, judge our own conduct by the standard of convicted murderers. The 
state of Oklahoma was carrying out a court-ordered penalty, pursuant to 
legislation and a complex set of regulations. These regulations mandated that 
executions be carried out through a medical procedure supervised by a licensed 
physician.

The state of Oklahoma responded to our filing by arguing that the gratuitous 
cruelty inflicted by Dr. Doe's incompetent medical practice does not matter, 
because "there is no duty" of competence or to provide reasonable medical care 
in carrying out an execution. The doctor's duties are limited to ensuring that 
"the inmate dies."

In other words, in Oklahoma's view, there should be no accountability for 
cruelty or incompetence in a condemned man's final interaction on earth.

So, why should anyone care whether the doctor who supervised the execution was 
any good and whether a convicted murderer suffered? Why should the public as a 
whole want to know whether Dr. Doe was incompetent or impaired or gratuitously 
cruel or willfully indifferent to the suffering of another human being?

Because Doctor Doe does not work exclusively for the Oklahoma Department of 
Corrections. According to Internet accounts, which do disclose Dr. Doe's 
identity, he is an ordinary physician who practices emergency medicine in 
Oklahoma. One would expect that the placement and monitoring of IVs would be 
one of his regular professional responsibilities. And next time, you (or 
someone you love) could be lying in the emergency room at your local hospital, 
waiting for Doctor Doe to treat you.

(source: Katherine Toomey is a partner at Lewis Baach PLLC in Washington D.C. 
She represents Doctors for the Ethical Practice of Medicine as Amici Curiae in 
the case Lockett v. Fallin, pending before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, 
in Denver----The Tulsa World)






NEBRASKA:

Death Penalty effort to be on November 2016 ballot


The Nebraska Secretary of State's Office released preliminary totals Friday for 
petition signatures verified by county officials, indicating that the petition 
drive to overturn the repeal of the state's death penalty had met the threshold 
to get the issue on the November 2016 ballot.

As of Friday afternoon, officials at the county level had verified 65,171 of 
the nearly 166,000 signatures turned in by petition organizers.

County officials rejected 9,154, or about 12 %, of the 74,667 signatures 
reviewed so far.

The number of registered voters in Nebraska at the petition deadline was 
1,138,825, according to the Secretary of State's Office. Organizers needed 
signatures from 5 % of the state's registered voters, or 56,942 verified 
signatures, to put the issue on the ballot.

Reaching 10 % of registered voters, or 113,883 valid signatures, would prevent 
the legislation from going into effect until it can be voted on.

Both thresholds further require that the 5 % or 10 % marks be met in at least 
38 of the state's 93 counties.

In Lancaster County, Friday's report showed, 10,153 of 11,918 signatures 
gathered were verified, with 1,733 rejected.

Douglas County signatures totaled 9,194, with 8,300 of those verified.

Signatures and information are checked against voter registration records.

Lancaster County Election Commissioner Dave Shively said his staff has a lot of 
leeway on verifying those signatures, even when they are hard to read or have 
missing or wrong information.

"It's our responsibility to prove that they're not registered, not that they 
are registered," he said.

The Secretary of State's Office has not certified any of the count totals 
released Friday. Some counties are still verifying signatures, said Laura 
Strimple, communications director with the Secretary of State's Office.

Nebraska's death penalty was repealed by the Legislature in May with the 
passage of LB268. Lawmakers then voted 30-19 to override Gov. Pete Ricketts' 
veto of the bill.

(source: Columbus Telegram)






ARIZONA:

Justin James Rector files motion against death penalty


Justin James Rector, accused of strangling 8 year old Isabella Grogan-Cannella 
last year in Bullhead City has asked the prosecution to remove the death 
penalty in his trail soon approaching.

On Friday Rector's attorneys filed a motion in Mohave County Superior Court 
stating that lethal injection is a cruel and unusual punishment. The motion 
goes on to state that Rector has constitutional rights to due process and a 
fair trial, and those will be violated by the death penalty option.

Matt Smith, county attorney, says he will seek the death penalty for Rector if 
he is convicted of 1st degree murder.

The trial is set to stand in October of next year.

(source: naztoday.com)

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

Phoenix man convicted in killing of brother, 6-year-old nephew


A Phoenix man has been convicted of 1st- and 2nd-degree murder in the 2010 
killings of his brother and his brother's 6-year-old son.

Jurors returned the verdict Monday against Christopher Licon before Maricopa 
County Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens.

Jurors rejected defense claims of mental illness and convicted Licon of 
1st-degree murder in the death of his nephew, Xavier Jaquez, and of 
second-degree murder in the death of his brother, Angel Jaquez. Licon was also 
guilty of kidnapping, burglary and tampering with evidence.

The case now goes to a penalty phase in which jurors will determine whether 
Licon will get the death penalty in Xavier Jaquez's slaying.

At trial, Licon's attorney had described Licon as an honor student on 
scholarship at Arizona State University before a series of events in 2010 left 
Licon mentally ill and capable of murder. Licon shot Angel Jaquez on Dec. 13, 
2010, and the following day, Xavier Jaquez on the following day.

The boy's murder, Deputy County Attorney Laura Reckart said, was to silence the 
only witness to Angel Jaquez's killing.

Both were shot in the back of the head.

In 2010, Licon told police he called 911 after he returned home to Angel's 
Broadway Road apartment and found Angel lying feet-up on the couch with a 
gunshot wound in the back of his head.

On the morning of Dec. 14, 2010, Xavier was found shot to death in the alley 
behind his mother's home near 65th Drive and Roma Avenue. Homicide 
investigators then began to take a hard look at Licon as a suspect in both 
cases.

Licon, 24, was charged in 2011 with 2 counts of 1st-degree murder, kidnapping 
and burglary for the slayings.

(source: Arizona Republic)



CALIFORNIA:

Redwood City man pleads not guilty in 11-year-old murder of tire shop owner


A Redwood City man pleaded not guilty Monday to murder charges in the 2004 
killing of a Castro Valley tire shop manager who had been called to testify 
against him in court.

Prisheen Sanjay Krishna, 36, was shot and killed outside his home in 
Brentwood's Shadow Lakes neighborhood about 6:15 a.m. on Oct. 26, 2004, the day 
before he was scheduled to testify against Larry Darnell Fuller Jr. in Alameda 
County Superior Court in Hayward.

Krishna was the manager of RyNck Tires in Castro Valley in 2003 when Fuller 
fled the shop without paying a $2,700 bill for completed work and was 
subsequently charged with grand theft.

Krishna testified at a parole revocation hearing that resulted in Fuller, who 
had prior felony convictions for battery, robbery and perjury, briefly 
returning to jail. Krishna was killed the day before he was scheduled to 
testify at Fuller's preliminary hearing.

Krishna told his family that he was afraid to testify against Fuller because in 
2000, Fuller cheated the auto shop out of paying another bill and then came 
back the next day and robbed them at gunpoint, according to the Alameda County 
Sheriff's Office.

3 days after the killing, Fuller's parole officer found Fuller was carrying 
handwritten notes containing Krishna's personal information, including 
directions to his house and license plate numbers for Krishna's wife's car and 
a rental car that the victim drove 2 weeks before the killing, authorities 
said.

Fuller eventually pleaded guilty in the grand theft case involving the tire 
shop but avoided arrest for the killing though he was a suspect.

The Alameda County Sheriff's Office took over the case from Contra Costa County 
authorities in 2009 and said it uncovered new evidence that led to Fuller, 45, 
being arrested and charged with capital murder in January.

The special circumstance allegation that Fuller committed murder to prevent 
testimony makes him eligible for the death penalty or life in prison without 
the possibility of parole. Death penalty prosecutions in Alameda County are 
rare, and the DA's office waits to announce its intentions in eligible cases 
after a defendant's preliminary hearing.

Fuller is being jailed without bail. He is scheduled to return to court on Oct. 
19, and a preliminary hearing is set for Nov 2.

(source: Mercury News)