[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., VA., OKLA., COLO.

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 15



PENNSYLVANIA:

Citing pope, activists call for end to death penalty


Death-penalty foes will gather at a Germantown church tomorrow for a prayer 
vigil, during which they will pray for an end to capital punishment.

The vigil will be at noon at St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church, 400 E. 
Price St. It is free and open to the public. Harold Wilson, a Philadelphia man 
exonerated in 2005 in a 1988 triple murder, will speak at the vigil about 
holding onto hope while living on death row.

Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penality, Witness to Innocence, 
various clergy and other activists organized the event to coincide with 
tomorrow's scheduled execution in Oklahoma of Richard Glossip, who was 
convicted in the 1997 murder of an Oklahoma City motel owner. Sister Helen 
Prejean, a noted anti-death-penalty crusader, has championed his case as a 
wrongful conviction.

With Pope Francis' upcoming Philadelphia visit, organizers are citing the 
pontiff's past calls for an end to the death penalty as a rallying cry. "It is 
impossible to imagine that states today cannot make use of another means than 
capital punishment to defend people's lives from an unjust aggressor," Pope 
Francis said in October 2014 to representatives of the International 
Association of Penal Law.

(source: philly.com)






VIRGINIA:

Convicted murderer's attorneys: He was high on PCP during Harvey family 
slayings


Court-appointed attorneys representing death row inmate Ricky Javon Gray argued 
today that a federal court should be forced to take a closer look at Gray's 
contention that his earlier lawyers were ineffective and did not perform up to 
acceptable standards.

They've argued that the lawyers failed to investigate and present evidence at 
Gray's trial that he was intoxicated by PCP when he murdered a South Richmond 
couple and their 2 young daughters.

Gray was convicted in the slayings of the Harvey family on New Year's Day 2006, 
along with accomplice Ray Dandridge. Gray, 38, was sentenced to life in prison 
for the murders of Bryan Harvey, 49, and his wife Kathryn, 39. He was sentenced 
to death for the murders of their daughters Stella, 9, and Ruby, 4.

The family was found dead in their burning home. They had been forced into 
their basement and tied up. Their throats were slit and they were beaten with 
hammers.

"This was a crime crying out for an explanation," said Elizabeth Hambourger of 
the Durham, N.C.-based Center for Death Penalty Litigation. The PCP could have 
been that explanation, she said.

Gray and Dandridge also murdered another Richmond family: Ashley Baskerville, 
21; her mother, Mary Tucker, 47; and stepfather, Percyell Tucker, 55.

Ashley Baskerville knew Gray and Dandridge and was a lookout when Gray killed 
the Harveys, authorities said.

Gray also confessed he killed his wife in 2005 in Pennsylvania.

Gray was not tried in the Baskerville-Tucker killings, but would have been had 
he not been sentenced to death in the Harvey case. Dandridge pleaded guilty and 
was sentenced to life in prison.

Gray's attorneys want the 3-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of 
Appeals to overturn a federal judge's decision throwing out Gray's request. The 
Virginia Attorney General's Office is opposing the attempt.

State officials have said that if the 4th Circuit rules against Gray and there 
are no other obstacles, he could have an execution date set for late winter or 
early spring.

(source: Richmond Times-Dispatch)






OKLAHOMA----impending execution

Oklahoma May Execute an Innocent Man on Wednesday ---- What the case of Richard 
Glossip says about the state of capital punishment in the United States.


In June, the US Supreme Court cleared the way for Oklahoma to execute Richard 
Glossip - who has been sitting on death row since 1998, when he was convicted 
of 1st-degree murder - using a controversial drug that's been implicated in 
several botched executions. Barring a last-minute stay by Gov. Mary Fallin, the 
state plans to put him to death on Wednesday. But if it does, it may execute an 
innocent man.

Glossip's landmark Supreme Court petition challenging the method of his 
execution is a footnote to a larger story that highlights the death penalty's 
many flaws.

Here's the backstory: In 1997, Glossip was working at the Best Budget Motel in 
Oklahoma City, when the body of his boss, motel owner Barry Van Treese, was 
discovered in Room 102. Within a week of finding the body, the police arrested 
Justin Sneed, a 19-year-old handyman and meth addict who worked at the motel. 
Sneed confessed to beating Van Treese to death with a baseball bat. His DNA was 
all over the crime scene, and his fingerprints were found on a soda cup in Van 
Treese's car. But egged on by police officers who promised him he could avoid a 
death sentence, Sneed claimed that Glossip had hired him to kill their boss.

No physical evidence linked Glossip to the crime. (Prosecutors tried to combat 
this problem by suggesting that the lack of Glossip's fingerprints at the crime 
scene was actually evidence of his guilt.) In exchange for testifying against 
Glossip, Sneed received a life sentence. Meanwhile, a jury sentenced Glossip to 
death based entirely on Sneed's testimony and prosecutors' contention that he 
had wielded undue influence over Sneed, whom they described as a hapless dupe. 
An Oklahoma appeals court overturned the verdict, finding Glossip's lawyer 
incompetent and the evidence against him strikingly weak. A second trial was 
held in 2004. Before it started, prosecutors offered Glossip a deal: Plead 
guilty to 2nd-degree murder and receive a life sentence with the possibility of 
parole after 20 years. Glossip, who had no prior criminal record, refused, 
maintaining his innocence.

The second jury also found him guilty and once again sentenced him to death. 
That verdict was upheld. In both trials, Sneed's testimony was inconsistent, 
changing considerably from what he'd initially told the police in 1997. 
Transcripts of the police interview with Sneed show officers coaching him to 
implicate Gossip, but video of the interrogation wasn't screened at either 
trial - a fact that led the first verdict to be overturned, but not the 2nd.

It's not unconstitutional to execute someone who didn't commit murder. Hiring 
someone else to do the dirty work, or conspiring with someone else to kill for 
money, is grounds for the death penalty, so long as there's proof of that 
person's "intent to kill." In 2010, for instance, Virginia executed Theresa 
Lewis for hiring hit men to kill her husband and adult stepson, while the 
killers themselves got life without parole. But even under that standard, 
Glossip's death sentence is a stretch. Prosecutors went to great lengths to 
suggest that Glossip wanted to kill his boss because he was going to get fired. 
But defense lawyers showed that Glossip had done a decent enough job at the 
motel that he'd received salary bonuses for 11 out of the prior 12 months 
before the murder. Prosecutors noted that when he was arrested, Glossip had 
about $1,200 in cash on him - evidence, they said, that Sneed had robbed Van 
Treese and split the money with Glossip. The defense countered that Glossip had 
just sold his belongings so he could get legal help after being questioned by 
the police. Indeed, 2Glossip was arrested coming out of a lawyer's office.

The appeals in Glossip's case have essentially run out, with the US Supreme 
Court turning down his last request for a rehearing on August 28. But over the 
past year, new developments have bolstered his claims of innocence. In October 
2014, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board denied a clemency petition from 
Glossip. The board then received an email claiming to be from Sneed's daughter, 
saying she believed Glossip was innocent and that her father would likely 
recant his testimony if he could be sure he wouldn't lose his plea agreement 
and end up on death row himself.

She wrote:

For a couple of years now, my father has been talking to me about recanting his 
original testimony. But [he] has been afraid to act upon it, in fear of being 
charged with the Death Penalty, and not be here for his children. My father has 
no reason to do so as a favor to Richard, as him and Mr. Glossip have no 
relationship and have had no communication in the last 17 years. I feel his 
conscious[sic] is getting to him. His fear of recanting, but guilt about not 
doing so, makes it obvious that information he is sitting on would exonerate 
Mr. Glossip.

The letter didn't arrive in time, so the board never considered it, and Sneed's 
daughter has never repeated the claim. Glossip's lawyers say they have talked 
to her and she has said she now wants to support her father, who has denied 
wanting to recant his story.

The unusual circumstances of Glossip's case and his rapidly approaching 
execution date have attracted international attention, including a sympathetic 
story in the National Enquirer. Dr. Phil devoted a show to Glossip in August 
featuring the actress Susan Sarandon, who publicly called on Oklahoma to spare 
his life, and Sister Helen Prejean, the nun Sarandon played in Dead Man 
Walking, who has also asked Oklahoma to spare Glossip. More than 200,000 people 
have signed online petitions supporting his clemency. Last week, Sir Richard 
Branson joined the chorus. So did former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn (R), and 
legendary Oklahoma football coach Barry Switzer sent a letter to Gov. Fallin 
urging her to stay Glossip's execution.

Last-ditch efforts to save potentially innocent condemned inmates haven't fared 
well in the past. Most notably, the state of Texas executed Todd Willingham in 
2004 despite a huge amount of evidence suggesting he had been wrongly 
convicted. Most death row exonerations have resulted from DNA testing. But the 
only DNA evidence in Glossip's case implicates Sneed, the man who has already 
confessed to the crime. So a reprieve for Glossip is a long shot, especially in 
Oklahoma, where last year Fallin threatened to execute a pair of condemned men 
in defiance of her own state Supreme Court, which had issued a stay in their 
cases. When the judges refused to lift the stay, the GOP-controlled state 
Legislature threatened to start impeachment proceedings them. The judges caved, 
and the state went on to badly botch the execution of one of the inmates, 
Clayton Lockett, a debacle that prompted Glossip and his legal team to 
challenge Oklahoma's lethal injection procedure - unsuccessfully - before the 
US Supreme Court.

Fallin shows no signs of wavering on Glossip's fate. Earlier this month, a 
local Fox station reported that a juror from his 1st trial would have voted 
differently if some of the information that has recently come to light had been 
presented to the jury. In response to the story, a spokesman for Fallin said, 
"The fact that Glossip had 1 conviction overturned and was given a 2nd trial 
illustrates that our justice system does respond to mistakes and has treated 
Glossip fairly. Governor Fallin believes in our justice system and is committed 
to upholding the law."

Glossip's legal team is frantically trying to save his life. But the options 
are limited.

Glossip's Hail Mary for staving off execution in the federal courts was his 
failed petition to the Supreme Court earlier this year, in which his lawyers 
argued that executing him with the sedative midazolam, a component of 
Oklahoma's lethal injection cocktail, would be unconstitutionally cruel. While 
the liberals on the court, led by Justice Stephen Breyer, used the case to make 
an impassioned argument for abolishing capital punishment, the conservatives 
held sway and ruled against Glossip.

As a result, much of the recent public pressure and lobbying has been aimed at 
Oklahoma's governor. But Fallin only has the power to grant Glossip a 60-day 
stay of his execution, unless the parole board recommends clemency, which it 
hasn't. His last best hope lies with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, 
where Gossip's lawyers will present last-minute new evidence on Tuesday that 
Sneed lied about Glossip's involvement in the murder.

Much of that evidence hinges on the fact that Sneed was seriously addicted to 
methamphetamine, which he used intravenously. Sneed's former drug dealer has 
signed an affidavit saying Sneed supported his habit by regularly stealing from 
the Best Budget Motel's customers and breaking into their cars. The testimony 
is designed to change the government's narrative to show that Sneed was a drug 
addict who killed Van Treese during a robbery gone awry, and that he simply 
tried to use Glossip to save himself.

If the Oklahoma court finds the evidence credible, it could stay Glossip's 
execution until it can hold a hearing to probe the new information further. 
Glossip's lawyers realize they have a high bar to meet, particularly in 
Oklahoma. "This is not a DNA-type case," says Don Knight, one of Glossip's 
attorneys. "This is a case of 'he said, she said.' It's hard to refute that 
kind of a situation."

Still, Glossip has been lucky before: He received a last-minute reprieve from 
execution in January, when the US Supreme Court decided to take up his lethal 
injection challenge. He'll know by Wednesday whether he'll get another chance 
to stave off the death chamber.

(source: Mother Jones)

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

Rally held to oppose Oklahoma execution, sit-in planned


A few dozen death penalty opponents gathered at the Ten Commandments monument 
on the grounds of the state Capitol on Tuesday to ask Gov. Mary Fallin to stay 
Wednesday's execution of Richard Glossip.

Former State Sen. Connie Johnson said Fallin should follow the commandment, 
"Thou shall not kill."

"As you know our governor has insisted this monument remain on the Capitol 
grounds despite a court order, but she has no regard for it," Johnson said.

Nathson "Nate" Fields, who was exonerated from death row in Illinois, said his 
case illustrates that mistakes happen in the death penalty system.

"I spent 12 years on death row for a crime I didn't commit," he said.

He urged Fallin to stop the execution.

"Just stop and pause, you may be making a mistake," he said.

Fallin has the ability to grant a 60-day stay of execution. The governor's 
office has said that if representatives for Glossip have evidence for why he 
should not be executed, they should present it in court.

Glossip is to receive a lethal injection at 3 p.m. Wednesday at the state 
penitentiary in McAlester for the 1997 killing of Barry Van Treese.

(source: The Oklahoman)

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

Oklahoma City bombing victim works to save Richard Glossip: 'Enough Killings'


Jannie Coverdale, the grandmother of 2 young boys who died in the 1995 Murrah 
Building Bombing, is speaking out to save the life of death row inmate, Richard 
Glossip.

Here's Coverdale???s letter to Glossip from August 4, 2015:

Dear Mr. Glossip,

I am Jannie Coverdale. And as you can see, I live in OKC. You first came to my 
attention when you and others were protesting the drug that the State was using 
to execute people.

Mr. Glossip, I am a member of the anti-death penalty group here, and I just 
don't believe in capital punishment. It serves no purpose plus we are murdering 
too many innocent people.

I lost 2 grandsons in the bombing here in "95" and I ranted and raved about the 
things that should happen to Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Well, Tim was put 
to death and Terry wasn't. At first I was angry that Terry was allowed to live. 
And I heard a voice one morning in my sleep telling me that there had been 
"Enough Killings." When I awoke, I knew who had spoke to me, and since that 
day, I have been trying to forgive myself, for wanting those 2 men murdered, 
guilty or not.

I ended up writing to Terry Nichols, and he asked for my forgiveness, which I 
did, but I have to live with the idea that Tim was executed and that I played a 
big part for him being sentenced to death.

What I'm trying to saw is that even though Tim was guilty killing him was 
wrong, and with you I feel that if there's any possibility that you are 
innocent, you should have the chance to prove it to everyone. And be let out of 
prison and if you are proven guilty again, just sentence you to time served and 
give you the chance to show that you are a good man who has learned his lesson.

I have (5) sons, and I don't know what I'd do if one of them ever ended up on 
death row.

Mr. Glossip, I am praying for you and your family. And when I finish writing 
this letter, that probably don't make too much "sense" I will write to Mary 
Fallin, letting her know that everone in this state doesn't believe in the 
death penalty.

In the meantime, keep praying and keep fighting.

"In God I Trust."

Jannie Coverdale

(source: KFOR news)

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

Juror who sent Richard Glossip to death row says he should not have been 
convicted


One of the jurors who sent a man to death row has come forward to say he should 
not have been convicted, just hours before his execution.

Richard Glossip, who was convicted of murder on the sole testimony of the man 
who carried out the killing, is due be given a lethal injection at 8pm on 
Wednesday unless his lawyers can win an 11th hour reprieve.

The 52-year-old's legal team continue to work round the clock hoping a new 
piece of evidence will see authorities grant a 60-day stay of execution.

But as Glossip nears the death chamber at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in 
McAlester, a juror has said he should be allowed to live until new evidence has 
been heard.

In statement the juror said: "If the defence would have presented the case that 
they are presenting now in the original trial, (and dare I say even the jurors 
in the 2nd), I would have not given a guilty verdict.

"I think that now there is enough questions/evidence out there that there may 
be another story than what we as jurors were given. Why did that happen?

"I don't know and frankly it p***es me off! I feel that this situation needs to 
be looked at and at the VERY least given a 60 days stay to make for certain 
that all the stones are unturned and everything is looked at with a fine tooth 
comb."

The father-of-4's legal team have highlighted countless deficiencies in his 
defence during his 2 trials including how the killer was coached to implicate 
Glossip, how others present close to the scene were never questioned and how 
there is no physical evidence linking him to the murder.

The Governor of Oklahoma, Mary Fallin, who has the power to grant a 60-day stay 
of execution, has said on numerous occasions the State is upholding the wishes 
of 24 jurors and the verdict of 2 trials.

But despite the juror's statement, she has now said they will not be taking the 
juror's opinions into consideration.

In a statement Governor Fallin's office said: "This juror served in Glossip's 
1st trial, which was thrown out by a court. The fact that Glossip had 1 
conviction overturned and was given a 2nd trial illustrates that our justice 
system does respond to mistakes and has treated Glossip fairly.

"Governor Fallin believes in our justice system and is committed to upholding 
the law."

Lawyers for Glossip say a former prisoner has come forward to to say he often 
heard the real killer, Justin Sneed boasting he had lied to save his own life.

Glossip was convicted of murder in 1998 after Sneed confessed to the crime and 
claimed Glossip hired him to do it. The motel's handyman carried out the 
killing claiming it was Glossip's idea, saying he was promised 6,460 pounds to 
do it.

>From his testimony, the sole evidence against Glossip, he received a plea deal 
of life without parole.

Supporters say the case against the death row inmate is riddled with holes and 
an illogical motive, that interview footage shows officers appearing to 
encourage Sneed to implicate Glossip while there was not a shred of physical 
evidence against him.

Supporters campaigning for his release include Oscar winning actress Susan 
Sarandon and anti death penalty advocate Sister Helen Prejean.

More than 300,000 people have signed a petition calling for Glossip's release 
while Sir Richard Branson has also backed his cause.

(source: The Mirror)






COLORADO:

Death penalty won't sway Colorado elections, suggests poll


Capital punishment will not be a deciding issue in Colorado elections, suggest 
a new poll commissioned by the anti-capital punishment group, the Better 
Priorities Initiative.

Only 5 % of Coloradans surveyed view a candidate's stance on the death penalty 
as a "most important" factor when deciding whom to vote for, and most will 
support candidates they generally agree with, even if those politicians have a 
different take on capital punishment, according to the poll conducted by Public 
Policy Polling.

Jobs and the economy, health care and education top the list of voters' 
deciding priorities. The fate of people convicted of crimes does not.

But that doesn't mean people aren't thinking about the death penalty.

Just 32.6 % of Coloradans prefer the death penalty for people convicted of 
murder, and 71 % think that Colorado will not execute anybody in the next 10 
years.

Nearly 43 % want to see the death penalty replaced, and 47.2 % want it to stay 
in place.

While capital punishment might not be a deciding factor in who gets in office, 
the conversation isn't over.

The Colorado GOP's possible U.S. Senate candidate District Attorney George 
Brauchler is best known among voters for trying win the death penalty for 
Aurora Theater Shooter James Holmes.

In a recent interview, death penalty opponent Gov. John Hickenlooper told Ryan 
Warner, host of Colorado Matters, that the time is not right for trying to end 
capital punishment.

"I think it would be better for Colorado, obviously, if [the death penalty were 
abolished before I leave office], but I don't think you can put a strict 
timeline on these things. It might take decades more. It's hard to predict," 
the Governor said.

(source: Colorado Independent)