[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ARIZ., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 19



ARIZONA:

Carlos Cruz, Rosemary Velazco: State to seek death penalty against Surprise 
parents in child's death


State prosecutors will seek the death penalty against 2 Surprise parents in 
connection with the death of the couple's 3-year-old daughter.

The Maricopa County Attorney's Office on Friday filed its intent to seek the 
death penalty against Carlos Cruz and Rosemary Velazco.

Cruz and Velazco's 3-year-old daughter died in late May; she weighed 15 pounds, 
"showing signs of extreme malnourishment," according to court documents.

A cause of death has not been disclosed. The medical examiner's report has not 
been finalized, according to the prosecution's filing.

At the time of her death, the victim's injuries included "bruising throughout 
her body ... [and] large lacerations to her forehead exposing her skull," 
according to court documents.

Each parent "committed the offense in an especially heinous, cruel, or depraved 
manner," according to the prosecution's death penalty filing.

Neither Cruz' nor Velazco's attorney could immediately be reached Friday night.

(source: ABC news)






CALIFORNIA:

'Grim Sleeper' Serial Killer Trial Postponed to December

Trial has been postponed until December for a California man charged with 10 
"Grim Sleeper" serial killings.

City News Service says a Los Angeles judge on Friday pushed back the date by 2 
months to Dec. 15.

The defense objected but the judge said she wants both sides to be fully 
prepared for the death penalty case.

Lonnie Franklin Jr. is charged with killing 9 women and a 15-year-old girl. 
They were shot and strangled, their bodies dumped in and around South Los 
Angeles.

The killings took place between 1985 and 2007 with a 14-year gap, leading to 
the "Grim Sleeper" nickname.

Franklin has spent 5 years behind bars, partly because of trial delays as 
prosecutors claimed the defense failed to share important documents.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Lawmakers push initiative to end California death penalty


A ballot proposal that could completely abolish California's death penalty is 
already on life support. The initiative would strike death as a possible 
punishment from the state's Penal Code, substituting life imprisonment without 
parole. California state law currently allows for the death penalty.

"The death penalty in America may be living on borrowed time," USA Today 
reported. The ballot's proponent, actor Mike Farrell, would have 180 days from 
when the secretary of state's office enters the measure into circulation to 
collect the needed 365,880 signatures.

California has not executed a death row inmate in nearly a decade, with the 
last one being in 2006, according to The Sacramento Bee.

Farrell's initiative also stresses in calling the death penalty an "empty 
promise" that drains public resources.

"The state spends millions of taxpayer dollars providing lawyers for death row 
inmates, only to see the murderers it has sentenced to death by execution die 
of old age in prison," the proposal reads. In June, death penalty advocates who 
sued in Sacramento Superior Court in 2014 won a critical settlement when the 
state agreed to develop a new method for lethal injection executions, using 
just 1 drug.

Opponents of the death penalty argue that it will take more time and money 
drawing up a new procedure to restart executions in California, with many legal 
obstacles to face.

California currently houses the nation's largest number of condemned inmates, 
nearly 1/4 of the more than 3,000 nationwide. The list also includes 21 women 
housed at a state prison in Chowchilla. Other opponents say they doubt any more 
prisoners will be executed at all, as more voters turn against the practice and 
they continue to challenge the state in court at every turn.

Currently in California, nearly 20 inmates on death row are believed to have 
exhausted all appeals and be eligible for execution. However, the state lacks a 
court-approved way to kill them.

"There seems to be a massive reassessment underway in this country in terms of 
capital punishment," said Kathryn Kase, executive director of the Texas 
Defender Service, which provides legal aid for those facing death row. 
"Everywhere you look with the death penalty, there's a problem."

Farrell's ballot also points to the "fatal mistakes" of innocent people being 
carelessly sentenced to death as a reason to end capital punishment in 
California.

"Wrongful convictions rob innocent people of decades of their lives, waste tax 
dollars, and re-traumatize the victims' families, while the real killers remain 
free to kill again," the proposal said.

In 2012, California voters rejected a death penalty repeal - known as 
Proposition 34 - by a 52 to 48 % margin.

Polls have consistently shown general public support for capital punishment. A 
growing number of states - 7, since 2007 - have already abolished the death 
penalty.

Earlier this year, Nebraska, traditionally a conservative state, became the 
19th state to ban capital punishment.

The federal government has not carried out an execution since 2003.

An unofficial moratorium has been declared, pending the completion of a Justice 
Department review of the death penalty ordered by President Obama. However, the 
average time spent on death row for those eventually executed continued to rise 
until 2011, with a peak of 16.5 years, before slightly dipping to 15.5 years in 
2013.

(source: Asian Journal)






USA:

When someone commits a murder, we all share a bit of the blame


A headline on Stephanie McCrummen's Sept. 13 front-page article in The Post, 
"An American void," asked: "Why do the friends Dylann Roof stayed with before 
the Charleston church shooting shrug about their inaction?" I can answer that 
question.

I am a high school dropout. I grew up in a small town in the Midwest. I spent 
many evenings in rundown trailers and apartments getting wasted with people 
whose lives were aimless. Crazy, stupid and sometimes threatening statements 
were not unusual. Everyone assumed they would be forgotten the next day. Acting 
on them was rare. Thankfully, nothing nearly as crazy, stupid or devastating as 
what Roof admitted to doing at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., ever 
happened.

I ended up becoming a lawyer. I have represented clients accused or convicted 
of crimes - including capital crimes - for more than 30 years. In every death 
penalty case, we thoroughly investigate every detail of our client's life. We 
work with experts on human development and psychology.

In every one of the scores of capital cases in which I have been involved, 
there were moments - usually many of them - in which someone had an opportunity 
to change our client's path. Had that altered path been taken, the murder would 
not have been committed.

These opportunities invariably come early in the client's life. But the 
opportunities also come just before the client's downward spiral results in 
murder. A client may become increasingly volatile, make threats or buy a gun. 
But friends and relatives do nothing.

Why? Because the friends and relatives are human. Because we are programmed to 
believe that everything will be okay. Because the client said crazy things 
before but didn't do anything. Because - like many of those people in my home 
town - the friends and family are too impaired, depressed or caught up in their 
own problems to recognize that something must be said or done. Or because they 
don't know what to say or do.

These failures are not just the failure to call police when a friend or 
relative buys a gun and makes threats. They are myriad failures that may seem 
insignificant: a pregnant mother's single night of drinking, a teacher's 
failure to report suspicious bruises on a student, a coach's cutting a player 
who cannot afford a uniform.

I point this out not because I claim to have the answer to how society can 
prevent statistically rare tragedies such as the one reportedly caused by Roof. 
I point it out because it is one of the many reasons that the United States 
must join virtually every other industrialized nation and abolish the death 
penalty. Capital murders occur because of countless failures not only of the 
killers themselves, but also of their families, neighbors, teachers and friends 
to act to alter the path of people like Roof.

This is not to say that murderers should not be punished for their crimes. It 
is simply to say that we all share at least a bit of the blame. Evil is not a 
rare virus that a few of us catch. It is a disease that is transmitted in bits 
and pieces from person to person until it accumulates and overcomes an 
individual. A sentence of life imprisonment without parole is a sufficient 
punishment for the ones who succumb.

(source: Opinion, Natman Schaye is senior trial counsel for the nonprofit 
Arizona Capital Representation Project----Washington Post)