[Deathpenalty] death penalty new----N.C., GA., ARK., OKLA.

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 22



NORTH CAROLINA:

Nebraska senator talks about state's death penalty repeal


A Republican legislator from Nebraska says North Carolina GOP lawmakers should 
consider abolishing the death penalty because the process is financially 
inefficient, subject to errors and does not give closure to victims' families.

Nebraska Sen. Colby Coash visited the Legislative Building on Tuesday to talk 
about his experiences leading efforts this year to repeal capital punishment in 
his state. The group North Carolina Conservatives Concerned about the Death 
Penalty brought in Coash for Raleigh, Greensboro and Charlotte appearances.

Nebraska became the 2st traditionally conservative state to eliminate the 
punishment since 1973 when its legislature overrode the veto of Gov. Pete 
Ricketts.

Republican Rep. Jon Hardister of Greensboro also opposes the death penalty. 
Hardister says he hopes Coash's visit will start discussions with fellow GOP 
lawmakers about repeal legislation.

(source: Associated Press)






GEORGIA:

Monroe prosecutors seek death penalty against Christopher Calmer in deputy 
killing


Prosecutors announced Tuesday that they will seek the death penalty against 
Christopher Keith Calmer, the man accused of fatally shooting a Monroe County 
deputy last year.

Calmer, 47, is accused of firing shots in a Sept. 13, 2014, shootout at his 
parents' Haley Lane home, killing deputy Michael Norris and injuring deputy 
Jeff Wilson.

Calmer, who was housed by the Georgia Department of Corrections for a stint 
soon after his arrest last September -- walked into a Monroe Count courtroom 
Tuesday wearing a Monroe County jail jumpsuit.

Calmer was dressed in the orange and white uniform after arriving at the Monroe 
County Justice Center prior to the hearing, but he isn't being housed at the 
county jail, according to the sheriff's office.

The location where he is being held hasn't been released due to security 
concerns.

Calmer didn't speak during the brief hearing except to answer the judge when he 
asked if Calmer was satisfied with his lawyers and if he had any questions 
about the proceedings.

Calmer declined to speak, citing advice from his lawyers, but indicated he 
didn't have any questions.

He is represented by 2 attorneys from the Georgia Capital Defender's Office, 
the state agency that provides lawyers for indigent defendants facing a 
possible death sentence.

Calmer is next scheduled to appear in court Oct. 19 for an arraignment -- a 
hearing in which he'll enter a plea of guilty or not guilty.

Some motions in the case may also be argued that day, said Towaliga Judicial 
Circuit District Attorney Richard Milam.

Milam said his goal is for the case to go to trial sometime next year.

The death notice filed Tuesday by prosecutors cites 2 aggravating circumstances 
as reasoning for seeking capital punishment against Calmer.

A jury must ultimately decide that at least 1 of the circumstances has been 
proven during the trial in order for Calmer to receive a death sentence.

The 1st circumstance alleges that Calmer committed "murder against a peace 
officer who was engaged in the performance of his official duties."

The 2nd alleges he committed murder "during the commission of aggravated 
battery," which Milam explained stems from allegations that Calmer also shot 
Wilson.

Norris and Wilson went to Calmer's parents' house near Bolingbroke just before 
6 p.m. Sept. 13, 2014, after receiving a call that someone there was attempting 
suicide.

Calmer is accused of shooting Norris in the head.

He also allegedly shot Wilson in the leg and buttocks. Wilson's bulletproof 
vest kept another bullet from entering his abdomen.

Calmer was shot in the leg.

Monroe County grand jurors voted to indict Calmer in May on charges of malice 
murder, 2 counts of felony murder, attempted murder, 2 counts of aggravated 
assault on a peace officer, aggravated battery and 2 counts of possession of a 
firearm during the commission of a felony.

Calmer has been held in custody without bond since his arrest last September.

Calmer is the 3rd person for whom Monroe County prosecutors have announced 
intentions to seek the death penalty in recent months.

They announced intentions of seeking capital punishment June 17 against Robert 
Buckner, 35, and Amanda Hendrickson, 33, in the 2014 death of Hendrickson's 
daughter, 5-year-old Heaven Woods.

Buckner pleaded guilty to murder June 17 and was sentenced to life in prison 
without the possibility of parole.

Hendrickson's case is still pending with motions hearings set to be held in 
December.

The last Monroe County death penalty case went to trial 18 years ago.

Andrew Allen Cook was sentenced to death for the 1995 shooting deaths of Mercer 
University students Michele Cartagena, 19, and Grant Hendrickson, 22, at Lake 
Juliette. Cook was executed in 2013.

(source: macon.com)

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

Former inmates rally to stop woman's execution in Georgia


Hers is a life measured by the dictates of Pulaski State Prison: when to rise, 
when to eat, when to go to bed so she can repeat the process the next day, and 
the day after that, and the day after that. This is how Kelly Gissendaner's 
life will unspool until the state of Georgia ends it.

That day may not be far off. Judicial officials on Friday issued a death 
warrant, Gissendaner's 3rd, for persuading her lover to kill her husband 2 
decades ago. Her execution date is set for Sept. 29 and, if it proceeds, she 
would become the 1st woman Georgia has put to death since 1945.

That day will not arrive, say her supporters, without a chorus of cries that 
Gissendaner, 47, be spared the ultimate punishment.

A loose-knit collection of former female convicts credits Gissendaner with 
giving them hope behind bars, ministering to them through an air vent. They are 
urging the state to reconsider her death sentence and let her live out her days 
in prison instead. The women call themselves Struggle Sisters.

Gissendaner acknowledges she coordinated the beating and stabbing death of her 
husband in 1997. She faced capital punishment twice earlier this year. Bad 
weather delayed one execution; a cloudy vial of lethal drugs prompted the 2nd 
execution's postponement.

The former inmates see those delays as a final chance to make their appeal. The 
women have established a Facebook page explaining their mission. They've 
recorded videos pleading her case, echoing the emotional pleas for mercy coming 
from 2 of Gissendaner's children.

The women credit Gissendaner with helping them turn their own troubled lives 
around. Nikki Roberts, convicted of robbery, is typical.

"I was at my low of lows" when chance brought her into contact with 
Gissendaner, the Atlanta resident recalled. "But I got some hope."

She got it at Metro State Prison, where she had been temporarily sent to 
"lockdown," a cell block for high-security female prisoners or inmates who 
posed a threat to themselves. Roberts had earned a spot: She had tried to slit 
her wrists.

In the new cell, she cried, cursed, howled. She paused in her rantings only 
when she heard a voice, coming through a heating vent: "Don't wish death on 
yourself," the voice said. "You sound like you've got some sense."

The voice, she discovered, belonged to Gissendaner, Georgia's sole female 
facing capital punishment - and, Roberts quickly learned, the sole voice of 
compassion in that echoing warren.

Roberts listened. The voice said she ought to sign up for some teaching 
courses, maybe impart some of that knowledge to others. Gissendaner, who had 
spent years studying theology, suggested topics that Roberts might study. A 
chaplain agreed to work with her.

Prison officials transferred Roberts back to the general population. She was, 
they discovered, a different inmate. She joined a choir. She became a prayer 
leader. She served her 10 years and was paroled last year. Roberts now works 
for an Atlanta agency that teaches adult literacy.

Others could benefit from Gissendaner's counsel, Roberts said.

"Killing Kelly is essentially killing hope," said Roberts, 40. "Kelly is the 
poster child for redemption."

That's not just hyperbole, said Stephen Bright, senior counsel for the Southern 
Center for Human Rights. The Atlanta nonprofit specializes in prison issues, 
especially capital punishment cases.

Gissendaner, he suggested, has changed for the better in her 2 decades behind 
bars. "There is such a thing as redemption," Bright said. "I've seen it over 
and over."

Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University and an expert on capital 
punishment, likened Gissendaner???s case to that of Karla Faye Tucker. 
Convicted of murder in Texas, Tucker became a Christian while in prison. Like 
Gissendaner, she counseled other inmates and built a following of supporters 
urging Texas corrections officials to commute her sentence to life in prison. 
It wasn't enough: In 1998, the state gave her a lethal injection.

Gissendaner's supporters may have just as much of an uphill fight, she said. 
"It's too few people at too low a rung in the hierarchy of influence," she 
said. "They would have to make a lot of noise. But who knows?"

Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter believes that Gissendaner 
deserves the death penalty and accused her of manipulation in planning her 
husband's slaying and in trying to avoid execution.

Gissendaner has never forgotten her crime, said her lead defense lawyer, Susan 
Casey. "She prays every day for the people she's hurt," said Casey.

The Struggle Sisters, she said, are a collective voice of conscience. "We 
didn't even know about them until they started coming to us," Casey said.

They appeared - seemingly out of nowhere - at Gissendaner's clemency hearing 
earlier this year, intent on explaining to anyone who would listen how the 
death row inmate set them on a new course. Gissendaner's clemency plea was 
denied but her legal team soon learned that the inmates their client had 
counseled in prison were among her most passionate defenders.

"These women have some incredible stories of rehabilitation and change," Casey 
said.

Kara Stephens, for one. Convicted of armed robbery, she was remanded to Metro's 
lockdown for fighting. There, she met Gissendaner, and was impressed with her 
grace under the worst sort of pressure. What other death-row prisoner, she 
wondered, could find reason to be upbeat?

As her days of incarceration dwindled, Stephens despaired. Would her children 
welcome her back? Where would she stay? Could she survive in society after a 
decade of strictly regulated existence?

"I was just wanting to give up," said Stephens, now 38. "I was terrified of 
going home."

Gissendaner offered some support: Stephens was somebody. God loved her. Things 
would be OK.

In March 2009, a frightened Stephens re-entered society. These days, she works 
for a Chattanooga, Tenn., social works agency sponsored by the Presbyterian 
church.

Nicole Legere, convicted of theft, is another Struggle Sister. When lawyers 
asked if she'd appear in a video supporting Gissendaner, she said yes.

"I saw the change in (other inmates) who talked to her," said Legere, 36, who 
left prison in 2013 after serving her full sentence. She lives in Ringgold, 
Ga., and works for a printing company.

"There needs to be people like her, someone to be a mentor," Legere said. 
"She's a lot of hope. And there's not much hope in there."

WOMEN AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

There are 56 women awaiting execution in the United States. That represents 
less than 2 % of the total death row population.

Since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, 15 women have been executed in 
the United States - or 1 % of the 1,414 executions.

In Georgia, the last woman put to death was Lena Baker, who was electrocuted in 
1945. Baker, who was black, was executed for killing a white mill operator in 
Cuthbert. She had been hired to care for him after he broke his leg. She argued 
he tried to sexually assault her and has since been pardoned.

[sources: The Death Penalty Information Center and the NACCP Legal Defense 
Fund]

(source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)






ARKANSAS----impending executions

Neither of 2 to die apply for clemency


Neither of the 2 death-row inmates scheduled for execution in October requested 
clemency before the Monday deadline, said state Parole Board administrator 
Solomon Graves.

Bruce Ward and Don Davis -- who are set to die by lethal injection on Oct. 21 
-- had until noon Monday to ask the state Parole Board to recommend to Gov. Asa 
Hutchinson that they be granted clemency, which can be either total forgiveness 
for the crime or a reduction of the criminal penalty.

Under the state's protocol, the state Parole Board must first review the 
application and then make a recommendation to the governor to either approve or 
deny the request. The governor is not obligated to follow the board's decision.

Both men, as well as 6 other death-row inmates, have exhausted all standard 
appeals. The execution dates have been scheduled for all 8 men over the next 4 
months.

A lawsuit filed in June in Pulaski County Circuit Court by all eight men asking 
the prison system to disclose the source of its execution drugs is still 
pending. Jeff Rosenzweig, an attorney for all 8 men, has said that he will ask 
the court to delay the executions.

Ward, 58, is also seeking a review by the U.S. Supreme Court after a February 
Arkansas Supreme Court ruling that affirmed his death sentence. A case 
conference is set for Sept. 28.

Ward was convicted of strangling to death 18-year-old Little Rock 
convenience-store clerk Rebecca Doss on Aug. 11, 1989.

Davis, 52, was sentenced to death for the Oct. 12, 1990, execution-style 
shooting of 62-year-old Jane Daniels during a robbery in Rogers.

(source: arkansasonline.com)






OKLAHOMA----impending execution

Glossip's Lawyers File New Documents To Court ---- Unless the court intervenes 
again, Richard Glossip is scheduled to be executed in Oklahoma in just over a 
week.


Attorneys for death row inmate Richard Glossip, who got a temporary stay of 
execution 3 hours before he was due to be put to death, have filed new court 
documents supporting his claim of innocence.

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a halt to his execution last 
Wednesday so judges had time to examine new witness statements and other 
details.

One of his attorneys, Don Knight, told Sky News that they are also interested 
in a document submitted by the state in response to their appeal.

The psychiatric evaluation of Justin Sneed, who beat motel owner Barry Van 
Treese to death with a baseball bat, has never been made public before.

The report was written in July 1997, almost 6 months after the crime. It was 
written by Edith King, Oklahoma County's director of forensic psychology, to 
determine whether Sneed was competent to stand trial.

Sneed told her that he understood he was facing a murder charge, but said it 
was in connection with a burglary.

He makes no mention of Richard Glossip, even though he later testified that 
Glossip had paid him to carry out the murder.

It was this testimony which led to Glossip being convicted and sentenced to 
death while Sneed was given life in prison.

The author of the report says Sneed told her he would prefer a death sentence 
to life in prison because it would be depressing to spend his life behind bars 
with "no sunlight and no air".

The report says he admitted to drug use in the past and was prescribed lithium 
while in prison.

Glossip's new lawyers have tried to portray Sneed as an addict who stole to 
feed his habit.

The execution of Richard Glossip is still scheduled to go ahead on 30 September 
unless the court intervenes again.

(source: Sky news)