[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., OHIO, MO., OKLA., NEB.

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 25




TEXAS:

Texas Is Making Its Own Execution Drugs, Oklahoma Inmate Alleges


Many death penalty states have struggled to obtain a lethal injection drug that 
Texas has consistently been able to procure. In a filing Thursday in Oklahoma, 
lawyers provided evidence that Texas sold pentobarbital to Virginia in August.

The state of Texas is making its own execution drugs and has sold them to at 
least 1 other death penalty state, an inmate facing execution in Oklahoma 
alleges in a court filing Thursday. His attorneys point to documents that show 
the Texas Department of Criminal Justice sold pentobarbital to Virginia in late 
August.

Pentobarbital is a sedative that many death penalty states, including Oklahoma, 
have claimed is impossible for them to get their hands on. As a result, some 
states have turned to midazolam, a drug that critics argue is significantly 
less effective. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of midazolam in 
executions this June.

The records submitted as part of the new filing show that Virginia received 150 
milligrams of the drug. Under the heading "Name of Supplier," the Texas 
Department of Criminal Justice is listed.

The labels do not identify the pharmacy that prepared the drug. However, the 
lawyers for the Oklahoma inmate state that the labels were created by the Texas 
Department of Criminal Justice, which they also allege "is compounding or 
producing pentobarbital within its department for use in executions."

On Friday, Texas confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it sent the execution drugs to 
Virginia. A spokesman said it was to repay Virginia for having given Texas 
drugs in the past.

"In 2013, the Virginia Department of Corrections gave the Texas Department of 
Criminal Justice pentobarbital to use as a back up drug in an execution," 
spokesman Jason Clark said. "Virginia's drugs were not used."

"The agency earlier this year was approached by officials in Virginia and we 
gave them 3 vials of pentobarbital that [were] legally purchased from a 
pharmacy. The agency has not provided compounded drugs to any other state. 
Texas law prohibits the TDCJ from disclosing the identity of the supplier of 
lethal injection drugs."

In a statement, the Virginia Department of Corrections said it intended to use 
the pentobarbital next week.

"The Department did recently obtain pentobarbital from the Texas Department of 
Criminal Justice," spokesperson Lisa Kinney said. "That pentobarbital is 
scheduled to be used in the Oct. 1 execution of Alfredo Prieto. There was no 
payment involved."

Kinney added that questions about who made the drug would have to be directed 
to Texas.

The lawyers raise these issues to make the argument that Oklahoma could avoid 
the use of the controversial midazolam drug in its executions. It could do so, 
they argue, by purchasing pentobarbital from Texas, like Virginia, or by 
"compounding or producing pentobarbital in the same manner as does TDCJ."

States have struggled to obtain execution drugs for years after makers enacted 
more stringent guidelines to keep them away from states that would use them for 
executions.

The idea of a state-run lab making its own death penalty drugs is something 
Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster raised last year, although many wondered 
how it could be done. Missouri, like Texas, has had no trouble obtaining 
pentobarbital.

(source:BuzzFeedNews.com)

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

Texas shared its execution drugs with Virginia


Texas prison officials acknowledged on Friday that they have supplied at least 
1 other state with execution drugs - but the original source of those drugs 
remains shrouded in secrecy.

The disclosure came the day after a death-row inmate claimed in court papers 
that Texas is now making its own lethal injection drugs and had shared vials of 
them with Virginia.

In a statement, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice confirmed it gave 
three vials of pentobarbital to the Virginia Department of Corrections.

"The drugs have been tested for purity and will expire in April 2016," the 
statement said.

"State law prohibits the agency from disclosing the identity of the supplier of 
lethal injection drugs," it said.

Several death penalty states have passed laws to keep the source of their 
execution chemicals confidential to protect pharmacies that mix them from 
negative publicity and protests.

Defense lawyers say the secrecy rules also prevent inmates from investigating 
whether the drugs that will be used to kill them are unadulterated.

States across the nation have struggled to obtain execution drugs because 
pharmaceutical companies have been pressured to stop selling them to prisons 
for lethal injections.

Virginia has not executed anyone since the 2013 electrocution of Robert 
Gleason. Texas, on the other hand, has put to death 10 prisoners this year.

The details of its shipment to Virginia were first revealed in a court filing 
by Richard Glossip, who is set to be executed in Oklahoma on Sept. 30 barring 
another last-minute reprieve.

Oklahoma uses a drug called midazolam, which inmates say does not protect them 
from an excruciating death. Glossip argued that the state could use 
pentobarbital since Texas appears to be able to supply it.

It's not clear if the vials sent to Virginia were in fact mixed in-house by 
Texas or by an outside compounding pharmacy.

(source: WSLS news)






PENNSYLVANIA:

Prosecutors seek death penalty for Lancaster County killings----Police: Suspect 
killed victims to stop them from testifying in assault case


Lancaster County prosecutors announced that they would seek the death penalty 
in a double-murder case that shocked the southern end of the county.

Leeton Thomas is charged with breaking into Lisa Scheetz home near Quarryville 
in June and killing her as well as her 16-year-old daughter.

Scheetz's 15-year-old daughter was critically injured in the attack.

Police say Thomas killed the victims to stop them from testifying in a previous 
sexual assault case.

(source: WGAL news)






GEORGIA----impending female execution

Hope Dies Last: A Word on Kelly Gissendaner


On September 21, 2011, I wrote an Open Letter to the State of Georgia about the 
state-authorized death of one of their sons, Troy Davis.

The blog went viral in a matter of 24 hours, finding its way on a host of news 
sites and it would be the first time that I would enter into public discourse 
about social justice and the death penalty.

4 years later, I'd find myself penning yet another article about a daughter of 
the State of Georgia, Kelly Gissendaner, a woman whose original execution was 
stayed because the drugs the State planned to use to kill her were cloudy and 
not fit for use. Recently, we learned that Kelly would be executed by the State 
of Georgia on the 29th of this month, after 6 long months of appeals and public 
outcry for her stay of execution.

Kelly's story touched a personal place for me; she was more than just an inmate 
at the Lee Arrendale State Prison, she was a friend, classmate, and student of 
people I consider friends and colleges at the Candler School of Theology at 
Emory University. Her graduation from Candler's prison-based theological 
certificate program was a transformation of a unique kind; no longer was she a 
woman whose checkered past overshadowed the possibility of a bright future. She 
is a woman who has overcome them, proving that grace is, in fact, sufficient.

As friends and supporters of Kelly prepare for what some can consider her 
imminent death, as her children, teachers, and friends like Nikki Roberts 
continue to fight against the State-sanctioned killing of Kelly, a fight that 
Nikki says will go on until the very last minute...

...as we remember brothers like Troy Davis, who on this day, took his last 
breath at a Jackson, Georgia state prison, with SWAT teams, sirens, news crews, 
and a faithful couple of thousands shouting his name in solidarity, kneeling 
with systematic violence to our face and somber Georgia breezes to our back...

...we remember what it means to die a good death, to die leaving a mark on a 
world that forces us to face our own idiosyncrasies and short comings.

A life that requires others to consider our otherness, our humanness, our lives 
that One thought was worth saving, even when we're so deep in our own mess that 
we couldn't see that we needed saving.

Right now, Kelly is still alive. Heart beating, and in my mind, feet pacing. 
She is symbolic of what it means to see redemption in the flesh, to see the 
unfathomable possibility of hope in a dark place. She embodies hope for us all, 
hope for the chance to get it right, to remember our own dark places, the 
places that most people don't see -- or get to judge.

September 29, 2015 may come and that just might be Kelly's last day on earth. 
Maybe.

But one thing we do know for sure, that the last thing to ever die, the last 
remnant that remains after the last breath has escaped its fleshly cage, is 
hope. Hope is always the last thing to die -- if it ever does.

Hope lives on in those who find solace that a life worth living is one that was 
worth fighting for -- even until the end.

(source: Alisha L. Gordon, M.Div. is a well sought-after writer, religious 
educator, and scholar activist; Huffington Post)






FLORIDA----female faces death penalty

Prosecutors to seek death penalty for girl in machete murder


Florida prosecutors said Thursday they will seek the death penalty for a 
teenage girl accused of taking part in the murder of a teen who was attacked 
with a machete, reports CBS Miami.

Desiray Strickland, 18, has been indicted for 1st degree murder in the June 
death of 17-year-old Jose Guardado, along with 5 other suspects: 23-year old 
Joseph Cabrera, 20-year-old Kaheem Arbelo, 18-year-old Jonathan Lucas and 
19-year-old Christian Colon. On Thursday, Strickland's attorney entered a plea 
of not guilty and said they would go to trial.

The suspects and victim were students at Homestead Job Corps, a live-in school 
and vocational training program for at-risk students run by the U.S. Department 
of Labor.

Prosecutors say the group spent 2 weeks planning Guardado's death, including 
digging a shallow grave in the woods near their school days before he was 
killed.

On Sunday, June 28th, they allegedly lured Guardado into the woods, where 
police say Arbelo ambushed him with a machete as the others watched. As 
Guardado lay dying on the ground, the group allegedly ordered him to crawl into 
the grave.

Police say when Guardado made 1 last attempt to fight back, Arbelo struck him 
repeatedly until his face caved in.

They then allegedly buried him and, to hide evidence, burned Guardado's 
belongings as well as their own clothes, according to police.

Investigators say all but Strickland and Arbelo went back to campus, but the 
duo allegedly stayed behind to have sex near where the murder took place.

Guardado's remains were discovered four days later by family members who were 
searching for him.

(source: CBS news)






OHIO:

Father of victim calls for death penalty


Bishop Howard should die for allegedly killing 2 men during a brutal crime 
spree this summer, the father of 1 of the victims said Thursday after 
aggravated murder charges carrying a possible death sentence were handed down 
against the 18-year-old.

"The kid's a butcher with no regard for human life. He deserves the death 
penalty," Tom Zaffer, the father of Eric Zaffer, whom Howard is accused of 
shooting on Aug. 4 before setting his Brighton Township home on fire.

Howard had already been facing charges for killing Zaffer, but the new round of 
charges also accuses him of wielding the baseball bat used in the July beating 
death of Farris Jones inside his Carlisle Township home.

Lorain County Prosecutor Dennis Will said the 2 crimes were connected and that 
Howard and 3 other people, including a 14-year-old boy facing a murder charge 
in Jones' death, were engaged in a pattern of criminal activity along with 
Trevor White and Ryan Crews.

Defense attorney Dan Wightman, who represents Howard, said he hadn't seen the 
new charges against his client and couldn't comment on the details of the case. 
He said it was unfortunate the death penalty was now on the table in the case.

"It really is tragic in so many ways because this kid is so young. He's 18," 
Wightman said.

Prosecutors contend that Howard and the 14-year-old boy broke into Jones' 
Midvale Drive home, attacked him and ransacked the home.

Gloria Pasters, a longtime friend of Jones who found his body on July 17, said 
the beating was so bad that she initially thought Jones had been shot in the 
head.

During the 911 call she told a dispatcher that there were broken eggs on her 
friend's head as well.

Will declined to discuss the details of the case.

"It's an ugly matter," he said.

(source: The Chronicle-Telegram)


MISSOURI:

Why one reporter is suing Missouri over death-penalty secrecy - again


Reporter Chris McDaniel, formerly of St. Louis Public Radio, took a job with 
BuzzFeed and moved to New York City earlier this year. But he hasn't let go of 
the story - and the related legal battle - that occupied much of his time in 
Missouri.

In May 2014, while still with SLPR, McDaniel filed a lawsuit, along with the 
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the ACLU of Missouri, alleging 
that the Missouri Department of Corrections had violated the state's 
open-records law by refusing to release information about the source of drugs 
used in lethal injections. As major pharmaceutical companies have increasingly 
refused to allow their drugs to be used for capital punishment, a number of 
states have turned to lightly regulated compounding pharmacies - and have kept 
the identities of those pharmacies secret even as the compounded drugs have in 
some cases been linked to botched executions. McDaniel's suit was part of a 
broader effort by media organizations and attorneys for death-row inmates to 
pierce that shroud of secrecy.

14 months later, after McDaniel had left the state and started his new job as 
BuzzFeed's national "death-penalty reporter," the Cole County Circuit Court of 
Missouri finally ruled in his favor. State law did not authorize the DOC to 
designate a compounding pharmacy a member of the "execution team" and thus keep 
its identity confidential, ruled circuit judge Jon E. Beetem.

It seemed a clear win, but the gears of justice grind slowly. To date, the DOC 
still has not been compelled to release the requested information, as the 
state's attorneys continue to dispute which documents should be subject to the 
ruling, what redactions are permitted, and other issues. Even once the court 
resolves these questions, which could happen soon, that will only start the 
clock for the expected appeal, which could drag the process out for months 
more. Meanwhile, Missouri continues to execute prisoners at a record clip, 
using drugs obtained from secret sources.

And McDaniel, for his part, has decided to sue again.

A few days after the July ruling, McDaniel decided to put it to the test. 
Knowing that the documents requested in his original case were voluminous, he 
made a smaller request, for copies of agreements between the state and any 
suppliers of lethal-injection drugs and testing labs - amounting to "just 3 
pages of records," he told me in an email. DOC officials supplied the records - 
but with the names of contractors redacted, just as they had been for all such 
requests ever since McDaniel and others began to pursue the story back in 2013.

As a result, McDaniel announced earlier this month that he's going back to 
court, this time with the help of BuzzFeed's own legal team and the Missouri 
Press Association's lead counsel, Jean Maneke.

"I have to say I was pretty surprised when they decided to still withhold the 
records after the judge???s clear ruling," McDaniel says. "BuzzFeed's attorneys 
reached out to the DOC to see what was going on and how they thought they could 
do that in light of the judge's ruling. They were clear that they weren't going 
to budge. So at that point, after the state disregarded the judge's ruling, we 
had to sue."

A spokeswoman in the Missouri attorney general's office, which represents state 
agencies, declined to comment for this story as it concerned pending 
litigation.

The new suit is only the latest chapter in a saga that began in October 2013, 
when the Department of Corrections expanded its interpretation of the state's 
"black hood" statute - designed to protect the anonymity of its execution team 
- to cover the suppliers of its execution drugs as well. The state's law is so 
broad that even people outside government are barred from sharing information 
about drug suppliers: Missouri's ACLU chapter was forced to take down 
information on its website about suppliers that it had already obtained; the 
organization subsequently sued the state, claiming its First Amendment rights 
were being violated. A few months later McDaniel and Veronique LaCapra, his 
colleague at St. Louis Public Radio, as well as reporter Steve Vockrodt at the 
Kansas City alt-weekly The Pitch, decided separately to defy the state's new 
interpretation of the "black hood" law and publish the name of what was then 
the likely supplier - which, it turned out, was an Oklahoma pharmacy that was 
not even licensed to practice in the state.

In February 2014, however, the state announced that it had found another, 
secret vendor, and would resume its brisk pace of executions - which has 
continued to this day. In April, the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in 
Oklahoma, which happened under a similarly secretive injection protocol, 
brought a new level of national attention to the issue. The McDaniel/RCFP suit, 
and a similar lawsuit filed by The Associated Press, The Guardian, and t3 
Missouri papers - the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Kansas City Star, and the 
Springfield News-Leader - followed soon after. (The cases were consolidated and 
argued alongside each other. The AP/Guardian suit raised a First Amendment 
claim against the state, but the judge didn't address it because he ruled in 
favor of the plaintiffs on the narrower Sunshine Law argument.)

Through this tumultuous period, McDaniel obsessively pursued the story in 
Missouri, and he has continued to pursue it since joining BuzzFeed.

"I think a large part of why I've stuck with it is because of that secrecy," 
McDaniel says. "States rarely exert this much effort into keeping something 
secret if they're proud of what they're doing, and that turned out to be the 
case when Veronique and I broke the story that the source wasn't licensed to 
sell. I'm very interested to see what else it is that they've been trying to 
keep secret."

But no one knows just how soon this will happen. While the state attorney 
general, Democrat Chris Koster, a leading candidate for governor next year, has 
expressed discomfort with the secretive execution protocol, his office 
continues to defend it vigorously against the media lawsuits - as well as those 
by the death-row inmates themselves, whose lawyers argue they have the right to 
know about the drugs that will be used to terminate them. So even once the 
circuit court resolves disputes in the Reporters Committee and AP/Guardian 
cases over attorneys' fees and precisely which documents the state is 
withholding, an appeal by the state appears likely.

Meanwhile, there's no telling when McDaniel's new lawsuit will be on the 
docket. And even the ACLU of Missouri's separate First Amendment case, filed 
all the way back in 2013, remains stuck in legal limbo.

"That's unfortunately the nature of litigation," says Katie Townsend, 
litigation director for the Reporters Committee. "When you force requesters 
into litigation, it ends up creating so much delay. When the requesters are 
members of the media and you are seeking information vital to the public, it's 
a problem."

Those delays are consequential in a state where the pace of executions has been 
set at nearly 1 per month since October 2013, precisely the point when the DOC 
first took steps to shield its drug suppliers. The next lethal injection is set 
for Oct. 6, with another to follow on Nov. 3.

"We're now nearing 2 years of the state continuing to violate open-records 
law," McDaniel says. "That's a really long time for the state to break the law. 
During that time, Missouri has carried out a record number of executions with 
little oversight and largely cleared out its death row."

(source: Columbia Journalism Review)






OKLAHOMA:

Oklahoma's AG tells court Cole execution should move forward


Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt is urging a state appeals court to 
reject a death row inmate's request to halt his execution, arguing that defense 
attorneys have failed to show the inmate is insane and ineligible for the death 
penalty.

Legal papers filed by Pruitt's office urge the Oklahoma Court of Criminal 
Appeals to deny a stay of execution for Benjamin Cole, 50, of Claremore.

Cole was convicted of 1st-degree murder in Rogers County and is scheduled to be 
executed by lethal injection on Oct. 7 for the 2002 killing of his 9-month-old 
daughter, Brianna Cole, whose spine was broken and her aorta torn after she was 
forcefully bent backward.

Pruitt filed the legal papers on Wednesday, and the appeals court did not 
immediately hand down a ruling.

Defense attorneys are appealing a ruling by Pittsburg County District Judge 
James Bland last month that rejected claims Cole is insane and that executing 
him is unconstitutional.

Attorneys for Cole asked the appeals court last week to halt his execution, 
claiming he is mentally ill, suffers from schizophrenia and brain damage and is 
incompetent to be executed under the U.S. Constitution. Cole is also 
challenging plans to use the sedative midazolam as the 1st in Oklahoma's 3-drug 
lethal injection protocol instead of an ultrashort-acting barbiturate defense 
attorneys claim is called for in state law.

Cole's attorneys claim Anita Trammell, warden at the Oklahoma State 
Penitentiary in McAlester where Cole is scheduled to be executed, has been on 
notice since January "that there is good reason to believe Mr. Cole is insane 
for purposes of execution."

"Substantial evidence has been presented to the warden documenting an 
abnormality in Mr. Cole's brain in a specific region associated with 
schizophrenia," the defense motion states. "This evidence presents 'good 
reason' to believe Mr. Cole is insane."

Defense attorneys allege that the warden is violating a state law that requires 
her to notify the local district attorney when an inmate has become insane.

In his response, the attorney general maintains Cole's claims of insanity were 
rejected when Bland denied his request for a stay of execution following a 
hearing on Aug. 28. During the hearing, Trammell testified she has been able to 
converse with Cole on numerous occasions and that he understands why he's being 
executed.

"Petitioner has made it clear that he understands he is being executed because 
he murdered his daughter," Pruitt's office states in its legal response. 
Trammell is under no legal duty to refer the case to local prosecutors, it 
says.

(source: Associated Press)






NEBRASKA:

Ricketts Says Nebraskans Should Get to Vote on Death Penalty Issue


Secretary of State John Gale says enough signatures have been verified to put 
the issue of the death penalty on the ballot next year, but complaints and 
lawsuits could potentially get in the way.

At least one group is protesting the language chosen for the ballot. And in the 
last week a lawsuit has challenged the petition's validity, saying Gov. Pete 
Ricketts should have been named as an official sponsor on the petition, but 
wasn't.

Rickets says the discussion should be up to voters.

"I think that capital punishment is something that we need for good public 
policy to help protect our law enforcement officers. They're the ones who are 
putting themselves at risk everyday. We need to help protect the people who 
protect us," said Ricketts. "And I believe this was something the Legislature 
was out of touch with the people of Nebraska when they repealed it. And the 
people of Nebraska should have a chance to vote on it."

(source: nebraska.tv)