[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----MO., ORE.

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 27

MISSOURI----impending execution

Autism undermines scheduled execution


I am concerned that Missouri plans to execute Kimber Edwards on Oct. 6 for a 
crime for which he might well be innocent. It is all the more disconcerting 
that Edwards has also been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, an autism spectrum 
disorder.

Edwards was convicted of hiring Orthell Wilson to kill his ex-wife, Kimberly 
Cantrell. Wilson has consistently acknowledged he fatally shot her on Aug. 22, 
2000, in University City. I mourn her death and all who have been murdered. 
Regarding accountability, nobody hired him - Wilson acted alone, he stressed in 
a May 2015 affidavit, undermining the state???s strongest pieces of evidence 
theoretically implicating Edwards.

"I was coerced by the police to implicate Edwards in a murder for hire by the 
threat of the death penalty," Wilson said. In exchange for his cooperation, he 
was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Soon after Edwards' 
conviction, Wilson said he lied to gain favorable treatment from the court.

The painful reality is that, while officials almost always get it right, 
mistakes are made, even with something as irreversible as capital punishment. 
At least 156 people who were convicted and sentenced to death across the 
country have been exonerated since 1974, according to the Death Penalty 
Information Center. That includes four men in Missouri. On average, for every 8 
U.S. executions, one death-sentenced individual has been exonerated.

There is no physical evidence that Edwards was involved in the murder. The case 
against him was also largely based on incriminating statements he made under 
pressure. At trial and since, Edwards has insisted he wasn't involved in his 
ex-wife's death. He had no prior criminal record.

A day after finding Cantrell's body, police officers brought Edwards to their 
station for questioning. They assumed state custody of a daughter he and 
Cantrell co-parented and also brought in Jada, his wife at the time, and their 
2 children. A few days later, they brought him back and threatened to bring his 
wife and kids in once more. Eager to avoid retraumatizing them, he "confessed" 
to hiring a man named "Michael," then said he hired Wilson.

False confessions are surprisingly common. More than 25 percent of the few 
hundred people nationwide who were wrongly convicted of crimes but later 
exonerated by DNA evidence made false confessions or self-incriminating 
statements, according to the Innocence Project.

Jurors, along with his trial attorneys and law-enforcement officers, were also 
sadly unaware that Edwards has Asperger disorder. Physician William Logan 
documented that conclusion years after Edwards' conviction in a 2007 
psychiatric report. He said there was evidence of autism spectrum disorder 
beginning early in Edward's childhood, when he was described as "lost in his 
own world" and engaging in "repetitive behavior" such as biting his tongue.

Through my 30 years as an educator, consultant and, internationally, as a 
presenter on autism, I have learned what other researchers know - that 
individuals with autism are especially susceptible to being pressured. They 
often do not understand the consequences when they agree to requests to escape 
from a difficult situation. They might make statements that are at odds with 
the truth. Many individuals with such disabilities have learned that, when 
unsure, it is best to say "yes" to get along.

Frequently, they do not accurately read social cues such as voice tone, body 
language and facial expression, and their own facial expressions might vary 
from what others think would be typical for a person in an emotional situation. 
Kimber Edwards' expression or lack of expression at his ex-wife's death, as 
Logan reported, was introduced at the trial and used as damaging 
characterization to the jury, when it is common in autism to feel emotion but 
not show it in the typical manner.

As an adult, Edwards continues his autism characteristics with over-focused 
interests on certain types of objects and the need for inflexible routines, 
according to Logan's report. He has made his predicament more difficult through 
an inability to understand the big picture of his conviction and to effectively 
work with others on his legal defense.

There certainly is enough doubt about Edwards' involvement in this crime - in 
addition to his previously undetected Asperger disorder - to warrant stopping 
the execution and taking a deeper look at this case. Please join us in asking 
Gov. Jay Nixon to stop this execution.

Contact Gov. Nixon's office by calling 573-751-3222 or writing via 
www.governor.mo.gov. Please urge him to stay Edwards' execution and convene a 
board of inquiry to reconsider the case.

Also, please contact Attorney General Chris Koster's Office, calling 
573-751-3321 or writing via attorney.general at ago.mo.gov. Urge him to desist in 
efforts to have Edwards be executed.

If there's no intervention, consider joining a vigil for life remembering all 
murder victims and opposing his execution from noon to 1 p.m. Oct. 6 in the 
Capitol outside the governor's office, Room 216. Later that day in Columbia, 
concerned citizens will gather from 5 to 6 p.m. outside the Boone County 
Courthouse at Walnut and Eighth streets.

(source: Julie A. Donnelly was an autism consultant with Columbia Public 
Schools for more than 20 years and recently retired from being associate 
director of Missouri's state educational autism agency, Project 
ACCESS----Columbia Daily Tribune)






OREGON:

Clear up death penalty debate by ending it


Debating the death penalty has become a lot more than an academic exercise 
around here with the U.S. Supreme Court and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown seemingly in 
legal limbo on the matter. Where are those 3x5 debate notecards I made in 
college listing arguments in opposition to capital punishment?

In a recent story by The Oregonian's Denis Theriault, we were reminded that 
eight days after taking office, Brown said she would convene a group of 
advisers devoted to puzzling through death penalty law and practices in Oregon. 
While seeking direction, she'd extend the moratorium former Gov. John Kitzhaber 
made on executions.

The death penalty has been carried out in Oregon just twice in more than 50 
years. Both happened on Kitzhaber's watch during his first administration. In a 
Nov. 22, 2011 statement about his moratorium, Kitzhaber wrote about being torn 
between his personal convictions about capital punishment and his oath to 
uphold the Oregon constitution. Of the executions, he said, "They were the most 
agonizing and difficult decisions I have made as Governor and I have revisited 
and questioned them over and over again during the past 14 years. I do not 
believe that those executions made us safer; and certainly they did not make us 
nobler as a society." I was proud of him for that statement and sympathized 
with the situation he faced.

Brown, too, has expressed personal opposition to the death penalty and is now 
stuck weighing her personal feelings with her governor job. Kristen Grainger, 
Brown's spokeswoman, told me, "These are very, very difficult issues. They test 
every leader's ability to balance a personal view with one's official role," 
and, given the Supreme Court's recent happenings, "Could Oregon even go forward 
with execution?"

That says to me Brown is happy to take advantage of the national limbo going 
on, because she still has no idea what to do. In February, then-Attorney 
General Eric Holder asked states to hold off on executions pending a Supreme 
Court decision on the use of lethal injection drugs in Oklahoma. That ruling 
hit in June and use of the drug was upheld, but justices Stephen Breyer and 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined in a dissenting opinion that called for a full 
re-examination of capital punishment. That hasn't yet happened and isn't 
expected to in the court's current session.

It's the 7nth month of a Brown reign. She's been extra busy having been thrust 
into office when Kitzhaber reluctantly resigned, and her office admits she is 
just starting the process on this issue. It's likely that any decision about 
reinstating the death penalty won't be made by Brown until after the 2016 
general election. That's a little lame, since the death penalty is one of the 
passion issues that can determine who some voters support. Aside from the 
politics, I'd like to see Brown use her convictions and leadership role to help 
drive Oregon law to a better place.

In college, my 3x5 cards were mostly about the heavy taxpayer cost associated 
with the death penalty (compelling); the inevitability that governments, at 
some point, will be responsible for executing an innocent individual (extra 
compelling), and the argument that our justice system needs to be more about 
rehabilitation and safety than punishment, even when rehabilitation fails. And 
that lends itself to continued assessment of criminals over time, not killing 
them.

The most compelling argument I'm drawn to today wasn't even on one of those 
notecards; it's that killers shouldn't get to lower our standards, alter who we 
are or have us -- or a governor -- revisiting, questioning and reliving 
personal conflict.

Supreme Court rulings about what's cruel and unusual and governor deliberations 
about moratoriums are happening as South Carolina is seeking the death penalty 
for Dylann Roof, the man who allegedly killed nine people during a Bible study 
in Charleston, South Carolina. Roof's crimes are not only offering fodder for 
the debate, they're making anti-death penalty people like me squirm a bit. If 
the death penalty is utilized, Roof is an awesome candidate for the punishment. 
Does this man "deserve" death as headlines say? Arguably and comparatively so. 
Do we deserve to be lowered to killing for any reason other than self defense? 
Absolutely not.

I admire Brown for convening advisers and best navigating her role. She also 
shouldn't be afraid to use her bully pulpit on this one. It's worth it.

I spent some time in my 20s visiting inmates at the Washington Corrections 
Center for Women. That's where I learned criminals were sometimes only 1 bad 
choice different than me and that rehabilitation is often possible. Jails are 
full of reasons to be against the death penalty. And they're full of examples 
of why we should be thankful that we're capable of making better choices.

(source: Opinion; Elizabeth Hovde writes Sunday columns for The 
Oregonian/OregonLive)

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

Oregon maintains only the illusion of a death penalty


For whatever reason, Pope Francis, in his historic visit to the United States, 
did not make it to Portland. Maybe nobody told him about our South American 
food carts, or someone was worried about the Popemobile getting bogged down in 
a sea of bicycles.

But as he spoke to Congress Thursday, there were passages that seemed to speak 
directly to us.

When he spoke about immigrants - "We, the people of this continent, are not 
fearful of foreigners, because most of us were once foreigners... When the 
stranger in our midst appeals to us, we must not repeat the sins and the errors 
of the past" - Francis might have found a more responsive audience here than 
among most of the congressmen and senators he was addressing.

When he pleaded for steps "to avert the most serious effects of the 
environmental deterioration caused by human activity," he may not have made 
much progress among senators who consider global warming "the greatest hoax" in 
human history. But Francis might have gotten a closer hearing in a place that, 
once again, has just had the hottest summer in its history, on a coast in the 
midst of a near-biblical drought, with countless counties declared disaster 
zones.

Francis may have spoken most topically to Oregon when he declared his 
determination "from the beginning of my ministry, to advocate at different 
levels for the global abolition of the death penalty. ... Recently, my brother 
bishops here in the United States renewed their call for the abolition of the 
death penalty. Not only do I support them, but I also offer encouragement to 
all those who are convinced that a just and necessary punishment must never 
exclude the dimension of hope and the goal of rehabilitation."

Rehabilitation of those on Oregon's death row may seem a distant and 
implausible vision. But Francis was speaking in the same week as yet another 
development in Oregon's continuing inability to find an acceptable way of 
dealing with the death penalty, leading to a deepening discomfort with having 
one at all.

Several years ago, former Gov. John Kitzhaber - who during the 1990s became the 
only Oregon governor in the last 50 years to sign execution orders, although 
our death row has become a high-density residential area - announced that as 
long as he was governor, there would be no more executions. Some people 
complained that Kitzhaber hadn't said this when running for the job in 2010, 
but his clear opposition to capital punishment didn't keep him from being 
re-elected in 2014. (What kept him from still being governor, of course, was 
something else entirely.)

When Secretary of State Kate Brown succeeded Kitzhaber in February, she said 
she would continue the execution moratorium while setting up a process to 
assess it. As The Oregon/OregonLive's Denis C. Theriault reported this month, 
not much has happened to move things along. Brown's spokeswoman Kristen 
Grainger did tell Theriault that Brown has directed her office attorney, Ben 
Souede, to seek "legal advice about the practical aspects related to capital 
punishment in Oregon," although there might not be any actual recommendations 
until deep into next year, when Brown runs for re-election.

The problems with Oregon's death penalty have long been clear: The highly 
expensive legal process takes decades; Oregon has more than 30 inmates on death 
row, but no executions actually expected for years; the only executions 
scheduled in the decades since the death penalty was restored were at the 
request of the convict, not exactly a testament to its deterrent power.

This year, a similar situation caused the Legislature in deep-red Nebraska to 
abolish its death penalty and then override the governor's veto. Last month, 
the Connecticut Supreme Court, ruling that the state's recent abolition 
extended to all its death row inmates, quoted Ninth Circuit appeals judge Alex 
Kozinski: "[W]e have little more than an illusion of a death penalty in this 
country. ... Whatever purposes the death penalty is said to serve - deterrence, 
retribution, assuaging the pain suffered by victims' families - these purposes 
are not served by the system as it now operates."

>From either the pope's principles or Kozinski's reality, it's hard to argue for 
Oregon to continue pretending to have capital punishment.

"A good political leader is one who, with the interests of all in mind, seizes 
the moment in a spirit of openness and pragmatism," Francis said Thursday. "A 
good political leader always opts to initiate processes rather than possessing 
spaces."

On a number of issues, this advice might have arrived too late for this 
Congress.

But it might still work in Salem.

(source: Opinion; David Sarasohn's column appears on Wednesdays and 
Sundays----The Oregonian)