[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----VA., GA., OHIO, ILL., OKLA., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 28



VIRGINIA----impending execution//foreign national

Virginia Plans For Thursday Execution


The Commonwealth is scheduled to execute a man this week at its prison near 
Jarratt. 49-year-old Alfredo Rolando Prieto is slated to die at 9 p.m. Thursday 
at the Greensville Correctional Center.

Prieto has been sentenced to die for the rape and murder of 22-year-old Rachel 
Raver and the murder of 22-year-old Warren Fulton, III. Those crimes were 
committed in Fairfax County. Raver and Fulton were last seen alive in December 
1988. He's also been accused of the death of 24-year-old Veronica "Tina" 
Jefferson.

Texas prison officials are helping Virginia carry out Prieto's scheduled 
Thursday night execution by providing the lethal drug pentobarbital. Prieto was 
born and spent part of his childhood in El Salvador.

(source: WINA news)






GEORGIA----impending execution


Lawyers seek execution delay for woman on Georgia death row


1 day before she's set to be executed, lawyers for the only woman on Georgia's 
death row will appear in court to argue that her life should be spared.

The hearing is set for Monday morning in a federal courtroom in Atlanta. 
Attorneys for 47-year-old Kelly Renee Gissendaner want Tuesday night's planned 
execution halted over concerns about lethal injection drugs the state plans to 
use.

If the execution happens, Gissendaner will be the 1st woman executed by the 
state in 70 years.

Gissendaner was convicted of murder in the February 1997 slaying of her 
husband, Douglas Gissendaner. Prosecutors said she conspired with her lover, 
Gregory Owen, who stabbed Douglas Gissendaner to death. Owen, who took a plea 
deal and testified against Gissendaner, is serving a prison sentence.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Judge To Hear Emergency Stay Request For Ga. Death Row Inmate


A federal judge is set to hear an emergency request to stay the execution of 
Georgia death row inmate Kelly Gissendaner.

Gissendaner's attorneys will ask federal Judge Robert Thrash to reconsider 
their Eighth Amendment argument. They contend the state has violated 
Gissendaner's constitutional rights by subjecting her to cruel and unusual 
punishment with delays and postponements of her execution.

In August, Judge Thrash heard and rejected that argument.

WABE Legal Analyst Page Pate says it's unlikely the judge will come to the same 
decision.

"I don't anticipate this new motion to really stop the execution," Pate says. 
"I think the judge will probably deny that motion because he's already 
considered the claims in the lawsuit and found them to be without merit."

Gissendaner, who was sentenced for conspiring to kill her husband, is scheduled 
to be put to death Tuesday.

Her execution has been postponed twice, first because of weather, and then 
because of problems with the lethal injection drug.

(source: WABE news)

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

Georgia's secret lethal injection protocol wasn't always so mysterious


Georgia plans to execute Kelly Gissendaner Tuesday, but many details of the 
lethal injection are top secret. Under a 2013 state law, Georgia corrections 
officials don't have to publicly identify the manufacturer of the execution 
drug, the compounding pharmacist who mixes the solution, or much of anything 
else.

Georgia's lethal injections weren't always so secretive. In 2007, the state's 
chief medical examiner testified in open court about all the drugs then used 
for executions, the dosages and the effects on the condemned prisoner.

Dr. Kris Sperry was an expert witness for the state of Florida when a death row 
inmate challenged that state's execution protocols after the botched lethal 
injection of another prisoner.

When Florida executed Angel Diaz in December 2006, the procedure took a 
remarkable 34 minutes. The intravenous line that was supposed to feed the drugs 
into Diaz's bloodstream apparently was not properly inserted. The drugs leaked 
into the muscles of his arm and took far longer than usual to put him to death.

The following day, anticipating a challenge from the next inmate scheduled for 
execution, Florida's attorney general hired Sperry - who frequently moonlights 
as an expert witness in forensic pathology - to help defend the state's 
procedures.

In a hearing in Ocala, Florida, in July 2007, Sperry testified that Florida and 
Georgia used the same combination of drugs for lethal injection. The only 
difference, he said, was that Florida used heavier doses that would kill an 
inmate faster.

The recipe for the lethal "cocktail," according to a transcript of Sperry's 
testimony:

--Thiopental sodium, also known as pentobarbital. Florida administered 5 grams, 
while Georgia used 2, Sperry said. Any dosage of more than 400 milligrams would 
leave a person unconscious and in "respiratory depression," he said. "The brain 
would forget to breathe."

--Pancuronium bromide. Florida's cocktail contained 100 mg, compared to 
Georgia's 50. Either dosage, Sperry said, would cause "virtually instantaneous" 
paralysis and prevent a person from breathing. In combination with the 1st 
drug, he said, "the person would be unable to perceive any kind of paralysis 
because they would have been rendered unconscious."

--Potassium chloride. This drug - at Florida's dosage of 240 milliequivalents 
or Georgia's of 120 - would cause "instantaneous cessation or stoppage of the 
heart," Sperry said.

The entire cocktail, Sperry said, would result in "a humane and painless 
death."

The judge upheld Florida's execution plan. But the inmate, Ian Deco 
Lightbourne, who now calls himself Ish'od Gi'hon, sentenced to death for a 1981 
murder, remains on death row, his appeals continuing.

Gissendaner, convicted of conspiring to murder her husband in 1997, is still 
appealing, too, of course, but with far less detail about the execution process 
than Lightbourne had.

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

Former Ga. chief justice regrets vote in Gissendaner case


Former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher, who opposes capital 
punishment, said in a statement he wished had he dissented 15 years ago when 
the court ruled Kelly Gissendaner's death sentence was proportional, even 
though her co-defendant was sentenced to life for her husband's murder.

Fletcher was not yet chief justice when the court ruled unanimously in 2000 to 
uphold Gissendaner's sentence for plotting the 1997 murder of her husband. The 
opinion cited several reasons she was more culpable than her former lover who 
murdered Douglas Gissendaner, while Kelly Gissendaner spent the evening with 
friends, driving to the place where her husband was killed just as he died.

Gregory Owen testified against Kelly Gissendaner after pleading guilty to 
forcing Douglas Gissendaner to drive to a remote corner of Gwinnett County on 
Feb. 7, 1997, knocking him unconscious and then repeatedly stabbing him.

Owen was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole once he has 
served 25 years, while Kelly Gissendaner rejected a similar plea deal and went 
to trial.

She is scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Fletcher said he is arguing that Gissendaner should be spared based on "the 
disproportionate nature of Ms. Gissendaner's sentence when compared to that of 
her co-defendant, Gregory Owen, who actually stabbed Douglas Gissendaner to 
death. Mr. Owen will be eligible for parole in 7 years. Ms. Gissendaner was not 
present when Mr. Gissendaner was killed, but she is scheduled to be executed in 
less than a week."

In the unanimous 2000 opinion, the 7 justices wrote that death was an 
appropriate sentence for Gissendaner because she was the "moving force behind 
the murder and even insisted upon murder when her co-conspirator suggested 
divorce instead." The justices also wrote in the opinion she stood to gain 
financially from her husband's death by collecting on a life insurance policy 
and would get their $84,000 house and she tried to find someone who, for 
$10,000, would beat beat up prosecution witnesses and also claim responsibility 
for her husband's murder.

"We concluded that her sentence was proportionate to her role in the crime. I 
was wrong," Fletcher wrote.

The former chief justice also said Kelly Gissendaner's ministry in prison and 
the help she has provided other inmates in despair are reasons Gissendaner 
should be spared.

(source for both: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)






OHIO:

Trial set to begin for man accused of killing Akron police officer Justin 
Winebrenner


The trial of an Akron man accused of killing an off-duty Akron police officer 
will begin Monday.

The 12-member jury - evenly split with 6 men and 6 women - will first visit the 
scene of the fatal encounter in the morning.

Akron police officer Justin Winebrenner was inside Papa Don's Pub on East 
Market Street on Nov. 16 when another patron, Kenan Dason Ivery, 36, was kicked 
out for being unruly.

Authorities say Winebrenner, 32, attempted to defuse the situation when Ivery 
returned a short time later.

Ivery is charged with firing 4 shots - leaving 6 victims - after he returned to 
the bar.

Winebrenner was shot twice in the torso and died a short time later at Summa 
Akron City Hospital.

4 other bar patrons, including a 2nd off-duty Akron police officer, were also 
shot. Another victim had a bullet pass through his clothing.

After visiting the scene of the shooting, the jury is expected to return to 
Summit County Common Pleas Judge Alison McCarty's courtroom Monday afternoon 
for opening arguments.

Ivery is charged with 18 separate counts and could get the death penalty if 
convicted of any of the aggravated murder charges.

McCarty previously issued a court order banning Summit County Assistant 
Prosecutors Jonathan Baumoel and Jennie Shuki and Ivery's defense lawyers Kerry 
O'Brien and John Greven from commenting on the case outside of court 
proceedings.

The trial is expected to last well into October.

(source: ohio.com)






ILLINOIS:

Lawmakers want death penalty back in some cases


Several years after the death penalty was abolished in Illinois, some state 
lawmakers want a limited reinstatement.

State Rep. Bill Mitchell, R-Fosyth and John Cabello, R-Machesney, are urging 
fellow lawmakers in Springfield to discuss whether the controversial punishment 
should be brought back in cases involving the murder of a law enforcement 
officer, firefighter or child and other specific cases.

"This is intended for the worst of the worst," Cabello said last week. "We feel 
if a member of our society is brutally murdered, the members of the family 
should be able to lobby for a different kind of punishment."

Former Republican Gov. George Ryan commuted the death sentences of all death 
row prisoners in 2000. Illinois became the 16th state to abolish the death 
penalty in 2011.

Under a measured introduced by Mitchell and Cabello, the option of the death 
penalty would only apply to those convicted of 1st-degree murder for the murder 
of a peace officer, correctional employee or fireman while in the line of duty, 
multiple murders, murder of a child younger than 12, any murder committed on a 
school grounds, or as an act of terrorism.

In addition, the death penalty could only be sought if it requested by the 
family of the victim through a state's attorney's office.

"If the families do not wish someone to be expired, then it's not something we 
want to happen," said Cabello, who also stressed the penalty should only be 
sought in cases where the evidence is "iron clad."

Mitchell said if the potential for the death penalty would deter one person 
from committing such a crime, then it is worth it.

"1 death is 1 too many," he said.

State Sen. Bill Haine, D-Alton, announced earlier this month his intent to file 
similar legislation in the state Senate.

The bill sponsored by Cabello, House Bill 4059, is in the House Rules 
Committee, with 3 Democratic and 3 Republican sponsors.

Cabello said the changing climate of the past several years, including the 
recent death of an officer in Fox Lake, has changed the narrative.

But while the national headlines of violence against law enforcement officers 
have seemingly increased, the actual number of cases is down.

According to the Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, which tracks officers' 
deaths so their names can be enshrined on a Washington, D.C., memorial, the 
number of officers shot and killed has decreased over the past few decades. 
There were 26 shooting deaths through the end August this year, down from 30 
last year.

(source: pantagraph.com)

OKLAHOMA:

Glossip attorneys cross line with criticism of DA


Everyone deserves a zealous defense, but efforts to prevent the execution of 
Richard Glossip are taking on the appearance of a smear campaign aimed not only 
at Oklahoma's law enforcement community, but also all Oklahomans who support 
them.

Glossip has been convicted, twice, of paying a co-worker in 1997 to murder his 
employer, Barry Van Treese. Glossip's defenders argue the co-worker, Justin 
Sneed, lied about Glossip's role in order to avoid the death penalty himself.

Now Glossip's attorneys have come forward with last-minute affidavits from 
former convicts who claim to have been incarcerated with Sneed and heard him 
make vague comments about sending Glossip "up the river" for the murder.

Of course, one reason juries believed Glossip played a role in the killing is 
because Glossip admitted he tried to cover up the murder. This, it must be 
noted, is not a minor point.

Among other things, Glossip diverted cleaning staff from the motel room where 
Van Treese had been killed to prevent discovery of the body; he and Sneed split 
thousands of dollars stolen from Van Treese; and Glossip not only failed to 
immediately tell police investigators he knew who killed Van Treese, but gave 
conflicting statements that impeded the investigation.

In short, for a supposedly innocent man, Glossip did plenty to look guilty.

The filing of the affidavits led the court, hours before Glossip was to be 
executed, to delay the execution by two weeks. It is now set for Thursday. Yet 
this new "evidence" seems shaky, at best. One former inmate involved, Michael 
G. Scott, previously admitted to Department of Corrections officials in 2005 
that he lies "all the time."

Glossip's attorneys did little to suggest they're confident in the validity of 
the new affidavits when they objected to prosecutors interviewing the supposed 
witnesses. Instead, they suggested Oklahoma County District Attorney David 
Prater and law enforcement officials across the state are trying to intimidate 
defense witnesses and railroad an innocent man.

Those claims were levied after Rogers County authorities arrested Scott for 
parole violations and Prater and other Oklahoma County officials questioned 
Scott while he was in custody.

Yet as The Oklahoman's Graham Lee Brewer reported, "It is not uncommon for 
prosecutors to interview defense witnesses directly to determine if what they 
are saying in an affidavit is accurate, and sometimes parole arrests play a 
role in that process."

Among the details Glossip's attorneys highlighted was that the room where Scott 
was interviewed "was equipped with a camera, although Mr. Scott did not know if 
it was turned on or not."

If Scott is telling the truth, why would a camera be intimidating? On the other 
hand, if Prater and other law enforcement officials are pressuring Scott to 
change his story and frame an innocent man for a murder he didn't commit and 
for which he may soon be executed, why would they film themselves?

Contrary to the implications made by Glossip's legal team, Prater has a 
long-established record as an above-board, independent prosecutor. So his blunt 
rebuttal of their claims is noteworthy: "The day will come when it will be 
clear that everything that the defense lawyers and their witnesses say in this 
case are lies."

Glossip's attorneys are obligated to defend him by every legal means. But if 
they are demonizing law enforcement officials for merely doing their jobs, 
they've gone too far.

(source: Editorial Board, The Oklahoman)






USA:

How Prosecutors Get Away With Cutting Black Jurors


This term, the Supreme Court will consider an outrageous case of prosecutorial 
misconduct. But will it do anything about it?

A curious thing happened at the trial of Timothy Tyrone Foster, a young black 
man accused of killing an elderly white woman: every black prospective juror 
was dismissed. He was convicted, and sentenced to death, by an all-white jury.

Even more curious: there were 42 prospective jurors that morning, 5 of whom 
were black. All dismissed, 4 of whom by "peremptory challenge," in which the 
prosecutor strikes a juror at his or her discretion. In Georgia, where Foster's 
trial took place, prosecutors have 10 such options.

Peremptory challenges were entirely unreviewable for most of American history. 
That was their function: in addition to dismissals with reasons, they were 
meant to give prosecutors and defense attorneys (in Georgia, defense attorneys 
get 20 such challenges) leeway to strike potentially problematic jurors without 
explanation.

That changed somewhat in 1986, when the Supreme Court decided Batson v. 
Kentucky. In Batson, the Court held that using peremptory challenges to strike 
jurors on the basis of race was unconstitutional.

Foster's trial, though, took place after Batson. How is that possible? Because 
Batson has proven to be almost worthless in practice. All a prosecutor must do 
is provide some race-neutral reason for striking jurors, and that is extremely 
easy to do. Maybe the juror didn't make eye contact. Maybe she was female. 
Maybe he looked bored or inattentive - as most of us are at the end of hours of 
jury duty.

Any of these reasons will do, and so, in Foster's case and countless others, 
winning a "Batson challenge" is basically impossible.

Except Foster's case has turned out to be different. During the lengthy appeals 
process (nearly thirty years and counting), the prosecutor's notes were made 
public. And they are laughable and tragic at the same time. Black prospective 
jurors are annotated as B#1, B#2, et cetera. Weighing the different options, 
the prosecutor noted that one has "the most potential to choose from out of the 
4 remaining blacks." And so on.

And then there were the absurd pretexts the prosecutor provided to satisfy 
Batson. First, he listed over 30 different reasons, basically throwing 
everything against the wall to see what would stick. He said 3 didn't make 
enough eye contact. He said another was a social worker, which in fact she was 
not. He said one was close in age to the 18-year-old defendant; she was 34.

All this make it abundantly clear that race was the predominant factor in 
striking these jurors, notwithstanding the pretexts given for their dismissals.

And that's why Foster's case is now at the Supreme Court, which will have an 
opportunity to update Batson, and perhaps give it some teeth. The Court will 
also, of course, determine the fate of Foster, who is developmentally disabled 
and who has now spent nearly 30 years on death row.

"Batson has failed miserably to prevent race discrimination," says Stephen 
Bright, who is Foster's lawyer, a professor at Yale Law School, president of 
the Southern Center for Human Rights, and 1 of the leading advocates for 
criminal justice reform, including abolition of the death penalty. Bright has 
been down this road before, having won 2 Supreme Court cases on race 
discrimination and jury selection. And he says that Foster's case is not 
unusual in the least.

"What went on at trial was typical," he told the Daily Beast. "What's unusual 
is we know what's in the prosecutor's files. These notes that show not just a 
consciousness of race but an obsession with race."

Black prospective jurors are annotated as B#1, B#2, et cetera.

Batson has failed to prevent discrimination, says Bright, for at least 3 
reasons.

First, "every prosecutor has a handy-dandy list of race-neutral reasons that 
they give. They even distribute reasons in advance. Some state training 
programs even distribute a list called 'Articulating Juror Negatives.'"

That's right, all prosecutors have to do is read from a prewritten list of 
reasons, and they'll prevail. "They just say, 'take a lot of notes when you 
strike a black juror.'"

Second, Bright notes the awkward dynamic that Batson challenges present. "When 
you challenge a prosecutor's strike, you're saying the prosecutor intentionally 
discriminated on the basis of race and lied about it. The psychological 
dynamics between judge and prosecutor are such that it'll be very hard for the 
judge to make either one of those findings. You deal with the prosecutor day in 
and day out - you're gonna call the guy a liar and a racist?"

Third, and most damningly, "elected judges in the state courts are not known 
for recognizing constitutional violations, especially in cases of race. The 
local judge would've been voted out of office had he found a Batson violation. 
He and the district attorney work together all the time. There's just no chance 
that's going to happen."

As a result, says Bright, "A lot of defense lawyers have quit making Batson 
objections because they just don't think there's any point."

The result is a perpetuation of the institutional racism of the judicial system 
itself.

First, of course, individual cases are influenced. In the case of Foster, 
Bright says "this kid got sentenced to death because was a black kid who 
committed a horrible crime against a white woman. If it had been a black woman, 
it wouldn't have been a death penalty case."

Amazingly, in front of his all-white jury, the prosecutor in Foster's case told 
the jury in his closing argument to "give Foster the death penalty to deter 
people in the projects" - which Bright calculated to be 94% black at the time. 
"That's a pretty racist appeal to say to an all-white jury."

Second, the net effect of blocking black jurors from service, in addition to 
the discrimination they experience, is to diminish the integrity of the 
judicial system. Says Bright, "A person comes to a courtroom where you may have 
a 30-40% black population, and the average citizen sees all-white juries. Not 
only that: everybody's white up there in the front: the prosecutor, the judge, 
the jury. The only person of color is the person on trial." (As reported in an 
earlier installment of Out of Order, prosecutors are 95% white.)

As a result, says Bright, "black people know they are not part of the criminal 
justice system. It's an all-white system. And white people know it too."

What happens now? In Bright's opinion, the Foster case will likely be decided 
on its specific facts: with this evidence, the Supreme Court may well decide 
that there is a clear inference of racial discrimination.

But Foster may turn out to be too easy a case. Most prosecutors don't leave 
smoking guns lying around - as Bright said to me, the mistake this one made was 
not shredding his notes afterwards. So what about the more numerous cases where 
racial discrimination takes place without smoking guns like this one?

One option would be to reduce the number of peremptory challenges available to 
prosecutors - but that is a matter of state law, with each state having 
different regimes in place. (Bright says there is no appetite for eliminating 
peremptory challenges altogether because prosecutors, needing unanimous 
verdicts, are "scared to death there'll be that 1 eccentric person on the jury 
who's going to hang the jury.") At the very least, that would limit 
prosecutors' capacity to use challenges to stack all-white juries.

Another could be to change the evidentiary standard for finding racial 
discrimination. The current standard requires that the prosecutor have a "mind 
to discriminate" - basically, that a prosecutor be found racist. But the Court 
could set out a standard that looks more like disparate impact. Without making 
any inference as to what's in a given prosecutor's head, the bare statistical 
imbalance could enable a defendant's challenge to prevail.

Disparate impact reasoning was recently (barely) upheld by the Supreme Court in 
the last term in the context of the Fair Housing Act. To be sure, it is 
imperfect and can lead to quotas, thus increasing, rather than decreasing, 
race-based decisionmaking. But it also eliminates Batson's embrace of the 
ridiculous pretext, and the uncomfortable inference that a legal colleague is a 
liar and a racist.

It's also possible that, amazingly, Foster could lose. If the Court finds that 
the race discrimination at issue was a harmless error - in particular, if the 
new evidence of discrimination is not a "relevant circumstance" that the 
appeals court should have considered - Foster could still face execution. Given 
the current composition of the Supreme Court, this is a very real possibility.

But even if Foster gets a new trial, the phenomenon of the "all-white jury," 
which Bob Dylan sang about in 1975, will remain as long as prosecutors can 
exercise challenges on a pretext, and bar people of color from sitting on a 
jury of one's peers.

In Bright's words, "When one part of the community is systematically kept off 
the juries undermines the respect that people pay to the courts' decisions. 
Something needs to be done about it."

(source: The Daily Beast)