[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 29


USA:

After Few Executions This Summer, 6 Executions Slated For Next 2 
Weeks----Georgia, Oklahoma, Virginia, Texas, and Missouri are set to execute 6 
inmates within 2 weeks.


The U.S. is set to execute 6 inmates in the next two weeks after only three 
executions were held during the entire summer.

Since January, only 2 states have conducted executions - Missouri and Texas - 
but 3 other states are aiming to do so in the coming days: Georgia, Oklahoma, 
and Virginia.

Beginning in January, executions in Oklahoma, Florida, and Alabama were halted 
pending the Supreme Court ruling on Oklahoma's use of midazolam - a lethal 
injection drug that was part of at least 3 problematic executions in 2014. 
Ohio's governor also held off all executions in 2015.

On June 29, however, the Supreme Court allowed the use of midazolam in 
executions, a ruling that had implications not only for states that used the 
drug, but also set a high bar for inmates challenging lethal injection in other 
states.

As a result of the halt on executions using midazolam during several months, 
Missouri and Texas, which do not use midazolam, together carried out the most 
number of executions in 2015 - including the 3 that occurred over the summer.

Now, Georgia is going to attempt an execution it halted before it began earlier 
this year, Oklahoma - the state at the center of the Supreme Court case - is 
slated to hold an execution that was delayed earlier this month, and Virginia - 
which has not seen an execution in more than 30 months - is scheduled to hold 
an execution.

Executions in all 3 states have attracted national attention for different 
reasons and renewed debates on the constitutionality of different aspects of 
the death penalty.

On Tuesday, Sept. 29, Georgia is set to execute Kelly Gissendaner for her role 
in the 1997 murder of her husband. If executed, she will be the 1st woman put 
to death in the state since 1945.

On Monday, Sept. 28, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles announced that it 
would reconsider its February decision denying clemency to Gissendaner. In a 
press release, the board said it would meet on Sept. 29 to review "supplemental 
information" presented by Gissendaner's representatives. The board can deny 
clemency again, or issue a 90-day stay to further consider the case, or grant 
clemency and commute the sentence to life with or without parole.

Georgia has already postponed Gissendaner's execution twice this year. In 
February, her execution was delayed due to a winter storm. In March, her 
execution was called off before she was administered the lethal injection after 
the state found particles floating in the syringe.

Gissendaner sued the state saying she was a victim of cruel and unusual 
punishment, as she accused Georgia of putting her through "a state of immense 
fear and anxiety for thirteen hours while dithering over whether to proceed 
with her execution."

In August, a judge dismissed her lawsuit, allowing Georgia to execute 
Gissendaner again.

The lawsuit raised questions about the drug's potency and concerns over whether 
it would cause a botched execution. Concerns over the source of lethal 
injection drugs in various states has been a contentious and, in many cases, 
litigious issue. Shortage of drugs has led to several states seeking out their 
supply from unregulated compounding pharmacies. States have refused to disclose 
identities of these sources citing threats to the pharmacies from anti-death 
penalty advocates.

Gissendaner's 3rd execution date is set for Tuesday.

(source: buzzfeed.com)

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

Humane Criminal Justice Is Not Hopeless----The Supreme Court is beginning to 
take cruel and unusual punishment seriously - just like Pope Francis is.


Pope Francis concluded his historic 1st visit to the United States on Sunday, 
spending most of his final few hours with women and men imprisoned at 
Philadelphia???s Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility and putting an 
exclamation mark on a central theme of his visit: the need to infuse more 
dignity and hope into America's criminal justice system.

Last week, during his address to Congress, Pope Francis called for "global 
abolition of the death penalty," because "every life is sacred, every human 
person is endowed with an inalienable dignity, and society can only benefit 
from the rehabilitation of those convicted of crimes." The pope's address also 
criticized life without parole sentences, offering "encouragement to those who 
are convinced that a just and necessary punishment must never exclude the 
dimension of hope and the goal of rehabilitation."

Here's a sentence I never thought I would write: Much of the pope's sermon to 
America on the need to curb our corrosive penal excess echoes themes emerging 
from the Supreme Court, particularly its recent cruel and unusual punishment 
jurisprudence. Indeed, Pope Francis' homily on dignity and hope must have 
struck a familiar cord with Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was sitting in the 
audience during the address.

Violent crime spiked in the 1980s and '90s, and the public panicked.

"When the law punishes by death, it risks its own sudden descent into 
brutality, transgressing the constitutional commitment to decency and 
restraint," Kennedy wrote in a 2008 opinion barring the death penalty for 
nonhomicide offenses. In another recent death penalty case, Kennedy reiterated 
that death is an excessive punishment for intellectually disabled offenders, 
because "to impose the harshest of punishments on an intellectually disabled 
person violates his or her inherent dignity as a human being." Kennedy wrote 
for the court in a 2010 decision that barred the imposition of life without 
parole on juvenile offenders who commit a nonhomicide offense: "Life in prison 
without the possibility of parole gives no chance for fulfillment outside 
prison walls, no chance for reconciliation with society, no hope."

Both Pope Francis and Justice Kennedy have expressed deep concern about prison 
conditions, and solitary confinement in particular. Last year, in a speech at 
the Vatican, Pope Francis referred to solitary confinement as a "genuine 
surplus of pain that is added to the suffering of detention." He deplored the 
"paranoia, anxiety, depression," and elevated "chances of suicide" that such 
isolation entails. Kennedy, in testimony to Congress last year, said: "Solitary 
confinement literally drives men mad." This year, Kennedy wrote in a separate 
concurring opinion that because "years on end of near-total isolation exact a 
terrible price, the judiciary may be required" to place limits on the use of 
solitary confinement.

That the judiciary would intervene to eradicate excessive punishment or to 
alleviate abhorrent prison conditions was an empty promise until very recently. 
Courts are supposed to step in to ensure, as Kennedy wrote, "moderation or 
restraint" in punishment. In other words, the judiciary has an obligation to 
protect us from undue government coercion - whether it be an excessively long 
sentence or inhumane prison conditions, the punishment and its administration 
must meaningfully serve a legitimate objective of punishment, or else it's 
unconstitutionally excessive.

Justice Harlan Stone, writing in the 1938 case of United States v. Carolene 
Products, explained that courts might have to intervene to invalidate excessive 
punishments because the "political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to 
protect minorities" often falter when it comes to laws that target "discrete 
and insular minorities." As Justice William Brennan put the point, especially 
in times of public panic over real or perceived crime spikes: "Those whom we 
would banish from society or from the human community itself often speak in too 
faint a voice to be heard above society's demand for punishment. It is the 
particular role of courts to hear these voices, for the Constitution declares 
that the majoritarian chorus may not alone dictate the conditions of social 
life."

And so it was as violent crime spiked in the 1980s and '90s and the public 
panicked. The ghost of Willie Horton, a man who committed murder while on a 
work furlough from a Massachusetts prison, propelled states to curb or 
eliminate parole. The death of college basketball star Len Bias from a cocaine 
overdose triggered brutally tough punishments for possessing or selling crack 
cocaine. The murder of young Polly Klaas in California spawned the passage of 
so-called 3 strikes laws across the country. The traditional media added fuel 
to the fire, spreading panic like a virus through our television sets and 
newspapers. Politicians, too, exploited fear for political gain by, for 
example, labeling as "soft on crime" anyone foolish enough to consider humane 
sentencing practices.

The Supreme Court did little to slow down the excessively punitive trajectory. 
In 1989, the court affirmed the constitutionality of the death penalty for both 
intellectually disabled and juvenile offenders. In 1991, near the height of the 
war on drugs, the court affirmed a life without parole sentence for a Michigan 
man convicted of possessing "more than 650 grams of cocaine" even though the 
jury in that case - and in most life without parole cases - had no opportunity 
to consider "the particularized circumstances of the crime and of the 
criminal." In 2003, the Supreme Court upheld 2 California "3 strikes" cases 
each involving a sentence of 25 years to life - in 1 case the defendant was 
convicted of "stealing 3 golf clubs, worth $399 apiece" while the other case 
involved a man who "stole approximately $150 worth of videotapes."

Times are finally changing. This convergence between Pope Francis' call for a 
more humane justice system and the Supreme Court's increasingly robust role in 
policing penal excess reflects more than shared values. The pope's sermon, like 
the court's revitalization of its cruel and unusual punishments jurisprudence, 
tapped into a growing national dissatisfaction with the penal extravagance that 
shaped criminal justice over the past 3 decades.

In 2010, Congress passed a bill eliminating the egregious sentencing 
disparities between crack and powdered cocaine. In 2012, a California ballot 
measure to repeal the 1990s era 3 strikes law passed with a whopping 69 % of 
the vote. 9 states in 3 years have abolished life without parole for juveniles 
who commit murder, meaning that these young offenders will have the opportunity 
to try to convince a parole board that they have transformed their lives and 
are fit to re-enter society.

1 in 25 death sentences nationally involves the conviction of an innocent 
person.

Earlier this year, a Republican-led Legislature in Nebraska repealed the 
state's death penalty, becoming the seventh state in eight years to do so. 
Applause erupted from corners of the congressional floor when Pope Francis 
called for the abolition of the death penalty last week. Later that day, in 
response to the pope's message, Newt Gingrich (who infamously suggested capital 
punishment for marijuana offenses) said that he was "more open" to ending the 
death penalty. In a speech at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, Justice 
Antonin Scalia said that 4 of his colleagues on the Supreme Court believe that 
the death penalty is unconstitutional and that he "wouldn't be surprised" if 
the court ultimately holds that the death penalty is a cruel and unusual 
punishment.

The Supreme Court is changing, too. Reversing its 1989 decisions, the court 
barred the death penalty for both juvenile and intellectually disabled 
offenders. It also held that the death penalty is an excessive punishment for 
nonhomicide offenses. In 2010, the court held that juveniles who commit 
nonhomicide offenses couldn't be sentenced to life without the possibility of 
parole. 2 years later, the court invalidated mandatory life without parole for 
juveniles who commit murder, meaning that jurors must be given the opportunity 
to consider the circumstances of the offense and the background and 
characteristics of the teenage offender.

But the Supreme Court has only just begun to fulfill its rightful role.

Though most jurisdictions have abandoned the death penalty in law or practice, 
this punishment is the symbolic crown jewel of a criminal justice system that 
degrades dignity and rejects the possibility of redemption. Justice Stephen 
Breyer explained in his recent dissent in Glossip v. Gross, "the number of 
active death penalty counties is small and getting smaller." Indeed, of the 
3,143 county or county equivalents in the United States, "only 15 counties 
imposed 5 or more death sentences" - an average of 1 per year - since 2010. 
This shows that the death penalty is unusual, and looking closely at the people 
whom we ultimately execute also shows that it is cruel.

Take just this week, for example:

No. 1: On Tuesday, Georgia is scheduled to execute Kelly Gissendaner, a woman 
who persuaded her lover to kill her husband. Gissendaner has mentored 
despondent prisoners, people who when released became productive members of 
society, including those who are now social workers and literacy teachers. 
"Kelly is the poster child for redemption," one of those women said. "Killing 
Kelly is essentially killing hope."

Gissendaner's case has parallels to the case of Karla Faye Tucker, a 
drug-addicted woman who became a born-again Christian while on Texas' death 
row. A spokesman for the National Association of Evangelicals called Tucker "a 
woman of such obvious spiritual change." Conservative minister Pat Robertson 
reminded then-Gov. George W. Bush that "any justice system that is worthy of 
the name must have room for mercy." Robertson said that executing Tucker would 
be "more an act of vengeance than it is appropriate justice." Texas executed 
her anyway.

In 2005, California executed Stanley Tookie Williams, one of the co-founders of 
the Crips street gang. During his incarceration on death row, Williams became 
an anti-gang activist, helped to create a peace protocol between the Bloods and 
the Crips, and authored children's books on the perils of gang violence. He was 
nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 5 times. As Bryan Robinson wrote, Williams' 
supporters thought that his "execution would extinguish the hopes of imprisoned 
gang members considering reform, telling them that no one, no matter what they 
do to change their ways, is worth saving - that there is no mercy for the 
reformed."

No. 2: On Wednesday, Oklahoma is scheduled to execute Richard Glossip. Justin 
Sneed confessed to the murder of Barry Van Treese, a motel owner for whom 
Glossip and Sneed both worked. However, police inserted the idea that Glossip 
ordered the killing and offered to not pursue the death penalty against Sneed 
if he testified against Glossip. Justin Sneed then changed his story. Recently, 
Sneed's daughter wrote a letter to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, 
stating that her father acted alone in killing Van Treese and that he refused 
to recant his trial testimony out of fear that the district attorney would 
still pursue a death sentence against him.

A former cellmate of Sneed's saw news of Glossip's pending execution, performed 
a Google search to identify Glossip's lawyers, and then wrote in an affidavit 
that Sneed claimed to have acted alone. Another cellmate of Sneed's, Michael 
Scott, claims to have overheard Sneed boasting about how he framed Glossip. 
Scott wrote in an affidavit: "Among all the inmates, it was common knowledge 
that Justin Sneed lied and sold Richard Glossip up the river." In what 
Glossip's lawyers say is witness intimidation, both of these men were arrested 
for minor probation violations after they came forward.

If he is innocent, Glossip's death sentence would hardly be unique. A recent 
study demonstrates that 1 in 25 death sentences nationally involves the 
conviction of an innocent person. Since 1973, 155 wrongfully convicted women 
and men have been exonerated from death row. Post-conviction DNA testing alone 
has led to the release of 20 condemned prisoners.

No. 3: On Thursday, Virginia is scheduled to execute Alfredo Prieto, who "for 
the last 7 years ... has spent 23 hours or more every day alone in a 
71-square-foot cell." His case exhibits a common theme of long-term solitary 
confinement - many people exposed to this form of torture are among our most 
vulnerable, including juveniles and people with severe mental illness and other 
disabilities.

More than almost any other, though, Prieto's case exemplifies the need for the 
Supreme Court to enforce the principle that the justice system should exercise 
restraint in the face of an undoubtedly brutal crime. Prieto committed multiple 
horrific crimes, including rape and murder. However, regardless of the severity 
of the offense, the Eighth Amendment permits the execution only of offenders 
with extreme personal culpability. Prieto is intellectually disabled. He has IQ 
test scores of 64, 66, and 73. In a letter urging Gov. Terry McAuliffe to stop 
Prieto's execution, the Virginia Chapter of the Association for Retarded 
Citizens wrote: "We believe that allowing Mr. Prieto's execution to go forward 
on the evidence as it stands is unjustified scientifically and would endorse a 
misunderstanding of intellectual disabilities."

Prieto is hardly unique among recently executed offenders. I co-authored a 
report that examined the cases of 100 recently executed offenders and found 
that the vast majority of those executed fall into one or more of the following 
categories: "intellectually impaired, too young to buy a beer, severely 
mentally ill, or chronically abused as children." As Charles Ogletree of 
Harvard Law School concluded, "severe functional deficits are the rule not the 
exception among the individuals who populate the nation's death rows."

So far in 2015, as David Menschel reports:

--"Georgia executed Andrew Brannan, an Army veteran who developed PTSD while 
earning a bronze star in Vietnam."

--Georgia also executed Warren Hill. "All of the doctors who examined Hill - 
including 3 who testified for state - eventually conceded Hill was mentally 
retarded."

--Texas executed Robert Ladd, despite compelling evidence of intellectual 
disability. "Though Ladd had an IQ of 67, Texas said that he did not 
sufficiently prove that he is mentally retarded."

--Texas executed Kent Sprouse, a drug-addicted man who suffered from paranoid 
delusions.

--Missouri executed Clayton Lockett, "a 74-year-old man with severe brain 
damage. Clayton was left severely disabled by a sawmill accident in which he 
lost 20 % of the frontal lobe of his brain."

A restrained justice system does not execute people like Kelly Gissendaner, 
Richard Glossip, and Alfredo Prieto.

* * *

Even if the death penalty ended tomorrow, the Pope's admonition that "a just 
and necessary punishment must never exclude the dimension of hope and the goal 
of rehabilitation" would remain valid. There may be room for disagreement about 
the cruelty of life without parole sentences in general. But there are people 
serving these more accurately named "death in prison" sentences for whom the 
hopelessness of the punishment is patently excessive.

Death in prison sentences for children who commit homicide offenses are one 
example. In the 1990s, academics and politicians peddled the racist and 
disproven idea that urban youth represented "a new generation of street 
criminals [that] is upon us - the youngest, biggest, and baddest generation any 
society has ever known." This morally bankrupt idea caused a public panic that 
helped ratchet up punishment on kids. This month, a report issued by the 
Phillips Black Project documented that, "although JLWOP [juvenile life without 
parole] dramatically expanded between 1992 and 1999 - an era of hysteria over 
juvenile superpredators," today the nation has "rapidly abandoned JLWOP in law 
and practice." Indeed, similar to the isolated use of capital punishment, the 
sentence today is concentrated in a handful of outlier counties. Though the 
precise figure is hard to pin down, Philadelphia County alone accounts for 
nearly 10 % of the national total of juvenile life without parole sentences.

Next month, in Montgomery v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court will hear arguments 
on whether its earlier decision barring mandatory life without parole for 
children who commit murder applies retroactively to those sentenced before the 
court issued its decision. Pending before the court, though, are 2 additional 
petitions - 1 from Michigan and 1 from Louisiana - that ask the court to 
declare death in prison sentences unconstitutional for juvenile offenders who 
commit murder. The point is not that every teenager who commits a homicide will 
eventually be released, but instead that it is impossible to know at the time 
of the trial whether any particular juvenile offender will eventually transform 
his life so much so that he is fit to re-enter society. In short, then, ending 
juvenile life without parole means only that every child has the possibility of 
redemption and the hope of release.

Personal transformation is not an abstract idea. Where given hope and a chance, 
kids who were in prison for homicide have changed themselves. Consider, for 
example, George Toca, sentenced to mandatory life without the possibility of 
parole in Louisiana. In a filing to the U.S. Supreme Court, Louisiana argued 
that Toca should never have an opportunity for release from prison. However, 
once the Supreme Court decided to hear his case, the state decided Toca was "no 
longer a public safety risk" and agreed to his immediate release in exchange 
for his agreement to waive his appeal (presumably because if the state lost the 
case in the Supreme Court, it would have to provide an opportunity for other 
juveniles to try to prove that they have transformed their lives). Since his 
release, roughly three decades after being sentenced to die in prison, Toca 
obtained a job and then started a small business.

One of the most serious obstacles to curbing penal excess is the artificial 
line that the Supreme Court has drawn between sentences it has addressed, such 
as some death penalty and juvenile life without parole cases, and all other 
forms of excessive punishment. It is now time for the Supreme Court to alter 
the miserly approach to regulating excessive sentences that it took in Harmelin 
(the Michigan cocaine possession case), Andrade (the $150 videotapes case), and 
Ewing (the golf clubs case).

"Maturity can lead to that considered reflection which is the foundation for 
remorse, renewal, and rehabilitation," Justice Kennedy wrote in Graham, the 
case that first curtailed the use of juvenile life without parole. Why should 
the possibility of redemption and rehabilitation be limited to those under the 
age of 18? Adults change, too, often dramatically. Addicts and alcoholics get 
sober. People with serious mental illness get treatment. Others transform 
themselves through religion or education or work. And, though less profound, 
most people simply age out of serious criminality.

In 2013, the American Civil Liberties Union released a report that documented 
the then 3,278 people serving a death in prison sentence for a nonviolent 
crime. Of these prisoners, nearly 80 % were incarcerated for a drug crime. Here 
are a few of the crimes that led to a life without parole sentence, according 
to the report: "possession of a crack pipe," "possession of a bottle cap 
containing a trace, unweighable amount of heroin," possession of "a trace 
amount of cocaine in clothes pockets that was so minute it was invisible to the 
naked eye and detected only in lab tests," and "having a single, small crack 
rock at home."

Ending juvenile life without parole means that every child has the possibility 
of redemption and the hope of release.

Akin to how capital punishment and juvenile life without parole sentences are 
becoming more rare, the country is abandoning life without parole sentences for 
nonviolent offenders. Most states now formally prohibit such a sanction.

In a sign of the times, in July, President Barack Obama commuted the sentences 
of 46 nonviolent offenders, many of them sentenced to life imprisonment. 
However, more than 3,000 women and men will continue to languish under these 
extravagant sentences, until the Supreme Court holds that the Eighth Amendment, 
as a forthcoming law review article by Bidish Sarma and Sophie Cull concludes, 
"offers these offenders an opportunity to demonstrate the unconstitutionality 
of their punishment to the Supreme Court, which is in a position to redress 
these excessive sentences of a bygone era."

* * *

Pope Francis focused his critique on the nation's harshest sentences. During 
his visit to the Philadelphia jail, however, he mostly met people awaiting 
trial. Some of them are in jail, separated from their families, communities, 
and jobs, because of a couple of hundred dollars' worth of fines or fees that 
they cannot afford to pay. The Eighth Amendment applies not only to cruel and 
unusual punishments but also to "excessive fines." The judiciary pays virtually 
no attention to the exorbitant fines and fees that tie citizens, especially 
those in poverty, to the criminal justice system.

In the wake of the civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, Joseph Shapiro 
reported: "In 2013, the municipal court in Ferguson - a city of 21,135 people - 
issued 32,975 arrest warrants for nonviolent offenses, mostly driving 
violations." These offenses are often resolved by payment of court costs and a 
fine; however, the debt is often unmanageable for many impoverished residents. 
Shapiro profiled 1 woman, Ebony, who owed $2,000 in fines and fees. She 
explained that she had previously been arrested for failure to pay her fines, 
including "just 2 weeks after she had given birth" and despite the fact that 
her "lawyer was calling and saying that I'm under doctor's care, I just had a 
baby."

In Georgia, the Southern Center for Human Rights recently represented a woman, 
Ora Lee Hurley, who had been imprisoned for almost 12 months "due to her 
inability to pay a $705 fine from a 15-year-old drug conviction." Even though 
Hurley worked "full-time at a restaurant that sent her paycheck directly to the 
Department of Corrections," the department charged her a daily fee that "took 
nearly every penny of her earnings." As the Southern Center for Human Rights 
said in connection with a lawsuit against the Department of Corrections: "Left 
with only $23 per month to buy food, toiletries, and pay her fine, Ms. Hurley 
was being confined in perpetuity."

These fines and fees serve no legitimate objective of punishment. They simply 
strip the dignity from the people buried under them and eradicate their hope 
for a brighter future. These fines and fees are every bit as emblematic of an 
extravagantly punitive justice system as life without parole sentences or the 
death penalty.

Pope Francis' 1st visit to the United States came at a time when the desire for 
a more humane criminal justice system has reached an inflection point. We see 
it in legislative proclamations, in the charging practices of prosecutors, and 
the verdicts of juries. But we also must know that we are not immune to another 
era of moral panic like the one that drove the punitive turn in American 
criminal justice during the 1980s and '90s. That's why we have an Eighth 
Amendment and a judiciary to enforce it. Courts, especially the U.S. Supreme 
Court, failed to fulfill their constitutional obligation to curb excessive 
punishments at the end of the 20th century. Now, as America begins to come out 
from the other side of those decades of misery and suffering, it is important 
for all of us - and especially the justices who occupy the highest court of the 
land - to remember, as Justice Kennedy put it, "The Eighth Amendment's 
protection of dignity reflects the Nation we have been, the Nation we are, and 
the Nation we aspire to be." That's a homily that even the pope might find 
inspiring.

(source: Robert J. Smith is a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at 
Austin School of Law, formerly an assistant professor at the University of 
North Carolina School of Law----slate.com)