[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OKLA., MO., COLO., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 30



OKLAHOMA----impending execution

Oklahoma death row prisoner Richard Glossip to be executed after final appeal 
fails


A man on death row for 17 years is to be executed by lethal injection after his 
final appeal failed.

Richard Glossip, 52, says he didn't murder motel boss Barry Van Treese in 1997.

Sir Richard Branson and actress Susan Sarandon have called for him to be freed.

Glossip will be killed in McAlester, Oklahoma.

His lawyers won a 2-week stay on 16 September just hours before he was due to 
be executed.

But at 5pm on Wednesday he will sit down to his final meal.

Justin Sneed was 19, he confessed to police that on the morning of January 6, 
1997, he beat Van Treese to death, claiming hos boss Glossip put him up to it.

However, there is no physical evidence corroborating Sneed's accusation.

The 52-year-old has been on death row since 1998.

His advocates include death penalty opponent Sister Helen Prejean and actress 
Susan Sarandon who portrayed Prejean in film 1995 film Dead Man Walking.

Businessman Richard Branson has also appealed for his release.

Glossip's lawyers had tried to submit a statement from a prison inmate who said 
he heard his former colleague boast about implicating him in the murder of 
Barry Van Treese.

They also argued there were issues with medical examiner testimony about when 
the victim died of his injuries.

But the court ruled the new evidence simply delves back into arguments that 
were raised at Glossip's original appeals.

(source: The Mirror)

***********

Glossip In Last-Minute Appeal Over Execution ---- Sky News speaks to death row 
inmate Richard Glossip as he is served his last meal ahead of a scheduled 
execution later today.


Attorneys for Oklahoma death row prisoner Richard Glossip have made a 
last-ditch appeal to the US Supreme Court to grant a stay of execution.

He is due to die at 3pm local time (9.00pm BST) today.

Glossip spoke to Sky News on the telephone from his cell in Oklahoma State 
Penitentiary just as he was being served his last meal.

2 weeks ago he went through the same ritual, and ordered the same food.

Then, the following day, three hours before he was to be put to death, an 
appeal court halted the execution.

Then, earlier this week, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that it 
wouldn't delay the process again.

Judges split 3-2 in favour of carrying out the death sentence. 2 of the judges 
who objected said the evidence in the case was flawed and tenuous.

Glossip was convicted of murdering his boss, motel owner Barry Van Treese, 
because the man who carried out the killing said Glossip paid him to do it.

In return for his testimony, Justin Sneed escaped a death sentence and is 
serving life in prison.

Sneed continues to blame Glossip, telling the Oklahoma news organisation The 
Frontier: "Mr Glossip coerced me, and pleaded with me for over 3 months and the 
amounts of money he was offering me kept changing.

"He kept begging and pleading until the point he pushed me over an edge."

Glossip's attorneys say he is lying and point out that in the interview he made 
a new claim which he had never raised before, to explain why there was no 
physical evidence linking Glossip to the crime.

"I look back now and I notice that he put some gloves on and he made sure his 
fingerprints wasn't there."

Glossip told Sky News: "He testified at my 2nd trial. He was asked that by the 
DA (District Attorney): 'Was Richard wearing gloves?' He said no.

"'He said 'Does Richard own a pair of gloves?' He said no. And now he's on TV 
saying that I did. It continues to show the discrepancies in anything that 
Justin Sneed has to say."

He said he believes his attorneys have a good chance of convincing the Supreme 
Court to intervene in his case.

(source: Sky News)

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

Is Oklahoma About to Execute an Innocent Man?


Just after Pope Francis called for an end to the death penalty in his address 
to Congress, six death-row inmates are set to be put to death over the next two 
weeks. It's the biggest burst of executions in the U.S. in more than two years, 
and there are many legal and moral issues surrounding the cases. Early on 
Wednesday morning, Georgia executed Kelly Renee Gissendaner for conspiring to 
kill her husband, though he was stabbed to death by her lover and she went on 
to become a model prisoner. This afternoon Oklahoma is set to execute another 
inmate who wasn't even present when the murder in question was committed - and 
in this case, there are serious doubts about whether he had any involvement in 
the crime.

Richard Glossip has been convicted twice for the 1997 murder of Barry Van 
Treese, his boss at the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City. Fellow employee 
Justin Sneed admitted to killing Van Treese, but he claims Glossip pressured 
him into committing the murder because he was embezzling money from the 
business and on the verge of being fired. There is no physical evidence linking 
Glossip to the crime, and the bulk of the prosecution's case against him is 
based on the testimony of Sneed, who was given life without parole rather than 
a death sentence in exchange for his testimony.

Glossip was convicted and sentenced to death in 1998, but in 2001 the Oklahoma 
Court of Criminal Appeals overturned his conviction, saying he had ineffective 
representation and the evidence supporting Sneed's testimony was "extremely 
weak." Glossip was offered a plea deal before his retrial, but he rejected it, 
insisting that he was innocent. He was convicted and sentenced to death at his 
2nd trial in 2004. Once again, his attorneys failed to show video of Sneed's 
confession to jurors, though that was one of the reasons he won his appeal. The 
Intercept reports that they would have seen Detective Bob Bemo coach Sneed into 
implicating Glossip:

Had members of the jury watched the tape, they would have heard Bemo tell Sneed 
that before he decided whether or not to waive his rights and talk to the cops, 
he should consider the situation. "Before you make your mind up on anything," 
Bemo cautioned him, "I want you to hear some of the things that we've got to 
say to you." Sneed was read his rights, and then Bemo leaned in: "We know this 
involves more than just you, okay?" Sneed told Bemo that he didn't "really know 
what to say about" what happened to Van Treese. Well, Bemo said, "everybody is 
saying you're the one that did this and you did it by yourself and I don't 
believe that. You know Rich is under arrest, don't you?" No, Sneed said, he 
didn't know that. "So he's the one," Bemo replied. "He's putting it on you the 
worst."

If Sneed didn't want to talk about the involvement of anyone else, Bemo said he 
would be happy to walk Sneed into the jail and book him for Van Treese's 
murder, "and you would be facing this thing on your own," Bemo said. "And I 
don't think it's just you."

Sneed changed his story considerably over the years, adding more elaborate 
details about how Glossip badgered him into killing their boss, and instructed 
him to pick up a hacksaw and muriatic acid to dispose of the body. As Glossip 
continued to appeal his case - the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld 
his conviction in 2013 - Sneed's story has continued to evolve. A year ago his 
adult daughter, O'Ryan Justine Sneed, wrote a letter to the Oklahoma Pardon and 
Parole Board saying she believes her father lied about Glossip's involvement in 
the murder to avoid the death penalty.

"For a couple of years now, my father has been talking to me about recanting 
his original testimony," she said. "I'm sure if he felt safe that he would not 
lose his plea agreement, he would give new and truthful testimony, much 
different from his testimony 17 years ago. He has asked me several times to 
look into what the legal ramifications would be to his own case if he 
recanted."

The parole board rejected Glossip's clemency request and he was scheduled to be 
executed on September 16. His attorneys claimed they had new evidence, but 
Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin refused to delay the execution, saying they 
waited until the last minute to turn over the new materials. "After reviewing 
it with my legal team, we have determined the vast majority of the limited 
content they have presented is not new; furthermore, we find none of the 
material to be credible evidence of Richard Glossip's innocence," she said.

Glossip's attorneys then released an affidavit in which Michael Scott, who was 
formerly incarcerated with Sneed, said he openly discussed lying about 
Glossip's involvement. "I specifically remember Justin on the top run with a 
couple of other inmates, fixing some food, and laughing with them about setting 
Richard Glossip up for a crime Richard didn't do," he said. "It was almost like 
Justin was bragging about what he had done to this other guy - Richard Glossip. 
Justin was happy and proud of himself for selling Richard Glossip out."

Oklahoma County district attorney David Prater called the new information a 
"bullshit PR campaign," but just hours before Glossip was set to receive a 
lethal injection, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals said it wanted 2 weeks 
to review the evidence. On Monday, the appeals court ruled in a 3-2 vote that 
the new information "merely builds on" previous evidence presented by the 
defense. "After reviewing Glossip's successive application and motions, we find 
that the law favors the principle of finality of judgment," the court said.

On Tuesday night, Glossip made one final plea to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking 
the court to give him a stay of execution and review his case. The justices are 
already familiar with Glossip, as he was the lead plaintiff in the case that 
led the court to uphold Oklahoma's use of the lethal-injection drug Midazolam 
last summer, despite claims that it is not an adequate sedative and played a 
role in several botched executions.

Nearly 250,000 people have signed a MoveOn.org petition asking Governor Fallin 
to grant Glossip a 60-day stay of execution to make his case, and the group 
staged a protest outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday night. Republican senator 
Tom Coburn, Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, and 
death-penalty opponent Sister Helen Prejean have also called for a halt to the 
execution. Prejean said she hopes the Supreme Court takes up the case as, "It 
may be the perfect case before the court that shows just how broken the death 
penalty is, and perhaps it can save other lives."

(source: nymag.com)






MISSOURI----impending execution

Attorneys, advocates want Missouri execution scheduled for next week halted


Missourians who oppose the death penalty are asking courts and Governor Jay 
Nixon to consider the testimony of a confessed murderer, that the man sentenced 
to death for hiring him is innocent, before that man is executed for that 
hiring next week.

Kimber Edwards is scheduled to die by lethal injection October 6 at the state 
prison at Bonne Terre. He was convicted of hiring Orthell Wilson to kill his 
ex-wife, Kimberly Cantrell, 15 years ago at her University City home.

Wilson told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in April he lied to investigators about 
Edwards' involvement to secure a plea deal that would allow him to avoid the 
death penalty. Wilson???s claim now is that he had been secretly carrying on a 
relationship with Cantrell and killed her after an argument.

"15-years later he has decided to finally tell the truth, and the truth is that 
he wasn't paid, that he was in a relationship with Miss Cantrell, that he knew 
her independent of any connection to our client, Kimber Edwards," said Weis. 
"Under no pressure from us, under no pressure from Mr. Edwards - in fact we 
can't offer him anything - he has decided to come forward and tell the truth."

The Attorney General's Office says that's not true. In its response to the 
request for a new hearing with the Missouri Supreme Court, it calls the 
statements made this year by Wilson "incredible," and said they are his "4th 
version of events." It said Edwards' attorneys told Wilson they would help him 
challenge his life sentence if he said Edwards is innocent.

"Wilson's 4th statement was clearly orchestrated by Edwards, not to save an 
innocent man, but instead made to help Edwards escape his death sentence. 
Wilson was also motivated to make this new statement after he received 
assurances that he may receive legal help in exchange for his assistance, and 
was not concerned that his recent statement was false because, as he told his 
family, he had already been convicted of the murder," the Attorney General's 
Office wrote in its response.

Advocates argue say Edwards' and Wilson's confessions that led to their 
convictions were false and given after they were coerced. Police said Edwards 
admitted to paying $1,600 for the murder.

Tricia Bushnell with the Midwest Innocence Project says Edwards has Asperger's 
syndrome and blames that for impairing his judgement, and says members of his 
family were questioned and fingerprinted by police, all adding to pressure on 
him to confess.

"It's difficult for us, those of us who don't go through the system and aren't 
actually accused of doing something we didn't commit, to understand how someone 
could ever confess to something they didn't do, particularly something has 
heinous as murder," said Bushnell, but she says of 330 cases in which DNA 
exonerated someone convicted of murder, false confessions were taken in more 
than 1/4 of them.

Edwards was originally sentenced to be executed in May but that date was 
suspended by the state Supreme Court. It did not give a reason for that action 
but his attorneys at the time said they were too busy with other cases to spend 
time on Edwards' case.

(source: Missourinet.com)






COLORADO:

Let's talk about death


If you want to get people riled up but you're sick of talking about abortion, 
the death penalty is always a good backup.

We just can't seem to agree whether the state of Colorado should be allowed to 
kill people. The questions are numerous: Are the drug cocktails common in 
executions "cruel and unusual"? Do we tend to execute people of color for the 
same crimes that white people serve prison time? Why does someone like James 
Holmes get life in prison, while others get the death penalty for lesser 
crimes? Is the death penalty a deterrent? Does it provide healing for the 
families of victims? Is it fair? And how many innocent people are we killing?

That last question is coming into full focus with Oklahoma prisoner Richard 
Glossip once again scheduled for execution, despite abundant evidence that he's 
not guilty of hiring another man to kill his boss.

Colorado College is apparently ready to dive into the weeds on the subject. The 
school is hosting a three-day series on the death penalty. It's open to the 
public, and more details are below:

The Colorado College History Department is hosting a 3-day series of 
presentations on "Addressing Capital Punishment" for the campus and community. 
Cornell University Professor of History Paul Friedland will speak on "Why 
States Kill: The History of Capital Punishment from the Medieval to the Modern" 
at 7 p.m. Wednesday (Sept. 30) in Colorado College's Worner Center, 902 N. 
Cascade Ave.

Thursday evening, San Quentin Prison Chaplain George Williams, S.J. will speak 
on "The Cost of Killing: Dimensions of Capital Punishment," 7 p.m. in Colorado 
College's Slocum Commons, 130 E. Cache La Poudre St. Finally, Friedland and 
Williams will lead a dialogue on "Does Capital Punishment Make Sense: 
Historical and Ethical Perspectives" at noon Friday in the Cornerstone Arts 
Center, 825 N. Cascade Ave.

The panel will be moderated by former Colorado College President Richard 
Celeste and followed by a luncheon and small group conversations in Worner 
Center.

(source: Colorado Springs Independent)

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

Man who killed 5 in Denver bar to be sentenced to life; jurors rejected death 
penalty


A man convicted of stabbing 5 people to death during a Denver bar robbery that 
netted $170 will be formally sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday.

A judge will issue a mandatory sentence of life without parole for Dexter 
Lewis, 25, who was convicted in August of 5 counts of murder for the October 
2012 stabbings at Fero's Bar and Grill.

Prosecutors said Lewis led a 4-man robbery crew at Fero's, where he killed the 
bar's owner and 4 customers. 2 men testified that Lewis stabbed his victims 
while they were held at gunpoint.

Jurors couldn't agree on death for Lewis, whose attorneys carefully detailed an 
abusive childhood. The case raised doubts about whether capital punishment will 
ever be imposed again in Colorado as it came just after theater shooter James 
Holmes was given a life sentence for murdering 12 people and trying to kill 70 
more at a crowded midnight movie.

In both cases, prosecutors said a single juror blocked the death penalty.

In Lewis' case, the juror found that the details of his troubled upbringing 
favored the mercy of a life sentence over execution. That took the death 
penalty off the table, because death sentences must be unanimous in Colorado.

Relatives of Lewis' victims will have a chance to tell the judge about the 
crime's continuing impact on their lives before he issues his sentence. Lewis 
and his family will also have a chance to speak.

Killed in the robbery were the bar's owner, Young Suk Fero, 53, and customers 
Daria M. Pohl, 21, Kellene Fallon, 44, Tereasa Beesley, 45, and Ross Richter, 
29.

Prosecutors have said that the victims' families had come to terms with the 
life sentence.

Lewis' accomplices, brothers Joseph and Lynell Hill, pleaded guilty to murder 
and received lengthy sentences. The fourth man, Demarea Harris, was a 
confidential informant at the time for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, 
Firearms and Explosives and reported the slayings to authorities. He was not 
charged in the case.

(source: Associated Press)






USA:

Here's What We Learned By Looking At Female Death Row Inmates----Gender aside, 
there is an astonishing number of people on death row in the U.S.

Kelly Renee Gissendaner, the only woman on death row in Georgia, was scheduled 
to die by lethal injection at 7 PM local time on Tuesday night, pending one 
last-ditch plea for clemency. Assuming a stay is not forthcoming, Gissendaner 
will be the 16th woman to be executed since 1976, the 1st executed in the U.S. 
in 2015, and the 1st woman executed in Georgia in 70 years.

Gissendaner was accused in 1997 of planning the murder of her husband with 
Gregory Owen, her lover. Owen hit her husband on the back of the head and 
stabbed him in the neck 8 to 10 times, the Attorney General's Office reported. 
All of the women executed since 1976 were convicted of at least 1 murder, 8 of 
them of having murdered their boyfriends, husbands or significant others.

Here's How Many Death Row Inmates Die Waiting To Die

Women are rarely executed, however. Out of 1,414 executions since 1976, women 
made up just 1 %, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. What is 
most striking, however, when you visualize the proportion of women on death 
row, is not just the disparity, but the sheer number of people waiting to be 
killed by the state in prisons across America.

As of April 1, 2015, there were 3,002 people on death row in the U.S., and only 
54 of those were females, according to NAACP data. 35 people were executed in 
2014, and so far in 2015, 20 have been executed. If the U.S. decided it wanted 
to execute 1 death row every single day, it would take until December 18, 2023 
to complete that macabre task, which is probably why so many prisoners die in 
their cells, waiting to be killed.

(source: vocativ.com)