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

[Rick Halperin]

April 12




VIRGINIA:

Virginia wants to hide the names of lethal injection drug suppliers. Here's how 
that is going in other states.


Virginia may soon become the latest state to shield the identities of companies 
that supply drugs for lethal injections, a move Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) paints 
as necessary if the state wants to continue carrying out executions.

This comes as the secrecy surrounding lethal injections is growing, even as the 
number of executions and death sentences in the United States continues to 
decline. For those states trying to carry out death sentences, struggles to 
obtain drugs and difficulties finding suppliers have led to laws that hide the 
names of these suppliers, which in turn prompted court challenges.

Take Arkansas, Missouri and Ohio, 3 states that illustrate the current 
environment for officials still looking to carry out executions - and offer a 
glimpse of what could lay ahead for Virginia if it adopts the new legislation.

[The proposal in Virginia could lead to court challenges, experts say]

These 3 states are in different places when it comes to capital punishment. 
Arkansas is seeking to resume executions after a decade-long break, while Ohio 
is an active executioner that will go at least 3 years between lethal 
injections as it tries to find drugs. Missouri is among the most active 
death-penalty states these days, joining Texas and Florida to account for most 
of the country's executions since 2013.

In these places, court fights over secrecy are being waged that have, in some 
cases, postponed executions or resulted in rulings against the states.

The fights over secrecy

Arkansas has not executed an inmate since 2005, but last fall authorities said 
they were ready to resume lethal injections and began setting execution dates.

A judge there halted the 1st scheduled execution less than 2 weeks before it 
was scheduled to occur as inmates challenged state legislation that let 
Arkansas hide the names of the companies that supply drugs for executions. Last 
week, the Arkansas Supreme Court said it would hear oral arguments in the 
challenge.

In Missouri, a judge ruled last month that the state "knowingly violated" 
public records laws "by refusing to disclose records that would reveal the 
suppliers of lethal injection drugs." The state had been challenged on multiple 
fronts, including in a lawsuit from the Associated Press and other media 
organizations pushing back against the secrecy provisions, and a judge ordered 
them to release their records identifying the suppliers.

The state has not filed an appeal in that case so far and still has time to 
file an appeal or other motions, according to a spokeswoman for the Missouri 
attorney general's office.

[Executions declined last year in the U.S. The country still put more inmates 
to death than most other nations]

Meanwhile, a shield law in Ohio is about to be debated in a federal courtroom. 
Under this law - signed by Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican presidential 
candidate, in December 2014 - the state can hide the identities of anyone who 
compounds or supplies drugs used in lethal injections.

Last year, District Judge Gregory L. Frost dismissed a lawsuit challenging this 
law, writing that just because the death-row inmates "want or need information 
does not invariably entitle them to it under the Constitution," adding: "Not 
all oversight requires absolute transparency."

The inmates are challenging the dismissal in federal appeals court, and oral 
arguments in this case are scheduled for next week.

Increased secrecy - and experts say more is coming

As states struggle to obtain lethal drugs due to an ongoing shortage sparked by 
European objections to capital punishment, laws shielding the identities of the 
suppliers will probably become more widespread, said Franklin E. Zimring, a law 
professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

"The shield law is an attempt to create circumstances in which continuity of 
supply is going to be possible," Zimring said. "Once the idea of a shield law 
takes hold, then anybody who is suffering from these issues will go after it."

More than a dozen states have some kind of secrecy statutes and others have 
secrecy regulations, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death 
Penalty Information Center. While these statutes largely exist to keep the 
identities of the executioners shielded, states have been expanding them and 
arguing that drug suppliers are part of the execution teams and should also be 
hidden, he said.

"States that have the longest history of aggressively seeking to carry out 
executions are the ones who've also been the most aggressive in attempting to 
conduct secret executions," Dunham said.

While some lower courts have rejected these secrecy arguments, appellate courts 
have reversed these rulings and not forced them to identify suppliers, he said. 
So far, no higher court has forced a state to release the hidden identity of a 
drug supplier, Dunham said.

Many states are still struggling to obtain lethal injection drugs

This drug shortage means that even as states fight to defend their secrecy 
provisions, some are still unable to carry out executions.

Ohio carried out at least 1 execution each year between 2001 and 2014, but 
officials there say they will not execute another inmate until next year at the 
earliest. The last execution in Ohio was in January 2014, when the state's 
lethal injection of Dennis McGuire - who admitted to raping and murdering a 
pregnant newlywed - stretched on for nearly 25 minutes as he struggled and 
gasped. (That was the 1st of 3 executions that went awry that year.)

State officials revamped Ohio's execution protocols as the state sought lethal 
drugs. Authorities have delayed Ohio's scheduled lethal injections multiple 
times, and the state's next execution is (currently) set for January 2017 - a 
schedule meant to give officials "additional time necessary to secure the 
required execution drugs," the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction 
said in a statement last fall.

[Ohio tried and failed to execute an inmate. The Ohio Supreme Court says it can 
try again.]

This shortage is also behind the current proposal in Virginia. Until 2010, most 
executions in the United States were carried out using a 3-drug combination 
similar to what Virginia uses, a method that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme 
Court as constitutional. But a drug shortage sparked by European objections to 
capital punishment interrupted the supply of these drugs, so states began 
shifting to a series of new combinations and protocols.

In Virginia and elsewhere, this shortage prompted officials to debate reviving 
older methods to continue carrying out death sentences. Before McAuliffe 
proposed hiding the identities of drug suppliers, he was presented with a bill 
that would have made the electric chair the mandated backup method of execution 
in Virginia.

Virginia does possess some of the drugs needed to carry out an execution, but 
not all of them. In an odd turn of events, a state considering hiding the 
identities of its drug supplier obtained chemicals from a state that has 
already shielded its own. Among the drugs Virginia possesses are two vials of 
pentobarbital obtained from Texas last year, both of which expire this month. 
Texas officials said they gave Virginia these drugs but, due to state law, 
could not identify the supplier.

"Only Lewis Carroll could write the modern history of lethal injection and 
capital punishment in America," Zimring said.

(source: Washington Post)






GEORGIA----execution

Georgia executes Kenneth Fults for 1996 murder


Georgia has executed 47-year-old Kenneth Fults for the 1996 murder of his 
neighbor.

Fults was killed by lethal injection at 7:37 p.m. at the Georgia Diagnostic and 
Classification Center in Jackson.

There was no one in the execution chamber for Fults, so he had no final words 
for witnesses from the media and the state who had gathered. But he ended the 
prayer offered by the chaplain with, "Amen."

Kenneth Fults, 47, was sentenced to die for murdering Cathy Bounds in 1996.

A few minutes after the execution drugs had begun to flow, he twice looked at 
the IV inserted into his right arm. Moments later, his entire body shook for a 
few seconds. Then he was still. 15 minutes later he was pronounced dead.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Fults' appeal for mercy nearly 4 hours before 
the scheduled execution hour of 7 p.m.

The rejection came even before Fults was given his last meal. Usually it is 
well past the scheduled execution hour when the Supreme Court decides 
last-minute appeals.

The State Board of Pardons and Paroles turned down his petition for clemency 
Monday night.

In his appeal to the Supreme Court, Fults' asks the justices to stop his 
execution at least until after they have heard arguments in a non-capital 
Colorado case in which there were similar issues - jurors who allegedly held 
racist attitudes that went against the defendant.

Daniel Anthony Lucas is scheduled to be executed April 27.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear in the fall an appeal by Miguel Angel 
Pena-Rodriguez, who was convicted of attempted sexual assault on a child 
younger than 15. It was later learned that some of the jurors who convicted 
Pena-Rodriguez made derogatory comments about Mexicans.

In Fults' case, a juror who voted for death used a racial slur in an affidavit 
he gave 8 years after Fults' trial.

Fults, a black man, pleaded guilty to murdering his white neighbor, 19-year-old 
Cathy Bounds, on Jan. 30, 1996, at the end of a weeklong crime spree in 
Griffin. Fults admitted he broke into several houses to steal guns so he could 
kill his ex-girlfriend???s new boyfriend.

After Bounds' live-in boyfriend left for work that morning, Fults went into her 
trailer, wrapped 6 feet of electrical tape around her eyes, led her into a 
bedroom and put her face-down on a bed. As she begged for her life, he shot her 
5 times in the back of the head.

Investigators canvassing the trailer park after Bounds' body was discovered 
found under Fults' trailer items taken in previous burglaries, spent shells 
from the .22-caliber handgun used to kill Bounds and a letter written in gang 
code detailing her murder.

Faced with the evidence, Fults pleaded guilty with the hope the jury would show 
mercy if he admitted to the crime and showed remorse.

Each prospective juror was asked if the differences in Fults' and Bounds' race 
would matter, and all those seated, including Thomas Buffington, said it would 
not.

But when an investigator working on Fults' appeal interviewed Buffington 8 
years later, he gave a different answer, and confirmed it by repeating the 
racial slur in a written sworn statement.

"I don't know if he (Fults) ever killed anybody, but that (slur) got just what 
should have happened," Buffington, now dead, wrote. "Once he pled guilty, I 
knew I would vote for the death penalty because that's what that (slur) 
deserved."

The courts declined to hear that issue in Fults' appeals, writing that it was 
too late and "procedurally barred."

Georgia has another execution set for April 27. Daniel Anthony Lucas is 
scheduled to die by lethal injection for killing a Jones County father and his 
2 children, 1 by 1, on April 23, 1998. Lucas' co-defendant, Brandon Rhode was 
executed on Sept. 27, 2010.

1 woman and 62 men have been executed in Georgia since the death penalty was 
reinstated in 1976.

Fults becomes the 4th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Georgia 
and the 64th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1983.

Fults becomes the 12th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA 
and the 1434th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

(sources: Atlanta Journal Constitution & Rick Halperin)






OHIO:

A Bipartisan Push is Launched to End Ohio's Death Penalty


Ohio has no executions scheduled for nine months, and the state has no drugs to 
carry out lethal injections.

So advocates are seizing the opportunity to lobby lawmakers on abandoning the 
death penalty entirely. And they came armed with some powerful weapons: people 
who were sentenced to die but who were freed after the charges against them 
were dismissed.

9 men sentenced to die in Ohio have been exonerated. Together, those men spent 
more than 200 years on Ohio's death row.

Derrick Jamison of Cincinnati spent 20 years under a death sentence for a 
murder he didn't commit. Since the charges against him were dismissed and he 
was released, he's been telling his story to inspire those working for an end 
to capital punishment.

"It's real hard. I lost 53 of my friends here in Ohio. I'm the 119th death-row 
exoneree in the United States. I'm the only survivor from Cincinnati, Ohio. I 
lost a lot of my friends I grew up with in Cincinnati.

"So it's real hard coming out and speaking about it night after night. It gets 
to you, but it's something you gotta do. It's something I got to do."

Another attempt to ban the death penalty

Democratic Rep. Nickie Antonio of Lakewood has proposed a death-penalty ban 
several times, but this time her bill is jointly sponsored with Republican 
Niraj Antani of Miamisburg near Dayton. Antonio says with no executions likely 
in the near future, now is the time to consider recalling the death penalty.

"We've not have been here exactly like this with two joint sponsors from both 
sides of the aisle. So I really believe this is the time to have the hearings, 
to talk about this forward movement that we need to have especially in this 
time of a moratorium."

Among those who addressed the activists before they set out to meet lawmakers 
was Republican Sen. Bill Seitz of Cincinnati. He told them he doesn't want to 
ban the death penalty, but he's proposed 2 laws that would make major changes.

"I'm not sure I'm quite where you are, but I'm very, very dedicated to 2 
propositions. First, that we should do everything humanly possible to ensure 
that an innocent person is not subjected to death at the hands of the state."

And he said legislators must make sure Ohio does not execute those who were 
mentally ill at the time of their crimes.

The next scheduled execution

Ohio's next execution is set for January 2017. The state went to a single-drug 
execution method after a problematic execution in 2014, but the drug that that 
was approved for use is unavailable. And though a law was passed to encourage 
compounding pharmacies to make it, none have.

So unless the state finds a way to acquire the drug or changes the method of 
execution, there won't be any executions in the foreseeable future.

(source: WKSU news)