[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, VA., ALA., LA., CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

April 18



TEXAS:

The Draw of Death Row


With "dark tourism" on the rise, Huntsville's prison museum is thriving.

The 3 syringes lie in a row, lined up neatly on a somber black background. 
Displayed with a saline drip bag and looping IV catheter, the vials are 
oversized, as though designed for the chubby hands of a child playing a macabre 
game of doctor. Below each is a typed card explaining its purpose in the 
December 1982 death of Charlie Brooks, Jr., the 1st person in the United States 
executed by lethal injection:

To their right is a pair of hair clippers used for shaving inmates' heads 
before electrocution as well as a sponge that was soaked in salt water to 
conduct electricity. The last thing to touch dozens of men's shaven skulls, the 
sponge sits on a plastic riser, its face pale and pockmarked like the surface 
of a distant moon. A 2nd sponge is in a baggie on a shelf a few steps away in 
the Texas Prison Museum's vault. The objects sit there matter of factly, their 
subtle presentation belying the roles they've played in execution, Texas 
history and making Huntsville - with its 5 prisons and the headquarters for the 
Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) - shorthand for the death penalty 
all over the world. it's difficult to believe that the very sponge used in the 
death chamber is now on display in a 1-story building just off interstate 45.

The roadside museum is the most comprehensive education many Texans, and other 
travelers, will get on the state's corrections system. Although the museum's 
small budget and close connection to the prison administration have limited its 
scope, it has an unmatched opportunity to convene conversations about crime, 
punishment and justice, especially given the expanding ranks of its guests.

For a dollar per person, visitors can borrow striped shirts and snap selfies 
behind bars. The museum opened on the courthouse square on April 20, 1989, and 
attracted 10,000 visitors in its 1st year. By 2003, when it had moved to its 
current location on the interstate, annual attendance jumped to 22,000. The 
numbers have inched up every year to 32,000 visitors in 2015. Greater 
visibility on I-45 is partly responsible, but so may be the growing popularity 
of prison tourism over the past decade.

>From the Tower of London to Alcatraz Island, old prison sites have long been 
big tourist attractions. But in the United States, the late-20th-century 
replacement of crumbling buildings by more modern facilities has led to a 
proliferation of new museums in old jails. And attendance at such sites - 
sometimes called "dark tourism" - is increasing, perhaps partly as a result of 
television shows about prison life. Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia 
last year counted nearly 213,000 visitors, quadruple the number it had a decade 
ago. Even in out-of-the-way Mansfield, Ohio, and Moundsville, West Virginia, 
visits to the local prison museum are tracking steadily upward. Instead of a 
single historic building, the Texas Prison Museum showcases the artifacts of a 
prison system, but its popularity also is increasing. "When it first opened, I 
thought, 'Who in the world would want to go to a prison museum?'" says director 
Jim Willett, 66, a soft-spoken retired warden. "But I can't imagine us having a 
more varied group of people come here - we get anybody from attorneys to 
ex-inmates."

Last year's visitors came from all over the world. They arrived alone, with 
their kids on vacation, on school field trips, on charter buses loaded with 
senior citizens, with their motorcycle clubs, and on the way to visit spouses 
on death row. Some showed their prison ID cards, mentioned where they'd been 
incarcerated and cracked jokes about former residents getting discounted 
admission.

Most spent between 45 minutes and an hour looking at artifacts and 
presentations, among them a pistol that belonged to Bonnie and Clyde, the 
display about the annual prison rodeo with inmate cowboys, and Old Sparky, the 
electric chair that ended the lives of 361 men between 1924 and 1964.

People like to play outlaw, walking into the replica of a cell, and for a 
dollar per person, visitors can borrow striped shirts and snap selfies behind 
bars. Some parents appreciate the chance to shut their kids in the cell for a 
moment of deterrent contemplation. The contraband case displays prohibited 
items made by inmates: a knife concealed in a flip-flop, a Coke can with a 
secret compartment, a jump rope made from state-issued boxer underwear. Nearby, 
the art display shows what else inmates create with time and limited materials: 
a jewelry box and cross made from matches, a rosary made from pencils, a 
hand-drawn game of "Prisonopoly," patterned after a Monopoly board with real 
estate named for Texas prison units.

"I'm struck by the talent of the prisoners," said Shannon Pettus, a bank sales 
representative from Conroe, who visited in February. "It makes you wonder, is 
it something they knew that they had going in? Or was it something they tapped 
into because they were in a situation where there was nothing else to do?" The 
objects sit there, matter of factly, their subtle presentation belying the 
roles they've played in execution, Texas history and making Huntsville 
shorthand for the death penalty. The piece de resistance, Old Sparky, sits in a 
replica of the red-brick death chamber at the Huntsville Unit prison less than 
3 miles away. The inmate-built oversize oak chair gleams beneath a gentle 
spotlight. Leather straps curl around its arms and footrests. Metal housings 
for the electrical works snake around the side of the chair. It is what drew 
Kansas resident Pete Gomez and his wife to the museum - that, and a general 
curiosity about crime (Gomez is a fan of the police show "The First 48"). 
Earlier on their road trip, they visited the prison in Florida where Ted Bundy 
was executed by electrocution in 1989. Gomez was curious about whether the 
electric chair in the Texas museum was the one used in Bundy's execution (it's 
not). The couple spent close to 2 hours in the museum, taking nearly 500 
pictures.

The museum "has to do with part of life we don't get to see," Gomez said. "And 
these guys that are in there get very creative when they have 40 years to think 
about what they did."

That creativity is visible in crafts sold in the museum's gift shop, which 
purchases curios made by inmates and sells them at a markup. The $25 nickel key 
chains, some reading "Death Row," are popular. The shop also sells T-shirts - 
one with an image of the electric chair that reads "Home of Old Sparky." Old 
Sparky shot glasses go for $4, a box of "Solitary ConfineMiNTS" for $2. A 
decade ago, under a previous director, the shop sold ballpoint pens crafted to 
look like injection needles. After a visitor complained, they were 
discontinued.

Gift shop sales ($250,000 last year) help support the museum, which receives no 
state funding - a fact announced in block letters on the front door. Nor is it 
officially connected to the prison system. it was the brainchild of TDCJ 
administrators, though, and that has shaped the story the museum tells.

In the mid-1980s, officials in what was then called the Texas Department of 
Corrections (TDC) discussed starting an archive to preserve the department's 
history. Meanwhile, Huntsville's leaders were deciding how to commemorate the 
Texas sesquicentennial in 1986. When Robert Pierce, a folklorist and oral 
historian who taught in the prison system and at Sam Houston State University 
(SHSU), heard about the archive, he volunteered to run it. Pierce secured 
permission to photograph and interview anyone in the system - inmates, guards, 
the electrician who maintained Old Sparky. "You start people talking about 
their lives, and that's where the stories come from," he says.

Ken Johnson, then an administrator for the system, was appointed Pierce's 
liaison. Together they collected filing cabinets full of documents, interviews, 
photographs, VHS tapes. Johnson suggested turning the archive into a museum, 
and a group of leaders in TDC, SHSU and the Huntsville community formed a 
nonprofit to raise money.

"When it first opened, I thought, ???Who in the world would want to go to a 
prison museum? 'But I can't imagine us having a more varied group of people 
come here - we get anybody from attorneys to ex-inmates.'" Pierce and Johnson 
erected temporary displays of artifacts - including a Thompson machine gun from 
the prison system armory - during the prison rodeo in Huntsville and at 1986 
sesquicentennial events around the state. There, they surveyed potential 
visitors, finding that interest in a museum was higher outside Huntsville than 
it was locally. Then as now, Huntsville residents who don't work for the prison 
system can be ambivalent about the way it defines their city. The 5 prisons in 
town, two more in the county, and the TDCJ offices make corrections the city's 
largest industry. Locals grow fatigued at the town's constant association with 
the death penalty. During the museum's formative years, they wearied of 
negative publicity from Ruiz v. Estelle, the landmark case filed by inmates in 
1972 alleging that the Texas prison system constituted cruel and unusual 
punishment. But TDCJ and SHSU keep the Huntsville economy stable, says Jane 
Monday, who served as mayor from 1985 to 1991 and was part of the planning 
effort. "TDC has always been appreciated because their administrators and many 
of their employees live here and work here; their kids go to school here; 
they're part of our churches and organizations," she said. "The museum was 
simply a move to celebrate that heritage that's been here and underwritten us 
for so many years."

In 1989 the museum secured a location: an old bank building that had been 
sitting empty on Huntsville's courthouse square. Its 2 vaults were perfect for 
displaying the big-ticket items on loan from the state. One housed the weapons; 
the other became a simulated death chamber displaying Old Sparky. "People want 
to sit in it, they want to carve their initials in it," Pierce remembers. "We 
had trouble with people wanting to take their picture in the chair."

The museum was assembled by a corps of community volunteers using donated 
materials.

"I was down there in my blue jeans trying to figure out how to hang stuff and 
label it," Monday recalls. Pierce, Johnson and a colleague, photographer Jim 
Balzaretti, assembled the original exhibits. "We knew we'd have the guns, 
because that's always a draw - because we're thinking tourism, right? - to 
bring people in," Pierce remembers. "And the chair. But I said we need to have 
artwork in there, and we need something about the [prison] education system. It 
can't be all just security and blood and guts."

Today, museum visitors start by Watching a short video about the Texas prison 
system and improvements - like offering education and job training - it has 
made over the years. Many prison museums offer similar narratives about a 
corrections system's evolution, says Rutgers sociologist Michael Welch. Author 
of the 2015 Escape to Prison: Penal Tourism and the Pull of Punishment, Welch 
says that prison museums attempt "education, enlightenment and a sense of 
history. ... They generally walk up through time, showing early forms of 
punishment with an emphasis on corporal punishment and the death penalty, and 
in many cases that we've moved beyond that to more humane forms of 
intervention."

But while the museum may reinforce a message of humane treatment as progress, 
it also reflects prison administration to the exclusion of inmates, says 
Elizabeth Neucere, a history master's graduate from SHSU who wrote her thesis 
about the museum. While panels throughout the museum explain the work inmates 
do, few exhibits feature prisoners' voices. Most inmates mentioned by name were 
executed, tried to escape, or were considered "famous and infamous." A photo 
exhibit featuring executed inmates is one of the few displays that allows 
visitors to hear the voices behind the bars.

"The Texas Prison Museum ... inhibits the possibility for public forum by 
creating silences in its historical presentation through the active choices 
made in exhibit design or display that makes a narrative superficial or 
absent," Neucere writes in her thesis. "Impropriety in the Texas prison system 
goes unnoticed by museum visitors, making contemporary inmate battles for human 
rights seem unwarranted."

For instance, Neucere says, the exhibit on inmate punishment displays 
handcuffs, a ball and chain, and old padlocks, as well as the bat, a leather 
strap with a wooden handle legally used to whip inmates until 1941. The card 
next to the bat says "Used for corporal punishment on convicts until the mid 
1940s," omitting the 1909 state investigation that uncovered abusive use of the 
bat, debates about banning it during the 1912 governor's race, and its 
temporary replacement with the "dark cell," an early form of solitary 
confinement. The bat returned to widespread use in the 1930s before being 
banned in 1941. But none of this information is present in the display.

The museum's selective silences, Neucere says, are partly a response to Ruiz v. 
Estelle, which resulted in federal oversight and major reforms to the prison 
system after the 1980 ruling that it was unconstitutional. "Ruiz is not 
remembered fondly among the prison system and this is reflected in the museum, 
along with any other court case against the system," Neucere writes. The 
plaintiffs' accounts of overcrowding, inmate-on-inmate violence and inadequate 
medical care brought negative publicity. She suggests that, consciously or not, 
the case likely influenced the museum founders' presentation of the story.

Pierce, the volunteer archivist, says there's probably some truth in that 
argument. Many people who helped with the museum were directly involved with 
Ruiz compliance issues, "and they were preoccupied with people being sued and 
fired," he says. "I think the thing they liked about the museum is that it 
gives a sense of authenticity, history and importance: 'Yeah, I worked at the 
prison system, and there were some bad things about it sometimes, but we have a 
history.'"

Asked if he thought some of the decade-old informational panels should be 
updated, Willett, the museum director and retired warden, was hesitant. 
"History doesn't change, so a lot of what's out there is, in my mind, never 
going to be updated other than to just refresh it from the fading," he said. 
"Some of the stuff is historical, and it's over with, and it won't be changed."

But interpretation of history does change, and Neucere, who interned at the 
museum before being hired as assistant curator of collections, is updating the 
display about inmate punishment; when Rogers retires at the end of this year, 
Neucere, 25, will take over as curator. Willett has approved adding an 
interpretive panel about inmate punishment from the 1800s to the present, and 
another about the bat. Neucere is organizing a speaker series with SHSU faculty 
and former guards and inmates. The project, patterned after a series at Eastern 
State Penitentiary, will reflect new information and multiple points of view.

In the last decade, "museums have been moving away from the whole detached, 
'here are some objects on display, this is what happened,' providing only 1 
master narrative," Neucere says. "Now museums are trying to present multiple 
narratives and engage with multiple stakeholders and have dialogue with 
visitors."

At Eastern State Penitentiary, the Big Graph exhibit asks visitors to reflect 
on mass incarceration. The 16-foot-tall, 3-dimensional outdoor graph comprises 
one bar per decade of American history. Each bar's height represents the number 
of people in prison, and the bars are color-coded by race. Every visitor who 
takes an audio tour is prompted to decide what the bar representing 2020 should 
look like. "The core of our mission these days is to ask people to reflect on 
this," says Sean Kelley, the museum's director of interpretation and public 
programming. "If there's one takeaway from our entire tour, we want it to be 
that this [prison] system has been changing all along, and it continues to 
evolve, and these are human decisions."

The Texas Prison Museum does not ask guests to reflect on current events or 
debate issues. But one can imagine the potential for encouraging dialogue among 
visitors who come from around the world to the city they associate with 
incarceration and the death penalty. "The Texas Prison Museum has the potential 
to become what is called a 'post- museum,'" Neucere writes in her thesis. "This 
type of museum has developed out of the new museum theory and is one that 
actively tries to engage its visitors and stakeholders in discourse over 
difficult and controversial issues, rectify social disparity, and promote 
social cohesion."

The museum has planned to add a wing for artifacts piling up in its vault and 
an off-site storage facility, but it doesn't have the funds yet. What is 
certain is that more visitors are coming: A conference center for a law 
enforcement training program affiliated with SHSU is slated to be built on 
state land next to the museum, which all but guarantees traffic will increase.

When visitors arrive at the new center, they will see the view museum patrons 
have now - a horse pasture and the Holliday Unit prison across the interstate. 
On sunny days, the field turns a blinding silver-yellow. Brighter still are the 
roofs of the Holliday Unit, surrounded by guard towers and barbed wire. Inside 
are 435 employees, roughly 2,100 inmates and at least 2,500 stories. The 
closest most people will get to hearing them is a 45-minute stop at the museum 
to look at words on a panel and objects under glass.

(source: Texas Observer)

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

see: http://nationinside.org/p/texas-parole-reform-due-dilligence

(source: nationinside.org)






VIRGINIA:

Governor McAuliffe's Plan to Hide Source of Lethal Injection Drugs a Bad Idea


Recently, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe amended a bill passed by the 
legislature that would mandate the use of the electric chair as the default 
method of execution if the state were unable to obtain the necessary drugs for 
lethal injection. Governor McAuliffe proposed instead to enlist compounding 
pharmacies to manufacture the drugs for the lethal injection protocol and 
shroud the pharmacies' identities in secrecy by making them exempt from the 
Freedom of Information Act and by prohibiting public dissemination of 
information regarding the origin of the lethal injection drugs.

Such a bill is not the first of its kind. Legislation that makes confidential 
information regarding the creation, distribution, and administration of lethal 
injection drugs has emerged across the country in response to the recent 
shortage of drugs that states need to carry out lethal injections, such as 
sodium thiopental and pentobarbital. The European Union has enacted measures to 
regulate the export of drugs used in lethal injections and domestic 
pharmaceutical manufacturers are refusing to provide states with drugs needed 
to execute prisoners, stating that executions are an improper use of their 
drugs. By concealing the identities of the compounding pharmacies that supply 
the lethal injection drugs to the state, the pharmacies would no longer be open 
to the lengthy legal challenges and immense public pressure they have faced in 
the past and would be more willing to do business in Virginia, according to the 
governor.

Though Governor McAuliffe has proposed the legislation in the hopes of 
providing a "humane way to carry out capital punishment," laws allowing 
compounding pharmacies to manufacture lethal drugs in secret pose an 
unacceptable risk that inmates will face a cruel and unusual death in violation 
of the Eighth Amendment. First, because compounding pharmacies are not 
federally regulated, there is a substantial concern about the sterility and the 
efficacy of the drugs they produce. For example, in 2012, tainted injectable 
drugs from a compounding pharmacy caused a meningitis outbreak that killed 64 
people across the country.

Second, in light of the several recent botched executions nationwide, the lack 
of government transparency regarding execution protocols undermines the 
public's faith in the integrity of the justice system, because it conceals 
information about the lawfulness of the drugs used in the state's lethal 
injection procedures. Furthermore, such secrecy laws prevent inmates from 
receiving any information on how the drugs being used for their execution are 
produced and used, thereby depriving them of their due process rights to ensure 
the legality of the state's lethal injection protocol.

In its 2014 report, Irreversible Error, The Constitution Project's Death 
Penalty Committee underscores the dangers of the lack of transparency in the 
development and administration of states' lethal injection protocols. The 
bipartisan, blue-ribbon committee is made up of both death penalty supporters 
and opponents, including 2 former Virginia Attorneys General, Democrat William 
G. Broaddus and Republican Mark Earley, Jr. It warns against secrecy practices 
exactly like the one proposed in Virginia, urging that states instead handle 
the implementation of lethal injection protocols in a transparent manner that 
allows for appropriate levels of legal, media, and public scrutiny. The 
committee also condemns the use of drugs manufactured by under-regulated 
compounding pharmacies like the ones that Governor McAuliffe wishes to employ 
in Virginia: such lax state regulations mean that drugs produced in compounding 
pharmacies are subject to less testing and may include contaminants that cause 
significant pain.

States must take the right measures to ensure the effectiveness of the drugs 
used for lethal injections, including appropriate procedures to ensure the 
proper manufacturing, transportation, handling, and use of the drugs.

Governor McAuliffe's proposal to shroud in secrecy the state???s process of 
obtaining drugs used in lethal injections is not an effective solution to the 
potential lack of execution drugs in Virginia, but rather gives rise to the 
risk of botched executions and significant constitutional violations. He may 
think his proposed amendment will improve the fairness and administration of 
capital punishment in Virginia, but our panel of criminal justice experts from 
across the ideological spectrum strongly disagrees with him.

(source: Ginny Sloan, President, The Constitution Project; Huffington Post)

**********

Faith-based leaders to rally in Richmond against death penalty bill clause


More than 500 faith-based leaders will rally in Richmond to fight what they are 
saying is an unfair clause in the death penalty bill.

They're rejecting an amendment to Gov. Terry McAuliffe's electric chair 
legislation that would allow the state to obtain lethal injection drugs from 
pharmacies without having to reveal the names of those companies.

Faith leaders believe the amendment is dangerous, and would keep pharmacies 
from being held accountable in case something went wrong.

According to a news release from Faith in Public Life, the group of leaders 
will be holding a press conference at the General Assembly Building to urge 
lawmakers to reject the amendment.

McAuliffe says if the General Assembly rejects the amendment, he'll veto the 
electric chair bill - which would effectively end the death penalty in 
Virginia. The General Assembly is set to take up the issue on April 20.

(source: WAVY news)






ALABAMA:

Mobile man set to represent himself in capital murder case


Carlos Kennedy, who was convicted of killing 69-year old Zoa White in 2010, 
will reappear in court this week, for the crime. This time, Kennedy will 
represent himself.

Kennedy was convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection for raping and 
murdering White with a claw hammer in her home on Springhill Avenue. His case 
has been handled as a capital murder because prosecutors say Kennedy committed 
the murder during the act of burglary.

Former Judge Joseph "Rusty" Johnston ruled in the original case that Kennedy 
was unfit to act as his own lawyer.

"After dealing with [Kennedy] for 10 months it is the Court's opinion that 
[Kennedy] was either being deceptive, a good actor or has suffered mental 
deterioration while incarcerated," Johnston ruled. "[Kennedy] has no capacity 
to defend himself and has no idea what needs to be done in order to prepare for 
trial."

"As this is a Capital Murder case in which forensics may be a critical factor, 
[Kennedy] is totally oblivious of what needs to be done regarding retaining 
experts, having samples tested, and preparing cross-examination. As to 
mitigation, if necessary, [Kennedy], once again seems to take the attitude that 
he will take care of that later."

The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the death penalty ruling in 
the case, stating that Kennedy, who had been uncooperative with lawyers, should 
be allowed an opportunity to represent himself.

Investigators found blood, a fingerprint and a palm print at the scene that 
matched in White's home that Kennedy. An autopsy also revealed seminal fluid, 
but it did not include sperm, so that DNA could be used by prosecutors to match 
Kennedy.

White worked in real estate and politics, serving as a administrator at the 
Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs under former Governor Bob 
Riley.

Judge Charles Graddick will preside over the case. A second defense attorney 
has been appointed to provide Kennedy with any assistance he many need in the 
judicial process, as well as serving as a liaison between the judge, 
prosecution and the defendant.

"The evidence is overwhelming," District Attorney Ashley Rich told AL.com last 
year. "If the courts say that we have to give him his day in court to represent 
himself, we will do that and we think he will get the death penalty again."

Jury selection in the retrial began Monday morning. The selected jury will 
return Wednesday. Court proceedings will begin the days following.

(source: al.com)






LOUISIANA:

Inadequate representation: No more money expected for public defenders


While hundreds of poor people wait in jail to be appointed a lawyer, a judge in 
New Orleans threatens to release defendants and suits are filed challenging the 
constitutionality of Louisiana's criminal justice system, lawmakers say they 
have no plans to increase funding for an office designed to protect basic legal 
rights.

Funding for the state Public Defenders Board, which oversees local public 
defenders offices, remains level in Gov. John Bel Edwards' proposal for the 
budget cycle that begins July 1. That would be good news for many agencies 
facing massive cuts as Edwards tries to close a $750 million shortfall.

But the lack of local resources and circumstances that have prompted lawsuits 
complaining of inadequate representation has created a dire situation in what 
is supposed to be a crucial protection for indigent defendants in the criminal 
justice system.

"There's just not enough money," State Public Defender Jay Dixon said.

Louisiana funds its public defenders in a way that no other state in the 
country does. The bulk of the public defenders funding comes from court fees 
assessed on defendants when they plead guilty or lose a case.

Most of these fees come from people admitting to traffic violations. And far 
fewer traffic tickets are being written in Louisiana than just a few years ago.

Local law enforcement is also steering more people toward community service and 
drug rehabilitation programs, instead of going through the court system. 
Orleans Public Defender Derwyn Bunton said he supports these diversion 
programs, but it means less money for his office.

"It takes resources to get our work done and done constitutionally," Bunton 
said.

The lack of funding for public defenders is creating a safety concern in 
Orleans. A New Orleans judge last week ordered the release of seven defendants 
because not enough funding was available to mount an adequate defense for them.

Overworked, underfunded, former ballerina sleeps, wakes in panic; did she 
forget something to defend the poorest of the poor?

The defendants included people charged with rape and murder. They remain behind 
bars, because prosecutors have filed an appeal Friday (April 15) of the judge's 
decision to have them released.

Still, Orleans isn't alone. Fourteen public defender offices around the state 
are in some type of restrictive status because they don't have enough to money 
to provide all their services.

The Plaquemines Parish public defenders office almost closed earlier this year 
because of a lack of funds. The situation is considered most dire in Acadiana, 
where 5,200 people are on a waiting on a lawyer because the local public 
defender's office that covers Lafayette, Vermillion and Acadia parishes and a 
few smaller city courts doesn't have enough money.

The Lafayette area office, known as the 15th Judicial District, has lost more 
than 1/2 of its staff and contract lawyers since February. At the end of 
January, around 60 staff and contract lawyers handled public defense services 
there.

Now, only around 27 lawyers are available, said Paul Marx, the chief public 
defender for that office. Around to 200 to 300 people currently in jail don't 
have representation because the office doesn't have enough lawyers to represent 
them without posing an ethical and professional conflict.

"It's massive. Catastrophic. I've talked to national experts who say they have 
never seen anything like it," Marx said.

In spite of these dramatic circumstances, state lawmakers haven't shown a 
willingness to increase the money public defenders get or change the system by 
which they are paid so they can find new revenue.

A handful of bills have been introduced to deal with public defenders, and most 
are tweaking the current funding system. No grand overhaul has been proposed.

"It's not exactly a popular expenditure," Dixon said.

OPD to begin refusing certain felony cases

Staff is overworked and underfunded, chief attorney says

The only thing lawmakers have done so far to address the public defense system 
problem is to introduced bills to force the state Public Defender Board to 
shift money from its death penality appeals work to local public defenders 
offices.

The Louisiana District Attorneys Association have accused the Public Defender 
Board of spending too much of its money on capital defense, because most of the 
board members don't believe in the death penalty.

"They need to send their money back down to their districts," said E. Pete 
Adams, executive director of the Louisiana District Attorneys Association. 
"When they start shutting down cases, it starts affecting district attorneys 
and victims."

The board typically sends about half of its appropriations to public defenders 
offices. About 1/3 is spent on defense in death penalty cases. The remaining 
goes to other programs and administrative costs. But for the coming budget 
year, the state Public Defender Board has voted to allocate at least 65 % of 
its funds to local public defenders.

Rep. Sherman Mack, R-Albany, is pushing a bill that would require the state 
public defender board to allocate 65 % of its funding to local districts every 
year, regardless of capital needs. Sen. Eddie Lambert, R-Gonzales, has 
legislation that would go even further -- requiring 85 % of the board's funding 
to go to local defenders offices.

But Dixon said moving around money is a little like rearranging deck chairs on 
the Titanic. Reducing money for capital defense as much won't make those cases 
go away.

It will just slow them down, something prosecutors generally don't want. Short 
of abolishing the death penalty, money will have to spent to mount some 
defense, Dixon said.

Given the funding crisis, there was also at least one effort to make sure local 
public defender money stays in a couple of local city courts. Rep. Sam Jones, 
D-Franklin, has sponsored a bill to give city courts in Morgan City, Franklin, 
and New Iberia 30 % of the public defense funding available to hire lawyers to 
represent indigent defendants. He said the local judges are frustrated that 
much of the court's work has ground to a halt because the public defenders 
office can supply representation for defendants.

"The genesis of this was the city court judge in Morgan City who has been there 
for a long time is tired that his court has been clogged up because of access 
to having indigent defenders through the process that we have now," Jones said.

"[The judge] has no confidence that anything is going to be corrected," he 
said.

A House committee approved Jones bill, which is now headed to the House floor 
for a full vote, but over the objections of Dixon. The public defenders said 
the bill pushes money to the city courts, at the expense of district courts 
that handle felony and juvenile cases. If every city court in Louisiana decided 
to keep a portion of its money, public defense for district court -- including 
felony cases -- would suffer, Dixon said.

"All of the local [public defense] funds come from traffic tickets. Those 
traffic tickets, for the most part, do not go through district court. They come 
from city court. That's just the way the system works," Dixon said.

But if Louisiana doesn't do anything about its public defender funding crisis, 
the federal government could step in. The American Civil Liberties Union is 
suing the Orleans public defenders office, saying people are being held too 
long without having a lawyer. If the public defenders office loses the case, 
the state could be ordered to provide more support indigent defense.

"A judge can force the state's hand," Bunton said.

(source: nola.com)






CALIFORNIA:

CHINO HILLS: Kevin Cooper's clemency petition stirs both sides----Polarizing 
case surrounding brutal murders has sparked strong emotions for 3 decades. 
Convicted killer's chance for clemency rests with Gov. Brown.


After 33 years in jail - 31 spent on San Quentin State Prison's death row - 
Kevin Cooper's last hope of avoiding execution rests in the hands of Gov. Jerry 
Brown.

The defense team for Cooper, convicted in February 1985 for the 1983 murders of 
a Chino Hills family and a neighbor, submitted a clemency petition to the 
governor Feb. 17, 3 months after a federal court reinstated the death penalty 
in California.

As 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Barry G. Silverman wrote when he stayed 
the convict's execution in 2004, Cooper "is either guilty as sin or he was 
framed by the police."

Even today, Silverman's remarks reflect the polarized feelings about Cooper's 
beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt guilt or innocence.

In 1985, a jury found Cooper - who had escaped a minimum-security prison and 
was holed up near the crime scene at the time of the murders - guilty of 
killing Douglas and Peggy Ryen, 41-year-old chiropractors and Arabian horse 
trainers and breeders; their daughter, Jessica, 10, and visiting neighbor 
Christopher Hughes, 11.

He also was found guilty of the attempted murder of Joshua Ryen, the Ryens' 
then-8-year-old son who survived a slashed throat.

San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Richard Garner, presiding over the 
change-of-venue trial in San Diego, accepted the jury's recommendation for 
death. On May 15, 1985, Garner sentenced Cooper to die in the San Quentin State 
Prison gas chamber.

No one denies the murders - via hatchet, knives and either an ice pick or 
screwdriver - were horrific. But with the state's moratorium on executions 
lifted in November, attention to the case has raised questions among some in 
the legal and law-enforcement communities as well as the anti-death penalty 
lobby.

The question of clemency stirs similarly strong sentiments on either side of 
the "guilty as sin" or "framed by police" argument. Past and present principals 
involved in the case either favor clemency or clamor for Cooper's execution. As 
for Cooper himself, he has maintained his innocence since his arrest July 30, 
1983.

Neither Gov. Brown nor his staff would comment on the Cooper clemency petition, 
said Evan Westrup, Brown's supervising public information officer, adding the 
governor has offered no timetable to answer the clemency petition.

A mother's rage

For MaryAnn Hughes, mother of Christopher Hughes, the neighbor boy who would be 
43 now, Cooper's execution can't happen soon enough.

It was her husband, William Hughes, who found the bodies of his son, the Ryens 
and a barely alive Joshua shortly before noon June 5, 1983. Concerned that no 
one answered the phone and Christopher hadn't returned home to go to church 
after his overnight visit at the Ryens, William set out to look for his son. 
What he found traumatized him and the entire neighborhood dotted with horse 
ranches and rural properties.

His 5th-grade classmates, teachers, parents, brother, relatives and friends 
attended the funeral Mass for Christopher, a boy described as happy and 
carefree. Her family continues to grapple with the pain of losing him, MaryAnn 
Hughes said.

"There is no new evidence," MaryAnn said in response to the clemency petition. 
"There is nothing that wasn't given to the jury. This thing has been tried for 
30-plus years through every avenue we have. Even when there was almost a new 
trial in 2004, when the Ninth Circuit Court (of Appeals) sent the appeal back 
to the district court in San Diego, the new things convicted him."

There has always been "overwhelming evidence of his guilt. There is no doubt 
whatsoever that he is the guilty party," she said. "Clemency is the only thing 
left for him."

Lawyers lining up

The Hugheses were especially irate over the American Bar Association's recently 
announced support of Cooper's bid for clemency.

In a letter sent to Gov. Brown on March 14, the American Bar Association 
alleged Cooper's "arrest, prosecution and conviction are marred by evidence of 
racial bias, police misconduct, evidence tampering, suppression of exculpatory 
information, lack of quality defense counsel and a hamstrung court system.

(source: Press-Enterprise)