[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., ARIZ.

[Rick Halperin]

April 29



TEXAS:

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for a 39-year-old North Texas man 
convicted of a 2013 shooting rampage that left 5 people dead, including his 
mother


A Kaufman County jury Thursday deliberated about 20 minutes before finding 
Charles Brownlow Jr. guilty of capital murder for the slaying of convenience 
store clerk Luis Leal-Carrillo.

He was 1 of the 5 killed over several hours in October 2013 in the area east of 
Dallas. Dallas TV station WFAA reports (http://bit.ly/1WuPr5x ) defense lawyers 
argued unsuccessfully that Brownlow was insane.

The other victims included Brownlow's 55-year-old aunt at her Terrell home. 
Then his mother's body was found on fire at her home, followed by the shooting 
of a former classmate and his girlfriend, and then the clerk.

Trial punishment testimony is set to resume Monday.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Texas Prisons Assert Right to Censor Inmates' Families on Social Media


On the morning of April 15, Pat Hartwell drove up from her home in Houston, 
Texas, to the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Austin, where the Texas Department of 
Criminal Justice, which runs the state???s prisons, was holding a board 
meeting. The board only offers a public comment period during 2 of its meetings 
each year, and this would be the 1st time in 2016 that the public would have a 
chance to air grievances or concerns about agency operations, for example, or 
prison conditions.

For Hartwell, a well-known anti-death penalty activist in Texas, the timing of 
the meeting was opportune; roughly a week earlier, word had spread among 
prisoners, family members, and activists that the director of the TDCJ had 
established a new rule forbidding any prisoner from maintaining a social media 
presence. Hartwell has for years maintained a Facebook page for a death row 
inmate she is certain is innocent, and she wanted some answers.

In a section of the 146-page Offender Orientation Handbook reserved for 
"standards of behavior" - between a rule requiring prisoners to "show respect" 
in their interactions with others and another forbidding "fighting, scuffling, 
horseplay, or similar activities" - there had appeared a seemingly incongruous 
new rule stating that prisoners "are prohibited from maintaining active social 
media accounts for the purposes of soliciting, updating, or engaging others, 
through a 3rd party or otherwise."

Hartwell and others only found out about it because the wife of a death row 
prisoner happened to be visiting her husband on the day inmates there 
discovered the new policy. The lack of explanation or guidance concerning its 
provenance was disconcerting (as far as anyone knew, the rule was never vetted 
by the department's board). And they were confused about why it hadn't been 
brought directly to anyone's attention (the responsibility for keeping abreast 
of new rules falls squarely on the offenders, activists say prisoners were 
told).

But more importantly, prisoners and their advocates didn???t understand the 
scope of the new rule. In Texas (as in most places), prisoners have no direct 
access to the internet, so anything about them that appears online is posted by 
a third party - by definition, a person who is not under the supervision of the 
department of corrections. As such, the new rule would infringe on the free 
speech and expression rights of ordinary citizens - a proposition of dubious 
constitutionality, says David Fathi, director of the ACLU's National Prison 
Project.

They also didn't understand why social media was being targeted - or whether 
the rule was intended to include other uses of the internet, including websites 
and blogs dedicated to prisoner artwork, exposing abuses inside facilities, or 
drawing attention to specific cases of apparent wrongful conviction. And since 
the same information published on a website could easily be - and often is - 
posted to Facebook and other social media platforms, there was concern the rule 
was made to be flexible enough that TDCJ could easily broaden its scope to 
attack other online content.

Upon learning of the rule, Hartwell penned an email to agency spokesperson 
Jason Clark with a list of questions. When she didn't hear back, she emailed 
the head of TDCJ, its general counsel, and its ombudsman. The day before the 
April board meeting, she got a short reply from the ombudsman that didn't 
exactly assuage her concerns - or directly address the majority of her 
questions. It was, she would tell the board, an "inadequate answer." Restating 
the new rule, the ombudsman said that it applied to all social media, and not 
only would offenders be punished for violating it, but outside 3rd parties 
would be as well, by having their ability to visit or correspond with their 
loved ones suspended.

By the time Hartwell arrived at the Crowne Plaza for the meeting, she was mad; 
she felt forced by the TDCJ to take offline the Facebook page she had long 
maintained. And that quickly turned into frustration when a board coordinator 
approached to deliver a bit of confounding news. Because there were so many 
people signed up to speak during the public comment period (including three who 
wanted to speak about the social media rule), the board's chair had decided to 
chop in half each speaker's normal allotted time of three minutes. How many 
people were signed up? The board rep didn't know; this is what the chairman has 
decided, she said.

But throughout the comment period, the rules kept changing, and not everyone 
got the promised 1 1/2 minutes. First, Chair Dale Wainwright, a former jurist 
on the Texas Supreme Court, announced that individuals who'd signed up to speak 
on the same topic would have to coordinate among themselves to figure out who 
would abridge and deliver comments on behalf of the group - regardless of 
whether the individuals had similar comments to make. For social media 
comments, he would offer a total of 2 minutes. Midway through the meeting, 
Wainwright changed the rules again, offering each speaker just 60 seconds to 
communicate their complaints and concerns.

After the comment period - during which board members did not respond to 
questions (Wainwright promised each speaker would later receive a written 
response) - Hartwell was quick to link the chair's actions to concerns about 
the social media rule. If the board so easily bent its rules for citizen 
communications, what was to keep the agency from bending its social media rule 
too? "They're very arbitrary," she told The Intercept. "They do what they want 
to do, and this is what scares me about this stuff."

The new rule first made news on April 12, when a reporter for the local FOX 
station in Houston essentially took credit for its creation. According to the 
reporter, the rule followed from a story he did back in January that drew 
attention to a Facebook page maintained for a prisoner named Elmer Wayne Henley 
Jr., who in the early 1970s, was an accomplice to the sexual assault and murder 
of more than 2 dozen teenage boys. In addition to written posts, Henley's page 
was apparently displaying jewelry for sale and other art that he made in 
prison.

Although he didn't mention Henley directly, TDCJ spokesperson Jason Clark later 
said the rule was necessary because some inmates had misused their accounts. 
"Offenders have used social media accounts to sell items over the internet 
based on the notoriety of their crime, harass victims or victims' families, and 
continue their criminal activity," he told Fusion in an email. Of course, 
trying to sell so-called murderabilia or threatening or harassing victims is 
already prohibited under TDCJ rules. Given that the content for Facebook and 
other internet sites must be transmitted from prison via mail, phone, or 
in-person visit, all of which are heavily monitored, it is hard to see how 
banning social media for all prisoners would be necessary to ferret out such 
violations.

When asked to provide details on incidents that prompted adoption of the rule, 
Clark referred The Intercept to the agency's Office of the Inspector General, 
suggesting we file an open records request for the information. In a follow-up 
email, he said there was "not 1 specific incident related to an offender that 
prompted the new rule." Rather, he wrote, it was that "it had become more 
difficult to have an offender's social media account take down because the 
agency had no policy that specifically prohibited it."

As it turns out, Facebook, at least, has been censoring prisoner pages for a 
number of years - despite its stated goal of giving "people the power to share 
and to make the world more open and connected." According to reporting by the 
Electronic Frontier Foundation, from at least 2011 through early 2015, prison 
officials and Facebook shared a "special arrangement" whereby a prison could 
provide Facebook with links for prisoner pages it wanted removed, and Facebook 
would then suspend those profiles, "often [with] no questions asked, even when 
it wasn't clear if any law or Facebook policy was being violated."

Records obtained by EFF showed that Facebook had censored hundreds, if not 
thousands of accounts in this fashion. In the wake of the revelations, Facebook 
revised its procedures, creating a form for prison officials to fill out that 
includes not only information about the prisoner in question, but also a 
requirement that the complaint include a link to "applicable law or legal 
authority regarding inmate social media access," EFF reported. If no rule or 
law is in place, the prison must provide "specific" safety-related reasons that 
the page should be taken down.

In an email to The Intercept, Clark confirmed that TDCJ had benefited from a 
chummy relationship with Facebook: Prior to adopting its new rule, the agency 
had requested that prisoner pages be suspended, and Facebook had granted those 
requests. He did not say how many requests TDCJ made or how many suspensions 
occurred as a result - again suggesting that we send an open records request to 
the OIG for the information. (The Intercept has submitted such a request.)

Clark insists the rule is aimed only at social media and that 3rd 
party-maintained prisoner blogs and websites are still allowed. When asked why 
that is, if the content is essentially the same, he explained that the agency 
has no mechanism to request the removal of other web content. So, if such a 
mechanism existed, would TDCJ prefer that all online prisoner-related content 
be eliminated? "I'm not going to get into some hypothetical, 'if there was a 
rule,' are we going to try to get that off," he said.

The real issue, Clark wrote in an email, is that the prisoner Facebook pages 
not only violate TDCJ's new rule, but also the company's own terms of service - 
including a provision that the TDCJ believes forbids 3rd parties from updating 
a page. "We are asking social media companies to take down accounts of 
offenders who are not updating them themselves, which would be a violation of 
their terms of agreements," he wrote. "Speech on platforms such as Facebook and 
Twitter is as free as the terms of their agreements permit."

But it isn't clear that the agency's reading of Facebook's terms of service is 
accurate. The company forbids sharing a password or allowing anyone to "access 
your account" - which is one kind of 3rd-party access. But offenders don't 
actually create their own pages (unless, of course, the page was set up by a 
prisoner using a contraband cellphone - but that would be its own, separate 
TDCJ rules violation). The other kind of 3rd-party access - having a person who 
is not in prison create and maintain the account - is not expressly forbidden 
by Facebook's terms.

Facebook did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Texas isn't the only state where corrections officials have tried to tamp down 
prisoner access to the online world - though it is hard to know exactly how 
many states have such a rule on the books. New Mexico has a rule (EFF and other 
activists have asked that it be repealed), as do Alabama and South Carolina. 
South Carolina's rule is particularly punitive; it is a violation of the 
highest level and can land a prisoner in solitary confinement for years. As EFF 
has reported, one South Carolina inmate was given 37 years in solitary for 
violating the social media rule. In Texas, the offense isn't considered as 
serious. Still, violating the rule can get an inmate confined to his cell for 
up to 30 days at a time.

And although Texas insists its policy does not violate the free speech rights 
of either prisoners or the public, the ACLU's David Fathi disagrees. "They are 
purporting to regulate the speech not only of prisoners, which is problematic, 
but they're purporting to regulate the speech of non-prisoners in the entire 
world and they can't constitutionally do that," he said. Prisons have the right 
to regulate speech "to the extent that it's necessary for prison safety and 
security," he said. Since the speech in question happens "completely outside 
the prison," he argues that any link to an actual penological interest "seems 
extremely attenuated or nonexistent."

A federal court case decided in 2003 supports Fathi's position. In 2000, 
Arizona legislators passed a law prohibiting prisoners from any internet 
access; at least 5 inmates were subsequently punished after officials found 
mention of them online. In 2002, the Canadian Coalition Against the Death 
Penalty - represented by Fathi and the ACLU - sued, arguing the restriction was 
unconstitutional. A year later, a federal district judge agreed. Although 
Arizona had argued its ban was necessary to prevent nefarious activity - like 
harassing victims, a motivation Texas cited in creating its rule - there were 
already rules and statutes prohibiting such conduct, which is also true in 
Texas. Ultimately, the Arizona judge found that the state could advance its 
penological interests without the internet ban - by enforcing existing 
regulations.

Anthony Graves, who spent 18 years in prison in Texas, including 12 on death 
row, before being exonerated for a grisly multiple murder that he did not 
commit, expressed his concern that unless the rule is repealed, wrongful 
convictions like his will go unnoticed. "I don't see this as a security breach 
because its been going on" for a long time, he said, referring to prisoners' 
presence on social media. "It's another way to oppress an inmate," blocking him 
from interaction with family and others in the outside world, "and it takes 
away a tool from those with legitimate claims of innocence," he said. "The most 
powerful tool innocent people have is social media."

Fathi says the Texas rule and others like it not only do damage to free speech 
rights, but simply make no sense. "Some prison officials fear the internet. 
They don't really understand it and they attribute to it magical powers. And I 
think that lies at the root of nonsensical rules like this," he said. "Everyone 
agrees that a prisoner could write a letter to the New York Times and place an 
ad saying, 'I'm innocent.' So what's the difference if he writes a letter [to a 
friend] and says, 'Post this on Facebook'? Like, what is the difference?" he 
asked. "If you think about it for 30 seconds, it doesn't make any sense."

(source: theintercept.com)






FLORIDA----new death sentence

Cocoa man who had woman buried alive is sentenced to death


Brevard Circuit Judge Jeffrey Mahl sentenced convicted murderer Vahtiece 
Kirkman to death Friday afternoon for killing a 22-year-old Bahamian woman in 
2006.

A jury, in accordance with new death penalty guidelines, voted 10-2 in favor of 
death. They also identified at least 5 aggravating factors why Kirkman should 
die, including the particular heinous, atrocious and cruel nature of the 
murder.

Kirkman, who was already serving a life sentence after he was convicted of 
fatally shooting 29-year-old Willie Parker of Cocoa in 2006 while robbing 
Parker of his money and drugs, will now be transferred to Florida's death row. 
He had previously served time for burglary and battery was also arrested on 
federal drug charges before being charged with murder.

Prosecutors say Kirkman had Darice Knowles buried alive in Cocoa because she 
knew about Parker's murder and was dating a Cocoa police officer.

The main witness against Kirkman was Chris Pratt, an ex-boyfriend of Knowles, 
who testified that Kirkman forced him to bind Knowles before digging a grave, 
mixing concrete and then throwing the woman into her own grave before being 
covered with concrete and dirt.

"One can imagine what Miss Knowles was thinking and what terror she 
experienced," Mahl said before issuing sentence. "Common sense dictates she 
experienced great amounts of fear."

Pratt received 10 years for his part in Knowles' murder as well as 10 years for 
his part in Parker's murder.

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

Another is sent to death row. Now come decades of appeals and uncertainty.


The governor's signature on a bill that changes how the state handles death 
penalty cases may be enough to get around January's declaration by the U.S. 
Supreme Court that the state's death penalty was unconstitutional but it feels 
like nothing more than a last-ditch effort to keep Florida's death chamber 
operational.

Why bother?

As Brevard County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Mahl increased the state's death row 
roster by one Friday, he basically ensured that another vicious killer would 
tie up the courts for the next 20 years. Mall sentenced convicted murderer 
Vahtiece Kirkman to die by lethal injection for the brutal murder of a 
22-year-old Bahamian woman in 2006.

There is little doubt that Kirkman is a monster who deserves to die for burying 
poor Darice Knowles alive but the truth is the taxpayers shouldn't have to fund 
the numerous appeals and heightened level of security until he is executed, if 
ever. In fact, just after imposing sentence, Mahl authorized the public 
defender's office to handle the appeal. And chances are that by the time he is 
wheeled into the death chamber for his lethal concoction of drugs, Kirkman will 
have become a sympathetic figure as protesters hold vigils outside the prison 
walls.

No, despite the jury's 10-2 recommendation of death, and despite the 
aggravating factors that the crime was particularly cruel and atrocious and the 
fact that Kirkman was already serving a life sentence for another murder, I 
wish Kirkman was getting a life sentence without the possibility of ever 
leaving in anything other than a pine box.

Even without the moral argument over whether we should be in the business of 
killing our own citizens and without the 1 in a trillion chance that Kirkman 
might actually be innocent, Florida's death penalty takes way too long to 
deliver justice for the families of the victims.

Bryan Jennings is nearing four decades on death row for raping, torturing and 
killing six-year-old Rebecca Kunash of Merritt Island. He's used the system 
like no other, winning two additional trials -- guilty for all three -- and 
launching numerous other appeals. Rebecca's father has since passed away and 
her mother moved away a long time ago. If Jennings is ever held accountable 
there may not be anyone here close to the case to actually witness justice.

I remember how worn out the family of Junny Rios-Martinez became attending 
hearings, appeals and other court proceedings for nearly 2 decades before 
getting to witness their son's killer -- Mark Dean Schwab -- fall asleep on a 
gurney and peacefully fade away. Maybe they would have found peace earlier had 
Schwab been sentenced to life in prison.

Maybe.

Now the 1st thing that will happen, even before Kirkman's death row flip-flops 
get worn in, will be an automatic appeal that will take a few years to make it 
through the courts. They will look to see if there were any errors made by the 
court. Next, will come the obligatory claim of ineffective counsel. So, in 
addition to paying for Kirkman's court-appointed attorney from Orlando, we will 
also be funding the lawyer who prepares the argument that his representation 
was not up to par.

What follows is the Post-Conviction Appeal that actually goes back to the judge 
who sentenced him, before working its way through intermediate courts before 
going to the Florida Supreme Court. It is during these appeals that Kirkman 
will claim juror misconduct or that the state withheld evidence -- known as a 
Brady Violation -- or that he has newly discovered evidence. Every claim will 
make it's way up the chain until there is nowhere left to turn but to the 
federal courts.

He will then file a Federal Habeus Corpus, which starts with a petition to the 
U.S. District Court followed by permission to appeal to the U.S. Court of 
Appeals and then finally to the U.S. Supreme Court -- the same people who ruled 
that Florida's process was unconstitutional before the latest tweaks.

By the time that gets all squared away I will have long since retired and will 
not have given a 2nd thought to Kirkman's fate in years.

If the politicians in Tallahassee need to keep it on the books then fine. The 
elected officials we vote in to prosecute cases or sit in judgement of them 
don't have to play along.

(source for both: Florida Today)

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

Florida Supreme Court to hear Pensacola death penalty case


The Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments Thursday in a high-profile case 
that forced an overhaul of the state's death-penalty sentencing system. The 
case involves Timothy Lee Hurst, who was sentenced to death for the 1998 
killing of a fast-food worker in Pensacola.

Hurst was the plaintiff in a legal challenge that led to the U.S. Supreme Court 
finding in January that Florida's death-penalty sentencing system was 
unconstitutional because it gave too much power to judges, instead of juries. 
State lawmakers and Gov. Rick Scott quickly approved changes to the system to 
try to resolve the constitutional issues.

The arguments Thursday are expected to focus on Hurst's contention that the 
Florida Supreme Court should order that he receive a life sentence, instead of 
facing execution. In briefs, Hurst's attorneys have raised a series of 
arguments related to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, including that Hurst 
received the death sentence under what was an unconstitutional process.

"The constitutional defect in Hurst's death sentence is that the judge, rather 
than a jury, determined 'each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death," 
said part of a brief filed last month, quoting the U.S. Supreme Court.

But Attorney General Pam Bondi's office has argued in court papers that the 
Florida Supreme Court should reject Hurst's request for a life sentence, in 
part contending that any error in his death sentence was "harmless."

(source: ricksblog.biz)






ARIZONA:

Arizona's Ability To Execute Prisoners Unclear


Arizona began executing death-row inmates by lethal injection in 1993.

A federal judge said weeks ago that he'd rule quickly on whether to dismiss a 
lawsuit against Arizona's death penalty.

But with a decision yet to be filed, and a looming expiration date for a supply 
of the lethal injection drug, midazolam, Arizona's ability to carry out an 
execution is unclear.

Arizona law says the Department of Corrections must get a death warrant before 
it can execute someone. Once it has the warrant, DOC has to wait 35 days before 
sending a prisoner to the death chamber.

Attorneys for the state have said a supply of midazolam will expire in May. If 
the judge throws out the lawsuit this week, there may not be enough time for 
DOC to use the drug.

DOC officials did not respond to a request for comment. It is unknown if DOC 
has drugs with a later expiration date.

[Editor's note: KJZZ is a member of the First Amendment Coalition of Arizona, 
which is a plaintiff in the lawsuit.]

(source: KJZZ news)