[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----NEV., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Aug. 24



NEVADA:

I-Team: Nevada unable to carry out death penalties


The Clark County District Attorney's Office is getting called out for how it 
handles death penalty cases. Harvard Law School's Fair Punishment Project 
released a report alleging "an overly aggressive prosecutor" ... and unfair 
treatment for the mentally ill.

While this report came out Tuesday referring to the process in the courts, the 
Department of Corrections has its own challenge with the death penalty.

Nevada is a death penalty state, but there is no way currently to execute 
anyone on death row. The Department of Corrections is scrambling to address the 
matter.

Serial killer Michael Ross was on death row in Connecticut in 2005 when he gave 
up the fight and said he wanted to die.

"I was a warden at the time of one of the state prisons and I had a position in 
the execution at that time," said James Dzurenda, director, Department of 
Corrections.

He has been in the position since April and has concerns that could happen in 
Nevada.

"We don't know when this happens. It could happen at any time," he said.

80 inmates are on death row in Nevada prisons. Dzurenda says all are in the 
appeals process, but if 1 of them asks to be executed, the death chamber has to 
be ready in 45 days and right now, it wouldn't be.

2 drugs are needed together for a lethal injection. The state has both drugs, 
but one drug is expired and the other drug will expire in January of 2018.

The state can't get the expired drug because drug makers like Pfizer refuse to 
sell it for executions so Dzurenda says he's put out a national request to get 
the drugs.

"Just sitting and waiting til the process is done and seeing if someone will 
respond or a company out there will respond," he said.

The other challenge is construction.

Dzurenda says the death chamber in Carson City was last used in 2006 and is 
outdated.

A new one is being built in Ely State Prison for an estimated $650,000. It's 
expected to be finished on Nov. 1. While critics of the death penalty call it a 
waste of money, Dzurenda says his hands are tied due to state law.

"If we don't have an appropriate chamber and policy and medication, we can't 
even abide by a court order," Dzurenda said.

He says the new death chamber in Ely State Prison will have mutiple purposes.

He says it will have 3 rooms where meetings and attorney visits can be held and 
it can be used for storage.

One defense attorney told the I-Team, he wouldn't want to meet with a client in 
the same place where an inmate could potentially be executed.

(source: lasvegasnow.com)






CALIFORNIA:

Don't abolish death penalty, make the system work: Michael A. Ramos


743 criminals sit on California's death row. Prisoners like Randy Kraft who 
sexually assaulted, tortured and murdered 16 young men between 1972-1983 or 
Dennis Stanworth, who was convicted of raping and murdering 2 girls and was 
sentenced to death in 1966 for the heinous crimes he committed.

California's Supreme Court set aside Stanworth's death sentence in 1972 after 
the California Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment was 
unconstitutional. So, instead they gave this brutal killer life in prison with 
the possibility of parole. In 1990, he was paroled and by 2013 he killed again 
- this time his elderly mother.

And who could forget Richard Allen Davis? A career criminal who was 3 months 
out of prison and "rehabilitated" only to end up raping and killing 12-year-old 
Polly Klaas. Davis has now been sitting on death row for 17 years - at 
taxpayer's expense.

Inmates on California's death row include notorious serial killers, cop 
killers, child killers and rape/torture murderers. Many of these individuals 
have been on death row since the 1980s and have used endless appeals, spread 
out over years and years to delay justice. Families of murder victims should 
not have to wait decades for justice. Hundreds of killers have sat on death row 
for more than 20 years forcing taxpayers to fund their meals, clothing, housing 
and health care. This is unacceptable.

Proposition 62 will abolish the death penalty altogether and instead give 
killers already on death row, and future killers, a life sentence. This is the 
wrong tact to take. Prop 62 means these murderers will live the rest of their 
lives at taxpayers' expense, long after their victims are gone. Instead, a more 
prudent move is to reform the death penalty by mending what's broken. The 
current system is out of balance, we need to restore the balance between the 
rights of defendants and the need to provide justice and closure for the 
families of victims and protect society. Voting no on Prop. 62 and voting Yes 
on Proposition 66 is the answer. Prop. 66 speeds up the appeals process by 
eliminating legal and procedural delaying tactics while assuring due process 
protections for those sentenced to death.

Death penalty opponents like to point out the possibility of persons wrongly 
convicted of capital offenses and sentenced to death being executed. The fact 
is there is not a single documented case of this ever taking place in 
California due to the expertise and painstaking quality of investigation and 
prosecutorial work that has gone into death penalty cases. Prop. 66 ensures 
that all appeals are heard within 5 years and no innocent person is executed. 
In addition, convicts on death row would lose various special privileges they 
enjoy and will be required to pay restitution to victims' families out of their 
prison work pay.

No on Prop. 62 and yes on Prop. 66 is supported by hundreds of district 
attorneys, sheriffs, law enforcement organizations, elected officials and 
victims' right advocates and community leaders. They all joined forces to 
ensure that the worst of the worst killers receive the strongest sentence to 
help bring closure to families while saving California taxpayers millions of 
dollars every year.

California's death row inmates have murdered more than a thousand victims, 
including 226 children and 43 police officers; 294 victims were raped and/or 
tortured. It's time California reformed our death penalty process so it works.

(source: Opinion; Michael A. Ramos is San Bernardino County district 
attorney----San Bernardino Sun)






USA:

Scathing new report: Racism, bias and prosecutor misconduct plague "dying" U.S. 
death penalty


The Fair Punishment Project at Harvard Law School is out with a damning new 
report this morning that seems certain to put another nail in the coffin of the 
death penalty in the United States. This is from the release that accompanied 
"Too Broken to Fix: Part I - An In-depth Look at America's Outlier Death 
Penalty Counties":

"Today, Harvard Law School's Fair Punishment Project released a new report 
offering an in-depth look at how the death penalty is operating in the handful 
of counties across the country that are still using it. Of the 3,143 county or 
county equivalents in the United States, only 16 - or 1/2 of 1 % - imposed 5 or 
more death sentences between 2010 and 2015. Part I of the report, titled Too 
Broken to Fix: An In-depth Look at America's Outlier Death Penalty Counties, 
examined 10 years of court opinions and records from 8 of these 16 "outlier 
counties," including Caddo Parish (LA), Clark (NV), Duval (FL), Harris (TX), 
Maricopa (AZ), Mobile (AL), Kern (CA) and Riverside (CA). The report also 
analyzed all of the new death sentences handed down in these counties since 
2010.

The report notes that these "outlier counties" are plagued by persistent 
problems of overzealous prosecutors, ineffective defense lawyers, and racial 
bias. Researchers found that the impact of these systemic problems included the 
conviction of innocent people, and the excessively harsh punishment of people 
with significant impairments. Many of the defendants appear to have one or more 
impairments that are on par with, or worse than, those that the U.S. Supreme 
Court has said should categorically exempt individuals from execution due to 
lessened culpability....

In conducting its analysis, the Project reviewed more than 200 direct appeals 
opinions handed down between 2006 and 2015 in these eight counties. The Project 
found:

--60 % of cases involved defendants with significant mental impairments or 
other forms of mitigation.

--18 % of cases involved a defendant who was under the age of 21 at the time of 
the offense. In Riverside County, 16 % of the defendants were age 18 at the 
time of the offense.

--44 % of cases involved a defendant who had an intellectual disability, brain 
damage, or severe mental illness. In 4 of the counties, 1/2 or more of the 
defendants had mental impairments: Maricopa (62 %), Mobile (60 %), Caddo Parish 
(57 %), and Kern (50 %).

--Approximately 1 in 7 cases involved a finding of prosecutorial misconduct. 
Maricopa and Clark counties had misconduct in 21 % and 47 % of cases, 
respectively.

--Bad lawyering was a persistent problem across all of the counties. In most of 
the counties, the average mitigation presentation at the penalty phase of the 
trial lasted approximately 1 day....

--A relatively small group of defense lawyers represented a substantial number 
of the individuals who ended up on death row. In Kern County, 1 lawyer 
represented 1/2 of the individuals who ended up on death row between 2010 and 
2015.

Happily, as the report also points out, the death penalty in the United States 
is dying. As with other vestiges of a bygone era - think of corporal punishment 
in our schools - the main challenge now is to bring the shrinking number of 
jurisdictions that cling to the death penalty into the 21st Century. The report 
seems certain to abet that process.

(source: ncpolicywatch.org)

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

Death sentences decline but dominate in Florida, Alabama


The number of death sentences in the United States has declined significantly 
since 1976, but the few remaining are clustered primarily in 2 states -- 
Alabama and Florida, Harvard's Fair Punishment Project said in a report 
released Tuesday.

"Across the country, the death penalty is on life support," the researchers 
said.

Last year, juries returned the fewest number of death sentences since capital 
punishment was reinstated in 1976 -- 49. That represents a decline of 50 % 
since 2009 when there were 118 death sentences. And in 1996, there were 315. 
And only 14 of the 31 states with the death penalty imposed at least 1 capital 
sentence.

The project, titled "Too Broken to Fix: Part 1" broke down the numbers by 
county,

Of 3,143 country or county equivalents, just 16 imposed imposed 5 or more death 
sentences between 2010 and 2015.

6 counties were in Alabama (Jefferson, Mobile) and Florida (Duval, 
Hillsborough, Miami-Dade, Pinellas). These are the only states that permit 
non-unanimous death verdicts.

In Florida, only 10 jurors need to agree to the death sentence. But in May, 
Florida Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch declared its latest death penalty law in 
violation of the state's constitution. In January, the U.S. Supreme Court 
declared the state's death sentencing system unconstitutional because it gave 
too little power to juries.

Of the remaining 10 counties, 5 are located in highly populated Southern 
California (Kern, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino). The 
others are in Louisiana (Caddo), Nevada (Clark), Texas (Dallas, Harris), and 
Arizona (Maricopa).

The report, in the first part, examined 1/2 of them -- Caddo, Clark, Duval, 
Harris, Maricopa, Mobile, Kern and Riverside.

"Our review reveals that these counties frequently share at least three 
systemic deficiencies: a history of overzealous prosecutions, inadequate 
defense lawyering and a pattern of racial bias and exclusion," the report said. 
"These structural failings regularly produce 2 types of unjust outcomes which 
disproportionately impact people of color: the wrongful conviction of innocent 
people and the excessive punishment of persons who are young or suffer from 
severe mental illnesses, brain damage, trauma and intellectual disabilities."

The report noted that with 14,000 homicides a year and only 49 death sentences 
last year, "it is safe to conclude that most prosecutors do not seek the death 
penalty in most of the cases in which the punishment is available."

But the report found that it's not prosecutorial restraint. "Our research 
doesn't support this claim," the report said. "Since 1976, the year capital 
punishment resumed in America, a tiny handful of prosecutors account for a 
wildly disproportionate number of death sentences."

Just 3 prosecutors obtained a combined 131 death sentences: Joe Freeman Britt 
of Robeson County, N.C.; Robert Macy of Oklahoma County, Okla.; and Donald 
Myers of the 11th Judicial District of South Carolina. They were also noted in 
a June report by the Fair Punishment Project titled "America's Top 5 Deadliest 
Prosecutors: How Overzealous Personalities Drive the Death Penalty." Britt and 
Macy have retired and Myers plans to step down in 2017.

The trio also were heavily cited for misconduct -- 33 %, 37 % and 46 %. The 
report also noted that once these prosecutors left office, the the death 
sentencing rates declined in their counties.

"The prosecutors who have obtained the most death sentences in these counties 
tend to exhibit an obsession with winning death sentences at almost any cost, 
even in cases with less culpable defendants," the report said. "Their 
willingness to cut corners, even in cases that literally involve life-and-death 
decisions, casts grave doubt on the legitimacy of capital punishment - and also 
tarnishes the entire justice system in America."

No. 1 on the list was Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix. It had 28 death 
sentences between 2010 and 2015. Its death rate was 2.3 times higher than the 
rest of Arizona. Its percentage of misconduct in the cases was 21 %.

Andrew Thomas, elected to serve as Maricopa's County attorney in 2004, pursued 
capital charges at nearly twice the rate of his predecessor, resulting in a 
backlog of cases. In 2012, a 3-member panel of Arizona Supreme Court voted 
unanimously to disbar Thomas.

One of the prosecutors who served under Thomas was Juan Martinez, who was found 
to have committed misconduct in at least 3 capital murder cases by the Arizona 
Supreme Court. He prosecuted the conviction of Jody Arias, a case that drew 
national attention, for her murder of Travis Alexander in 2008. Arias was 
convicted of 1st-degree murder, but 2 juries failed to agree on the death 
penalty and instead the judge imposed a life sentence.

"Killing somebody is not love," Martinez said after the Arias trial."It's just 
a show that this person belongs to you and that if you can't have them, nobody 
else will."

In May, the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down the death sentence because the 
judge allowed Martinez to argue that the defendant, Shawn Patrick Lynch, could 
be potentially dangerous when he would be locked up forever.

In Duval County, which includes Jacksonville, there were 25 sentences -- about 
1/4 of Florida's death sentences imposed. The rate is 40 % higher than the rest 
of the state. The report found the percentage of misconduct at 16 %.

Angela Corey is the state attorney in Florida's Fourth Judicial Circuit, which 
includes Duval County. Like Gonzalez in Arizona, Corey headed a high-profile 
case.

In 2012, Corey was appointed by Florida Gov. Rick Scott as special prosecutor 
to investigate the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. She charged 
him with 2nd-degree murder, but he was acquitted of the charges.

One recent case is James Xavier Rhodes, a now-24-year-old man who is facing a 
death sentence for shooting a young woman at a MetroPCS store.? Darlene Farrah, 
the victim's mother, has unsuccessfully asked Corey to grant her daughter's 
killer a plea deal for a life sentence.

"It's my statutory and constitutional duty to seek justice for this community 
and to give the victim's family justice," said told The New York Times. And she 
said the victims "do not control the seeking of the death penalty."

Corey says she can't be blamed for these disproportionate numbers. "We have so 
many sets of rules we are bound to follow," said told The Nation. "There are so 
many checks and balances."

Duval has had no capital cased exonerated.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 ruled that juvenile offenders and persons with 
intellectual disabilities should not be executed. However, the report noted 
there are "many defendants who also have a diminished culpability similar to 
these 'categorically exempted' defendants, but fall through the cracks of 
justice."

The report concluded: "Our findings, taken together, suggest that the small 
handful of counties that are still using the death penalty are plagued by 
persistent problems of overzealous prosecutors, ineffective defense lawyers, 
and racial bias, resulting in the conviction of innocent people and the 
excessively harsh punishment of people with significant impairments that are on 
par with, or even worse than, the categorical exclusions that the Court has 
said should exempt individuals from execution due to lessened culpability."

(source: UPI)

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

Just 16 counties are fueling America's use of the death penalty


Just 16 counties in the US are driving the use of the death penalty, despite a 
nationwide movement away from the sentence, a new report from the Harvard Law 
School's Fair Punishment Project has found.

The "outlier counties" - scattered throughout Alabama, Florida, California, 
Louisiana, Nevada, Texas, and Arizona - have each imposed five or more death 
sentences between 2010 and 2015, a major departure from the overall downward 
trend in death penalty use since it peaked in 1996 with 315.

The report determined that the reasons behind the counties' deviation can be 
boiled down to 3 "structural failures" that they tend to have in common: 
overzealous prosecutors, inadequate defense lawyers, and racial bias and 
exclusion.

The outcomes of these sentencings, according to the report, regularly resulted 
in wrongful convictions and excessive punishment of young people, or those who 
suffer from mental illnesses or disabilities.

"Studies have shown [death sentences] to be extremely expensive, prone to 
error, applied in discriminatory ways, and imposed upon the most vulnerable, 
rather than the most culpable people," the report said.

For instance, in Maricopa County, Arizona, the report found that a 
disproportionate 57% of those sentenced to death between 2010 and 2015 were 
people of color. The county is notable for drawing national scrutiny in recent 
days - its sheriff, Joe Arpaio, was referred by a federal judge for criminal 
contempt charges last week after he allegedly failed to abide by a court order 
meant to prevent his office from racially profiling Latinos.

Arpaio has been accused by the Department of Justice of overseeing the "worst 
pattern of racial profiling by a law enforcement agency in US history."

The report also looked into Duval County, Florida, where 87% of its death 
sentences since 2010 have been used on African-American defendants. The report 
attributed much of the county's outlier status to State Attorney Angela Corey, 
who is currently campaigning for re-election and was dubbed the "cruelest 
prosecutor in America" last week by The Nation magazine.

Corey slammed the Fair Sentencing Project's statistics as being unfair in an 
interview with the Florida Times-Union on Tuesday.

The study's focus on 16 counties hearkens back to Supreme Court Justice Stephen 
Breyer's dissent in the 2015 Glossip v. Gross case, in which he pegged 
geography as being a major factor in determining which defendants are sentenced 
to death.

"Within a death penalty State, the imposition of the death penalty heavily 
depends on the county in which a defendant is tried," Breyer wrote.

The report, released Tuesday, examined just 8 of the 16 counties, while a 
second report detailing the remaining eight is set to be released in September.

(source: Business Insider)