[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----UTAH, MONT., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 16



UTAH:

The high cost of the death penalty: $1.6 million is just the tip of the iceberg


Utah has filed 110 Aggravated Murder cases in the last 11 years, but has 
achieved only one execution, and only 1 new death sentence in that time.

Republicans are sponsoring a bill in the 2016 legislative session to repeal the 
death penalty. The purpose of the bill is to eliminate an extremely expensive 
and grossly ineffective government program.

In 2012 the Utah Legislature's Fiscal Analyst's Office completed a study 
comparing the cost of a typical Aggravated Murder case in which the death 
penalty was sought and obtained, with the costs of an Aggravated Murder case in 
which the death penalty was never sought and a sentence of Life Without 
Possibility of Parole (LWOP) was obtained. That study determined that the 
additional cost of just one case ending in execution was about $1.6 million 
more than 1 LWOP case.

As striking as the $1.6 million number is, it is just the tip of the iceberg 
when it comes to the cost of the death penalty. Only 10% of an iceberg is 
visible above the water line. If you are measuring the size of the iceberg you 
must count the full mass of the iceberg. The same is true of the cost of the 
death penalty. The full cost of achieving 1 execution, or "cost per execution," 
must include the costs incurred in all the other death-eligible cases that do 
not result in execution.

Utah has filed 110 Aggravated Murder cases in the last 11 years, but has 
achieved only one execution, and only one new death sentence in that time. 
These other death-eligible cases may not result in execution for several 
reasons: They may be resolved by plea bargain before trial, or the defendant 
may not be convicted of Aggravated Murder at trial, or the jury may vote for a 
sentence other than death. But, the extra expenses begin mounting as soon as 
counsel is appointed in each potential death penalty case.

For example, in 2015, Washington State found that the additional cost per case 
to the state for a death penalty case was $1 million. Then, adding in the 
estimated costs incurred in all the death-eligible cases that did not result in 
execution, and dividing that total amount by the 5 executions Washington had 
since 1976, resulted in a cost per execution of about $24 million. That is 24 
times the additional costs of one capital case.

Similarly, a 2008 study in Maryland found that the additional cost per case for 
a case resulting in a death sentence was about $2 million more per case than 
when the death penalty was not sought. Then, adding in the estimated costs 
incurred in all of the death-eligible cases that did not result in execution, 
and dividing that total amount by the 5 executions Maryland had since 1976, 
resulted in a cost per execution of $37.2 million. That is 18.6 times the 
additional costs of one capital case.

Utah's statistics are similar to those of Washington and Maryland. Utah has had 
only 7 executions since 1976. Utah's 2012 cost analysis reasonably estimated 
that the additional cost per case to prosecute a case to execution is $1.6 
million, which is right in the middle of the additional cost per case estimates 
of Maryland ($2 million) and Washington ($1 million). Now, even if Utah's 
multiple for death-eligible cases not ending in execution were only half that 
of Washington and Maryland, say 10, then Utah's estimated cost per execution 
would be over $16 million per execution.

Moreover, not only is the death penalty shockingly expensive, it is also 
grossly ineffective. The State very rarely achieves an execution. As noted, 
Utah has filed 110 Aggravated Murder cases in the last 11 years, but has 
achieved only 1 execution and 1 new death sentence in that time. Would we 
accept a Fire Department that only showed up at only 1 of every 110 fires? 
Would we tolerate a Roads Department that fixed only 1 of every 110 potholes? 
What is the point of paying for the death penalty system if the prosecutions 
almost never result in executions?

Another important "cost" of the death penalty is a human one. When the State 
seeks the death penalty, the families of the murder victims have to wait 
decades for the cases, including appeals, to come to an end. And, for the vast 
majority, those cases never do end in an execution. But when the death penalty 
is not sought, none of the costs or delays associated with a death case are 
incurred. The families get swift and sure justice. And for the most dangerous 
murderers, an LWOP sentence ensures that the murderer will never leave prison.

Utah policymakers should apply that same prudent analysis as they did with last 
year's Justice Reinvestment Initiative, and cut out these wasteful costs by 
eliminating the death penalty. A sentence of LWOP provides swift and sure 
justice to the families of victims. And the millions saved by eliminating 
wasteful death penalty prosecutions could be invested in more productive crime 
prevention measures, or returned to taxpayers in the form of a tax cut.

(source: Opinion; Ralph Dellapiana is Director of Utahns for Alternatives to 
the Death Penalty----Deseret News)

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

Lawmaker wants to abolish death penalty in conservative Utah


A Republican lawmaker wants Utah to join 19 states and the District of Columbia 
in abolishing the death penalty, but supporters acknowledge that it's a long 
shot in the conservative state.

Sen. Steve Urquhart of St. George said Wednesday that the delays and costs 
associated with executions make it an ineffective punishment. His proposal has 
not yet been unveiled, but he said he is not sure the government should be in 
the business of killing people.

"We understand that government is not perfect. And that realization to take 
upon ourselves the godlike power of life and death - that's something we should 
really think about," he said.

Urquhart knows there is strong support for capital punishment in Utah, but he 
said its expense and the chance of wrongful convictions might resonate with his 
libertarian and conservative colleagues.

A panel of state lawmakers debated the issue in October, weighing whether a 
repeal would be the most moral and cost-effective path. They didn't take action 
but brought up a 2012 legislative report that estimated each capital punishment 
case costs taxpayers about $1.7 million more than a life sentence.

The number was based on the assumption that each inmate spends about 20 years 
on death row appealing their sentence.

The state's last execution was in 2010, and the 9 inmates on death row are all 
years away from exhausting their appeals.

"In Utah, we almost don't have a death penalty because it happens so 
infrequently," said Republican Rep. Stephen Handy, who opposes execution.

Handy of Layton called it an important discussion to have but said he doesn't 
think it will go anywhere this year.

Republican Gov. Gary Herbert said in October that he's a strong supporter of 
capital punishment but it should only be used for "the most heinous of crimes." 
Herbert signed a law last year that bolstered the state's execution policy by 
ordering that a firing squad be used if lethal injection drugs cannot be 
obtained.

Urquhart acknowledged that he voted in favor of the firing squad bill, saying 
that because Utah has capital punishment on the books, "firing squad is as 
quick and effective as any means."

He said his proposal would allow executions to go forward for the nine people 
on death row now but remove it as an option for any new convictions. He said he 
doesn't want to interfere with those pending cases out of concern it will cause 
further pain for the victims' families.

Providing a sense of justice for victims and their families is a reason to keep 
the death penalty, said Republican Sen. Lyle Hillyard of Logan. He said he 
would oppose Urquhart's proposal.

Democratic Sen. Luz Escamilla of Salt Lake City said she would support 
Urquhart's proposal but didn't know where her Democratic colleagues stood and 
whether their support might help it pass the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Urquhart said he's been discussing it with his colleagues and thinks it may 
pass the Senate.

"If you're betting, bet against it," he said. "But I'm kind of optimistic. We 
are a libertarian state and that leads us to do some interesting things at 
times."

(source: Associated Press)






MONTANA:

Mother of victim finds closure after former death row inmate dies in DOC 
infirmary


Montana State Prison inmate Dewey Eugene Coleman died on Sunday at the 
Lewistown Infirmary of natural causes, according to a news release from the 
Montana Department of Corrections. He was 67.

Coleman was on death row for almost 15 years before his sentence was commuted 
to life in prison.

"I'm not sending flowers," said Eleanor Harstad Neurohr on Monday. Neurohr is 
the mother of Peggy Lee Harstad, the woman Coleman was convicted of killing in 
1974.

On July 4, 1974, Harstad, 21, was returning home to Rosebud from a 4th of July 
rodeo in Harlowton. She was spending the summer at her family's farm before 
beginning her teaching career in Plains.

On the drive, her path crossed Dewey Eugene Coleman and Robert Dennis Nank. The 
2 had been riding a motorcycle through Montana after leaving a veterans' 
hospital in Wyoming, where they had been treated for medical issues related to 
mental health. Their motorcycle had broken down and were stopping vehicles 
asking for assistance.

When Harstad came upon the two men, they took control of her vehicle, a 
light-green car with a white-and-green checkerboard top. A friend had brought 
the car back from California for Harstad, Neurohr said.

The men drove Harstad to a secluded area where they bound and sexually 
assaulted her; Nank later stated he was impotent at the time and did not 
succeed in assaulting Harstad. They drove with Harstad a little longer before 
they allowed her to get dressed again and then killed her by holding her down 
in the Yellowstone River until she drowned.

The next day, Neurohr drove to the Harstad family ranch outside Forsyth into 
town to grab coffee with friends and run errands. As she headed into town, she 
saw the unmistakable checkered top of her daughter's car. She thought it was 
unusual to see a car so similar to her daughter's, but believed it was a road 
worker's. She was at a cafe when a call came in to the business; John Harstad, 
Peggy Harstad's father, was on the line.

"He asked me if I knew where Peggy was, and I said, 'Yes, I think she's at a 
girlfriend's house or maybe with Lynda, her sister,'" Neurohr said in an 
interview with the Gazette on Monday. "And John said, 'Well, a car with her 
license plate was found parked along Frontage Road.'"

Neurohr and her husband saw their daughter everywhere after that. The whole 
town rallied to help them find her. They even called in a Native American 
clairvoyant from Hardin who stayed at the Harstad ranch. Neurohr still credits 
the woman with pointing the family to the area on the Yellowstone River where 
Harstad's body was found.

"Peggy was right across from where she said she would be," Neurohr said. "2 
fisherman found her, and I remember, it had rained a lot that year, so the 
river was very high, and Coleman and Nank hadn't put Peggy in the main stream, 
so, when the water receded, the 2 fisherman saw her body."

Her body was discovered in late August 1974 on the north bank of the 
Yellowstone River near Forsyth.

"They wouldn't let me see her," Neurohr said. "I wanted so badly to see her."

The night before Peggy Harstad's death, she kissed both her parents and thanked 
them for all they'd done for her.

"She was kind, a loving, good-natured person," Neurohr said. When Harstad would 
come home from college, her sister Lynda Ottun would walk over from where she 
and her husband lived, and the 3 women would visit in the kitchen together. The 
girls would sit together on the counters laughing and chatting while Neurohr 
prepared dinner or lunch, Neurohr said.

"I miss that," Neurohr said. After Peggy Harstad's death, Neurohr said she 
could never again get close to her older daughter.

"Sometimes I wish I'd asked her, talked to her about it," Neurohr said. "But we 
were all hurting, hurting so deeply."

Nank and Coleman were arrested in October 1974 in Boise. Nank entered a plea 
agreement to avoid the death penalty, in exchange for testifying against 
Coleman. Nank confessed that he and Coleman had raped, beaten and drowned 
Harstad, while Coleman denied that he was involved. Both were charged with 
deliberate homicide, aggravated kidnapping and rape, according to Gazette 
archives.

Nank died in 1999 according to Montana State Death Records.

Coleman was convicted and sentenced to 100 years for the homicide and 40 years 
for the rape charge. He received the death sentence for his conviction of 
aggravated kidnapping, a mandatory sentence at the time. That law was repealed 
in 1977.

Coleman appealed his sentence, and the Montana Supreme Court determined the 
mandatory death sentence to be unconstitutional. Coleman was again sentenced to 
death in 1978 under a new statute.

Just days before the hanging was to take place, Coleman was granted a stay of 
execution.

Coleman later argued that his death sentence was handed down because he was 
black, and that Nank was given preferential treatment because he was white.

The 2 men are interchangeable to Neurohr, who said the death penalty wasn't 
good enough for either.

"My daughter suffered at their hands," Neurohr said. "They should suffer. That 
was my hate talking at the time, but I still feel what they got was far too 
plush."

Both men pointed the finger at the other after the death of her daughter, but 
both could have stopped it, she said.

"Killing my daughter, through that, I lost my husband," Neurohr said. John 
Harstad died from a heart attack in 1989, a month after an interview with the 
Gazette about his daughter's death, in which he remarked on the overwhelming 
support from the community. "It was just all too late," he had said of their 
efforts.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Coleman in 1988, 
commuting his death sentence to life imprisonment.

Neurohr is the last surviving member of Peggy Harstad's direct family. Her 
sister, Lynda Ottun, died from cancer in 2005. Her adoptive brother, Rowland 
Limberhand Harstad, died in 2009 from a heart attack. The youngest brother, 
Monte Harstad, died in 2013, also following a battle with cancer.

"Monte always thought he should have been with her," Neurohr said. "Even though 
he was just a little tyke, he thought, maybe if he'd been with her, she would 
have come home."

In May 1974, a few months before Harstad was killed, she told her mother where 
she wanted to be buried when she died. She pointed to a big hill where she used 
to ride her horse, Neurohr said. From the top, she could see the family's 
entire ranch.

"I remember I told her, 'Peggy, we're not going to talk about it, we're not 
going to think about it," Neurohr said. "'Parents don't bury their children.'"

Coleman would have been eligible for parole this year. A previous hearing with 
the Montana Board of Pardons and Parole in 2011 did not go in his favor.

"I'm happy about it," Neurohr said of Coleman's death. "But there's closure, it 
gives you a feeling, I can't really explain the feeling, it has all come to the 
end."

(source: Billings Gazette)






CALIFORNIA:

Readers answer our question about the California death penalty: Letters


We asked readers: Is it time to put an end to the death penalty in California?

Death penalty more costly than life without parole

It's time to end the death penalty in California. Since it was reenacted in our 
state in 1978, we have spent $5 billion on a system that has sentenced over 
1,000 men and women to death while executing 13 of them. That comes to over 
$300 million per execution. And for what?

Killing is not only wrong, when done by the state, it's an incredibly 
complicated, lengthy and expensive process.

Over 150 men and women who were sentenced to death in the U.S. have been 
exonerated and freed, many after spending decades on death row. Los Angeles 
just paid out $17 million to two of them who had been wrongly convicted.

Last year, federal Judge Cormac Carney held California's death penalty 
unconstitutional, saying, "For all practical purposes then, a sentence of death 
in California is a sentence of life imprisonment with the remote possibility of 
death."

Hard as it is for some to believe, the death penalty is much more costly than 
life without parole. Killing is wrong in every way; let's get out of the 
business.

Mike Farrell, Studio City

----

Victims' lives matter most


I don't understand how anybody believes that a murderer deserves to live out 
the rest of their lives supported by the taxpayers, including the murder 
victim's family.

I don't believe the death penalty is appropriate in all cases because each case 
has its own circumstances.

But in a case where a person has been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt 
and the crime includes other crimes such as rape, torture, multiple murders, 
that person should lose his life.

I hear the argument that the state has no right to take a life or the state is 
behaving just as brutally as the murderer. Those are fallacious arguments. When 
you let a vicious convicted murderer live out his natural life you are 
cheapening the worth of the victim.

Ken Pinckney, Walnut

----

Risk of mistakes too great


It is time to abolish the death penalty.

First, mistakes have been made. DNA has proven that convictions have been in 
error. Second, there are over-zealous prosecutors who may knowingly push for 
convictions of innocent people. And lastly, the cost to taxpayers for endless 
appeals is too great.

Do not misunderstand. There are individuals so evil that they deserve to be put 
to death. However, if even one innocent person is executed, then the cost is 
too high.

Terry Hales, Ontario

----

Some forfeit right to life


In the early '90s while visiting my mother she asked my opinion of the death 
penalty. I immediately responded that there are people who have committed acts 
of such a nature that they have forfeited their right to live. That is still my 
opinion.

Robert S. Kennedy Jr., Camarillo

----

Revenge isn't worth it


There is no excuse ever for a society which calls itself civilized to have 
capital punishment. It doesn't bring the victims back. It does not right any 
wrong. It is simply revenge.

I would rather see 100 prisoners housed at public expense than to see one 
person wrongly executed for a crime they did not commit. I don't give the state 
permission to murder in my name.

Gary Durward, Rancho Palos Verdes

(source for all: Letters to the Editor, Los Angeles Daily News)

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

Lonnie Franklin Jr., accused of being 'Grim Sleeper' serial killer, goes on 
trial


30 years after the first of the Grim Sleeper serial killer victims was found 
fatally shot and discarded in a South Los Angeles alley, Lonnie David Franklin 
Jr. will face a jury Tuesday in a downtown courtroom.

Franklin, a former garbage collector and police garage attendant, is charged 
with killing 1 girl and 9 women ranging in age from 15 to 35 over a span of 3 
decades. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Opening statements begin 
Tuesday.

The killings for which Franklin is charged came in spurts that were 13 years 
apart, resulting in the nickname "the Grim Sleeper" for the period of apparent 
inactivity.

Franklin, 63, has pleaded not guilty. His attorney has promised a vigorous 
defense of the man neighbors described as friendly, helpful and reliable.

"All I can say is stayed tuned," said the lawyer, Seymour Amster.

The trial is expected to last 2 to 3 months, said Deputy District Attorney Beth 
Silverman, the lead prosecutor on the case.

A case with a lot of notoriety

The case has already spawned a documentary about Franklin, an "official" 
website and a made-for-TV movie about a local reporter whose stories for the LA 
Weekly drew attention to the case.

The LAPD has been both criticized for failing to alert the community sooner 
that there was a serial killer on the prowl (before Franklin was identified by 
name) and heralded for doggedly pursuing the case once the more recent slayings 
were discovered.

Evidence in the case will span three decades of policing in Los Angeles: From 
the murderous, crack-fueled 1980s, during which at least 2 serial killers were 
operating in South L.A., to the relative calm of the 2000s and the creation of 
an LAPD cold case unit charged with taking fresh looks at unsolved slayings, to 
the modern era of advanced DNA testing.

Prosecutors say they have tied Franklin to the killings with physical evidence, 
including saliva collected from bodies, and ballistic matches between slugs 
recovered from crime scenes and a .25 caliber handgun seized from Franklin's 
home the day he was arrested.

A woman alleged to be a surviving victim of Franklin is expected to be a star 
witness against him.

Enietra Washington was shot in the chest with a .25 caliber handgun and 
sexually assaulted before escaping. She has since identified Franklin as her 
assailant. In addition to the 10 counts of murder, Franklin is charged with 1 
count of attempted murder in Washington's attack.

(source: Fox news)






USA:

Former Ga. Justice: Scalia Death May Alter SCOTUS On Death Penalty


The U.S. Supreme Court could take a different stance on capital punishment with 
the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

That's according to Norman Fletcher, former chief justice of Georgia's Supreme 
Court and an opponent of the death penalty, who said he believes the country's 
highest court will rule the practice unconstitutional in the next 3 to 6 years.

"Anyone that President Obama might nominate - and if they were cleared - 
certainly would be more moderate than Justice Scalia on this subject," Fletcher 
said.

Fletcher said that it's also possible with a nominee from a Republican 
president because of how justices actually vote when they get to the bench.

"Frankly, many people have been surprised at how people turn out once they get 
to the court and have to actually deal with the issues that are so well-briefed 
and presented to the Supreme Court," Fletcher said.

He cited the dissenting opinion in the Glossip v. Gross case out of Oklahoma 
regarding lethal injection practices as a sign the court could end the death 
penalty within the next decade.

In the dissent, Justice Breyer wrote, "I believe it highly likely that the 
death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment. At the very least, the Court 
should call for full briefing on the basic question."

Justice Scalia had often dissented in cases that restricted carrying out the 
death penalty, including the case of Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis, who 
was executed in 2011. Scalia wrote a dissenting opinion to a decision that sent 
Davis' case down to a lower court in Georgia for a new hearing, calling it a 
"fool's errand."

Georgia is set to execute its second death row inmate this year the night of 
Tuesday, Feb. 16. Travis Clinton Hittson is scheduled for execution at 7 p.m. 
for murdering a fellow Navy sailor in 1992.

(source: WABE news)

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

Scalia's death: Another step in the demise of the death penalty?


With executions long on hold here in North Carolina, it's easy to forget that 
we still have a long way to go in joining the most of the rest of the civilized 
world in abandoning the death penalty. What's more, as this recent post by 
Kristin Collins on the blog of the NC Coalition for Alternatives to the Death 
Penalty reminds us, men still reside on death row in our state who were 
sentenced under the most absurd and outrageous of circumstances. Here's 
Collins:

"Almost a year ago, Kenneth Neal was quietly removed from death row after 19 
years awaiting his execution.

According to the judge's order entered that day in March 2015, Neal was 
resentenced to life in prison without parole because he is intellectually 
disabled. In the years since Neal's 1996 conviction, the Supreme Court has 
ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute people with significant 
intellectual disabilities.

What went unmentioned is that Neal likely never would have been sentenced to 
death in the first place had he not been assigned a notorious convicted felon 
as a defense attorney.

On trial for his life, the courts assigned Neal an attorney who had, just a few 
years before when he was a district attorney, been caught up in a highly 
publicized child pornography sting. The attorney had been caught with sex tapes 
of children as young as 7 and 8, performing incestuous sex acts between 
siblings and parents - and the jury was well aware of the lawyer's crimes.

Of course, such facts would have been unlikely to trouble the late Supreme 
Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who infamously declared that the Constitution did 
not bar the execution of even an innocent person who had received a "fair" 
trial.

In the weeks and months to come, it's clear that the vacancy on the U.S. 
Supreme Court created by Scalia's passing will force the Court closer to the 
center of the American political debate than, perhaps, ever before. And 
whatever the outcome of that contest, it's hard to imagine that the next 
Justice appointed will be as avid and enthusiastic of a death penalty defender 
as Scalia.

Let's fervently hope that's the case, anyway.

(source: Commentary, Rick Schofield; ncpolicywatch.org)

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

Cruz makes his Supreme Court knowledge new focal point


Ted Cruz has always talked about the Supreme Court as a candidate for 
president, but it's become the new focal point of his White House bid following 
the weekend death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

The Texas senator on Monday recast the stump speech he's offered voters for the 
past several weeks to highlight the importance of electing a conservative who 
will appoint what he called the right kind of justices to the Supreme Court, 
which he described as currently being "activist" and "out of control."

Cruz argued before the Supreme Court nine times by age 40, winning two cases 
and losing four, with three cases having a murkier outcome. He says that gives 
him alone "the background, the principle, the character, the judgment" to find 
a solid conservative to replace Scalia.

The tea party darling also has vowed to filibuster any nominees offered by 
President Barack Obama, saying 1 more liberal Supreme Court justice could wipe 
out state-level abortion restrictions while undermining religious liberty and 
curtailing gun ownership.

"This presidential election is the turning point between either prevailing or 
losing that fight for a generation," Cruz told a crowd in Florence, South 
Carolina.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Cruz clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice 
William Rehnquist. His high court arguments were the bedrock of his underdog 
Senate victory in Texas and are woven into the DNA of his presidential run.

If elected, Cruz would be the ninth president to have argued before the Supreme 
Court, but the first since Richard Nixon in 1966, according to The American Bar 
Association. Cruz constantly reminds audiences he defended states' rights, gun 
rights, the Ten Commandments and capital punishment before the high court.

He doesn't suggest he won every case, but Cruz's defeats can get lost in 
translation. While canvassing for Cruz in Iowa last month, a volunteer visiting 
from Georgia proclaimed to caucus-goers that her candidate "won every one" of 
his 9 cases.

Cruz did prevail in his final Supreme Court appearance. He won a patent 
infringement case in 2011 involving a deep fat fryer while working for a 
private Houston law firm.

His other 8 appearances came during his five years as Texas solicitor general, 
a job he took on in 2003 at 32. Cruz didn't get to pick his own cases as he 
argued for Texas. But then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, now the state's 
governor, encouraged him to join out-of-state cases that could promote 
conservative values.

"Ted Cruz was tireless in searching for every possible opportunity, not just to 
talk about, but to implement and execute, a conservative constitutional vision 
for the country," said James Ho, Cruz's successor as Texas solicitor general.

In his first Supreme Court case in 2003, Cruz argued Texas shouldn't have to 
honor an agreement to improve health coverage for poor children. He lost 9-0.

The following year, Cruz implored the Supreme Court to uphold a 16-year prison 
sentence for a man convicted of stealing a calculator from Wal-Mart. The 
justices remanded the case to a lower court, which sentenced the man to time 
served.

The case Cruz most trumpets brought him to the Supreme Court twice and involved 
a Mexican national named Jose Ernesto Medellin.

Medellin was convicted of the rape and murder of 2 teenage girls in Houston in 
1993, but wasn't notified of his right to contact Mexican diplomats upon 
arrest, as dictated by the 1963 Vienna Convention. The International Court of 
Justice ruled in 2004 that U.S. courts should review the convictions and 
sentences for Medellin and 50 other Mexican-born prisoners because of the 
treaty violation.

President George W. Bush directed state courts to review such cases, and Texas 
sued.

"It was an unusual circumstance," Cruz, who once worked for Bush's presidential 
campaign and administration, told The Associated Press in 2014. "Especially 
when the president was a Texan, was a Republican and was a friend."

The Supreme Court first sent the case back to state courts. Upon hearing it a 
second time, the justices sided with Texas 6-3 and Medellin was executed.

In 2006, Cruz defended congressional redistricting maps drawn by Texas' 
GOP-controlled Legislature. The Supreme Court didn't declare them 
unconstitutional, despite claims they deliberately dispersed the voting power 
of the state's growing Hispanic population. But it did rule that a sprawling 
South Texas congressional district had to be redrawn.

2 more Cruz Supreme Court arguments came in 2007 and involved the death 
penalty.

Cruz argued a man convicted of killing a former Taco Bell co-worker should be 
executed despite the jury not being instructed to consider several factors, 
including his having been abused as a child. Cruz also defended the death 
sentence of a killer whose schizophrenia meant he might not be able to 
understand why he was being executed. He lost both 5-4.

Cruz also lost 5-4 his final case as solicitor general, an unsuccessful defense 
of states' imposing the death penalty in cases of child rape. It originated in 
Louisiana, but Cruz served as lead attorney for 10 states.

In his filings, Cruz overlooked that in 2006, Congress had modified the 
military's justice code to add child rape as a crime punishable by death. He 
was so worried that The New York Times would write that his office "screwed up 
by not finding" that statue that he wrote to another attorney via email: "Would 
love to have some sort of response, so we don't look silly."

(source: Associated Press)

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

E.U.: Declaration by the Committee of Ministers on the death penalty in the USA


The following declaration was adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 10 
February 2016 at the 1247th meeting of the Ministers' Deputies.

The Committee of Ministers deplores the execution of 5 persons in the United 
States since the beginning of 2016.

It recalls that capital punishment contravenes the principles set out in the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the European Convention on Human 
Rights and reiterates its appeal to the United States authorities to introduce 
a moratorium on the death penalty as a 1st step towards abolition.

The Committee of Ministers is following with concern the debate relating to the 
lifting of the moratorium on executions in the State of California following 
the possible introduction of a new lethal injection protocol.

It urges the Californian authorities not to go back on the moratorium put in 
place in 2006 so as to ensure that the death penalty remains a thing of the 
past.

(source: Council of Europe; altervista.org)