[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.C., S.C., FLA., NEV, . USA, US MIL.

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 22




TEXAS:

Former death row inmate seeks $2 million in state compensation


Former death row inmate Alfred Dewayne Brown filed a request Monday for almost 
$2 million dollars in state compensation saying he spent more than 12 years 
behind bars because he was wrongfully convicted.

State senator Rodney Ellis and lawyers for Brown said the 33-year-old is 
eligible for a lump sum of $973,589 plus an annuity in that amount to be paid 
annually for the rest of his life.

Brown was freed from prison last year, and his case has been dismissed but no 
official has said he is "actually innocent."

See a timeline of the case in the gallery above.

However under the Tim Cole Act, a state law providing compensation for the 
wrongfully convicted, Brown fits the definition of "exonerated," according to 
his lawyers.

"No 'magic words' are required anymore," said Neal Manne, one of Brown's 
attorneys. "The magic is in the fact that you're released."

In a red and white plaid button down shirt and jeans, Brown said little Monday 
except that he is working in construction and enjoying spending days with his 
family.

"I'm good," he said. "Just staying around family."

Brown spent 12 years and 62 days in jail, including a decade on death row after 
being convicted of capital murder in the fatal shooting of officer Charles 
Clark and clerk, Alfredia Jones during the robbery of a check-cashing store in 
2003.

The dismissal still rankles Houston police officers who have said, through 
their union officials, they continue to believe Brown was part of a gang of 3 
men involved in the check cashing store robbery turned double murder. Clerk 
Alfredia Jones was killed in the shooting.

Brown was released from jail June 8 after a police detective came forward with 
telephone records in the case that could have aided Brown's defense. The 
records might have bolstered Brown's alibi that he spent the day at his 
girlfriend's home. The state's highest court reversed the conviction and sent 
the case back to Houston.

Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson decided last year that there was 
not enough credible evidence in the case for a re-trial and dismissed the 
charges, freeing Brown.

That course of events is enough to show that he is presumed innocent, his 
lawyers said. The state comptroller will be in charge of distributing the money 
and other benefits, including free healthcare and free college tuition.

(source: Houston Chronicle)






NORTH CAROLINA:

Jury recommends life in prison for Travion Smith for murder of Raleigh mom


After hearing closing arguments Monday in the death penalty phase of the 
Travion Smith murder trial, the jury has recommended life in prison. A Wake 
County jury hasn't recommended the death penalty since 2007.

Last week, Smith was convicted of beating and stabbing of 30-year-old Melissa 
Huggins-Jones, who was found dead by her 8-year-old daughter inside their North 
Hills apartment in May 2013. Smith and another man climbed up to a 2nd-floor 
balcony to get into her apartment after breaking into cars in the neighborhood 
to steal small valuables.

In her closing arguments, prosecutor Melani Shekita told jurors Huggins-Jones 
was killed for just an iPhone.

During the trial, the defense called several members of Smith's family to 
testify about his abusive childhood, trying to get the jury to spare his life. 
But in her closing, Shekita attacked that evidence.

"Travion didn't live behind a white picket fence and have the perfect life - 
nobody does," offered Shekita as she pointed out that Smith has siblings who 
did succeed despite the difficult childhood.

Shekita said Smith did suffer from ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, and 
depression - for which he was prescribed medication. But over the objection of 
the defense, she argued many middle school students suffer from similar 
conditions but don't kill people.

"They're trying to blame his mother and his father," said Shekita.

In his closing, prosecutor Jason Waller said Smith deserved the death penalty 
for the brutality of the crime. He said he and his accomplice stabbed 
Huggins-Jones 18 times in her bed - even stabbing her in the face. He said it 
took her a while to die as she bled out.

"She went to bed with her daughter down the hall and these guys came in and did 
this! Why? For an iPhone," said Waller.

In her rebuttal, defense attorney Phoebe Dee asked jurors not dismiss how hard 
Smith's childhood was. She said when his father learned his mother was 
pregnant, he beat her and punched her in the stomach in an attempt to cause a 
miscarriage. She called his upbringing incredibly difficult at the hands of 2 
parents who didn't want him.

Defense attorney Jonathan Broun asked for a sentence of life in prison without 
the possibility of parole - calling that harsh and severe enough for the crime.

Broun told jurors the death penalty should be reserved for "the worst of the 
worst and "that's just not Travion."

Last September, Smith's accomplice Ronald Anthony pleaded guilty to 1st-degree 
murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The plea deal spared 
him the death penalty.

Charges against Sarah Redden, who allegedly acted as lookout and who agreed to 
testify against Smith, remain.

(source: ABC news)






SOUTH CAROLINA:

Senate Panel to Consider Lethal Injection Secrecy Bill


A bill that would veil lethal injections in secrecy has risen from the dead.

The proposed law, sponsored by 4 Republican senators, would protect the 
identities of companies that sell lethal injection drugs to the state 
Department of Corrections, and exempt those purchases from state procurement 
laws and pharmacy board regulation. It would also protect the identities of the 
execution team, and of any pharmacists involved in mixing lethal injection 
drugs.

It's a reflection of just how hard it's become for states to buy drugs for 
lethal injection.

Last year, Corrections director Bryan Stirling told senators South Carolina had 
run out of drugs with which to kill people - and said the state hadn't been 
able to buy more. Many companies have quit selling drug for executions, and the 
American Pharmacists Association has called on its members not to provide such 
drugs.

The bill, S.553, could help the state get those drugs - or not. There's still 
no guarantee that any company would be willing to sell South Carolina any of 
the drugs allowed for lethal injections, even without the fear of being 
identified publicly. And states aren't sharing information, possibly out of 
fear their sources will dry up.

Opponents say the bill isn't needed.

"There are no executions on hold because of this [lack of lethal injection 
drugs]," says Mandy Medlock, executive director of Justice 360, saying it'll be 
several years before the appeals process runs out for anyone on death row in 
South Carolina. "There's nothing urgent."

Her group also opposes the secrecy provisions of the bill, saying it could 
shield botched executions from public scrutiny. In recent years, several 
executions in other states have been drawn out and apparently painful, 
particularly as states experiment with alternatives to the lethal injection 
drugs that have become so hard to get.

"If the government is going to exercise the awesome power of taking the life of 
one of its citizens, it must do so with transparency and accountability," 
Justice 360 writes.

But Sen. Mike Fair, one of the bill's sponsors, says opponents are just trying 
to delay the bill because they oppose the death penalty. This bill, he says, is 
about allowing the Department of Corrections to do its job.

"If you want to end capital punishment, let's do it with a bill or let's do it 
with an amendment to our constitution or at least a referendum and let the 
people decide," Fair says. "This is not the way to go about it."

Last spring the Senate Corrections and Penology Committee, which Fair chairs, 
split 7-7 on the bill. That meant the bill didn't advance out of committee to 
the Senate floor - but the tie vote didn't kill the bill, either.

Then, Dylann Roof killed 9 people at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston - 
including Sen. Clementa Pinckney, who was also a member of the Corrections and 
Penology Committee.

Fair says it didn't feel right to be talking about the death penalty after 
Pinckney was killed - and he didn't want to "give the appearance of trying to 
be opportunistic." So the bill was put on the back burner until this year.

The committee membership has shifted since Pinckney's killing and the new 
session; it's unclear whether the bill will come up against another tie vote. 
The committee has 6 Democrats and 8 Republicans.

Fair said last week he'd heard a compromise was in the works.

But people on both sides of the discussion told Free Times they sat down 
together Thursday morning following a committee meeting, having been told there 
was a proposed compromise, only to find that neither side had such a 
compromise. The meeting lasted no more than 30 seconds.

Laura Hudson, executive director of the South Carolina Crime Victims' Council, 
wants the bill passed quickly.

"We don't want people who are manufacturing the drugs to be harassed by 
people," Hudson says. "We have the death penalty in this state. We delay it 
enough making sure we have the right person," she said, explaining that no 
victim would ever want the wrong person executed, but that the appeals process 
is long enough.

The committee could vote on the bill this week.

(source: Free Times)






FLORIDA:

Inmate in death penalty ruling seeks life in prison


A death row inmate whose case led to the U.S. Supreme Court rejecting Florida's 
death-penalty sentencing system is arguing that he should be sentenced to life 
in prison.

An attorney for Timothy Lee Hurst filed a motion Friday in the Florida Supreme 
Court asking that it send the case to a lower court for imposition of a life 
sentence. A challenge by Hurst led the U.S. Supreme Court last month to issue 
an 8-1 ruling that found Florida's death-penalty sentencing system 
unconstitutional.

The ruling said juries -- not judges-- should be responsible for imposing the 
death penalty and that Florida's system of giving power to judges violated 
Hurst's Sixth Amendment right to a trial by jury. State lawmakers are rushing 
to approve changes in the death-penalty system to comply with the U.S. Supreme 
Court decision, which also has spurred a debate about how the ruling should 
apply to inmates who were sentenced under the law that was struck down.

Hurst was sentenced to death for the 1998 killing of fast-food worker Cynthia 
Harrison in Pensacola. Harrison, an assistant manager at a Popeye's Fried 
Chicken restaurant where Hurst worked, was bound, gagged and stabbed more than 
60 times. Her body was found in a freezer.

The motion filed Friday does not take issue with Hurst's guilt but says he 
should be sentenced to life in prison because he has "fundamentally been denied 
his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial" in sentencing.

(source: news4jax.com)






NEVADA:

Convictions, death sentence upheld for Las Vegas killer


The Nevada Supreme Court has upheld the murder convictions and death sentence 
of Gregory Hover, who was found guilty by a Las Vegas jury in 2013 of killing 2 
people during a crime spree that also involved a rape and robbery.

In a 6-1 unpublished decision, the court rejected numerous challenges brought 
by Hover either as being unwarranted or because any mistakes were deemed to be 
harmless error.

"Hover contends that the cumulative effect of errors warrants reversal of his 
convictions and sentences," the court majority said in upholding the jury's 
verdict and sentence. "However, a defendant is not entitled to a perfect trial, 
merely a fair one."

Justice Michael Cherry dissented, arguing that several of the errors at Hover's 
trial affected his right to a fair trial.

During Hover's penalty hearing in Clark County District Court in May of 2013, 
prosecutors described Hover as a racist who took pleasure in the suffering of 
his Hispanic victims. Defense lawyers said Hover had endured abuse as a child 
in Oklahoma but lived a normal life as a husband and father in Las Vegas before 
turning violent.

Hover was employed as a process server when he kidnapped 21-year-old Prisma 
Contreras from a parking lot on East Tropicana Avenue. He proceeded to rape, 
stab and strangle her.

The young mother's body was found in a burned-out car south of Boulder City on 
Jan. 15, 2010.

Hover also was convicted of fatally shooting 64-year-old Julio Romero during a 
robbery on Jan. 25, 2010.

(source: Las Vegas Review-Journal)






USA:

The Speaker for the Dead: Antonin Scalia and the Truth


For a long time now, I've been waiting with diligent patience to write 3 
articles: 1 on the passing of former President George W. Bush, 1 on the passing 
of former Vice President Dick Cheney and 1 on the passing of now-former Supreme 
Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

The novelist Orson Scott Card developed, in his writings, an idea for someone 
known as the Speaker for the Dead. A Speaker does not spit-polish and shine the 
departed at the graveside, doesn't eulogize inflated greatness or create a 
polite fiction to please and soothe. The Speaker tells the unvarnished truth 
about the one going into the ground: the good, the bad and the ugly.

Today, I stand as Justice Scalia's Speaker for the Dead.

First, the good: Justice Scalia dedicated his life to public service and 
scholarship in the law. He met his wife, Maureen McCarthy, on a blind date in 
1960 and died with his wedding ring still on his finger. The couple raised five 
sons and four daughters together. Among his boon companions was Justice Ruth 
Bader Ginsburg, who knew him from their shared days on the DC Circuit. The two 
made a long-standing ritual of sharing family dinner every New Year's Eve. If 
Justice Scalia was not loved by most, he was surely loved by many.

The bad and the ugly, unfortunately, require more time in the telling.

Whatever Justice Scalia may have been to his family and friends, he was to the 
nation a wrecking ball. One may try to deny that he was a racist, a sexist, a 
homophobe, an unabashed authoritarian and in the end a simple, shabby 
ward-heeling Republican lackey. The black-letter truths about the man, buried 
in his decisions for the majority and the minority, as well as his oft-quoted 
public comments, tell the true tale. It is abundantly clear that Mr. Scalia 
approached his duties with a broad sense of entitlement, exclusion and venom. 
The man had a lot of hate in his heart, and it poured out onto the pages of his 
decisions in vigorous abundance.

Justice Scalia, by way of his argument in Bush v. Gore to stop the vote 
counting in Florida, was instrumental in giving us George W. Bush, which gave 
us Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, September 11, the ongoing 
Afghanistan War, WMD lies, the Iraq war with millions dead and maimed and 
displaced, the horror of ISIS, torture as accepted policy, surveillance as a 
fact of life, the assassination of constitutional law, absolute corporate rule, 
the disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the demolition of the US economy.

Why? Because of his interpretation of the "questionable legality" of counting 
all the votes cast. Teachers from now until judgment day will speak of Bush v. 
Gore in the way they speak of Dred Scott and Brown v. Board as pivot points in 
history, moments that changed the world. Scalia's was not a positive moment, 
and bodies are still hitting the floor because of it.

Justice Scalia ruled in favor of Citizens United because, he claimed, the 
framers of the US Constitution would welcome the power and influence of modern 
billion-dollar multinational corporations, despite the fact that Jefferson and 
the others regularly railed against corporate power with militant vehemence. 
Hell, the Boston Tea Party was a protest against corporate hegemony.

Don't tell that to Tony. "Most of the Founders' resentment towards corporations 
was directed at the state-granted monopoly privileges that individually 
chartered corporations enjoyed," he wrote in his concurrence. "Modern 
corporations do not have such privileges." Yeah, right. Tell that to the tax 
man.

Justice Scalia ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby's desire to discriminate against 
basically whoever they want because they think Jesus is whispering in their 
ear. In his dissenting opinion against same-sex marriage, he railed against the 
"civil consequences" of people who love each other consecrating their union.

When Anthony Graves, a Black man, was spared the death chamber by court 
exoneration in Texas, Scalia argued in dissent that Graves should still be 
executed because established proof of innocence should not upend a standing 
court decision, even if that decision is decisively proven wrong.

Justice Scalia ruled against a petition to drop a sodomy law directly aimed at 
the LGBTQ community, claiming the people in favor of the law were "protecting 
themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral 
and destructive." Justice Scalia's disdain for anyone not heterosexual has been 
well documented. "Of course it is our moral heritage that one should not hate 
any human being or class of human beings," Scalia wrote in 1996. "But I had 
thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible - murder, for 
example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals - and could exhibit even 'animus' 
toward such conduct. Surely that is the only sort of 'animus' at issue here: 
moral disapproval of homosexual conduct."

Murderers, serial infidelity, dog killers, cat stranglers ... homosexuals. All 
"reprehensible" in the same pile. Justice Scalia was an equal opportunity 
despiser.

Last, but not least, the ugly: The passing of Justice Scalia after a Texas 
quail hunt with a pillow over his flapped face has perfectly deranged the 2016 
GOP presidential race, the GOP majority in Congress and politics in general. 
The conspiracy theories are flying faster than barn swallows with a beakful of 
meth. OBAMA DID IT. Anything to turn a buck. Right, Alex Jones? If you didn't 
exist, God would have to invent you just so people could have something to 
think about while taking a dump. Push, splash, wipe, flush, and so much for 
that.

You just have to love the instantaneous GOP reaction to Scalia's passing. Obama 
can't appoint a new justice in his last year in office - that's unprecedented! 
(Justice Kennedy, nominated by Ronald Reagan, was voted to the bench in 1988, 
Reagan's last year in office). Obama can't make an interim Supreme Court 
appointment - that's unprecedented! (The venerable Justice Brennan was an 
interim appointment back when the Senate enjoyed the presence of Joe McCarthy). 
History Fail, precedent Fail, in Technicolor.

Republicans in Congress are twisting themselves into strange rhetorical knots 
trying to argue against President Obama's ability and duty to nominate Scalia's 
successor. The issue came up in 2008, George W. Bush's last year in office. At 
that time, Sen. Chuck Grassley said, "The reality is that the Senate has never 
stopped confirming judicial nominees during the last few months of a 
president's term." Now, he's against it.

Sen. Lamar Alexander said back then, "Just because it's a presidential election 
year is no excuse for us to take a vacation. And we're here. We're ready to go 
to work."

Sen. John Cornyn said back then, "Now is the perfect time because, of course, 
we're in a presidential election year and no one yet knows who the next 
president will be. What a unique opportunity to establish that regardless of 
the next president's party, the nominees will be treated fairly and on the 
basis of their qualifications, and not on the basis of ancient political 
squabbles." Now, he's against it, too.

The GOP candidates are falling all over themselves in a mad rush to keep the 
guy in the round room from nominating someone supremely qualified to screw up 
their plans to make being gay or a woman essentially illegal, to put a pistol 
in every pot, to shoot every undocumented immigrant on sight, to declare 
corporations the sole ruling entities in the nation, and to rain bombs and fire 
down upon the rest of the world for a tidy fee. Scalia's open seat is what the 
2016 election will henceforth be about: abortion, Planned Parenthood, LGBTQ 
rights, war and how far hate itself can go before it goes too far.

Justice Scalia, who was Reagan's dying breath, hurt people. We will be 10 
generations getting out from under his legacy. His impact beggars 
quantification, but cannot be denied. The man took a hammer and chisel to the 
best aspects of our civil society and did sore damage for decades. He thought 
he was funny. In the end, he was the joke.

Speaking of jokes, there is an old yarn about a man who would go to the 
newsstand every morning, buy a newspaper, scan the front page, growl, and then 
throw the paper away in disgust. One day, the paperboy who ran the stand ginned 
up enough courage to ask the man what it was he was looking for. "The 
obituaries," the man replied. "But sir," said the boy, "the obituaries are on 
page 30." The man looked the boy square in the eye and said, "When the bastard 
I'm looking for dies, he'll be on the front page."

... and there he is. I can officially check one off my list. As for George and 
Dick, well ... I contemplate Bob Dylan: "I'll watch while you're lowered down 
to your death bed, and I'll stand o'er your grave 'til I'm sure that you're 
dead."

Amen.

(source: Op-Ed; William Rivers Pitt, Truthout)






US MILITARY:

Oscar-nominated film spotlights death-row veterans, combat PTSD


A film that raises questions about veterans' mental health care, capital 
punishment and justice for troubled troops is on the short list for an Oscar on 
Feb. 28.

The 30-minute documentary "Last Day of Freedom" tells the story of former 
Marine Manuel Babbitt through the eyes of his brother Bill. Babbitt was 
executed in California in 1999 after being convicted of beating an elderly 
woman to death in Sacramento in 1980.

Babbitt - "Manny" to family and friends - had suffered a head injury as a 
child, and despite having learning disabilities and dropping out of school in 
7th grade at age 17, was recruited by the Marine Corps. He went to Vietnam and 
later developed a host of mental health issues, including schizophrenia, severe 
post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse.

"They was able to discern his physical wounds and was able to patch them up, 
but they never got around to patching that wound in his head," Bill says in the 
film.

Through a melange of film footage and animation using more than 30,000 drawings 
and sketches, filmmakers Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman follow Manny 
Babbitt's life from childhood to grave, focusing on his struggles but also on 
the system they believe failed him.

"One of the things we really wanted to uncover is the complexities of the death 
penalty and of veterans' care," said Hibbert-Jones, an associate professor of 
art at the University of California-Santa Cruz. "The fact that someone would go 
to war and serve their country and then be failed by that country is a complete 
travesty."

The movie is among 5 vying for the Academy Award for best short documentary. 
Going into the competition, it already has a bevy of accolades, including the 
best short film award at the International Documentary Association, as well as 
the jury and best filmmaker awards from the Full Frame Documentary Film 
Festival.

Hibbert-Jones said the 6-year project began as an effort to understand the 
impact of gang violence and PTSD on youth.

"But as we listened to Bill's story, it was so powerful ... it really speaks to 
the issues of the judicial system, who goes to war for us, race and politics," 
she said.

The exact number of combat veterans facing capital punishment in the United 
States is unknown. An extrapolation from several states released last November 
estimates that 275 to 300 of the country's 3,057 inmates on death row are 
veterans.

Manny Babbitt is emblematic of many of these cases, Hibbert-Jones said.

"Sadly, Manny's is not an unusual case," she said.

Babbitt joined the Marine Corps under a program that admitted service members 
with IQs or physical standards lower than the accepted norm. He was struck in 
the head and hand by shrapnel at Khe Sanh, Vietnam, and returned to combat a 
week after he was wounded.

When he got home, he began displaying symptoms of PTSD, including flashbacks 
and nightmares, according to Bill. He began abusing drugs and alcohol, and 
turned to crime, robbing gas stations and breaking into homes.

He was caught, convicted and sentenced to prison but served most of his time in 
a mental hospital. After he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, he was 
let out. He went to live with Bill and his family, and during that time, he 
broke into the home of Leah Schendel, 78, and beat her to death.

In the film, Bill talks about figuring out Manny participated in the crime and 
choosing to turn him in.

"I was so grateful for these cops, you know? They were going to make it right, 
somehow," Bill Babbitt says. "I told my family it was going to be alright."

After Manny was convicted and efforts to appeal the case failed, he was 
executed on his 50th birthday. In the year before his death, the Marine Corps 
awarded him his Purple Heart in prison.

Hibbert-Jones, a native of England, and Talisman, an Israeli veteran, that they 
have lifelong feelings against the death penalty, viewing it as cruel and 
unusual punishment.

But Hibbert-Jones said in cases involving the mentally ill, the punishment 
seems even more egregious.

"We have been showing this film at universities, and people say, 'This was 
years ago. This doesn't happen today.' But that's not true. These issues have 
not gone away," she said.

Nearly 40 years after Babbitt was discharged, the Defense Department does not 
know how many troops have been discharged with combat-related mental health 
disorders, according to the Government Accountability Office.

According to a report published in 2015, the Army, Marine Corps and Navy do not 
accurately label the reasons for discharges ineligible for disability pay, 
making it impossible to know how many service members in the past decade have 
been kicked out for misbehavior that may be related to PTSD or other 
combat-related disorders.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation in 2013 by The Gazette of Colorado 
Springs found that the Army continues to discharge troops who have 
combat-related mental issues for misconduct and poor behavior without examining 
the connection between the 2.

The report also found that Army psychologists face pressure to clear troops for 
discharge from superiors who want to thin the ranks.

Hibbert-Jones said she would like to win in order to shine a spotlight on the 
plight of veterans' mental health and capital punishment.

"One of our hopes for the film is it will reach audiences that might not 
otherwise be aware of these issues," Hibbert-Jones said.

"Last Day of Freedom" is currently available on Netflix.

(source: Military Times)