[Deathpenalty] death penalty news-----PENN., VA., FLA., MISS., OHIO, KY., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 25


PENNSYLVANIA:

A Perfect Storm: Judicial Bias, Prosecutorial Misconduct, and a Death Sentence


Next Monday, the Supreme Court will consider whether the constitution is 
violated if the chief judge on the highest court of the state refuses to 
disqualify himself in a death penalty appeal where he was the chief prosecutor 
who authorized the defendant's death sentence, obtained the death sentence 
through his office's misconduct, and campaigned for the judgeship by showcasing 
how many people he put on death row, including the defendant.

To be sure, some judges play fast and loose with the rules of ethics, 
especially rules relating to bias and unfairness, and occasionally judges are 
disciplined for their misconduct. But it is unusual to find a case in which a 
judge's bias is so clear, even if the judge in question is so tone deaf that he 
believes he can be fair. However, believing in one's own fairness is not the 
test. As the Supreme Court has explained in other cases, the test is objective: 
whether under the circumstances the average judge is likely to be neutral. In 
addition, however, constitutional Due Process requires from a judge not just 
the absence of actual bias but the absence of even the appearance of bias. As 
the Supreme Court famously observed: "Justice must satisfy the appearance of 
justice."

In the case before the Supreme Court , Pennsylvania v. Williams, defendant 
Terrence Williams and a co-defendant were convicted in Philadelphia in 1984 of 
beating the victim to death with a tire iron and then burning his body. 
Williams was 18 and had several previous convictions for violent crimes, 
including 3rd degree murder and robbery. As is required by law, Philadelphia's 
elected District Attorney, Ronald Castille, authorized his staff to seek the 
death penalty against the defendant. The trial prosecutor argued to the 
sentencing jury that Williams killed the victim "for no other reason but that a 
kind man offered him a ride home." Given the defendant's violent history, the 
jury agreed with the prosecutor's plea, and sentenced Williams to death. But 
the prosecutor did not tell the jury the truth.

In a post-conviction hearing many years later, the defendant discovered 
evidence in the prosecutor's files that showed that the sentencing jury was 
given an incomplete and distorted picture of the killing. The victim was not 
nearly as sympathetic as the trial prosecutor argued. In fact, as several 
documents discovered from the prosecutor's files revealed, the victim was a 
pedophile who had engaged in many homosexual encounters with young boys, 
including the defendant when he was 13 years old. According to the defendant, 
the sexual pressure imposed on him by the victim was a critical circumstance in 
the killing. But the sentencing jury never learned these facts. Why? Because 
for 30 years the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office suppressed information 
that would have been relevant on the jury's penalty decision. The prosecutor 
suppressed a statement from the victim's widow that her husband engaged in 
sexual encounters with young boys; suppressed a statement from the pastor at 
the local church that the victim engaged in sexual encounters with parishioners 
at his church; suppressed evidence that the prosecution gave benefits to the 
co-defendant in return for his testimony; and failed to correct this witness's 
false testimony at the trial. Based on this serial misconduct by the 
prosecution, the hearing court vacated the death sentence. The court described 
the prosecutor's conduct as playing "fast and loose with the truth," engaging 
in a "pattern of misconduct," "disregarded her ethical obligations," and "took 
unfair measures to win."

The prosecution appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Williams filed a 
motion asking Chief Judge Castille to recuse himself from the appeal, and if he 
denied the motion, to refer the motion to the entire court. Recall that in 
1993, District Attorney Castille campaigned for election to become a Judge on 
the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. He stressed his record as Philadelphia District 
Attorney championing the death penalty. He proclaimed that he "put 45 people on 
death row," one of whom was the defendant. The media sensationalized his 
campaign oratory, hailing him as a "tough as nails scourge of criminals," 
repeatedly quoting Castille "bragging that he sent 45 people to death row," and 
that he "wears that statistic as a badge." Castille was elected and assumed his 
position in January 1994. Now, in response to the defendant's motion to recuse 
him, he issued a terse 1 sentence order: "The Motion for Recusal is DENIED, as 
is the request for referral to full Court."

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed the hearing court and reinstated the 
death sentence. Chief Judge Castille joined in the Court's unanimous reversal 
and lifting the stay of execution. He did not write the opinion for the 
6-member court, but he did write a concurring opinion that can only be 
described as a tirade in which he attacks the hearing judge for bias and 
incompetence, and the conduct of the defense lawyers as unlawful and unethical. 
According to Judge Castille, the hearing court's ruling on the defendant's 
"blatantly frivolous motion" was "extraordinary and unauthorized," "ignored the 
law," "misapprehended discovery rules," and "most troubling, lost sight of [the 
trial judge's] role as a neutral judicial officer." He alleged, incredibly, 
that the hearing judge "seized the files of the Commonwealth and the police for 
no legitimate reason," "independently reviewed the materials," and then allowed 
these materials to be used at the hearing.

Chief Judge Castille's attack on the defendant's lawyers - the Federal 
Community Defenders Office - was uniquely vicious. He charged them with "gaming 
the system," " representing clients throughout Pennsylvania illegitimately," 
"pursuing an obstructionist death-penalty agenda," "anointing themselves as a 
statewide de facto capital defenders office," employing "tactics" that included 
"multiple attempts to delay and obstruct cases and unsettle and undermine 
Pennsylvania law," and turning legal proceedings into a "circus where [these 
lawyers] are the ringmasters, with their parrots and puppets as a sideshow."

Given this astonishing attack against the hearing judge and the defense 
lawyers, it is no wonder that Judge Castille refused to disqualify himself from 
reviewing his own conduct as District Attorney who supervised the defendant's 
prosecution and death sentence. It appears Judge Castille wanted the 
opportunity to vilify those individuals whom he believed were trying to 
undermine his own past work. His opinion merely reinforces the view that he 
could not be fair and impartial, and that the defendant's constitutional right 
under Due Process and the Eighth Amendment was violated by his refusal to 
remove himself from the proceedings. Indeed, Judge Castille's ideological bias 
is even more audaciously displayed in that part of his opinion that disparages 
lawyers who take capital punishment cases and in which he demeans the noble 
principle, restated many times by the Supreme Court, that "death is different," 
because, Judge Castille asserts, it causes "mischief" to the legal system.

Under all the circumstances, Judge Castille could not realistically pretend he 
could be neutral when he was adjudicating his own conduct and the conduct of 
others he supervised. He could not pretend that there is no appearance of 
unfairness in his conduct. Would the general public really believe that he 
could be fair when, as District Attorney, he authorized the defendant's death 
sentence, supervised a prosecution permeated by misconduct by his own staff, 
and campaigned for his judgeship on having sent 45 persons to death row, 
including the defendant? Regardless of whether he subjectively believed he 
could be fair - an assertion of a state of mind that can never be conclusively 
refuted - there is no doubt that under an objective test he could never be 
perceived as neutral. His refusal to disqualify himself, as the Supreme Court 
almost certainly will conclude, violated Due Process and the Eighth Amendment.

But the result also reinforces that this is not the end of the case. There 
remains one final issue, and a big one. Judge Castille was part of a panel of 
six judges that heard the appeal and decided in favor of the prosecution, but 
his vote was not decisive. In other words, even though there may be a biased 
judge on a panel of judges, as there clearly was here, if his tainted vote is 
not controlling, has the defendant sufficiently shown that he was harmed by the 
judge's refusal to recuse himself? The lower courts are split on this question. 
Does bias on the part of one member of a multi-judge tribunal taint the entire 
proceeding? Can one reasonably contend that a tribunal is impartial when one 
member is biased? Moreover, there is no way of knowing how the tainted judge 
may have influenced the other judges. And needless to say, Chief Judge 
Castille, as the presiding judge of the state supreme court, has special 
responsibilities of supervising deliberations, assigning opinions to the other 
judges, and generally administering the processes of the court. This question 
is tricky. And without Justice Scalia, a 4-4 split on the Supreme Court is 
possible. And if that is the result, then under the Supreme Court's rules the 
decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would be affirmed - and Terrence 
Williams will be executed.

(source: Bennett L. Gershman, Professor of Law; Pace----Huffington Post)






VIRGINIA:

Gov. Terry McAuliffe says Virginia faces "somewhat of a crisis" over a lack of 
lethal-injection drugs for a scheduled execution next month.


State officials are searching for the drugs for the March 16 execution of 
convicted killer Ricky Gray, 1 of Virginia's7 remaining death row inmates.

The Democratic governor said Wednesday on Washington's WTOP-FM that it was "too 
soon" to say whether Gray's execution would be delayed.

The state has 2 vials of pentobarbital it received from Texas last year. 
McAuliffe indicated the state needs to test 1 vial and have another as a backup 
before it can proceed with an execution.

The General Assembly is currently considering a bill to allow the state to use 
the electric chair as an alternative to legal-injection drugs.

Gray was convicted of the murders of Bryan Harvey, 49; Kathryn, 39; and their 
daughters, Stella, 9, and Ruby, 4 at their Richmond home on New Year's Day 
2006.

(source: Richmond Times-Dispatch)






FLORIDA:

Death penalty fix clears key Senate panel, with 6 defections


The Senate Appropriations Committee agreed with the House Thursday that in 
future capital cases, a defendant cannot be sentenced to death unless at least 
10 or 12 jurors agree to recommend that punishment.

The 10-2 provision makes Florida's death sentencing system the same as 1 other 
state, Alabama. It was added to a bill (SB 7068) that makes other changes to 
bring Florida in compliance with last month's U.S. Supreme Court decision that 
struck down the state's sentencing system as a violation of the right to trial 
by jury.

Voting no were Republican Sens. Thad Altman of Melbourne, Anitere Flores of 
Miami and Don Gaetz of Niceville and Democrats Arthenia Joyner of Tampa, Gwen 
Margolis of Miami and Bill Montford of Tallahassee.

Altman, who opposed capital punishment, said: "I do not believe that we need to 
diminish our position constitutionally, based on what the House would like." 
Gaetz said he voted no because he supports the current Florida law, under which 
a 12-member jury can recommend death by a simple majority of 7-5.

Florida prosecutors support the 10-2 compromise but public defenders oppose it, 
arguing that Florida should follow most other states and require that juries be 
unanimous in recommending a death sentence. Public Defender Rex Dimmig of Polk 
County predicted Florida's "outlier" status as a 10-2 sentencing state would 
trigger a flood of new lawsuits by death row inmates.

A 3rd state, Delaware, allows a jury recommendation of death by a simple 
majority, but that state has suspended use of the death penalty pending a full 
legal review.

Executions in Florida have been on hold following the Jan. 12 decision in the 
case of Hurst vs. Florida. After that ruling, the Florida Supreme Court 
indefinitely postponed the execution of death row inmate Michael Lambrix, and 
will hear arguments next Tuesday in the case of Mark Asay, whose execution is 
scheduled for March 17.

(source: Tampa Bay Times)

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

Death penalty 'compromise' headed to Senate floor


Florida lawmakers are poised to resolve a fundamental flaw with the state's 
death-penalty sentencing system, as a Senate measure heads to the floor for a 
vote as early as next week.

The House already approved its version of the proposal addressing a recent U.S. 
Supreme Court decision that struck down Florida's capital-sentencing process as 
unconstitutional.

On Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee amended a Senate version to 
align it with the House's plan, which would require at least 10 jurors to 
recommend the death penalty for the sentence to be imposed. The move Thursday 
receded from the Senate's original position, which would have required 
unanimous jury recommendations for death.

The committee's 12-6 approval of the measure (SB 7068) virtually guaranteed 
that lawmakers will send a bill to Gov. Rick Scott before the end of the 
legislative session March. 11.

The Jan. 12 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in a case known as Hurst v. Florida, did 
not specifically address unanimous jury recommendations to judges about 
imposing the death penalty, a process that happens after jurors determine 
whether aggravating factors exist. But the issue of unanimity -- or 10-2 or 9-3 
recommendations -- became a flashpoint for lawmakers in debate over the 
legislation.

The ruling dealt with the sentencing phase of death-penalty cases after 
defendants are found guilty, and it focused on what are known as aggravating 
circumstances that must be determined before defendants can be sentenced to 
death. A 2002 U.S. Supreme court ruling, in a case known as Ring v. Arizona, 
requires that determinations of such aggravating circumstances must be made by 
juries, not judges.

Effectively putting death sentences in Florida on hold, the 8-1 decision found 
that the state's system of giving judges -- and not juries -- the power to 
impose death sentences is an unconstitutional violation of defendants' Sixth 
Amendment right to trial by jury.

The plan overwhelmingly approved by the House last week, and agreed to by the 
Senate committee on Thursday, would require jurors to unanimously find that at 
least 1 aggravating factor exists before a defendant can be eligible for a 
death sentence. At least 10 jurors would have to recommend death for the 
sentence to be imposed.

Of the 31 states with the death penalty, Florida is 1 of only 3 that do not 
require unanimous jury recommendations for death to be imposed. The other 2 -- 
Alabama and Delaware -- require at least 10 jurors to recommend death, while 
Florida requires a simple majority.

Nearly all death penalty experts -- with the exception of state attorneys -- 
recommended that requiring unanimous jury recommendations would inoculate 
Florida from future court decisions regarding the constitutionality of the 
death penalty.

But prosecutors, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, argued that unanimous 
recommendations would allow single jurors to "hijack" the process.

During debate on the measure Thursday, critics of the plan questioned why the 
Senate was backing down from unanimity, required for all other jury verdicts in 
Florida.

"Why don't we expect unanimity when a life is at stake, when in fact we expect 
unanimity in other matters before the court?" Senate Minority Leader Arthenia 
Joyner, a Tampa lawyer, asked. "I know that ultimately we'll probably end up 
back before the Supreme Court on this issue, because the way I see it, the 
trend is toward unanimous jury verdicts."

Senate Criminal Justice Chairman Greg Evers, the bill's sponsor, said the 10-2 
recommendation was a compromise with the House.

"We knew that we had to have a bill. We knew that it had to pass this session," 
Evers, R-Baker, said. "We had to reach that middle ground. That's the reason we 
came up with the 10-2."

But Sen. Thad Altman, a Rockledge Republican who has repeatedly sponsored 
proposals that would require unanimous jury recommendations in death-penalty 
cases, questioned the strategy.

The House would be unlikely to stick to a non-unanimous proposal if that meant 
leaving the state without a death-penalty sentencing system, Altman predicted.

"I do not believe we need to diminish our position, constitutionally, based on 
what the House would like," he said.

While lawmakers address the statute, the Florida Supreme Court is weighing the 
impact of the Hurst decision on a number of death penalty cases.

The Florida court indefinitely postponed the execution of Cary Michael Lambrix, 
scheduled for earlier this month, and will hear arguments Wednesday in the case 
of Mark James Asay, scheduled to die on March 17.

Lawyers for Asay and other death row inmates contend that the Hurst decision 
should be retroactive and apply to all of the 390 inmates sentenced to die for 
their crimes.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling did not say whether it should apply 
retroactively, and Bondi's lawyers instead have identified 43 cases that would 
qualify for reconsideration as a result of the Hurst decision.

Myriad factors -- timing, aggravators involved in determining whether 
defendants were eligible for the death penalty and the jury instructions -- 
have to be considered when evaluating whether Hurst applies, Bondi said.

"It has to be on a case-by-case basis," she said recently.

(source: news4jax.com)

**********

Legislature's death penalty "fix" is flawed


The Florida Senate has the chance to repair the state's death penalty statutes 
in a way that won't invite years of litigation. Last month, the U.S. Supreme 
Court declared Florida's death penalty procedures unconstitutional. Until the 
Legislature acts, the state's prosecutors have no legal avenue for pursuing 
death penalty cases.

House Bill 7101 is a good beginning toward fixing what's broken. But unless 
amended in the Senate, the bill may not go far enough to meet the requirements 
of the Sixth Amendment, which provides for trial by jury.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote on behalf of the majority in Hurst v. Florida: 
"The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary 
to impose a sentence of death. A jury's mere recommendation is not enough."

In Florida, capital cases entail a "penalty phase" after a defendant is found 
guilty of 1st-degree murder.

Under the old law, Florida juries could recommend the death penalty by a simple 
majority vote, leaving the judge to make the final sentencing decision.

Jurors could consider aggravating circumstances, facts that made the murder 
more heinous and thus justified the death penalty. They also could consider 
mitigating circumstances, facts about the defendant's life, for example, that 
would argue against imposing capital punishment.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the "jury recommendation" model of sentencing 
because Florida law left open the possibility that the facts that swayed jurors 
to recommend death may not match the facts the judge considered before imposing 
a sentence. The court said in effect that juries, not judges, should have the 
last word on the facts that affect sentencing a defendant to death.

To repair Florida law, the House passed a bill that would require a minimum 
jury vote of 10-2 to recommend death, along with unanimous (12-0) agreement on 
at least 1 aggravating factor.

But as the bill is now written, the act of weighing mitigating versus 
aggravating circumstances goes back to the judge.

And these considerations are not objective math problems. It's not as if jurors 
can assign a point value to being abandoned by parents and abused in foster 
care, or points that measure the depravity of murdering a disabled person.

Weighing mitigating versus aggravating factors is a subjective, human question. 
It's plausible that jurors could agree that an aggravating factor exists, but 
then disagree as to whether mitigating factors outweighed the aggravating ones.

When the law tells them they need merely vote on their final sentencing 
recommendation, rather than deliberate, it stunts the jury's role.

Studies have shown that jurors spend much more time on an issue - and probe 
more deeply - if they're required to be unanimous. Simply casting a vote, on 
the other hand, often prevents jurors from changing each other's minds.

While the movie "12 Angry Men" is fictional, the difficulty it portrays in the 
consensus-building process is not. Juror #3, played by Henry Fonda, starts out 
as the only juror who believes the defendant is innocent. By the end of the 
movie, with lots of argument, discoveries and discussions in between, the jury 
unanimously acquits the defendant.

It's the stuff in between that matters - the human elements of outrage and 
compassion that can't be boiled down into a formulaic equation.

Ted Bundy and Eileen Wournos were executed after split jury votes. We will 
never know what would have happened in those cases if the jurors had been 
required to deliberate.

The majority voters may well have convinced the minority voters of their 
opinions, if the law had required them to do so. It might have taken a longer; 
it might have been a little harder. But it would have ultimately been their 
decision, and not the decision of a judge.

The simple fix is for the Senate to amend the House bill to require not only 
unanimity on a single aggravating factor, but also unanimity in the weighing of 
all the facts. Such an amendment would match Justice Sotomayor's language in 
Hurst, in both letter and spirit.

(source: Julie Delegal, a University of Florida alumna, is a contributor for 
Folio Weekly, Jacksonville's alternative weekly, and writes for the family 
business, Delegal Law Offices. She lives in Jacksonville, 
Florida----floridapolitics.com)






MISSISSIPPI:

Wrongfully convicted: Life after death row


A simple jog around her Mississippi neighborhood quickly spiraled into a case 
of capital murder.

"In 1989, I was accused of killing my son," said Sabrina Porter, an exonerated 
death row survivor, in a phone interview. "When I went jogging that night, I 
left him in the house by himself when he went to sleep. When I got back, he 
wasn't breathing."

Distressed, Porter said she began performing CPR.

"When you're scared and you're panicked, you don't know what to do," she said. 
"I didn't apply CPR right. I applied adult CPR."

At the age of 18, Porter was wrongfully convicted of killing her 9-month-old 
son, Walter.

"My case, they just did what they wanted to do," Porter said. "I didn't have 
anyone in my court to help me. I was young, black, uneducated, and I'm from the 
south - it's more or less a race thing."

During her 6 1/2 years in prison, Porter spent 2 years and 9 months on death 
row. She was innocent.

"You don't suffer just because you're in jail," she said. "You continue to 
suffer. They ruined my life. They took that from me."

Today, she is just 1 of 2 women in the U.S. to be freed from death row.

"I want people to really look at what's going on - they're killing people," she 
said. "Then they find out, 'Oh, that person was innocent, my bad,' but, it's 
too late, you already killed them. They're taking people's lives. Destroying 
families."

Through an honors colloquium course titled "Wrongful Convictions," taught by 
Ashley Wellman, UCM assistant professor of criminal justice, Porter will come 
to campus to speak about her experiences in and out of prison.

"What a better way to learn about wrongful convictions than to hear from 
someone who has experienced the entire process," Wellman said. "She had this 
horrific experience where her child died, was blamed for his death, was 
sentenced to death for it, and then now is a free woman, raising her family in 
the same town where she was convicted. Mind-blowing."

Whether or not people support the death penalty, Wellman said she encourages 
everyone to hear Porter's story because she finds her experience to be unique 
as it exposes people to human error and the long-lasting effects of the 
criminal justice system.

"(Sabrina) has a passion to change the face of sentencing in our country, of 
investigations in our country, the way suspects are treated, and she's part of 
the Witness to Innocence Project, so she's an advocate for ending the death 
penalty in the United States," Wellman said. "She just wants to share her story 
so that other people don't have to go through what she went through."

Porter will share her story beginning at 6:15 p.m. Wednesday, March 2, in 
Hendricks Hall. A question-and-answer session will follow her presentation. The 
event is free and open to the public.

"It can be draining at times because you have to put yourself back in that 
situation," Porter said. "The date that you were sentenced to death. I have to 
pray about it before I do it. Once I tell my story, I have to get away in order 
to come down from that. It's hard to do that when you're just pouring yourself 
to everybody, and everybody is staring and looking at you. I do it because I 
know it can help somebody."

(source: digitalburg.com)


OHIO:

Ohio former prison officials join anti-death penalty group


2 former Ohio prison bosses who watched dozens of men executed have joined a 
national group which is "strongly concerned about the fairness and efficacy of 
the death penalty in America."

Terry Collins and Reginald Wilkinson, both former directors of the Ohio 
Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, are part Public Safety Officials 
on the Death Penalty. The Washington, D.C.,-based group is a coalition of law 
enforcement, prosecutors and prison officials.

Not all members of the coalition are opposed to capital punishment, but all 
share the conclusion that the system is "ineffective, expensive and makes 
mistakes."

Collins, who oversaw 33 executions as deparment director from 2006 to 2010, has 
been a vocal opponent of capital punishment since retiring from his state job. 
He recently said in a published report, "the death penalty isn't worth fixing." 
He is a member of Ohioans Against Executions.

Wilkinson was head of the state prison system from 1991 to 2006; he began 
witnessing executions when the state resumed capital punishment in 1999.

(source: Columbus Dispatch)






KENTUCKY----2, including female, to face death penalty

Death penalty sought in teen's 2015 murder


Prosecutors have decided to seek the death penalty for 2 defendants accused of 
kidnapping a 19-year-old last summer before shooting and leaving her for dead 
in a wooded ravine.

Todd Byrd, 46, and Monica Mudd, 23, were arrested days after Meagan Hassler's 
body was found June 23 just across the Jefferson County line.

Both are charged with complicity murder and complicity kidnapping resulting in 
death.

State law allows the prosecution to seek the death penalty by citing 
aggravating circumstances. One such circumstance is kidnapping that precedes a 
killing, wrote Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Ryane Conroy in court 
documents filed last week in Jefferson Circuit Court.

The defendants appeared Thursday morning in court, where Byrd's attorney Mark 
Rice said because of the capital case status, he will seek a 2nd attorney to 
help him defend Byrd.

Mudd's public defender John Mack said he, too, will be adding another attorney 
to the case in light of the prosecution's decision.

Rice has filed a motion for the defendants to be tried separately, but a ruling 
on that matter is on hold until more evidence is entered into the court file. 
The parties are next due in court in June.

The day before Hassler's body was found, Mudd gave a statement to LMPD 
detectives in which she said she and Byrd abducted the teen from a home in 
southwestern Louisville because they believed she had stolen jewelry and drugs, 
court records show.

Mudd stripped Hassler of her clothes to search for the the allegedly stolen 
drugs, she told police. Byrd then drove to the wooded hills just across the 
Jefferson and Bullitt county line, where Mudd alleges Byrd shot the teen, whose 
hands were bound and eyes and mouth covered with duct tape.

(source: Courier-Journal)






CALIFORNIA:

Jury recommends death penalty for convicted killer


A San Bernardino jury recommended death today for a man convicted of raping and 
murdering 30-year-old Sylvia Galindo at a Fontana bakery in 2001.

The recommendation came after jurors convicted Gilbert Sanchez, 54, of 
Montebello, in Nov. 2015.

A judge will make the final decision on sentencing Sanchez at an upcoming 
hearing scheduled May 27 at the San Bernardino Justice Center.

(source: highlandnews.net)






USA:

The Death Penalty Doesn't Violate the 10 Commandments


The Ten Commandments don't prohibit killing, and the often-cited "thou shalt 
not kill" is a translation error. So when the Pope said on Sunday that "the 
commandment 'thou shalt not kill,' has absolute value," he was citing a 
mistranslation.

In fact, the original wording in the Ten Commandments refers only to illegal 
killing, and takes no stand on the merits of legally sanctioned killing such as 
the death penalty. This is why most modern translations prefer "do not murder" 
instead of the misleading "do not kill."

But that more modern wording is also not quite right. The commandment includes 
every variety of illegal killing: manslaughter, for instance, along with 
murder. "Do not murder" is too narrow, just as "do not kill" is too broad.

Equally, the Ten Commandments - contrary to the popular conception - are not 
even a legal code. They are a morality code that takes the form of a list of 
laws. The laws themselves are codified elsewhere. The point of the Ten 
Commandments is that these laws have moral implications beyond their legal 
implications.

For example, Numbers 35 explores different kinds of killing in great detail, 
even delving into such surprisingly modern nuances as hate crimes and assault 
with a deadly weapon. The same passage delineates 3 categories of killing, and 
1 of those categories is "legal killing." One kind of legal killing in the 
Bible is the death penalty - which is required in certain circumstances. 
Another is some killing during wartime. More generally, to understand the 
legality of killing according the Bible, the right place to look is Numbers 35 
and other similar texts.

The purpose of the Ten Commandments is to stress that these laws about killing 
are matters of morality. Even if you don't think you'll get caught, for 
instance, or even if you are willing to pay the penalty, you should not engage 
in illegal killing, or in the other actions like stealing that are listed in 
the Ten Commandments. (But the death penalty is okay.)

The Ten Commandments are unlike anything in modern legal codes, which are 
simply a set of consequences for various actions. For example, according to 
Section 2113 of Title 18 of the US Codes ("18 USC 2113"), if you take something 
that belongs to a bank and is worth up to $1,000, you can be fined or 
imprisoned for not more than 1 year; take something that's worth more than 
$1,000 and the jail term can be as long as 10 years.

This is what is popularly called the law against bank robbing. But the law 
doesn't take a position on whether it's moral or immoral to rob a bank. It just 
tells you what might happen if you do.

This is where the Ten Commandments come in. They insist that human actions can 
be categorized not just as "legal" versus "illegal" but, more importantly, also 
as "moral" versus "immoral."

So the Pope is right that the Bible sees killing as a matter of morality. But 
it is his interpretation that ascribes immorality to the death penalty. Though 
the Pope's position is consistent with established Catholic doctrine, and in 
keeping with many other mainstream Christian and Jewish traditions, it actually 
reverses the Bible's position. The original text of the Ten Commandments does 
not address capital punishment, and Numbers 35 even demands it.

(source: Dr. Joel Hoffman is author most recently of The Bible Doesn't Say 
That: 40 Biblical Mistranslations, Misconceptions, and Other Misunderstandings, 
which explores what the Bible meant before the last 2,000 years of 
interpretation. He can be reached through his website at 
www.lashon.net----Huffington Post)