[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ALA., KY., MO., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 14



ALABAMA:

Expert: Lethal injection consciousness check 'inadequate'


In a lawsuit challenging Alabama's death penalty protocol, Dr. Alan Kaye, chair 
of Louisiana State University's Department of Anesthesiology, testified 
Wednesday that the "consciousness check" used by the Alabama Department of 
Corrections during lethal injections is inadequate.

Specifically, he said the check for consciousness does not ensure condemned 
inmates won't feel the sensation of being buried alive or burned from the 
inside as a result of the drugs.

But the court is primarily trying to determine if the consciousness checks are 
performed at all.

This litigation began in 2011 when attorney Suhana Han filed suit against 
Jefferson Dunn, ADOC Commissioner; Walter Myers, warden of Holman Correctional 
Facility; and others on behalf of Thomas Arthur, a death row inmate who was 
convicted in 1982 in a murder-for-hire plot.

A final hearing for this litigation began on Tuesday in U.S. District Court for 
the Middle District of Alabama.

Alabama's current death penalty process uses a 3-drug injection lethal cocktail 
to carry out executions: 500 milligrams of midazolam, 600 milligrams of 
rocuronium bromide and 240 "milliequivalents" of potassium chloride.

The 1st drug, midazolam, is supposed to sedate inmates so they won't feel the 
effects of the rocuronium bromide, a paralytic, and the potassium chloride, 
which stops the heart.

Kaye said that if inmates are not properly sedated, they could feel the effects 
of the paralyzing drug, which would induce the feeling of being buried alive, 
and the potassium chloride, which would cause a burning sensation.

In addition, no Alabama inmate has yet been executed using midazolam. 
Pentobarbital was the sedative of choice until the state ran out of its supply.

According to ADOC's protocol, correctional officers are supposed to perform a 
consciousness check after the sedative is administered. That involves a 
correctional officer saying the inmate's name, gently brushing his eyelashes, 
then pinching his arm.

The consciousness check is vital in determining if condemned inmates have been 
properly sedated, Kaye testified.

"(The consciousness check) is all we have in this protocol," Kaye said. "It's a 
safeguard, albeit a limited safeguard."

That consciousness check is inadequate for several reasons, Kaye testified.

Based off testimony he's read, Kaye said correctional officers performing the 
check aren't adequately trained on how to do so.

He said they don't pinch hard enough and there is little communication between 
those performing the check and those administering the drugs.

"(The consciousness check) can't tell you, even if done properly, if a person 
is at a deep level of anesthesia," Kaye said.

But the issue at hand in this trial isn't necessarily the adequacy of the 
consciousness check. It's if that check is regularly performed at all.

Kaye said he doesn't believe this check is always performed.

On Tuesday during trial, 3 people who have witnessed 2 executions in 2010 and 
2011 testified that they did not see the pinch test performed.

On Wednesday, a video deposition of a volunteer minister for death row inmates 
testified that the consciousness check was not performed on 6 executions he's 
witnessed.

Thomas Govan, an assistant attorney general representing the defendants in this 
case, pointed out to Kaye upon cross examination that correctional officers 
testified that the consciousness check was always performed.

Kaye's opinion remained unchanged.

U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins, who is presiding over this litigation, isn't 
expected to rule until higher courts rule on other death penalty litigation 
motions which are tangentially related to Arthur's case.

He is tasked with deciding if ADOC committed a violation by allegedly not 
performing the consciousness check, and if the plaintiffs have proved that 
there is a readily available alternative method to the state's current lethal 
injection protocol.

(source: Montgomery Advertiser)

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

Marshall County death row inmate hopes for reduced sentence


A Marshall County man on death row for the killing of his wife and her unborn 
child returned to court Wednesday.

Jessie Phillips is hoping to have his sentence reduced. This after an appeals 
court seeks clarification from the judge on his 2012 sentence.

Prosecutors in the case are asking the judge to clarify to the appeals court, 
reasons why he ordered the death penalty.

But defense attorneys see this as an opportunity for Phillips to be 
re-sentenced to life without parole. More than 3 years after he was sentenced, 
Jessie Phillips was back before his trial judge Wednesday morning.

Phillips was sentenced to death in 2012 for the shooting death of Erica Droze. 
Droze was 8 weeks pregnant when she was shot in the head by Phillips at 
Lakeside Car Wash back in 2009.

On Wednesday, the parties began revisiting the aggravating and mitigating 
circumstances surrounding the decision to sentence Phillips to death.

Defense attorneys argued he should be given life without, because there were 
several mitigating circumstances including Phillips bad childhood, mother had 
drug problems, he was in foster care, as well as he had no significant criminal 
history.

Prosecutors argued the single aggravating circumstance of taking the life of 
the mother, and giving no life opportunities for the unborn child outweighs 
those mitigating circumstances.

"Our position is the judge doesn't need to change his sentence. In fact, he 
simply needs to amend his order and allow the sentence that was imposed and 
recommended by the jury and by him to be eventually carried out," says Marshall 
County District Attorney Steve Marshall.

The judge asked both sides to submit their briefs to the court by the end of 
the month and a future hearing date will be set.

(source: WAFF news)






KENTUCKY:

Suspect in 7-year-old's murder could face death penalty


The man accused of raping and killing a 7-year-old Allen County girl was in 
court Wednesday.

Timothy Madden was formally arraigned in the death of Gabbi Doolin of 
Scottsville. Doolin disappeared from a football game at Allen County High 
School in November. Her body was found a short time later in the woods near the 
school.

A not guilty plea was entered on Madden's behalf.

"I am only aware of some DNA testing or remaining that's being done that is not 
to us ...the majority of it, we should be able to comply with any deadline the 
court sets," the prosecutor said during the arraignment.

The courtroom was packed with family members on both sides.

Madden told WDRB in a jailhouse interview right after his arrest in November 
that he's innocent, despite DNA evidence pointing to him as a suspect.

His attorney, Travis Lock, says Madden maintains his innocence and remains 
upbeat.

"He is as positive as can be would be the way I would describe him," Lock said. 
"Obviously I can't discussed my communications with him but nothing with Mr. 
Madden has changed."

Lock admits he has even taken some heat for representing Madden.

"This is a very high profile case and obviously, there is negative feedback and 
negative opinions in our community," Lock said.

Madden is being held at the Barren County jail on a $1 million full cash bond. 
Prosecutors are still deciding whether they will seek the death penalty in the 
case.

(source: WDRB news)

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

Judge sets deadline for pursuit of death penalty in Doolin case


The prosecutor in the case involving the death of Gabriella "Gabbi" Doolin will 
have until March 31 to decide whether to seek the death penalty against her 
suspected killer.

Timothy Wayne Madden, 38, of Scottsville, was arraigned Wednesday afternoon in 
Allen Circuit Court on charges of murder, kidnapping, 1st-degree rape and 
1st-degree sodomy.

Madden is accused of killing 7-year-old Gabriella, whose body was found Nov. 14 
in a creek in a wooded area behind Allen County-Scottsville High School, where 
her brother was participating in a youth football game.

Manual strangulation and drowning are the listed causes of death in court 
records.

This was Madden's 1st court appearance since his indictment last month by a 
special grand jury. He was clean-shaven on Wednesday, as opposed to his bearded 
appearance during previous court hearings.

Doolin's and Madden's families sat on separate sides of the courtroom where 
cameras were not allowed.

Madden's attorney, Travis Lock of Bowling Green, entered a not guilty plea on 
his client's behalf.

Allen Circuit Judge Janet Crocker ordered Madden to return to court July 13 for 
a pretrial conference.

Madden is being held without bail in the Barren County Detention Center in 
Glasgow due to the potential of this case becoming a death penalty prosecution. 
Defendants in capital cases are not entitled to bail.

In Kentucky, a murder case may be eligible for the death penalty if there is 
evidence of aggravating circumstances, such as if the murder occurred during 
the course of another violent act.

Crocker imposed a March 31 deadline on Allen County Commonwealth's Attorney 
Clint Willis to file a motion of intent to seek the death penalty against 
Madden.

Willis said in court that he could "easily" meet the deadline.

After the hearing, Willis said he planned to meet with Doolin's family sometime 
in the next couple of weeks to discuss how to proceed with the case and answer 
their questions.

Willis said it was important to give the family time to process Wednesday's 
court appearance before meeting with them.

"Every time you go to court, you're reopening new wounds and they've got to be 
able to absorb some of this stuff," Willis said.

Evidence that has been gathered by law enforcement is anticipated to be turned 
over by Willis' office to Lock and Madden ahead of the pretrial conference in 
July.

Willis said in court that some DNA testing remains to be done in the case.

After Wednesday's hearing, Lock said he is awaiting receipt of evidence from 
Willis' office.

Kentucky courts operate under open discovery, in which the prosecution shares 
its evidence with the defense ahead of a trial.

"I know nothing more about the evidence than what I knew last December," Lock 
said after the arraignment. "I think it's important for everyone to know ... 
the defense is entitled to all evidence the commonwealth possesses and that's 
not true in all jurisdictions."

Before the arraignment, Lock had served subpoenas on two area convenience 
stores for video footage believed to depict Madden at both locations on the day 
of Gabbi's death.

Lock said that he has received video from one of the locations and that Madden 
is shown on the footage. The other business has not responded to its subpoena, 
Lock said.

A member of Madden's extended family who had been a client of Lock's contacted 
the attorney Nov. 20, the date of Madden's arrest by the Kentucky State Police.

Lock agreed to represent Madden after meeting with him and his family.

The arrangement has led to Lock receiving some criticism from people in a 
community that has been stung by 2 homicides in recent months.

"Public opinion is out there and it's a high-profile case, but as I've said 
before, any person who is accused of even a heinous crime has to have counsel," 
Lock said. "Any person who is aggrieved by that doesn't understand how the 
system works. For the system to work, the accused has to have counsel and 
someone has to fulfill that role for justice to happen."

Lock said that a motion to move the trial out of Allen County remains a 
possibility, while Willis said the prospect of a change of venue motion seems 
highly likely.

"I fully anticipate the defense will be filing a motion like that someday," 
Willis said. "The timing of that is simply when they feel it's appropriate. If 
the defense doesn't file it, I suspect the court ... on its own will address 
that one way or another."

(source: Bowling Green Daily News)






MISSOURI:

Appeals court hears arguments in Columbia death penalty case


Missouri's method of execution and the timeliness of the argument made its way 
to the 28th floor of the Thomas Eagleton Courthouse Wednesday afternoon.

A 3 judge panel of the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals will decide whether 
Ernest Lee Johnson, convicted of killing 3 people in northeast Columbia in 
1994, should have his case sent back to Missouri's Western District court, or 
go through with an execution by lethal injection. The U.S. Supreme Court issued 
a stay in Johnson's execution the day it was set to happen in November.

The Court cited Johnson's lawyers' claim that lethal injection would cause 
"severe and uncontrollable" seizures. According to a medical affidavit filed in 
2015, Dr. Joel Zivot said scar tissue that formed after a 2008 brain surgery 
would cause those seizures when reacting to pentobarbital, the single drug used 
in Missouri's lethal injection.

Judge Lavenski Smith, flanked by Judges Steven Colloton and Raymond Gruender, 
asked about the use of lethal gas. Johnson's attorney Brian Gaddy said that 
since the state allows for its use by law, it constitutes a "feasible" and 
"readily implementable" alternative - the legal bar established by the Supreme 
Court.

"A lot's been made of the gas chamber," Gaddy told ABC 17 News after the 
hearing. "I think technology has advanced to where you may not need an official 
gas chamber, and those are items that we hope to litigate of the case is sent 
back down to the district court."

Johnson murdered Mabel Scruggs, Mary Bratcher and Fred Jones in February 1994, 
as the 3 closed the Casey's General Store at the corner of Rice Road and 
Ballenger Lane. Johnson was convicted of the murders the next year, but various 
courts overturned the death penalty sentence. A Pettis County jury last upheld 
that punishment in 2006.

Assistant Attorney General Gregory Goodwin said Johnson's attorneys have never 
proved that the chemicals used in lethal gas would not cause the same result 
they allege with pentobarbital. Johnson could also not prove that lethal gas 
was a "readily implementable" form of execution, simply because state law 
allowed it.

Missouri has not conducted an execution with the gas chamber since 1965. 
Department of Corrections spokesperson David Owen told ABC 17 News the state 
does not currently have an operational gas chamber.

Goodwin also claimed Johnson filed his petition for a new form of execution too 
late. Both sides agreed that the statute of limitations for such a claim is 5 
years. Goodwin said the brain surgery in 2008 started the "clock," but Gaddy 
rebutted to say the discovery of the scar tissue in a follow-up MRI in 2011 
would have given Johnson any claim under the Eighth Amendment.

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals does not have timetable on handing down an 
opinion.

(source: KMIZ news)






CALIFORNIA:

Alejandro Guerrero Ruiz of Orange May Face Death Penalty in Slayings of 4 Men


A 23-year-old Orange man has been charged with the murders of three men whose 
burned bodies were found in an SUV ablaze in a quiet Orange neighborhood and a 
fourth man whose body was found in the back seat of a car in Fontana.

Alejandro Guerrero Ruiz, who is awaiting extradition proceedings in Texas, 
where he is being held on a separate matter, faces special circumstance 
allegations of multiple murders and murder during the commission of a robbery, 
according to Orange County Senior Deputy District Attorney Scott Simmons.

Those allegations would make it possible to seek the death penalty, Simmons 
noted.

Speaking with City News Service, the prosecutor declined to comment further on 
the nature of Ruiz's arrest in Texas or the motive for the Southern California 
murders, except to mention "drugs were definitely involved."

Simmons' office released a statement saying no further information is being 
released at this time, nor is a booking photo of Ruiz.

Orange Police Lt. Fred Lopez said at the time his dispatchers received a call 
about a vehicle fire at 2:18 p.m. Monday, Nov.. 9, in the 500 block of East 
Oakmont Avenue, near Shaffer Street and Orange High School. Witnesses at the 
scene said the driver was seen running away from the black, full-size GMC SUV 
as it caught fire and rolled to a stop in the driveway of a yellow house. The 
bodies of 3 men were pulled out.

There was a license plate on the GMC that was legible so investigators quickly 
discovered the SUV had not been reported stolen, Orange Police Sgt. Phil 
McMullen said at the time.

Also on Nov. 9, 19-year-old Antonio Medina of Glendale, Arizona, and 
20-year-old Fernando Meza of Phoenix were reported missing, according to a 
Facebook page titled "Searching for Fernando Meza and Antonio Medina." The 
Orange County coroner later identified them as two men found in the back seat 
of the flamed-out SUV.

The Orange Police Department previously said the 3rd dead man, who was in the 
front right passenger seat, was an Orange resident in his late 20s. He was 
later identified as 26-year- old Edgar Berrelleza-Soto, whose 35-year-old 
brother, Joel Mauricio Berrelleza of Orange, had been found dead (but not 
burned) in the back seat of a car in Fontana on Nov. 15, Simmons said.

The date of all 4 murders was listed as Nov. 9 in an arrest warrant attached to 
the criminal complaint, City News Service reports. Simmons, who believes all 4 
victims were shot to death, said the special circumstance allegation of murder 
during a robbery applies to all 4.

He declined to say whether Ruiz was the driver who bolted out of the SUV.

The OCDA says the investigation is ongoing.

(source: Orange County Weekly)






USA:

US authorities agree not to seek death penalty for "Shorty" Guzman


US Authorities who are applying for the extradition of detained Sinaloa drug 
cartel leader Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, have agreed not to seek the death 
penalty, if he's convicted of homicide.

The concession is key for a successful extradition of the accused leader of a 
Mexican drug cartel. The Mexican constitution forbids extradition if there is a 
possibility that an accused will suffer the death penalty.

Guzman was re-captured last Friday and returned to the same maximum security 
prison from which he was rescued by his henchman 6 months ago by tunneling into 
his cell. The difference now, however, is that the floor has been reinforced 
with concrete. Other security measures have been taken, including that Guzman 
will be moved from cell to cell on a continuous basis. Outside the prison's 
perimeter fence, tanks and armoured cars are on constant patrol.

Guzman's lawyers are filing injunction after injunction in an attempt to 
prevent or at least delay the day when Guzman will have to face US justice.

(source: radiovaticana.va)

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

The End of the Death Penalty Isn't Near


The U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida's death penalty Tuesday, but if you 
think this is a harbinger of the end of capital punishment, think again. The 
8-1 decision was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, who 
have no intention of ever ruling death sentences unconstitutional as a general 
matter.

The reason these archconservatives held Florida's death-penalty system 
unconstitutional was highly specific. The state gave a judge, not a jury, final 
authority to decide facts that would determine a capital sentence.

This arrangement violated a principle that Scalia and Thomas adopted in 2000 as 
part of their goal to strike down federal sentencing guidelines. According to 
that principle, any fact that's necessary to increase a defendant's punishment 
must be submitted to the jury for proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The Florida 
structure didn't satisfy that requirement, the court held. So Scalia and Thomas 
had no choice but to join the opinion.

The constitutional back story is fascinating. It begins with a 1998 decision, 
Almendarez-Torres v. U.S., in which Scalia wrote a dissent that was joined by 3 
of the court's 4 liberals at the time: Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul 
Stevens and David Souter. Scalia said there was strong reason to believe that 
the Constitution requires any fact increasing punishment to be decided by a 
jury. Thomas didn't join Scalia's dissent, and neither did the usually liberal 
Justice Stephen Breyer.

Thomas's refusal to join wasn't yet noteworthy. But Breyer's was. The most 
probable explanation was that Breyer had helped dream up and then draft the 
U.S. sentencing guidelines that governed almost all federal sentencing at the 
time. One central element of the guidelines was that judges would make findings 
about the degree of harm and nature of the crime which they then applied 
according to an elaborate grid designed to reduce judicial discretion. Scalia's 
dissent hinted that this arrangement might violate the Constitution, upending 
the sentencing guidelines.

Two years later, in Apprendi v. New Jersey, Scalia took the next step. He 
joined an opinion by Stevens squarely holding that any fact (except the fact of 
a prior conviction) that enhanced a sentence beyond the statutory maximum must 
be found by a jury.

This time, Thomas joined him, reversing his vote from Almendarez-Torres and 
saying he'd gotten that result wrong. The result was a 5-4 opinion with a 
bizarre judicial lineup: Scalia and Thomas joined 3 of the liberals, while 
Breyer, committed to the sentencing guidelines, joined the court's 
conservatives.

The conservatives' reasoning was historical and originalist. But one issue in 
particular may have been important to Thomas. The idea, first mentioned in a 
1999 opinion that helped pave the way for the Apprendi decision, was that 
common-law juries had the de facto power to block the implementation of 
criminal laws that they didn't like.

The great 18th century English legal thinker William Blackstone called such 
nullifying verdicts "pious perjury." The jurors perjured themselves by breaking 
their oath to find the fact accurately, but they were acting piously because 
the laws were wrong. In particular, Blackstone had in mind the common-law rule 
that stealing goods of a certain value constituted a felony punishable by 
death. Juries fudged the facts to find defendants guilty of misdemeanor, thus 
mitigating the harshness of the laws while simultaneously expressing their 
dissatisfaction with them.

Thomas never said so explicitly, but it seems probable that he liked the idea 
of an empowered jury casting doubt on laws it didn't like. The sentencing 
guidelines, perceived as inflicting especially harsh punishments on black 
defendants, probably seemed like good targets for such jury repudiation. In 
2005, Scalia and Thomas provided their votes to strike down the sentencing 
guidelines on the same grounds.

In any case, Thomas has consistently stuck with the principle ever since, as 
has Scalia. The Florida sentencing system deviated from it. The reason was that 
the jury's findings regarding the death penalty were merely advisory. The 
ultimate decision was made by the judge. The court said the Apprendi precedent 
controlled, and found Florida's system unconstitutional.

In case you're wondering if Scalia and Thomas are somehow softening, proof to 
the contrary may be gleaned from the fact that last week, the court refused to 
stay the execution of a Florida death row inmate. Ordinarily, if the court knew 
that a forthcoming opinion would save a defendant's life, it would issue a stay 
-- a decision that requires 5 justices.

The court didn't give a reason for refusing the stay. But the defendant, Oscar 
Ray Bolin Jr., had waived the jury's part of the process at his 2001 trial and 
chosen to go straight to the judge for sentencing. Thus, the court could've 
concluded that he wouldn't have benefited from the constitutional rule 
requiring submission of facts to the jury. You're entitled to waive your 
constitutional rights, and 5 of the justices must've thought that Bolin 
would've done so even if he'd known he had the right to demand a jury finding.

And what about Breyer? He still hasn't given up on the constitutionality of the 
sentencing guidelines. He concurred separately in the Florida case to explain 
that he still doesn't think that facts enhancing punishment must be submitted 
to a jury. He gave a different reason for striking down the sentence, namely 
that the death penalty in particular must be decided by a jury, not a judge.

The upshot is that the Florida case wasn't about the death penalty for Scalia 
and Thomas -- it was about the old fight over the sentencing guidelines, which 
Breyer hasn't forgotten either.

(source: Noah Friedman, bloombergview.com)

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

On death penalty, is this the company we want to keep?


Saudi Arabia's mass execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr and 46 others has 
sparked tumult in the Middle East and underscored the brutality of the Saudi 
government. Al-Nimr was convicted of political crimes in a rigged trial by a 
corrupt judiciary, as were some of the others, who reportedly included 
juveniles and people with mental disabilities.

Mass executions are something of a habit in Saudi Arabia. While this one was 
the worst in 35 years, they aren't uncommon. Nor are the arguments about 
Western complicity: While professing outrage, Canada's new prime minister, 
Justin Trudeau, a progressive on most issues, stated his continuing commitment 
to a $15 billion arms deal with the desert kingdom despite the killings.

The United States is also standing by its commitments: In 2015 alone, the 
United States agreed to sell Saudi Arabia $46 billion worth of military 
hardware. That Saudi Arabia, our closest Arab ally, is one of the world's worst 
human rights offenders (it still sometimes executes women by stoning for 
"moral" violations of Sharia law) seems to be of little consequence to the U.S. 
government.

However, Saudi Arabia is just one of the world's worst perpetrators of capital 
punishment. Shockingly, we're another. In that context, our complicity isn't 
all that surprising.

In 2015, 2,984 convicts sat on death row in the United States, a staggering 
figure. The number of executions in the United States each year is exceeded 
only by Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China. Clearly, we're not keeping very 
good company, and Amnesty International has blasted us for the discriminatory 
and disproportionate way we condemn people. All of the Western democracies, 
excluding the United States, have abolished the death penalty; altogether, more 
than 150 countries no longer use it.

The death penalty as applied in the United States defies constitutional and 
judicial guarantees of equal justice under the law. An Atlantic article in 2014 
reported on the landmark research of University of Iowa Professor David Baldus, 
who, with associates, studied 2,000 homicides in Georgia in the 1970s and 1980s 
and found vast racial disparities in sentencing.

Baldus also researched 677 homicides in Philadelphia and determined that blacks 
were condemned 4 times more than whites for similar crimes. Baldus' work, which 
also debunked the myth that blacks were condemned more than whites because they 
commit more crimes, was cited by the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun 
in finding that "both fairness and rationality cannot be achieved (by) the 
death penalty." A geographical bias, too

The death penalty is also geographically biased. Altogether, 1,157 people have 
been executed in the South since the death penalty was reinstated, compared 
with 177 in the Midwest, 85 in the West and only 4 in the populous Northeast. 
Sometimes the bias is local: In California, someone convicted of murdering a 
white person in a rural area is three times more likely to be sentenced to 
death than someone who commits the same crime in a city, according to 
researchers Glenn L. Pierce and Michael Radelet in the Santa Clara Law Review.

And The Guardian reported in 2012 that Harris County, Texas, led the nation in 
executions, accounting for more than 1/3 of Texas' 305 death row inmates and 
half of its 121 black death row prisoners.

Sometimes, the bias is both geographic and racial: No white person has ever 
been executed for killing a black person in Louisiana, according to a 2015 
Loyola University study cited recently in an online article by researcher Josie 
Duffy.

There's also the matter of wrongful conviction. Florida, which has been racing 
ahead with executions under Gov. Rick Scott, a "tough on crime" tea party 
favorite, has had 26 exonerations, the most of any state. The U.S. Supreme 
Court ruled Tuesday that Florida's death penalty was unconstitutional because 
of the way judges can ignore the wishes of juries.

Like Saudi Arabia, we execute the mentally ill and disabled, despite laws 
against it, according to a report by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for 
Race and Justice at Harvard University. It found recently that more than 2/3 of 
those executed in the United States in 2015 suffered from severe mental 
disabilities. Several, it said, suffered from "multiple mental impairments."

We should also consider cost. The death penalty has cost cash-strapped 
California $4 billion since 1978, according to a study by Judge Arthur Alarcon 
of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court and associate Paula Mitchell.

Finally, the death penalty has no deterrent value. The FBI Uniform Crime Report 
for 2014 showed that the South had the country's most murders despite having 
more than 80 percent of its executions. 88 % of criminologists believe it is 
not a deterrent, according to the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. And 
police chiefs surveyed in 2009 by the nonpartisan Death Penalty Information 
Center rated the death penalty the least effective way both to reduce violent 
crime and spend taxpayer dollars.

Like it or not, we are judged by the company we keep. We would be better off 
joining the ranks of the countries that have abolished the death penalty rather 
than tacitly endorsing the practices of countries like Saudi Arabia and 
continuing down our own dubious path.

(source: Op-Ed; Martin W.G. King is the former senior writer at the National 
Crime Prevention Council in Washington----News & Observer)