[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA

Fri Jan 22 09:57:42 CST 2016

Jan. 22

USA:

Breyer renews call to review constitutionality of death penalty

Justice Stephen G. Breyer has used an Alabama capital case to renew his call to 
examine the constitutionality of the death penalty.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant a stay of execution for the inmate, 
Chistopher Eugene Brooks, drawing a dissent (PDF) from Breyer, report BuzzFeed 
News, the Montgomery Advertiser and Al.com. Brooks was executed Thursday 
evening.

Breyer said Alabama allows jurors to issue an "advisory verdict" in death 
penalty cases using a system that is much like the death penalty scheme struck 
down on Jan. 12 in Hurst v. Florida.

"The unfairness inherent in treating this case differently from others which 
used similarly unconstitutional procedures only underscores the need to 
reconsider the validity of capital punishment under the Eighth Amendment," 
Breyer wrote.

In a concurrence to the cert denial, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader 
Ginsburg also pointed to possible problems with Alabama's capital sentencing 
scheme, but said they believed procedural obstacles would have prevented the 
court from granting relief.

Breyer dissented a day before the U.S. Supreme Court was scheduled to consider 
a cert petition raising the Eighth Amendment issue in the case of Shonda 
Walter, BuzzFeed News reports.

"The death penalty has outlived any conceivable use," Walter's cert petition 
asserts. "It is imperfect in application, haphazard in result, and of 
negligible utility."

If the court is considering taking up the case, it probably won't act before 
its next conference on Feb. 19, BuzzFeed reports. At that time, a Louisiana 
case also raising the constitutional issue will likely be before the court.

(source: ABA Journal)

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Capital Punishment -- Justice or State Sanctioned Murder?

State sanctioned execution of convicted criminals is a hotly-debated, 
life-and-death social issue and the subject of capital punishment pushes more 
emotional buttons than practical ones.

There's a host of heated arguments to back up each camp's position.

The Pros put forward justice, retribution, deterrence, cost-saving, and closure 
to victims as reasons to carry out the death penalty.

The Cons defer to moral, religious, legal, unfair application, and danger of 
mistake as grounds not to kill condemned prisoners.

So who's right?

Both, if you listen to the emotional pleas.

But set aside all the teeth-gnashing and hair-tearing and look at the practical 
benefits of having death penalty legislation.

It goes without saying that punishment must fit the crime and execution must be 
reserved for the most despicable of criminals such as child-rapists, 
serial-killers, and mass-murderers.

Some jurisdictions retain the right to execute lesser felons like mutineers, 
traitors, and spies, however it's sensible that only exceptionally dangerous 
people, for whom there's no chance of rehabilitation, or that their crimes are 
so horrific that there's no other just punishment, be executed.

Serial killer Theodore (Ted) Bundy is a prime example as well as Timothy 
McVeigh who carried out the Oklahoma City bombing.

I'm a supporter of capital punishment under the proper circumstances and I 
believe there are only 2 unshakable reasons for the state having and enforcing 
the power to execute a condemned prisoner.

First, it's an indisputable fact that execution guarantees that person will 
never re-offend.

Yes, the counter argument suggests that locking an inmate up for life with no 
possibility of parole achieves the same end, but it's not the same thing.

There are cases where a dangerous criminal has escaped or found a legal means 
to roam free and kill again, but once a killer is dead -- that's the end of 
their threat to society.

Period.

There's a 2nd practical application of death penalty legislation that few 
people in the general public think about, but which police officers and 
prosecutors know to be valid.

Capital punishment is an effective, persuasive tool in forcing caught killers 
to co-operate with authorities.

Plea-bargains are done with accused murderers where the death penalty is waived 
in exchange for information.

This leads to solving other homicides, recovering bodies, giving closure to 
victimized families, and studying the minds of these monsters in order to 
understand and prevent future miscreants.

This "save-my-own-life" deal with Seattle's Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway, 
paid off big.

There'll never be unanimous support for and against capital punishment, let 
alone on the method of how it should be carried out.

Capital punishment arguments include these views:

Moral. Practical. Economic. Vengeance. Justice. Retribution. Deterrence. 
Cost-saving. Closure. Moral, Religious. Legal. Unfair application. Danger of 
mistake.

Capital punishment methods include these means:

Lethal injection. Firing squad. Noose. Gas chamber. Electric chair. Beheading. 
Stoning. Burning at the stake.

What are your thoughts?

Is capital punishment deserved justice? Or is it state-sanctioned murder?

And is there a humane method in carrying it out?

I'm dying to hear your words.

(source: Garry Rodgers is a retired homicide detective and forensic coroner, 
now bestselling crime writer----Huffington Post)

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

Number of executions in US each year exceeded only by Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran 
and China

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.

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, the United States is 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, 
including Canada but excluding the United States, have abolished the death 
penalty; all together, 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."

The death penalty is also geographically biased. All together, 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 3 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.

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 
1/2 of its 121 black death row prisoners.

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.

Like Saudi Arabia, the U.S. executes 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 % 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: Martin W.G. King is the former senior writer at the National Crime 
Prevention Council in Washington, D.C.----Deseret News)

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

Supreme Court Justice Again Urges: It's Time To Reconsider The Death 
Penalty----On the eve of a private conference in which the Supreme Court is due 
to consider hearing a case challenging the constitutionality of the death 
penalty, one justice made a point to remind his colleagues of the "need" to 
address the issue.

Justice Stephen Breyer reiterated his call for the Supreme Court to reconsider 
the constitutionality of the death penalty on Thursday night, just hours before 
the justices are due to consider hearing a case that could do just that.

The comments came in response to Christopher Brooks's request to the justices 
that they halt his pending execution in Alabama. The court denied the request, 
but Breyer objected - noting in a short, 2-paragraph statement that he would 
have granted the request.

Breyer went further, though, stating that the treatment of Brooks's case 
"underscores the need to reconsider the validity of capital punishment under 
the Eighth Amendment."

This past June, Breyer dissented from the court's decision in Glossip v. Gross 
upholding Oklahoma's use of the sedative midazolam in executions. He joined a 
dissenting opinion by Justice Sonia Sotomayor that detailed why the 4 more 
liberal justices believe Oklahoma's use of midazolam was unconstitutional. 
Breyer went further though, writing a 2nd dissenting opinion - in which he was 
joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

"But rather than try to patch up the death penalty's legal wounds one at a 
time," he wrote, "I would ask for full briefing on a more basic question: 
whether the death penalty violates the Constitution." He then spent 40 pages 
explaining why the court should do so, concluding, "I believe it highly likely 
that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment."

Since that time, some advocates have taken the dissent as a sign that the time 
is now to get a case before the justices that would allow them to take such a 
step. Others, most recently the Brennan Center's Andrew Cohen, call a belief 
that the death penalty could be nearing its end "implausible."

Breyer had not written further about his call in any of the death penalty cases 
the court has had before it since then - even in cases where his call was 
specifically referenced. Thirteen executions had been carried out between the 
court's opinion in Glossip and Thursday morning.

Breyer chose Brooks's case - in which Sotomayor and Ginsburg noted that, 
despite questions about Alabama's death sentencing scheme, "procedural 
obstacles" ultimately would have kept the court from overturning his death 
sentence - as the moment to raise the issue again. He referenced those 
procedurals obstacles - noting that he had opposed the court's decision putting 
those obstacles in place in the first place - but then returned to his Glossip 
dissent.

Although he did not explain why he chose now, and not any of the prior 13 
executions, to raise the issue, Thursday's statement came as the justices are 
due to consider Shonda Walter's request out of Pennsylvania that the court 
reconsider the validity of capital punishment under the Eighth Amendment.

The justices initially were scheduled to consider Walter's petition on Jan. 15 
at their private conference, but, with no explanation given, the case was 
rescheduled to be considered at another time. On Tuesday, it was set to be 
considered at Friday's conference.

Walter's case comes to the court on direct appeal after the Pennsylvania 
Supreme Court upheld her conviction - a distinction from the other, last-minute 
requests that have raised the question since Breyer's dissent this past June. 
In presenting her case, her lawyer told the justices: "Shonda Walter is an 
African American female, and the last woman on Pennsylvania's death row. Her 
case exemplifies what is wrong with the death penalty."

The petition goes on to detail issues raised in her case, from the legal 
counsel she had at trial to her treatment in prison to the progress of her 
appeals to claims of arbitrariness and racial discrimination throughout the 
process.

"The death penalty has outlived any conceivable use," Walter's lawyer, Daniel 
Silverman, writes in the petition. "It is imperfect in application, haphazard 
in result, and of negligible utility."

Although it is possible that word of the outcome of the justices' consideration 
of Walter's petition could come on Friday, that is unlikely - unless there is a 
concerted effort to expand the court's calendar in order to hear the case this 
term.

More likely, the soonest the outcome of the consideration will be known would 
be if the justices decline to take up Walter's case, in which the denial of 
certiorari would be noted in the orders scheduled to be released on Monday, 
Jan. 25.

If, however, the justice are considering taking her case, they are - in 
accordance with the court's usual, though not exclusive, practice over the past 
few terms - likely to re-list the case for their next conference before 
granting certiorari.

That itself adds another question to the mix. The justices' next conference is 
not until Feb. 19 - by which time at least 1 more petition seeking a full 
reconsideration of the constitutionality of the death penalty, in a case out of 
Louisiana, is expected to be before the justices.

(source: buzzfeed.com)

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Growing use of neurobiological evidence in criminal trials, new study finds

In 2008, in El Cajon, California, 30-year-old John Nicholas Gunther bludgeoned 
his mother to death with a metal pipe, and then stole $1378 in cash, her credit 
cards, a DVD/VCR player, and some prescription painkillers. At trial, Gunther 
admitted to the killing, but argued that his conviction should be reduced to 
2nd-degree murder because he had not acted with premeditation. A clinical 
psychologist and neuropsychologist testified that 2 previous head traumas - 1 
the result of an assault, the other from a drug overdose - had damaged his 
brain's frontal lobes, potentially reducing Gunther's ability to plan the 
murder, and causing him to act impulsively. The jury didn't buy Gunther's 
defense, however; based on other evidence, such as the fact that Gunther had 
previously talked about killing his mother with friends, the court concluded 
that he was guilty of 1st-degree murder, and gave him a 25-years-to-life prison 
sentence.

Gunther's case represents a growing trend, a new analysis suggests. Between 
2005 and 2012, more than 1585 U.S. published judicial opinions describe the use 
of neurobiological evidence by criminal defendants to shore up their defense, 
according to a study published last week in the Journal of Law and the 
Biosciences by legal scholar Nita Farahany of Duke University in Durham, North 
Carolina, and colleagues. In 2012 alone, for example, more than 250 opinions 
cited defendants' arguments that their "brains made them do it" - more than 
double the number of similar claims made in 2007.

Conventional legal wisdom holds that neurobiological evidence, such as 
functional magnetic resonance imaging scans, evaluations of cognitive 
impairment, or tests for genetic variants that might affect mental function, is 
primarily used to argue against the use of the death penalty in capital cases, 
Farahany says. By combing through tens of thousands of published judicial 
opinions with the help of 17 law students and three undergraduates, using 
search terms such as "brain disorder," "biological," and "CT scan," however, 
Farahany's team found that use of such evidence is growing for a wide range of 
violations including robbery, fraud, and drug possession.

But bringing in neuroscientists doesn't necessarily get defendants anywhere. 
Most judges and juries are not persuaded by neurobiological evidence used to 
argue that a defendant was not fully responsible for his or her actions, as in 
Gunther's case, the analysis found. That's partly because of legal standards 
for insanity - which, in many states, require that a defendant have a "complete 
lack of understanding" of the difference between right and wrong. Even if a 
person is mentally ill, that usually results in "some degree, rather than 
complete impairment of understanding," Farahany and colleagues write. In 
general, neuroscientific insights about human behavior and decision-making 
often can't say much about why a particular individual behaved "voluntarily" or 
with "intention" and is therefore legally guilty, Farahany says.

There are, however, some instances in which evidence from neurobiology is 
proving unexpectedly valuable, Farahany says. Her analysis found that the 2nd 
most common use of neurobiological evidence in court is to challenge 
defendants' competency to plead guilty, confess, stand trial, or be sentenced. 
In 1 such case, Farahany says, the defense established that a man was mentally 
incompetent to be sentenced after he had already been found guilty of fraud, 
she says. As a result, "he spent the rest of his life in a nursing home, rather 
than being sentenced."

Overall, the new study suggests that neurobiological evidence has improved the 
U.S. criminal justice system "through better determinations of competence and 
considerations about the role of punishment," says Judy Illes, a neuroscientist 
at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in Canada. That is not 
Farahany's interpretation, however. With a few notable exceptions, use of 
neurobiological evidence in courtrooms "continues to be haphazard, ad hoc, and 
often ill conceived," she and her colleagues write. Lawyers rarely heed 
scientists' cautions "that the neurobiological evidence at issue is weak, 
particularly for making claims about individuals rather than studying 
between-group differences," they add.

"What we are faced with is trying to 'fit' the round peg of neuroscientific 
techniques and information into the square hole of the law," says James 
Giordano, a neuroethicist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. What is 
needed, Giordano says, is a body of "neuroscience for law" that meets the needs 
of the courts, "while recognizing the actual capabilities and limitations of 
current neuroscientific tools." Illes agrees, saying that "better engagement of 
neuroscientists in the conversation on these matters should not merely be a 
call; it is an imperative."

(source: sciencemag.org)