[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ALA., IND., USA

[Rick Halperin]

July 3



ALABAMA:

Morgan County judge denies motion to rule death penalty unconstitutional


If found guilty in a trial scheduled for Aug. 22, a capital murder defendant 
could face the death penalty despite a defense effort to have the state's death 
penalty law declared unconstitutional.

Morgan County Circuit Court Judge Steven Haddock, citing a state appeals court 
ruling, has denied Marqueze Smith's motion to bar the state from seeking the 
death penalty.

Haddock last month denied the motion and declined to rule the state's death 
sentencing scheme unconstitutional in advance of Smith's retrial scheduled for 
this fall.

Haddock had delayed a decision on the matter during a March hearing in which 
defense attorney Britt Cauthen cited a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck 
down Florida's sentencing scheme in capital cases.

Haddock's ruling on June 21 followed an Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals 
ruling June 17 that said the state law is constitutional.

The appeals court ordered Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Tracie Todd to 
vacate her ruling that prosecutors couldn't seek the death penalty against 4 
men because the state's death sentencing scheme was unconstitutional because it 
was similar to the Florida case struck down by the Supreme Court.

The appellate court ruling said the state's capital murder sentencing scheme is 
constitutional because in Alabama "it is the jury, not the trial court, that 
makes the critical finding necessary for imposition of the death penalty ...."

Haddock said in his ruling that he "is bound generally by the rulings issued" 
by the state's appellate courts.

Cauthen was not surprised by Haddock's ruling.

"We knew that was going to happen," he said. "We were hoping it wouldn't 
happen."

Cauthen added that the U.S. Supreme Court has sent 3 death penalty cases back 
to the state that are similar to the Florida case.

"It's not over yet," he said. "We're just in a holding pattern."

Morgan County Assistant District Attorney Jerry Knight said prosecutors 
expected Haddock to rule in the state's favor.

"Haddock said he felt bound by the Court of Criminal Appeals, and there wasn't 
any discretion left for him on the constitutionality of it," Knight said.

In Hurst vs. Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Florida's death penalty 
scheme unconstitutional because the Sixth Amendment requires a jury to find the 
aggravating factors needed to impose the death penalty. Florida's law allowed a 
judge to decide the facts and override a jury's "advisory" sentencing 
recommendation. Florida's law has been changed since the January court ruling.

Smith, 35, is scheduled to go on trial in August for the 2003 killing of Jeremy 
Black. Smith was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2012, 
but the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals overturned his conviction in 2014 and 
ordered a new trial.

The appeals court in Smith's case said the fact a witness against Smith had 
passed a polygraph test should not have been allowed into the trial during the 
prosecution's closing argument because it bolstered the witness' credibility. 
Evidence from a polygraph test is not admissible in court, the appeals court 
said.

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

Huntsville men indicted for capital murder in Brandon Harris shooting


2 Huntsville men have been indicted for capital murder in connection with the 
November shooting death of Brandon Harris while Harris sat in a car in a 
Southeast Decatur alley.

Jovan Deante Anderson, 25, and Gary Lorenzo Hill Jr., 24, were each charged 
with 1 count of capital murder in indictments recently returned by a Morgan 
County grand jury, according to Morgan County District Attorney Scott Anderson.

Jovan Anderson told police in a sworn statement that Hill shot Harris, 30, for 
selling Hill fake marijuana.

Scott Anderson said he has not decided whether to seek the death penalty if 
Jovan Anderson and Hill are convicted.

A capital murder conviction carries a sentence of either life in prison without 
the possibility of parole or execution.

Scott Anderson has said the men were charged with capital murder because it 
involved shooting into an occupied vehicle.

Scott Anderson said a decision to seek the death penalty isn't something to 
take lightly or to make a quick decision about.

"We're still looking through the evidence," Anderson said after a hearing for 4 
young Decatur residents accused of killing 2 men last year. "We've got these 
cases on the front-burner. We've got Marqueze Smith on the front-burner. And 
we've got 2 capital trials in August."

Smith is to be retried for the 2003 shooting death of Jeremy Black.

Terrence Baker, a friend of Harris' since childhood, said he wants to see 
justice served, but doesn't want Jovan Anderson and Hill executed if found 
guilty. He said he has been praying for the families of Jovan Anderson and 
Hill.

"Honestly, I'm not a harsh person," said Baker, who is director of 
Strengthening the Integrity 4 Future Families (STIFF). "Brandon was like a 
brother to me. The pain we've suffered with his death shouldn't be placed on 
anybody. I don't wish death on anyone."

Harris' sisters "don't want to ever see these guys again," Baker said.

Police testified in a March hearing that Hill was seen holding a pistol minutes 
before Harris was shot in an alley behind his home at 1616 Wadsworth St. S.E.

Witnesses at the hearing said they never saw Jovan Anderson with a gun. Jovan 
Anderson said in a police statement that he was not in the alley when the 
shooting occurred.

Jovan Anderson is in Morgan County Jail with bail set at $150,000. Hill is in 
Morgan County Jail without bail.

(source for both: Decatur Daily)






INDIANA:

Death-row prisoner runs out of appeals


Joseph Corcoran waits.

The convicted killer has been on Indiana's death row for nearly 20 years, in 
1998 sentenced by Allen Superior Court Judge Fran Gull to death for a quadruple 
murder.

Armed with a shotgun, Corcoran killed his brother, James Corcoran, 30; his 
sister's fiancee, Robert Scott Turner, 32; and 2 of his brother's friends, 
Timothy G. Bricker, 30, and Douglas A. Stillwell, 30, in a home on Bayer Avenue 
in July 1997.

Since his incarceration, Corcoran has bragged about killing his parents, also 
with a shotgun in Steuben County in 1992 - a crime for which he was charged and 
acquitted.

To say his case has been heavily litigated is probably an understatement. It 
has been heard in Indiana's Court of Appeals and Supreme Court, and the U.S. 
District Court for the Northern District of Indiana and the 7th Circuit Court 
of Appeals.

Corcoran's appeal has even been heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on multiple 
occasions. In 2010, his sentence of death was reinstated by the nation's 
highest court, overturning a ruling by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

It appears that that was the end.

In March, the Supreme Court denied Corcoran's request to have his case reviewed 
by the court for a 3rd time. The refusal to hear it again lets stand a 2015 
ruling by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago that upheld lower federal 
court rulings that left the sentence of death in place.

He has no more appeals left in Indiana, either.

For the past decade or so, the courts have looked at whether Gull improperly 
considered factors against Corcoran in his sentencing, or whether she properly 
considered factors in his favor.

The state of Indiana can request the death penalty if a defendant is found to 
have committed murder with at least 1 aggravating circumstance, such as the age 
of the victim, multiple victims, while committing another crime or killing a 
law enforcement officer.

In Corcoran's case, Gull found that one of the aggravating circumstances 
existed, specifically the multiple victims.

But when she sentenced Corcoran to death, she cited several factors against him 
- the innocence of the victims, the heinousness of the crime and the likelihood 
Corcoran would kill again.

She also cited factors to be considered in his favor, but gave them less weight 
than what she considered against him.

In 2000, Gull rewrote her sentencing order, carefully explaining what she 
considered and what she did not. The order reaffirmed the death penalty, and it 
has ultimately survived challenges in state and federal courts for the past 13 
years.

In 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Jon DeGuilio upheld Gull's order, after 
Corcoran's attorneys filed a writ of habeas corpus asking for another review of 
the sentence.

DeGuilio denied their request but allowed them to appeal to the 7th Circuit 
Court of Appeals in Chicago, which they did in the fall of 2013. It was on 
Corcoran to show the appellate court that Gull's sentence was unreasonable.

The 7th Circuit backed DeGuilio, and, as of an order issued in late March, the 
U.S. Supreme Court won't hear it anymore.

For now, the 41-year-old Corcoran, who is a paranoid schizophrenic, sits in a 
cell in the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, 1 of 14 people in the 
Indiana Department of Correction under the sentence of death, according to the 
Indiana Department of Correction.

The last execution in the state was in 2009, with the death by lethal injection 
of Matthew Wrinkles who was convicted of the murder of his wife, brother-in-law 
and his brother-in-law's wife in 1994.

A lawsuit is pending in LaPorte County Circuit Court on the use of Indiana's 
3-drug protocol for executions. The lawsuit was filed in January by death-row 
inmate Roy Lee Ward against the Indiana Department of Corrections. There was a 
hearing held Friday on a motion by the State of Indiana to dismiss the lawsuit, 
but no ruling has been issued yet, according to court record.

No executions are scheduled, according to the Department of Correction.

And the Indiana Attorney General has not asked for a date for Corcoran's 
execution, officials said.

Corcoran's attorney, Alan Freedman, said there is but 1 likely option left: 
clemency.

That is probably a longshot option, based on recent behavior by past Indiana 
governors.

Democrat Gov. Joseph Kernan granted clemency twice. In 2004, Kernan commuted 
the sentence of Darnell Williams because his co-defendant received a sentence 
of life without parole.

Again in 2005, Kernan commuted a death sentence to life without parole, this 
time in the case of Michael Daniels. There were doubts about Michael Daniels' 
personal responsibility for the crime, according to the Death Penalty 
Information Center.

Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, granted clemency to Arthur P. Baird II in 
2005. The family of Baird's victims believed he deserved a life sentence 
because of his mental illness.

No clemency has been granted in the past decade in the Hoosier State.

(source: The Journal Gazette)






USA:

The Prosecutors Who Aim to Kill


One kept a paperweight model of an electric chair on his desk. Another boasted 
about being named the "deadliest prosecutor in America" by the Guinness Book of 
World Records and mocked defendants with intellectual disabilities. A third was 
dragged from the courtroom when jurors who acquitted six defendants he had 
charged with shooting police officers said he approached them and reached for 
his gun.

These 5 people are members of a very small club: The death sentences they have 
obtained are equal to 15 % of the current national death row population.

Even as most states have moved away from capital punishment, the practice 
continues to be used in a tiny fraction of counties, and under the leadership 
of specific prosecutors, according to a new report by the Fair Punishment 
Project at Harvard Law School.

The prosecutors are Joe Freeman Britt in North Carolina, Robert Macy in 
Oklahoma, Donnie Myers in South Carolina, Lynne Abraham in Philadelphia and 
Johnny Holmes in Texas. Of these 5, only Mr. Myers remains in office. But 
during their tenures, each either secured dozens of death sentences personally 
or led offices that won hundreds. And each, in his or her way, embodies the 
vindictive, idiosyncratic nature of state-sanctioned killing.

The 5 prosecutors also share a disturbing tendency to break the rules to win. 
Mr. Macy - the one who pulled a gun on the jury - won 54 death sentences during 
2 decades as Oklahoma County's district attorney. But courts overturned almost 
1/2 of them, and they found him guilty of misconduct in 1/3 of them. 3 people 
he sent to death row were later exonerated.

In 2002, a federal appeals court said that Mr. Macy's persistent misconduct 
"without doubt harmed the reputation of Oklahoma's criminal justice system."

Mr. Britt was found to have committed misconduct in more than 1/3 of the 38 
death penalty cases he had won; Mr. Myers, in nearly 1/2 of his 39 wins. 
Another prosecutor said of Mr. Myers, "Virtually the only time you see him in 
the courtroom is when he's trying to kill people."

Most revealing, the frequency of death sentences sought and won in these 
prosecutors' counties dropped dramatically after they left office. During Mr. 
Holmes's 21-year tenure, which ended in 2000, juries in Harris County, Tex., 
sentenced 201 people to death, almost 1 a month. Since 2008, the average has 
been about 1 a year.

The report identifies 8 more recent or current prosecutors who have sought the 
death penalty far more than their colleagues around the country. And many of 
their records are rife with misconduct. As long as the death penalty remains 
legal, people like this will find their way into positions where they have the 
power to make life-or-death decisions.

The United States is one of the last developed countries to continue killing 
its citizens in the name of the state, but it is misleading to talk about the 
death penalty as an American phenomenon. As the report shows, capital 
punishment today is driven largely by individuals in a few locations. That is, 
the rate of death sentences has less to do with the crimes of the people being 
prosecuted than with the men and women doing the prosecuting.

(source: Editorial, New York Times)

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

Abolitionists Promote Message of Compassion on 40th Anniversary of Gregg V. 
Georgia


In December 1986, SuZann Bosler was stabbed and left for dead and witnessed her 
father, the Reverend Billy Bosler, be killed by an intruder seeking to rob them 
for drug money at their church parsonage in Opa Locka Florida.

As a Brethren minister, Rev. Bosler had been an opponent of capital punishment, 
and had once told SueZann that if he was ever murdered he would not want his 
killer to receive the death penalty.

On her father's behalf, SueZann worked for 10 1/2 years to spare the life of 
his murderer, James Bernard Campbell, and found it in her heart to forgive him. 
She in turn helped found the organization Journey of Hope 
(https://www.journeyofhope.org/) consisting of family members of murder-victims 
opposed to the death penalty.

The organization believes the death penalty is an act of revenge that will not 
bring back their loved ones but perpetuate an endless cycle of violence and 
that it is foolish to show people killing is wrong by killing.

This holiday weekend Journey of Hope organized a 4 day vigil and teach-in in 
front of the Supreme Court in conjunction with the national abolitionist 
organization Starvin' for Justice to coincide with the anniversary of the 1972 
Furman v. Georgia and 1976 Gregg v. Georgia Supreme Court cases abolishing and 
then reinstituting capital punishment.

As David Garland points out in his book Peculiar Institution: America's Death 
Penalty in an Age of Abolition, the Furman case vacating the death sentences of 
587 condemned men and 2 women ignited an immediate backlash by white 
conservatives and death penalty advocates supportive of the Nixon 
administration's law and order agenda. Georgia's Governor Lester Maddox called 
the decision a "license for anarchy, rape and murder."

Florida was the 1st state to reintroduce capital punishment just months after 
the Furman decision followed by California under Governor Ronald Reagan and 
Georgia under Governor Jimmy Carter. The Gregg v. Georgia case which followed 
suit was premised on the argument that democratically elected legislators and 
not the Supreme Court should determine whether the death penalty constituted 
cruel and unusual punishment.

Garland points out that the reinstitution of the death penalty was key to the 
conservative backlash against civil rights, the Great Society, the liberal 
Warren Court and cultural changes of the 1960s, and was a product of a new 
culture of control synonymous with harsh sentencing, mass imprisonment and 
neoliberal economic policy.

Studies have shown that the death penalty does not serve as a deterrent to 
murder or coincide with declining murder rates, as there are many other 
variables effecting this, and that it costs 2 to 6 times as much to kill 1 
person than to incarcerate him for life.

The strongest argument against the death penalty is that it could lead to 
innocent men or women being killed. It is estimated that 4 % of the 
approximately 3,000 death row inmates are likely innocent, which amounts to 
over 100 innocent people who could be killed.

In 2003, Illinois Governor George Ryan became convinced the system that had 
produced so many errors could not be trusted to determine life and death 
verdicts, even for the guilty, and he emptied death row, granting four pardons 
and 167 commutations for those with death sentences.

Jenn Meeropol spoke outside the Supreme Court at the Starvin' for Justice 
teach-in last Wednesday about her grandmother Ethel Rosenberg who appears 
innocent of the charges of espionage directed against her that led to her 
execution with her husband Julius in 1953. The Rosenberg's did not receive a 
fair trial in the hysterical climate of McCarthyism.

Grand jury testimony released only last year shows that David Greenglass, who 
worked for the army weapons lab at Los Alamos and served ten years for 
conspiracy, changed his story between the Grand Jury and actual trial about 
Ethel having typewritten blueprints of a cross-section of the bomb and having 
persuaded his wife Ruth to recruit him into a spy ring led by her husband 
Julius in order to protect Ruth from prosecution.

Ethel it appears was convicted and executed not for any direct involvement but 
simply for failing to turn on her husband who according to the Rosenberg 
family, never engaged in atomic spying.

The Rosenberg's are unfortunately only one of the many cases of people executed 
unjustly by the state.

in 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed by the state of Texas for 
allegedly starting a house fire that killed his 3 kids, though a forensic 
review using updated fire science investigative methods revealed there was 
likely no arson and the fire was an accident- information Texas state 
authorities chose to ignore in proceeding with the execution.

Then there is the case of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma who died of a heart 
attack after twitching and shaking while still alive for 25 minutes after he 
was given an experimental blend of lethal drugs. The botched execution exposed 
for everyone the barbaric nature of the death penalty.

Public support for the death penalty has declined considerably since its peak 
in the mid-1990s and over 20 states have now abolished it.

Nebraska has become a key battleground state on the issue as the legislature 
voted to rescind it, though the Governor Pete Ricketts (R) vetoed the bill and 
then financed a $300,000 petition drive with his billionaire father after his 
veto was overridden.

The Journey of Hope activists are traveling to Nebraska next week to lend their 
support to the abolitionist efforts.

I was personally moved to hear the stories of Journey of Hope members who after 
undergoing traumatic life experiences were able to show compassion towards 
those who had committed horrible acts. Striving to break the cycle of violence 
gripping our world today, they promote a message of tolerance, healing and love 
which we should all embrace.

Members of the group include people wrongfully imprisoned such as George White, 
a former drill sergeant falsely accused of killing his own wife by corrupt, 
over-zealous prosecutors in Enterprise, Alabama and Shujaa Graham, who was 
tortured in San Quentin prison after being accused of killing a guard during 
rebellions that followed the murder of Black Panther Party activist George 
Jackson.

Graham was exonerated after his 4th trial with the help of community activists 
who organized his legal defense, though still bears some of the psychological 
scars. He is living example of the racial discrimination and injustice that 
continue to mar our court system and of the need for systematic reforms which 
abolishing the death penalty should be central to.

(source: Jeremy Kuzmarov, Huffington Post)