[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, MASS., GA., ALA., TENN., NEB., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

June 7



TEXAS:

Supreme Court Makes Slip-Up In Death Penalty Case----2 hours after it agreed to 
hear 2 questions raised by a death row inmate, the court changed its mind.


It looks like the Supreme Court won't be reviewing one of the pressing issues 
involving the death penalty today.

Evincing that things may be in a bit of disarray since the death of Justice 
Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court on Monday made a misstep when agreeing to 
hear the case of a prisoner seeking to challenge his death sentence.

The case was 1 of 2 death penalty appeals the court added to its docket for its 
next term, which begins in October.

The Texas inmate, Bobby Moore, had actually asked the court to review 2 
constitutional issues relating to his capital sentence:

Both are significant questions, implicating recent decisions and statements by 
the Supreme Court or individual justices with respect to the death penalty or 
its application to specific defendants.

As part of their usual Monday business, the justices issued an order at 9:30 
a.m. noting that they would agree to hear the 2 questions raised by Moore's 
petition:

That was a big deal, because the second question of Moore's petition - whether 
sitting on death row for 35 years amounts to cruel and unusual punishment - 
touches on one of the practices Justice Stephen Breyer has repeatedly singled 
out as problematic in America's system of capital punishment.

That development was short-lived.

At around 11:44 a.m., a court spokeswoman alerted the press that the court had 
made a mistake and that now only the 1st question in Moore's petition was 
accepted for review.

The court accordingly amended the order and republished it on its website:

That means Moore - who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1980 and has 
been awaiting punishment since - will not get an answer to whether the length 
of his confinement, much of which is in complete isolation, violates the 
Constitution.

The remaining question in his case is still important: The Supreme Court will 
now decide whether states may rely on outdated medical standards when 
determining whether a person who is intellectually disabled merits the death 
penalty.

The Supreme Court has already ruled that it's unconstitutional to sentence to 
death someone who is intellectually disabled, and that states may not use rigid 
"cutoff" tests when assessing a person's mental disability. States, however, 
are far from consistent in the assessments they use.

For Moore, this is a matter of life and death: Relying on experts, a court had 
determined that he bore all the hallmarks of someone who was intellectually 
disabled - including an IQ of 70, deplorable school performance, and 
"sub-normal intellectual functioning." But Texas has resisted these findings 
and has insisted that Moore be assessed using older medical standards for 
intellectual disability.

Here's hoping the court's final decision in the case will bring some clarity to 
that area of the law, if not to those who were a little confused by its actions 
on Monday.

(source: Cristian Farias, Legal Affairs Reporter, The Huffington Post)






MASSACHUSETTS:

Gov. Baker may file bill calling for death penalty for cop killers


Following the May 22 fatal shooting of an Auburn police officer, Gov. Charlie 
Baker says he may file legislation that would impose the death penalty on those 
convicted of killing police.

"I think we should at the start of next session, absolutely, and have that 
debate," Baker told "Keller at Large" host Jon Keller, who asked Baker in a 
televised interview on Sunday if he would file a bill.

The death penalty was outlawed by the Supreme Judicial Court 3 decades ago, and 
efforts to reinstate it since then have failed, with opponents pointing to 
cases where incarcerated individuals were found to have been wrongly convicted 
of crimes.

On Nov. 6, 1997, after death penalty legislation had cleared the state Senate 
by a comfortable margin, legislation reinstating capital punishment was 
defeated in the House after Rep. John Slattery, D-Peabody, switched his vote 
and doomed the measure 80-80.

Last month, Auburn police Officer Ronald Tarentino Jr. was shot and killed 
during a traffic stop. Baker subsequently said he would support the death 
penalty for those convicted of killing police officers.

The suspected gunman, Jorge Zambrano, died in a shootout with police. Media 
reports about Zambrano's extensive record have prompted the courts to review 
his criminal justice system history.

When asked by Keller if there is a problem with lenient judges, Baker did not 
offer an opinion, and instead said he's interested in the outcome of the 
investigation and what elements of the current system may need to be changed.

"I think all of this stuff is case-specific. I'm not willing to comment on that 
generally one way or another. What I will say is there are some troubling 
elements to this story, and I want to know what the process was and the 
decision points were. For example, if part of the reason why there wasn't a 
dangerousness hearing -- with respect to this particular gentleman -- was 
because assault and battery on a police officer is a misdemeanor and not a 
felony, maybe it should be a felony," Baker said.

Last month Trial Court Chief Justice Paula Carey said that a preliminary review 
of court decisions involving Zambrano found "that no law, court rule or court 
procedure was violated."

(source: WCVB news)






GEORGIA:

Prosecutor is 'pathologically enthralled' with death penalty, motion says; 
'Death Row Marv' is cited


A motion filed on behalf of a Georgia inmate contends the District Attorney who 
sent him to death row is "pathologically enthralled" with the death penalty.

The motion filed on behalf of Rodney Young says DA Layla Zon pursues death 
sentences with zeal that is greater than any other DA in the state, the Atlanta 
Journal-Constitution reports. The motion cites statistics and refers to a 
"Death Row Marv" toy in her office.

The Death Row Marv character is seated in an electric chair, with a helmet atop 
his head. The electric chair buzzes and Marv's eyes turn red, but Marv 
survives. "That the best you can do, you pansies?" The toy is based on a comic 
book and Sin City movie in which actor Mickey Rourke makes the "pansies" remark 
after a 1st attempt at electrocution doesn't work.

Since 2011, the motion says, 4 out of 11 death penalty trials in the state took 
place in Newton County, 1 of 2 counties in which Zon's office prosecutes cases.

Zon told the Journal-Constitution the toy was already in her office when she 
became DA in 2010, and she recently got rid of it. "It was not something I 
purchased to decorate my office," she said. "It was a left-behind trinket that 
became part of the woodwork. ... I never sat and looked and fixated on it, like 
it was part of some medieval mindset."

Zon also told the newspaper that Young's case was particularly heinous and the 
death penalty was warranted.

(source: ABA Journal)






ALABAMA:

Dothan death penalty case reversed again


A Dothan man will now have to be sentenced for a 5th time after the Alabama 
appeals court recently reversed his death sentence for the killing of three 
people at a Dothan residence nearly 20 years ago.

Attorney David Hogg said the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the 
death sentence on Friday for his client, 45-year-old Jerry Jerome Smith, 
remanding it back to Houston County Circuit Court.

"With the reversal, the sentencing basically starts fresh," Hogg said. "A jury 
will have to be selected again too."

Circuit Court Judge Michael Conaway sentenced Smith to death last fall, 
affirming a jury's similar recommendation they returned. A jury already 
convicted Smith earlier, finding him guilty of capital murder for the killing 
of 2 or more people. The jury recommended the death sentence by a vote of 10 to 
2.

A jury found Smith guilty of killing Willie James Flournoy, 40, of Dothan, 
Theresa Ann Helms, 26, of Wicksburg and David Lee Bennett, 29, of Midland City. 
The 3 people were killed at a Sturgeon Court residence on Oct. 19, 1996. Police 
had described it as a crack house. All 3 people were shot to death in the home.

The case has been reversed for a new sentencing phase of trial.

"Basically, the courtroom was not open to the public for jury selection, and 
the appellate court held that was a violation of Mr. Smith???s right to have a 
public trial," Hogg said. "The right to have a public trial extends to all 
parts of a trial, even jury selection."

According to the appellate opinion, the circuit court totally closed jury 
qualification to the public for Smith's last sentencing phase.

The opinion also said although the circuit court noted generic concerns 
regarding the small size of the courtroom, and the need to prevent 
inappropriate communication, the circuit court did not point to any specific 
harm or threat that needed to be addressed that resulted in the full closure of 
the courtroom.

According to the opinion, before beginning the jury selection process during 
the 4th penalty sentencing, the circuit court completely excluded the public 
and the press from the general qualification of jurors. Smith and his legal 
counsel objected, informing the court that Smith's family, a member of the 
media and 1 of Smith's appellate attorneys, an attorney from the Equal Justice 
Initiative, were there to observe the proceedings.

The opinion said the circuit court judge explained that it did not want any 
improper contact between the jury selection process and the public. The court 
also said the decision to close the court was in an effort to minimize contact 
with any jurors during the selection process.

Hogg said Smith will now have to be scheduled for a new sentencing phase during 
which a jury will hear evidence from the state in favor of the death and from 
the defense in favor of a sentence of life without parole. The jury will then 
make a sentence recommendation to the court, which then can affirm their 
recommendation or make its own.

(source: Dothan Eagle)






TENNESSEE:

No trial date yet set in death penalty case involving slaying of 3-year-old


The 1st death penalty case in Campbell County in more than a decade in a case 
involving the death of a toddler has languished long enough, a judge said 
Monday.

"This is a capital matter that has been pending on this court's docket for two 
years," 8th Judicial District Criminal Court Judge Shayne Sexton said at a 
hearing Monday. "It's been underworked for 2 years."

Sexton's frustration came when Campbell County Assistant District Attorney 
General Tom Barclay sought to set a November trial date in the felony murder 
case against Joshua Adam Comer, 35, in the June 2014 death of 3-year-old 
Gabriella "Gabby" Orton but was met with resistance from one of Comer's 2 
court-appointed attorneys.

Assistant Public Defender Dale Potter urged Sexton to hold off on setting a 
trial date, noting his co-counsel, John Eldridge, had a conflicting court 
appearance Monday. Potter also argued the defense had only recent secured 
funding for the services of a forensic pathologist to offer expert testimony on 
the cause of the child's death.

"We've hoping the pathologist gives us some information that we could (use) to 
dispose of this case," Potter said. It wasn't clear if he was suggesting a plea 
or a dismissal.

Gabby died, according to court records, as a result of child abuse allegedly at 
the hands of Comer, a roofer who was dating the child's mother, Amber Leann 
Orton, 31. Orton, who also uses the surname Rezentes, is not accused in the 
toddler's death but instead is charged with aggravated child abuse and neglect, 
in part for allegedly failing to protect her daughter.

Knox County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Darinka Mileusnic-Polchan conducted the 
autopsy and concluded she died from severe child abuse. The exact nature of the 
toddler's injuries has not been publicly disclosed. Mileusnic-Polchan is 
considered an expert in fatal child abuse investigations.

Comer and the child's mother were indicted via a special grand jury soon after 
the child was brought to the LaFollette Medical Center emergency room with 
life-threatening injuries. Prosecutors then filed notice of an intent to seek 
the death penalty as punishment, based on the child's young age and the 
"especially heinous" nature of her death.

Sexton ultimately agreed to delay for one month a decision on a trial date but 
vowed the case would be put before a jury by year's end.

"If I have to set it for trial on Christmas Eve, that's what we'll do," he 
said.

The child's mother is represented by attorney Mike Hatmaker, who has filed few 
motions in the case, suggesting a plea in return for her testimony against 
Comer may be in the works.

(source: Knoxville News Sentinel)



NEBRASKA:

Shane Claiborne to speak out against Nebraska's death penalty


Shane Claiborne, Christian social activist and bestselling author, will be in 
Nebraska Tuesday to speak out against the death penalty.

His presentations at Lincoln's South Gate United Methodist Church and Omaha's 
Faith-Westwood United Methodist Church are sponsored by Nebraskans for 
Alternatives to the Death Penalty and Retain a Just Nebraska.

Claiborne worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta and founded The Simple Way in 
Philadelphia. He heads up Red Letter Christians, a movement of people committed 
to living "as if Jesus meant the things he said."

His newest book, "Executing Grace: How the death penalty killed Jesus and why 
it's killing us," is being released nationally on Tuesday.

Claiborne's presentation at South Gate, 3500 Pioneers Blvd., begins at 5 p.m. 
Tuesday. He'll speak at 8 p.m. in Omaha. Both presentations are open to the 
public.

(source: Lincoln Journal Star)






CALIFORNIA----new death sentence

Jurors vote for death sentence for 'Grim Sleeper' serial killer


A Los Angeles County jury decided Monday that the man known as the "Grim 
Sleeper" serial killer should be put to death, closing an important legal 
chapter in the grisly slayings of at least 9 women and 1 teenage girl that 
terrorized South L.A. for more than 2 decades.

The verdict against Lonnie David Franklin Jr., a 63-year-old former sanitation 
worker, drew muted sighs of relief in the downtown courtroom from victims' 
relatives, who were passing tissues back and forth, letting slight sobs go as 
each victim's name was read aloud. Franklin, wearing a yellow dress shirt and 
neck tie that he put on as he entered the courtroom, appeared to remain stoic 
as he has the entire trial.

He was convicted last month of 10 murders between 1985 and 2007 but authorities 
believe he is responsible for more. Jurors rejected defense arguments that he 
should spend the rest of his life in prison rather than face execution.

The victims' bodies were often dumped naked on roadsides or among trash in 
humiliating fashion, and the victims were all initially listed as Jane Does, 
leaving the killings unconnected for decades.

Outside the courtroom, relatives of Franklin's victims hugged prosecutors and 
wiped away tears moments after the death verdict was read.

"We got what we came to get," said Porter Alexander Jr., whose daughter Alicia 
was 18 when she was killed.

Diana Ware, whose daughter Barbara was among the victims, said she had been 
coming to the downtown court for years waiting for this moment.

"I'm just glad it's over and that he'll never get out to hurt anyone else," she 
said. "Justice was served."

Donnell Alexander, Alicia's brother, made clear he intends to attend Franklin's 
execution because Donnell "wasn't there when he did what he did to my sister."

During the penalty phase of the trial, prosecutors connected Franklin to an 
additional 5 killings. The district attorney's office decided not to charge 
Franklin with those crimes because he was already facing the death penalty and 
prosecutors did not want to further stall a trial that had already been beset 
by delays.

In all, investigators think Franklin may have killed as many as 25 women during 
the years he spent stalking one of the city's most vulnerable populations.

In her closing argument to the jury, Deputy Dist. Atty. Beth Silverman gave a 
blistering recounting of each victim???s final moments, speaking with a 
palpable disdain for Franklin. The defendant, seated underneath a projector 
that displayed pictures of his victims??? battered and bloody bodies, never 
looked up.

"They were so vicious, they were so calculated, and they were so demeaning," 
Silverman said of the killings. "The way that these women ended up, half of 
them naked ... all of them in filthy alleys."

Defense attorney Dale Atherton countered by appealing to the jury's conscience 
in a plea for mercy. Executing Franklin, he said, would only "delay the healing 
process" for the victims' families.

"Every time they think of the approaching execution date, it will be like 
opening the wounds again," he said.

The killing of the women, some of whom were drug addicts or worked as 
prostitutes, failed to elicit the same alarm that put Los Angeles on high alert 
during rampages of other prolific serial killers in the Southland, such as the 
so-called Hillside Strangler or Richard Ramirez, who was dubbed the 
Nightstalker.

The deaths attributed to the Grim Sleeper in the mid-to-late-'80s coincided 
with a surge of homicides linked to the crack cocaine epidemic. In addition, 
several other serial killers were operating in the same area in those years. 
Michael Hughes was later convicted of killing 7 women, Chester Turner of 14 
women and a fetus. Both are on California's death row.

But the Grim Sleeper proved to be the most persistent. His victims' deaths 
would not be connected for decades, and police kept the slayings quiet despite 
suspicions that a serial killer was stalking black women.

That decision led to outrage and condemnation from many who attribute 
Franklin's longevity as a killer to police indifference.

The victims listed in the charges against Franklin, in the order in which they 
died, were: Debra Jackson, 29; Henrietta Wright, 35; Barbara Ware, 23; Bernita 
Sparks, 25; Mary Lowe, 26; Lachrica Jefferson, 22; Alicia Alexander; Princess 
Berthomieux; Valerie McCorvey, 35; and Janecia Peters, 25.

Most of the women were shot to death, and Berthomieux was strangled.

Franklin initially earned the "Grim Sleeper" nickname because police believed 
he had gone dormant between 1988 and 2002. But detectives believe Franklin 
never really slept. Georgia Mae Thomas, 43, 1 of the 5 additional victims 
presented to jurors during the penalty phase of the trial, was killed in 2000.

Prosecutors said the other additional victims were Inez Warren, 28; Rolena 
Morris, 31; Sharon Dismuke, 21; and Ayellah Marshall, 18.

Morris vanished in 2005 and Marshall disappeared in 2006. Their bodies were 
never found.

Investigators found more than 1,000 photos and hundreds of hours of video in 
Franklin's house, showing women, many of them nude and in sexually graphic 
poses, some seemingly unconscious. Marshall's Hawthorne High School ID card and 
a photograph of Morris, along with her driver's license, were found inside a 
garage refrigerator stuffed with a morbid cache of items. Prosecutors called it 
Franklin's "trophy case."

A German woman also testified that Franklin was 1 of 3 U.S. Army men who 
kidnapped and raped her in Stuttgart in 1974.

(source: Los Angeles Times)






USA:

We Can't Just Be Against the Death Penalty When It's Easy


As we hear more and more outrageous stories about wrongly convicted people 
spending decades in prison, support for the death penalty weakens. According to 
The Innocence Project, 341 prisoners have been exonerated through DNA evidence 
in the last 25 years. And these are the ones who are lucky enough to have an 
organization with resources to investigate their cases. It's impossible to know 
how many innocent people are still in prison or have been executed already. As 
the immense flaws of our criminal justice system have been laid bare, it's 
clear that the risk of executing an innocent person is far too high to justify 
continuing to mete out this brutal punishment. When I spent time calling voters 
in an effort to eliminate the death penalty in California, the potential that 
innocent people may be on death row was one of the most compelling reasons 
people felt it was time to eliminate the practice. Sadly we didn't succeed, but 
the general trend is moving, though far too slowly, in the direction of 
abolition.

But opposing the death penalty doesn't just mean working to prevent the 
executions of victims of a racist, classist criminal justice system. It means 
that we resist the urge for vengeance when a person has committed even a crime 
that is heinous and embodies the worst hatred and cruelty on display in this 
country.

Clint Smith writes in The New Yorker about progressive opponents of the death 
penalty who want to make an exception for Dylann Roof, who perpetrated a brutal 
and racist attack against members of the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston.

Those who support the death penalty are accepting a practice that is both 
ineffective and fundamentally flawed. It means supporting a system that not 
infrequently kills those with serious mental illness. It means supporting a 
system in which an execution is far more likely to take place when the 
convicted murder is black and the victim is white, than it is when the victim 
is black and the killer is white. It means supporting a system that has 
sentenced, and continues to sentence, innocent people to death. In our impulse 
to rid the world of those we find reprehensible, we forget that we are also 
ridding the world of those who have done nothing wrong.

Additionally, to call Roof uniquely evil, as Ta-Nehisi Coates has also pointed 
out, is to ignore the history that made him possible. Roof is not a historical 
anomaly as much as a representation of a past that America prefers to sweep 
under its rug rather than commit to cleaning up. When Roof told Tywanza 
Sanders, one of the victims in the church, "You rape our women and you're 
taking over our country and you have to go," he was echoing a vast history that 
has used such rationale to decimate black lives. Killing Roof does nothing 
other than soothe the moral conscience of a country that would rather not 
reckon with the forces that created and cultivated his ideology.

Smith talks about reading the last words of executed prisoners in Texas and how 
the death penalty "not only takes away the life of the person strapped to the 
table - it takes away a little bit of the humanity in each of us." I recently 
finished the remarkable book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, who founded the 
Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama and works to free wrongly convicted 
prisoners. The stories in the book are a powerful rebuke to anyone who would 
claim our justice system is reliable and unbiased. But it also reminds us just 
how executions strip away that humanity from all of us. People may want to 
imagine a sterile, quiet end to a troubled life, but the reality is using 
unapproved drug cocktails, struggling to find a vein, or frying someone in an 
electric chair for several minutes and realizing they are still alive. None of 
these things lessen the pain of loved ones or bring victims back to life. But 
they do implicate us in an inhumane act that contradicts our best instincts as 
human beings.

Smith writes:

It is easy not to support the death penalty when there is doubt about the 
culpability of the person sitting in the chair; it is harder to sustain such 
principles when the crime of the accused is morally indefensible. But if our 
principles are only our principles when it is convenient for us, when they 
align with our visceral emotional responses, then they are, in fact, not 
principles at all. What's the point of having progressive principles if they 
can't contain your rage?

We must face the full picture of what opposition to the death penalty means and 
embrace it as the only compassionate, just way forward. As Stevenson writes in 
his book, "The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It's 
when mercy is least expected that it's most potent - strong enough to break the 
cycle of victimization and victimhood, retribution and suffering. It has the 
power to heal the psychic harm and injuries that lead to aggression and 
violence, abuse of power, mass incarceration."

(source: Rebecca Griffin, Huffington Post)

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

Even blatant racism remains a major problem in some death penalty cases


When a psychologist took the stand in Duane Buck's 1997 sentencing hearing in 
Texas, he testified that in his expert opinion, one key factor made the 
convicted killer an imminent danger to society: Buck was a black man.

Now nearly 2 decades later, the blatant racial undertones of Buck's death 
sentence will be up for review before the Supreme Court next fall, becoming the 
latest case to shine light on the insidious - and often shockingly overt - role 
that race plays in determining who is condemned to death row.

Psychologist Walter Quijano was brought on the Texas case to provide expert 
testimony for Buck's defense. But when cross-examined by prosecutors, Quijano 
testified that certain factors increased the likelihood that Buck, who was 
found guilty of killing his girlfriend and her friend, would commit future acts 
of violence.

"You have determined that the sex factor, that a male is more violent than a 
female because that's just the way it is, and that the race factor, black, 
increases the future dangerousness for various complicated reasons," the 
prosecutor said to Quijano. "Is that correct?"

"Yes," he replied.

Then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn, who now serves as a U.S. senator, 
later admitted in 2000 that the state unfairly sentenced Buck and 6 other 
prisoners to death row by improperly linking race to future violent behavior. 
The 6 others were offered new sentencing hearings - all except for Buck. Timing 
worked against him. His case didn't reach the courts until Cornyn's successor 
had taken over, now-Gov. Greg Abbott. The new attorney general refused to give 
Buck a 2nd chance.

Buck's case now joins a spate of death penalty cases brought before the Supreme 
Court that present an disquieting reminder of the prevalence of racism in the 
criminal justice system. More often now, the justices are showing a willingness 
to take on the question: How long will the United States continue to tolerate 
blatant racial bias?

The Supreme Court overturned the conviction and death sentence of a Georgia man 
last month after it was revealed that prosecutors deliberately removed every 
prospective black juror in order to have an all-white pool.

Prosecutors were caught shamelessly ranking prospective jurors based on their 
race, sketching into the margins of their notes "B#1," "B#2" and "B#3" and 
circling "Black" on juror questionnaires to keep a tally on people of color.

"These cases confirm the deeply entrenched role of race in death penalty 
cases," said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information 
Center. "And they can't be viewed in isolation, either."

But observers note that the high court's intervention has not been universally 
applied in all racially charged cases, even those that saw explicit racial 
slurs being used against death row inmates.

Kenneth Fults, a black man convicted of the 1996 murder of his white neighbor, 
was executed in Georgia as scheduled in April, even despite clear evidence 
pointing to a sentencing process that was compromised by racism.

In a sworn affidavit, a juror on Fults trial admitted years later that he voted 
for the death penalty because "that's what that n----- deserved." Also, Fults' 
trial lawyer at the time, a public defender who also handled his appeal, 
reportedly had a proclivity for making racially charged jokes.

It's unclear why the Supreme Court would chose to step in and halt 1 overtly 
racialized death penalty case, but not another. As a possible explanation to 
the discrepancy, Dunham says a number of themes have arisen out of the court's 
recent decisions, indicating greater scrutiny to cases in which prosecutors 
were central in expressly using race as a tool.

"What this may suggest is that the court is taking a closer look at cases in 
which the prosecution strategically employs races as a means to obtain the 
death penalty," Dunham said. "But Fults shows how perniciously race can operate 
in secret with the juror and the defense lawyer both making bigoted comments, 
and the state and federal courts tolerate it."

The justices have been playing triage to a litany of death penalty-related 
issues brought before the court in recent terms. On top of the 11th-hour 
appeals for the high court to halt executions, the Supreme Court in the last 
year alone has had to address a number of capital punishment cases dealing with 
state sentencing procedures, lethal drug combinations and jury protocols.

Buck v. Stephens is not the only death penalty case before the Supreme Court 
next term. The Court announced on Monday that it will also review another 
appeal in Texas, which questions the science behind the state's standards in 
testing an inmate's intellectual disabilities, determining whether they are fit 
to face capital punishment.

Still, the justices last week declined to consider a broad review into the 
constitutionality of the death penalty itself. But for the 2nd time in more 
than a year, Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented on the 
issue, urging their colleagues to reconsider.

"Rather than try to patch up the death penalty's legal wounds 1 at a time, I 
would ask for full briefing on a more basic question: whether the death penalty 
violates the Constitution," Breyer wrote, dissenting in Glossip v. Gross last 
year.

The justices will likely prefer to wait until the court's vacancy is filled 
before they address an issue as contentious as capital punishment. But based on 
the number of death penalty cases that have exposed deeply troubling and 
systemic problems, the time to address the broader issue may come sooner than 
they'd like.

(source: MSNBC)

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

Why this exonerated death row inmate is voting for Hillary Clinton


Nick Yarris spent 21 years on death row after he was convicted of the rape and 
murder of a woman he never met. If it hadn't been for DNA testing, which 
cleared him in 2003, he'd still be behind bars waiting to die.

Instead he's free, and on Tuesday he plans to vote in the California Democratic 
primary for a presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, who supports the death 
penalty.

He hopes the story of his time on death row, where he was stabbed by fellow 
inmates, suffered in solitary confinement, and faced abuse by prison guards, 
can convince her that she is wrong. His message: Even the chance of 1 innocent 
person being killed is too many.

"You can't bring me back after you execute me and say, 'Well, the DNA proved 
that Nick Yarris didn't rape and kill a woman in 1981, but, in 1990, we 
executed him.' That doesn't work," Yarris told me a few days before the 
primary.

"There is no justice without life, and Mrs. Clinton needs to recognize that for 
her to continue to support the death penalty knowing that it is not fair and 
that the people at the end of it are just as broken as their victims, then we 
as a society are not electing the right person."

But there's the rub: Yarris, 55, feels Clinton is the right person. Her 
experience in world affairs and her time as a U.S. senator and first lady make 
her highly qualified to serve as president, he believes. She's just wrong on 
the death penalty.

California voters will decide in November whether to abolish capital punishment 
in their state, but Yarris and other anti-death penalty activists are drumming 
up support for the repeal now because they don't want the measure to surprise 
voters in 5 months. A repeal would take 750 people off death row and give them 
life without the possibility of parole. A January poll shows that Californians 
are split.

The last time California executed someone was in 2006. Many of the state's 
death row inmates have been there for decades, according to The Washington 
Post. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by a death row inmate 
who argued that it was unconstitutional to keep someone on death row for so 
long. In his dissent, Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote that the California 
system embodied 3 "fundamental defects" of the death penalty: It puts innocent 
people to death, it's applied arbitrarily, and it's plagued by long delays that 
undermine its very purpose.

One reason Yarris feels some voters support the death penalty is that they 
can't connect a human face with society's ultimate punishment. Minorities, 
people who can't get a good lawyer, and people from low-income backgrounds are 
much more likely to be sentenced to death. Nationally, 43% of the country's 
2,943 death row inmates are black; most of California's inmates are black.

****

Yarris told me that when he was pulled over during a routine traffic stop in 
1981, he was a drug-addicted, "poor white trash" thief from southwest 
Philadelphia. He got into a violent confrontation with the cop and was thrown 
in jail. In an effort to get out, he made up a story tying an associate on the 
outside to the the well-publicized rape and murder of a woman named Linda May 
Craig earlier that year. When the cops cleared the man he accused, they charged 
Yarris with rape and murder. He was convicted in 1982 and sentenced to death.

Yarris said all along that he was innocent; rounds of DNA testing during the 
1990s yielded nothing conclusive. In 2003, a final round of testing on gloves 
found in the victim's car, on fingernail scrapings from the woman, and on other 
crime scene evidence ruled out Yarris for the 1st time.

Since 1973, 156 people on death row have been exonerated because of DNA 
evidence, witnesses changing their stories, or other exposed flaws in the 
justice system.

Yarris blames overzealous, revenge-minded prosecutors, politicians who want to 
look tough, and a society that assumes, incorrectly, that the threat of death 
will deter crime.

Clinton's opponent in the Democratic primaries, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, 
opposes the death penalty. Clinton last week indicated support for the Justice 
Department's decision to pursue the death penalty against Dylann Roof, the 
accused gunman in the slaughter of 9 black parishioners at a South Carolina 
church a year ago. Yet the death penalty has not been discussed at any 
significant length on the presidential campaign trail. It rarely even comes up 
during debates.

1 exception was in March, when Ricky Jackson, a former death-row inmate who had 
been imprisoned for 39 years for a crime he didn't commit, asked Clinton during 
a town-hall whether she'd consider changing her position on the death penalty. 
While she expressed sympathy for what happened to him, Clinton stood firm. "You 
know, this is such a profoundly difficult question," she began.

And what I have said - and what I continue to believe - is that the states have 
proven themselves incapable of carrying out fair trials that give any defendant 
all of the rights a defendant should have, all of the support that the 
defendant's lawyer should have. And I have said I would breathe a sigh of 
relief if either the Supreme Court or the states, themselves, began to 
eliminate the death penalty. Where I end up is this - and maybe it's a 
distinction that is hard to support - but at this point, given the challenges 
we face from terrorist activities, primarily in our country, that end up under 
federal jurisdiction, for very limited purposes I think that it can still be 
held in reserve for those.

Yarris was watching that night, and he was hardly surprised.

"I knew what Hillary was going to do," he told me. "She was going to play it 
safe like she is trying to do with everything. You can't be a leader if you 
can't make change. Mrs. Clinton, please, have enough dignity to recognize that 
what your husband did in 1992 probably still haunts him."

He was referring to Bill Clinton's infamous flight back to Arkansas during his 
first presidential campaign to personally oversee the execution of a mentally 
unsound man named Ricky Ray Rector.

"Bill flew home and oversaw the execution of a human being so he could get into 
the White House," Yarris said.

****

In 1978, Ron Briggs thought he and his father, then-state Sen. John Briggs, 
were doing the right thing by expanding the state's death penalty laws after 
the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated it nationally in 1976. Now, Ron, a retired 
member of the Board of Supervisors of El Dorado County, thinks he and his 
father were wrong. He is trying to convince his fellow Republicans in part by 
arguing that the death penalty is too expensive.

"My mission in the next 6 months heading into November is to garner Republican 
support," Ron told me over the phone. "We have an initiative on the ballot. The 
initiative would replace the death penalty with life without the possibility of 
parole. To house a death row inmate costs about $130,000 a year in California. 
To stick a guy in a facility for life without the possibility of parole costs 
$60,000 per year. Life without the possibility of parole takes away all of 
these attorneys. Once the death penalty is filed, that person automatically 
gets 2 attorneys attached to them for the rest of his duration until 20 to 30 
years down the road. That's what???s costing all of the money."

California came close to repealing the death penalty 4 years ago, with a ballot 
initiative known as Proposition 34. It failed in a close vote, winning 47.2% 
support. But David Crawford, director of community outreach and education at 
Death Penalty Focus, a San Francisco organization dedicated to the abolition of 
the death penalty, told me that he's optimistic California voters will vote to 
repeal the death penalty in November.

(source: fusion.net)

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

WNYC's Radiolab program has started a new podcast about the Supreme Court 
called More Perfect. The 1st episode deals with the battle over execution 
drugs. It's called "Cruel and Unusual" and can be found at: 
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolabmoreperfect/

(source: RG)