[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., OHIO, KAN., NEB., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

June 11




TEXAS:

We welcome Supreme Court scrutiny in 2 Texas death penalty cases


The Supreme Court has agreed once again to scrutinize the way Texas implements 
the death penalty. Rejecting Texas' arguments that they need not interfere, at 
least 4 justices in each case decided that circumstances were unusual enough to 
merit another look.

We welcome that scrutiny, and so should Texas.

One case in particular reveals Texas??? stubbornness: Bobby James Moore. It's 
as clear as a red stop sign to Texas officials and everyone else in the country 
that individuals with intellectual disabilities may not be executed. But Texas 
insists that its decades-old method for testing a defendant's mental capacity 
is sufficient, despite widespread improvements in medical evaluations that have 
been adopted across the U.S.

When a judge ruled that a modern test had shown that Moore, who's been awaiting 
execution since his 1980 conviction for murder, suffers from intellectual 
disability severe enough to keep him out of the death house, Texas appealed to 
the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. That court ruled the modern test invalid, 
arguing that only the outdated methods maintained by Texas officials could 
suffice.

Lawyers for Moore have called that absurd; we agree. In seeking the Supreme 
Court review, they noted other state high courts have ruled that "current, 
established medical standards in assessing intellectual disability" should be 
used.

Texas' insistence that only its older testing methods are valid is 
unreasonable. It also marks the state out as a unnecessary holdout against 
capital punishment limits that have proven wise and human. Texas serves no 
higher public good by being so stubborn.

The other case involves another inmate on Texas' death row, though its 
challenge is not so pointedly directed at the death penalty. Instead, it asks a 
broader question: "Whether and to what extent the criminal justice system 
tolerates racial bias and discrimination."

When jurors were determining whether to sentence Duane Buck to death, his 
lawyers called an expert witness who, astoundingly, told jurors that Buck would 
be more likely to be dangerous in the future because he is black. That helped 
persuade the jury to sentence him to death. So far, lower appeals courts have 
said that isn't enough to win review of his sentence, but we welcome Supreme 
Court's review of the case.

It's a technical point, but the fact that such an obviously racist statement 
was allowed to be made in the influence of a life-or-death decision is 
extraordinary.

Both cases show the importance of Supreme Court scrutiny of the way Texas 
imposes the death penalty. The review is so critical because once imposed, an 
execution can never be undone. We can't allow ourselves to forget how human, 
and therefore inescapably fallible, the process leading up to a death sentence 
is.

We were reminded of the potential error in death penalty cases once again last 
week when Smith County prosecutors finally dropped charges against Kerry Max 
Cook, the man who they have said for 40 years was behind one of East Texas' 
most notorious killings. He's another flesh-and-blood reminder of how important 
it is to get the process right; some punishments can't be be undone.

(source: Editorial, Dallas Morning News)

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

Blanco County man charged with capital murder in infant's death


A man accused of killing a 15-month-old child in Blanco County could now face 
the death penalty after a grand jury indicted him on capital murder charges 
this week.

John Cody Lawrence, 24, is also facing a charge of super aggravated sexual 
assault after a Blanco County grand jury indicted him and the infant's mother, 
23-year-old Jamie Petronella, on Wednesday, according to the Blanco County 
district attorney's office. Petronella is facing 2 charges of injury to a 
child.

The couple lived together with Petronella's 3 children at a home in the 500 
block of Jones Street. They had only been living in Blanco for a short time, 
police have said.

On May 2, either Petronella or Lawrence called 911 after the youngest child, 
15-month-old Sunny Dakota Bort, stopped breathing. Bort had several bruises 
around her chin and jaw. The 2 other children also showed signs of abuse, 
including a 3-year-old boy who had a cerebral hemorrhage.

Bort died while in treatment at a hospital in San Antonio on May 5.

The capital murder charge against Lawrence is new because Bort had not died yet 
when Lawrence was arrested and charged with injury to a child.

Blanco police chief Mike Ritchey has said Lawrence's arrest was "the worst 
child abuse case I've ever seen," and that he was disturbed by the lack of 
emotion both Lawrence and Petronella showed at the time of their arrest.

Child Protective Services had visited the couple the week prior because the 
3-year-old boy had broken his arm. Lawrence said it happened when he was 
roughhousing with the child, Ritchey said.

Lawrence was also arrested in Austin in April 2015 when police said he tried to 
choke his then-girlfriend.

(source: Austin American-Statesman)

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

Argentine mom hopes Pope Francis can save her son in Texas


Pope Francis always has a packed schedule, but on Saturday he made time to meet 
a troubled fellow Argentine and mother of 4: Lidia Guerrero, whose son, Victor 
Hugo Saldano, has spent 20 years on death row in Texas waiting to be executed, 
despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling finding racial prejudice in his sentence.

"I'm sure [Francis] will do all that is in his hands," Guerrero told 
journalists in Rome after her private audience with the pontiff.

"My son finds hope in my meetings with the pope," she added.

She refused to reveal many details of the meeting, only saying she felt 
welcomed by the pope, who "allowed me to share everything I wanted to."

This is the 2nd time Guerrero has had the opportunity to talk with Francis, the 
1st coming in 2014, at the end of one of the pope's public audiences, a few 
months before she saw her son for the last time in November 2014.

"My son's situation is desperate," she said on Saturday, at a press conference 
hosted at a hotel.

"In 3 opportunities, he's asked to be killed ... what he leads is not a life, 
but psychological torture."

Saldano is confined in isolation, and according to his mother, the lack of 
contact with other humans has led him to want to die. Yet the 2 talks his 
mother has had with the pope, she said, "give him hope."

His only contact with the world outside are letters and the books his family 
send through two bookshops in Cordoba, Argentina, which had to be approved by 
the prison.

During her talk with journalists, Guerrero was accompanied by her lawyer, Juan 
Carlos Vega, who helped present the case to the Inter-American Commission on 
Human Rights.

"This isn't just 1 more death penalty case," Vega said.

Saldano was born in Cordoba, Argentina, in 1972. On November 25, 1995 he and a 
Mexican friend, Jorge Chavez, kidnapped American Paul King at a parking lot of 
a supermarket in Plano, a wealthy suburb in Dallas.

They drove him to a wooded area, stole $50 along with a plastic watch, and 
Salda???no shot him 5 times.

The Argentine confessed, and by July 1996 he had been sentenced to death.

As her mother said on Saturday, he was on drugs at the time. Guerrero and her 
lawyer don't argue that he's innocent, but that he deserved to be sentenced to 
life in prison rather than to death.

1 basis for the death sentence was the report of a psychiatric expert, who 
claimed that Saldano was prone to backsliding if he lived because that's what 
statistics allegedly show among Latino convicts.

In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court sent the death sentence back to the Texas Court 
of Criminal Appeals for review because of ethnic discrimination. In 2005, he 
was once again sentenced to death.

Yet according to Vera, the 2nd ruling is even worse than the 1st, because it 
doesn't take into consideration the fact that according to a precedent from a 
case called Soering vs the United Kingdom, Saldano was mentally incapacitated.

Vera contends the ruling, from 1989, established that after 4 years on death 
row a person's psyche is broken, meaning Saldano was incapable of defending 
himself the 2nd time.

"What we want is for him to leave death row and be placed in a federal 
psychiatric institution, because today he can't be anywhere else," he said.

Guerrero said she's praying Francis is able to do something on her son's 
behalf, and for all those in the death row around the world - currently over 
3,000 in the United States alone.

If Francis does intervene, it wouldn't be unprecedented: In 1999, Pope John 
Paul II won a reprieve from Missouri's then-Governor Mel Carnahan on behalf of 
a prisoner scheduled for execution who instead was ordered to serve life in 
prison without parole.

The Argentine pontiff has appealed for a global end to capital punishment 
several times, the last one being this February, when he told thousands 
gathered in Rome's St. Peter's Square that the sixth commandment "You shall not 
kill" applies to the innocent as well as the guilty.

Last September, when he addressed a joint session of the US Congress, the pope 
said, "Every life is sacred, every human person is endowed with an inalienable 
dignity, and society can only benefit from the rehabilitation of those 
convicted of crimes."

He also offered encouragement to those convinced that just punishment must 
never exclude hope and the goal of rehabilitation.

(source: cruxnow.com)






FLORIDA:

Spaniard taken off death row in US----Pablo Ibar, whose death sentence was 
overturned in February by the Florida Supreme Court, has been transferred to a 
regular prison


The Florida Supreme Court vacated Ibar's sentence and ordered a new trial, 
citing several flaws in the state's arguments against him.

45-year-old Ibar, who is of Basque descent, will appear before Judge Jeffrey 
Levenson in a Fort Lauderdale court, in Broward County, on Friday. Levenson 
presided over his case in 2009, nearly 10 years after the Spaniard was 
sentenced to death for the triple murder of a nightclub owner and 2 models.

Ibar, who has served 22 years in prison, 15 of them on death row, has always 
maintained his innocence.

"Ibar is already listed as being transferred to a jail in Broward County," said 
Andres Krakenberger, a spokesman for the Pablo Ibar Association Against the 
Death Penalty.

The Florida Supreme Court underscored one of the most important arguments used 
by the defense: the fact that "Ibar's DNA was not found on a blue T-shirt 
recovered from the crime scene" and which was allegedly "[used] by the 
perpetrator to partially cover his face."

Benjamin Waxman, Ibar's lawyer, filed 7 motions in Broward County questioning 
the basis of the prosecution's case. He argued against the strength of a key 
piece of evidence, a "soundless, blurry, grainy" home surveillance videotape 
that a facial identification expert said could not prove "with certainty" that 
the killer was in fact the defendant.

Ibar will appear before Judge Levenson on Friday for a short hearing to decide 
"future steps to be taken in the procedure leading to the retrial."

Ibar, who has served 22 years in prison, 15 of them on death row, has always 
maintained his innocence. The defense will ask the court to release him on bail 
and under the supervision of his family while awaiting the new trial.

During the 1st trial, which began in 1998, a Broward County jury failed to 
reach a unanimous verdict and the judge threw out the case because there were 
no fingerprints or DNA linking Ibar to the murders. But he was convicted on 
August 28, 2000 after a 2nd trial. Ibar is the only Spanish citizen to have 
been sentenced to death in the United States.

(source: el pais)

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

Another judge rules death penalty law unconstitutional


For the 2nd time in a month, a circuit judge has ruled that Florida's new 
death-penalty sentencing law is "patently unconstitutional" because it does not 
require unanimous jury decisions for death to be imposed.

Hillsborough County Circuit Judge Samantha Ward on Thursday sided with 
defendant Michael Keetley, an ice cream truck driver who was charged with 
murdering 2 men and injuring 4 others in 2010.

Florida lawmakers hurriedly crafted a new death-penalty sentencing process this 
year, in response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in January that overturned 
the old law because it gave too much power to judges, instead of juries.

Under the new law, juries have to unanimously find that at least 1 aggravating 
circumstance exists in order for defendants to be eligible for the death 
penalty. The law also requires juries to weigh whether sufficient mitigating 
factors exist to outweigh the aggravating circumstances, but the law is silent 
about whether those decisions must be unanimous. The law also requires at least 
10 jurors to recommend the death penalty, a departure from the old law, which 
required a simple majority of jurors.

But, agreeing with Keetley's lawyers, Ward ruled that the new law "runs afoul" 
of the Supreme Court decision, which came in a case known as Hurst v. Florida. 
Prosecutors argued that the requirement to find at least one aggravator, 
unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt, was sufficient to comport with a 
previous U.S. Supreme Court decision, in a case known as Ring v. Arizona.

"But it defies logic, and the dictates of Ring through Hurst, to have the jury 
find one of the prerequisites unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt (that 
at least one aggravating factor exists), but not the other two prerequisites 
(that sufficient aggravators exist and that they outweigh the mitigating 
circumstances)," Ward wrote.

Ward's decision Thursday was the 2nd time a circuit judge has found that 
Florida's new law is unconstitutional. The Florida Supreme Court has also been 
inundated with arguments about the constitutionality of the law and is poised 
to decide on the issue.

Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch ruled May 9 that unanimous 
decisions are required in imposing death sentences, rather than recommendations 
from majorities or super-majorities of juries.

Ward's ruling dealt with the fact-finding phase of the sentencing process.

The Sixth Amendment guarantee to a trial by jury "unequivocally demands that a 
jury unanimously find the existence of any fact that subjects a defendant to a 
sentence in excess of that statutorily authorized by a guilty verdict beyond a 
reasonable doubt," Ward wrote Thursday. "Florida's existing death penalty 
sentencing scheme is incongruous with this decree."

(source: news4jax.com)






OHIO:

Prosecutors allowed to dismiss jurors opposing death penalty in Seman trial


Prosecutors will be allowed to excuse potential jurors opposed to the death 
penalty when a Green Township man goes on trial for murdering a child and her 
grandparents.

Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Maureen Sweeney has denied a motion 
filed by the attorney of Robert Seman, who is accused of setting the March 31, 
2015 Youngstown house fire that claimed the lives of 10-year-old Corinne Gump, 
63-year-old William Schmidt and his 61-year-old wife Judith.

The fire occurred just hours before Seman was scheduled to go on trial for 
allegedly raping the child.

Seman, 47, faces 10 counts of aggravated murder and could be sentenced to death 
if convicted.

His attorney had asked the court to prohibit the prosecution from dismissing 
potential jurors who have doubts about the death penalty during the jury 
selection process.

Seman's trial is scheduled to begin in September.

(source: WFMJ news)






KANSAS:

A look at the 10 Kansas inmates on death row


As the U.S. Supreme Court gears up to hear 2 cases challenging the death 
penalty, Kansas' most recent addition to death row, Kyle Trevor Flack, joins 
the 9 other inmates who have been awaiting death by lethal injection, some for 
more than a decade.

Flack, of Ottawa, was convicted in March of capital murder for shooting to 
death a toddler and her mother; he was also convicted of 1st-degree murder in 
the deaths of 2 men.

Kansas has not put anyone to death since 1965. That year the state hanged 4 
men, George Ronald York and James Douglas Latham who had been on a 
cross-country killing spree, and Perry Edward Smith and Richard Eugene Hickock 
for the infamous Clutter family murders.

Up until 1965, all capital murderers had been hanged except 1, John Coon, who 
was executed by firing squad in 1853.

In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively instituted a moratorium on Kansas' 
death penalty along with that of 3 dozen other states in Furman v. Georgia. 
That moratorium was lifted in 1976. And in 1994, Kansas statute re-established 
the death penalty, this time by lethal injection.

Chances are that Flack, serving his time at the El Dorado state penitentiary, 
and his fellow death-row inmates will spend many more years in prison as their 
legal battles continue to wend their way through the courts.

So what is life like on Kansas death row?

First of all, Kansas doesn't actually have a death row. Inmates sentenced to 
death are held in "solitary confinement," which the penal system calls 
administrative segregation, said Adam Pfannenstiel, spokesman for the Kansas 
Department of Corrections.

Most of the cells are 83 square feet - about the size of a small bedroom - and 
have concrete walls and floors, 1 small window and a solid door so that inmates 
are unable to look through bars to visit with other inmates.

The bed is a concrete slab or metal, covered with a thin plastic mattress. 
Metal shelves with a sink and an attached backless stool are located along part 
of 1 wall. A metal toilet is adjacent.

Each cell has a telephone, but calls can be expensive, Pfannenstiel said. 
Currently in Kansas state prisons, collect and prepaid collect calls cost 18 
cents per minute, while debit calls cost 17 cents per minute.

The cost of telephone calls is expected to be reduced over the next couple of 
years. The Federal Communications Commission issued an order in October that 
would reduce the price to 11 cents a minute for debit and collect prepaid 
calls.

Inmates may have a list of up to 20 individual phone numbers that they can 
call. All conversations except with the inmate's attorney are subject to 
monitoring.

Cellphones are considered contraband, and only certain digital devices 
considered learning tools are allowed, Pfannenstiel said.

"They are able to have certain types of property, puzzles, literature, pen and 
paper," he said.

Inmates can receive books from the prison library.

Inmates can earn television privileges, but they must pay for their own 
television and hookups out of their own funds. Cable is available but no 
premium channels, Pfannenstiel said.

They receive the same food as all inmates, but it is served in their cells.

"Food is brought to them and put through a sally port," Pfannenstiel said.

Death-row inmates stay in their cells 23 hours a day, except when they have 
visitors, which is limited to Saturdays, Sundays and special holidays.

Visitors must be on a special list monitored by the Department of Corrections.

During the visit the inmate is placed in what is called a noncontact 
video-visitation booth, where a telephone-type device is used for talking while 
a screen displays video of the individuals, Pfannenstiel said. The Kansas 
Department of Corrections monitors all those discussions.

In some states death-row inmates have been able to marry.

For example, in Texas there is a practice called proxy marriage. The inmate 
signs an affidavit that allows him to marry without being present at the 
ceremony, which has raised the specter of benefits and insurance fraud in that 
state.

But Pfannenstiel said no Kansas death-row inmates have gotten married.

"We haven't had any wedding ceremony," he said.

Inmates have 1 hour outside of the cell each day to shower or to exercise in an 
outdoor recreation cage made of wire grates that is 10 feet wide, 20 feet long 
and 10 feet high.

The following is a list of the 9 inmates besides Flack who have been sentenced 
to death:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reginald Dexter Carr Jr., 38, and brother Jonathan Daniel Carr, 36, were 
convicted in 2002 for the "Wichita Massacre," a weeklong spree of random 
robberies, rapes and murders. During the spree they robbed a man, seriously 
wounded a cellist and librarian who later died, and then shot 5 people 
execution style. Only 1 survived.

The Carrs were apprehended after a particularly cold-blooded act in which they 
broke into a house where 3 women and 2 men were spending the night. They forced 
the victims to strip and tied them up. They repeatedly raped the women and 
forced the 5 to have sex with one another.

After taking them to ATM machines to empty their bank accounts, the Carrs shot 
each of the 5 in the back of the head. But a woman survived after her hair 
barrette deflected the bullet. After walking more than a mile, naked, in snow, 
she made it to safety and, based on her information, the Carrs were captured.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

John Edward Robinson Sr., 72, a serial killer, con man, embezzler and forger 
who was living in Johnson County, was convicted of 2 capital murders and 1 
1st-degree murder in 2003. He later confessed to killing 5 others, and 
detectives say there may be more.

Robinson maintained what appeared to be a normal life. He and his wife had 4 
children. He was a Boy Scoutmaster, a baseball coach and Sunday school teacher. 
But that started falling apart when he was arrested for embezzling and spent 60 
days in jail and said he had joined a sadomasochism cult and had become a 
slave-master.

Robinson is connected to murders that began possibly as early as 1984. He 
sought out women who had little money. In 1 case, he promised a woman with a 
child a job as a sales associate in Chicago. The woman disappeared, and 
Robinson gave a child to his brother and sister-in-law, saying the mother had 
committed suicide.

Police became aware of Robinson over the years as his name cropped up in 
several missing persons cases.

Robinson was arrested in 2000 on his farm near La Cygne. The police searched 
the farm and found 2 bodies in 85-pound drums.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sidney John Gleason, 37, was convicted in 2006 in the shooting deaths of a 
couple. Gleason had learned that the woman who had taken part in a robbery with 
him in Great Bend was talking to police. He and his cousin Damian Thompson 
killed the man and shot the woman and kidnapped her. They took her to a 
secluded area where she was choked, shot and finally killed. Thompson cut a 
deal with police to testify against Gleason and also revealed where the woman's 
body was. Thompson pleaded guilty to 1st-degree murder and received life in 
prison.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scott Dever Cheever, 34, was in a house making methamphetamine in Hilltop when 
Greenwood County Sheriff Matthew Samuels and 4 other officers, acting on a tip, 
showed up with warrants for Cheever's arrest.

Cheever hid in an upstairs room, and when he heard Samuels on the stairs, he 
leaned out from the room and shot him. When 2 officers tried to get the wounded 
sheriff, Cheever shot him again. He also shot at least 4 officers who were 
trying to arrest him.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gary Wayne Kleypas, 60, became in 1996 the 1st person to be sentenced to death 
in Kansas in more than 3 decades. Kleypas was convicted of killing Carrie 
Williams, 20, who was a student at Pittsburg State University. Kleypas had 
already killed by the time he met up with Williams. He had been convicted of 
the rape and murder of a 78-year-old woman in Missouri and received a life 
sentence. After serving 1/2 of it, Missouri gave him probation and transferred 
Kleypas to Kansas for supervision, and he was allowed to enroll at Pittsburg 
State.

Kleypas lived near Williams, and in the early-morning hours in March 1996, he 
knocked on Williams' door. When she opened it a crack, he pushed it open and 
dragged her to the bedroom. After raping her, Kleypas later told police, he 
decided to kill her so there would not be a witness.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Justin Eugene Thurber, 33, was convicted in 2009 in the violent death of 
19-year-old Jodi Sanderholm, who was a member of a dance team at a Cowley 
Community College in Arkansas City. Thurber kidnapped Sanderholm in January 
2007 and took her to a wildlife area, where he tortured, raped and killed her, 
authorities said.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

James Kraig Kahler, 53, was convicted in 2011 of killing his estranged wife, 
Karen Kahler; 2 daughters, 18 and 16; and Karen Kahler's 89-year-old 
grandmother in Burlingame.

Kahler was upset that his wife had a lesbian lover. On Thanksgiving weekend 
2009, he stormed into Karen Kahler's house and shot her. Karen Kahler was 
standing next to their son, but Kahler allowed his son to flee. Then he shot 
the rest of the family. He was convicted of capital murder and 4 counts of 
1st-degree murder.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Frazier Glenn Cross Jr. (also known as Frazier Glenn Miller), 75, was convicted 
in 2015 of 3 murders at the Overland Park Jewish Community Center and Village 
Shalom, a Jewish retirement community. Cross, a white supremacist, had gone on 
a rampage in 2014 because he said he wanted to kill Jewish people. None of the 
people he shot was Jewish.

(source: Lawrence Journal World)






NEBRASKA:

Activist: Death penalty incompatible with faith, humanity


The death penalty has survived not in spite of Christians, but because of them, 
according to Shane Claiborne, social activist, author and pioneer in the New 
Monasticism Movement.

For a long time, Claiborne believed that scripture supported the death penalty: 
an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth ...

But his gut told him something else.

He believed it was not as simple as good versus evil, right versus wrong and 
life versus death.

"I went back to study Scripture, and I saw how complex it is," Claiborne said 
during a recent visit from Philadelphia to Lincoln and Omaha, as part of 
Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and Retain a Just Nebraska -- 
both efforts to retain a state law abolishing the death penalty.

More than 200 people attended Claiborne's June 7 presentations, which coincided 
with the release of his newest book, "Executing Grace: How the Death Penalty 
Killed Jesus and Why It's Killing Us." The book examines the death penalty from 
all angles: religious, moral, just and practical. Many Nebraska stories are 
included in the 300-page book.

Claiborne's appearance was the 1st in a series of guests invited to Nebraska 
over the coming months to help convince voters to uphold LB268 which calls for 
abolishing capital punishment in the state, said Dan Parsons, spokesman for 
Retain a Just Nebraska.

For Christians, faith and the belief that no one is beyond redemption are 
reasons to end the death penalty.

But beyond Jesus' teachings and Scripture, Claiborne argues that capital 
punishment is also costly, fallible, unjust and offers false promises of 
"closure" to the the families of victims. In fact, he said capital punishment 
often is treated as a sacred cow, in which the voices of victims who oppose it 
are squelched and in some cases punished by the courts for speaking out.

A native of Tennessee, Claiborne said he grew up in the Bible Belt.

"The Bible Belt is the death belt," he said, noting that more than 85 % of 
state executions over the last 38 years occurred in the South and Middle West, 
where strictly conservative Christian beliefs often prevail.

Death penalty defenders often point to Old Testament law given to Moses 
indicating which crimes deserve death. But as Claiborne notes, Moses himself 
killed, but was not put to death. Same for David and Saul of Tarsus -- killers 
who were punished by God, but not executed.

"The Bible is a love story -- it's about a God who so loved the world that he 
sent Jesus to save it -- not condemn it to hell," Claiborne writes in his book.

Put simply, Claiborne said: "We can do better than the death penalty."

"Why is it a crime for individuals to kill, and it is just for the government 
to kill?" he asked. "The story of God's grace is that no one is beyond 
redemption."

That is not to say there is no such thing as "evil," Claiborne said.

Evil exists.

Evil deeds should be punished, he said.

"But we don't rape those who rape," Claiborne said. "We don't maim those who 
maim. So why kill those who kill?

"There is no doubt that we have to protect society from dangerous people. But 
it has become so clear there are other and better ways of protecting society 
than saying we've got to kill someone."

For his book, Claiborne interviewed dozens of people -- families of murder 
victims, families of murderers, killers and executioners.

"The stunning thing I discovered as I did my research was hearing from many 
murder victims' families ... who have not found that execution fulfilled the 
promise of closure and justice," Claiborne said.

In fact, many families and executioners have said they are haunted by the 
murder of the killer.

Most murderers are not born killers. They are made that way, Claiborne noted. 
Some are mentally ill. Many have grown up amid horrendous trauma. They are 
broken, abused, addicted and lost.

And for the most part they are minority and poor, according to Claiborne.

"To this day, even though African-Americans make up only 13 % of the nation's 
population, 42 % of death row inmates are black, and 34 % of those executed 
since 1976 have been black," Claiborne writes in his book.

The justice system is far from infallible -- 160 people on death row in 26 
states have been proven innocent, Claiborne said. Together, they served 1,800 
years for crimes they did not commit.

For every 9 people executed, 1 has been exonerated, Claiborne said.

"We are not killing the worst of the worst," Claiborne aid. "We are killing the 
poorest of the poor."

Claiborne recalled his interview with Ron McAndrew, a former warden and 
executioner in Florida. McAndrew is a strong believer in "do the crime, do the 
time," but overseeing executions took a toll, Claiborne said.

"The men I killed sat on the edge of my bed and haunted me," McAndrew told 
Claiborne.

McAndrew was in charge of Pedro Medina's electric chair execution. The chair 
malfunctioned. Medina caught fire. It took 30 minutes for him to die.

Later, McAndrew worked to replace the electric chair with lethal injection. But 
in the end, that was no better for him, Claiborne said.

"He is convinced there is no good way to kill someone. ... We have to have 
consequences, but execution is cruel and unusual punishment," Claiborne said.

Putting an end to the death penalty is not just about following the teachings 
of Jesus, it's about putting an end to a broken system, he said.

"To take a life is wrong," Claiborne said. "Yet, we reinforce the very thing we 
are trying to rid the world of by doing 'legal homicide.'"

(source: Lincoln Journal Star)






CALIFORNIA:

A sane approach to dealing with mentally ill death row inmates


California's death penalty system has been broken for so long, you could 
forgive people for thinking that it no longer exists. The last person executed 
at San Quentin was Clarence Ray Allen, who arranged the murders of 3 people in 
Fresno - 1 who revealed details of a burglary Allen had planned, and 2 others 
who testified against him. His January 2006 execution came 23 years after his 
conviction.

Since then, legal challenges have left California without a constitutional 
method of executing prisoners. The state has proposed a new lethal-injection 
protocol, but more lawsuits will likely stall the resumption of executions for 
the foreseeable future, and an initiative headed for the fall ballot would ban 
it outright. It's unclear how many executions have been forestalled by the 
freeze. Of 747 people on California's death row - most of them men held at San 
Quentin - only 18 have exhausted their appeals and could be slated for 
execution should the "machinery of death," as Justice Harry A. Blackmun once 
described it, ever be turned back on.

We hope it won't be. The result of a too-easily manipulated system, the 
practice is barbaric, immoral and applied disproportionately to people of 
color. As Paige St. John reported recently in our news pages, there also are 
many condemned prisoners in California who can't legally be put to death. The 
Supreme Court has held that the state can???t execute someone who doesn't have 
a "rational understanding" of why he or she is about to be executed.

The state historically has argued that it could not acquiesce in removing a 
convicted killer from death row unless it believed there was a miscarriage of 
justice. And the mental state of a condemned person does not become a legal 
issue until execution is near, in part because many forms of mental illness 
come and go.

But now, under an agreement worked out with the state-funded office that 
coordinates death sentence appeals, Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris has taken the 
unusual step of joining the defense in asking the state Supreme Court to 
invalidate the death sentence of Ronnie McPeters. McPeters, a panhandler 
convicted of the 1984 murder of Linda Pasnick in Fresno, converses with a 
nonexistent wife and children, hoards his feces and says he's tormented by the 
voices of his victim's relatives.

One inmate continually bangs his head against the wall, believes he is 
controlled by computer chips and says he dies every night only to be reborn 
[every day].

Though we wish that Harris, who personally opposes the death penalty, would use 
this opportunity to make a broader call for its abolition, we welcome her 
efforts to move inmates such as McPeters off death row. Working with defense 
lawyers to identify those ineligible for the death penalty earlier in the 
appeals process keeps the state from wasting time and resources pursuing 
executions that are constitutionally barred from occurring. No public interest 
is served by the state doggedly fighting a battle it knows it can't win, and we 
hope the state Supreme Court affirms this new process.

What depths of insanity are involved here? One inmate continually bangs his 
head against the wall, believes he is controlled by computer chips and says he 
dies every night only to be reborn the next morning. Another seesaws between 
delusions and catatonia, spending days at a time naked and smeared with his own 
feces on the floor of his cell. Several have had their appeals indefinitely 
delayed because they are too incapacitated to assist in their own counsel, yet 
they remain on death row ostensibly awaiting execution. If they're too crazy 
for court, they're certainly too crazy for the death chamber.

Victims' families have legitimate grievances, and a right to want the guilty 
punished. But executions do not achieve justice; they are revenge killings 
conducted by the state on behalf of the victims, and serve no broader societal 
or judicial purpose. And fighting to push the insane closer to the needle moves 
the practice into the realm of the absurd.

If a condemned person doesn't understand why he or she is to be killed by the 
state, the state must recognize that and place the convicted in circumstances 
that will ensure basic constitutional rights are protected. Even the guilty are 
human beings, and must be treated as such.

(source: Editorial, Los Angeles Times)


USA:

Death penalty for SC racial killings? Mother of murdered cop says throw the 
switch


Dylann Roof, who killed black churchgoers because of hate, wants a judge 
instead of a jury to decide if he gets the death penalty or life in a prison.

There is a woman in Lancaster who needs no judge or jury to say what should 
happen to a murderer who kills because of racial hatred. There is no debate 
over the death penalty for Myra McCants.

Throw the switch, she says.

"What good is the death penalty if you never use it for the worst murderers?" 
McCants asked.

Her son, York County sheriff's Deputy Brent McCants, was shot and killed in 
1992 by a black man named Mar-Reece Hughes. Hughes killed McCants during a 
traffic stop after Hughes had committed another crime. Hughes killed McCants 
because Brent McCants was white and Hughes hated white people.

Hughes, in jail waiting for trial after he killed McCants, smuggled in a shank 
and killed another prisoner, who was white. In two decades, his alleged mental 
status - and his lawyer's claims that Hughes is incompetent because he 
apparently likes to kill white people but does not relish dying much himself - 
has kept him from the electric chair.

Myra McCants has endured what racial hatred and gun violence do. She has dealt 
with it for nearly a quarter of a century. The other guy involved in killing 
her son, another black man named Dwayne Eric Forney, got life in prison. 
Forney's mother asked McCants so long ago not to hate, that the family did not 
have racial hatred. The mothers embraced. A killer's mother, and the victim's 
mother.

McCants has preached love and racial harmony ever since.

"Every person on this earth has a soul that has no color," McCants said. "The 
man who killed my son, he hated white people. This white man in Charleston, he 
killed those black people because he hated black people. He went into a church 
where God is, and he killed them because they were black.

"We are all people."

Don't take Myra McCants' beautiful heart for being soft on crime, though. Her 
courage and stand for racial harmony does not mean she does not think Hughes 
should not get the death penalty. That does not mean she does not think Roof 
should not get the death penalty.

McCants belives in equality, yes. She also believes in justice. She wants it, 
and for 24 years she has not had it.

If South Carolina brought in a firing squad for her son's killer, she would be 
1st in line to watch the triggers pulled.

She would hold the hands of the families of the Charleston 9 murder victims and 
tell them they are loved - if Roof is put to death.

These racial hatred gun killers - and although Roof has not been convicted, 
there appears no doubt he is guilty as his lawyers have offered to plead him 
guilty for life in prison instead of death - seem to have all the rights, 
McCants said.

"What about the rights of the victims?" she wondered. "The killer has rights, 
and the victim has none. All these court hearings, all these things, are about 
the murderer and his rights.

"Where are the rights of those black people shot down in that church? Their 
families? Their kids and mothers? Where are the rights of my son?"

Myra McCants has cried and wailed and wept and rushed in and out of courtrooms 
for 24 years to try to get the state of South Carolina to do what it said it 
would do - execute Hughes for killing Brent McCants over hate.

If Roof gets the death penalty in federal or state courts, there will be so 
many appeals that last for years and likely, decades.

Myra McCants has lived with appeals and court orders for 24 years.

She does not hate. It is Hughes and Roof who hated. But after what Myra McCants 
has been through, she's left with little else but to ask:

"Where the hell is the justice?"

(source: heraldonline.com)

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

Capital punishment drugs


People die every day from drug overdoses. So why is there a problem getting 
drugs for executing criminals? I am not a pharmacist or a lawyer, so I am not 
qualified to comment on this. But it still strikes me as odd. I guess that some 
details of legislation prevent an obvious solution to the problem.

Recently we learned that the entertainer Prince died of a drug overdose. It 
seems to have been a legal opium-related remedy for pain and stress. Why can't 
it be used in executions? Fentanyl is a drug that kills quickly and has flooded 
the illegal market.

Hangings, electric chairs, and firing squads have been means to officially kill 
people. If deterrence is a reason for execution, public hanging is the best 
way. With modern media any dramatic death can be viewed by millions. But it's 
not clear that potential criminals are deterred from crime by seeing punishment 
enacted. A violent personality might actually enjoy the sight.

Cruel and unusual pain is cited as a reason for benign execution. In that case, 
why kill at all. Perhaps because lifetime imprisonment is crueler than a quick 
death. But it is not quick when one is on death row for years.

Maybe legislators don't want people to die happy. If popular drugs that make 
people high are used, it will be a nicer death than is proper for punishment. 
Maybe ordinary drugs take too long to kill, too long for observers to wait.

Socrates' friends were able to talk with him while he drank the hemlock, a nice 
social occasion. Perhaps the death-penalty could be administered like 
euthanasia. This would blend society's desire to kill, with the criminal's 
reasonable desire to get it over with.

George Weckman is a retired professor and director of music at Christ Lutheran 
Church

(source: Letter to the Editor, The Athens Messenger)