[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----UTAH, CALIF., ORE.

[Rick Halperin]

June 24



UTAH:

There is no argument for keeping the death penalty in Utah


"Though justice be thy plea, consider this, that, in the course of justice, 
none of us should see salvation: we do pray for mercy." -- William Shakespeare, 
"The Merchant of Venice"

If justice costs more, we pay for justice. If justice costs less - a lot less - 
we are, as the Bard said, "twice blest."

Last week, some members of the Utah Legislature were putting themselves though 
some unsightly, if not uncomfortable, contortions to try to get around the fact 
that carrying out the death penalty in Utah - and everywhere else in the United 
States - costs more than a life sentence.

How much more? About $1.6 million more per case.

That's because any sense of justice requires that the ultimate penalty not be 
dispensed sloppily. That every possible legal argument, every piece of 
evidence, every safeguard against the most ghastly of legal errors, be set in 
motion before the state commits an act of irreparable violence.

The state's own budget analysts and lawyers told the members of the Law 
Enforcement and Criminal Justice Interim Committee that those costs, borne by 
taxpayers in the counties where the cases are tried, are not something the 
Legislature has the power to influence.

They are the result of rules imposed by the federal court system. Any desire 
state officials may have to shorten the process, perhaps reducing the cost, 
simply will not happen.

And that is as it should be. While the chances of putting the wrong person to 
death are smaller in Utah than they are in the states (Texas, Florida) where 
the death house is practically an assembly line, no state should pride itself 
on the quick turn-around of its capital punishment machine.

The analysis also suggests that local prosecutors seek the death penalty in 
fewer and fewer eligible cases. Whether that's because of the cost to 
taxpayers, the additional emotional burden imposed on the families of murder 
victims or just disgust with the very idea of state-sanctioned homicide, the 
decision of which accused killers face the death penalty and which do not are 
increasingly a lottery that has little to do with justice.

Utah would obviously be better off following through on the effort that was 
made in the last session of the Legislature to just abolish the death penalty. 
The kind of conservative thinking that Utah politicians pride themselves on 
should have led to the realization that there is nothing at all conservative 
about giving the state, which is supposedly not competent enough to do much of 
anything, the power to kill people.

Keeping the death penalty would also lead to further debate over just how to do 
the deed. Lethal injection has proven to be anything but humane. Drug makers, 
who don't want their products associated with death, are less and less willing 
to provide the fatal concoctions.

And Utah's old firing squad is a relic of a brutal age that casts the state in 
the most negative light before the world.

The legal, ethical and financial arguments necessary to make the death penalty 
seem like anything other that what it is - thuggish, expensive vengeance that 
harms everyone it touches - are getter harder and harder to make, or believe.

It's time to end this practice, once and for all.

(source: Editorial, Salt Lake Tribune)






CALIFORNIA:

Judge: DA will stay in Baby Sophia case


As the battle between prosecutors and the defense continues, a Tulare County 
judge refused to remove the District Attorney's Office from a case involving 
the brutal death of an Exeter toddler.

Judge Joseph Kalashian denied a motion made by the public defender to remove 
the DA from prosecuting Christopher Cheary, a man accused of killing a toddler. 
If granted, prosecutors would have had to come in from an outlying area.

Cheary, 25, is charged with the 2011 death of 3-year-old child Sophia Acosta. 
Prosecutors added special allegations that Cheary committed forcible lewd acts 
on the toddler, which attributed to her death.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, which the defense is also fighting 
to be tossed.

The defense argued in court on Thursday that due to the District Attorney Tim 
Ward's involvement at a bench dedication in Sophia's honor, prosecutors should 
be removed from the case. Additionally, they requested the judge change the 
venue of the trial to a different county.

"The district attorney chose to participate and speak at the bench dedication," 
Supervising Attorney Angela Krueger said. "They chose politics over justice."

The program for the event stated, "Bench dedication to honor the well-being of 
children". Although District Attorney Tim Ward and now Judge Anthony Fultz 
spoke during the rally, neither mentioned Sophia's name, according to 
prosecutors.

Photos of Sophia were placed at the podium and the only name mentioned during 
the event was Sophia's, the defense said. Additionally, her father, Obadiah 
Acosta, spoke while members of Sophias family presented the bench to the city 
of Farmersville.

"Standing together with county and state officials, including a judge, is a 
violation of the Eighth Amendment," Krueger said. "There is an obligation to 
ensure fair administration of justice."

Krueger said Ward and Fultz crossed an ethical line by participating in the 
event. The recusal wasn't a punishment but was a remedy, said Krueger.

"Would you say it was ill advised for the DA to be present knowing they were 
going to talk about Sophia?" Kalashian asked Heather Gimle of the Attorney 
General's Office.

"I will not concede that," Gimle replied. "District Attorney's don't have to be 
indifferent toward victim crimes. It's the role of the judge and jury to be 
impartial."

Gimle went on to state reasons for a district attorney's rescual, which 
included being a victim or witness in a case being tried.

"This is a highly disfavorable remedy," Gimle said. "I would ask the court to 
deny the motion."

The prosecution seconded those comments.

"The bench didn't say, 'dedicated to the person who killed Sophia Acosta,'" 
Assistant District Attorney David Alavezos said. "The issue they were 
addressing was stopping the abuse of children."

Kalashian denied the Krueger's motion to remove the DA's office and a motion by 
the defense to prohibit the death penalty based on evidence that the harvesting 
of Sophia's organs affected autopsy results.

The defense requested a hearing for 2 additional motions, a change of venue and 
to discuss the death penalty. Kalashian granted the request and scheduled the 
hearing for July 13 in Department 5.

Sophia's death and the arrest of Cheary:

--Officers arrived on May 7, 2011 at an Exeter apartment complex in the 800 
block of West Visalia Road. There they found 3 people - Sophia's mother Erica 
Smith, Cheary and a neighbor.

--Sophia dies at on May 11 at Valley Children's Hospital from extensive 
internal bleeding in the brain and other injuries.

--An autopsy showed that the child died from blunt force trauma to the head. 
Reports also showed the child was sexually assaulted prior to her head being 
hit.

--Formal charges were filed on June 1, 2011 against Cheary, who faces 
1st-degree murder.

--A jury trial has been set for Aug. 22 in Department 5.

(source: Visalia Times-Delta)

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

Cop killer must die: High court rejects appeal


The California Supreme Court Thursday upheld a man's death sentence for 
murdering a Maywood police officer and the owner of a Van Nuys market during a 
5-month crime spree.

The state's highest court rejected the defense's contention that there were 
errors in Edgardo Sanchez's trial for the May 4, 1992, killing of Lee Chul Kim, 
the owner of Woodley Market in Van Nuys, and the May 29, 1992, killing of 
Maywood Police Officer John Hoglund, shot while responding to a silent alarm 
activated during a robbery at George's Market in Maywood.

Along with the murders, Sanchez was convicted of 1 count of attempted murder, 2 
counts each of attempted robbery and assault with a stun gun, 5 counts of 
assault with a deadly weapon and 26 counts of robbery stemming from 
takeover-style robberies starting on New Year's Eve of 1991 at a Sun Valley bar 
and stretching through mid-1992 at businesses in Paramount, South Gate and 
Maywood.

The state's highest court overturned Sanchez's conviction on a robbery count 
involving 1 of the 5 employees at a Van Nuys supermarket in April 1992, noting 
that the employee could not be located to testify at Sanchez's trial and 
finding that there was insufficient evidence to support his conviction on that 
charge.

Sanchez was sentenced to death in March 1995, telling a judge and relatives of 
his victims, "I deserve it."

"I ask that the victims forgive me," he said through an interpreter. "At that 
time, I did not know what I was doing. I had no respect for God and I had no 
knowledge of love."

Sanchez - who testified during the penalty phase of his trial that he had 
undergone a religious conversion in jail - told jurors that he shot Kim only 
after the grocer shot him first, Chin noted in the ruling.

Kim dropped the keys to the store's cash drawer and a money bag he had been 
carrying after returning from a bank and tried to close a freezer door, then 
pleaded with a man identified by 2 of the store's employees as Sanchez not to 
do anything to him, according to the ruling. Kim was shot eight times by 2 
different guns, and evidence indicated that he managed to get some shots off 
from his own .25-caliber semiautomatic handgun, according to the ruling.

25 days later, Hoglund's police vehicle was found parked in front of the market 
in Maywood with his bullet-riddled body partly inside the car with his legs 
outside and his firearm in its unsnapped holster after he responded to a silent 
alarm regarding a robbery in progress, according to the ruling. The 46-year-old 
father of 3, who was shot 3 times, was the 1st Maywood police officer to die in 
the line of duty.

On behalf of the panel, Associate Justice Ming W. Chin wrote that "eyewitness 
identifications were far from the only evidence connecting defendant to the 
crimes."

"He was caught on videotape robbing George's Market," Chin wrote.

The justices noted that Sanchez "literally ran out of his shoe" after robbing a 
restaurant in Paramount on May 17, 1992.

"The ballistics evidence, together with other evidence, strongly showed that 
defendant was the gunman who fired shots during 3 of the robberies," Chin 
wrote.

Co-defendants Benjamin Navarro and Jose Contreras, who were charged along with 
him in many of the crimes, also were convicted. They were sentenced to life in 
prison.

(source: mynewsla.com)






OREGON:

Foe of death penalty takes message to Oregon


The Rev. Jack Sullivan Jr. carried his message against the death penalty to 
like-minded abolitionists in Oregon.

"There is nothing personally redemptive or socially transformative about the 
death penalty," Sullivan said Wednesday (June 22) at the annual banquet of 
Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

"It calls for its adherents to be so consumed by their dark night of vengeance 
until they cannot embrace the bright dawn of hope that illuminates a path 
toward healing and reconciliation.

"This is why it is important for people who have lost loved ones to murder, and 
supported by allies and friends, to poignantly tell and retell our stories and 
speak our truths - even with tears in our eyes and shaking knees - about why we 
enthusiastically oppose the death penalty."

The banquet attracted more than 100, including former Gov. John Kitzhaber, to 
Madeleine Parish Hall in Portland.

Sullivan is executive director of Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation - 
and he is more than just its top official. His younger sister, Jennifer, was 
murdered in 1997.

Before his current position, Sullivan has been a religious leader, including 
executive minister of Northwest churches in the Christian Church Disciples of 
Christ denomination.

About 3,000 inmates in the United States - 33 men and 1 woman in Oregon, 
according to the Department of Corrections - are on death row.

"We agree that murder is immoral and wrong," Sullivan said. "Yet there are many 
among us, particularly in 31 states and the federal government, who argue that 
the best and most appropriate way for us to proclaim how horrible murder really 
is is to kill those convicted of murder."

The eventual aim of Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty is to 
persuade Oregon voters to repeal the state???s death penalty, which voters 
reinstated by a constitutional amendment in 1984. Since the state assumed 
responsibility for executions in 1903, voters have gone back and forth on the 
issue.

Although the tone of his talk was largely somber, Sullivan quoted from Marvin 
Gaye's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" to make a point about what political 
candidates say: "People say believe half of what you see, and none of what you 
hear."

In a reference to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential 
nominee, Sullivan said:

"Some political camps at this very moment are vowing to take back this country 
- and who knows who stole it? - and make America great again by leading us 
through always rocky and unstable terrain of racial profiling, ethnic 
scapegoating, and religious bigotry. To many, these are green, beautiful, even 
huge ideas.

"However, if you are an observer in possession of a green thumb, you know they 
are just weeds rooted in confined creativity and old, tired, moldy and leftover 
thinking."

Oregon opponents

Sullivan was introduced by Becky O'Neil McBrayer, who is active in the national 
and state organizations, and whose mother and stepfather died in 2006 at the 
hands of her 25-year-old brother, Joseph O'Neil. O'Neil, who McBrayer said was 
mentally ill, was sentenced in 2007 to life without parole as the result of a 
plea agreement and is housed at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.

McBrayer, now program director at Saint Andre Bessette Catholic Church in 
downtown Portland, told her full story at the 2015 meeting of Oregonians for 
Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

"Reconciliation means that you cannot undo murder," she said. "But you can 
decide how you want to live afterward."

A surprise guest at the banquet was former Gov. John Kitzhaber, who has made 
few public appearances since he resigned under pressure in February 2015 amid a 
still-unfinished ethics investigation.

Kitzhaber received two standing ovations for his 2011 moratorium on executions 
in Oregon - a moratorium that continues under Gov. Kate Brown - although he let 
2 executions proceed during his earlier tenure in 1996 and 1997. (Similar 
actions have been taken by governors in Washington and Colorado.)

"You have stopped the machinery of death in Oregon and we are grateful to you," 
said Emily Plec, a communications studies professor at Western Oregon 
University, a member of the advisory council to the state group, and the 
mistress of ceremonies. "Now it is time for us to finish the job."

Kitzhaber did not speak, and OADP Board Chairman Ron Steiner said he did not 
know in advance that the former governor would attend.

Sen. Chip Shields, D-Portland, a longtime foe of Oregon's death penalty and the 
2016 recipient of OADP's Sister Helen Prejean Award, said he asked Kitzhaber to 
attend.

"I have never had to confront this issue like the governor has," Shields said 
in reference to Kitzhaber's 2011 decision to grant a temporary reprieve to Gary 
Haugen, who was scheduled to die 2 weeks later if Kitzhaber had not acted. 
"When I called him, he did not hesitate. He wanted to come here and do what he 
could to further the cause (of abolition)."

(source: The Portland Tribune)