[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----IND., KAN., NEB., USA

[Rick Halperin]

March 25



INDIANA:

Goshen double homicide suspects plead not guilty; trial set for 
June----Prosecutors want to put Diego Ramos and Luis Rivas on trial together, 
but Ramos' attorney didn't comment on whether he would try to change that


The 2 suspects in the Goshen double homicide made their 1st appearance in court 
Thursday and pleaded not guilty to the murder charges filed against them.

Diego Ramos, 22, and Luis Rivas, 19, appeared in Elkhart County Circuit Court 
before Judge George Biddlecome, who said the duo could be looking at the death 
penalty, if convicted.

Ramos, who doesn't have an attorney, told Biddlecome that he was out on bond 
from being in U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement custody, confirming that 
in fact he was illegally in the United States. Ramos also consented to allowing 
the state to take a DNA sample.

Attorney David Francisco represented Rivas at the hearing. Rivas stayed mainly 
silent, only answering questions from the judge.

Prosecutors indicated that they would like to conduct the 2 suspects' trials 
together. After the hearing, Francisco did not say whether he would push for 
his client to receive a separate trial.

Ramos and Rivas each are charged with 2 counts of murder in the March 13 
slayings at a home in the 400 block of Ripple Rock Drive at the Brookside Manor 
mobile home community in Goshen. If convicted on both charges, Ramos and Rivas 
could face a sentence of up to 130 years in prison, according to Indiana 
sentencing guidelines.

However, Biddlecome said they could also potentially face life in prison 
without parole or even the death sentence, although prosecutors have not 
indicated whether they are pursuing either option.

In Indiana, the death penalty is available only for the crime of murder, and is 
available for murder only if the prosecution can prove the existence of at 
least 1 of 17 "aggravating circumstances." Those circumstances are set out in 
the state's death penalty statute, 1 of which is criminal gang activity.

According to Goshen police, investigators have reason to believe the shooting 
was motivated by gang violence. During interrogation, Rivas and Ramos were 
asked whether they were involved in the gang Los Vatos Locos.

Ramos and Rivas are accused of fatally shooting 27-year-old Jose Nava-Orozco 
and 43-year-old Marco Carmona-Gonzalez. The 2 suspects were arrested last week 
following a 4-day investigation by Goshen police in conjunction with the 
Elkhart Police Department and the Elkhart County Prosecutor's Office.

Police found spent shell casings at the mobile home park and were later able to 
find a match with bullets and spent casings at Ramos' home and car, according 
to court documents. In searching Rivas' phone, police found images of a gun 
that had been described by witnesses of a previous shooting.

Nava-Orozco was known by many in the community as hard-working and 
family-oriented. Carmona-Gonzalez, a native of the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, 
kept to himself but was a hard worker too, family members say.

Ramos is due in court April 9 for an attorney status update and Rivas is due to 
return to court on April 21.

The trial for both of the suspects is tentatively set for June 20.

(source: The Elkhart Truth)

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

Pruitt to be re-sentenced April 20


Convicted killer Tommy Pruitt will find out April 20 what his new prison 
sentence will be for killing Morgan County Sgt. Dan Starnes. His previous death 
sentence was overturned earlier this month.

His death sentence was overturned by the 7th Circuit Court on the grounds that 
Pruitt was not eligible for the death penalty because of his low IQ. The 
decision was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which refused to 
consider the case.

The new sentencing hearing will be at 9 a.m. April 20 in Dearborn County 
Circuit Court. The hearing is scheduled to last all day.

Starnes was shot June 14, 2001, during a traffic stop on Wilbur Road. He died 
about a month later.

Pruitt was also shot during the stop. He survived and was tried in Dearborn 
County by Judge James D. Humphrey. After a 2-week trial, Pruitt was found 
guilty of murder and several additional charges. Humphrey sentenced Pruitt to 
die for the murder and to serve 115 years in prison on the additional charges.

Pruitt's attorneys filed appeals of the death sentence. All appeals were 
rejected in state court. His sentence was rejected by a United States District 
Judge.

The case was appealed to the United States 7th Circuit Court who reversed the 
decision and determined, due to his IQ, that Pruitt was not eligible for the 
death penalty. Morgan County Prosecutor Steve Sonnega said the 2001 law sets 
the penalty for murder at 55 years in prison. He said the judge may add 10 
years for aggravating circumstances or subtract 10 years for mitigating 
circumstances.

Sonnega said that in addition, the judge will have to determine if the murder 
sentence will be served consecutively to the other charges Pruitt was convicted 
of or will be served concurrently to the other charges.

Sonnega said Pruitt's two court-appointed attorneys will probably be arguing 
for a 45-year sentence to be served consecutively with his 115-year sentence. 
Sonnega said Pruitt, without a sentence modification, would still have to serve 
at least 55 years before being considered for parole.

Pruitt was around 39 years old when he shot Starnes. He is now 53 years old.

Sonnega said Pruitt was already serving 115 years and if he received the 
maximum of 65 years to be served concurrently, he would have a total of 180 
years to serve.

"We are committed to a search for justice for Dan," he said.


KANSAS:

Judge agrees to delay Bennett capital murder trial


A Labette County judge on Wednesday delayed for nearly a year the jury trial 
for a man accused of capital murder.

David Cornell Bennett Jr., 24, is charged in Labette County District Court with 
capital murder or in the alternative 4 counts of 1st-degree murder. The 
punishment for capital murder is death by lethal injection or life in prison 
without parole, but the punishment requires an additional hearing after a 
finding of guilt. The prosecution filed notice that it is seeking the death 
penalty in the case. Bennett also faces a rape charge, 3 counts of criminal 
threat, all felonies, and four misdemeanors, 2 counts of phone harassment and 2 
counts of criminal deprivation of property.

Bennett is accused of strangling Cami Umbarger and her three children, Hollie 
Betts, 9, Jaxon Betts, 6, and Averie Betts, 4, in November 2013. Their bodies 
were discovered on Nov. 25, 2013, at Umbarger's home in Parsons after she 
didn't show up for work.

Bennett's defense is handled by the state's Death Penalty Defense Unit, a 
division of the Kansas Board of Indigents' Defense Services. His attorneys are 
Tim Frieden and Jeffrey Wicks. The Kansas Attorney General's Office is 
prosecuting the case.

Bennett's jury trial was to begin Sept. 7, but Wicks asked for a delay because 
of his and Frieden's workload and state budget constraints. Frieden is 
defending Kyle Flack, who was convicted Wednesday of a quadruple murder in 
Franklin County and faces the death penalty.

Judge Robert Fleming reviewed the history of Bennett's case Wednesday. He'd 
ordered Bennett to stand trial on the charges after a preliminary hearing in 
October 2014. Bennett was arraigned in May 2015 and has since waived his right 
to a speedy trial.

Wicks had asked for a delay in a written motion filed in the case. The AG's 
office indicated in a court filing it wouldn't object as long as Bennett 
clearly waived his right to a speedy trial.

Wicks said Wednesday that his team is defending 5 or 6 capital cases and other 
cases as well. The office is allowed 1 investigator, who must make progress on 
all cases. The caseload and having only 1 investigator puts time constraints on 
everyone, Wicks said.

To complicate matters, the state is in the midst of a budget crisis and Wicks' 
office has been told there are limited funds to go around until the end of the 
fiscal year, June 30. Wicks said he needs to hire expert witnesses and conduct 
other complicated and detailed investigation related to the separate penalty 
phase of the capital case. There won't be money available to do that until July 
1, which could restrict his ability to defend Bennett in the trial and penalty 
phase.

Wicks said Bennett, who remains jailed on a $5 million bond, has indicated he 
should do what he needs to do.

Judge Fleming asked Bennett if he supported the request for a delay in the 
case. Bennett said he didn't care if that's what needs to be done.

The judge also asked Bennett if he agreed again to waive his right to a speedy 
trial. Bennett said he would.

Assistant Attorney General Amy Hanley said she didn't oppose the delay in the 
jury trial to allow Bennett's defense team to prepare properly for the trial.

Fleming asked Hanley how the victims' family felt about the delay.

"They are frustrated," Hanley said. While they understand the reason for the 
delay, "they are certainly frustrated."

Fleming agreed to the delay, though he said if he is sitting on the bench he 
likely will not accept another delay in the case, which has been pending for 
more than 2 years.

The new jury trial will begin July 10, 2017, and is expected to last 4 weeks.

Fleming said he may not be the judge in the case. He has mentioned the 
possibility of retiring.

The next hearing for Bennett will be a motions hearing on Aug. 4. Other hearing 
dates before then were eliminated.

(source: The Chanute Tribune)






NEBRASKA:

Midlands Voices: Consistent ethic of life says end death penalty


The author, Ann Marie Bowen, who lives in Omaha, is chairwoman of Nebraskans 
United for Life.

As Holy Week is upon us, and I reflect on the passion of Jesus - the most 
famous victim of a state execution - I can't help but think about the important 
debate that is happening in our own state about the death penalty.

My strong beliefs about the sacred value of human life compel me to speak out 
to protect life whenever possible. For me, this means defending innocent life, 
as well as the lives of the guilty when capital punishment comes into play.

Though there are many important factors to consider when reflecting on capital 
punishment, the one that is most fundamental is the sacredness of human life.

The state has a right to take life only in circumstances where nonlethal means 
are insufficient to protect society. As the United States Conference of 
Catholic Bishops has stated, "No matter how heinous the crime, if society can 
protect itself without ending a human life, it should do so."

In Nebraska, we have life imprisonment with no possibility of parole, which 
enables society to be kept safe without resorting to the taking of human life. 
This is important not just for the condemned man or woman whose life is on the 
line, but for the message we send about how we value life. It reflects upon how 
we treat life at every stage.

In some instances, the death penalty affects innocent life. Every year the 
evidence mounts that there are many innocent people on death row. Since 1973, 
over 155 people have been released from death rows across the country with 
evidence of their innocence, and an untold number of innocents have already 
been executed.

Troubling mistakes in Nebraska's criminal justice system have come to light. 
The Beatrice 6 were Nebraskans convicted of a rape and murder, who collectively 
spent over 75 years in prison before DNA evidence emerged demonstrating their 
innocence.

When the innocent Beatrice 6 were threatened with the death penalty, this fear 
led some to confess to a crime they had nothing to do with. As our witness 
against abortion proclaims, nothing could be more cruel and inhumane than the 
needless death of an innocent.

In debates over life, questions inevitably come up asking whether those working 
tirelessly to defend life are motivated by a concern for all life. A growing 
movement of pro-life lawmakers and citizens in Nebraska has left no doubt where 
we stand: We are committed to ending all policies that unnecessarily threaten 
life, from abortion to the death penalty to euthanasia. Ultimately, no message 
is more powerful than this straightforward consistency.

In November, all Nebraskans are going to have a chance to vote on whether or 
not to bring back our state's death penalty.

This week, as Christians reflect upon the execution and resurrection of our 
Lord, I encourage you to think of that vote as an opportunity to vocally 
proclaim a consistent ethic of life in all we do. I implore Nebraskans to help 
promote a culture of life and reject bringing back our broken death penalty.

(source: omaha.com)






USA:

Holy Week and the death penalty: a challenge to pro-life Christians


Christians around the world will pause in silence before crosses on Friday as 
part of a Holy Week journey toward Easter. The Roman Empire's instrument of 
execution is central to the story of Jesus' suffering, death and resurrection. 
For many people then and today, how a tree of despair and death is transformed 
into a throne of hope and new life defies any reason. Only through the eyes of 
faith do we see differently, reclaim the meaning of the Cross.

Good Friday observances will take place this year not only as an iconic 
spiritual date on the Christian calendar, but against a backdrop of growing 
political and religious attention to the persistence of state executions.

During a historic speech to Congress last fall, Pope Francis called for the 
abolition of capital punishment, highlighting how "every life is sacred, every 
human person is endowed with an inalienable dignity."

The pope reiterated his consistent appeal for abolition during a recent address 
in Rome that included a specific ask that Catholic public officials "make a 
courageous and exemplary gesture that no sentence is executed" during what 
Francis has called a Year of Mercy.

Catholic governors such as Terry McAuliffe of Virginia, a Democrat who opposes 
the death penalty, and Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican who supports it and 
oversees one of the most flawed and prolific state execution machines in the 
world, stand at the nexus of contentious debates over crime and punishment, 
policy and morality.

The Virginia Senate has approved a bill that would bring back the electric 
chair if lethal injection drugs are not available. The House previously 
approved a version of the bill and will make minor changes before it goes to 
McAuliffe, who has not yet signaled his position.

Despite his opposition to the death penalty, McAuliffe does support bipartisan 
legislation that would cloak Virginia executions in what The Washington Post 
describes as "unprecedented secrecy." The bill is aimed to encourage 
manufacturers of lethal injection drugs to keep up supply in the state by 
shielding them from public scrutiny. At a time when some foreign companies have 
stopped selling these drugs because of a growing political backlash against the 
death penalty -- underscored by a series of high-profile botched executions --- 
the bill states that "all information relating to the execution process" would 
be exempt from the state's open-record laws.

"He is a Catholic, so there is a moral component to his position on the issue, 
but he's the governor, and he will enforce the law," a McAuliffe spokesman told 
the Post.

In Texas, Abbott, who last year was honored at the National Catholic Prayer 
Breakfast in Washington, seems unlikely to reflect on the pope's challenge. 
During his campaign for governor, Abbot was asked about whether his Catholic 
faith and pro-death penalty position raised any moral tensions. "Catholic 
doctrine is not against the death penalty, and so there is no conflict here," 
he breezily told the San Antonio Express-News editorial board. His answer 
conveniently distorts the essence of Catholic teaching.

Pope Francis is not going rogue when it comes to the Catholic position on 
executions, which he has described as "cruel, inhumane and degrading." More 
than 15 years ago, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued "A Good 
Friday Appeal to End the Death Penalty." The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 
while not excluding the use of capital punishment if it is the only available 
recourse to protect society, quotes Pope John Paul II's encyclical "The Gospel 
of Life" in clearly stating that those situations are "very rare, if 
practically non-existent."

During a 1999 visit to the United States, John Paul preached that the "dignity 
of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has 
done great evil."

The United States is one of the few nations in the world that still regularly 
executes people. While a majority of Americans approve of the death penalty, 
that support is lower than it has been in two generations, according to a 2015 
Pew Research Center survey.

The shift in public opinion is the result of a range of factors, including the 
common use of DNA evidence now that did not exist in previous decades.

Data from the Public Religion Research Institute shows that religious Americans 
support or oppose capital punishment at varying degrees, depending on their 
denomination.

White evangelicals and white mainline Protestants show the strongest support, 
while Hispanic and black Protestants are least likely to endorse.

Catholics are sharply divided by race. Reflecting the general public, white 
Catholics are almost evenly split, with 45 % expressing support for the death 
penalty, and 50 % in favor of life in prison. In contrast, only 29 % of 
Hispanic Catholics favor the death penalty, while 62 % prefer convicted 
murderers serve a life sentence.

The National Association of Evangelicals made headlines last year with a new 
resolution that for the 1st time in its history acknowledged that opposition to 
the death penalty is a legitimate posture rooted in Christian ethics.

A growing number of evangelicals are speaking out in opposition to the death 
penalty. Younger evangelicals of the millennial generation and Latino 
evangelicals are driving that trend. The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of 
the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, has noted that as 
evangelicals and Catholics worked together to oppose abortion, evangelicals 
were influenced by Catholic teaching on the death penalty.

"This is coming from very conservative evangelicals who are staunchly 
pro-life," Rodriguez told The Washington Post. "They don't see it as a liberal 
issue."

Christians who identity as "pro-life" because of their opposition to abortion 
should be at the forefront of ending the death penalty. As 400 Catholic and 
evangelical leaders wrote in a Holy Week statement last year: "All who 
reverence the sanctity of human life, created in the image of God, must never 
remain silent when firing squads, lethal injections, electric chairs and other 
instruments of death are viewed as morally unacceptable. ... In many ways, 
capital punishment is the rotten fruit of a culture that is sown with the seeds 
of poverty, inequality, racism and indifference to life."

The challenge ahead is clear.

More than 4 months after the Nebraska legislature voted to abolish the death 
penalty - a significant victory in a conservative state - a petition drive from 
supporters of capital punishment succeeded. A statewide referendum on the 
ballot in November will decide the future of the death penalty there.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that Florida's death penalty system is 
unconstitutional because the state, which has 400 inmates on death row, allows 
judges rather than juries to hand down a capital punishment verdict. Lawmakers 
responded with a new bill that would require at least 10 jurors to recommend a 
death sentence. The governor has signaled he will sign the bill in an effort to 
preserve the state's capital punishment system.

Meanwhile, an Alabama judge has also ruled that the state's death penalty is 
unconstitutional, based on the same Supreme Court ruling that struck down 
Florida's death penalty.

In the most recent vivid example of how morally grotesque it is for the state 
to be in the business of killing, a divided Ohio Supreme Court just last week 
found that a 2nd execution attempt on a death row prisoner would not constitute 
double jeopardy or cruel and unusual punishment. In 2009, Ohio first tried to 
put Romell Broom to death but the execution was called off after repeated 
failed attempts to insert the IV.

During Holy Week, as we reflect on the suffering and death of Jesus at the 
hands of the state, the death penalty remains a profound injustice. How will 
pro-life Christians respond?

(source: National Catholic Reporter)

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

High Court Wisely Avoids Death Penalty Case


With the Innocence Project exonerating death row inmates, the statistical 
certainty that the U.S. government has executed innocent people, and the 
brutality of the death penalty itself, it's difficult to support capital 
punishment.

It feels like a relic of another age, a barbaric practice that doesn't belong 
in a civilized society. Especially at a time when science has discredited 
longstanding methods to "prove" guilt, when research has shown witness 
testimony is virtually useless because of how malleable memories are.

Those arguments come up every time a death row inmate is set to be executed, 
every time defense attorneys launch last-ditch efforts to save their clients as 
the hours and minutes wind down.

They came up again ahead of March 22, when the state of Texas executed Adam 
Ward. Ward's attorneys failed in their bid to get the Texas Board of Pardons 
and Paroles to grant clemency, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review 
the case, upholding a lower court's ruling that Ward should face the death 
penalty.

I don't support the death penalty, but it's difficult to fault the Supreme 
Court for passing on this case. There are plenty of questionable convictions, 
cases in which innocent men and women face almost certain death despite serious 
flaws in evidence-gathering or questionable witness statements.

This is not one of those cases.

Reading the coverage of Ward's execution, you'd think the Texas man was a 
Shawshank-like figure, a man proclaiming his innocence from prison while a 
growing number of supporters rally to his cause. Despite the complete absence 
of evidence that Ward suffers from intellectual disabilities, Newsweek ran a 
story with the headline, "Texas Executes Mentally Ill Man After Multiple 
Appeals." A story in Gawker Media's Jezebel barely acknowledges the death of 
Ward's victim. Instead, the story paints a picture of injustice, casting Ward 
as a victim of police wrongdoing.

The facts don't support those claims.

Ward himself admits he killed 44-year-old Michael Walker, a single father of 2. 
No one disputes the fact that Walker was unarmed, carrying only a cell phone 
and a camera, according to the Associated Press. And Walker was just doing his 
job.

Ward and his father had been piling junk on their front lawn for some time in 
2005, and when neighbors complained, the city of Commerce -- more of a small 
town of about 9,000 people, some 60 miles northeast of Dallas -- gave Ward a 
deadline to clean his yard.

When the deadline came and went without the cooperation of Ward, the local 
government sent Walker, a code enforcement officer, to follow up. On July 13, 
2005, Walker was taking photographs of Ward's front lawn when Ward angrily 
confronted the code enforcement officer.

After arguing with Walker, Ward walked back into his house, retrieved a 
.45-caliber pistol, then returned and shot Walker. Nine times.

Walker, who realized Ward was out of control, had already asked for back-up. 
Police officers arrived less than a minute after Ward gunned him down, local 
station KLTV reported at the time.

Ward's attorneys argued that their client had an IQ below 70, which would mean 
he was intellectually disabled under the law. Prosecutors argued there was no 
evidence to support that claim, and said Ward had registered an IQ as high as 
123 on tests he was given.

As a series of jailhouse interviews with the AP and other news organizations 
demonstrated, Ward was aware of what he'd done, perfectly understood the 
consequences of his actions, and spoke intelligently about his fate.

The only argument he mustered in his defense was that he felt threatened, so he 
shot Walker.

"Only time any shots were fired on my behalf was when I was matching force with 
force," Ward told the AP in February. "I wish it never happened, but it did, 
and I have to live with what it is."

Ward had a long time to think about what he was doing when he walked back 
inside his home to retrieve his pistol. Ward's father told KLTV he tried to 
stop his son, but Ward wouldn't listen.

Ward never apologized for killing Walker, and right up until his last moments, 
he lamented his own fate, but didn't acknowledge the life he snuffed out in 
2005.

There are plenty of other cases involving mentally ill inmates on death row. 
Organizations like Human Rights Watch, the ACLU, and Amnesty International have 
issued dozens of reports on the unfair practice of executing the intellectually 
disabled.

If the Supreme Court is going to hear any case involving the mentally ill and 
the death penalty, the justices can do a lot better than reviewing the case of 
a man who clearly had control of his own faculties.

(source: Nik Bonopartis, opposingviews.com)

************************** film reviews

'Death by Hanging' and 'I Want to Live!' on DVD


The Japanese director Nagisa Oshima (1932-2013) was not known for action films, 
but he was, as his colleague Shohei Imamura called him, a "samurai" - a 
militant modernist with a taste for razor-sharp social critiques.

Mr. Oshima began his career with several incendiary movies about juvenile 
crime, like "Cruel Story of Youth" and "The Sun's Burial" (both 1960), and 
later created an international furor with his X-rated love story "In the Realm 
of the Senses" (1976). But he started a national debate in 1968 with "Death by 
Hanging," which was inspired by a 1958 case in which a Japanese schoolgirl was 
raped and murdered by a teenage Korean. Through that lens, Mr. Oshima fashioned 
a slapstick philosophical treatise that attacked Japanese hypocrisy in general 
- capital punishment in particular.

"Death by Hanging," which has been reissued on Blu-ray by Criterion, starts by 
detailing the procedure for execution; it switches to absurd comedy when the 
condemned man, identified as R, survives his hanging. (As one of the film's 
Brechtian intertitles puts it, his "body refuses to be executed.")

The unsuccessful execution deprives the prisoner of his memory, thus placing 
the authorities in an awkward position: Their prisoner has become 
inconveniently "innocent." The law mandates that he understand why he is to 
die, so the need to educate him provides "Death by Hanging" the opportunity to 
interrogate the state's motives in prosecuting R's crime.

The Japanese critic Tadao Sato compared Mr. Oshima's strategy to 1960s social 
unrest. The movie "resembled the dialectical cross-examination by students of 
their professors on responsibility." To jog R's memory, various authority 
figures - a cynical doctor, an opportunistic prison warden, a hysterical 
Catholic priest, a crazy education officer and several clownish prison guards - 
prod him to re-enact his crime.

The death chamber becomes a stage on which R is meant to perform before an 
impassive magistrate, flanked by imperial soldiers and the Japanese flag. Since 
R is Korean, the patriotic trappings are additionally significant: He is a 
former colonial subject and for Japanese extremists, a member of another race. 
But R no longer remembers that he is Korean, nor does he even understand what 
"Korean" means. In the movie's most sardonic sequence, the prison authorities 
dramatize R's childhood in an urban slum, yelling suggestions ("Act more Korean 
- more over the top!") as he is taken to the scene of the crime.

After the education officer gets so carried away that he commits R's crime for 
him, the film takes another leap into abstraction. The murdered schoolgirl 
turns into R's nonexistent sister, a militant leftist who, after she explains 
that his crime is a product of Japanese imperialism, herself becomes an 
accomplice and candidate for execution.

Ultimately devolving into a sodden drinking party, "Death by Hanging" is by no 
means perfect. The movie's 1st 1/2 has a conceptual lucidity that is later 
clouded over with ambivalence. Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine a 
comparable American movie - Mr. Oshima's essay on race and crime would not only 
be provocative but also topical.

The 1958 Walter Wanger production "I Want to Live!" (remastered on DVD by Kino 
Lorber) is probably the most celebrated anti-death penalty movie Hollywood ever 
produced; as with "Death by Hanging," it was inspired by an actual crime - a 
1953 armed robbery resulting in the killing of a 62-year-old Burbank widow - 
that became a tabloid sensation. But unlike Mr. Oshima's film, "I Want to 
Live!" is premised, not altogether impartially, on the innocence of its 
protagonist.

Rather than didactic farce, the mode is high-powered melodrama - the samurai 
warrior here is Susan Hayward, who became one of Hollywood's top female stars 
by embodying sassy determination in the face of extreme hardship. Announcing 
itself as a "factual story," "I Want to Live!" - directed by Robert Wise - 
plunges into a wildly expressionistic vision of a San Francisco jazz club. 
Gerry Mulligan wails on sax, hipsters smoke reefer in the alley, and party 
girls dance solo mambos to a mad bongo beat. The scene shifts to a sleazy hotel 
room, where Barbara Graham (Ms. Hayward) pops suddenly into the frame, rising 
from the bed where she spent the night in the company of a man who is 
definitely not her husband.

After a half-hour of raucous freedom and petty crime, Barbara is busted and 
seemingly framed for a murder committed by her lowlife pals. Packed off to 
prison, betrayed by a fellow inmate, tortured by the press and put on trial 
(with a showstopping turn on the stand), she is railroaded toward the gas 
chamber.

The movie spends the better part of an hour on death row (where, her taste for 
jazz undiminished, Barbara listens to Mr. Mulligan in her cell). Nothing if not 
effective in its existential angst, "I Want to Live!" was endorsed in France by 
Albert Camus. Barbara is battered by a series of last-minute stays of execution 
but is valiantly glamorous to the end, going to the gas chamber in a cocktail 
dress and high heels. ("Are my seams straight?" she asks a sympathetic prison 
guard.)

"I Want to Live!" ends where "Death by Hanging" begins, with an analysis of the 
execution process. It also won Ms. Hayward an Academy Award, after 4 previous 
nominations. After the actress accepted her prize, she was, according to Mason 
Wiley and Damien Bona's book "Inside Oscar," called back out onstage to make a 
curtain call - a tribute, perhaps, to her character's will to live.

(source: New York Times)