[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

May 4



CALIFORNIA:

THE EXECUTIONER'S TALE: Former San Quentin warden reveals how he killed 
prisoners in the jail's 'coughing box' without any training . . . or remorse 
----Dan Vasquez performed 2 executions while warden at San Quentin


Without any experience or medical training, Dan Vasquez was employed by the 
government to kill other human beings.

As warden of San Quentin, one of the most notorious prisons in the world, put 
inmates to death in the gas chamber - known by his staff and those on death row 
as the 'coughing box'.

The day before an execution he would bring in a psychologist to help his team 
prepare to watch a condemned criminal die, in a bid to avoid post-traumatic 
stress.

Then, just hours later, he would ask the prisoner for his last words as he was 
strapped into a chair inside a tiny metal green room.

Then he would start the chemical reaction that has been deemed the most 
dangerous and expensive way to kill an inmate.

Vasquez insists he was never fazed by putting an inmate to death, as it was his 
job.

In his 1st interview since stepping down as California's state executioner, 
Vasquez has told Daily Mail Online his role as California's state executioner 
has never haunted him.

For more than 30 years he has been involved in the death penalty, either 
carrying it out or testifying as consultant at capital murder trials.

The grandfather-of-2 also believes in an 'eye-for-an-eye' when it comes to the 
death penalty - that condemned inmates should be killed in the same manner they 
killed their victims.

A controversial policy like that, he believes, would send a strong message to 
would-be criminals and act as a deterrent,

'In my opinion, if you want to stop human beings killing other human beings, 
when you execute the 1st person in the manner that they killed their victim.

'I think it would get rid of the need for the death penalty.

'For example, if I rape a woman and strangle her, then they would rape and 
strangle me.'

'If that happened, maybe other people would get the message of murder under 
special circumstances.

'I shoot you to death, then maybe I should be executed by being shot.

'It should be an eye-for-an-eye. If it's done that way, I guarantee you that 
you are going to go a long way to stopping the criminal offense of killing 
another person.

'If I stab you to death and cut you into pieces, maybe I should be stabbed and 
cut into pieces.'

Vasquez is a father-of-2 who has been married for 51 years to wife Juanita.

As warden at San Quentin, Vasquez was the state executioner between 1983 and 
1993.

For the first 9 years, he didn't put any inmates to death, as the 1976 US 
Supreme Court decision of Gregg v. Georgia had put a moratorium on the death 
penalty.

But when it was lifted, he carried out the 1st execution in San Quentin for 
almost 25 years.

'I knew it was part of the job.

'I prepared for it by preparing the procedure and putting it all together.

'I made sure the gas chamber was working, made sure maintenance was done on it. 
I prepared in that manner.

'I also practiced in running the lethal gas. We had a chemical engineer from 
Indiana who would come in and measure the toxicity of the lethal gas inside the 
chamber.'

The 1st person he put to death was Robert Alton Harris, who killed 2 teenage 
boys in San Diego in 1978. He was originally scheduled at 12.01am on April 21, 
1992, but stays meant his death was delayed for 6 hours

'I didn't receive any training, but I prepared myself. I didn't need the 
department to help me with anything.'

He killed 2 inmates by lethal gas - Robert Alton Harris and David Edwin Mason.

The gas chamber was never as popular as the electric chair in the United States 
but was used widely in Arizona, Wyoming, Missouri, Mississippi and California.

Still, it was considered the most expensive and most dangerous way to kill an 
inmate.

The prisoner, strapped into a metal chair inside a tiny chamber, waits as 
potassium cyanide pellets are dropped into a bath of sulfuric acid below. The 
chemical reaction would generate fumes of lethal hydrogen cyanide.

As a result, the inmate would then suffer terribly before dying of hypoxia, a 
form of oxygen starvation

Harris, who killed 2 teenage boys in San Diego in 1978, was originally 
scheduled at 12.01am on April 21, 1992.

He finished his last meal - a 21-piece bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, 2 
large Domino's pizzas, a bag of jelly beans, a 6-pack of Pepsi, and a pack of 
Camel cigarettes - before he was led into the death chamber.

But a series of 4 stays of execution issued by 9th circuit appeal court delayed 
the execution until just after 6am.

At one point he was strapped into his seat in the gas chamber when the phone 
rang. According to witnesses, he urged the prison guards to get over and done 
with, but they couldn't.

Moments later, the guards opened the doors and Alton Harris became the 1st 
prisoner to leave the gas chamber at San Quentin alive - even if it was for 
just a short time.

Aside from the delays execution was however remembered for his bizarre choice 
of last words:

He said: 'You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everybody dances with the 
grim reaper,'[12] a misquotation of a line from the 1991 film Bill & Ted's 
Bogus Journey.

Vasquez said he was frustrated by the constant delays, but when it came to it, 
the prisoner was killed without an issue.

David Edwin Mason, who murdered four elderly people in 1980 and his cellmate in 
1982, would be the last person in California to be put to death by lethal gas.

His execution was far smoother, as he kept his vow not to go through any final 
appeals.

Instead of having a traditional last meal, he instead opted to dine with his 
family on sandwiches provided by the prison.

When Mason was in the chamber, Vasquez asked if he wanted to proceed, knowing 
that his attorney could stop the execution at any time.

But Mason refused.

He died on August 24, 1993, 12 months before a federal judge said the execution 
method constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

It would be the last execution Vasquez carried out, but a year later he was 
invited to watch the lethal injection procedure in Texas.

As a witness, he returned and offered his advice to the then California 
Attorney General Dan Lungren, on the new method that has been used to kill 
inmates ever since.

Despite his involvement in the controversial system, Vasquez insists capital 
punishment hasn't had a damaging impact on his life.

'They don't haunt me. I didn't put the inmates on the row, they put themselves 
on their with their actions.

'I have never received any complaints from my execution team nor from the 
department of corrections in California.

'I have never received any kind of disability initiation for participating in 
the executions.

'It hasn't affected my life at all.'

Capital punishment in the United States is still frequently part of political 
debates. Recently, Virginia's legislature said they were bringing back the 
electric chair as a back-up way to kill inmates.

Vasquez says it will never happen because of the courts, but insists he is 
still for capital punishment.

'I'm for the executions. I would be a hypocrite if I wasn't'.

But he does believe that a sentence of life without parole is more punishment 
than an execution.

'In California there hasn't been an execution in 10 years. It is held up in the 
courts right now.

'The policy of the state of California is the death penalty.

'The citizens of the state of California have been asked on 3 different 
occasions on a ballot if they wanted to do away with capital punishment in 
California.

'3 times they have voted for the death penalty. I don't have any problems with 
the death penalty. But I don't have any problems with life without the 
possibility of parole either.'

There hasn't been an execution in California since 2006, when Clarence Ray 
Allen was put to death by lethal injection.

Legal cases and problems with the lethal injection procedure led to a 
moratorium being signed in California. As capital punishment was brought to a 
halt, the death row population swelled.

A quarter of condemned inmates in the United States currently sit on death row 
in California.

Now, it has been lifted, and some of the 764 rapists, murderers and kidnappers 
on death row are facing their sentence.

7 have been there since the 1970s.

It could be at least a year until California puts another inmate to death, but 
Vasquez thinks the questions surrounding the death penalty will prevail, and 
will never be answered.

'Attorneys are always raising issues. It's like the question a philosopher once 
posed: 'How many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

'It is a question that can never be answered, but is a question that will 
always exist.

'Does it hurt when they execute you? How many angels dance on the head of a 
pin?'

Now, Vasquez is a consultant, and still has a role in the whole execution 
process.

He said: 'When your watch is over at San Quentin then you don't do anymore 
executions.

'Now the closest I get to any issue of executions is when I testify in the 
penalty phase of capital trial in California.

'What that requires is for me to educate the jury that is going to make the 
decision on an inmate who has been charged with a capital crime.

'Whether to sentence them to death or sentence them to life without the 
possibility of parole.'

He explains to the jury what prisons in the California state system are like, 
and how life without parole will impact a prisoner.

'The defense usually hire me,' he added. 'It does not involve pros or cons. It 
only involves educating the jury on all the policies involved in incarcerating 
a prisoner'.

Vasquez also does a variety of consulting on prisons. He has testified on death 
in custody, either by suicide or at the hands of the prison guards.

He has also been involved in informing prisons on how to avoid escapes.

In January, 4 inmates managed to flee the Orange County Central Jail through 
the roof.

They went on the run for almost a week before they were spotted and captured.

Vasquez slammed the prison, claiming their regime, the decision to lock the 
criminals together and the fact they left so long between headcounts, was the 
cause of their escape.

(source: Daily Mail)






USA:

Batson and The Legacy of Lynchings


"Southern trees bear a strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood at the 
root..."

Swaying in the wind on an October day in 1934, Claude Neal's body hung from a 
tree on display in front of the Jackson County courthouse. Days prior, he was 
taken from his jail cell in Marianna, Florida by an angry white mob. Having 
been accused of raping and killing a white woman, Lola Cannidy, Claude Neal was 
tortured and hung by his neck until he was strangled to death. People gathered 
to watch the lynching, in the name of "justice" for Lola.

Claude Neal's tragic death, which is detailed in James McGovern's Anatomy of a 
Lynching, is significant to me because he was my grandfather's cousin and 
because I am a capital defense attorney. Because of my work, I am often 
confronted by the many historical connections between the death penalty and 
lynchings. One of the most clear and lasting legacies of the torrid, bloody 
lynchings that occurred throughout the South in the late 1800s and early 1900s 
is the fact that today, hundreds of individuals - who are disproportionately 
Black - face the prospect of a death sentence without a fair trial. While Black 
men are no longer lynched before all-white crowds gathered on the courthouse 
lawn, Black men are all-too-often condemned to death by all-white juries that 
are produced by prosecutors' deliberate exclusion of people of color, 
particularly Black people, from jury service.

This past Saturday marked the 30th anniversary of the United State Supreme 
Court's decision in Batson v. Kentucky, which prohibits the intentional 
exclusion of prospective jurors from service on an individual case based on 
race. The importance of this landmark decision cannot be overstated because, as 
the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once commented, "Illegal and 
unconstitutional jury selection procedures cast doubt on the integrity of the 
whole judicial process. They create the appearance of bias in the decision of 
individual cases, and they increase the risk of actual bias as well." Peters v. 
Kiff, 407 U.S. 493, 502 (1972). And contemporary studies bear out the truth of 
Justice Marshall's analysis: compared to diverse juries, all-white juries spend 
less time deliberating, make more errors, rely on implicit biases and consider 
fewer alternative perspectives. Interestingly, studies have shown the effects 
of diversity were not wholly attributable to the specific performance of Black 
participants. In fact, the mere presence of individuals from other racial or 
ethnic groups improves the likelihood of a more well-rounded discussion among 
jurors.

Despite the weighty legal and practical reasons not to have all-white juries, 
prosecutors throughout the country continue to pursue them. The Glenn Ford case 
in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, offers a powerful example of the tragic 
consequences of this misguided practice. Mr. Ford, a Black man, was charged 
with the murder of a white man in a community with a long and deep history of 
racial discrimination and violence. Indeed, the Confederate flag flew outside 
the courthouse at the time of his trial. Mr. Ford was sentenced to death by an 
all-white jury even though nearly 40 % of the community was Black. Nearly 30 
years after he was condemned to die, Mr. Ford was found to be innocent and 
exonerated. Tragically, he died of lung cancer after having only one year of 
freedom after his release. Considering the well-documented inadequacies of 
homogenous juries, there is a very real chance that Mr. Ford's fate would have 
been drastically different, had he been tried by a fairly selected, and 
appropriately diverse jury.

Unfortunately, the selection of an all-white jury in Mr. Ford's case was hardly 
anomalous. Thirty years after Batson, the practice is rampant. Thus, every day 
across this nation, Black jurors are struck from juries based solely on the 
color of their skin. For example, 1 study that examined 300 Caddo Parish trials 
that were conducted between 2003 and 2012 and found that the Caddo Parish 
District Attorney's office struck Black prospective jurors at 3 times the rate 
of non-Blacks in felony jury trials. Similarly, a Michigan State Law School 
study of trials for defendants on death row in North Carolina as of July 1, 
2010, found that in those 173 capital cases, prosecutors excluded 52.8% of 
potential Black jurors, as compared to 25.7% of non-Black prospective jurors. 
The same study found that when the defendant was Black, prosecutors excluded 
more Black prospective jurors (60%), and accepted more non-Black jurors (they 
excluded only 23.1%). A prosecutors' training manual in Dallas, Texas, provided 
detailed instructions on the systematic exclusion of Blacks from jury service 
in criminal cases: "Do not take Jews, Negroes, Dagos, Mexicans or a member of 
any minority race on a jury, no matter how rich or how well educated....[T]hey 
will not do on juries." And, an Equal Justice Initiative report found that 
between 2005 and 2009, Houston County, Alabama, state prosecutors used 
peremptory strikes to remove 80% of potential Black jurors, resulting in 1/2 of 
the death penalty juries being all white and the remainder with only one Black 
juror.

Prosecutors not only frequently exclude Black jurors, but when faced with 
Batson challenges, they also make up spurious reasons to cover up their 
unlawful discrimination. Any day now, the United States Supreme Court will rule 
on Foster v. Humphrey, a case of discrimination in jury selection that shows 
the lengths to which prosecutors will go to cover up their discrimination. 
During Mr. Foster trial, Georgia prosecutors excluded all of the prospective 
Black jurors. When challenged, the prosecutors offered "race-neutral" reasons 
for the jurors' exclusions. Years later, however, it became clear that the 
Black jurors had been specifically targeted because of their race. Indeed, the 
trial prosecutors highlighted each Black prospective juror's name in green on 
four different copies of the jury list.

Prosecutors often offer pre-textual "race-neutral" justifications for their 
exclusion of prospective jurors of color. Indeed, some prosecutors are 
explicitly taught to do so. Philadelphia prosecutors were caught training young 
attorneys to question potential Black jurors in such a way that they would 
later be able to provide race-neutral reasons for their peremptory strikes. In 
1995, the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys distributed a 
one-page handout titled "Batson Justifications: Articulating Juror Negatives" 
that provided a list of 10 types of "justifications" a prosecutor might offer 
in response to a Batson challenge, including age, attitude, body language, and 
juror response.

These tactics demonstrate the significant challenges faced by courts seeking to 
root out racial discrimination in jury selection in criminal cases. Foster 
provides the Supreme Court with an opportunity to strengthen the reach of 
Batson through greater scrutiny of "race-neutral" justifications. But 
prosecutors must also be held accountable whenever they exclude jurors on the 
basis of race by suffering serious penalties for engaging in such 
unconstitutional conduct. In order to ensure the legitimacy of the judicial 
process, prosecutors should not evade their responsibility to selection 
impartial and inclusive juries - especially in cases where a defendant's life 
is literally on the line. Otherwise, the phenomenon of all-white juries 
imposing death sentences on Black defendants will continue, harkening back to 
the sordid lynchings of our past.

(source: Angel S. Harris Assistant Counsel at The NAACP Legal Defense and 
Educational Fund, Inc. ---- Huffington Post)