[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----LA., OHIO, ARK., ARIZ., CALIF., ORE, USA, US MIL.

[Rick Halperin]

May 6




LOUISIANA:

Public defenders' claims sound like Chicken Little


The Louisiana Public Defender Board and its supporters have done an excellent 
job of using Louisiana's budget woes to make a case for more money. They say 
the right of indigent criminal defendants to receive free legal counsel will 
disappear unless they are provided massive increases in their budget.

These "Chicken Little" claims have been accepted as truth by most media. As an 
example of just how pervasive the idea of a funding crisis is, Louisiana Public 
Broadcasting recently staged a forum titled "Justice on Hold: Louisiana's 
Public Defender Shortage." The program began with the premise that insufficient 
funding was leading many local public defender offices to stop taking cases. 
>From that starting point, participants debated what should be done.

I suggest those concerned about public defender funding step back to a 
different starting point and ask whether a funding crisis actually does exists, 
and, if it does, how it occurred.

Let me be clear that all district attorneys want efficient, competent, properly 
funded public defender offices. We work in an adversarial system in which every 
criminal defendant is constitutionally guaranteed the right to have qualified 
legal counsel. We would not have it any other way.

The issue for us is how a public defender system that is better funded today 
than at any previous time in history can claim to be so underfunded that it has 
virtually shut down the criminal courts in some judicial districts.

After all, state funding for indigent defense has increased 300 % in the past 
decade.

We believe the problem lies not with local public defender offices, many of 
which do an outstanding job of representing their clients, but in the Louisiana 
Public Defender Board, which has become a kind of middleman receiving and 
parceling out the state's $33 million annual allocation. Before the board came 
into existence in 2007, public defender offices may have been underfunded, but 
they were not in crisis.

Rather than properly fund the local offices, the board spends millions of 
dollars on its staff, who do not try cases, and doles out about $10 million a 
year to nonprofit legal organizations that represent death penalty defendants, 
which make up less than 1 % of criminal defendants. Only about half the 
board???s state allocation filters down to the local offices, where all but the 
few capital indigent defendants are actually represented by local public 
defenders. The chief public defender recently admitted that if the board would 
direct 60 % of the state money to the locals, all of the local cases could 
proceed. Why haven't they done so?

The bottom line for the Louisiana District Attorneys Association is that the 
Public Defender Board appears to be the source of the problem it seeks to 
solve. The board is not accountable to anyone - unlike district attorneys, who 
are directly accountable to the voters - and in the past decade, it has used 
its authority to weaken the autonomy and financial condition of local public 
defender offices.

Before considering giving the board more money, the Legislature should conduct 
a thorough review of its spending priorities and impose accountability on the 
board. The board exists to serve public defenders across Louisiana, so those 
local offices should have a voice in its governance to ensure that allocated 
money is spent for its intended purpose, not in pursuit of a narrow political 
agenda.

If an objective review of the Public Defender Board finds that more money 
should be appropriated for public defense, district attorneys will support it. 
Until then, the board should put local defenders back to work representing real 
indigent defendants and allowing justice to be done. (source: Guest Column; E. 
Pete Adams is executive director of the Louisiana District Attorneys 
Association----The Advocate)

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

Angola inmates become Loyola grads


William Kirkpatrick smiles, blue eyes glimmering over his faded cheekbone 
tattoo. It's a sunny, breezy day at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, 
Louisiana, and this former death row inmate has just graduated from the Loyola 
Institute for Ministry.

Kirkpatrick was 1 of 6 inmates to graduate from the LIM extension program on 
April 29 with a certification in pastoral studies.

The graduates, along with their facilitator, Rick Bebin, also won the Kairos 
Award, given to 1 exceptional LIM class each year.

About a dozen men began studying in the Loyola program, but only 6 - John 
Balfa, Milburn Bates, William Kirkpatrick, Felton Ledet, Herman Tureaud and 
Lester Williams - completed the 10-week class.

"I would never have even imagined myself in ministry," Kirkpatrick said after 
the graduation ceremony.

Kirkpatrick dropped out of school in junior high, but since coming to Angola 
and having his death penalty sentence reduced, he has focused on education and 
caring for other inmates.

He has pursued multiple religious education programs and teaches in the prison.

Kirkpatrick hopes to use his new certification to return to death row as a peer 
minister.

Reflecting on the extension program's effect, Kirkpatrick said, "LIMEX has 
greatly enhanced our ability to minister and our ability to live out our faith 
in every situation, and in an environment that can be trying to say the least."

Angola is the largest maximum-security prison in the United States and houses 
6,000 inmates, the state's death row for men, and the execution chamber for men 
and women.

Because the men earn less than one dollar per hour for their labor on "The 
Farm," 1 of Angola's nicknames, Loyola raised funds to educate the inmates for 
free, using donations from the Diocese of Baton Rouge and a grant from Our 
Sunday Visitor. Loyola hopes to host another program like this, provided the 
funds are available, said Tom Ryan, director of the institute for ministry.

Each student in the program chose a focus area, Ryan said. Graduate Herman 
Tureaud, who has been in Angola since he was 15 years old, focused on youth 
ministry.

Herman works on the popular confirmation retreats Angola hosts for high school 
students from the Diocese of Baton Rouge. His favorite part of the Loyola 
Institute for Ministry class was the heated discussions over how to interpret 
different readings. He said he liked to see the way the students' cultures 
influenced their interpretations.

He recalled that controversial topics like women priests and how to approach 
abortion intensified the class' conversation, but, he said, "We're a 
brotherhood, so it never got bad."

Instead, Tureaud reflected, "It was a beautiful experience of getting to know 
one another."

Louisiana lawmakers are now debating how to apply a January Supreme Court 
decision that might open the possibility of parole to juvenile offenders who, 
like Tureaud, are serving life sentences without parole.

Tureaud is hopeful that he might be released from prison and said that he would 
like to minister to teens who are in the situation he was before his arrest.

When asked if he would return to minister in his former neighborhood in 
Algiers, Tureaud said, "It really doesn't matter as long as I'm doing God's 
work in the capacity I'm able to do it in. I don't want it to be about me."

(source: The Loyola Maroon)






OHIO:

East Cleveland serial killer Michael Madison convicted on 13 counts: 'He will 
never do this again'


After the verdict was read convicting Michael Madison in the serial murders of 
three East Cleveland women, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty 
walked to the back of the courtroom and hugged the victims' family members.

"He will never do this again," McGinty told Belinda Minor, mother of Shirellda 
Terry, who would have turned 21 years old this year.

Terry was 1 of 3 women Madison is now convicted of killing in a series of 
attacks that occurred between October 2012 and July 2013. Shetisha Sheeley and 
Angela Deskins were his other victims.

Family members thanked McGinty on what marks his 1st successful prosecution in 
a death penalty case.

The jury of 12 spent less than 1 day deliberating before returning a guilty 
verdict on all 13 counts including aggravated felony murder, kidnapping and 
rape.

The verdict ensures that Madison will never walk the Earth as a free man. 
Members of the jury will return to court Thursday for the sentencing phase of 
the trial which will determine whether they will recommend the death penalty.

Madison told the court he plans to appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Nancy McDonnell will decide whether to 
sentence Madison to death or allow him to spend the rest of his life in prison.

The verdict marked 31 days since the trial began. Prosecutors, led by McGinty, 
called 50 witnesses to testify in the case and presented over a thousand 
exhibits to jurors.

Madison's defense attorneys, led by David Grant, did not dispute that Madison 
killed the 3 women. Instead, his attorneys hoped to convince jurors that 
Madison did not commit the murders with the degree of prior thought and 
calculation that would qualify him for the death penalty.

Prosecutors spent over 2 hours in closing arguments reexamining dozens of 
photographs showing how Madison mutilated the women's bodies before stuffing 
them in garbage bags. Their evidence including Madison talking about the 
killings and how he met the women.

Attorneys made their closing arguments before a jury Wednesday in the trial of 
accused East Cleveland serial killer Michael Madison.

In the sentencing phase, Grant will present testimony from psychological 
experts and people who knew Madison in an attempt dissuade the jury from 
recommending a death sentence.

Madison will return to court Friday morning to continue a bench trial on 
separate charges, including having weapons under disability and a violent 
sexual offender specification that was attached to the murder and aggravated 
murder charges.


ARKANSAS:

Former death-row inmate from 'West Memphis 3' remembers anniversary of his 
scheduled execution


Damian Echols, who was sentenced to death as part of the 'West Memphis 3' 
remembered the anniversary of his scheduled execution date on Thursday. A 
former death-row inmate released after decades in prison commemorated Thursday 
as the anniversary of when he was originally scheduled to be executed.

"If Arkansas had their way, I'd have been dead 22 years today," Damien Echols, 
the supposed ringleader of the West Memphis 3, said on Twitter.

Others wished the former inmate, who was released in 2011, a Happy Survivors 
Day after going through 18 years in prison for a crime many believe he didn't 
commit.

Echols's original execution date came 364 days after the bodies of 3 
8-year-olds were discovered in West Memphis, the result of what prosecutors 
said was a Satanic killing ritual.

Jessie Misskelley Jr., Jason Baldwin and Echols, a group of teenagers who 
didn't fit in with the rest of the Southern Christian town.

"I was the town weirdo. I dressed in all black, had long hair, and listened to 
heavy metal music," he wrote for Vice last year.

Though evidence was thin, they were ultimately convicted because of a 
confession from Misskelley, who had mental disabilities, that the defense said 
was coerced.

Misskelley and Baldwin received life sentences while Echols, as the supposed 
ringleader, was sentenced to the death penalty.

He faced time in solitary confinement and the looming threat of execution dates 
as interest in his case waned and waxed, at one point surging due to the 
documentary series "Paradise Lost."

Echols was in prison for more than 18 years, including stretches in solitary 
confinement.

He says that part of the way he survived prison was through meditation and 
"magick.

Echols still has an interested in the occult, and says that one of the ways he 
survived solitary confinement in prison was meditation.

It was ultimately DNA evidence - or the lack of any pointing to the 3 
defendants - that helped free them after material from the crime scene was 
tested in 2007. Echols, Misskelley and Baldwin were not fully exonerated, but 
were resentenced to time served in 2011 after entering Alford pleas, which 
maintain innocence but admit that the prosecution has enough evidence for 
conviction.

Since his release from prison Echols has continued to speak and write about his 
experiences along with his wife Terri, who he married while in jail in 1999.

He has spoken about the benefits of "magick" meditation and also has begun a 
career as an artist while living in Harlem, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Still an occult enthusiast, he exhibited a show called "Salem" in Santa Monica 
last month.

(source: New York Daily News)






ARIZONA:

Cop killer to learn whether he'll get death penalty


Danny Martinez, convicted of shooting and killing a Phoenix police officer, has 
already been sentenced to life in prison, and Friday he finds out whether he 
will get the death penalty.

In June of 2015, Martinez was convicted of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder for 
shooting and killing Officer Travis Murphy.

In November, jurors sentenced Martinez to life in prison on 1 murder charge, 
but were not unanimous in their decision on the 2nd charge for premeditated 
murder.

Murphy was shot and killed in 2010. He was responding to a suspicious-person 
call near 19th Avenue and Indian School Road.

Murphy and his partner were the first to respond to the 1:30 a.m. call.

Neighbors said someone hit a parked car and was trying to hide the car in a 
vacant carport. The officers split up in search of a suspect.

Moments later, Murphy was hit by multiple gunshots from an assault rifle. He 
had just come back to work after being off for paternity leave. He was a father 
of 2 and had served on the force for 4 years.

The jurors determined that Martinez killed Murphy in a cruel manner and that he 
should have known Murphy was with the police.

That sentencing will happen at 1:30 p.m. at Maricopa County Superior Court.

(source: KPNX news)






CALIFORNIA:

'Grim Sleeper' killer guilty in 10 murders, could face death penalty


A former Los Angeles trash collector was convicted Thursday of 10 counts of 
murder in the "Grim Sleeper" serial killings that targeted poor, young black 
women over 2 decades.

Lonnie Franklin Jr. showed no emotion as the verdicts were read and family 
members who had wondered if they would ever see justice quietly wept and dabbed 
their eyes with tissues in the gallery.

"We got him," exclaimed Porter Alexander Jr., whose daughter Alicia, 18, was 
shot and choked. Her body was found under a mattress in an alley in September 
1988. "It took a long time. By the grace of God it happened. It's such a 
relief."

Prosecutors will seek the death penalty during the 2nd phase of trial scheduled 
to start May 12.

Franklin, 63, was also found guilty of 1 count of attempted murder for shooting 
a woman in the chest and dumping her body from his orange Ford Pinto 2 months 
after Alexander's killing. The survivor, Enietra Washington, provided a link to 
7 previous slayings and was a key witness at trial.

The killings from 1985 to 2007 were dubbed the work of the "Grim Sleeper" 
because of an apparent 14-year gap after Washington's shooting, though 
prosecutors now think he never rested and there were other victims during that 
span.

The crimes went unsolved for decades and community members complained that 
police ignored the victims because of their race and the fact some were 
prostitutes and drug users.

Much of the violence unfolded during the nation's crack cocaine epidemic when 
at least 2 other serial killers prowled the area then known as South Central.

The 10 victims, including a 15-year-old girl, were fatally shot or strangled 
and dumped in alleys and garbage bins. Most had traces of cocaine in their 
systems.

Franklin, a onetime trash collector in the area and a garage attendant for the 
Los Angeles Police Department, had been hiding in plain sight, said Deputy 
District Attorney Beth Silverman.

He was connected to the crimes after DNA from a son, collected after a felony 
arrest, showed similarities to genetic material left on the bodies of many of 
the victims.

An officer posing as a busboy retrieved pizza crusts and napkins with 
Franklin's DNA while he was celebrating at a birthday party.

It proved a match with material found on the breasts and clothing of many of 
the women and on the zip tie of a trash bag that held the curled-up body of the 
final victim, Janecia Peters. She was found Jan. 1, 2007, by someone rifling 
through a dumpster who noticed her red fingernails through a hole in the bag.

Silverman described the victims as sisters, daughters and mothers who suffered 
frailties but had hopes and dreams.

She projected photos of the 10 women from happier days, many smiling from 
headshots that captured their youth and hairstyles of the times. The images 
were in stark contrast to gory crime scene and autopsy photos also displayed of 
half-naked bodies sprawled among garbage - images that made family members 
wince, weep and recoil.

Samara Herard, the sister of the youngest victim, Princess Berthomieux, said 
there were things she didn't want to see during the trial and had to hold her 
head down at times, but was elated with the verdict.

"I wanted to remember the sweet little girl who had her whole life in front of 
her," Herard said. "She had a heart of gold and she deserved to live a full 
life."

Defense lawyer Seymour Amster challenged what he called "inferior science" of 
DNA and ballistics evidence. During his closing argument, he introduced a new 
theory: a "mystery man with a mystery gun and mystery DNA" was responsible for 
all the killings. He said the man was a "nephew" of Franklin's who was jealous 
because his uncle had better luck with women, though he offered no supporting 
evidence or any name.

Amster based the theory on the testimony of the sole known survivor, 
Washington, who crawled to safety after being shot in Franklin's flashy Pinto. 
She testified that her assailant said he had to stop at his "uncle's house" for 
money before the attack.

Silverman scoffed at the "mystery nephew" notion, saying it was as rational an 
explanation as a space ship dropping from the sky and killing the women. She 
said Franklin had lied to Washington and was probably stopping at his house to 
get his gun.

Washington later led police to Franklin's street, but not his house.

The attack fit the pattern of other killings and showed how the killer carried 
out the crimes, Silverman said. The bullet removed from Washington's chest came 
from the same gun used to shoot the 7 previous victims and she provided a 
detail that would later prove telling.

Washington described how her attacker took a Polaroid photo of her as she was 
losing consciousness. Police searching Franklin's house more than 2 decades 
later found a snapshot of the wounded Washington slouched over in a car with a 
breast exposed.

The Polaroid was hidden behind a wall in his garage.

(source: Pasadena Star-News)

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

Serial wife killer on death row offers info on where he buried body in exchange 
for execution date


A serial wife killer will tell where he buried 1 of his wives, if the state 
will set a date to put him to death. His case highlights the serious problems 
in California's death penalty system,

Tonight at 11 on ABC7 News, we'll discuss what his case says about our broken 
death penalty system in an exclusive I-Team report.

Gerald Stanley offers to reveal where he buried 1 of his wives, because he is 
tired of decades on death row and of all the mandatory appeals.

This investigation began after Gerald wrote me. I've been going through the 
evidence and speaking with attorneys on the case, and with his children.

Jay Stanley was only 5 years old when he watched his father open fire at 
Cambridge Elementary in Concord.

"He didn't just destroy mine and my sister's life, he destroyed other kids' 
lives," he said. "They don't have no (sic) closure, they don't know where their 
mom is, never found her body."

Gerald has been on San Quentin's death row for 32 years.

(source: ABC news)






OREGON:

The Oregon Supreme Court is upholding the death sentences given to a father and 
son convicted of a 2008 bank bombing in Woodburn


The Oregon Supreme Court has affirmed convictions and death sentences for a 
father and son found guilty of killing 2 police officers in a bank bombing.

Bruce Turnidge and his son, Joshua Turnidge, were convicted of murder in 2010 
by a jury who agreed with prosecutors that the pair planted a bomb that 
exploded at a bank in Woodburn, a small city between Portland and Salem.

The December 2008 blast killed state police bomb technician William Hakim, who 
was trying to dismantle the explosive, and Woodburn Capt. Tom Tennant, who was 
helping. The city's police chief, Scott Russell, lost a leg.

Prosecutors said the Turnidges fantasized about starting an anti-government 
militia and hatched a bank robbery plan because they needed money to maintain 
their struggling biodiesel company.

Oregon law requires the state Supreme Court to review verdicts and sentences in 
death-penalty cases for any legal errors in the trial court.

The high court Thursday rejected more than two dozen assertions of trial 
errors, on issues ranging from jury questionnaires to closing arguments to the 
denial of Joshua Turnidge's motion to be tried separately.

In one instance, Bruce Turnidge took issue with a closing statement in which 
the prosecutor told jurors about the defendant's zeal to form a militia and 
spread anti-government ideologies.

The state said the prosecutor raised the point because potential future danger 
is 1 thing the jury considers as it decides whether to sentence someone to 
death. Turnidge said argument violated his free-speech rights, but the court 
disagreed.

"Contrary to defendant's assertions, this is not a situation in which the 
prosecutor's statements urged the jury to punish defendant because of his 
abstract political beliefs or statements," the opinion states. "Rather, the 
state had presented evidence of defendant's beliefs that directly bore on his 
motivation for the murders at issue in this case."

The Turnidges are among more than 30 people on Oregon's death row. The state 
currently has a moratorium on executions.

Public defender Joshua Crowther, who argued on behalf of Joshua Turnidge, said 
this was just a first step and the challenges will continue.

"From our point of view, there are still several issues that need to be 
resolved," he said from Salem. "Most of the issues raised, if not all, had a 
federal component, so a federal court is going to need to look at the issues, 
which could be the United States Supreme Court."

(source: Associated Press)



USA:

There's No Separating the Death Penalty and Race----The only way to get rid of 
racial bias in death penalty cases is to get rid of the death penalty.


Back in 1987, Timothy Foster was a poor, black, intellectually impaired 
teenager facing trial for the murder of an elderly white woman in rural 
Georgia.* During jury selection, the prosecution highlighted in green the name 
of every black person on the jury list and helpfully added a note explaining 
that a green highlight meant the person was black. For good measure, they also 
placed a B next to each black person's name and circled the word black where it 
appeared on the jury questionnaires as a racial identifier. Then, in case "it 
[came] down to having to pick one of the black jurors," the prosecutors also 
ranked blacks against one another. After securing an all-white jury, 
prosecutors argued for the death penalty for Foster to "deter other people out 
there in the projects." The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide soon 
whether illegal race discrimination infected that trial, a decision that will 
come after Foster has spent nearly 3 decades on Georgia's death row. It seems 
likely the court will grant Foster a new trial, but it's hard to imagine even a 
favorable Supreme Court ruling in his case fixing the biggest problem with the 
death penalty itself: Even in 2016, its use remains inextricably, hopelessly 
intertwined with our national legacy of racial bias and exclusion.

The mix of prosecutorial impropriety and the exclusion of black jurors has 
always been a potent combination for injecting racial bias into death penalty 
cases and racial cynicism into the electorate. It undermines not only the 
legitimacy of the death penalty, but also the legitimacy of the government as 
an entity capable of rendering impartial justice. It robs people of the right 
to participate in their government, and it makes whole swaths of people cynical 
about the government itself and their role in it. Yet, even if the Foster case 
provides another rebuke of the illegal practice of striking jurors because of 
their race, 30 years of experience suggests that the court's case-by-case 
reversals will not eradicate racial discrimination in jury selection. It still 
happens all over the country and continues to taint our broken death penalty 
system.

As older cases like Foster's move toward execution dates, the inextricable ties 
between race and the death penalty in America become increasingly salient. This 
is because the death penalty generally is in decline at a time when there is 
heightened attention to racial unfairness throughout the criminal justice 
system. Consider the last couple of months alone:

--On April 12, Georgia executed Kenneth Fults - another poor, intellectually 
impaired black man - even though a juror in his case acknowledged deciding to 
vote for death before hearing the evidence because "that's what that nigger 
deserved."

--"A dumb nigger" is what one member of an all-white South Carolina jury called 
Johnny Bennett, a black defendant who received relief from a federal judge in 
March because the prosecutor called him a monster, caveman, "beast of burden," 
and "King Kong."

--Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court rescheduled its review of a petition 
urging the justices to intervene in a Harris County, Texas, death penalty case 
where a psychologist testified that Duane Buck's blackness makes him more 
dangerous.

An optimist might hold out hope that although racial bias infects these older 
cases, the ties between race and the death penalty have loosened in more recent 
cases as the nation continues to make racial progress. Unfortunately, though, 
while the death penalty has become increasingly rare in practice, many of the 
remaining cases are still intertwined with the nation's long legacy of racism. 
And, even in the cases with explicit, unconscionable racial bias - for example, 
the execution of Fults last month - current elected prosecutors, governors, and 
state and federal courts have failed repeatedly to intervene or object.

Of the more than 3,100 counties in the United States, only 16 or so still 
impose death sentences with any regularity. Consider, for example, the 
following three jurisdictions, all of which are among the tiny handful of 
outlier death sentencing counties:

--Caddo Parish, Louisiana's nickname is "Bloody Caddo" due to its history as 
the place with the second-highest number lynchings in the country between 1877 
and 1950. Over the past 6 years, 66 percent of Louisiana's death sentences come 
from Caddo Parish, a jurisdiction with 5 % of the state's population. Yet, no 
white defendant has ever been sentenced to death in Caddo Parish for killing a 
black person. As recently as 2011, Lamondre Tucker - an 18-year-old with an IQ 
of 74 - was sentenced to death in a courthouse adorned with the Confederate 
flag. Last year, a study found that prosecutors struck qualified black 
residents from Caddo juries 3 times more often than qualified white residents. 
--In Houston County, Alabama, a local police chief started a chapter of the 
Sons of the Confederacy, posed in front of a Confederate flag, and named his 
son after the 1st grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. A 2010 study found that 
prosecutors in Houston County strike 80 % of qualified black jurors from death 
penalty cases. Alabama courts have reversed at least 3 death sentences from 
Houston County since 2010.

--At the end of March, the Nevada Supreme Court found that Clark County 
prosecutors engaged in illegal racial discrimination in jury selection for the 
2nd time in the past 2 years. In yet another recent Clark County case involving 
questionable jury selection practices, a state supreme court justice said to a 
prosecutor during oral arguments: "I just don't understand knocking these 2 
black women off [the jury]. I just don't understand why it's so necessary in 
these cases. You're so afraid of losing a case that you're knocking off African 
Americans consistently." That case is still pending.

Despite all the racial progress over the past decades, how can it be that race 
continues to plague the nation's death penalty?

The death penalty has always been rooted in a felt need for retribution - 
payback, evening the score, revenge. Indeed, in 1914, the Shreveport Times 
editorial board responded to "suggestions from some of the newspapers" that 
Louisiana "abolish the death penalty" with an argument that repeal of the death 
penalty would result in an "increase in the number of lynchings" due to "the 
vengeance of an outraged citizenship." In 1972, in Furman v. Georgia, Supreme 
Court Justice Potter Stewart made a similar point: "When people begin to 
believe that organized society is unwilling or unable to impose upon criminal 
offenders the punishment they 'deserve,' then there are sown the seeds of 
anarchy - of self-help, vigilante justice, and lynch law."

A black defendant received relief from a federal judge because the prosecutor 
called him a monster, caveman, "beast of burden," and "King Kong."

The reality today is that the death penalty no longer contributes meaningfully 
to any felt need for retribution. Life without parole or other serious 
sanctions satisfy the retributive appetite for most prosecutors and jurors in 
most places in America. We know this is true because in this nation of 320 
million people, with more than 10,000 annual murders, surely there would be 
much more frequent resort to death sentences in far more counties and states if 
executions were truly necessary for retributive purposes. And, when we look 
closely at some of the outlier counties that still resort to death sentences, 
we see this racialized need for retribution continues to drive how prosecutors 
seek death sentences and how juries decide them.

These are places like Caddo Parish where prosecutors like Dale Cox make their 
racially filtered, outsized-personality - driven need for retribution known 
unmistakably: Last year, after calling society "a jungle," Cox told a reporter 
that "we need to kill more people" because revenge "brings to us a visceral 
satisfaction." Cox's comments epitomize what Justice Anthony Kennedy meant when 
he cautioned in 2008's Kennedy v. Louisiana, a case where the court held that 
the death penalty is an unconstitutionally excessive punishment for nonhomicide 
offenses, that retribution is the motive for punishment that "most often can 
contradict the law's own ends." "When the law punishes by death," Kennedy 
wrote, "it risks its own sudden descent into brutality, transgressing the 
constitutional commitment to decency and restraint."

Though it is up to prosecutors to guard against retributive excess, when they 
do not, jurors are meant to be the second line of defense. Most death penalty 
jurors are white. This is a big deal because research shows that white jurors 
tend to implicitly associate black faces with the concept of retribution, 
implicitly associate white faces with a sense of relative value or worth, show 
greater support for the death penalty generally, and may be less able to 
consider mitigating circumstances when they relate to black defendants. When 
black jurors are placed on juries, they help guard against retributive excess. 
Yet, in the few places that continue to use the death penalty consistently 
today - in Caddo Parish, Clark County, and Houston County, for example - 
prosecutors continue to disproportionately strike qualified black prospective 
jurors.

I support getting rid of the death penalty but my support for this is 
relatively new, and it's largely based on the credibility and continuation of 
life-without-parole sentencing, something that did not exist in the past.

In other words, in these outlier counties, neither prosecutorial discretion nor 
the constitutionally built-in jury check on retribution appears to be 
functioning as intended. That leaves the judiciary. The court should grant new 
trials for Timothy Foster, Duane Buck, and Lamondre Tucker. But it would be 
naive to believe that new trials in these cases would put a dent in the broader 
race problems that continue to plague American capital punishment. Indeed, it 
has become indisputably clear in the 40 years since the Supreme Court held the 
modern death penalty constitutional that the only way to eradicate race from 
the death penalty is to eradicate the death penalty.

(source: Robert Smith, slate.com)






US MILITARY:

Navy Lt. Cmdr. accused of espionage confesses on tape


Lieutenant Commander Edward C. Lin, the Taiwan born U.S. Navy officer accused 
of espionage, confessed to the crime during an NCIS interrogation, according to 
military prosecutors.

But his defense attorney argued none of that would be admissible if the case 
moves to court-martial.

The information came to light Thursday, as Navy officials played an audio 
recording of Lin's Article 32 Hearing which took place in early April. The 
recording was played at Fleet Forces Command for members of the media, 
including 10 On Your Side, but media were not allowed to record the audio.

During the 80-minute hearing, which is similar to a pre-trial hearing in a 
civilian court. Attorneys for both sides submitted evidence to Navy Commander 
Bruce Gregor.

Lin is charged with 2 counts of espionage, 3 counts of attempted espionage, 
communicating secret information 'with intent or reason to believe it would be 
used to the advantage of a foreign nation' and adultery. The charges stem from 
actions the Navy says occurred in August and September of 2015.

Navy prosecutor, Cmdr. Jonathan Stevens told Gregor Lin is accused of feeding 
secrets to a prostitute, and also came into contact with under cover FBI 
agents, as well a FBI informant. The recordings did not make it clear if the 
prostitute and the FBI's informant were the same person.

We also learned that NCIS agents searched Lin's workplace and his home. They 
found emails dating back to 2012 and a notebook they say contained classified 
information.

Stevens also said Lin communicated with a FBI informant in Mandarin Chinese, 
which is his native language. Lin's civilian defense attorney, Larry Younger, 
questioned the validity of the transcript of the conversation. The transcript 
was submitted as evidence saying that whomever the FBI chose to translate the 
conversation, could have gotten it wrong. The defense claims that because 
Mandarin Chinese has two dialects, the meaning of the conversation could be 
misinterpreted.

Lin was arrested at a Honolulu airport on September 11th, 2015. NCIS 
investigators then interrogated Lin for eleven hours, all of which was recorded 
according to prosecutors. They submitted nine disks of evidence which they say 
contain all 11 hours of recordings. Those were also not played during the 
hearing.

While it appears Lin confessed to the crimes, his attorney argued none of it 
will be admissible if the case goes to court-martial. Younger counted the 
government's claims and went so far as to accuse officials of entrapment. 
Younger called actions by the FBI agents a 'nefarious scheme to entrap' and 
that agents 'preyed on his vulnerabilities' when they allegedly 'coerced' Lin 
to communicate with the informant.

Younger also said that if the case moves forward he would file motions to 
suppress all eleven hours of audio recordings in which Lin allegedly admits to 
the crimes. Younger says his client was never properly read his rights, or 
notified of his right to counsel. He believes the audio would not be admissible 
in court. Younger also argued that the search of Lin's property may have been 
done without proper search warrants, and that any evidence gathered would also 
be inadmissible.

Younger also claimed that any information Lin passed on to the informant was 
'open-source' information, meaning information that was no longer classified 
and could be found on-line.

The decision to move the case forward sits in the hands of Admiral Davidson, 
head of Fleet Forces Command. There is no timeline on his decision. If 
convicted, Lin could face the death penalty.

Lin has been held in pre-trial confinement at the Brig in Chesapeake since 
September.

(source: WAVY news)