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

[Rick Halperin]

May 13




NEVADA:

Las Vegas man indicted on charges that could get him the death penalty


A convicted panderer has been indicted on charges that could get him the death 
penalty in a car-to-car shooting that killed 2 women and critically wounded a 
man near the Las Vegas Strip.

A judge on Thursday set a May 19 arraignment in state court for Omar Jamal 
Talley on murder, attempted murder and multiple felony weapon charges in the 
Feb. 19 shooting.

The indictment avoided a Thursday preliminary hearing.

Police and prosecutors say an argument in a parking structure at the Miracle 
Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood preceded the shooting that killed Melissa 
Mendoza and Jennifer Chicas and wounded Jerraud Jackson. They were from the San 
Francisco Bay Area.

The Clark County district attorney will decide in coming weeks whether the 
30-year-old Tally will face the death penalty.

(source: Associated Press)






CALIFORNIA:

British veteran faces death penalty over double shooting in United States


A British former soldier, who served in Iraq and says that he suffers from 
post-traumatic stress disorder, has pleaded not guilty to murdering his mother 
and stepfather by shooting them at their home in the US.

Derek Connell, 29, could face the death penalty after being accused of killing 
Kim Higginbotham, 48, and Christopher, 48, her US husband, who were found dead 
at their home in Bakersfield, California, on April 30.

Mr Connell, originally of Glasgow, is also alleged to have taken a video of 
their dead bodies on his mobile phone and sent it to a relative.

(source: thetimes.co.uk)

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

Death times


Yet another try to hurry up executions on California's death row has drawn 
$12,500 from the San Diego Police Officers Association's political action 
committee. In addition to hastening their demise, the measure would put 
death-row inmates to work while they waited.

The initiative was submitted for signature-gathering last year by retired NFL 
star Kermit Alexander, who lost 4 family members in a bungled 1984 contract 
killing. A measure to repeal the death penalty is being backed by M.A.S.H. star 
Mike Farrell.

A previous Farrell attempt to do away with execution in 2012 drew the backing 
of a host of La Jolla Democrats, including billionaire Qualcomm founder Irwin 
Jacobs and the San Diego chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which 
kicked in $100,000.

(source: sandiegoreader.com)

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

A Modest Proposal Concerning Means of Execution


Sunday ends the public comment period for California's proposed regulations for 
a new safe and sane lethal injection procedure. The regs are in a 29-page 
document, to which are attached 18 forms that cover things like the condemned's 
written acknowledgment that "it was explained to me that I have an execution 
date of [insert date] and that I may choose either lethal gas or lethal 
injection as the method of execution."

So I address this (very public) comment to the state's Department of 
Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Dear CDCR,

I admire the team tasked with the macabre and impossible job of developing what 
they call "a humane and dignified execution" process. I can't fathom what it is 
like to be tasked with clearly imagining, and designing procedures for:

--choosing who is qualified to kill a person on our behalf, training them, and 
organizing them into sub-teams

--giving the condemned a choice of how to be dispatched and appropriate forms 
for last meals, witnesses, property distribution, and burial arrangements

--dealing with the chemical supply problems posed by manufacturers who won't 
have their medicines used as poisons (letting the warden choose any of 4 drugs 
for a particular execution is brilliant!)

--sending the prisoner to health-care professionals for a "vein assessment" on 
where best to administer the overdose

--making sure that the prisoner's list of people who are to be informed "in 
case of death, serious injury or serious illness" is up to date

--assigning a liaison to the condemned prisoner's family (surely a coveted job)

--assessing whether the person is mentally healthy enough to be killed

--ensuring that suicide doesn't interfere with the state's planned homicide

--deciding exactly how much money to spend on a human being's last meal on this 
planet

--postulating what differences in handling are required in putting a woman to 
death

--projecting when and to what degree the executioners need to rehearse their 
tasks

--designing contingencies if someone on the team won't be able to go through 
with the job

--briefing the condemned on what will be done to them

--detailing medical procedures for the killing process to work effectively, 
including protocols for horrifying scenarios where the injections, injections 
at the backup site, and backups to the backup plan fail to turn the human into 
a corpse

--offering post-trauma counseling to the people who do this job for us, and

--designing forms to document it all.

It must be hard to put oneself through imagining how all this might go, so as 
to design its institutionalization. I am no expert, just someone with a lot of 
caring for the 3 people I know on death row. It looks to me like you have done 
a thorough and thoughtful job. I can't blame you for the weird and disturbing 
disjunct between aseptic language prescribing standardized procedures and the 
reality of plotting how to take another's life. And I won't repeat the reams of 
comments you've received about the pitfalls of this experimental 1-drug 
protocol.

My complaint is with the overall attempt to civilize an uncivilized act. Every 
venture at making state killing more refined has dug us into a deeper hole. 
This is true in terms of your stated goal of respecting the Eighth Amendment 
ban on cruel punishment. It's also true from the perspective of the spiritual 
health of our society and its ability to make informed public-policy choices.

In contrast, the guillotine (used in France until its 1981 abolition of capital 
punishment) and the firing squad (Utah's not-so-old method) are gruesome but 
truly swift and certain, unlike anything we've come up with since.Gaschamber

Surely they are less cruel than sending the condemned to nice nurses a week 
before execution to find the best veins, then, at the time of the blessed 
event, inserting a catheter and backup catheter (will they first swab with 
alcohol to prevent infection?), dripping saline until it's time for the drug to 
be injected, needing a backup to the backup in case the poison doesn't flow 
right, and inviting God-knows-what hellish visions to possibly zip through the 
mind as the barbiturate finally begins to hit the nervous system of a person 
experiencing execution.

Society's interest is even more clear. With shootings and beheadings, we get to 
know what we're doing: no whitewashing it as a medical procedure, no pretending 
we're different from our ISIS enemies and our Saudi friends. The person offed 
someone a few decades ago - now we're offing them. That is, after all, the 
logic of the death penalty.

Please abandon the attempt to civilize the barbaric. As long as we feel we need 
barbarisim, let's be open about it.

(source: Michael Goldstein; Political writer, author, mediator and death 
penalty appeals lawyer ---- Huffington Post)






OREGON:

Nelson guilty in 2012 slaying of Eugene resident


A 26-year-old man faces a potential death sentence after a Lane County jury on 
Thursday found him guilty of aggravated murder in the 2012 slaying of Eugene 
resident Celestino Gutierrez Jr.

Jurors in A.J. Scott Nelson's case spent nearly 2 days in deliberations before 
returning guilty verdicts on 18 felony charges relating to a brief but heinous 
crime spree carried out by Nelson and 2 other people on Aug. 3, 2012.

The jury found Nelson guilty of kidnapping, robbing and murdering Gutierrez, 
and of abusing the victim's corpse by dismembering it.

Nelson also was convicted on all 12 robbery counts he faced in connection with 
an armed, takeover-style robbery of a Siuslaw Bank branch in Mapleton.

The bank heist happened hours after Gutierrez was killed. His car was used as a 
getaway vehicle in the robbery.

Nelson, an Army veteran whose trial defense included assertions that he suffers 
from post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury linked to his 
military service, showed no visible reaction while Lane County Circuit Judge 
Debra Vogt read aloud from the 22-page verdict form completed by the jury.

Defense attorney Laurie Bender said afterward that she was "disappointed" with 
the outcome. She offered no additional comment.

Prosecutor David Schwartz, meanwhile, indicated he would not comment on the 
case until after Nelson is sentenced.

The jury in Nelson's case will return to court Tuesday to begin hearing 
evidence in the sentencing phase of his trial.

During the sentencing portion, prosecutors and defense attorneys will offer 
additional evidence before the jury convenes to consider Nelson's fate.

A judge cannot sentence a murderer to death unless all 12 jurors agree it's the 
appropriate punishment. If just 1 juror decides Nelson should not receive the 
death penalty, Vogt will either sentence him to life in prison without parole, 
or impose a lifetime sentence that allows him to apply for parole after 30 
years.

Nelson is the 3rd person convicted in Gutierrez's slaying.

One of Nelson's codefendants, David Ray Taylor, 60, is now on Oregon's death 
row. A Lane County jury found him guilty of aggravated murder in 2014 and 
subsequently recommended that he be sentenced to death.

Taylor was convicted of all but one of the charges he faced. The jury in his 
case found him guilty of 3 aggravated murder charges but acquitted him on a 
4th, instead deciding to convict him on a lesser charge of intentional murder. 
That count related to an allegation that Gutierrez was killed after or while 
being tortured.

Nelson's jury came to an almost identical conclusion, returning guilty verdicts 
on 2 of the 3 aggravated murder charges filed in his case.

Nelson, like Taylor before him, was found not guilty of aggravated murder under 
the prosecution's murder-by-torture theory, but guilty of a lesser murder 
charge.

Taylor was charged with a 4th count of aggravated murder because he had 
previously been convicted of murder. He served 27 years in state prison for 
killing a Eugene woman in 1977. The state parole board voted in favor of his 
release in 2004.

The 3rd person arrested in Gutierrez's slaying, Mercedes Crabtree, is serving 
life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years. She pleaded 
guilty in 2013 after reaching an agreement with prosecutors that required her 
to testify against Taylor and Nelson.

According to trial evidence, the trio carried out a plan to kidnap and kill a 
stranger in order to use the victim's car in the Mapleton bank robbery. 
Gutierrez's remains were buried southwest of Eugene after Nelson and Taylor 
dismembered his body in the bathroom of Taylor's home off Highway 99 in Eugene.

(source: The Register-Guard)

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

Guilty verdict in 2012 murder; case moves to death penalty phase


A jury found a man guilty of murder Thursday in a gruesome 2012 slaying.

AJ Scott Nelson could face the death penalty for his role in the killing of 
Celestino Gutierrez.

The penalty phase of the trial is expected to begin Tuesday.

The jury found Nelson murder of Aggravated Murder, Robbery in the 1st degree 
and more.

2 other defendants in the case have already been sentenced.

David Ray Taylor is on death row after being found guilty of the crime and 
sentenced to die.

Mercedes Crabtree is serving 30 years to life.

The trio selected Gutierrez at a bar and tricked him to get his car, which was 
used in a bank robbery.

Prosecutors said the killers murdered Gutierrez and disposed of his body to 
conceal the crime.

(source: KVAL news)






USA:

Down with the death penalty


"Treat others how you wish to be treated" is a saying we were all taught 
growing up, but do the rules still apply in situations such as murder? For many 
years, the death penalty has been a very controversial issue. According to 
death-penalty-info.org, there are currently 31 states in the United States of 
America where the death penalty is legal, and 19 states where it is illegal.

The death penalty is wrong and immoral for countless reasons, one of those 
reasons being that not everyone who is on death row is truly guilty. According 
to an article written by Pema Levy published in 2014 on Newsweek.com, one in 
every 25 people sentenced to death in the United States is actually innocent. 
That is a lot of wrongly convicted people who are unfairly accused and punished 
for crimes they never even committed.

Capital punishment is hypocritical. It is used to discourage killers yet it 
models the very behavior it seeks to prevent, murder. Implementing the death 
penalty is surrendering to the idea that murder is okay, but only if it is 
handled by the government. We should not use violence to punish others because 
it does not change anything or stop other people from using it.

Execution is inhumane. Purposefully ending a human being's life makes you 
nearly indistinguishable to the murderers we loathe. By using the death 
penalty, we are just as guilty and have just as much blood on our hands than 
the person being lethally injected.

The death penalty is also racist and biased. According to deathpenaltyinfo.org, 
94.5% of elected prosecutors in death penalty states are white, and 79% of 
which are males. The site also states that since 1976, there have been 297 
executions involving a black defendant and a white victim, and just 31 
executions of white defendants with black victims. People argue that race has 
no influence on the death penalty but it undoubtedly does, the numbers don't 
lie.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think criminals should get away with their crimes, 
I just believe they should be sentenced to life in prison rather than be 
killed, after all life in prison is cheaper. Cases without the death penalty 
cost $740,000, while cases where the death penalty is sought cost $1.26 
million. Maintaining each death row prisoner costs taxpayers $90,000 more per 
year than a prisoner in general population. Why pay extra in taxes to execute 
someone when it would cost less to give them life in prison? Capital punishment 
is a waste of money, especially considering that not everyone on death row is 
truly guilty; can you imagine paying to execute an innocent person who was 
wrongfully convicted?

Execution doesn't necessarily help the family and friends of murder victims; 
they are still going to be emotionally disturbed. Instead of paying extra for 
death penalty cases, that money should go toward things such as therapy and 
counseling for the families of the victims.

Not only is life in prison more civilized, but it gives criminals a chance to 
turn their lives around and work on better themselves.

Over 117 nations worldwide have made the death penalty illegal - unfortunately 
the United States is not one of them. Capital punishment is in no way 
beneficial and should be abolished. America needs to get with the program and 
stop killing people and kill the death penalty instead.

(source: Jamie Perlee, The (Los Medanos College) Experience)