[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., N.C., FLA. ALA., LA.

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 2



TEXAS----new execution date

John Ramirez has been given an execution date for Feb. 2; it should be 
considered serious.

Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----20

Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----538

Abbott#--------scheduled execution date-----name------------Tx. #

21---------December 7---------------John Battaglia--------539

22---------January 11---------------Christoper Wilkins----540

23---------January 25---------------Kosoul Chanthakoummane----541

24---------January 26---------------Terry Edwards---------542

25---------February 2---------------John Ramirez----------543

26---------February 7---------------Tilon Carter----------544

27---------April 12-----------------Paul Storey-----------545

28---------June 28------------------Steven Long-----------546

(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)






PENNSYLVANIA:

Prosecutors drop death penalty in '92 killing


The York County District Attorney's Office is no longer seeking the death 
penalty against a man who's waiting for a retrial in the killing of his 
girlfriend, who was stabbed and cut more than 200 times and found covered in 
bleach over 24 years ago.

Daniel Jacobs, 45, of York, is already serving life in prison without the 
possibility of parole for the death of his 7-month-old daughter, Holly. But, 
he's been waiting for another trial in the killing of Tammy Lee Mock, 18, for 
about 10 years, because his case has been in limbo.

Both were found in the bathtub of the couple's apartment on West King Street 
near South Richland Avenue in York on Feb. 16, 1992.

It's unclear why the District Attorney's Office made the decision, which is 
mentioned in court documents dated on Friday. Chief Deputy Prosecutor Tim 
Barker, one of the attorneys who's handling the case, could not immediately be 
reached.

Initially, Jacobs was found guilty of 1st-degree murder in Mock's killing and 
sentenced to death. But federal appeals courts threw out his punishment and 
conviction, in 2001 and 2005, respectively.

In September, Common Pleas Judge Harry M. Ness ruled that Jacobs is competent 
to stand trial, but that he cannot serve as his own lawyer. He has since filed 
a motion asking the judge to reconsider the decision.

Kevin Hoffman, an attorney who's been appointed to represent Jacobs, said he 
will most likely have to prepare for the case to go trial. But, he said, it 
will be "some time" before one is held.

Now, Hoffman said it will be a "more straightforward process." That's because 
the attorneys will not have to pick a jury for a death penalty case, nor 
present additional testimony - if there's a conviction.

Jacobs is expected back in court on Dec. 1.

(source: York Daily Record)






NORTH CAROLINA:

Time to end NC's death penalty


There is a deadly battle going on in the courts of the United States. It has 
lasted for decades. The battle is between those favoring the death penalty and 
those opposed to it.

In North Carolina we have 150 people on death row. 55 North Carolina Counties 
have prisoners on death row. 45 counties have no one there.

It is clear that people in certain counties have been more likely to receive a 
death sentence than others. For instance, Durham County has no one on death 
row. Its neighbor, Wake County has ten. Guilford County has 3 prisoners on 
death row. Yet, its neighbor, Forsyth County, has 12.

The last execution in North Carolina was on August 18, 2006, 10 years ago.

There are many things that keep prisoners from being executed in North 
Carolina. Here are 6 of them:

1. The legislature passed the Racial Justice Act. It made it extremely 
difficult for death sentences to be upheld on appeal. That law has been 
repealed, but the result is that most (if not all) death sentence cases are 
under appeal. Resolution of this problem will take months - perhaps years.

2. The law requires a doctor to be present during executions. However, both the 
American Medical Association and the North Carolina Medical Board have ruled 
that doctors should NOT be present at executions.

In response to this, the legislature has passed a law which states that 
participation in executions is not the practice of medicine. The intent was to 
protect doctors who attended an execution from discipline by medical boards. It 
is unlikely that this law will entice doctors to participate in executions. 
Whether it is practicing medicine or not, it is still helping to kill someone. 
Second, the propriety of that law will continue to be litigated.

3. The State has to find the appropriate drugs to cause death. Many companies 
have refused to sell the drugs to states that will use them in executions. 
Then, once the chemicals are picked, there will be legal challenges to those 
particular chemicals.

4. It will be at least 2 years before executions are scheduled. The passing of 
12 or more years from the last execution will make it more unpleasant to 
restart executions. Judges will tend to grant stays of executions.

It is one thing to believe in the death penalty. It is quite another thing to 
actually carry out the sentence. If you were a nurse or technician, would you 
insert the needle?

5. Other objections to our death penalty law will arise.

6. As time goes by, people will become more opposed to the death penalty.

7. Increasingly, juries are more willing to approve the alternative of life 
without parole.

It is extremely unlikely that our governor or legislature will do away with the 
death penalty. Yet no executions are being carried out. Will we continue to 
travel this road indefinitely? It is extremely frustrating to the families of 
the victims. They have to bear up, as appeal after appeal is filed. They are 
sorely tired of that, and seek a resolution. Does it make sense to reduce the 
number of people on death row - and replace the death sentences to life without 
parole?

Here are ways to do that:

The 1st is to remove all prisoners over 65 years old. Execution of older 
prisoners can be considered gruesome. One of our death row prisoners is an 83 
year old woman.

The 2nd is to remove the prisoners with the best criminal records.

The 3rd choice would be to take the cases that have been on death row the 
longest and change those sentences to life without parole.

This would be a compromise. It would be a significant reduction of the number 
of people on death row yet it would not do away with the death penalty. Further 
reasons for this choice are:

1. It is more likely that there were improprieties in the trial of cases before 
1996. Newer cases have more protections to the defendants.

2. There is a precedent to clearing out death row. In 1976. The U.S. Supreme 
Court held that the NC. death sentence statute was unconstitutional. As a 
result, the 120 death row prisoners had their sentences vacated, or had new 
trials, or were re-sentenced to life. From 1976 to 1984, no executions took 
place in NC.

3. The victims in the older cases may be more willing to accept the lesser 
punishment.

Many families of the victims may have become worn out and frustrated at the 
endless appeals they may want the cases to be over and done with.

(source: Op-Ed; Stanley Peele of Chapel Hill is a retired district 
judge----News & Observer)






FLORIDA:

Intellectual disability at question in death-row case


A convicted murderer, Sonny Boy Oats Jr., appeared at the Marion County 
Judicial Center on Tuesday. Oats, 59, sat beside his attorneys for a hearing 
that followed 35 years after a local judge sentenced him to death for his role 
in a local murder in 1979.

In line with a Florida Supreme Court opinion, released late last year, a local 
judge is set to reconsider whether Oats is intellectually disabled. That 
question has come up during a lengthy appeals process for Oats. It stands as 
particularly significant because, as the Supreme Court noted in December, Oats 
cannot be executed if he is found to be intellectually disabled.

Attorneys began to tackle the question on Tuesday, when they talked through the 
next steps with Circuit Judge Jonathan Ohlman, who is currently assigned to the 
case. The discussion included working out deadlines for prosecutors and public 
defenders to identify what information they intend to present at an evidentiary 
hearing that would address whether Oats is intellectually disabled.

That hearing would occur after another hearing currently slated for mid-March.

But that could yet change, as Ohlman noted during the hearing.

The case could go to another judge, Hale Stancil, who retired in December and 
continues to work as a senior judge. Ohlman is set to consider a request to 
transfer the case to Stancil, who most recently handled Oats' case.

Also possible is a high court ruling on whether or not recent changes to 
Florida's death penalty would apply retroactively. That could steer Oats' 
appeal in another direction.

Oats is convicted of killing a convenience store clerk in Martel, a community 
west of Ocala, a few days before Christmas in 1979. Prosecutors at the time 
presented evidence that Oats had entered the convenience store with plans to 
commit a robbery.

(source: ocala.com)






ALABAMA----impending execution

Alabama inmate this week nears execution for the 7th time


Alabama death row inmate Tommy Arthur on Tuesday was still waiting for the U.S. 
11th Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on whether it will grant a stay of 
execution.

Arthur is set to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. on Thursday.

If the appeal is granted, it would be the 7th time the 74-year-old's execution 
has been halted. 6 other times, within days or hours of the appointed time, his 
execution was stopped. And other than a month on the lam after shooting a 
jailer in a 1986 escape, the 2nd oldest inmate on death row has spent the 
better part of his last 33 years in a small cell on death row.

Arthur denies he was paid to kill a sleeping Muscle Shoals man, Troy Wicker, in 
1982.

"I didn't no more kill Troy Wicker than you did," Arthur told AL.com in a 
recent telephone interview from his cell.

3 different juries in trials in 1983, 1987 and 1991, however, thought otherwise 
and found him guilty. The victim's wife, Judy Wicker, was also convicted of the 
murder and spent a decade in prison. She testified at one trial she paid Arthur 
$10,000 of the insurance money for the killing. Judy Wicker and Arthur, who was 
on work release at the time, were in a romantic relationship, court records 
show.

Wicker's family has always felt Arthur was guilty, Janette Grantham, executive 
director of the group Victims of Crime and Leniency (VOCAL) said this week.

"There's no doubt he's guilty," Grantham said. "He deserves to be held 
accountable."

"They all called him 'Houdini' because he always seems to slip away. But 
hopefully he won't this time," Grantham said.

Efforts to reach members of Wicker's family were unsuccessful.

Grantham, who once worked with victims in the Alabama Attorney General's 
Office, said one of Wicker's sisters, Peggy Jones, who had closely followed the 
case won't be at the execution because she is dealing with breast cancer.

"They waited so long for this ... I just hope they can all find some kind of 
peace," Grantham said.

Besides seeking a stay of execution, Arthur's legal team is also appealing to 
the 11th Circuit to overturn a federal judge's ruling that denied his claims 
challenging Alabama's new 3-drug lethal injection combination.

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley also has not said whether he would grant clemency 
to Arthur, although the governor has yet to grant clemency for an inmate in the 
past. Arthur recently wrote Bentley seeking a stay of his execution, help in 
getting a new hearing, and a moratorium on all executions.

Arthur, spared execution 6 times since he was convicted in a 1983 contract 
killing, is asking the governor to stay his execution because he says he is an 
innocent man.

If the 11th Circuit denies his request for a stay of execution, then he could 
appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Arthur was moved Tuesday into a holding cell by the execution 
chamber.

Here are the highlights of Arthur's case:

-- On Feb. 1, 1982, police found Troy Wicker of Muscle Shoals shot to death in 
his bed - a gunshot wound to his right eye.

-- Arthur was convicted of capital murder in 1983.

-- At the time of the Wicker murder, Arthur was serving at a Decatur work 
release center for a conviction in the 1977 murder of his sister-in-law, Eloise 
West, in Marion County. Having 2 murder convictions in that short a span made 
him eligible for the death penalty.

-- In 1985, Arthur's conviction in the Wicker case was overturned because 
details of the earlier murder had been introduced at his trial.

-- On Jan. 27, 1986, while awaiting retrial, Arthur escaped from the Colbert 
County jail by shooting a jailer in the neck with a .25 caliber pistol and 
forcing another jailer to open his cell. He was caught a month later by FBI 
agents in Knoxville, Tenn., after robbing a bank.

-- Arthur was retried for the Wicker murder in 1987, with the case moved to 
Jefferson County because of publicity. He was convicted, but the conviction was 
again overturned.

-- Arthur was tried again in Jefferson County and convicted in 1991. That 
verdict was upheld.

-- Before he was sentenced, Arthur asked jurors to recommend the death 
penalty. He said that he did not have a death wish, but that the sentence would 
provide more access to appeals. A lawyer for the state at that time said Arthur 
"knows how to work the system."

-- Tuscumbia attorney William Hovater, who was appointed to defend Arthur 
after he fired his first two attorneys and later escaped from the Colbert 
County Jail, told a reporter after one trial that he had worked a plea 
agreement for Arthur to be sentenced to life without parole, if he pleaded 
guilty. Arthur declined. "He never admitted that he did it," Hovater told a 
reporter.

Arthur has come close to execution 6 previous times - within days or even 
hours. They include:

-- April 27, 2001. A federal court issued a stay 2 days before the scheduled 
execution because of an appeal that was later dismissed.

-- Sept. 27, 2007. The day of the planned execution Gov. Bob Riley granted a 
45-day reprieve so that the state could develop an assessment of whether 
inmates are unconscious after the 1st drug in the 3-drug protocol is given.

-- Dec. 6, 2007. One day before, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay pending 
its decision in a case challenging Kentucky's method of lethal injection. The 
court later upheld Kentucky's method as constitutional.

-- July 31, 2008. 2 days before, Arthur filed a petition that he was innocent 
based on an affidavit from another inmate that asserted that the inmate, not 
Arthur, had killed Wicker. The Alabama Supreme Court issued a stay to allow 
investigation of the claim. A Jefferson County judge later found that Arthur 
had helped the other inmate to make the claim and said the 2 inmates had tried 
to defraud the court.

-- March 31, 2012. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay March 28 
and ordered the district court to hear Arthur's claims that Alabama's lethal 
injection method violated his right to be free from cruel and unusual 
punishment and his due process rights. Alabama later changed its drug 
combination because one of the drugs was no longer available.

-- Feb. 19, 2015. Watkins ruled 2 days before the scheduled execution that the 
2012 stay remains in place and allowed Arthur to file an amended complaint 
challenging the new drug protocol.

Current appeal

Arthur's current appeal to the 11th Circuit says the district court judge 
improperly denied Arthur's request to amend his complaint to request the firing 
squad as an alternative execution method. When challenging a method of 
execution, inmates must suggest another form of execution under a U.S. Supreme 
Court ruling. Arthur's attorneys argue that the judge erroneously ruled that 
the alternative method must be expressly permitted by state law.

The judge also rejected Arthur's claim that pentobarbital is a feasible and 
readily implemented alternative execution drug. An Alabama Department of 
Corrections official testified at Arthur's hearing earlier this year that the 
state couldn't find a supply of that drug.

Among the other arguments, Arthur's attorneys claim that the judge erroneously 
rejected their arguments that the first drug in the lethal injection protocol - 
midazolam - would cause him to suffer a painful heart attack before being 
sedated.

Arthur and his attorneys have also said there was never any physical evidence, 
such as fingerprints or DNA, linking him to Wicker's death. Arthur said that 
not all the evidence has been tested that might point to another person.

Arthur also points to Judy Wicker's testimony at her murder trial in which she 
claimed a burglar raped her and killed her husband. Wicker, after her 
conviction, testified at one of Arthur's later trials that she had given Arthur 
$10,000 - part of the insurance money - to kill her husband.

Arthur and his attorneys say the rape kit performed on Judy Wicker is missing.

Arthur in June asked AL.com to conduct a videotaped in-person interview at 
Holman prison. But prison officials said that is not allowed under the law.

Arthur claimed prison officials and the Attorney General's Office didn't want 
publicity. "They don't want a face, they don't want a personality to reach the 
public. They want to portray me as a mad dog foaming-at-the-mouth heathen 
killer," Arthur said in one interview. "They don't want the public to see that 
I'm a human being, that I'm not an idiot. They don't want to put what I'm 
saying with a voice where the general public can see."

Efforts to reach Arthur's daughter, Sherrie Author Stone, who at one time had a 
website for her father to support his appeals, were unsuccessful for this 
story.

But she did talk to reporters with the Times Daily newspaper in Florence for a 
story on Sunday.

"My heart goes out to the families of those he killed and to the families of 
those he injured in some way. I am so sorry for your loss and pain. I pray you 
find peace if you have not been able to. There are probably many others we do 
not know about," Stone told the Times Daily.

Stone, who has a brother, also talked to the newspaper about how abusive her 
father was to their mother.

"He beat and shot my 1st stepmother. He beat my 2nd stepmother, and shot and 
killed her sister and almost killed her cousin," Stone told the Times Daily.

(source: al.com)

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

Judge critiques ban on physicians assisting executions


A federal judge Monday denied a group of death row inmates' challenge to the 
state's use of lethal injection in executions.

But then Chief U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins turned to medical 
professionals.

In a critique at the end of a 29-page opinion - titled "Alternative Method 
Evidence: Hippocrates and Hypocrites" - the judge accused the medical community 
of using the American Medical Association's prohibition on physicians assisting 
in executions to prevent testimony on execution methods that would 
"compassionately ensure no measurable possibility of feeling pain during 
execution."

"The medical profession may choose," Watkins wrote. "It could continue on the 
side of guerrilla tactics against a clearly constitutional right of the state 
to execute criminals convicted of vile human desecration and death; or, it 
could choose to become part of a compassionate solution to perceived human 
suffering by rendering assistance to inmates facing the final human judgment, 
with 'great humbleness and awareness of [one's] own frailty.'"

The American Medical Association's Code of Medical Ethics for physicians 
prohibits doctors from participating in or assisting with executions. "As a 
member of a profession dedicated to preserving life when there is hope of doing 
so, a physician must not participate in a legally authorized execution," the 
code states.

The code does allow testimony on a person's medical history; relieving pain or 
anxiety at the anticipation of an execution by a condemned person or 
intervening to mitigate extreme suffering by an incompetent prisoner suffering 
psychosis or any other illness.

Messages seeking comment were sent to the American Medical Association Tuesday 
afternoon. John Palombi, a federal defender representing the inmates, said 
Tuesday afternoon they were "very disappointed" in the decision and had filed 
an appeal with the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Joy Patterson, a spokeswoman for the Alabama attorney general's office, which 
represented the Alabama Department of Corrections in the case, said they had no 
comment Tuesday.

The case involves 10 death row inmates who claim that midazolam, a sedative 
used in the state's 3-drug execution protocol, would be unlikely to render them 
unconscious before the administration of rocuronium bromide, a paralytic, and 
potassium chloride, which stops the heart. Following U.S. Supreme Court rulings 
that condemned inmates objecting to the method of execution must propose 
alternatives, the inmates proposed single-drug methods of execution, using 
injections of midazolam; pentobarbital or sodium thiopental.

The state in the past used pentobarbital and sodium thiopental as sedatives in 
the lethal injection process. Hospira, the manufacturer of sodium thiopental, 
stopped making it in the United States in 2011 over concerns with its use in 
executions. Alabama switched to pentobarbital afterward but ran out of the drug 
by early 2014. The state implemented its current protocol using midazolam in 
September of that year.

Noting the absence of the drugs, the Department of Corrections argued that 
using compounded pentobarbital or sodium thiopental was not workable. DOC also 
said the plaintiffs failed to show that a single large injection of midazolam 
would result in less pain than Alabama's current 3-drug procedure.

Watkins sided with the state, writing that witnesses failed to identify sources 
of sodium thiopental or pentobarbital the DOC could get. The judge also wrote 
that the plaintiffs failed to show "scientific evidence of record" to support 
their arguments that midazolam alone would be a safer, less painful, 
alternative to the state's current method.

Following that discussion, Watkins accused "modern medical ethicists" of 
selectively reading the Hippocratic Oath to find "pure magic in unleashing the 
genies of physician-assisted suicide, medical marijuana, drug and alcohol use - 
even abuse - during pregnancy and without personal responsibility, all in the 
name of liberty, self-determination, and choice."

The American Medical Association's current position on physician-assisted 
suicide is that it is "fundamentally incompatible with the physician???s role 
as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious 
societal risks." The AMA has called for more studies of the impact of medical 
marijuana but has not endorsed its use.

Watkins also said that the AMA's opposition to physician participation in 
executions was "playing at Hippocrates and God in the same breath," and 
unfavorably compared deaths resulting from medical errors - estimated by one 
Johns Hopkins study at 250,000 a year - to the 57 executions that have taken 
place in Alabama since 1983.

The judge also attacked the U.S. Supreme Court???s 1958 decision in Trop v. 
Dulles, where the majority held that the Eighth Amendment's prohibitions 
against cruel and unusual punishment "must draw its meaning from the evolving 
standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." Watkins 
favorably quoted the late Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion that it was "a task 
for which we are imminently ill suited."

"The hollow arguments from a debased medical community in death penalty cases 
are both the progeny of, and prompted by, just such standardless Trop 
jurisprudence as applied to the death penalty," Watkins wrote.

Robert Dunham, the director of the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty 
Information Center, which opposes capital punishment, said Tuesday Watkins' 
criticism reflects "the inherent problem with lethal injections."

"It is a process by its nature that requires medical professionals to violate 
their ethical codes," he said. "It's not a surprise they would be reluctant to 
do that."

The state plans to execute death row inmate Thomas Arthur on Thursday. Arthur 
has an appeal pending in the federal courts, arguing in part that the courts 
should allow him to argue for a single-dose injection of pentobarbital or a 
firing squad as an alternative method of execution.

(source: Montgomery Advertiser)

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

Prosecutors ask jurors for death penalty in murder case


The jury in a potential death penalty case listened to testimony throughout 
Tuesday from prosecutors and defense lawyers.

Jurors found David D. Martin, 31, guilty on Monday of beating and stabbing his 
girlfriend Jennifer Kitchens to death in 2013. Prosecutors argued, based on his 
conviction and previous criminal history, that Martin should face the death 
penalty.

The state's case for the death penalty wrapped up relatively quickly. Testimony 
from the defense's witnesses came to an end just before 5 p.m.

Testimony from more defense witnesses is expected to resume Wednesday morning 
and last the duration of the day. The jury is expected to deliberate on 
Martin's fate - life in prison or the death penalty - by Thursday, said 
McIntosh County District Court Judge James Bland.

(source: Muskogee Phoenix)






LOUISIANA----new death sentence

Death sentence for man who killed a woman and 2 young daughters


A Houma man should be put to death for killing a woman and her 2 daughters then 
torching their Lockport apartment, a jury decided Tuesday.

The 12-member jury reached a unanimous decision after an 8-week trial that 
resulted Sunday in the conviction of David Brown, 38, on 3 counts of 1st-degree 
murder.

The same jury gave Brown the death penalty for the Nov. 4, 2012, slayings of 
29-year-old Jacquelin Nieves and her daughters, 7-year-old Gabriela and 
1-year-old Izabela.

Prosecutors said Brown also sexually assaulted Jacquelin and Gabriela. A 
forensic pathologist who conducted the victims' autopsies determined Jacquelin 
and Izabela died from stab wounds, while Gabriela died of smoke inhalation.

(source: WWL TV news)