[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, OHIO, NEB., ORE.

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 29



TEXAS:

U.S. justices sympathetic to death row inmate on intellectual disability


A majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices on Tuesday appeared ready to side 
with a man sentenced to death for a 1980 Houston murder who is challenging how 
Texas gauges whether a defendant has intellectual disabilities that would 
preclude execution.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that the execution of people who are 
intellectually disabled violates the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and 
unusual punishment. At issue in the arguments the eight justices heard on 
Tuesday was whether Texas is using an obsolete standard to assess whether a 
defendant is intellectually disabled.

Bobby Moore, convicted at age 20 of fatally shooting a 70-year-old grocery 
clerk during a 1980 Houston robbery, is challenging his sentence in Texas, 
which carries out more executions than any other U.S. state.

Moore's lawyers contend their client is intellectually disabled and should be 
spared execution. They argued that a lower court that upheld his sentence 
wrongly used an "outdated" 24-year-old definition used in Texas when it 
determined he was not intellectually disabled.

Moore's appeal focused on how judges should weigh medical evidence of 
intellectual disability. His lawyers said that a lower court found that Moore's 
IQ of 70 was "within the range of mild mental retardation."

Based on questions asked during the argument, the justices, equally divided 
between liberals and conservatives, appeared likely to rule for Moore, 57.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who sometimes sides with the liberals, 
looked likely to be the key vote. Kennedy and two other current justices were 
in the majority in the 2002 ruling precluding executing people with an 
intellectual disability.

At one point during the argument, Kennedy said that the state appeals court 
precedent on which Texas relies was intended to "really limit" the definition 
of intellectual disability.

Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller responded that the state court has "never 
said that the purpose ... is to screen out individuals and deny them relief."

"But isn't that the effect?" Kennedy asked.

Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal, said the Texas standards appeared to reflect a 
decision by the state court to reject expert clinical findings because "they 
don't reflect what Texas citizens think."

The Supreme Court's justices have differed among themselves over capital 
punishment but the court has shown no indication it will take up the broader 
question of the whether the death penalty itself violates the Constitution. 
Liberal justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have said the way the 
death penalty is implemented may be unconstitutional, in part because of 
differences from state to state.

Breyer hinted at those concerns during Tuesday's argument. He said it may not 
be possible to set an intellectual disability standard that is applied 
uniformly nationwide, meaning there will be "disparities and uncertainties" and 
"people who are alike treated differently."

The high court on Oct. 5 heard arguments in another Texas death penalty case. 
In that one, the justices appeared poised to rule in favor of black convicted 
murderer Duane Buck, who is seeking to avoid execution after his own trial 
lawyer called an expert witness who testified Buck was more likely to be 
dangerous in the future because of his race.

Rulings in both cases are due by the end of June.

(source: Reuters)

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

On death row for 1980 killing, Texas inmate asks Supreme Court to spare him


A Texas death-row inmate who once struggled to spell the word "cat" exposed on 
Tuesday sharp differences among Supreme Court justices over capital punishment 
and the judging of intellectual disability.

In an hour-long oral argument set against the backdrop of an upcoming 
confirmation battle, the short-handed court seemed split along conventional 
conservative and liberal lines. The fate of inmate Bobby James Moore and others 
like him who are on the borderline of intellectual disability now appears to 
hang on one swing vote, that of Justice Anthony Kennedy.

"This is a vitally important, life or death issue," Moore's attorney, Clifford 
M. Sloan, told the justices.

In 2002, the court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of 
people with intellectual disabilities. It???s been up to individual states to 
determine how this standard is met.

In Moore's case, Texas applied a standard subsequently spelled out in a 1992 
manual by the American Association of Mental Retardation. Critics, including 
Moore's attorneys, consider this standard outdated, and some justices Tuesday 
clearly agreed.

"Your view ... of state discretion is that a person that every clinician would 
find is intellectually disabled, the state would not find is intellectually 
disabled, because a consensus of Texas citizens would not find that person to 
be intellectually disabled," a skeptical Justice Elena Kagan told Texas 
Solicitor General Scott A. Keller.

Texas officials, Kagan said, believe they "can execute people that clinicians 
would say are disabled."

"There is no question that Texas is very extreme and stands alone."--Defense 
attorney Clifford M. Sloan

The son of an abusive alcoholic father, Moore began skipping school in 4th 
grade and dropped out altogether after 9th grade. His father, who had allegedly 
beat Moore when he did poorly in school and when he couldn't spell easy words, 
kicked him out of the house when he was 14. "He couldn't tell the days of the 
week. He couldn't tell the months of the year; couldn't tell time," Justice 
Sonia Sotomayor said, adding that Moore "was eating out of garbage cans 
repeatedly and getting sick after each time he did it, but not learning from 
his mistakes."

By the time he was 17, Moore was a felon who financed his drug use by stealing 
cars, burglarizing houses and hustling pool.

In April 1980, Moore and two accomplices agreed to commit a robbery. Moore 
supplied a .32 caliber pistol and a shotgun, and the 3 men drove around Houston 
until they came upon Birdsall Super Market. Donning a wig and sunglasses, Moore 
entered the store with the other 2 robbers and then, prosecutors say, Moore 
shot and killed 70-year-old James McCarble.

Moore said the firearm discharge was accidental.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals later confined the assessment of Moore's 
intellectual capacity to the 1992 manual. This assessment included a finding 
that Moore has scored in the mid-70s on IQ tests. The manual has since been 
updated, and more current medical standards de-emphasize rigid IQ scores and 
place greater weight on the individual's real-world abilities to adapt and 
function.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer both joined Kagan and Sotomayor 
on Tuesday in sounding sympathetic to Moore's case.

"You've made very good arguments for your client," Breyer told Sloan.

Texas, in turn, had apparent allies in Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., and, in 
particular, Justice Samuel Alito, a former federal prosecutor. At one point, 
Alito pulled out a particular academic journal to support his point.

"Texas is not prohibiting the use of current standards," Keller said.

The argument Tuesday was the 2nd involving a Texas death-row inmate to be heard 
this term. In October, justices sounded sympathetic to a separate, and 
relatively narrow, challenge brought by Duane Edward Buck.

A jury in 1996 convicted Buck of killing 2 people and wounding his step-sister, 
and he was sentenced to death after a psychologist summoned by his own defense 
attorney concluded that being "'Black' was a 'statistical factor'" that 
increased the probability that Buck would commit future acts of violence.

In keeping with his standard practice, Justice Clarence Thomas did not speak or 
ask questions during oral argument for either of the Texas cases. He is, 
however, a reliable vote to uphold death sentences as a general matter.

Decisions in both cases are expected by the end of next June.

If the 8 current justices deadlock in Moore's case, no precedent would be set 
but the lower Texas appellate court decision would be upheld, thus affirming 
Moore's death sentence.

By June, the Republican-controlled Senate is also likely to have confirmed a 
replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who passed away last February. 
President-elect Donald Trump, who will make the selection after GOP lawmakers 
refused to consider President Barack Obama's nominee, supports the death 
penalty.

(source: mcclatchydc.com)






OHIO:

Mother of Glenara Bates no longer faces death penalty


A woman charged with murder in the death of her 2-year-old daughter who 
prosecutors say was starved and beaten no longer faces the death penalty.

At a court hearing Tuesday, Hamilton County prosecutors did not dispute the 
report of a psychologist who found that 30-year-old Andrea Bradley is 
intellectually disabled. That finding means Bradley, if convicted, cannot be 
sentenced to death. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that executing people with 
intellectual disabilities violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual 
punishment.

A trial was set for April 2017 in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court before 
Judge Robert Ruehlman.

Experts have determined that Bradley's IQ is in the mid-60s, below the 
threshold of 75 that determines intellectual disability.

Prosecutors said both Bradley and her onetime boyfriend, Glen Bates, were 
responsible for the death of 2-year-old Glenara Bates. She had been starved, 
burned, beaten and ultimately slammed against a door frame by Glen Bates before 
she died in March 2015. Bates was found guilty of aggravated murder and 
sentenced to death in October.

Bates lived on and off with Bradley, Glenara and 5 other children in a rented 
house in East Walnut Hills. Bates is the father of 3 of Bradley's children, 
including Glenara and a child Bradley gave birth to last year while she was in 
jail, awaiting trial.

Bradley's attorneys have called Bates controlling and abusive toward her.

(source: cincinnati.com)






NEBRASKA:

Ricketts: 'Claims of secrecy really just aren't founded' surrounding death 
penalty proposal


Gov. Pete Ricketts on Tuesday dismissed concerns about lack of transparency 
with proposed changes to Nebraska's lethal injection protocol.

The proposal, announced Monday by the Nebraska Department of Correctional 
Services, would allow the state prisons director to choose the drug or drugs 
used in executions, and would keep the identity of the state's supplier 
confidential.

It would also keep the drugs and method of administration secret until 60 days 
before a death warrant is requested. At that point, the information would be 
shared with the condemned inmate.

"Claims of secrecy really just aren't founded," Ricketts told reporters during 
a news conference Tuesday at the Capitol.

He said the proposed rules are intended to protect the drug provider, and that 
the 60-day window of notification provides flexibility for the state to change 
the drug it uses while still giving inmates "plenty of time" to appeal.

"We're really not changing anything about confidentiality," Ricketts said, but 
the protocol would "give the state flexibility to carry out the execution."

The proposal came three weeks after voters overwhelmingly reversed the 
Legislature's repeal of the death penalty.

The proposed new protocol will be submitted to a public hearing on Dec. 30.

(source: Lincoln Journal Star)






OREGON:

Despite Execution Moratorium, Oregon Gives Another Inmate The Death Penalty


Oregon has a new death row inmate, bringing the total to 35.

David Ray Bartol, 45, was found guilty of aggravated murder after killing 
fellow inmate Gavin Siscel. Barton made a shank and stabbed Siscel to death as 
he watched TV.

To pass a death sentence, the jury had to answer "yes" to a series of questions 
including:

-Was the murder deliberate?

-Is Bartol a continuing threat to society?

-Was the attack unreasonable in response to any provocation by Siscel?

-And finally: Should the defendant receive a death sentence?

The jury of nine women and three men answered "yes" to all the questions.

Gov. Kate Brown has said she plans to continue Oregon's moratorium on capital 
punishment.

The last person to be put to death here was Douglas Wright, 20 years ago.

The last person to be sentenced to death in Oregon was David Taylor in 2014.

(source: OPB news)