[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., DEL., ARIZ., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 2



PENNSYLVANIA:

Taunting defendant in Easton death penalty case fires his lawyers


Northampton County Judge Emil Giordano allowed alleged Easton killer Jeffrey 
Knoble to fire his lawyers Friday.

And that means the new attorneys won't have enough time to prepare for Knoble's 
scheduled Sept. 6 trial date. The judge pushed back the trial to January.

Knoble, 26, is charged with killing Andrew "Beep" White on March 11, 2015, at 
the Quality Inn in Downtown Easton. Police say White felt sorry for Knoble and 
got him a place to stay.

Knoble surrendered to police hours later after a standoff at 1318 Liberty St. 
in Easton's West Ward, according to police.

Knoble faces the death penalty.

He has asked to fire his attorneys and then relented multiple times. This time 
Giordano granted his request.

The attorneys will come from the conflict counsel list, a list of attorneys 
willing to stand in as public defenders but have no ties to the public 
defender's office. Knoble formerly had Chief Public Defender Robert Eyer and 
public defenders Matt Goodrich and Matt Potts.

Knoble wasn't in court Friday for the decision. His appearances have been 
marked with profane outbursts and erratic behavior.

He was scheduled to plead guilty last month to killing White, then showed up 
and stuck his tongue out at the victim's family, professed his innocence and 
said "Ha ha! Ha ha! Ha ha!"

Assistant District Attorney Terence Houck said he remains prepared to prosecute 
Knoble, whether the trial is in September or January.

(source: lehighvalleylive.com)

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

Easton hotel murder trial delayed until next year


The capital murder trial of Jeffrey S. Knoble Jr. has been delayed until next 
year, after a Northampton County judge stuck with his decision to allow 
Knoble's public defenders to withdraw from the case.

Knoble will be tried in January, instead of next week, and he will be appointed 
a new defense team, Judge Emil Giordano said on Friday.

The order represented the latest delay in the trial of Knoble, who faces the 
death penalty if convicted of shooting a man last year inside a downtown Easton 
hotel room, then making a cellphone video of the corpse. It came as Knoble has 
repeatedly clashed with his lawyers and had outbursts in court, including 
mocking the family of the man he is accused of killing.

The delay marked a reversal for Giordano, who had previously said that the 
trial would be held in September "come hell or high water." But on Monday, 
Giordano allowed Chief Public Defender Robert Eyer and 2 other defense lawyers 
to get out of the case, after Eyer cited a "complete breakdown" of the 
attorney-client relationship.

Giordano reiterated his decision on Friday, after a closed-door meeting with 
the defense in which prosecutor Terence Houck was kept out of the room - a rare 
occurrence, given that court rules frown upon ex-parte communications, in which 
one side meets with a judge without the other side present.

After the meeting, for which Knoble was not brought into court, Giordano 
announced the delay until Jan. 9. Giordano chided the 26-year-old Riegelsville 
man's behavior, but said he is nonetheless entitled to new lawyers.

"He has deliberately disrupted the scheduling of this trial and he has made it 
impossible for counsel to effectively represent him," Giordano said.

Knoble is charged in the early March 11, 2015, death of 32-year-old Andrew 
"Beep" White, who was shot in the back of the head at the former Quality Inn on 
South Third Street. Authorities call White a good Samaritan who had rented a 
room for Knoble that night because he had no place to stay, then was killed for 
his kindness.

In granting the trial's delay, Giordano did so over the objections of Houck, 
the county's first deputy district attorney. Houck has repeatedly accused 
Knoble of trying to sabotage the justice system through his courtroom antics.

In February, Knoble called his public defenders "bums" and "corrupt." A week 
later, he cursed at Giordano, telling him to "Go [expletive] yourself." In May, 
Knoble insisted he is a sovereign man who isn't subject to the reach of the 
justice system.

More recently, Knoble was in court last month for what was expected to be a 
guilty plea in which he would admit to murdering White and accept a sentence of 
life without parole. But instead, Knoble asserted his innocence, turned to 
White's family, stuck out his tongue and repeatedly said, "Ha ha, ha ha" to 
them.

Before Monday, Giordano had rejected prior attempts by Knoble to replace his 
defense lawyers. Houck said he had "no idea" why the judge was persuaded this 
week that Knoble's relationship with his attorneys was irreconcilable.

"Whatever it was, was kept between the judge and Mr. Eyer, and was sealed," 
Houck said.

Afterward, Eyer declined to discuss the basis for the private meeting.

"There are circumstances that require it, that's all I can say," Eyer said

(source: The Morning Call)






DELAWARE:

Keep death penalty for mass murderers, cop killers


Sunday, Sept. 11, is Patriot Day, the National Day of Service and Remembrance, 
as we mourn the date 15 years ago when almost 3,000 people lost their lives and 
the United States lost its innocence.

When those 4 planes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the 
Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, we realized that worldwide terrorism had 
reached our shores.

Since then the United States has had mass murders of innocent children, women 
and men in schools, nightclubs, workplaces, churches and theaters by 
self-professed terrorists or unhinged individuals.

We usually haven't had a chance to bring these murderers to trial as they 
committed suicide or fell to police bullets. None of these killers deserved to 
live, which is why if they are caught, complete elimination of the death 
penalty is a big mistake.

The death penalty must be retained for especially heinous crimes such as 
unprovoked mass killing of innocent people, the murders of police and others 
who have sworn to protect us, and especially for the leaders of countries 
killing their own people like Syria's Assad. Who would spare murdering 
dictators like Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot?

Of course, such callous killers would not come under Delaware law but do any of 
the well-motivated individuals and groups seeking to end all capital punishment 
really believe these people should not pay the ultimate penalty for their 
crimes?

Whenever I hear about the anti-death penalty movement, I think about Barbara 
Keating, a friend of my wife and me, who was a passenger on that 1st plane to 
hit the World Trade Tower. I cannot imagine the terror she and the others on 
that flight must have experienced as they realized terrorists were flying them 
to their fiery deaths.

9/11 Rescue

A new book by two University of Delaware professors chronicles the little-known 
volunteer evacuation efforts from lower Manhattan by a fleet of boats on 
9/11/2001.

"American Dunkirk: The Waterborne Evacuation of Manhattan on 9/11" details the 
findings of the Disaster Research Center, a 53-year-old unique institution that 
examines and solves complex social problems related to disasters. The center 
has been based in Delaware for 30 years.

This rescue can certainly be compared to the 1940 evacuation of 340,000 Allied 
troops from the French beaches of Dunkirk.

The book tells us how boat operators and waterfront workers formed a rescue 
fleet for tens of thousands of people unable to flee from the towers disaster 
by the usual routes of subways, bridges, tunnels and trains. These survivors 
were trapped at the water's edge just 350 yards from the collapsed trade center 
until hundreds of boats brought them to safety.

The maritime response was perhaps the greatest water evacuation in history, 
write James Kendra and Tricia Wachtendorf, directors of the research center. 
The book asks, "What can the people and lessons teach us about not only 
surviving but thriving in the face of calamity?"

(source: Harry Themal, The News Journal)






ARIZONA:

Study: Maricopa County Near Top In Death Penalty Cases


The U.S. Supreme Court barred execution of intellectually disabled prisoners in 
2002.

Since 2006, about 62 % of defendants in Maricopa County death penalty cases 
were intellectually disabled, had a mental illness or brain damage, according 
to the study.

There are 3 reasons why the percentage is so high, said Dale Baich, an 
assistant federal public defender who represents plaintiffs in an ongoing 
lawsuit against Arizona's death penalty.

"First, I think the county attorney is skeptical of claims of mental 
impairment," Baich said. "The view may be that the accused is somehow faking 
it."

The 2 other reasons are: Some defense lawyers have not effectively explained 
their client's mental issues to the jury, and the state legislature made it 
more difficult for the Arizona Supreme Court to reverse a death sentence, Baich 
said.

Authors of the study also named several attorneys as having provided an 
inadequate defense of clients facing the death penalty in Maricopa County 
courtrooms.

One lawyer wrote that a client with a low IQ "looks like a killer, not a 
retard," according to the study. Another didn't tell the jury his client was 
born addicted to heroin, had symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome and suffered 
head injuries caused by physical abuse.

"Some of the lawyers that were mentioned in this report are still being 
appointed to death penalty cases in Maricopa County," Baich said. "I think the 
state Supreme Court really needs to take a careful look at who is qualified to 
handle these cases."

Arizona has not carried out an execution since 2014.

(source: KJZZ news)






USA:

The death penalty killed Jesus. Is it killing us, too?


Amid the seismic shifts happening within American Christianity, a growing 
number of the faithful now oppose the death penalty. The Catholic Church has 
long repudiated the death penalty, and many mainline Protestant denominations 
do too. Though evangelical Christians have generally favored the death penalty, 
even the National Association of Evangelicals has shrunk back from its 
previously supportive stance.

Enter Shane Claiborne, an evangelical leader and author who has recently 
released a book, "Executing Grace: How the death penalty killed Jesus and why 
it is killing us." Unlike some of his progressive Christian compatriots, 
Claiborne's approach is Jesus-centric. He wrestles with the issue through the 
lens of Jesus' story, teachings, and crucifixion. On the latter, Claiborne 
emphasizes that Jesus was himself killed by means of capital punishment. Here 
we discuss what how he believes the executed first-century rabbi changes the 
way we should think about state-sanctioned death.

RNS: You admit in Executing Grace that you have an agenda, so let's get that 
out of the way. What is your agenda exactly?

SC: I want to abolish the death penalty. And I believe we can. Death sentences 
are the lowest they've been in 40 years, and executions the lowest in 20 years. 
Every year a new state abolishes the death penalty, and only a handful of 
states are actually executing. I don't think the question is if will abolish 
the death penalty but when.

We're also seeing many conservative and evangelical voices rising to the 
occasion. One study has shown 80 % of millennial Christians are against the 
death penalty. I'd love to see Christians be a part of making history. We can 
do better than killing to show that killing is wrong.

RNS: You say "the nagging problem of Jesus" is the greatest obstacle for 
pro-death penalty Christians. Explain. SC: First, it must be noted that the 
death penalty has succeeded in America not in spite of Christians, but because 
of us. Wherever Christians are most concentrated is where executions have been 
most concentrated. 85% of executions take place in the Bible belt. As my friend 
Dale Recinella, chaplain on Florida's death row puts it: "The Bible belt is the 
death belt." This troubles me. Many of my fellow Christians have lost the 
centrality of Jesus, and we've used - and misused - Scripture to contradict 
Christ.

RNS: You mention Jesus, but what about the Hebrew scriptures? Didn't God 
establish the death penalty?

SC: The problem with this line of reasoning is that murder was not the only 
crime that warranted death in the Old Testament. There were some 30 
death-worthy crimes listed including working on the Sabbath, witchcraft, 
adultery, and disrespecting your parents. But here's the catch. The law also 
made it nearly impossible to execute someone. The criteria was so strict that 
executions rarely happened. The rabbis of old said that if a high court 
executes more than one person in 70 years it is a bloody court.

But that is where Jesus becomes so important. For Christians, Jesus is the lens 
through which we read Scripture and understand how we are to live. And it is 
Jesus who becomes the "nagging problem" for pro-death-penalty Christians. Jesus 
said things like "Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy" and 
"inasmuch as you forgive you will be forgiven." It becomes impossible to 
justify the death penalty with Jesus. When asked if Jesus would support capital 
punishment only 5 % of Americans think he would.

RNS: Get specific. The Old Testament mentions an "eye for eye" standard of 
justice. How do you understand this and how does Jesus factor in?

SC: The "eye for an eye" law was intended to be a limit to retaliation, not a 
license for it. The goal was to stop the cycle of violence rather than validate 
or escalate it. One way of thinking of it would be "an eye for an eye ... no 
more." If someone broke your arm, you couldn't go break both of theirs, or burn 
their house down. Even today, we don't rape those who rape to show that rape is 
wrong. But somehow in the most severe case of murder we sometimes still cling 
to this idea that we can kill those who kill to show that it is wrong to kill.

Ironically, it's Christians - not Jewish people - who use the Hebrew law to 
justify the death penalty. Even though there were 30 death-worthy crimes in the 
Old Testament, the Jewish community didn't like execution and did away with 
capital punishment hundreds of years ago.

Jesus comes along and says, "You've heard it said 'an eye for an eye ... but I 
tell you." He says that even if you have a legal right to retaliate, that 
doesn't make it right. Limiting violence, as God did in the Old Testament, was 
a good start. And Jesus fulfills that by saying we shouldn't harm those who 
harm us at all. Moses's law limited violence. Jesus wanted to heal us from 
violence altogether.

RNS: The subtitle of your book stuns me like ice water: "How the death penalty 
killed Jesus and why it's killing us." What about Christians who say - ala 
Isaiah - that God, not the death penalty, killed Jesus?

SC: It's so important to see Jesus as one who was executed. At the heart of 
Christianity is an executed Savior, one who was convicted, jailed, shamed, and 
sentenced to die at the hands of the state beside 2 other convicted felons. 
This has held the secret power of the Gospel to oppressed people around the 
world.

During slavery and lynching, black folks in America looked at Jesus hanging on 
the tree and saw him as one who was lynched. What if we thought of the cross 
like we think of a noose, or an electric chair? For centuries, the cross was a 
terrible symbol of horror, humiliation, and torture. Colossians says that as 
Jesus willfully dies forgiving those who kill him, he makes a spectacle of 
death. He triumphs over them with love, forgiveness, and grace. Love steals the 
show, and turns this tragic story into a love story. Now, any time we rejoice 
in death, we disgrace the cross.

RNS: Fine. But how could a loving God sacrifice his son, as Christianity holds, 
unless that God believed in capital punishment?

SC: I once received an email that asked, "How can God be against the death 
penalty when God used it to save the world?" How we understand Jesus's death - 
his execution - is a critical question. Some ways of understanding why Jesus 
died are toxic and confusing. There are versions of theology that would suggest 
God had a gun pointed at humanity, and then turned the gun away from us and 
killed Jesus. I believe Jesus is doing something much different, much deeper 
and much more beautiful on the cross.

The Bible is full of messed up people, even people who have committed terrible 
crimes like murder. One of the first murders in the Bible is none other than 
Moses. Then, there's David who took another man's wife and ended up killing 
that man to cover his tracks. Saul of Tarsus was by every definition a 
terrorist, a religious extremist, who went door to door trying to kill the 
early Christians. He oversaw the execution of a young man named Stephen, one of 
the church's first martyrs. But he has a radical conversion. If we believe 
murderers are beyond redemption, then we can rip out half the Bible. Jesus 
?comes in the middle of this story to expose the violence and evil we are all 
capable of, and triumphing over it in love, forgiving even those who kill him.

The Bible would be much shorter with out grace. In the end, this is a love 
story. It is about imperfect people falling in love with a merciful God. It 
reminds that none of us are beyond redemption - not Moses, or David, or Saul, 
or you, or me. God's grace is bigger than we can ever imagine.

RNS: Like you, I oppose the death penalty. But I struggle when people ask me 
about justice for the victims of violent crimes. How is an anti-penalty 
position compassionate to victims and their families?

SC: This is exactly the right question that must be asked. Violence and evil 
are real. We see people who are capable of unimaginable brutality, and innocent 
people must be protected. God is a God of grace, but also a God of justice.

Sometimes folks ask, "What if someone killed your wife or mom?" Actually it is 
the victims of violence who are against the death penalty that captured my 
heart. They have become some of the most credible voices in the abolition 
movement and have taught me that the death penalty is not the best form of 
justice. It sentences the families to relive the horror for 10 to 20 years, 
since our system is so broken. The death penalty is much more expensive than 
alternatives like life in prison, which means less resources available for the 
victims' service and prevention.

Some of the most stunning examples of healing I've ever seen are families of 
the murdered who have decided against execution and found better forms of 
justice and closure. They are living testimonies to the power of grace and 
forgiveness to heal the heart. They have taught me that when we kill those who 
kill, we become the very thing we hate. We promote violence, revenge, and 
retaliation. Dr. King said that capital punishment is "society's final 
assertion that we will not forgive." Violence is the disease, not the cure. The 
death penalty creates a whole new set of victims.

(source: Opinion, Jonathan Merritt, Religion News)

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

Life Requires More From Us Than Death: Ending The Death Penalty In Charleston, 
Too


The United States of America was born in violence. The brutality, severity, and 
ubiquity of violence during slavery preceded and followed our country's 
founding. It was, indeed, inscribed and fundamentally baked into the parchment 
of our constitution. For many of us this is a difficult and disturbing truth to 
face, but one we know too well. It persistently unsettles the meaning of our 
democracy and search for a more perfect union. It too often disturbs 
long-cherished beliefs and practices and disrupts visions of what our future 
holds. The death penalty has been and remains an essential and consistent form 
of this American violence - often its messenger - and it is time to stop.

For the first peoples of this land, communities of African descent, other 
communities of color and poor people, news about America the violent, is not 
really news at all. Ours is a different recognition grounded in a historic set 
of oppressions established through searing social custom, legislative fiat, 
religious teachings, and racial taxonomies. Enslavement, segregation, 
discrimination, criminalization, removal, poverty, second-class citizenship, 
and all manner of brutality and violation are its legacy. It is a legacy that 
continues still, nowhere more prominently than in the continued administration 
of the death penalty.

Oppressions based on race, gender, class, sex, ethnicity and so much more have 
had deep material and spiritual consequences for our national community life. 
Long before ascending to the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall battled the death 
penalty on behalf of Black lives in the South that were diminished and treated 
as inconsequential, cheap, abbreviated, and expendable. Marshall's 1940's 
heroics in the killing fields of Lake County, Florida, included exposing and 
challenging brandings, lynchings, rape, abuse, burnings, and bombings. Today, 
many of those atrocities have given way to predatory lending, redlining, mass 
incarceration, health disparities, voter exclusion, 3 strikes, stop and frisk, 
and stand your ground. The struggle against state-sanctioned violence, 
homegrown terror, sexual aggression, bullying, profiling, shootings, killings, 
and assassinations racks the increasingly fragile American psyche. The death 
penalty, then as now, is the tip of this iceberg.

"Death and the instruments of death must be eliminated from our criminal 
justice system. Our historic struggle against state-sanctioned terror requires 
it."

Americans are not alone in the urgent struggle to reclaim our deeper humanity. 
The world over is seized with dehumanizing pain. It has long been so. Nelson 
Mandela, and all of Africa, bore the pain and scars of violent imperialism and 
systems that by law and practice denied African humanity. Mandela saw that 
there could be no future for South Africa or its Black population if the death 
penalty, as instrument or symbol remained. Today, indifference and hatred seems 
to grow more debilitating by the moment. Violence and terror is without 
boundary. From Palestine and Paris to African Mediterranean refugee routes and 
Syria, the refrain is agonizingly personal and distressingly the same. Old 
divisions have become new. We have seen "all the oppressions that are practiced 
under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 4:1)

There is so much in our experience as African Americans, as a people who have 
undergone the terror, who were once forcibly enslaved, the raped and the 
lynched, the foreclosed and the incarcerated, to warrant our hatred of this 
country. This simple and seldom-expressed truth courses through our veins and 
has always been known and feared in this land by others, including the 
perpetrators. Yet somehow, African America remains true to itself, waging 
justice in the face of this nation???s grave shortcomings, and our own 
apprehensions no less, declaring that we will find a way to live together in 
this rainbow nation and world and not perish together as fools. We care enough 
to advocate for right, to challenge institutional racism, to be collectively 
angry and morally indignant over the senseless loss and devaluation of Black 
lives. In critical solidarity with other communities of struggle, we are 
forging new meanings of justice and the birth of a new nation.

Truth telling, the call for public conversations on race, racism, and 
recognition of intersectional realities - state and domestic forms of violence, 
police shootings and the shootings of police, health and gender equity, queer 
and transgender equality, Islamophobia and immigration, to name a few - is 
terribly important. We must learn how to talk meaningfully about and act 
effectively against the complex realities of racism. No death penalty trial, 
whether in Charleston, Boston, or Texas, will contribute one iota, to this 
necessary national conversation. A new vocabulary and a new resolve in this 
present moment are required.

Truth telling also requires something even more courageous of us. Sometimes, we 
have to commit to do the unnoticed restorative work of laying the foundation, 
of walking the talk, of consensus-building, of consciousness-raising, one 
individual at a time, of sustaining the movement toward a more just, 
sustainable, and inclusive world that is ours to envision even if it has not 
yet appeared on the horizon.

1 year ago in Charleston, South Carolina, 9 people were killed during Bible 
study and prayer, by a 21 year old self-professed white supremacist; 5 
survived, including a child. In the current maelstrom, there are those who seek 
to hold the killer accountable by death. Such a response is certainly 
understandable. In some quarters it may even be accepted wisdom. But successful 
prosecution of the death penalty extends our national cycle of violence and 
death and the almost certain continued disproportionate execution of people who 
are Black, Brown, poor, and impaired - the traditional subjects of capital 
punishment, a penalty rooted in racial terrorism.

We, therefore reject the notion that you offer reparations to those who have 
suffered racial violence by offering more violence. Our just obligation is to 
hold the killer fully accountable, honor the legacy of the lives lost, and 
promote the restoration of health and well-being to a devastated community. A 
severe prison sentence of life without possibility of release, and ultimately 
death in prison is a devastating, lifelong punishment that powerfully, 
importantly, rejects the barbarism of state-inflicted death. It also allows for 
redemption. Death and the instruments of death must be eliminated from our 
criminal justice system. Our historic struggle against state-sanctioned terror 
requires it. The God of life expects no less.

There is a resurgent movement today insisting it is time to end state violence 
and systemic oppression, to break the endless cycle of racial animus, trauma, 
and death. 19 states have abolished the death penalty, 7 in the last decade. 4 
Governors have imposed moratoria on executions and new death sentences and 
executions have been reduced nationwide. The Democratic Party platform during 
this critical election year calls for abolition and public support for the 
death penalty is at an all-time low. Dismantling the death penalty is a crucial 
component for communities of struggle to reach their full potential.

A wellspring of strength is found in the most incredible of places: The 
historic Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The 9 murdered 
saints. The 5 survivors.

There is an opportunity to unite with countless courageous others who have 
called on our nation and our world to learn to return love for hate at this 
crossroads in history. Nelson Mandela. Martin Luther King, Jr. Coretta Scott 
King. Bernice King. Daddy King. Thurgood Marshall. Desmond Tutu. William 
Barber. Bryan Stevenson. Cornel West. Harry Belafonte. KRS-One. Big Boi. 
Ta-Nehisi Coates. Michelle Alexander. Angela Davis. Some of those others have 
directly lost loved ones to violence. Some have directly challenged the 
prison-industrial complex. All have opposed the death penalty. All are 
champions for justice. All have said that the death penalty only perpetuates 
the endless cycle of death. All say Not in Our Name. All have testified that 
the right to life and dignity is greater than retribution and fear. Life 
requires more from us than death. Let us work for such a world above all else.

(source: Alton B. Pollard, III, Ph.D.--Dean and Professor of Religion and 
Culture at Howard University School of Divinity; Henderson Hill Veteran 
criminal defense and civil rights attorney and trial advocacy instructor based 
in Charlotte, NC.----Huffington Post)