[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OHIO, ARK., MO., MINN.

[Rick Halperin]

April 9



OHIO:

Death penalty debate continues


Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said it may be premature for people 
opposed to the death penalty to call it dead in Ohio.

"In Trumbull County, the system works and due process takes place daily with 
judges and jurors doing their jobs every day," Watkins said. "Every poll in 
Ohio and the U.S. since I have been prosecutor in 1984 ... shows a majority of 
citizens supporting the death penalty in Ohio and most of the United States. 
Some states have repealed the death penalty, but under the United States 
Constitution, it is not cruel and unusual punishment to have and use the death 
penalty for murders."

Kevin Werner, executive director of Ohioans to Stop Executions, disagrees, 
saying, in part, an execution in Ohio hasn't been carried out in more than 3 
years after the process was suspended because of legal challenges over how the 
state puts people to death.

"Ohioans accept that capital punishment is coming to an end. Our state and 
county coffers will welcome the cost savings and more sound public policy," 
Werner said.

Ohio suffered a blow Thursday when a federal appeals court rejected the state's 
new 3-drug lethal injection process.

In a 2-1 decision, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati found 
the proposed use of a contested sedative - midazolam - unconstitutional. The 
court also ruled Ohio's planned use of 2 other drugs the state abandoned years 
ago prevents their reintroduction in a new execution system.

Executions have been on hold since January 2014, when inmate Dennis McGuire 
took 26 minutes to die under a never-before-tried 2-drug method that began with 
midazolam. Ohio announced its 3-drug method in October.

An appeal is likely. Options included asking the full appeals court to consider 
the case or appealing straight to the U.S. Supreme Court, said Dan Tierney, a 
spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General???s Office.

Said Werner, "The death penalty system in Ohio is collapsing in nearly every 
measurable way. The trends we see are striking. Ohioans are choosing life 
sentences as the appropriate punishment for these worst-of-the-worst crimes."

Indictments containing the possibility of death as punishment were down in Ohio 
30 % in 2016 compared to the year before, according to a news release from the 
anti-execution group. Information from the attorney general's office shows 4 
new death sentences were added in Ohio, but three were removed for resentencing 
or retrial.

Also, figures from the office show 6 counties with a high number of inmates on 
death row - Trumbull, Mahoning, Hamilton, Lucas, Stark and Summit - did not 
file a new death penalty case in 2016.

But in March, capital murder charges were filed against Nasser Hamad of 
Howland, who is accused of killing 2 and wounding 3 others March 25 at his 
home.

In Mahoning County, capital defendant Robert Seman's trial, which has been 
moved because of difficulties in seating an impartial jury, will start this 
month in Portage County. Seman is accused of killing 3 while setting fire to a 
Youngstown home. He was indicted in 2015.

There are 139 people on Ohio's death row, including 1 woman, Donna Roberts of 
Trumbull County. 25 executions are scheduled in Ohio in the next 4 years, 
including Mahoning County's John Drummond, who is scheduled to die Sept. 17, 
2020. The next execution in Ohio is scheduled for May 10.

Opponents say there are trends that show judges and juries are choosing options 
other than death. Between 2012 and 2015, Ohio prosecutors sought the death 
penalty in 122 cases, according to the Ohio Supreme Court's Capital Indictment 
Table. While death penalty cases from this time period produced 9 new death 
sentences, most concluded with alternative sentences.

Watkins, however, has another take on the numbers.

"Because we have individualized sentencing, no 2 defendants are ever treated 
the same. This is as it should be. Therefore, results will vary as would be 
expected," Watkins said.

Trumbull County statistics bear that out. There was an 11-year gap between 
Roberts' sentence in 2003 and David Martin's death penalty conviction. 
Assistant Trumbull County Prosecutor LuWayne Annos said juries have recommended 
the death sentence in 5 cases - Sean Carter, Stanley Adams, Nate Jackson, 
Roberts and Martin - since the legislature gave an option of life without 
parole in capital cases.

Since July 1, 1996, 6 capital murder defendants were sentenced to life without 
parole after juries in Trumbull County were given the ability to make that 
recommendation.

But, "the real question is how many more years will we tolerate the enormous 
costs, the bias, and the risk of executing innocent people?" Werner said.

Watkins said he would rather look at an issue of fairness.

"Some would say that it would be unfair to execute 1 robber who was caught 
leaving the scene of a murder when the accomplice got away and never was 
caught," Watkins said. "I would say it is only unfair to the victim and society 
that the other escaped justice."

(source: Warren tribune Chronicle)






ARKANSAS:

Arkansas Plans to Execute 7 People This Month, Continuing Long Tradition of 
Assembly-Line Killing


On April 17, the state of Arkansas plans to kill Don Davis and Bruce Earl Ward, 
2 men who have been on death row since the early 1990s. Neither has applied for 
clemency. Both will die on the same gurney, back to back, if all goes according 
to plan. Executioners will start by injecting them with a sedative called 
midazolam, never before used by the state, but which is supposed to render them 
unconscious for the 2 lethal drugs to follow. No one, apart from a handful of 
officials, knows where the drugs will come from, or who exactly will do the 
injecting. Those are secrets under the law. Most importantly, no one knows how 
well the midazolam will work, if it works at all. After nearly 12 years without 
a single execution, Arkansas is embarking on a kind of human experiment.

If there are risks to this plan, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchison has wasted 
little time contemplating them. 3 nights after the double execution, Ledelle 
Lee and Stacey Johnson are scheduled to die the same way, on April 20, followed 
by another 2 men, Marcel Williams and Jack Jones Jr., on April 24. Finally, if 
all goes according to plan, Kenneth Williams will be executed on the 27th. An 
8th man, Jason McGehee, was supposed to die with him, but this week he was 
granted a reprieve. As it now stands, 7 men will die in the Arkansas death 
house this month, over the course of 11 days.

The sudden rush to execute stems from a practical dilemma: Arkansas's supply of 
midazolam is set to expire at the end of the month. If the governor lets that 
happen, officials will have to find a new supply of drugs for lethal injection, 
an increasingly challenging task that has kept executions on hold for years. In 
the years since the state's last execution, officials seem to be getting rusty, 
even when it comes to basic PR. Facing a shortage of necessary witnesses for 
its upcoming executions, Department of Corrections Director Wendy Kelly asked 
startled members of a Little Rock rotary club last month if anyone would be 
willing to attend the executions. "It quickly became obvious that she was not 
kidding," 1 man said.

If Arkansas officials now find themselves in uncharted waters, they are also 
reviving an old local tradition. It was not so long ago that prisoners were 
once executed two and three at a time, using techniques believed to be humane, 
even cutting edge, despite signs to the contrary. As in other death penalty 
states, generations of politicians in Arkansas have passed law after law 
mandating experimental new killing tools hastily borrowed from other states, 
while tasking others to implement them. Governors have ignored red flags, 
insisting they are bound by law to set execution dates, regardless of 
circumstance, then discovered things don't go according to plan.

Part of this history can be found at the Arkansas Studies Institute in downtown 
Little Rock, a modern renovation of 2 historic buildings on President Clinton 
Avenue. The vast collection includes boxes of old materials belonging to the 
Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty: decades of prison mail, 
meeting minutes, and a handful of correspondence with Hutchison's predecessors. 
In 1 letter, from 1989, Governor Bill Clinton responds to a prominent activist 
and longtime friend Freddie Nixon, who had urged him to intervene on behalf of 
a black man on death row named Barry Lee Fairchild, whom many believed to be 
innocent. "As you know our positions differ," Clinton wrote back, "and I ask 
that you respect the prayer and deliberation on which mine is based."

Clinton restarted executions in 1990, ending a 26-year stretch without any 
deaths in the Arkansas death chamber. A bloody era followed. In January 1994, 
the state executed 2 men in a single night - a 1st in the country's so-called 
"modern" death penalty period. A few months later, Nixon and her husband sent a 
letter to Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, with another urgent appeal. "Once again we are 
writing to you to request that you grant clemency to persons on Arkansas' death 
row," they wrote in July 1994. "The situation this time is even more 
extraordinary than the last." The double execution had been "gruesome enough," 
they continued. "This time, 3 are scheduled to die and all for 1 crime. What 
kind of justice requires three deaths? Please do not let Arkansas become 
another 'Killing Field.' Grant clemency to Darryl Richley, Hoyt Clines and 
James Holmes."

The Nixons were not alone in seeking to halt the triple execution. The ACLU 
decried "the horrifying and barbaric spectacle of Arkansas' 'final solution' to 
crime. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund called it "disturbingly paradigmatic of an 
era when African-Americans were too often the victims of mass lynchings." 
Protests were held, and vigils organized at the governor's mansion. 
Nevertheless, Governor Tucker denied clemency. Within a span of 2 1/2 hours on 
the night of August 3, 1994, Richley, Clines, and Holmes were killed by lethal 
injection at the Cummins Unit, less than 80 miles southeast of Little Rock. 
Arkansas carried out another triple execution in 1997, under Governor Mike 
Huckabee.

This was the death penalty at its peak in the United States - it has been 
declining ever since. Arkansas has not executed anyone since 2005, and much has 
changed in meantime. While the U.S. Supreme Court has twice upheld lethal 
injection in the past 10 years, a slew of botched executions across the country 
have shown it to be inherently unreliable - no matter what drugs are used. In 
2014, Oklahoma made international headlines after the horrifying execution of 
Clayton Lockett; executioners had failed to properly insert the IV lines. In an 
open letter last month, a group of former prison officials reminded Governor 
Hutchison that a 2nd man had been scheduled to die that same night using 
midazolam, before things went so horribly wrong. "We believe that performing so 
many executions in so little time will impose extraordinary and unnecessary 
stress and trauma on the staff responsible with carrying out the executions," 
they wrote.

"We haven't had an execution since this whole controversy over lethal injection 
controversy came up," veteran Arkansas defense lawyer Jeff Rosenzweig told me 
in Little Rock last month. Attorneys for the condemned have raised particular 
alarm over the planned use of midazolam, which replaces a longtime anesthetic - 
sodium thiopental - that became unavailable years ago. Midazolam has a short 
but grisly track record; a complaint filed in federal court last month points 
to several executions where the sedative appeared to fail, most recently in 
Alabama, during the execution of Robert Bert Smith, who heaved and coughed as 
he died. Today Rosenzweig is increasingly convinced lethal injection never 
really worked as intended, even when sodium thiopental was in ample supply. 
"Now, they're not even using that drug, but using a drug which has a history of 
not working," he said.

Rosenzweig's office is littered with legal files, his desk barely visible under 
his workload. On the day we met, one of his clients had just had his bid for 
clemency rejected by the parole board. Now racing against the clock, Rosenzweig 
is prepared to be a witness if the time comes. If something goes wrong, it will 
not be the first time he has seen a botched execution in Arkansas.

Before Arkansas learned to love lethal injection, it first bought into the myth 
of electrocution as a civilized alternative to hangings. The electric chair 
would kill instantaneously, its promotors boasted in the late 1800s, with 
medical experts echoing the claim in the press. Although the country's 1st 
electrocution - carried out in New York in 1890 - was a grisly ordeal, it was 
nonetheless seen as an advance, a reflection of a more enlightened age. Arguing 
for a new execution law in 1913, Arkansas lawmakers said the technology would 
discourage lynchings; executions would now be centralized, going from 
individual counties across the state to a single death chamber at the state 
penitentiary. "The substitution of the electric chair for the gallows in 
Arkansas meets with the very general approval by all citizens," the St. Louis 
Dispatch reported in 1913, adding that state sheriffs were "especially 
pleased." Hanging convicts had been among their more "undesirable duties," the 
paper reported, "and it has never been a good advertisement for a community.

Arkansas prison officials were under immediate pressure to adopt the new 
technology. As the new law came closer to taking effect, the state attorney 
general pushed it as "an emergency that must be met." Based in part on New 
York's pioneering machinery, an electrician at the University of Arkansas built 
a homemade electric chair, which was "successfully tested' on a large steer, 
according to the Arkansas Democrat. A black man named Lee Simms, convicted of 
raping a white woman, would have "the honor of officially testing the home-made 
apparatus."

In addition to bringing executions behind prison walls - avoiding the unseemly 
crowds that gathered at the gallows - Arkansas' new execution law also made it 
a crime for newspapers to report on them. "No newspaper or person shall print 
or publish the details of the execution of criminals under this act," it read. 
"Only the fact that the criminal was executed shall be printed or published." 
Yet reporters flouted the law for the Simms execution, while taking some 
creative liberties. He was said to be unafraid, singing as his face was covered 
by a leather mask before a 2,300-volt current would be sent through his body. 
Assured he would die painlessly and with dignity, Simms supposedly expressed 
satisfaction that he was making history. "I'se glad I am the first niggah to be 
'lectrocuted," he said, according to an account in the Gazette. Afterward, the 
paper approvingly reported that Simms had died "without the convulsions or 
twitchings" seen at the gallows. "There is no doubt that executions by 
electrocution are much less gruesome and horrible than those by hanging."

It did not take long for this lie to be dramatically exposed. 9 years after 
killing Simms, Arkansas carried out one of the most grotesque executions the 
country had ever seen. Following the departure of the longtime warden at the 
state penitentiary, prison officials selected an unidentified "volunteer" 
executioner - an English car salesman who had taken a correspondence course in 
electricity, according to a 1922 article in the Arkansas Democrat - who flipped 
the switch to kill an 18-year-old black man named James Wells. To the horror of 
witnesses, most of whom fled minutes into the execution, Wells stayed alive 
over repeated attempts to send lethal currents through his body. On the 12th 
try, the young man finally died.

Newspapers decried the spectacle. The Democrat's editorial page called it a 
"horrible and revolting disgrace on the state of Arkansas," calling for experts 
to carry out executions, and exhorting the governor to ensure that "there are 
no repetitions of this horrible human butchery." Yet less than a year later, 
Arkansas carried out a quadruple execution, only to realize as officials 
prepared to bury the 4 men, that 1 of them was still alive. This time, the 
press was a bit more matter-of-fact. "He was taken from the coffin and again 
placed in the electric chair," according to 1 report.

Despite such ghoulish mishaps, the electric chair prevailed for decades as the 
country's preferred execution method, seen as reliable if used responsibly. 
Arkansas went on to kill 168 people in the chair, sometimes four in the same 
day. Courts provided legal legitimacy. In 1947, the U.S. Supreme Court 
considered the gruesome execution of a black teenager named Willie Francis in 
Louisiana, who had been removed from the electric chair after repeated 
unsuccessful attempts to kill him, then sent back a few days later to die. A 
majority found no violation of the 8th amendment prohibition on cruel and 
unusual punishment, calling the execution an "innocent misadventure."

In Arkansas, the notion that the electric chair was mostly humane survived well 
into the 1990s. After the U.S. Supreme Court brought back the death penalty in 
Gregg v. Georgia in 1976, state officials hired an electrical engineer named 
Jay Wiechert to build a new and improved electric chair. "Of course, I didn't 
know anything about how to do it at the time," Wiechert later told the Arkansas 
Times, adding that he found the challenge "interesting." A new death chamber 
was constructed from scratch, and a generator had to be installed at the 
prison, after the Arkansas Power & Light Company said it would prefer not to 
provide energy for electrocutions. After Bill Clinton set the execution date 
for John Edward Swindler in 1990, the Arkansas Democrat sought to reacquaint 
readers with the technology, quoting a university professor who said its 
effects would be "like going to sleep."

Convicted before Arkansas officially adopted lethal injection, Swindler was 
given the choice between electrocution and the gurney. He refused to choose, 
and was electrocuted. It was the 1st and last time the state used Wiechert's 
electric chair. The next man to die chose lethal injection.

Wiechert died last year, an obscure figure despite an auspicious legacy: the 
man whose ad hoc electric chair design was replicated from Ohio to Tennessee. 
In his last published interview, Wiechert recalled how he came to modernize the 
electric chair.

"Back in the '70s, the state of Arkansas couldn't find anybody to build an 
electric chair," Wiechert said - a state of affairs with parallels to the 
difficulty states have obtaining the lethal injection cocktail these days. 
"They called me and I said, 'Yeah! I'll build you an electric chair. How 
difficult can that be?' In my business, the hard part is not electrocuting 
somebody! Killing somebody is a piece of cake."

If lethal injection was supposed to launch executions into the modern age, in 
reality it was a similarly slapdash invention. Fordham law professor Deborah 
Denno, the foremost legal expert on the subject, has written extensively about 
its origins at the hands of Oklahoma medical examiner Jay Chapman, whose 
concoction spread swiftly despite old warnings against using lethal injection 
to carry out executions. Government-led commissions in the U.S. and UK had 
studied and rejected the method, over concerns that it could not be performed 
efficiently or painlessly. Yet politicians ignored these concerns, emphasizing 
that lethal injection "appeared more humane and visually palatable relative to 
other methods," as Denno wrote in a 2007 article for the Fordham Law Review.

That the protocol be "visually palatable" was key. The Oklahoma state senator 
who first pushed lethal injection in the 1970s found electrocutions gruesome, 
telling the Tulsa World they were "kind of a combination of Barnum & Bailey and 
reform." Showing graphic post-electrocution photos to fellow lawmakers, he 
unsuccessfully sought the help of his own physician, who was the head of the 
Oklahoma Medical Association, then turned to Chapman, asking if he might design 
a lethal injection formula. As Denno recounts, Chapman admitted he did not know 
much about how to kill people, although he had examined plenty of homicide 
victims. "To hell with them," he said about members of the medical community 
who might disapprove. "Let's do this."

How to implement Chapman's "3-drug cocktail" would be a matter largely decided 
by Texas Department of Corrections director W.J. Estelle, whose state was the 
first to adopt lethal injection. One AP report described how Estelle decided 
prisoners should be strapped down on a hospital gurney, rather than the old 
electric chair. (A prison chaplain who had seen 14 electrocutions wanted them 
"carried out in a nice clean room, something that doesn't look like a prison.") 
Guided by "unnamed consultants," Estelle was also given the choice of 3 
different drugs to kick off the 3-drug protocol - 1 was a "muscle relaxant," 
another a "contact poison." Estelle chose sodium thiopental, a fast-acting 
barbiturate used for general anesthesia. A prison spokesman said death would 
come "within minutes."

A 40-year-old man named Charlie Brooks Jr. was the 1st to die by lethal 
injection. One media witness described how he "gasped and wheezed," but no one 
seemed to make much of it. The Texas model was replicated across the country: 
the 1st drug (generally sodium thiopental) anesthetized the prisoner. The s2nd 
(pancuronium bromide) caused paralysis, including of the muscles used for 
respiration. And the third (potassium chloride) stopped the heart. The 2nd drug 
was mostly cosmetic; Chapman had included it to conceal the effects of the 
fatal doses on bodies of the condemned. But it also introduced a fatal flaw 
that went undiscussed among prison officials, who had no grasp of the 
properties of the drugs they were administering: If the anesthetic didn't work 
as intended, its effect was to suffocate the person on the gurney; once the 
third drug kicked in, the third drug would induce a heart attack. In all, the 
experience would be agonizing - yet the paralytic would prevent him or her from 
signaling their suffering.

It took Arkansas several years to implement lethal injection. In 1970, 4 years 
after the state's last execution, Governor Winthrop Rockefeller had commuted 
the death sentences of all 15 men on death row. But by 1977, Arkansas lawmakers 
hoped to start killing again. Officials approved $75,000 to build a new 
execution chamber, designed to accommodate both electrocution and lethal 
injection, or "clinical death," as some put it. It would be built by prisoners.

The Arkansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty explored a lawsuit to block 
the project, in part by arguing that the use of convict labor was 
unconstitutional, but were dissuaded by attorneys, who said it would be costly, 
and sure to fail. Even if a willing plaintiff were found, "prisoners under 
sentence can be required to work," 1 lawyer wrote. Besides, those constructing 
the death chamber "are receiving benefit in the form of good time off of their 
sentence at a rate of one day off for each day served."

In 1979, Thomas Carpenter of the Arkansas ACLU urged abolitionists to fight the 
new method, even if it seemed more humane. "At first blush it may seem that 
this is good legislation in that if the death penalty is to exist in this 
state, then the least barbarous method should be used," he wrote. "However, if 
the horror of killing people is removed in this method, it will become much 
easier for most people to be complacent about killing people."

In 1990, a week after Bill Clinton presided over the execution of John Edward 
Swindler in the electric chair, Ronald Gene Simmons became the first person in 
Arkansas to die by lethal injection. A serial killer who murdered 16 people - 
including more than a dozen members of his own family - Simmons was no poster 
child for abolition. But anti-death penalty activists protested, making 
arguments that remain familiar today. "Jeff Rosenzweig, a Little Rock lawyer 
who represents numerous death row inmates ... said the death penalty is applied 
unfairly," the Gazette reported prior to the Simmons execution, citing problems 
of racial bias, poverty, and poor lawyering.

The Simmons execution did not go well. In a 2006 lawsuit invoking the state's 
history of botched executions, witness accounts describe how he appeared to 
"nod off" in the first couple minutes of his execution, but he then cried out 
"Oh! Oh! and began to cough sporadically as though he might have difficulty 
breathing." The gurney shook as Simmons coughed and heaved, according to 
witnesses. He then became still, "after which his face and arm turned first 
blue and then purple."

The next execution was worse. In 1992, Bill Clinton famously returned to 
Arkansas during his campaign for president to preside over the death of Ricky 
Ray Rector, a black man who was lobotomized after he shot himself in the head 
after killing of a police officer. Rector was severely brain damaged; The New 
Yorker would later recount how after eating his last meal of steak and fried 
chicken, "he carefully set aside his helping of pecan pie," planning to finish 
it after his execution. Rosenzweig was among the witnesses that night. "It was 
obviously very political," he said about Clinton's decision to fly back to 
Little Rock. "He didn't have to set the execution date then. But he did. And 
then, obviously, in the middle of the campaign he wasn't going to back off. But 
Rector was clearly not competent, in my opinion."

Rosenzweig recalled how staff struggled to inject Rector, due to his size and 
"all the Dilantin he was on," referring to Rector's antipsychotic medication. 
Rector moaned as prison staff were unable to find a suitable vein, puncturing 
his skin over and over again as the medical director looked on. Once Rector 
finally appeared to be unconscious, 1 witness heard him say, "I'm getting 
dizzy," after which he appeared to draw rapid "shallow breaths," according to 
the 2006 lawsuit.

Rosenzweig has seen five men die by lethal injection. Despite the obvious 
problems with Rector's execution, the method remained mostly uncontroversial. 
"We didn't understand the extent of the problem," he says. But like many death 
penalty lawyers, Rosenzweig eventually realized that even when an IV was 
perfectly placed, it did not guarantee the drugs would work as planned. "They 
were using a substance which was understood at the time - sodium thiopental - 
to cause you to be insensate to pain. Whether it did or not, at least that was 
the understanding." But soon witnesses would report seeing sounds and movement 
from the gurney that were not supposed to occur.

In 2005, The Lancet medical journal published a landmark research letter that 
confirmed what many feared: lethal injection was not working the way people 
thought. The authors had obtained records from Texas and Virginia - highly 
active death penalty states - and found that "executioners had no anesthesia 
training, drugs were administered remotely with no monitoring for anesthesia." 
More alarming, "toxicology reports from Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and 
South Carolina showed that post-mortem concentrations of [sodium thiopental] in 
the blood were lower than that required for surgery in 43 of 49 executed 
inmates (88%); 21 (43%) inmates had concentrations consistent with awareness." 
The conclusion was grim. "Without anesthesia, the condemned person would 
experience asphyxiation, a severe burning sensation, massive muscle cramping, 
and finally cardiac arrest." The next year, California tried to assign medical 
monitors for the execution of Michael Morales, but the anesthesiologists backed 
out at the last minute. Executions have remained stalled in the state since.

The findings in The Lancet would help pave the way for Baze v. Rees, the 2008 
U.S. Supreme Court ruling that ultimately upheld the three-drug protocol used 
across the country. Yet no sooner than the Court handed down Baze than the 
longtime protocol become virtually obsolete, with supplies of sodium thiopental 
drying up: the sole U.S. manufacturer ceased production and the activist group 
Reprieve launched a campaign to keep foreign pharmaceutical companies from 
sending drugs to be used in executions. In Arkansas, which carried out its last 
execution the same year the Lancet study was released, officials were unable to 
obtain a replacement for years, though they have certainly tried. In 2011, 
Arkansas was forced to hand over a stash of sodium thiopental that had been 
shipped to the U.S. from Dream Pharma, a sketchy pharmaceutical company 
operated in the back of a London driving school. Not only was the shipment 
imported in violation of federal law, there was evidence some batches of drugs 
had expired, leading to botched executions in Georgia and Arizona. The Drug 
Enforcement Administration seized several states' supplies. In Arkansas, then 
Deputy Director of Corrections Wendy Kelly later explained she had searched far 
and wide for drugs to carry out executions. "I went wherever they had them."

Forced to tinker with its protocol depending on the availability of drugs, 
Arkansas ultimately adopted midazalom, first tested in Florida in 2013. Prison 
officials there promised "a humane and dignified death," but its effectiveness 
was in doubt from the start: the 1st man executed under the new protocol died 
"in what seemed like a labored process," according to a reporter for the Sun 
Sentinel. At times his eyes fluttered, he swallowed hard, his head twitched, 
his chest heaved." Nonetheless, in 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the drug 
in Glossip v. Gross. That same year, Arkansas revised its own protocol, passing 
a law that makes suppliers for lethal injection drugs a secret. With a new drug 
at its disposal, and after setting several execution dates only to be blocked 
by the courts, Governor Hutchison has been trying to move forward with 
executions ever since.

For all the insistence from states and the courts that the drug is appropriate 
for executions, the man who created midazolam is disturbed that his invention 
has been adopted for lethal injection. "I didn't make it for that purpose," he 
recently told the New York Times. Anesthesiologist David Lubarsky, one of the 
original authors of the 2005 Lancet study, warns that the drug is "a very poor 
choice" for lethal injection, since even its maximum effect falls short of 
rendering a person completely unconscious. While states have upped the dosages 
in an attempt to ensure its reliability, the drug's ceiling effect means it 
will make no difference past a point. And in places where euthanasia is legal, 
Lubarsky wrote via email, people have woken up even after receiving lethal 
doses of midazolam. Finally, he stresses, as has been true since the invention 
of lethal injection, in a 3-part execution protocol "the paralytic hides 
evidence of the insufficient anesthesia."

Indeed, 40 years after inventing an execution method that transformed an act of 
killing into a kind of medical theater, Jay Chapman has long since disavowed 
his invention, admitting that the paralytic was probably a mistake. Besides, as 
he said in 2007, it has been carried out by "complete idiots."

Whether this will be the case in Arkansas later this month in anybody's guess. 
"It's unclear who's going to be doing what," says Rosenzweig. "But our 
understanding is it's basically a whole new crew."

(source: theintercept.com)

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

As wave of executions draws near, Catholics in Arkansas pray for an alternative


Even though legal options have run out, Catholics in Arkansas are still pushing 
back against a wave of eight executions set to start on Easter Monday, April 
17.

"Though guilty of heinous crimes, these men nevertheless retain the God-given 
dignity of any human life, which must be respected and defended from conception 
to natural death," wrote Bishop Anthony B. Taylor of Little Rock in a March 1 
letter to Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson against the execution of the eight 
men scheduled to be killed in April.

Beginning April 17 the state of Arkansas will execute 8 men in the span of 10 
days.

Their names and scheduled execution dates are Don Davis and Bruce Earl Ward 
(April 17), Ledelle Lee and Stacey Johnson (April 20), Marcel Williams and Jack 
Jones, Jr. (April 24), Jason McGehee and Kenneth Williams (April 27).

No death row inmate has been executed in Arkansas since 2005. There are 34 
death row inmates in the state.

The executions were originally scheduled in October 2015 after the state 
legislature passed a law legalizing the anonymity of the sources of a 
three-drug cocktail of lethal injections that sedates, paralyzes, and stops the 
heart of the person upon whom it is used. The men's attorney filed a lawsuit 
alleging that concealing the drugs' sources could obfuscate whether or not the 
inmates had been subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. After a stay was 
granted and a county court ruled the law unconstitutional, the Arkansas Supreme 
Court ruled in favor of the law. The United States Supreme Court opted not to 
hear the case.

Hutchinson then rescheduled the executions. According to the Arkansas Catholic, 
the state has spent $24,226.40 on the drugs used in the scheduled executions.

The 8 executions are taking place before the state's supply of midazolam, a 
sedative used in the execution process, expires.

The state's supply of potassium chloride, used to stop the heart, expired Jan. 
1, 2017. However, Hutchinson told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a Feb. 28 
article that he was confident the state could procure more potassium chloride 
in time for the executions.

The state also permits the use of a single-drug method of execution.

Catholic teaching has long permitted the state???s use of capital punishment as 
an act of justice and to keep a community safe from a dangerous wrongdoer, 
given that the gravity of the crime merits such a harsh response and that the 
guilt of the inmate is certain.

While this teaching has not changed, writings by St. John Paul II and his 
successors have critiqued the practice's use in the modern era. In his 1995 
encyclical Evangelium Vitae, St. John Paul II wrote that "If bloodless means 
are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public 
order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such 
means."

Bishop Taylor referenced these papal critiques of the death penalty in his plea 
that the state of Arkansas halt the executions.

"Since the penal system of our state is well equipped to keep them incarcerated 
for the rest of their life (and thus protect society), we should limit 
ourselves to non-lethal means - hence this appeal to you," the bishop argued.

The bishop also pointed out some practical arguments against the death 
penalty's use in the state, including that the punishment is frequently applied 
inconsistently, even among similar crimes; that the death penalty is more 
costly than other sentences; and that more than 139 death row inmates from 36 
states have been exonerated since 1973, after evidence showed their innocence.

He also pointed out that in an overwhelming majority of death row cases, no DNA 
evidence exists to ensure the inmate's guilt, and the inmates are too poor to 
afford their own attorney.

Bishop Taylor recognized Hutchinson's duty to execute the state's laws, 
including that of the death penalty, but also reminded him that he is also 
subject to a "higher law, the divine law."

"As governor you have the power to commute these sentences to life without 
possibility of parole and so I appeal to you to do so - and not only out of 
concern for these 8 men, but also out of concern for the damage that the death 
penalty does to all of us as a society," the bishop wrote.

While the bishop's letter has not stopped the upcoming executions, Catholics in 
the state are not halting their protests or prayers.

The Benedictine Sisters of the St. Scholastica Monastery will hold a novena for 
the prisoners who will be executed and their clemency, and are inviting 
Catholics to join them by coming to pray daily April 9-17 at the monastery's 
cemetery.

In addition, on Good Friday, a non-partisan ecumenical group, the Arkansas 
Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, will host a rally in front of the state 
capitol against the mass executions.

(source: Catholic News Agency)

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

Ready to refuse clemency


Jack Harold Jones Jr. did not show up for his executive clemency hearing Friday 
before the Arkansas Parole Board in Grady. Instead, the death-row inmate sent a 
letter to be read by his attorney saying if he were "miraculously" granted 
clemency before his execution date April 24, he would refuse it.

"I shall not ask to be forgiven," Jones, 52, said concerning the 1995 rape and 
murder of Mary Phillips in Bald Knob for which he was given the death penalty. 
He has been on death row at the Varner Supermax prison in Grady since being 
sentenced in 1996.

Saying that he never has nor ever will want clemency, Jones said, "There's no 
way in hell I would spend another 20 years in this hellhole."

He criticized the media and accused them of saying he was "begging" for his 
life, insisting he only signed the clemency application to present "solidarity" 
among the other seven inmates set to die, including one who has been 
recommended for clemency by the parole board.

Jeff Rosenzweig, a criminal defense attorney out of Little Rock, told the board 
at the hearing that his client "is not here and he was not inclined to come 
out."

Rosenzweig explained that he did visit with Jones first to confirm this was a 
voluntary decision.

"He knowingly and voluntarily declined to attend," he said.

Rosenzweig provided the board with a copy of the 3-inch thick stack of medical 
history he described as "recent" describing Jones as an amputee in a wheelchair 
with numerous medical conditions and having to take "a large number of 
medications" -- including methadone -- for nerve pain, spinal problems, high 
blood pressure and diabetes.

"It is difficult for him to get around," Rosenzweig said.

Before Jones' letter was read aloud, a lengthy video was played of an interview 
with Jones' sister, who is a year younger than Jones, asking the board to spare 
his life.

A letter, not read aloud but distributed to commissioners, from Jones' 
half-sister also was provided to the board, but was not available to media in 
attendance.

Jones' sister on video said she was unable to travel from North Carolina on 
four days' notice to attend the Friday morning hearing so she filmed the video 
Thursday.

She described in length growing up with Jones and several siblings in a home 
filled with various abuses, and she thought of Jones as her "protector."

He paints her pictures of birds in prison, she said, describing Jones as a 
creative artist and a writer.

As kids, they were left alone for Thanksgiving while their parents were away 
gambling in Las Vegas, she said, leaving them to fend for themselves. An older 
half sister was abused more than the others, she said. Once told to go outside 
to play and not allowed to come in when hungry, the kids were punished after 
being found eating apple butter out of the garbage can. Jones' mother was 
described as a "reactionary punisher," who always had long, red fingernails and 
used them to scratch, grab and pinch.

Inside, the house encased sexual abuse, incest, physical and mental abuse, and 
harsh punishments, including being tied to chairs to face each other when the 
siblings had arguments. The mother would use a dirty dish cloth from the 
kitchen to stifle the half sister when she laughed -- the mother didn't like 
the way it sounded, according to Jones' sister.

She said he has never been given a shot by anyone, and if he had been properly 
treated for mental issues before the crime occurred, she didn't believe he 
would have done it.

Jones' letter, which also contained many apologies, focused on Lacey Phillips, 
who was 11 when Jones choked her, beat her with the butt of a BB gun repeatedly 
and left her for dead tied to a chair in a bathroom while he raped and killed 
her 34-year-old mother in the next room in the accounting office where she 
worked. He described a grainy, old black and white picture of Lacey Phillips he 
kept on a "surgical table" and how he had written "YOU DID THIS" as a constant 
reminder.

"I kept it so I would never forget to remember," he said in the letter.

Lacey Phillips was present for the victim impact statement portion of the 
hearing later Friday afternoon in Little rock. She has said that Jones has had 
"too many" appearances before the parole board in the 21 years since being 
sentenced to death, but she attended them all. The Phillips family hopes this 
is the last parole hearing for Jones.

Lacey Phillips also has said she will be at the prison during Jones' execution 
by lethal injection, but she isn't sure about watching it happen.

Jones' letter did not mention or address the rape and murder of Lorraine Anne 
Barrett, for which Jones was convicted and sentenced to 30 years, in addition 
to the death sentence he already had received, in 2005 after his DNA matched a 
cold case. The Pennsylvania woman was 32 years old when she was strangled to 
death in a Florida motel room in 1991. Officials matched his DNA to that taken 
at the crime scene in 1995.

Arkansas Parole Board

What: Clemency hearing held for Jack Harold Jones Jr., 52

When: Friday

Why: Scheduled to be executed by lethal injection April 24 for 1995 rape and 
murder in Bald Knob

(source: The Daily Citizen

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

Arkansas officials aim to push ahead with executions


The dates with death continue to loom over Arkansas.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson is moving ahead with the state's plan to execute several 
men in an 11-day window this month, even as a federal court has granted a 
temporary reprieve to 1 of the condemned

The state's parole board this week recommended that Hutchinson commute the 
death sentence of Jason McGehee, who had been among the 8 men scheduled to die 
between April 17 and 27, to life in prison without parole. But before 
Hutchinson could announce a decision, a federal judge ruled that McGehee's 
execution should be put on hold for at least 30 days.

In an effort to act before the state's supply of midazolam, an anesthetic used 
in the lethal injection cocktail, expires at the end of the month, Hutchinson 
set the execution dates of McGehee - along with the 7 other men - during the 
final 2 weeks of April. Now, with the ruling by the federal judge, McGehee's 
reprieve expands into May and past the expiration date of the drug. The parole 
board did not recommend that the sentences of any of the other men be commuted.

"We're pleased. It's an appropriate decision," John C. Williams, an assistant 
federal public defender representing McGehee, said Saturday.

McGehee has been on death row since 1997.

In 1996, McGehee, 40, along with 2 other men, kidnapped and killed John 
Melbourne Jr., 15, in Boone County, about 150 miles north of Little Rock. 
Prosecutors said he was the leader, and McGehee was the only one of the group 
sentenced to death.

This month, Josh Hendrix, Melbourne's younger brother, urged the parole board 
not to spare McGehee's life.

"When you have a dog that attacks a child, you put the dog down," Hendrix said. 
"I feel this man is an animal and he should be treated the way he did my 
brother."

Even with McGehee's life spared for the moment, no state has executed 7 people 
in such a short span since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 
1976. The closest was Texas, which executed 8 men in May and June 1997, 
according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes 
capital punishment.

Opponents of the death penalty have assailed the executions as cruel and 
unusual punishment and have said that the likelihood of a botched executions - 
in which inmates take a long time to die - increases with so many in such a 
short time span.

Hutchinson, who has said the executions are necessary in order to bring justice 
to the victims' families, has faced strong pushback. Members of the Arkansas 
ACLU and the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty have held vigils 
outside his Little Rock mansion and urged people to sign petitions calling on 
the governor to halt the executions.

"This many executions just creates a huge, huge risk for a botched execution, 
which will lead to suffering," said Furonda Brasfield, executive director of 
the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "It's truly unheard of for 
a state to this."

Brasfield, whose group is planning protests this month at Cummins Unit, the 
site of the lethal injection chamber, said the executions are placing a cloud 
over the state.

"Arkansas' image will hurt because of these events," she said.

In a recent op-ed in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, titled "Bloody Arkansas," 
columnist Paul Greenberg suggested that Hutchinson serve as a witness to the 
executions. Arkansas law requires that at least 6 citizens who don't know the 
victim or the condemned witness each execution, but the state has had trouble 
finding as many as 48 volunteers.

Even as Hutchinson has indicated the executions will move forward, the Supreme 
Court at the last minute could intervene - a rare move by a court that tilts 
conservative.

Among the most recent stays by the Supreme Court came in November, when it 
granted a reprieve to Tommy Arthur in Alabama. Arthur was convicted of killing 
a man in 1982, but has maintained his innocence.

The men scheduled to die - among the 34 on death row in Arkansas - are Don 
Davis, Stacey Johnson, Jack Jones, Ledell Lee, Bruce Ward, Kenneth Williams and 
Marcel Williams. Arkansas has not executed a person since 2005, when it put to 
death Eric Nance.

While each of those men have sought reprieves, Jones recently expressed a 
desire to proceed with his execution April 24. He was convicted for the 1995 
robbery, rape and murder of 34-year-old Mary Phillips and the attempted murder 
of her daughter, Lacy.

Jones decided not to appear in person before the Arkansas parole board to ask 
for clemency, but instead asked his attorney to read from a letter he had 
written to Phillips' family.

"I am so very, very sorry," Jones' attorney, Jeff Rosenzweig, read. "I haven't 
wanted clemency ever. I have no interest in it."

(source: Los Angeles Times)






MISSOURI----female could face death penalty

Jurors to be brought in for Pamela Hupp murder trial


A suburban St. Louis woman accused of killing a disabled man to shift attention 
away from her in another slaying will have a jury from another county decide 
the case, which could result in the death penalty.

St. Charles County Circuit Judge Jon Cunningham on Friday sided with Pamela 
Hupp's attorneys in ruling that jurors will be brought in from an unspecified 
county for Hupp's murder trial, given the intense publicity the case has 
received locally, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported (http://bit.ly/2ojdV8k 
). Prosecutors didn't oppose the request.

"The court recognized Mrs. Hupp's right to a fair and impartial jury. We 
respect the Court's decision," said Nick Williams, one of Hupp's attorneys.

Hupp, 58, has pleaded not guilty to charges of 1st-degree murder and armed 
criminal action in last August's shooting death of 33-year-old Louis 
Gumpenberger, a St. Charles man who was left physically and mentally impaired 
after a 2005 car wreck.

According to prosecutors, Hupp lured Gumpenberger to her home, killed him and 
tried to make it look like he had been trying to kidnap her and take $150,000 
in insurance money she received after her friend, Betsy Faria, was killed in 
2011. They allege that Hupp tried to make it look like Faria's husband, Russell 
Faria, had sent Gumpenberger, and that Hupp did this to deflect attention from 
her in the re-investigation of Betsy Faria's death.

Russell Faria had been convicted of killing his wife, but he was later 
acquitted in a retrial. He believes Hupp should be investigated in his wife's 
killing.

Hupp has denied any wrongdoing and hasn't been charged in Betsy Faria's death.

St. Charles County Prosecutor Tim Lohmar is seeking the death penalty.

No women are among 26 Missouri inmates awaiting execution by injection. A woman 
has not been executed in Missouri since 1953, but that was a federal case. 
Bonnie Heady was sent to the gas chamber with lover Carl Hall for the 
kidnapping and murder of a 6-year-old boy in Kansas City.

(source: mcclatchydc.com)






MINNESOTA:

arleton lecture focused on the American death penalty


Daniel LaChance '01, author and history professor at Emory University, will 
present "A Lethal Mythology: The Old West and the Modern American Death 
Penalty" on Wednesday, April 12 from 5 to 6 p.m. in the Gould Library 
Athenaeum. LaChance will focus on the American death penalty, chronicling its 
decline in the years following World War II, its revival in the 1970s, and its 
subsequent use over the past 30 years.

LaChance is Assistant Professor of History and Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Law 
and the Humanities at Emory University. His work examines the sources, meaning, 
and effects of the "punitive turn" in the United States, the ratcheting up of 
incarceration and other forms of harsh punishment in the late 20th century. His 
book, "Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United 
States" (University of Chicago Press, 2016) examines use of the death penalty 
in the United States, arguing that shifting ideas about the nature of freedom 
have reshaped the dominant meaning of capital punishment in America.

LaChance has also contributed to national discussions on the past and present 
of the American death penalty through opinion pieces and news analyses 
published by The New York Times, The New Republic, and Newsweek. Articles he 
has written on this topic have appeared in the journals Law and Social Inquiry, 
Punishment and Society, and Law, Culture, and the Humanities.

LaChance earned a BA in English from Carleton College and his PhD in American 
Studies from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

This event is free and open to the public, and is sponsored by the Carleton 
College Department of American Studies. For more information, including 
disability accommodations, call (507) 222-5248. The Gould Library is located 
off College Street on the Carleton campus, and is also accessible via Highway 
19 in Northfield.

(source: carleton.edu)