[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----MISS., TENN., OHIO, IND., NEB., IDAHO, ARIZ., WASH.

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 12




MISSISSIPPI:

Alternate execution method bill ignores larger death penalty debate


There is no gentle way to say it, so here goes. House Bill 638 as passed by 
that chamber of the Mississippi Legislature isn't a bill that considers whether 
the state should impose the death penalty. No, that's not the matter at hand in 
this legislation.

House Bill 638 is a bill that would govern the method by which the state would 
impose the death penalty should the current lethal injection method at some 
point in the future be ruled unconstitutional.

Nationally, lethal injection as a method of execution is mired in litigation 
over the specific drugs used in the lethal injection "cocktail" and whether the 
practice actually is the "more humane" method that legislators thought they 
were adopting almost 20 years ago.

Attorney Jim Craig represents 2 the Mississippi prisoners who lost their 2016 
case at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Craig has been a longtime legal 
player in litigation opposing the death penalty in Mississippi - whatever the 
method.

Craig, co-director of the Roderick & Solange Justice Center at New Orleans, 
argued in 2016: "Neither compounded pentobarbital or midazolam are in the class 
of drugs specified by state law for use in executions. There is good reason for 
that. In other states, both compounded pentobarbital and midazolam have been 
used in botched executions, which tortured prisoners to death. Those states 
have changed their protocols to create safeguards against chemical torture."

Last year, Hood responded to the federal appeals court decision as follows: 
"For years and years, anti-death penalty groups have clogged the courts with 
bogus legal claims that only delay justice for murder victims and their 
families. If these anti-death penalty groups want to change the law, they 
should be lobbying the Legislature to change the law to stop use of the death 
penalty, not filing frivolous claims attempting to dupe judges into stopping 
executions at the last minute."

Hood's response defines where the majority of the Mississippi House of 
Representatives apparently is on the subject - and that's a place where the 
death penalty is still the law and implementation methods are subject to 
expansion.

The new legislation provides that if lethal injection cannot be the method, 
then the state would proceed to implement the death penalty by nitrogen 
hypoxia. "Hypoxia" occurs when someone has a lack of an adequate supply of 
oxygen.

The air we breathe is normally about 78 % nitrogen and 21 % oxygen (the rest is 
argon or other gases). Giving a condemned prisoner 100 % nitrogen would induce 
hypoxia, unconsciousness and death in what proponents in the scientific and 
legal communities suggest would be far more human than lethal injection.

If nitrogen hypoxia is ruled unconstitutional, then the state would proceed 
with implementing the death penalty by firing squad. If the firing squad method 
is ruled unconstitutional, then the state would proceed under the new law to 
implement the death penalty by electrocution.

In other words, HB 638 says that Mississippi is prepared to carry out the 
imposition of the death penalty by any accepted form of execution used in the 
state's history with the exception of the old cyanide-fueled gas chamber. 
Remember, Mississippi has engaged in almost all of the accepted forms of 
execution during the state's history including hanging, electrocution, the gas 
chamber, and lethal injection.

The notion that imposition of the death penalty can be somehow sanitized and 
guaranteed to be painless or free from fear and anxiety is one that flies in 
the face of what the death penalty really is - which is the most extreme form 
of punishment. Those who argue otherwise delude themselves.

I have covered 4 executions incorporating death sentences carried out both in 
Mississippi's old gas chamber and in the state's present lethal injection 
chamber. By any method, watching a condemned man strapped down and killed by 
the State of Mississippi is a sobering experience - and not one whit like the 
experience portrayed in the movies.

House Bill 638 is the reaction to litigation filed challenging the "cruel and 
unusual punishment" aspects of lethal injection. Most of those legal challenges 
were filed as a delaying tactic to thwart the imposition of the death penalty.

For good or ill, state legislatures are pushing back hard against those 
challenges with this type of legislation. The propriety of maintaining the 
death penalty at all is by no means part of the current discussion.

(source: Sid SAlter, The Oxford Eagle)






TENNESSEE:

Exclude mentally ill defendants from death penalty


Excluding severe mental illness defendants from the death penalty would be a 
fair and efficient reform

Our society's understanding of mental illness improves every day, with a 
growing movement nationwide to reduce the number of individuals with mental 
illness in our prisons and jails.

In this context, it is surprising that people with severe mental illnesses, 
like schizophrenia, can still be subject to the death penalty in Tennessee.

As one clear example, that comes from the state of Texas, the defendant Scott 
Panetti first showed signs of severe mental illness at 20 years old, soon after 
his discharge from the military. He was hospitalized over a dozen times and 
received government disability benefits because of his chronic schizophrenia.

In 1992, while off his anti-psychotic medications, Mr. Panetti tragically 
murdered his in-laws. While there is no question about his guilt, his 
schizophrenia significantly impacted his trial and sentencing.

In court, he acted as his own attorney while dressed in a cowboy costume. He 
attempted to subpoena over 200 witnesses, including John F. Kennedy, Jesus 
Christ and the Pope, and his behavior was bizarre and incomprehensible - and he 
was sentenced to death in Texas.

As a former Tennessee Attorney General, I understand how horrific these crimes 
are and how seriously we must take capital cases. I firmly believe that Mr. 
Panetti and other capital defendants should face very serious consequences for 
their crimes.

But in light of our increased understanding of mental illness, I believe that 
for those with documented mental illness of the most severe form at the time of 
their crime, the maximum punishment should be life in prison without parole.

Severe mental illness is characterized by psychotic episodes, which affect 
rational judgment. It can also lead to a greater risk of wrongful convictions - 
with several studies showing a link between mental illness and false 
confessions - or have very problematic trials, as evidenced by Panetti's case.

I believe that the money saved by not seeking the death penalty in these cases 
could be used to solve cold cases, train and staff police forces, fund victims' 
services, or create mental health programs.

I'm not the only one who thinks this change is overdue. National groups like 
the American Bar Association (ABA), American Psychiatric Association, National 
Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health America all support a severe 
mental illness exclusion. In 2007, an ABA study committee, of which I was a 
member, conducted a comprehensive assessment of Tennessee's death penalty laws 
and found that "mental illness can affect every stage of a capital trial" and 
that "when the judge, prosecutor and jurors are misinformed about the nature of 
mental illness and its relevance to the defendant's culpability, tragic 
consequences often follow for the defendant."

Some may argue that Tennessee's law does not need to change, as prosecutors and 
judges already take into account a defendant's severe mental illness in other 
ways.

I know the care that Tennessee's prosecutors put into researching their cases 
and defendants' background before seeking a death sentence. However, if a 
defendant hasn't received treatment or his attorney hasn't thoroughly 
researched his background, a prosecutor may be unaware of how significant the 
illness is, allowing some defendants with severe mental illnesses to receive a 
disproportionate sentence.

When the illness is discovered later in the appeals process, it can lead to 
decades of costly court proceedings. An exclusion would be a safeguard against 
such situations, which, though rare, end up being very expensive and hard on 
victims' families.

For these reasons, I support efforts underway to establish a severe mental 
illness exclusion from the death penalty. Such an exclusion will help to ensure 
that defendants with severe mental illnesses, while punished, are treated 
fairly and we avoid expensive death penalty trials, devoting those resources to 
preventing these tragedies from happening in the first place.

(source: W.J. Michael Cody was the Attorney General for the State of Tennessee 
(1984-1988) and the United States Attorney for Western District of Tennessee 
(1977-1981). He has also served as a member of the American Bar Association's 
Tennessee Death Penalty Assessment Team (2007) and the Constitution???s Project 
Death Penalty Initiative's Blue-Ribbon Committee (2000) that worked on 
bi-partisan studies of capital punishment and proposed consensus 
recommendations for reform----The Commercial Appeal)






OHIO:

8 death row prisoners given stay of execution in lethal injections wrangle----3 
executions led to legal challenge from prisoners who said method used was 'too 
painful'


8 prisoners on death row have had their executions stayed amid a legal 
challenge over how condemned prisoners should be put to death in the state of 
Ohio.

A judge ruled a proposed new 3-drug method for lethal injection was 
unconstitutional after prisoners issued a legal challenge saying it would be 
too painful, causing Governor John Kasich to halt executions for the 2nd 
successive year.

Prisoner Ronald Phillips was scheduled to die on February 15 for the 1993 rape 
and murder of his girlfriend's 3-year-old daughter, Sheila Marie Evan, but this 
has now been postponed until May 10.

Ohio became the 1st state to adopt a single drug, pentobarbital, for lethal 
injections in 2009 after 3 executions were botched in a 3 year period using the 
3 drug procedure.

In 2011, the Danish company which manufactures pentobarbital announced its 
distributors would not supply the drug to prisons which carry out the death 
penalty, leading to new combinations of drugs being tested by Ohio.

The last man to be executed by Ohio was convicted rapist and murderer Dennis 
McGuire in 2014, sparking controversy after he took an unusually long 25 
minutes to die with a new 2-drug procedure.

Ohio state law says that drugs used during executions must "quickly and 
painlessly cause death".

Critics say proposed anti-anxiety drug midazolam does not render prisoners 
deeply unconscious which may lead to pain from the other 2 drugs that stop the 
heart.

Lawyers argue the proposed method could be in violation of the constitutional 
protection from "cruel and unusual" punishments.

A lawyer for Ohio said the state has asked 7 other states to supply it with the 
single-dose drug pentobarbital but all had refused.

Ohio is among several states that have had problems obtaining drugs used in 
lethal injections.

Mr Kasich said he is confident the state will win an appeal based on a prior 
ruling in the Supreme Court that upheld the use of midazolam in a 3-drug 
process.

"These delays are necessary to allow the judicial process to come to a full 
resolution and ensure that the state can move forward with the executions," he 
said.

The US Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati will hear the case on February 
21.

Ohio was the 2nd state to adopt the electric chair as its preferred method of 
capital punishment in 1897, and reinstated the death penalty in 1974 after a 
hiatus - although it did not resume executions until 1999.

The death penalty remains a legal punishment in 31 out of 50 US states, with 
2095 inmates on death row in July 2016.

The use of capital punishment has declined steadily in the US since 1999, when 
98 were carried out nationwide, to just 20 instances last year.

(source: The Independent)






INDIANA:

Several bills await hearings at Indiana's 2017 legislative session


The 2017 Indiana General Assembly is well underway. Several bills have yet to 
be heard, and some of those could make a big impact on the state.

One piece of legislation would protect some people from the death penalty.

"I do not think that passing this bill is a logical next step to ending the 
death penalty in general," said Hoosier Alliance for Serious Mental Illness 
Exemption program director Matthew Ellis.

The bill proposes a procedure to decide whether a person charged or convicted 
of murder has a serious mental illness.

If a person is believed to have suffered from 1 of 6 different diagnoses at the 
time of the crime, they would be exempt from the death penalty. Those include 
bipolar disorder, post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.

If the bill becomes law, Ellis said those already serving on death row who 
qualify for the exemption could file an appeal. The sentence could then be 
changed to life without parole.

However, Ellis believes the bill is not intended to be a tool for criminals to 
get out of capital punishment.

"This is not a wide open door for anyone to claim any kind of mental illness," 
explained Ellis. "This is a very specific set of diagnoses that specifically 
impact their actions at the time of the crime."

Ellis said the law would save taxpayers money. He said the average cost of 
someone serving life without parole is about $43,000, but he said someone 
sentenced to death costs an average of $450,000

(source: WLFI news)






NEBRASKA:

2 may join Nebraska death row but will executions resume?


After briefly repealing its death penalty only to have it reinstated by voters, 
Nebraska has resumed an effort to acquire drugs needed to carry out executions 
for the 1st time in 20 years, just as judges consider whether to increase death 
row by 2 men who between them killed 8 people.

Nebraska is among the few states where those facing capital punishment have a 
remarkably good shot at ultimately dying of natural causes. Since 2001, four 
death row inmates have died of natural causes while awaiting execution, 
including one who died last year of brain cancer.

Of the 10 people currently on Nebraska's death row, Carey Dean Moore has waited 
37 years for his murder convictions in the 1979 shooting deaths of 2 Omaha cab 
drivers. He is among at least 24 of the nearly 3,000 death row inmates in the 
U.S. to have been sentenced in 1980 or earlier.

"It's harder to carry out executions than many state officials like to admit," 
University of Nebraska-Lincoln law professor Eric Berger said. "The state moved 
to lethal injection (in 2009) in the hopes of being able to start carrying out 
executions again, but one thing after another has gotten in the way of the 
state's being able to do it."

That has included the state's trouble obtaining the drugs it needs for lethal 
injections, said Berger, who worked with death penalty opponents during the 
recent ballot campaign that saw Nebraska's death penalty reinstated in 
November. The state paid more than $54,000 for a hard-to-find lethal injection 
drug nearly 2 years ago to a dealer based in India, but never received it 
because the federal government blocked the shipment over questions of the 
drug's legality.

And then there are the multiple appeals filed by most death row inmates, Berg 
said.

"Given that the state hasn't been able to get over those hurdles even once in 
the last 20 years, it should make us skeptical that it'll be able to do so 
consistently in the future," Berg said. "The one thing that is certain is that 
the state's efforts will take a lot of time and consume a lot of taxpayer 
dollars."

Former Nebraska Attorney General Don Stenberg, who served as co-chair of the 
petition drive that led to the reinstatement of the state's death penalty, 
rejects the argument that enforcing the death penalty is substantially more 
expensive than life behind bars. Those with life sentences file about as many 
appeals as those facing death, he said.

He also pointed to recent measures that could ease the way to again carrying 
out executions. One was a recently-enacted executive measure that would allow 
the corrections department to execute inmates with a single drug rather than 
multiple drugs, an action also taken by several other states. Another is a bill 
being considered by lawmakers that would keep secret the suppliers of the 
state's lethal injection drugs. Fifteen other states have enacted similar 
so-called shield laws.

Enacting such a secrecy law will invariably lead to lawsuits and more death row 
appeals, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty 
Information Center, a nonprofit organization that opposes capital punishment 
and tracks the issue.

"These secrecy provisions increasingly challenge the legitimacy of the death 
penalty," Dunham said. "People like public policy to be conducted in the open."

Stenberg, now the state treasurer, said he heard the same doubts about the 
state's ability to carry out executions when he was the state's top prosecutor. 
When he was first elected in 1990, "the most recent execution at that time had 
been in 1959 with Charles Starkweather," he recalled.

He went on to oversee 3 executions during his 12-year tenure. He was able to do 
so, he said, by asking for an execution date whenever he could.

"It would force the defendants to take the next legal step available, pushing 
the process along," he said.

Nebraska currently has no executions scheduled, the Nebraska Department of 
Correctional Services said.

It remains to be seen whether 2 men convicted in capital murder cases in Omaha 
will join Nebraska's death row.

Nikko Jenkins was convicted in 2014 of killing 4 people in 3 separate attacks 
in and around Omaha over the span of 10 days, just weeks after he had been 
released from prison. Anthony Garcia is a former medical doctor who was 
convicted in October of the revenge killings of 4 people, including the 
11-year-old son of a faculty member he blamed in part for his firing 15 years 
ago from an Omaha medical school's pathology residency program.

3-judge panels have determined that aggravating factors make both men eligible 
for the death penalty. The judges must now determine whether mitigating factors 
- such as childhood abuse or impaired mental capacity - exist that might spare 
them death and see them sentenced to life in prison. Their sentences are 
expected later this year.

Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine, who prosecuted the Jenkins and Garcia 
cases, has said he's been frustrated by the inability of the state to carry out 
an execution since Robert Williams died in the electric chair in 1997. But he 
believes the death penalty is needed in cases where children, officers or 
multiple people have been killed.

"I believe the death penalty is certainly merited in these cases," he said.

(source: Associated Press)






IDAHO:

Murder trial details shaping up


Kootenai County prosecutors want Jonathan Renfro to have his day in court.

Soon.

"As we know, cases do not age like wine. They age like milk," Deputy Prosecutor 
David Robbins said Friday in front of First District Judge Lansing Haynes.

When Renfro, 26, the accused killer of Coeur d'Alene Police Sgt. Greg Moore, 
faces a jury this summer, more than 2 years will have passed since Moore was 
shot while patrolling a Coeur d'Alene neighborhood.

Haynes solidified a July 31 trial date and allowed for the public defender's 
office to select from one of 2 Idaho attorneys with death-penalty expertise to 
serve as Renfro's lead attorney.

"Delays in the case are attributable to the lengthy, appropriate pre-trial 
motion practice," Haynes said. "I'm not assigning any blame for unnecessary 
delays because I don't think the delays were unnecessary at all."

Renfro faces the death penalty if found guilty.

At a previous hearing, Seattle-based attorney Mark Larranaga was put forward by 
the public-defender's office to serve as the lead attorney in the case. 
However, Haynes was concerned about delaying the case because Larranaga is 
unavailable to represent Renfro until early 2018.

Haynes asked Kootenai County Public Defender Linda Paine to seek out any Idaho 
attorneys who have been qualified by the state's supreme court to serve as lead 
counsel in a death penalty case. Paine found 2, Caldwell-based defense attorney 
Scott Fouser and Twin-Falls based defense attorney Keith Roark.

Both attorneys were in the courtroom at the Kootenai County jail on Friday, and 
briefly spoke with Haynes about their availability. Fouser and Roark said they 
would be able to represent Renfro at the end of July, but both attorneys added 
they need time to prepare.

"I don't know any trial attorney who doesn't prefer to do things later rather 
than sooner, for that reason," Roark said.

Haynes said it was not necessary for him to appoint either attorney as lead 
counsel, and left the matter to Renfro and the public defender's office. Paine 
said she could submit their selection by Tuesday.

The jury trial will begin on July 31. Haynes estimated it will take 5 to 8 
weeks.

After the hearing, Roark and Fouser shook hands with and introduced themselves 
to Renfro.

(source: Bonner County Daily Bee)






ARIZONA:

Inmates offered 'do-it-yourself' execution


The Arizona Department of Corrections has had trouble killing people.

It hasn't been able to get the drugs it wants, and the drugs that it has gotten 
have transformed the already gruesome act of executing a person into a 
ghoulish, unacceptable freak show.

But the department persists.

The latest move, unique in - the world - offers Arizona death-row inmates the 
opportunity to perform a kind of do-it-yourself execution.

Last month, The Arizona Republic's Michael Kiefer reported on a new execution 
protocol announced by Corrections Director Charles Ryan.

Like many policy decisions in Arizona government, the process begins with the 
implausible and ends with the bizarre.

Executions, the Department of Corrections says, are to be carried out using 
either of 2 barbiturates, pentobarbital or thiopental.

Except there's a small problem. Neither of those drugs can be obtained legally. 
Thiopental is no longer manufactured in the United States and is banned from 
importation, and the manufacturers of pentobarbital refuse to sell the drug for 
the purpose of execution.

Will the state find a compounding pharmacy that will produce the deadly mixture 
for the department?

We'll see.

In the meantime, the new execution protocol says that if defense attorneys 
choose to do so, they can pick up the drugs on their own and the department 
will use it to kill their clients.

Really.

"This is a bizarre notion that calls for actions that are both illegal and 
impossible," said Dale Baich from the office of The Federal Public Defender in 
Arizona.

Arizona is alone in this lunacy (surprised?)

"A prisoner or prisoner's lawyer cannot legally obtain these drugs or legally 
transfer them to the Department. Under the federal Controlled Substances Act, 
we cannot imagine a way to obtain the drug. Those that obtain controlled 
substances illegally, go to prison."

As far as Baich or anyone else can determine, Arizona is the only state to even 
suggest such a thing.

Hey, America, who says the best (meaning worst) governmental craziness is 
coming out of Washington, D.C.?

Arizona is still in this game, baby!

Not too long ago the DOC got caught trying import from a sketchy foreign source 
some killer drugs that it hoped to use in executions.

Now, it's actually suggesting that the condemned inmate get his attorneys to 
participate in his killing.

Beat that, Donald Trump!

"It is hard to comprehend what the ADC was thinking in including this 
nonsensical, unprecedented provision as part of its execution procedures," 
Baich told me. "If the state wants to have the death penalty, it has the duty 
to figure out how to do it constitutionally. The state cannot pass its 
obligation on to the condemned prisoner."

Maybe any other state cannot or would not do such a thing, but this is Arizona.

We can give it a try.

(source: EJ Montini, The Arizona Republic)






WASHINGTON:

State capital punishment law worth another look


The death penalty is the ultimate case of the punishment fitting the crime, at 
least when the crime involves intentionally taking the life of another. That is 
part of the appeal for its supporters, who argue that those who commit heinous 
acts are getting their just reward, that victims' loved ones get closure, and 
that it serves as a deterrent to crime. The mindset is hard-wired into American 
society and traditionally receives strong public support.

Opponents argue that the penalty is retribution that may satisfy a deep-seated 
desire for justice, but that it is irreversible - people who were wrongly 
accused have been put to death, and for them there is obviously no recourse. 
Foes also say that it is not applied equally, that the state shouldn't have 
such life-or-death power, that problems arise with execution mechanisms and 
that it does not serve as a deterrent; some offenders have even used it to 
commit suicide-by-state.

Washington has a tightly written law that reserves capital punishment for the 
worst of the worst. Executions have been used sparingly - only 5 times since 
the Legislature reinstated the law in 1981 - with the most recent execution 
coming in 2010. Cal Coburn Brown that year died by lethal injection after he 
was convicted in the 1991 murder of a 21-year-old woman in Burien. The details 
of the murder are grisly; Brown carjacked the victim at knifepoint, then 
robbed, raped and tortured her for 36 hours before killing her. His case fits 
the argument that this penalty fits misdeeds by the worst of the worst.

Part of the long interval since executions stems from a capital punishment 
moratorium that Gov. Jay Inslee imposed in 2014. Inslee argued that the 
death-penalty law has been applied inconsistently and unequally, and on that he 
has a point.

All of this state's potential executions became problematical after Gary 
Ridgway, the notorious Green River Killer, was spared execution for the deaths 
of 48 women in the 1980s and 1990s. King County officials deemed it a 
worthwhile tradeoff to spare Ridgway's life as part of a plea bargain that 
yielded the names of 41 victims that they would not have obtained otherwise. He 
was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, which raised a glaring 
issue: If killing 48 people doesn't warrant capital punishment, what does?

That is one aspect of the debate that is returning to the Legislature this 
year. Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson have proposed that this state 
join 19 others and Washington, D.C., in abolishing the death penalty. Inslee 
and Ferguson are Democrats, but their proposal has bipartisan support, having 
won the endorsement of Republicans such as former Attorney General Rob McKenna 
and state Sens. Maureen Walsh and Mark Miloscia.

In addition to unequal application of the law, Inslee pointed to the cost of 
prosecuting cases. Seattle University in 2015 came out with a study of 147 
death penalty cases in this state; it found the average cost of prosecution was 
$3 million, while a life imprisonment sentence averages about $2 million per 
inmate. While drawn-out appeals raise the price tag, another factor is the 
limited number of attorneys who are qualified to handle death penalty cases. 
There is also an expense in time, which Brown's case illustrates well; appeals 
and a change in how the state carried out lethal injections meant 19 years 
passed between crime and punishment.

Legislators representing the conservative Yakima Valley are reluctant to 
abolish the death penalty, and their beliefs no doubt align with those of their 
constituents. But legislators do understand some of the issues. Yakima Rep. 
Norm Johnson and Sunnyside state Sen. Jim Honeyford, while supporting capital 
punishment, also noted concern about costs.

We have supported Washington's selective use of the death penalty, noting in 
2010 after Brown's execution that the tightly crafted state law reflects the 
will of the public and is written in a way that reflects the solemnity of 
ending the life of an individual. There will always be - and always should be - 
vigorous debate about whether the state should have the right to end the life 
of an individual.

In this year's debate, death penalty foes will argue that it is applied 
unfairly and that costs of death-penalty prosecutions are too high. Supporters 
will cite the sentiments of victims' families, who fear that even with a life 
sentence, an offender could still be paroled onto the streets. Backers will 
also say that for the most heinous crimes, the punishment fits the crime.

Is the death penalty still viable as applied in this state? While we lean 
toward reluctance to changing the law, we do believe that the questions being 
raised are valid ones. Spokane Republican state Sen. Mike Padden, who chairs 
the Senate Judiciary Committee, last year blocked a hearing on a similar bill. 
Padden said in January that he would consider holding a hearing if the 
Democratic-controlled House passes a measure first, and Padden should follow 
through on that statement and conduct a hearing, The death penalty is an issue 
worth revisiting and a debate worth having.

(source: Yakima Herald-Republic Editorial Board)