[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----KAN., S.DAK., COLO., ARIZ., WASH., USA, US MIL.

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 15



KANSAS:

Death row: Legislators have responsibility to abolish capital punishment.


Many Kansans may not know the state has a death penalty.

There have been no executions in Kansas since 1965.

Still, attempts to abolish capital punishment have failed. In 2010, the Kansas 
Senate narrowly rejected a proposal to repeal the state's capital punishment 
law and replace the death sentence for some murders with life in prison without 
parole.

Proponents of repeal often cite the expense to taxpayers. 1st-degree murder 
proceedings involving the death penalty cost far more than cases in which death 
wasn't sought, studies have shown.

As part of new discussion on another proposal to kill capital punishment, 
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt recently argued debate over the death 
penalty shouldn???t center on dollars and cents.

The issue does indeed go beyond economics: the potential for error matters 
more.

The Innocence Project reports that since 1973, 157 people convicted and 
sentenced to death were exonerated through DNA evidence and other means, with 
the most recent in January.

It's assumed that others now on death row nationwide were wrongly convicted, 
with some unjustly executed.

False convictions may stem from poor legal representation, cases of mistaken 
identity or false confessions made under duress.

In Kansas, a state that currently has 10 inmates on death row but hasn't 
executed anyone in decades, it's reasonable to question whether resources 
devoured by death-penalty proceedings would be better spent in ways such as 
investigating cold cases and preventing crime.

In the end, it's a divisive, emotionally charged issue.

People have different versions of justice. Self-proclaimed "pro-life" 
activists, for example, are split on whether the state should sanction killing 
the worst criminals.

The most horrific acts warrant severe, unrelenting punishment, which life 
without parole delivers. Those offenders must never again be a threat to 
society.

Victims' loved ones also deserve better than being subjected to decades of 
painful death-penalty appeals.

The latest proposal to end the death penalty in Kansas (which wouldn't reverse 
sentences for those currently on death row) likely won't gain traction this 
year.

Tax policy, budget fixes and K-12 public school funding will dominate this 
legislative session. While that's understandable, thoughtful consideration of 
the responsible act of repealing the death penalty shouldn't be tabled 
indefinitely.

(source: Opinion, Dena Sattler----Garden City Telegram)

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

House Committee holds hearing on the death penalty


The House Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee held a hearing on House 
Bill 2167

This bill would repeal the death penalty in Kansas.

Several proponents of the bill shared their testimony and for some it was very 
personal.

Celeste Dixon supported the death penalty until her mother was murdered.

"I woke up realizing I was actively wishing for another human being to die, and 
I just didn't like the way that made me feel."

While the offender was on death row Dixon saw a different perspective.

"This woman had just heard that her son was going to die, and I just remember 
not at the moment but later when I started thinking about it, that must be a 
terrible feeling to have."

Dixon along with other proponents of the bill to repeal the death penalty and 
replace it with a life sentence gave testimony at a house committee hearing.

Former Secretary of Corrections Roger Werholtz said the money used for people 
on death row should go to better causes, and life in prison should replace the 
death penalty.

"Existence in a prison is not an existence I think any rational person would 
want to experience"

And while many proponents were present at the hearing several others sent in 
written statements in support of the bill.

As for Celeste, she realizes this won't bring back her mother, but knowing 
she's doing right in helping other victims, brings her peace.

This bill did not pass in the senate, but constituents are hopeful that it will 
pass in the house.

If the bill is passed the death penalty will be replaced with life in prison 
without the chance of parole.

The house committee is expected to further discuss the hearing before making a 
vote.

(source: 6lawrence.com)






SOUTH DAKOTA:

Panel rejects eliminating death penalty for mentally ill offenders


A legislative panel on Monday defeated a bill that would have eliminated the 
option of the death sentence for severely mentally ill criminal offenders.

The House State Affairs Committee on a 8-4 vote opted to reject the bill after 
defense attorneys, mental health advocates and others advocated for its 
passage, saying severely mentally ill individuals shouldn't be subject to 
capital punishment.

The measure proposed instead setting a life sentence without opportunity for 
parole as the maximum penalty for criminal offenders found to have severe 
mental illnesses.

"You only execute morally culpable people and if you have a serious mental 
illness, you're not morally culpable," said the measure's sponsor Rep. Timothy 
Johns, R-Lead.

Attorney General Marty Jackley, state's attorneys from Minnehaha and Pennington 
Counties and others said the current process is adequate to assess offenders' 
mental health status and to eliminate the option of the death sentence for 
offenders who are found to have mental illnesses.

Aaron McGowan, Minnehaha County state's attorney, said very seldom do 
prosecutors seek the death penalty for offenders and those cases don't involve 
mentally ill individuals.

"We use it sparingly, we use it appropriately and we'd ask this committee to 
consider that these are evil defendants who have a hole in their brains where 
most of us have a conscience," he said.

Opponents also argued that the bill was an effort to eliminate capital 
punishment in South Dakota.

"HB 1099 is a death penalty repeal in all but name," Jackley said.

A handful of other states have considered and rejected similar measures.

(source: Argus Leader)






COLORADO:

Repeal Colorado's flawed and broken death penalty


The failures of Colorado's capital punishment system are almost too lengthy to 
list, and yet prosecutors continue to sporadically and unsuccessfully ask 
jurors to sentence convicted criminals to death.

We urge Colorado lawmakers to repeal the death penalty by approving Senate 
Minority Leader Lucia Guzman's Senate Bill 95, which would replace capital 
punishment with a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole

It's time the state stop spinning its wheels in pursuit of death and instead 
lock its worst criminals away to live out an insignificant existence in a cell 
with few comforts.

SB 95 wouldn't impact the fates of the three men currently on death row; it 
would only eliminate the potential for others in the future to be sentenced to 
death.

It would save the state millions in both the prosecution and defense of 
murderers and an untold number of judicial man hours that have so infrequently 
resulted in death. The track record of death sentences in Colorado is bleak.

Let's start in 1997, the last time someone was executed in Colorado. Gary 
Davis, who raped, tortured and murdered Virginia "Ginny" May, sat on death row 
for a decade filled with execution dates and stays.

A month before he was put to death by lethal injection, Davis went on TV to 
apologize for killing May.

In response, Rod MacLennan, the victim's father, stated: "The state has spoken, 
everything is in place now. Why continue to bring it up? He's one guy we want 
to forget, and if they knew him, all the people would want to forget him. Why 
bring his memory up for us to look at?"

Davis was a constant media spectacle for 10 years while he awaited death.

Convicted murderer Frank Rodriguez came close to being killed in 1996, but 42 
hours and 39 minutes before his execution, a judge granted a stay. Instead 
Rodriguez died in 2002 of Hepatitis C complications, 18 years after his crime.

Between 2001 and 2005, another 5 death row inmates had their sentences changed 
to life in prison for a variety of problems with legal processes.

And now we come to Colorado's 3 remaining death row inmates.

Gov. John Hickenlooper spared the life of Nathan Dunlap with a temporary 
reprieve in 2013. Dunlap, convicted of killing 4 people at an Aurora Chuck E. 
Cheese's in 1993, still sits on death row awaiting a final decision on his life 
even though all of his appeals have expired.

The beginning appeals of the 2 other death row inmates, sentenced in 2005, have 
been stalled in court for years, despite a 1997 change in law intended to 
expedite the process. The appeals process has been so mired in uncertainty with 
judge changes and motions that it will stretch on for years.

And finally, 2 Colorado juries have recently demonstrated an unwillingness to 
sentence anyone to death, sparing the life of James Holmes in August 2015 after 
convicting him of killing 12 people at the Century Aurora 16 theater and a few 
weeks later Dexter Lewis who stabbed 5 people to death in a Denver bar.

Guzman said these cases all demonstrate a system that is broken beyond repair 
and needs to be repealed. We agree.

(source: Editorial, Denver Post)






ARIZONA:

Arizona unveils new death penalty plan: bring your own lethal injection drugs 
---- The state's execution protocol invites death row inmates' lawyers to 
provide drugs to kill their own clients - a suggestion attorneys describe as 
ludicrous


As states have faced challenges to carrying out executions by lethal injection, 
various work-arounds and alternatives have been proposed, including the return 
of electric chairs and firing squads. Arizona may have come up with the most 
original concept yet: an invitation for lawyers to help kill their own clients.

With drugs that can legally be used for lethal injections in short supply, the 
Arizona department of corrections' latest execution protocol states that 
attorneys for death row inmates are welcome to bring along their own.

The protocol says that "the inmate's counsel or other third parties acting on 
behalf of the inmate's counsel" may provide the department with a sedative, 
pentobarbital, or an anesthetic, Sodium Pentothal, if they can obtain it "from 
a certified or licensed pharmacist, pharmacy, compound pharmacy, manufacturer, 
or supplier".

Attorneys, though, said the idea is ludicrous. Megan McCracken, a lethal 
injection expert at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, said 
the clause is "unprecedented, wholly novel and frankly absurd. A prisoner or a 
prisoner's lawyer simply cannot obtain these drugs legally, or legally transfer 
them to the department of corrections, so it's hard to fathom what the Arizona 
department was thinking in including this nonsensical provision as part of its 
execution protocol."

Dale Baich, an assistant federal public defender who works on death penalty 
cases in Arizona, said he was "at a loss" to explain the provision, which he 
said presents "ethical issues as well as legal issues. It's not legal for me as 
a lawyer to go out and procure drugs for a client. So legally it's impossible 
and ethically as well, my job is to make sure that my client's rights are 
protected and not to work with the state to ensure that it carries out the 
execution ... If the state wants to have the death penalty it has the duty to 
figure out how to do it constitutionally, it can't pass that obligation on to 
the prisoner or to anyone else."

The department of corrections did not respond to a request to elaborate on the 
reasoning behind the clause.


In 2011 the then manufacturer of pentobarbital for the US market, the Danish 
company, Lundbeck, banned its use in executions. Arizona illegally tried to 
import sodium thiopental from India in 2015 and found its shipment blocked by 
federal officials at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport.

The latest protocol, as the Arizona Republic reports, was written amid 
litigation concerning the department's procedures, including the wide level of 
discretion afforded to its director, its levels of secrecy and the questionable 
effectiveness of its drugs.

There are 119 prisoners on Arizona's death row, according to the corrections 
department, but the state has not executed anyone since July 2014, when Joseph 
Wood took nearly 2 hours to die, gasping and gulping on the gurney as he was 
injected with 15 doses of drugs while his attorneys appealed for an emergency 
stay of execution in a telephone call with a judge.

4 men have been executed by lethal injection in the US so far this year.

Mississippi's house of representatives this month passed a bill which - should 
it become law - means that if lethal injections are unavailable or ruled 
unconstitutional, the state can use a gas chamber, a firing squad or an 
electric chair.

In 2015, Utah approved the use of firing squads if drugs are unavailable. The 
state is the most recent to carry out an execution by that method, in 2010.

(source: The Guardian)






WASHINGTON:

Death penalty repeal bill not expected to advance


An effort to abolish the death penalty in Washington state got a new push this 
year, with strong backing from Gov. Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob 
Ferguson, but the measure still won't see a vote in either chamber.

A House bill will have a public hearing Wednesday, but it's not scheduled for a 
committee vote before a key deadline on Friday. A Senate version of the bill 
never was scheduled for a hearing, so it appears the measure has suffered the 
same fate as repeal bills introduced in previous years.

The death penalty has been overturned or abolished in 19 states and the 
District of Columbia. The latest was Delaware, whose Supreme Court last year 
declared the state's death penalty law unconstitutional.

Inslee imposed a moratorium on capital punishment in 2014.

(source: Associated Press)






USA:

Fell defense seeks further death penalty appeal, more time


The defense team for Donald Fell has asked the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to 
review two key lower-court rulings on his upcoming death penalty retrial.

The motion, filed Friday, asks the court for permission to appeal U.S. District 
Judge Geoffrey Crawford's decision not to rule the death penalty 
unconstitutional and his refusal to grant a stay in the retrial.

If the appeals court agrees to review either of the decisions, it could delay 
Fell's retrial, which is scheduled to begin in late March.

Lead counsel Michael Burt, who recently wrapped up his defense of Gary Lee 
Sampson in another death penalty trial, has argued that he has not had ample 
time to prepare for the Fell trial. Sampson was sentenced to death Jan. 9 in 
Massachusetts.

Burt has floated the possibility of asking to withdraw from the case if he 
doesn't get more time to prepare.

In the motion before the 2nd Circuit, Burt says additional time to prepare will 
"advance the ultimate termination of the litigation."

"If this order is in error," Burt writes, "and Mr. Fell is forced to trial with 
unprepared counsel, this death penalty case may again be subject to a retrial."

In an earlier motion the defense had sought permission to appeal the death 
penalty ruling but was rebuffed by Crawford, who argued that the case did not 
meet the legal requirements for granting what is known as an interlocutory 
appeal. Typically such appeals are granted only in civil cases. However, the 
2nd Circuit has conceded that in rare instances interlocutory appeals may be 
heard in a criminal case.

Fell, who is charged in the killing of North Clarendon resident Teresca King in 
2000, was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to death. However, the ruling was 
overturned due to juror misconduct. Fell's current defense team was appointed 
in February 2015 after the case was transferred to Judge Crawford.

It is not the 1st time the 2nd Circuit will be asked to address matters related 
to the constitutionality of the death penalty in this trial. In 2002 the 
appeals court overturned a decision by Judge William Sessions declaring the 
death penalty unconstitutional because it denied a defendant's right to due 
process.

Though Crawford found major flaws in the application of the federal death 
penalty, he said it was not the role of a district court judge to overturn the 
prevailing wisdom of the Supreme Court, which has upheld the constitutionality 
of the death penalty for more than 40 years. Crawford has also expressed some 
frustration with the defense team's request for additional time to prepare and 
has pointed out that the retrial has already been delayed twice.

Yet the defense maintains that addressing the constitutionality of the death 
penalty at this stage will ultimately save time and money on "fruitless 
litigation" in the future. If Fell is convicted and sentenced to death, 
Crawford's ruling will undoubtedly be appealed. Even if Fell is sentenced to 
life in prison, the death penalty ruling will likely play a role in an appeal 
given Crawford's criticism of the jury selection process in capital cases.

In its motion the defense says the 2nd Circuit "has extolled the virtues of 
pretrial appellate litigation of the constitutionality of the Federal Death 
Penalty Act."

(source: vtdigger.org)

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

Conservatives Are Key In Leading The Conversation About The Death Penalty


In early 2013, my group Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty 
(CCATDP) launched at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). While 
we entered CPAC supported by nationally known conservative stalwarts like 
Richard Viguerie and Jay Sekulow, at first, some viewed us as a bit of a 
novelty organization.

At the time, conservative-led criminal justice reform was still a relatively 
new concept, and scrutinizing capital punishment's many failures from a 
conservative perspective wasn't regularly conducted at the national level. 
Despite this, we ultimately experienced widespread acceptance and incredible 
success at our 1st CPAC, and the success of this work has only grown since.

4 short years after we launched, the death penalty's landscape has shifted 
dramatically thanks, in part, to the burgeoning conservative push to end 
capital punishment.

For many years, repealing the death penalty was viewed as a partisan issue only 
supported by Democrats, and unsurprisingly, nobody batted a lash when the usual 
suspects on the political left championed efforts to end capital punishment in 
various states.

Yet the myth that liberals uniformly oppose the death penalty, while 
conservatives support it, has been thoroughly debunked. In fact, since CCATDP 
formed, there has been a surge of Republicans filing repeal legislation. Just 
in the past 2 legislative cycles, conservatives have sponsored repeal bills in 
a dozen different states - many of which are deep red bastions of conservatism.

As many of these states inched closer to statutorily ending their capital 
punishment programs, this last election cycle saw Americans rejecting many 
renown pro-death penalty prosecutors. Voters from several counties, including 
Duval County, Florida, and Harris County, Texas, booted their pro-execution 
district attorneys. These are hardly left-leaning counties, and as such, 
conservatives played an indelible role in replacing their prosecutors for ones 
without the same strong affinity for capital punishment.

The reason conservatives are increasingly opposing the death penalty is simple: 
it doesn't work, and it violates our core principles.

Most conservatives consider themselves to be pro-life, but there is an 
ever-present risk of executing an innocent person so long as an error-prone 
government administers the death penalty. In fact, over 155 people have been 
wrongly convicted and sentenced to die. So, it can't be considered pro-life. 
Moreover, it costs far more than its alternatives. Exact numbers vary from 
state to state, but capital punishment easily costs taxpayers millions more 
than life without parole. These expensive capital proceedings have also been 
directly responsible for budget crises, resulting in tax increases. 
Consequently, it can't be viewed as fiscally responsible.

The death penalty also fails to consistently provide any sort of benefit to 
outweigh the incredible costs and abhorrent risks. According to peer-reviewed 
studies and anecdotal evidence, capital punishment doesn't deter murder, and 
because of the complex, protracted proceedings, many murder victims' families 
find it to be a much more painful process than life without parole. In short, 
capital punishment is an expensive government program that imperils innocent 
lives, which is why growing numbers of conservatives are turning against it.

Understanding what the death penalty does in practice rather than in theory is 
another factor spurring capital punishment's stark decline. The year before 
CCATDP launched, there were 43 executions, but last year, there were 20. 
Similarly, the number of states that executed individuals dropped from 9 in 
2012 to 5 in 2016.

There is a similar effect relating to death sentences too. In 2012, 78 death 
sentences were delivered, but that number shrunk to 30 in 2016. Americans, 
especially conservatives, are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with capital 
punishment, which can clearly be seen as the death penalty's usage continues to 
dwindle.

4 years after CCATDP was founded, we will be returning to CPAC next week, but 
our experience and message will be slightly different. We have exhibited at the 
conference every year since 2013, but if the last 2 years at CPAC are good 
indicators, then few will look at us with peculiar interest. Instead, we are 
simply viewed as part of the growing conservative movement.

However, in 4 years, our message has changed to some extent. Rather than just 
educating our fellow conservatives about how the death penalty is inconsistent 
with our values, we can also share how far conservatives have moved the needle 
when it comes to ending capital punishment.

(source: Opinion, Marc Hyden; ijr.com)

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

ABA brief supports lawyer groups challenging US rule on habeas counsel 
appointment procedures


The ABA has filed an amicus brief arguing supporting 2 legal groups that claim 
a final rule governing the appointment of lawyers in capital habeas appeals 
fails to adequately protect the right to competent counsel.

The ABA brief (PDF) argues that the 2 groups - the Habeas Corpus Resource 
Center and the Federal Public Defender for the District of Arizona - have 
standing to challenge the rule. The ABA filed the brief with the U.S. Supreme 
Court on Monday, according to an ABA press release.

At issue is a Justice Department final rule implementing a portion of the 
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which allows states to fast 
track capital habeas cases if they offer competent counsel to indigent 
death-row inmates. The rule creates procedures to certify the state mechanisms 
for appointment of competent counsel.

The ABA brief asserts that the final rule "contains no meaningful substantive 
competency criteria." The rule doesn't reference objective material such as ABA 
guidelines on competent counsel in death-penalty cases, the brief says. And it 
allows the U.S. attorney general to judge state procedures in a way that "could 
essentially be arbitrary," according to the brief.

The case is Habeas Corpus Resource Center for U.S. Department of Justice.

(source: abajournal.com)

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

Death penalty and the United States

The death penalty is an issue widely contested across the country. Not the 
world, however: only 43 of the 200 nations that participate in the United 
Nations routinely execute their prisoners.

The United States is one of the nations that uses the death penalty on its 
prisoners, and the U.S. seems to wear this as a badge of honor.

Gallup reports that 60 % of Americans favor the use of capital punishment, a 
number that hasn't dropped below 57 % since 1972. A plurality of Americans also 
believe that this practice is "not used enough."

While overall support for the death penalty is waning, potentially due to the 
methods currently used in the process, what cannot be denied is the fact that 
it is still the will of the people.

The use of the death penalty will not change until public opinion shifts. This 
article will not be an attempt to shift public opinion, even though it is my 
personal opinion on the values our nation has adopted that could lead to the 
death penalty being maintained deep into the modern age.

Violence has been a simple and effective way to maintain a power structure 
throughout the history of humanity, including much of the animal kingdom. This 
power structure can then be used to enforce a system of law, either based on 
the morals of the community or some third party (miscellaneous holy texts, the 
word of some supreme dictator, et cetera).

That being said, power structures based on dominance and enforced through 
violence have lasted so long because they are, for the most part, effective. An 
animal will follow the instructions of the alpha.

This theory falls apart, however, when one aspect is introduced. Life or death 
circumstances will often overtake this fear of authority. As Maslow stated, 
physiological needs outweigh an individual's desire for safety. A poor child 
living in an impoverished area will steal food if it means that they won't 
starve to death. And, as poverty is the largest catalyst to crime, it is no 
surprise that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent to crime.

So we, being animals ourselves, are accustomed to violence as a way of 
demonstrating dominance and keeping control. Should we avoid human nature?

Well, as many nations have shown, it's not difficult to abolish the death 
penalty. So there must be a more complex reason as to why the U.S. specifically 
is such an avid advocate of this practice, even though many other developed 
countries label this venture "barbaric."

One potential explanation is the approach to crime taken in the United States. 
Whereas many nations in the developed world adopt a healthy mixture of 
rehabilitation and punishment, the U.S. seems to be heavily focused on the 
penalty aspect of the penal system, as opposed to helping the guilty reform. 
The problem with this is 2fold:

1. A focus on punishment (even capital punishment) does not decrease 
recidivism, and often hurts the chances of an offender successfully 
reintegrating into society, which can increase recidivism.

2. Focusing on punishment, instead of rehabilitation, creates a divide between 
offenders and the rest of the population. When the 2 are divided as such, it is 
easy to demonize or dehumanize any criminal for breaking the social code. While 
the latter certainly has understandable and positive implications for society, 
there are certainly negative aspects to it as well.

Mob mentality, as well as the desire to maintain societal order, feed the 
flames of support for a violent offender's execution. They are viewed as a 
danger to order, and, in the eyes of proponents, do not provide anything 
positive to society.

The problem is then exacerbated by the harsh, punishment-focused prison system, 
which has the potential to hinder the fight against crime and further 
strengthen the divide between the supporters of the death penalty and its 
casualties.

(source: Dean Cahill is a 1st-year student majoring in English--The Quad)






US MILITARY:

Airman convicted of murdering pregnant fiancee, could face death penalty


Airman 1st Class Charles Amos Wilson III was found guilty Monday of the 
premeditated murder of his fiancee and their unborn child in 2013.

Wilson, an airman with the 461st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Robins Air 
Force Base in Georgia, was found guilty in a court-martial of 1 count of 
murdering Tameda Ferguson and a 2nd count of murdering the child she was 8 1/2 
months pregnant with at the time, Robins officials said in an email to Air 
Force Times. Wilson was found shot to death at her home in Dawson, Georgia, 
about 100 miles south of Robins, in August 2013.

Robins officials said the sentencing phase began Tuesday, and that Wilson could 
be sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, life without the 
possibility of parole, or death.

"The Air Force is committed to the pursuit of justice," Robins spokesman Roland 
Leach said in the email. "Based on the evidence and the law, a panel of 
military members found Airman First Class Charles Wilson guilty of the 
premeditated murder of Ms. Tameda Ferguson ... and Ms. Ferguson's unborn child 
... Monday, Feb. 13, at the Houston County Courthouse in Perry, Ga."

The Macon Telegraph first reported Wilson's conviction on Monday.

This is the 3rd court-martial Wilson has faced in the last year. In June 2016, 
Wilson was found guilty in another court-martial of striking Tech. Sgt. Denise 
Forrest, who was his girlfriend at the time, during an argument, though he was 
found not guilty of other charges. He was sentenced to the maximum 6 months of 
confinement - but because he had already been in jail for 2 1/2 years, his 
sentence amounted to time served - and a reduction in rank from senior airman.

In another court-martial that same month, Wilson was found not guilty of felony 
murder in the death of his friend, Demetrius Hardy, who was a civilian employee 
at Robins. Wilson was also found not guilty of aggravated arson, conspiracy, 
and other charges during that court-martial. Prosecutors alleged that Hardy set 
fire to Wilson's trailer in what authorities called an insurance fraud scheme, 
so both men could collect insurance money. But Hardy was severely injured by 
the fire and died a few days later.

Before his arrest, Wilson was a support section team member and hardware 
custodian.

Former Senior Airman Andrew Witt is now the only airman on death row. He was 
also stationed at Robins when he stabbed another airman and the airman's wife, 
and nearly killed a 3rd person in 2004.

The last time the Air Force executed an airman was in 1954. That year, 2 airmen 
were executed for the rape and murder of a Guam citizen.

(source: Air Froce Times)