[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., VA., FLA., OHIO, IND., ILL., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 12




TEXAS----execution

Texas carries out nation's 1st execution in 2017


Texas has executed death row inmate Christopher Wilkins, who was convicted of 
killing 2 men after one of them mocked him for falling for a phony drug deal.

The lethal injection of the 48-year-old Wilkins Wednesday is the nation's 1st 
execution this year. 20 were carried out in the U.S. last year, the lowest 
number since the 1980s.

Wilkins was declared dead at 6:29 p.m. local time.

Wilkins explained to jurors at his capital murder trial in 2008 how and why he 
killed his friends in Fort Worth 3 years earlier, saying he didn't care if they 
sentenced him to death.

The Supreme Court declined to block Wilkins' execution about 3 hours before the 
scheduled lethal injection. Wilkins' attorneys had argued to the Supreme Court 
that he had poor legal help at his trial and during earlier appeals and that 
the courts improperly refused to authorize money for a more thorough 
investigation of those claims to support other appeals and a clemency petition.

In their unsuccessful appeal to the high court, Wilkins' attorneys contended he 
had poor legal help at trial and during earlier appeals and that the courts 
improperly refused to authorize money for a more thorough investigation of his 
claims.

State attorneys said courts have rejected similar appeals and that defense 
lawyers are simply employing delaying tactics.

Wilkins was released from prison in 2005 after serving time for a federal gun 
possession conviction. He drove a stolen truck to Fort Worth, where he 
befriended Willie Freeman, 40, and Mike Silva, 33.

Court records show Freeman and his drug supplier, who wasn't identified, duped 
Wilkins into paying $20 for a piece of gravel that he thought was a rock of 
crack cocaine. Wilkins said he shot Freeman on Oct. 28, 2005, after Freeman 
laughed about the scam, then he shot Silva because he was there. Wilkins' 
fingerprints were found in Silva's wrecked SUV and a pentagram matching 1 of 
Wilkins' numerous tattoos had been carved into the hood.

Wilkins also testified that the day before the shootings, he shot and killed 
another man, Gilbert Vallejo, 47, outside a Fort Worth bar in a dispute over a 
pay phone, and about a week later used a stolen car to try to run down 2 people 
because he believed 1 of them had taken his sunglasses.

"I know they are bad decisions," Wilkins told jurors of his actions. "I make 
them anyway."

Wes Ball, 1 of Wilkins' trial lawyers, described him as "candid to a degree you 
don't see," and had hoped his appearance on the witness stand would have made 
jurors like him.

"It didn't work," Ball said.

While awaiting trial, authorities discovered he had swallowed a handcuff key 
and fashioned a knife to be used in an escape attempt.

"This guy is the classic outlaw in the model of Billy the Kid, an Old 
West-style outlaw," said Kevin Rousseau, the Tarrant County assistant district 
attorney who prosecuted Wilkins.

20 convicted killers were executed in the U.S. last year, the lowest number 
since the early 1980s. That tally includes 7 executions in Texas - the fewest 
in the state since 1996. Wilkins is among 9 Texas inmates already scheduled to 
die in the early months of 2017.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Condemned killer of San Antonio woman loses appeal


The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has rejected an appeal from a man sent to 
death row for fatally stabbing a disabled woman at her San Antonio home after 
she refused to give him and his girlfriend money to support their $1,000-a-day 
drug habit.

Lawyers for 40-year-old Armando Leza contended he was innocent of the 2007 
slaying of a neighbor, 57-year-old Caryl Jean Allen, and that his deficient 
trial lawyers contributed to a Bexar County jury's decision to convict him and 
give him the death penalty. The appeals court sent the appeal back to the trial 
court, which held a hearing and recommended the arguments be rejected.

The appeals court ruling Wednesday supports the trial court's findings.

Leza's girlfriend also was charged and testified against him in a plea deal.

(source: foxsanantonio.com)






PENNSYLVANIA:

Still only 7 jurors selected for Easton death penalty case


Attorneys in the death penalty case of Jeffrey Knoble added a juror but they 
also lost a juror Wednesday.

Jury selection continues in the trial of the 27-year-old Riegelsville man. He's 
charged with fatally shooting Andrew "Beep" White in March 2015 in the former 
Quality Inn hotel in Easton.

The total number of jurors holds steady at 7. The attorneys made their way 
through a pool of 40 prospective jurors on Monday and Tuesday. They started 
questioning a new pool of 56 one by one on Wednesday.

Jeffrey Knoble is charged with killing Andrew "Beep" White at a Downtown Easton 
hotel in 2015.

They need 12 jurors and 4 alternates before testimony can begin.

Northampton County Judge Emil Giordano hopes jury selection can wrap up by 
Friday, allowing testimony to begin Tuesday, Jan. 17.

(source: lehighvalleylive.com)






VIRGINIA----impending execution

Federal judge declines to delay execution over drug controversy


A judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on 
Tuesday declined to delay the execution of convicted killer Ricky Gray, which 
is scheduled to take place January 18. Gray's attorneys argued in December that 
the drugs to be used during the execution were untested and potentially 
torturous. Judge Henry Hudson concluded that "any discomfort experienced by 
Gray in the execution process is unlikely to cause serious pain or suffering." 
He also concluded that the possibility of pain was outweighed by the harm done 
if the execution was delayed. Gray's attorney, Lisa Fried, stated that "it is 
unconstitutional ... to carry out an execution that risk chemically torturing a 
prisoner to death." No other state has used the mixture of drugs to be used at 
Gray's execution. His attorneys plan to appeal.

Capital punishment remains a controversial issue in the US and worldwide. Last 
Wednesday the Florida Supreme Court issued a 1-paragraph order informing judges 
and prosecutors that the state's death penalty procedure is unconstitutional, 
marking the 2nd such order in 3 months. In October the US Supreme Court vacated 
the death sentence of an Oklahoma man convicted of killing his girlfriend and 
her 2 children in a case where the trial judge permitted family members to 
recommend the sentence to the jury. In May a Miami judge ruled that Florida's 
revamped death penalty law is unconstitutional because it does not require a 
unanimous agreement among jurors to approve executions. In April Virginia's 
General Assembly voted to keep secret the identities of suppliers of lethal 
injection drugs. In 2002 the Supreme Court held in Atkins v. Virginia that the 
Eighth Amendment's proscription on cruel and unusual punishment makes the 
execution of individuals with intellectual disability unconstitutional, which 
was considered in the Moore v. Texas case. In November, Oklahoma became the 1st 
state to have the death penalty explicitly added to their state constitution as 
legal. According to a report by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), 
only 5 out of 31 states that have the death penalty held executions in 2016.

(source: jurist.org)






FLORIDA:

House panel reviews Supreme Court death decisions


In December, the Supreme Court of Florida ruled that death row inmates 
sentenced before 2002 would not get a new hearing, while those given death 
afterwards would, even though all were sentenced under a sentenced under a law 
declared unconstitutional;. Law professor Michael Allen told the house 
committee reviewing the opinion that it made no sense whatsoever.

"The Florida Supreme Court's decision to make the rule retroactive to some 
people but not others, finds absolutely no support in anything I'm aware of 
anywhere in the country says the law professor.

Prosecutors have opposed giving all death row inmates a 2nd bite at the 
sentencing apple. State Attorney Brad King, who prosecutes cases in west 
central Florida says death is the only appropriate sentence for some crimes.

"Sometimes you can only know that difference if you've been a cop like me and 
been to scenes or been the state attorney and been to scenes, and see the hole 
that a little girl was buried in, after she was put in a plastic bag alive, 
after she was rapped and then she was buried and left to suffocate to death and 
then the question of the death penalty I think becomes a little more real" said 
an emotional King.

Last Thursday, the state's high court issued an option saying no death cases 
can be prosecuted until lawmakers re-enact a unanimous jury requirement, but 
the court quickly withdrew the opinion, calling it premature.

(source: flanews.com)






OHIO:

New details revealed in killing of 89-year-old Northside man


A woman facing the death penalty in the killing of an 89-year-old man told 
detectives she "snapped" before stabbing him with a large kitchen knife, 
prosecutors said.

Margaret Kinney, 41, and her boyfriend, 43-year-old Michael Stumph, then used a 
pillow to try to suffocate Otto Stewart, according to prosecutors.

Hamilton County Assistant Prosecutor Seth Tieger said Wednesday at Kinney's 
arraignment that the couple wrapped a cord around Stewart's neck, tightening it 
"like a tourniquet with a letter opener."

Prosecutors say the killing happened Nov. 19 at Stewart's Northside home. 
Stewart's body was found nearly a month later by his landlord. The couple was 
homeless and Tieger said they had befriended Stewart, a military veteran.

They lived with him "for a period of time," Tieger said, and were "taking 
advantage of him."

Prosecutors have previously said Stewart was lending money to the couple, who 
were homeless, but eventually told them to find jobs and pay him back.

Tieger said Kinney told homicide detectives that "she snapped...got a large 
knife and stabbed him."

Prosecutors say Kinney and Stumph then took cash and other items from Stewart, 
including his vehicle.

Both Kinney and Stumph were arrested last month in Kentucky.

At Wednesday's hearing, Kinney's attorneys, Elizabeth Agar and Tim McKenna, 
entered a not guilty plea on her behalf. Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge 
Lisa Allen set her bond at $5 million.

Both Kinney and Stumph, who also is being held on a $5 million bond, face 
charges including aggravated murder and aggravated robbery. Prosecutors are 
seeking the death penalty against both.

(source: cincinnati.com)



INDIANA:

Judge Lets Death Penalty Appeal Go To High Court


A northern Indiana judge has ruled that a man who faces the death penalty can 
appeal claiming the state's death penalty law is unconstitutional.

The (Gary) Post-Tribune reports that a Lake County judge made the ruling Friday 
in the case of 45-year-old Darren Vann, who is charged in the deaths of 7 
women. Last year Vann's attorneys made the argument in a case filing but a 
judge denied their claim. On Friday the attorneys asked the judge if they could 
appeal the ruling to the Indiana Supreme Court and the judge allowed it.

Officials with the Lake County prosecutor's office said they agree with the 
judge's ruling but don't object to the defense's appeal.

Lake County prosecutors requested the death penalty in Vann's case.

(source: WBIW news)






ILLINOIS:

The death knell for the death penalty in Illinois


Nobody paid much attention to the date Wednesday and the significance it has in 
Illinois history. January 11, 2003, then Governor George Ryan cleared out death 
row in Illinois by declaring it unfair. With the stroke of a pen, George Ryan, 
a Republican, spared the lives of 163 men and 4 women.

Among liberal groups, he was called a hero. He was even nominated for a Nobel 
Prize. Among conservatives who like nothing more than a good execution, he was 
called a closet liberal and other terms too crude to repeat.

Among George haters, and there were and are a lot of them to this day, it was 
said he made the move to curry favor with African-Americans to taint a jury 
pool prior to his being indicted on corruption charges. When you think about 
it, that is a pretty racist statement. To think African-Americans would be so 
overwhelmed by ending the death penalty that they would give someone a pass is 
a slap in the mouth to African-Americans.

African-Americans are used to being slapped in the mouth although the sting 
never lessens. The fact the insult came from many liberals is even more 
insulting.

I'm not in the hate George camp although it is fashionable to hate him. See, 
unlike so many who hate the man without knowing him, I know George personally. 
I know his kids; I knew his wife and I have a deep love for his family. For 
George, my emotions are mixed and here is why.

When I was a child growing up in Kankakee, Illinois, my neighbor was George 
Ryan. I lived on Cobb Boulevard in the middle of the block. The Ryans lived up 
the alley on the corner of Park and Greenwood. We were neighbors and although 
his kids were younger than me, they were the same age as my young sister so we 
all knew one another.

I well recall one winter night when I was very sick. I could hardly breathe and 
had a high temperature. My Mom called Dr. Burnett, our family doctor who would 
give me a prescription in the morning. I was very sick, so at 2 AM, my Mom 
called George Ryan.

The Ryans own Ryan's Pharmacies in Kankakee. And George went at the wee hours 
of the morning and filled a cheap prescription for a young kid who was sick. 
However, that wasn't good enough. The next day, George Ryan came by to see how 
I was doing.

I know about all the terrible things that happened with license scandal. I know 
George inherited the McBroom political machine and continued to use it for 
power. I know those things and as those who know me know, I am dedicated to 
ending political corruption.

I also know there is goodness in George Ryan. It may have gotten lost 
somewhere, but it is there. I know, because I have been witness to it 
first-hand.

I don't think George Ryan pardoned those people and set Illinois on the path to 
ending the death penalty. I believe George did it because regardless of all 
else that happened, there is goodness in George Ryan.

I'm proud to know him, and for those in the future, who want to bash him, 
remember the story of the sick child and the medicine. That story was not 
unique. It is uniquely George because he is a good man in spite of the scandal.

If you want to read about corrupt political machines in Illinois, author Jim 
Ridings has a book out named, Kankakee Confidential. He chronicles the machine 
Governor Ryan ran, which dates back to Al Capone and perhaps the most corrupt 
Governor of all, Governor Small, of Kankakee. He has a book about Governor 
Small named Governors and Gangsters that studies the relationship between Al 
Capone and Governor Small. Both are an interesting history of Illinois crime 
where it meets power in Springfield.

(source: Bob Schneider, chicagonow.com)






USA:

Dylann Roof's Death Sentence Is A Tragedy... For A Lot Of Other People


Yesterday, Dylann Roof got the death penalty for walking into a church, being 
accepted by the African-American congregation, and then murdering them. And 
once again, America has to look itself in the mirror and consider its comfort 
with what Justice Blackmun called "the machinery of death."

Most people are going to be pretty cool with it today.

And why wouldn't they be? Finally, we've got someone who deserves the death 
penalty. A nasty little s**tbag who literally got Burger King after he killed 
nine innocent people (even if he didn't actually get driven there). Eric Garner 
gets killed for selling cigarettes and this mass murderer gets a burger. That 
pretty much sums up justice in America.

Maybe this will balance the scales just a bit.

It won't, of course, but that's how the argument goes. Fundamentally poisoned 
systems rely on moments like this to thrive - it's what keeps the whole affair 
from collapsing under its own weight. Offing the unrepentant killer who 
absolutely, positively murdered these people provides that neat and tidy 
legitimization of America's barbaric and racist fascination with the death 
penalty. Roof is a sacrifice at the altar of the death penalty to forgive all 
of its sins.

Never mind that nationally, African-Americans are around 3 times more likely to 
end up on death row than demographics would suggest, while other killers are 
more likely to be shunted off into punishments with a longer life expectancy. 
Or that miscarriages of justice are supercharged in capital cases because the 
death penalty is an irrevocable punishment that doubles down on the often 
racially driven failures of the criminal justice system writ large. 
Occasionally you can get a few people to focus on these problems. Mostly when 
innocent folks get exonerated years after the fact and get high-profile media 
coverage. Those stories plant seeds of doubt in the minds of the public. You 
can actually see the polls start ever so slightly to shift.

But now, bad people are getting what they deserve again! Who can take any death 
penalty critic seriously when the face of death row is no longer someone like 
Glenn Ford - innocent man exonerated after 30 years - but Dylann Roof? Just 
watch that support for the death penalty tick right back up again. It's the 
life cycle of injustice - nobody cares about the doing the right thing when it 
helps the wrong people.

That's why this sentence is ultimately a tragedy. Dylann Roof deserves the 
worst punishment imaginable. But, as they say, it's not what you do, it???s 
what you justify. And sentencing Roof to death is going to justify a whole lot 
of state-sponsored injustice.

(source: Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like 
A Lawyer----abovethelaw.com)

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

Anguish, Rage and Mercy as Dylann Roof Is Sentenced to Death


In an extraordinary culmination to the federal death penalty trial of Dylann S. 
Roof, 35 family members and friends of his nine African-American victims 
confronted him directly at a sentencing hearing on Wednesday. Some forgave him 
with Christian grace. Others damned him to hell. But almost all proclaimed 
defiantly that his murderous church rampage had failed in its mission to sow 
division and racist hate.

"The hate that you possess is beyond human comprehension," Melvin Graham, a 
brother of one of the victims, Cynthia Hurd, told the young white supremacist 
seated across the courtroom. "You wanted people to kill each other. But instead 
of starting a race war, you started a love war."

At the close of the nearly 5-hour hearing, Judge Richard M. Gergel of Federal 
District Court formally sentenced Mr. Roof, 22, to death, in accordance with 
the verdict that a jury quickly delivered on Tuesday. Although they were not 
required to do so, most of the jurors who heard the case attended Wednesday's 
proceedings.

"This trial has produced no winners, only losers," Judge Gergel said. "The 
defendant will now pay for his crimes with his life. But the trial has not been 
a futile act because the jury, acting as the conscience of this community, has 
stated clearly and unequivocally that his hate, his viciousness, his depravity 
will not go unanswered."

Mr. Roof, who presented no defense during his trial and denied any mental 
incapacity, declined an offer to speak before Judge Gergel imposed the 
sentence: death on 18 counts, and life in prison for an additional 15. Mr. 
Roof, whose case will probably be appealed for years, had no family members in 
the audience.

Throughout the hearing in the courtroom, where the victims' loved ones spent 
more than 2 weeks reliving the June 17, 2015, massacre at Emanuel African 
Methodist Episcopal Church, one family member after the next demanded, 
sometimes with raised voices, that Mr. Roof turn his head to look at them. He 
refused to do so, sitting as he did through most of his trial as if in a 
trance, motionless, staring ahead and exhibiting no expression.

"I wish you would look at me, boy," said Janet Scott, an aunt of Tywanza 
Sanders, who, at 26, was the youngest victim of the attack during a Bible study 
session. "But I know you hear me."

In legal terms, Wednesday's hearing was a formality, as Judge Gergel was bound 
by the unanimous sentencing decision of the jury, which on Dec. 15 found Mr. 
Roof guilty of 33 counts. But it afforded family members, many of them dressed 
in funereal black, an unfettered opportunity to express the full measure of 
their grief and fury in ways not allowed when some testified during the penalty 
phase of the trial. They had been limited then to characterizing their 
relatives and the impact of their loss, and could not advocate a particular 
punishment.

Wednesday's session served as something of a reprise, or at least a bookend, to 
the bond hearing held 2 days after the killings, in which 5 family members 
stunningly offered Mr. Roof a measure of public forgiveness. They had since 
learned much more about Mr. Roof, including the vehement nature of his white 
supremacist beliefs, as expressed in a confession and a variety of writings, 
and his utter lack of remorse.

At both hearings, nearly 19 months apart, however, the deep faith of the 
bereaved - and the value placed on forgiveness and repentance by African 
Methodism - played prominent roles.

"Know that God will forgive you. Know that you can change your life," Daniel L. 
Simmons Jr., the son of the Rev. Daniel L. Simmons Sr., urged in a preacher's 
cadence on Wednesday. "Feel that awesome power of God. Feel it. Feel it. Feel 
it. Feel it."

Sheila Capers, Ms. Hurd's sister-in-law, told Mr. Roof she hoped God would open 
his heart so that he would go to heaven after his execution. "If at any point 
before you're sent to prison, you want me to come to pray with you, I will do 
that," she said.

But just as the group was divided, including within families, about whether Mr. 
Roof should be put to death, many who spoke could not disguise their disdain. 
Some said they could not bear to look at him or to speak his name. But others 
spoke it emphatically, in full - Dylann Storm Roof - as if to hold him to full 
account.

"To you, Dylann, I know you will be burned in hell," Gary Washington, the son 
of Ethel Lee Lance, said through a sign language interpreter.

Gracyn Doctor, a daughter of the Rev. DePayne Middleton Doctor, suggested that 
the killings qualified as "the one sin that I'm not even sure God can look 
past." Marsha Spencer, a church member, likened Mr. Roof to Judas and described 
him as a "subhuman miscreant." Tyrone Sanders, Mr. Sanders's father, said he 
wished the law required Mr. Roof to lose a limb each time he filed an appeal.

And Malcolm Graham, another of Ms. Hurd's brothers, described Mr. Roof as the 
embodiment of racism. "There's just no place for forgiveness in this community 
for racism, hatred and discrimination," he said. "There's no room for it. 
There's no room for him."

Felicia Sanders, 1 of 3 survivors of the attack and Mr. Sanders's mother, told 
Mr. Roof how she continued to use the Bible she carried that night, only partly 
cleaned of bloodstains. But Ms. Sanders, in her 3rd round of testimony during 
the proceedings, said the percussion of gunfire, which began as the worshipers 
closed their eyes in benediction, haunted her each day.

She could not watch fireworks, she said. She could not hear "something as small 
as an acorn drop from out of a tree." Mr. Roof and his rampage were constantly 
in her head.

"Most importantly," she continued, "I cannot shut my eye to pray. I cannot shut 
my eye to pray. Even when I try, I cannot, because I have to keep my eye on 
everyone that is around me."

Despite such personal trauma, the speakers vowed that the shooting had bent 
families but not broken them; had unified their community along racial lines, 
not rived it; had reinforced their confidence in God, not shaken it.

"You can't have my joy,' Bethane Middleton-Brown, Ms. Doctor's sister, told Mr. 
Roof. "It's simply not yours to take. You can't have it. So I guess you will 
spend the rest of your time being angry because you can't have it. The other 
thing that you will be angry about is because you didn't win."

Then she added: "You couldn't make me hate you. May God bless you."

(source: New York Times)

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

With no sincere remorse comes death sentence


If Death lingers in courtroom corridors awaiting sentences, this historic 
city's federal courthouse was surely a top destination. On Tuesday, the 
Reaper's patience was rewarded with the jury's return of the death penalty for 
Dylann Roof.

Roof, who insisted on representing himself during the sentencing phase of his 
33-count murder trial, was found guilty last month for the slaughter of 90 
black parishioners at Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in June 2015.

Roof's self-lawyering is still mystifying when he had at his disposal one of 
the nation's best death-penalty lawyers, David Bruck, who did represent Roof 
during the guilt phase that ended last month. Bruck was allowed only to advise 
Roof during the penalty phase, which began last week, but briefly addressed the 
judge Tuesday when Roof requested that Bruck address objections.

While the government's case seemed airtight in covering all the requirements 
for the death penalty, Roof's remarks Tuesday took fewer than 5 minutes.

Wearing slacks and a blue cable-knit sweater - his bowl-cut hair obviously 
recently shaped - Roof approached the lectern with a single, yellow, 
letter-sized sheet of paper for his closing argument.

Barely audible - and his pauses were longer than his sentences - he made 
essentially two suggestions seemingly aimed at creating doubt about his alleged 
hatred of black people and his intent in carrying out his mission, which he 
himself previously identified as wanting to incite racial violence.

"I think it's safe to say nobody in their mind wants to go to a church and kill 
people," he began. Then he contradicted other confession statements that he had 
to do what he did. "In my (FBI confession) tape I told them I had to do it. ... 
Obviously that's not true. Nobody made me do it. I felt like I had to do it, 
and I still feel like I had to do it."

Clarity isn't his strong suit.

Next, Roof challenged the prosecution's claim that he's filled with hatred, one 
of the statutory-required aggravating factors in capital cases. He referred to 
his confession when an FBI agent asked him if he hated blacks. Roof's reply 
was, "I don't like what black people do."

To the jury, he posited: "If I was really filled with as much hate as I 
allegedly am, wouldn't I just say, 'Yes, I hate black people'?"

Finally, Roof said it's fair to say that the prosecutors hate him since they're 
seeking the death penalty. Then he tutored the court that people hate because 
they've been misled. He also said that people think they know what hatred it 
is, but "they don't know what real hatred looks like."

Does Roof? Is this because some hate-filled person misled him? Or did he merely 
look in the mirror?

Not once during his very brief remarks did Roof say he regretted his actions, 
which might have elicited some empathy from those burdened with determining his 
fate. Indeed, in a jailhouse journal, he wrote that he isn't sorry and that he 
hadn't shed a tear for the "innocent people I killed."

Tuesday, as he attempted to take on a battery of lawyers hell-bent on ultimate 
justice, he seemed ever the evil child who, rather than acknowledging the 
horror and the agony of what he did, was somehow above the process. 
Expressionless and aloof, as he had been throughout the trial, he was anything 
but a sympathetic character and certainly no advocate for his continued access 
to life.

Throughout the proceedings, my mind kept wandering to an earlier case I covered 
when Bruck was fighting another death penalty - the 1994 trial of Susan Smith, 
the young mother who rolled her car into a Union, South Carolina, lake, 
drowning her 2 small children.

The crime was heinous and the trial heart-wrenching. At one point during the 
father's testimony, the judge had to call for a break because nearly everyone 
in the courtroom, including the media, was weeping. The father had been talking 
about his 3-year-old's favorite Disney movie, which the child called, "1-o-1 
Dalma-hay-tions."

Susan Smith threw herself across the defense table, loudly sobbing with the 
agony of regret and the sorrow of inconsolable loss. Yes, she was responsible 
for her children's death, but there was no questioning her remorse or doubting 
that her life in prison would be an endless night of piercing pain.

For death penalty opponents like me, this seemed a far more just end than death 
would have been. With Roof, there's plainly no sense of sorrow now - or to 
come.

In the end, evidence of sincere remorse, which is to say, humanity, can be the 
difference between life and death.

(source: Column, Kathleen Parker, Washington Post)

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

Friends of Slain Pastor React to Death Sentence


The friends of the slain pastor of Mother Emanuel have mixed emotions about the 
death sentence for the convicted killer and white supremacist.

"The verdict does bring about some closure in the sense that we don't have to 
be in court every single day anymore," Dr. Kylon Middleton, Rev. Clementa 
Pinckney's best friend explained. ???It really continues a process that 
facilitates you know mixed emotions on both sides, because some people are for 
the death penalty and some people are against the death penalty."

Middleton said it's not necessarily a time to celebrate over the fact that 
Dylann Roof, the man convicted of killing and shooting 9 Black worshippers at 
Mother Emanuel in 2015 will get death.

"This is a day that brings some finality to a long, very painful chapter, it's 
certainly not a day of celebration," Middleton said.

"This is not a jubilant time. This is not a time to say this is a celebration. 
This is a sad time. It does not end well. We have still lost a loved one," 
Senator Gerald Malloy, Pinckney's friend and lawyer echoed.

Malloy said it's a very challenging time for everyone involved.

"We have the loss of 9 lives at a church of people that are ages from 87 to 26 
years of age. The 87-year-old woman took at least 11 shots in her body," the 
senator said of the tragedy.

"Senator Pinckney was a great man, one of the most decent people you would ever 
meet in your life," Malloy said of his friend. "We don't know what he would 
have become."

Malloy also shared how Pinckney was truly a man who supported the voiceless. He 
said his friend had great plans for Mother Emanuel.

"I still can't imagine life without him although he's been gone for 18 months. 
At this point you know giving me a sense of peace," Middleton said. "When I'm 
still you know kind of taking his children to dance and or piano, and dealing 
with 2 little girls who don't have a father and a wife who no longer has a 
husband, there's no peace there."

Middleton said he forgives Roof and is committed to continuing Pinckney's 
legacy and believes his friend is smiling on them from heaven.

"I think he's smiling when we walked out of the courtroom, although it's still 
chilly, the sun was shining brightly, I look at all of those things as you know 
almost a sign, if you will of affirmation," Pinckney's best friend said. "And 
just him in the universe sort of supporting the fight that we continue and that 
we're going to continue."

(source: WLTX news)