[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.C., FLA., LA., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

March 2



TEXAS-----new execution date

Condemned killer in San Antonio robbery set to die May 24


A 35-year-old San Antonio man on death row for a fatal shooting during a 
robbery more than 13 years ago has been set to die.

Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark said Tuesday the 
prison agency has received court documents setting Juan Castillo for lethal 
injection May 24.

Castillo was convicted of the December 2003 slaying of 19-year-old Tommy Garcia 
Jr. Evidence showed Garcia was lured to a San Antonio lovers' lane by 
Castillo's girlfriend and then ambushed. She pleaded guilty before Castillo's 
2005 trial and testified against him.

Late in his trial, Castillo fired his lawyers and represented himself.

The U.S. Supreme Court in October refused to review his case. He's among at 
least seven Texas inmates with execution dates this year, including 2 in March.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----22

Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----540

Abbott#--------scheduled execution date-----name------------Tx. #

23---------March 7------------------Rolando Ruiz----------541

24---------March 14-----------------James Bigby-----------542

25---------April 12-----------------Paul Storey-----------543

26---------May 16-------------------Tilon Carter----------544

27---------May 24-------------------Juan Castillo----------545

28---------June 28------------------Steven Long-----------546

29---------July 19-----------------Kosoul Chanthakoummane---547

(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)

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

Falk gets death penalty for correctional officer's slaying


John Ray Falk Jr. was sentenced to die for his role in the murder of a 
correctional officer during an attempted escape from a Huntsville-area prison 
more than 9 years ago.

An Angelina County jury deliberated for 28 minutes this morning before reaching 
a decision following closing arguments. Falk, who chose to represent himself, 
pleaded guilty to capital murder last Thursday for the slaying of Texas 
Department of Criminal Justice employee Susan Canfield of New Waverly.

The jury had the option to give Falk the death penalty or sentence him to life 
in prison without the possibility of parole.

Falk and another inmate, Jerry Duane Martin, ran away from a work detail at the 
Wynne Unit in Huntsville on Sept. 24, 2007. Canfield was killed while trying to 
prevent the escape when her horse was struck by a stolen truck driven by Martin 
in the garage area of the city of Huntsville Service Center adjacent to the 
prison.

The inmates were apprehended that day a few miles from the prison.

Martin was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2009 by a Leon 
County jury for Canfield???s murder. He was executed in 2013 after waiving his 
right to an appeal.

(source: Huntsville Item)






NORTH CAROLINA:

"Count": UNC Process Series Examines Life On Death Row


This weekend, you're invited to UNC's campus to experience a theatrical work in 
progress: a staged reading of a play developed through conversations with 
death-row inmates across the country.

The play is called "Count." Written by Lynden Harris in conjunction with Hidden 
Voices, the play examines the lives of 6 men on death row. Harris has worked on 
the piece for several years, forging strong relationships with numerous inmates 
along the way.

This weekend's performance will be a staged reading, but the curtain will go up 
on the finished product later this year: UNC's PlayMakers Repertory Company 
will stage "Count" as part of their PRC2 series next season.

"Count" - the title is derived from the headcount that begins and ends each day 
in prison - will be staged on Friday and Saturday, March 3-4, at 8 pm at Swain 
Hall Studio 6. (Admission is free, but there's a 5-dollar suggested donation.) 
In addition to the 2 readings, there will also be a panel discussion on the 
death penalty Thursday, March 2, from 4:30-6:00 at the Center for the Study of 
the American South (410 E. Franklin Street); Harris will speak along with 
Jennifer Thompson of Healing Justice and UNC professors Frank Baumgartner and 
Isaac Unah.

Hidden Voices is an organization dedicated to giving people a chance to express 
themselves - especially those who are marginalized, silenced, or otherwise 
rarely heard. (Harris is its founder.)

"Count" is part of UNC's Process Series - an annual series of innovative works 
in progress, part of UNC's Department of Communication.

(source: chapelboro.com)






FLORIDA:

40 years on death row and still living off your taxes


Expect a fiery debate on capital punishment when the new legislative session 
starts in the beginning of March in Tallahassee. A few months ago, the Florida 
Supreme Court decided the jury must be unanimous for a defendant to get death.

The NBC2 Investigators discovered this will likely continue the agony for the 
family of a Lee County teenager.

This murder case goes back to August of 1976.

Gerald Ford was president.

Elton John had the number 1 song.

Quarterback Tom Brady wasn't even born yet.

In the 70s, Bonita Springs was little more than a fishing village.

"Everyone knew everyone," recalled Cindi Piper.

Everyone in town knew the Piper family.

"It was a great place to be raised in that time here in Bonita," added Cindi's 
husband, Buck Piper.

His grandfather and uncle opened a roadside attraction that's still open today.

Cindi explained, "That was your only way to get from Fort Myers to Naples was 
to pass the Everglades Wonder Gardens."

The family business especially attracted Buck's younger sister, Jill.

"She was an animal lover," Cindi fondly remembered. "Like all the rest of the 
family."

Buck described his younger sister as "a sweet, fun, loving 16-year-old."

Jill never saw her 17th birthday.

Cindi Piper still remembers the phone call where she heard the news her 
sister-in-law had been shot.

Buck took NBC2 back to his parent's old home in Bonita where in the front yard 
Harold Gene Lucas shot Jill Piper 7 times.

"I kind of just cuddled, hugged her and told her I loved her," Buck remembered 
while fighting back tears.

Just 18 years old at the time her death, Buck is now 59. The protective big 
brother still remembers the pain of hugging his sister 1 final time.

"Yeah, it was a long time ago, but you stir up those memories even though they 
are kind of on the back shelf."

Deputies arrested Lucas after a week of community-wide hunting.

6 months later, a jury unanimously recommended the death penalty.

Buck admitted, "[The length of time on death row] is surreal at best. We knew 
there would be appeals."

Just not 4 decades worth of appeals.

David Brener is a capital qualified death penalty attorney who has handled 24 
capital cases in his career spanning 3 decades.

He typically predicts 12 to 14 years for death row inmates to exhaust all 
options.

"That is a long time," Brener said. "But this case is over 40 years old."

When Lucas got a new trial, 1 juror did not recommend death. Years of appeals 
have followed.

"We have given him all his time, you and I put the clothes on his back and the 
food in his mouth," Cindi Piper said.

The NBC2 Investigators tracked those tax dollars bringing the total daily cost 
to $64 to keep Gene Lucas locked up. It adds up in today's dollars to nearly a 
million bucks in the last 40 years. That's the cost for incarceration.

"State of Florida, plaintiff, vs. Harold Lucas, defendant," stated a Lee County 
circuit judge.

In February of 2017, the Lucas case again went before a judge.

"As to Mr. Lucas, I'd ask this court to consider and give Mr. Lucas relief," 
asked his attorney Ali Shakoor via telephone.

The judge denied his attorney's request to vacate the death sentence; however, 
that doesn't mean Lucas's case is finished.

"Right now, we are in a mess," Brener said, while describing Florida's overall 
situation regarding death penalty cases.

Supreme Court justices ruled in another case that too much power was given to 
judges to make the final decision. For someone to receive death, the jury must 
be unanimous. That is why Lucas is still fighting for his life.

When asked how long this process for Lucas could last, Brener predicted, "it 
could take another 10 to 12 years."

Lucas's attorney plans to appeal the February decision by a Lee County circuit 
judge.

Governors typically don't sign death warrants during pending appeals. Since 
Lucas's case is so old, he may not get a new sentencing phase.

1/2 of Florida's 400 death row inmates could be granted new sentencing 
proceedings because their convictions came after a pivotal 2002 Supreme Court 
ruling.

"I just had thought the wheels of the justice system would have been moving a 
little faster than it has," Buck Piper said from his Bonita Springs home.

He doesn't think his parents, who now live in Alabama, ever really got over 
Jill's death.

"They've looked for justice for years," added Cindi.

Through the years, the Lee County community changed and so too has the court's 
requirement for the ultimate penalty.

(source: NBC News)






LOUISIANA:

Death penalty case for man accused of murdering St. John deputies may be moved 
out of parish


A judge may decide next week whether to move the most high-profile murder trial 
in recent St. John the Baptist Parish history out of the parish.

Brian Smith, who faces a potential death penalty for his alleged role in the 
2012 shootout that took the lives of 2 sheriff's deputies and injured 2 other 
deputies, is asking for the change of venue because of "local bias" from the 
parish government and the community, according to court documents.

Judge J. Sterling Snowdy, of 40th Judicial District Court in Edgard, said in 
February that he was in the process of identifying "one or more viable parishes 
willing and able to accommodate" future proceedings related to the case.

Snowdy could decide whether to move the case as early as March 9, when he is 
scheduled to consider the change of venue motion. Another option, according to 
court documents, is to bring in a jury from elsewhere to hear the case in St. 
John.

7 people were initially charged in the shootout, which happened before dawn on 
Aug. 16, 2012. Deputies Jeremy Triche and Brandon Nielsen were killed. Deputies 
Michael Boyington and Jason Triche were left severely injured.

Smith and another defendant, Kyle Joekel, are the only 2 facing the death 
penalty in relation to the crime, having been indicted in 2012 on 1st-degree 
murder and attempted murder charges. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty 
for the 1st-degree murder charge, which is punishable by either execution or 
life in prison.

Joekel will be tried separately, but Snowdy is expected to make the same 
decision on the venue for his trial as for Smith's.

The shootout at the Scenic Riverview Mobile Home Park in LaPlace rocked an 
otherwise quiet parish, creating long-lasting scars in the community.

The 2 slain deputies were both husbands and fathers and well-respected members 
of the community, according to witnesses who have testified in court 
proceedings related to the case. The wounded deputies were left with permanent 
disabilities.

Family members of the dead deputies and the surviving victims have struggled to 
understand the motive behind the crime. Some have told The New Orleans Advocate 
in the past that the only word they can think of to describe the act is "evil."

The group accused in the killings has written various manifestos describing 
their allegiance to a movement of anti-government extremists calling themselves 
"sovereign citizens." The FBI has described them as domestic terrorists, and 
their encounters with authority often turn violent, especially when police are 
involved.

The IRS has estimated there are about 200,000 self-proclaimed "sovereign 
citizens" in the country. The number is hard to pin down, however, because 
members actively avoid carrying licenses or otherwise interacting with 
government.

For years after the crime, the parish held ceremonies marking the anniversary 
of the deputies' deaths.

Richard Bourke, the director of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center and 
Smith's lawyer, said it's exactly this kind of outpouring of support that 
should qualify his client for a trial in a new parish.

"The true gravamen of the need for a change of venue here is not the publicity 
but the level of community engagement with and response to the shootings," 
Bourke said, especially "the understandable and extensive support for those 
killed and injured and their families."

He added that because the deputies worked for the district attorney in a St. 
John drug court, "it is critical to consider the local and courthouse 
environment."

Snowdy has agreed that "prejudice in the public's mind" and "other pervasive 
influences" qualify Smith and Joekel for a change of venue because neither 
"could obtain an impartial jury venire from St. John the Baptist Parish."

However, that change could mean a variety of things.

The state has agreed that some sort of change of venue "may be well founded" 
but has pushed for bringing in a new jury from elsewhere. The court, District 
Attorney Bridget Dinvaut has argued, could sequester the members of that jury 
for the duration of the trial to avoid exposing them to prejudicial local 
influences.

In court documents submitted over the summer, Dinvaut argued that "practical 
considerations" call for the trial to remain in St. John Parish, with Snowdy 
continuing to preside. The case is so complicated that it would simply be too 
much for another court or judge to handle, Dinvaut claimed.

Moreover, she said, it would be "pointless" to transfer the trial to a parish 
whose court system has inadequate staffing or facilities to handle a capital 
case, or which is unwilling to cooperate.

"A total change of venue would only complicate an already complicated matter 
and serve no useful purpose," she has said.

A trial date for Smith is awaiting the outcome of the judge's ruling on the 
change of venue.

Brian Smith's father, Terry Smith, is also still awaiting trial after being 
charged with attempted 1st-degree murder in the shootings. He was sentenced to 
life in prison last year in connection with sexual abuse of his stepdaughter 
over a decade.

Another witness, Teniecha Bright, was released from custody when authorities 
decided she had gotten caught in the fray after hitching a ride home with the 
Smiths.

3 other suspects - Derrick Smith; Terry Smith???s wife, Chanel Skains; and 
Brian Smith's girlfriend, Britney Keith - pleaded guilty as accessories years 
ago.

The Smith family had moved together from state to state and trailer park to 
trailer park, according to various news reports. They met Joekel, who was 
running from police after he'd fled in a high-speed chase, in Tennessee.

Prosecutors have said that Joekel and members of the Smith family had long 
conspired to kill police.

Witnesses have testified that the fatal 2012 shooting began after the Smith 
family, along with Joekel, worked a graveyard shift for a contractor at the 
Valero refinery. As they left, Boyington, who was working an off-duty security 
detail at the lot, tried to pull Terry Smith over.

He asked for Smith's driver's license. Smith, however, refused to carry one. 
Many "sovereign citizens" claim the government conspires against residents by 
using such mechanisms as licenses and Social Security cards to take away their 
freedom.

The early-morning scene quickly turned chaotic, according to past testimony. 
Ultimately, according to testimony, Brian Smith pulled out an assault rifle and 
fired at Boyington in his car as his father tried to drive away.

Jeremy Triche soon arrived with Jason Triche, who is not related to him, as 
well as Nielsen, records show. The deputies allegedly scuffled with Kyle 
Joekel, who also is accused of firing shots.

Jeremy Triche and Nielsen were killed. Jason Triche was shot through the back, 
and Boyington was shot multiple times.

Jason Triche, who at the time was an 11-year veteran of the Sheriff's Office, 
testified that he drove himself to the hospital. He spent weeks in a medically 
induced coma and did not realize the full extent of the damages until after he 
awoke, he said.

"That's when I realized I don't have a gall bladder anymore, a spleen," he said 
at a hearing in 2014. "My right kidney was gone. And then that's when I 
realized I was on dialysis. And that's when I realized that Jeremy Triche 
passed away in the incident. And Brandon Nielsen."

(source: The New Orleans Advocate)






CALIFORNIA:

Death penalty for tattooed accused cop killer charged in Whittier police 
murder?


A reputed gang member with tattoos across his face and neck who allegedly shot 
2 Whittier police officers, killing 1 of them, was charged Wednesday with 2 
counts of capital murder.

Michael Christopher Mejia is also alleged to have killed his cousin within 
hours of the police murder. He is charged with the Feb. 20 murders of Whittier 
police Officer Keith Boyer, who responded to a traffic crash in which Mejia was 
allegedly involved, and the defendant's 47-year-old cousin, Roy Torres, who was 
shot in East Los Angeles earlier that day.

The murder charges include the special circumstance allegations of murder of a 
peace officer in the performance of his duties, murder for the purpose of 
avoiding arrest and multiple murders.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office has yet to decide whether to 
seek the death penalty against the 26-year-old defendant, who is also facing 
one count each of attempted murder of a peace officer, carjacking and 
possession of a firearm by a felon with 2 priors.

The charges include allegations that Mejia personally and intentionally 
discharged a handgun and that he committed the crimes "for the benefit of, at 
the direction of, and in association with a criminal street gang."

Mejia - who has convictions for 2nd-degree robbery in 2010 and grand theft auto 
in 2014 - is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday at the Bellflower courthouse.

Boyer, 53, was killed in a gun battle after responding to a report of a traffic 
collision near Colima Road and Mar Vista Street shortly after 8 a.m.

Mejia allegedly pulled out a semi-automatic handgun and fired at Boyer as well 
as Officer Patrick Hazell, who was shot in the abdomen but survived. Mejia was 
shot in the back during the shootout.

About 5:30 that morning, Mejia allegedly gunned down his cousin and took the 
victim's car, which he crashed into 2 other vehicles in Whittier, according to 
the District Attorney's Office.

A public viewing for Boyer is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Whittier Area 
Community Church, 8100 Colima Road. Boyer, a grandfather, musician and school 
resource officer, had been with the police department for 27 years.

Funeral services will be held at 10 a.m. Friday at Calvary Chapel Downey, 12808 
Woodruff Ave. Following the service, a procession will carry Boyer's body to 
Rose Hills Memorial Park at 3888 Workman Mill Road in Whittier for a graveside 
service.

(source: mynewsla.com)






USA:

Is The Firing Squad More Humane Than Lethal Injection?


Last week, the Supreme Court responded to a petition from a death row inmate in 
Alabama containing an unusual demand: He wanted to be executed by firing squad. 
The prisoner, a 75-year-old man named Thomas D. Arthur, who was convicted of a 
murder committed in 1982, argued that if he was executed using the state's 
default method, lethal injection, he would become the latest in a series of 
death row prisoners who have appeared to suffer for extended periods of time 
during their executions. Arthur contended that such a death would violate the 
8th Amendment, which protects prisoners against cruel and unusual punishment - 
but the firing squad would be an acceptable replacement.

The court rejected Arthur's appeal over a furious dissent from Justice Sonia 
Sotomayor, who argued that of all the available options, the firing squad might 
well be the most humane. "In addition to being near instant, death by shooting 
may also be comparatively painless," she wrote. "Condemned prisoners, like 
Arthur, might find more dignity in an instantaneous death rather than prolonged 
torture on a medical gurney."

Despite being the default method of execution in the 31 states where the death 
penalty is still legal, the use of lethal injection has resulted in disturbing 
scenes where inmates appeared to be dying in excruciating pain, sometimes for 
an hour or more. Now, Arthur and Sotomayor are not alone in wondering whether 
the firing squad could be a preferable alternative to lethal injection; state 
legislators, lower court judges and other death row inmates have also proposed 
bringing back the firing squad. But will Americans allow the country to return 
to a method of execution that was rejected decades ago as too brutal and 
backwards?

Utah is the only state that has carried out an execution by firing squad in 
recent memory.1 But Oklahoma allows the use of the firing squad as a backup for 
lethal injection, and as recently as this month, Mississippi considered similar 
legislation to allow the use of the firing squad, electric chair and gas 
chamber, although the firing squad option was recently removed from the bill.

A central part of the case for firing squads is that these executions can be 
more difficult for states to mishandle. In her dissent, Sotomayor pointed out 
that firing squad executions were far less likely to have been botched in the 
past. Citing data compiled by political scientist Austin Sarat, she noted that 
about 7 % of the executions by lethal injection between 1890 and 2010 were 
botched, meaning that they departed from the standard protocol set forth by the 
state. The number of botched firing squad executions, meanwhile, was zero.

If the number of botchings is a proxy for the effectiveness or humaneness of a 
particular form of execution, the data would seem to serve as a ringing 
endorsement of proposals like Mississippi's. But Sarat, a professor at Amherst 
College, said that the numbers can tell us how frequently particular types of 
executions go wrong but not which method is the most humane. The broader 
conversation, he said, should be about whether a death penalty method is 
compatible with our social values and commitments, not whether we can prove 
that we're minimizing the suffering of the condemned. "Are we really saying 
that a form of execution is legitimate just because it hasn't been botched as 
frequently?" he said.

The relative rarity of firing squad executions should caution anyone against 
extrapolating too much from Sarat's data. Of the 8,776 executions that took 
place between 1890 and 2010, only 34 used firing squads. Even before the advent 
of modern technologies such as electrocution, the gas chamber and lethal 
injection, firing squads were still relatively uncommon. Another dataset of 
executions going back to the 17th century, compiled by death penalty historians 
M. Watt Espy and John Ortiz Smykla, shows that of 15,269 executions that took 
place in the United States between 1608 and 2002, only 144 were carried out by 
gunshot.2 Many of those 144 executions, especially those conducted in the 19th 
century or later, took place in Utah, which held on to the firing squad as a 
method of capital punishment long after other states had rejected it as 
antiquated and barbaric, in part because of an arcane Mormon belief in "blood 
atonement" - the idea that a murderer must literally shed his blood to be 
forgiven by God. From 1977, when the death penalty began to be implemented 
again after a short hiatus imposed by the Supreme Court, only 3 executions by 
firing squad have taken place. Even Utah finally removed the firing squad from 
the books in 2004, driven by concerns from legislators that continuing to offer 
it made the state appear primitive, although it was formally reinstated in 
2015.

"Americans tend to want the death penalty to be as sanitary as possible," said 
Andrew Novak, a professor at George Mason University who studies the death 
penalty in the U.S. and abroad. "It's an act of state violence, but we don't 
want it to be violent."

The search for a swift and painless form of capital punishment began in earnest 
in the late 19th century, when hanging was increasingly seen as primitive and 
ineffective, while the firing squad was associated with the violence and 
anarchy of the Wild West. At first, the electric chair, which was adopted in 
1890, seemed to be the solution; then, in the 1920s, lethal gas was introduced 
as an even more humane alternative. But neither delivered on their promise of 
painlessness and speed. Prisoners executed in the electric chair often had 
burns across their body, and inmates placed in the gas chamber appeared to be 
choking to death.

There's little empirical or clinical research on the experience of death by 
execution: in one macabre experiment, conducted in 1938, a physician monitored 
the heart activity of a man being executed by firing squad and found that his 
heart essentially stopped functioning less than a minute after the shots were 
fired. A study conducted in 1993 attempted to measure pain during different 
forms of execution. It concluded that firing squad was one of the least painful 
methods - but because the study assumed that the executions went smoothly, it 
said the same of lethal injection. Dr. Jonathan I. Groner, a professor of 
surgery at Ohio State University, says that based on his experience as a 
surgeon and his research on the effects of lethal injection, he believes the 
firing squad is quicker and causes less suffering than other forms of 
execution. "There's pain, certainly, but it's transient," he said. "If you're 
shot in the chest and your heart stops functioning, it's just seconds until you 
lose consciousness."

The firing squad also has the advantage of being carried out by trained 
professionals, says Deborah Denno, a professor of law at Fordham University. 
Lethal injection, despite the fact that it was designed to mimic anesthesia, 
has been hamstrung by the fact that most physicians refuse to participate in 
executions. This leaves prison staff to perform a series of procedures that 
require professional medical skill. Firing squads, on the other hand, use 
professional marksmen. "For better or for worse, we have a lot of people in 
this country who are very good at firing a gun," Denno said. But although the 
marksmen who carried out the firing squad execution in 2010 were chosen from a 
pool of volunteers, Novak noted that those who pull the trigger might still 
suffer from a form of post-traumatic stress. Vietnam recently abandoned the 
firing squad in favor of lethal injection, in part because of the distress 
experienced by the shooters.

It's certainly possible to botch a firing squad execution, says Novak, who has 
studied executions in countries like Indonesia where the firing squad is more 
commonly used. "There are these ghastly stories about marksmen missing the 
target and the prisoner resuscitating and having to be shot again," he said. 
These kinds of errors may be less likely in Utah, which has a detailed protocol 
for conducting firing squad executions, including a special chair with 
restraints. (In Indonesia, prisoners are usually tied to a stake, leaving more 
room for error.) Protocols, however, don't guarantee success. "We have equally 
detailed regulations for lethal injection and still manage to mess those up," 
Novak said. Sarat, too, is skeptical of the idea that trained marksmen would 
never make a mistake. "We don???t expect perfect performance from any other 
profession," he said.

The fate of efforts to bring back the firing squad, in the end, may hinge less 
on proof of its effectiveness and more on the public's willingness to stomach 
such an unequivocally violent form of execution. Despite all of the bad 
publicity around lethal injection, a poll conducted in 2014 found that 65 % of 
Americans still believed it was the most humane form of execution; only 9 % 
said the same of the firing squad. "We can debate all day about whether the 
firing squad is more predictable or less painful, but in the end it's about 
what Americans are willing to tolerate," Novak said. "And I just don't think 
we'll accept the idea of the state performing executions by shooting people, no 
matter what the science or the data says."

(source: Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux; fivethirtyeight.com)

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

US death row prisoners try to escape torturous lethal injections----A shortage 
of deadly drugs has led states to try out new methods that have ended in 
botched executions across the United States, opening up legal battles for more 
humane deaths.


"When you see someone gasping for breath, the one thing you want to do is reach 
out and help," said Father Lawrence Hummer, a Catholic priest.

What Hummer witnessed was not a stranger choking, but the state of Ohio killing 
Dennis McGuire.

On January 14, 2014, Hummer attended the execution of McGuire, an Ohio death 
row inmate who received a combination of drugs including midazolam, a drug that 
has been linked to a string of botched executions in prisons across the United 
States. Experts believe the drug fails to render a prisoner unconscious before 
the injection of other deadly chemicals that paralyse them and stop their 
hearts.

Although Hummer was just a few feet away in the observation room, he couldn't 
help McGuire.

"I wanted out of there in the worst way possible. It made my skin crawl," 
Hummer told TRT World.

Hummer had been McGuire's priest at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in 
Chillicothe, and had heard McGuire confess to, and ask for, forgiveness for the 
1989 murder of a pregnant woman that put him on death row. Hummer was there 
with McGuire's family.

"Once you've been through a trauma like that, the one thing you want to do is 
try to forget it," Hummer said, remembering watching McGuire struggle for 
breath for half an hour. "It is being trapped in a small room, in this case 
with his daughter, son and daughter-in-law, whom I was there with by his 
request to offer them comfort and consolation. But there was nobody there for 
me."

An uncertain future

The US is at a crossroads when it comes to capital punishment. The American 
public's support for the practise is falling, as a nationwide shortage of 
lethal injection drugs has led states to experiment with chemicals that slowly 
torture prisoners to death.

Although no prisoner has lived to describe what the process feels like, Supreme 
Court justice Sonia Sotomayor, after hearing testimony on the issue, said that 
midazolam's inability to anaesthetise the condemned "may well be the chemical 
equivalent of being burned at the stake."

The use of of the sedative midazolam has been the subject of legal challenges 
across the US by death row prisoners, who say it violates the Eighth Amendment 
of the US Constitution, which bans "cruel and unusual" punishment. 
Nevertheless, executions have gone ahead using the drug.

In response, lawmakers in the state of Mississippi have introduced legislation 
that would legalise the use of midazolam and expand other options for 
executioners, including the electric chair, and nitrogen asphyxiation, which 
has never been tried before. Another proposal to include the firing squad was 
struck down by a committee, but is available in Utah and Oklahoma.

In neighbouring Alabama, one death row inmate, Tommy Arthur, turned to the 
Supreme Court to argue that the firing squad would be more humane than death by 
lethal injection using midazolam. Last week, the Supreme Court declined to hear 
his appeal, meaning his execution can go forward.

The court also declined to hear appeals from all eight remaining inmates on 
Arkansas' death row. Their executions will go forward in April, using 
midazolam.

Following another 2015 Supreme Court decision, in the case of Glossip v. Gross, 
the highest US court ruled that prisoners would need to petition states with 
suggestions for less painful means of execution - making it the prisoners' 
responsibility to provide their own lethal drugs.

"Essentially, they are being coerced into proposing an alternative because if 
they don't propose an alternative, they will be executed using the method that 
they consider to be torturous," said Robert Dunham, head of the Death Penalty 
Information Center, a Washington DC-based legal advocacy group that takes a 
critical stance on the way the practise is implemented.

By limiting the options death row inmates have, Dunham said that governments 
carrying out the death penalty could "guarantee" prisoners would feel pain.

"That doesn't make any sense," Dunham said. "Legislatures have to decide what 
they're going to do. Are they going to tolerate botched lethal injection 
executions? Are they going to go through anonymous pharmacies or illegally 
smuggle drugs into the US?"

In 1 case, on April 29, 2014, Dunham said, Oklahoma used a chemical called 
potassium acetate to end the life of one prisoner. His last words were: "My 
body is on fire".

In that case, Oklahoma also used midazolam in an apparently failed attempt to 
sedate that prisoner, Charles Warner.

But an Oklahoma prosecutor, Rex Duncan, dismissed Warner's description of his 
own death, the Associated Press reported.

The killing drug in Warner's case is also used to strip ice off airplanes.

"I think what you witnessed is predictable, especially if it could be helpful 
to the guys behind him," Duncan reportedly told journalists present, referring 
to other death row inmates awaiting execution.

Fears of the condemned

Hearing of the suffering of other inmates as the death days draw closer, the 
condemned prisoners fear of a slow, torturous death grows. What worries them 
the most is that because of the paralysing agent, the 2nd drug injected as part 
of the 3 drug combination, they won't be able to tell anyone that they are 
suffering.

"It's not only them, but also their family and friends who love them, who are 
very concerned and in terror about the notion that they will be unable to 
communicate that they are feeling serious pain that they are being tortured to 
death," said James Craig, an attorney with the Roderick & Solange MacArthur 
Justice Center, based in New Orleans. He is representing 2 death row inmates in 
Mississippi who are seeking another drug to be used in their execution: 
phenobarbital.

Craig said phenobarbital presents a potentially more humane form of lethal 
injection. It's also a drug that veterinarians employ to euthanise animals. A 
heavy single dose of the drug kills the prisoner, without using a three drug 
combination that has failed repeatedly to quickly end human life. Why states 
are reluctant to switch to phenobarbital is unclear, Craig said, but he can 
make an educated guess.

"They intend to inflict pain," Craig said. "They are committed to their 
indifference to the substantial risk of torture in the manner in which they are 
taking executions."

Georgia, Texas and Missouri carried out 17 of the 20 executions that took place 
in the United States in 2016. For these executions phenobarbital was used. But 
they have refused to release where they got the drug or how they used it. Craig 
has filed motions to seek more information about where the states got the 
drugs.

The confusion over how and where to get lethal injection drugs has led to 
unprecedented moves by other states. In Arizona, a new bill proposes to have 
inmates provide their own lethal injection drugs.

"I find that really the worst," said Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham 
University in New York City who has been studying the death penalty for more 
than 2 decades.

"I don't know what they're going to do with that. I don't know how that comes 
close to something that we've ever done before. That's basically having an 
inmate conduct their own execution," Denno explained.

"Executions are supposed to be conducted by the government. The idea that an 
inmate would bring their own drugs is abdicating the state's considerable 
responsibility."

Capital punishment favourability declines

Public opinion in the US regarding the death penalty has shifted over the 
decades, as genetic evidence successfully clears more inmates and raises 
questions about how many innocent people capital punishment kills. Falling 
violent crime rates and the clear racial disparities in the application of 
capital punishment have also contributed to the decline.

In 2016, a Pew poll found less support for the death penalty for convicted 
murderers than at any time since the 1970s, with 49 % of people in favour. The 
study also found a sharp drop of 7 % points between 2016 and 2015.

"Public support for capital punishment peaked in the mid-1990s, when 8-in-10 
Americans [80 % in 1994] favored the death penalty and fewer than 2-in-10 were 
opposed [16 %]. Opposition to the death penalty is now the highest it has been 
since 1972," Pew reported.

Citing concerns about humane punishment, the Supreme Court in 1972 imposed a 
moratorium on the death penalty, which held until 1976. Since then, more than 
1,300 people have been put to death by states.

When first used to execute a prisoner in 1982, lethal injection was hailed as a 
more humane way of killing death row prisoners, and that reputation has stuck 
in the minds of voters.

"The American public thinks that lethal injection is not cruel and unusual, but 
it thinks that every other method is," Dunham explained, citing a February 2015 
YouGov poll. "The execution method of choice that is favoured by the American 
public is increasingly unavailable. And all the other methods are considered 
barbaric."

Other options available for executions can also cause grotesque deaths. The 
electric chair, invented to be more humane, has a history of setting prisoners 
on fire. Gas chambers can also end in long, lingering deaths. Botched hangings 
wind up as slow stranglings.

"I can understand why a prisoner would prefer firing squad," said Deborah 
Denno, a law professor at Fordham University who studies the death penalty.

"Where it's been used in Utah in modern executions it is very quick," Denno 
said.

"It is a quick, certain method of execution where people are trained to use it, 
and anecdotal evidence as well as old experimental evidences shows it is 
seemingly the most humane. Certainly there is a lot of evidence for that," 
Denno said, adding that its implementation would require strict protocols.

But Denno stresses that it's impossible to be sure whether people are 
experiencing pain. Anyone who would could say for certain is dead.

"I always qualify that statement by saying no one knows," she said.

The future of the death penalty in the US is uncertain, Denno said. Although 
public opinion has turned against its use, an attempt to repeal it in the state 
of California failed in a referendum last year.

"I never look into a crystal ball when it comes to execution methods," Denno 
said.

"I've been writing on it since 1990, following execution methods. I would never 
have predicted this drug shortage thing. That wasn't in anybody's crystal 
ball."

Denno said that it would have been difficult to predict the beginning of the 
drug shortage in 2009 just a year after the Supreme Court had affirmed the 
legality of the three drug combination method.

What could affect the statute in the future is the composition of the Supreme 
Court. President Donald Trump's nominee for the judicial body, Neil Gorsuch, 
has not ruled often on the matter, but one case he did sign off on as a judge 
on the 10th circuit concerned the botched 2014 execution of Clayton Lockett in 
Oklahoma. Gorsuch agreed with that decision.

Lockett preceded Charles Warner, and was also dosed with midazolam. Lockett's 
slow death reportedly involved 45 minutes of writhing on the execution 
stretcher, or gurney, as prison officials tried and failed to insert a needle 
into his groin. Blood spurted from the puncture. Lockett eventually died of a 
heart attack. The court ruled that the doctor involved in the execution was not 
liable under the Eighth Amendment.

"These allegations suggest nothing more than the sort of 'isolated mishap,' 
which 'alone does not give rise to an Eighth Amendment violation, precisely 
because such an event, while regrettable, does not suggest cruelty," Joe 
Heaton, a federal district judge, wrote in June 2015.

While Gorsuch did not write the opinion himself, he backed the decision.

No good death?

Dunham, Craig and Denno all oppose the death penalty for a variety of reasons. 
Beyond the ethical dimension, they say it does not deter crime. More than that, 
trying to come up with a humane way of killing a human being may be impossible.

"That is the ultimate question," Dunham said. "And that may be a moral as 
opposed to physical question. Pope Francis obviously has said there is no way 
humane way of executing anyone anytime there is an involuntary termination of a 
person's life."

Craig said that doing away with the death penalty would be part of making the 
American criminal justice system more fair.

"It is not becoming us as a people as Americans," Craig said. "And it would be 
a very nice day that we decide not just to eliminate the death penalty, but 
reorient our criminal justice system but it's going to be a little while before 
get there."

Denno said that attitudes towards the death penalty and the views of victims 
themselves were pushing the US away from the practise, albeit slowly.

"You have this realisation that it's just not working," she said. "That said we 
still have a couple of states where it's going to be really hard, such as 
Texas. California has the largest death row population in the country. They 
just voted to have the death penalty and make it quicker. It's still so much a 
part of our culture."

Denno mentioned the reaction of the victims of the 2015 mass shootings in 
Charleston, South Carolina as a sign of a changing tide. In June of that year, 
the 20-year-old white supremacist Dylann Roof shot and killed 9 members of the 
Mother Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church during a Bible-study meeting 
where he was welcomed before drawing handgun and opening fire in the church's 
basement.

The jury was less forgiving than the congregation. In January, a federal jury 
found him guilty and he received a death sentence. Roof, who represented 
himself during the trial, and showed no repentance or remorse.

"The reason I mention this is the degree of forgiveness shown toward him from 
the members of the church whose congregants were killed. There weren't victims 
asking for the death penalty, not them. Other people yes, but not them," Denno 
said.

"This kind of emotional desire for retribution is not as sellable as it used to 
be," he added, even in the face of such twisted cruelty.

Father Hummer, for his part, has a proposal he believes would end the practise. 
As it is now, the death penalty is shrouded in secrecy, but he says that public 
officials should have to do the deed themselves.

"It's the destruction of a human being," he said. "I have said often that my 
solution is to make the governor of the state go be the executioner, and see 
how fast it is abolished."

(source: trtworld.com)