[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., DEL., FLA., ARK.

[Rick Halperin]

March 29



TEXAS:

Texas Must Broaden Death-Penalty Exemption, High Court Says


A divided U.S. Supreme Court said Texas must broaden its death-penalty 
exemption for people who are intellectually disabled, ruling that the state was 
violating the Constitution by using outdated medical standards.

The 5-3 ruling could mean a new sentencing hearing for Bobby James Moore, 57, 
who was convicted of fatally shooting James McCarble during a 1980 grocery 
store robbery in Houston.

Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that, while states 
have some flexibility to determine who's ineligible for the death penalty, they 
can't completely disregard current medical standards. The case divided the 
court along ideological lines, with Justice Anthony Kennedy joining the court's 
liberal wing in the majority.

"Texas cannot satisfactorily explain why it applies current medical standards 
for diagnosing intellectual disability in other contexts, yet clings to 
superseded standards when an individual's life is at stake," Ginsburg wrote for 
the majority.

The Supreme Court barred the execution of intellectually disabled people in 
2002 as violating the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishments. To a 
large degree, however, the court left it to the states to determine who 
qualifies for that exemption.

Texas is one of the nation's top death-penalty states, with 239 people on death 
row, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website.

In upholding Moore's death sentence, Texas's top criminal appeals court said 
the state could continue to use a 1992 definition of intellectual disability as 
part of a multi-factor test for determining eligibility for capital punishment.

The state court also said it stood by a 2004 ruling that used Lennie Small, a 
mentally challenged character in John Steinbeck's novel "Of Mice and Men," as 
an example of someone who might be exempt from the death penalty.

Ginsburg called that test an "outlier," saying that only 2 other state courts 
had adopted anything similar.

In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts said the high court had overstepped its 
authority.

"Clinicians, not judges, should determine clinical standards," Roberts wrote 
for himself and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, "and judges, not 
clinicians, should determine the content of the Eighth Amendment."

(source: bloombergquint.com)

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

Texas Used Wrong Standard in Death Penalty Cases, Justices Rule----The case 
concerned Bobby J. Moore, who has been on death row in Texas since 1980 for 
fatally shooting a Houston supermarket clerk during a robbery.


The Supreme Court on Tuesday continued a trend toward limiting capital 
punishment, rejecting Texas' approach to deciding which intellectually disabled 
people must be spared the death penalty.

Writing for the majority in the 5-to-3 decision, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg 
said Texas had failed to keep up with current medical consensus, relied too 
heavily on I.Q. scores and took account of factors rooted in stereotypes.

"Texas cannot satisfactorily explain why it applies current medical standards 
for diagnosing intellectual disability in other contexts, yet clings to 
superseded standards when an individual's life is at stake," Justice Ginsburg 
wrote. She was joined by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia 
Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The case was the latest in a series of decisions refining the court's 2002 
decision in Atkins v. Virginia, which barred the execution of the 
intellectually disabled as a violation of the Eighth Amendment???s ban on cruel 
and unusual punishment. The Atkins decision gave states substantial discretion 
to decide just who was, in the language of the day, "mentally retarded."

But the decision did set out a general framework. It said a finding of 
intellectual disability required proof of 3 things: "subaverage intellectual 
functioning," meaning low I.Q. scores; a lack of fundamental social and 
practical skills; and the presence of both conditions before age 18. The court 
said I.Q. scores under "approximately 70" typically indicated disability.

The case before the court on Tuesday concerned Bobby J. Moore, who has been on 
death row since 1980 for fatally shooting a 72-year-old Houston supermarket 
clerk, James McCarble, during a robbery.

Justice Ginsburg wrote that Mr. Moore's I.Q. was in the range of 69 to 79, 
meaning that other factors had to be considered. In dissent, Chief Justice John 
G. Roberts Jr. wrote that only 2 I.Q. scores had been found reliable, of 78 and 
74.

"The court's ruling on intellectual functioning turns solely on the fact that 
Moore's I.Q. range was 69 to 79 rather than 70 to 80," Chief Justice Roberts 
wrote.

The reliable scores were enough, he said, to decide the case and to allow Mr. 
Moore's execution.

Justice Ginsburg said the courts have more work to do when I.Q. scores are 
close to the line. For instance, she wrote, Mr. Moore had reached his teenage 
years without having learned the most fundamental things.

"At 13," she wrote, "Moore lacked basic understanding of the days of the week, 
the months of the year, and the seasons; he could scarcely tell time or 
comprehend the standards of measure or the basic principle that subtraction is 
the reverse of addition."

A state judge, considering that evidence and relying on current medical 
standards on intellectual disability, concluded that executing Mr. Moore would 
violate the Eighth Amendment.

But the Court of Criminal Appeals, Texas's highest court for criminal matters, 
reversed that ruling, saying the judge had made a mistake in "employing the 
definition of intellectual disability presently used."

Under medical standards from 1992, Mr. Moore was not intellectually disabled, 
the appeals court said. The court added that the young Bobby Moore "had 
demonstrated adaptive strengths" by living on the street, mowing lawns, playing 
pool and committing crimes. He had, for instance, worn a wig during the robbery 
and tried to hide his shotgun in 2 plastic bags, which prosecutors said was 
evidence of forethought and planning.

Justice Ginsburg said the appeals court had given too much weight to those 
aspects of Mr. Moore's behavior and not enough to his intellectual deficits.

The appeals court relied on a set of seven factors to help determine 
intellectual disability drawn from one of its earlier decisions. (One example: 
"Can the person hide facts or lie effectively?") Justice Ginsburg rejected the 
factors, noting that they were used almost nowhere else and that Texas itself 
did not use them in determining intellectual disability in other contexts.

On this point, Chief Justice Roberts agreed, saying, "Those factors are an 
unacceptable method of enforcing the guarantee of Atkins."

The case, Moore v. Texas, No. 15-797, had attracted some attention for 1 aspect 
of Texas' approach, which was partly drawn from a comparison to the fictional 
character of Lennie Small, the dim, hulking farmhand in John Steinbeck's 
novella "Of Mice and Men."

In 2004, in the decision that set out the standards Texas uses, Judge Cathy 
Cochran of the Court of Criminal Appeals wrote that Lennie should be a legal 
touchstone. "Most Texas citizens might agree that Steinbeck's Lennie should, by 
virtue of his lack of reasoning ability and adaptive skills, be exempt" from 
the death penalty, she wrote.

When Mr. Moore's case was argued in November, Justice Sotomayor said he was at 
least as intellectually disabled as Lennie. "The state had no problem in saying 
that Lennie, even though he could work, earn a living, plan his trying to hide 
the death of the rabbit he killed, that he could do all of those things, and 
yet he was not just mildly, but severely disabled," she said.

The opinions rendered Tuesday did not mention Lennie.

In his dissent, Chief Roberts said the majority had not adequately considered 
"the practices among the states."

"The court instead crafts a constitutional holding based solely on what it 
deems to be medical consensus about intellectual disability," the chief justice 
wrote. "But clinicians, not judges, should determine clinical standards; and 
judges, not clinicians, should determine the content of the Eighth Amendment."

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined the chief justice's 
dissent.

(source: New York Times)

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

Supreme Court blocks Texas execution over disability


The Supreme Court tightened its rules on capital punishment again Tuesday, 
ruling that Texas - the nation's leader in executions - cannot use a 
decades-old definition of intellectual disability to determine who lives and 
who dies.

The 5-3 decision was another in a series of high court rulings intended to 
eliminate differences in how states decide who is disabled - and therefore 
ineligible for the death penalty under a 2002 precedent - and who is not.

The case of Bobby James Moore was the 3rd death penalty case to reach the court 
in recent months, each presenting a different issue, ranging from how sentences 
were determined to how those condemned should die. In Moore's case, it involved 
Texas' unique system for deciding who is intellectually disabled - one that is 
not based on the latest clinical guidelines.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued the decision, backed by the court's liberal 
members and Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has sided with the liberals in past 
death penalty cases. Speaking from the bench, she said Supreme Court precedent 
does not allow for the "disregard of current medical standards."

"Adjudications of intellectual disability should be 'informed by the views of 
medical experts,' " Ginsburg wrote, quoting in part from the high court's 2014 
ruling in a Florida case. "That instruction cannot sensibly be read to give 
courts leave to diminish the force of the medical community's consensus."

Chief Justice John Roberts and two conservative justices dissented, arguing 
that Moore failed to prove the intellectual deficits necessary for a holding 
that the death penalty would be a cruel punishment. "Clinicians, not judges, 
should determine clinical standards," he wrote, "and judges, not clinicians, 
should determine the content of the Eighth Amendment."

Moore's case dates back to 1980, when he shot and killed a grocery store clerk 
during a botched robbery. He was twice convicted, then found to be 
intellectually disabled, but Texas' highest criminal court overturned that 
finding, citing its own precedent, which is based on a 1992 definition of 
intellectual disability. His case now returns to Texas for further 
consideration.

"Today, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that all persons with intellectual 
disability are exempt from execution, and that current medical standards must 
be used to determine whether a person is intellectually disabled," Moore's 
attorney, Cliff Sloan, said.

The Supreme Court has tightened sentencing rules for people with intellectual 
disabilities since its landmark 2002 ruling in Atkins v. Virginia. 3 years ago, 
it barred Florida from using a single, strict IQ standard to determine a 
prisoner's competency.

That case, Ginsburg wrote, "indicated that being informed by the medical 
community does not demand adherence to everything stated in the latest medical 
guide. But neither does our precedent license disregard of current medical 
standards."

She noted that Texas does not use the outdated standards in other contexts, 
such as assessments of students' intellectual disabilities or the diagnosis of 
juveniles in the criminal justice system. "Texas cannot satisfactorily explain 
why it applies current medical standards for diagnosing intellectual disability 
in other contexts, yet clings to superseded standards when an individual's life 
is at stake," she wrote.

Justice Stephen Breyer - who, with Ginsburg's support, suggested in 2015 that 
the high court consider declaring capital punishment unconstitutional - said 
during oral argument that the Texas standard "would free some, while subjecting 
others to the death penalty."

Kennedy, the lone conservative to voice skepticism about the Texas system 
during oral argument, acknowledged that the Supreme Court's 2002 precedent 
barring execution of the intellectually disabled "left some discretion to the 
states." But he said Texas' method of determining disability seemed designed to 
limit who can claim it.

Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller told the court that the state goes by the 
Supreme Court's standard - looking at defendants' intellectual functioning, 
adaptive behaviors and at what age their impairments appeared. "Texas is well 
within the national consensus," he said.

But Sloan disagreed. "Texas is very extreme and stands alone," he said, 
accusing the state of using "lay stereotypes" of intellectual disability such 
as the character Lennie in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.

Texas leads the nation in executions with 542 since 1976, nearly 5 times the 
total of runners-up Oklahoma and Virginia. Its effort to execute another 
prisoner despite racially biased testimony from a defense witness was blocked 
by the high court last month.

Nationwide, the pace of executions has slowed since peaking in 1999. There were 
20 last year, the lowest number in a quarter century; there have been 6 so far 
this year, including 4 in Texas. The trend is a result of action by 
legislatures and courts, as well as problems states face getting the drugs 
required for lethal injections.

Despite that trend, voters in California, Nebraska and Oklahoma decided to 
retain or restore capital punishment at the polls in November.

(source: USA Today)

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

The Supreme Court Keeps Tinkering With Death


It's been more than 2 decades since Justice Harry Blackmun renounced the death 
penalty, calling it a "failed" experiment and writing that "I no longer shall 
tinker with the machinery of death." By refusing to stop the use of capital 
punishment, the Supreme Court has consigned itself to tinkering with the death 
machine, trying in vain to make a barbaric, irrational system appear 
predictable and just.

The latest tweak came Tuesday, when the court tossed out the death sentence of 
Bobby James Moore, who was convicted in 1980 for murdering a supermarket clerk 
during a robbery. Mr. Moore has intellectual disabilities - among other things, 
his I.Q. is in the 70s, he "lacked basic understanding of the days of the week, 
the months of the year and the seasons" at the age of 13, and he failed out of 
9th grade.

After the Supreme Court barred the execution of people with intellectual 
disabilities in 2002, Mr. Moore challenged his death sentence. A state court 
ruled in his favor, finding that under current medical standards Mr. Moore was 
so disabled that executing him would violate the Eighth Amendment's ban of 
cruel and unusual punishments.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest court for criminal 
cases, reversed that decision. The lower court, it said, had mistakenly applied 
a newer definition of intellectual disability. But Texas case law relied on an 
older definition, and used a 7-factor test drawn up by a judge in 2004 to 
determine whether someone has sufficiently severe disabilities to be spared. 
For example, it asks, "Has the person formulated plans and carried them through 
or is his conduct impulsive?" Because Mr. Moore mowed lawns, played pool and 
took part in the planning of the robbery, the court found that he could be 
executed.

The Supreme Court gives states a good amount of room to set their own 
intellectual-disability standards, but on Tuesday it found that Texas had 
crossed the line.

Writing for 5 members of the court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the 
state's approach was unconnected to modern medical consensus. Even the 
dissenting justices - Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence 
Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr. - agreed that the 7-factor test wasn't acceptable. 
Instead, they argued, Mr. Moore's I.Q. score was high enough to render him fit 
for execution.

Tuesday's decision was good for Mr. Moore and perhaps a handful of other 
inmates, although it came too late for many others. More than anything, it 
drove home the futility of the tortured, macabre exercises the court engages in 
whenever it deals with capital punishment.

The real question is not whether Mr. Moore's I.Q. is 69 or 74, or whether he 
knows the difference between Monday and Thursday - it's why a few states still 
insist on engaging in a practice that the rest of the developed world rejected 
long ago, and why the Supreme Court refuses to end it for good.

(source: Editorial, New York Times)

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

Finally, Texas is forced to stop executing the mentally disabled based on junk 
science


In a 5-3 decision Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court determined what many in Texas 
have argued for years: The way the state evaluates mental disability in death 
row cases is "cruel and unusual punishment."

We second that. Texas' outrageously loose, nonscientific method of assessing a 
person's intelligence flies in the face of a requirement forbidding states from 
executing individuals with intellectual disabilities.

Tuesday's decision means Bobby Moore, who has been on death row for more than 
36 years, will see his case sent back to Texas' highest criminal court for 
re-evaluation.

There is no question that Moore did the crime. In 1980, he shot and killed 
James McCarble, a 73-year-old grocery clerk, during a botched robbery in 
Houston. However, after he was sentenced to death, Moore's lawyers argued on 
appeal that he was severely intellectually disabled.

In 2002, the Supreme Court declared the execution of individuals with 
intellectual disabilities a violation of the Constitution's ban on cruel and 
unusual punishment. Moore, however, remained in jeopardy because the court also 
deferred heavily to the states to determine who qualified as intellectually 
disabled.

And that's where Texas stumbled, spectacularly. Lawmakers failed to adopt 
updated standards, which left it to the courts. The Texas Court of Criminal 
Appeals reverted to obsolete evaluation techniques written 25 years ago - and 
then compounded that misstep by adding several other subjective and problematic 
determinations.

Those 7 factors are known as "the Lennie standard," because the court invoked 
Lennie Small, the dim-witted fictional farmhand in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and 
Men. "Most Texas citizens might agree that Steinbeck's Lennie should, by virtue 
of his lack of reasoning ability and adaptive skills, be exempt," the court 
said. That's not science.

When, at a rehearing, a judge using current medical standards found Moore to be 
intellectually disabled, the Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the decision, 
absurdly clinging to its old contentions ordering that only the 1992 standards 
could be used.

Texas' insistence on applying outdated evaluation when better testing methods 
were available - and widely in use across the country - was the height of 
hubris. Courts have acknowledged the important role of modern forensic science 
in the criminal justice system, but when it came to the death penalty, Texas 
oddly reverted to obsolete evaluation protocols.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the majority opinion, rebuked Texas' 
actions as a disregard of current medical standards. "Texas," she wrote, 
"cannot satisfactorily explain why it applies current medical standards for 
diagnosing intellectual disability in other contexts, yet clings to superseded 
standards when an individual's life is at stake."

Regardless of whether you believe the death penalty is a deterrent, or whether 
you consider it to be immoral, there is no question that the law of the land 
doesn't allow states to execute the intellectually disabled. Now Texas has been 
told so in indisputable terms.

(source: Editorial, Dallas Morning News)






PENNSYLVANIA:

State Supreme Court upholds murder conviction, death sentence of Charles Ray 
Hicks


The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania upheld a death sentence Tuesday of a man 
convicted of killing a woman, dismembering her and dumping her body parts along 
Interstate 80 and 380 in Monroe and Lackawanna counties.

A jury convicted Charles Ray Hicks Jr. of Coolbaugh Twp. in 2014 for 
first-degree murder of 36-year-old Scranton woman Deanna Null and other crimes 
in Monroe County Court. The jury, some weeping, sentenced him to death. Monroe 
County President Judge Margherita Patti Worthington formally imposed that 
decision weeks later.

All death penalties are automatically reviewed by the state Supreme Court, 
which can cancel the sentence.

The state's highest court did not. The court's majority opinion found 
"sufficient evidence" to uphold the conviction. The 7-person court ruled in 
favor of the conviction and death sentence by a 5-2 vote.

"Our careful review of the record reveals the (death) sentence was not the 
product of passion, prejudice, or any other arbitrary factor," the judges 
wrote.

The 2 dissenting justices, Christine Donohue and David Wecht, each wrote their 
own opinion.

For the case of the 2008 murder, the Monroe County district attorney's office 
considered dropping the death penalty against Hicks, now 42, in exchange for 
information on murders he's suspected of committing in Texas, but he failed to 
provide sufficient information to seal the deal, a county detective said.

(source: thetimes-tribune.com)

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

Jury selection complete for Frein case


Jury selection for the capital murder trial of Eric Matthew Frein concluded 
Tuesday, with the trial set to begin next week, Pike County District Attorney 
Ray Tonkin said.

2 alternate jurors were selected Tuesday and three jurors were selected Monday, 
bringing the total to 12 jurors and 6 alternates.

In another development, Tonkin notified Frein's attorneys, William Ruzzo and 
Michael Weinstein, that he may present recordings of conversations Frein had 
with visitors at Pike County Correctional Facility as evidence at the trial.

Prosecutors are required by law to notify the defense if wiretapped recordings 
will be introduced. Weinstein said Tuesday that he does not know yet who Frein 
spoke to or the substance of the recordings because he has not yet received 
them.

"It may be just notice that they recorded every phone call," Weinstein said. 
"I'm not treating it as a disaster yet. It's the practice of the jail to record 
every conversation. This may be all the conversations over the last 2 1/2 years 
he had with family."

Frein, 33, of Canadensis, is charged with 1st-degree murder and other crimes 
for the Sept. 12, 2014, sniper attack outside the Blooming Grove state police 
barracks that killed Cpl. Bryon K. Dickson II, Dunmore, and severely wounded 
Trooper Alex T. Douglass, Olyphant. Frein pleaded not guilty.

Named a suspect 3 days after the shooting, Frein eluded capture until Oct. 30, 
2014, when he was found outside an abandoned airport hangar in Monroe County. 
He faces the death penalty if convicted of 1st-degree murder.

Lawyers picked the jury of 7 women and 5 men from Chester County partly because 
of extensive pre-trial publicity.

Pike County Judge Gregory Chelak still is considering if the trial in Pike 
County Court will start April 3, as scheduled, or April 4.

Chelak also has not decided when he will hold a hearing regarding a defense 
motion that seeks to suppress statements Frein made to police following his 
arrest. Ruzzo said he expects the judge to issue an order on both matters 
today.

(source: Republican Herald)

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

Butler DA weighing death penalty in 4-year-old's killing


The Butler County District Attorney said today that a "horrific" case in which 
a 4-year-old boy was raped and killed calls out for capital punishment, but he 
will not make the decision until the case has moved past the preliminary 
hearing stage.

"It would appear on its face it asks for the death penalty," said Richard 
Goldinger. "I've never seen anything like this."

Keith Jordan Lambing, 20, is accused of assaulting his girlfriend's son, who 
was found bleeding and unresponsive in a car with Mr. Lambing's mother, Kristen 
Herold, at a business on Renaissance Drive in Butler at 9:26 a.m. on March 21.

The boy was pronounced dead a short time later at Butler Memorial Hospital.

Police said that in addition to injuries associated with sodomy, Bentley had 
bruises to the head, trunk and extremities.

"It's unimaginable someone could do something like this to any human being let 
alone a 4-year-old," Mr. Goldinger said.

He said that police are still investigating and that charges could be filed 
against Bentley's mother, Mackenzie Peters.

"I don't think she's going to get out of this scot-free," Mr. Goldinger said.

Ms. Herold is charged with hindering apprehension and endangering the welfare 
of children.

Ms. Herold told police she had picked up the boy that morning at a Super 8 
motel on Pittsburgh Road in Butler. Her her son had been living there for 
several weeks with Ms. Peters, Bentley and the couple's 4-month-old son.

The infant was taken into custody by Butler County Children, Youth and 
Families.

Mr. Goldinger said that CYF had been called about 2 years ago when Bentley had 
a broken arm, but that the complaint was not sustained, and no case was ever 
opened.

(source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)






DELAWARE:

Del. Lawmakers Announce Bill to Reinstate Death Penalty


A bipartisan group of lawmakers announced Monday that they are pushing ahead 
with a legislative effort to bring back the death penalty in the First State 
after the Delaware Supreme Court last year struck down the state's capital 
sentencing statute as unconstitutional.

Dubbed the Extreme Crimes Protection Act, the bill aims to address flaws that 
led a bare majority of Delaware's 5 justices last August to rule, in the case 
Rauf v. State, that the scheme violated a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to 
a trial by jury.

By a 3-2 vote, the court said that the statute unconstitutionally allowed 
sentencing judges to independently find the existence of aggravating 
circumstances and to weigh them against mitigating factors. In light of a 
recent U.S. Supreme Court case, those determinations, the justices said, can 
only be made by a jury, unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt.

The ruling effectively wiped out capital punishment in the state, though the 
law remains on the books. But it also left to the General Assembly the decision 
of whether to fix and reinstate the statute or to scrap it altogether.

Last summer, a bloc of 15 Republican legislators vowed to rework the statute 
and introduce legislation this session to revive it. On Monday, four Republican 
lawmakers, joined by two Democrats, took the first public step toward realizing 
that goal. The legislation, they said, was circulating for sponsorship and was 
expected to be introduced sometime early next week in the House of 
Representatives.

"This is a thoughtfully crafted, constitutionally sound bill. Once enacted, I 
believe this legislation will serve as a deterrent against our most heinous 
crimes," said state Sen. Brian Pettyjohn, R-Georgetown, one of the bill's 
sponsors, said in a joint press release. "For those who do commit these vile 
acts, this statute will ensure that capital sentences are justly and fairly 
applied."

Specifically, the bill would require a jury to unanimously find the existence 
of at least 1 aggravating factor beyond a reasonable doubt in order to make a 
defendant eligible for death.

It would also apply the reasonable doubt standard to the weighing phase. Under 
the stricken statute, a determination that aggravating factors outweigh 
mitigating circumstances was made by a preponderance of evidence, a lower bar 
that the Supreme Court found to be unacceptable. A trial judge would then have 
to sign off on the jury's decision.

The bill would also keep in place a provision of the old law that allows a jury 
to mitigating circumstances, even if a defendant has not proven their existence 
beyond a reasonable doubt.

Bill sponsor Rep. John "Larry" Mitchell, D-Elsmere, said the measures were 
enough to avoid the constitutional pitfalls of the old sentencing scheme.

"Capital punishment is the most serious sentence we as a state can carry out. 
This legislation sets a higher standard, which reserves the punishment for only 
the most extreme cases," said Mitchell, a retired sergeant with the New Castle 
County Police Department, who chairs the House committee that will first 
consider the bill.

Still, lawmakers are expecting a heated battle to unfold in Legislative Hall. 
Opponents of capital punishment have argued that the practice is inhumane, 
overly expensive and fundamentally tinged with racial bias.

Supporters of capital punishment say the death penalty is essential to public 
safety because it acts as a necessary deterrent to committing the most heinous 
crimes. Opponents, however, vigorously dispute that assessment.

But there did seem to be some early agreement on Monday that the measures, as 
drafted, fit the constitutional framework laid out in Rauf.

Kathleen MacRae, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of 
Delaware, said the provisions of the bill appeared consistent with the court's 
landmark holding; however, she said, her organization remains "totally opposed" 
to the death penalty and would lobby aggressively against it in Dover.

"From our perspective, it makes absolutely no sense to reinstate a practice we 
know to be broken," she said.

MacRae said the bill's passage was likely - but not assured - in the House, 
where the most recent bid to repeal the death penalty died in the House last 
January after clearing a Senate vote. But she noted that the politics of the 
death penalty in Delaware had changed in the past 14 months.

"To actively vote to allow the state to kill its citizens is a different vote, 
and I'm hoping that will give some members pause," she said.

The 12 men previously condemned to die have been resentenced to life in prison 
without the possibility of parole. Delaware's last execution occurred in 2012, 
when Shannon Johnson died by lethal injection.

(source: delawarelawweekly.com)






FLORIDA:

Judge sides with governor in prosecutor removal over death penalty


Florida's governor has the right to remove a state attorney from a case after 
the prosecutor said she would not seek the death penalty, a judge said Tuesday 
as he denied a request to delay the proceedings.

State Attorney Aramis Ayala said earlier this month that she wouldn't seek the 
death penalty for a man charged in the December slayings of his ex-girlfriend 
and a police officer. After her announcement, Republican Gov. Rick Scott 
removed her from the case and appointed a new prosecutor.

Ayala, a Democrat, said the governor overstepped his authority and she is 
fighting to keep the case. Ayala has said there is no evidence that shows the 
death penalty improves public safety and it's costly and drags on for years for 
the victims' families.

She asked a judge to delay proceedings for 2 weeks while she prepares an 
argument for the Florida Supreme Court. But Chief Justice Frederick J. Lauten 
denied her request Tuesday and said State Attorney Brad King, who was appointed 
by the governor, will remain as the chief prosecutor.

The judge said Ayala can still file her argument with the high court, but the 
case against Markeith Loyd would move ahead, with the next hearing scheduled 
for Monday. Loyd is charged with the 1st-degree murder in the killings of his 
pregnant ex-girlfriend Sade Dixon and Orlando Police Lt. Debra Clayton.

Loyd, who has previously cursed at judges during previous court appearances, 
was subdued during the hearing Tuesday. He objected to Ayala being removed from 
the case.

Ayala, who is the 1st elected African-American state attorney in Florida, said 
in court documents that the governor's actions are unprecedented and his 
interference in the decision-making by state attorneys could undermine 
Florida's judicial system.

(source: news-journalonline.com)






ARKANSAS:

Legal Battle Looms Ahead of Arkansas Executions----The state with some of the 
highest incarceration rates ranks second to last for crime and corrections.


This combination of undated photos provided by the Arkansas Department of 
Correction shows death-row inmates Jack Harold Jones Jr., left, and Marcel 
Williams. Both men are scheduled for execution on April 24, 2017.

As Arkansas prepares to execute eight condemned convicts before an end of April 
deadline, the state faces numerous obstacles, including a lack of required 
execution witnesses and, most recently, a legal battle.

In the most recent turn of events, the inmates, who are set to receive lethal 
injections within a 10-day span, asked a federal judge Monday for a preliminary 
injunction. Their attorneys say the quick schedule of events violates their 
constitutional rights, the Associated Press reports.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson is racing the clock to complete the executions, two at a 
time, before the state's supply of midazolam, a drug used in the injections, 
expires.

"The rushed schedule appreciably increases the risk of harm to plaintiffs, 
falls far outside the bounds of modern penological practice, and disrespects 
the plaintiff's fundamental dignity - defects that all run against the Eighth 
Amendment's protection," the prisoners' attorneys said.

One of the inmates, Ledelle Lee, 51, was convicted of killing his neighbor by 
beating her with a tire iron more than 30 times. Jack Harold Jones Jr., 52, 
received the death sentence for murdering a bookkeeper, who police found naked 
from the waist down with a cord around her neck, according to the Associated 
Press. 4 of the convicts are black, 2 white.

Meanwhile, Hutchinson also is evaluating clemency requests from Lee and 1 of 
the other prisoners, though the Arkansas Parole Board recommends that he deny 
them. Three of the other inmates will hear their recommendations from the board 
next week.

Due to legal issues and a lack of legal injection drugs, Arkansas hasn't had an 
execution since 2006, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. If 
Hutchinson's schedule remains the same, Arkansas will be the 1st state to 
execute this many prisoners within 10 days.

Arkansas, which ranks 2nd to last in U.S. News' Best States rankings for crime 
and corrections, ranks No. 13 on the list of most executions by state - 27 
executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Texas has had the 
most executions by far, with 542, followed by Oklahoma and Virginia at 112 and 
Florida at 92.

These states with high execution levels also generally do not rank highly in 
the Best States crime and corrections rankings, which look at state crime 
levels and the efficiency of their prison systems.

Though Virginia ranks No. 6 for crime and corrections, Texas ranks No. 31, 
Oklahoma No. 40 and Florida No. 37.

States with the most executions also tend to have some of the highest 
incarceration rates. Texas ranks No. 44, with about 584 prisoners under state 
or federal jurisdiction per 100,000 residents. Oklahoma ranks even lower at No. 
49, with around 700 prisoners out of the same number of residents.

But Arkansas ranks even lower in many of the crime and corrections measures 
than any of the 10 states with the most executions. It nears the bottom in 
almost every category, ranking in the bottom 10 for corrections, crime, 
incarceration rate, parole completion and more.

(source: US News & World Report)

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

Former Virginia executioner concerned about expedited schedule of Arkansas 
executions


He was responsible for putting 62 people to death from 1982 to 1999 in the 
Commonwealth of Virginia. Now Jerry Givens takes a strong stance against the 
death penalty; his concerns center on the stress put on correctional employees 
and the potential of putting innocent people to death.

Givens job as Virginia's lead executioner came to a halt in 1999 when he was 
implicated and convicted in a money laundering case involving the purchase of a 
vehicle - he would end up spending 4 years in prison, in the exact opposite 
spot of his correctional officer position prior to conviction.

But even though Givens didn't leave his job as lead executioner on his own free 
will, if given the chance to do it again, for Givens it would be a hard no.

"I killed these people," said Givens. "I took syringes and I pushed poison into 
these people until they were dead - I killed them. On the death certificate it 
said homicide, so that made me a murderer."

Givens said there was always immense stress both leading up to and following 
each of the 62 executions he performed in Virginia - many by electrocution and 
others by lethal injection.

When it comes to lethal injection, Givens said there was an extremely large 
amount of room for error. Doctors would not perform the execution, given the 
fact it goes against their code of ethics, meaning the job was put in the hands 
of simple correctional officers without any medical training.

"You've got non-professional people, just ordinary people, doing a professional 
job," said Givens. "So you're going to have mistakes."

Givens mentioned most of the mistakes he and his crew made were during electric 
chair executions.

The biggest mistake Givens is concerned with is potentially putting an innocent 
man to death. Givens almost did that when he was scheduled to execute Earl 
Washington Jr. - a man with an IQ of 69 who confessed to a rape and murder that 
he was later exonerated of due to DNA evidence.

"Just say I had taken Earl Washington's life," pondered Givens. "There's no way 
I could go back and tell Earl Washington, I'm sorry for what I've done."

Washington's averted execution and the executions of the 62 people that Givens 
actually did put to death, have weighed on Givens' mind ever since. Givens said 
he's concerned Arkansas Department of Correction employees will experience the 
same mental stress - stress that has caused suicide among some correctional 
officers and others to quit the profession.

"There's other ways to make these guys suffer through the rest of their lives," 
said Givens.

(source: KATV news)

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

Arkansas executioners will suffer like I did, warns former corrections 
head----Arkansas plans to execute 8 men in 11 days. Allen Ault, who gave the 
order to kill 5 men in Georgia, says that death penalty staff's mental health 
is at risk


It's been more than 20 years since Dr Allen Ault stood in a death chamber and 
gave the order for the execution to go ahead.

"I said, 'It's time,' and the electrician threw the switch."

Despite the passage of so many years, he feels troubled to this day by what he 
did. "I had a lot of guilt, my conscience totally bothered me," he said. "When 
the switch was thrown that 1st time, and I realized I had just killed a man, 
that was pretty traumatic. Then to have to do it again and again and again, it 
got so that I absolutely could not go through with it."

As commissioner of the department of corrections in Georgia, Ault gave the 
order for 5 executions by electric chair in 1994 and 1995. After the fifth life 
was taken, the cumulative distress reached breaking point and he resigned from 
the post and moved to a job in the US justice department that had nothing to do 
with the death penalty.

Since then, he has found himself haunted by the memory of the 5 men whose lives 
he ended. "I don't remember their names, but I still see them in my 
nightmares," he said.

Now those nightmares are back in force, triggered by the knowledge that what 
Ault considers to be a disaster-in-the-making is about to unfold in Arkansas. 
Next month, the state's Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, has scheduled no 
fewer than 8 executions over 11 days - a conveyor belt of killing dispensed at 
a clip not seen in the US for at least 1/2 a century.

The executions are set to take place by lethal injection at a rate of2 a day 
over 4 separate days. On 17 April, it will be the turn of the inmates Don Davis 
and Bruce Ward; on 20 April, Stacey Johnson and Ledell Lee; 24 April, Marcel 
Williams and Jack Jones; 27 April, Jason McGehee and Kenneth Williams.

One of Ault's prime concerns relates not to the 8 convicted capital murderers 
who are set to die, but to the men and women of the execution team who are 
being asked, just as he was 2 decades ago, to kill in the name of justice. "To 
ask corrections officials in Arkansas to kill 8 people, 2 a day - as someone 
who went through this, I can't tell you how deeply concerned I am for their 
mental health," he said.

"As the old saying goes," he went on, "you dig 2 graves: 1 for the condemned, 1 
for the avenger. That's what will happen to this execution team - many of them 
will figuratively have to dig their own grave too."

Ault said his role at the head of the team that had killed 5 men left him 
feeling "lower than the most despicable person". He felt degraded to a level 
below that of the heinous murderers he was confronting, a sense that was 
amplified by how much planning went into the protocols. "I had a manual about 
an inch thick that I had to follow. What I did was much more premeditated than 
any of the murders committed by those I executed."

Then there was the defenselessness of the man on the gurney: "You are taking a 
totally defenseless person, planning, premeditating, even rehearsing, then 
killing him - any sane person other than a psychopath would be dramatically 
affected by that."

The Arkansas governor has so far given scant details about how he intends to 
deal with the intense psychological burden he is placing on the shoulders of 
the state's execution team, beyond indicating that counseling will be 
available. When the Guardian put a series of questions to Hutchinson, including 
what was being done to protect the execution team from potential mental or 
emotional harm, a spokesman declined to answer.

All the spokesman would say was that the governor had no intention of talking 
to the national or international media before next month's executions, on the 
grounds that there was nothing to discuss. "There's no debate here - this is 
not like the future of healthcare in America. The governor has the duty to 
carry out these executions that were decided by a jury. This is the law of 
Arkansas and of the federal government of the United States."

In previous statements, the governor's office has argued that it will be "more 
efficient and less stressful" for those involved in carrying out the killing to 
see them through in quick succession. Given his rich personal experience, that 
sounds like arrogant negligence to Allen Ault.

"If the governor is so hot on this, he ought to go down to the death chamber 
and do it himself. But he won't, they don't, they never do. Politicians are 
never in the room when it happens, they never have to suffer anything."

Ault found that several members of his team were so troubled by the part they 
played in snuffing out life that they required therapeutic help, and 1 senior 
member of the corrections department had to be relieved of his job. He has seen 
the same pattern of damaged psyches repeated in death penalty states across the 
country. He personally knew, he said, 3 former corrections officials who 
participated, to their distress, in executions and went on to take their own 
lives.

The psychological impact on execution teams is one of the least discussed 
aspects of capital punishment in the US, yet arguably one of the most 
disturbing. There Will Be No Stay, a documentary film released last year, 
profiles 2 former majors in South Carolina's department of corrections Swat 
team who sued the state for allegedly pressuring them into assisting in 
multiple executions with minimal training and no counselling (the case was 
eventually dismissed by a judge).

Craig Baxley, who was responsible for plunging the lethal injection syringe 
into at least 8 prisoners, has himself attempted suicide and is now on 6 types 
of medication for PTSD and depression. One detail of his years working in the 
death chamber stuck in his mind: the cause of mortality given on the inmates' 
death certificates was always the same: "homicide".

The other major, Terry Bracey, told the film-makers he had struggled with the 
effects of trauma for years: "I expected to be trained and counseled - none of 
that took place. Taking that plunger and pushing it in set me on a course I 
wasn't prepared for."

The members of the Arkansas execution team are shrouded in anonymity, as they 
are in all death penalty states. Typically, the group consists of a "tie-down 
team" who escort the prisoner from his cell to the death chamber and then strap 
him to the gurney; medically trained personnel who set the intravenous lines; 
and those, like Bracey and Baxley, who sit on the other side of a glass wall 
and press the buttons to inject the lethal drugs into the prisoner once the 
team leader gives the order.

Frank Thompson gave that order twice when he was superintendent of Oregon state 
penitentiary - the only 2 completed executions in that state in over 50 years. 
Thompson said he could not comment on the specifics of the Arkansas team, but 
he was clear that based on his own experiences, they needed to be extremely 
careful.

Several of the members of his own team quit their jobs in the fallout of what 
they went through. Despite the intensive training he put them through, he said 
he was ultimately unable to spare them the brutalizing consequences.

"There is absolutely no way to conduct a well-run execution without causing at 
least 1 person to lose a little bit of their humanity, or to start at least 1 
person on the cumulative path to post-traumatic stress. So for Arkansas to do 
this 8 times in 10 days, to me that is unimaginable - it is compounding the 
stress, laying traumatic experiences on top of each other."

Such trauma often manifests itself in fevered sleep and harrowing dreams. Rich 
Robertson recalls being hounded by a recurring nightmare after the then local 
TV reporter witnessed the last use of the gas chamber in Arizona in 1999 - he 
watched a prisoner named Walter LaGrand being engulfed in a light fog of 
cyanide, then gagging forcefully and flailing from side to side before slumping 
forward into unconsciousness.

Robertson described his dream to the Guardian: "I was standing at a window with 
venetian blinds just like the actual gas chamber, and the blinds opened up and 
I could see a crib in the middle of the room. There was a baby in the crib with 
lines running from its arms and legs that ran to a set of levers on the wall, 
and standing there was an evil-looking clown throwing the switches."

It's not just potential psychological damage that is raising the alarm over the 
Arkansas plans. Legal experts also fear that the unseemly rush could greatly 
increase the risk of mistakes leading to botched procedures.

Arkansas's supply of the execution drug Midazolam is due to expire at the end 
of April and further stocks will be hard to secure because of a boycott by 
European drug companies.

Hutchinson's professed reason for the tight schedule is that the state's batch 
of midazolam, a sedative used in many recent US executions, reaches its 
expiration date at the end of April and fresh supplies of the drug will be hard 
to secure because of the boycott of US corrections departments by 
pharmaceutical companies and foreign governments. Yet even without the added 
complications that can come from haste, midazolam has a patchy reputation in 
capital punishment.

It was the same drug that was deployed in the gruesome killing of Clayton 
Lockett in Oklahoma in 2014, in which the inmate writhed and groaned on the 
gurney for 43 minutes. The state's subsequent investigation found that one 
factor behind the calamity was that the execution team had been placed under 
undue stress as they were primed to carry out 2 judicial killings on the same 
day. "Due to manpower and facility concerns, executions should not be scheduled 
within 7 calendar days of each other," the report concluded.

"The example of Oklahoma should be very troubling for Arkansas officials," said 
Dale Baich, a defense attorney who represented Joseph Wood, who died in 
similarly grotesque circumstances in a botched execution involving midazolam in 
Arizona that same year. "What will happen if the 1st prisoner has the same sort 
of reaction as Wood or Lockett - will the governor press ahead with the next 
execution? This rush to execute is foolish and irresponsible."

Jennifer Moreno, a staff attorney with the Berkeley Law death penalty clinic, 
said that by choosing to use midazolam, Arkansas had opted for a protocol that 
had no margin of error. "When you add to that the pressure of executing 8 men 
in 11 days, you are just asking for something to go wrong - they are putting 
their team in a really difficult spot."

The 8 condemned men on Monday lodged a new lawsuit in a federal court in 
Arkansas seeking to prevent Hutchinson from going ahead with his plan. The 
complaint warns that the intense stress placed on the execution team, and the 
lack of a pause between killings to allow for review, will heighten the risk of 
the inmates suffering unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment as they 
die.

"The people who will make up the execution team will be called upon to take 
part in the killing of an otherwise healthy human being, under intense scrutiny 
and pressure, in a process that they have little to no prior experience with, 
using a drug that has not been used before for executions in this state. And 
then they are going to be asked to do it again. And then come back to work and 
do it again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And finally again, for 
the 8th time."

(source: The Guardian)