[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., OHIO, TENN., OKLA., USA

[Rick Halperin]

December 4



TEXAS----impending execution

'Texas 7' Member Set To Die Under Controversial Law



A San Antonio man is set to die by lethal injection on Tuesday for a murder he 
didn’t actually commit. As part of the notorious “Texas 7” escape, Joseph 
Garcia was convicted and sentenced to die under a controversial law some say is 
unconstitutional.

“Why am I here? Why am I on death row? You know, I don't get it," said Garcia 
from death row Wednesday. "... Why are you trying to kill me for the actions of 
somebody else?”

Garcia was sentenced to death under the “Law of Parties,” which holds a 
non-shooter accomplice just as criminally liable as the person pulling the 
trigger.

Stephanie Stevens, law professor, and supervising attorney for the St. Mary's 
University Center for Legal and Social Justice, said the law is broader in 
Texas than in other states.

“If you and another person were going to go rob a convenience store. If during 
the course of that robbery, your friend inside the store shot and killed the 
convenience store clerk, you would be guilty for capital murder as well, even 
though you sat in the car the whole time,” she said.

On Dec. 13, 2000, the group of inmates, known as the Texas 7, broke out of the 
Connally Prison Unit in Karnes County. The escape triggered the largest manhunt 
in the state’s history. 11 days later, on Christmas Eve, members of the crew 
fatally shot and ran over Irving Police Officer Aubrey Hawkins during a robbery 
of a sporting goods store.

“He was very nice and easy to get along with — very unassuming,” said Jeff 
Spivey, chief of the Irving Police Department, of Hawkins.

But Garcia said he shouldn’t be executed because he didn’t actively take part 
in the fatal shootout Hawkins.

"You have the testimony of these people who did actually kill," Garcia said. 
"... They did it. And so, I mean, I think what it all boils down to ... is that 
I'm one of the Texas 7.”

Garcia said his version of events is supported by the testimony of others — he 
was inside the store and never fired a gun.

“I don't know. I don't know what caused them to start firing at the officer," 
he said. "By the time I got out there on the back dock, it was over.”

But Chief Spivey says that makes no difference. Garcia directly participated in 
the murder of Hawkins in other ways.

“Joseph Garcia, due to his accomplice testimony is either credited with pulling 
Officer Hawkins’ dead body out of the car and moving the car so that they could 
then escape in the Ford Explorer," he said. "So I think it's a little 
self-serving for Joseph to say that.”

Nevertheless, some anti-death penalty activists say using the Law of Parties in 
death penalty cases might be a violation of the Constitution’s 8th Amendment, 
prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. And with last-minute appeals filed 
the courts could intervene. Garcia is scheduled to be executed Tuesday at 6 
p.m.

(source: tpr.org)

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

Texas’s Death-Penalty System Is a Travesty. Joseph Garcia Is Proof.



Texas’s death-penalty system is a travesty. It is racist; kills people who are 
probably innocent at an alarming rate; and has used drugs sourced from a 
pharmacy that, according to BuzzFeed News, was “cited for scores of safety 
violations,” forged quality control documents, and sent at least 1 child to the 
emergency room because it had improperly compounded their medication. 5 of the 
11 Texas inmates executed in 2018 said the drugs used to kill them felt like 
they were “burning” them internally, even though they were supposed to be 
pain-free — reflecting a nationwide pattern of excruciating deaths by lethal 
injection. Perhaps even worse is that Texas is not unique. These issues 
illustrate an ethical and logistical crisis facing the American death-penalty 
system as a whole, from Tennessee to South Dakota to Oklahoma.

Yet barring a miracle, December 4 will be business as usual. Joseph Garcia is 
set to be executed in Texas for his role in the Christmas Eve 2000 murder of 
Irving Police Officer Aubrey Hawkins, which occurred during a shoot-out after 
Garcia and 6 other men broke out of a maximum-security prison in Kenedy and 
robbed a sporting goods store. There is no proof that Garcia pulled the 
trigger. In fact, he was inside the store while the shooting unfolded outside, 
making his guilt unlikely. But Texas’s Law of Parties holds that he could be 
convicted of a crime his associates had committed simply because he was 
present.

Details from Garcia’s tragic personal story cast doubt on whether he should 
have been in the prison he escaped from in the first place. Sister Helen 
Prejean, a Catholic nun and prominent death-penalty abolitionist, outlined it 
in a Twitter thread on Sunday:

The thread is worth reading in its entirety, but includes accounts of Garcia’s 
trauma-filled childhood, including several instances of sexual abuse and his 
first criminal conviction, for which he received a 50-year prison sentence. The 
conviction stemmed from a 1996 incident where he stabbed and killed Miguel 
Luna, an acquaintance with whom he attended a party one night. Luna — who had 
had a history of violence against women and, in Prejean’s words, “men who he 
perceived as obstacles to his access to women” — had stolen Garcia’s keys and 
attacked him after Garcia separated him from a female partygoer Luna was trying 
to coerce into sex.

Garcia’s court-appointed attorney failed to note Luna’s history or make a 
self-defense argument, but the system’s failure to give Garcia a fair shake did 
not stop there. 4 years later came the Irving store robbery that spiraled out 
of control, resulting in the death of a police officer for which there is still 
no proof of Garcia’s hands-on involvement. In 2003, his case was overseen by a 
judge named Vickers “Vic” Cunningham, who made headlines in May when the Dallas 
Morning News reported that his living trust rewarded his children for marrying 
white people rather than interracially. These injustices continued in the 
absurdity of Garcia’s death sentence. Participating in a robbery is not murder. 
Yet under Texas law, he was found guilty of killing Officer Hawkins — which he 
has maintained he did not do, and which nobody has proven he did — because the 
people with whom he was simultaneously committing a different crime may have. 
This is an unacceptable pretense on which to convict anybody of a crime, let 
alone sentence them to death.

But in a broader sense, Garcia’s case illustrates the fundamental illogic on 
which the death penalty is predicated. There is no proof that capital 
punishment deters crime. It is racist, as demonstrated locally by the 102 black 
inmates executed in Texas, as of July 2017, out of the 235 total — a rate of 43 
%, compared to black Texans’s 12.7 % population share. Every European nation 
has abolished it, save for Belarus, a dictatorship. It is such a contentious 
practice that its application is often subject to years of appeals, deferring 
closure to victims and leaving the convicted to languish on death row for 
decades, awaiting what can end up being an agonizingly painful death. The 
details of its implementation aside, the existence of the death penalty 
presumes that a country whose wealth was derived from black slave labor and 
indigenous-land theft, and seen thousands of racist lynchings, has moral 
legitimacy to be executing people in the first place.

America’s commitment to this horrific farce persists nonetheless. Capital 
punishment is cast often as the overwhelming province of former slave-holding 
states in the South, like Texas, but California houses one in every 4 death-row 
inmates. Its use is declining across the country, but efforts to do away with 
it entirely face severe opposition. After Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis 
Ayala — the 1st and only black elected prosecutor in Florida history — 
announced in March 2017 that she would not seek the death penalty in any case 
tried by her office, Republican then-governor Rick Scott personally reassigned 
several of her cases to another prosecutor. “He’s taking away the authority 
that she was given by the people [who elected her],” State Senator Randolph 
Bracy told the Orlando Sentinel at the time. Most of these national tensions 
converge at Garcia’s case, which illustrates vividly the dysfunction and 
immorality of a systemic atrocity masquerading as justice. Nobody is served by 
the death penalty’s continued existence save its financial profiteers and those 
committed to the delusion it constitutes anything more than revenge. That a 
broken man like Garcia can be killed legally, here, in its name, is Texas’s 
shame, and ours as a nation.

(source: Zak Cheney-Rice)

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

‘We don’t do it’: As protesters gather, Texas pharmacy owner denies providing 
lethal injection drugs



Denouncing capital punishment and shouting into a bullhorn grisly descriptions 
of executions, a small cadre of anti-death penalty activists turned out Monday 
to protest a Houston area pharmacy that allegedly compounded death drugs for 
the Texas prison system.

But even as the sign-carrying crowd gathered outside, the owner of Greenpark 
Compounding Pharmacy & Gifts emerged to clear the air and refute allegations 
that his business compounds drugs destined for the Huntsville death chamber.

“It’s the wrong pharmacy and we don’t do it,” said Ken Hughes. “They have been 
mistaken or misinformed.”

For more than an hour, close to two dozen activists posted up outside the 
Southside Place store that BuzzFeed last week identified as one pharmacy that 
mixes the state’s supply of pentobarbital, the deadly barbiturate used to dole 
out capital punishment. Previously, Hughes told the online news outlet that his 
store only did drug testing for the prison system, but did not offer a clear 
answer when asked if he’d ever compounded death drugs for the Texas Department 
of Criminal Justice.

“They need to tell us today that they are going to stop making execution 
drugs,” said long-time activist Gloria Rubac.

Another activist called lethal injection a “modern-day lynching” and likened it 
to the Holocaust.

Although the store owner came out to document who turned up, the gathering 
stayed well-behaved. At one point, Southside Place police Chief Don McCall 
pulled up and politely asked the protesters not to block the driveways and 
please not swear on the bullhorn because “there’s women and kids around.”

The protest plans came together in response to Wednesday’s reporting by 
BuzzFeed’s Chris McDaniel who, citing unidentified federal documents, named the 
small gift shop in southwest Houston as 1 of 2 compounding pharmacies allegedly 
providing drugs to the state.

Aside from identifying Greenpark as the alleged source of the drugs, the news 
report also laid out a slew of documented safety violations that landed the 
Braeswood business on probationary status 2 years ago.

In 2016, according to state records, the Texas State Board of Pharmacy found 
that the company had mixed up the wrong drug for 3 kids. In a warning letter 
two years later, the FDA dinged the Houston business for “insanitary 
conditions” that could have contaminated drugs.

It was those problems that prompted lawyers for death row inmate Joseph Garcia 
- 1 of the notorious “Texas 7” escapees, who’s set for execution Tuesday - to 
ask the governor for a 30-day reprieve and file a last-minute federal appeal.

Exactly where the state gets its death drugs has been shrouded in mystery, as a 
2015 law keeps secret the suppliers’ names. Previously, the state has argued 
that revealing identifying information about the source of the drugs could 
endanger businesses and their workers.

“Releasing publicly the identity of any supplier of execution drugs raises 
serious safety concerns that real harm could come to the business, operators 
and its employees,” Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jeremy Desel 
told the Chronicle in October.

But Monday’s protest stayed peaceful if, at times, loud. And the activists 
stressed that their presence didn’t present any threat.

“It’s just the right thing to do,” said protester Ward Larkin, “to let these 
people know that they’re not acting ethically.”

(source: Houston Chronicle)

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

Local death penalty case moved to Greene County



A Texas County death penalty case will be heard in Greene County, a judge in 
Steelville determined Monday.

Andrew J. Vrba, 19, of Houston, is charged with 1st-degree murder, armed 
criminal action and abandonment of a corpse in the September death of Joseph M. 
Steinfeld, 17, who went by “Ally” and planned to transition to a female, 
according to family members. Authorities allege the victim was stabbed and the 
remains burned.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in the case.

No trial date has been set.

2 other defendants were previously sentenced, and another, Briana Calderas, 
still faces a trial. A pre-trial conference was Wednesday in her case. A trial 
in Pulaski County is Feb. 25-March 1. She also is charged with 1st-degree 
murder, armed criminal action and abandonment of a corpse.

(source: Houston Herald)

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

Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----38

Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----556

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

39---------Dec. 4-----------------Joseph Garcia-----------557

40---------Dec. 11----------------Alvin Braziel, Jr.------558

41---------Jan. 15----------------Blaine Milam------------559

42---------Jan. 30----------------Robert Jennings---------560

43---------Feb. 28----------------Billy Wayne Coble-------561

44---------April 11---------------Mark Robertson----------562

(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)








FLORIDA:

U.S. Supreme Court rejects death row appeal



With Florida death row inmate Jose Antonio Jimenez scheduled to be executed 
next week, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to take up an appeal.

The Supreme Court, as is common, did not explain its reasons. Gov. Rick Scott 
last month scheduled a Dec. 13 execution for Jimenez, who was convicted in the 
1992 murder of 63-year-old Phyllis Minas during a burglary in Miami-Dade 
County.

Neighbors tried to enter the home through an unlocked front door after hearing 
Minas’ cries, but Jimenez slammed the door shut, locked it and fled by going 
onto a bedroom balcony, according to court documents.

Jimenez, now 55, also has 2 appeals pending at the Florida Supreme Court, 
including one filed Monday.

Scott signed a death warrant in July and initially scheduled the execution of 
Jimenez in August. But the Florida Supreme Court issued a stay of execution so 
it could look further at issues in the case.

The Florida Supreme Court on Oct. 4 lifted the stay, allowing Scott to 
reschedule the execution.

(source: Florida Politics)








OHIO:

Should those with serious mental illnesses be exempt from the death penalty in 
Ohio?



If Ohio is going to execute convicted murderers, it shouldn't execute 
individuals with serious mental illnesses, a bipartisan group of lawmakers 
says.

That is the aim of House Bill 81, which would prohibit capital punishment for 
anyone with a clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, 
bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder or delusional disorder. The 
proposal has stalled for years in the Ohio House but could advance this week 
for the first time after gaining support from a handful of Republicans.

Those facing the death penalty would present evidence, including an expert 
evaluation, to prove they were "significantly impaired" at the time of the 
offense – they didn't know what they did was wrong or illegal. Prosecutors 
could dispute that.

If a judge or jury finds the person was impaired at the time of the murder, the 
defendant could not be sentenced to death. They could still face life in 
prison.

The idea came from a 2014 task force of judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys 
and academics who recommended several changes to Ohio's death penalty. It 
builds on U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

The bill, sponsored by Republican Rep. Bill Seitz of Green Township and 
Democratic Rep. Nickie J. Antonio of Lakewood, has bipartisan support. Groups 
such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Ohio and Ohio Psychiatric 
Physicians Association agree that certain people shouldn't face the death 
penalty.

“If we are going to have a death penalty, it should be reserved only for those 
who are the worst of the worst, not for those who are suffering from impaired 
judgment due to a severe mental illness," said Richard Cline, chief counsel 
with Ohio Public Defender's death penalty department, during a Nov. 27 hearing.

Convicted killers could be exempt from the death penalty even if they are found 
competent to stand trial and don't meet the standards for being found not 
guilty by reason of insanity.

Prosecutors and some GOP lawmakers aren't convinced that the changes are 
needed.

Under the bill, those already on death row could ask a judge to take another 
look at their mental state at the time of the offense and possibly have their 
death sentence vacated.

Some worry that every inmate on death row would claim some mental illness to 
escape execution.

“It would be a substantial miscarriage of justice for someone convicted and 
sentenced to death years ago to be able to now claim that they had a serious 
mental illness at the time and should, therefore, be excluded from the death 
penalty,” said Lou Tobin, executive director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys 
Association.

Opposition from prosecutors has stalled the proposal once before.

Still, the bill could get a vote in committee Tuesday. From there, the proposed 
law would need approval from the Ohio House and Ohio Senate before heading to 
Gov. John Kasich. The Legislature has only a handful of sessions remaining.

(source: cincinnati.com)








TENNESSEE----impending execution

Tennessee inmate asks US Supreme Court to halt execution



A condemned Tennessee inmate is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to halt his 
Thursday execution and consider his claims that the electric chair is 
unconstitutional but the state's lethal injection method is worse.

Attorneys for David Earl Miller filed a petition with the high court Monday 
after a panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the 
inmate.

Miller has chosen to die by electrocution, the second Tennessee inmate in just 
more than a month to make that choice. His attorneys have argued that 
Tennessee's preferred execution method of midazolam-based lethal injection 
cause a prolonged and torturous death.

The 6th Circuit ruled that Miller could not challenge electrocution because he 
chose that method. His attorneys argue the choice was coerced by the threat of 
something even worse.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Appeals court denies attempt to delay David Earl Miller's execution



A federal appeals court has blocked an attempt to delay David Earl Miller's 
execution while he challenges the constitutionality of lethal injection and the 
electric chair.

In an opinion handed down Monday, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with 
the federal district court in Nashville, saying Miller's execution should move 
forward as scheduled Dec. 6 while his lawsuit against Tennessee's execution 
methods is pending.

Miller, 61, has told prison officials he wants to be executed using the 
electric chair. He was sentenced to death for killing 23-year-old Lee Standifer 
in 1981.

Miller was 1 of 4 death row inmates to file suit in November, arguing that a 
firing squad would be more humane than the state's 3-drug lethal injection 
protocol or the electric chair.

In order to secure a stay of execution, the appellate judges wrote, Miller 
would have to show he was likely to succeed in challenging Tennessee's lethal 
injection and electrocution methods as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual.

A majority of the judges said he had failed to do so.

"Miller (has) not shown that the new (lethal injection) protocol is 'sure or 
very likely' to be less humane than electrocution" the majority wrote in a 2-1 
decision. "Because Miller has elected to be executed by electrocution, he has 
waived any challenge to his execution by that method."

But Judge Helene White dissented, saying he had shown adequate evidence that 
the state's lethal injection and electrocution methods were cruel and unusual 
enough to violate the U.S. Constitution.

The defeat at the 6th Circuit further limits Miller's options to stop his 
execution, although a few remain.

His attorneys have appealed the 6th Circuit's ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, 
which has yet to rule on a separate request for a stay in this case.

And Gov. Bill Haslam has not decided on Miller's application for clemency, 
which was filed Friday.

(source: The Tennessean)

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

David Miller should not be executed because of his childhood adversity



Children are our future; what happens while they are young has life-long 
consequences. I recently retired after 45 years advocating in Tennessee for 
improving outcomes for children and families. The last several years focused on 
preventing adverse childhood experiences – ACEs – and mitigating their impact 
on children, families and society.

Research on ACEs demonstrates childhood adversity leads to trauma and toxic 
stress that damage the developing brain. This can cause developmental damage, 
violence, substance abuse, and physical and mental health challenges.

Gov. Bill Haslam and other state leaders launched Building Strong Brains 
Tennessee, an effort to establish Tennessee as a national model promoting 
culture change to prevent and mitigate ACEs and their impact, and to enhance 
long-term prosperity by improving outcomes for children.

The original ACEs study identified 10 types of childhood trauma. 5 are 
personal: physical, verbal or sexual abuse, and physical or emotional neglect. 
5 are caused by family dysfunction: parental substance abuse, mental illness, 
incarceration, domestic violence and the absence/loss of a parent.

Each experience of trauma counts as 1 ACE. So, if before age 18, a child 
experiences physical abuse and a father in jail, his ACE score is 2. Higher 
scores increase risk for poor mental and physical health outcomes (depression, 
addiction, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), and 
psychosocial outcomes (incarceration, job failure, lower education).

Individuals who become violent often have experienced substantial trauma and 
have high ACE scores. ACEs are facts, not fate, so safe, stable, nurturing 
relationships and environments can reduce damage from significant childhood 
stressors.

David Miller has been on Tennessee’s death row nearly 37 years and is scheduled 
for execution Dec. 6. As a child, David experienced chronic physical, sexual 
and emotional trauma, giving him an irregularly high ACE score. His biological 
father and mother both had mental illness; his mother sexually abused him for 
years. David’s stepfather beat him regularly, sometimes to unconsciousness.

David repeatedly fled the abuse only to be returned home, where the beatings 
and sexual abuse continued. Later, he was sent to a boys’ school, another 
experience marked by rampant abuse and assaults. At age 14, David began 
experiencing seizures and episodes of losing contact with reality, attributable 
to his severe, chronic post-traumatic stress disorder. This condition led to 
the crime for which he was sentenced to death.

David was dating Lee Standifer in Knoxville when she was murdered. According to 
court documents, he had significant memory lapses that night and couldn’t 
explain what happened. He did not dispute that he had killed Ms. Standifer, but 
only remembered hitting her with his fists.

In his 1982 trial, the law did not allow a defense expert as it does today, so 
no expert testified about David’s diminished mental health. The law had changed 
by his resentencing in 1987, but his attorney failed to call an expert to 
testify about his brain damage and psychosis, factors juries often find warrant 
a sentence of life in prison instead of the death penalty.

Though lay witnesses shared his history of abuse in his resentencing in 1987, 
Tennessee's death penalty statute failed to let the jury weigh this as 
mitigation, a defect in Tennessee law since addressed. Today, jurors can 
consider any facts supporting a life sentence over a death sentence.

Someone with a life-long history of ACEs whose abuse and mental health problems 
weren't properly considered by the courts should not be executed. David 
Miller's traumatic experiences should have been mitigating factors and would be 
if he were tried today.

As we continue advocating for children today, we must also stand up for those 
who have been extensively victimized since childhood. In cases like David's, 
execution is not the answer.

(source: Linda O'Neal, Guest Columnist; Knoxville News Sentinel)








OKLAHOMA:

Jihadist Beheader In Oklahoma Cleared For Execution ----The Alton Nolen case is 
very much worth remembering, along with all terror attacks that occur on U.S. 
soil, not just for the victims and their survivors but for lessons that must be 
learned.



This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court essentially cemented the execution of 
America’s least known Islamic terrorist. Jihadist convert Alton Nolen is now 
set to be put to death in Oklahoma, likely by nitrogen gas inhalation.

The Supreme Court’s October 1, 2018 rejection of Nolen’s final death penalty 
appeal went unremarked upon by news media so, partly as a result, I missed it. 
But the Nolen case is very much worth remembering, along with all terror 
attacks that occur on U.S. soil, if not just for the victims and their 
survivors but for lessons that can and must be learned.

The September 24, 2014 attack in Oklahoma is somewhat notable in the annals of 
many officially uncalled terrorist strikes in that Nolen emulated a favorite 
ISIS death tactic no doubt learned online: he fully beheaded a co-worker—the 
beloved wife, mother, and grandmother Colleen Hufford—inside the Moore, 
Oklahoma food processing plant where they both worked. Shouting “Alluah Akbar” 
throughout the attack, Nolen used the same oversized butcher knife on the neck 
of a second co-worker, Tracy Johnson, when the company’s chief operations 
officer, a reserve law enforcement officer named Mark Vaughn, burst in with an 
AR-15 rifle. He shot and wounded Nolen as Nolen disengaged from his second 
victim and charged at him with the bloody knife.

Such an attack must generate a particular horror in its witnesses and, when 
Nolen is finally put to death, one should keep in mind what Hufford must have 
experienced in her last moments.

The Benefits of Calling Terror Attacks ‘Terror Attacks’

Rather than to call this an Islamic terror attack and charge it federally as 
such, President Obama’s U.S. Department of Justice let the local district 
attorney charge Nolen under state murder statues (and as an assault and battery 
against survivor Traci Johnson). The whole disgusting affair was quickly 
forgotten by the rest of the nation, government, and all but those involved and 
some locals. But make no mistake: This was a jihadist terror attack on American 
soil.

This attack and its repercussions warrants our full national attention and 
should be properly memorialized until all related matters are finally resolved, 
not least for any comfort this can still bring the victim, survivors, and 
witnesses. Terrorism acknowledgement and media treatment can encourage the 
nation to comfort those who were there and help them close the emotionally 
important loop of knowing why loved ones and innocents died, who did it, and 
for what cause.

Calling terrorism out for what it is portends practical benefits too. Federal 
acknowledgement of Islamic terrorism opens the throttle on investigations that 
can identify co-conspirators and foreign connections. Public acknowledgement 
and remembrance can spur suspicious activity reporting from the general public, 
which can roll up other cocked and loaded extremists before they also kill.

Also importantly, federalizing the identification of terrorism cases helps 
homeland security authorities look inward to determine if intelligence failures 
occurred. Homeland security professionals learn from those what not to repeat 
and how to fix broken processes, to reduce the chances of future law 
enforcement intelligence failures.

The Obama administration decided not to call this a terror attack or count it 
as one soon afterward, even though Nolen, a prison convert to Islam, had filled 
his Facebook page with hideous ISIS propaganda and openly praised the death 
cult’s rise to global prominence through constant blood-letting. Nolen had just 
been suspended after co-workers rejected his Islamist proselytizing and demands 
for religious accommodations at Vaughan Foods. This gave those already 
predisposed to downplay Islamic terror attacks the excuse needed to suggest 
workplace violence and mental illness was somehow at play, instead of the prima 
facie terror attack it was.

Proof of Terrorism Overflowed at Trial

The 2017 trial, which received only some highly localized Oklahoma TV news 
coverage, decisively showed this was neither mental illness nor workplace 
violence. Taped police interviews of Nolen and other evidence showed Nolen was 
motivated by Qur’anic scripture and the very same well-worn extremist ideology 
we have seen cited for attacks across the globe, to include the 9/11 attacks. 
Nolen has proven unrepentant.

On September 29, after hearing the evidence a jury rejected defense arguments 
that Nolen was insane. Right after the attack, for instance, police asked a 
very calm and collected Nolen if anyone had told him to behead unbelievers. He 
responded that the Qur’an gave him the idea. (Qur’an 47:4 states that “When you 
meet the unbelievers, strike their necks.) Nolen answered: “Uh, no. I read the 
Qur’an. Like I say, the Qur’an is easy to understand. No one guides me but 
Allah.”

When asked why he beheaded Hufford, he answered: “I just feel like…I did what I 
needed to do. What Allah says in the Qur’an to do. Oppressors don’t need to be 
here. You know the Muslim is somebody who submits their will to Allah…Whatever 
he wants done, that’s what we do…And you know he wants us to get the oppressors 
out of this place.”

When asked if he regretted murdering Hufford, Nolen answered: “There wasn’t 
nothing but a trial for me. I passed it because, like I said, I felt oppressed. 
I knew for sure that, if I was to die right then, I was going to heaven.” He 
added: “I feel, you know, you know what I’m saying, if I was to die in five or 
10 minutes, I’m going to heaven. That’s all that matters to me.”

Nolen also confirmed that he had screamed “Allahu akbar” as he beheaded 
Hufford.

Johnson testified that she ran into the next room after hearing screaming and 
saw Nolan standing over Hufford with a bloody knife. “When I saw the defendant, 
I was frozen. I couldn’t move. And I saw the knife with the blood on the knife, 
and he made a mad dash toward me and pushed me up against the wall and held me 
up with his forearm against the wall and just started splicing my neck. He was 
just going back and forth like he was just cutting a piece of meat.”

The hero of this tragedy is Vaughan, then COO of Vaughan Foods and an Oklahoma 
County Sheriff’s Office reserve deputy. When the call came that a knife attack 
was underway, Vaughan suited up with his weapon, ammo, and first aid on a vest. 
Vaughan testified that he and another employee entered the building where the 
attack was underway and saw Nolen on top of Johnson. He testified that he 
called for Nolen to stop. Nolen jumped up, ran around a corner and charged 
Vaughan at full speed. Vaughan said he fired 3 rounds.

Nolen leaned against a wall and fell to the ground. Vaughan then held Nolen at 
bay until police arrived and took the suspect away.

Deserves National Acknowledgement and Coverage

Although Nolen’s execution warrants national notice, no solid date was readily 
available. Oklahoma has been caught up in political wrangling with death 
penalty opponents and thus shut down the state’s supply of lethal injection 
drugs. Most of the state’s executions are awaiting a resolution over state 
plans to start using nitrogen gas. Earlier this year, the state announced it 
was working to develop a new execution protocol making nitrogen hypoxia the 
preferred method.

When this is all sorted out, politically and legally, Nolen’s turn will come 
and bring the state’s only possible final resolution to this terrorism episode 
so we can all properly move on. When that resolution is at hand, I hope somehow 
the world finds out about it.

(source: Todd Bensman is a Texas-based senior national security fellow for the 
Center for Immigration Studies. For nearly a decade, Bensman led 
counterterrorism-related intelligence efforts for the Texas Intelligence and 
Counterterrorism Division----The Federalist)








USA:

On death row, Marvin Gabrion plans appeal in woman's 1997 killing



Condemned killer Marvin Gabrion filed notice he would appeal a federal judge's 
ruling rejecting his multiple, long-running allegations of mistreatment by the 
justice system.

Gabrion, 65, is awaiting the death penalty in the 1997 killing of Rachel 
Timmerman, 19.

He is also suspected of killing her 11-month-old daughter, Shannon, whose body 
was never found, and 3 others.

Gabrion, who has already exhausted direct appeals, has waged a "collateral 
attack," a civil process that alleges violations of the U.S. Constitution, in 
an attempt to vacate his conviction and sentence or get a new trial.

He wanted to depose attorneys, prosecutors, FBI agents, mental-health experts, 
a forensic pathologist, state police and others and examine evidence and 
records used to convict him. His attorneys provided an extraordinary report 
looking at four generations of his family's history, including mental illness, 
substance abuse and "chaotic" home environments.

Marvin Gabrion is awaiting the death penalty in the 1997 killing of Rachel 
Timmerman, 19. Authorities suspect he also killed her 11-month-old daughter and 
3 other men.

"Marvin did not escape this family tree unscathed," a defense report said.

He has filed notice to appeal a ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker in 
Grand Rapids to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.

Jonker rejected Gabrion's claims that Gabrion's incompetence, ineffective 
counsel, false or misleading evidence, lying witnesses and other issues led to 
his wrongful conviction.

Attorneys for Marvin Gabrion submitted a detailed report on Gabrion and 4 
generations of his family in an effort to overturn his death sentence for 
killing a 19-year-old girl in 1997, court records showed.

"The evidence of Gabrion's guilt and of the aggravating factors in support of 
his sentence are overwhelming," Jonker wrote in a 216-page opinion.

"His trial attorneys provided admirable assistance in the face of this 
evidence, despite Gabrion's uncooperative and unpredictable behavior. .. the 
evidence of Gabrion's guilt is so strong.. ."

The government says Gabrion, awaiting trial accused of raping Timmerman, killed 
her to prevent her from testifying against him. She was bound and gagged, 
chained to concrete blocks, and thrown from an old, metal boat into a weedy, 
muddy lake in the Manistee National Forest.

Marvin Gabrion is awaiting execution in the 1997 killing of Rachel Timmerman, 
19, who was killed 2 days before she was to testify he raped a year earlier.

She was alive when she was put into Oxford Lake and drowned. Her body was 
recovered about a month after her early June 1997, killing.

She disappeared 2 days before Gabrion was to stand trial for raping her in 
August 1996.

Attorneys for Marvin Gabrion have asked a judge to hold a hearing to determine 
if he is incompetent and should be treated with psychiatric medication so he 
help appeal his conviction and sentence.

Gabrion was sentenced to death by a jury in 2002. Michigan law does not allow 
the death penalty but Gabrion was tried under federal law after the prosecution 
showed the killing happened on federal land.

The federal appellate court has previously cited the "the utter depravity of 
the manner in which (Gabrion) killed (Timmerman)." The U.S. Supreme Court has 
refused previous request to hear his case.

Gabrion is held in a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where most 
condemned prisoners stay. His execution is anything but certain. Since 1988, 
when the federal penalty was re-instated after a 16-year moratorium, only 3 on 
death row have been put to death.

Among them: Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 in the April 19, 1995, bombing of 
the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. He did not challenge 
the sentence.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy VerHey says Gabrion's challenge to the 
appellate court could be his last legal avenue.

The government said John Weeks, at Gabrion's urging, convinced Timmerman to go 
to dinner with him. She brought her daughter. They soon went missing. Weeks 
also went missing. So did Wayne Davis, a witness to the sexual assault, and 
Robert Allen, a mentally disabled Kent County man whose Social Security checks 
were stolen by Gabrion.

For many years, Gabrion tried to get U.S. District Judge Robert Holmes Bell to 
recuse himself, including when Bell told MLive/Grand Rapids Press in 2016 that 
Gabrion "is in the right place" on death row. Bell would not recuse himself. He 
retired at the end of 2016 and Jonker took the case.

In a strongly worded opinion, Jonker rejected Gabrion's claims. Many of them 
have been litigated, at length, over the years.

"Furthermore, in the Court's own judgment, the death penalty is not 
automatically an excessive punishment for all criminally responsible people who 
have some form of mental illness," Jonker wrote.

"In this case, all the evidence before the Court indicates that Gabrion is 
unwilling to cooperate with counsel, not that he is unable to do so. Gabrion's 
current counsel assert that '(e)fforts to discus (Gabrion's) case are met with 
derision and anger,' and that Gabrion is 'consumed with topics having nothing 
to do with this litigation and that is all he will discuss with counsel. He is 
actively delusional,'" the judge wrote.

Those are "virtually identical" observations of trial attorneys, the judge 
said.

He was "always hostile" to his attorneys. During the sentencing phase, he 
punched an attorney, which he later contended should have served as grounds for 
a mistrial.

The judge said Gabrion filed "an exhaustive list of challenges" to the criminal 
proceedings but none had merit.

He also wants to represent himself now, saying his attorneys "are in a 
conspiracy with an 'Obama crime syndicate,'' and he has been "proven innocent 
through DNA evidence," the judge said.

Jonker said that Timmerman "made it clear to others that she was terrified that 
Gabrion would kill her. At one point, she stopped by a friend's house, closed 
the curtains, and stated repeatedly that Gabrion was going to kill her because 
of the rape case," Jonker wrote.

She had called police twice to report seeing Gabrion in an effort to leave a 
"trail" in case he followed through on a threat to kill her, the judge said.

"Rachel's fear was justified."

(source: mlive.com)

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

If There's Nothing Wrong With the Death Penalty, Why All the Secrecy?



In the nineteenth century, the United States began quietly moving executions 
from the public square to the insulated walls of prisons.

The change was largely in response to a powerful movement in the 1830’s to 
abolish the death penalty, with proponents of capital punishment believing that 
the disgust produced by public executions would eventually lead to outright 
abolition. And thus began the modern day death penalty system, one that has 
largely been shrouded in secrecy since its inception.

Since reinstatement of the death penalty in 1977, 90 % of executions have used 
lethal injection to carry out sentences­­, predominately to avoid legal 
challenges over prior methods such as electrocution and hanging and to foster 
the image of a humane process for the public. That image, however, is a farce, 
and state governments have gone to great lengths to conceal practically all 
facets of modern day executions.

“Behind the Curtain: Secrecy and the Death Penalty in the United States,” a new 
report by the Death Penalty Information Center, delves deeply into the 
problematic practices currently at play and showcases the unethical behavior 
being carried out by big government across 30 states and the federal and 
military death penalty systems.

Some tactics have been in place for decades, serving to block the government 
from transparency and accountability measures: Information about those who 
carry out the executions and their qualifications are withheld. Very few 
members of the public are able to witness executions. Those who do observe 
executions are seldom able to view the entire process.

In recent years, however, disturbing new layers of secrecy have been added.

States are now blocking information about the drugs they are using in lethal 
injections, and not just from the public, but frequently from the very 
manufacturers producing the drugs who do not want their product used in this 
manner.

Since 2011, 13 state legislatures have passed new laws that have enacted 
secrecy statutes to prevent the public from obtaining important information 
about executions. 8 additional states have invoked existing laws or protocols 
to refuse disclosing this type of information. In four of these states, it is 
either a civil or criminal offense to disclose such information.

These laws are a mechanism for the government to thwart the constitutional 
rights of individuals, the ability of courts to ensure the protection of those 
rights, and the capability for the public to hold their government accountable. 
It seems in many, many areas of our system, elected officials have forgotten 
that they work for us — not the other way around.

We know beyond the shadow of a doubt that botched executions occur, whether due 
to error of the executioners or problems with execution drugs. Despite the use 
of a paralytic in most execution drug cocktails to mask any symptoms of pain, 
witnesses have still reported signs of severe distress in several executions, 
notably where the drug midazolam was used. By covering this information up, 
governments are preventing rigorous and robust discussion on the death penalty 
along with any public oversight that might come from that.

Another unethical practice these secrecy laws are veiling are the corrupt 
lengths to which state governments are going to obtain the needed drugs for 
executions. Pharmaceutical companies do not want their medicines used in 
executions. Period, end of story. When you consider the amount of money it 
takes to develop a medication and bring it to market, it is wholly 
understandable why a company that is producing a product meant to cure would 
object to it being used instead to kill — on both moral and financial grounds. 
Use of one’s medication in an execution is not exactly a great marketing 
strategy.

However, despite the explicit wishes of these companies, states have 
deliberately circumvented drug distribution contracts that prohibited the sale 
of medicines for use in executions using false pretense and trickery. Several 
drug companies have alleged as much in lawsuits and have also pointed out that 
use of these tactics will make it harder for people who actually need their 
medicines to obtain them.

States often claim these secrecy laws are to protect the pharmaceutical 
companies from harassment, but that's an obvious lie considering that every 
FDA-approved supplier of the drugs has sought to block the use of their product 
in executions. This makes it vividly apparent that states are trying to conceal 
knowledge on the drugs being used from the manufacturers themselves.

It should surprise no conservative that the government is out of control.

It’s time those on the right realize that the death penalty is another failed 
big government program, filled with all the ineffectiveness and corruption as 
the others. Clearly, when this much secrecy is needed to carry out the death 
penalty, it’s not operating correctly.

(source: Hannah Cox is the National Manager of Conservatives Concerned About 
the Death Penalty. Hannah was previously Director of Outreach for the Beacon 
Center of Tennessee, a free-market think tank. Prior to that, she was Director 
of Development for the Tennessee Firearms Association and a policy advocate for 
the National Alliance on Mental Illness----newsmax.com)