[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TENN., KY., MO., OKLA., NEB., NEV., USA

[Rick Halperin]

December 8



TENNESSEE:

Death penalty in Tennessee: What I saw when I watched David Earl Miller die on 
electric chair



David Earl Miller didn't care that I came to see him die.

He didn't care if anyone heard his last words. He didn't mention Lee Standifer, 
the woman he beat and stabbed to death a generation ago, didn't bother to 
apologize — even when he got a 2nd chance to speak as all of us in the witness 
chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution leaned toward the glass in 
the dark.

Those might have been the only words he could say that her family would have 
wanted to hear. I heard the disappointment in her mother's voice. No more 
delays I won't write what was said on that phone call. I called the mother — 
with her permission — to give her the chance to speak for her daughter, since 
she chose not to make the trip to Tennessee from Arizona for Thursday's 
execution. But everything she wanted to say publicly, she's said. She's in her 
80s now. She wants to remember her daughter, not Miller. But she wanted to hear 
the case was finally over.

For 3 decades, the brown envelopes in the mail found her as she and Lee 
Standifer's father, now dead, moved across the country — another notification, 
another appeal, another delay. She'll never get another one of those envelopes 
again. Mumbled last words I was 5 years old when Miller killed Lee Standifer, a 
woman he barely knew, in South Knoxville the night of May 20, 1981. Some of the 
reporters in the witness chamber Thursday night weren't yet born.

2 Knox County juries sentenced Miller to die for the crime. A faded clipping in 
the News Sentinel morgue tells how he showed "no expression" when he heard the 
sentence — maybe the same look he showed as he sat waiting in the electric 
chair Thursday night. He didn't look like the center of attention, didn't look 
like the long­haired young drifter turned interstate fugitive in his 
37-­year-­old mug shot.

He barely looked up at all as the blinds rose on the window to the death 
chamber. He sat strapped into the electric chair, bald, flabby, pale as the 
institutional white paint on the walls of the prison hallways. He looked 
resigned, indifferent — maybe even bored — as the warden asked him for any last 
words. If not for the straps, he might have shrugged. We could barely make out 
what he mumbled, either time. His attorney gave us his best guess at the 
statement: "Beats being on death row."

None of Miller's family came to see him die. No surprise. His appellate briefs 
tell a consistent story of a life of anger, alienation and abuse, from daily 
beatings to sexual violation to drug and alcohol abuse that began at the 
earliest age. He tried suicide over and over — the last time just before the 
hitch­hiking trip that brought him to Knoxville where he met Lee Standifer.

He told psychologists he dreamed nightly of his abusive stepfather staring him 
in the face, cursing him, wishing him more pain. He chose electrocution in 
apparent hopes it might be quicker, easier than lethal injection.

Did he get his wish? Or did he see the specter from his nightmares as the 
straps on the helmet buckled and the hood slipped over his face? I can't know 
that, anymore than I can know whether the same man who died in front of me was 
the same man mentally, emotionally, spiritually as when he killed Lee Standifer 
that night. All I can tell is what I heard and saw.

I saw the saline water run down his face from the sponge fastened atop his 
skull to help the electric current course through his body. I saw him wince 
when the solution dripped into his eyes before a guard wiped his face — almost 
tenderly — with a rag. I heard the click of a switch and the hum of a generator 
or exhaust fan as the current kicked on once. Then twice. I saw his body 
stiffen, arch, rise as much each time as the straps allowed until the current 
stopped and a corpse slumped back into the chair. I heard the warden pronounce 
him dead and the sentence "carried out."

What I saw looked like a man who didn't care about life — not his, not Lee 
Standifer's, not even as he breathed for the last time.

(source: The Independent)

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

David Earl Miller's death clears way for 3 more executions from East Tennessee



David Earl Miller became the 3rd inmate executed this year in Tennessee on 
Thursday night — the 2nd from Knox County since 2000.

Miller, 61, died by electrocution for beating and stabbing Lee Standifer, 23, 
to death the night of May 20, 1981, in South Knoxville. He was the state's 
longest-serving inmate on death row.

The Tennessee Supreme Court has set execution dates for 3 more inmates from 
East Tennessee — 2 in the coming year and 1 in 2020. That number doesn't 
include the 4 left from Knox County who still wait for their sentences to be 
carried out.

Here's a snapshot of the region's next in line for the ultimate punishment. 
Because each committed his crime in the years before Tennessee changed 
execution methods in 1999, each will get the choice, like Miller, between 
lethal injection and electrocution.

Stephen Michael West: Aug. 15

Steve West and Ronnie Martin took a drive after work, drank some beers and then 
raped and stabbed Wanda Romines and her teenage daughter to death.

West, 23, and Martin, 17, had known each other about two weeks when they 
clocked out at the McDonald's in what's now Rocky Top the night of March 17, 
1986. They drove around for a few hours before heading to the Romines home on 
Stooksbury Road near Big Ridge State Park in Union County, where they watched 
and waited for Wanda's husband, Jack, to leave for work.

The husband drove away around 5:20 a.m. West and Martin then broke in the 
house, where they raped Wanda Romines and her daughter, Sheila, 15, at 
knifepoint and killed them. An autopsy found each had been stabbed more than a 
dozen times, with many of the wounds described as "torture-type cuts."

Jack Romines found his wife and daughter dead when he came home from work that 
evening. Neighbors had seen West's car get stuck in a ditch as the pair left 
the scene, and each blamed the other for the crimes when questioned by 
detectives.

West testified at his trial he didn't take part in the killings because he was 
held at knifepoint by Martin, too "terrified" to intervene. But he couldn't 
explain why his life was spared or why mother's and daughter's wounds appeared 
to be inflicted by not one, but two knives. A Union County jury sentenced him 
to death.

Martin's age — just young enough to be charged in Juvenile Court — spared him 
being tried on capital charges. He received a life sentence instead.

West has come almost to the threshold of the death chamber repeatedly over the 
decades, only to be spared by last-minute stays of execution from appellate 
courts. His closest call came in March 2001, when a reprieve arrived with just 
14 hours to spare.

He's set to die Aug. 15.

Leroy Hall Jr.: Dec. 5

Leroy Hall Jr. and his girlfriend couldn't get along. The last time they 
argued, he sloshed her with gasoline and set her and her car on fire.

Traci Crozier lived long enough to tell Chattanooga police who threw a burning 
2-gallon jug of gas at her the night of April 16, 1991. She suffered burns over 
95 % of her body and died of what emergency-room doctors at Erlanger Hospital 
called the worst injuries they'd ever seen.

Hall at first denied he'd thrown the firebomb at Crozier, then insisted she 
only burned because she ignored him when he threw it and told her to get out of 
the way. He loved her, he said — he just wanted to burn her car. Never mind 
he'd left messages on her answering machine threatening to kill her exactly the 
way she died.

A Hamilton County jury found Hall guilty in 1992 of 1st-degree murder and 
aggravated arson. He's set to die Dec. 5.

Nicholas Todd Sutton: Feb. 20, 2020

Nicholas Sutton was sentenced to die in the 1985 stabbing death of a fellow 
inmate at the Morgan County Regional Correctional Facility. He and another man 
stabbed inmate Carl Estep 38 times. Witnesses said Estep, who was imprisoned 
for child molestation, had sold the two inmates bad drugs. Nicholas Todd 
"Nicky" Sutton wasn't old enough to buy a beer the 1st time he killed — or the 
2nd, or the 3rd. None of those got him the death penalty.

Sutton was 18 when he knocked his grandmother, a retired elementary school 
teacher, unconscious with a stick of firewood, wrapped her in a blanket and 
trash bags, chained her to a cinder block and threw her alive into the 
Nolichucky River from Hale's Bridge in Hamblen County's Lowland community 3 
days before Christmas Day 1979. She drowned in the icy waters, an autopsy 
found.

Dorothy Sutton, 58, had made the mistake of telling her grandson no when he 
asked for money, prosecutors said. She might also have discovered he'd already 
killed 2 other people — John Large, a childhood friend, and Charles P. Almon, a 
bankrupt Knoxville contractor.

Dorothy Sutton's daughter reported her missing when she didn't show up for 
dinner on Christmas Day. The grandson at first claimed she'd disappeared, but 
the various stories he told deputies fell apart fast. Searchers pulled her body 
from the river Dec. 29.

Sutton eventually led authorities to Large's body after a jury found him guilty 
of 1st-degree murder in his grandmother's death and sentenced him to life in 
prison. He'd killed Large, 19, on a trip to Mount Sterling, N.C., and buried 
his body in a shallow grave on property that belonged to Sutton's aunt.

In October 1979, he shot Almon and dumped his body in a North Carolina quarry. 
Searchers found that corpse only after spending thousands of dollars searching 
in other spots as Sutton, who loved the attention, spun one confession, then 
another.

Investigators learned to recognize what they called the "Sutton signature" — 
bodies wrapped in plastic, bound in chains and weighted with cinder blocks. He 
claimed he'd killed 5 people in all, but 2 of the stories he told never yielded 
bodies, missing-person reports or other hard evidence.

Sutton hadn't served 5 years when he helped stab Carl Isaac Estep, a convicted 
child rapist from Knoxville, more than 3 dozen times Jan. 5, 1985, in a cell at 
Brushy Mountain Penitentiary in Morgan County. This time a jury sentenced 
Sutton to death.

He's set to die Feb. 20, 2020.

(source: Knoxville News-Sentinel)








KENTUCKY:

Hearing For Calloway Death Penalty Case Set For Next Week



A hearing for what could be Calloway County's 1st death penalty case in a 
century is set for Thursday.

Assistant Commonwealth Attorney James Burkeen says this status hearing is 
procedural in nature to aid additional discovery and jury selection.

"The rules of criminal procedure require jury questioning in death penalty 
cases to be conducted in a certain manner," said Burkeen. "And they wanted a 
motion to make sure that process and all those requirements were met."

Pascasio Pacheco faces charges in connection to the shooting death of his aunt 
and uncle and setting fire to their home, and killing the couple’s 2 children.

Pacheco’s trial itself is set for January 7th.

(source: WKMS news)








MISSOURI:

Trial of man accused in death of transgender teen moved



A 19-year-old Missouri man accused of killing a transgender teenager in 2017 
will be tried in Greene County.

Andrew Vrba was scheduled to be tried in Crawford County for 1st-degree murder 
in the death of 17-year-old Ally Steinfeld, who identified as a male-to-female 
transgender person.

Vrba was 1 of 4 people charged with killing or helping to dispose of 
Steinfeld's body. Her remains were found in September in Cabool.

Investigators say she was stabbed several times, her eyes were gouged out and 
her body was set on fire. Authorities have insisted the killing was not a hate 
crime.

The Springfield News-Leader reports Texas County Prosecutor Parke Stevens Jr. 
intends to seek the death penalty.

The case was moved earlier this week because the Crawford County judge assigned 
to the case lost his re-election bid.

(source: The Kansas City Star)








OKLAHOMA:

Conservatives become split on death-penalty debate



With a new administration — and new proposals for carrying out executions — the 
ultimate punishment could soon be front and center again.

While the state is controlled by Republicans, there's a growing split among 
conservatives regarding what to do about the death penalty.

It is the party that proclaims the need for limited government. And as concerns 
about everything from the application to execution of the death penalty 
continue to make headlines, some conservative leaders in Oklahoma say it's time 
to give capital punishment a second thought.

"I don't believe that a government should ever be able to invoke the death 
penalty," Marven Goodman said. "I don't think the government should ever be 
doing that because they make mistakes, even one's too many."

Goodman is a Logan County commissioner and is one of the conservatives 
concerned about the death penalty.

Goodman is a staunch second-amendment supporter and believes in the right to 
self defense, but working in government has taught him even more — that 
government doesn't get everything right all the time.

"The first time I heard someone state it in that terms, 'do you really want the 
government that's supposed to provide services and keep you safe, do you really 
want that same government killing its citizens'" he said.

Goodman says when he thought about his conservative values — the death penalty 
didn't fit.

"How can you be pro-life and also be pro-death penalty?" he said. "It all 
depends on how long after someone is born that you take their life that doesn't 
make sense. I can't square that,"

Supporters of capital punishment say there is a difference between innocent 
life and those on death row.

In an interview with London-based Sky News in 2015, the former warden of the 
state penitentiary in McAlester said the death penalty is needed.

"I absolutely would keep the death penalty," Randy Workman said. "And people 
ask me, 'well the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime.' Well, yes it is, 
that individual will never commit a crime again."

Randy Workman oversaw dozens of executions and says each one was different, 
sometimes he was cursed for carrying out the death sentences.

But other times?

"I have had some individuals that were being executed that were very nurturing 
to us," he said. "You know and said, 'I'm going to go to heaven don't worry 
about me, everything is just fine.'"

But while he supports the death penalty, he says rarely do the families of 
victims ever get what they were hoping for after the killer is put to death.

(source: KOKH news)

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

Fox 25 Investigates: The Death Debate

Oklahoma is preparing for a new year, a new administration and a new way to 
carry out executions. The state was once home to one of the busiest death 
chambers in the country, but no death sentence has been carried out since 2015.

Since 1915, Oklahoma has executed 195 people, more than 100 of those since 1990 
when the death penalty was reinstated in Oklahoma following the Supreme Court 
decision that put the ultimate punishment on hold.

HOW WE GOT HERE

Oklahoma’s current self-imposed moratorium began in 2015 when Oklahoma was in 
the national spotlight following a botched execution and a case that called 
into question everything we're supposed to believe about the justice system.

As the public debate raged over the fate of Richard Glossip, all eyes turned to 
the governor’s office amid the growing concern about the legitimacy of his 
conviction. Governor Mary Fallin only had the authority to call for a short 
stay of execution, but that was a power her office made clear she would not use 
because she believed Glossip was guilty and jurors were right to impose the 
death sentence.

Delivering that news to the world, was not the governor of Oklahoma, but here 
spokesman Alex Weintz. In the Fall of 2015, Weintz would be the face the world 
saw as that supporting the execution of Richard Glossip and the justice of 
Oklahoma’s death penalty.

“I really liked my job; I liked working for Governor Fallin,” Weintz said of 
his time as the governor’s communications director. Weintz left public service 
and now works for a private public relations and public policy company. 
However, being caught in the middle of the death penalty was not a pleasant 
part of his time working for the governor. “I think we did a lot of good things 
in that office this is a part of my job I didn't like and it was hard not to 
take home with me."

This is Weintz’ 1st time speaking on camera about the events surrounding the 
lead up to Glossip’s scheduled execution. It is the public’s first time hearing 
from anyone in Fallin’s inner circle about one of the most controversial times 
of her administration.

Weintz had worked for Mary Fallin for years prior to her gubernatorial election 
and had spoken for her on a number of controversial issues in the past. The 
death penalty debate was different than any other previous controversy.

“I've always been conflicted about the death penalty,” Weintz said of the 
challenge of defending the scheduled execution of Glossip while struggling with 
his own beliefs.

He saw his job as making sure the governor’s position was clearly communicated. 
“I was frustred, and I think a lot of people in the governor's office were 
frustrated because I thought that outside forces, like Susan Sarandon for 
instance, had come into the state and were essentially spinning a narrative 
which we did not agree with.”

Award-winning actress Susan Sarandon had portrayed Sister Helen Prejean in the 
motion picture “Dead Man Walking.” Sarandon became one of Glossip’s most 
outspoken advocates along with the woman she once portrayed, Sister Helen 
Prejean who had become Glossip’s spiritual adviser.

Sarandon once said “the governor of Oklahoma is just a horrible person,” during 
an interview. She would later apologize for that comment as the national and 
international spotlight on Glossip’s case and on the governor’s office grew 
brighter.

The governor would end up receiving requests from other celebrities including 
Richard Branson and even Pope Francis.

“I thought that our office quickly became a political pressure cooker,” Weintz 
said.

It wasn't just those opposed to the death sentence, the office heard the 
impassioned pleas of those on the other side of the death penalty debate.

“There were people who were part of this process who viewed a successful 
execution as closure and justice for the [Barry] Van Treese family,” Weintz 
said about hearing from the family of the victim Glossip is accused of planning 
the murder of and paying Justin Sneed to commit.

Ultimately, it wasn't any of pro or con arguments that led to the governor 
issuing a stay of execution. It was the 11th hour revelation the prison had 
received the wrong drug needed to end Glossip's life.

Our first look at the pressure inside the governor's office on that day came in 
the 106-page grand jury report that detailed the failures of the state in 
carrying out executions. The report showed the governor’s then general counsel 
Steve Mullins was pushing to carry out the execution even with an unapproved 
drug. He, no famously, told the Attorney General’s office to “Google It” when 
trying to convince Scott Pruitt’s office to order the execution to continue 
with Potassium Acetate instead of the required Potassium Chloride. The internal 
debate raged as state officials became aware that Oklahoma had, apparently 
unknowingly, experimented killing with potassium acetate on Charles Warner 
earlier in 2015.

“I think everyone wanted to get it right and was frustrated when, quite 
frankly, the state didn't get it right,” Weintz said. All of the debate

It all added to Weintz's own internal conflict over capital punishment.

“I think the best way to explain it is, on the one hand I want justice and 
accountability; on another hand, I am both as a person of faith and a 
conservative skeptical about giving government or other human beings ultimate 
power over other human beings."

Also troubling to Weintz, the unintended consequences on the rest of the people 
who find themselves, willingly or not, in the middle of the death penalty.

“You're asking me about my role as a spokesperson, all I did was talk about it, 
someone in the Department of Corrections job is to inject people with poison 
and kill them; that takes a toll,” Weintz told FOX 25.

A new governor and a new staff will soon take over the office where the death 
penalty debate raged in 2015. Kevin Stitt has previously said he supports the 
death penalty for the “worst of the worst."

“The death penalty is something sucks all the oxygen out of the room,” Weintz 
said in warning to any future policy makers, “Defending the death penalty or 
for that matter attacking the death penalty is ,something that takes a lot of 
moral and political capital and energy and you may find that you don't have any 
left to do anything that is constructive when you are done. So that is why I’ve 
become a skeptic of the death penalty."

WHAT ABOUT THE VICTIMS

Where is the balance between justice and revenge? Can you have one without the 
other, or does it matter if you have both justice and revenge?

What is the proper punishment for killing someone? It's a question society and 
our courts have debated for centuries and your perspective on that question 
often depends on whether you attend a funeral before a trial.

“According to the coroner, the first blow was to her head and caused a 
hemorrhage, she screamed and the second blow was to her throat and crushed her 
larynx,” Ken Busch recalled of how his daughter Kathy was murdered. Floyd 
Medlock would confess he went on to beat, drown, rape and stab the 
seven-year-old girl before she finally died.

“Any victim that you talk to you that has been in the grieving process for 
long, initially we go through that part that says I want vengeance; I want them 
dead and I want them dead now and I’ll do it,” Busch said.

Ken would go on to found the Oklahoma Homicide Survivor’s support group. He was 
one of the first family members in Oklahoma who got to witness the killer’s 
execution.

"You think as you're building up to that wow this is going to give me some 
closure, everything stops here,” Busch told FOX 25.

Witnesses reported Medlock said "You all take it easy" to his family before his 
lethal injection began.

“It creates some other problems,” Busch said of the aftermath of the execution, 
“Because for 11 years, I had someone to focus my hate at; he was alive and 
breathing setting in a cell and I could, that's who I could hate and when he 
was dead, I didn't have anyone else to hate.”

Busch still supports the death penalty, but says it should be used carefully 
and constitutionally. He believes in making sure the right person is convicted 
and that justice is carried out efficiently.

“[The execution] was not a night of celebration, this was a night of justice,” 
Busch said, “At that time I knew there was another family, his family that knew 
my pain."

Taylor Heintzelman's mother LaDonna lives knowing the man who ordered the 
kidnapping, torture and murder of her son walks free.

“That was because the [District Attorney] let them plea down. They were both 
charged with first-degree murder and they allowed them to plea one to accessory 
to kidnapping and the other accessory to first-degree murder and I don't think 
people realize those two crimes are not considered violent in this state,” 
LaDonna told FOX 25.

Only the person who pulled the trigger to finally end Taylor’s life is in 
prison. He is serving a life sentence, LaDonna said she was promised it was a 
death penalty case. She has become an ardent supporter of capital punishment.

“There's always that group of people that are going to say you need to forgive 
them or you're never going to have peace. I have plenty of peace in my life,” 
LaDonna said. “God's son was murdered too and he knows how we feel and what 
we're going through too and if he can forgive the murderers if they truly are 
repentful he'll forgive us, and I’m not worried about that. I know I’ve got God 
on my side."

When the death penalty is discussed in Oklahoma, inevitably, regardless of how 
supportive or unsupportive the debaters are there is one case above all others 
that comes up. What about Timothy McVeigh? The man who blew up the Alfred P. 
Murrah Federal Building killing an identified 168 victims, including 19 
children in a daycare and changing forever the lives of so many others.

“I had a period of time after Julie’s death, almost a year that I supported the 
death penalty because I was so full of that revenge; I had to get my revenge,” 
said Bud Welch who’s only daughter Julie Marie Welch died when she walked into 
the lobby of the Murrah building to meet a client just as the truck bomb 
exploded.

“I remember going down to the bomb site about 10 months after her death and I 
stood across the street from where the chain link fence was that surround the 
footprint of the Murrah building,” Welch recalled. “Every muscle in my body 
ached, and it was caused from alcohol poisoning and I began asking myself what 
did I need to do to move forward."

Bud would end up embracing a cause his daughter had championed while she was 
alive; abolition of the death penalty.

“I recognized that the day we would take Tim McVeigh from his cage to kill him 
was not part of my healing process,” Welch said.

While Bud, Ken and LaDonna may disagree on the specifics or even the need for 
the death penalty, they do agree it isn't the so-often cited word "closure."

“[The word closure] is a way for a news person to attach something to it when 
they don't have anything to attach they call it ‘closure,’” Welch told FOX 25.

“Closure is something you do the door, you close the door, you close a drawer 
there's not closure in things like this,” Heintzelman said “And just because 
your loved one is dead you don't stop loving them."

“The thing we all find out is the day your loved one was murdered you died with 
them and you have to learn who you are all over again,” Busch told FOX 25, “I 
became someone else when my daughter died. That person when she was alive died 
with her."

If closure is a myth, then what is the death penalty?

If I had to argue why we need the death penalty, because we need justice,” 
Busch said “And that's what it has to remain is justice."

“An execution is not about correcting anything,” Welch said, “An execution is 
basically revenge that's all it is and revenge never healed anyone."

APPEALING TO A HIGHER AUTHORITY

Oklahoma's last method of execution ended up being fought all the way to the 
Supreme Court, the new method of using nitrogen gas will likely see a similar 
legal fight.

In a state where researchers say nearly 80-percent of citizens identify as 
“Christian” and nearly 90-percent say they believe in God, the debate about 
capital punishment often appeals to a higher power.

So often in Oklahoma politics, elected officials share their religious beliefs 
that impact their legislative priorities. The state went to court to defend 
putting the Ten Commandments monument on capitol grounds. Republican leaders 
regularly file what they call “pro-life” legislation.

In a political sense, the term “pro-life” applies to opposition to abortion. 
There is a growing number of religious leaders in Oklahoma who say “pro-life” 
should mean more than just that.

“The church has always maintained the sanctity of life, thou shall not kill we 
are created in the image and likeness of God and life is precious,” said 
Archbishop Paul Coakely of the Oklahoma City Archdiocese.

The Catholic Church’s position on how far to take "thou shalt not kill" has 
evolved over the years.

“So we believe in the sanctity of life we believe the state does have an 
obligation to protect itself to protect its citizens,” Archbishop Coakley said.

That position allows for the justness of wars, and the punishment of prisoners. 
In recent years, Catholic teachings have shifted away from supporting capital 
punishment.

“Pope Francis has taken that a step further that he says that he can see really 
no situation in which the use of the death penalty is morally necessary or 
justifiable,” Archbishop Coakley told FOX 25 saying that life should be 
protected from conception to its natural end.

“It is sometimes harder for people to grasp that though a person has committed 
a grievous heinous crime that they don't forfeit their human dignity their 
God-given human dignity,” the Archbishop said.

That is not the end of the debate, nationally, the Southern Baptist Convention 
has made it clear Christians should support the death penalty.

“Quite frankly, I happen to be a Baptist but I couldn't care less whether the 
Baptist Church supports something or not if it is clearly delineated in 
scripture and that is really what our standard is to be what does the Bible 
say,” said Pastor Paul Blair of the Fairview Baptist Church.

Pastor Blair said from the beginnings of the biblical set up of civil 
government, God ordained the death penalty.

“Obviously, this is a serious issue. Life is critical and that's why I am 
advocate for ending abortion because I think that is the senseless slaughter of 
innocent life and no life should be taken lightly,” Blair said.

Blair says the Old Testament teachings call for two or three witnesses before 
the death sentence is handed down.

“If a person is a murderer in their heart then the consequences of that then 
they should forfeit their own life and it should be done with absolute 
justice.”

That is the Old Testament, the New Testament includes the Gospels which tell a 
story of Jesus being asked to carry out an execution. Scriptures record Jesus 
telling the accusers that the person without sin could cast the first stone.

“Recognize that Jesus also wrote the Old Testament there is one author of the 
bible the Old Testament and the New Testament complete and complement each 
other,” Blair said of any concern there is a contradiction in the Bible’s 
teachings on the death penalty. “The woman taken in adultery was a unique 
situation and quite frankly it dealt more with hypocrisy of those who were 
making the accusation."

“It is hard to imagine on the lips of Jesus any kind of statement in support of 
the death penalty,” Archbishop Coakley said.

Catholics argue the death penalty is simply unnecessary in today's day and age 
because life in prison fulfills the purpose of scriptural sentencing 
requirements. The Catholic church also argues that it allows for redemption 
without threatening society with the release of a killer.

“’Blessed are the merciful’ our Lord said. We can't ration Cod's mercy. We 
can't put limits on God's mercy,” Archbishop Coakley said. “So I would say that 
nobody is beyond the mercy of God; no sin, no crime is beyond redemption.”

While the justifications differ, both Pastor Blair and Archbishop Coakley agree 
that the death penalty as it is applied in Oklahoma has problems.

“The way it is carried out in this day and age I don't know that it is 
effective,” Blair said. “Because it is scriptural I am an advocate for it if it 
was carried out properly.”

“It seems as though there's a growing desire in our state to see reforms in 
these areas,” Archbishop Coakley said. “I truly hope so, the state of Oklahoma 
and the people of Oklahoma deserve better.”,P> THE NEW METHOD

Oklahoma is on track to be the 1st state to use nitrogen gas as its primary 
means of execution

With lethal injection drugs becoming harder and harder to get, the state 
announced earlier this year they are moving on to develop procedures to use 
nitrogen gas, or other inert gas to carry out executions.

One of the researchers on the project said Oklahoma should invest in a 
high-altitude training simulator to carry out these executions. The reasoning 
is it would be easier to defend in court because the effects of such a 
simulator are well documented.

Critics of the plan have claimed it could lead to a feeling of suffocation or 
potentially harm bystanders and other witnesses who could be overcome by the 
effects of the inert gas.

In an effort to separate fact from fiction, FOX 25 went to an Oklahoma 
physician who is also a certified flight surgeon for the United States Air 
Force.

Doctor Joshua Carey provided his medical expertise and personal experiences for 
this story and is in no way endorsing or opposing capital punishment. He 
recalled for us his last time in the simulator.

“They put you in an altitude chamber and they pump the atmosphere out so that 
it is the pressures of the gasses in our atmosphere are much, much lower. After 
a while you are in there you feel light headed that is usually the first thing, 
after that you get a little giddy. Your judgement starts getting impaired. Your 
vision changes because the rods and cones that do vision specifically the color 
vision they use a lot of oxygen as they work so y our color vision goes away, 
fairly quickly,” Dr. Carey said.

“Eventually my judgement was impaired and I didn't want to put my mask back on 
because I was feeling too good and they had to come and help me put my mask 
back on,” Dr. Carey said.

For executions there will be no one with an oxygen mask. The oxygen will either 
continue to be removed and replaced with an inert gas, or a mask or hood will 
be placed on the inmate to deliver straight nitrogen.

“Specifically, this is called hypoxic hypoxia meaning there is no oxygen and 
that is why your oxygen levels are getting low,” Dr. Carey said. He said 
someone experiencing this will not feel like they are suffocating.

“What drives humans to breath is not oxygen and it is not our sensation of 
whether or not we have enough oxygen, it is whether or not we are eliminating 
carbon dioxide,” Dr. Carey said. He said it is the carbon dioxide build up that 
cause anxiety and the body does not detect when oxygen is not present as long 
as the carbon dioxide is not being expelled.

Dr. Carey said it would only take two or three breaths of pure nitrogen for 
someone to pass out. Once that happened there is the possibility of heart 
arrhythmia or seizures, but a person would not experience pain with those and 
death comes quickly if oxygen is not introduced.

If nitrogen does leak out of any system, bystanders or witnesses it should not 
be concerned about being impacted. Dr. Carey said that humans breathe in 
nitrogen all the time and a little extra nitrogen is not problematic as long as 
there is some ventilation in the room.

(source: Fox News)








NEBRASKA:

Experimental drug protocol for execution worked, but likely to inspire death 
penalty appeals



A grand jury has found that convicted double-murderer Carey Dean Moore died of 
respiratory failure during the state’s 1st execution in 21 years.

But a national authority on the death penalty says that finding will lead to 
more questions, and likely more legal challenges, to the “experimental” 4-drug 
protocol used by Nebraska in the lethal injection execution in August.

“Prisoners will use any uncertainly to challenge the efficacy of the execution 
process,” said Robert Dunham of the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty 
Information Center.

On Friday, a Lancaster County grand jury issued a 2-page report after reviewing 
the death of Moore, who was executed Aug. 14. By state law, all deaths that 
occur while in the custody of law enforcement, jails or prisons require a grand 
jury examination. Four officials testified before the grand jury, including Dr. 
Robert Bowen and Scott Frakes, the state corrections director.

The jury found that the cause of death of Moore, 60, was “multi-drug toxicity 
which resulted in respiratory failure."

Due to the difficulty in obtaining drugs previously used in executions, the 
State of Nebraska used a 4-drug protocol in August that had never been used.

The drugs and their sequence were: diazepam, a sedative intended to knock out 
the condemned inmate; fentanyl, a powerful opioid painkiller designed to slow 
breathing; cisatracurium, a muscle relaxant intended to paralyze and halt 
breathing; and potassium chloride, intended to stop the heart.

Dunham said that it was hard to tell from the grand jury’s finding whether 
Moore died from a side effect of the 4 drugs, or whether the drugs did “what 
they are supposed to do,” which is shut down his heart. The transcript of the 
grand jury’s deliberations may shine some light on that, but that record is not 
expected to be available for a couple of weeks, according to Troy Hawk, the 
clerk of the Lancaster County District Court.

The difficulty in obtaining drugs for executions, and questions about new 
combinations of drugs used in execution chambers, have been key points in 
recent controversies over the death penalty. Nebraska, along with several other 
death penalty states, has declined to reveal the source of its drugs, which has 
prompted questions about their purity and effectiveness.

Among the questions raised at the Moore execution was why curtains were closed 
to witnesses both while the IV lines were set and later, during a 14-minute 
span when Moore was declared dead.

Fresenius Kabi filed a notice Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the 
voluntary dismissal of a lawsuit that unsuccessfully tried to keep Nebraska 
from using drugs that the company believed were its in the Aug. 14 execution of 
Carey

(source: Omaha World-Herald)








NEVADA:

Could political wave end capital punishment in Nevada?



Buried in the Nevada attorney general’s court papers over blocked lethal 
injection drugs sits a line that hints at a bleak future for capital punishment 
in the state.

It was one of the last paragraphs in a 55-page appeal to the Nevada Supreme 
Court over District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez’s late-September decision to 
prohibit the prison system from using its supply of a sedative in the lethal 
injection of condemned killer Scott Dozier.

Lawyers for Alvogen, which distributes midazolam, had argued that their product 
was obtained by prison officials through subterfuge. They claimed the company 
would suffer irreparable harm if the drug were used in a state-sanctioned 
execution.

“Alvogen’s legal theory will virtually abolish the death penalty without a vote 
of the people or their representatives,” wrote Deputy Solicitor General Jordan 
Smith, who represents the Nevada Department of Corrections. “Corporate 
interests should not be allowed to interfere with lawful capital sentences and 
delay justice for victims and their families."

Republican Attorney General Adam Laxalt said during his recent failed campaign 
for governor that he supports the death penalty, “especially for dangerous 
criminals guilty of horrific, gruesome crimes like Scott Dozier."

Laxalt and his deputies have fought court battles for more than 2 years with 
criminal defense attorneys and billion-dollar pharmaceutical corporations to 
ensure that a 3-drug killing cocktail is upheld.

Execution delays

Dozier’s execution was halted in July, for the 2nd time in 9 months, after 
Alvogen sued the prison system. Dozier would be the 1st prisoner executed in 
Nevada since 2006.

The inmate, who waived his legal appeals in late 2016, was sentenced to die in 
2007 after 1st-degree murder and robbery convictions in the killing of Jeremiah 
Miller. Dozier had a murder conviction in Arizona before he was brought to 
Nevada to face charges in Miller’s death.

“A drug company’s private litigation filed to score public relations points 
with anti-death penalty advocates is not a lawful basis to prevent a capital 
sentence,” Smith wrote, pointing out that other states have shot down similar 
litigation. “Yet despite the frivolous nature of the drug companies’ claims, 
this case lingers and renders Nevada an outlier."

Smith tried to show a path that would open the gate to continued lawsuits, 
including attacks on “every method of execution, from the rope-weaver, armorer, 
electrician, and chemist, to the pharmacist and everyone in between."

But defense attorney Scott Coffee, who closely tracks the death penalty in 
Nevada and across the country, said the argument rings hollow.

“There’s a 40-year history in Nevada of not actually following through with 
death sentences,” Coffee said. “Why does it make a difference now?"

The high court asked the drug company to respond to the prison system’s appeal 
by next week, and the attorney general’s office has another 2 weeks to file its 
last reply.

New attorney general

But by the time the Nevada Supreme Court likely will hear arguments in the 
case, the newly elected attorney general, Democrat Aaron Ford, will have taken 
office. He will not say whether he plans to drop the appeal.

Ford told a Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter that he is opposed to the death 
penalty, but he also vowed to “uphold the law of the state, irrespective of any 
case going on."

He said he could not comment on the current attorney general’s appeal of 
Gonzalez’s ruling, adding that he still needs to review pending litigation in 
which the office has an interest.

Coffee said Ford could drop the appeal once he takes office, “particularly if 
he considers it to be a waste of resources or lacking in merit.”

Meanwhile, 2 new state Supreme Court justices are set to take the bench in 
January, and Nevada voters recently elected various Democrats to public office 
across the state who could sound the death rattle for Nevada’s executions.

Governor-elect Steve Sisolak has said he does not support the death penalty 
“except for in extreme cases.”

Democratic Assemblyman Ozzie Fumo, a criminal defense lawyer who recently won 
his second term in office, said he anticipates legislation that calls for 
abolishing the death penalty, which he said he would sign, or a request for the 
governor to call for a moratorium.

“There’s a social change coming,” Fumo said. “Overwhelmingly, we’re going to 
see people think about it, and say this is wrong."

Death penalty costs

He argued that the money spent on death penalty cases should instead fund other 
state institutions, such as education, along with police and fire protection.

In his appeal, Smith listed costs and man-hours that went into preparing for 
Dozier’s execution.

More than 100 prison staff members, including officers, administrators and 
supervisors, spent upward of 2,600 hours rehearsing the steps at Ely State 
Prison.

The prison system spent “well-over $100,000,” Smith wrote, and each training 
session, "which lasts 10 hours, utilizing the entire facility, costs around 
$15,000 a day.” In the meantime, the entire facility is placed on lockdown, he 
added.

Smith pointed to a poll that stated that 55 % of Americans supported the death 
penalty, while 66 % of Nevadans favored keeping it.

Prosecutors in Dozier’s case have argued that delaying his death wish 
“inflicted profound emotional disturbance, disappointment, and confusion” for 
the family of his victims.

But Fumo pointed out that many convicted killers sit on death row in Nevada for 
decades.

“The 50 years that the families are waiting doesn’t give them any closure,” 
Fumo said. With a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, 
he continued, victims know that murderers remain in prison “and leave in a pine 
box."

(source: Las Vegas Review-Journal)








USA:

Donald Trump keeps bringing up the death penalty



President Donald Trump has been talking a lot about the death penalty recently.

On Friday, he pushed for capital punishment for people who kill police 
officers.

"We will protect those who protect us," he said during a speech to law 
enforcement officers in Kansas City. "And we will believe the right punishment, 
and we all do, for cop-killers, is called the death penalty. And you know in 
some circles, that's very controversial to say that? You have all the 
television cameras rolling back there, for me it's not even a little 
controversial. You kill a cop, and it's called the death penalty."

The US federal government has not executed a prisoner since 2003 and most 
prosecutions and convictions for murder occur in state courts. There are 
currently 62 prisoners on federal death row compared to more than 2,500 on 
death row in states, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

On Wednesday, Trump tweeted in support of using the death penalty for drug 
dealers in China, weighing in on the domestic affairs of another nation and 
contradicting bipartisan criminal justice reform efforts, which Trump has 
endorsed.

Trump was praising the Chinese government and President Xi Jinping for 
criminalizing fentanyl, but he also took the step of making clear he has no 
problem with China's government killing "pushers" of the drug, which has also 
helped fueled the opioid crisis in the US.

It's not the first time Trump has spoken admiringly of other countries' use of 
the death penalty for drug dealers. He's mooned after the Philippines leader 
Rodrigo Duterte's liberal use of execution for drug dealers, meted out by mobs, 
even though it's drawn international concern about the rule of law.

In March he suggested during a White House summit on the opioid epidemic that 
the death penalty for drug dealers be imported to the US.

"Some countries have a very tough penalty, the ultimate penalty, and they have 
much less of a drug problem than we do," Trump said.

He repeated the sentiment a few weeks later during a speech in New Hampshire, 
which has been hard hit by the opioid crisis.

"If we don't get tough on the drug dealers, we are wasting our time," Trump 
told the audience in Manchester, New Hampshire. "And that toughness includes 
the death penalty."

Not long afterward, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo calling 
for prosecutors to seek "capital punishment in appropriate cases" and cited 
various laws that allow for the death penalty for drug-related offenses, 
including a 1994 law explicitly allowing the death penalty for drug crimes.

It is hard or impossible to square Trump's clear interest in the death penalty 
for drug pushing with the separate bipartisan efforts undertaken by members of 
his administration, notably Jared Kushner, to institute criminal justice 
reform, which could include sentencing reform. It's one of the few truly 
bipartisan efforts on display in Washington at the moment.

Add to that Trump's stated interest in delivering pardons and commutations to 
drug dealers.

That's what he did to Alice Johnson after public lobbying by Kim Kardashian, 
granting Johnson clemency in June.

"While this administration will always be very tough on crime, it believes that 
those who have paid their debt to society and worked hard to better themselves 
while in prison deserve a second chance," the White House statement at the time 
said.

Johnson's crime, by the way, was drug trafficking. She was the linchpin of a 
massive drug ring that "dealt in tons of cocaine," according to news reports 
about her conviction.

She turned into a model prisoner and mentor, and that's why she ultimately got 
Trump's clemency.

Support for executing murderers, not drug dealers

The bipartisan effort to overhaul the criminal justice system would seek to 
change some mandatory minimum guidelines, and there is some bipartisan support 
for changing sentencing guidelines specifically to give nonviolent drug 
offenders 2nd chances.

While Trump did endorse those efforts, he pays much more lip service to 
toughness -- in endorsing fellow Republicans, he routinely promises they'll be 
"tough on crime." That's a phrase that brings to mind the 1990s era, which saw 
a race to make criminal penalties increasingly strict and which the criminal 
justice reform effort, to some extent, is seeking to unwind.

A majority of Americans think capital punishment is morally acceptable for 
murderers, but the numbers flip when they are asked if it should be applied to 
drug dealers.

After Trump's comments in March, Quinnipiac asked about the death penalty in a 
poll and found 58% of Americans support the death penalty for people convicted 
of murder, but another majority, 51% , said they would prefer a sentence of 
life without parole.

In that same poll just 21% said they supported the death penalty for people who 
sold drugs that contributed to a fatal overdose. A similar 20% said they 
thought capital punishment for such people would help stop the opioid crisis.

The Supreme Court has held that the death penalty should not be instituted for 
any offense that does not result in the death of a victim, and has said it is 
not appropriate for rape.

Large-scale drug trafficking is a capital crime under US law, but the death 
penalty has not been instituted for that purpose, and would certainly raise a 
court battle.

The use of the death penalty has been on the decline in the US in recent years, 
according to a trove of data maintained by the Death Penalty Information 
Center.

30 states and the US government have the death penalty, although 3 of those -- 
Colorado, Pennsylvania and Oregon -- have placed a moratorium on its use in 
recent years, according to the center. 7 of the 20 states that have abolished 
the death penalty have done so since 2007, either by court decision, 
legislative action or, in the case of New Mexico, by vote.

The rate of executions has fallen markedly, from more than 60 each year 
nationwide in the late 1990s to fewer than 30 each year since 2015, and the 
drop in death sentences has been even steeper.

Executions today are clustered in a few states. There have been 65 people put 
to death in the US in the past three years, according to the Death Penalty 
Information Center, and 40% of those were in Texas alone.

Oklahoma has not had an execution for years, in part because it cannot get the 
drugs needed to carry them out.

Nebraska set a new precedent in August, when it conducted its 1st execution in 
21 years and put Carey Moore to death for the double murder in 1979 of Omaha 
taxi drivers Maynard Helgeland and Reuel Van Ness Jr. The 4-drug cocktail used 
to execute Moore included fentanyl, the drug Trump suggested seeking the death 
penalty for illegally pushing, as a painkiller.

(source: WTHI TV news)

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

Trump nominee William Barr pushed for the death penalty to “send a message to 
drug dealers



William P. Barr, the former attorney general under George H. W. Bush, could be 
returning to his old job, after Donald Trump nominated him yesterday to fill 
the position held by Jeff Sessions.

Barr, who served as attorney general from 1991 until 1993, was a staunch 
proponent of the death penalty, and pushed hard to get a Bush-backed bill that 
would have expanded the types of crime that could punished by execution.

What Barr, who has been a Verizon employee and a private attorney since he left 
Bush’s administration, believes now about the death penalty isn’t clear yet. 
But he’s sure to be questioned about it during the Senate confirmation process, 
which is expected to start in January.

Sending a message to drug dealers

Barr’s rationale for stricter death penalty laws was that they would reduce 
crime, including drug trafficking, as he explained in a 1991 op-ed in The New 
York Times:

"We need a death penalty to deter and punish the most heinous Federal crimes 
such as terrorist killings. That penalty would send a message to drug dealers 
and gangs.

"The need for a death penalty was highlighted by the recent hostage crisis at 
the Federal prison at Talladega, Ala. Detainees, faced with deportation to 
Cuba, seized control of the prison and held 10 Federal officers hostage. The 
prisoners threatened to kill them unless the Justice Department granted their 
demands to remain in the U.S. Fortunately, no one was killed, and the prisoners 
were deported. If the crime bill had been law, the prisoners would have faced 
the death penalty for killing a hostage, increasing the chances our personnel 
would be recovered safely."

He also argued that death row inmates’ ability to challenge their sentences 
should be limited, to avoid cases dragging on for years. “This lack of finality 
devastates the criminal justice system. It diminishes the deterrent effect of 
state criminal laws, saps state prosecutorial resources and continually reopens 
the wounds of victims and survivors,” he wrote in the op-ed.

The exact Bush bill that Barr was backing never passed. But in a sign of 
attitudes at the time, Democratic president Bill Clinton signed into law a 
massive federal crime bill just three years later that included sixty new death 
penalty offenses, including “terrorism, murder of a federal law enforcement 
officer, civil rights-related murders, drive-by shootings resulting in death, 
the use of weapons of mass destruction resulting in death, and carjackings 
resulting in death,” Politico reported.

Shifting views on the death penalty

In the years since, however, the use of the death penalty in the US has 
plummeted. The exoneration of dozens of inmates on death row, thanks in part to 
the increased use of DNA in appeals and investigations, has led to a 
reexamination of the practice. Overwhelming evidence of racial prejudice in 
death penalty trials and sentencing has led three states to abolish the death 
penalty outright. Barr and Bush’s own speechwriter, Mary Kate Cary, denounced 
it in a 2011 op-ed in USNews titled “The Conservative Case Against the Death 
Penalty."

"Every day, it seems the newspapers have another story about a wrongfully 
convicted person being released, often after serving decades in jail. Just last 
week, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell released a man from prison who had served 27 
years for rapes he did not commit. DNA testing cleared him.

"As I said, it’s hard to turn your back on innocent people whose lives have 
been destroyed.

"It’s becoming harder to justify the death penalty in the face of evidence that 
our system is flawed."

If Barr is confirmed, the issue of execution as a deterrent to drug-related 
crimes is sure to resurface. Barr’s daughter Mary Daly was appointed by Trump 
as the top Department of Justice official on opioid crimes this year. As 
president, Trump has advocated for the death penalty for drug traffickers who 
caused the crisis, but it is unclear whether he means the pharmaceutical 
executives who pushed prescription opioids, or the people distributing illegal 
opioids.

(source: qz.com)

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

Trump demands border wall money, promises death penalty for ‘cop killers’ at 
conference



President Donald Trump said Friday that Congress should provide all the money 
he wants for his promised U.S.-Mexico border wall, and he called illegal 
immigration a "threat to the well-being of every American community."

Trump spoke hours after signing a short-term spending bill that covers key 
government departments for 2 more weeks, until Dec. 21, setting up a 
pre-Christmas showdown over the wall.

The president wants the next spending package to include at least $5 billion 
for the proposed wall. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California 
rejected that a day earlier.

At an appearance at the Project Safe Neighborhoods conference in Kansas City, 
Missouri, Trump accused Democrats of playing a political game, and said it was 
one that he ultimately would win.

He also said money for a program that encourages federal, state and local 
authorities to collaborate on crime-fighting strategies was increased by $50 
million this year. The president said he will ask Congress for more money next 
year, but didn't say how much.

Trump said his administration is giving law enforcement officials the resources 
they need to do their jobs. He said there are more than 200 new violent crime 
prosecutors nationwide and cities have access to $600 million worth of surplus 
military equipment.

Trump noted he's also making police officers a top priority and believes anyone 
who kills a cop should face the death penalty.

"We will protect those who protect us," he said. "And we will believe the right 
punishment, and we all do, for cop-killers, is called the death penalty."

(source: Associated Press)