[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., TENN., COLO., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 15



TEXAS:

Texas sees uptick in executions, death sentences in 2018----The state put to 
death 13 men this year. That's more than half the total number of people 
executed in the entire country: 25. Still, the death row population — both here 
and nationwide — is at a historic low.



Texas again executed far more inmates than any other state in 2018, according 
to year-end reports released Friday by 2 groups critical of the death penalty.

With no other executions scheduled for the year, tallies from The Death Penalty 
Information Center and the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty show 
the state will have put to death 13 people in 2018 — all men, as usual. That's 
more than 1/2 the total number of executions that took place in the United 
States this year — 25.

The number of people Texas put to death increased substantially from the last 2 
years as the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted far fewer executions. 7 men 
died in the state’s execution chamber in both 2016 and 2017, when the state's 
highest criminal court stayed at least twice as many executions as it did this 
year.

At the same time, the death row population in Texas — and the nation at large — 
reached historic lows this year, according to the Death Penalty Information 
Center report, which noted that the total number of people with active death 
sentences nationwide is at a 25-year low.

The number of inmates living with death sentence in Texas has dropped 
consistently since 2003. There are currently 224 inmates awaiting execution, 
according to the state's prison system.

Texas usually leads the nation every year in the number of prisoners it puts to 
death and has executed far more people since the death penalty was reinstated 
in 1976 — more than 550. The state with the 2nd-highest number of executions, 
Virginia, has racked up 113, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

In the last 20 years, Texas has had fewer executions than another state only 
twice.

Here are some of the big changes that happened with the Texas death penalty 
this year:

The rise in executions this year in Texas also coincides with an increase in 
new death sentences. In 2018, 7 men — all people of color — were added to 
Texas’ death row, according to the report from the Texas Coalition to Abolish 
the Death Penalty. That’s a jump from last year, when 4 men were sentenced to 
death. In 2015 and 2016, only 3 men got the punishment.

But the relative increase comes at a time after both executions and death 
sentences in Texas and the nation reached historic lows. By comparison, Texas 
juries handed down 48 new death sentences in 1999, and executed 35 people.

The parole board, governor reduced a death sentence for the 1st time in more 
than a decade

In February, the Texas parole board unanimously voted to recommend clemency for 
Thomas Whitaker, who was convicted in the death of his mother and brother in an 
inheritance money scheme. Minutes before his execution was scheduled to 
proceed, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott accepted the board's recommendation and 
changed Whitaker’s sentence to life in prison.

It was the 1st time the board recommended the lesser sentence since 2009, and 
the 1st time a governor signed off on that change since 2007. Still, Abbott 
emphasized his support of the death penalty, noting that he had allowed more 
than 30 executions to take place since he took office in 2015.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stopped fewer executions

The state’s highest criminal court stopped significantly fewer executions in 
2018 than other years in recent history. Of the 3 executions the court halted, 
2 were specifically tied to a 2017 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that invalidated 
the Texas court’s method of determining whether a death row inmate is 
intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution.

In 2017, the state's Court of Criminal Appeals stopped 6 executions during late 
appeals, and in 2015 and 2016, it halted 8 and 7 respectively, according to the 
Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

The court, consisting of 9 Republican judges, also is losing its most vocal 
death penalty critic, Judge Elsa Alcala, at the end of the year. She did not 
run for re-election and will be replaced by Republican Michelle Slaughter, who 
defended the death penalty in February during her primary campaign but said any 
reforms should stem from legislation and not court rulings.

(source: Texas Tribune)








PENNSYLVANIA:

State's prosecutors, not moratorium, drive dip in death sentences



A new report from a group that tracks the death penalty in the United States 
finds that executions have reached the lowest point since 1991.

For the fourth year in a row, there have been fewer than 30 executions in the 
U.S., coming just as public opinion polls show that support for the death 
penalty is waning.

Texas put more people to death — 13 — than any other state. That was more than 
1/2 of the nation’s total of 25 executions in 2018.

In Pennsylvania, where Gov. Tom Wolf is blocking new executions, defendants are 
still being sent to death row, though the pace of death sentences has slowed.

Since Wolf put a moratorium on the death penalty in 2015, 6 convicted killers 
have been sentenced to death, mostly in rural places like York and Pike 
counties.

Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, the 
group that prepared the report, said Wolf’s moratorium had less of an impact on 
the number of people sitting on death row than another factor: Convicted 
killers in Philadelphia are being sentenced to death far less often than in 
years past.

In the 1990s, around 10 defendants a year received death warrants after murder 
convictions. In recent years, the number has been, on average, less than 1 a 
year.

It’s a movement not expected to change soon. Philadelphia District Attorney 
Larry Krasner has vowed never to pursue the death penalty, likening the 
practice to “lighting money on fire.”

Dunham said the trend toward fewer capital cases in Philadelphia resulting in 
death sentences reflects patterns nationwide.

“I don’t think the moratorium has had a significant impact in the reduction in 
the number of capital prosecutions and the number of death sentences. It has 
had some impact,” Dunham said. “But the major driver of the decline of death 
sentences in Pennsylvania is Philadelphia."

(source: Courier-Express)








TENNESSEE:

The indecency of the death penalty



I never met David Earl Miller. I didn't even know he existed until the week he 
was set to die. Dec. 6 was his execution date at Riverbend Maximum Security 
Institution in Nashville, Tennessee. Both the U.S. Supreme Court and the 
governor refused his lawyer's final attempts to gain a reprieve.

The Nashville Tennessean newspaper explained the details of how Miller's 
execution went down.

When it was Miller's time, "when the warden signaled for the first charge of 
1,750 volts of electricity, Miller's upper body raised up in the chair and his 
elbows stuck out," reporters from the newspaper wrote.

The story of Miller's life is even more horrifying than his death, and it 
should make us all question the justice of state execution.

"David Earl Miller came to Knoxville in 1979 a 22-year-old drifter -- homeless, 
jobless and friendless. He might never have stayed had he not been picked up on 
Interstate 75 by a preacher looking for sex -- and Lee Standifer might be alive 
today."

Standifer is the woman Miller was convicted of murdering in 1981.

The details of Standifer's death -- beaten with a fireplace poker and stabbed 
-- are excruciating to read. So are the details of Miller's childhood. He was 
born in a suburb of Toledo, Ohio, in the summer of 1957. "His mother met his 
father during a one-night stand in a bar, drank throughout her pregnancy and 
was later diagnosed with brain damage from exposure to toxic fumes at her job 
in a plastics plant. He was 10 months old when she married his stepfather, an 
alcoholic who routinely beat him with boards, slammed him into walls and 
dragged him around the house by the hair, according to court records."

According to Miller, he was sexually abused by a female cousin at 5, then by a 
friend of his grandfather at 12, and by his own intoxicated mother at 15. 
"Miller tried to hang himself at age 6 and began drinking, smoking marijuana 
and huffing gasoline daily by age 10. By age 13, he'd landed in a state reform 
school where counselors regularly whipped boys with rubber hoses and turned a 
blind eye to sexual molestation."

In a court-ordered examination, Miller said that his earliest memory was being 
beaten by his stepfather. He said that he couldn't remember anyone ever telling 
him they loved him as a child. "Being beaten by his stepfather is the earliest 
memory that Mr. Miller can recall, and beatings are the rhythm of his 
childhood," a clinical psychologist wrote. "Mr. Miller, from a very early age, 
harbored a simmering rage. He hated his stepfather for the brutality and 
humiliation he was subjected to, and he loathed his mother for first failing to 
protect him from his stepfather and later for turning him into her sexual 
plaything. .... His rage has also been enacted on many other innocent 
'stand-ins' for his mother."

Miller never had a chance. No one cared to give him a chance.

Miller had been on death row for 36 years. He was the 3rd person to be executed 
in Tennessee this year. More are scheduled for next year.

Justice and mercy involve recognizing evil, but also acknowledging humanity, 
too. Could the state have acknowledged the evil done to Miller long before that 
deadly night of rage in which he took a young woman's life?

I think we are called to be better than the death penalty. As we approach 
Christmas -- the celebration of the birth of a man who was himself executed by 
the state -- give thanks for the opportunities you've had and the blessings 
you've counted, and think about all the things that were denied Miller. Whisper 
a prayer for God's mercy all around. Think about what kind of people we are and 
what kind we ought to be. Real thoughts and prayers, difficult conversations 
and more merciful policies will mean Miller did not die in vain. May the ugly 
details make us more human.

(source: Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, 
editor-at-large of National Review Online and founding director of Catholic 
Voices USA----The Mercury)








COLORADO:

Hickenlooper commutes life sentences of 6 men convicted of murder, including in 
high-profile Curtis Brooks case----Curtis Brooks was sentenced to life in 
prison without parole for the slaying of 24-year-old Christopher Ramos in 
Aurora in 1995



Gov. John Hickenlooper on Friday commuted the life sentences of 6 men convicted 
of 1st-degree murder as young men or teens, marking the most significant action 
he has taken with his clemency authority in more than five years when he 
indefinitely halted the execution of convicted killed Nathan Dunlap.

The term-limited Democrat granted parole eligibility to the 6, who were 
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. That includes 
one — Curtis A. Brooks — who was a juvenile at the time he was sent to prison. 
Brooks will be released in July 2019 and ordered to serve 5 years of parole.

Brooks was 15 and with a group of other boys when one of them fatally shot 
24-year-old Christopher Ramos during a robbery in Aurora in 1995. Brooks did 
not pull the trigger, but was convicted of felony murder — a Colorado law that 
gives legal responsibility for a killing to those present when a murder occurs 
if they participated in the events leading up to it.

Brooks’ case has been at the center of a high-profile debate in recent months 
about juvenile sentencing in Colorado. Questions about his imprisonment have 
reached the Colorado Supreme Court.

“You are a prime example of extraordinary rehabilitation and illustrate our 
hope for every offender who spends time in the Department of Corrections,” 
Hickenlooper wrote to Brooks in his decision. “You have demonstrated that you 
will respect society’s laws and productively contribute to our society.”

The governor added: “You are remorseful, and ready to advance to a new phase of 
life. I believe you will be successful upon your release. … Good luck.”

To date, Hickenlooper has mostly used his pardon power on low-level drug 
offenses and other cases where those convicted expressed remorse and 
demonstrated that they turned their lives around.

Before today, the exception was Dunlap, who shot and killed 4 at a Chuck E. 
Cheese in 1993. Dunlap was sentenced to death but Hickenlooper granted a 
temporary reprieve in 2013 because he said the jury may have landed on a 
different punishment if they knew he was bipolar.

“These decisions are not made lightly,” Hickenlooper said in a written 
statement. “Every individual granted clemency has shown to us that they are 
worthy of this consideration. Their crimes were severe. It’s our belief that 
young offenders who have grown into exemplary individuals, and who have clearly 
learned from their mistakes, should be considered for a 2nd chance. It’s our 
sincere hope that each individual granted a commutation or pardon uses the 
opportunity to its fullest.”

Hickenlooper told The Colorado Sun in November that he does not intend to take 
action to commute Dunlap’s sentence before he leaves office, instead leaving 
him in limbo unless incoming Gov.-elect Jared Polis decides to act.

Polis is opposed to the death penalty but has not said exactly how he would 
handle Dunlap’s case.

Hickenlooper’s latest action comes as he moves toward a possible presidential 
bid in 2020.

Brooks had been seeking a shortened sentence in light of a 2012 U.S. Supreme 
Court ruling that mandatory life-without-parole sentences are unconstitutional 
and a subsequent Colorado law created in response that mandates how to address 
those sentences. 18th Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler challenged 
the 2016 state law in the Colorado Supreme Court in response to Brooks’ case, 
but lost.

A re-sentencing hearing for Brooks was scheduled for next week but has been 
cancelled in light of Hickenlooper’s commutation. Brooks has been in prison for 
21 years.

Brauchler called the governor’s timing “bizarre” given the upcoming hearing, 
pointing out that Brooks’ attorneys first appealed for clemency back in March. 
He questioned why Brooks’ sentence was commute after the Colorado Supreme Court 
ruled on the legality of the state’s juvenile re-sentencing standards in 
September.

“We have long advocated for the idea that, yes, we think Mr. Brooks is entitled 
to clemency,” Brauchler said. “Our intention was not to go to court and resist 
clemency for Mr. Brooks. it was to have a hearing in which the victims could 
have their feelings known. None of that’s going to happen now."

Brauchler also noted that under the state’s 2016 re-sentencing law, Brooks 
would still have had to serve at least 4 more years in prison before being 
released and that his parole stint afterward would have had to be 10 years.

“If the governor was intent on giving more than the legislature could provide, 
I get that,” he said. “Why wait for the hearing? But why wait for the Friday 
before the hearing to do it. The reason that’s important is because: the 
victims. They are out here every single day wondering what’s going to happen to 
their loved ones’ killers. The governor waited until the last possible moment 
to let them know what his intentions would be."

The family of Ramos, who was killed in the shooting Brooks was convicted in, 
told Brauchler’s office Friday that they were “devastated.” They had opposed 
Brooks’ release.

“Christopher did nothing to have his life taken,” the Ramos’ family said in an 
email to to Brauchler’s office, and “does not get a 2nd chance at life."

The other men convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without 
parole who now are eligible for parole because of Hickenlooper’s commutations:

Monir Wood was sentenced in 1999 for committing felony murder. He was 24 at the 
time of the offense. He will be eligible for parole on July 1, 2028.

Brian Lee was sentenced in 1993 for the 1992 killing of James McGregor when he 
was 22. He will be eligible for parole on Dec. 1, 2022.

William Lee, Brian Lee’s brother, sentenced in 1993 for McGregor’s killing, 
committed when he was 18. He will be eligible for parole on Dec. 1, 2022.

Eric Lightner was convicted of committing the 1st-degree murder of McGregor 
with the Lee brothers. Lightner was 21 at the time of the offense. He will be 
eligible for parole on Dec. 1, 2022.

John Lopez was sentenced in 1999 for murdering his stepfather when he was 18. 
He will be eligible for parole on Dec. 1, 2026.

Hickenlooper noted that all five men were young at the time of their crimes.

On Friday Hickenlooper also issued pardons for 46 other people who have served 
their sentences for lower level crimes and who he believes are “currently 
contributing members of their communities.”

To date, the governor has pardoned 135 people.

A pardon is an act of public forgiveness for offenders who served their 
sentences. A commutation is where an offender’s sentence is shortened.

(source: The Colorado Sun)








USA:

Report Finds Waning Support for Death Penalty



Declining public support for the death penalty and reduced rates of executions 
indicate there is a “climate change” involving capital punishment, which could 
lead to an abolition of the practice in the United States, the director of the 
Death Penalty Information Center said in an interview, touting the release 
Friday of his group’s annual year-end report.

The report indicates that juries and judges sentenced people to death 41 times 
in 2018, and 25 executions were carried out. The number of inmates on death row 
fell below 2,500 for the 1st time in 25 years.

“New death sentences and executions remained near historic lows in 2018 and a 
twentieth state abolished capital punishment, as public opinion polls, election 
results, legislative actions, and court decisions all reflected the continuing 
erosion of the death penalty across the country,” according to the 20-page 
report.

The Death Penalty Information Center is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit 
providing information on the death penalty in the United States. It does not 
offer its own opinions about capital punishment.

The study notes the similarities between conditions today and 1972 when the 
U.S. Supreme Court put a moratorium on the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia, 
a 5-4 ruling in which each member of the majority wrote a separate opinion. The 
court ruled that absent a uniform policy of determining who is eligible for 
capital punishment, the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

“Fewer new death sentences were imposed in the past decade than in the decade 
leading up to Furman, and the death sentences imposed this year were more than 
85 % below the peak of more than 300 per year in the mid-1990s,” the report 
states.

Several factors contributed to the lower numbers, the most notable factor being 
reduced rates of crime, including murder.

“We have crossed some significant threshold with respect to the fear of crime,” 
the center’s director Robert Dunham said in an interview, “and that has 
significantly changed the American worldview on what punishments are 
appropriate.”

In October, the Supreme Court for Washington State declared the punishment 
unconstitutional because it is racially biased, making it the 20th state to 
prohibit it.

The Roman Catholic Church this year declared the death penalty “inadmissible” 
because “more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure 
the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively 
deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.”

Therefore, according to Pope Francis, “the death penalty is inadmissible 
because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” and 
the church will work for its abolition worldwide.

The Death Penalty Information Center’s report noted public support for capital 
punishment has been dropping. A Gallup poll conducted in October found 49 
percent of Americans thought the penalty was applied fairly.,P> “The death 
penalty in 2018 was characterized by secrecy, bias, and arbitrariness, further 
undermining public confidence in the reliability of the punishment and the 
trustworthiness of the states to carry it out fairly,” the report states.

According to the report, one prisoner has been exonerated from death row for 
every nine executions carried out.

If a 3-judge panel in Ohio hands down a death sentence in case of George 
Brinkman, Jr. in the final days of the year, it will be the 6th time the death 
penalty will be meted out by a jury that did not arrive at that conclusion 
unanimously. The sentencing, expected on Dec. 28, would be the 42nd death 
sentence in the country this year.

“The evidence of arbitrariness is even greater today, and there were fewer 
death sentences imposed in the last decade than in the 10 years leading up to 
Furman,” Dunham said. “There is no question that if that same Supreme Court 
were in existence today, the death penalty would be declared unconstitutional.”

Chief Justice Warren Burger led the court in 1972, however, and it was a far 
different court than today’s conservative Supreme Court. The nation has changed 
as well since 1972, when a high percentage of the public believed that the U.S. 
justice system was 2nd to none and that if someone ended up on death row, they 
probably deserved it, Dunham said.

Because of the trends, Cassandra Stubbs, director of the American Civil 
Liberties Union Capital Punishment Project, sees a future without the death 
penalty.

“We really are seeing the last gasp here of the death penalty,” Stubbs said. 
“There’s just really no question about it. These trend lines are all moving in 
the same direction.”

If the Supreme Court will revisit the question of whether the death penalty 
violates the Eighth Amendment, Stubbs said, it will indicate a questioning of 
the nation’s evolving bounds of decency.

“We’re meeting many of the benchmarks that we thought would be necessary for 
the Supreme Court to recognize an Eighth Amendment violation,” Stubbs said. 
“When it’s truly just a tiny handful of counties in a very random and biased 
process, it’s very difficult to see how that squares with our constitutional 
guarantees.”

But Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, 
a right-wing group that favors the death penalty, said he does not foresee 
abolition of capital punishment. Even in liberal California counties, he said, 
juries have decided some crimes deserve capital punishment.

Jurors even in liberal counties, Scheidegger said, “still occasionally get a 
murder so horrible that a jury will say, ‘Yes, this is the exceptional case. 
This is the one that really has to be punished by death.’”

Also this year, Louisiana became the third state to suggest carrying out 
executions by nitrogen hypoxia. Scheidegger said this may be a better execution 
protocol than lethal injection because the materials are easy to acquire and 
the method is painless. Scheidegger said he knows this from personal 
experience, as he had to experience hypoxia during flight training in the Air 
Force.

“Nobody’s implemented it yet, Scheidegger said. “I think every state wants 
another one to go first because whoever goes first is going to be embroiled in 
litigation.”

(source: courthousenews.com)

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

Former public defender: Death penalty states are most in need of criminal 
justice reform



States with high rates of capital punishment are the ones most in need of 
criminal justice reform, former public defender Robert Dunham said Friday 
during an interview on “Rising.”

“Overproducers of death are a red flag for where criminal justice reforms are 
necessary,” Dunham, who is now the executive director of the Death Penalty 
Information Center, told Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton. “We’ve seen a 
whole range of problems but they’re the the same problems that we see in the 
criminal justice system as a whole."

Since 1977, Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma have executed the most death-row 
inmates. California has the largest population of death-row inmates but has not 
had an execution since 2016.

Overall, capital punishment is on the decline in the U.S. Executions and death 
sentences have been near historic lows in 2018, according to the Death Penalty 
Information Center, which found that there have been 25 executions and 42 death 
sentences this year.

That marks the 4th consecutive year there were fewer than 30 executions.

Dunham attributed the decline to more public awareness when it comes to 
different sentencing options.

“In many states in the 1990s, juries thought that you got sentenced to life, 
you’d be back on the street,” he said. “That’s not the case anymore.”

He attributed the drop in death row inmates to the increasing use of DNA 
testing to verify whether a defendant was innocent or guilty, as well as 
criminal justice reform legislation like the Innocence Protection Act, which 
created a post-conviction testing process.,P> “I think that those individual 
stories became more and more powerful,” Dunham said.

Criminal justice reform has been one of the few bipartisan issues during the 
Trump administration.

Backed by President Trump, criminal justice reform legislation is making its 
way through Congress.

After being stalled in the Senate for months, Senate Majority leader Mitch 
McConnell has agreed to bring the bipartisan legislation to the Senate floor 
for a vote.

The measure is aimed at reducing the number of people in prison and is seen as 
one of the first steps toward overhauling the criminal justice system.

(source: thehill.com)