[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OHIO, ARK., S.DAK., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 9



OHIO----stay of impending execution

Clemency appropriately applied by the governor



Ross Geiger took the extraordinary step of writing to the governor last week. 
On Thursday, John Kasich responded in a considered and appropriate way. The 
governor issued a temporary reprieve for Raymond Tibbetts, who was scheduled 
for execution by lethal injection next Tuesday. Now the Ohio Parole Board will 
revisit the Tibbetts case.

In his 4-page letter, Geiger offered a unique viewpoint. He served on the jury 
that convicted Tibbetts for 2 killings and sentenced him to death 2 decades 
ago. Geiger explained to the governor that the jurors had no doubt about 
Tibbetts' guilt. He and another juror did have concerns about a death sentence, 
yet they eventually joined their colleagues in the required unanimity.

What spurred him to write was his look at the documentation accompanying the 
most recent clemency hearing. Geiger told the governor that he learned things 
for the 1st time, so much that he concluded: "Based on what I know today I 
would not have recommended the death penalty. ..."

A trial involving the death penalty has 2 phases, the first deciding whether 
the defendant is guilty, and the 2nd, if needed, to weigh whether a death 
sentence fits according to the law. A defendant has the opportunity to present 
mitigating evidence. What Geiger discovered is how little of the available 
mitigating evidence reached the jury.

Tibbetts didn't just have a tough childhood. It was filled with trauma almost 
from the start, including repeated abandonment, abuse that continued in foster 
homes, drug and alcohol addiction. Yet his trial attorneys brought just 1 
witness, a psychiatrist, before jurors to discuss these circumstances. Geiger 
told the governor he was shocked to learn that Tibbetts' sister was available 
to testify, but she wasn't called to the witness stand.

That left 2 impressions: No one cared enough about Tibbetts to prevent his 
execution and that prosecutors must be right, the Tibbetts siblings, in 
contrast, leading normal lives. Now Geiger knows differently, the siblings with 
their own troubled lives.

The point Geiger makes about these and other failings in the trial process 
isn't to excuse somehow the awful crime committed by Tibbetts. Rather, his 
concern goes to whether Ohio should execute Tibbetts. He reasonably asks the 
governor: "... if we are going to have a legal process that can send criminals 
to death that includes a special phase for mitigation shouldn't we get it 
right?"

One of the virtues of giving the governor the power of clemency is that it 
provides a backstop for justice, in particular, when information emerges after 
a conviction and avenues to the courthouse essentially are closed. The governor 
ends up as the one authority in position to assess all that is known.

In this instance, John Kasich has exercised that power just as it should be 
done. Now the parole board must do its part, giving the Ross Geiger letter the 
weight it deserves, Ray Tibbetts spared execution for life without parole.

(source: Beacon Journal/Ohio.com editorial board----ohio.com)

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

Ohio Delays Execution After Ex-Juror Seeks Reprieve for Death Row Inmate



Ohio Governor John Kasich on Thursday postponed next week's scheduled execution 
of a convicted double murderer in light of a letter from a juror in the man's 
trial asking that he not be put to death because the jury was not given 
information pertinent to his sentencing about his troubled childhood.

Kasich, a Republican, issued a temporary reprieve to Raymond Tibbetts, moving 
the execution date from Feb. 13 to Oct. 17 and asking the state's Parole Board 
to hold a hearing in the meantime to consider the letter's contents, the 
governor's office said in a statement.

In the letter sent to the governor on Jan. 30, former juror Ross Geiger said 
there was no question Tibbetts committed the murders but that factors about the 
defendant's upbringing were omitted or distorted by prosecutors in the trial's 
sentencing phase.

Tibbetts was convicted of fatally beating and stabbing his wife, Judith 
Crawford, and fatally stabbing Fred Hicks, a man for whom she provided care.

Geiger said the defense presented only one witness in the sentencing phase, a 
psychiatrist who testified Tibbetts had a tough upbringing related to 
inattentive parents and poor foster care.

Prosecutors then told jurors many people with tough childhoods turn out fine, 
including Tibbetts' four siblings, and that placing the convicted murderer in 
foster care as a child was the best thing for him, the letter said.

Geiger said several years later he read a publicly available clemency report 
from 2017 that showed a history of abandonment for Tibbetts starting at age 2 
and that of the 4 siblings, 1 committed suicide, another spent time in prison 
and another is essentially homeless.

He faulted the defense team for not calling the one sibling of Tibbetts who is 
leading a stable life and was willing to testify during sentencing about the 
difficult childhood they all shared.

Geiger said Tibbetts deserves to be in prison but based on what he knows today, 
"I would not have recommended the death penalty."

Erin Barnhart, an attorney for Tibbetts, lauded Kasich, saying the governor had 
acted "in the interests of fairness and justice."

"Because a juror from the original trial recently revealed flaws in the 
proceedings, there is now incontrovertible proof that Mr. Tibbetts never would 
have ended up on death row had the system functioned properly," Barnhart said 
in a statement.

(source: US News & World Report)

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

Governor John Kasich announced he will grant a reprieve until October 17, 2018 
to Ray Tibbetts, who had been scheduled for execution on???Tuesday, February 
13, 2018. The purpose of this temporary reprieve is to allow the Ohio Parole 
Board convene a hearing to consider new evidence bearing on Ray's clemency 
request.???

Following is a statement from Erin Barnhart, attorney for Ray Tibbetts:

"Governor Kasich acted in the interests of fairness and justice by recognizing 
new information provided by a juror from Mr. Tibbetts' trial merits careful 
additional consideration. Because a juror from the original trial recently 
revealed flaws in the proceedings, there is now incontrovertible proof that Mr. 
Tibbetts never would have ended up on death row had the system functioned 
properly. This juror - whose single vote for life would have made Mr. Tibbetts 
ineligible for the death penalty under Ohio law - was shocked when he saw 
evidence that Mr. Tibbetts' abuse and abandonment continued throughout his 
childhood, even once the State placed him in foster care. The juror also 
learned that this horrible environment had devastating consequences for all of 
the Tibbetts children. Even more, Tibbetts' severe addiction problems were not 
fully addressed, particularly in regard to the dangers of prescribing opioids 
to people with a history of addiction. Mr. Tibbetts' attorneys failed to 
present this evidence at trial and the prosecutor misstated the facts. Juror 
Geiger's view of the case provides compelling reasons for the exercise of the 
Governor's reprieve power to allow the Ohio Parole Board to convene a hearing 
to consider this new information. We are confident that after doing so, the 
Board and the Governor will agree that clemency is appropriate to correct the 
failures in the legal process in this case. Governor Kasich has done our State 
a great service today by ensuring that careful consideration is given to this 
new information."

-Erin Barnhart, Attorney for Ray Tibbetts and Assistant Federal Public 
Defender, CapitalHabeas Unit, Federal Public Defender's Office for the Southern 
District of Ohio

Warrant of Reprieve for Raymond Tibbetts: http://bit.ly/2nMheUo

Letter from Gov. Kasich to Chairman of Ohio Parole Board: http://bit.ly/2EbROcZ

(source: Ohioans to Stop Executions)

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

Death sentence in murders of Sandusky family upheld



The conviction and death sentence will stand in the 2012 murders of a 
23-year-old Sandusky woman and her 2 young children.

The Ohio Supreme Court on Thursday rejected arguments from Curtis L. Clinton 
that prosecutors should not have been able to combine the trials for the 
strangulation murders with that of a separate rape of a 17-year-old girl he 
committed a week earlier.

The court noted the similarities in the choking and rape between the prior rape 
victim and the 3 murder victims.

Clinton faces lethal injection for killing Heather Jackson and her 2 children, 
Celina, 3, and Wayne, Jr., 20 months, on Sept. 8, 2012 in the hours following a 
party celebrating their move into a new home. He was convicted of the 3 
murders, 2 rapes, and aggravated burglary.

Evidence from the prior crime helped connect him to the murders.


"The rapes of the (prior rape victim) and the murder of the Jacksons occurred 
less than a week apart in Sandusky and involved an assailant driving a white 
Cadillac," Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor wrote. "Although the crimes differed 
in some respects, '(a)dmissibility is not adversely affected simply because the 
other (crimes) differed in some details'."

The court was unanimous in its upholding of the convictions, but now resigned 
Justice William O'Neill dissented when it came to the death sentence. He 
offered no explanation beyond pointing to prior opinions in which he opined 
that Ohio's death penalty is unconstitutional.

The court found that aggravating circumstances favoring imposition of the death 
penalty outweighed mitigating circumstances arguing against death. At trial, 
Clinton had refused to allow his lawyers to formally present mitigating 
evidence, but his lawyers urged the high court to consider his abusive and 
violent childhood, his stay in a psychiatric hospital following a suicide 
attempt, and a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and 
depression.

"We conclude that the aggravating circumstances as to each aggravated-murder 
count clearly outweigh the mitigating factors beyond a reasonable doubt," Chief 
Justice O'Connor wrote. "With respect to Jackson's murder, the 
course-of-conduct and the aggravated-murder-during-rape (related to the rape of 
C.J.) specifications strongly outweigh the mitigating factors.

"The 3 specifications that apply to C.J.'s and W.J.'s murders - course of 
conduct, murder during a rape, and child murder - overwhelm the mitigating 
factors," she wrote, referring to the deaths of Celina and Wayne, Jr.

(source: Toledo Blade)








ARKANSAS:

Arkansas justices seek $135,000 to pay defense team in suit filed by judge 
barred from hearing death penalty cases



Arkansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Dan Kemp is asking the Legislature for 
more than $135,000 to pay a team of lawyers defending the state's top justices 
in a federal lawsuit brought by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen.

Griffen, an outspoken judge, blogger and preacher, sued the Arkansas Supreme 
Court's 7 justices in October -- several months after the high court stripped 
Griffen of his ability to hear cases involving the death penalty.

The punishment came after Griffen made a public display of his opposition to 
the death penalty by laying prostrate on a cot in front of the Governor's 
Mansion, on the same day he issued an order that temporarily halted the state's 
ability to carry out a series of planned executions. Griffen says the justices 
violated state and federal laws by stripping him of cases.

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, whose office typically represents state 
officials in lawsuits, is also the lead attorney in the state's push to carry 
out executions. She recused from the case last year, and Gov. Asa Hutchinson 
allowed the justices to seek outside counsel.

Those debts associated with paying the justices' lawyers -- who hail from 
around Arkansas, Colorado, New York and Washington, D.C. -- now add up to 
$135,744.62, according to a letter Kemp sent Tuesday to the leaders of the 
Legislature's Joint Budget Committee.

That amount is what's left after the court spent all of the $25,000 
appropriated to the Supreme Court's Professional Services Appropriation in the 
current fiscal year. The Legislature is sent to convene in a fiscal session 
starting next week to approve a budget for the next fiscal year, which begins 
July 1.

Kemp also said in his letter that he will ask that the Professional Services 
Appropriation be increased by $250,000 this fiscal year and next.

The chief justice did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

One of the co-chairmen of the Joint Budget Committee, Sen. Larry Teague, 
D-Nashville, said he was "a little frustrated" by the cost and the number of 
attorneys the justices had hired. But he did not expect the committee to refuse 
to appropriate the money.

Conservative lawmakers, irate at Griffen's outspokenness off the bench, called 
for his resignation last year.

Sen. Trent Garner, R-El Dorado, repeated his call for impeachment on Twitter on 
Tuesday, saying it is "unbelievable that the tax payers of Arkansas have to 
front the bill for Judge Griffen's attention-seeking frivolous lawsuit."

Griffen's attorney said justices had alternatives.

"The Court says that Judge Griffen's lawsuit is baseless and yet it has 
retained 10 or so expensive attorneys, some from Washington DC, New York City 
and Denver, CO, for its defense," said Griffen's attorney, Michael Laux, in an 
email. "Each of these defense attorneys does his own legal work and further 
presumably bills for review of each other's work, and so on and so on. So, for 
instance, one pleading from Judge Griffen equals ten attorney's bills for 
review. This is what has caused the costs of which Chief Justice Kemp 
complains. As we have previously stated, Judge Griffen's lawsuit does not seek 
monetary damages. The Court could have reinstated Judge Griffen, which would 
have cost literally zero."

Reached by phone Wednesday, Garner said he thought the legal fees were in line 
with what an ongoing federal case should cost and that the appropriation should 
pass easily in the Republican-majority Legislature.

"It's on Judge Griffen," Garner said.

According to records, 11 attorneys represent the justices in the case before 
U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr.

All of the justices, and the Supreme Court as a whole, are represented by 
Robert S. Peck, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Litigation in New 
York City.

4 justices -- Courtney Goodson, Josephine Hart, Karen Baker and Rhonda Wood -- 
also have their own private attorneys. It's unclear if Kemp's request for funds 
would pay those attorneys as well.

According to online records, Goodson is being represented by Michael W. Kirk, 
David Thompson and William C. Marra of the Washington, D.C.-firm Cooper & Kirk; 
and D. Matt Keil of her husband's Texarkana firm, Keil & Goodson.

Hart is being represented by Alfred F. Thompson III and Kenneth P. Castleberry 
of the Batesville firm Murphy, Thompson, Arnold, Skinner & Castleberry; and 
Robert L. Henry III of Little Rock's Barber Law Firm.

Wood is being represented by David Brandon Meschke and Christopher O. Murray of 
the Denver firm Brownstein Hyatt Ferber Schreck.

Baker is being represented by the Little Rock attorney Timothy O. Dudley.

(source: arkansasonline.com)








SOUTH DAKOTA:

Frias could face death penalty if convicted in double homicide



A man charged with murder in connection to the Jan. 5 double homicide in Sioux 
Falls made his initial court appearance Thursday.

Manuel Jesus Frias, 34, was charged with 1st-degree murder, 2nd-degree murder 
and 4 counts of manslaughter.

The Sioux Falls man faces life in prison or the death penalty if convicted of 
the charges he faces in Minnehaha County.

Frias is accused of killing one person in a "drug rip gone bad," police say.

His bond is set at $1 million, cash only. A preliminary hearing is set for Feb. 
23.

Authorities arrested Frias on Jan. 16, after a 3-hour standoff in Nebraska 
involving 2 police departments, 2 sheriff's offices and the U.S. Marshals.

2 others wanted in connection with the double homicide were arrested in January 
as well. Maria Shantel LeClaire was arrested by local law enforcement in Red 
Wing, Minn., after someone tipped off police to her location. She arrived at 
the Minnehaha County Jail on Jan. 13 on charges of 1st-degree robbery.

Crystal Habben was booked into the jail on Jan. 9 on charges of misprision of a 
felony - failing to report knowledge of a felony to authorities.

Police say Samuel Louis Crockett, 28, died at a hospital and Corey James 
Zephier, 30, died on the scene after being shot outside an apartment building 
in the 700 block of West Rice Street.

Court documents say a cell phone located near the victim's bodies that belonged 
to Crockett contained text messages discussing a meth deal with Habben, who 
said she knew someone who could sell it to them.

Documents say Zephier, LeClaire and Frias then left to case the location where 
they planned to rob Crockett.

At some point, documents say, the robbery went wrong, and police were told 
Crockett was being held up by Zephier when Crockett grabbed his gun from his 
waistband and shot Zephier. Frias then shot Crockett.

(source: Argus Leader)








CALIFORNIA:

Judge rules prosecutors can seek death penalty in 1987 Chico killings



A Butte County judge ruled Thursday that prosecutors can again seek the death 
penalty against a man facing retrial in the 1987 killings of a Chico doctor and 
his wife.

Superior Court Judge Tamara Mosbarger made the ruling after defense attorneys 
for the man, Steven Crittenden, 50, filed a motion seeking to preclude 
prosecutors from seeking the death penalty in the case.

Mosbarger also denied a separate motion by defense attorneys seeking to bar the 
local District Attorney's Office from participating in Crittenden's retrial.

Crittenden, a former Chico State University football player, was convicted in 
1989 of murder and sentenced to death in the stabbing and beating deaths of Dr. 
William Chiapella, 68, and his wife Katherine Chiapella, 67, in Chico.

Crittenden's conviction was later overturned by a federal district court that 
found the original prosecutor at Crittenden's trial, Gerald Flanagan, was 
motivated by race when he excluded the only prospective black juror at 
Crittenden's trial.

Crittenden is black.

Crittenden's attorneys, Jeffrey Thoma and Jodea Foster, argued that removing 
local prosecutors from the case would be appropriate after the federal district 
court ruling.

Foster argued in court Thursday that Flanagan's conduct amounted to 
"prosecutorial misconduct," adding that removing the District Attorney's Office 
from the case and/or keeping it from seeking the death penalty would be an 
appropriate legal solution for the harm Crittenden suffered by having lost his 
right to a fairly chosen jury.

Thoma further argued that the likelihood of prejudice in Crittenden's case is 
"severe," adding that prosecutors have broad discretion in seeking the death 
penalty, which leaves room for racial prejudice.

"Although African-Americans make up only 12 percent of the total population of 
the United States, they have been victims in about 1/2 of total homicides in 
this country in the last 35 years," Thoma said. "Yet 85 % of the cases in which 
the death penalty has been carried out have involved white victims."

District Attorney Mike Ramsey said in court that accusations that Flanagan, the 
original prosecutor, was racially prejudiced "is insulting to Mr. Flanagan, 
it's insulting to the Butte County District Attorney's Office, it's personally 
insulting to me."

Ramsey added that it is false to claim that the death penalty was sought 
against Crittenden because of racial bias.

"The death penalty was sought because two elderly victims ... were found 
tortured and brutally murdered," the district attorney said. "And after his 
arrest and during his prosecution, Mr. Crittenden escaped from his cell no less 
than 2 times in Butte County, and 1 attempt in Placer County."

It was for those reasons, Ramsey said, that prosecutors sought the death 
penalty against Crittenden.

Lawyers are due back in court March 22, when a judge will consider a motion by 
prosecutors seeking to hold Crittenden's retrial in Butte County.

Crittenden's original trial was held in Placer County instead of Butte County 
in part because of extensive pretrial publicity. But prosecutors say enough 
time has passed for Crittenden to receive a fair trial locally.

Crittenden remains in custody at San Quentin State Prison.

(source: orovillemr.com)

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

'Nothing but hate.' Prosecutors aim to get death penalty for admitted cop 
killer



With confessed cop killer Luis Bracamontes watching quietly from the defense 
table, prosecutors began a methodical closing argument Thursday designed to 
send him to the death chamber at San Quentin.

"By the time Luis Bracamontes and his wife had made it to Sacramento, he had 
thought about killing...," Placer County prosecutor Dave Tellman told the jury. 
"He had nothing but hate."

The closing arguments are expected to last through Thursday morning, and there 
appears to be little suspense about how the jury may respond.

Bracamontes has blurted out repeatedly that he killed 2 Sacramento-area 
deputies on Oct. 24, 2014, and his own lawyers have conceded he is responsible 
for their deaths.

But prosecutors are intent on showing that Bracamontes acted in a decisive and 
intentional manner during the crime spree that stretched from an Arden Way 
Motel 6 to a remote cul de sac in Auburn.

"This is nothing but willful conduct from start to finish," Tellman said.

The 1st killing - in which Sacramento sheriff's Deputy Danny Oliver was shot in 
the head in the motel parking lot as he approached Bracamontes' car - was 
premeditated and intentional, Tellman argued.

"The defendant fired that gun that killed Danny Oliver," Tellman said. "When he 
did so, he had the intent to kill."

Bracamontes and his wife, Janelle Monroy, are charged in the crime spree that 
left a motorist and another deputy gravely wounded.

Monroy, who faces murder and other charges in the slaying of Placer Detective 
Michael Davis Jr., is awaiting a verdict from a jury that began deliberations 
late Wednesday.

Her attorney, Pete Kmeto, has argued she was a victim of Bracamontes' violent 
rages and helped carry a rifle that Bracamontes used to kill Davis only because 
she feared for her life.

Prosecutors dispute that, saying she was a willing participant and "the CEO" of 
the couple as they traveled from Salt Lake City to Sacramento.

Tellman and Sacramento prosecutor Rod Norgaard are intent on convincing the 
jurors that Bracamontes had long talked of killing police officers.

They also are trying to stave off the inevitable appeals that Bracamontes' 
lawyers are expected to pursue with claims that their client is mentally ill. 
The defense has tried repeatedly in the past to enter a plea of not guilty by 
reason of insanity, but Bracamontes has refused to allow it and the judge has 
found Bracamontes competent to stand trial.

The defense presentation Thursday is expected to be brief; Bracamontes' public 
defenders, Norm Dawson and Jeffrey Barbour, offered no defense witnesses during 
the trial, and the defendant himself has made no effort conceal his guilt.

He has loudly proclaimed through court hearings for years that he killed the 
deputies, has threatened to kill more, and has threatened the deputies' 
families and jurors.

Sacramento Superior Court Judge Steve White banished Bracamontes from the 
courtroom for a few days, ordering him to watch the proceedings from a cell 
with a video feed.

But he has allowed Bracamontes back into court this week, and the defendant is 
no longer making any effort to wear street clothes, as he did at the start of 
trial.

On Thursday, he appeared in a white t-shirt and striped jail trousers. 
Bracamontes sat chained to a chair at the defense table with 2 deputies seated 
directly behind him, while Tellman stood with his back to him as he addressed 
jurors.

"We have done our best to leave you with absolutely no doubt as to what 
happened," Tellman told jurors, noting that Bracamontes, has repeatedly 
threatened his jailers as he awaited trial.

He recounted Bracamontes' profane outbursts at deputies in the jails he has 
been housed in and his written threats that the Sinaloa cartel is watching 
them.

"This is unadulterated hate," Tellman said. (source: sacbee.com)








USA:

How Prosecutors are Making Intellectually-Disabled African-Americans on Death 
Row Smart Enough to Kill



IQ tests have long been plagued by claims of cultural and racial bias. Critics 
from a wide range of arenas, including academia, psychology, psychiatry and 
activism have characterized these controversial assessments as ineffective, 
inappropriate and skewed toward a normative white standard. Still, the tests 
have endured in many fields, including criminal justice, where they act as a 
criterion for determining if a person convicted of a capital offense is 
intellectually competent enough to receive the death penalty given these 
assessments are commonly acknowledged to offer value in establishing a basic 
competency. In Atkins v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court codified this upon 
ruling that executing the intellectually disabled violated the Eighth Amendment 
and qualified as cruel and unusual punishment.

However, in a cruel and unusual legal twist, it is this charge of racial bias 
in IQ testing that is now being used by a growing number of American 
prosecutors to ensure more African-American and Latinx capital inmates are put 
to death.

Referred to as "ethnic adjustments," this practice automatically boosts IQ 
scores, often by 5 to 15 points, for African-American and Latinx inmates 
convicted of capital crimes. To win a death sentence against an accused, 
prosecutors in at least eight states - Alabama, California, Florida, Missouri, 
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas - have increasingly resorted to the 
summoning of expert witnesses who testify to the racial biases of IQ testing. 
Though these health experts commonly have no interaction with the defendants at 
any point, they generally argue that such racial bias accounts for the 
sub-competent performance on previous IQ tests for African-American and Latinx 
defendants and, therefore, their scores would have likely been higher if not 
for the bias. Such ethnic adjustments enable the capital sentencing of those 
who'd otherwise be deemed intellectually unfit.

"In my opinion, ethnic adjustments are outrageous," said Robert M. Sanger, a 
prominent trial lawyer and professor of law and forensic science at Santa 
Barbara College of Law in California. His 2015 article in the American 
University Law Review was largely responsible for drawing attention to the 
prosecutorial use of ethnic adjustments. "What these so-called experts do is 
say that, because people of color are not as likely to score as well on IQ 
tests, you should, therefore, increase their IQ scores from 5 to 15 points to 
make up for some unknown or undescribed problem in the test," explained Sanger, 
noting there is no scientific, "legal or intellectual basis for this."

Scientific or not, Sanger has documented numerous cases where such adjustments 
were employed including Hodges v. State, where the Florida Supreme Court ruled 
that the legal significance of an African-American defendant's low IQ score 
could be discounted after a prosecution expert testified, "IQ tests tend to 
underestimate particularly the intelligence of African-Americans." While this 
claim, in itself, may certainly have merit, Sanger is more concerned with its 
selective legal interpretation and application.

He cited a number of cases where the Supreme Court consistently rejected the 
adjusting of test scores on the basis of race, the most prominent being 
Washington v. Davis, where District of Columbia police officer candidates 
claimed a skills test was racially discriminatory, as African-Americans were 4 
times less likely to pass than white candidates. The high court ultimately 
concluded that, despite a Fifth Amendment equal protection component 
"prohibiting the government from invidious discrimination, it does not follow 
that a law or other official act is unconstitutional solely because it has a 
racially disproportionate impact regardless of whether it reflects a racially 
discriminatory purpose."

The African-American candidates, recounted Sanger, felt "their scores should be 
adjusted upward so they could get a job, but the Supreme Court said, 'No, we 
can't do that.' So it's sort of outrageous that you can adjust scores upward so 
you can be killed, but not so you can get a job."

In America, the racially discriminatory impact of capital punishment policy has 
been an ongoing source of outrage as well. The nonprofit Death Penalty 
Information Center reported that despite constituting only 13 % of the 
population, in 2016 41.8 % of the 2905 prisoners on death row in the United 
States - and more than a third of those executed since 1977 - were Black.

In Georgia, American Bar Association (ABA) data revealed that among all 
homicides with known suspects, those suspected of killing whites are almost 
five times as likely to be sentenced to death as those suspected of killing 
African-Americans. Similarly, in Alabama, over 82 % of those executed since 
1976 were convicted of killing white people even though more than 65 % of all 
murders each year in Alabama involve Black victims. And 80 % of the state's 
current death row population was convicted of murdering white people.

"The race-conscious use of the death penalty in Alabama has always been a 
widespread problem," said Angie Setzer, senior attorney with the Equal Justice 
Initiative, a Montgomery-based nonprofit providing legal representation to 
individuals and communities impacted by poverty and unequal treatment. Setzer 
detailed ongoing racial disparities and inequitable practices in the state's 
administration of criminal justice. "We see this playing out in the way people 
are charged and convicted, and we see this in the process of discriminatory 
jury selection," she acknowledged. "So it's occurring at all of these different 
levels in the context of a criminal case," stressed Setzer, noting the Alabama 
court system's tolerance and use of "racially biased experts is a clear example 
of this larger problem."

It is a problem compounded by the wide variety of disabilities across a range 
of categories including, but not limited to, physical, intellectual and mental, 
that capital inmates commonly suffer from. While no comprehensive accounting 
has been attempted, the Fair Punishment Project (FPP) did reveal that at least 
40 % of the death row inmates in the 16 American counties with the most 
executions suffered from intellectual disabilities, severe mental illness or 
brain damage.

Additionally, 2/3 of those on death row in the state of Oregon exhibited "signs 
of serious mental illness or intellectual impairment, endured devastatingly 
severe childhood trauma, or were not old enough to legally purchase alcohol at 
the time the offense occurred." FPP further noted the "U.S. Supreme Court has 
held that regardless of the severity of the crime, imposition of the death 
penalty upon a juvenile or an intellectually disabled person, both classes of 
individuals who suffer from impaired mental and emotional capacity relative to 
typically developed adults, would be so disproportionate as to violate his or 
her 'inherent dignity as a human being.'"

Consistently, the 2002 Atkins ruling and its interpretive evolution a dozen 
years later in Hall v. Florida produced a more structured and clinical 
framework for both defining and determining intellectual disabilities in 
capital cases. This framework held that those with "significantly subaverage 
intellectual functioning" - generally yet not strictly recognized as an IQ of 
70 or below - were ineligible for the death penalty provided they met 2 
additional criteria, these being compelling "deficits in adaptive functioning" 
and the "onset of these deficits during the development period." In other 
words, a low IQ could combine with certain inabilities to socially function and 
reason within one's environment, particularly those stemming from an earlier 
developmental stage like childhood, to prohibit a defendant's eligibility for 
the death penalty.

But with ethnic adjustments, prosecutors are finding a way to artificially 
inflate these IQ scores in order to execute more African-American and Latinx 
capital inmates. Such controversial tactics are a particularly pressing concern 
for Sanger, who commonly represents African-American capital defendants with 
serious intellectual disabilities stemming from traumatic childhoods.

"We're not taking the worst of the worst, which is what the death penalty is 
supposed to be all about, which is to get the people who committed the worst 
crimes with intentionality and evil," said Sanger. "Instead, we're getting the 
people who are marginalized in society, and, ironically, they are often the 
same people who are subject to these same deprivations that would, in fact, 
cause them to have deficits in their IQ scores and adaptive behavior.

"If you look at the demographics of our death row inmates, you're taking a 
segment of society from a lower economic strata that disproportionately suffers 
from mental health issues and has an IQ that is close to the limit or below the 
limit," continued Sanger, noting that "maybe those 5 or 10 points that pushed 
them down there [below the score of 70] might have been a result of their 
exposure to these environmental issues.

"But you don't add them back in."

(source: atlantablackstar.com)

**********

The Former Death Row Prisoner Making Rings for the Exonerated----Kirk 
Bloodsworth makes custom jewelry for men who went to jail for crimes they 
didn't commit.



Dennis Maher isn't the kind of guy who typically wears rings. He's a diesel 
mechanic for waste management; if he were to wear them, he might lose a finger. 
He doesn't even wear his wedding band.

In the past year or so, though, when he's asked to talk at a university or to 
attend a reception, he'll slip a 28-gram sterling silver ring on his right 
hand. The word "exoneree" is engraved on its face. People will ask him 
questions about it and, if they don't already know, he'll have to tell them how 
he spent 19 years, 2 months, and 29 days in prison for violent sex crimes that 
he didn't commit. He was exonerated, and became a free man on April 3rd, 2003, 
1 of the thousands of men and women who have been wrongfully convicted in this 
country.

Maher, who is 57 and lives in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, about an hour northwest 
of Boston, compares his ring to a Super Bowl championship ring - and it's as 
big as one, too. But there's a key difference between them. "To me, it's worth 
more," he said recently. "I didn't get paid for what was done to me. And I 
survived. And I wear it with pride."

The ring is one of dozens that have been hand-made for exonerees by Kirk 
Bloodsworth, the first US death row prisoner to be cleared through DNA. In 
fact, it was on death row that he dreamed of receiving a Super Bowl 
championship ring from the football commissioner. He never expected that years 
later, he would take up silversmithing and make his own commemorative rings for 
fellow exonerees.

And while commemorative rings have long been used to mark an important event or 
person, Bloodsworth???s rings may be unique by marking the painful experience 
of wrongful incarceration. He has promised to give a ring to each exoneree in 
the US, at no cost to them, by raising money online and from friends; each ring 
costs $100 to make.

"Why shouldn't they get something that signifies what they endured?" 
Bloodsworth said. "A lot of these people have spent many, many years in a place 
where they didn't belong."

More than 2,000 people in the US have been exonerated for crimes they did not 
commit, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. Some have been 
cleared by DNA, others through investigations and hard-won court battles by 
attorneys working with law clinics throughout the country. The majority of 
those who have been wrongfully convicted were the victims of mistaken identity, 
perjury or false confession, or official misconduct.

Bloodsworth spent 8 years, 10 months and 19 days in prison after being 
sentenced to death in Baltimore, Maryland, for the 1984 rape and murder of 
9-year-old Dawn Hamilton. He was proven innocent by DNA in 1993, and granted a 
full pardon by Maryland's governor a year later. In 2003, DNA testing linked 
another inmate who had been serving time in the same prison as Bloodworth to 
the girl's brutal killing.

After his release from prison, he worked as a fisherman, driving trucks, as a 
machinist, and for a now-defunct nonprofit committed to criminal justice 
reform, the Justice Project. But about four years ago, inspired by a girlfriend 
who gave him a set of beading equipment, he began to dabble in jewelry making. 
One day, he was inspired to look up the craft online and came across a video on 
how to make silver rings, by Lance Johnson. That was just the beginning of his 
journey into silversmithing. "I watched YouTube videos for a year," he said by 
phone from his home in eastern Pennsylvania. He figures he watched several 
hundred clips from jewelers like Soham Harrison and Peter Keep, all the while 
trying out the techniques that he was learning about from watching them.

"I never thought in my late 50s I'd be doing this," he said. "I wish I had 
discovered this years ago." He formed his own silversmithing workshop, Bloods 
Stones Creations, in 2015, after making his 1st piece of jewelry: a silver 
band. Today his collection includes rings, earrings, bracelets, and pendants, 
one of which is shaped like a DNA strand.

In 2016, he attended the acclaimed Revere Academy of Jewelry Arts in San 
Francisco, California, where he studied with master goldsmith and founder of 
the school Alan Revere.

"The people who receive them as a token have been through hell and for no 
reason at all."

In an email, Revere praised his former student's efforts to make rings for 
exonerees. "I find this to be absolutely fascinating," he wrote. "We jewelers 
have been making commemorative items for thousands of years, but this is a 
first. The people who receive them as a token have been through hell, and for 
no reason at all."

The design of the rings is exacting: The words "exoneree" or "death row 
exoneree" are engraved on their faces over a prison cell door; a teardrop 
represents the exoneree's wrongful conviction; and 3 drops of blood represent 
the person's past, present, and future. The rings are made in batches from an 
original mold and cast in wax by a former teacher in California, then shipped 
back to Bloodsworth to be finished and signed. It takes about a month to make 
each batch. The biggest challenge of making them may be having to get them the 
right size for each person. Rings can be customized by the wearer.

(source: racked.com)