[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., OHIO, ARK.

[Rick Halperin]

Feb, 18



PENNSYLVANIA:

Death penalty to be sought in murder of university student



Prosecutors have announced their intention to seek the death penalty in the 
case of a man charged with killing a University of Pittsburgh student in her 
off-campus apartment last year.

21-year-old Matthew Darby is accused of having used a claw hammer and 2 knives 
in October to kill 20-year-old Alina Sheykhet, his ex-girlfriend. He fled and 
was captured in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Allegheny County prosecutors said capital punishment would be warranted if 
Darby is convicted of 1st-degree murder because the murder occurred during 
commission of other felonies.

They also cited the defendant's criminal history and the fact that the victim 
had a protection-from-abuse order against him stemming from an earlier break-in 
at her apartment.

Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has imposed a moratorium on use of the death penalty.

(source: Associated Press)








OHIO:

Ohio AG appealing decision that would keep child killer off death row



The Ohio Attorney General is appealing a decision by the U.S. Sixth District 
Court of Appeals that would keep a convicted child killer off of death row.

The A.G.'s Office filed the appeal Friday, seeking a review of the ruling by 
the 3-judge panel that determined that Danny Lee Hill was too mentally 
deficient to face the death penalty.

"I am very grateful to Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins for asking for 
the appeal and to our Attorney General Mike DeWine for filing the appeal," said 
Miriam Fife, the mother of Hill's victim.

Raymond Fife was 12 years old when he was killed in Warren. His mother last saw 
him alive on Sept. 10, 1985 when he left on his bike and headed to a Boy Scout 
meeting.

Prosecutors and police say Danny Lee Hill, who was 18 at the time, and Timothy 
Combs, who was 17, attacked, raped, tortured and murdered Fife.

Both were convicted of aggravated murder and several other charges.

Since Combs was a juvenile he was sentenced to life in prison. Hill was sent to 
death row.

Hill's attorneys, however, have filed numerous motions saying his IQ is low and 
he is too intellectually disabled to be executed. A federal appeals court 
agreed with them earlier this month.

But Watkins has told Fox 8 the state courts have already heard Lee's claims and 
upheld the death sentence.

(source: Fox News)








ARKANSAS:

Life and Death Row: the Mass Execution - a valiant, important attempt to tell 
an astonishing story



The state of Arkansas' attempt to execute 8 men in 10 days is put under the 
spotlight by BB3's award-winning documentary strand

The Life and Death Row strand is hard to pin down - part true crime, part 
thought-provoking, almost campaigning documentary, previous series have focused 
on particular crimes, and the individuals (both victims and perpetrators) 
involved.

The latest instalment, Arkansas - a run of 4 films - takes a look at the legal 
mechanics of capital punishment in the USA, focusing on the unprecedented move 
by the state of Arkansas in 2017 to schedule 8 executions in 10 days in order 
to beat an expiry date on Midazolam, 1 of the drugs used in lethal injections.

It's as compelling as ever - there's real power in its intimate, on-the-ground 
approach, as the programme-makers gain access to various interested parties: 
the Arkansas governor, the prisoners, their lawyers and families, relatives of 
the victims. They also intercut views from ordinary Arkansas residents, who 
each have their own idea of justice, and whether it is currently being done in 
their state.

And the film-makers do ask difficult questions. When Susan Khani - whose 
mother, Jane Daniel, was killed in 1992 - discusses the upcoming execution of 
the man who was convicted of her mother's murder, she says she hopes that, 
after 25 years, the man's death will "give the family peace". "Do you think you 
will get that?" asks a voice off-camera. "Oh yeah!" comes the enthusiastic 
reply.

There's an intense frustration, though, inherent in the events this series is 
covering. Many people are up in arms, it tells us, because these executions are 
being rushed through in order to beat an arbitrary deadline, and will involve a 
drug that may inflict unnecessary suffering. There are also suggestions that 
the scheduling is political grandstanding, a statement of intent by Arkansas 
Governor Asa Hutchinson. And of course this is something to decry.

But as the series unfolds you realise that this is not the US justice system 
malfunctioning. This is the US justice system at work. I will freely admit to a 
bias here, but it is hard to understand how the particular circumstance of 
these executions is a scandal, but the usual application of capital punishment 
is not.

Because the programme is rooted in personal testimony and experience, it is 
light on facts, so here are some: there are currently 2,816 people (99% are 
men) on death row, but in 2017, only 23 were executed. On average, those 23 
people spent 19 years waiting to be killed.

It's important to know this to know that the experience of the prisoners and 
the families of their victims shown in the series ' many of whom have waited 
decades with the promise of an execution hanging over them - is not a blip, a 
one-off; this is the reality of capital punishment in America.

In the series we see some of the convoluted process that lawyers must go 
through to get stays of execution; judgements are handed down, challenged, 
overturned, challenged again, all by different courts or panels. But the 
glimpses we do get just beg more glaring questions: if there is enough evidence 
that someone should be granted a stay of execution, does that not undermine the 
whole legal system that handed down that execution? How was that person 
condemned to death in the first place? Why would it be OK to kill them in a few 
months' time, but not now? If the conditions under which a death sentence is 
given are so fickle, so malleable, then how can anyone ever be sure that it is 
the right, just, legal thing?

Somehow this - the programme's use of an individual story to gesture to wider 
issues - manages to be both a strength and a limitation. There is something 
unsatisfying in the way threads are picked at but never unravelled, even if you 
know it's because this is a subject that is too big, too morally muddy for 1 
programme to be able to cover it in a satisfactory way.

The Life and Death Row strand as a whole makes a valiant, important attempt, 
and the Arkansas series in particular does a lot well: it conveys both the 
sheer chaos that seems to govern this most solemn of responsibilities and the 
inadequacy of the current system, which is certainly not working for prisoners, 
but also, crucially, not for victims and their families, either.

As the attorney of 1 of the condemned men puts it, "There's nothing about 
having 10 days to plead for a man's life that's fair." He's right, except I'd 
go further - there's nothing here that's fair at all.

Life and Death Row: the Mass Execution is available on Sunday 18th February 
from 10am on BBC3 with episode one broadcasting at 9pm on BBC2

(source: Hannah Shaddock, radiotimes.com)