[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.H., CONN., N.J., PENN., FLA.

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 27


TEXAS:

East Texas dragging death killer loses federal court appeal



A prisoner on Texas death row for the dragging death of a man nearly 2 decades 
ago in East Texas has lost a federal court appeal, moving him a step close to 
execution for the hate crime.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week turned down an appeal from 
43-year-old John William King, condemned for the June 1998 slaying of James 
Byrd, Junior.

Evidence showed the 49-year-old Byrd was chained by his ankles to the back of a 
pickup truck and dragged along a road outside Jasper in East Texas. Prosecutors 
said Byrd was killed simply because he was black. Attorneys for King argued his 
trial lawyers were deficient. The 5th Circuit disagreed.

1 of 2 other white men convicted has been executed. The 3rd man is serving 
life.

The killing inspired the Mathew Shepherd and James Byrd, Junior Hate Crimes 
Act, which President Barack Obama signed into law in 2009.

It expanded hate crimes laws to include those motivated by a victim's gender, 
race, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

(source: KTRE news)

*********

Texas bishop says Catholics are shrinking away from death penalty support



Bishop Michael Olson of Fort Worth believes Catholic bishops in Texas are 
slowly gaining momentum in reducing Catholic support for the death penalty in a 
state that is widely considered ground zero for the use of capital punishment 
in the U.S.

His remarks came in an interview with Crux just days after Governor Greg Abbott 
granted clemency to Thomas Whitaker less than an hour before he was scheduled 
to be executed - a decision praised by the state's Catholic bishops.

Whitaker will now serve life in prison without the possibility of parole as 
punishment for assisting in the 2003 murder of his mother and brother, and the 
attempted murder of his father, Kent. His father was the leading petitioner for 
clemency, leading the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to make a unanimous 
recommendation to the governor to grant the request.

The board said Kent Whitaker maintained that he "would be victimized again if 
the state put to death his last remaining immediate family member."

Abbott, who is Catholic, has been a long-time defender of the death penalty - a 
position maintained by an overwhelming majority of Texans. Recent joint polling 
from the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune found that 73 % of 
respondents either somewhat or strongly supported the death penalty and only 21 
% opposed the practice.

Despite such strong public support, Olson says he believes this decision by 
Abbott is an encouraging sign that Catholics are beginning to shift in their 
support on the issue - though he cautions that there is much work to be done.

"I think at least we're making headway in fostering greater awareness among our 
people about the ineffectiveness of the death penalty to curtail crime and to 
fulfill even the classical understanding of its permissibility," he told Crux.

"Our recent letter as Texas Bishops also talked about how its use is a failure 
to witness to the greater truths about the dignity of human life," he added.

Olson said that the issue of capital punishment, however, isn't the only issue 
where Catholic opinions on public policy fail to line-up with the Church, and 
he lamented the fact that too often views are informed by secular influences 
rather than Church teaching.

"The big challenge we face as the Church and as bishops entrusted with the 
authentic teaching mission, is that Catholics tend to identify not so 
differently from the secular mainstream populace," said Olson.

He continued: "They do this not just exclusively on this issue, but on other 
issues involving the common good, such as immigration and refugees. That's the 
challenge we have as a state conference and as a local church."

One demographic Olson believes is leading the shift in this debate is young 
people.

"I see a greater attentiveness to this issue of capital punishment as a part of 
our Catholic pro-life witness, especially with the younger people," he told 
Crux.

Olson - who has become an active Twitter user since being named bishop of Fort 
Worth in January 2014 - used the medium both to raise awareness of the Whitaker 
case and also to express his gratitude to Abbott for his decision to grant 
clemency.

As far as its overall value, he renders a mixed verdict, but says to the extent 
that social media is being used to welcome people into the Church and at times 
alter public perception of it, then that should be welcomed.

"It's a contemporary tool but it's deceptively very limited," said Olson. "It 
has a high impact, but as part of a means for providing the substance of 
Catholic teaching, social media is always going to limp. I think it's good at 
creating intentional communities but these communities are without a high 
degree of commitment for belonging. And at times social media can form not a 
community, but a mob, a violent mob.

"As long as we use social media to invite people back into the communion formed 
by the Eucharist within the mission of the Church, it's a valuable tool," he 
concluded.

For several decades now, internal debates have swirled over how the Church 
should engage pro-life issues ranging from abortion to euthanasia to capital 
punishment.

Olson told Crux that the "seamless garment of life" philosophy can often be 
applied without making critical distinctions, and that approach is not 
identical to a "consistent ethic of life" which he champions.

"The consistent ethic of life has to do with recognizing the inherent dignity 
of each and every human person," said Olson. "As St. Pope John Paul II always 
reminded us, it's important for Catholics to know our anthropology. We 
understand and flourish as human persons in the context of human society."

"One can understand the importance of life issues, such as abortion, 
contraception, married life, euthanasia, assisted suicide, the distinction 
between ordinary and extraordinary means, but we also have to learn to make 
critical distinctions in light of our belonging to society as more than 
abstract individuals," he added.

Helping Catholics learn how to make these distinctions - while at the same time 
offering a consistent and more compelling vision of human society seems to be 
Olson's main priority in speaking out on these issues at the moment.

"The first society to which we belong is the family," he concluded.

(source: cruxnow.com)

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

How a conservative Collin County state rep showed what mercy means in death 
penalty justice



Without much talk and quite literally at the last minute, Greg Abbott last week 
did what no Texas governor has done in more than a decade: He commuted a 
condemned man's death sentence.

This is no small deal for what opponents of capital punishment like to call 
"the Texas death machine" and "the nation's busiest death chamber." Mercy 
towards heinous criminals is not a quality that gets a lot of political 
traction in this state.

Thomas Bartlett Whitaker's crime was certainly a terrible one. In 2003, when he 
was 23 years old, he engineered the murders of his own mother and brother, 
allegedly for an inheritance payoff. His father was also shot in the attack, 
but survived.

The father, Kent Whitaker, has publicly forgiven his son, and asked that his 
life be spared. And in recommending clemency, the Texas Board of Pardons and 
Paroles noted that it was not Whitaker, but a friend he recruited - and who 
received a lesser sentence - who actually pulled the trigger in the killings.

Thomas Whitaker himself has reportedly been that rare commodity, a "model" 
inmate, cited by corrections officers and other inmates as an encouraging and 
calming influence on death row.

And Whitaker, in accepting the commutation barely an hour before his scheduled 
execution last Thursday, waived any right to appeal for future parole. He will 
die in prison.

All of those were reasons cited by Abbott in making his decision - the first 
time a Texas death sentence has been commuted since 2007.

Something else that jumped out at me, though, was mention of a particular name 
in the behind-the-scenes lobbying effort on Whitaker's behalf: State Rep. Jeff 
Leach, Republican from Collin County.

Even in this reddest of states, Leach's conservative bona fides are solid: he's 
pro-life, pro-gun rights, tough on crime and border security. Like the majority 
of voters in his suburban district, he's a committed capital punishment 
adherent.

"I'm still a proponent of the death penalty in Texas," Leach said Monday, 
speaking from a plane that had just landed in Lubbock, where he was traveling 
for business. Leach did not draw a primary opponent, which pretty much 
guarantees he'll be re-elected to the 67th District. "The way I view it is, 
you've got to take it on a case-by-case basis."

It's the 2nd time I've talked to Leach about his efforts to secure commutation 
for a death row inmate. He has urged clemency for Jeffery Lee Wood, a Kerrville 
man sentenced to die for a robbery-murder in which he waited in the car while 
another man killed a store clerk.

At one point, Leach visited Wood in prison. Wood, sentenced under Texas' law of 
parties, won a stay of execution in 2016 while his case is on appeal.

Leach doesn't accept that he was instrumental in persuading Abbott to grant 
Whitaker's clemency request - the governor "makes these decisions by himself," 
Leach said - but he confirms that he communicated with Abbott's staff about the 
case.

On Thursday, after the tense execution clock countdown was halted by the 
governor's order, Leach tweeted, "Our Governor is amazing! This is the right 
decision. With this act of mercy, justice has been served."

"Law and order pro-life conservatives should not be afraid to review these 
cases," Leach said. "This is one of those issues where the right thing is the 
right thing, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat."

Leach is anxious not to overstate his role in Whitaker's case: the seven board 
members of Pardons and Paroles issued a nearly unheard-of unanimous vote to 
commute the sentence. And no one has played a greater role than Whitaker's 
father, the surviving victim of the murder plot, a deeply religious man who has 
said he does not want to see his remaining son die.

And as Leach points out, he has quietly supported imposition of capital 
punishment for worst-of-the-worst crimes. He shed no tears (I didn't either), 
when John Battaglia was put to death Feb. 1 for shooting his 2 daughters to 
death in 2001 as their distraught mother listened on the phone.

Yet in a state as determinedly tough-on-crime as this one, there's a hint of 
the maverick in Leach's position. I'm sure plenty of lawmakers - conservatives 
included - cringe at the anti-death penalty movement's ideological depiction of 
Texas as a bloodthirsty "death machine" where as many executions as possible 
are carried out without regard to specifics, or even to culpability.

They may cringe, but few of them risk standing up to it. Going to bat for 
people on death row isn't much of a winning political strategy, even in a lot 
of Texas' blue-to-purple districts.

In a follow-up statement applauding Abbott's "monumental" decision in the 
Whitaker case, Leach said the governor's decision "has proven that justice and 
mercy are not mutually exclusive" and that it shows "what a tough but smart 
criminal justice system can look like."

I disagree with Rep. Leach on a lot of issues. But we should all admire 
political courage.

And in this state, those are brave words.

(source: Commentary, Jacquielynn Floyd, Dallas Morning News)

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

Kountze man faces possible death sentence this week in child's 
death----Prosecutors say the victim was tortured to death

A group of men and women who listened to detailed testimony about torture that 
led to the death of a 4-year-old child is hearing testimony today that will be 
use to decide if the man responsible should get the death penalty. The jury 
Friday took less than 3 hours of deliberation to find Jason Wade Delacerda 
guilty of capital murder in the death of Breonna Nochol Loftin. The young 
victim had broken bones, bruises and burns when she died in 2011.

The 1st witness called by the prosecution in the punishment phase is forensic 
psychiatrist Dr. Lisa Douget. She was called because she interviewed Delacerda 
twice following his arrest. She said she determined Delacerda was a, 
"moderate-to-high risk," of future violent behavior. Defense attorney Ryan 
Gertz said his client has been a model inmate since his incarceration. He said 
the doctor's assessment is not accurate because it does not take into account 
his behavior since he was taken into custody.

The state brought up Delacerda's previous convictions which include drug 
possession, theft and trespassing. Defense Attorney Gertz said that none of 
Delacerda's previous convictions are felonies and none are violent crimes. The 
defense pointed out that all of his convictions are at least 10 years old.

The state called witnesses to the stand to testify about accusations made 
against Delacerda that did not result in a conviction. Amanda Henderson, a 
neighbor of Delacerda, testified that Delacerda had a knife fight with a man 
and was not arrested. A Lumberton police officer testified about arresting 
Delacerda for marijuana possession. The jury then broke for lunch.

Delecerda would be the first person in a Hardin County case to receive the 
death penalty since the 1980's if the jury sends him to death row. The last 
person a Hardin County jury sent to death row was Robert Streetman who was 
convicted in the 1982 shooting death of Christine Baker.

The trial is held before District Court Judge Steven Thomas.

(source: 12newsnow.com)








NEW HAMPSHIRE:

Senate bill would abolish death penalty in New Hampshire



A new effort to repeal New Hampshire's death penalty has bipartisan support.

If passed, the bill would change the penalty for capital murder to life in 
prison without the possibility for parole.

It would not change the fate for Michael Addison, the state's only death row 
inmate. Addison was convicted of murdering Manchester Police Officer Michael 
Briggs in 2006.

Addison has been the only person sentenced to death in the Granite State since 
the 1930s.

Historically, bills to ban the death penalty it have failed in the state 
Senate, failing by just 1 vote in both 2014 and 2016.

However, the legislation introduced earlier this month appears to have enough 
support, with 13 senators sponsoring the bill.

"People have come to realize that the death penalty is just a failed public 
policy. It doesn't work for law enforcement. It doesn't work for victims. It's 
expensive. Mistakes are made," said Rep. Renny Cushing, D-Hampton.

Cushing has dealt with his own personal losses; his father and brother-in-law 
were murdered.

"Filling another coffin doesn't bring anybody back. It just kind of increases 
the cycles of pain and violence," he said.

State Sen. Lou D'Allesando, D-Manchester, has supported capital punishment 
since the 1970s.

"It's a very narrow death penalty. It isn't used very often. But it's served as 
a deterrent for years," he said. "You don't bring dead people back who were 
killed by someone. That's another situation. Think of the family of Officer 
Briggs and the lasting effect it has on their family."

The bill will go to a committee hearing before the Senate votes at a later 
date. It would also have to pass in the state House of Representatives.

(source: WMUR news)








CONNECTICUT:

Sharp Debate Expected As Lawmakers Consider New Chief Justice Of State Supreme 
Court



Justice Andrew McDonald is either a judicial activist with his own agenda or a 
highly competent justice with impeccable credentials.

With that dichotomy, legislators expect a lengthy public hearing Monday as they 
argue whether McDonald should be the next chief justice of the Connecticut 
Supreme Court - the most powerful position in the state judiciary.

McDonald's nomination is among the most controversial in recent years because 
he is a liberal Democrat and longtime ally of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, a 2-term 
governor who has tangled with Republicans on numerous issues. Some Republicans 
believe that McDonald is a judicial activist, citing his vote to eliminate the 
death penalty after many legislators said the penalty should remain for the 
convicted killers in the Cheshire home invasion in July 2007.

During debates on the House and Senate floors after the killings of 3 members 
of the family of Dr. William Petit, legislators said the death penalty should 
be eliminated only "prospectively" - meaning that all convicted killers on 
death row should remain there. But McDonald and other justices ruled that the 
law was unconstitutional, and now none of the inmates are on death row.

Some lawmakers say Monday's hearing is likely to be longer than the grilling of 
Justice Richard N. Palmer, who wrote the majority opinion eliminating the death 
penalty in a 4-3 vote that was joined by McDonald.

After some heated debate, Palmer was approved last year for another term on the 
court by a narrow margin, 19-16 on a largely party-line vote, in the state 
Senate. Lawmakers say that McDonald, too, could be subject to a close vote in a 
Senate that is tied at 18-18 for the 1st time in more than 100 years.

"There will be a lot of sound and fury, and he squeaks in," predicted Deputy 
House Speaker Robert Godfrey, a Danbury Democrat who is among the 
longest-serving legislators.

The current chief justice, Chase Rogers, had a relatively quiet renomination 
process in 2015 when the state House of Representatives approved her 139-6 and 
the state Senate voted unanimously. McDonald, too, was approved by wide margins 
in the House and Senate when he was first nominated to the court 5 years ago. 
But McDonald has been involved in politics more than Rogers through the years, 
and the chief justice position is more high profile.

If approved, McDonald would be the 1st openly gay chief justice in the country.

Sen. Beth Bye, who also is openly gay, said McDonald's personal life factors 
into his nomination - even though she says it should not be a factor.

"Andrew has been in the forefront of the LGBT fight for more than a decade," 
Bye said. "On balance, given his qualifications, there should be no worries. 
When people don't agree, they look for other motives or reasons. He is 
intellectually and temperamentally an excellent Supreme Court justice."

Some potentially key voters said they were still undecided on McDonald's 
nomination. Sen. Craig Miner, a Litchfield Republican, said he had not yet 
formulated an opinion.

Sen. Joan Hartley, a longtime swing voter who has broken with her Democratic 
colleagues on budget and other issues, said, "No, I'm not on the [judiciary] 
committee."

The committee's co-chairman, Republican Sen. John Kissel of Enfield, said the 
broad questioning of McDonald could cover his state Senate career, his time as 
Malloy's chief counsel, and "decisions, dissents, and footnotes" during his 
past 5 years as a justice. He said the vote will come down to a decision by 
legislators on whether McDonald is "an activist or a strict constructionist."

Kissel added, "I have an open mind, but philosophically I'm not in favor of 
activist judges."

But he said he has not yet determined whether he believes McDonald is an 
activist.

Kissel said that the judiciary committee, and then the full legislature, will 
be making a highly important decision.

"Justice McDonald is a young man," Kissel said. "He can be chief justice for 20 
years."

Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney, a New Haven Democrat, said that 
McDonald's nomination should be approved.

"If there is any justice in this world or in the General Assembly, Andrew 
McDonald will not have a problem in confirmation," Looney said. "There is no 
legitimate objection to his appointment as chief justice. His experience in the 
last 15 years is unique for a public official in that he has served at the 
highest levels of the legislature as chair of the judiciary committee, in the 
executive branch as chief counsel to the governor and on the state Supreme 
Court. No one else can match that record of public service in all 3 branches."

Sen. Ted Kennedy Jr. said he is not expecting to recuse himself from McDonald's 
nomination due to the ongoing controversy surrounding the high-profile 
conviction of Michael Skakel, who was charged in the beating death of 
15-year-old Martha Moxley in 1975 in the upscale Belle Haven section of 
Greenwich. Skakel, whose case is awaiting Supreme Court action, is related by 
marriage to the family of Robert F. Kennedy, but he is not directly related to 
Ted Kennedy.

"I have no stake in the Skakel case," Kennedy told The Courant. "Media outlets 
like to characterize Michael as a Kennedy cousin when all I want is for justice 
to be done. ... I think I can be impartial."

A spokesman for Kennedy said later that the state's ethics office said there 
was no need for Kennedy to recuse himself because he is not related to Skakel.

Sen. Len Suzio, a conservative Republican from Meriden, met privately with 
McDonald and a judicial aide at the state Capitol complex on a variety of 
issues. A member of the judiciary committee, Suzio said he had not made up his 
mind yet on the nomination, saying he needs to learn more from the questioning 
during Monday's hearing.

Suzio said that he talked to McDonald about the death penalty and the 
controversies around public school financing that led to a contentious, 12-year 
legal battle that eventually went to the Supreme Court. The court ruled, 4-3, 
that the current school financing system is constitutional. Many of those 
issues are expected to come up during the hearing.

Suzio said that some of his colleagues expressed surprise that McDonald had 
asked to meet with him.

"It's important for me to understand the mindset of our jurists," Suzio said. 
"I'm a person who believes in a strict reading of the Constitution. You can't 
change the meaning of it every 30 or 40 years to match social whims."

Suzio added, "In the judiciary committee last year, I asked Justice Palmer some 
questions because he talked about evolving social norms on what's cruel and 
unusual as part of the consideration of the death penalty. I have concerns 
about that. ... When the legislature passes a law, they have the right to 
expect that the jurists are going to honor the meaning of it as it was intended 
and not adjust it to the circumstances 50 years from now. For consistency and 
respect for the law, we have to stick as close as we can to the original 
intent."

(source: Hartford Courant)








NEW JERSEY:

NJ death penalty: These GOP lawmakers want to bring it back



President Donald Trump isn't the only one thinking out loud about capital 
punishment.

In New Jersey -- the birthplace of the electric chair -- a handful of 
Republican lawmakers want the state to bring back the death penalty for certain 
crimes.

The last execution in New Jersey took place in 1963. The state abolished 
capital punishment in 2007 in favor of life in prison with no parole.

Capital punishment is currently authorized in 31 states, by the federal 
government and the military. For a story about the stay of execution granted to 
an Alabama man, watch the video at the top of the page. Only 3 federal inmates 
have been executed in the United States since the federal death penalty was 
reinstated in 1988

Trump reportedly has said he would love to have a law to execute all drug 
dealers in the U.S., though he's privately admitted it would probably be 
impossible to get such a harsh measure passed, according to the Axios news 
site.

Attempts to rejuvenate capital punishment in New Jersey have been ongoing, with 
3 Jersey Shore legislators -- Assemblymen Ronald Dancer and Ned Thomson and 
Sen. Robert Singer -- among those with bills that goal in the new legislative 
session.

Democrats who control the Senate and Assembly haven't shown an interest in 
allowing the bills to receive consideration, but Thomson in a telephone 
interview Monday said he's hopeful.

"It's really tough to read the temperature of leadership's willingness to have 
this discussion, but we should definitely talk about it,'' Thomson said. "The 
crimes we've seen of late, we can't allow them to continue without deterrent.''

In all, there are 5 bills or proposed constitutional amendments that would 
restore the death penalty here in special cases of homicides, such as:

When the victim was a law enforcement officer

When the victim was under 18 and a sex crime was involved

When the murder occurred during an act of terrorism

When the killer had a previous murder conviction

When multiple people are murdered

8 states carried out executions in 2017, a spike from recent years. Among them 
were Arkansas, which executed 4 prisoners over 8 days in April before its 
supply of lethal injection drugs expired, and Florida, which had halted 
executions for 18 months after the Supreme Court found its sentencing procedure 
unconstitutional.

A 2015 Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind poll found that 57 % of New 
Jersey residents favored the death penalty for certain crimes, while 36 % 
opposed.

(source: app.com)








PENNSYLVANIA:

GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Wants Death Penalty For School Shooters



Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Wagner says he'll pursue a mandatory 
death penalty for any school shooter who kills someone, although legal analysts 
say that's unconstitutional.

Wagner, a state senator, said Monday that his message is "if someone kills one 
of our children, we will kill them." Wagner is running in a 3-way primary for 
the GOP nomination to challenge Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf???s re-election bid.

Wagner's comments came in the wake of the Parkland, Florida school shooting 
that killed 17 people.

Pennsylvania hasn't executed anyone since 1999. Wolf announced a death penalty 
moratorium soon after taking office in 2015.

Robert Dunham of the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center 
says the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that juries must be able to 
consider factors that might call for mercy.

(source: Associated Press)








FLORIDA:

How required unanimity changed the death penalty



In January 2016, a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court changed a key requirement 
for a judge in Florida to hand down a death sentence to a person convicted of a 
capital crime.

The court ruled that Florida's sentencing procedure was unconstitutional under 
the 6th Amendment, which guarantees the right to a trial by jury.

On Death Row----347 Inmates are on death row in Florida. 3 are women.

44.9----The average age at time of execution.

27.4----The average age at offense for executed inmates.

Over the past decade there have been 32 executions in Florida. Since the death 
penalty was reinstated in 1976, 96 inmates have been executed.

Effective after the Hurst v. Florida decision and a similar order by the state 
Supreme Court in October 2016, juries must be unanimous in recommending the 
death penalty before a judge can send a convicted defendant to death row.

Before the ruling, only a supermajority vote (at least 10 of 12 jurors) was 
required for that sentence.

In response to the requirement for a unanimous death recommendation, the 4th 
Judicial Circuit developed a concise written procedure to determine whether the 
state attorney will ask for the death penalty or a sentence of life in prison 
without parole when a defendant is charged with a capital crime.

"Our process is modeled loosely on the way the Department of Justice handles 
death penalty decisions,' said Mac Heavener, chief assistant state attorney and 
direct supervisor of the Special Prosecution, Special Assault and Homicide 
divisions.

The purpose is to assure fair, uniform, efficient and transparent handling of 
homicide cases and to provide appropriate review of how homicide cases are 
investigated, charged and prosecuted.

"We have a number of experienced prosecutors reviewing cases and the policy is 
applied to every murder indictment," Heavener said.

The assistant state attorneys who comprise the Grand Jury Indictment Review 
Panel act in a fact-finding role to State Attorney Melissa Nelson, who makes 
the decision whether to seek the death penalty.

The 9-member panel of division chiefs and assistant state attorneys considers 
the facts of each case, based on relevant Florida law within a framework of 
consistent and even-handed application of the law.

Under the policy, arbitrary or legally impermissible factors - including a 
defendant's race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or religion - do not 
play a role in the decision to seek or waive the death penalty.

"The panel provides quality control in terms of the strength of the case. It 
involves more people in a thoughtful, methodical process," said Heavener.

"We want to make the right decision, using the right process, for the right 
reasons."

Of the 347 people currently on death row in Florida, 53 were sentenced in the 
4th Circuit: 47 in Duval County, 6 in Clay County and none in Nassau County.

(source: Jax Daily Record)