[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----FLA., ARIZ., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 2



FLORIDA:

Man accused of killing stepson appears before judge



A Hillsborough county stepfather who is facing charges of child abuse and 
murder, could also be met with the death penalty.

Jack Montgomery had his 1st appearance hearing Monday morning after 
investigators say he brutally beat a 7 year old to death. He's being held on a 
total of $870,000 bond. The judge agreed with prosecutors who argued the 
details of this case and Montgomery's past domestic violence issues were too 
much to ignore.

"This is a case based just legally that Mr. Montgomery is looking at the death 
penalty," said prosecutor Matthew Smith with the State Attorney's office. "He 
was taking care of those 4 children while the mother was out working a double 
shift."

Officials say Montgomery was babysitting the 4 kids at the Masters Inn hotel in 
Seffner, where the family was staying. Early Saturday morning, they believe 
Montgomery started punching his stepson, Brice Russell, and throwing him into 
furniture in the room.

When talking with investigators, Montgomery admitted to disciplining the child 
because he tried sneaking out of bed for a cookie, but claims he threw him on 
the bed and that the child was alive when he went to sleep.

Prosecutors though aren't buying his story.

"He chose to not only physically discipline this child himself repeatedly by 
punching and throwing him on the ground but threatening bodily harm upon the 2 
brothers if they did not partake and equally discipline him," said Smith.

According to an affidavit, the other children witnessed the alleged abuse. 
Prosecutors say Montgomery put Brice in bed and had the other children lay with 
him, but officials believe the child was dead by that time.

"Mr. Montgomery took the child put him in bed and had the siblings sleep with 
him while Brice was dead the entire night," he said.

A judge disagreed with Montgomery's attorney who asked for a bond no more than 
$20,000 on his murder charge and instead gave him a bond of $750,000. 
Prosecutors say his criminal past which includes domestic violence should play 
a role in whether Montgomery should walk free before his trial.

(source: Fox News)

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

Death penalty sought in Jupiter triple homicide case



The Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office will seek the death penalty 
against a 2nd man arrested in a Jupiter triple homicide on Super Bowl Sunday.

Marcus Steward, 25, is charged with 3 counts of 1st-degree murder with a 
firearm, 1 count of attempted 1st-degree murder with a firearm, and 1 count of 
grand theft of a motor vehicle.

Police arrested Christopher Vasata for the same charges in March.

Sean Henry, 26, Brandi El-Salhy, 24, and 20-year-old Kelli Doherty were shot to 
death during a Super Bowl party on Feb. 5 on Mohawk Street in Jupiter River 
Estates.

The Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office filed a notice to seek the death 
penalty against Steward on Friday.

Jupiter police say DNA evidence linked Steward to the killings. He's currently 
being held without bond.

(source: WPTV news)








ARIZONA:

California man pleads not guilty in death of Mohave County inmate



A California man has pleaded not guilty in the death of his cellmate at Mohave 
County Jail.

Gaven Robel is charged with 1st-degree murder in the beating death of 
41-year-old Kingman resident Ryan Couch. The 2 shared a cell for a few days 
last month.

The 25-year-old Robel entered his plea Thursday in superior court.

He faces natural life in prison if convicted. Prosecutors have not said whether 
they'll seek the death penalty.

Robel originally was jailed on charges related to his alleged role in a 
Bullhead City opioid ring.

The Needles man is being held on a $5 million bond.

His next court hearing is in late February.

(source: Associated Press)








CALIFORNIA:

2018: The Year of the Executioner?



Editor's note: Kevin Cooper was convicted of a 1983 quadruple murder and 
sentenced to death in a trial in which evidence that might have exonerated him 
was withheld from the defense. His case was scrutinized in a June 19 New York 
Times column by Nicholas Kristof. Visit savekevincooper.org for more 
information.

Many years ago, Protestant pastor and poet Martin Niemoller famously wrote of 
the Nazi era:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out -

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out -

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me."

I, Kevin Cooper, am not a murderer, but I am speaking out against murder, 
whether at the hands of people or, even worse, at the hands of the government.

As this new year begins, the state of California, because of the voters' 
approval of Proposition 66, finds itself closer to resuming executions, or, in 
the words of death penalty supporters, "justice." Justice in 2018 is just like 
justice in yesteryear, especially when it comes to who lives and who dies by 
the use of capital punishment.

In my poor man's dictionary, the definition of the word "justice" is (1) the 
administration of what is just (as by assigning merited rewards or punishments; 
(2) judge; (3) the administration of law; (4) fairness; also: righteousness.

The death penalty, as we know it and as it has always been, has been proved to 
be unfair, unjust and unrighteous - morally and ethically. Consider that 
between 1973 and 2017, 160 death row inmates have been exonerated nationally, 
and a 2014 study estimated that 1 out of 25 people on death row across the 
United States are innocent. From 2000 to 2011, there were an average of 5 
exonerations a year. In 2017, there were 4. We know that some innocent people 
on death row have been executed. This is unjust, unfair and unrighteous.

The only thing truth has in common with the definition of the word "justice" in 
my poor man's dictionary is "the administration and procedure of law." Most of 
us know and understand that from what we see, read and continue to learn about 
this country and its laws and/or the administration of them and its procedures; 
none of which, in fact, has anything to do with real justice.

Whoever is administering justice, and their version or understanding of 
justice, is what really matters. For example, Democrats and Republicans, both 
of whom claim to want to stand for justice, do so according to their own 
political ideology, which is as different as night and day. This will not 
change in 2018, just as the ideologies of women and men won???t change when it 
comes to certain things.

As I continue to live in this modern-day plantation against my will, as certain 
people seek their form of "justice" against me for murders I did not commit, I 
will not be silent. Here in this inhumane place where loneliness is my best 
friend and death is my constant companion, I must do what the late civil rights 
activist Ella Baker taught many of us to do, which is to work for a cause that 
"is bigger than any organization, bigger than any group of people, and it is 
the cause of humanity. The cause is the cause that brings us together - the 
drive of the human spirit for freedom."

In my mind, there can be no bigger cause in 2018 than stopping the resumption 
of the death penalty in California. This is my cause for justice. This cause 
for which I fight has been around far too long. It is also a very real part of 
our collective humanity and freedom, as well as part of our inhumanity and 
chattel slavery, which certain death penalty supporters refuse to acknowledge.

In this country, rich white man's justice always has been poor black man's 
grief. Within this grief has been the unjust use of the death penalty in all of 
its various forms. So in 2018, this fight, this cause to end capital 
punishment, must continue, and it will. Whether advocates call it justice, 
retribution, revenge or even God's will, it is only being used against its 
poorest people, especially its minorities.

As an innocent man sitting here on San Quentin's death row, I have learned that 
"justice" for those who sent me here in 1985 is the same "justice" they seek in 
2018, which is my murder at the hands of the state. They don't care if I am 
tortured by lethal poison, or that my family will suffer just as theirs has 
suffered, or that a crime against humanity will be committed - against me by 
them - or that what they support is honestly against everything their Christian 
God stands for. They are pained by the brutal torture and execution of Jesus 
but willingly, often enthusiastically, endorse exacting that same punishment of 
execution on others today.

All they know is that I was convicted of murder - though wrongfully convicted - 
and now they want to have their red, white and blue poison pumped into my black 
body until I am no more.

Real justice for me, my family, friends and supporters is my release from this 
hell and/or a new trial so the whole truth can be exposed to the world, 
detailing what the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and district 
attorney have done to me from 1983 through today, from planting, destroying and 
tampering with evidence that could have proved my innocence before and after my 
trial to continuing to fight against the advanced DNA tests that could prove my 
innocence and point to the real killers.

Real justice for the families of the victims in this case is finding and 
prosecuting the real killers. Real justice is having Gov. Jerry Brown grant me 
an innocence hearing before the state executes an innocent man - me.

The law enforcement people and prosecutors in my case do not seek justice. They 
seek closure. They believe my execution would end this case. I believe it 
wouldn't.

I do want to get out of this prison, but whatever happens to me, as long as I 
live, I will continue to stand up and speak out against the death penalty in 
this state and in this country. And if I am executed, an innocent man, I know 
there will be people left to speak out for me and others like me, condemned to 
die in this profoundly flawed system of "justice."

(source: truthdig.com)








USA:

Will 2018 Be The Year The Death Penalty Dies - Again?



>From assassinations to space missions, 1968 was a year of radical firsts in 
American history. But amid all the commemorative ruckus over the 50th 
anniversary of that seminal year, one of the most striking precedents it set 
has been largely forgotten: 1968 was the 1st year in the history of the United 
States in which not a single prisoner was executed. Today, the nation is edging 
closer to repeating that non-feat - but this time, the reasons are quite 
different.

50 years ago, moral objections were killing the death penalty. In a nation 
shaken by the racial injustices exposed by the civil rights movement, public 
support for capital punishment plunged. Pollsters reported that more Americans 
opposed the death penalty than supported it. Several states had banned the 
practice. Leaders from Robert Kennedy to local politicians called for its 
abolition; even the federal Attorney General, the nation's top law-enforcement 
official, joined them. A Supreme Court justice wrote off death penalty 
advocates, in a 1968 ruling, as a "distinct and dwindling minority." The annual 
number of executions had already dwindled into the single digits; that year, it 
hit zero.

Finally, the Supreme Court effectively banned capital punishment altogether in 
1972. America had joined the overwhelming majority of Western nations which had 
long since stopped killing prisoners.

But it turned out the United States had only hit pause, not stop. In 1976, the 
Supreme Court reopened the door to capital punishment, and as crime rose 
throughout that decade and the next, executions came roaring back into vogue. 
By the 1990s, walloping majorities of Americans supported the death penalty. No 
serious politician could afford to stand against it. Courts doled out hundreds 
of death sentences every year. By the start of the new millennium, scores of 
prisoners were being executed each year, and thousands more waited on death row 
for their turn.

What happened? By the mid-1970s, much of middle America was deeply uneasy about 
how the very fabric of society seemed to be unraveling. Drug use and crime were 
rising; minorities, women and homosexuals were demanding more power and 
respect. And the mighty United States was humiliated, first in Vietnam and 
later by Iranian hostage-takers.

In this milieu, politicians increasingly learned that crime could pay - for 
them. From federal candidates to county sheriffs, would-be officeholders began 
vying to out-tough each other on law-and-order issues. One result was the 
extension of the death penalty to dozens of new crimes, along with cutbacks on 
appeals and other protections for capital defendants.

Today, however, Americans are once again losing their appetite for the ultimate 
sanction. The most recent Gallup poll, taken in October, found that popular 
support for capital punishment has plunged to 55 %. That's still a majority, 
but the smallest one since 1972. And even though most Americans are okay with 
executions in the abstract, they are increasingly squeamish about actually 
carrying them out. In 1999, America put 98 convicts to death; last year's total 
was 23. The number of death sentences has fallen even more dramatically, 
according to the Death Penalty Information Center, from 277 to 31. As the New 
York Times reports, even in Texas' Harris County, "the nation's undisputed 
leader in state-sanctioned killing, the year passed without a single execution 
or death sentence - the 1st time that's happened in more than 40 years."

The issue now is to a great extent a practical one: Many Americans have lost 
faith in the criminal justice system's ability to separate the innocent from 
the guilty. That's largely because of the more than 155 men and women who have 
been freed from death row in recent years, thanks to DNA testing and other 
advances. That shocking proof of the system's fallibility has made juries, 
judges, prosecutors and politicians much more wary about pushing for the 
ultimate punishment.

Even among Republicans, traditional champions of capital punishment, support is 
crumbling. An October report by a group called Conservatives Concerned About 
the Death Penalty found that dozens of Republican state lawmakers signed on to 
death penalty repeal bills in 2016 and 2017 - far more than in previous years. 
"Plagued by wrongful convictions, high costs, and delays, the death penalty has 
proven to be ineffective and incompatible with a number of core conservative 
principles," explain the study's authors.

What all this tells us is that despite how it has endured for these many 
centuries, capital punishment is not necessarily a permanent fixture of 
American justice. Worldwide, according to Amnesty International, 141 countries 
have by now stopped using the death penalty. We briefly joined them in 1968. On 
the 50th anniversary of that 1st execution-free year, we are within sight of 
becoming, once again, an execution-free nation.

(source: Vince Beiser, Huffington Post)

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

Capital Punishment Deserves a Quick Death



Alva Campbell was supposed to die on Nov. 15. That was the date chosen by the 
State of Ohio, which had convicted and condemned Mr. Campbell for murdering a 
teenager, Charles Dials, during a 1997 carjacking in Columbus.

Inside the death chamber that morning, prison officials spent more than an hour 
searching Mr. Campbell's arms and legs for a vein into which they could inject 
the lethal drug cocktail. They comforted him as they prepared to kill him, 
providing the 69-year-old with a wedge pillow to help with breathing problems 
related to his years of heavy smoking.

After about 80 minutes, they gave up and returned Mr. Campbell to his cell, 
where he sits awaiting his next date with death, now set for June 5, 2019.

The pathetic scene was a fitting symbol of the state of capital punishment in 
America in 2017, a vile practice that descends further into macabre farce even 
as it declines in use. Mr. Campbell would have been the 24th person put to 
death last year. That's less than a quarter of the 98 executions carried out in 
1999.

The number should be zero. As the nation enters 2018, the Supreme Court is 
considering whether to hear at least one case asking it to strike down the 
death penalty, once and for all, for violating the Eighth Amendment's ban on 
cruel and unusual punishments.

Whether the justices take that or another case, the facts they face will be the 
same: The death penalty is a savage, racially biased, arbitrary and pointless 
punishment that becomes rarer and more geographically isolated with every year. 
In 2017 the total number of people sitting on death rows across America fell 
for the 17th straight year. In Harris County, Tex., the nation's undisputed 
leader in state-sanctioned killing, the year passed without a single execution 
or death sentence - the 1st time that's happened in more than 40 years.

Still, Texas was 1 of just 2 states - Arkansas is the other - responsible for 
almost 1/2 of 2017's executions. And nearly 1 in 3 of the nation's 39 new death 
sentences last year were handed down in 3 counties: Riverside in California, 
Clark in Nevada and Maricopa in Arizona.

It would be tempting to conclude from this litany, which is drawn from an 
annual report by the Death Penalty Information Center, that capital punishment 
is being reserved for the most horrific crimes committed by the most 
incorrigible offenders. But it would be wrong.

The death penalty is not and has never been about the severity of any given 
crime. Mental illness, intellectual disability, brain damage, childhood abuse 
or neglect, abysmal lawyers, minimal judicial review, a white victim - these 
factors are far more closely associated with who ends up getting executed. Of 
the 23 people put to death in 2017, all but 3 had at least 1 of these factors, 
according to the report. 8 were younger than 21 at the time of their crime.

More troubling still are the wrongful convictions. In 2017, 4 more people who 
had been sentenced to death were exonerated, for a total of 160 since 1973 - a 
time during which 1,465 people were executed. In many of the exonerations, 
prosecutors won convictions and sentences despite questionable or nonexistent 
evidence, pervasive misconduct or a pattern of racial bias. A 2014 study 
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences extrapolated 
from known cases of wrongful convictions to estimate that at least 4 % of all 
death-row inmates are wrongfully convicted. Against this backdrop, it would 
take an enormous leap of faith to believe that no innocent person has ever been 
executed.

This page has long opposed the death penalty, and would continue to even if the 
penalty's application were completely free of bias and error. That is an 
unattainable goal, as should be obvious by now. Perhaps this explains why 
Americans, whose support for capital punishment climbed as high as 80 % in 
1994, have increasingly lost their appetite for state-sanctioned killing. 
Support is down to around 55 %, its lowest level in 45 years.

The rest of the developed world agreed to reject this cruel and pointless 
practice long ago. How can it be ended here, for good?

Leaving it up to individual states is not the solution. It's true that 19 
states and the District of Columbia have already banned capital punishment, 4 
have suspended it and 8 others haven't executed anyone in more than a decade. 
Some particularly awful state policies have also been eliminated in the past 
couple of years, like a Florida law that permitted non-unanimous juries to 
impose death sentences, and an Alabama rule empowering judges to override a 
jury's vote for life, even a unanimous one, and impose death.

And yet at the same time, states have passed laws intended to speed up the 
capital appeals process, despite the growing evidence of legal errors and 
prosecutorial misconduct that can be hidden for years or longer. Other states 
have gone to great lengths to hide their lethal-injection protocols from public 
scrutiny, even as executions with untested drugs have gone awry and 
pharmaceutical companies have objected to the use of their products to kill 
people.

Last summer, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested that the death penalty would 
eventually end with a whimper. "The incidence of capital punishment has gone 
down, down, down so that now, I think, there are only 3 states that actually 
administer the death penalty," Justice Ginsburg said at a law school event. "We 
may see an end to capital punishment by attrition as there are fewer and fewer 
executions."

That's a dispiriting take. The death penalty holdouts may be few and far 
between, but they are fiercely committed, and they won't stop killing people 
unless they're forced to. Relying on the vague idea of attrition absolves the 
court of its responsibility to be the ultimate arbiter and guardian of the 
Constitution - and specifically of the Eighth Amendment. The court has already 
relied on that provision to ban the execution of juvenile offenders, the 
intellectually disabled and those convicted of crimes against people other than 
murder.

There's no reason not to take the final step. The justices have all the 
information they need right now to bring America in line with most of the rest 
of the world and end the death penalty for good.

(source: New York Times Editorial Board)

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

Another year in death



By at least 1 important measure, the Trump administration's simplistic 
get-tough-on-crime rhetoric did not move the country backward in the 
president's 1st year: The death penalty, which Americans once favored at 
near-consensus rates, was a historically rare punishment. For those of us who 
would prefer to see no executions, this is as much a call to continue the 
argument as it is a cause for celebration.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center's annual report, 2017 saw the 
2nd-lowest number of death sentences since 1972, with 39. Though 2016 saw only 
31, these numbers nevertheless mark a steep decline since a peak of 315 in 
1996. 2017 also saw the 2nd-lowest number of executions - 23 - since 1991, 
outpacing 2016 by only 3. Executions peaked at 98 in 1999 and have also dropped 
precipitously since. Notorious execution states such as Texas and Oklahoma had 
a relatively quiet 2017. These trends mean that the number of people on death 
row fell for the 17th straight year, from about 2,900 to about 2,800.

There is reason to believe these figures foreshadow more of the same. A few 
more states this year reformed their justice systems to be less primed to 
produce death sentences. Alabama barred judges from overriding juries 
recommending life sentences. Florida shifted policy to require jury unanimity 
to sentence a convict to death.

Not all the news was good. Alabama and other states also pushed to speed up the 
execution process, raising serious doubts about whether they would offer 
condemned people sufficient chance to make their cases. Moreover, certain 
places stuck out from the national picture, sentencing prisoners to death at 
unusual rates. 3 counties, 1 each in Arizona, California and Nevada, accounted 
for 1/3 of all death sentences in 2017.

As with other years, 2017 also brought more death-row exonerations. 4 people 
whom the state had condemned to die were freed. While these were positive 
stories, they reflect the reality that others placed on death row - or already 
executed - almost certainly were unjustly convicted.

The inherent risk of executing innocent people is probably one reason that, as 
the report notes, an October Gallup poll found that only 55 % of Americans 
support the death penalty, the lowest reading on the question since 1972. 
Another reason, we hope, is that American society is simply becoming less 
tolerant of extinguishing the precious spark of life, acknowledging inherent 
human dignity even in those who failed to honor it in others.

No matter the reason, it is heartening to see the country become steadily more 
humane.

(source: Washington Post, Editorial Board)