[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TENN., ILL., IOWA, NEB., UTAH

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 20




TENNESSEE:

Tennessee warned about use of controversial drug combination for lethal 
injections



As of January 2017, there were 63 inmates on death row in Tennessee. Executions 
have been on hold pending a challenge by inmates to the single-dose drug 
protocol.

The drugs are supposed to put a death row inmate to sleep before stopping the 
inmate's lungs and heart.

However, controversies around the country show a 3-drug combination Tennessee 
is prepared to use as it resumes executions in 2018 may leave witnesses scarred 
and death row offenders in pain - and alive.

Documents obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK-Tennessee show the state has a new 
protocol for what drugs it will use to put inmates to death. A supplier of 
those drugs also warned the state they may not actually stop inmates from 
feeling pain before they die, according to emails also obtained.

The issues already prompted a legal challenge and will likely spur death 
penalty critics to characterize use of the drugs as unconstitutional cruel and 
unusual punishment.

Lethal injection is the primary means of carrying out the death penalty in 
Tennessee, although the electric chair is also legal. The state had used 
pentobarbital, a barbituate, but manufacturers have largely stopped selling the 
drug to anyone using it for executions.

In 2017, the general counsel for the Tennessee Department of Correction said 
the state did not have the drugs needed to carry out an execution but could get 
them if they needed.

On Thursday, after the Tennessee Supreme Court announced it had scheduled three 
executions, the department said it has the necessary drugs.

The documents and emails point to the department's inability to find 
pentobarbital. It is instead relying on the easier-to-obtain but far more 
controversial 3-drug mixture used in other states.

The 1st drug, midazolam, is supposed to put an inmate in a state akin to sleep. 
The 2nd, vercuronium bromide, stops the inmate's lungs. The 3rd, potassium 
chloride, stops the heart.

The problem in executions carried out in Oklahoma, Arizona, Ohio and elsewhere 
is the midazolam in some cases has failed to put the inmate to sleep or stop 
them from feeling pain.

A legal filing from attorneys defending death row inmates pointed to the emails 
and new lethal injection protocol as a reason the state supreme court should 
delay any executions.

"Tennessee deliberately chose to revise its execution protocol to include as 
the 1st drug, midazolam, despite knowledge of the substantial harm that drug 
will cause. It is the most controversial protocol ever adopted by the state," 
the legal filing states.

As noted in the legal filing, a supplier pointed out these problems to 
Tennessee prison officials in September.

"Here is my concern with midazolam...it does not elicit strong analgesic 
effects. The subjects may be able to feel pain from the administration of the 
2nd and 3rd drugs. Potassium chloride especially," wrote the supplier in an 
email.

"It may not be a huge concern but can open the door to some scrutiny on your 
end."

A department spokeswoman did not immediately answers questions Friday about the 
protocol.

James Hawkins, a 41-year-old Shelby County man convicted in 2011 of killing the 
mother of his 3 children, is scheduled to die May 9.

Billy Ray Irick, a 59-year-old Knox County man convicted of the 1985 rape and 
murder of a 7-year-old girl is set to be executed Aug. 9.

Sedrick Clayton, a 34-year-old Shelby County man convicted of a triple murder 
in 2014, is scheduled to die Nov. 28.

Hawkins and Clayton have yet to exhaust their legal appeals, so it's likely 
their executions will be delayed. Irick, who's been on death row in Nashville 
for more than 3 decades, has fewer legal options.

(source: The Tennessean)








ILLINOIS:

Former Medill Innocence Project private investigator files defamation lawsuit



A 2nd lawsuit has been filed after investigations into a high-profile murder 
case led to 2 exonerations, the repeal of the death penalty in Illinois and the 
fall of one of Northwestern's most distinguished professors.

Paul Ciolino, a private investigator who obtained a video confession of Alstory 
Simon for a 1982 double homicide, is defending his reputation - and that of 
Northwestern and former Medill Prof. David Protess - in a defamation lawsuit 
filed earlier this month. The suit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, alleges 
nine defendants engaged in a "conspiracy" to discredit the work of Ciolino, 
Protess and the then-Medill Innocence Project, since renamed the Medill Justice 
Project.

The suit, filed Jan. 2, claims Simon's lawyers and the 2 investigators they 
hired made false claims in an effort to defame and discredit Ciolino's 
investigation, despite continued confessions of murder by their client.

"Together they conceived a plan to ruin the reputations of Northwestern 
University, David Protess and Plaintiff Ciolino," the complaint reads. "Part of 
the strategy to discredit Protess and plaintiff was to attack the integrity of 
their success stories."

The suit also claims the defendants intentionally inflicted emotional distress, 
which led to Ciolino's depression, anxiety and fear. Additionally, the suit 
claims the plot ruined his reputation and has made it difficult for him to find 
work as an investigator.

Details of the alleged "swift-boat" plot to undermine the investigation include 
claims that Simon and witnesses were paid to recant their stories. The 
complaint also claims that Anita Alvarez, the prosecutor who freed Simon, 
resorted to "unethical, underhanded and downright sleazy methods to discredit" 
Protess and Northwestern.

The complaint mirrors a countersuit in an ongoing lawsuit against Ciolino filed 
by Simon in 2015. The countersuit was dismissed for not having proper 
jurisdiction, but the federal judge for the case said it could be taken to a 
state court.

Ciolino was working with Protess and the Medill Innocence Project in 1999 when 
he obtained Simon's confession. The confession helped to convict Simon and 
exonerate Anthony Porter, who was just hours away from the death penalty after 
he was convicted for the 1982 deaths of Jerry Hillard and Marilyn Green. Though 
Simon pleaded guilty and continued to confess multiple times, as the suit 
points out, he later renounced the admission, alleging Ciolino threatened him 
at gunpoint, showed him a video of an actor falsely claiming he saw Simon 
commit the murders and said he could avoid the death penalty if he confessed.

Though Ciolino disputes Simon's claim that he conspired to wrongfully convict 
Simon, prosecutors released Simon in 2015 after they concluded the confession 
was coerced. Ciolino has admitted previously that he showed Simon the video 
with the actor.

The decision by prosecutors brought into question not only Ciolino's tactics, 
but also those of Protess and the then-Medill Innocence Project. Protess left 
the University in 2011 after allegations that he engaged in and encouraged his 
students to adopt unethical reporting tactics, prompting administrators to 
prohibit him from leading the organization he established.

The innocence project has since been under new leadership with Medill Prof. 
Alec Klein as the director.

After 2 men were exonerated for the same murders, the project and case gained 
widespread attention and scrutiny from across the nation.

Porter's exoneration is believed to have convinced then-Gov. George Ryan to 
halt executions, a step toward the repeal of the death penalty in 2011.

Additionally, a 2015 documentary, "A Murder in the Park," and a book titled, 
"Justice Perverted: How The Innocence Project at Northwestern University's 
Medill School of Journalism Sent an Innocent Man to Prison," criticized the 
case and the innocence movement for its tactics.

Ciolino's suit claims these projects also defamed him by including false 
statements.

"The movie advanced the outrageous lie that Ciolino had obtained Simon's 
video-recorded statement in 1999 by using an array of unethical and criminal 
tactics," the suit claims. "Ciolino suffered devastating damages as a result of 
the publication of the false and defamatory statements in MIP (and) 'Justice 
Perverted.'"

A case management hearing is scheduled for March.

(source: The Daily Northwestern)








IOWA:

Capital punishment debate is unwarranted



Iowa lawmakers shouldn't reinstate the death penalty, or waste time discussing 
it.

Proponents insist the death penalty is needed as a deterrent. Yet, FBI 
statistics show the opposite: States with the death penalty have higher murder 
rates than those without.

Polk County Attorney John Sarcone, in an effort to illustrate that perpetrators 
rarely consider such consequences, previously has shared the story of 4 people 
who murdered 2 elderly women. The group killed one woman in Iowa before driving 
the other across the state line to commit the 2nd murder in Missouri, a death 
penalty state.

Capital punishment is, by design, more expensive than life without parole.

As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer noted, "In this world, or at least 
in this nation, we can have a death penalty that at least arguably serves 
legitimate penological purposes or we can have a procedural system that at 
least arguably seeks reliability and fairness in the death penalty's 
application. We cannot have both."

The average delay between sentencing and execution now is more than 17 years; 
an inevitable outcome due to needed "reliability and fairness." Many inmates on 
death row succumb to natural causes before they face state executioners.

Other factors - psychological tolls on jurors and state officials tasked with 
imposing the death penalty, prison infrastructure needs, disproportionate 
application on racial minorities and the poor, difficulties in obtaining lethal 
injection pharmaceuticals, the ever-present possibility of executing the 
innocent - also must be weighed.

In addition to these ongoing national debates, state lawmakers cannot ignore 
the limitations past budgetary decisions have placed on state institutions. 
Legislators must decide, for example, if the cash-strapped Iowa judicial branch 
is realistically able to absorb such an added and monumental duty.

Iowa courts employ 182 fewer people today than 1 year ago; 115 essential 
positions remain unfilled. More judges will retire this year than in previous 
years, and fewer private attorneys are seeking the bench. By its own admission, 
the judicial branch cannot currently provide residents equitable services.

(source: The Gazette)








NEBRASKA:

Nebraska notifies 2nd death-row inmate of drugs to be used



Nebraska's corrections department has notified a second death-row inmate of the 
drugs it intends to use for his execution.

The Department of Correctional Services sent the letter Friday to Carey Dean 
Moore, who has been on death row since 1980 for fatally shooting 2 Omaha 
taxicab drivers.

No execution date has been scheduled, and the department currently faces a 
lawsuit challenging its efforts to proceed with one.

The department says it plans to execute Moore with diazepam, fentanyl citrate, 
cisatracurium besylate and potassium chloride.

Nebraska officials provided the same notice on Nov. 9 to death-row inmate Jose 
Sandoval, who was convicted for his role in a 2002 Norfolk bank robbery and 
shooting. No execution date has been set in that case.

(source: Associated Press)








UTAH:

Death penalty sought in jealousy-fueled Utah trailer park murder



Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty against a 28-year-old Utah man 
charged with killing a man who was in bed with his ex-girlfriend in a Cedar 
City trailer park.

The Spectrum newspaper in St. George reports that Mark Mair's attorney, Douglas 
Terry, called it "sobering" to hear prosecutors want the death penalty. Terry 
says the facts in the case don't warrant that punishment.

Iron County Attorney Scott Garrett says the decision to pursue the death 
penalty allows prosecutors to keep all options open.

Mair is accused of killing 34-year-old Justin Hannah on July 24, 2016 in an 
alleged fit of jealousy. Hannah, who was shot 3 times, was in bed with Mair's 
ex-girlfriend.

Mair and an alleged accomplice were arrested in Grand Junction, Colorado the 
next day.

(source: Associated Press)