[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, ALA., CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

June 18




TEXAS----impending execution

A Houston Killer Is Too Sick To Be Executed, His Lawyer Says



Danny Bible is scheduled to die on June 27. He was sentenced to death in 2003 
for murdering Houston resident Inez Deaton in 1979. Bible's attorney, Jeremy 
Schepers, recently filed a lawsuit alleging that a lethal injection would 
almost certainly constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Schepers is a federal 
public defender in the Northern District of Texas.

"With this lawsuit that we've filed on Mr. Bible's behalf, it has nothing to do 
with his conviction or his death sentence," Schepers says. "It's all about the 
method of execution."

Bible's situation is unique because, Schepers says, "Texas has never attempted 
to execute someone in his condition. He suffers from a wide variety of serious 
medical issues."

While being transported to death row back in 2003, the van carrying Bible was 
involved in a collision that killed the driver and another passenger. Since 
then, Bible has used a wheelchair, and has developed a number of other serious 
medical conditions, including heart failure, coronary artery disease, 
Parkinson's Disease, diabetes, and hypertension.

"And some of the side effects of these diseases are that at this point Mr. 
Bible's veins are completely inaccessible and unsuitable for execution," 
Schepers says.

He argues that, if Texas proceeds with the lethal injection, "That could lead 
to a number of serious complications. If they're unable to locate a vein for 
execution, the vein itself could literally explode during the process if 
they're not able to hit it correctly with the needle. And there's also a 
possibility of just hours and hours of poking around and prodding with the 
needle trying to locate a suitable vein."

Texas currently only allows for execution by lethal injection, though other 
states allow for alternate means. In the suit, Schepers identifies some of 
these that could be used on Bible, such as a firing squad or nitrogen gas.

However, the suit also pleads that "with a claim like Mr. Bible has, that only 
applies to 1 person, that he shouldn't have to allege an alternative means of 
execution," Schepers says. "And that's something that is currently pending and 
is an open question before the Supreme Case in the [Russell] Bucklew case out 
of Missouri."

In addition to the cruel and unusual punishment argument, Schepers says there 
is also a public policy issue here.

"I think it would be something that would undermine the public's trust in the 
death penalty system itself. If you look at other states that have botched 
executions in recent years - for example, Oklahoma botched the execution of 
Clayton Lockett in 2014 - since then that state's been in a moratorium for 
conducting executions," Schepers says.

"So I think that anyone, regardless of your position on the death penalty, 
should be concerned about a botched execution, and even if you're a proponent 
to the death penalty, should be concerned about a botch, because that could 
lead to the death penalty system grinding to a halt in Texas," Schepers says.

After this interview was recorded on Friday, Attorney General Ken Paxton's 
office responded to Bible's suit, asking the court not to honor Bible's request 
for an alternative means of execution. The attorney general says that Schepers' 
real goal is to delay the execution as long as possible. The official response 
states that Texas has never had a botched execution, and that "Bible's suit is 
less a genuine challenge to Texas lethal-injection protocol and more a 
meritless attempt to postpone his lawful execution."

(source: kut.org)








ALABAMA:

Anthony Ray Hinton Spent Almost 30 Years on Death Row. Now He Has a Message for 
White America.



Anthony Ray Hinton was mowing the lawn at his mother's house in 1985 when 
Alabama police came to arrest him for 2 murders he did not commit. One took 
place when he was working the night shift at a Birmingham warehouse. Yet the 
state won a death sentence, based on 2 bullets it falsely claimed matched a gun 
found at his mother's home. In his powerful new memoir, "The Sun Does Shine: 
How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row," Hinton describes how racism and a 
system stacked against the poor were the driving forces behind his conviction. 
He also writes about the unique and unexpected bonds that can form on death 
row, and in particular about his relationship with Henry Hays, a former 
Klansman sentenced to death for a notorious lynching in 1981. Hays died in the 
electric chair in 1997 - 1 of 54 people executed in Alabama while Hinton was on 
death row.

After almost 30 years, Hinton was finally exonerated in 2015, thanks to the 
Equal Justice Initiative, or EJI. On April 27, Hinton spoke at the Peace and 
Justice Summit in Montgomery, organized by EJI to launch 2 new historical 
memorials: the Memorial to Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum. I met 
Hinton at a conference room at EJI's headquarters. In a blue checkered shirt 
and black boots, he said he likes to picture his lawyer and close friend Bryan 
Stevenson at that same table, strategizing around his case. We discussed 
Hinton's memoir, his unlikely friendship with Hays, and the links between 
racial violence and the modern death penalty.

Liliana Segura: You were a big part of the opening of EJI's Peace and Justice 
Summit. What was it like to visit the memorial and museum?

Anthony Ray Hinton: Seeing myself in the museum was like, "Wow." A whole lot of 
memories came back - not all good memories. But if 30 years is what it cost me 
to educate people, so be it. Those names you read when you go up to the 
memorial - they lost their life. As you read why they were lynched, you think, 
are you serious? This man was lynched because he asked for a receipt. This man 
was lynched because he looked at a white woman. Although I've read about all of 
these types of crimes, it brought tears to my eyes.

I call the death penalty, to this day, a form of lynching. It's not where they 
run to your house and burn you up without justification. Now, they do it in the 
name of the law. I was a victim of that, and almost lost my life because they 
have that much power.

LS: Lynching was a form of torture and terror for the community. You write 
vividly about those nights when men were killed in the electric chair. Would 
you call that torture?

ARH: Absolutely. It's torture for the guards that have a job to do. It's 
torture for the warden. It was torture for us. When you smell this smell, it 
makes you run to the toilet and throw up. This smell gets up in your nostrils, 
and you couldn't get it out. Torture was sitting there, 30 feet away from the 
death chamber, knowing that one day that's going to be me.

A photo of Hinton's mother sits next to his books on a side table in his home 
in Quinton, Ala.

LS: Your book is remarkable for having these very funny moments where you 
escape by imagining your way into amazing scenarios. But there are also moments 
where you are present in that space. The banging on the bars on execution 
nights - I was hoping you might talk about that.

ARH: Try to imagine: You and I live in this room for 30 years. We get to know 
each other, probably better than you would someone in your own household. Now, 
they come and it's your time to be executed. We don't know whether or not you 
have family members there. We don't even know whether your lawyer was going to 
be there. No one came and said, "His mother is with him." Banging on the bars 
was our way of letting the condemned know we are still here with you until the 
very end.

At one point, they used to carry out executions at 12:01 a.m. We would start 
beating on the bars about 5 minutes to 12. We would beat about 15, 20 minutes 
after 12. We would stop to see if we heard any noise. Every now and then one of 
the guards would say, "They haven't killed him yet." We would go back to 
beating on the bars.

LS: That's interesting - they didn't try to stop you.

ARH: The guards got to the point they understood why we did it. People don't 
realize that when you go to prison, families forsake you or they don't visit. 
You have to learn to develop a new family, new friends. A lot of guys had pen 
pals from other states and from other countries. The guards realized that it 
was our way of saying goodbye to someone that had no one.

LS: It's a form of protest, really.

ARH: Absolutely. We wanted the guards to hear and we wanted the warden to hear. 
We would shout out, "Murderers." We would shout out, "You're no better than 
what he did." Who was going to be put on death row for this man's murder? I do 
think it made a difference. I think it made the condemned feel love. It made 
them feel that somebody really cared enough about me to raise hell.

LS: Some of the most profound parts of your book are the sections in which we 
get to know Henry Hays before he was executed. On my drive down here, I was 
listening to an audio book about his case - his crime, but also about his 
background, his father, who was horribly abusive. How have people responded to 
that portion of the book?

ARH: The 1st person who called me was my niece. She said, "Uncle Ray, how could 
you?" I said, "Let's back up a moment. Henry was born Henry Francis Hayes, not 
"KKK Henry Francis Hayes." I explained to her that from the time he was 
conceived, he was taught hate. I imagine at the age of 4 and 5 his daddy 
drilled in him the word "nigger" every day, all day. As he got older, he went 
to Klan meetings, teaching him more hate. Before he turned 15, 16, 17 - where 
was child protective services? We love to say it takes a village to raise a 
child. Where was this village when this young boy was being mentally abused? 
The village didn't come out until he did something horrible. That same village 
that should have protected him found him guilty. This same village said, "This 
world would be better if you wasn't in it." What I find joy in is the fact that 
for 15 years, Henry was taught to hate, but once Henry came to death row, the 
very people that he was taught to hate taught him love, compassion. Henry 
changed and I saw the change.

LS: It really debunks the idea that some people are so irredeemable they have 
to be sentenced to die.

ARH: Politicians would also have you to believe it is a deterrent. Believe me, 
at the moment they was executing a man, somebody else was committing murder in 
Alabama. We need to be truthful. The death penalty serves no purpose other than 
the getting votes for politicians.

At least 3 different murder victims' families have come to hear me speak. They 
said, "I'm against the death penalty now. I haven't got any closure. Actually, 
it now gave me something more to think about. I had the date that my parents 
were murdered. Now I have to think of the date they executed the killer. I 
didn't want that on my conscience. I just wanted ... revenge." I said, "Say 
it." That's what it is.

LS: One of the most emotional moments of your panel at the summit was when you 
described how you had never received an apology from the state. It reminded me 
of speaking to victims' family members - sometimes it seems what they need more 
than anything to have a sense of justice would be the acknowledgement of the 
harm that was done to them.

ARH: That's why an apology is so important. Can you imagine the victims' family 
seeing me on TV, hearing somebody say, "You need to read this book by this 
guy"? An apology would at least acknowledge, first and foremost, I'm not the 
person that did the horrible crime. 2nd, it would acknowledge that as human 
beings, we make mistakes. Now, I'm going to be honest with you - there was no 
mistake made in my case. I was convicted because I'm a black male. But I'm 
willing to let the state say, "We made a mistake 33 years ago." Somebody ought 
to be honest enough to say to the victims' family, "I work for the state and 
we're sorry that we didn't catch the person - but we did let the right man go."

LS: In 2003, Gov. George Ryan of Illinois commuted all death sentences and 
pardoned a man named Madison Hobley, who had been wrongfully convicted for 
killing his wife and child. He spent 16 years on death row. After his release, 
he came to New York and told his story like you're doing now. This law student 
came up to him and said, "In the end, the system worked. You got released." Do 
you ever hear anything like that?

ARH: I've had people say, "Thank God you wasn't executed, but don't you think 
that that is the price one must pay to have law and order?" I say, you have a 
right to feel that way, but how would you feel about that price if I had been 
your father, if I was your brother? Then I've had people that comes up to me 
and they'll say, "Mr. Hinton, I'm so sorry what happened to you, but the system 
worked." I said, "If the system had worked, I never would have went in the 
first place."

LS: Some people are really resistant to accepting that these kinds of 
injustices have happened, whether it's our criminal justice system now or the 
history EJI has put on display in these monuments. Do you feel like white folks 
in Alabama are responding to this message?

ARH: It's too soon to know. I'm going to be honest with you. White people in 
Alabama know what happened. White people would love for it to stay in the 
closet, but it's open, it's out in the open. I think the white people in 
Alabama need to own up to responsibility. "My ancestors were a part of what 
happened. I feel nothing like they did, but I want to apologize in whatever 
way, by bringing the races together."

LS: Is there anything you wish you could have included in your book that you 
didn't?

ARH: I wish that I could have included a lot more about the men on death row - 
why they ended up being where they are. I wish I could have shown how we failed 
them. I think it was about 5 of us [on death row] that graduated from high 
school. Everybody had quit in the 7th and 8th grade. Tell me that society 
didn't play a part. We still fail them because we're spending more money on 
prison than we are on school. Since I've been out, I've been to white schools 
to speak and I thought I was at a college. They've got labs - Bill Gates, here 
they come. I'm saying, "Imagine if you could put something like this in a black 
neighborhood."

I think about lynching. They probably lynched one of the greatest scientists of 
modern times. They probably lynched someone that could come up with a cure for 
AIDS, Alzheimer's, cancer. We don't know what a person can be. Earlier, we 
spoke of Henry Hays. Henry could still be alive today and could be in the 
general population getting blacks and white to come together. He could say, "I 
was brought up to hate. I'm telling you, it serves no purpose. If anyone knows, 
I know. I lived it." But society didn't want him to be an advocate.

LS: You mentioned in your book that you still have a fear of going back to 
death row.

ARH: Yes. Every time I go somewhere and I'm by myself, the fear that police 
could get behind me and pull me over. The fear will always be there now. I 
don't disrespect them, but I trust no police.

LS: I noticed your car outside - it has the license plate that says "Hinton" on 
it.

ARH: Yeah.

LS: So you still drive that car with your name on it - fear isn't driving you.

ARH: I saved up money and had this door fixed and that window fixed. When I 
went to get the license plate, I said, "Is it possible I can get 'Hinton' put 
on it?" The lady said, "You sure can." I put Hinton on it because I want people 
to realize that for so long, I was nobody. I want you to realize that I am 
somebody.

(source: theintercept.com)








CALIFORNIA:

Murder charges filed against 3 men in Cathedral City gang shooting



Murder and attempted murder charges were filed Monday against 3 men accused in 
a gang-related shooting outside a Cathedral City strip club that left 1 man 
dead and 2 others injured.

Manuel Vargas, 30, Christian Miramontes, 24, and Guillermo Gomez, 22, are 
accused in last Wednesday's slaying of Jason Rosas, 24, of Indio outside the 
Showgirls Gentlemen's Club. The men also face special circumstance allegations 
of lying in wait and discharging a firearm from a vehicle, making them eligible 
for the death penalty, if prosecutors pursue it.

Vargas and Miramontes were taken into custody over the weekend, while Gomez 
remains at large.

Police say the suspects, Rosas and 2 other men got into a fight inside the 
club; that fight allegedly spilled into the parking lot after the men were 
kicked out around 2 a.m. The men were identified as "2 groups of rival gang 
members,'' by Cathedral City Police Chief Travis Walker.

Police did not specify what gangs the involved parties belong to but noted that 
are were from "out-of-area.''

After the fighting guests were kicked out of the club by security personnel, 1 
suspect shot the victims with a handgun, Walker said.

All 3 victims were taken to a hospital, where Rosas later died. The other 2 -- 
a 28-year-old Indio man and a 28-year-old Coachella man -- were both expected 
to survive, police said.

Vargas is due to appear in an Indio courtroom Monday afternoon, while 
Miramontes is expected in court Tuesday.

Anyone with information regarding the shooting or Gomez's whereabouts is asked 
to contact Detective Heather Olsen at 760-770-0398 or Sgt. Rick Sanchez at 
760-202-2488.

(source: KESQ news)