[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., N.C., FLA., ALA., OHIO

[Rick Halperin]

March 3



TEXAS----impending execution

Texas Gives Rosendo Rodriguez Execution Date of March 27, 2018



Rosendo Rodriguez III is scheduled to be executed at 6 pm CDT, on Tuesday, 
March 27, 2018, at the Walls Unit of the Huntsville State Penitentiary in 
Huntsville, Texas. 37-year-old Rosendo is convicted of the murder of 
29-year-old Summer Baldwin and her unborn child in 2005. Rosendo has spent the 
last 9 years on Texas' death row.

Rosendo grew up being abused by his domineering and alcoholic father. Rosendo 
attended Texas Tech. He was serving as a US Marine Corp reservist, and was in 
Lubbock, Texas for training at the time of the murder. Prior to his arrest, 
Rosendo worked as an office clerk and in food service. He had no prior prison 
record, however, following his initial arrest, he was also discovered to have 
murdered 16-year-old Joanna Rogers in 2004.

Summer Baldwin's body was found stuffed inside of a suitcase in a Lubbock, 
Texas city landfill on September 13, 2005. Summer was a prostitute and a 
witness in federal counterfeiting case, making her death of interest to the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Finical records obtained by the federal government showed that Rosendo 
Rodriguez's debit card was used to buy an identical suitcase in WalMart the day 
before Summer's body was discovered. Video surveillance also showed Rodriguez 
with Summer. Financial records also showed that Rodriguez rented a hotel room. 
Hotel records showed that he signed in under the name "Thomas" Rodriguez. 
Police arrested Rodriguez at his parent's home in San Antonio, Texas.

3 weeks after his arrest, Rodriguez confessed to the murder of Summer. 
According to his confession, the 2 engaged in consensual intercourse. Rodriguez 
claimed that he killed Summer in self-defense when she came after him with a 
knife. As police continued their investigation, they discovered that Rodriguez 
was also linked to the disappearance of teenager Joanna Rogers, who had been 
missing for over 1 year. Like Summer, Joanna's body was also found stuffed in a 
suitcase in a landfill in Lubbock, Texas.

In exchange for confessing to Joanna's body, Rodriguez's attorney negotiated a 
deal which would spare him from the death penalty, reduce the murder charge, 
grant him immunity for Joanna's murder, and sentence him to life in prison. On 
the day the plea bargain was to occur, Rodriguez's attorney said that for the 
past 24 hours, Rodriguez had maintained that he did not understand anything he 
was being told and then told the trial judge that he did not understand the 
questions being asked of him. The plea bargain did not go forward and 
Rodriguez's attorney withdrew from the case.

Rodriguez was assigned new counsel and the trial began in 2008. Rodriguez 
argued that his combat training kicked in, causing him to murder Summer when 
she attacked him with a knife. He further alleged that he had no knowledge that 
she was pregnant. The prosecution alleged that he sexually assaulted Summer 
before killing her by strangulation and disposing of the body. Rodriguez was 
convicted and sentenced to death in April 2008.

Please pray for peace and healing for the families of Summer Baldwin and Joanna 
Rogers. Please pray for strength for the family of Rosendo Rodriguez. Please 
pray that if Rosendo is innocent, lacks the competency to be executed, or 
should not be executed for any other reason that evidence will be presented 
prior to his execution. Please pray that Rosendo may come to find peace through 
a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, if he has not already.

(source: theforgivenessfoundation.org)

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

Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----30

Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----548

Abbott#--------scheduled execution date-----name------------Tx. #

31----------Mar. 27----------------Rosendo Rodriguez III--549

32----------Apr. 25----------------Erick Davila-----------550

33----------May 16-----------------Juan Castillo----------551

(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)

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

3 Murder Suspects Escape Texas County Jail by Scaling Wall



3 murder suspects escaped a Texas jail Friday morning and were briefly on the 
loose before being apprehended. The men, who were accused of murder in separate 
incidents, escaped from Bexar County Detention Center in downtown San Antonio.

Jacob Anthony Brownson, Luis Antonio Arroyo and Eric Trevino were discovered 
missing at around 10:40 a.m. local time and were apprehended in a restaurant 
less than an hour later. The woman who drove the trio's getaway car was also 
arrested.

In a press conference, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said that the 
inmates cut a hole in the mesh of a 20-foot-tall fence and used bedsheets to 
escape. After getting to the street, the men were picked up in a white sedan.

"Definitely a good ending to what was a tense situation. We are continuing to 
investigate ... we'll start working backward to find out how it was that they 
formulated this plan and got the material together that [was] needed to affect 
this escape," said Salazar.

Salazar said police were immediately notified about the escape by witnesses in 
front of the jail.

The 3 inmates escaped during recreation time and will face additional charges 
for the incident. Salazar said that the jail would remain on lockdown as they 
investigated.

Trevino was accused of killing a 3-year-old in a drive-by shooting last year 
and had previously spent time in jail on child pornography charges; Brownson is 
charged with the murder of 3 men in 2016; and Arroyo was charged with the 
shooting and stabbing deaths of 2 women from 2016, according to the San Antonio 
Express-News. All 3 could potentially face the death penalty for the alleged 
murders.

The Sheriff's Department could not immediately be reached for comment.

(source: newsweek.com)








PENNSYLVANIA:

Using death penalty as a political prop



Politics at its worst is on full display in Pennsylvania. Not only is State 
Senator Scott Wagner, a GOP candidate for Governor, shamelessly trying to 
exploit the school massacre in Parkland, Florida, his proposal to make the 
death penalty mandatory for school shooters is bunk.

There is no requirement that a candidate for governor be a constitutional 
scholar, but to go on the stump and tell voters he's going to do something that 
he knows, or should know, is unconstitutional - is untenable.

Recently, Wagner spoke to the Pennsylvania Press Club and said he would pursue 
a mandatory death penalty for any school shooter who kills someone, "if someone 
kills one of our children, we will kill them."

The problem is mandatory death sentences have been unconstitutional for 
decades. Marc Bookman, of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation in 
Philadelphia, told The Associated Press that mandatory death sentences have 
been unconstitutional since 1976 when the U.S. Supreme Court threw out a North 
Carolina law that imposed a mandatory death sentence for the crime of 
1st-degree murder.

The Court found that justice requires careful consideration of the defendant's 
individual characteristics and the nature of the crime, including any evidence 
that mitigates the defendant's responsibility.

A mandatory death sentence does not provide for such review and is cruel and 
unusual punishment and a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States 
Constitution.

In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the last remnant of the mandatory 
death penalty in the United States. The decision dealt with a very specific 
type of killer, much like Wagner's proposal.

The High Court struck down a Nevada law that made executions mandatory for 
murders committed by prisoners who were serving life sentences without the 
possibility of parole.

Obviously, there was concern that a person sentenced to life without the 
possibility of parole could kill with impunity. The Court refused to circumvent 
the requirements of due process for a killer who kills while in prison.

Justice Harry A. Blackmun's majority opinion said the Eighth Amendment's 
prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment" guarantees to all defendants 
facing possible death sentences the right "to present any relevant mitigating 
evidence that could justify a lesser sentence."

Senator Wagner may not agree with the Supreme Court, but he and the 
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have to comply with its directives.

Wagner is pandering to the "law and order' crowd even as support for the death 
penalty wanes. That's not surprising. According to Newsweek, President Donald 
Trump has floated the idea of a mandatory death penalty for drug dealers, even 
though the Supreme Court has outlawed the death penalty for all crimes but 
first degree murder.

Less than 1/2 of Americans - 49 % - favor the death penalty for people 
convicted of murder, according to a 2016 poll by Pew Research.

19 states and the District of Columbia have abolished capital punishment. 
According to the New York Times, 4 more states have imposed moratoriums on 
executions. Not only are executions down, death sentences are down as well. 
There are 31 states with the death penalty. Only 14 states handed down death 
sentences last year, for a total of 39 across the country - less than 1/2 the 
number 6 years ago. California, which issued more than 1/4 of last year's death 
sentences, hasn't executed anyone since 2006.

In Wagner's Pennsylvania, there has not been an execution since 1999. The state 
has carried out only 3 executions since 1976 and all 3 inmates gave up their 
appeal rights and volunteered to be executed.

In 2015, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer noted in a dissent that the 
decline of the death penalty county by county could one day persuade the court 
to end it everywhere. However, as long as the death penalty is on the books, 
politicians will use it to their benefit - whatever the circumstances.

(source: Matthew T. Mangino, arkansasnews.com)








NORTH CAROLINA:

N.C. Supreme Court to hear Racial Justice Act death row cases



Condemned inmates from Cumberland County murder cases want a chance for life 
without parole based on allegations of racism in their trials.

The North Carolina Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether 3 death row 
inmates from Fayetteville-area homicides will get another chance to commute 
their sentences to life without parole, the North Carolina Coalition for 
Alternatives to the Death Penalty said on Friday.

The inmates were 3 of 4 death row inmates who in 2012 used the North Carolina 
Racial Justice Act to persuade Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Greg 
Weeks that racism tainted the selection of the juries in their trials - he 
concluded blacks were illegally blocked from serving on the juries.

Weeks commuted the 4 inmates' death sentences to life in prison without parole. 
The state Supreme Court in 2015 overturned Weeks' decisions and referred their 
cases back to Superior Court.

In January 2017 Superior Court Judge Erwin Spainhour rejected the 4 inmates' 
Racial Justice Act claims.

Now the state Supreme Court is going to consider whether Spainhour's ruling was 
erroneous for 3 of the 4 inmates. If the Supreme Court rules in the inmates' 
favor, they could get new hearings to assess whether their trials were biased 
by racism.

The 3 inmates are Marcus Reymond Robinson, Quintel Augustine and Christina 
Walters:

-- Robinson killed a teen in a robbery in 1991.

-- Augustine was convicted of killing a Fayetteville police officer in 2001.

-- Walters led a gang that kidnapped and killed 2 women in 1998 in a gang 
initiation ritual.

The 4th inmate is Tilmon Golphin. Golphin and his brother killed a Cumberland 
County deputy and a state trooper in a traffic stop in 1997. The Supreme Court 
has not decided whether to hear Golphin's case, said spokeswoman Gerda Stein 
for the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

The Racial Justice Act was enacted in 2009 to address a history of 
institutional racism against racial minorities in North Carolina's court 
system. The law allowed death row inmates to attempt to commute their death 
sentences to life in prison.

Nearly all of the state's condemned inmates, members of all races on death row, 
filed Racial Justice Act claims.

The legislature repealed the law in 2013 after the 4 Cumberland inmates got 
their death sentences converted to life in prison.

In addition to addressing 3 of the 4's claims, the coalition said, the Supreme 
Court is separately reviewing the Racial Justice Act claims of 2 other death 
row inmates.

Those inmates, Rayford Burke and Andrew Ramseur, contend that the courts were 
wrong to halt their Racial Justice Act claims after the law was repealed in 
2013. The say that their claims should have been gone forward because filed 
them before the law was repealed.

(source: Fayetteville Observer)

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

Death row inmates will go before NC's highest court. 'Urgent civil rights 
issue,' lawyer says.



3 North Carolina death row inmates who briefly saw their sentences changed to 
life in prison after a judge found racial bias played a role in their case will 
get a hearing at the state Supreme Court.

On Friday, the state's highest court agreed to hear the cases of Marcus 
Robinson, Quintel Augustine and Christina Walters, 3 inmates who used the NC 
Racial Justice Act to have their sentences converted from death to life in 
prison with no chance for parole before a different judge sent them back to 
death row.

The decision comes more than a year after a Cumberland County judge ruled 
against the four inmates who are still trying to use the short-lived Racial 
Justice Act to have their sentences commuted.

The Racial Justice Act, adopted in 2009 as groundbreaking legislation while 
Democrats controlled the legislature and governor???s office, was repealed in 
2013 while Republicans had control of both branches.

Although most of the inmates on death row in the North Carolina prison system 
filed cases under the Racial Justice Act, alleging racial bias played a role in 
their cases, Robinson, Augustine, Walters and Timothy Golphin were the first 4 
to have their claims heard.

Golphin's case was not in the orders issued on Friday by the state Supreme 
Court.

They successfully persuaded Cumberland County judge Gregory Weeks through the 
use of statewide and local statistics that racial bias played a role in their 
cases. Weeks has since retired from the bench, but he ruled in the cases being 
watched by many legal scholars that African-Americans had been systemically 
excluded from serving on death-penalty juries.

Prosecutors have disagreed with such claims, arguing that the race of a 
potential juror rarely plays into their decisions for keeping or excluding 
someone from a panel. But Racial Justice Act advocates have countered that a 
Michigan State University study of 173 capital trials over a 20-year period in 
North Carolina shows otherwise.

The study found that in North Carolina, between 1990 and 2010, qualified black 
jurors were more than twice as likely as whites to be removed from juries by 
prosecutors through moves known as peremptory strikes.

Prosecutors argued that the Racial Justice Act in general, and more 
specifically Weeks' rulings, were based on a range of statistics that were too 
broad.

The state Supreme Court vacated Weeks' ruling in December 2015 and sent the 
case back to Superior Court to give prosecutors more time to respond to the 
statistical analyses presented by the inmates.

But prosecutors argued to Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Erwin 
Spainhour in January 2017 that the 4 inmates could no longer use the Racial 
Justice Act since it was no longer a law on the books.

Attorneys for the inmates argued against that, pointing out that when the 
inmates filed their claims the Racial Justice Act was law and not allowing 
their claims to continue under law in place then was unconstitutional.

Spainhour sided with prosecutors, saying in his ruling this week that Weeks' 
2012 decision should not be considered a final judgment because all appeals in 
the case had not been exhausted.

Executions on hold in NC

Both sides will get to make their arguments to the state's Supreme Court 
justices.

2 other death row prisoners, Rayford Burke and Andrew Ramseur, whose Racial 
Justice Act cases did not go before a judge before lawmakers repealed the law, 
also are on the docket with their related claims. The court will decide whether 
they can still present their claims of racial bias.

James Ferguson, a longtime civil rights attorney with the Charlotte-based law 
firm, Ferguson, Chambers & Sumter, said in a statement he hoped the justices 
would re-open the path for the inmates to provide their data to judges.

The Racial Justice Act lawsuits and a series of others challenging the fairness 
of the death penalty have created a de facto moratorium on executions in North 
Carolina for more than a decade.

"All we want is for the courts to look at the facts and make a fair decision," 
said Ferguson. "When you really look at the evidence, it's clear that race is 
influencing how we use the death penalty in North Carolina. This is a chance 
for the state's highest court to declare, definitively, that racial bias in the 
death penalty is an urgent civil rights issue that cannot be swept under the 
rug."

(source: newsobserver.com)








FLORIDA:

New Poll: Americans Want the Florida Killer Sentenced to Death



The young man man who walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School 2 weeks 
ago and murdered 17 students is willing plead guilty his crimes so long as the 
death penalty is taken off the table by prosecutors. A decision about whether 
prosecutors will pursue a death sentence has not been made.

But according to a new Rasmussen Poll, the majority of Americans believe his 
crimes fit the punishment and that he should be handed the death penalty.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 58% of 
American Adults think, if convicted, the suspect in the Florida shooting 
incident should receive the death penalty. Twenty-four percent (24%) disagree, 
while 18% are not sure.

These findings are comparable to how Americans felt about the man convicted of 
committing the mass shooting at a movie theater in Colorado.

Broward State Attorney Mike Satz said in the immediate aftermath of the murders 
that the death penalty was designed specifically for cases like this.

"This certainly is the type of case the death penalty was designed for. This 
was a highly calculated and premeditated murder of 17 people and the attempted 
murder of everyone in that school. Our office will announce our formal position 
at the appropriate time."

A final decision on what kind of sentencing prosecutors will recommend to the 
judge will made in the coming weeks.

In an effort to blunt the punishment, public defenders for the assailant argue 
the young man was disturbed, alone and a "broken person" when he committed his 
crimes .They also said was a "bullied and misunderstood" child.

(source: townhall.com)

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

Survey Shows Most Pinellas County Voters Oppose Death Penalty----Court records 
show that the Pinellas/Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe has filed to seek 
death in 15 pending cases and 6 re-sentences.



A poll just released shows that 2/3 of Pinellas County voters (68 %) prefer 
some version of life in prison over the death penalty for people convicted of 
murder.

Only 30 % of respondents chose the death penalty as their preferred punishment. 
60 % of surveyed voters also expressed support for redirecting the funds 
currently spent on death penalty cases to solving more rapes and murders.

The poll also found that voters opposed seeking the death penalty for 
individuals with severe mental illness by a three to one margin (66 to 21 %) -- 
a difference of 45 points.

50 % of voters also opposed seeking the death penalty for people who are under 
the age of 21 at the time of their crimes, compared to just 36 % who were not 
opposed.

Notably, a majority of voters would either strongly (46 %) or somewhat (18 %) 
support a decision by the State Attorney to reduce or eliminate use of the 
death penalty.

"After evaluating other recent polls on this issue, it has become clear that a 
trend has emerged in Florida as voters increasingly prefer alternatives to the 
death penalty," said Stephen K. Harper, director of the Florida Center for 
Capital Representation at FIorida International University College of Law. 
"Whether due to the high cost, the legal chaos or the risk of executing 
innocent people, many voters simply don't think the death penalty is a useful 
tool anymore."

Court records indicate that the Pinellas/Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe has 
filed to seek death in 15 pending cases and 6 re-sentences. 9 death penalty 
trials are already scheduled for 2018.

"The survey results make clear that the state attorney's office is ignoring the 
will of the overwhelming majority of Pinellas County constituents who prefer 
life sentences for those convicted of murder," Mark Elliott, director of 
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said. "Expensive death 
penalty trials do nothing to prevent violent crime, protect law enforcement or 
help victims' families in meaningful ways, and mistakes are also 
all-too-common."

McCabe has disputed the findings of surveys like these, saying the surveys use 
"trigger words" and "incendiary language" to solicit opinions.

"In every death penalty case, my office carefully reviews the evidence and the 
facts surrounding the case," he said. "We carefully consider all the 
aggravating and mitigating factors in determining whether it is appropriate to 
have the jury and judge consider the death penalty as a sentencing option.

However, the Florida Center for Capital Representation at FIU College of Law, 
which commissioned the survey with the support of Floridians for Alternatives 
to the Death Penalty, said neither the judge nor the jury is infallible.

It points to the case of Ralph Wright Jr. as an example. Last May, Wright 
became the 27th innocent person exonerated and released from Florida's death 
row. He was sentenced to death in Pinellas County.

"These results show us that Pinellas residents are looking for life-affirming 
alternatives to the death penalty--that they no longer want to answer violence 
with more violence," said the Rev. Bob Schneider, pastor of St. Cecelia 
Catholic Church in Clearwater and a longtime activist against the death 
penalty. "The death penalty is not a viable means to promote true healing for 
victims' families."

A report by Harvard Law School's Fair Punishment Project released in 2016 named 
Pinellas County as one of the nation's 16 outlier counties due to its frequent 
usage of the death penalty.

This is the 4th poll in the last 2 years in which voters in all or part of 
Florida expressed a strong preference for life sentences over the death penalty 
(See PPP Florida Poll February 2016, University of Florida Survey Research 
Center Poll August 2016, and PPP Osceola and Orange Counties Poll April 2017).

The poll was conducted Jan. 22-23 by Public Policy Polling. It surveyed 269 
Pinellas County voters and has a margin of error of +/- 6.0 %.

(source: patch.com)








ALABAMA----impending execution

Alabama Gives Michael Eggers Execution Date of March 15, 2018



Michael Wayne Eggers is scheduled to be executed at 6 pm CST, on Thursday, 
March 15, 2018, at the Holeman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. 
50-year-old Michael is convicted of the murder of Bennie Francis Murray on 
December 30, 2000, near Jasper, Alabama. Michael has spent the last 15 years on 
Alabama's death row.

Michael Eggers sold concessions with a carnival that traveled trough the 
southeastern United States. The business was owned by Frank and Bennie 
"Francis" Murray. In September of 2000, the carnival stopped in Jasper, 
Alabama. While there, Eggers met a woman and decided to stay. Between September 
and the end of December 2000, Eggers found a job, but eventually lost it and 
was unable to find another.

On December 26, 2000, Eggers phoned Francis asking for a job. At the time, the 
carnival was not traveling and Francis and her husband were at their home in 
Talladega. Francis explained that the carnival would not be traveling again 
until mid-March and that their "bunkhouse" was unavailable.


On December 28, Eggers called Francis again, saying he was at the bus station 
in Birmingham with his son. He asked if she would pick them up. Francis agreed, 
and during the next several days, unsuccessfully attempted to help Eggers 
locate a job. On December 30, Eggers asked Francis to take him and his son back 
to the Jasper; she agreed.

Francis dropped off Egger's son at his apartment and then she agreed to help 
Eggers find his car, which he had allegedly driven off the road due to 
inclement weather a few days earlier. They drove for some time, but Francis 
eventually stopped and said she was willing to go no further and was turning 
around. Eggers alleged that when he voiced his protest, Francis backhanded him, 
causing him to "let go, and just start hitting her." After Francis fell 
unconscious, Eggers started driving the truck.

When Francis started to come around she was making noises, which caused Eggers 
to stop the truck, get out, and kick her several times in the head with his 
steel-toed boots. He then left her along the dirt road, but came back a short 
time later to make sure she was dead, because he "didn't want to leaver her out 
there suffering." When he discovered that she was once again regaining 
consciousness, he strangled her with his hands and using a tree branch after he 
dragged her into the woods. He then took the truck to a car wash to wash out 
the blood and stole money from her purse, left in the truck.

Eggers fled to Florida, where he was eventually arrested and returned to 
Alabama for criminal proceedings. His trial began in August 2002, and he found 
guilty and sentenced to death in October 2002.

Eggers is not protesting his execution and stopped all appeals in his case, 
asking a judge to give him an execution date. In requesting his date, he also 
noted that long, drawn-out appeals process are cruel and unusual punishment for 
both the family of the victims and the condemned.

Please pray for peace and healing for the family of Francis Murray. Please pray 
for strength for the family of Michael Eggers. Please pray that if Michael is 
innocent, lacks the competency to be executed, or should not be executed for 
any other reason, that evidence will be presented prior to his execution. 
Please pray that Michael may come to find peace through a personal relationship 
with Jesus Christ, if he has not already.

(source: theforgivenessfoundation.org)

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

Ala. court affirms convictions of 2 death row inmates



The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals won't review the cases of 2 men on death 
row, who were convicted in separate north Alabama killings. Creque was 
convicted in 2013 of capital murder during the course of a robbery for the 
slaying of Jeffrey Mark Graff and Jessie Jose Aguilar. Both men were killed 
while working their shifts at the Krystal fast-food restaurant in Morgan 
County.

He was sentenced to death, and in 2014 was denied a new trial.

"We have searched the record for any error that might have adversely affected 
Creque's substantial rights and we have found none. For the foregoing reasons, 
we affirm Creque's capital-murder convictions and sentences of death," the 
order released Friday states.

The appeals court also affirmed the Lauderdale Circuit Court's decision, 
denying the appeal for Riley. Riley is on death row for his convictions in the 
2005 slaying of 38-year-old Scott Michael Kirtley, who was shot to death during 
a liquor store robbery.

Riley was convicted for a 2nd time in 2011, after the Alabama Court of Criminal 
Appeals threw out his original 2007 case.

The court's order is based on a 2015 petition filed by Riley, which claims he 
had ineffective counsel at his second trial. That appeal was denied by the 
circuit court in 2016.

(source: McClatchy-Tribune News Service)

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

The Cruel and Unusual Punishment of Doyle Lee Hamm----The State of Alabama was 
warned that its planned execution of Hamm would be painful and torturous. It 
kept going anyway.



Last Thursday the state of Alabama tried and failed to execute Doyle Lee Hamm, 
a prisoner who has spent more than 1/2 his life on death row for a murder 
committed in 1987. The botched execution attempt, which lasted hours and left 
Hamm covered in blood, was 1 of 3 lethal injections scheduled in the United 
States that day. Its gruesome outcome has horrified criminal-justice advocates 
across the country, who see this execution as yet another blatant violation of 
the Constitution's guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment.

According to Hamm's attorney, Bernard Harcourt, the 2-person execution team 
stuck needles in Hamm's legs half a dozen times, but were unable to locate a 
surface-level vein. They then moved on to Hamm's groin, which they stabbed 
another half-dozen times. In the process, they may have punctured his bladder 
and femoral artery - Hamm was gushing blood as the execution proceeded, and he 
urinated blood for most of the following day, Harcourt reported. At the urging 
of the state employee who was there, the execution team gave up just before 
midnight, worried that Hamm's death warrant would expire.

Harcourt, a Columbia law professor who has represented Hamm since the 2 men met 
in 1990, describes the process as "torture," and there is certainly every 
indication that the multi-hour execution attempt was cruel, harrowing, and 
painful. Hamm was "remarkably stoic" and "emotionally mature" as the date of 
his execution drew nearer, the lawyer said, but when the 2 men saw each other 
after the botched execution, Hamm was "traumatized," shaken up and clearly 
still in pain.

Hamm's botched execution is the latest in an expanding list of execution 
attempts gone horribly wrong (think Clayton Lockett and Joseph Wood, both in 
2014, along with many others). But the likely reason for the failure adds a 
disturbing twist to the tradition. In addition to a history of drug use that 
makes surface-level vein access difficult, Harcourt says that Hamm has 
lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system that causes his nodes to swell, blocking 
access to veins in his groin. After Hamm was diagnosed in 2014, he underwent 
radiation therapy to remove a large tumor from behind his left eye, but it is 
not clear that he received any treatment since. Multiple independent examiners 
have observed swollen lymph nodes on his body since then.

Well before the date of the execution, Harcourt began pleading with the court 
to deliver the execution chemicals orally, but the court dismissed his concerns 
as unfounded. In recent weeks, Harcourt hired Dr. Mark Heath, an 
anesthesiologist affiliated with New York Presbyterian Hospital, to evaluate 
Hamm, and he said an execution would be unlikely to succeed. At Harcourt's 
request, the court then appointed its own doctor, who noted the inflamed lymph 
nodes in Hamm's right groin - the very area the executioners punctured half a 
dozen times - but concluded that "[they would] not impede venous flow." 1 vein 
in particular, he went so far as to declare, would be a "piece of cake."

Hamm was originally sentenced to death for shooting a motel clerk in the head 
during an armed robbery. While he has been imprisoned, Alabama has executed 
more than fifty people, for many years by means of its infamous electric chair 
"Yellow Mama" and, more recently, by means of lethal injection. Harcourt has 
appealed his sentence several times to successively higher courts, and in the 
process has exposed a number of disturbing facts about the case. When arguing 
for the death penalty, for instance, prosecutors cited a robbery Hamm 
supposedly committed while drunk at age 20, but that robbery may never have 
happened. And in ruling on Hamm's case in 1999, a judge copied verbatim an 
89-page "proposed memorandum opinion" on the case that had been drafted by the 
Alabama attorney general; in a consummate act of disregard, the judge did not 
even bother to remove the word "proposed" from the title of the version he 
signed.

According to Harcourt, Hamm has not been provided with medical attention 
sufficient to determine how advanced his cancer is or how long he has left to 
live. His case and his life now hang in legal limbo, awaiting a hearing next 
week at which the state will announce whether it intends to try again to 
execute him.

At that hearing, Harcourt hopes to present a medical report that reviews the 
execution attempt. He confesses he has no idea what will happen next, 
describing the case as "completely uncharted territory," but feels confident 
that it would be unconstitutional for the state to seek another execution given 
how much warning he gave them about the difficulty of finding a suitable vein.

In the meantime, Hamm's case will stand as testament to the state's 
determination to exercise its monopoly on violence, no matter how impractical, 
time-consuming, or cruel that exercise becomes.

Recent decades have seen district attorneys in most counties pull away from the 
death penalty and the Supreme Court limit its use to 1st-degree murder cases 
with unanimous juries. A growing body of evidence attests that not only is 
capital punishment expensive and inhumane; it is also more or less useless: A 
2012 review of death penalty studies found no evidence that capital punishment 
deters crime, and a recent survey of criminologists found that nearly 90 % of 
them doubt the death penalty is effective.

Without any practical justification for carrying on this tradition, 
law-and-order prosecutors and legislators have argued that the death penalty 
functions as symbolic justice, the only fit way for the state to respond to the 
worst of crimes. In Hamm's case, though, this "symbolic justice" involved 
strapping an infirm, long-incarcerated man to a gurney and stabbing him 
repeatedly in the groin until he gushed blood. Such torture is certainly 
symbolic of something, but that something is not justice.

(source: Jake Bittle, The Nation)








OHIO----impending execution

Urgent Action: Withheld Evidence At Issue As Execution Nears (USA: UA 47.18)



William Montgomery is due to be executed in Ohio on 11 April for a 1986 murder 
he says he did not commit. Six federal judges argued he should have had a new 
trial because a police report contradicting the state's theory of the case was 
withheld from the defence.

TAKE ACTION----Write a letter, send an email, call, fax or tweet:

Calling on the Board to recommend clemency and the Governor to stop the 
execution of William Montgomery and to commute his death sentence, noting 
persistent doubts about the reliability of the conviction;

Noting that 6 federal judges have held that he should receive a new trial 
because the withheld police report directly contradicted the state's theory of 
the case and severely undermined confidence in the verdict;

Pointing to the frequent errors that have occurred in US death penalty cases, 
including in Ohio.

Contact these 2 officials by 8 March (for Parole Board) and 11 April 2018 (for 
Governor):

Ohio Parole Board

770 West Broad Street

Columbus, Ohio 43222

USA

Email: drc.paroleboard at odrc.state.oh.us

Fax: +1 614-752-0600

Salutation: Dear Board members

Governor John Kasich

Riffe Center, 30th Floor

77 South High St

Columbus, OH 43215 USA

Phone: +1-855-782-6925 (Direct Patch Through Line)

Fax: +1 614 466 9354

Email: www.governor.ohio.gov/Contact/ContacttheGovernor.aspx

Twitter: @JohnKasich

Salutation: Dear Governor

(source: Amnesty International)