[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ALA., LA., OHIO, TENN., ARK.

[Rick Halperin]

April 4



ALABAMA----new death sentence

Convicted murderer given death penalty in Tuscaloosa court



A judge has sentenced convicted killer Michael Belcher to death for his role in 
the torture and beating death of Samantha Payne.

Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court Judge Brad Almond followed a jury’s 
recommendation by choosing death by lethal injection over life with no 
possibility of parole.

Belcher spoke briefly to the judge before he was sentenced at the hearing 
Wednesday morning, saying “Words can’t express my sorrow and grief.”

Payne endured hours of beatings from a group of friends who were all using 
methamphetamine at Belcher’s father’s motorcycle repair shop in Centreville the 
night of Nov. 2, 2015. Her throat had been cut while she was tied to an 
ironwood tree and she was left to die in a remote area of the Talladega 
National Forest. Prosecutors said Belcher was the ringleader who encouraged the 
beatings from the others, saying they believe he is the one who cut her throat 
after she was tied, naked, to the tree.

A 12-member jury found Belcher, 34, guilty of capital murder during a 
kidnapping after a trial last month, deliberating just two hours to reach the 
unanimous verdict on March 13. They took even less time to recommend the death 
penalty after a hearing held the following week, with all agreeing the crime 
was “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel compared to other capital 
offenses.”

(source: Tuscaloosa News)

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

These Men are Fighting to Abolish the Death Penalty—From Death Row----Project 
Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty is the nation’s only anti–death penalty 
organization run by death-row prisoners.



It was early on a September morning in 1993 when police in Morgan County, 
Alabama, dragged Gary Drinkard through his car window and threw him to the 
ground. Minutes before, he’d been sitting in his kitchen with his half-sister, 
discussing a newspaper article about the murder of a local junkyard dealer 
named Dalton Pace. A wire taped between her legs recorded the conversation, 
feeding it to the officers stationed outside.

The police told Drinkard, who had served time for robbery but was working hard 
to turn his life around, that he was being charged with Pace’s murder. Two 
weeks earlier, the 62-year-old had been found shot dead, with $2,000 missing 
from his pants pocket. As Drinkard sat in the Morgan County jail, one of his 
attorneys assured him that there was no evidence tying him to the crime, and 
that he would be out in no time.

Neither of Drinkard’s court-appointed attorneys was a criminal lawyer, and 
neither had tried a capital-murder case. Each received a scant $1,000 from the 
state to mount Drinkard’s defense.

Drinkard said he’d been at home at the time of the murder—and that a painful 
back injury would have made committing the crime impossible. His lawyers, 
however, failed to prepare a key witness and to call in a physician to testify 
about the back injury. When Drinkard’s case went to trial, he was sentenced to 
death. That was in 1995.

“I lose everything,” Drinkard, now 63, said 25 years later, still speaking of 
the verdict in the present tense. “I lose the dream home, lose the family—I 
mean, it was a bitch.”

Drinkard told his wife to find another man. She thought he didn’t love her, but 
that wasn’t true; he wanted her to find someone to help take care of their 3 
children.

A couple of months after he arrived on death row at the William C. Holman 
Correctional Facility, Drinkard met Darrell Grayson, who offered him coffee, 
cigarettes, and an invitation. Each Wednesday, Grayson and a group of other 
death-row inmates would meet in the prison’s law library and work on a plan to 
raise awareness about inequity in the criminal-justice system. Dubbed Project 
Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, it was—and remains—the nation’s only 
anti-death-penalty organization run by death-row prisoners.

When Drinkard arrived at Holman, the organization was just 6 years old. It had 
been formed in 1989, after Cornelius Singleton, an intellectually disabled man 
who had been convicted of killing a nun—but who many believe was 
innocent—begged two death-row inmates for help. Over the next few months, they 
put together a five-man committee that outlined the group’s purpose: They would 
educate the public—the people responsible for deciding their fates—on the 
realities of the death penalty in Alabama. In a “death belt” state infamous for 
its dedication to capital punishment, this was a crucial mission.

In the 30 years since, Project Hope’s members have come and gone. Singleton was 
executed in 1992, Grayson in 2007, and Drinkard won his freedom in 2001. But 
Project Hope continues, its mission now expanded to include providing legal 
guidance and emotional support as well as advocacy. The nonprofit is currently 
composed of 15 men, as well as an advisory board of outside supporters; its 
mighty executive director, Esther Brown, now 85, is a former psychiatric social 
worker whom one member referred to as “the most loyal person I’ve ever known.”

Project Hope meets at Holman but says that it represents all 176 people on 
Alabama’s three death rows, sending its newsletter to the men—and a handful of 
women—held at the two other prisons that house people awaiting execution. 
Hidden from the rest of the world, these men and women have reached the end 
point of a system that seems to have been designed to snare people who are 
poor, of color, or intellectually disabled. Adequate legal representation is 
rare; prosecutorial misconduct is rampant. In 2016, Alabama had the highest 
number of death-row inmates per capita in the United States. Today, half of 
those men are black, despite making up just a quarter of Alabama’s population. 
And in the 6th-poorest state in the country, all of Project Hope’s members are 
impoverished. This fundamental inequity is the axis around which so much of the 
group’s work spins.

“There are no rich people on death row,” wrote Anthony Tyson, the 
organization’s chairman, in a letter. (The Alabama Department of Corrections 
refused to allow in-person interviews with Project Hope’s members, citing a 
state law prohibiting the press from meeting face-to-face with death-row 
prisoners.) “If you fit the bill they’re looking for and you are broke, then 
you receive the death penalty.”

Since the organization’s inception, Holman’s wardens have allowed Project Hope 
to exist, so long as its members abide by one clear rule: They may not discuss 
prison conditions. Instead, during the weekly Wednesday meetings, members talk 
about current death-penalty news, which they learn from articles sent in by one 
of the advisory-board members. Lately, that news has been focused on 
legislative efforts to abolish the death penalty in states like New Hampshire, 
Nevada, and Colorado. The men are hopeful that, with each new state that 
abandons the practice, the moral tide will shift, drawing the states that still 
have capital punishment—some 30 in all (though four have recently instituted 
moratoriums)—into the anti-death-penalty column. They’ve also been working on a 
long-term project that aims to show the racial disparities of the death penalty 
in states across the country.

At 10 am on these Wednesdays, the group’s six board members phone Brown, who 
has been the face of Project Hope for the past 19 years, with duties that 
include representing it at speaking events and conferences, writing grant 
proposals, maintaining the website, and keeping the books. (The organization 
raises roughly $3,000 annually.) Brown pays for the weekly meeting calls (and 
the yearly Christmas party) out of her pocket. During the calls, the men speak 
with her on topics that, in addition to death-penalty news, can vary from 
family and friends to the day’s lunch.

Sitting in a floral-patterned armchair in her home in southeast Alabama last 
July, Brown listened as the organization’s sergeant at arms, Anthony Boyd, or 
“Ant,” led a conversation about the ways that spending money on education 
instead of the death penalty could transform a broken system. “If you pay 
teachers what they’re worth, there will be less crime and more scholars, but 
they want to spend money taking lives,” he said.

Tyson, the group’s chairman, knows the state’s priorities are elsewhere. 
“There’s 2 things never going out of business in Alabama,” he said: 
“corrections and funeral homes.”

When vice chairman Bart Johnson took the phone, Brown chastised him for calling 
her “ma’am.” “I’m Esther—I don’t want this ‘ma’am’ thing,” she joked. Each 
15-minute phone conversation ends with “I love you.”

The rest of the meeting takes place among the men and runs until 1:30 pm. Some 
of them stick around for Tyson’s law class or “enlightenment group,” which 
educates the men on how to navigate the state and federal appellate processes. 
For most of them, a key component is learning how to advocate for themselves, 
including with their attorneys. “Our lawyers need us to remind them of things,” 
Tyson says. “We are not their top case or their only case. So we have to be our 
case.”

Over the past 11 years, 2 of Tyson’s students, Montez Spradley and William 
Ziegler, have been freed, and several have gotten their sentences reduced to 
life. Tyson doesn’t attribute the victories to his class, but instead to the 
teamwork between his newly legal-savvy students and their attorneys. At the end 
of the year, Tyson administers an exam to his students. Anyone who gets a 
perfect score can choose any item they want from the commissary. Since taking 
over the group in 2007, he has paid up twice.

While anyone on death row can join Project Hope, there are rules: Members must 
act respectfully, and they are required to contribute to the quarterly 
newsletter On Wings of Hope, which is written by the men on typewriters at 
Holman and then sent to Brown, who adds her own content and takes it to the 
printer. The newsletter is distributed to about 1,300 subscribers.

In its most recent issue, Brown—who was diagnosed with a brain tumor late last 
year—announced that she would be stepping down from her duties. “I would like 
to be remembered as someone who was incredibly fortunate,” she wrote in a piece 
titled “Thank You!” “I always received what I gave many times over. I was never 
a victim, but did whatever I did because it expressed me and rewarded me.”

When he was asked by Darrell Grayson to join Project Hope, Drinkard—who had 
once been a supporter of the death penalty—wasn’t sure that the group would 
achieve much. Still, he decided to join. He devoured the law class and quickly 
earned a reputation as something of a legal scholar. He penned letters to 
politicians and local leaders, urging them to support a moratorium on the death 
penalty in Alabama. And, over time, he drew closer to the men in Project Hope. 
“You met people from everywhere, from every different form, and you were all 
brothers. You were all there for the same reason: to be killed by the state,” 
he said.

Despite the kinship, Drinkard sometimes thought of suicide. He was overwhelmed 
by the hopelessness of facing death for a crime he didn’t commit. And when it 
came time for his friends to die, as inevitably happened, the scent of their 
flesh burning in the electric chair haunted him. After Alabama executed his 
best friend, Brian Baldwin, in 1999, Drinkard nearly jumped on a guard he’d 
heard laughing about packing cotton up Baldwin’s rectum, a standard practice in 
executions back then.

It was at times like these that Drinkard would write poems for the Project Hope 
newsletter, like the one titled “Living Tomb,” which begins: “When oh when, 
will our nation see / They are likely to be next, sitting beside me?”

Still, death row was a lot less violent than the rest of the prison, Drinkard 
said. During the nearly six years he was there, he never witnessed a fight. But 
in the general population, there was a fight or a stabbing once a week. 
Drinkard attributed this relative calm to Project Hope. Timothy Stidham, a 
former Holman corrections officer who oversaw death row from 2015 to 2016, 
agreed: “They’re a great support group for each other. They do a lot of good 
things for ‘em, I will say that.”

For Tyson, who has spent 20 of his 46 years at Holman, the group’s legacy runs 
deeper still. “I really feel that this was one of the greatest things that 
could have been offered for a person in this situation,” he wrote. “A lot of us 
really didn’t start living until we got here. So, we don’t call it death row… 
we call it life row.”

One of the ways that Project Hope has managed this shift is by helping keep 
people alive, quite literally. It’s a feat the group accomplishes not only by 
providing emotional support for its members, but also by offering legal 
resources and guidance.

Shortly after they arrive at Holman, Project Hope’s members advise new 
prisoners to contact the Equal Justice Initiative, the nonprofit legal 
organization run by Bryan Stevenson, to ask for help obtaining an appellate 
attorney. It’s a critical task, as Alabama was the only state in the country 
that didn’t provide counsel for post-conviction proceedings until 2017—and, 
even now, the quality of the representation remains uncertain. The group also 
serves a broader advocacy role. When, in June 2018, the state announced that 
prisoners had three days to decide whether they’d like to die by lethal 
injection or nitrogen gas—an experimental method that kills through 
asphyxiation and was cooked up by the state as an alternative to lethal 
injection—Project Hope spread the word for everyone to contact their attorneys.

These are vital interventions into a system designed to hasten people toward 
their deaths. In Alabama, the list of circumstances that qualify someone for 
the death penalty is long; there is no statewide public defender’s office 
outfitted with the necessary resources to successfully try a capital-murder 
case (instead, individual attorneys must rely on elected judges to approve 
funds for experts and investigators); and in 2017, the state made it even more 
difficult for death-row inmates to fight their convictions by passing the 
so-called Fair Justice Act, which requires death-row prisoners to file 
post-conviction claims on issues like ineffective assistance of counsel or new 
evidence within a year of their direct appeal. While its supporters championed 
the legislation as a way to speed up “frivolous appeals,” critics say the 
likelihood of wrongful executions will increase without the opportunity for 
attorneys to take their time reviewing their clients’ cases.

But perhaps the most egregious feature of Alabama’s death-penalty regime is the 
anemic trial representation it provides for poor defendants. This remains as 
appalling as it was throughout much of the South back in the 1970s and ’80s, 
says Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. 
“I think Alabama represents much of what is wrong with the death penalty 
throughout the United States,” Dunham adds. There are few standards in place to 
assure the quality of the attorneys assigned to cases, and the pay is paltry. 
Until 1999, attorneys received $1,000 to build their case ($20 an hour for 
out-of-court work and $40 for in-court work). Today, they are paid $70 an hour 
for out-of-court work, while there is no longer a cap for the trial; direct 
appeals are now capped at $2,500.

Data shows that hiring an attorney, as opposed to going with the state’s 
court-appointed representative, is the difference between those who receive the 
death penalty and those who don’t. Yet paying for an experienced lawyer is not 
an option in most cases. A 2009 study by criminologist Scott Phillips assessed 
the outcomes of trials in which defendants were charged with capital murder in 
Harris County, Texas, between 1992 and 1999. Harris County is known as the 
“capital of capital punishment,” yet the standards for appointment to represent 
capital cases far exceed those in Alabama: Attorneys must be approved by their 
peers and pass a capital certification exam, and the lead counsel must have 
tried at least two capital cases before being assigned. Phillips found that 
people who hired attorneys were never sentenced to death, despite being charged 
with crimes just as heinous as the indigent defendants’.

Since 1973, 165 people—or one out of every 10 people executed—have been 
exonerated. These exonerations, coupled with the growing concerns around lethal 
injection, have helped shift support away from the death penalty, with an 
increasing number of states opting to put executions on hold. But despite this 
evolving consensus, for most men in Project Hope, the story still ends in a 
sterile room, lashed to a gurney, awaiting an injection. (The state has used 
lethal injection as its primary method of execution since 2002, prior to which 
it used an electric chair, ghoulishly known as “Yellow Mama.”)

In the week leading up to an execution, Project Hope members say they make 
themselves available to listen to the condemned. They promise the man they will 
make calls to friends, family, or an attorney if anything goes wrong—and, as 
they all know, much can go wrong. Just last year, Doyle Lee Hamm, who was 
suffering from advanced lymphatic cancer, bled profusely as executioners spent 
two and a half hours trying unsuccessfully to find a vein.

On the day before and day of the execution, the group’s members protest in the 
yard, asking all inmates to wear their visiting whites and abstain from sports. 
A vigil is held, during which the men share memories of the man scheduled to be 
executed. When a board member is executed, the group holds an election. The 
higher someone advances in the organization, the closer they are to death.

“Executions are never easy,” wrote Anthony Boyd, Project Hope’s sergeant at 
arms, in a letter after the execution of Domineque Ray this past February. Ray 
was left to die alone after the Supreme Court determined that it was 
constitutional for Alabama to ban his imam from the death chamber. “You worry 
for the person going through it all,” Boyd continued; “you worry about losing 
one of your own, and it makes you think about how it could be for you 
personally, if something doesn’t get done on your behalf.”

For Drinkard, it was luck and persistence that ultimately led to his 
exoneration. While in prison, he wrote to attorneys asking them to represent 
him on his appeals. His letters caught the eye of the well-known Alabama 
death-penalty attorney Richard Jaffe, who told him it would cost $250,000 to 
represent him—money that Drinkard did not have. In a stroke of luck, Jaffe 
convinced the local judge to appoint him to the case. Drinkard says his work 
with Project Hope prepared him to advocate for himself and work more closely 
with his new lawyers: “I knew what the lawyers should do the second time, where 
I actually didn’t know the first time.”

The Alabama Supreme Court ordered a new trial on the basis that his first trial 
had been tainted by prosecutorial misconduct. Drinkard was exonerated in 2001 
after his defense team presented evidence proving that he had never confessed 
to the murder on that static-ridden tape recorded in 1993 and called witnesses 
to prove he was indeed at home. After nearly 6 years on death row, Drinkard was 
freed.

Still, almost 18 years later, he remembers death row vividly: the hot air 
suffocating his cell, the sound of his friends beating against the bars during 
executions, and the times he felt overpowered by hate. “I hated the system 
because they lied, and there was nobody out there willing to prove the lies, 
nobody would listen, and that’s the worst feeling you can have—when nobody will 
listen.”

Like those who were exonerated before him, Drinkard never received compensation 
from Alabama for his time on death row, and he survives on Social Security 
disability insurance, having been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress 
disorder. He studied respiratory therapy after getting out of prison, but no 
one would hire him because of his murder conviction, which he could not get 
expunged.

And so, though free, Drinkard says that his living room in the north Alabama 
backcountry, furnished with a pair of brown recliners, a leather couch, and a 
flat-screen television, is his new version of death row. In this version, it’s 
easier to get people to listen. He travels the world, trying to change minds 
about the death penalty. In October, he went to Paris to talk to high-school 
students, and in February, he traveled to Wyoming to speak in support of a bill 
to repeal the death penalty. As always, he mentioned Project Hope. It was only 
natural—they were family, he said.

“Most of them admitted what they did wrong, [but] there were a couple of 
innocents that actually died,” he continued. “But the public don’t care. The 
public’s mentality in the South is, ‘Kill ‘em all and God will sort ‘em out.’“

(asource: Lauren Gill is a journalist covering criminal justice. Her work has 
appeared in Rolling Stone, The Appeal, and ProPublica, among other 
publications----The Nation)








LOUISIANA:

Landry introduces bill to end death penalty



For the third year, a local state representative has pre-filed a bill to 
eliminate the death penalty in Louisiana.

HB 215 was pre-filed by State Rep. Terry Landry, D-New Ibeira, March 27. If 
passed, the bill would “eliminate the death penalty as punishment for the 
crimes of 1st degree murder, 1st degree rape, and treason; to provide for the 
penalty of life imprisonment without benefit of parole, probation, or 
suspension of sentence for the crime of treason and to provide for prospective 
application.

“My initial reason for filing it was to have a real conversation about whether 
it was making us safer and whether it was morally correct,” Landry said. “I 
disagree that it is.”

Landry argues the death penalty is expensive beause it costs 3 times as much to 
house a person on death row as a regular inmate.

“Morally, I just don’t believe it’s within our power to take a life,” Landry 
said. “Spiritually I have a really strong belief that it’s not for man to take 
a life. At the end we’re no safer, we have one of the highest violent crime 
rates in the country.”

A Louisiana survey from the LSU Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs 
found in 2018 found that a majority of Louisiana resident support the death 
penalty. 58 % residents favored it while 34 % opposed it.

Currently there are 20 states that do not have the death penalty in Louisiana.

Sen. Dan Claitor, R-Baton Rouge, has also pre-filed a bill to abolish the death 
penalty for this year’s upcoming legislative regular session. Claitor’s bill 
would create a constitutional amendment abolishing the penalty.

If passed, Landry’s bill would eliminate the death penalty for all offenses 
committed on or after Aug. 1 of this year.

(source: Daily Iberian)








OHIO:

House passes bill to help pay bills for Pike County death penalty cases



A bill aimed at helping Pike County deal with the staggering costs of 
prosecuting 4 death-penalty cases resulting from the April 2016 murder of 8 
people passed the Ohio House on Wednesday with overwhelming support.

“Ohio is simply not prepared to financially assist counties and the public 
defender’s office with capital cases of this magnitude,” said Rep. Shane 
Wilkin, R-Hillsboro, a lead sponsor. “It’s simply not financially feasible for 
Pike County to absorb costs of this magnitude. If we do not act as a 
legislature and provide a quick solution, the financial hardship could cripple 
basic services and responsibilities of the county.”

House Bill 85, which passed 93-2, is backed by county prosecutors, 
commissioners, the Ohio public defender, and Attorney General Dave Yost. While 
it is directed at Pike County and the aftermath of the Rhoden family murders, 
which left 8 people dead ranging in age from 16 to 44, the bill is designed to 
help any county that finds itself with multiple capital cases expected to cost 
more than 5 % of a county’s general fund.

Pike County Commissioner Tony Montgomery told lawmakers that the county spent 
$600,000 on the investigation, and the state has reimbursed $130,000. The total 
county budget is about $10 million per year; the prosecution of the death 
penalty cases, including defense for the accused, is likely to run more than $4 
million.

“Our circumstances have unfortunately demonstrated that Ohio lacks the ability 
to provide adequate financial assistance for prosecution or indigent defense in 
capital cases like ours,” Montgomery said.

(source: Columbus Dispatch)








TENNESSEE----impending execution

Death Row Inmate's Clemency Appeal Stresses Christian Faith



Supporters of a Tennessee death row inmate appealed to Gov. Bill Lee's strong 
Christian faith on Wednesday in requesting clemency for a prisoner they say was 
redeemed by Jesus.

Don Johnson's clemency petition includes a plea from Cynthia Vaughn, the 
daughter of the woman Johnson was convicted of killing. Vaughn is also 
Johnson's stepdaughter.

The petition quotes from Vaughn's own letter to the governor in which she 
describes visiting Johnson in prison in 2012 after not seeing him since she was 
a little girl.

Vaughn said she vented 3 decades of anger and pain on Johnson, telling him how 
it felt not to have her mother around when she graduated from high school, got 
married, had a baby.

"The next thing that came out of my mouth changed my life forever," she wrote. 
"I looked at him, told him I couldn't keep hating him because it was doing 
nothing but killing me instead of him, and then I said, 'I forgive you.'"

Vaughn wrote that before she forgave Johnson, "I cried every night that I was 
alone." Afterward, she became a happier person, able to laugh and snuggle with 
her children. She joined a church where she made close friends.

In the petition, Vaughn asks to meet with Lee and share her story in person.

The petition also emphasizes Johnson's conversion from "a liar, a cheat, a con 
man and a murderer" to a Seventh Day Adventist Church elder who ministers to 
other prisoners.

Johnson, 68, was convicted of murdering his wife Connie Johnson in 1984 by 
suffocating her in a Memphis camping center that he managed. He initially 
blamed the murder on a work-release inmate who confessed to helping dispose of 
the body and was granted immunity for testifying against Johnson, according to 
court documents.

But the petition makes no claim of innocence, instead saying Johnson was 
"justly convicted of the murder of his wife."

And while the petition details the abuse Johnson suffered as a child at the 
hands of his own stepfather and later in juvenile detention centers, it makes 
clear that Johnson "does not place blame for his failure of character on anyone 
but himself."

The petition includes excerpts from many other letters sent to the governor by 
people who have come to know Johnson through their prison ministry, volunteer 
work, mentoring and correspondence.

"These friends and supporters are adamant that Don's faith is strong, and his 
reformation is real," it reads. Many of the excerpts mention Johnson's ministry 
to other prisoners. He also has a ministry outside of prison through a radio 
and internet show that plays recordings he has made on Sunday mornings on 
WNAH-1360 AM, according to the petition.

Tennessee executed 3 inmates in 2018 after a 9-year hiatus during which legal 
challenges to the state's lethal injection protocols put all executions on 
hold. Johnson's execution, scheduled May 16, is 1 of 4 planned in 2019.

Lee, who took office in January, made his Christian faith a central component 
of his campaign. Previously asked about the four pending executions, Lee said 
they would be difficult decisions.

"The death penalty is the law in Tennessee, and I believe that it's an 
appropriate law in the most egregious of cases," he said. "But I think we have 
to look at each case individually, and we'll do so when it's the right time."

In 2010, another Tennessee death row inmate with a similar story of redemption 
and forgiveness had her sentence commuted by then-Gov. Phil Bredesen. Gaile 
Owens was convicted of hiring a hit man to murder her husband. She later 
reconciled with their son Stephen Owens, who publicly pleaded with the governor 
for mercy.

(source: Associated Press)

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

Victim's daughter seeks mercy from Gov. Bill Lee for death row inmate Donnie 
Edward Johnson----Donnie Edward Johnson, on death row for the 1984 murder of 
his wife in Memphis, has his execution scheduled for May 16. On Wednesday, his 
attorneys filed for clemency with the governor.



Cynthia Vaughn once condemned death row inmate Donnie Edward Johnson for 
killing her mother, but now she wants to meet with Gov. Bill Lee to make a case 
for mercy ahead of Johnson's scheduled execution.

Johnson, 68, is scheduled to die May 16 for killing his wife and Vaughn's 
mother, Connie Johnson, in Memphis in 1984.

His legal team said Johnson deserves a reprieve because of his transformation 
behind bars — from "a liar, a cheat, a con man and a murderer" to an ordained 
elder in the Seventh-day Adventist Church "with a flock in prison."

They laid out the case for mercy in a 21-page clemency petition submitted to 
Lee's office on Wednesday. Vaughn's forgiveness was the centerpiece of their 
argument.

"Cynthia asks for the privilege of meeting you in person, so she can share her 
experience of Christian forgiveness," the application read. "Cynthia's plea for 
mercy is exceptional. We know of only one other case in the history of the 
state of Tennessee in which the child of the ultimate victim has begged the 
governor for mercy for the murderer."

In that case, the lawyers said, clemency was granted for Gaile Owens. Owens had 
been sentenced to death for hiring a hit man to kill her husband in 1984, but 
former Gov. Phil Bredesen commuted her sentence after her son joined her appeal 
for mercy.

Now Johnson's legal team wants Lee to make a similar choice.

"This is a story with three chapters," the Rev. Charles Fels, one of Johnson's 
attorneys, said during a Wednesday news conference discussing the case.

"Redemption. That's Don. Forgiveness. That's Cynthia," Fels said. "The 3rd and 
final chapter is mercy, and that is for the governor of the state of 
Tennessee."

Johnson is the fourth person scheduled to die since Tennessee resumed 
executions in August. His request for clemency differs from the other three 
filed since 2018 in that it focuses on religious themes and redemption, not 
legal arguments or details of the crime.

The difference in approach suits Johnson, who has become a religious leader at 
Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.

It is the 1st clemency petition to reach Lee, whose Christian faith was 
prominent during his successful campaign for office.

"I don't know that we would say that we tailor-made our clemency application to 
Gov. Lee," federal public defender Kelley Henry said during the news 
conference. "It just so happens that Don's story of faith, forgiveness and 
redemption coincides with many of the same themes that Gov. Lee himself has 
spoken about."

Henry said Johnson's legal team did not plan to file any additional legal 
challenges attempting to block the execution.

In their direct appeal to Lee, Johnson's lawyers said his was "an extraordinary 
case, where mercy, forgiveness, redemption and the miracle of rebirth in Christ 
all come together to warrant an exercise of your constitutional powers."

A spokeswoman for Lee's office said the governor would review the petition.

About the crime in Memphis

Donnie Johnson, who now goes by Don, killed his wife Connie Johnson in the 
office of the camping equipment center where he worked. He stuffed a large 
plastic bag in her mouth and suffocated her, according to court documents.

He initially told police he was not involved but no longer contests his guilt.

Donnie Johnson and Ronnie McCoy, an inmate on work release who also worked at 
the camping center, moved Connie Johnson’s body and belongings, including her 
broken glasses, into her van and then left the van at the Mall of Memphis.

Johnson's lawyers said his commitment to Christianity began in the Shelby 
County jail while he awaited trial. After hearing about the religion from 
fellow inmates, he decided to get baptized while he was on death row.

Lawyers describe a 'transformation' in prison

Behind bars, Johnson became a church elder at Riverside Chapel Seventh-day 
Adventist Church in Nashville and began preaching — to fellow inmates and 
others who listen to his radio program "What the Bible Says."

“He started becoming one of the leaders of our prison ministry,” said Pastor 
Furman F. Fordham II, senior pastor at the Riverside church, who ordained 
Johnson in 2008. “These young men were leaving Riverbend (prison) as changed 
individuals.”

Church members quoted in the clemency petition said Johnson's preaching had led 
other inmates to join the Seventh-day Adventist Church after they were released 
from prison.

Johnson's lawyers said his current stature as a devoted Christian stands in 
contrast to his earlier life, when he responded to abuse at home and in state 
custody by becoming "a terror."

Johnson was "routinely and mercilessly beaten" by his stepfather, his lawyers 
said. Subsequent time in state custody as a juvenile led to more abuse, 
according to the clemency petition.

"What is most remarkable about Don Johnson's life story is not that he ended up 
on death row following a loveless and hate filled childhood, it is that he 
overcame that childhood to become the man of God he is today," the petition 
reads.

A 2012 meeting led to forgiveness

Johnson was first scheduled to die by electric chair in 2006. Vaughn, his 
stepdaughter, initially approved of the execution, saying, "I want the freak to 
burn."

After that execution date was delayed, Johnson began reaching out to Vaughn. In 
2012, she visited him.

Vaughn describes her visit as revelatory.

"After I was finished telling him about all the years of pain and agony he had 
caused, I sat down and heard a voice. The voice told me, 'That's it, let it 
go,' " Vaughn said in a passage of the clemency petition. "The next thing that 
came out of my mouth changed my life forever.

"I looked at him, told him I couldn't keep hating him because it was doing 
nothing but killing me instead of him, and then I said, 'I forgive you.' "

(source: The Tennessean)








ARKANSAS:

Arkansas House Committee Approves Execution Drug Secrecy Bill



A bill that exempts documents disclosing the source of drugs used in lethal 
injections from open records laws and criminalizes disclosure of such documents 
passed the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday.

Senate Bill 464's House co-sponsor, Rep. John Maddox, R-Mena, said the bill was 
necessary to shield drug companies from negative publicity.

"Death penalty opponents are harassing and putting intense public pressure on 
manufacturers who supply the drugs that are necessary to carry out the death 
penalty in Arkansas," Maddox said. "And, to be frank, unfortunately, these 
pressure tactics are working."

Though Maddox said the majority of Arkansans support the death penalty, 
Democratic Rep. Andrew Collins of Little Rock said drug manufacturers and 
distributors would not supply the state with drugs to be used specifically for 
executions, regardless of secrecy laws.

"It seems to me... that this is about drug manufacturers who don't want to sell 
live-giving drugs to the state for the purpose of killing," Collins said. "They 
clearly do not support this measure despite what was said to the contrary, and 
we saw 2 of the drug makers send us letters expressing grave concerns about 
this bill."

The bill comes 2 years after the state was sued by drug distributor McKesson 
Medical-Surgical, Inc. for allegedly obtaining an execution drug under false 
pretenses. That lawsuit came about after a package insert for the drug was 
disclosed while the state was attempting to execute eight men in an 11-day 
span.

Furonda Brasfield, executive director of Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the 
Death Penalty, spoke against the bill, saying drug companies have contracts 
that specifically prohibit their products' use in executions.

"Today, every single FDA-approved supplier of any drug sought for use in... 
executions has imposed binding contracts blocking the medicine's sale for this 
purpose," Brasfield said. "These companies are not serving the interests of 
activists, but of their customers, their shareholders and the wider healthcare 
industry."

Criminal Defense Attorney Jeff Rosenzweig also spoke against the bill, saying 
that no matter the bill's intention it violates the First Amendment of the 
United States Constitution.

The bill passed the committee by a voice vote and now goes to the full House 
for approval. The state currently has no executions scheduled, and all three of 
the drugs in its supply have expired.

State Correction Department officials have said no more executions would be 
scheduled until a law addressing execution drug secrecy was passed by the 
legislature.

(source: ualrpublicradio.org)

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

Arkansas seeks death penalty in 2017 triple slaying



Prosecutors in Arkansas plan to pursue the death penalty for 1 of 2 brothers 
accused in the killing of a Little Rock mother and her 2 young children in 
2017. Pulaski County Chief Deputy Prosecutor John Johnson told Circuit Judge 
Herb Wright on Tuesday that prosecutors would seek the lethal injection for 
26-year-old Michael Collins of Colorado, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 
reported. The county last sought the death penalty in 2009.

Collins and his brother, 22-year-old William Alexander of Little Rock, have 
been charged with capital murder and aggravated robbery in the deaths of 
24-year-old Mariah Cunningham, 5-year-old A'Layliah Fisher and 4-year-old 
Elijah Fisher. The family was found stabbed to death in their Little Rock home 
in December 2017.

The brothers will stand trial separately. Collins' trial date will be scheduled 
at his next hearing on May 28. The death penalty won't be sought for Alexander, 
prosecutors said.

Collins and Alexander were also charged in July with capital murder and 
aggravated robbery in the death of Billie Thornton, 64. Thornton was found dead 
in his Little Rock apartment in July 2017.

Arkansas hasn't performed any executions since 2017, when 4 inmates were 
executed in 8 days.

The last of the state's lethal injection drugs expired in January. Arkansas 
doesn't have any executions scheduled, and state prison officials last year 
said they wouldn't search for any new lethal injection drugs until a law 
keeping the source of drugs secret is expanded to cover manufacturers.

(source: Associated Press)