[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----COLO., UTAH, ARIZ., ORE., USA

[Rick Halperin]

August 13




COLORADO:

Money well spent? Death penalty stance means big bucks for La Junta DA’s office



Prosecuting the death penalty case for an inmate accused of murdering Colorado 
Department of Corrections Sgt. Mary Ricard and wounding another officer during 
a Sept. 24, 2012, attack is costing Coloradans big bucks, but taxpayers may 
never know just how much.

And prosecutors’ insistence on pursuing the death penalty - even though 
Colorado has not executed a criminal since 1997; the governor of the state 
opposes capital punishment; and Ricard’s family opposes execution for the 
killer - has added more than $1.6 million to the coffers of the District’s 
Attorney’s Office in Colorado’s 16th Judicial District in La Junta.

Miguel Contreras-Perez, now 40, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to 
first-degree murder in the stabbing death of Ricard, 55, at the Arkansas Valley 
prison in Ordway. Contreras-Perez also faces charges of attempted 1st-degree 
murder and 1st-degree assault in the attack on Sgt. Lori Gann, who survived.

The case has been mired down in legal maneuverings for the past 7 years, slowed 
by competency evaluations and changes in attorneys representing 
Contreras-Perez.

"This case has had so many frustrations from start to finish," said James 
Bullock, the 16th Judicial District Attorney, who is prosecuting the case.

Bullock declined to comment any further as "this case is still currently 
pending," he said.

As a part of that process, Bullock is allowed by state law to bill the Colorado 
Department of Corrections for the cost of prosecuting Contreras-Perez. A 
Colorado Open Records Act Request filed by The Pueblo Chieftain on July 23 was 
fulfilled by the Colorado Department of Corrections and reveals the cost the 
taxpayers have had to shoulder for the prosecution.

>From October of 2012 to July 1 of this year, the DOC has paid $1.665 million of 
taxpayers’ money to Bullock’s office. Billing’s notes indicate the fees have 
covered attorney, investigator, paralegal and support staff costs as well as 
supplies, service fees, transcript and postage costs associated with the case.

Currently, Denver Attorney David Lane and members of his staff are representing 
Contreras-Perez, who is held at the maximum-security section of Sterling 
Correctional Facility in Northern Colorado.

The Chieftain also made a Colorado Open Records request with the Colorado 
Office of Alternate Defense Council on Aug. 5, asking for documentation of the 
cost to state taxpayers to pay attorneys representing Contreras-Perez.

On Aug. 7, Deputy Director Darren Cantor denied the request based on a Colorado 
Supreme Court rule stating there are exceptions and limitations on access to 
records, and that agencies must deny inspection if the records have privileged 
information; confidential legal, commercial, financial, geological, or 
geophysical data; and confidential personal information.

"State lawmakers in 2015 killed a bill that would have made the State Public 
Defender’s Office and the Office of Alternate Defense Counsel subject to CORA. 
At the time, reporters were trying to get records from the public defender 
showing how much that office spent to keep James Holmes from the death 
penalty," said Jeffrey Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of 
Information Coalition. Holmes on July 20, 2012, killed 12 people and injured 70 
others when he opened fire in an Aurora movie theater.

"Since then, the judicial branch adopted the rules cited by Cantor."

Although the Chieftain did not seek any personal or confidential information, 
the request was denied.

"Yes, they seem to be interpreting that provision very broadly," Roberts said.

Crowley County District Court Judge Michael Schiferl was overseeing the case 
against Contreras-Perez and agreed to a change of venue last year, so Pueblo 
District Court Judge William Alexander took over the case last August. 
Currently, the case is set for a 6-month jury trial starting Jan. 6.

Conteras-Perez is scheduled to appear in court today for a status conference. 
The case involves hundreds of witnesses, 55,000 pages of evidence, hostile 
witnesses, El Salvadorian witnesses from Conteras-Perez’s native country, who 
Lane fears may encounter difficulty getting into the U.S. to testify.

During a February 2014 preliminary hearing spanning 3 days starting in December 
2013, videotaped interviews were played in the courtroom and Contreras-Perez 
talked of a relationship with Gann. He later recanted his statements.

He initially said the relationship involved her accepting love notes from him 
and letting him touch her without writing him up for breaking the rules. He 
told investigators that she halted the relationship, but at times would change 
her attitude and that had confused him.

Later, in letters he sent to the district attorney’s office, Contreras-Perez 
recanted about the relationship and said, "I tried to pass notes and she didn’t 
accept them."

Evidence indicated Contreras-Perez removed a kitchen knife from its wire cable 
tether by chopping at the tether about 15 times. He first killed Ricard by 
asking her to take him to a supply room for supplies, then attacked Gann.

Contreras-Perez admitted to investigators he would have killed Gann but Sgt. 
Lisa Orosco walked in and he stopped because she was there.

Ricard’s husband, Tim Ricard, told The Pueblo Chieftain last year that he has 
been to all but one court hearing because "I feel I have to be there for her."

At one recent court hearing, Mary Ricard’s daughter, Katie Benson Smith, said 
she witnessed defense attorney Lane present a book, "History of the Death 
Penalty in Colorado," by Michael Radelet to both the defense and the judge, 
requesting they read the book.

"We’ve requested they not pursue the death penalty from the get go, but it 
falls on deaf ears," Smith said. "They say they have a job to do and I don’t 
know what to think," Smith said.

Ricard’s family would prefer to see the case wrapped up. Seven years of travel 
and time spent attending court hearings has taken a toll on them.

"As long as it (disposition) is done right," Smith said, it is the victim’s 
family members’ belief that it would be better to have the case wrapped up 
instead of requiring them to trek from all over the state to attend court 
hearings at which they are painfully reminded about how Mary Ricard died.

During the most recent legislative session, Tim Ricard testified and Smith’s 
brother read a statement on her behalf during a hearing about abolishing the 
death penalty in Colorado. The bill did not advance.

"I don’t know what the Legislature’s plan is this next session, but I have 
heard there is a big push for the issue to be brought up again," Smith said.

It has been more than a half-century since a Puebloan was executed. John Bizup, 
26, a white handyman, was executed in the gas chamber on Aug. 14, 1964, for a 
murder and robbery in Pueblo.

3 years later Luis Monge, 48, a Hispanic appliance salesman was executed June 
2, 1967, for a Denver murder. After that, the gas chamber was no longer used.

The only execution to occur since Monge was Oct. 13, 1997, when Gary Lee Davis, 
53, a white man, was executed by lethal injection for a 1986 murder and rape. 
Davis was on death row for a decade while appeals were litigated.

In modern-day Colorado, convicts with more heinous crimes that seem fitting for 
the death penalty have escaped capital punishment. Holmes was sentenced to life 
without parole in 2015 after a jury failed to agree on the death penalty.

And even when an execution seems imminent, Colorado’s governors don’t always 
agree to sign the death warrant. A judge initially set an execution date for 
Nathan Dunlap in August 2013, but Gov. John Hickenlooper signed a temporary 
reprieve to postpone Dunlap’s execution date. Dunlap, now a 45-year-old black 
male, is the old timer on death row, having been there since 1996. He was 
convicted of murdering 4 people at an Aurora pizza restaurant in 1993.

Current Democratic Gov. Jared Polis has indicated he would sign a bill that 
would end the death penalty and it is a topic the Legislature is expected to 
take up again in the upcoming session.

(source: The Pueblo Chieftain)








UTAH:

Ron Lafferty could face firing squad within ‘months’ after Utah death row 
inmate loses latest appeal



A federal appeals court Monday pushed Ron Lafferty, who is on Utah’s death row 
for the 1984 murder of his sister-in-law and niece in American Fork, much 
closer to a firing squad by denying his latest appeal.

Lafferty, 78, can appeal the latest decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, said 
Andrew Peterson, assistant solicitor general at the Utah attorney general’s 
office.

"It’s incredibly unlikely they will review this case," Peterson said, "and if 
they don’t, we’re talking months" until Lafferty is executed.

Dale Baich, an attorney for Lafferty, issued a statement Monday afternoon.

"When the most severe penalty a state can impose is at stake," the statement 
said, "we look to the courts to be the safety net to ensure that the full 
protections allowed by the Constitution have been met. Here, the court relied 
on procedural technicalities to deny Mr. Lafferty a complete appellate review 
of his case.

"We are carefully reviewing the decision and going forward, we will exercise 
all state and federal legal options."

Utah has not executed an inmate since a firing squad shot Ronnie Lee Gardner to 
death in 2010. The state has 8 inmates on its death row. Monday’s ruling makes 
Lafferty the closest of them to being executed.

State law gives Lafferty the choice between death by lethal injection or firing 
squad. Lafferty has said in court proceedings he wants the latter.

In 2004, the Utah Legislature ended the firing squad option, except for inmates 
who had already been sentenced to die and had selected that method. Then, in 
2015, the Legislature added firing squads again, but only if courts determine 
Utah does not have the cocktail of drugs needed to execute an inmate by lethal 
injection.

Monday’s ruling by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals covered old ground. 
Lafferty again argued his original trial attorneys misrepresented him, that he 
should not have been found competent to stand trial and he should not have been 
made to stand trial a 2nd time after winning an earlier appeal.

Monday’s decision rejected every point. The 18-page ruling from the 
Denver-based appellate judges repeatedly said they found no errors with the 
federal and state courts in Utah that already sided against Lafferty’s 
arguments.

Lafferty and his younger brother Dan Lafferty participated in the murders of 
Brenda Lafferty, 24, and her 15-month-old daughter, Erica - crimes captured in 
Jon Krakauer’s book "Under the Banner of Heaven." According to court documents, 
the brothers blamed their sister-in-law for helping Ron Lafferty’s wife leave 
him with their 6 children. Ron and Dan Lafferty also were upset, according to 
trial testimony, that Brenda Lafferty opposed her husband, Allen Lafferty, 
joining their polygamous cult, called School of the Prophets.

On Pioneer Day 1984, Ron and Dan Lafferty forced their way into Brenda and 
Allen Lafferty’s American Fork duplex. The husband was not home.

Ron and Dan Lafferty beat her, strangled her with a vacuum cord and slit her 
throat, court documents say. Dan Lafferty then killed Erica by cutting her 
throat.

The 2 brothers were tried separately. Dan Lafferty went on trial first in 
January 1985. He represented himself. The 12 jurors convicted him of 2 counts 
of 1st-degree murder and 4 other felonies but were unable to vote unanimously 
for the death penalty. A judge sentenced him to 2 life terms.

When Ron Lafferty, who had lawyers representing him, went to trial the 
following April, the jury convicted him and voted unanimously that he be put to 
death. The 10th Circuit - the same court that ruled Monday - later overturned 
the capital murder conviction and ordered a new trial after finding that the 
wrong standards had been used to evaluate Ron Lafferty’s mental competency.

The 2nd trial commenced in 1996 with the same result - Ron Lafferty was 
convicted of murder charges and sentenced to die. Lafferty’s legal case has 
been crawling through state and federal courts ever since.

Even if the U.S. Supreme Court rejects the latest appeal, Ron Lafferty will 
still have some legal options. Once a state judge signs an execution warrant, 
Ron Lafferty will have the right to request a commutation from the Utah Board 
of Pardons and Parole.

Peterson said Ron Lafferty’s attorneys might also yet argue he is not competent 
to be executed. Mental competency has arisen ever since Ron Lafferty was tried 
the 1st time, with trial and appellate attorneys arguing he couldn’t adequately 
assist in his defense.

Peterson said there is a different legal standard for determining if someone is 
competent to go to an execution chamber.

"As long as he knows why he’s being punished," Peterson said, "he’s competent 
to be executed."

(source: Salt Lake Tribune)

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

New appeal denied: Is Utah inmate Ron Lafferty months away from a firing squad?



The man convicted of committing one of Utah's most infamous double murders has 
lost his latest round of appeals, putting him another step closer to a firing 
squad execution.

Ronald Lafferty, 78, was seeking a certificate that would allow him to make an 
appeal to another court. On Monday, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver 
denied that request.

"This is effectively the end of the habeas case, other than motions," said 
Andrew Peterson, with the Utah Attorney General's Office, meaning Lafferty's 
challenges to his conviction and sentence are over.

At this point, Peterson said Lafferty can ask the 10th Circuit to reconsider 
its decision, ask the full 10th Circuit to consider his case rather than a 
panel of judges, or ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case. Peterson 
believes it's "exceedingly unlikely" that the nation's highest court would hear 
Lafferty's case.

Because of Monday's decision, Peterson said it's "conceivable" that Lafferty is 
now just months away from execution.

Lafferty and his brother, Dan Lafferty, were convicted of slitting the throats 
of his sister-in-law, Brenda Lafferty, and her infant daughter in 1984 - crimes 
they committed after Ron Lafferty allegedly received a revelation from God 
telling him to kill them. Dan Lafferty was sentenced to life in prison.

Lafferty is one of the longest-serving death row inmates in the state. His case 
has gone through numerous appeals.

In his latest appeal, Lafferty was seeking a certificate of appealability, 
something he has already sought and been denied once before. A certificate of 
appealability is needed in order for another court to hear arguments that a 
habeas corpus appeal was wrongfully denied.

Peterson said Lafferty was essentially asking for a permit to be allowed to 
appeal.

"After exhausting his state court remedies, Lafferty sought federal habeas 
relief by filing a petition in federal district court," according to the 10th 
Circuit Court's decision issued Monday. "The district court denied his petition 
and also denied him a certificate of appealability. Lafferty has now filed a 
renewed motion."

In the appeals court's decision, the judges deny 4 arguments made by Lafferty: 
that the state did not have jurisdiction to retry him; that his retrial 
violated the double jeopardy clause; that he had ineffective assistance at 
trial and at sentencing; and that the state court erred in finding him 
competent to stand trial.

Peterson said the state will still seek a warrant of execution for Lafferty, 
despite his age.

"We've been attempting for several decades to have his judgment carried out," 
he said.

Peterson said it would be an injustice to the victims and their families if 
Lafferty was not executed simply because he "waited it out."

Lafferty would be the 2nd oldest inmate if executed. In 2018, Walter Moody 
became the oldest person executed, in Alabama, at 83.

(source: Deseret News)








ARIZONA:

Intent on Restoring His Conviction and Death Sentence, Arizona Reinvents Its 
Case Against Barry Jones----A year after a federal judge overturned the 
conviction of Barry Jones, Arizona is still fighting to execute him.



On a clear, blue day in late spring, Arizona Assistant Attorney General Myles 
Braccio stood before a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. 
It was just after 10 a.m. Braccio had a half-hour to salvage a 24-year-old 
death penalty conviction that had been overturned by a federal judge. "Your 
honors," he began, "this case today presents nothing more than a habeas 
petitioner who hired several new experts, many years after his convictions and 
sentences, in an attempt to undermine the jury’s verdicts."

The petitioner was Barry Lee Jones, sent to death row in 1995 for an 
unspeakable crime: the rape and murder of a 4-year-old girl. Jones had always 
sworn he was innocent - and the experts in question, hired by the Office of the 
Arizona Federal Public Defender, had dismantled the case against him. During a 
seven-day evidentiary hearing held in 2017, witnesses had explained in sobering 
detail why the state’s medical theory of the crime was impossible. Had Jones’s 
trial lawyers presented such evidence, U.S. District Judge Timothy Burgess 
ruled in July 2018, “there is a reasonable probability that his jury would not 
have convicted him of any of the crimes” that sent him to death row.

Burgess ordered Arizona to swiftly retry or release Jones. Instead, the state 
appealed to the 9th Circuit. An oral argument was scheduled for June 20 at its 
headquarters in downtown San Francisco. The courthouse at Seventh and Mission 
looks stately but plain from the outside, but inside it is startlingly 
magnificent: an opulent Beaux Arts building replete with marble, vaulted 
ceilings and a bronze elevator cage, just past security. Braccio, 39, arrived 
unaccompanied by his colleagues with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. 
With a new beard, mustache, and glasses, he was now the face of the state’s 
determination to execute Jones.

Jones’s actual innocence was not up for debate. Rather, the judges had to 
decide whether they agreed with Burgess that the new medical evidence would 
likely have led to an acquittal if considered by a jury. They also had to 
address a more vexing legal argument advanced by the state: that under the 
sweeping Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, or AEDPA, Burgess 
should not have granted the 2017 evidentiary hearing in the first place.

The state’s position seemed weak, if not desperate, on the one hand. The case 
against Jones had been so thoroughly discredited that it was hard to imagine 
how the remaining evidence against him could survive the scrutiny of a new 
trial. Of course, from the state’s perspective, that was the point of 
appealing. Arizona prosecutors clearly believed it would be easier to convince 
a panel of federal judges that Burgess was wrong on the law than it would be to 
convince a jury to reconvict Jones. At this stage of capital appellate 
litigation, cases are most often won or lost on procedural technicalities, no 
matter how clear cut the underlying facts may seem.

The case against Jones had been so thoroughly discredited that it was hard to 
imagine how the remaining evidence against him could survive the scrutiny of a 
new trial.

Braccio began by recasting the medical testimony at the 2017 evidentiary 
hearing. The evidence was actually "double-edged," he argued. Even if it did 
not fully support the original theory of the crime, it still supported other 
elements of the state’s case. And those were enough to reinstate Jones’s 
conviction and sentence.

The judges looked skeptical. They had reviewed the voluminous records in the 
case. The files dated back to the morning of May 2, 1994: the day 4-year-old 
Rachel Gray arrived at a Tucson hospital, lifeless, bruised, and showing 
injuries to her head and vagina. She and her siblings had been living with 
their mother, Angela Gray - Jones’s girlfriend at the time - in Jones’s cramped 
home at the Desert Vista Trailer Park. An autopsy would show that Rachel died 
from a blow to her abdomen that ruptured her duodenum, part of her small 
intestine, leading to a deadly condition called peritonitis. There was little 
doubt someone had violently harmed the child. But the lead detective never 
investigated the timing of Rachel’s fatal injury, merely assuming it had been 
inflicted on the eve of her death. Law enforcement immediately seized on Jones, 
ignoring any alternative suspects.

In his ruling overturning the conviction, Burgess called this a "rush to 
judgment." The state had placed its entire theory of the crime within a narrow 
window on May 1 - during which Jones had been seen with Rachel taking short 
trips in his van - but now it was clear that Rachel’s condition could never 
have become so grave so fast. The timeline used to convict Jones no longer fit, 
9th Circuit Judge Richard Clifton told Braccio. "We’re close to the OJ 
anniversary," he added, "and things don’t fit, you gotta acquit, right?"

In a judicial circuit famed for being the most liberal in the country, Clifton, 
68, is among the more conservative members of the bench. Seated next to him was 
another judge who is no bleeding heart: Judge Johnnie Rawlinson, a former 
prosecutor from Nevada. The third and most liberal member of the panel was 
Judge Paul Watford, appointed by Barack Obama. Ideologically, it was a mixed 
bag. But if there were any deep disagreements over the case, they were hard to 
discern. The stakes were high for Jones going into the oral argument. But they 
would soon become even higher. In July, U.S. Attorney General William Barr 
announced plans to resume federal executions - and Arizona Attorney General 
Mark Brnovich immediately signaled plans do the same. "As you know, Arizona has 
not carried out an execution since 2014," he wrote in a letter to Gov. Doug 
Ducey. Under a legal settlement following a notorious botched execution, 
Arizona had adopted a new 1-drug protocol allowing for pentobarbital - the same 
drug just chosen by the Justice Department. "This suggests that the federal 
government has successfully obtained pentobarbital,- Brnovich wrote, noting 
that Arizona had struggled to acquire the drug. He asked for the governor’s 
help finding a supply to restart executions. "Justice must be done for the 
victims of these heinous crimes and their families. Those who committed the 
ultimate crime deserve the ultimate punishment."

"Subtract Everything Else"

There is no question that the original charges against Jones were some of the 
worst crimes imaginable. But the oral argument made clear that Arizona is now 
trying win back Jones’s death sentence on any possible basis - even one that 
radically alters the original theory of the case.

Jurors found Jones guilty on 4 counts along with 1st-degree murder: 3 counts of 
child abuse and 1 of "sexual assault of a minor under 14" Under Arizona’s 
felony murder law - in which a person can be found guilty of 1st-degree murder 
if a death occurs during the commission of a felony - any of the 4 counts were 
sufficient to support a death sentence. To reinstate Jones’s conviction, 
Braccio just needed to convince the panel that a jury would still convict Jones 
on any one of the original counts.

The judges swiftly shut down Braccio’s first line of argument: that despite all 
the new medical evidence, a jury would still have convicted Jones of sexual 
assault. This was a somewhat baffling place to begin; of the original charges 
against Jones, it was perhaps the weakest. There was never any physical 
evidence tying Jones to Rachel’s vaginal injury. A pediatric pathologist had 
found that, while there was evidence of re-injury, the original wound dated 
back weeks - possibly before Rachel lived with Jones. Braccio’s claim didn’t 
stand up, Clifton told him. "Because once you open the door to an earlier time 
period, you open the door to lots of other potential culprits."

Braccio asked the judges to discard the horrific charges at the heart of the 
state’s original case and fast-forward to the part where Jones did not take 
Rachel to the hospital.

Braccio moved on to his next argument: Even if a jury would not have found 
Jones guilty of physically assaulting Rachel, he said, it would definitely have 
convicted him on a separate count of child abuse: the failure to take Rachel to 
the hospital the night before she died.

This argument was harder to dismiss. It was true that Rachel was visibly sick 
and injured that evening. As Braccio pointed out, multiple neighbors had 
expressed concern - and one of Jones’s own medical experts had testified that 
it would have been apparent to anyone that the child was unwell, even if the 
reason was unclear. Particularly damning for Jones was that he had admitted to 
lying to Angela Gray about taking Rachel to get medical attention earlier that 
day. As Jones would tell police, Rachel had bloodied her head after falling 
from his parked van; she said a little boy had pushed her. Jones said he was 
taking Rachel to be seen by paramedics at a nearby fire station but changed his 
mind after spotting a police car. Wishing to avoid being caught with a 
suspended license, Jones said he drove to a Quik Mart, where an EMT shined a 
light in Rachel’s eyes and concluded that she was OK. "He said something about 
her, her eyes being reactive equal, reacting equal, something," Jones told 
police.

The head injury was not what killed Rachel. But the lie about taking Rachel to 
the fire station made Jones an early suspect. However, as Jones’s lawyer, 
Assistant Federal Public Defender Cary Sandman, argued, it was Gray - known to 
be physically abusive toward her kids - who did not want to take Rachel to the 
hospital that night. She was afraid she would be suspected of child abuse. In 
fact, Pima County prosecutors had tried and failed to win a felony murder 
conviction against Gray on the same charge in 1995. She was given 8 years 
instead.

But most importantly, Sandman said, the jurors who convicted Jones of 
"intentionally and knowingly" denying medical care to Rachel had been persuaded 
that he committed the underlying offenses - namely raping and fatally beating 
her. In her closing statement at trial, the prosecutor said that Jones had 
deliberately refused to take Rachel to the hospital in order to cover up his 
deadly actions. This argument was inextricable from the jury’s decision to find 
Jones guilty on all counts, Sandman argued. "I think that the conviction has to 
be set aside," he told the judges. If the state decides to retry Jones - a 
decision the attorney general’s office has repeatedly tried to avoid - "they 
can retry him on that count."

"You’re now asking us to hypothesize an entirely different trial that never 
occurred."

Braccio vehemently disagreed. Jurors had been instructed to consider each count 
separately, he pointed out. He asked the judges to simply discard the horrific 
charges at the heart of the state’s original case and fast-forward to the part 
where Jones did not take Rachel to the hospital. "I think you can look at the 
evidence from trial in this case and start exactly when he returned to the 
trailer park with Rachel after these numerous trips he took," Braccio said. 
"Subtract everything else - everything else that happened before that. And the 
record is overwhelming to convict him of fatal neglect in this case."

Watford pushed back. "You’re now asking us to hypothesize an entirely different 
trial that never occurred," he told Braccio. But the judge was more incredulous 
at a different claim peddled by Braccio: that under Arizona law, it did not 
matter whether Jones even realized Rachel was gravely injured on the night 
before she died. His failure to take her to the hospital still made him guilty 
of murder.

"That’s a pretty tough standard to apply a death penalty to," Clifton remarked. 
Never mind the death penalty, Watford said. Was Braccio really suggesting that 
a parent who fails to take their kid to the hospital can be convicted of murder 
- even if they have no idea their child’s life is at risk? "Absolutely correct, 
your honor," Braccio said.

"I can tell you the Eighth Amendment does not permit someone to get the death 
penalty for doing that," Watford responded. "That has got to be true. Correct?" 
Braccio demurred. But taken to its logical conclusion, that’s exactly what he 
was saying.

Unintended Consequences

It has been more than a year since Jones first heard the news of his overturned 
conviction. The order last summer brought a palpable sense of excitement and 
relief that seemed to mark the end of a very long road. But the state soon made 
clear it was not giving up, and despite Burgess’s order telling Arizona to 
retry or release him, Jones was not likely to go home anytime soon after all.

With a ruling from the 9th Circuit panel not likely to come until the end of 
this year, the next few months will extend what has already felt like an 
endless series of waits for Jones. It had taken 8 months after the 2017 
evidentiary hearing for Burgess to overturn his conviction. Before that, it was 
a lengthy wait for the hearing itself - not to mention the years it took his 
lawyers to win the hearing to begin with. Even if the 9th Circuit rules in 
Jones’s favor, there is no reason to believe the state will yield.

I first wrote about Jones in the days leading up to the 2017 hearing. The 
records, police reports, and trial transcripts were filled with red flags 
pointing to a wrongful conviction, from prosecutorial misconduct to junk 
science. Two jurors who voted to find Jones guilty had since expressed 
misgivings about the case. And friends and neighbors who knew Jones from Desert 
Vista told me that they never believed he was responsible for Rachel’s death.

In the meantime, there have been significant shifts in Arizona where the death 
penalty is concerned. The same year as Jones’s evidentiary hearing, several 
former prosecutors and judges threw their support behind a petition before the 
U.S. Supreme Court, brought by a man on death row named Abel Daniel Hidalgo, 
who argued that Arizona’s death penalty was so overly broad as to be 
unconstitutional. Hidalgo’s attorneys presented statistical data that showed 98 
percent of first-degree murder defendants in Maricopa County (where the death 
penalty is most frequently sought) were eligible for the death penalty. This 
flew in the face of the notion that capital punishment be reserved only for the 
most egregious cases - for defendants who are the "worst of the worst."

Among those who signed an amicus brief supporting Hidalgo was the man who wrote 
Arizona’s death penalty law more than 40 years ago. As he told me in late 2017, 
the once-narrow list of aggravating factors that were supposed to tip the 
scales toward a death sentence in Arizona has "crept and expanded to absurd, 
broad categories." Among them: offenses "committed in a cold, calculated manner 
without pretense of moral or legal justification."

The Supreme Court ultimately rejected Hidalgo’s petition, explaining that, 
while the data pointed to a problem that "warrants careful attention and 
evaluation," there was not enough evidence presented for the justices to rule 
one way or another. But Justice Stephen Breyer highlighted other concerning 
aspects of Arizona’s law that show how broadly the death penalty can be 
applied. "Arizona’s capital murder statute makes all 1st-degree murderers 
eligible for death and defines first-degree murder broadly to include all 
premeditated homicides along with felony murder based on 22 possible predicate 
felony offenses," he wrote.

The most recent Arizona prosecutor to come out against the death penalty is a 
man closely linked to Jones’s case.

It is under this sentencing scheme that Arizona is now fighting to execute 
Jones, not for the "ultimate crime," but for failing to take Rachel to the 
hospital. Braccio may indeed be right that state law would authorize a death 
sentence in these circumstances. But few would argue that this is how the 
state’s death penalty law was intended to work.

The most recent Arizona prosecutor to come out against the death penalty is a 
man closely linked to Jones’s case. In May, just weeks before the oral argument 
before the 9th Circuit, Deputy Pima County Attorney Rick Unklesbay published a 
memoir titled "Arbitrary Death: A Prosecutor’s Perspective on the Death 
Penalty." The slim volume contains profiles of capital cases he handled dating 
back to the 1980s - grisly crimes that he still believes merited the death 
penalty. But the book reveals how Unklesbay came to decide the system is 
unworkable. It critiqued the overly broad aggravating factors, some of which 
are "perplexing, even to prosecutors."

Yet Unklesbay’s book had a notable omission. While he briefly acknowledged the 
risk of executing people for crimes they did not commit, he made practically no 
mention of the nine people exonerated from Arizona’s death row. This is 
particularly odd given Unklesbay’s current position in Tucson: He is the head 
of Pima County’s Conviction Integrity Unit. It is literally his job to review 
cases of possible innocence.

Unklesbay’s abolitionist message would likely ring hollow to Jones. For years 
his attorneys have sought to submit his case to the Pima County CIU, but 
Unklesbay has repeatedly declined to accept it. After Burgess vacated Jones’s 
conviction, Unklesbay told me it was too soon to know whether the CIU would 
accept the case. In an email last week, Unklesbay echoed this message. "I’m 
waiting for 9th Circuit as well and waiting to hear from the attorney general 
about the outcome," he wrote. "So we haven’t considered anything further on it 
at this point."

"That’s the Conundrum"

The oral argument in San Francisco was winding down when the judges finally 
addressed the most confusing part of the state’s appeal: that under AEDPA, 
Burgess had been wrong to grant the 2017 evidentiary hearing - and to use it as 
a basis for overturning Jones’s conviction.

Jones only ever made it back into federal court thanks to a 2012 ruling by the 
U.S. Supreme Court named Martinez v. Ryan. The decision provided a narrow 
remedy in cases where there was compelling evidence of poor lawyering that had 
never been heard in court. The Sixth Amendment right to counsel is a 
cornerstone of American law. For appellate attorneys in criminal cases, an 
ineffective assistance claim is the most obvious and viable path to a new 
trial. Yet, depending in part on the procedural rules in a given state, there 
is no guarantee a court will meaningfully assess a trial lawyer’s performance, 
even in a death penalty case. AEDPA, passed a year after Jones was convicted, 
bolstered rules shutting out ineffective assistance claims from federal review 
if a defendant had previously failed to bring them in state court.

But Martinez carved out a crucial exception to this rule. If the failure was 
itself due to the ineffectiveness of a state post-conviction attorney, the 
justices ruled, a federal court could consider the claim. "Before Martinez, the 
general rule that applied in every case was, if your post-conviction lawyer is 
negligent, the client is stuck with that,"
Sandman, Jones’s lawyer, told me.

Jones’s case "seems to fit to a tee what Martinez was intended to correct," 
Sandman says. "I mean, here’s a guy who’s been in prison for 25 years and he 
used Martinez to show that he didn’t get a fair trial." But the Arizona 
Attorney General’s Office accused Burgess of taking Martinez too far. The 
ruling created "a gateway" to having an ineffective assistance claim considered 
- "no more, no less," the state argued. Just because Jones had overcome this 
initial hurdle - a concept known as "procedural default" - to get his claim 
considered by Burgess did not mean he was actually entitled to prove it in 
court. After all, AEDPA explicitly forbids federal courts from granting an 
evidentiary hearing on a claim that was never developed in state court.

In other words, if Jones had wished to present the evidence on display at the 
2017 evidentiary hearing to win a new trial, he should have gotten his 
post-conviction attorney to do it back when he was assigned one in 1999. 
Burgess had violated AEDPA "by using all of this evidence" to decide Jones’s 
case, Braccio argued.

"Counsel, just so I understand your argument," Rawlinson said, "are you saying 
that it was permissible to use this evidence to determine whether or not there 
was cause to excuse the procedural default, but then a line has to be drawn 
around that evidence, and it cannot be used on the merits? That’s your 
argument?"

"Exactly right, your honor," Braccio said. The judges seemed confounded. What 
was the point of allowing the claim to be brought before a judge if then there 
was no evidence for a judge to consider? Braccio replied that a judge could 
just look to the state court record. "But that doesn’t make sense if the claim 
wasn’t developed in state court," Rawlinson said. "That’s the conundrum I’m 
having with your argument. If the claim was never developed in state court, 
there will be nothing in the state record. You’d be looking at a vacuum 
basically."

"Are you aware of the concept of Catch-22?” Clifton said. “Because this seems 
like exactly that."

The judges were clearly not convinced by Braccio’s argument. But they also 
seemed genuinely unsure about how to proceed. "I feel a little caught," Clifton 
confessed. On the one hand, "it seems insane" to allow someone like Jones to 
develop all the facts that prove he should have a chance to get back into court 
under Martinez, only to then say a judge must ignore that same evidence. "That 
doesn’t make any sense." But the Supreme Court was also clear that Martinez did 
not overrule any of its earlier decisions - including those that restrict 
evidentiary development under AEDPA. ":So, I feel sort of handcuffed."

Rawlinson asked Braccio whether there was a specific case that supported his 
stance. He cited a "combination" of rulings. So, "you’re asking us to cobble 
together all of these sources and come up with the conclusion that the evidence 
that’s been garnered in support of [Jones] is no longer in play?" Rawlinson 
replied. "Correct," Braccio said.

"This is a separation of powers issue," Braccio went on. Congress passed AEDPA 
in order to ensure finality in criminal convictions. Just because the Supreme 
Court carved out an exception to one of the law’s strict procedural rules did 
not mean its other rules did not apply. "Well, it appears the Supreme Court has 
done that in Martinez," Rawlinson responded. "And we’re bound to follow the 
Supreme Court’s ruling on this."

Sandman predicts that the 9th Circuit will ultimately reject Braccio’s 
argument. But he also expects Arizona to appeal to the Supreme Court. In his 
view, this will do little more than drag out a process that has unfairly kept 
his client on death row for more than 2 1/2 decades. The Martinez decision was 
clearly intended to open a door that had long been closed to people like Jones, 
he says.

"Martinez was a 7-2 decision," Sandman says. Only Clarence Thomas and the late 
Antonin Scalia dissented. Unless John Roberts and Samuel Alito, who voted with 
the majority, want to suddenly "switch sides," it is highly unlikely that the 
court will grant review on the question. To do so would be to say, "‘We want to 
close the door that we opened.’ And I don’t see that happening. I think they’re 
going to want to leave the door open."

(source: theintercept.com)








OREGON:

Oregon’s new law limiting the death penalty applies to past cases, new legal 
opinion says



Lawmakers this year assured Oregonians that a new law significantly limiting 
the death penalty in Oregon would not affect death row cases returned to lower 
courts for retrial or new sentencing hearings. On Friday, a top lawyer with the 
Oregon Department of Justice told prosecutors the law does in fact apply to 
those cases -- and to pending aggravated murder cases as well.

Lawmakers this year assured Oregonians that a new law significantly limiting 
the death penalty in Oregon would not affect death row cases returned to lower 
courts for retrial or new sentencing hearings. On Friday, a top lawyer with the 
Oregon Department of Justice told prosecutors the law does in fact apply to 
those cases -- and to pending aggravated murder cases as well. State 
legislators this year made repeated assurances that a new law significantly 
limiting the death penalty in Oregon wouldn’t apply to death row cases returned 
to lower courts for retrial or new sentencing hearings.

Now, a top lawyer with the Oregon Department of Justice has told prosecutors 
that the law does indeed affect those cases -- and pending aggravated murder 
cases as well.

Benjamin Gutman, Oregon’s solicitor general, wrote the email, which was 
distributed Friday and later obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Gutman said the issue came up during the agency’s review of a Washington County 
trial court ruling last week involving Martin Allen Johnson who authorities say 
raped and murdered a 15-year-old Tigard girl in 1998 before throwing her body 
off an Astoria bridge.

As soon as Gov. Kate Brown signed Senate Bill 1013, which limits the crimes 
eligible for the death penalty, Johnson’s lawyers raised the issue of whether 
the law applies to their client. Circuit Judge Eric Butterfield determined that 
Johnson’s crime no longer qualifies as aggravated murder under the new law and 
therefore he isn’t eligible for the death penalty.

"I know that I have had conversations with many of you in which I suggested 
otherwise but after careful review of the issue - we have concluded that we 
don’t have a plausible basis for an appeal," Gutman wrote.

State Rep. Jennifer Williamson, D-Portland, had told The Oregonian/OregonLive 
last month that lawmakers drafted a separate bill, Senate Bill 1005, to make 
clear that SB 1013 wouldn’t apply to those who have been previously sentenced 
but have been granted reversals.

The 2nd bill passed at the close of the session and was signed into law this 
month by Brown. It says SB 1013 doesn’t "apply to persons who were originally 
sentenced before January 1, 2020, and who are subsequently resentenced on or 
after January 1, 2020, as the result of an appellate decision or a 
post-conviction relief proceeding or for any other reason."

Williamson on Monday was unavailable for comment, according to her legislative 
aide. Williamson, an attorney, stepped down as House Majority Leader last month 
and has been rumored to be interested in a run for Oregon attorney general.

A representative of Sen. Floyd Prozanski, a leading proponent of SB 1013, said 
the senator hadn’t seen Gutman’s email and wasn’t available to talk about it.

It is unclear how the opinion will affect some of the state’s most notorious 
cases.

The new law narrows the definition of aggravated murder, which is the only 
crime in Oregon eligible for a death sentence. Aggravated murder is now limited 
to defendants who kill 2 or more people as an act of organized terrorism; kill 
a child younger than 14 intentionally and with premeditation; kill another 
person while locked in jail or prison for a previous murder; or kill a police, 
correctional or probation officer.

Gutman, who as solicitor general oversees the state’s appellate division, said 
the Justice Department’s analysis has broad implications. Lawyers for the 
agency handle all appeals for criminal cases.

He sent the email to prosecutors with aggravated murder cases that have been 
sent back for retrial.

"I thought all of your offices would want to know about our conclusion because 
it also means that we do not think we could defend a death sentence (or even an 
aggravated murder conviction) obtained in any of the pending cases even if the 
trial courts were to rule differently than the court" in the Washington County 
case, he wrote.

Gutman wrote that he had been under the impression that lawmakers had addressed 
concerns over the law’s retroactivity by passing SB 1005, "but on a closer 
read, SB 1005 does not have any language limiting the application of SB 1013’s 
substantive provisions to cases being retried."

Gutman’s opinion sent prosecutors reeling.

Tim Colahan, executive director of the Oregon District Attorneys Association, 
and other prosecutors said the opinion has injected uncertainty into the most 
serious cases and undermined the families of murder victims.

"This contradicts the express intent that the proponents of SB 1013 stated 
during the legislative process and also is contrary to the stated legislative 
intent expressed by legislators when the bill passed," Colahan said. The 
organization opposed Senate Bill 1013.

District attorneys are trying to determine how many cases may be affected by 
the opinion, he said.

Meanwhile, Washington County District Attorney Kevin Barton said the 
legislation has thrown the state’s most serious statutes into chaos.

"Oregon’s murder laws are now a mess after the passage of SB 1013," he said. 
"This is what happens when politicians ignore the will of Oregon voters and 
disregard the experience and input of Oregon’s prosecutors."

Barton said Senate Bill 1013 was passed without regard for its "real world 
impact to our communities and to our victims."

"There are victims and families across Oregon who are suffering right now as a 
result of the mess that has been created," he said.

Katie Suver, a longtime deputy district attorney in Marion County, said the law 
was hastily passed and poorly crafted. She said her testimony before the 
Legislature was limited to 2 minutes -- not enough time, she said, to discuss 
concerns about implications of major change to Oregon murder statutes.

"There needed to be a lot more care in passing this law," she said.

Lane County District Attorney Patty Perlow said prosecutors worried that the 
new law would have implications for cases sent back for new trials or 
sentencing hearings.

"This is why I have been saying all along this bill isn’t going to save any 
money," she said. "We are going to have to litigate every issue."

(source: oregonlive.com)








USA:

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin files bill to abolish death penalty nationwide



U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin is pushing to abolish the federal death penalty after 
President Donald Trump’s administration announced it will be resuming 
executions again for the 1st time since 2003.

Durbin’s bill would "prohibit the imposition of the death penalty for any 
violation of Federal law, and for other purposes." Durbin said Illinois 
eliminated the death penalty 8 years ago and, "We should do the same at the 
federal level," he said in a news release.

The bill is one of a handful that has been filed in Congress this session. 
Durbin’s bill is co-sponsored by Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary 
Committee and Bernie Sanders, an independent seeking Trump's job.

"Try as we might, we cannot escape the fact that the death penalty in America 
is disproportionately imposed on minorities and poor people,"
Durbin said in a statement. "Supreme Court Justices Harry Blackmun and John 
Paul Stevens both declared their opposition to the death penalty by the end of 
their judicial careers, recognizing the system to be deeply flawed."

Jennifer Vollen-Katz, CEO of the John Howard Association, said too many people 
on death row have been exonerated.

"Our criminal justice system is grossly imperfect and to think that we have 
enough certainty of who people are and what happened to think the punishment 
should be death is simply outrageous," she said.

Illinois put a moratorium on the death penalty in 2001 and abolished it in 
2011.

Gallup polling shows a majority of people support allowing the death penalty, 
but that figure has been slowly falling.

(source: Cherokee Tribune & Ledger-News)

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



PENNSYLVANIA:

‘Eric’s Law’ would give prosecutors a 2nd chance at death penalty



Citing the brutal murder of Correctional Officer Eric Williams, 2 lawmakers on 
Monday announced legislation that would give prosecutors a 2nd crack at 
securing the death penalty for killers.

Williams, 34, was beaten and stabbed more than 200 times during an ambush at 
U.S. Penitentiary at Canaan on Feb. 25, 2013, while preparing to lock inmates 
into their cells for a nightly head-count.

His killer, Jessie Con-ui, was already serving a life sentence for a gang 
murder and freely admitted responsibility at trial. Nevertheless, at sentencing 
a lone holdout on the jury ensured he did not get the death penalty for the 
vicious murder, which was caught on tape.

Williams’ family blasted the jury for doing “absolutely nothing” with its 
decision, which resulted in a 2nd life sentence for Con-ui, 42.

On Monday, Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey and U.S. Rep. Fred Keller, R-12, 
announced "Eric’s Law," which would allow prosecutors to impanel a second jury 
for sentencing if the 1st jury fails to reach a unanimous decision.

"Officer Eric Williams was killed by a violent gang member while on-duty," 
Toomey said in a statement. "His murderer’s crime largely went unpunished, even 
though 11 out of 12 jurors voted for the death penalty, because he was already 
serving a life sentence. Our legislation will fix this flaw in our justice 
system and help ensure no family has to see violent criminals avoid justice."

The announcement noted federal law currently does not allow prosecutors to 
impanel a 2nd jury if the first becomes deadlocked. Instead, the presiding 
judge must impose a sentence other than death.

The proposed legislation, which is modeled after state laws in California and 
Arizona, would allow for the 2nd jury, but not require it.

"Justice denied to one is justice denied to all and we cannot let that stand, 
and as they say: the punishment must fit the crime," Keller said in the 
statement. "When a jury in a federal death penalty case finds a defendant 
guilty, but fails to come to a unanimous verdict on the death penalty, there 
should be an option to review the penalty phase of the trial to give victims 
and their families the best chance at finding the justice they seek."

U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser, R-9, Dallas, is a cosponsor of the legislation, which has 
the support of the prison union, the Fraternal Order of Police and the Federal 
Law Enforcement Officers Association.

(source: The Citizen's Voice)

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

Barr Urges Quick Death Penalty for Mass Murder or Killing Police



The Justice Department is seeking legislation to allow quick death sentences 
for people who carry out mass murder or kill a law enforcement officer, 
Attorney General William Barr said Monday.

"We will be proposing legislation providing that in cases of mass murder or in 
cases of murder of a law enforcement officer there will be a strict timetable 
for judicial proceedings that will allow the imposition of the death sentence 
without undue delay," Barr said in a speech at a law enforcement conference in 
New Orleans.

"Punishment must be swift," Barr said adding that he plans to offer the 
legislative proposal next month, when Congress returns from its summer break.

The attorney general offered a conservative’s response to the mass shootings 
that killed 31 people in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton Ohio, as gun-control 
advocates press for a ban on assault rifles and expanded background checks for 
gun buyers.

President Donald Trump has said he wants "meaningful background checks" for 
firearm purchases but that he’ll ensure that the National Rifle Association’s 
views are "fully represented and respected" in discussions with Congress on 
legislation.

(source: bloomberg.com)

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

The Struggle Continues: Bryan Stevenson Speaks On True Justice And Tradition 
---- The veteran attorney, author, and freedom fighter's life's work is 
featured in a new HBO documentary, "True Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for 
Equality."



When one mentions the name Bryan Stevenson in social and criminal justice 
spaces, it is met with reverence and respect.

Stevenson, 59, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative based in Montgomery, 
Alabama, has been in the trenches and at the front lines in the fight against 
the death penalty. He has argued five cases before the United States Supreme 
Court and, through EJI, has won reversals, relief or release from prison for 
more than 135 wrongly condemned death-row inmates, people abandoned by society 
at-large and left to die in cages.

The veteran attorney, author, and freedom fighter’s life’s work is featured in 
a new HBO documentary, True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality. A 
film adaption of his book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, will 
hit theaters in December 2019, with Michael B. Jordan starring as Stevenson and 
Jamie Foxx starring as Walter McMillian, who, in 1987, was sentenced to death 
after he was wrongly convicted for the murder of an 18-year-old white girl.

Stevenson took on McMillian’s case in post-conviction, where he showed that the 
State’s witnesses had lied on the stand - and that the prosecution had 
illegally suppressed evidence. The case was overturned by the Alabama Court of 
Criminal Appeals in 1993 and McMillian was released after spending 6 years on 
death row for a crime he did not commit.

In an interview with ESSENCE, Stevenson’s voice is filled with the echoes and 
expectation of victory, despite the pain he has seen and the horrors he’s 
witnessed.

"We, in the African American community, have always known that the criminal 
justice system is a threat, that it will take people who are innocent or 
wrongly convicted and it will treat people unfairly," Stevenson responds when I 
ask him about the awesome responsibility of holding life and death in his hands 
against the gravitational pull of injustice. "But we keep fighting."

According to EJI, more than half of the people on death row in this country are 
people of color. Of the more than 2700 people currently under a death sentence, 
42% are Black, 13% are Latinx, and 42% are white, despite Black people making 
up approximately 13% and Latinx people making up approximately 18% of the 
population, according to 2018 census data.

Additionally, nearly 80% of murder victims in cases resulting in an execution 
have been white, even though nationally only 50% of murder victims are white, 
i.e. those who murdered white people were found more likely to be sentenced to 
death than those who murdered Black people, according to DeathPenaltyInfo.org.

"It’s been really difficult to get the rest of society to acknowledge the 
racial disparities and inhumanity within the criminal justice system,” 
Stevenson continued. "But I’ve been laboring at this for a really long time, 
and I feel hopeful about this moment, despite the challenges that we face."

This moment is, indeed, rife with both cruelty and resistance. As ESSENCE 
previously reported, Attorney General William Barr announced in July that the 
federal government will be resuming capital punishment after 16 years. One day 
later, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) announced that she would be introducing a 
bill that would "prohibit the imposition of the death penalty for any violation 
of Federal law, and for other purposes."

Pressley announced the bill on social media, tweeting, "The same #racist 
rhetoric coming from the occupant of the @WhiteHouse, who called for the 
execution of the #Exonerated5, is what led to this racist, vile policy. It was 
wrong then and it’s wrong now.

"The cruelty is the point - this is by design."

For Stevenson, this nation’s failed promise of "with liberty and justice for 
all" is what compelled him to enter the legal field. "I became a lawyer because 
I really did want to have the skills and abilities to get behind the 
limitations of democracy," he said with conviction. "I grew up in a community 
where the Black kids had to go to the ‘colored’ school and if you left it up to 
people voting whether or not to end racial segregation in schools, because 
white people were the majority, that would have never happened.

"It took the rule of law and the ability to go into a courtroom and make things 
change," Stevenson continued. "And that’s what motivated me. I always want to 
use that power to help people who are disfavored and disadvantaged, to help 
people like the people I grew up with."

>From George Stinney Jr. To Troy Davis

George Stinney Jr., the youngest person executed in the U.S. in the 20th 
century, was only 14-years old and weighed 95 pounds when he was accused of 
murdering two white girls with a railroad spike in 1944. His trial lasted for 
less than 3 hours and an all-white male jury deliberated for 10 minutes before 
returning a guilty verdict. Though a South Carolina judge exonerated young 
George in 2014, ruling that there had been "fundamental, Constitutional 
violations of due process," the evilness of George Stinney Jr.’s 
state-sanctioned execution is haunting. His photo appears in the early moments 
of True Justice.

"The spectacle of putting a little boy on top of Bibles so his head would be 
tall enough for the electrodes to reach, then to kill him and go home like 
you’ve done something right or just, and not be overwhelmed by that illustrates 
the perversity of what this system can do," Stevenson says quietly.

Though Troy Davis, at the age of 42, was much older than George Stinney Jr., 
when the state of Georgia killed him by lethal injection in 2011 for allegedly 
murdering a police officer, the spectacles of their executions further expose 
the ugliness this nation tries to conceal with flag-waving and anthem-singing. 
Davis was not proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Frantic efforts to save 
his life reached all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in the 11th hour, but to 
no avail.

"Continue to fight this fight", Davis said to his loved ones gathered to watch 
him die. He also addressed his executioners. "For those about to take my life, 
may God have mercy on all of your souls."

For Stevenson, it is important not to view these cases in a vacuum - and 
equally important to be clear on one thing.

"We don’t have to execute people in this country to keep the public safe," 
Stevenson said. "Like with Troy Davis, if there’s a question about guilt, then 
why execute the person? Why? There is a parallel between those 2 cases that I 
think is important for people to recognize."

With Justice For All

Despite the miscarriages of justice Stevenson has witnessed and experienced 
throughout his career, he still believes in equal justice under the law. This 
struck me as the familiar well-worn, tattered, beautiful Black southern faith 
that got our elders and ancestors through, mixed in with that same steely 
determination that says if it’s not so, yet, then it will be when we’re done.

And while that is certainly admirable, there was a time when the Deacons for 
Defense and Justice walked the walk of armed resistance during the same decade 
that Malcolm X taught that there had never been a revolution without bloodshed. 
And as Princeton Professor Eddie Glaude recently made plain, we’re living and 
loving and fighting through a cold Civil War right now.

So, does Stevenson believe - with all that he’s seen - that freedom and justice 
for all can truly be found inside of a courtroom and through non-violent 
protests? Will revolution truly come from inside of the system - a system that 
is not broken, but functioning exactly as intended? As James Baldwin once 
asked, "How much time [does this nation] want for [its] progress?"

"Violence is not just something that you do to other people; in fact, it does 
something to you, as well," Stevenson responds with the conviction of a man who 
has thought this through many times. "And I’m not willing to give away my 
decency and my humanity and my capacity to love - which is what my mother and 
my grandmother gave to me, and her mother and our enslaved ancestors gave to 
them."

"The people who shaped me are the people like my grandmother and my mother. 
These women had such strength and wisdom and insight and tenacity - and they 
were courageous when other people were quiet. Johnnie Carr and Jo Ann Robinson 
and Claudette Colvin and all of these women who were the real architects of the 
Montgomery Bus Boycott and made the Civil Rights Movement succeed. We have to 
honor and recognize them."

Stevenson then recalls a conversation with freedom fighter and civil rights 
leader Rosa Parks, during which she was very specific in telling him to be 
brave - not fearless, but brave - as he continued his fights for justice.

"I think [Parks] knew that it would be irrational to be fearless," he tells 
ESSENCE. "I’ve been in situations that I’ve been very worried about how we’re 
going to be victorious, but I think of our people, our history. The enslaved 
people who escaped, who took the Underground Railroad.

"Then I think about the people who didn’t escape, who still found ways to love 
their children and create joy, even if that was tenuous and they weren’t sure 
if they could hold on to it," Stevenson continued. "I think about the Black 
people who fled the American south for the north and west in response the 
violence of lynching and terror. Then think about the Black people who stayed 
despite that threat and terror."

For Stevenson, that ancestral resilience that has been passed down through 
generations of Black people not only gives him strength to fight for freedom 
even on the days that all seems lost, it also reminds him of his responsibility 
to pass the tradition on.

"That’s the legacy of our community, this capacity to stand up when other 
people say sit down, to speak when other people say be quite," he says with 
palpable resolve. "That has to be something that I hold on to."

(source: essence.com)