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

[Rick Halperin]

January 23



TEXAS:

Texas Supreme Court will weigh whether state should reveal execution drug 
supplier----After 5 years, the fight over identifying a pharmacy that provided 
execution drugs in 2014 is in front of the justices.



For years, the state of Texas has fought to keep the identity of an execution 
drug supplier a secret. On Wednesday, the Texas Supreme Court will hear 
arguments over whether that company's identity should finally be revealed.

Three lawyers who represent death row inmates are seeking to name a pharmacy 
that supplied pentobarbital — the sole drug used in Texas executions — in 2014, 
at a time when multiple states had "botched"executions with new drug 
combinations and struggled to find lethal doses. The Texas prison system has 
claimed before lower courts that the information should be withheld from public 
disclosure because it would endanger the supplier. A district and an appellate 
court both sided with the death penalty lawyers, rejecting the claim that 
disclosure would put the company in danger.

Originally, the Texas Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal from the Texas 
Department of Criminal Justice, indicating that the state soon would be forced 
to reveal the pharmacy's identity. But the justices changed their minds after 
the state filed a motion for a rehearing and focused on a broader claim: that 
naming the pharmacy could cut off the state's supply of drugs and end the death 
penalty in Texas, which has executed by far more inmates than any other state.

“This lawsuit is a collateral attack on the death penalty,” former Texas 
Solicitor General Scott Keller wrote in his last-shot petition in July. “If 
allowed to stand, the court of appeals’ decision directs the public unmasking 
of a supplier of Texas’s lethal-injection drugs, which jeopardizes the State’s 
ability to carry out the death penalty.”

The death penalty lawyers scoffed at the notion, saying, “The sky is not 
falling,” and emphasizing that any Supreme Court order would only pertain to 
the 2014 source; a state shield law passed in 2015 keeps secret any suppliers 
after that, and it's unclear whether the supplier has changed.

The legal fight over the 2014 supplier’s identity began five years ago, when 
then-Attorney General Greg Abbott, who in three previous rulings had said the 
information was public, reversed course and said the state could withhold that 
information because the company would face “real harm” from disclosure. The 
state has repeatedly cited a threat assessment by the Texas Department of 
Public Safety and hate mail received by a previously named pharmacy.

The lawyers then took the case to the courts, where they have largely won. A 
Travis County district court and a regional appellate court both ruled in favor 
of naming the supplier, saying the “threat of physical harm” standard for 
withholding public information does not apply to threats to privacy or the 
impact on the state's supply of drugs.

The death penalty lawyers said they hope to discuss a pharmacy recently named 
by BuzzFeed, according to a letter filed this month with the court. The news 
outlet named Houston’s Greenpark Compounding Pharmacy as an execution drug 
supplier for Texas in November.

“After the news coverage, there was a day of protest, described by the Houston 
Chronicle as ‘peaceful’ and where the protesters ‘stayed well-behaved,’” 
attorney Philip Durst, who represents the death penalty attorneys, wrote. 
“This, of course, both demonstrates that violence will not erupt and that any 
hoopla has already died down.”

The state argued that the recent news articles should be excluded from the 
record, pointing out that Greenpark has denied producing the drug and its role 
as a supplier is unconfirmed by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

“These articles thus say nothing about what has happened to a confirmed 
supplier of Texas’s lethal-injection drugs after being publicly identified,” 
Texas Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins wrote.

(source: Texas Tribune)

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

Texas Supreme Court will weigh whether state should reveal execution drug 
supplier



"Texas Supreme Court will weigh whether state should reveal execution drug 
supplier" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan 
media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public 
policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

For years, the state of Texas has fought to keep the identity of an execution 
drug supplier a secret. On Wednesday, the Texas Supreme Court will hear 
arguments over whether that company's identity should finally be revealed.

Three lawyers who represent death row inmates are seeking to name a pharmacy 
that supplied pentobarbital — the sole drug used in Texas executions — in 2014, 
at a time when multiple states had "botched"executions with new drug 
combinations and struggled to find lethal doses. The Texas prison system has 
claimed before lower courts that the information should be withheld from public 
disclosure because it would endanger the supplier. A district and an appellate 
court both sided with the death penalty lawyers, rejecting the claim that 
disclosure would put the company in danger.

Originally, the Texas Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal from the Texas 
Department of Criminal Justice, indicating that the state soon would be forced 
to reveal the pharmacy's identity. But the justices changed their minds after 
the state filed a motion for a rehearing and focused on a broader claim: that 
naming the pharmacy could cut off the state's supply of drugs and end the death 
penalty in Texas, which has executed by far more inmates than any other state.

“This lawsuit is a collateral attack on the death penalty,” former Texas 
Solicitor General Scott Keller wrote in his last-shot petition in July. “If 
allowed to stand, the court of appeals’ decision directs the public unmasking 
of a supplier of Texas’s lethal-injection drugs, which jeopardizes the State’s 
ability to carry out the death penalty.”

The death penalty lawyers scoffed at the notion, saying, “The sky is not 
falling,” and emphasizing that any Supreme Court order would only pertain to 
the 2014 source; a state shield law passed in 2015 keeps secret any suppliers 
after that, and it's unclear whether the supplier has changed.

The legal fight over the 2014 supplier’s identity began five years ago, when 
then-Attorney General Greg Abbott, who in 3 previous rulings had said the 
information was public, reversed course and said the state could withhold that 
information because the company would face “real harm” from disclosure. The 
state has repeatedly cited a threat assessment by the Texas Department of 
Public Safety and hate mail received by a previously named pharmacy.

The lawyers then took the case to the courts, where they have largely won. A 
Travis County district court and a regional appellate court both ruled in favor 
of naming the supplier, saying the “threat of physical harm” standard for 
withholding public information does not apply to threats to privacy or the 
impact on the state's supply of drugs.

The death penalty lawyers said they hope to discuss a pharmacy recently named 
by BuzzFeed, according to a letter filed this month with the court. The news 
outlet named Houston’s Greenpark Compounding Pharmacy as an execution drug 
supplier for Texas in November.

“After the news coverage, there was a day of protest, described by the Houston 
Chronicle as ‘peaceful’ and where the protesters ‘stayed well-behaved,’” 
attorney Philip Durst, who represents the death penalty attorneys, wrote. 
“This, of course, both demonstrates that violence will not erupt and that any 
hoopla has already died down.”

The state argued that the recent news articles should be excluded from the 
record, pointing out that Greenpark has denied producing the drug and its role 
as a supplier is unconfirmed by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

“These articles thus say nothing about what has happened to a confirmed 
supplier of Texas’s lethal-injection drugs after being publicly identified,” 
Texas Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins wrote.

(source: myhighplains.com)








VIRGINIA:

Virginia Senate Passes Bill to Bar the Death Penalty for Severely Mentally Ill 
Offenders



By a vote of 23-17, the Virginia State Senate has approved a bill that, if 
enacted, would ban capital punishment for defendants with severe mental 
illness. With the support of all nineteen Democratic senators and four 
Republicans, the bill passed the GOP-controlled Senate on January 17, 2019. It 
now moves on to the Commonwealth’s House of Delegates, which is comprised of 51 
Republicans and 49 Democrats.

SB 1137 defines severe mental illness as “active psychotic symptoms that 
substantially impair a person’s capacity to (i) appreciate the nature, 
consequences, or wrongfulness of the person’s conduct; (ii) exercise rational 
judgment in relation to the person’s conduct; or (iii) conform the person’s 
conduct to the requirements of the law.”However, the bill excludes disorders 
that are “manifested primarily by repeated criminal conduct or attributable to 
the acute effects of voluntary use of alcohol or any drug.”Under the proposal, 
the determination of severe mental illness would be made in the sentencing 
phase of trial, after the defendant already has been convicted. The jury (or 
the judge, if the defendant waives the right to a jury trial) would decide if 
the defendant has proven “by a preponderance of the evidence” that he or she 
was severely mentally ill at the time of the offense. A defendant found to be 
severely mentally ill would be sentenced to life without parole. The bill also 
provides for indigent defendants with mental illness claims to receive 
assistance from a mental health expert appointed by the court.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Barbara Favola (D – Arlington), called the proposal “a 
vehicle for us to administer justice in a way that’s humane and, I would say, 
in a way that reflects the values of Virginians.” Sen. Scott Surovell (D – 
Fairfax), said the mental illness exemption would have limited impact in 
Virginia because of the decline in death sentences across the state, but was a 
necessary mental-health reform. “The reality is we have a broken mental health 
system in this country,” he said. “We have a broken mental health system in 
this state. We don’t give it enough money.” Senate Minority Leader Richard 
Saslaw (D – Fairfax), who called himself “a pretty strong proponent of capital 
punishment,” supported the bill, saying that, when it comes to defendants who 
are severely mentally ill, “probably we ought to think twice.”

Virginia is 2nd only to Texas in the number of executions carried out since 
1976, but it has had a sharp decline in the use of the death penalty in recent 
years. No one has been sentenced to death in Virginia since 2011, and just s 
men remain on the state’s death row. In July 2017, lawyers for William Morva, a 
seriously mentally ill death-row prisoner suffering from a delusional disorder 
that his lawyers said left him unable to distinguish his delusions from 
reality, unsuccessfully sought a commutation from Governor Terry McAuliffe. 
Previously, Governors James Gilmore and Timothy Kaine commuted the death 
sentences of Calvin Swann and Percy Walton, citing concerns about serious 
mental illness. Other states are also considering legislation that would ban 
the death penalty for seriously mentally ill defendants. In 2017, bills were 
introduced in 7 states, including Virginia, calling for such measures. The 
American Bar Association in 2016 issued a white paper in support of a 
mental-illness exemption.

(source: Death Penalty Information Center)








NORTH CAROLINA:

Trial for Phillip Stroupe II delayed until May



A high-profile murder case from Henderson County has been continued. Phillip 
Stroupe II will not go to trial now until May 6, 2019.

Stroupe's trial was scheduled to start on the Jan. 28, 2019.

Stroupe appeared in district court Tuesday morning with his lawyers, asking the 
judge for more time before the start of the trial. In court on Tuesday, the 
district attorney says he has new information that could be used as evidence 
and that the defense council has a right to review it.

Stroupe is charged with killing 68-year-old Tommy Bryson while on the run from 
law enforcement in July of 2017.

According to documents, Bryson died from a gunshot wound to the head.

Stroupe was captured in McDowell County on July 27, 2017 after a massive, 
multi-county manhunt.

Bryson's body was discovered off Glenn Bridge Road in Arden, 3 days after 
Stroupe's capture.

Stroupe was also indicted for robbery with a dangerous weapon and 1st-degree 
kidnapping. He currently faces more than a dozen charges, including 
first-degree murder, kidnapping, and robbery with a dangerous weapon.

Stroupe's attorney had also filed 2 other motions.

One asks that the DA's office be disqualified from prosecuting the case, citing 
a conflict of interest. They're also filing motions requiring state to disclose 
its Intentions to use evidence of prior bad acts of defendant.

Both of those were denied.

Stroupe is being transported to the state penitentiary in Raleigh until the 
start of the trial. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

(source: WLOS news)

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

James Bradley’s death penalty case starts in Pender



A twice-convicted murderer was back in court Tuesday in Pender County, standing 
trial in the 2013 murder of a Wilmington woman. If convicted, James Opleton 
Bradley, 56, could be the 1st person sent to death row from the region in 15 
years.

Potential jurors were called Tuesday in Bradley’s capital murder trial. Bradley 
is charged with 1st-degree murder in the death of Elisha Tucker, 33, whose body 
was found bound with duct tape and stuffed in trash bags in a Pender County 
field in 2014.

Tucker had been missing from Wilmington since August 2013, five months after 
Bradley, a former U.S. Army sergeant, was released from prison after serving 23 
years in the Fayetteville killing of his 8-year-old stepdaughter, Ivy Gipson.

Police found Tucker’s body while searching for another missing Wilmington 
woman: Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk, 53, last seen April 5, 2014 while walking to 
a downtown Wilmington bar. Van Newkirk’s body has never been found, but Bradley 
was convicted of second-degree murder in her presumed death in 2017.

Bradley was charged with Van Newkirk’s murder after Tucker’s body was found 
near where Bradley and Van Newkirk worked together for a landscaping company. 
Phone records obtained by investigators showed Bradley and Van Newkirk 
exchanged 17 phone calls in the four days before her disappearance, and the 2 
reportedly had a fight in which she ran from his truck near Greenfield Lake. 
Blood and the dead woman’s DNA were found in Bradley’s truck.

Roughly 400 people from the Burgaw area have been summoned for Bradley’s latest 
trial.

According to the office of Ben David, the district attorney for New Hanover and 
Pender counties, jury selection is expected to take weeks.

Between the large number summoned and the detailed questioning by attorneys 
necessary for a death penalty case (including on how potential jurors feel 
about capital punishment), it will likely be more than a month before opening 
statements can commence.

There’s another issue that could slow the process: severe damage to the Pender 
County courthouse from Hurricane Florence. A judge is expected to tell jurors 
Tuesday that they will be bused to the New Hanover County Courthouse for voir 
dire -- their examination by prosecutors and defenders.

If sentenced as prosecutors want, Bradley would be the 1st person from the 
Pender-New Hanover district put on death row since Paul Dewayne Cummings in 
2004. Cummings, now 39, was convicted in the 2002 murder of Jane Truelove Head, 
found stabbed to death on the floor of her 202 Dogwood Road by her adult 
children.

Timeline

June 9, 1988: Law enforcement officers say James Bradley kills his 8-year-old 
stepdaughter, Ivy Gipson. Bradley, who tells police she never came home from 
school, wraps the girl’s body in trash bags and places her in a dumpster that 
is emptied at a Fayetteville landfill.

Jan. 22, 1990: Bradley, in custody since his arrest days after Gipson’s 
killing, pleads in her death. He is sentenced to life with parole after 25 
years. North Carolina has since done away with parole on newer cases.

Feb. 11, 2013: Bradley is released on parole from the N.C. Department of 
Correction.

April 5, 2014: Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk is last seen at The Husk bar at the 
corner of Front and Dock streets.

April 7, 2014: Van Newkirk is reported missing.

April 15, 2014: After reviewing traffic camera footage, WPD investigators serve 
a search warrant on Bradley’s Flint Drive apartment, phone and red Tahoe. His 
story, they have since testified, changes several times. He is read his Miranda 
rights and interviewed at police headquarters. He tells police he was with Van 
Newkirk on April 5, but that the 2 argued and she jumped out of his truck at 
Greenfield Lake Park and ran off.

April 29, 2014: Wilmington Police Department investigators unearth a woman’s 
body -- bound with duct tape and wrapped in trash bags -- buried in a Hampstead 
field. They believe it is Van Newkirk. Bradley is arrested during a traffic 
stop. He is charged with 1st-degree murder in the presumed death of Van 
Newkirk.

May 1, 2014: Police announce the body found in Hampstead is not Van Newkirk’s.

May 12, 2014: The Hampstead body is identified as that of Elisha Tucker of 
Wilmington, last seen in August 2013.

July 21, 2016: A judge rules the jury in Bradley’s trial in Van Newkirk’s 
presumed death will hear about Ivy’s killing, the discovery of Tucker’s body 
and 2 short stories Bradley wrote about serial killers.

Dec. 5, 2016: A grand jury indicts Bradley in Tucker’s killing.

Jan. 9, 2017: DA announces he intends to seek death penalty in Tucker’s 
killing.

June 29, 2017: Jury finds Bradley guilty of 2nd-degree murder in presumed death 
of Van Newkirk.

Jan. 22, 2019: Jury selection begins in Bradley’s murder trial for the killing 
of Elisha Tucker.

Cummings remains incarcerated at Raleigh’s Central Prison, 1 of 140 people on 
North Carolina’s death row. The state has not executed anyone since 2006, when 
Samuel Flippen, 36, was put to death for the beating death of his 2-year-old 
stepdaughter.

(source: Wilmington Star News)








ALABAMA:

Teenager who murdered police officer could face death penalty



An Alabama teenager could be put to death if he's convicted of killing a Mobile 
Police Officer.

Police say 19-year-old Marco Perez shot and killed Officer Sean Tuder, who was 
trying to track him down on gun charges.

Tuder was working his day off undercover so he wasn't wearing a protective vest 
nor did he have on his body camera.

They say Officer Tuder struggled with Perez.

Perez then shot and killed Officer Tuder.

Police say Tuder had no chance to fire back.

(source: myarklamiss.com)








OHIO:

Ohio’s execution method likened to waterboarding, fire in veins - but won’t 
change



Warren Keith Henness’ Feb. 13 execution is still on, even though a federal 
judge ruled last week that one of the phases of Ohio’s three-drug execution 
protocol is akin to fatal “waterboarding.” The judge added that recent expert 
testimony in his court shows that the other two drugs probably also produce 
agony for the condemned.

But Magistrate Judge Michael R. Merz is allowing the Columbus man’s execution 
to proceed even though he has concerns that Ohio’s method is unconstitutional.

“Reading the plain language of the Eighth Amendment, that should be enough to 
constitute cruel and unusual punishment,” he said of his conclusion that Ohio 
is, in essence, torturing the condemned to death.

However, the execution is proceeding because of a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court 
decision. The majority in the 5-4 decision ruled that if Death Row inmates 
claim that the government’s methods of killing them are cruel, they must 
propose an alternative for their execution that is “available, feasible and can 
be readily implemented.”

Henness, 55, proposed to die by drinking 10 grams of secobarbital mixed in a 
sweet liquid. But Merz ruled Monday that the inmate’s attorneys hadn’t shown 
how the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction could legally obtain 
the barbiturate.

Henness was convicted of the March 20, 1992, slaying of Richard Myers, a lab 
technician from Circleville whom Henness lured to his Columbus home under the 
pretext that he needed substance-abuse counseling from Myers. Henness kidnapped 
Myers, shot him in the head five times, cut his throat and stole his car, 
checkbook and credit cards, according to Ohio Parole Board records. Henness and 
his wife and another man spent the subsequent days using Myers’ money to smoke 
crack and abuse other drugs.

5 days after Myers disappeared, police found his body at an abandoned 
water-purification plant off Nelson Road. He had been gagged and his hands 
bound behind his back with a coat hanger. His ring finger had been severed, and 
his wedding ring was missing.

Grisly as Myers’ murder was, Merz has spent the past several months in his 
Dayton courtroom hearing grim descriptions of what Henness is likely to 
experience in Ohio’s death chamber. Witnesses to the most recent execution 
described how Robert Van Hook lay on the table in the Southern Ohio 
Correctional Facility near Lucasville in July, wheezing and gasping as his life 
ebbed away.

A string of doctors from prestigious institutions testified in front of Merz 
that the 1st drug in the cocktail, midazolam, is a benzodiazepine that can 
render a person unconscious but lacks the painkilling effects of opioids and 
other analgesics.

Matthew Exline, a doctor at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center, 
testified that midazolam takes away a person’s ability to express pain. They 
“look comatose,” but the drug hasn’t “actually taken away their pain,” Exline 
said.

He added that “if you ask patients when they leave the ICU, ‘How was your ICU 
stay? What do you remember from it?,’ a lot of patients have memories of 
painful procedures.”

When midazolam is administered in the massive doses used in executions, it 
attacks lung tissues and causes pulmonary edema, an accumulation of fluid that 
“will cause a person to experience anything from shortness of breath to 
sensations of drowning, asphyxiation, terror and panic,” testified Mark Edgar, 
an associate professor of pathology at the Emory University School of Medicine 
in Atlanta.

An autopsy of Van Hook found that when he died, he suffered from pulmonary 
edema, a condition that Merz likened to the torture technique of waterboarding.

The next drug in the cocktail, a paralytic, would cause ”‘a very bad, 
horrifying experience,’ as the paralysis would be ‘essentially the same as 
suffocation. In order to get oxygen into their lungs, they would try to 
breathe, but the muscles wouldn’t work,’” testified David J. Greenblatt, an 
anesthesiology professor and pharmacologist at the Tufts University School of 
Medicine.

Paraphrasing Greenblatt, Merz wrote that the third drug, heart-stopping 
potassium chloride, “would feel as though fire was being poured” into a 
prisoner’s veins.

Merz ruled that the doctors’ testimony showed that a few peers’ earlier 
statements justifying the three-drug protocol were outside the scientific 
mainstream and thus should be disregarded.

“The case against midazolam is now much stronger. We now know on the best 
expert testimony available that it does not have any analgesic effect. 
Moreover, we have good evidence that midazolam will cause the ‘waterboarding’ 
effects of pulmonary edema,” he wrote, adding that the Ohio protocol would 
“almost certainly subject (Henness) to severe pain and needless suffering.”

However, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito noted in his 2015 majority 
opinion that activists opposing the death penalty had successfully pressured 
manufacturers to stop supplying other drugs, forcing the switch to midazolam. 
Alito wrote that a plaintiff objecting to that drug has an obligation to fund a 
better alternative.

Alito also noted that death is seldom painless.

“After all, while most humans wish to die a painless death, many do not have 
that good fortune. Holding that the Eighth Amendment demands the elimination of 
essentially all risk of pain would effectively outlaw the death penalty 
altogether,” he wrote.

But Merz said the guidance, which compelled him to allow Henness’ execution to 
proceed, “is not a result with which the Court is comfortable.”

He quoted from Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in the 2015 case, Glossip v. 
Gross. It said people facing executions using midazolam are losing protections 
against cruel and unusual punishment because the conservative majority imposed 
“a wholly unprecedented obligation on the condemned inmate to identify an 
available means for his or her own execution.”

(source: Columbus Dispatch)