[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----NH, PENN., ALA., TENN., NEV., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

July 18



NEW HAMPSHIRE:

Mercy sisters honored for efforts to help New Hampshire end death penalty



A group of Mercy sisters has been honored by the New Hampshire Coalition 
Against the Death Penalty for the key role they played in making New Hampshire 
the 21st state in the country to abolish the death penalty.

Sisters Eileen Brady, Mary Ellen Foley and Madonna Moran received the 
recognition on behalf of their community at a celebration in Concord June 22.

The New Hampshire Sisters of Mercy have long played an active role in opposing 
the death penalty. In December 1997, they adopted a “Corporate Stand Against 
the Death Penalty” and since then many sisters have served on committees, 
petitioned legislators, written letters to newspaper editors, testified at 
legislative hearings, participated in rallies and prayer vigils and prayed that 
the death penalty would be replaced by restorative justice.

Their efforts bore fruit May 30 when the New Hampshire Legislature overrode the 
governor’s veto of a bill to repeal capital punishment.

Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing 
Network, a Washington-based organization that works to end the use of the death 
penalty, called the repeal “a major step toward building a culture that 
unconditionally protects the dignity of life and is yet more evidence that the 
death penalty is falling out of favor with the American public.”

The organization thanked the state’s Catholics for their efforts to support the 
measure that abolished the death penalty, which included Bishop Peter A. 
Libasci of Manchester’s written testimony calling capital punishment “a faulty 
response” to crime. The bishop had urged legislators to “repeal the death 
penalty” and devote more resources to providing services to families of murder 
victims as a way to “offer a true path of support and healing.”

(source: cruxnow.com)








PENNSYLVANIA:

Philadelphia DA wants state Supreme Court to declare the death penalty 
unconstitutional



Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has asked the Pennsylvania Supreme 
Court to declare the death penalty system unconstitutional, a move in line with 
a national dwindling of support for the death penalty. “Because of the 
arbitrary manner in which it has been applied, the death penalty violates our 
state Constitution’s prohibition against cruel punishments,” Krasner states in 
a brief filed in the case Jermont Cox v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Krasner’s challenge is part of a series of amicus briefs filed in support of 
life sentences for Cox and another death row inmate, Kevin Marinelli. Both Cox 
and Marinelli were sentenced to death for homicide; both are represented by the 
same lawyers.

The briefs come from organizations including the ACLU of Pennsylvania and the 
Juvenile Law Center, and from the murder victims’ family members. The four 
family members’ brief filed in Cox’s case “know the pain, confusion, heartache, 
and trauma left in the wake of a loved one’s murder,” the brief states. But 
they oppose the death penalty, knowing “firsthand that its imposition only 
complicates grieving and impedes healing.”

The court’s justices—5 Democrats and 2 Republicans—said in December they will 
consider whether to take up the issue.

Out of the 45 people currently on death row in Philadelphia, 37 are black and 4 
are from other “minority groups,” according to an analysis of death convictions 
in Krasner’s brief. “It really is about poverty,” Krasner told The Appeal. “It 
really is about race.”

At the state level, about half of death row prisoners were black over the past 
30 years, even though the state’s black population is less than 12%. The 
lawyers representing Cox and Marinelli asked the state Supreme Court to weigh 
in on the use of the death penalty last August, when they called it “a system 
of capital punishment that is replete with error, a national outlier in its 
design, and a mirror for the inequities and prejudices that plague American 
society.”

In 2013, Philadelphia County ranked 3rd in the country in people it had 
prosecuted being on death row. When Krasner ran in 2017, he promised not to 
seek the death penalty.

Death sentences have plummeted nationwide, with executions highly 
geographically concentrated. The year 2018 marked the 4th year in a row with 
fewer than 30 executions—and 1/2 were in Texas. Ronald J. Tabak, chair of the 
Death Penalty Committee of the American Bar Association’s Section of Civil 
Rights and Social Justice, attributes the decline partially to reformist 
district attorneys in formerly high-use areas, including Krasner in 
Philadelphia. Krasner and a handful of other reformist district attorneys 
who’ve opposed the death penalty stand out, The Justice Collaborative legal 
director Jessica Brand said. “They’re used to the tough on crime mantra in 
people’s DNA,” she said. Still, opposition to capital punishment has recently 
gained momentum among Democrats.

When recently elected California Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium on the 
death penalty, several Democratic presidential candidates expressed their 
support. The New York Times questioned the candidates on whether they support 
or oppose the death penalty, and every candidate except for Gov. Steve Bullock 
of Montana said they oppose it. Former Vice President Joe Biden was not 
interviewed, though he has consistently supported the death penalty in the 
past.

It’s a sharp turn from the “tough on crime” Democratic Party of the ‘90s and 
2000s, when then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was running for president and made 
a point to return to Arkansas to oversee the execution of a mentally ill black 
man, Ricky Ray Rector.

Still, Pennsylvania’s Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro has said he 
supports the death penalty for “the most heinous of crimes.” Cox was sentenced 
to death in 1 of 3 drug-related murders in Philadelphia. Marinelli was found 
guilty of the torture killing of a Northumberland County man during a robbery. 
On Monday, Shapiro filed a brief requesting the court decline jurisdiction over 
the cases. “Our brief makes clear the Office of Attorney General’s position 
that policy decisions should remain the responsibility of the Legislature, and 
that these issues should be a priority,” the attorney general’s spokesperson 
Jacklin Rhoads said in a statement.

Shapiro’s brief argues that the issue of racial discrimination in 
Pennsylvania’s death penalty system should also be a legislative concern, 
rather than for the courts to pursue. “In our constitutional system it is the 
legislature which best discerns and represents the will of a sovereign people,” 
the brief states. More than a dozen state senators filed an amicus brief in 
agreement with Shapiro.

Shapiro’s filing comes on the heels of another act to halt Krasner’s reforms. 
The state legislature recently passed a bill which grants Shapiro the authority 
to prosecute certain gun offenses, which means he could overstep cases in which 
Krasner chooses not to prosecute. The bill gives Shapiro this authority only in 
Philadelphia, and only for the the next 2 years until Krasner is up for 
re-election.

The dynamic in Philadelphia over the use of the death penalty is indicative of 
a broader national question on criminal justice. In Washington, King County 
District Attorney Dan Satterberg called the death penalty “broken” and called 
for its repeal.

In Missouri’s St. Louis County, District Attorney Wesley Bell ran on a promise 
not to pursue the death penalty, and sparked news when he stuck to the promise 
in the case of Thomas Bruce, who is charged with killing one woman and sexually 
assaulting others at a Catholic Supply store.

And though Texas still has a disproportionate concentration of death 
convictions, the election of reform-minded district attorneys in Dallas County 
and Bexar County, where San Antonio is located, have led to a decline in death 
penalty cases.

So other district attorneys will have an eye on Philadelphia in September, when 
the court will decide whether to make a decision on the question of the death 
penalty’s constitutionality. “The death penalty is broken, racist, and it’s 
putting the most vulnerable people on death row, not the worst of the worst. 
Krasner is in line with enormous momentum on this issue,” Brand said. “It’s 
another extension of the question, where are we on crime? Where are the 
Democrats?”

(source: alternet.org)

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

It’s time for Pennsylvania to abolish the death penalty



This week, District Attorney Larry Krasner argued in a brief to the 
Pennsylvania Supreme Court that the death penalty in Pennsylvania is 
unconstitutional. Krasner’s office reviewed every death sentence imposed on a 
Philadelphian between 1978 and 2017 -- a total of 155 sentences -- and found 
that 72 percent of the sentences were overturned, most due to inadequate 
representation. The major point is that race, income, and intellectual 
disability determines who ends up on death row.

Krasner’s brief was in support of a petition urging the state Supreme Court to 
use its power to weigh in on the constitutionality of the death penalty. The 
petition is the result of a consolidation of 2 cases brought by two people on 
death row, Jermont Cox and Kevin Marinelli. Other organizations -- such as the 
Juvenile Law Center and the ACLU of Pa. -- have also filed briefs in support of 
the petition. Attorney General Josh Shapiro argued against the petition in a 
brief stating that the future of the death penalty should be determined by the 
legislature, not the judiciary.

Arguing that the death penalty in Pa. is broken is not a stance exclusive to 
progressives. Last summer, the Pennsylvania’s General Assembly Joint State 
Government Commission, a bipartisan effort, released a condemning report on the 
death penalty. Over 280 pages, the Commission found that the death penalty is 
applied unevenly across the commonwealth, affected by factors like race and 
county. The Commission further noted the large proportion of people with mental 
illness and intellectual disabilities on death row -- a population that is 
supposed to be constitutionally protected from the death penalty.

The report concluded with multiple recommendations on how to fix capital 
punishment in Pennsylvania. There is a simpler solution: abolish the death 
penalty.

The strongest argument against the death penalty in Pennsylvania: More people 
have been exonerated than executed. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 
Pennsylvania in 1976, hundreds of people were condemned to death, while only 3 
people were executed. All 3 of them were mentally ill and had waived their 
appeal. In the same time period, 6 people on death row were exonerated.

The 140 people now on death row are languishing in indefinite, de facto 
solitary confinement, sometimes for decades. If that is not cruel punishment, 
what is?

Abolishing the death penalty is possible. New Hampshire did it just a few weeks 
ago -- leaving Pa. as the last state in the northeast to have the death penalty 
on the books. But Pennsylvania could be next. Rep. Chris Rabb (D, Philadelphia) 
and Rep. Frank Ryan (R, Lebanon) plan to introduce in the fall bipartisan 
legislation to abolish the death penalty. In 2015, Gov. Tom Wolf put a 
moratorium on executions.

The death penalty is expensive, unevenly applied, and, according to a consensus 
among criminologists, does not deter crime. Whether it is through the state’s 
Supreme Court or bipartisan legislation, this upcoming fall could finally offer 
the best chance for Pennsylvania to abolish the death penalty.

(source: Editorial, Philadelphia Inquirer)








ALABAMA:

Death penalty sought for 2 charged in Birmingham double murder



Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against 2 people charged with the 
murder of a Birmingham couple.

24-year-old Zachary Phillips and 30-year-old Kristen Gullion are charged for 
the murders of Mary and Joe Holt. Officers say the suspects stabbed the couple 
to death during a robbery last year.

They’re also accused of kidnapping the couple’s 3-year-old granddaughter , 
tying her up with a phone cord and leaving her in a bathtub. The child was not 
injured. Officers say both were on probation for separate theft-related crimes 
at the time of the murders.

(source: rocketcitynow.com)








TENNESSEE:

Man State Is Seeking Death Penalty Against Says He Is Being Mistreated At The 
County Jail



A man the state is seeking the death penalty against says he is being 
mistreated at the County Jail.

Courtney High, who is charged along with Andre Grier and Charles Shelton in the 
death of state witness Bianca Horton, is asking Criminal Court Judge Tom 
Greenholtz for a hearing.

A motion filed by attorney Steven Moore says High is being held in solitary 
confinement for 23 hours per day and, when he is allowed out of that cell, he 
is accompanied by 2 guards.

The attorney said he is often not able to meet with High because jail personnel 
say they do not have two guards available at the time.

He also claimed that items he has sent to High do not reach him and that he has 
not gotten material High has sent to him. He said court documents that High had 
with him in the cell have become missing.

The motion said High is not allowed to shower every day, is not able to 
communicate with other prisoners and is not given exercise time.

It was claimed that High is not getting adequate medical and mental health 
treatment.

The attorney said drugs were found on High, but he said the only way that could 
have happened would be getting it from jail personnel since he is kept away 
from others.

He said on one occasion that Greer, Floyd Davis and others were placed in an 
elevator without a guard and went to the sixth floor where High is housed for a 
religious service purportedly. He said each of the men was armed with a 
"shank." At the same time, he said High was escorted ouit of his cell. He said 
Greer, Davis and the others confronted High and a fight broke out.

Attorney Moore also claimed that within the past 10 days that High was removed 
from his cell around 2 a.m. by 4 or more guards, who took him to an area on the 
6th floor that is not covered by cameras. It was claimed that the guards then 
physically assaulted High "by using a taser gun and punching and kicking him 
while he laid on the floor of the jail."

High claimed that "Officer Roberts used the taser and Officers Jones, Lewis and 
Thorn physically beat him."

He said he was returned to his cell "and refused medical treatment."

High claimed that the next morning the first shift supervisor saw blood on his 
clothing and took a picture of it, then sent him for medical treatment.

(source: chattanoogan.com)



NEVADA:

Death penalty to be sought in deadly North Las Vegas shooting



A Las Vegas judge set a July 2020 trial date for a man accused of killing an 
11-year-old girl in a gang-related shooting that targeted the wrong house.

Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty.

Jarquan Tiffith, 20, is alleged to be 1 of 3 men who opened fire on a North Las 
Vegas home in November. Angelina Erives, 11, was struck by gunfire as she sat 
at the home’s kitchen table, helping her 14-year-old sister with a science 
project.

The Clark County district attorney’s office filed a notice of intent to seek 
the death penalty June 14. Tiffith faces 1 count each of murder and conspiracy 
to commit murder, as well as multiple counts of attempted murder and 43 counts 
of firing a gun at or into an occupied structure.

In the notice, the district attorney’s office stated several aggravating 
circumstances contributed to the decision, including the high number of shots 
that were fired in a heavily-populated area.

“The area is clearly a residential neighborhood with multiple occupied homes,” 
the notice states.

3 other suspects, 18-year-old Erin Deshawn Lynn Hines, 19-year-old Isaac George 
and 16-year-old Damion Dill, face the same charges. Hines told police he chose 
to drive the car because he didn’t want to shoot anyone, his arrest report 
states.

A 5th suspect, 19-year-old Guy Lee Banks III, died from a gunshot wound to the 
head after a neighbor fired at their vehicle as they fled the scene.

Tiffith’s next court appearance is scheduled for Oct. 16. His trial is set to 
begin July 28, 2020.

(source: Las Vegas Review-Journal)








CALIFORNIA:

Law Professors, Legal Scholars Call for End to Death Penalty in LA



A group of law professors and legal scholars released an open letter today 
calling on District Attorney Jackie Lacey to stop seeking the death penalty in 
murder cases, citing a report that the convicted killers who have been 
sentenced in Los Angeles County to death while she has been in office are all 
"people of color.''

"Not only does Lacey seek and obtain the death penalty more often (than) almost 
any other prosecutor, those sentenced to death under her watch have been 
exclusively people of color,'' according to the letter, which is signed by 
professors from universities including USC, UCLA, UC Irvine, Loyola Law School 
and Pepperdine. ``She pursues the death penalty in the face of terrible defense 
lawyering and not withstanding a moratorium on executions in California.''

The letter, signed by 75 law professors and legal scholars, notes that "a 
majority of Los Angeles County voters favored the abolition of capital 
punishment in both 2012 and 2016.''

A report released last month by the American Civil Liberties Union -- which 
called for the district attorney to "step up and step away from the death 
penalty'' -- noted that 13 of the inmates who were sentenced to death since 
Lacey was sworn in as the county's top prosecutor in December 2012 were Latino, 
while 8 were black and one was Asian. The report noted that no county in the 
United States has produced more death sentences than Los Angeles County, with 
nearly 1/3 of California's death row inmates coming from the region.

In a letter released earlier this month, Lacey countered that she has "asked 
for and received death sentences for 8 defendants in some of Los Angeles 
County's most horrendous killings,'' including the torture-murder of an 
8-year-old boy in Palmdale and the killings of five people at a homeless 
encampment in Long Beach.

The district attorney noted that the victims were diverse -- 6 
African-Americans, 6 whites, 5 Latinos and 4 Asian Pacific Islanders.

"I mention race because my office recently was criticized for its record on the 
death penalty,'' Lacey wrote. "My prosecutors make decisions based on the facts 
of the crime -- not the race of the defendant or the victim. In Los Angeles 
County, a committee of experienced and diverse prosecutors examine the facts of 
these cases, including mitigating circumstances presented by the defendant and 
his attorneys, in one of the nation's most extensive review processes.''

In a statement shortly after the open letter was released, Shiara 
Davila-Morales of the District Attorney's Office said, "The law has not changed 
and, until it does, Los Angeles County prosecutors will continue to fairly 
evaluate all special circumstance cases and seek death against the worst of the 
worst offenders, including child murderers and serial killers. In Los Angeles 
County, our office has sought a death sentence for less than 3 percent of the 
approximately 1,200 defendants who, under the law, may be punished for their 
crimes by death.''

(source: KFI AM radio news)

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

California’s execution pause hasn’t stopped new capital cases. The Supreme 
Court could change that



Gov. Gavin Newsom’s death penalty moratorium hasn’t stopped district attorneys 
from pursuing capital punishment in California, but the state Supreme Court is 
considering a case that could change that.

Newsom suspended the state’s death penalty in March, granting temporary 
reprieves for California’s 737 death row inmates, shuttering the execution 
chamber in San Quentin State Prison and withdrawing the state’s lethal 
injection protocol.

His executive order only halts the death penalty while he is governor. In the 
meantime, district attorneys across the state have continued to pursue capital 
charges against defendants.

Lawyers for a man facing five capital murder charges say that should stop. They 
are appealing to the state Supreme Court to block capital murder trials while 
Newsom’s moratorium is in effect.

In a petition filed with the court earlier this month, lawyers for Cleamon 
Johnson argue jurors cannot fairly decide whether to put someone to death while 
the moratorium is in place. To return a fair decision, the lawyers argue, 
jurors have to believe their choice could result in the defendant being put to 
death.

Under Newsom’s order, the jurors will “be unable to assume a death sentence 
will result in an execution and be unable to comprehend fully the gravity of 
their decision,” they argue.

“In light of this paradigm shift, a California jury in a capital case cannot be 
expected to provide a fair and reasoned penalty-phase determination,” the 
lawyers wrote.

Johnson’s lawyers filed the petition with the Supreme Court on July 1 after an 
appeals court judge dismissed the argument. The next day, the Supreme Court 
asked prosecutors to respond. The Supreme Court also halted a separate death 
penalty case after lawyers in that case made a similar argument.

Those actions indicate the court is taking the argument seriously, said Robert 
Sanger, one of Johnson’s lawyers.

David Ettinger, who closely watches the court as an appellate lawyer at Horvitz 
& Levy law firm, said although it could be significant that the court didn’t 
dismiss the argument off the bat, it’s too soon to say if the justices will 
rule on the merits of the argument. There’s also no way to know whether the 
court will side with Johnson if it does engage the issue.

San Mateo District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said he anticipates the Supreme 
Court will ultimately weigh in on the case, which he welcomes because it will 
give him and his colleagues clarity on how to handle death penalty-eligible 
cases.

Wagstaffe, former president of the California District Attorneys Association, 
said he and other California DAs believe the court will rule against the 
argument. It’s already standard to tell juries they must assume the sentence 
they return will be carried out, even though they know a governor can reverse 
their decision through his clemency powers, he said.

“Its a smart point for them to bring up,” Wagstaffe said of Johnson’s lawyers. 
“But we think that answer is one that has been dealt with before.”

In their response filed Tuesday, prosecutors argued that concerns about the 
moratorium can be handled during jury selection and that it shouldn’t spare 
Johnson from facing the death penalty.

“Jurors are routinely asked to set aside these types of things in order to 
reach a just verdict based on the evidence and the law,” prosecutors wrote. 
“The real goal of this petition is to turn Governor Newsom’s moratorium, which 
is nominally a ‘reprieve,’ into a judicial abolition of the death penalty in 
California.”

If the Supreme Court rules in Johnson’s favor, it could effectively ban death 
penalty trials in the state, said Sanger, whose client is accused of killing 
five people in Los Angeles in the 90s.

That would be a significant impact of Newsom’s executive order, which didn’t 
alter the status quo when he signed it in March. By then, California had not 
executed anyone for more than a decade, although Newsom argued executions could 
soon resume.

Newsom said he could not ethically sign off on any executions while in office, 
despite commitments he made in 2016 that he would uphold the will of the 
voters, who reaffirmed their support for the policy that year.

Newsom also stressed the possibility that the state could kill innocent people 
if it resumes executions.

“I can’t sign my name to that,” Newsom said. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep at 
night.”

(source: Sacramento Bee)








USA:

Convicted Killer Brendt Christensen Could Be Illinois’ 1st Death Sentence in 
Decades



The death penalty was abolished in Illinois years ago, but the man convicted of 
killing a Chinese student at the University of Illinois could still be the 1st 
person from Illinois sentenced to death in nearly 15 years.

12 jurors are now all that stand between Brendt Christensen and death row, as 
deliberations begin in the death-penalty phase of his federal trial. 
Christensen was convicted last month of kidnapping and killing 28-year-old 
Yingying Zhang in 2017. It took jurors less than 2 hours to deliberate before 
reaching a verdict in late June, convicting Christensen on a charge of 
kidnapping resulting in a death, along with 2 counts of lying to investigators.

At trial, federal prosecutors described in grisly detail how Christensen, a 
former doctoral student at the university, allegedly kidnapped Zhang by posing 
as an undercover officer, and then raped, stabbed, choked, beat, and ultimately 
decapitated her.

The same jury that convicted Christensen is now deciding whether he should face 
the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of release.

Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011, 8 years after former Governor 
George Ryan commuted the sentences of all Illinois death row inmates in 2013. 
The last person executed in Illinois was the serial killer Andrew Kokoraleis in 
1999.

But the death penalty remains legal at the federal level, where Christensen’s 
case was prosecuted.

And while death sentences are rare in federal cases — and executions even rarer 
— it’s still possible Christensen could be sentenced to die.

If sentenced to death, Christensen would join an exclusive club of just 62 such 
prisoners nationwide, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), 
a nonprofit that studies capital punishment. Only 2 people have been executed 
by the feds since Timothy McVeigh was put to death in 2001, according to DPIC.

Prosecutors argued Christensen has expressed no remorse for killing Zhang — a 
fact jurors will likely consider during their deliberations. He would face a 
unique situation as someone sentenced to death in a state without the death 
penalty — an outcome his family begged jurors to avoid during the trial.

“I am just so sorry that my son was the cause of the pain,” Christensen’s 
father, Michael Christensen, said in court during the penalty phase of the 
trial last week.

According to his father, Brendt Christensen’s mother was an extreme alcoholic 
throughout his childhood; he attempted suicide twice, his father said.

A day before Christen’s father took the stand, Zhang’s parents testified, 
bringing jurors, and even Christensen, to tears. They also told the court 
they’d approve of a death sentence if one was handed down.

Christensen’s attorneys have admitted he had abducted and killed Zhang since 
his trial began, although Zhang’s body was never found and Christensen never 
told investigators what he did with the body.

(source: CBS News)

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

Why Justice Stevens Turned Against the Death Penalty----He ended up seeing it 
as a failure.



Justice John Paul Stevens struck an important blow against the modern death 
penalty 17 years ago in a Supreme Court decision barring capital punishment for 
intellectually disabled people.

In his majority opinion in Atkins v. Virginia, Justice Stevens said the 
“cognitive and behavioral impairments” of the intellectually disabled made them 
“less morally culpable” and put them at “special risk of wrongful conviction.” 
Those defendants, he warned, would be more prone to give false confessions and 
less capable of helping their lawyers mount a strong defense.

It was a step toward greater humanity in the law from a justice who joined the 
court as a supporter of capital punishment but who came to believe that it had 
failed in practice and should be outlawed. His willingness to wrestle publicly 
with this deep and divisive question, and to shift his views, was rare for any 
judge, let alone a Supreme Court justice.

But Justice Stevens, who died Tuesday at age 99 from complications of a stroke, 
believed in making what he called “careful, reasoned” judgments based on 
evidence from the world around him. And for him, the death penalty, while 
perhaps defensible in theory as the ultimate penalty for the ultimate crime, 
proved over his tenure to be haphazard and mistake-prone in its application 
and, as plenty of evidence showed, racially discriminatory.

At the time of the 2002 Supreme Court decision, 18 states had recently ended 
the death penalty for intellectually disabled defendants, joining a dozen that 
had previously done so or had abolished the death penalty entirely. To Justice 
Stevens, that meant the standards of decency that the court used to determine 
when a punishment crossed the constitutional line had evolved into the “cruel 
and unusual.”

“Over the years I became more and more unhappy with the failure of the court to 
impose adequate procedures in capital litigation,” he told me when I 
interviewed him 4 years ago. “I dissented in the ways we allowed for picking 
juries and on the permissible scope of evidence allowed in a death penalty 
hearing. I became increasingly disenchanted with the operation of the death 
penalty. I did conclude in my own mind that it was unconstitutional. Because it 
had some seriously harmful effects.”

His conclusion was a long time coming. When he joined the court in 1975, 
Justice Stevens formed a middle-ground alliance with two moderates on the 
court, Justices Potter Stewart and Lewis Powell, according to Evan Mandery, 
author of “A Wild Justice.” The 3 justices decided to let states keep capital 
punishment as long as it wasn’t mandatory; a state would have to give a jury 
the power to spare a defendant’s life. In 1976, Justice Stevens joined Justice 
Stewart’s opinion in Gregg v. Georgia cementing the status of capital 
punishment as an “expression of the community’s belief that certain crimes are 
themselves so grievous an affront to humanity that the only adequate response 
may be the penalty of death.”

At the same time, the court had to decide whether to uphold or strike down the 
law governing the death penalty in Texas. The state imposed the death penalty, 
in many murder cases, if a jury had found merely that a defendant killed 
deliberately and posed “a continuing threat to society.” But the law made no 
mention of reasons a jury might decide to grant mercy. Did this, in effect, 
make the death penalty mandatory? Professor Mandery, who teaches at the John 
Jay College of Criminal Justice, says that Justices Stevens and Stewart wanted 
to strike down the law, but that Justice Powell disagreed. In the end, the 
three justices joined together in an opinion, Jurek v. Texas, upholding the 
Texas death penalty.

“I regret that vote because experience has shown that the Texas statute has 
played an important role in authorizing so many death sentences in that state,” 
Justice Stevens wrote in his memoir, “Five Chiefs,” published in 2011 after his 
retirement. In Texas, the path to the death penalty did not narrow, as he had 
hoped. It widened, with more than 560 executions from 1976 to now — more than 
four times the number in any other state.

The distance Justice Stevens traveled over a quarter century was the path from 
novice to veteran. Supreme Court justices hear many death penalty appeals. 
Called upon time after time to stop or delay an execution, the justices come to 
know this aspect of criminal law perhaps more closely than any other. They 
oversee the country’s long-running “death penalty experiment,” as Justice Harry 
Blackmun put it. They are effectively in charge of the lab. Over the years, 
Justice Stevens became increasingly haunted by the probability of a wrongful 
execution. That was what made the difference.

“Well, on the death penalty itself, if they” — meaning Texas and other states — 
“had enforced the procedural safeguards I thought were going to be enforced, 
I’m not sure it would be unconstitutional,” he told me. “Well, I guess it would 
be. I guess I’d have to say it’s a relic of the past and it should be buried.”

In 2008, Justice Stevens renounced the death penalty as a “pointless and 
needless extinction of life” while he also voted to impose it in the case then 
before the justices, out of respect for the court’s previous decisions. It was 
an imperfect kind of reckoning. But, as it had turned out, Justice Stevens’s 
2002 opinion in Atkins helped further narrow the death penalty’s scope, as he’d 
hoped. That decision laid the foundation for the court’s ruling three years 
later ending the death penalty for those who commit capital crimes before the 
age of 18.

Justice Stevens wrote separately in that 2005 case, Roper v. Simmons, to affirm 
his belief that constitutional interpretation is and must be an evolving 
process. “That our understanding of the Constitution does change from time to 
time has been settled since John Marshall breathed life into its text,” he 
said, referencing the nation’s 1st chief justice.

That same year, Justice Stevens said in a speech that “learning on the job is 
essential to the process of judging.” He didn’t see himself as in any way 
infallible. To the contrary. And that was his strength as a judge.

(source: Opinion; Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at the Magazine and the 
Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School----New 
York Times)

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

Justice Stevens changed death penalty views during 3 decades on court



Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who served on the court for 
nearly 35 years, died July 16 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at age 99 after 
suffering complications from a stroke the previous day.

The justice, who retired in 2010, remained active after retirement, even 
writing his autobiography, "The Making of a Justice: My First 94 Years," which 
was just released in April. Last year, he wrote an op-ed published in The New 
York Times calling for action to end gun violence.

"He brought to our bench an inimitable blend of kindness, humility, wisdom and 
independence. His unrelenting commitment to justice has left us a better 
nation," Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement.

Stevens was often portrayed as the leader of the court's liberal side, but he 
didn't stand by that description, telling The New York Times in 2007: "I don't 
think of myself as a liberal at all. I think as part of my general politics, 
I'm pretty darn conservative."

The justice, a Chicago-born Protestant who served as a naval intelligence 
officer during World War II and was awarded a Bronze Star for his work with a 
codebreaking team, stood firm on many issues and changed his opinion on others 
during his time on the high court. Most notably, he changed his views on the 
death penalty from initially supporting it to renouncing it completely.

He was known as a defender of strict separation of church and state and was 
against official prayer in schools and vouchers for religious school tuition. 
He also defended legal abortion, gay rights, and the rights of crime suspects 
and immigrants in the country without legal documentation facing deportation.

Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph of Medaille, who is a longtime 
opponent of capital punishment, posted a thread of tweets July 16 after the 
announcement of Stevens' death outlining his opinion on the death penalty over 
the years.

She said he voted with the court's majority in a 1976 case that reinstated the 
death penalty nationwide after a four-year moratorium and after his retirement 
he said this was the only vote he regretted.

In a 2008 death penalty case, he wrote that he had come to believe the death 
penalty was unconstitutional. Prior to that, in 2002, he wrote the decision in 
Atkins v. Virginia, which ended the death penalty for people with intellectual 
disabilities, and in 2005, he voted to do away with the death penalty for 
juvenile offenders.

He also spoke publicly against the death penalty in a number of interviews, 
calling it a "wasteful enterprise" in 2016 and something the U.S. should do 
away with under all circumstances in 2010.

In a 2014 interview on the "PBS NewsHour," he said he thought the court had 
made a grave mistake in formulating rules that "slant the opportunity for 
justice in favor of the prosecutor" in death penalty cases, especially when 
"the cost is so high if you make a mistake."

"If you make a mistake in a capital case, there's no way to take care of it 
later on. The risk of an incorrect execution in any case, to me, is really 
intolerable. The system should not permit that possibility to exist," he said.

Similarly, in 2005, he also told the American Bar Association that recent 
evidence that "a substantial number of death sentences have been imposed 
erroneously" was "profoundly significant because it indicates that there must 
be serious flaws in our administration of criminal justice."

In an abortion case in 1989, he was the only justice to say that a Missouri 
statute declaring that life begins at conception violated previous court 
decisions on abortion and was an "unequivocal endorsement of a religious tenet" 
that "serves no identifiable secular purpose."

In 1992, he voted to uphold the right to an abortion in Planned Parenthood v. 
Casey, which also established the "undue burden" standard for abortion 
restrictions.

Justice Elena Kagan filled Stevens' seat on the court.

He is survived by 2 daughters, 9 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren. 
Funeral arrangements are pending, the Supreme Court said in a statement 
announcing his death. He is expected to be buried in Arlington National 
Cemetery.

(source: Catholic News Service)