[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA

[Rick Halperin]

July 26




USA:

AG Barr Reinstates Federal Death Penalty, Immediately Schedules 5 
Executions----“Additional executions will be scheduled at a later date,” the 
DOJ said.



Attorney General William Barr on Thursday reinstated the federal death penalty, 
which lapsed 20 years ago, and immediately scheduled executions for 5 federal 
death row inmates convicted of murdering children and the elderly, while 
promising more to come.

According to a Justice Department announcement, Barr directed Hugh Hurwitz, the 
acting director of the Bureau of Prisons, to adopt the revision to the Federal 
Execution Protocol, a maneuver that “[clears] the way for the federal 
government to resume capital punishment after a nearly 2 decade lapse, and 
bringing justice to victims of the most horrific crimes.”

Barr also directed Hurwitz to schedule executions for 5 death-row inmates at a 
federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana in December 2019 and January 2020.

“Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation 
adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed 
by the President,” Barr said in a statement.

“Under Administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought 
the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these 5 murderers, 
each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair 
proceeding. The Justice Department upholds the rule of law—and we owe it to the 
victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice 
system.”

The Justice Department identified the 5 inmates scheduled for execution:

Daniel Lewis Lee, a member of a white supremacist group, murdered a family of 
3, including an 8-year-old girl. After robbing and shooting the victims with a 
stun gun, Lee covered their heads with plastic bags, sealed the bags with duct 
tape, weighed down each victim with rocks, and threw the family of 3 into the 
Illinois bayou. On May 4, 1999, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the 
Eastern District of Arkansas found Lee guilty of numerous offenses, including 3 
counts of murder in aid of racketeering, and he was sentenced to death. Lee’s 
execution is scheduled to occur on Dec. 9, 2019.

Lezmond Mitchell stabbed to death a 63-year-old grandmother and forced her 
9-year-old granddaughter to sit beside her lifeless body for a 30 to 40-mile 
drive. Mitchell then slit the girl’s throat twice, crushed her head with 
20-pound rocks, and severed and buried both victims’ heads and hands. On May 8, 
2003, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona found 
Mitchell guilty of numerous offenses, including 1st degree murder, felony 
murder, and carjacking resulting in murder, and he was sentenced to death. 
Mitchell’s execution is scheduled to occur on Dec. 11, 2019.

Wesley Ira Purkey violently raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl, and then 
dismembered, burned, and dumped the young girl’s body in a septic pond. He also 
was convicted in state court for using a claw hammer to bludgeon to death an 
80-year-old woman who suffered from polio and walked with a cane. On Nov. 5, 
2003, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri 
found Purkey guilty of kidnapping a child resulting in the child’s death, and 
he was sentenced to death. Purkey’s execution is scheduled to occur on Dec. 13, 
2019.

Alfred Bourgeois physically and emotionally tortured, sexually molested, and 
then beat to death his 2 1/2-year-old daughter. On March 16, 2004, a jury in 
the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas found Bourgeois 
guilty of multiple offenses, including murder, and he was sentenced to death. 
Bourgeois’ execution is scheduled to occur on Jan. 13, 2020.

Dustin Lee Honken shot and killed 5 people—2 men who planned to testify against 
him and a single, working mother and her 10-year-old and 6-year-old daughters. 
On Oct. 14, 2004, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District 
of Iowa found Honken guilty of numerous offenses, including 5 counts of murder 
during the course of a continuing criminal enterprise, and he was sentenced to 
death. Honken’s execution is scheduled to occur on Jan. 15, 2020.

The Justice Department said that the 5 inmates have exhausted all appeals of 
their sentences.

“Additional executions will be scheduled at a later date,” the DOJ said.

(source: nationalinterest.com)

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

U.S. to Resume Executions of Death-Row Inmates----The federal government has 
not executed an inmate since 2003, a moratorium reversed by the attorney 
general.



The federal government will resume executions of death-row inmates after a 
nearly two-decade hiatus, Attorney General William P. Barr said Thursday, 
countering a broad national shift away from the death penalty as public support 
for it has dwindled.

The announcement reverses what had been essentially a moratorium on the federal 
death penalty. Five men convicted of murdering children will be executed in 
December or January at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., Mr. Barr 
said, and additional executions will be scheduled later.

Prosecutors still seek the death penalty in some federal cases, including for 
Dylann S. Roof, an avowed white supremacist who gunned down nine 
African-American churchgoers in 2015, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston 
Marathon bomber. But the federal government has only executed only 3 inmates 
since it reinstated the death penalty in 1988, including the Oklahoma City 
bomber Timothy J. McVeigh, who was put to death in 2001, and Louis Jones Jr., 
who was executed in 2003 for the rape and murder of a female soldier.

“Under administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought 
the death penalty against the worst criminals,” Mr. Barr said in a statement. 
“The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims 
and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice 
system.”

The number of executions in the United States had fallen to less than 2 dozen a 
year since a high in 1999, when 98 executions were carried out at the state 
level, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Public support for 
the death penalty hit a 2-decade low 3 years ago, when just under half of 
Americans polled backed it for people convicted of murder, down from nearly 80 
% in 1996, according to the Pew Research Center. Support for capital punishment 
ticked back up to 54 % last year, the center found.

Capital punishment fell out of favor as researchers began to question whether 
it deterred people from committing heinous crimes and as more defense lawyers 
proved that their clients were wrongfully convicted.

Civil rights advocates also noted that there was a great racial disparity among 
inmates on death row and argued that the penalty was disproportionately applied 
to black men.

With pressure building to replace the capital punishment with life in prison, 
21 states have outlawed the death penalty.

Advocates and inmates argued in lawsuits against state and federal governments 
that the practice was inhumane, and many of them focused on botched executions 
where the drug cocktail used was ineffective or caused severe suffering before 
death.

Nearly a decade ago, drugmakers in the United States and Europe stopped selling 
to the federal government the sedatives that it had long used to render 
prisoners unconscious before executing them. In at least one case, a prisoner 
regained consciousness during an execution in which an alternative sedative was 
used.

On Thursday, Mr. Barr said that he had issued a protocol that replaces the 
3-drug procedure previously used in federal executions with a single drug, 
pentobarbital, which is widely available.

In 2015, the Supreme Court examined whether lethal injection was 
unconstitutionally cruel punishment.

The court upheld the use of lethal injection, but in a dissent, Justice Stephen 
G. Breyer urged the Supreme Court to take a fresh look at the constitutionality 
of the death penalty.

He said that there was evidence that innocent people have been executed, that 
death row exonerations were frequent, that death sentences were imposed 
arbitrarily and that the capital justice system was warped by racial 
discrimination and politics.

But only Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined Justice Breyer’s dissent, and there 
have been no signs that a majority of the justices have qualms about the 
constitutionality of the death penalty. To the contrary, the court’s 5 more 
conservative members have expressed frustration with what they say is 
litigation gamesmanship used by opponents of the death penalty to put off 
executions.

(source: New York Times)

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

Barr orders resumption of federal executions; Navajo among those targeted



Attorney General William Barr ordered a resumption of federal executions 
Thursday and named a Navajo double-murderer as 1 of the first 5 death-row 
inmates who will be put to death.

Lezmond Mitchell will be executed on Dec. 11 with a fatal injection of 
pentobarbital if all goes according to the plan announced Thursday by the 
Justice Department and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

Mitchell was convicted on 11 counts in connection with the grisly beating and 
stabbing deaths of Alyce Slim, 63, and her 9-year-old granddaughter in 2001 
near Sawmill on the Navajo Nation. He is currently the only Native American on 
federal death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

In ordering the Bureau of Prisons to start scheduling executions again, Barr 
said he focused on inmates convicted of “murdering, and in some cases torturing 
and raping, the most vulnerable in our society – children and the elderly.”

Barr also ordered the bureau to replace its current three-drug for executions 
with the single drug, that he said has been used in more than 200 executions in 
14 states and has withstood legal challenges.

If the five executions occur as scheduled – beginning on Dec. 9 and continuing 
at regular intervals through Jan. 15 – they would be the 1st executions in the 
federal prisons in more than 20 years, Barr said.

According to court documents, federal prosecutors in Mitchell’s case originally 
opted against the death penalty, in the face of opposition from the Navajo 
Nation and from the victims’ family. But that decision was overruled by 
then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and prosecutors sought, and won, a death 
sentence in the case.

The case began when Mitchell and others abducted Slim and her granddaughter on 
Oct. 28, 2001, in Slim’s pickup truck, which they planned to use later to rob a 
trading post on the Navajo Nation.

The men ended up killing Slim by stabbing her 33 times, then dumping her body 
in the back of the truck, where her granddaughter was forced to sit with the 
body. They later dragged Slim’s body out of the truck and ordered the girl to 
“lay down and die,” slitting her throat and then, when she did not die, 
dropping heavy rocks on her head to kill her.

They later tried to cover their tracks by burying their victims’ heads and 
hands in a hole and dragging their dismembered torsos into the woods before 
burning the victims’ clothes and belongings.

Mitchell and two other men were in Slim’s truck three days later when they 
robbed the Red Rock Trading Post at gunpoint before driving off. They later 
burned Slim’s truck.

Defense experts at Mitchell’s trial determined that he had mental and emotional 
problems and a distant mother, that he had substance-abuse issues and was 
likely abused as a child.

But they also described him as a borderline sociopath who denied he was 
intoxicated at the time of the killing, who talked calmly about killing the 
girl and who had a history of “swinging dogs and cats by their tails and then 
throwing them off bridges just for fun.”

Mitchell was convicted on 11 counts, including two counts of 1st-degree murder, 
carjacking resulting in death and robbery, among others. He could not be 
executed for the murders under federal and Navajo law – but because carjacking 
falls under another section of federal law, he could face the death penalty for 
that.

It was in part because of that “loophole” in federal law that an appeals court 
judge in 2015 argued that Mitchell should get a new trial because his attorneys 
were ineffective.

But his opinion was the dissent in a ruling that upheld the conviction, with 
the majority of court panel saying Mitchell’s attorneys were “thorough in the 
extreme” and had to make difficult choices to construct a defense in a crime of 
“unusual brutality.”

Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt, the dissenting judge in that case, wrote then 
that Mitchell could “suffer the ignominious fate of becoming the first person 
to be executed for an intra-Indian crime that occurred in Indian country.”

(source: azpbs.org)

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

Dustin Honken to be executed: Timeline of events in infamous 1993 Iowa murder



An Iowa native convicted of murdering 5 people will be executed in January, the 
federal government said Thursday.

The government is resuming executions for the 1st time since 2003.

Dustin Lee Honken, 51, was running a sophisticated methamphetamine operation 
when, in 1993, he committed the execution-style slayings of 2 associates, 1 of 
their girlfriends and her daughters, ages 10 and 6. A jury convicted him in all 
5 slayings, giving him 2 death sentences for the girls' murders and life in 
prison for the adults' deaths.

He has exhausted his legal appeals for the guilty verdict, the government said.

Here's a timeline of some of the major events in his case:

1993

March — Britt native Dustin Honken and Timothy Cutkomp, formerly of Mason City, 
are arrested in Mason City on drug charges.

March — Honken, living in Arizona, is indicted in federal court for alleged 
methamphetamine trafficking in Iowa.

April — Greg Nicholson testifies against Honken before a federal grand jury.

July — Angela Johnson of Klemme obtains a permit to buy a handgun. 4 days 
later, she purchases a 9mm handgun at a pawnshop in Waterloo.

July — Nicholson and Nicholson's girlfriend, Lori Ann Duncan, 31, and her 2 
daughters, 10-year-old Amber and 6-year-old Kandace, are reported missing.

November — Terry DeGeus, 32, of rural Britt, another potential witness in the 
investigation against Honken, is reported missing.

1995

March — The original charges against Honken are dismissed because witnesses 
could not be found.

1996

February — Local, state and federal law enforcement officers search Honken's 
Mason City home and discover a meth lab.

April — Honken and Cutkomp are arrested in Mason City for meth trafficking from 
1993 to 1996.

June — Chemicals used to manufacture meth are seized from as storage shed at 
Johnson's home.

1997

June — Honken pleads guilty of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute 
methamphetamine.

Sept. 11 — State agents excavate property in Hancock County is search of the 5 
missing persons.

1998

February — Honken is sentenced to 27 years in prison.

2000

October — Informant provides authorities with 2 maps he says were given to him 
by Johnson and point to 2 spots where the bodies are buried.

October — The remains of Lori Duncan, her daughters and Nicholson are 
discovered west of Mason City.

November — The body of DeGeus is discovered in a farm field 1 mile west of 
Burchinal. The state medical examiner determined all 5 people died of gunshot 
wounds.

2001

July — Indictments charge Honken and Johnson with federal murder.

2002

April — U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett rules that any evidence found as a 
result of the informant's maps is inadmissible against Johnson.

2003

February — Federal prosecutors argue that McNeese was not a government agent 
when he obtained the maps.

February — A federal judge denies a request to release the remains of the five 
victims, ruling the bodies are key evidence.

December — The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals rules that prosecutors can use maps 
and information from the informant as evidence.

2004

June — The remains of the victims are released to their families.

July — Funeral services for Lori Duncan and her daughters are held in Mason 
City.

October — Honken is convicted of 17 charges related to the 5 murders.

2005

May — A federal jury finds Johnson guilty of helping Honken kill 5 people. The 
jury deliberated for 7 hours before finding Johnson guilty of 5 counts of 
conspiracy to commit murder as part of a drug conspiracy and 5 counts of 
committing murder while engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise.

June — A jury finds Johnson is eligible to receive the death penalty for her 
role in the murders.

October — Honken is sentenced to death for the murders. At his sentencing, he 
said, "I have committed wrongs both known and unknown. But never have I taken 
another's life. Thought it? Yes. Verbalized it? Yes. Done it? No."

December — Johnson is sentenced to death for her role in the murders.

2010

Honken appeals his case, raising dozens of objections and arguing that his 
sentences should be overturned.

2012

March — Bennett overturns Johnson's death sentence, saying Johnson's lawyers 
failed to present evidence about her brain and personality impairments that 
could have been mitigating factors. He orders a new sentencing hearing.

2013

October — U.S. District Judge Linda Reade upholds Honken's death sentences, 
writing that he received a fair trial in 2004 and effective legal counsel at 
every step of the process. She said she saw no reason "to disturb the jury's 
determination that death is the appropriate punishment in this case."

2014

December — Prosecutors drop their pursuit of the death penalty in Johnson's 
case, leaving her to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of 
parole.

2019

July — The U.S. Justice Department announces the Bureau of Prisons has 
completed a review of capital punishment and issues surrounding lethal 
injection drugs, allowing the executions of five inmates, including Honken to 
proceed.

2020

January — Honken is scheduled to be executed on Jan. 15 in Terre Haute, 
Indiana.

(source: Des Moines Register)

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

We Are All Executioners Now----Attorney General Bill Barr announced that the 
government will put 5 prisoners to death in 6 months, ending a 16-year hiatus.



54 % of Americans say they support capital punishment, but very few of them 
have any connection to it. Almost all death sentences come from just a 
smattering of counties in California, the Midwest, and the South. 26 states 
that authorize the death penalty handed down no new sentences last year. Only a 
handful actually executed someone. While most Americans may favor the death 
penalty in theory, the actual practice is a remote abstraction for them.

That changed on Thursday. Attorney General Bill Barr announced that he will 
order the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule execution dates for 5 federal 
death-row prisoners, ending a 16-year de facto moratorium at the federal level. 
“Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation 
adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed 
by the President,” Barr said in a statement. “The Justice Department upholds 
the rule of law—and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry 
forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”

Barr’s decision to frame the move in democratic terms is appropriate. The 
United States is still a democracy, even though it doesn’t always feel like 
one. Federal and state laws are still written by elected legislators and 
enforced on the people’s behalf. As a result, Americans continue to bear a 
certain responsibility for whatever the government does in their name. 
Residents of Massachusetts, by the same token, aren’t morally culpable for 
executions in Texas. Barr erased those boundaries on Thursday, making every 
American citizen an equal participant in the government’s premeditated taking 
of human life.

The federal resurrection of capital punishment comes as a growing number of 
states are abandoning it. In May, New Hampshire became the 21st state to scrap 
the death penalty after lawmakers overturned a gubernatorial veto. State 
supreme courts in Connecticut, Delaware, and Washington have struck down 
capital statutes in recent years, while state and local prosecutors asked the 
Pennsylvania Supreme Court to do the same earlier this month. In March, 
California Governor Gavin Newsom imposed a statewide moratorium on executions 
for the nation’s largest death row.

The federal government, by contrast, has never been a major player in American 
capital punishment: 1,500 prisoners have been executed nationwide since the 
Supreme Court revived the death penalty in 1976, but only three of them came 
from federal death row. The Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit 
organization that tracks capital punishment, lists 62 federal prisoners on 
death row, a tiny fraction of the roughly 2,600 prisoners nationwide who await 
execution.

Part of the reason for this disparity is that most crimes, including those 
eligible for the death penalty, are typically prosecuted by the states. The 
Clinton administration began scheduling executions in 1995, though the first 
one wouldn’t take place until 2001, when the government executed Oklahoma City 
bomber Timothy McVeigh. 2 more prisoners received lethal injections at the 
federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, the last in 2003. In recent years, 
federal prosecutors sought the death penalty in high-profile cases against 
Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Charleston church shooter Dylann 
Roof. The Obama administration briefly toyed with the idea of ending the 
federal death penalty before deciding against it.

The new executions are scheduled for December and January. To make its decision 
more palatable, the Justice Department chose five prisoners who committed 
crimes against children or the elderly for the first slate of executions. Each 
of them has “exhausted their appellate and post-conviction remedies, and 
currently no legal impediments prevent their executions,” the department said 
in a statement. Last-minute challenges could still be filed to challenge the 
method of execution, though they are unlikely to succeed.

A major hurdle for American executions at any level is the availability of 
lethal-injection drugs. Barr said the Federal Bureau of Prisons would use 
pentobarbital to kill the five men. The federal government’s supplier is 
unknown. Over the past decade, pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. and the 
European Union imposed an embargo on selling drugs for use in executions. The 
traditional three-drug cocktail used sodium thiopental as a sedative and 
vecuronium bromide or a similar compound as a paralytic. State officials would 
then inject potassium chloride to stop the prisoner’s heart. After sodium 
thiopental became unobtainable, states began experimenting with alternatives.

The result of those experiments was an uptick in botched executions. In July 
2014, Arizona officials performed a lethal injection on Joseph Wood with the 
sedative midazolam and hydromorphone, a potent narcotic. Most executions by 
lethal injection take between 10 and 20 minutes. Wood spent an hour and 57 
minutes struggling for breath before he died, with 1 reporter counting more 
than 600 gasps for air. 2 high-profile botched executions with midazolam in 
Oklahoma later that year brought a wave of new legal challenges.

The federal courts have long acted as a check on capital punishment’s worst 
excesses, but that role is fading fast. The Supreme Court made it virtually 
impossible to challenge the constitutionality of execution methods when it 
heard the midazolam case in 2015. Even the high court’s highest values now come 
second to keeping the machinery of death running. In February, a federal 
appeals court blocked Alabama from executing a Muslim prisoner while he 
challenged a state policy that required a Christian pastor to be present when 
he died. Instead of protecting the prisoner’s religious freedom, the Supreme 
Court’s conservative majority allowed the execution to go forward, drawing 
near-universal criticism from the left and right.

There is hope for Americans who don’t want to be part of a system that 
consciously takes human life. Almost all of the Democratic presidential 
candidates—from Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar to Cory Booker and Elizabeth 
Warren—publicly oppose the death penalty. Most of them quickly spoke out 
against Barr’s plan. “We need a national moratorium on the death penalty, not a 
resurrection,” California Senator Kamala Harris wrote on Twitter on Thursday. 
“When I am president, we will abolish the death penalty,” Vermont Senator 
Bernie Sanders declared.

The divide couldn’t be sharper. While a majority of Americans still favor 
capital punishment, President Donald Trump seems to relish it. He took out 
full-page newspaper ads in 1989 to demand the execution of the Central Park 5, 
who were later exonerated. He pledged in 2015 to mandate the death penalty by 
executive order for people who kill police officers if elected president. Last 
February, he praised Chinese President Xi Jinping for his country’s policy of 
executing drug dealers without due process. Barr’s decision this week means 
federal policy now reflects Trump’s zeal. Only the American people can now 
change it.

(source: Matt Ford is a staff writer at The New Republic)

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

Feds to begin executing death row inmates. What that means for Horry County 
murderers



Attorney General William Barr announced plans to use capital punishment after a 
2-decade hiatus. 5 inmates will be executed this year. 3 convicted in South 
Carolina, with 2 in Horry County could be next.

5 death-row inmates are scheduled to be executed later this year after Attorney 
General William Barr’s decision this week to resurrect capital punishment 
following a nearly 2-decade hiatus.

South Carolina currently has 3 sitting on death row: Dylann Roof, Brandon 
Basham and Chadrick Fulks. Basham and Fulks killed 2 women, including a 
44-year-old woman in Horry County.

The Department of Justice announced its decision Thursday, authorizing the 
execution of those who have been convicted of murdering, and in some cases 
torturing and raping, the most vulnerable, including children and the elderly.

Here are the 5 the federal government plans to execute

Daniel Lewis Lee, Lezmond Mitchell, Wesley Ira Purkey, Alfred Bourgeois and 
Dustin Lee Honken will be executed in December and January.

The last federal execution was performed in 2003. There are currently 62 people 
on federal death row.

Brandon Basham and Chadrick Fulks

Chadrick Fulks, of West Virginia, and Brandon Basham, of Kentucky, killed 2 
women, including a 44-year-old woman in Horry County.

The pair, who were cellmates and escaped from a Kentucky jail in 2002, went on 
a 17-day crime spree through Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, North Carolina 
and South Carolina.

Fulks and Basham were sentenced to death in December 2004 for the kidnapping 
and killing of Galivants Ferry resident Alice Donovan. Donovan was taken from a 
Walmart parking lot in Conway in November 2002, with Fulks aiding police in 
finding her remains in 2009.

Both men also pleaded guilty and were sentenced to life in prison for abducting 
and killing 19-year-old Samantha Burns, a Marshall University student last seen 
in November 2002.

Burns, of West Hamlin, W.Va., disappeared after calling her mother to tell her 
she was leaving a mall about 15 miles away from her home. When Burns didn’t 
make it home, her disappearance set off a massive manhunt that led to her 
burned-out vehicle about 15 minutes south of Huntington.

Burns’ body has never been found, despite assistance from Fulks.

Soon after Burns’ abduction, the men came to the Myrtle Beach area and 
committed crimes here, including carjacking and kidnapping Donovan, which led 
to her death.

Both men made attempts to appeal their convictions and death sentence but all 
were denied. Basham’s last appeal was denied in 2015, with Fulks in 2013 
requesting that his remaining appeals be stopped, stating that he was ready to 
accept his execution date.

Basham and Fulks are being held on federal death row in Terre Haute, Ind., 
awaiting execution.

Dylann Roof gunned down and murdered 9 African-American parishioners at 
Charleston’s Mother Emanuel AME Church in June 2015.

Roof, a self-described white supremacist from Columbia, was convicted on 33 
federal charges relating to the shooting. He was sentenced to death on those 
charges.

He also pleaded guilty to 13 state charges — including 9 counts of murder, 3 
counts of attempted murder and a weapons charge — for life sentences without 
parole.

Roof is also being held on federal death row in Terre Haute awaiting execution.

1 more South Carolina inmate could be added to DOJ’s execution list.

Federal officials plan to seek the death penalty against Brandon Council, the 
man accused of killing 2 women during a Conway bank heist in August 2017.

Council, of Wilson, North Carolina, was indicted in September 2017 for armed 
robbery resulting in death, using a firearm in violent crime that resulted in 
the murder and being a felon in possession of a firearm. He is accused of 
shooting Kathryn “Katie” Davis Skeen and Donna Major while robbing the CresCom 
Bank in Conway on Aug. 21.

The 2 worked at the bank at the time of the robbery.

Jury selection for Council’s trial will begin at the end of August.

(source: Myrtle Beach Sun News)

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

USA----impending/scheduled executions

With the execution of Marion Wilson Jr. in Georgia on June 20, the USA has now 
executed 1,500 condemned individuals since the death penalty was re-legalized 
on July 2, 1976 in the US Supreme Court Gregg v Georgia decision.

Gary Gilmore was the 1st person executed, in Utah, on January 17, 1977. Below 
is a list of further scheduled executions as the nation continues its shameful 
practice of state-sponsored killings.

NOTE: The list is likely to change over the coming months as new execution 
dates are added and possible stays of execution occur.

1501------Aug. 15-------------Dexter Johnson-----------Texas

1502-------Aug. 15------------Stephen West-------------Tennessee

1503-------Aug. 21------------Larry Swearingen---------Texas

1504-------Aug. 22------------Gary Ray Bowles----------Florida

1505-------Sept. 4------------Billy Crutsinger------------Texas

1506-------Sept. 10-----------Mark Anthony Soliz-------Texas

1507-------Sept. 12-----------Warren Henness-----------Ohio

1508-------Sept 25------------Robert Sparks------------Texas

1509-------Oct. 1-------------Russell Bucklew----------Missouri

1510-------Oct. 2-------------Stephen Barbee-----------Texas

1511-------Oct. 10------------Randy Halprin------------Texas

1512-------Oct. 16------------Randall Mays-------------Texas

1513-------Oct. 30------------Ruben Gutierrez----------Texas

1514-------Nov. 3-9-----------Charles Rhines-----------South Dakota

1515-------Nov. 6-------------Justen Hall----------------Texas

1516-------Nov. 20-----------Rodney Reed--------------Texas

1517-------Dec. 5-------------Lee Hall Jr.---------------Tennessee

1518-------Dec. 9-------------Daniel Lewis Lee---------Federal - Ark.

1519-------Dec. 11------------James Hanna--------------Ohio

1520-------Dec. 11------------Lezmond Mitchell---------Federal - Ariz.

1521-------Dec. 13------------Wesley Purkey------------Federal - Mo.

1522-------Jan. 13-----------Alfred Bourgeois-----------Federal - Tex.

1523-------Jan. 15-----------Dusten Honken--------------Federal - Iowa

1524-------Jan. 16-----------Kareem Jackson------------Ohio

(source: Rick Halperin)

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Amnesty International Response to US Government Decision to Resume Federal 
Executions

The US government has announced it plans to resume federal executions for the 
1st time since 2003. 5 people have been identified as the first to be subject 
to this new lethal injection protocol. In response, Amnesty International USA 
executive director Margaret Huang issued this statement:

“The Trump administration’s decision to restart federal executions after a 
16-year hiatus is outrageous. It is the latest indication of this 
administration’s disdain for human rights.

“The death penalty is the ultimate cruel and inhuman punishment. It is a system 
flawed beyond repair and the federal government should not proceed with any 
executions. The use of the death penalty is out of step with both national and 
international trends. 21 states in the USA, and over half the countries around 
the world have already determined the death penalty disrespects human rights 
and has no place in their laws. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty 
in all circumstances and will continue to fight to end this inhuman practice.”

(source: Amnesty International USA)

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

He was the last person to be executed in Michigan: 'Finish me off'----Anthony 
Chebatoris was hanged in Michigan in 1938.



Michigan could be moving closer to its 1st execution in 81 years.

On Wednesday, the federal government announced it would resume capital 
punishment, allowing the federal government to carry out the death penalty 
after a 16-year lapse.

Marvin Gabrion is the only Michigan convict on the list of federal death row 
prisoners, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

If executed, it would be Michigan's 1st execution since July 8, 1938, when 
Anthony Chebatoris was hanged for a deadly bank robbery.

On Sept. 29, 1937, Chebatoris shot a bystander during a Chemical State Savings 
Bank robbery in Midland. The victim died days later. A jury — in this case, 
composed of 5 men and 7 women — directed the defendant to be sentenced to 
death.

The day before Chebatoris was hanged at the federal prison in Milan, a 
technician ran tests on the 18-foot gallows and a chaplain visited the 
condemned man. The Free Press described him as sitting "sullenly in his cell, 
apparently unmoved by the inexorable tread of events, leading to the final act 
of his life."

He'd slit both his wrists and his throat shortly after the sentencing and 
reportedly had told his attorney: "Why appeal? I'm only half a man now. The 
government might just as well finish me off."

Michigan's governor at the time, Frank Murphy, expressed his opposition to 
Chebatoris' execution to then-President Franklin Roosevelt and even asked that 
the hanging be done in another state, but to no avail.

The day before Chebatoris was put to death, Murphy said: "When Chebatoris 
swings tomorrow at dawn, a blot will have appeared on Michigan's civilized 
record of no hanging in 108 years."

The state itself abolished the death penalty in 1847.

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

Michigan has 1 inmate on federal death row — and new ruling could mean 
execution



A Michigan man convicted of a 1997 murder is 1 of 62 federal death row 
prisoners who soon may be executed after the federal government announced on 
Wednesday it would resume capital punishment.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr has directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons 
to adopt an addendum to federal execution protocol allowing the federal 
government to carry out the death penalty after a 16-year lapse, according to a 
news release from Barr’s office.

5 death row inmates convicted of killing children or elderly people are 
scheduled to be executed in December 2019 and January 2020.

“The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims 
and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice 
system,” Barr said in the release.

Marvin Gabrion is the only Michigan convict on the list of federal death row 
prisoners, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Gabrion is not 1 
of the 5 scheduled to be executed in December or January.

Michigan abolished the death penalty in 1847, but Gabrion was sentenced to 
death by a federal court because he committed the crime on federal land.

In 2002, Gabrion was sentenced to death for murdering Rachel Timmerman, 19, who 
had accused him of rape. The woman and her 18-month-old daughter went missing 
days before Gabrion was to stand trial on the rape accusation.

Timmerman’s body was found weighted down by cinder blocks in a lake at the 
Manistee National Forest. Her daughter was never found.

Gabrion is the 1st person sentenced to death by a federal court in a non-death 
penalty state since the federal death penalty was reinstated, according to the 
Death Penalty Information Center.

It is unclear when or if he will be executed under Barr’s new ruling.

The attorney general said additional executions will be scheduled later.

(source for both: Detroit Free Press)

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

Kaboni Savage: Meet Philadelphia's Only Inmate on Federal Death Row



Philadelphia drug kingpin Kaboni Savage has been awaiting federal execution 
since 2014 when he was convicted of murdering 12 people, which included a 
family of 6 killed in a brutal firebombing.

Five years later, Savage, now 44, remains entangled in the criminal justice 
system as he appeals his death sentence.

Thursday’s announcement from U.S. Attorney General William Barr reinstating 
federal executions will do nothing to expedite Savage's sentence, according to 
a spokesperson for U.S. Attorney William McSwain, who represents the Eastern 
District including Philadelphia.

Savage is the only inmate from Pennsylvania on federal death row, but he is not 
among the 5 scheduled to be executed as early as December 2019, according to 
the Department of Justice.

Instead, Savage’s lawyers, who did not respond to a request for comment, filed 
an appeal in the spring and now have until September to submit more paperwork, 
according to McSwain’s office. Then, a federal court must decide whether or not 
to hear oral arguments.

In the time being, echoes of what Savage did linger throughout Philadelphia.

The family Savage firebombed in 2004 belonged to Eugene Coleman, his former 
confident turned FBI informant. In retaliation, Savage killed Coleman’s mother 
plus his cousin, his infant son and three other children. Coleman was in prison 
at the time.

Although Savage was also incarcerated at the time of the firebombing, he 
orchestrated the attack through phone calls and prison visits and communicated 
with other inmates through prison plumbing pipes.

Savage’s actions were described as “pure evil” by then-Deputy Commissioner of 
the Philadelphia Police Department Richard Ross.

Savage's younger sister, Kidada Savage, was sentenced to life in prison for the 
firebombing.

The Savages enterprises dated back several years before their ultimate fall. 
They were members of a regional criminal organization based in North 
Philadelphia that sold narcotic throughout the city. They ran "drug corners" 
and oversaw a small army of conspirators who did their bidding, according to 
court records.

Their organization was wide enough in scope to constitute an enterprise that 
conducted interstate commerce. Through this enterprise, they engaged in a 
lengthy list of federal crimes, including murder, arson, money laundering, 
witness tampering, retaliation against witnesses, assault and battery.

Despite his sentence, Savage could face several more years of appeals and 
execution is not necessarily guaranteed. The federal government has only 
executed three of more than 60 death row inmates since 1988, according to the 
Death Penalty Information Center.

Despite the ongoing lag, McSwain expressed support for the reinstatement of 
executions.

“The federal death penalty is the law of the land and the U.S. Supreme Court 
has found it constitutional,” he said. “We owe it to the victims and their 
families to enforce the sentences imposed by our justice system after full and 
fair proceedings.”

Reinstatement of the federal death penalty comes 2 weeks after Philadelphia 
District Attorney Larry Krasner filed a brief asking the Pennsylvania Supreme 
Court to rule the sentence unconstitutional because capital punishment 
historically targeted men of color.

But McSwain has said that “as a prosecutor, the only reason not to enforce [the 
death penalty] is political cowardice.”

The issue remains divisive both at the state and federal level.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf imposed a moratorium on the death 
penalty in 2015, but there hasn't been an execution here for nearly 2 decades.

Meanwhile, the last federal execution was carried out in 2003.

Opponents have long argued against capital punishment not just on moral 
grounds, but also on economic concerns.

When Wolf issued Pennsylvania's moratorium on executions, he said it was "a 
chance to reexamine and fix “a flawed system that has been proven to be an 
endless cycle of court proceedings as well as ineffective, unjust, and 
expensive.” Lengthy appeals can last years, costing the government thousands of 
dollars and providing little relief for victims’ families. A 2008 study found 
that death penalty cases could cost up to 8 times more than cases where 
execution is not sought, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

(source: nbcphiladelphia.com)

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

In Tsarnaev case, death sentence policy change will have little short-term 
effect, attorneys say



While the federal government said Thursday it will resume executing death-row 
inmates, that policy change will have little effect on convicted Boston 
Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s case in the short-term, according to local 
attorneys and legal scholars.

Tsarnaev was sentenced to death in 2015 for detonating a bomb amid Marathon 
spectators, becoming the 1st terrorist condemned to death by a jury in the 
post-9/11 US. But when that happened, the Justice Department was operating 
under a de facto moratorium on executions because of a review of federal death 
penalty policy.

That review has been completed, Attorney General William Barr said Thursday, 
and it has cleared the way for executions to resume.

Tsarnaev has appealed his conviction and death sentence. Since the appeal is 
still pending, the policy change holds little significance for his case at the 
moment, according to Daniel Medwed, a professor at Northeastern University 
School of Law.

“That is going to take a while to unfold,” said Medwed of the appeal.

After that appeal, Tsarnaev will be able to seek review from the US Supreme 
Court, and after that, he will have the opportunity to file a petition to 
challenge the sentence in federal district court, according to Medwed, who 
teaches criminal law and evidence.

“He has at a minimum 3 litigation procedures available before an execution date 
would even matter,” said Medwed.

According to Medwed, it would likely be “at least several years before there is 
any realistic possibility of a meaningful” execution date.

D. Christopher Dearborn, a professor who teaches criminal procedure and trial 
practice at Suffolk University Law School, had similar sentiments, saying he 
did not think Thursday’s developments would “have a huge impact” on Tsarnaev’s 
case.

“He’s still got a bunch of procedural steps to go,” said Dearborn. “The case is 
a long way from over.”

Dearborn found the timing of the death penalty announcement “to be a little 
suspicious.”

“I think a cynical person would say it’s [President] Trump playing to his base 
again,” he said.

Trump supports the death penalty.

For Tsarnaev’s legal defense, Dearborn thought there were arguments to be made 
regarding pre-trial publicity possibly tainting jurors and the choice of venue 
for the trial.

In their 500-page brief filed in the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, 
Tsarnaev’s taxpayer-funded legal team argued that the case should not have been 
tried in Boston and that the presiding judge allowed jurors to serve who 
appeared to have lied during the selection process.

Tsarnaev’s lawyers at trial admitted his role in the attack, which killed 3 
people and wounded more than 260 others, but attempted to portray his older 
brother and co-assailant, Tamerlan, who died in a confrontation with police 
days after the blasts, as the dominant leader of the plot.

The brothers also killed an MIT police officer while they were on the run.

In another case, a federal jury in Massachusetts condemned admitted serial 
killer Gary Lee Sampson to death in 2017 for a weeklong crime spree that left 3 
people dead in 2 states in July 2001.

State courts in Massachusetts struck down the death penalty laws in the early 
1980s and the last executions in the state were in the late 1940s. But Tsarnaev 
and Sampson were charged with federal crimes that allow capital punishment; in 
Sampson’s case, it was the crimes of carjacking resulting in death.

Martin G. Weinberg, a Boston criminal defense attorney, said in the short-term, 
Thursday’s news is a nonfactor for Tsarnaev.

“But in the longer term, it’s a very real and imperilling factor if his appeals 
are not successful,” he said.

The average capital defendant, said Weinberg, “has a decade of litigation 
before even becoming eligible for this irrevocably draconian punishment.”

On Thursday, Barr, the attorney general, instructed the Bureau of Prisons to 
schedule executions starting in December for five men, all accused of murdering 
children.

Although the death penalty remains legal in 30 states, executions on the 
federal level are rare. Since the federal death penalty was restored in 1988, 
the government has put to death only 3 defendants, with the last one being 
executed in 2003.

In 2014, following a botched state execution in Oklahoma, President Barack 
Obama directed the Justice Department to conduct a broad review of capital 
punishment and issues surrounding lethal injection drugs.

According to Weinberg, the change in federal policy represents a “step that 
reverses all the illumination of the last decades that demonstrates the system 
is not perfect and that innocent people are on death row.”

“Mistakes are made and to extinguish the potential to reverse a mistake is just 
horrifying,” he said.

Barry J. Bisson, another Boston criminal defense attorney, said there are many 
unanswered questions about the new federal policy.

Barr has approved a new procedure for lethal injections that replaces a 
three-drug cocktail with a single drug, pentobarbital. The government, said 
Bisson, is risking “making people lab rats who are put to death.”

“We have no idea much is needed to execute someone,” he said. “We could have a 
lot of botched executions.”

Bisson expected there to be legal challenges questioning if the new policy 
constituted cruel and unusual punishment. He wouldn’t be surprised if the issue 
landed before the Supreme Court, he said.

By the time Tsarnaev has exhausted his legal options, there could be a 
different federal death penalty policy.

“It may not affect his case at all,” said Bisson.

(source: Boston Globe)

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

In restarting the federal death penalty, AG William Barr looks to Texas----The 
federal death penalty hasn't been carried out since 2003. Now the U.S. attorney 
general wants to adopt the method used in Texas executions to put 5 men to 
death.



In reviving the rarely used federal death penalty, the U.S. Department of 
Justice announced Thursday it would use the same lethal drug Texas uses in its 
executions.

Ordering 5 executions in December and January, U.S. Attorney General William 
Barr told the federal prisons bureau to adopt an execution method “which 
closely mirrors” the protocol used in Texas, Georgia and Missouri. A federal 
death sentence has not been carried out since 2003, when an unofficial 
moratorium began as questions arose over the constitutionality of lethal 
injection. There have only been 3 federal executions in the modern era.

The new protocol replaces the controversial three-drug lethal injection 
combination with the method that Texas has had since 2012 — using only 
pentobarbital, a sedative. Texas purchases the drug from compounding pharmacies 
kept secret from the public, where drugs are mixed without federal regulation. 
The state has used pentobarbital in 79 executions.

Lethal drugs have become hard for states to obtain in the last decade. In 2011, 
drug manufacturers began blocking their products from being used in lethal 
injections, making states across the country, including Texas, scramble to find 
new execution drugs. In recent years, states have either stopped executions 
because they can’t obtain lethal doses or tried untested, controversial 
mixtures — sometimes resulting in gruesome deaths.

Compounding pharmacies, whose identities have been shielded from the public 
recently under Texas law, have allowed the state to continue carrying out by 
far the most executions in the country. 13 men were put to death in Texas last 
year; the state with the 2nd most executions, Tennessee, had 3, according to 
the Death Penalty Information Center.

After purchasing several new batches of pentobarbital in recent years — as well 
as pushing back expiration dates of doses in stock — the Texas prison system 
has 27 lethal doses, more than enough to cover the 10 executions on the 
schedule this year, according to records obtained by The Texas Tribune. Its 
supply puts Texas in contrast with most other states, which still struggle to 
obtain the drugs.

Barr’s announcement did not indicate how the federal government would obtain 
lethal drugs or from where, but it said the new protocol is “clearing the way 
for the federal government to resume capital punishment after a nearly two 
decade lapse, and bringing justice to victims of the most horrific crimes.”

Since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, only 3 men have been 
executed, according to the Death Penalty Information Center: Timothy McVeigh in 
2001 for the Oklahoma City bombing, Juan Raul Garza about a week later for the 
Texas murders of three drug traffickers and Louis Jones in 2003 for the Texas 
murder of a female soldier.

On Thursday, Barr ordered executions in five cases in which children and 
elderly people were killed — including a Texas case. Alfred Bourgeois was 
federally sentenced to death in 2004, after being convicted in the torture, 
sexual molestation and death of his 2-year-old daughter at the Corpus Christi 
Naval Air Station. His execution is scheduled for Jan. 13. The four other men 
set for execution are Daniel Lewis Lee, Lezmond Mitchell, Wesley Ira Purkey and 
Dustin Lee Honken. They all were found guilty in the killings of minors, with 
all but Bourgeois convicted in multiple deaths. (source: The Texas Tribune)

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

2020 Democrats speak out against DOJ death penalty decision



Several 2020 Democratic presidential candidates spoke out Thursday against the 
Justice Department’s announcement it would resume the use of the federal death 
penalty.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) called for a federal moratorium on the death 
penalty, echoing her past statements on the issue.

“Let me be clear: capital punishment is immoral and deeply flawed. Too many 
innocent people have been put to death,” Harris tweeted Thursday. “We need a 
national moratorium on the death penalty, not a resurrection.”

Harris previously called for such a moratorium in March, one day after 
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) granted 737 death row inmates a reprieve and 
imposed a statewide moratorium.

As attorney general and San Francisco district attorney, her track record on 
the issue was mixed. In a 2003 case, then-District Attorney Harris declined to 
seek the death penalty for a gang member in the killing of a police officer, 
putting her at odds with her eventual fellow senator, Dianne Feinstein 
(D-Calif.).

As attorney general, however, she appealed a 2014 decision by a federal judge 
that California’s death penalty was unconstitutional.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted “Our criminal justice system has a long 
history of mistakes when it comes to capital punishment—especially when it 
comes to Black and Brown people. We cannot let a broken system decide the fate 
of incarcerated Americans. I oppose the death penalty.”

Warren’s rationale for opposing capital punishment echoed the answer she gave 
in a New York Times questionnaire earlier this year. “The evidence suggests we 
make mistakes that are racially tinged. We can’t do that as a country,” she 
said.

In 2014, when asked about then-Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to seek 
the death penalty for Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev, Warren said she 
was against the death penalty but respected Holder’s decision.

A year later, however, Warren explicitly spoke out against executing Tsarnaev, 
saying the convicted bomber “should die in prison.”

"My heart goes out to the families here, but I don't support the death penalty. 
I think he should spend his life in jail. No possibility of parole,” Warren 
told “CBS This Morning” a day after a jury found Tsarnaev guilty on 30 counts.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) also specifically invoked the racial and class 
disparities in the application of the death penalty in his statement, calling 
the Justice Department's decision "disturbing" and saying it "does nothing to 
advance the cause of justice."

"Throughout our nation’s history we have seen how the death penalty is not only 
ineffective and immoral, but also fraught with biases against people of color, 
low-income individuals, and those with mental illness," Booker said.

"It is a waste of taxpayer dollars and does nothing to improve public safety. 
Instead, capital punishment seeks to satisfy a desire for vengeance and 
retribution. Our government must represent the best of who we are, not the 
worst. We can, and should, do better," he added.

Booker has consistently opposed the death penalty, joining Harris in praising 
Newsom's move in March and making former Vice President Joe Biden's historical 
support for capital punishment a key focus of his jabs at his competitor's 
criminal justice record.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also spoke out against Barr's decision, tweeting 
“There’s enough violence in the world. The government shouldn’t add to it. When 
I am president, we will abolish the death penalty.”

Sanders has frequently spoken out against capital punishment in the House and 
Senate, saying in a 1991 House speech "All over the industrialized world now, 
countries are saying, ‘let us put an end to state murder, let us stop capital 
punishment’ … but here what we’re talking about is more and more capital 
punishment."

However, he voted in favor of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act 
in 1994, which expanded use of the death penalty at the federal level. He had 
previously voted for an ultimately unsuccessful amendment that would replace 
all death sentences with life in prison, but voted for the final bill after it 
was removed.

A spokesman for Sanders told Politifact in 2016 that he voted for the final 
bill due to its ban on certain assault weapons and its inclusion of the 
Violence Against Women Act.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) also condemned the decision, tweeting on 
Thursday “The death penalty is cruel and unnecessary. We put an end to it in 
Washington state, and we’ll abolish it nationwide when I’m president.”

Inslee suspended the use of the death penalty in his state in 2014, saying in a 
news conference “There have been too many doubts raised about capital 
punishment, there are too many flaws in this system today … there is too much 
at state to accept an imperfect system.”

More than f4 years later in October 2018, the state supreme court struck down 
the death penalty in Washington.

The Justice Department announced Thursday morning it would resume federal 
capital punishment after more than 2 decades. Only 3 federal executions have 
been carried out since 1988.

“Under Administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought 
the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these five murderers, 
each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair 
proceeding,” Attorney General William Barr said in a statement Thursday.

“The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims 
and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice 
system,” he added. All 5 of the inmates named were convicted for murders of 
children.

(source: thehill.com)

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

‘Wrong.’ California Democrats decry return of federal death penalty



California’s top Democrats took to social media Thursday to condemn the 
Attorney General William Barr’s decision to lift a 20-year moratorium on the 
federal death penalty.

Among the critics to decry the move were both of California’s senators, Sen. 
Dianne Feinstein and Sen. Kamala Harris, U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, and 
California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Newsom, who earlier this year ordered a moratorium on in-state executions, 
tweeted that “We need an end to this system — not a resurrection.”

Harris called capital punishment “immoral and deeply flawed,” while Feinstein 
said that “the decision by this administration to resume the federal death 
penalty after a nearly 2-decade hiatus is wrong.”

Lee pointed out that the death penalty overwhelmingly is used against people of 
color, and she called it “a racist and error-prone practice that doesn’t deter 
crime.”

California’s Republican lawmakers stayed silent on the subject of the death 
penalty as of Thursday morning.

(source: Sacramento Bee)

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

Here's Why Death Penalty Opponents Say Resuming Federal Executions Is the Wrong 
Move



The Justice Department on Thursday said it would go back to executing federal 
death-row inmates for the 1st time in nearly 2 decades—a move capital 
punishment opponents quickly denounced as a step backward for criminal justice 
reform in the country.

“It’s distressing,” said Madeline Cohen, a capital defense attorney who 
represents three inmates on federal death row. “This administration has a 
history of taking rash actions, and this one is no exception.”

The federal government set execution dates as early as December for five 
convicted child murderers, including a man who killed a couple and their 
8-year-old daughter in 1996 by suffocating them with plastic bags and tying 
rocks to their bodies before dumping them into an Illinois bayou. In a news 
release Thursday, Attorney General William Barr called those five inmates the 
“worst criminals” and said “we owe it to the victims and their families to 
carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”

There are at least 60 federal prisoners on death row, including Boston Marathon 
bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who gunned down 
nine black parishioners in a Charleston, South Carolina church in 2015, 
according to the Justice Department and the nonprofit Death Penalty Information 
Center (DPIC).

A federal death-row inmate has not been executed since 2003 when Louis Jones 
Jr., who raped and killed a U.S. Army soldier, died by lethal injection in 
Terre Haute, Ind. The federal government has carried out a total of 37 
executions since 1927, according to the Bureau of Prisons, but only three have 
been executed since 1988.

Jones’ execution in 2003 sparked litigation against capital punishment that 
complicated and prevented its use in the federal system, a Justice Department 
official said. Another complication emerged in 2014 when convicted murderer 
Clayton Lockett, a state death row inmate in Oklahoma, convulsed and died of a 
heart attack 43 minutes into a botched lethal-injection execution there. It 
prompted President Barack Obama to call on the Justice Department to review the 
application of the death penalty nationwide.

On Thursday, the Justice Department said the Federal Bureau of Prisons had 
concluded a legal and procedural review—ordered by then-Attorney General Jeff 
Sessions—on how to move forward with using the death penalty. Going forward, it 
said it was changing its execution method, replacing the 3-drug procedure 
previously used with a single drug, pentobarbital. “Since 2010, 14 states have 
used pentobarbital in over 200 executions,” it said, adding that courts had 
upheld the drug’s use as consistent with protections against cruel and unusual 
punishment.

Capital punishment opponents said they were disappointed but not shocked by the 
Justice Department’s announcement, given that President Donald Trump has been a 
vocal supporter of the death penalty. (After a gunman killed 11 people in a 
Pittsburgh synagogue last year, Trump told reporters the perpetrator “should 
really suffer the ultimate price.” “I think they should very much bring the 
death penalty into vogue,” he added.)

“The surprise is that it took this long for them to do something,” DPIC 
Executive Director Robert Dunham said.

Hannah Cox, the national manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death 
Penalty, added: “We knew this was a possibility for some time, but we were 
hopeful the federal government would take a cue from what’s happening across 
the country.”

21 states have abolished the death penalty, and California, Pennsylvania, 
Oregon and Colorado have issued moratoriums on executions, Cox says. New 
Hampshire in May became the latest state to do away with executions.

Public support for the death penalty had hit a four-decade low in 2016, but it 
has slightly increased since, according to the Pew Research Center. A 2018 Pew 
survey found that 54% of Americans favor the death penalty for people convicted 
of murder, while 39% oppose it. Technically, there is a defined and limited set 
of crimes that warrant the federal death penalty. They include terrorism, 
espionage, killings of federal employees, political assassinations, killings in 
federal prisons and murders that take place on federal lands, according to the 
DPIC.

But Cohen, the federal capital defense attorney, says there is only 1 person on 
federal death row for a terrorism crime—the Boston Marathon bomber— and no one 
there for espionage. “Everyone else could have been prosecuted in state court,” 
she says. “There are a bunch of people on the row for homicides associated with 
carjacking, where the only federal hook is that the car was manufactured in 
interstate commerce.”

“It’s a very serious question,” she adds, “whether the federal death penalty is 
vindicating core federal interests.”

Dunham, the DPIC executive director, agrees. “When you look at the cases of 
people on death row,” he says, “they look like classic state murder cases.”

Among the people on federal death row with newly set execution dates is Lezmond 
Mitchell, who was convicted of stabbing a 63-year-old woman to death and then 
killing her 9-year-old granddaughter after making the young girl sit next to 
her dead5 grandmother’s body in a car for a roughly 30-mile drive.

“Killing a child is bad. There’s no question about that,” Dunham says. “But 
that doesn’t make it a federal crime.”

(source: TIME)

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

How Does the Federal Death Penalty Work?----The federal government has 
announced plans to resume capital punishment. But the order will likely face 
challenges.



The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has directed the Federal Bureau 
of Prisons to allow the federal government to resume capital punishment for the 
first time since 2003. In the announcement released Thursday, Attorney General 
William Barr ordered the executions of 5 federal death row inmates, scheduled 
to take place in December of 2019 and January of 2020, with an intention to 
schedule additional executions at a later date.

"Under Administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought 
the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these 5 murderers, 
each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair 
proceeding," Barr said in a statement. "The Justice Department upholds the rule 
of law—and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the 
sentence imposed by our justice system."

The statement released by the DOJ includes brief descriptions of the violent 
crimes committed by each of the five inmates, noting they have all exhausted 
their appellate and post-conviction remedies, leaving no legal impediments to 
the application of the death penalty.

Still, the order isn't necessarily a green light to begin executions. It will 
probably face challenges, particularly regarding Barr's proposed new lethal 
injection protocol. In case you need a refresher after 16 years, here's an 
explanation of the current state of the federal death penalty.

How Is the Federal Death Penalty Applied and Executed?

Federal death penalty cases are authorized by the DOJ in consultation with 
local U.S. attorney offices (U.S. attorneys represent the federal government in 
district courts and appeals courts). According to Capital Punishment in 
Context, an online resource for those studying the death penalty, a committee 
within the DOJ reviews all federal death-eligible cases, taking into 
consideration defense attorneys' reasons not to seek the death penalty, and 
makes recommendations to the attorney general on whether to seek the death 
penalty. Before seeking the death penalty, local U.S. attorneys must obtain the 
consent of the U.S. attorney general, who makes the final decision on whether 
to seek the charge.

Those indicted of federal death-eligible crimes are assigned two defense 
attorneys and are prosecuted by U.S. attorneys. Those who are convicted and 
sentenced to death are allowed one appeal (except for rare occasions where they 
can have more), and the president alone has the power to grant clemency to a 
prisoner on federal death row. Federal prisoners are held in the Special 
Confinement Unit at U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute in Indiana. There are 
currently 62 prisoners on federal death row.

The lengthy list of crimes punishable with the federal death penalty includes 
offenses like espionage, treason, and various instances of murder. But 
according to the Death Penalty Information Center, the federal death penalty is 
frequently applied in cases where a conviction or death sentence would have 
been available at the state level. All current death row inmates have been 
convicted of crimes involving murder or death; none have been convicted of 
treason, espionage, or air piracy, and only one case was related to terrorism.

State Opposition to the Death Penalty Is Still on the Rise

The order comes at a time when more and more states, with mounting conservative 
support, are making moves to abolish the death penalty: Most recently, New 
Hampshire repealed the death penalty in May of 2019, and bipartisan legislators 
in Wyoming, Montana, and Kentucky all introduced bills to end capital 
punishment in their states this year.

However, state opposition does not impede the federal government from applying 
the death penalty to a prisoner from that state.

As it stands, 21 states and Washington, D.C., have outlawed the death penalty, 
four have a governor-imposed moratorium, and 25 allow the death penalty, 
according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Although it's only legal by 
state law in half of the U.S., the federal death penalty applies to all 50 
states, D.C., and other U.S. jurisdictions.

Is the Federal Death Penalty an Overstep of State Powers?

States traditionally have the power to define and enforce criminal law, leading 
to questions about the constitutionality of the federal government's right to 
exercise capital punishment, especially when so many states oppose it. The 
federal death penalty was outlawed in the 1972 case Furman v. Georgia, which 
found that it constituted cruel and unusual punishment and was applied in an 
inconsistent, discriminatory manner. It was reinstated in the Anti-Drug Abuse 
Act of 1988 for a short list of crimes, and then lengthened to include 60 
offenses in the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994. This drew criticism from a 
range of scholars, anti-death penalty advocates, attorneys, and more for 
overriding state powers.

"Problems unique to the federal death penalty include over-federalization of 
traditionally state crimes and restricted judicial review," Ruth Friedman, 
director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project told CNBC. "These and other 
concerns, including troubling questions about the new execution protocol, are 
why there must be additional court review before the federal government can 
proceed with any execution."

Ongoing Challenges to Lethal Injection Protocol Will Likely Pose a Barrier

In his order, Barr directs the federal government to use a new protocol with 
just one drug, pentobarbital, rather than the three-drug cocktail the 
government formerly used. But BuzzFeed News reports that the new protocol will 
immediately end up in court and likely delay the scheduled executions, since 
legal injections have been effectively suspended by a lawsuit—pending since 
2005 and on hold since 2011—that challenges the U.S. government's execution 
protocol.

"Saying that you are going to adopt a protocol is not the same thing as having 
a protocol properly adopted through the required administrative procedures," 
Robert Dunham, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, 
told CNN.

(source: Pacific Standard)

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

Pressley to introduce bill to end death penalty after DOJ decision



Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) will introduce a bill to abolish the death 
penalty after the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday that it will 
resume capital punishment for the 1st time in nearly 2 decades.

The bill seeks to “prohibit the use of the death penalty for any violation of 
federal law, and for other purposes.” It also calls for any person sentenced to 
death prior to law's enactment to be resentenced.

“The death penalty has no place in a just society,” Pressley tweeted, along 
with an image of the legislation.

Pressley, earlier Thursday, had denounced the Justice Department's decision to 
resume capital punishment.

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," she tweeted. "The cruelty is the 
point - this is by design."

Only 3 federal executions have taken place since 1988, according to the Death 
Penalty Information Center. All five of the death-row inmates named in 
Thursday's release were convicted for the murders of children.

“Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation 
adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed 
by the President,” Attorney General William Barr said in a statement Thursday.

“Under Administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought 
the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these 5 murderers, 
each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair 
proceeding. The Justice Department upholds the rule of law—and we owe it to the 
victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice 
system.”

Several states currently have a moratorium on the death penalty or have 
suspended the practice due to recent past wrongful convictions brought to light 
by groups such as the Innocence Project, which have secured the release of a 
number of death-row inmates in recent years. The total number of executions has 
declined over the last decade, in part, due to concerns that capital punishment 
disproportionately affects African Americans.

The death penalty has been abolished in about 70 % of countries, including many 
democratic, industrialized nations similar to the U.S.

(source: thehill.com)

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

Renewed federal executions raise death penalty’s 2020 stakes



The question to Michael Dukakis, the Democratic presidential candidate in 1988, 
was brutally personal.

"If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death 
penalty for the killer?" Bernard Shaw, a CNN anchor, asked, referring to the 
Massachusetts governor's wife. Dukakis said he wouldn't favor it because "I 
don't see any evidence that it is a deterrent."

The technocratic, largely emotionless response in a debate mere weeks before 
the election marked the nadir of Democrats' politically agonized relationship 
to the death penalty — reinforcing in some voters' minds that the party was 
soft on crime. President George H.W. Bush went on to crush Dukakis, winning the 
Electoral College vote, 426-111.

Four years later, then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton projected the opposite 
message, defending the death penalty on a New Hampshire debate stage, then 
leaving the campaign trail to return to his home state and preside over the 
execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally impaired black inmate who killed a 
police officer and another man.

In the decade that followed, though, many Democrats were moved by the startling 
revelations of inmates being wrongly executed and began to rethink their 
position on capital punishment. In 2014, an Oklahoma execution was problematic 
enough that President Barack Obama mulled a moratorium on the federal death 
penalty. Though that never materialized, his party's national platform endorsed 
one two years later, and only one of the 24 Democrats seeking the White House 
in 2020 — Montana Gov. Steve Bullock — has publicly supported preserving 
capital punishment in some form.

The issue took on unexpected urgency on Thursday when the Justice Department 
announced that it will begin executing federal death row inmates for the first 
time since 2003, again raising the political stakes on a topic that's rarely 
been a Democratic strength. And while the party is now much more unified in 
opposing it than a generation ago, the public is not — potentially casting a 
long policy shadow over the upcoming primary.

Democratic strategist Mike Lavigne said that, despite the planned federal 
executions, he doesn't see the issue as a winner for Democrats because "there's 
not a lot of single-issue voters on the death penalty."

Still, several Democratic presidential candidates strongly criticized the move, 
setting up a stark contrast with President Donald Trump. "Capital punishment is 
immoral and deeply flawed," Sen. Kamala Harris of California said on Twitter. 
"Too many innocent people have been put to death."

About 6 in 10 Americans favor the death penalty, according to the General 
Social Survey, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. That's declined 
steadily since the 1990s, when nearly 3/4 were in favor.

Even California, the nation's largest blue state, rejected a capital punishment 
ban in 2016. Now-Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom used an executive order to 
declare a moratorium, but prosecutors in the state still sometimes seek the 
death penalty.

The 1st federal inmate is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 9 — less than 2 
months before the Democratic primary begins with the Iowa caucus — and 4 other 
prisoners are set to be put to death over the next 6 weeks.

Trump has repeatedly endorsed capital punishment for serious crimes, and that's 
likely to play well with his conservative base heading into 2020. Republican 
support for capital punishment has held steady at about 8 in 10 over the past 2 
decades, while about half of Democrats now say they favor it compared to nearly 
2/3 in the 1990s.

Pope Francis has declared the death penalty "inadmissible," but some Christians 
support it. Since 2015, the National Association of Evangelicals, which 
represents 45,000-plus churches, has acknowledged that Christians differ in 
their capital punishment beliefs and affirming "the conscientious commitment of 
both streams of Christian ethical thought."

"Our weighing in on the topic is not for the purpose of helping or hurting any 
politician, but it's to provide a moral context for our leaders in both 
parties," Galen Carey, the association's vice president of government 
relations, said by phone.

When Dukakis and Clinton were running for president, there were roughly 300 new 
death sentences annually nationwide, as opposed to around 40 today. Yearly 
executions peaked at nearly 100 in 1999 and have declined steadily ever since.

"It's shocking that, at this point, the federal government would be taking what 
feels like a giant step backward," said Bee Moorhead, executive director of 
Texas Impact, a theological civil group that has organized interfaith religious 
calls to abolish the death penalty in the state that executes more inmates than 
any other. "It is in the mold of a bunch of other policies that are devoid of 
the concept of mercy in a way that this country is just not used to."

Bullock, the lone Democratic White House hopeful who supports it, says he backs 
the death penalty in some cases such as terrorism.

But former Vice President Joe Biden only this week shifted to calling for 
eliminating the federal death penalty after years of supporting it. His 
criminal justice plan also would encourage states to follow the federal 
government in ending capital punishment, 25 years after he helped pass tough 
crime legislation that expanded its use.

Many of the other Democratic White House hopefuls have opposed the death 
penalty as part of larger calls for reforming a criminal justice system they 
see as unfairly targeting minorities and the poor. People of color have 
accounted for 43% of total executions since 1976 and 55% of those currently on 
death row, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

In a statement, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker noted the death penalty is "fraught 
with biases against people of color, low-income individuals, and those with 
mental illness." Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar said, "A life sentence compared 
to a death penalty sentence depends on where you live, who your lawyer is and 
the color of your skin," and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg tweeted, 
"Justice is not equally distributed in our country."

(source: Associated Press)

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

Gov. Newsom Sounds Off On Capital Punishment Revival



Governor Gavin Newsom is calling the federal government's decision to reinstate 
capital punishment "unjust, unfair and immoral."

"Equal justice doesn't exist in our death penalty system," Newsom wrote on 
Twitter Thursday. "The disparities for people of color are insanely high. 
You’re better off if you’re rich and guilty, than if you’re poor and innocent. 
It’s unjust. Unfair. Immoral. We need an end to this system — not a 
resurrection."

On Thursday, the Justice Department announced that Attorney General William 
Barr had ordered the federal government to resume executing federal death row 
inmates, nearly two decades after the last execution overseen by the federal 
government.

“Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation 
adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed 
by the President,” Barr said in a statement. “Under Administrations of both 
parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the 
worst criminals, including these 5 murderers, each of whom was convicted by a 
jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding.”

"The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims 
and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice 
system," he added.

The executions of 5 inmates convicted of murder and other crimes have been 
scheduled to take place in December 2019 and January 2020 at the U.S. 
Penitentiary Terre Haute, in Terre Haute, Indiana. The five prisoners were 
identified as Daniel Lewis Lee, Lezmond Mitchell,Wesley Ira Purkey, Alfred 
Bourgeois, and Dustin Lee Honken. The Justice Department provided a rundown of 
each prisoner and the crimes they'd been convicted of in the release. Each of 
the inmates had "exhausted their appellate and post-conviction remedies, and 
currently no legal impediments prevent their executions."

Newsom said you're better off if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and 
innocent.

"I see America has chosen to join North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Saudi Arabia’s 
King Salman, and Russia’s Putin in executing its citizens... continuing the 
trend of “strengthening” our ties with these liberal democratic leaders!" 
Newsom wrote.

(source: iheart.com)

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

Opponents vow to challenge Justice decision on death penalty



Human rights and anti-death penalty groups are vowing to challenge the Justice 
Department’s decision to resume the federal death penalty after a 15-year 
hiatus.

Attorney General William Barr’s announcement that the federal government will 
execute five people — its first executions since 200 — was quickly criticized 
by opponents as unlawful.

The groups predicted the decision would set off new lawsuits opposing the Trump 
administration, particularly given a decades-long move against capital 
punishment that has seen a number of states suspend the practice.

“It seems to me there are a lot of other pressing national security issues that 
I would think the Department of Justice would be concerned about,” said Miriam 
Gohara, an associate professor at Yale Law School who previously represented 
death-sentenced clients in post-conviction litigation.

“I find it surprising they’re using their resources to resurrect this issue at 
a time when people are really reexamining the death penalty all across the 
country,” she added.

The Justice Department announced an addendum to the procedure for carrying out 
capital punishment via lethal injection that would clear the way for the 
execution of 5 men: Daniel Lewis Lee, Lezmond Mitchell, Wesley Ira Purkey, 
Alfred Bourgeois and Dustin Lee Honken.

Each man was convicted in 2004 or earlier of killing children or the elderly.

It’s not clear whether the White House had any involvement with the issue, 
though President Trump has touted the death penalty in the past.

Trump did not comment on the decision on Thursday, and the White House did not 
release a statement on Barr’s announcement.

The issue could play out in the 2020 presidential campaign, where criminal 
justice reform already has been a hot topic.

Trump has supported capital punishment dating back to the 1980s, when he 
purchased ad space in a New York newspaper calling for a group of young black 
and Latino men wrongly accused of raping a white woman to face the death 
penalty. Just last month, Trump refused to apologize for his past comments on 
the case.

Trump has continued to advocate for the death penalty since taking office. In 
the aftermath of the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, 
Trump suggested one response should be to “stiffen up our laws in terms of the 
death penalty.”

“I think they should very much bring the death penalty into vogue,” he told 
reporters last October. “Anybody that does a thing like this to innocent people 
that are in temple or in church ... they should really suffer the ultimate 
price.”

The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, former Vice 
President Joe Biden, has also supported the death penalty. The 1994 crime bill 
authored by Biden extended the reach of the death penalty to dozens of new 
offenses.

But earlier this year, Politico reported that Biden congratulated the people of 
New Hampshire for ending the death penalty in that state, remarks that could 
signal a shift in his position.

Supporters of the death penalty said they were not surprised by Barr’s 
decision.

“The only surprise is that it took this long,” said Kent Scheidegger, legal 
director of California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

“I expected [former Attorney General] Jeff Sessions to jump on it as soon as he 
was appointed, but I guess other matters got priority.”

Scheidegger and other proponents of capital punishment argue that it acts as a 
deterrent and represents a just response to the crimes committed by those on 
death row.

Death penalty opponents also weren’t surprised, but raised red flags about 
exactly how the new protocol is being put in place.

A number of groups, including the ACLU, have indicated that they plan to 
challenge the new policy, whether in court or through other means.

“Under no circumstances should the Justice Department be allowed to rush 
through executions. The federal death penalty is defined by the same problems 
of racial bias, geographic disparities, prosecutorial misconduct, and junk 
science that have led to the decline in support for capital punishment 
nationwide,” Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment 
Project, said in a statement.

An ACLU spokesperson told The Hill that litigation is among the options being 
weighed at the moment and that Amnesty USA and the Legal Defense Fund are among 
the groups the ACLU is working with as they explore their options.

Legal battles will likely center on how the policy is being implemented: Barr 
indicated in Thursday’s announcement that the protocol has already been 
formally adopted.

But experts say that such a policy should have to go through a comment and 
notice period as required by the Administrative Procedure Act, and that sets it 
up to be challenged in court.

“When you're dealing with an issue as serious as the death penalty, it's 
important that governments that are seeking to carry it out follow the law,” 
Robert Dunham, the head of the Death Penalty Information Center, told The Hill. 
“To the extent that they don't, that undermines confidence in the system. But 
worse than that, it undermines faith in the legitimacy of the punishment.”

Further concerns are being raised about the new form of lethal injection that 
the federal government will use in the planned executions.

Barr said in Thursday’s announcement that federal authorities will adopt a 
one-drug method during lethal injections, using the chemical pentobarbital. The 
same drug is used in executions by other states, including Texas, Georgia and 
Missouri.

Megan McCracken, a counsel at the University of California, Berkeley School of 
Law’s Death Penalty Clinic, said that the limited details on how the drug will 
be purchased, stored and utilized raises concerns on how safe the process will 
be.

“What we certainly see is that when there’s secrecy, or a lack of transparency, 
botched executions happen,” she said. “That's a predictable consequence of this 
type of rush and this type of lack of transparency.”

However, McCracken didn’t rule out the possibility of authorities being trained 
in time to properly conduct the upcoming executions, saying that it’s possible 
as long as federal officials start working to reach that goal relatively 
quickly.

Others are skeptical of how the crimes could be classified as a federal matter.

“All murders are bad and I think people would agree that the murder of a child 
or a helpless elderly person is particularly bad,” Dunham said. “But that 
doesn’t make it a federal offense.”

Dunham said states have long had mechanisms in place to address those kinds of 
crimes, and that it doesn’t necessarily make sense for federal authorities to 
take over instead.

Public sentiment has in recent years moved away from capital punishment. 
Roughly 20 states have either banned the death penalty or have governor-imposed 
moratoriums on the practice.

A Gallup poll conducted last October found that 56 % of Americans are in favor 
of the death penalty for someone convicted of murder. But that number has 
steadily dropped since the 1990s, and the same poll found 49 % believe the 
death penalty is applied fairly.

At least one of the planned executions is already being challenged by the 
death-row inmate it involves: Attorneys for Daniel Lewis Lee, whose execution 
is planned for Dec. 9 of this year, are speaking out against the move, saying 
that his conviction was secured despite the “demonstrated unreliability of the 
evidence.”

Lee’s attorney Morris Moon raised concerns about the DNA and other evidence 
used in the case, arguing that it “exemplifies many of the serious flaws in the 
federal death penalty system.”

“Given the problems that undermine the fairness and reliability of Danny Lee’s 
conviction and death sentence, the Government should not move forward with his 
execution,” Moon said.

A lawyer for another one of the men, Purkey, also said Thursday that he 
shouldn’t be executed, claiming that “substandard representation permeated Mr. 
Purkey’s trial with errors and meant that his jury never had a full picture of 
his deep and sincere remorse or the personal circumstances that led to these 
tragic events.“

“The DOJ seeks to execute Mr. Purkey now, despite the myriad legal violations 
in his case and despite his advancing age and declining health,” attorney 
Rebecca Woodman said in a statement of her 67-year-old client.

“The timing of this decision raises serious questions about the application of 
capital punishment under this administration."

(source: thehill.com)

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

US Cardinal echoes Pope Francis’ rejection of Capital Punishment



Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago has today issued a number of 
tweets on the decision to reverse the moratorium on the death penalty in the 
United States.

In his tweets, Cardinal Cupich called the decision “gravely injurious to the 
common good” that “effaces the God-given dignity of all human beings”.

Cardinal Cupich also said that Pope Francis “revised the Catechism of the 
Catholic Church to say that capital punishment is ‘inadmissible because it is 
an attack on the inviolability and diginity of the person.'”

The Cardinal also made reference to an address he delivered on capital 
punishment to the American Bar Association.

You can read the full address below.

Remarks of Cardinal Blase J. Cupich at the American Bar Association on Capital 
Punishment

August 2, 2018

I am grateful for this opportunity to be on this panel of distinguished 
professors and lawyers to discuss this important topic of capital punishment. 
Their significant contributions put us in touch with the wide range of systemic 
injustices involved, such as the inconsistencies in applying Supreme Court 
decisions, the problems of racism, regional disparities and other factors 
related to the inequality of legal representation and the arbitrariness in 
applying the death penalty, the evolving standards of decency, not to mention 
the clear evidence that innocent people have been put to death.

As you may have heard, today Pope Francis made a bit of news by revising the 
Catechism of the Catholic Church to say that capital punishment is 
“inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the 
person.” This dignity persists, the revision continues, “even after the 
commission of very serious crimes.” By adding this language to the Catechism, 
the Holy Father has made official a development of Church teaching that gained 
steam under Pope John Paul II, who repeatedly described capital punishment as 
virtually never acceptable, and called for an end to state-sanctioned 
executions the world over. This development was carried on by his successor, 
Benedict XVI. And now the Magisterium, the teaching office of the Church, 
affirms the doctrine against capital punishment, and the fact that the Church 
“works with determination for its abolition worldwide,” as Francis’ revision to 
the Catechism puts it.

For close observers of the Holy Father, this comes as no surprise. Pope Francis 
has consistently called for the abolition of the death penalty. He did so early 
in his papacy at a meeting with representatives of the International 
Association of Penal Law in the summer of 2014. There he referred to a “penal 
populism” that promises to solve society’s problems by punishing crime instead 
of pursuing social justice. He admitted that according to the Catechism of the 
Catholic Church, “the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude 
recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively 
defending human lives against the unjust aggressor,” but, as the Catechism has 
long emphasized, he noted that modern advances in protecting society from 
dangerous criminals mean that “cases in which the execution of the offender is 
an absolute necessity are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”

In discussions leading up to today’s meeting, I was told that advocates of the 
so-called doctrine of “evolving standards of decency” were intrigued by what 
Pope Francis said in a 2017 address about the development in Church teaching. I 
imagine they are even more intrigued today. On that occasion he observed that 
in the Catholic view “tradition is a living reality…” as “the word of God 
cannot be mothballed like some old blanket in an attempt to keep insects at 
bay.” Rather, it is “a dynamic and living reality that develops and grows.”

While I am not competent enough, or foolish enough to enter the debate about 
the Constitution being a “living document,” I do want to say something about 
two important principles developed at the Second Vatican Council that have 
forced the Church to come to this new understanding of its position against the 
death penalty. Doing so will allow me to give a theoretical grounding to the 
evidence of inequality and inconsistency that others have pointed out.

The first principle has to do with how the Church, not to mention every 
Christian, should understand its role in the modern world. We have entered, the 
Council noted, “a new stage in human history, the birth of a new humanism, 
where people are defined first of all by their responsibilities to their 
brothers and sisters and to history.” As a result, the proper task of the 
Church and each Christian is to “work with everyone in building a more human 
world” (Gaudium et Spes 54-57). In a word, Catholicism as a religion cannot be 
understood without a social commitment, to the point that salvation and the 
efforts toward transforming history are intertwined precisely because God has 
set out to “make people holy and save them, not as individuals without bonds or 
links between one another, but to bring them together as one people” (Lumen 
Gentium 9). God’s work, which we must make our own, is about bringing people 
together toward a more profound level of human intercommunion and shared life. 
And so, we have to do all we can to make sure that no one is excluded, and we 
are especially to be attentive to those who live at the margins of society, the 
poor, the vulnerable, the weak, those whose lives are at risk, including those 
on death row, because God’s plan is to bring people together and leave no one 
behind.

The second principle has to do with the dignity of the human person and the 
inalienable right to life, which Pope Francis emphasizes in his decision to 
revise the Church’s teaching in the Catechism. The Church has long held that 
“the dignity of the human person is rooted in his or her creation in the image 
and likeness of God.” While this principle is often called upon by the pro-life 
movement, it has not been so prevalent in the death-penalty discussion, that 
is, until today.

Almost a dozen years ago, when I was the bishop of Rapid City, South Dakota, I 
pointed this out in a piece I wrote for America magazine. I asked the question: 
Is the right to life unconditional in all circumstances, or can it be forfeited 
by criminal behavior or advancing age?

The occasion for writing this article was the coincidence that voters and the 
legislature of South Dakota were simultaneously considering the issues of 
abortion and capital punishment. A law banning all abortions except to save a 
mother’s life was up for a vote. Proponents forcefully argued that the right to 
life is universal and God-given, a position held by the Catholic Church. The 
statute they supported did not refer to degrees or gradations of the right to 
life, nor did it rest on an individual’s quality of life, age or moral worth.

At the same time, lawmakers were attempting to clarify the state death penalty 
statute, as it was discovered that the lethal injection drugs readied for the 
execution of a convicted murderer did not conform to state law. Members of both 
houses announced their intention to fix what is now known as “the cocktail 
problem,” so that the death penalty could proceed.

Now, I fully recognized that the moral weight of these two issues differs 
greatly. Abortion, after all, involves the taking of innocent human life. Yet, 
it occurred to me that the convergence of these debates on abortion and the 
death penalty provided an opportunity to reflect more deeply on the claim that 
the right to life is universal and God-given.

I argued that the assertion that every human life has an inherent and 
inalienable value will only be strengthened if we apply this principle to the 
morality of defending both convicted criminals and the lives of the unborn. As 
I noted, “the death penalty confronts us with a penetrating moral question: Can 
even the monstrous crimes of those who are condemned to death and are truly 
guilty of such crimes erase their sacred dignity as human beings and their 
intrinsic right to life?” Despite today’s news, faithful Catholics will 
continue to struggle with this question. And it is not hard to understand why.

There are, after all, impulses deep in the human heart that answer: yes, 
certain crimes do bring a forfeiture of human dignity. That response springs 
from compassion for the victims of the most barbarous crimes in society and a 
desire to restore the order of justice that has been so viciously violated. At 
a profound human level, we tend to believe that by executing a murderer, we are 
somehow helping rebalance the scales of justice.

But there is a flaw in that way of thinking, for the real tragedy of murder is 
that there is no way to rebalance the scales of justice, no way to bring life 
back to those who have been killed or to restore them to their grieving 
families. When the state imposes the death penalty, it proclaims that taking 
one human life counterbalances the taking of another life. This is profoundly 
mistaken. If there is any lesson we need to learn in this perilous age, it is 
that taking a human life in the name of retribution does not bring justice or 
even closure, even if it may feel that way in the moment. Rather, capital 
punishment only continues the cycle of violence and vengeance. The tragic truth 
is that nothing can restore a human life.

We are left confronting the unavoidable moral question posed by capital 
punishment: Is the right to life conditional, or is it unconditional? Can men 
and women forfeit their right to life by their behavior, or is that right 
irrevocably given by God? Can society — that is, we the people — determine that 
the crimes committed by human beings supersede their intrinsic claim to life?

This question is all the more trenchant in an age when secure prisons and a 
viable justice system can virtually guarantee that those who have committed the 
most grievous acts against their fellow citizens will not pose a continuing 
danger to society. It means that when the state chooses to perform executions 
even when there are ways to protect society, it has concluded that the right to 
life is conditional after all.

Such a state, even if it does not intend to do so, inevitably weakens the 
ability of its citizens to defend the sacredness of human life against all the 
threats that imperil life in the present day. Erasing the innate value of 
individual lives because of crimes committed, and removing such criminals from 
the human family, is an echo of the violence done to human dignity when 
pro-choice advocates imply that the life developing in the womb is not “real 
human” life. Both conclusions assume that the right to life is contingent, 
rooted not in the free and absolute gift of a sovereign and loving God, but in 
the discernment of relative worth by society.

On the other hand, a state that rejects in principle the execution of even 
those individuals whose crimes are unspeakable bears powerful witness to the 
unconditional nature of the right to life. It asserts that every member of the 
human community shares a dignity that is not cancelled by defects of health or 
age or morality. A state that refuses to use the death penalty advances a 
culture of life with great power of witness precisely because it protects the 
lives of those who have been judged least worthy of its vindication.

The Church, and now especially Pope Francis, considers how this question bears 
on all issues related to human dignity. We live in an era when the dignity of 
human life is threatened. Wherever we turn we encounter mounting efforts to 
treat the lives of men and women as mere means to larger and allegedly more 
important goals. Global markets are developing for the sale of vital human 
organs by those driven, in the desperation of poverty, to risk death in order 
to provide food and shelter for their families. In our own land a dominant 
cultural ethic asserts that the lives of immigrants are of less value because 
they are other, alien. The same ethic avows that unborn children have no 
sanctity when weighed against the wishes and needs of their pregnant mothers 
and that those in declining health are less worthy of continued care. And in 
terrorism we see the chilling assertion that it is legitimate to kill innocent 
men and women in the service of political goals, religion and revenge. This is 
why it is so vital for us to have this discussion, and especially for us to 
urge all elected officials and leaders to recognize their responsibility but 
also the vested interest of society in defending the sacredness and value of 
every human life.

This principle of the dignity of human life must underpin any reference to 
inequality, inconsistency and systemic injustice. It is what holds together our 
care for the poor, the sick, the migrant, the excluded. Our assertion that the 
value of a human life does not depend upon an individual’s quality of life or 
age or moral worth must apply in all cases. For if we protect the sanctity of 
life for the least worthy among us, we surely witness to the need to protect 
the lives of those who are the most innocent, and most vulnerable.

(source: catholicoutlook.org)