[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., TENN., COLO., ARIZ., ORE.

[Rick Halperin]

July 27








TEXAS:

Like with Dallas' serial murder suspect, DAs seek death penalty when crimes are 
'heinous enough'



After Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot's decision this week to seek 
the death penalty for serial murder suspect Billy Chemirmir, current and former 
top prosecutors said Friday they know the emotional toll that came with that 
choice.

Take former Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, who said Friday he 
has struggled with the death penalty even though as district attorney he sought 
it time and time again.

His qualms about the ultimate punishment aren't just political. They're 
personal. His great-grandfather was executed by the state in 1932 for the 
murder of a Fort Worth man.

But despite his personal ties, which he revealed the same week he witnessed an 
execution while in office, Watkins sent more defendants to death row than any 
other DA in the state during his tenure.

Over two years, prosecutors say, Chemirmir charmed his way into the homes of 
elderly North Texans before smothering them, stealing their jewelry and selling 
it online and in pawn shops.

He's suspected in 19 deaths in Dallas and Collin counties and has been indicted 
on capital murder charges in a dozen of those cases. Now, prosecutors say, he 
deserves to die.

Choosing when to seek the death penalty is never easy, say other district 
attorneys who've had to weigh the evidence and make the call. It's a decision 
they don't take lightly.

"That's the hard part of the job. Obviously, I was against the death penalty," 
Watkins said Friday. "But when something like that happens, you pretty much 
have to set your personal feelings aside."

All about punishment

Watkins said that dating back at least to his predecessor, Republican Bill 
Hill, there has been no doubt about guilt when Dallas County has sought the 
death penalty. The evidence, he said, has always been strong. While juries in 
Dallas County death penalty cases decide guilt, the true trial is all about 
punishment, he said.

The question then, Watkins said, becomes whether a defendant deserves the 
ultimate punishment. Watkins said he always considered the actual crime and his 
personal beliefs when considering the appropriate punishment.

“Those are the things you lose sleep over,” he said. "When you get there [in 
office] and you see it, you have to change.”

DA Watkins questioned victim in death penalty trial

Watkins, who earned a national reputation for freeing the innocent from prison 
while in office, said he was always concerned about unfairly seeking a death 
sentence against people of color.

Watkins’ prosecutors sent at least 12 men to death row, including one whose 
case was retried, during his eight years in office. All but one were either 
black or Hispanic. Their victims were a baby and a toddler, an elderly store 
clerk, and a Southern Methodist University student raped and stabbed by a 
stranger.

Fewer death penalty cases

Nationally, use of the death penalty has dropped. 21 states have abolished 
capital punishment.

During the 1st half of this year, 12 defendants in the United States were 
sentenced to death; none were in Texas. The Death Penalty Information Center, a 
Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that disseminates information about the death 
penalty, estimates that 2019 will be the 5th consecutive year with fewer than 
50 new death sentences and fewer than 30 executions.

Senior-living communities were Dallas serial killer's hunting grounds, 
families' lawsuits say

Texas has executed more prisoners — 561 — than any other state since the death 
penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976. So far this year, Texas 
has carried out 3 executions. 10 more are scheduled through early November, 
although appeals could cause delays.

One reason for the drop in Texas executions is a September 2005 law that made 
defendants convicted of capital murder ineligible for parole if they didn’t 
receive a death sentence or if prosecutors didn’t seek one.

The Dallas County district attorney's office filed a motion Tuesday to seek the 
death penalty against Billy Chemimir in the death of Lu Thi Harris, an 
81-year-old woman whose body was found in her Dallas home after Chemirmir was 
arrested on an outstanding warrant.

Watkins, who is now in private practice, has followed the Chemirmir case and 
said Creuzot is right to seek the death penalty. Watkins, like Creuzot, is a 
Democrat.

“You have to make the hard decisions, and it looks like he did,” Watkins said.

Attorney Trey Crawford represents many of the families who say their loved ones 
were killed by Chemirmir at The Tradition-Prestonwood, a posh North Dallas 
senior living complex.

“If there is such a case deserving of the death penalty, this is certainly it,” 
Crawford said. “We are clearly dealing with an individual who has no regard for 
human life. Each of his victims and their families deserve justice.”

Crawford said he hopes Chemirmir will admit to all the murders. He said the 
decision to pursue the death penalty may persuade a defendant like Chemirmir to 
accept a plea deal and confess to crimes.

“This is a norm across the country for district attorneys to use the death 
penalty to leverage it against defendants,” said Rick Halperin, director of 
SMU’s Embrey Human Rights Program. “It’s just a bargaining tool. If defendants 
don’t yield to it, it’s not a tool. It’s the goal.”

Halperin, who works to end the death penalty, said that it makes sense that 
Creuzot would seek to have Chermirmir put to death. The facts of the case make 
it ripe for capital punishment.

“I’d be shocked — shocked — if he didn’t seek the death penalty in this case,” 
Halperin said. “For him, it makes political sense. But I’d never say seeking 
the death penalty is a good call. It’s a logical call, but it’s not a good 
call.”

‘Heinous enough, severe enough’

In Dallas, prosecutors pitch capital murder cases to Creuzot with a 
recommendation about whether to seek the death penalty, an office spokeswoman 
said. Creuzot makes the final call. The office did not respond to a request for 
prosecutors to discuss the process.

In Tarrant County, District Attorney Sharen Wilson created a strict policy on 
how they decide whether to seek the death penalty. Prosecutors will begin jury 
selection in September for two death penalty cases.

Wilson and the chief of the office’s criminal division, Larry Moore, said 
Friday that Wilson, a Republican, wanted to make sure all cases were judged on 
the same criteria. A committee then discusses the case, but like in Dallas, the 
decision ultimately rests with the district attorney.

Between them, Wilson and Moore have been involved in a combined 27 death 
penalty cases as either a prosecutor or defense attorney — and, for Wilson, as 
a judge. Texas is a trendsetter in executions, but not for the reason you think

Wilson’s policy requires assistant district attorneys to file an initial review 
of the case within five days, seek an indictment from the grand jury within 85 
days, and file a death penalty memo to Wilson about the defendant’s guilt or 
innocence, “future dangerousness,” liability issues and how the victim’s family 
feels about the death penalty.

Prosecutors must also consider the cost — in time and money — of a death 
penalty case. Cynthia Alkon, a professor of law at Fort Worth's Texas A&M 
University School of Law, said choosing to seek life without parole could be a 
cheaper option than seeking the death penalty.

“It’s quite expensive,” she said. “If your goal as a prosecutor is to make sure 
someone’s not walking the streets again, you can do that without the death 
penalty.”

Much of the high cost for death penalty cases comes from the time and labor 
used in appeals in state and federal courts. In Texas, death verdicts are 
automatically appealed, and most cases involve other attempts to reverse the 
jury’s decision. Death penalty cases also typically involve more attorneys, 
experts, testing and time before and during the trial.

The first hurdle, Wilson says, is whether the case is “heinous enough, severe 
enough.” Wilson said that while she hates to classify cases that way, the death 
penalty should be reserved for the worst of the worst.

Texas again leads U.S. in executions in 2018, and Dallas was top county, with 4

“As costly as this is, as serious as this is we want to make sure we are making 
a correct decision and that the appellate courts will agree,” said Wilson, who 
took office in January 2015 and is in her 2nd term. “When the decision is made, 
it cannot be emotional.”

Both say working on death penalty cases takes a personal toll, though they feel 
an obligation to do so. Defendants depend on their attorneys to save their 
lives, and prosecutors become close to the victims’ families.

“The only people who are interested in trying a death penalty case are lawyers 
who have never done it,” said Moore.

(source: Dallas Morning News)








FLORIDA:

The Death Penalty’s Fatal Flaw is Finding a Way to Do It Right



(EDITOR’S NOTE: Tony Panaccio, once a reporter for the now-defunct Clearwater 
Sun daily newspaper, is one of only a handful of journalists to witness the 
execution of serial killer Ted Bundy at the Florida State Prison 28 years ago 
this month.) As the federal government is gearing up to start executing death 
row inmates, I found myself remembering my first, and incredibly surreal, 
experience with capital punishment.

It took place while I was covering the execution of Ted Bundy, and happened 
before I even set foot in Starke Prison.

I had asked the communications director of the prison, Bob MacMaster, for 
Bundy’s schedule for his last day before his execution. Keep in mind, this was 
back in 1989, so it’s not like the old newsroom at The Clearwater Sun had email 
access. MacMaster sent me the information via snail mail, and it didn’t come in 
a standard envelope. I was expecting a couple of sheets of paper, at most. 
Instead, I received a three-ring binder with more than 100 pages neatly tucked 
inside.

What I did not understand at the time of my request was that every minute of a 
condemned man’s final day is accounted for in the Florida statute authorizing 
the death penalty itself. Everything from bathing, restroom breaks, and even 
the choices for his last meal — it was all in there, in plain black and white.

Did you know if a death row inmate gets the flu the day before his execution, 
the state has to wait for him to feel better before they execute him? It’s 
apparently only cruel and unusual to kill an inmate if his sinuses are clogged. 
Also, we never execute anyone on a Sunday. That would be violating the sabbath. 
So, now there are 2 things you can’t do on a Sunday in Florida — execute 
someone and get a Chik-Fil-A sandwich.

It struck me that some poor clerk or legislative aide had to sit down and write 
this up before the law was passed, and made me wonder just how many other 
persnickety details were codified by a law which had the sole purpose of 
guiding state employees on the right way to kill a human being.

In a larger sense, that’s the question the U.S. Supreme Court was attempting to 
address with its ruling last year that Florida’s existing capital punishment 
law is unconstitutional. It’s not that the idea of the state killing a criminal 
as part of a legal punishment was constitutionally ambiguous, but rather, in 
allowing judges too much unilateral sway during the process, that we just 
weren’t doing it right. So, it’s still okay for the government to kill people, 
as long as it’s done just so.

But there’s a broader theme in play beyond the constitutionality of capital 
punishment: the simple reality that there may not be any “right way” for the 
state to kill convicted criminals. Of course, the primary problem that states 
are beginning to discover — aside from simply trying to find a humane and 
dignified way to end the life of a capital criminal — is the one thing you 
cannot do with the death penalty: Undo it.

The Innocence Project has helped remove 20 death row residents since they began 
their work in 1992, winning release for an additional 316 innocent inmates 
wrongly convicted of crimes. Of course, those who served years behind bars 
cannot get that time back. That being said, wrongful convictions turn into 
lawsuits, which turn into cash settlements for those inmates to take as legal 
compensation for their incarceration. With the death penalty, there is no 
compensation that can undo or compensate for that sentence once it is wrongly 
carried out.

Moreover, the state suffers from the costliness of administering the death 
penalty, with a Palm Beach Post study from January 2000 estimating Florida 
could save $51 million each year if all death row inmates’ sentences were 
commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Incidentally, 
that’s the most recent study on the expense of death row.

Perhaps that is why the Supreme Court, states around the country, the 
Democratic Party Platform Committee and the modern media machine are finding 
difficulty with the death penalty, as well. In fact, the only participant in 
this issue who seems completely committed to the death penalty is the federal 
government. I guess after putting brown children in cages, they wanted to test 
just how far the humanity bar could be lowered without actually touching the 
ground.

Our government was founded as an institution to safeguard the rights and 
privileges of our citizens, so it stands to reason that it probably shouldn’t 
be in the business of killing them. It can’t be undone, and it forces the state 
to spend more money on inmates it intends to kill than inmates it hopes to 
rehabilitate. Finally, if it’s illegal for people to kill, how can it become 
legal simply because the government — of the people, for the people, and by the 
people — chooses to do it?

(source: Tony Panaccio, The Bipartissan Press)








TENNESSEE----impending execution

Tennessee Inmate Declines to Choose Execution Method----Tennessee death row 
inmate Stephen West has declined to choose the method of his execution 
scheduled for Aug. 15.



A Tennessee death row inmate has declined to choose the method of his execution 
scheduled for mid-August, a non-decision that would result in his death by 
lethal injection.

Tennessee Department of Correction spokeswoman Neysa Taylor confirmed in an 
email Friday that Stephen West declined to pick his method of execution when 
given the opportunity. She said that by policy, the method would default to 
lethal injection.

4 inmates have been executed in Tennessee since August 2018. 2 died by the 
state's preferred method, lethal injection, and 2 chose the electric chair, 
arguing it would be a quicker and less painful way to die than the 3-drug 
method.

West's execution is scheduled for Aug. 15. The 56-year-old was convicted for 
the 1986 murders of a Union County mother and daughter. He received a death 
sentence in 1987.

He was found guilty of kidnapping and stabbing Wanda Romines and her 
15-year-old daughter, Sheila Romines, to death. West was also convicted of 
raping the teenager.

In a February court filing, West's attorney argued that some "feasible and 
readily implemented alternative methods of execution exist that significantly 
reduce the substantial risk of severe pain and suffering" compared with the 
state's 3-drug protocol or electrocution: a single bullet to the back of the 
head, a firing squad, a "euthanasia oral cocktail" or 1-drug pentobarbital.

West still has an ongoing case in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. 
Additionally, Republican Gov. Bill Lee's office has received West's request for 
clemency, Lee spokesman Chris Walker confirmed. Lee, who took office in 
January, declined to intervene in his 1st death penalty decision in May.

In February 2001, West came within 10 hours of dying in the electric chair 
before deciding to resume appeals of his death sentence.

While Tennessee prepares for West's execution, U.S. Attorney General William 
Barr instructed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule executions starting 
in December for 5 men, all convicted of murdering children.

This week's announcement means the federal government will resume executing 
death row inmates for the 1st time since 2003, ending an informal moratorium 
even as the country has broadly moved away from putting inmates to death.

8 states have executed inmates or are planning to do so this year, according to 
the Death Penalty Information Center. Texas, by far, has executed the most 
people, with 563 inmates put to death since capital punishment resumed in the 
U.S. in 1977 after a 10-year pause.

Tennessee moved this year to drop one step of reviewing death penalty cases by 
the state Court of Criminal Appeals, which generally only took several months 
of the sometimes three decades of court review before an execution, with most 
of that coming in federal proceedings.

Another Tennessee execution is scheduled for December. Additionally, Charles 
Walton Wright had been scheduled to be put to death in October, but he died in 
prison in May.

(source: Associated Press)








COLORADO:

DA's Office: Death penalty off the table in slaying of Kelsey Berreth



The death penalty appears to be off the table for Patrick Frazee, the 
Florissant rancher charged with 1st-degree murder and awaiting trial in the 
killing of Kelsey Berreth, his fiancee and mother of his daughter.

Fourth Judicial District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Lee Richards said 
prosecutors would not be filing notice Friday declaring their intention to seek 
capital punishment against Frazee, 33, apparently closing the door on the 
possibility.

State law gives prosecutors nine weeks from a defendant’s arraignment to 
announce if they intended to seek the death penalty, and Richards confirmed 
that Friday was the deadline in the Frazee case.

(source: The Gazette)








ARIZONA:

Arizona attorney general asks governor for help getting drugs to resume 
executions



A day after the federal government announced it is taking steps to resume 
executions, the Arizona attorney general is asking the governor for help to do 
the same.

"Justice must be done for the victims of these heinous crimes and their 
families," Attorney General Mark Brnovich wrote in a letter to Gov. Doug Ducey 
on Friday. "Those who commit the ultimate crime deserve the ultimate 
punishment."

Arizona hasn't executed someone since 2014, when a controversial cocktail of 
execution drugs left Joseph Rudolph Wood snorting and gasping for nearly 2 
hours before he died.

Brnovich asked Ducey for help obtaining the execution drug pentobarbital. The 
drug has been hard to get for years, as manufacturers refused to provide it to 
prisons for use in executions.

Brnovich believes it might be possible to starting getting pentobarbital again 
following recent statements from the U.S. Department of Justice that it would 
resume executions using the same drug.

Problems with obtaining drugs

U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced the federal government will 
prepare to execute inmates on death row for the 1st time in 2 decades. 5 
inmates are to be scheduled, including a man from Arizona.

As part of that announcement, Barr said they would use pentobarbital in those 
executions. However, according to USA Today, it is unclear where the federal 
government would obtain the drug or whether it has a supply of it. The Justice 
Department and the Bureau of Prisons declined to comment to USA Today on 
pentobarbital supplies.

The Arizona Department of Corrections in 2017 posted execution procedures that 
said executions must be carried out using either of two barbiturates, 
pentobarbital or thiopental.

The latter method is how Arizona and most other states used to carry out 
executions. Several states have used pentobarbital on its own, as the federal 
government announced it would begin to do.

Arizona attempted to import thiopental from India in 2015, but federal 
officials impounded the supply at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

According to Brnovich's letter, the Department of Justice issued an opinion in 
2019 saying the U.S. Food and Drug Administration did not have the jurisdiction 
to regulate the importation of drugs if they were to be used for executions.

"I believe that opinion clears the path for states to import pentobarbital," 
Bronvich wrote.

The attorney general believes Barr's recent statement's suggest the federal 
government has obtained the drug.

"In order to administer the lawfully imposed death sentences in accordance with 
the Arizona Constitution, my office respectfully requests your assistance in 
obtaining pentobarbital," Bronvich wrote to Ducey. "We stand ready to 
vigorously defend you and the Department of Corrections in this effort and urge 
you to act without delay."

Death penalty in Arizona

There are 116 inmates currently on death row in Arizona.

Brnovich said 14 of those inmates have exhausted all their automatic appeals.

In April, Ducey signed a measure into law that eliminates three of the possible 
aggravating circumstances to qualify for the death penalty. Arizona law 
requires proof of at least one aggravating circumstance and the determination 
that the sentence is the most appropriate punishment in order for a person to 
be sentenced to death.

Democratic lawmakers have in the past introduced bills to eliminate the death 
penalty, but Republican legislative leaders never put them up for a vote.

(source: Arizona Republic)








OREGON:

Feds won’t pursue death penalty in Gypsy Joker Outlaw Motorcycle kidnapping, 
murder conspiracy cases



The U.S. attorney general has directed federal prosecutors in Oregon not to 
seek the death penalty in the kidnapping, torture-style murder and racketeering 
conspiracy cases pending against accused members of the Gypsy Joker Outlaw 
Motorcycle Club.

The decision was forwarded July 1 to the Oregon judge handling the case -- 
that’s about 3 ½ weeks before Attorney General William P. Barr announced 
Thursday that the federal government would resume death penalty executions 
after a 16-year hiatus.

No offenders prosecuted in Oregon currently are on federal death row.

In the motorcycle club prosecution, the Criminal Division of the U.S. 
Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., reviewed the case and made a 
recommendation.

Steven Mygrant, a federal prosecutor in Oregon, then informed U.S. District 
Judge Robert E. Jones.

“The government will not be seeking the death penalty against indicted and 
death-eligible defendants Earl Fisher, Mark Dencklau, Tiler Pribbernow, Ryan 
Negrinelli, Chad Erickson, or Joseph Folkerts,” Mygrant wrote.

Mygrant’s letter this month didn’t explain what led to the decision and federal 
officials declined further comment.

2 of the 6 who are charged in both the racketeering conspiracy and the killing 
of a former club member have entered guilty pleas to racketeering. They are 
Pribbernow and Fisher.

A 7th defendant, Kenneth Earl Hause, the national president of the outlaw 
motorcycle club, wasn’t charged with a death penalty-eligible offense and is 
accused only in the racketeering conspiracy.

The judge had pressed prosecutors to decide as soon as possible whether to seek 
the death penalty.

The racketeering charges stem from the 2015 kidnapping and death of Robert 
“Bagger” Huggins, 56.

Portland’s Gypsy Joker president Mark Leroy Dencklau was accused of ordering 
the 2015 kidnapping and killing of Huggins, according to Pribbernow, who has 
cooperated with the government. Others carried it out, he said.

The attack was in retaliation for Huggins’ robbery at Dencklau’s Woodburn home 
earlier that month, the government has alleged.

The prosecution’s case largely rests on Pribbernow, the man who wielded the 
fatal blow with a baseball strike to the head, according to lawyer Matthew 
Schindler, who represents co-defendant Negrinelli.

Schindler said he believes the government recognized that “the optics of 
attempting to execute those with lesser roles when it had already waived the 
death penalty for Pribbernow were problematic."

The move also gives the government a tactical advantage because additional 
defense lawyers with expertise in capital murder cases usually are removed from 
the defense teams once the death penalty is off the table, Schindler said.

In 2014, then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder directed federal prosecutors in 
Oregon not to seek the death penalty against 2 white supremacists, David “Joey” 
Pedersen and Holly Ann Grigsby, indicted on racketeering conspiracy and other 
charges in the killing of 4 people in 3 states.

But that case was jeopardized by government and state police mishandling of 
evidence, according to a federal judge. Ultimately, Pedersen and Grigsby 
entered guilty pleas and were sentenced to life in prison.

The federal government has executed 3 inmates since it reinstated the death 
penalty in 1988, including Timothy J. McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, in 
2001.

(source: oregonlive.com)

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

Death penalty legal in Oregon but state hasn't carried out an execution since 
1997



After 16 years without a federal execution, the death penalty is back.

The move came Thursday, after U.S. Attorney General William Barr directed the 
Bureau of Prisons to schedule the execution of 5 inmates after updating 
protocols.

Here in Oregon, the death penalty is legal at the state level - but has been on 
hold since 2011.

There's no doubt it's a controversial topic.

We asked people in downtown Eugene to weigh in on the death penalty.

“I don't think that anyone has the right to play God,” Jennifer Sherlock said.

“I’m generally not a big fan of it, but I think it can be appropriate in 
certain circumstances,” said Robert Gleeson.

“I feel like people still deserve to live their life, but it’s to a point where 
you should just live it in like a place where you can’t hurt anybody else or 
make any other mistake to that point,” Kalen Gleeson added.

The death penalty became legal four times throughout Oregon's history after 
being struck down by the state's supreme court and voters.

It remains legal to this day by lethal injection, but the punishment was halted 
in 2011 by then- Governor John Kitzhaber.

The last inmate to be executed was in 1997, according to the state.

As of the first of this year, 30 inmates are on Oregon's death row.

According to Oregon's Department of Corrections, it costs about $108 to keep an 
inmate in prison each day.

But many national studies find that the death penalty is more expensive than 
alternative punishments.

The state reports the execution of Douglas Franklin Wright in 1996 cost Oregon 
taxpayers nearly $200,000.

Now a bill to limit the state's death penalty to rare cases sits on Gov. Kate 
Brown's desk waiting for a signature.

Senate Bill 1013 would redefine aggravated murder - a charge punishable by 
death.

Under the bill, to be sentenced to death:

a defendant must have killed 2 or more people intentionally as an act of 
organized terrorism

killed a certain law enforcement officer

killed another inmate in prison or jail for a past murder, or

killed a child under the age of 14

Those that don't fall in the category under new sentencing would be shifted to 
a different charge.

(source: KVAL news)