[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA

[Rick Halperin]

July 27



USA:

The Government’s Arguments for Restoring the Death Penalty All Fail



Thursday, Attorney General William Barr announced that the federal government 
would begin executing people for the 1st time since 2003. He seemed to justify 
this decision in 4 ways: 1st, the death penalty is what the American people 
want, 2nd, these people have committed acts so heinous that no one should care 
if they live or die, 3rd, the system is fair and accurate, and 4th, killing 
prisoners will bring peace to victims. “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 Barr 
said. “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.”

All of these arguments fail.

The death penalty in the U.S. is dying. New death sentences are plummeting, and 
the few that do come down are coming from a handful of outlier jurisdictions, 
with 31 percent of the sentences coming from three counties: Riverside in 
California, Clark in Nevada, and Maricopa in Arizona. 2 % of counties 
nationwide now account for the majority of prisoners on states’ death rows.

Even when prosecutors seek the death penalty, juries around the country are 
often resisting them. In Wake County, North Carolina, home to Raleigh, juries 
have declined to sentence a defendant to death in eight out of eight cases over 
the last decade. After the last life sentence, the elected prosecutor stated: 
“At some point, we have to step back and say, ‘Has the community sent us a 
message on that?’”

A Gallup poll in October 2018 found that 56 % of Americans still favor the 
death penalty for murder. But these numbers have trended downward since the 
mid-1990s. And, as Matt Ford noted in The New Republic, “While most Americans 
may favor the death penalty in theory, the actual practice is a remote 
abstraction for them.” According to Rob Smith, executive director of The 
Justice Collaborative (publisher of the Daily Appeal), the more revealing 
metric for public support is that when asked to make real life-or-death 
decisions about a real person in a real case, prosecutors increasingly don’t 
seek and jurors don’t return death sentences.

Curiously, only 49 % of Americans told Gallup they thought the death penalty 
was applied fairly. This might prompt a person to ask: What’s going on with the 
7 % of people who don’t agree that the death penalty is applied fairly but are 
still in favor of it? We might wonder why we don’t defer more to experts, who 
tell us that the death penalty is not only unfairly applied, but it also 
accomplishes none of its stated goals.

Recently, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has asked the 
Pennsylvania Supreme Court to declare that the death penalty violates the 
state’s Constitution. “Because of the arbitrary manner in which it has been 
applied, the death penalty violates our state Constitution’s prohibition 
against cruel punishments,” his office argued in a brief. “It really is not 
about the worst offenders,” Krasner told The Appeal. “It really is about 
poverty. It really is about race.”

Out of the 45 people on death row from Philadelphia, 37 are Black, and 4 are 
from other “minority groups,” according to the brief. 72 % of Philadelphia’s 
death cases have been overturned, almost 1/2 due to ineffective assistance of 
counsel. Among those on death row, 62 % were represented by an attorney found 
to be ineffective in another capital case. “These were people too poor to 
afford their attorneys,” Krasner told The Appeal. “These attorneys did a dismal 
job.”

These patterns are not unique to Philadelphia. Even though the Supreme Court 
has ruled that capital punishment must be limited to those “whose extreme 
culpability makes them the most deserving of execution,” and that it is cruel 
and unusual punishment to execute the insane, the intellectually disabled, and 
people under 18, people in the first 2 of those groups continue to be sentenced 
to death. Of those executed in 2017, 20 of the 23 men had one or more of the 
following impairments: significant evidence of mental illness; evidence of 
brain injury, developmental brain damage, or an IQ in the intellectually 
disabled range; serious childhood trauma, neglect, or abuse.

Prosecutors also keep sending innocent people to be killed. “As of Oct. 17, 
2017, 160 people have been exonerated from the nation’s death rows, and 
numerous executions have taken place despite strong evidence of innocence,” 
according to The Appeal. “According to one study, 1 out of every 25 people 
sentenced to death is most likely innocent.”

And many victims and their families aren’t on board with the executions. “Yes, 
he killed my grandma, and he killed a little girl,” said Michael Slim, whose 
grandmother was killed by Lezmond Mitchell, one of the men that is now slated 
for execution. At the trial, Navajo officials asked federal officials not to 
seek death, but federal prosecutors did so anyway. At the time, Slim was 
pleased with that decision. “Looking back on it, yes, I did believe in it when 
it first happened,” he told Martin Kaste of NPR. “I felt happy, but that was 
the wrong kind of happy, because God should make that decision, not me.”

“We know that the death penalty is deeply flawed, with a terrible history of 
racism in its implementation and an equally terrible history of errors, 
resulting in many innocents on death row,” death penalty activist Sister Helen 
Prejean wrote in a statement yesterday. “We also know that it does not offer 
the healing balm to victims’ families that is promised. And let’s think about 
the power to take the life of our fellow citizens. What confidence can we have 
that our governments can be trusted with such power? When a penalty is 
absolutely final, surely we must seek a flawless system, and what government, 
what group of people, can deliver that?”

(source: theappeal.org)

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

Cuomo Trashes 'Demagogue' Trump for Bringing Back the Death Penalty



CNN host Chris Cuomo devoted his closing argument Thursday night to trashing 
President Trump for bringing back the death penalty. Not surprisingly, he used 
the occasion to refer to the President as a “demagogue.”

The closing argument began with Cuomo declaring “this President wants to start 
killing people again on the federal level in the name of justice.” Cuomo tried 
using religion to make the point that the death penalty is morally wrong: “this 
new appeal to vengeance sounds powerful, but is taking a life a show of 
strength? Let’s look at it different ways. Not to Jesus. His core message for 
believers was love, mercy.” According to Cuomo, “if you’re pro-life and 
pro-death penalty, you’ve got an inconsistency. And if you argue, well, fetuses 
are innocent and these people are guilty, then send any Christian back to the 
source. Did Jesus say you decide who lives and dies?”

Cuomo proceeded to argue that the death penalty was racist; providing 
statistics showing that the death row population has about the same amount of 
blacks and whites before arguing “half of homicide victims are African-American 
but the death penalty is way more prevalent when the victim is white.” The CNN 
host also provided statistics showing that the death penalty is applied far 
more often when a black person kills a white person than when a white person 
kills a black person. Later, Cuomo referred to the death penalty as “a vestige 
of a less evolved society,” pointing to the fact that the United States joins 
China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, and Somalia as the countries 
with the highest number of confirmed executions.

As the hour came to a close, Cuomo proclaimed that in America, “the popularity 
of killing people has fallen and we are now split about 50/50 and that is the 
stage for this election. This President knows we are divided and he is pushing 
on prejudice. That’s what a demagogue does.” He devoted the final seconds of 
his monologue to chanting phrases he associates with President Trump: “Muslims 
stay out! Brown folks go home…Insult the free press if you don’t like what they 
report. And now, the ultimate new appeal to harshness: here we kill people.” 
Channeling his inner Joe Biden, Cuomo proclaimed “this is about the soul of 
society.”

While the televised version of his closing argument came to a close following 
the conclusion of Thursday’s edition of Cuomo Prime Time, the debate over the 
death penalty continued on Cuomo’s Twitter feed. Responding to a Twitter user’s 
claim that violent criminals “deserve” the death penalty, Cuomo asked, “are you 
ok with brutality being our rule…because that’s what killing is.”

(source: newsbusters.org)

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

A 1994 law Joe Biden wrote put these 4 men on death row----Biden sponsored a 
bill that expanded death penalty-eligible crimes. He’s now trying to undo his 
“tough on crime” legacy.



A few hours after the Trump administration announced it was bringing back 
federal executions, former vice president and 2020 candidate Joe Biden had a 
single message: abolish the death penalty.

“Because we can’t ensure that we get these cases right every time, we must 
eliminate the death penalty,” he tweeted.

In criticizing these federal executions, Biden is fighting a monster he helped 
create.

On Thursday, US Attorney General William Barr announced that the federal 
government would resume executions for the first time in nearly two decades, 
scheduling execution dates for five inmates who have been convicted of murder 
and other crimes.

Several 2020 candidates swiftly criticized the government for its decision, 
which isn’t surprising considering all candidates but Montana Gov. Steve 
Bullock are opposed to the death penalty. Biden, too, joined the crowd to call 
for the abolishment of the death penalty.

4 of the 5 prisoners are eligible for federal executions because of the 1994 
crime law Biden wrote and shepherded to passage while he was the chair of the 
Senate Judiciary Committee.

The federal death penalty was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 
Furman v. Georgia in 1972. When it was reinstated in 1988, only those convicted 
of murder in federal court while engaging in containing criminal enterprise 
were eligible for the death penalty.

The 1994 crime law changed that. Among the law’s many provisions was the 
Federal Death Penalty Act, which expanded federal law to make 60 crimes, 
including drug crimes that do not involve homicide, eligible for the death 
penalty. Crimes could fall under three broad categories: homicide offenses, 
espionage and treason, and non-homicidal narcotics offenses.

Because the 4 prisoners were convicted after 1994, they received the death 
penalty under the updated crime law

These 4 prisoners, all of whom were convicted after 1994, were not convicted of 
murder while engaged in a criminal enterprise — therefore, they would not have 
been eligible for the death penalty if not for the 1994 anti-crime bill.

The 1994 crime law was an attempt to establish Democrats as the “tough on 
crime” party at a time when crime was high.

“Let me define the liberal wing of the Democratic Party,” Biden had said at the 
time. “The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is now for 60 new death 
penalties.”

Biden’s campaign highlighted that he also supported funding for prevention 
programs in the bill, which was necessary to tackle the root of the problem, 
though not as popular among Republicans. Yet the bill is not remembered kindly 
by criminal justice activists, who say it was ineffective and unfairly targeted 
black and brown men. As criticism has mounted, Biden, too, has acknowledged 
that his 1994 bill wasn’t perfect.

“I haven’t always been right,” he said in January of his criminal justice 
record. “I know we haven’t always gotten things right, but I’ve always tried.”

Now Biden is trying to undo his legacy. On Tuesday, the presidential candidate 
revealed his criminal justice reform plan — one of the most comprehensive ones 
to come out of the 2020 cycle so far. He tackles multiple issues, such as 
decriminalizing marijuana, reforming the police, and establishing a $20 billion 
grant to encourage states to reduce incarceration and crime.

Most notable may be his change of heart on the death penalty: Despite his long 
support of capital punishment, Biden said on Tuesday that he would abolish the 
death penalty at the federal level and incentivize states to follow suit.

As Vox’s German Lopez notes, this is an opportunity for Biden to show voters he 
can change with time:

For Biden, then, his criminal justice plan isn’t just a chance to line up with 
the preferences of most Democratic voters. It’s also an opportunity to try to 
make up for the mistakes of his past.  (source: vox.com)

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

Execution scheduled for member of the Navajo Nation for 2001 murders



When the U.S. Department of Justice announced this week that the federal 
government will resume capital punishment and scheduled executions for 5 
inmates, the list included a member of the Navajo Nation.

The Navajo Nation has taken a stance against the death penalty since 1991 
because it does not comply with Diné culture, tradition and values, including 
the belief in restoring harmony by restitution and not by taking human life for 
vengeance.

Lezmond Mitchell was convicted in 2003 of murdering Alyce Slim, 63, and her 
9-year-old granddaughter, Tiffany Lee.

The victims were members of the Navajo Nation, having lived in Fort Defiance, 
Arizona, and their dismembered bodies were found in 2001 near Tsaile, Arizona, 
according to The Daily Times archives.

In January 2002, the Navajo Nation Department of Justice opposed the plan by 
federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Mitchell, according to The 
Daily Times archives.

Since his case involved a carjacking, it gave prosecutors the ability to seek 
capital punishment without the tribe's permission because of interstate laws, 
according to the archives.

Guilty of murder

A federal jury found Mitchell, from Round Rock, Arizona, guilty of several 
offenses, including first-degree murder, carjacking resulting in death and 
felony murder, according to court records.

He is the only Native American among 62 federal death row prisoners and the 
last federal execution happened in 2003, according to the Death Penalty 
Information Center.

The July 25 press release from the DOJ states that U.S. Attorney General 
William Barr directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to execute the 5 men by a 
single drug, pentobarbital.

3 executions are scheduled for December, including Mitchell on Dec. 11, and the 
remaining 2 in January.

"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.

When the federal government amended capital punishment laws 25 years ago, a 
provision was made for tribes to choose to opt in to the federal death penalty.

Tribe opposes capital punishment

The tribe's point of view has been repeatedly expressed in letters written by 
the tribe's attorneys general and by a chief justice to congressional members 
and to federal attorneys in Arizona and New Mexico.

The latest was a July 2014 letter by then-Chief Justice Herb Yazzie to John 
Leonardo, who served as U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona from 2012 to 
2017.

"Capital punishment is a sensitive issue for the Navajo people. Our laws have 
never allowed for the death penalty. It is our belief that the negative force 
that drives a person to commit evil acts can only be extracted by the creator. 
People, on the other hand, are vehicles only for goodness and healing," Yazzie 
wrote.

(source: Farmington Daily Times)

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

Death penalty decision answers lingering questions about how Barr’s faith 
affects his politics



U.S. Attorney General William Barr is, by all accounts, a very committed 
Catholic. He’s a Knight of Columbus and served for several years as a member of 
its Supreme Board. He served on the board of the Catholic Information Center in 
Washington, D.C. until 2017 and serves on the board of the New York 
Archdiocese’s Inner-City Scholarship Fund. He reportedly donates $50,000 of his 
own money to pay for Catholic education for needy students each year.

His wife goes to Bible study regularly (and now, one presumes, somewhat 
awkwardly) with the wife of Robert Mueller.

Barr’s Catholicism is so well known that it came up in his confirmation hearing 
for attorney general when Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, chastising Democrats who 
had made an issue of a judicial nominee’s Catholic associations, rhetorically 
asked if Barr’s religion should disqualify him for the job. (Barr said no.)

But Barr himself has long been criticized by secular groups for mixing church 
and state, particularly for his declaration that “society’s moral culture is 
based on God’s law,” in a speech to a Catholic group in 1992.

The worry that Barr might impose his private religious views on federal matters 
has apparently been overblown, at least judging from his decision this week to 
reinstate the federal death penalty.

Since at least 2005, when they issued their statement, “A Culture of Life and 
the Penalty of Death,” America’s Catholic bishops have condemned the death 
penalty as inconsistent with the pro-life teaching of the Catholic Church.

The federal government has not used the death penalty in nearly 20 years, 
making it hard for Barr to claim that his decision is demanded by law. No one 
is forcing him to make the change, in other words. It appears to be his 
specific, individual choice alone.

As one might imagine, the powers that be in the Catholic Church are not happy. 
Speaking for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Frank 
Dewane said, “I am deeply concerned by the announcement by the United States 
Justice Department that it will once again turn, after many years, to the death 
penalty as a form of punishment, and urge instead that these Federal officials 
be moved by God’s love, which is stronger than death, and abandon the announced 
plans for executions.”

The USCCB is on very strong ground. The Catechism of the Catholic Church 
teaches that the “dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission 
of very serious crimes” and notes that “more effective systems of detention 
have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the 
same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of 
redemption.”

The only moral possibility for the death penalty comes from, as St. John Paul 
II put it, a situation where it is the only way to “defend society.” But in 
1995, the Holy Father noted that “such cases are very rare, if not practically 
non-existent” given the capacities of most penal systems. Today’s U.S. supermax 
federal prisons, it hardly needs saying, fall into the “practically 
non-existent” category.

Given Catholic teaching, what Barr has done by instituting the death penalty at 
the federal level in the United States is manifestly and gravely sinful. He is 
freely and publicly instituting an inadmissible punishment that directly 
attacks the inherent dignity of the human person. A very serious sin, indeed.

As always with moral questions of state, Barr’s decision raises the question, 
on the one hand, of how the church should respond. In other contexts, bishops 
have asked public figures who persevere in grave attacks against the dignity of 
the human person to refrain from seeking Holy Communion. A decade ago, 
then-Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis said that then-presidential 
candidate John Kerry should refrain from the Eucharist until he repented of his 
support for abortion rights.

Does Barr’s order fall into this category? That is ultimately up to his local 
ordinary bishop — in this case, as Barr is a native of Virginia, Bishop Michael 
Burbidge of the diocese of Arlington. One hopes he will ask to sit down with 
Barr and respectfully insist on his faithfulness to the teaching of the church.

If Barr obstinately refuses to live out his Catholic faith in his very public 
position, his bishop would be justified in asking him to refuse to present 
himself for communion until he confessed this sin and began to repair the 
serious disruption to the moral order. It’s important to note that this would 
not be a punishment. Instead it’s an invitation and motivation to do what is 
necessary to return to full communion with Christ and his Church.

There is also the question of what Barr’s responsibility is to his country. It 
may be that Barr believes he is duty bound by his office to impose the death 
penalty. In his announcement, he said, “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 … 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.”

For a long time, as on the abortion issue, politicians have claimed that their 
personal principles should not override their duty to the public. But the 
thinking in this regard is evolving. A 1998 law review article by Amy Coney 
Barrett, now a federal appellate judge, and John Garvey, now president of the 
Catholic University of America, argued that “judges cannot — nor should they 
try to — align our legal system with the Church’s moral teaching whenever the 
two diverge. They should, however, conform their own behavior to the Church’s 
standard.”

With regard to the death penalty, this meant Catholic judges recusing 
themselves in many and perhaps most situations.

If Barr truly believes his position as attorney general requires him to seek an 
inadmissible punishment as a matter of law, then his own words loom large as to 
what should come next.

At his confirmation hearing, he said that if his Catholicism demanded he do 
something inconsistent with serving in the government, Barr insisted he 
wouldn’t impose the Catholic view on others. Before doing that, he said rather 
dramatically, “I would resign my office.”

(source: Religion News Service)

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

Catholic Leaders Object to Reinstatement of Federal Death Penalty



The July 25 announcement by the Justice Department that it is reinstating the 
federal death penalty for the first time in 16 years was unwelcome news for 
Catholic leaders who have advocated against capital punishment.

“The United States’ death penalty system is tragically flawed. Resuming federal 
executions—especially by an administration that identifies itself as 
‘pro-life—is wrongheaded and unconscionable,” said Krisanne Vaillancourt 
Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, a group that 
champions restorative justice and an end to the death penalty.

The execution of five inmates on federal death row will take place from 
December 2019 through next January.

Attorney General William 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 last time there was a federal execution was in 2003.

In 2014, President Barack Obama directed the Bureau of Prisons to conduct a 
review of federal capital punishment cases and issues surrounding the use of 
lethal injection drugs. According to the July 25 announcement, that review is 
complete and the executions can proceed.

Currently, there are 62 inmates—61 men and 1 woman—on federal death row, 
according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Most of the federal 
death-row prisoners are at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind.

Inmates in the group include convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev 
and Charleston, S.C., church shooter Dylann Roof.

In a July 25 statement released by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, 
Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Fla., chairman of the USCCB Committee on 
Domestic Justice and Human Development, said that Pope Francis in 2015 called 
for “the global abolition of the death penalty,” which he said the U.S. bishops 
also have supported for many years.

“In light of these long held and strongly maintained positions, I am deeply 
concerned by the announcement by the United States Justice Department that it 
will once again turn, after many years, to the death penalty as a form of 
punishment, and urge instead that these federal officials be moved by God’s 
love, which is stronger than death, and abandon the announced plans for 
executions.”

Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph of Medaille, who is a longtime 
opponent of capital punishment, tweeted a brief reaction to the July 25 
announcement saying that as she was about to “board a plane to Alaska to join 
the celebrations of 62 years without the death penalty in that state” when she 
learned “the federal government plans to restart executions later this year 
after a 16-year hiatus.”

“The DOJ regresses as the rest of our country evolves,” she added.

Other Church leaders also reacted on Twitter to the announcement.

In a July 25 tweet, Chicago Cardinal Blase J. Cupich called Barr’s announcement 
“gravely injurious to the common good, as it effaces the God-given dignity of 
all human beings, even those who have committed terrible crimes.”

He also pointed out that last year Pope Francis ordered a revision to 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.”

The Sisters of Mercy called the Justice Department’s decision “tremendously 
disappointing” and said in a July 25 tweet that they would continue to uphold 
Catholic social teaching regarding the dignity of human life with education and 
advocacy efforts to “continue to work for the death penalty’s abolition.”

In a statement released the afternoon of July 25, Sister Prejean described the 
Justice Department’s announcement as a “seemingly measured statement,” which 
“belies the fact that this is a rush to kill: They plan three executions in one 
week using a new, untested—and not yet approved—lethal injection protocol.”

She also said it is “disheartening that the administration has chosen to follow 
the death road, when the life road calls us to work for justice for all.”

Sister Prejean, echoing a message she has said before, added: “The death 
penalty is deeply flawed, with a terrible history of racism in its 
implementation and an equally terrible history of errors, resulting in many 
innocents on death row. We also know that it does not offer the healing balm to 
victims’ families that is promised.”

Federal death penalty cases are authorized by the Department of Justice in 
consultation with local U.S. Attorney Offices.

Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy said in her July 25 statement that in the 16 years 
since the federal government executed a death-row prisoner, the American public 
has changed its collective thinking on the death penalty. Last October, she 
said 49 % of Americans said they believed the punishment is applied fairly and 
currently, 25 states have distanced themselves from the death penalty in some 
capacity, most recently, California, with its governor-imposed execution ban in 
March and New Hampshire’s repeal of capital punishment by legislative veto 
override in May.

Hannah Cox, national manager of Conservatives Concerned about the Death 
Penalty, offered a similar response saying the reinstatement of federal 
executions “goes against the trend we have seen in states across the nation, 
where executions and sentences are at historic lows.”

She also pointed out that a growing number of conservative state lawmakers 
“realize that capital punishment goes against their principles of valuing life, 
fiscal responsibility and limited government, and that the death penalty does 
nothing to make the public safer.”

Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy reiterated that the Catholic Church’s teaching is very 
clear on capital punishment, noting the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls 
it “inadmissible” in all cases “because it is an attack on the inviolability 
and dignity of the person.”

She said the Justice Department’s announcement “flies in the face” of American 
values of equality and fairness “and for Catholics, above all, a belief in the 
sanctity of all human life.”

She said the decision also “promotes a culture of death where we so desperately 
need a culture of life.”

(source: Catholic New York)






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

Trump’s Death Penalty Obsession Won’t Stem the Tide Against Executions----The 
decision to resume federal executions may play well to Trump’s base, but the 
rest of America is growing disillusioned with capital punishment.



Attorney General William Barr claimed that it was the rule of law that inspired 
the Trump administration’s decision to resume federal executions after 16 
years. His plan calls for executions of five death row inmates in rapid 
succession starting in December using a controversial, single-drug protocol.

“Under Administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought 
the death penalty against the worst criminals … each of whom was convicted by a 
jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding,” he said in a statement 
announcing the decision 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.”

Given the administration’s generally cavalier attitude toward the “rule of 
law,” it is more likely that this decision was the result of a raw political 
calculus rather than anything that the law requires.

As the Chicago Tribune noted in its coverage of Barr’s announcement, “The move 
is likely to stir up fresh interest in an issue that has largely lain dormant 
in recent years, adding a new front to the culture battles that President 
Donald Trump already is waging on matters such as abortion and immigration in 
the lead-up to the 2020 elections.”

The resumption of federal executions is a logical outgrowth of President Donald 
Trump’s enthusiasm for capital punishment. As a private citizen in 1989, he 
took out advertisements calling for the death penalty for five young men 
accused in the infamous Central Park Jogger case.

The resumption of federal executions is a logical outgrowth of Trump’s 
enthusiasm for capital punishment.

More recently, in late 2015, in the run-up to his presidential campaign, he 
reacted to the shooting deaths of 2 police officers in Mississippi by saying, 
“We have people who are, these 2, animals who shot the cops … the death 
penalty, it should be brought back and it should be brought back strong.”

In March of last year, the president called for enacting the death penalty for 
drug dealers and proudly said that he had gotten this idea from Chinese 
President Xi Jinping.

That the president is using the death penalty to play to his base is also 
suggested by the sharp partisan divide in support for that punishment and the 
fact that 80 % of self-identified Republicans support it.

Yet whatever the motives of Trump or Barr, today’s political climate is far 
less hospitable to red-meat appeals to restore and expand the death penalty 
than it has been in the past.

The United States has come a long way from the time when Democratic candidates 
for president showed that they would be tough on crime by trumpeting their 
support for the death penalty, or leaving the campaign trail, as Bill Clinton 
once did, to preside over an execution.

Yesterday, almost every major contender for the Democratic nomination for 
president denounced Barr’s decision and reminded voters of their opposition to 
the death penalty.

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

Moreover, the resumption of executions at the federal level is unlikely to slow 
or reverse the momentum opponents of the death penalty have achieved in 
bringing about a national reconsideration of the death penalty. Signs of that 
reconsideration are everywhere.

Since 2007, 7 states have abolished capital punishment by legislative action, 
and 3 by judicial decree. (Nebraska abolished it legislatively, but voters 
subsequently reinstated it in a referendum.) 4 other states have a moratorium 
in place preventing anyone from being executed.

This period has been one of the most successful in the modern history of death 
penalty abolitionism.

Another mark of this success is that death sentences nationwide have fallen 
from a modern high of 315 in 1996 to 42 last year.

Executions have followed a similar path, going from 98 in 1999 to 25 in 2018.

Abolitionists have changed their arguments in ways that can and do appeal to a 
broader range of citizens. In many states, they have allied themselves with the 
plight of the families of murder victims. They also effectively countered “soft 
on crime” accusations with data showing that the death penalty does not make 
citizens safer. And the argument that capital punishment is far more expensive 
than a life sentence has won over major conservative groups and Republican 
lawmakers.

Most importantly, abolitionists have highlighted the many flaws in the capital 
punishment system: the large numbers of innocent people who have been sent to 
death row, the racial discrimination in death sentencing, and the growing 
prevalence of botched executions as drug manufacturers refuse to provide lethal 
drugs.

The federal death penalty is plagued by these same issues. A study of federal 
death penalty prosecutions released in 2000 by the United States Department of 
Justice (the most recent data available) found “that the federal death penalty, 
like its application in the states, is used disproportionately against people 
of color.” It also showed that in the 5-year period from 1995–2000, “80% of all 
the federal capital cases recommended by U.S. Attorneys to the Attorney General 
seeking the death penalty involved people of color.” Today, 42 % of federal 
death row inmates are black.

Another study conducted in 2014 in anticipation of the federal prosecution of 
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber, showed that federal death 
penalty prosecutions “are more expensive and time consuming, more subject to 
prolonged delays, and unlikely to produce a different result than where the 
prosecution seeks life without parole.” It also raised concerns about the 
“inevitability of error” in federal death penalty cases.

The resumption of federal executions does nothing to repair those troubling 
problems. Instead, it will provide another arena in which the death penalty’s 
irredeemable defects will be vividly on display.

(source: slate.com)

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

3 sentenced to death in Georgia await federal executions



One bludgeoned a prison guard to death. One raped and killed a nurse 
practitioner. Another fatally stabbed a postal worker.

The three men, sentenced to death by Georgia juries, are among roughly 60 
inmates who sit on federal death row. While they were not listed Thursday by 
the U.S. Justice Department as the first five condemned prisoners now set to be 
executed since 2003, they could be scheduled to be put to death by lethal 
injection sometime next year.

In 1997, Anthony George Battle became the 1st Georgia man to receive a federal 
death sentence since Congress restored capital punishment in 1988 under U.S. 
law.

Battle was sentenced to die by an Atlanta jury for the Dec. 21, 1994, killing 
of 31-year-old guard D’Antonio Washington. Battle repeatedly struck Washington 
in the back of the head with a ball-peen hammer at the Atlanta Federal 
Penitentiary.

At the time, Battle was already serving a life sentence for the 1987 murder of 
his wife, a U.S. Marine stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Battle, whose lawyers said he was schizophrenic, was given a chance at the end 
of his trial to ask jurors to spare his life. Instead, he told them that 
Washington “died like a dog.”

In 2003, Meier Jason Brown received a death sentence from a federal jury in 
Savannah. On Nov. 30, 2002, the Liberty County man showed up at a post office 
in Fleming and stole $1,175 in money orders.

As the robbery unfolded, Brown stabbed postmistress Sallie Gaglia 10 times as 
she tried to defend herself. He left the 48-year-old woman to die lying face 
down on the floor, according to court records.

A year after Brown’s trial, a federal jury in Gainesville sentenced William 
LeCroy Jr. to death for raping and killing a nurse practitioner after she 
arrived at her Gilmer County home from a shopping trip with her fiancé. On Oct. 
7, 2001, LeCroy slit Joann Tiesler’s throat and repeatedly stabbed her in the 
back before driving off in her Ford Explorer.

LeCroy’s case became highly unusual because 6 years after he was sentenced to 
death, his brother, Georgia State Trooper Chadwick LeCroy, was shot and killed 
by a career criminal who should have been in jail without bond for a pending 
criminal case.

On Dec. 27, 2010, during a routine traffic stop for a broken taillight, Gregory 
Favors sped away from Chadwick LeCroy and crashed his car near the intersection 
of Hightower Road and St. Paul Avenue in Atlanta. When LeCroy, 38, approached, 
Favors pulled out a gun and opened fire, fatally striking the trooper in the 
neck.

Fulton County prosecutors sought the death penalty against Favors. In 2014, 
however, they allowed Favors to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of life 
in prison without parole.

(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

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

With the federal government starting to execute inmates again, what does this 
mean for Arizona?



The death penalty is back on the table as punishment for federal crimes.

In a somewhat surprising announcement today, U.S. Attorney General William Barr 
directed the Bureau of Prisons to begin scheduling the execution of 5 inmates. 
One of those inmates is Lezmond Mitchell, who killed a 63-year-old woman and 
her 9-year-old granddaughter on the Navajo Nation back in 2001.

Barr says the government owes it to the victims and their families to carry out 
the punishment handed down by the justice system.

While the death penalty is legal in 30 states, including Arizona, the state has 
been unable to execute anyone since a botched execution in 2014.

The latest move from Barr is reigniting the debate over whether states should 
be in the business of putting people to death.

This decision has people wondering if states that have put executions on hold 
will now follow through with them.

The announcement was met by praise by at least one Arizona congressman, Andy 
Biggs. Biggs applauded the move in a statement saying in part, "Government has 
a solemn responsibility to administer justice for the most loathsome crimes, 
committed by some of our most hardened criminals."

There hasn't been a federal execution since 2003 after problems with the 
three-drug cocktail that was being used. A botched execution in 2014 led to a 
Department of Justice review, and now 5 people are set to be federally executed 
with a one drug cocktail starting later this year.

"You know, the federal government hasn't been doing this for awhile. Exactly 
what are their protocols? What happened to their practice and procedures and 
policies? Have they been renewed? Have they been revamped?" Ray Krone said.

FOX 10 reached Ray Krone by phone. Krone spent 10 years in prison and time on 
death row before being exonerated by DNA evidence for an early 1990s murder he 
didn't commit.

He says the announcement today has him concerned.

"It's new what just happened. I can pretty much promise you there will be a 
number of suits filed by whether its by Amnesty International, the ACLU, or 
other groups. Again, what is the federal government prepared to do? What have 
they done in preparing to resume execution? Krone said.

The decision only effects federal crimes, not state. Here in Arizona, there 
hasn't been an execution in 5 years, and there are 116 people currently sitting 
on the state's death row with no executions scheduled.

(source: 10foxphoenix.com)

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

Juror recounts day in the life of a juror in a capital punishment case



It has now been just over a week since the jury could not unanimously decide 
what the punishment of the kidnapper and killer of visiting scholar Yingying 
Zhang’s should be.

It’s a life or death decision not many people think about having to make in 
their lifetime. However, for 12 people this decision was on their minds for 
almost 4 weeks.

Brendt Christensen was found guilty toward the end of June, for kidnapping 
resulting in death by the same jury that could not unanimously decide if he 
should be sentenced to death or life in prison, ending their deliberations on a 
10-2 vote for the death penalty, according to one of the alternate jurors from 
the trial, Bob, who did not wish to disclose his last name for the article but 
was willing to speak with The Daily Illini about his experience.

The jury consisted of 12 jurors and 6 alternates. The alternates did not 
participate in any of the deliberations or verdicts but were required to sit 
through the trial just in case one of them needed to step in. The alternates 
were also required to follow the same rules as the other jurors.

Every day, Bob would leave his house in Bloomington, Illinois, around 7 a.m. to 
get to the courthouse in Peoria by the latest 9 a.m. Before that, however, Bob 
had a job and canoeing trip in Canada to look forward to this summer.

“I immediately knew when I pulled it from the mailbox that (it was) a jury 
summons,” Bob said.

He informed his brother, who he had planned the trip with he may not be able to 
go on the trip, and he eventually found out that he was right. He officially 
canceled his trip to be an alternate juror for the case U.S. v. Christensen.

At the very beginning, when opening statements first began in the guilty or not 
guilty phase, Christensen’s attorneys said right away they would not deny his 
guilt in Zhang’s murder.

“From a jury’s perspective … isn’t that the whole reason we’re here: for us to 
hear the evidence and make that decision?” Bob said.

He said after the entire trial ended on July 18, prosecutors Eugene Miller and 
James Nelson as well as Judge James Shadid, spoke with the jury and answered 
any questions they may have had post the trial.

The admission of Christensen’s guilt by his attorneys was brought up to the 
prosecutors during this time, Bob said. They said they were supposed to expect 
anything but didn’t know what the defense would essentially come out with, so 
it was a surprise but wasn’t completely unexpected.

After Christensen was found guilty by the jury, the sentencing trial didn’t 
begin until about a week and half later, after the Fourth of July. This is when 
Bob was able to catch up on some work he might have missed, but he also got to 
go on his canoeing trip with his brother.

During the canoeing trip in Canada, there was no service and no electronics, so 
it was easy to stay away from any media coverage of the case, and he said his 
brother was good about not asking him about it as well.

“There we’re back in the bush. There is no communications. There is no 
electricity. There’s nothing,” he said. “It was a great way to destress and be 
out in the wild and go fishing and not think about or discuss the case.”

But eventually it was time to come back for the start of the sentencing phase. 
At the start of this phase each juror was asked if he or she had read, seen, 
heard or discussed anything about the case and every single juror had not.

Bob said as a jury, everyone was really good about paying close attention to 
all the evidence and to what was being said, adding the majority of the jurors 
also had some form of college education.

During the numerous and often emotional testimonies, Bob said there was 
discussion of possibly needing one of the alternate jurors to step in because 
one of the other sitting jurors had to leave the courtroom during a testimony 
from Zhang’s family. However, she was questioned by the judge and both sides of 
counsel and was cleared to stay on.

Bob said depending on who was on the witness stand at the time, there was often 
a swing of emotion.

“You would hear the testimony of Yingying’s parents and brother and boyfriend 
and friends, and that was extremely emotional,” he said. “Then you’d hear 
testimony of Brendt Christensen’s friends and family and I would say that was a 
little less emotional because he was the killer, but you’d have a shift (of 
emotion) then depending on who was talking at the time.”

He said his emotions did ebb and flow, but his position stayed pretty steady 
throughout the sentencing phase, and he is respectful of the decision the jury 
ended up with.

Although Bob did not wish to say if he would have voted for either death or 
life, he did say this: “If I could trade Brendt Christensen for Yingying, I 
would undoubtedly, immediately.”

(source: The (Univ. Illinois) Daily Illini)

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

'Execute justice, not people...' Sisters of Providence speak out against 
Federal Executions----The Attorney General announced Federal Executions will 
begin again in Terre Haute in December. Sisters of Providence at 
Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods said they're still against the act.



Attorney General William Barr made the announcement yesterday. He directed the 
Federal Bureau of Prisons to adopt an addendum to the Federal Execution 
Protocol. That makes way for capital punishment to resume after nearly 2 
decades. Death row on the Federal level is located right here in Terre Haute, 
at the Terre Haute Federal Penitentiary.

The Sisters of Providence have always been outspoken when it comes to federal 
executions. They've had silent protests at each one in the past. Now that 
federal executions will start again they said they'll be at each one.

"We don't believe that killing is right whether it's done in anger or whether 
it's done by law enforcement," Sister Rita Clare Gerardot of Sisters of 
Providence said. "Killing is killing."

Sister Rita Clare Gerardot has been in the Sisters of Providence congregation 
since 1944.

So you can imagine she's seen a lot of things going on in the Wabash Valley, 
the state, country and the world. One of those things is the death penalty.

"I don't believe in the death penalty. As a community, we don't believe in the 
death penalty," she said.

Now, after almost 2 decades the capital punishment will start again, right here 
in Terre Haute and sister Rita Clare said she will still fight against it.

"What they've done is detestable, certainly, and they deserve to be punished 
but killing them is not the answer to that," she said. "Life in prison without 
the possibility of parole is certainly a punishment that they have to live with 
day after day after day."

She said she's been to all of the executions that have happened in the past at 
Terre Haute's federal prison.

"It was very very solemn. There was no chit chat back and forth it was a very 
solemn gathering of people. And sobering very sobering," Sister Rita Clare 
said.

She hopes to have no more, but if they continue she will be at the next.

"We should never judge a person by the worst thing that they've ever done and 
I'm sure that most of these men who are there that is probably the worst thing 
that they have ever done," she said.

There are 5 death row inmates already scheduled for execution. Those will start 
in December at Terre Haute's Federal Prison.

Sister Rita Clare sais the Sisters of Providence and other clergy members will 
be there to pray for the prisoner, their families, and the people they killed.

(source: WTHI TV news)

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

Editorial: The new life in the death penalty



The death penalty is alive and well in the federal government.

On Thursday, U.S. Attorney General William Barr resuscitated the punishment 
that has languished since 2014 when the Obama administration began a review.

That review is complete and executions are being scheduled. The first 5 death 
row inmates who will be executed have been announced. 3 are set to die in 
December.

So is this just another reversal of an Obama policy?

Not quite. It goes back further. The federal government hasn’t executed anyone 
in 16 years, according to the Bureau of Prisons. That’s almost as long as 
Pennsylvania has gone without an execution.

Kidnapper Louis Jones received lethal injection in 2003 at USP Terre Haute, the 
same prison where Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and murderer Juan Raul 
Garza met their ends in 2001.

Then this is a return to prior practice?

Not so much. Before McVeigh, the U.S. government hadn’t executed anyone since 
1963. While states have wielded the needle, the electric chair and the gas 
chamber more liberally, the federal government has executed only 37 people 
since 1927. Texas executed 40 in 2000 alone.

The change comes from a Trump administration that has turned in different 
directions on crime during his first campaign and since taking office.

On the one hand, President Trump has advocated hard stances against criminals 
while also having son-in-law Jared Kushner work successfully on popular, 
bipartisan prison reform. In 2018, the president suggested drug dealers should 
get the death penalty.

“Other countries don’t play games. … But the ultimate penalty has to be the 
death penalty,” he said.

The announced list includes no Pennsylvania inmates, although Philadelphia drug 
kingpin Kaboni Savage is on federal death row, which has to be a more uncertain 
place to live than it was 2 days ago.

But Pittsburgh could be an early focus of a new spotlight on the federal death 
penalty because of Robert Bowers, who is facing 63 federal charges — 22 of them 
death penalty crimes — for the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in October. 
Prosecutors have not decided whether they will seek the death penalty, but 
until Barr’s announcement, it was moot.

Now it’s not. Now a decision should be made, because the death penalty is no 
longer a distant threat. It’s a pending promise.

(source: Editorial, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)

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

Legal Expert Lambastes William Barr’s Death Penalty Move as ‘Thunder Signifying 
Nothing’



A couple of Duke University Law professors were quick to respond to U.S. 
Attorney General William Barr’s Thursday announcement that he was bringing 
federal executions back. One of the scholars went so far as to say that the 
move was “thunder signifying nothing.”

In case you missed it, Barr announced earlier Thursday that the the Federal 
Bureau of Prisons (BOP) would lift the moratorium on federal executions. Barr 
directed Hugh Hurwitz, the Acting Director of the BOP, to schedule the 
executions of five inmates currently on death-row who were convicted of 
“murdering and in some cases torturing and raping, the most vulnerable in our 
society – children and the elderly.”

“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. “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 last federal execution occurred in 2003.

Duke University law professor James E. Coleman Jr. said the DOJ move was “just 
one more effort by the administration to pick off low-hanging fruit that gives 
its political base a sense that something is happening.”

“Like the president’s heated rhetoric, however, it is just thunder signifying 
nothing. The public is rapidly losing faith in the death penalty. This move 
will not change that trend,” Coleman Jr. said.

The group Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty (CCATDP) also noted 
the national trend away from the death penalty.

“Resumption of executions by the federal government goes against the trend we 
have seen in states across the nation, where executions and sentences are at 
historic lows,” Hannah Cox, National Manager of CCATDP, said in a statement to 
Law&Crime. “A growing number of conservative state lawmakers are driving that 
trend because they realize that capital punishment goes against their 
principles of valuing life, fiscal responsibility and limited government, and 
that the death penalty does nothing to make the public safer.”

Coleman Jr.’s colleague, Duke University law professor Brandon L. Garrett, 
agreed that the Barr announcement sounded “dramatic,” but pointed out that 
previous Attorneys General have tried this before and failed.

“However dramatic it may sound, the announcement that federal executions will 
resume certainly does not mean that we should expect to see them any time 
soon,” Garrett said. “First, lawyers will challenge the execution protocol; 
indeed there is already pending federal litigation. Second, jurors are 
increasingly rejecting death sentences in federal cases and in the states. The 
federal death penalty has continued to decline, and although Attorneys General 
have tried to revive it over the years, they have not succeeded.”

(source: lawandcrime.com)