[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OHIO, TENN., ARK., OKLA., UTAH, USA

[Rick Halperin]

June 1




OHIO:

Death penalty ‘mental illness’ bill heads to Ohio House



The Ohio House is considering a bill that would prohibit the executions of 
defendants if they're found to have had a "serious mental illness" at the time 
of the offense.

The House Criminal Justice Committee approved the measure Thursday after 
rejecting an amendment offered by Rep. Robert Cupp, a Lima Republican, that 
would have exempted current death row inmates from the ban.

Gongwer News Service reports that Cupp said he was concerned about the cost and 
the difficulty of finding evidence in old cases.

Rep. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican, said only a few inmates would be 
eligible.

Offenders deemed by professionals to have had "serious mental illness" must 
have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar 
disorder, or delusional disorder. The bill goes now to the full House.

(source: Associated Press)








TENNESSEE:

Sumner Co. DA: Waiting on evidence, psych. eval. before seeking death penalty 
for Cummins



Sumner County District Attorney Ray Whitley is still awaiting more evidence 
processing from the TBI and a mental health examination for Michael Cummins 
before deciding he will seek the death penalty for Cummins who is accused of 
killing 8 people.

"We have to wait until we determine what his mental state is, determine what 
the evidence is, fit that into the law and make a decision," Whitley said after 
Cummins preliminary hearing.

Whitley has taken criticism from the family of victims who think Sumner County 
was too lenient on Cummins after a conviction for aggravated arson and 
aggravated assault.

Steve McGlothlin, brother and uncle to 2 of Cummins' alleged victims, said, "I 
feel Sumner County dropped the ball. This man shouldn't have been out."

Whitley responded, "All the facts represented to the judge, we did not drop the 
ball. We did what we should have done, and it turned out bad. Sometimes that 
happens. You cannot predict human behavior 100%."

Whitley does not want to make a decision on the death penalty until he is sure 
that Cummins is fit to stand trial. Prematurely calling for the death penalty 
only to reverse that decision could create false hope for heartbroken people 
like Virgil Nuckols.

"I just want him to get the penalty where he won't be able to come out of 
jail," Nuckols said. "He's took the most important thing away from me. My wife, 
my daughter and granddaughter, and I'm really hurt."

Testimony in the Wednesday preliminary hearing was too tough for McGlothlin and 
Nuckols to take; both left midway through the 2 hour hearing that detailed how 
the bodies were found and beaten.

Cummins is accused of the deadliest killing spree in Tennessee since Paul 
Dennis Reid in 1997 when he killed 7 fast food workers.

(source: WZTV news)

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

Execution lays bare truth about corrosive hatred, need for mercy



It was the 4th vigil at the Riverbend Maximum Security Prison in Nashville 
since executions have made their dark return to Tennessee. Sadly, it was 
beginning to feel routine.

On the road to the prison, there’s a first checkpoint. “For or against?” the 
officer asks. “Against,” I replied. They placed a yellow sticker on my 
windshield and moved me on to the next checkpoint.

Seeing the sticker, the officer at checkpoint No. 2 motioned me to the 
“Against” parking lot, where I parked and walked to the third checkpoint, where 
the question was asked again by armed officers sitting at tables under a tent. 
“Against,” I responded again as they took my driver’s license and wrote down my 
legal name. “Ernest, go that way,” he said as he pointed down a roped-off path 
that led to a fenced-in field.

15 feet away from me were 4 armed officers on black Clydesdales. They looked 
both silly and ominous, supposedly a symbol of force to keep these people who 
don’t want people to kill people because they killed people in line, lest they 
break out into mayhem and violence.

As I walked into the “against” area, I saw familiar faces, a collection of 
people who had visited men on death row, several priests and a few career 
activists. They talked quietly in small groups, some people standing alone 
looking up at the nearby hills and a descending sun.

We gathered in a circle as a young priest began a liturgy interspersed with 
scripture, readings, prayers, testimonies and song. Absent this time were 
cameras from the local TV stations. Sadly, this had become old news. Unless 
there was a last-minute phone call, Don Johnson, the condemned, would be dead 
within an hour, killed by a drug concoction that, contrary to popular belief, 
has been proven to cause torturous pain.

I was on the edge of the circle, unable to concentrate on the words, and 
looking toward the building where Don was being strapped to a gurney. As I 
looked around, I saw a particular man. He was in the “For” field, connected to 
the far corner of our field. He’d been there for each execution in the same 
outfit: a long leather coat, hanging loosely almost to the ground, and a 
snake-skin cowboy hat. In the past, he’d had a few friends with him.

Their liturgy was different from ours. Sometimes it involved blaring metal 
music from a huge black boom box pointed in our direction. But mostly, there 
were taunts. “I hope he fries!” “I hope he takes a long time to die and suffers 
every second!” “I hope they dump his body in the landfill!” “Why don’t you pray 
for the victims?” which we were doing when they yelled it. All the while they 
were laughing like they were at a keg party. There were times I wanted the guys 
on the Clydesdales to stop them, having forgotten that the horses were there 
only for show.

This night, however, he was in the field alone, slowly pacing back and forth in 
a line. As I watched him, I felt something I hadn’t felt before. Compassion. He 
looked like some lonely old horse on a run-down farm. Without his friends, 
there was no party. No one with whom he could laugh. Taunting by one’s self is 
no fun. His silence surprised me. It also exposed me.

I had grown to hate him, annoyed and angered by his mean and cruel spirit. What 
kind of person would make the drive to the prison to celebrate a death? Why 
such hate? I realized I had absorbed his hatred and turned it back on him. The 
words of Jesus to the Pharisees flooded over me as he was making the playing 
field level – hate is murder.

In my hatred, I was no better than him. I was as guilty as Don and all the men 
on death row. I was as guilty as the governor. And I desperately needed what 
they all needed – mercy.

And then, for a moment, I thought, “I wonder what it would mean to try to love 
this guy. To pray for him.” I’m not at all sure how to do that, but I know that 
hate was not working for me. Like all of the men on death row, he must have 
experienced horrible abuse. Hatred doesn’t come out of nowhere. And dare I 
dream that one day, he could join our circle and not have to be alone, not have 
to hate?

The announcement came: “Don Johnson died at 7:37 p.m.” The song that was sung 
at the beginning of the night resonated throughout the field: “Though we have 
sinned He has mercy and pardon, pardon for you and for me. Come home, come 
home. Ye who are weary come home.”

And so we slowly left for home. Don went first, then the rest of us began the 
same journey. The man alone in the field left as well.

(source: Opinion; Al Andrews, The Tennessean)








ARKANSAS:

Arkansas Supreme Court says it won't reconsider new trial order for man who had 
been convicted of killing 6-year-old son



The Arkansas Supreme Court says it won't reconsider its decision to grant a new 
trial to an inmate who had been convicted of capital murder and sentenced to 
death for the killing of his 6-year-old son.

The justices on Thursday denied Attorney General Leslie Rutledge's petition to 
reconsider their 4-3 decision last month in the 2016 conviction of Mauricio 
Alejandro Torres. Investigators say Torres used a stick to sexually assault his 
son while the family was camping in Missouri. The boy died at an Arkansas 
hospital a day after the assault.

The justices denied the request along the same 4-3 split. They ruled last month 
that Arkansas authorities couldn't use rape to substantiate the capital murder 
conviction because the assault occurred in Missouri.

Rutledge argued that the court erred in its analysis of how the law applied to 
Torres' case.

(source: Associated Press)








OKLAHOMA:

Criminal Justice Conversation Addresses Death Row Inmate’s Plea For Clemency



A conversation on the criminal justice system this week brought together legal 
experts and the family of a man on death row. Julius Jones became the focus of 
the “What Lies Between Us? with Ayanna Najuma” community discussion series.

The event takes place every other Tuesday evening at 6:30 p.m. at the Full 
Circle bookstore, using books to delve into community issues. This week, 
participants say they were trying to save a life.

Attorneys, judges and corrections board members all joined host Najuma in the 
discussion, highlighting how mass incarceration helps the rural areas where 
private prisons are often located.

Oklahoma DOC board member Reginald Hines explained, “That is an economic boost 
for those areas, and where do most of the people that are incarcerated…come 
from? They come from the urban areas.”

Those who have worked in the legal field for years admit the system is flawed.

“The courts in our country were never intended to do justice,” added attorney 
and tribal Supreme Court Justice Peggy Big Eagle. “We do law. That’s what we’re 
supposed to do, is law.”

That led the conversation to the Julius Jones case. He was convicted of 
murdering a man in Edmond in 1999. Jones did not get to testify in his own 
defense, after his original attorney died and he was appointed a group of 
public defenders.

Jones’s last possible appeal now is to Governor Kevin Stitt.

A former teacher of Jones, Dr. John Thompson, said, “Have them read the fact 
sheet and then ask 1 simple question: If Barry Albert hadn’t died, do you think 
he would be on death row today?”

Jones’s sister immediately responded, “No.”

They hope the governor will hear their voices, as they push to eliminate the 
death penalty altogether in the state, saying conservatives should also 
consider the additional cost to house death row inmates.

Big Eagle explained, “You have to have a separate facility. You have to have a 
death house, and you have to keep it staffed and you have to keep it cooled, 
even if no one is there.”

Their goal is to get their appeal for clemency to the governor's desk before 
time runs out.

(source: news9.com)








UTAH:

Petition seeks death penalty for man charged with killing Elizabeth Shelley



An online petition is asking for a Logan man charged with the brutal murder of 
his 5-year-old niece to be sentenced to death.

Elizabeth “Lizzy” Shelley was reported missing on Saturday morning.

5 days later, Alex Whipple, 21, was charged with kidnapping, murder and 
desecration of her body. Hours later, police found Shelley’s body just a block 
away from her home.

Authorities negotiated with Whipple in order to find Shelley. They came to an 
agreement that prosecutors wouldn't seek the death penalty if the 21-year-old 
would lead them to the girl's body.

This decision has outraged thousands of community members who have been 
following the case since Shelley was reported missing.

A petition on Avaaz.org is asking for the Utah Attorney General’s office to put 
the death penalty back on the table.

“It was only day 5 that he finally gave up the location of Lizzy’s body in 
order to have the death penalty taken off of the table. If not for this deal, I 
do not believe we would have found her on day 5. I do not believe that he truly 
wanted the family to have closure and that he only revealed the location to 
save his own life.

I firmly believe that Alexander should receive the death penalty. An eye for an 
eye or in this case, a life for a life.”

Whipple was named the primary suspect in the case after police say they found 
incriminating evidence.

At approximately 3 p.m. on Saturday, Whipple was located in a remote area near 
2400 W. 8000 South. In his possession, police found a baseball bat, a pipe 
commonly used for narcotics, personal items and a Pabst Blue Ribbon 24-ounce 
beer can. He was transported to the Logan City Police Department for 
questioning.

At the station, handcuffs were removed from Whipple. When he was left alone in 
the room, the 21-year-old started licking his hands to try and wipe them clean, 
court documents state. Police placed the handcuffs back on him to preserve 
evidence that may be on Whipple's hands.

During an interview with police, Whipple initially denied going over to 
Jessica's house on Friday night. He changed his story several times, stating 
the last time he went to his sister's house was two days ago and then two weeks 
ago. When he was confronted with the inconsistencies, Whipple admitted to going 
over to Jessica's home on Friday.

Court documents state Whipple said he drank beer at Jessica's house and later 
left the residence to go on a walk because he could tell his sister and her 
boyfriend were "horny." He told police he didn't want to hear anything, so he 
went on a walk to enjoy the scenery just before sunrise. He claimed he had not 
seen Elizabeth while he was at her house.

When police asked why he left his cellphone and skateboard and why he left the 
door open, Whipple claimed he didn't know and that he didn't need his personal 
items.

Court documents state Whipple never denied, nor admitted to being involved in 
Elizabeth's disappearance. He told investigators about how cruel the world is, 
his struggles as a child and how his family treated him "horribly."

The 21-year-old also mentioned to police that alcohol makes him "black out" and 
sometimes he does "criminal things" when he blacks out. He didn't elaborate on 
what those criminal things were.

During the interview, investigators noticed dark colored stains on Whipple's 
pants that were consistent with dried blood. They also noticed several cuts on 
his dirty fingers.

A search warrant was served on Whipple and DNA tests were obtained from his 
clothing.

Whipple was later charged with violating his probation and was held at the 
Cache County Jail without bail.

While Whipple was being questioned, investigators found several pieces of 
evidence near the Shelley home. A knife was found in the northwest corner of 
the Bear River Charter School parking lot. This was consistent with the knife 
that was missing from Jessica's LivingKit set she had at home. In the same 
area, a PVC pipe was located. It had a red substance on it and a partial palm 
print.

Approximately 50 yards away, investigators found a teal skirt with white lace 
that appeared to be hastily buried under some dirt and bark, court document 
state.

A neighbor in the area of 470 W. Center St. in Logan told police he found an 
empty Pabst Blue Ribbon 24-ounce beer in his garbage on Saturday morning. He 
said he doesn't drink beer and that the can didn't' belong to him. This was the 
same kind of beer that Whipple was drinking at the Shelley home the night 
before. The can was seized as evidence.

Swabs were taken from the evidence to test for Elizabeth's DNA. Blood found on 
the LivingKit knife, Whipple's watch and a hooded sweatshirt all had positive 
matches to Elizabeth's DNA profile. The beer can tested positive for Whipple's 
DNA and the palm print on the PVC pipe was determined to be Whipple's.

(source: KUTV news)








USA:

Roanoke federal murder case on hold until death penalty decision



Federal prosecutors still haven’t revealed whether they’ll seek the death 
penalty against 2 of 4 Roanoke men who have been held on gang-related charges 
for nearly 8 months.

The case is on hold until the decision, which prosecutors said is up to 
Attorney General William Barr.

Trayvone Raycron Kasey, 20, and Demonte Rashod Mack, 30, are charged with 
murder in aid of racketeering and firearms offenses. They’re charged, along 
with Chauncey Dion Levesy, 25, and Sean Denzel Guerrant, 28, with engaging in a 
racketeering conspiracy involving acts of violence, obstruction of justice and 
drug trafficking. A footnote in one filing says Guerrant could also face death 
penalty-eligible charges as investigators continue to piece together what 
happened.

The 4 men were arrested and pleaded not guilty in October.

Court papers described the Lansdowne Park public housing complex on Salem 
Turnpike Northwest as the gang's center of operations, although a 
representative of the complex has said he did not think any of the defendants 
lived there. The gang goes by the name Rollin' 30s Crips, court papers said.

A grand jury indictment accused Kasey of killing Markel Trevon Girty, 23, of 
Roanoke in February 2018. It also accused Kasey and Mack of killing Nickalas 
Lee, 17, of Roanoke in June 2017. Both men were killed in Roanoke, police said, 
but not at the housing complex.

The evidence includes 500 gigabytes of digital information, prosecutors told 
the judge in a successful motion to relax time constraints because the case is 
especially complex. The defendants didn’t disagree with the delay. The material 
includes thousands of pages of Facebook content, recordings of jail phone calls 
and witness interviews, police body camera footage and gang documents, court 
papers said.

(source: The ROanoke Times)

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

How to Convince Americans to Abolish the Death Penalty----The moral argument 
doesn't work. Opponents of capital punishment in New Hampshire succeeded with a 
different approach.



When New Hampshire abolished the death penalty on Thursday, the reaction to the 
news—at least nationally—was rather muted. Here was a New England state, after 
all, whose machinery of death had rusted long ago. “This debate has been 
largely symbolic, because New Hampshire has neither an active death penalty 
system nor any executions on the horizon,” The Washington Post reported. “The 
state has only one person on death row … and last carried out an execution in 
1939.”

It is true that New Hampshire never had much use for capital punishment. Since 
its first use in 1734, New Hampshire has executed only 24 people. But there is 
greater significance here than it seems. For starters, New Hampshire joins a 
growing trend. Now, since 2007, seven states have abolished capital punishment 
by legislative action, and three by judicial decree. (Nebraska abolished it 
legislatively, but voters subsequently reinstated it in a referendum.) Four 
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.

And the politics of New Hampshire are not those of, say, Massachusetts. The 
state—whose official motto, emblazoned on license plates, is “Live Free or 
Die”—was a Republican stronghold until the early 1990s, and retains a 
libertarian streak. While the state Senate and House are both controlled by 
Democrats, they needed votes from across the aisle to reach the two-thirds 
threshold to override Republican Governor Chris Sununu.

There are thus important lessons from New Hampshire about how abolitionists can 
be successful across the country—namely, by shifting the grounds of the debate 
so as not to be painted as soft on crime or out of touch with mainstream 
American values.

Their success has its roots in a decades-long struggle. In 2000, both houses of 
the New Hampshire legislature voted to end the death penalty, only to have 
Democratic Governor Jeanne Shaheen veto the bill; the legislature failed to 
override her. Shaheen explained her decision by saying, “There are some murders 
that are so brutal and heinous that the death penalty is the only appropriate 
penalty.”

This appeal to an eye for an eye kind of justice has long provided the fuel to 
propel support for the death penalty. Four years after Shaheen’s veto, 
Republican Governor Craig Benson made a similar argument in explaining his veto 
of legislation that would have raised the minimum age to execute someone from 
17 to 18. “When somebody, regardless of their age, is bold enough to take the 
life of a police officer, there should be no exceptions—we should make sure 
that they should pay the ultimate price,” he said. Earlier this month, Sununu 
defended capital punishment as “common sense,” adding that the repeal bill was 
an “injustice … to law enforcement and other victims of violent crime across 
the state.” (Michael Addison, the only man in death row in the state, was 
sentenced to death for killing a Manchester police officer.)

Similar arguments frequently are heard at the national level. In explaining the 
Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the 1994 case Callins v. Collins, Justice 
Antonin Scalia famously argued that abolitionists—including Justice Harry 
Blackmun, whose dissent from the Court’s decision is equally famous—underplay 
the gravity and heinousness of the crimes for which the death penalty is an 
appropriate punishment.

“Justice Blackmun begins his statement by describing with poignancy the death 
of a convicted murderer by lethal injection,” Scalia wrote. “He chooses, as the 
case in which to make that statement, one of the less brutal of the murders 
that regularly come before us—the murder of a man ripped by a bullet suddenly 
and unexpectedly, with no opportunity to prepare himself and his affairs, and 
left to bleed to death on the floor of a tavern. The death by injection which 
Justice Blackmun describes looks pretty desirable next to that.”

Other justices have shown little patience for the extended period of appeal 
that follows a capital sentence. Earlier this year, Neil Gorsuch, Scalia’s 
successor on the Court, noted that “both the State and the victims of crime 
have an important interest in the timely enforcement of a (death) sentence.”

Traditionally, opponents of the death penalty have responded to such arguments 
by claiming that even the most heinous criminals are entitled to be treated 
with dignity or that there is nothing that anyone can do to forfeit their 
“right to have rights.” Each of these arguments rejects the simple and 
appealing rationale for capital punishment: retribution. But in doing so, it 
puts opponents of the death penalty on the side of society’s most despised and 
notorious criminals, of cop killers and of child murderers. It is not 
surprising, then, that such arguments, while popular in philosophical and 
political commentary, have never carried the day in the debate about capital 
punishment in the United States.

New Hampshire abolitionists avoided this pitfall, changing the argument in ways 
that can and do appeal to a broader range of citizens. They allied themselves 
with the plight of the families of murder victims. “I am grateful to the many 
survivors of murder victims who bravely shared their stories with the 
Legislature this session, many of whom told us that the death penalty, with its 
requisite long legal process, only prolongs the pain and trauma of their loss,” 
said Democratic Senator Martha Hennessey in explaining her vote to override the 
veto.

They also avoided the soft-on-crime label by noting that the death penalty does 
not make citizens safer and that it is “archaic, costly, discriminatory and 
violent.” And they enlisted conservative allies. As one New Hampshire 
abolitionist said, “more conservatives than ever know the death penalty is a 
failed government program that does not value life, threatens innocent people, 
and wastes money.”

The campaign to abolish capital punishment succeeded in New Hampshire, just as 
it has succeeded elsewhere, because abolitionists resisted the temptation to 
engage with the red meat arguments of many death penalty supporters. They 
appealed to American values of fairness, equal treatment, and pragmatism. In so 
doing, they formed a coalition of legislators, political leaders, and citizens 
who shared the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun’s view that it is time 
to “stop tinkering with the machinery of death.”

(source: Commentary; Austin Sarat is a professor of jurisprudence and political 
science at Amherst College and author of The Death Penalty on the Ballot: 
American Democracy and the Fate of Capital Punishment----The New Republic)