[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----S.C., FLA., OHIO, TENN., OKLA., USA

[Rick Halperin]

June 12




SOUTH CAROLINA:

Mom: Ex-husband shouldn't die for killing 5 kids



A mother whose ex-husband killed their 5 children says she wouldn't choose to 
sentence him to death, but she will respect the jury's decision.

Defense lawyers called Amber Kyzer to testify Tuesday. She said she thinks 
Timothy Jones Jr. should not be executed for killing their 5 children in a 
Lexington home in August 2014.

But on cross-examination by prosecutors, Kyzer said while she strongly opposes 
the death penalty, she thinks jurors should make up their own minds.

Under questioning, Kyzer also described how Jones hit her, spit in her face in 
front of their young daughter and threatened to chop her up and feed her to 
pigs during their marriage.

The same jury convicted Jones of 5 counts of murder last week. They must decide 
if he faces the death penalty or life without parole.

Social worker Deborah Grey testified Tuesday that Timothy Jones Jr.'s father 
was born after his then-12-year-old grandmother was raped by her stepfather.

Grey testified she used interviews and records to determine Jones' mother 
reported she was molested by her father who was also into voodoo and locked his 
daughter in a closet with a dead chicken dripping blood on her as part of a 
ritual.

Prosecutors objected to much of Grey's testimony.

Jones was convicted last week of killing his 5 children in their Lexington home 
in 2014.

(source: Associated Press)








FLORIDA----new execution date

Gov. DeSantis signs death warrant in Jacksonville murder----Execution of Gary 
Ray Bowles is scheduled for Aug. 22 at Florida State Prison



Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed a death warrant for an inmate convicted of 
committing 3 murders in Florida, including a Jacksonville murder that sent him 
to death row.

The execution of Gary Ray Bowles is scheduled for Aug. 22 at Florida State 
Prison, according to documents the governor’s office filed late Tuesday 
afternoon at the state Supreme Court. Bowles, 57, would be the 2nd inmate put 
to death since DeSantis took office in January, with serial killer Bobby Joe 
Long executed on May 23.

Bowles is serving life sentences in the 1994 murders of John Roberts in Volusia 
County and Albert Morris in Nassau County, according to documents filed at the 
Supreme Court and information on the Florida Department of Corrections website. 
The death warrant, however, is for the November 1994 murder of Walter Hinton, 
who was found dead in his Jacksonville mobile home.

A 1999 sentencing document included in the Supreme Court filing said Bowles 
brutally killed Hinton during a robbery. It said Bowles brought a 40-pound 
stepping stone into the mobile home, put the stone on a table and sat down and 
thought for a few moments.

“He then entered Mr. Hinton’s bedroom and dropped the cement stepping stone on 
Mr. Hinton’s face,” the sentencing document said. “Mr. Hinton sustained a skull 
fracture which extended on the right side of his face across his cheek to the 
roots of his teeth. Despite the force of this blow, Mr. Hinton did not die or 
lose complete consciousness. In an effort to save his life, Mr. Hinton 
struggled with the defendant.”

The document said Hinton was then choked and had toiled paper stuffed down his 
throat, with a rag placed over the toilet paper.

A memorandum released Tuesday evening by the governor's office said Bowles also 
confessed to murdering men in Georgia and Maryland and that evidence suggested 
he targeted gay men.

(source: news4jax.com)








OHIO:

Death penalty bill creates loophole----Would eliminate capital punishment if 
defendant suffered from serious mental illnesss



A House-approved bill that could allow defendants to escape the death penalty 
if they suffered from a serious mental illness at the time of the crime “would 
open the floodgates” for appeals from Ohio’s death row.

That’s what state Sen. Sean J. O’Brien said is his biggest concern about House 
Bill 136 and why he’s going to try to stop it in the Ohio Senate — or at the 
very least, convince other senators the bill needs a clause to keep existing 
death row inmates from filing a claim should it become law.

House members approved the bill 76-18 last week that eliminates the death 
penalty for offenders diagnosed by a professional with schizophrenia, 
schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder or delusional disorder.

The legislation also contains language that would allow death row inmates to 
file to be resentenced to life in prison without parole.

There are 137 men and one woman on Ohio’s death row, including eight from 
Trumbull County. The only woman, Donna Roberts, is from Trumbull County.

An effort by Republican state Rep. Robert R. Cupp of Lima, a former Ohio 
Supreme Court judge, to amend the House version to ban it from applying to 
existing death row inmates failed.

“One of the big problems I had with that bill, the retroactive application, 
which is very, very rare in criminal law,” said state Rep. Gil Blair, 
D-Weathersfield, who supported Cupp’s amendment.

“When you look at this, in Trumbull County, the first thing that comes to mind 
is the Hill case,” said Blair, an attorney and former prosecutor. “The problem 
with retroactivity with a 25-, 30-year-old criminal case is witnesses are gone 
and trying to determine the mental state of the defendant at that time.”

The “Hill case” is that of Danny Lee Hill, who committed perhaps the most 
heinous crime ever in Trumbull County. Hill, on death row for more than 30 
years, has failed in several appeals over his mental capacity and claims he 
should not be put to death.

Most recently, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an appeals court ruling that 
removed Hill from death row based on his intellectual disability claims.

“My opposition is defined in 2 words, and those are Danny Hill,” said state 
Rep. Michael J. O’Brien, D-Warren.

“In this particular case, there has been appeal after appeal after appeal for 
mental disorder or mental capacity, and I feel a bill like this would just 
create additional appeals,” O’Brien said.

Hill was sentenced to death in 1986 after being convicted of torturing, raping 
and murdering Raymond Fife, 12, in Warren. Hill was 18 when he killed Fife.

The bill had bipartisan support in the House and support from mental health 
advocacy groups. Those groups include the Ohio Psychological Association, the 
Ohio Psychiatric Physician’s Association and the National Alliance on Mental 
Illness of Ohio.

Prosecutors in Ohio have opposed the legislation. That list includes Trumbull 
County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins, who called the approach “complete nonsense.”

“It provides another loophole for additional or unnecessary hearings or 
defenses that do no promote justice,” Watkins said.

A talking points memo from the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association states 
the bill is so broad it “effectively ends the death penalty” in Ohio and is 
“absolutely not necessary” to address any problem with state law.

In addition, existing law has protections for those with severe mental illness 
who could not appreciate the wrongfulness of their actions and evidence of 
mental illness can be introduced at sentencing to try to lessen the sentence.

Sean J. O’Brien said he expects the bill to be assigned to the judiciary 
committee, of which he is a member.

(source: Tribune Chronicle)








TENNESSEE:

Why are US killers choosing to die by electric chair? Responsible for ghastly 
executions, ‘Old Sparky’ is back in fashion for a macabre reason.



Double murderer Stephen West is said to be favourably eyeing the old electric 
chair at Tennessee’s Riverbed Maximum Security Institution for his forthcoming 
execution.

Because he committed his murders before 1999, he can choose between lethal 
injection, Tennessee’s primary method of executing its death row prisoners, or 
the back-up method, the chair.

Now aged 56, West has already legally objected to the lethal injection method, 
claiming the current drug protocol causes cruel and unusual punishment and a 
lengthy, painful death.

West is set to die on August 15 for the 1986 torture murders of Wanda Romines, 
51, and her 16-year-old daughter Sheila, who was also raped.

If West chooses the electric chair, he will be following his fellow Riverbend 
death row inmates, Edmund Zagorski, who was electrocuted last November, and 
David Earl Miller in December.

But electric chairs have had a bad rap since the 1990s when smoke and flames 
shot from the heads of 2 different inmates who were put to death in Florida’s 
“Old Sparky”.

In a 1999 electrocution, blood spilt from under an inmate’s mask as the death 
sentence took place.

The electric chair at Riverbend prison, a high-risk facility on half a square 
kilometre inside the giant loop of the Cumberland River just outside Nashville, 
is a historic item with parts possibly dating back to the 1800s.

Tennessee’s “Old Sparky” was built by controversial execution device specialist 
Fred Leuchter 30 years ago.

Leuchter used the old back legs from the state’s original electric chair, that 
had been retired after 125 electrocutions.

That chair’s legs had incorporated wood from the gallows at Tennessee State 
Penitentiary, which opened in 1898 and hanged prisoners until 1913.

Last year, before the electrocution of Zagorski, who killed 2 men in a botched 
drug deal, Leuchter expressed concern his chair would work.

Fred Leuchter is a self-proclaimed engineer who built and renovated gallows, 
gas chambers and lethal injection devices in 27 US states between 1979 and 
1990.

He was ostracised after proclaiming the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps 
had no gas chambers, and it emerged he was not a trained engineer but “self 
taught”.

A documentary about his life Mr Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter 
Jr. was made in 2000.

Leuchter revealed he had learnt on the job, accompanying his father as a 
superintendent in Massachusetts state prison from the 1940s when Fred was aged 
4 to 16 years old.

When the chair he rebuilt in 1988 was set to be used for the execution of 
Edmund Zagorski last November, Leuchter expressed concern.

30 years ago, Leuchter had replaced the previous chair’s electrodes, as well as 
the leather straps used to tether condemned men with quick-release nylon belts, 
to allow swift removal of bodies after execution.

He trained prison workers and gave them certificates as “electrocution 
technicians”.

But after his Holocaust denial, Leuchter himself was replaced as the go-to 
execution specialist.

In 2007, as it prepared to execute Gulf War veteran and child killer Daryl 
Holton in Leuchter’s chair, Tennessee hired a trained electrical engineer.

The engineer reduced the voltage from 2,640 to 1,750, raised the amperage (the 
strength of the electric current) from 5 to 7.

The timing was changed from 2, 1-minute jolts separated by a 10-second pause, 
to a 20-second and 15-second jolt with a 15-second pause.

It worked, but last year Leuchter came out saying it only did so because 
Tennessean authorities “were lucky” and he believed the chair was “defective 
and shouldn’t be used”.

The chair was inspected on Oct. 10 of this year and found to meet the criteria 
for an execution, state documents show.

“What I’m worried about now is Tennessee’s got an electric chair that’s going 
to hurt someone or cause problems. And it’s got my name on it,” he said. “I 
don’t think it’s going to be humane.”

But after the long, torturous death by lethal injection last August of Billy 
Ray Irick — who took 20 minutes to die — death row inmates were willing to give 
the old chair a chance.

Controversy over Tennessee’s three-drug lethal injections and similar protocols 
in other states follow the withdrawal of the drug sodium thiopental by its US 
manufacturer.

Hospira ceased production at its North Carolina plant in 2011 due to 
contamination issues.

When it tried to restart production near Milan, the Italian government refused 
a licence for the purpose of execution.

The state of Oklahoma switched to pentobarbital, other states went for 
different drugs with Tennessee settling on the sedative Midazolam, followed by 
vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride to cease lung and heart function.

Ahead of Billy Ray Irick’s execution, no-one had any sympathy for the man who 
had fought against dying for his crimes of raping, sodomising and strangling 
7-year-old Paula Dyer as he babysat her.

But the spectre of Irick thrashing about, coughing, choking, gasping for air 
and turning dark purple offended the sensibilities of state executions and 
ignited fear in death row populations.

Approximately 60 inmates lived on death row in the state of Tennessee.

4 years ago, Tennessee’s Republican Governor Bill Haslam signed a bill 
authorising the state to use the electric chair if the drugs needed for lethal 
injection were unavailable.

After spending 36 years on death row, David Earl Miller tried to argue in court 
against his execution, on the grounds lethal injection was painful.

A violent alcoholic drifter, Miller murdered Lee Standifer, a naive 
23-year-old, in a horrific attack in Knoxville in 1981 while they were on a 
date.

Miller smashed Ms Standifer’s head in with a fire poker he used to hammer 
through her neck, chest, stomach and mouth, then dumped her body in the woods.

Last year the US Supreme Court rejected Miller’s final appeals, and Governor 
Haslam declined to intervene.

Around 7pm on December 6 last year, 61-year-old Miller was taken to Riverbend’s 
death chamber wearing a cream-coloured jumpsuit.

He was strapped into the electric chair and wet sponges were applied to his 
head to carry the electricity.

Asked if he wanted to say anything, Miller mumbled, and he was asked again.

His attorney said Miller had replied, “beats being on death row”.

Dripping with water from the sponges, Miller looked down at his lap.

A shroud was placed over Miller’s head, and 2 jolts of electricity were 
administered, causing his muscles to clench.

Blinds were lowered in the chamber and he was pronounced dead.

In a statement to an appeals judge last year, Edmund Zagorski said he would 
prefer to die via electrocution as the method was the “lesser of 2 evils”.

In May this year, Donald Edward “Donnie” Johnson chose lethal injection for his 
execution.

The family of Wanda and Sheila Romines have told US media they don’t really 
care how Stephen West dies, as long as he does.

Eddie Campbell is the official Tennessee state next-of-kin for Wanda and Sheila 
Romines.

Mr Campbell promised his close friend and distant relative, Jack Romines, to 
see through West’s execution before Jack’s death in 2004.

The murders took place at the home Jack shared with his wife Wanda and 2 
daughters.

After Jack Romines left for work at 5.20am on March 18, 1986, 23-year-old West 
and his co-worker, 17-year-old Ronnie Martin knocked on the Romines door.

Martin was a classmate of Sheila Romines, who had rejected his advances.

Between 6am and 8.30am Wanda was made to watch her daughter’s rape before both 
were stabbed to death in “torture type” wounds.

“I don’t care what [execution method] they use,” Mr Campbell told Tennessee’s 
WBIR-TV.

“If it was me and I was in that situation, I would choose the fastest method.

“How ever they want to do it, it needs to be done.

“This has been a long time coming. Either have the death penalty or don’t have 
it.

“Don’t have the death penalty and then take such a long time to carry out the 
sentence that you keep everyone in limbo and make families continue reliving 
these tragedies with every appeal.”

(source: news.com.au)








OKLAHOMA:

After failed petition to Supreme Court, Julius Jones' lawyers to file clemency 
application with Oklahoma Parole Board----In an interview with MEAWW, Jones' 
lawyer Dale Baich revealed that they hoped to have his sentence commuted to 
life with time served.



Julius Jones was just 19-years-old when he was accused of the July 28, 1999 
murder of insurance executive Paul Scott Howell.

Despite a litany of inconsistencies and loopholes in the prosecution's case, as 
well as controversy surrounding his trial, Julius was convicted of the murder 
and sentenced to death and has spent the last 18 years behind bars as his case 
makes its way through the appellate system.

For the longest time, one of the major points of contention in the case was a 
red bandana that Howell's sister, who witnessed his murder, claimed the killer 
was wearing. After repeated attempts and years of petitioning, the bandana was 
finally sent in for DNA testing at an independent lab, and the results were 
damning.

After the testing was completed last October, Oklahoma Attorney General Mike 
Hunter announced that the bandana tested positive for Julius' DNA and analysis 
showed the probability it belonged to someone other than Jones was one in 110 
million the US African American population.

"The lab results, which indicate that Julius Jones’ DNA is present on the red 
bandana, is an additional validation of the trial and appellate process in 
proving his guilt," he announced.

However, Dale Baich, an Assistant Federal Public Defender in Arizona and 
Supervisor of the Capital Habeas Unit, and who has been fighting on Julius' 
side for several years, told MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) that the results were not as 
conclusive as they were made out to be.

Baich said the results had DNA profiles from three or more males, conceding 
that one was from Julius but arguing that it was only a partial profile. "DNA 
has 23 markers and it was consistent with Julius only on seven," he argued, 
adding, "There is other male DNA on there as well but we're not able to 
determine who's DNA that is."

He also pointed to a detail that has been disregarded in the results. "What's 
significant is that the stain on the bandana is not saliva," he revealed. "Our 
theory was that the shooter yelled when he had the bandana over his face and 
that stain should be saliva, so now, we don't even know if that bandana that 
was found in Julius' attic was the same one worn by the shooter."

There was also a suggestion of racial prejudice amongst the jurors who 
convicted Julius, with one member reportedly stating that the trial was a 
"waste of time" and suggesting that they "just take the n***** out and shoot 
him behind the jail."

Despite the US Supreme Court having unambiguously condemned racial prejudice 
from playing any role in a single juror's decision to convict a defendant and 
sentence him to death, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) dismissed 
his lawyers' petition in September 2018 and ruled there was "no racial bias."

His lawyers had also filed a petition challenging the conviction directly with 
the US Supreme Court based on an Oklahoma race study that concluded an African 
American who killed a white male was three times as more likely to get the 
death penalty.

The court rescheduled consideration of Julius' case 25 times before eventually 
declining to review the challenge. Baich told MEAWW, that for the time being, 
there were no plans to further petition the country's highest court.

"Right now there's nothing in the US supreme court but that doesn't mean that 
something will come up along the way that will allow us to go back to court," 
he said, adding, "We are now in the process of preparing a clemency application 
to the parole board in Oklahoma."

No executions have been performed in Oklahoma since January 2015 after a 
botched attempt with the lethal injection saw a prisoner suffer an agonizing 
death. However, that moratorium was lifted in March 2018 and it was announced 
that Oklahoma would use inert gas inhalation as the primary method for death 
penalty executions. Lethal injection, electrocution, and firing squads would be 
used in that order in the scenario inert gas inhalation was unavailable.

But Baich said there was still a long way to go before Julius was assigned an 
execution date. "Julius had never had an execution date because his case was in 
court," he explained. "Now that it's out of court, the state can ask for a 
date, but they still don't have a protocol in place to carry out executions."

"There may also be litigation over the new protocol when it comes out, so the 
state has to wait another five months after that before it can even ask for an 
execution date," he continued.

"So, there is time. We are going to ask for clemency so his death sentence is 
commuted to a life sentence with time served."

Since he was imprisoned 19 years ago, Julius has been primarily kept in 
solitary confinement for 23 hours a day and is bound with shackles for the hour 
he's allowed outside. He also gets only 3 5-minute showers a week and is 
allowed no physical contact with visitors, not even his family.

Oklahoma has executed the third largest number of convicts in the United States 
— after only Texas and Virginia — and has the highest number of executions per 
capita in the country. There are currently 47 defendants on death row in the 
state, with 16 having exhausted all modes of appeal.

As grim as the situation appears to be, Baich said Julius' spirit was still 
strong. "He's hopeful and very grateful for all the support he's receiving from 
across the country and around the world," he told MEAWW.

(source: meaww.com)

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

OK-CADP fundraiser features Innocence Project’s Vanessa Potkin and pays tribute 
to death penalty foe Jim Rowan



Nearly 200 guests attended the 28th Annual Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the 
Death Penalty (OK-CADP) Awards Dinner & Meeting on Saturday, June 8 at the 
Capitol View Event Center in Oklahoma City. The evening included a cocktail 
reception, a buffet dinner by Ingrid’s Catering, followed by an awards program. 
Flowers were provided by A Date With Iris.

“It was energizing to have so many people in the same room whose life’s work is 
supporting and carrying for the least of these,” said Rev. Don Heath, OK-CADP 
chair.

The event paid tribute to Oklahoma County public defender, death penalty foe, 
and longtime coalition board member Jim Rowan, who unexpectedly passed away on 
May 6.

Keynote speaker for the event was Innocence Project’s Director of 
Postconviction Litigation, Vanessa Potkin. As a nationally recognized expert on 
wrongful convictions, Vanessa has represented and exonerated over 30 innocent 
individuals.

Vanessa, along with Academy Award winning actress Viola Davis, was the 
executive producer on the ABC documentary “The Last Defense” through Lincoln 
Square Productions. The case of Julius Darius Jones, who has served over 19 
years on Oklahoma’s death row, was a story that Potkin felt should be 
spotlighted in the seven part docu-series.

Co-founded in 1992 by attorneys Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, Potkin joined 
New York City’s Innocence Project in 2000 as its 1st staff attorney. Vanessa 
has helped to pioneer the model of postconviction DNA litigation used 
nationwide to exonerate wrongfully convicted persons.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there have been 165 people 
exonerated from death row in the United States since 1976 – 10 in Oklahoma.

Introducing keynote speaker Vanessa Potkin, Executive Director for the Oklahoma 
Innocence Project and former Oklahoma County prosecutor, Vicki Behenna pointed 
out that the 30 individuals exonerated by the work of Potkin and her allies 
spent a total of 500 years of wrongful imprisonment. She stressed that five of 
those individuals were on death row.

Potkin’s speech was an insightful review of fault lines throughout the criminal 
justice system, with particular emphasis on capital cases.

In a succinct review of the “The Last Defense,” taking about a dozen minutes of 
her keynote address, Potkin summarized the wide range of problems surrounding 
Oklahoma death row inmate Julius Jones’ conviction and sentencing. Her survey 
included a recounting of several contradictory versions in the statements of a 
key prosecution witness, discrepancies and lack of transparency in the deal 
offered to that individual, racial issues in the jury pool and other aspects of 
the Jones process, and dubious use of forensic science.

More broadly, Potkin provided a wide-ranging review of evidence about the ways 
death penalty processes are flawed beyond repair. Yet, she pointed out, as a 
practical matter, “Most of the issues addressed by the Oklahoma Death Penalty 
Review Commission have yet to be addressed.”

Crediting the state for recently enacting reforms aimed to offset the 
shortcomings of eyewitness testimony in capital cases, she noted that several 
other weaknesses in the legal process (including false, sometimes coerced, 
confessions) have yet to be corrected.

While advocating for the Commission’s reforms, Potkin said the human factor 
makes executions persistently suspect: “There will never be a day when we can 
eliminate possible error in the death penalty system.”

In the end, Americans are shifting on capital punishment because, as the 
convicted (including exonerees) become humanized, “people don’t feel 
comfortable with the system not working,” she said.

In response to a question from The City Sentinel, asking for suggestions on how 
average citizens can work most effectively to oppose executions, Potkin 
reflected, ”Get active. Stay active. Don’t stop.” She encouraged reporters in 
attendance to “Keep writing about the story.” In these times, “There are so 
many platforms, different mediums to get the message out there.”

Oklahoma has had a moratorium on the death penalty since October 2015 after the 
wrong drug, (potassium acetate instead of potassium chloride, the drug approved 
as a part of the state’s three-drug protocol) was nearly used to execute 
Richard Glossip.

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections later announced that the wrong drug had 
also been used in the January 2015 execution of Charles Warner during which he 
said, “My body is on fire.”

In 2018, the State of Oklahoma announced that nitrogen hypoxia would be its new 
execution protocol. However, death by gas mask has never been used as a mode of 
execution in the United States, and Oklahoma has been unable to obtain a device 
that would “appropriately introduce nitrogen into an individual’s system.” The 
state is now ready to “develop the machine themselves,” according to Attorney 
General Mike Hunter.

Until the new protocol is in place, the moratorium on executions in Oklahoma 
will continue.

Board member Leslie Fitzhugh and longtime Julius Jones friend and Rose State 
College Adjunct professor Jimmy Lawson read the 26 names of those executed 
since the last OK-CADP dinner as well as the names of the ten exonerees from 
Oklahoma’s death row.

During the business meeting portion of the program, OK-CADP elected seven 
at-large board members: Wende Battle, Margaret Cox, Leslie Fitzhugh, Kelley 
Garrett, Nykkia Harris, Dr. Elizabeth Overman and Dr. Gilbert Parks. Heath 
discussed the group’s annual report and Margie Roetker, OK-CADP treasurer 
discussed the financial report saying, “We spent more money than we took in 
last year,” …as she asked for donations to help the organization continue “our 
important work of abolishing the death penalty.”

Board member and attorney Rex Friend made an eloquent plea to those attending 
to support the Bob Lemon Capitol Defense Attorney Scholarship Fund, founded by 
former supervisor of the Federal Public Defenders Capitol Habeas Unit, Randy 
Bauman, Jim Rowan, and former OK-CADP chair Lydia Polley. The program commits 
financial aid for capital defense attorneys to attend national training events 
in order to further their professional development in the areas of trials, 
mitigation, appeals, and victim outreach to help those facing the death 
penalty.

That evening, Cece Jones-Davis, founder of Sing for Change, Inc., and tireless 
advocate for Julius Jones, received the Phil Wahl Abolitionist of the Year 
Award, presented by Don Heath. There to witness the moment was her husband 
Mike, along with her mother, Sharon Graves, her aunt Karen Medley, and her twin 
sister LeLe Jones. The 3 traveled from the east coast for the ceremony.

“This is better than the Oscars,” Cece exclaimed. “I could not be more honored 
to receive this award. It is such a huge acknowledgement and my family is so 
proud. I am very grateful.”

Randy Bauman presented the 2019 OK-CADP Opio Toure Courageous Advocate award to 
Dale Baich and Amanda Bass, attorneys for the Federal Public Defender’s Capitol 
Habeas Unit in the District of Arizona, and legal representatives for Julius 
Jones.

“Opio Toure left us way too soon, but his legacy endures,” Baich said. “He went 
to the state legislature to try to make life better for other people, 
especially the downtrodden and the underdog. He spoke for those that did not 
have a platform to speak for themselves. His efforts on behalf of imprisoned 
people were heroic.

“It is important for each of us to bear witness,” Baich continued. “Whether we 
watch capital trials, befriend a death row prisoner; speak to neighbors or 
legislators, hold prosecutors accountable, or witness executions. We must tell 
our stories, even if we tell it to one person at a time. Because we know that 
most of those who have the strongest feelings in favor of the death penalty are 
those who know the least about it. We must take steps toward change.

“It is our hope that we can have a fair and honest debate in Oklahoma on 
whether the death penalty is sound public policy, or a relic from our past that 
should be abandoned,” Baich added. “We hope that our leaders in the legislature 
will take serious strides to begin the discussion and to safeguard human 
rights.”

The OK-CADP Lifetime Abolitionist Award was given posthumously to honor 
attorney James Thomas Rowan (May 25,1944 – May 6, 2019), who served on the 
OK-CADP board of directors for nearly two decades. Longtime friend and OK-CADP 
board member Becky VanPool presented the award to Jim’s wife, Sherry Rowan.

Rowan tried 50 capital cases during his 35 years of service working as a public 
defender with Oklahoma County and for the Capital Trial Division of the 
Oklahoma Indigent Defense System (OIDS) in Norman. Following a brief private 
practice, Jim returned to the Oklahoma County Public Defender Office, where he 
worked until his unexpected and sudden death.

Among his numerous awards, Rowan was honored with the Oklahoma Criminal Defense 
Lawyers Association Lord Erskine Award in 2002 and the OK-CADP Phil Wahl 
Abolitionist of the Year in 2008.

In accepting the award for her late husband, Sherry said her husband “would be 
elated and humbled” to receive the award from OK-CADP, a group he loved. “Jim 
believed the death penalty is inherently wrong and has no place in system of 
law.” He believed in “The absolute value of every person.”

She encouraged attendees to work on Jim’s behalf and in his memory, to end 
executions in the state of Oklahoma.

Sponsors for the event included First Unitarian Church of OKC, St. Charles 
Borromeo Catholic Church, The Peace House, The City Sentinel, Dale Baich, James 
Rowan Memorial (Sherry Rowan), Jim Rowan Memorial (Oklahoma County Public 
Defenders Office), Oklahoma Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, Friends & 
Friends of Friends (Quakers), Edmond Trinity Christian Church, University of 
Central Oklahoma – Pi Alpha Alpha, the OK Innocence Project and numerous 
individuals.

The invocation was delivered by Rev. Diana Davies of First Unitarian Church of 
Oklahoma City and the benediction was given by Father Tim Luschen of St. 
Charles Borromeo Catholic Church.

For more information, or to make a donation, visit okcadp.org.

(source: The City Sentinel)








USA:

Bishops may revise U.S. catechism to update capital punishment stance



During their June 11-13 meeting in Baltimore, the U.S. bishops are looking at 
what the U.S. church teaches its adult members about the death penalty and they 
will vote about adding a revised passage to the U.S. Catechism for Adults about 
this.

The proposed draft is the work of the bishops’ Committee on Evangelization and 
Catechesis, chaired by Auxiliary Bishop Robert E. Barron of Los Angeles. On the 
first day of the bishops’ spring assembly in Baltimore, Barron said June 11 
that the draft emphasizes the dignity of all people and the misapplication of 
capital punishment. Discussion of the proposed revision is not meant to be a 
debate on the death penalty overall, he added.

The material given to bishops about the additional passage points out that last 
year, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released the pope’s 
revision to the teaching on the death penalty in the universal Catechism of the 
Catholic Church.

In response to that action, the bishops’ Committee on Evangelization and 
Catechesis planned to replace its current text in the U.S. adult catechesis 
with a revised statement, providing this revision is approved by a two-thirds 
majority of the bishops and receives the approval, or “recognitio,” of the 
Vatican.

The goal of the proposed revision is to “keep our treatment of the death 
penalty in the U.S. Catechism for Adults in alignment with the revised 
universal catechism,” Barron said.

He said it quotes extensively from Pope Francis’s addition. Key features of it 
would similarly emphasize “the irreducible dignity of all people, even those 
accused of terrible crimes” as well as the practical non-necessity of capital 
punishment due to developments within civil society and the danger of the 
“gross misapplication of this penalty.”

Barron reiterated that the bishops are not debating the change to the universal 
catechism itself or even the overall issue of capital punishment, but simply 
deciding if the added revision to the adult catechism adequately reflects 
recent catechism revisions.

The proposed draft, he said, provides context and justification for the 
development of this teaching on the death penalty that highlights the dignity 
of the human person. It also emphasizes the continuity of Catholic teaching on 
this topic by citing St. John Paul II’s encyclical, “The Gospel of Life,” and 
previous statements of U.S. bishops.

The bishop noted that the universal catechism change has not yet been published 
and if the U.S. bishops make a similar change to the U.S. adult catechism, they 
would not issue the revised version until the universal catechism change is 
published.

Last year, the pope ordered a revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church 
to reflect that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on 
the inviolability and dignity of the person” and that the church is committed 
to working toward the abolition of capital punishment worldwide.

The catechism’s paragraph on capital punishment already had been updated by St. 
John Paul II in 1997 to strengthen its skepticism about the need to use the 
death penalty in the modern world and, particularly, to affirm the importance 
of protecting all human life.

The bishops’ proposed draft about the death penalty states that “today it is no 
longer just nor reasonable to apply the death penalty,” stressing that it is 
not needed to protect society and its application is “inequitable and flawed.”

The draft also says the death penalty does not promote a culture of life and, 
quoting the universal catechism, adds that it is “inadmissible because it is an 
attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” and the church will work 
“with determination for its abolition worldwide.”

(source: cruxnow.com)

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

Why Death Penalty Trial Is Possible In Illinois After State Ended Capital 
Punishment



A perplexed prospective juror at the trial of a former graduate student charged 
with kidnapping and killing a University of Illinois scholar from China said 
during jury selection last week that she didn't understand how a conviction 
could carry the death penalty in Illinois when the state struck capital 
punishment from its statutes years ago.

The judge explained that Brendt Christensen's case is a rare instance of the 
U.S. Department of Justice seeking the death penalty in one of the more than 20 
states that doesn't have capital punishment, drawing on U.S. laws that allow 
executions by federal authorities for exceptional crimes.

Christensen's is the first federal death-penalty trial in Illinois since it 
abolished capital punishment in 2011, dismaying activists who fought to end 
executions in the state. They fear it's the start of a trend under President 
Donald Trump — a blunt death-penalty proponent — of more such trials, more 
often in states with no death penalty on their books.

"It's pretty outrageous when the federal government is essentially imposing 
capital punishment on a state that abolished it," Rob Warden, a leader in the 
2000s of Illinois' anti-death penalty movement, said about the Christensen 
trial. "It's absolutely morally offensive and indefensible."

Jury selection in Peoria is expected to wrap up Tuesday, with opening 
statements slated for Wednesday.

Despite past success, anti-capital punishment activists in Illinois are no 
longer positioned well to mount protests. Many shifted to other causes. And the 
Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, a main umbrella group in the movement, 
has been disbanded in Illinois.

Former Gov. George Ryan, who took the 1st step toward abolishing the state's 
death penalty by placing a moratorium on executions in Illinois in 2000, a year 
after the state's last execution, said the federal decision to hold a death 
penalty trial in Illinois subverted the will of the majority of the residents.

"I think it's a bad idea, but there's nothing we can do about it," Ryan told 
The Associated Press in a phone interview this week. "The only thing that we 
can do is to get the federal government to abolish the death penalty."

He said he opposes the death penalty on the grounds it's impossible to ensure 
innocent people will never be put to death.

In notifying the court last year of the decision to seek the death penalty, the 
Justice Department cited evidence that Christensen, now 29, tortured Yingying 
Zhang after taking advantage of the 26-year-old woman's small size and lack of 
fluent English-speaking skills to lure her into his car as she headed to sign 
an apartment lease off campus. Her body was never found.

Her disappearance in June 2017 in Urbana and the arrest weeks later of 
Christensen, who studied physics, shocked Chinese students nationwide. U of I, 
based in Champaign, has one of the largest populations of Chinese students in 
the country, with over 5,000 enrolled.

Justice Department protocols call for victims' families to be consulted on 
whether they think the death penalty should be pursued. It's not clear if 
officials had such a conversation with Zhang's family.

"I cannot believe there is such an evil person among us in this world," her 
father, Ronggao Zhang, said of Christensen in a recent interview with ABC News. 
"I think he should definitely get the death penalty."

Chicago defense attorneys say they notice the U.S. attorney's office 
considering the death penalty more for street gang members in racketeering 
cases involving killings. The Justice Department is expected to decide soon 
whether to seek it in the case of gang members from Chicago's Four Corner 
Hustlers who are accused of carrying out killings to maintain an illegal drug 
trade.

Federal death-penalty cases have risen under Trump following a near-moratorium 
during President Barack Obama's last term. The Justice Department approved at 
least a dozen death penalty prosecutions during Trump's first two years, 
according to October data from the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel.

Recent data wasn't available. But Robert Dunham, the executive director of 
Washington's Death Penalty Information Center, says all signs are the trend of 
more federal death-penalty cases will continue even as cases are decreasing in 
states with capital punishment. He added: "It's making the federal government 
an outlier."

Homicide charges nearly always come from state authorities, except in a short 
list of cases including killings during terrorist attacks, bank robberies and 
kidnappings. Illinois could have charged Christensen under state murder and 
kidnapping laws, which carry maximum life sentences.

Christensen's lawyers asked Judge James Shadid to declare the federal decision 
to seek the death penalty for an Illinois resident unconstitutional, including 
because it would force jurors from Illinois into "the painful duty of 
determining whether another human being lives or dies." Shadid refused.

Federal death-penalty trials in states without capital punishment laws are rare 
historically.

Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death at a 2015 
federal trial in Massachusetts, which abolished capital punishment in 1984. 
Marvin Gabrion was sentenced to death in a 2002 federal trial in Michigan for 
killing a woman he was earlier charged with raping even though Michigan became 
one of the first places in the English-speaking world to end death as a 
punishment 173 years ago.

Federal death row currently has 62 inmates on it. Four were tried in states 
without the death penalty, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. 
More than 2,500 inmates are on death row in states, the center said.

Just because a prisoner is on federal death row doesn't necessarily mean the 
person will die, at least not soon. Appeals can delay executions by decades. 
Tsarnaev and Gabrion also remain on death row.

Since 1988, there have only been 3 federal executions — all by lethal injection 
in Terre Haute, Indiana, between 2001 and 2003. States have executed nearly 
1,500 inmates since 1976.

Louis Jones was the last person on federal death row to be executed following 
his conviction for kidnapping resulting in death — the same charge Christensen 
has pleaded not guilty to.

(source: nbcchicago.com)

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

Supreme Court Takes on Race, Death Penalty, Rejects Gitmo Case



The Supreme Court added five new cases to its term for fall 2019, including 
racial discrimination, the environment, the death penalty, and international 
child abduction. On the same day, the Court refused to dive into declaring new 
legal rights for Islamic terrorists held by the U.S. military.

In Comcast Corp. v. National Association of African-American Owned Media and 
Entertainment Studios Networks, the justices will decide a case alleging that 
Comcast is behind a racist conspiracy. When negotiations between the cable 
giant and a group of black-owned media businesses fell apart, that group argued 
that Comcast intended to discriminate on the basis of the group’s owne’s race. 
Comcast is represented by 2 of the most respected Supreme Court litigators in 
the nation, Miguel Estrada and Tom Hungar from Gibson Dunn.

In Atlanta Richfield Co. v. Christian, the Supreme Court will dive into a 
CERCLA (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act) 
case. It will decide whether federal courts lack jurisdiction to decide certain 
property rights claims that conflict with EPA actions under CERCLA, and whether 
CERCLA preempts other state-law claims.

In McKinney v. Arizona, the Court will tackle the death penalty to determine 
what mitigating and aggravating evidence a state court must consider in a 
capital case under the Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution. Justice 
Anthony Kennedy often voted with liberal justices on death penalty cases, so 
this could be a revealing case for the Court’s new membership.

In Intel Corp. Investment Policy Committee v. Sulyma, the justices will 
determine how to apply the 3-year time limit for ERISA (Employee Retirement 
Income Security Act). Obama Solicitor General Donald Verilli represents the 
company.

In Monasky v. Taglieri, the Supreme Court will decide America’s treaty 
obligations under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International 
Child Abduction, which requires children wrongfully removed from their country 
to be returned to it.

The Court also denied several interesting cases. Foremost among these is 
al-Alwi v. Trump, wherin an Islamic terrorist detainee in Guantanamo Bay argued 
that after 17 years of being held by the U.S. military, U.S. courts should now 
claim the power to consider setting him free. Justice Stephen Breyer issued a 
statement saying that he would not necessarily take this particular case, but 
believes the Court should grant a petition to review one of these cases. None 
of the conservative justices joined Breyer’s call to second-guess the national 
security decisions of the president and Congress on this matter.

(source: breitbart.com)