[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ALA., TENN., KY., COLO., ARIZ., ORE., USA

[Rick Halperin]

March 6



ALABAMA:

Alabama Prisoner Seeks U.S. Supreme Court Review of Attorney Conflict of 
Interest Case



Whose interests does a lawyer represent, the capital defendant whose life is at 
stake or the abusive father paying for his defense? Alabama death-row prisoner 
Nicholas Acklin is seeking U.S. Supreme Court review of that issue because he 
alleges that the lawyer who represented him at trial had a financial conflict 
of interest that affected the way he represented Acklin in the penalty phase of 
his capital trial. Nick Acklin’s father, Theodis Acklin, paid for the legal 
services of Behrouz Rahmati to represent his son in the 1998 death-penalty 
trial. 2 days before trial, as Rahmati belatedly investigated his client’s 
background, he learned from Nick’s mother, Velma, that Theodis had physically 
abused her, Nick, and Nick’s brothers, holding them at gunpoint and threatening 
to kill them. Rahmati asked Theodis to testify about the abuse, believing that 
the mitigating factor could help persuade the jury to spare Nick’s life. 
Theodis then gave Rahmati an ultimatum: “You tell Nick if he wants to go down 
this road, I’m done with him” and “done helping with this case.” Rahmati told 
the jury nothing about the child abuse, instead presenting testimony from 
Theodis that Nick had been raised in a “Christian home” with “good values.” The 
jury then voted 10-2 to recommend a death sentence, and the trial court imposed 
the death penalty, reasoning that, unlike “most killers” who are the products 
of abusive childhoods, Nick had chosen to reject the good values with which he 
had been raised.

Acklin’s petition for Supreme Court review is supported by friend-of-the-court 
briefs filed by four legal ethics scholars and by former Alabama appeals court 
judges and presidents of the Alabama State Bar. The brief of the legal ethics 
professors urges the Court to overturn Acklin’s death sentence, saying that 
Rahmati “labored under an acute and obvious conflict of interest” that violated 
ethics norms and rules of professional responsibility applicable in every 
jurisdiction in the United States. Once Theodis threatened to withdraw funding, 
the scholars wrote, Rahmati had a clear conflict: “He could serve his client’s 
interest by making the best argument possible against the imposition of the 
death penalty, or he could protect his own interests by avoiding antagonizing 
the paymaster.” At that point, they wrote, “ethics rules unanimously required 
Rahmati to secure an alternative fee arrangement or obtain Acklin’s informed 
consent to the conflict, or else seek to end the representation. None of these 
things occurred.” Instead, without providing Acklin the advice of conflict-free 
counsel, Rahmati had Nick sign a “waiver” stating that he did not want to raise 
the abuse issue during his trial.

The former judges and bar presidents—including Alabama Supreme Court Chief 
Justice Ernest Hornsby, Justice Ralph Cook, and Alabama Court of Criminal 
Appeals Presiding Judge William Bowen—wrote that “The obligation of loyalty is 
at its most acute in a death penalty case, where its disregard may cost one’s 
client his life.” Rahmati’s conduct, they wrote, was an “utter abandonment of 
his client’s interests” that was exacerbated by counsel’s incompetence. “Any 
reasonable mitigation investigation would have revealed childhood abuse by 
Acklin’s father months before trial,” they wrote, when “counsel could have 
avoided the conflict by not becoming financially beholden to Acklin’s abuser.” 
Counsel also violated the duty of candor to the court, the judges and bar 
presidents wrote, “by knowingly presenting false and misleading testimony 
[that] the trial court expressly relied upon … in sentencing Acklin to death, 
while counsel stood silent.”

Nick Acklin’s lawyers have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his death 
sentence and clarify the rules regarding attorney conflicts of interest. In 
2013, an Alabama trial judge held an evidentiary hearing, ultimately rejecting 
Acklin’s claim. The legal ethics scholars’ brief called that decision a 
“departure from precedent and prevailing ethics norms.” The former judges urged 
the Supreme Court to intercede, saying Acklin’s execution under these 
circumstances would be unjust to him and would also damage “our system of 
justice itself.”

(source: Death Penalty Information Center)








TENNESSEE:

Hangings, electric chair used as capital punishment in 1800s, early 1900s



There is no history book that describes the hangings of men at the Knox County 
Jail. I have never seen a report that tells how many died at the end of a rope. 
Yet the newspaper articles I have read indicate there were quite a few white 
and black men who paid the ultimate price for rape or murder. It seems that a 
number of them were demented, but that did not count with a court of law in 
those days.

I initially got interested in the subject when I read the fascinating account 
of the hanging of John Webb on Aug. 13, 1875. His execution for murder drew 
12,000 spectators from across the region who came on trains, in wagons, on 
horseback and via other means to witness the spectacle. The usual county jail 
hanging site and the larger field at the south end of the Gay Street Bridge 
could not accommodate the massive crowd, so it was held in a large isolated 
field. 2 other men were hanged the same day, and the Press and Herald declared: 
"DOOMSDAY. 3 Executions in One Day. Webb, Berry, and Honeycut. The Majesty Of 
The Law."

As I continue to read old newspapers in the McClung Collection at the East 
Tennessee History Center that date to 1791, I find more and more information on 
how we conducted capital punishment. I don't know the name of the 1st man to be 
hanged, but the last one was John McPherson, who was hanged by Sheriff C.A. 
Reeder on March 24, 1908. He had been convicted of murdering deputy sheriff 
William Walker. He had also killed Grant Smith that same day.

The Jan. 12, 1909, Journal and Tribune reported that Reeder supported the 
proposal to have people sentenced to death go to the electric chair in 
Nashville. "No one knows the awful strain that a sheriff is under prior to the 
performing of his duty under the law when about to execute the death sentence. 
I can't explain it. A man can't explain it unless he has had to undergo it. It 
virtually breaks me down," he said.

The Tribune of July 13, 1916, announced the first person to go to the electric 
chair: "Julius Morgan, a negro of Dyer County, will be electrocuted at the 
State Penitentiary at sunrise tomorrow. Morgan will be the first person to be 
executed in Tennessee since the installation of the electric chair. The 
condemned negro will pay with his life for criminally assaulting a young white 
girl of Dyer County last March.

"Morgan is 22 years old. Criminal assault is the only crime for which the death 
penalty can be imposed in Tennessee since the recent passage of the Bowers 
Anti-Capital Punishment law."

Almost 6 years later the Tribune of Feb. 18, 1922, reported on the 1st white 
man to die in the electric chair: "John Green was executed at the State Prison 
at sunrise today for the murder of Robert Houston at the latter's home near 
Johnson City July 17 last, being the 1st white man ever electrocuted in 
Tennessee.

"Green had heretofore served twelve years for killing policeman Walter McPeak 
of Johnson City. While at liberty he killed Houston, it is alleged out of 
revenge. His electrocution is said to have been without incident."

(source: Opinion; Robert J. Booker is a freelance writer and former executive 
director of the Beck Cultural Exchange Center----Knoxville News Sentinel)

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

Sgt. Baker Act: ‘Justice delayed is justice denied,’ says House leader as bill 
advances



A bill named after Sgt. Daniel Baker that removes a step in the death penalty 
appeal process, was discussed by several lawmakers — including 3 from Dickson 
County and a 4th who represents Dickson — before being approved.

The “Sgt. Daniel Baker Act” bill now moves on in both the state House and 
Senate.

Baker was shot and killed in May 30 last year. Steven Wiggins and Erika 
Castro-Miles have been charged with first-degree murder and the district 
attorney’s office is seeking the death penalty for both. The trial is set for 
August. Littleton, Curcio on ‘Baker Act’

State Rep. Mary Littleton, R-Dickson, who filed the House bill, was questioned 
by Democratic representatives on why the legislation is needed at the Judiciary 
Committee meeting Tuesday last week.

Littleton said the bill is about handling the appeal process in fair and "more 
efficient manner” and added that her constituents often ask, “What can we do to 
speed this process up?”

State Rep. Michael Curcio, R-Dickson, said he was "honored to have his name on 
it and honored to have some of the family members here today."

Curcio said currently the state Court of Criminal Appeals looks over the cases 
in "a very limited scope” and the case still ultimately goes to the state 
Supreme Court.

Curcio added that the appeals court step is unnecessary and when a case is in 
the Supreme Court, "everything starts over anyway.”

Rep. Bo Mitchell, a Democrat who is from Dickson County before moving to 
Bellevue, asked if there were other ways to speed up the process.

"Are we expediting it by taking a court step away?,” Mitchell said.

He stated that Baker’s case is “clear cut. “There is no doubt…this person 
(defendant) deserves whatever we can come up with."

"I am worried about the next one,” Mitchell added.

The state House Majority Leader William Lamberth, a Republican who serves on 
the Judiciary Committee, said the current process will only continue to “delay 
justice. Period.”

“This is the best case scenario for the defendant, for the victim’s family, and 
for the state’s interest is to get that back to the trial court as soon as 
possible,” Lamberth said. “This would save 6 months to 3 years out of that 
process. It keeps justice from being delayed. And justice delayed is justice 
denied.”

The bill moved on from House Judiciary Committee to the House Finance, Ways, 
and Means Committee meeting set for Wednesday.

Judge: Appeals Court not reason cases ‘take 30 years’

Judge John Everett Williams, the presiding judge of the state’s Court of 
Criminal Appeals, rebutted the idea that his court might be drawing out the 
death penalty cases.

"We are not the reason these cases are taking 30 years,” said Williams to the 
Senate Judiciary Committee on Feb. 27.

Williams said death penalty cases in his court are normally handled in a 3-5 
month period, are “given priority,” and there’s not “dilly-dallying around with 
these type of cases."

"If you can handle the worst of the worst cases in the State of Tennessee in 5 
to 6 months, you are working ladies and gentlemen,” Williams said.

Sen. Kerry Roberts, who represents Dickson County, said a few years ago he was 
“pretty conflicted” about the bill, which was also presented at that time by 
Sen. John Stevens, R-Huntington. Roberts passed on the bill at that time.

However, he approved the bill last week.

"I am doing this today because this is being presented by 2 of my House members 
in memory of one of my late constituents,” Roberts said.

The Judiciary Committee approved the bill by 6-3 vote. The bill is scheduled to 
go before the entire Senate on Thursday for possible approval.

Bill named after Baker

Littleton said the bill was named after Baker to “memorialize Sgt. Baker and to 
continue his memory for those in Dickson County as well as around the state.”

The representative said the bill “is not influenced by his death or the pending 
trial.”

“The purpose is to condense the amount of time between the date of death 
sentence and court of last resort while still maintaining the U.S. Supreme 
Court’s due process mandates,” Littleton said.

(source: The Tennessean)








KENTUCKY:

Accused killer could face death penalty in double homicide



Commonwealth’s Attorney Shane Young will seek the death penalty should the 
double murder case against Shad­rach Peeler of Elizabethtown go to trial.

Peeler, who is accused of killing two people and injuring 2 others Feb. 21 in 
separate shootings, pleaded not guilty to six felony charges and a misdemeanor 
Tuesday morning in Hardin Circuit Court.

Peeler appeared in front of Hardin Circuit Judge Kelly Mark Easton with 
shackles on his hands and around his ankles. He was represented by public 
defender Susie Hurst.

All Young would say on the decision was “the matter speaks for itself” after 
telling the court he will file aggravators in the case to lead to seeking the 
death penalty should Peeler be convicted.

Peeler was indicted last Thursday by a Hardin County grand jury.

Peeler, 35, who is being held in lieu of a $2 million cash bond in the Hardin 
County Detention Center, reportedly shot Cherie Turner, 34, to death on West 
Warfield Street and then went to a convenience store on North Miles Street, 
killing store co-owner Subash “Su” Ghale, 40. He also is charged with injuring 
2 other people at the store – 1 inside and 1 outside.

Authorities have not publicly identified a motive in the shootings.

Elizabethtown police have said Turner and Peeler lived together on West 
Warfield Street. He was arrested shortly after police were called to the 
convenience store around 11:30 p.m.

Peeler also is accused of shooting and injuring Prayash Baniya, 31, of 
Elizabethtown, a store employee and close friend of Ghale, and Nadia Browne, 
34, of Elizabethtown.

Baniya remains hospitalized at University Hospital in Louisville in critical 
but stable condition. He was shot multiple times, including in the neck. Browne 
was shot in the leg and has been released from the hospital.

Peeler will next appear in court at 1:15 p.m. April 30 for a pre-trial 
conference.

He was 1 of 3 men scheduled to appear Tuesday in Hardin Circuit Court to face 
murder charges.

(source: The News-Enterprise)








COLORADO:

Colorado law mandates which drugs be used for lethal injection. So what happens 
when they are no longer made?----As Colorado debates the end of capital 
punishment, a specific drug required by Colorado law -- sodium thiopental -- is 
no longer available on the open market for executions



Since the state’s last execution more than 20 years ago, Colorado juries have 
mulled capital punishment, and advocates on both sides have debated the merits 
of its deterrent effect, its morality, its cost and any number of factors 
related to its application.

But amid nationwide controversy surrounding availability of drugs used for 
lethal injection, one other question remains: If necessary, would Colorado have 
the ability to perform a legal execution?

The short-term answer is no. Yet both sides of the capital punishment debate 
say that, despite efforts by manufacturers and others to restrict access to 
drugs used in lethal injection, Colorado could likely find a source if the 
execution process were to be set in motion.

But both sides also agree that would almost certainly trigger a fresh round of 
legal challenges.

Colorado law not only mandates lethal injection, but also specifies use of a 
specific drug — sodium thiopental — that is no longer available on the open 
market for executions. The Colorado Department of Corrections said it would 
look to other states for that or an available alternative drug (it lists 
pentobarbital as a backup).

“Honestly, we don’t have a storage of lethal injection medications, and without 
the necessary drugs, we’d be faced with a significant issue,” DOC spokeswoman 
Adrienne Jacobson said. “If an execution had to be done today, this moment, no, 
we couldn’t do that. But we would take any steps we needed to take.”

She added that the statute presents other possibilities, including the use of a 
single-drug option rather than the state’s current three-drug protocol. The 
statute specifies that the DOC must use the anesthetic sodium thiopental “or 
other equally or more effective substance sufficient to cause death.” The other 
drugs administered according to Colorado’s protocol are pancuronium bromide (to 
cause paralysis and stop breathing) and potassium chloride (to stop the heart).

Just last week, Texas executed a prisoner with a single dose of pentobarbital. 
Last summer, Nebraska became the first state to execute a prisoner with 
fentanyl, a drug at the center of the nation’s opioid crisis.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office declined to respond to questions 
about legal issues surrounding the state’s lethal injection protocol, noting 
that it would have to advise or represent the DOC if such drugs became an 
issue. Weiser, while an opponent of the death penalty, has said he would defend 
the state’s capital punishment law.

Colorado’s only lethal injection execution occurred in 1997, when Gary Lee 
Davis was put to death for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Virginia “Ginny” 
May.

The state’s 3 death penalty cases currently underway, as well as the three men 
already on death row, would still be subject to capital punishment under the 
bill that legislators introduced on Monday, which would affect cases charged 
after July 1. But Gov. Jared Polis recently told Colorado Public Radio that if 
the legislature voted to do away with the death penalty, he would commute the 
sentences of death-row inmates.

George Brauchler, district attorney for the 18th Judicial District, where all 3 
men facing death were convicted, noted that 6 years ago, the DOC made inquiries 
to see if the required lethal injection drugs might be available.

“There were at least two responses that yes, we could get you these drugs,” 
Brauchler said, adding that he suspects that’s the route the DOC would take in 
the future. “If (the drugs) don’t exist, they can certainly be compounded. It’s 
not like it’s moon-based titanium, where we couldn’t create more of it. I don’t 
think that’s a big issue.”

Brauchler said he hasn’t researched whether there is a substitute drug to 
sodium thiopental that Colorado could use under the law that a court would find 
sufficient.

“My guess is, if we try to come up with an alternative, that would stick us in 
litigation for a while, while the courts decide whether this other substance 
works,” he said.

Defense attorney David Lane, an opponent of the death penalty, agrees with 
Brauchler that the DOC probably wouldn’t have too much difficulty finding the 
necessary drugs, whether from some “mom-and-pop” compounding pharmacy or even 
directly from another state that performs lethal injections.

But he also agrees with the prosecutor that more legal challenges would follow.

“There’s not been any full-blown lethal injection litigation yet in Colorado 
because it hasn’t gotten to that point yet, but once we get there, there will 
be lethal injection litigation in Colorado,” Lane said. “But lethal injection 
challenges have generally failed across the country. There have been some 
exceptions, but the best way for Colorado to avoid all that is to abolish the 
death penalty, which should happen within the next month.”

Another issue factors into the mix: secrecy.

Statutes vary from state to state regarding the ability of government to 
conceal from the public the source of their lethal injection drugs. In 
Colorado, the ACLU filed suit in 2013 to force the DOC to provide details of 
its protocol — including where it obtained its drugs. But a judge ruled that 
the DOC did not need to do so.

The DOC released only a heavily-redacted document outlining the protocol.

“As I recall, I think that the useful piece of information that we got was just 
the difficulty DOC was having to go through to find the drug,” ACLU public 
policy director Denise Maes said. “Research we did separate and apart from the 
open-records request was that the substance itself was hard to find, hard to 
get.”

If Colorado tried to introduce a different drug, Maes said, the ACLU would 
likely take another stab at forcing the DOC to reveal details about its 
procedures.

“We certainly would take steps to bring attention to how the state is planning 
to execute one of its own people, so we’d probably do the same open records 
request, to find out where the state has gotten its drug from, what hoops it 
had to go through to get it, what it paid for it,” she said. “We’d certainly 
bring attention to that issue. I have no idea whether we’d have a legal claim 
to stop (an execution).”

Nonetheless, she said that even while the question of Colorado’s ability to 
perform a legal execution may not have immediate repercussions, it remains a 
critical issue to resolve.

“I think it’s an important reason to talk about why we should even have a death 
penalty if effectively you’ll never be able to carry one out,” she said. “…It’s 
much more cerebral to talk about costs, or how it doesn’t work as a deterrent, 
but how we actually execute people is super important.”

Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, 
which takes no official position on the death penalty but has been sharply 
critical of the means by which it is carried out, notes that pharmaceutical 
companies’ resisting use of their drugs for executions have adopted 
distribution policies to prevent that, forcing states with lethal injection to 
turn to other sources.

“That has meant that states have had to obtain drugs either from compounding 
pharmacies or on the ‘gray market’ or subterfuge,” he said. “States that want 
to carry out the death penalty openly and honestly haven’t been carrying out 
executions.”

In 2011, sodium thiopental, used in medical practice as an anesthetic, was 
taken off the market by its sole manufacturer, Hospira, over concerns that it 
was being obtained and used against the company’s policy for executions in the 
United States. Hospira had moved production to Italy, Dunham explained, but 
then took it out of production because the drug’s use in executions could have 
subjected the company to liability issues in Europe, which does not use the 
death penalty.

“It’s not an economically viable drug, so you’re not going have companies 
coming in and generically producing it,” he said. “Nobody is going to go 
through the FDA approval process for something that’s going to have the limited 
purpose of executing prisoners.”

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine recently halted all executions in his state after a 
federal judge in January criticized the use of midazolam, a sedative 
administered in Ohio’s 3-drug protocol, as insufficient to render the prisoner 
fully unconscious. That led to concerns that administration of the subsequent 
drugs could cause severe pain. Testimony about botched executions in other 
states added to that concern.

Several states started using midazolam after sodium thiopental became difficult 
to obtain. Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on an Oklahoma case in 
2015 that use of midazolam is not unconstitutional, the Ohio judge said the 
ruling left open the possibility for proof that the drug might present 
“objectively intolerable risk of harm.”

(source: The Colorado Sun)

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

Colorado lawmakers introduce bill to abolish death penalty



Colorado State lawmakers will consider a bill this week to abolish the death 
penalty.

Those who argue for the repeal say it's expensive, biased, and cruel. Opponents 
say it should be left up to voters.

A sponsor of the bill, Senator Angela Williams who represents District 33 in 
Denver says, "I believe that life in prison with no chance of ever getting out 
is punishment enough."

Recently convicted killers Chris Watts and James Holmes were convicted of what 
many would call heinous crimes, but they weren't sentenced to death. Only 1 
person has been executed under the death penalty in Colorado since it was 
reinstated in 1977. Gary Lee Davis was killed using lethal injection in 1997.

Co-sponsor and Democratic state Senator Julie Gonzales argues, "The death 
penalty is irrevocable, it is cruel and it is unusual practice and for those 
reasons, we should abolish it."

Gov. Jared Polis has expressed his support for the bill. He told Colorado 
Public Radio that if the bill passes, he'd be inclined to take the three men 
awaiting execution off death row.

"If the state Republicans and Democrats were to say, and I were to sign a bill 
that said we no longer have the death penalty in Colorado, whether it's 
formally in the bill or not, I would certainly take that as a strong indication 
that those who are currently on death row should have their sentences commuted 
to life in prison," Polis said.

The news isn't sitting well with Democratic state Senator Rhonda Fields. Two of 
the men sitting on death row are responsible for the death of her son and his 
fiancee. She says this legislation is moving forward too fast.

"It was just introduced yesterday, [Tuesday] there was a press conference and 
[Wednesday] the bill will be heard, and it gives very little opportunity for 
the victims to show up," Fields says.

She thinks the decision should be left up to voters, rather than lawmakers. The 
hearing has its first hearing Wednesday afternoon before the Senate Judiciary 
Committee.

(source: KRDO news)








ARIZONA:

“Lawmakers move to tighten Arizona’s death penalty law”



It makes no difference if the Legislature tinkers with aggravating factors for 
the death penalty. No county, including the Maricopa County prosecutor, can 
afford to use. It is far too expensive, and carrying out a sentence can take 25 
years or more.

The death penalty is not used on the “most heinous” criminals or the “worst of 
the worst.” It is used on the most winnable cases and it is used to score 
political points by looking “tough” on crime.

In Arizona, a more important factor is killing the innocent. 10 times, we have 
sentenced people to death row who never committed a crime. The last most recent 
person released because of innocence was a woman. It's time to end a very bad 
system.

John Yoakum

Downtown

(source: Letter to the Editor, Arizona Daily Star)








OREGON:

Oregon bill would abolish almost all death penalty cases



An Oregon bill filed on Monday would effectively abolish almost all use of 
capital punishment in the state.

The proposal in the Oregon state House would only allow the death penalty in 
cases where 2 or more people are killed in a terror attack, The Oregonian 
reported.

The state currently allows the death penalty for aggravated murder cases, which 
includes the killing of a child under 13, killing more than 1 person, killing a 
police officer on duty or killing someone during a rape or robbery.

The bill would reclassify those crimes as 1st-degree murder and carry a maximum 
sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, the newspaper 
noted.

The state voted to abolish capital punishment in 1914, but it was revived in 
1964, the newspaper reported. The most recent vote on the keeping the death 
penalty was in the 1980s.

Former Gov. John Kitzhaber (D) in 2011 issued a moratorium on the death penalty 
because he argued that it wasn’t handed down fairly. Current Gov. Kate Brown 
(D) in 2015 extended the temporary prohibition.

While there are currently 30 people on Oregon’s death row, the state has not 
executed an inmate since 1997. Only two men were executed in the past 50 years 
after waving their rights to appeals before their deaths, The Oregonian 
reports.

The measure’s chief sponsor, state Rep. Mitch Greenlick (D), said that he 
believes people are “generally” supportive of eliminating the death penalty.

“I know it’s problematically applied and it’s extraordinarily expensive,” 
Greenlick said.

The Oregon Justice Resource Center (OJRC), an anti-death penalty organization, 
in 2016 found that the death penalty cost twice as much as those for life 
sentences in the state.

OJRC spokeswoman Alice Lundell told the newspaper that while the House bill is 
a positive step, it does not go as far as eliminating the death penalty 
entirely.

She has also called on the governor to commute the sentences of the inmates on 
death row.

Mary Elledge, an Oregon resident whose son Rob was murdered in 1986, opposes 
the state House bill.

She told The Oregonian that the simple threat of execution could be effective 
in murder cases, even though the state rarely executes inmates.

“The death penalty is a great bargaining tool,” she said.

There are currently 31 states where capital punishment is authorized, according 
to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Several states, including New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut and Maryland, have 
abolished the death penalty in recent years through their state legislatures.

Several red states have made legislative pushes to end capital punishment in 
recent months.

The Wyoming state Senate last month voted down a bill that would have repealed 
the death penalty.

(source: thehill.com)








USA:

Ndume Olatushani and Jerry Givens: the death row inmate and the executioner



Ndume Olatushani spent 20 years on Tennessee’s death row for a crime he did not 
commit. Jerry Givens was the chief executioner for the state of Virginia for 17 
years, during which he oversaw the execution of 62 people. Though their 
experiences with capital punishment could not be more opposed, both men are now 
bound by a shared rejection of the death penalty. For Ndume and Jerry, the 
possibility of killing an innocent person is the prime reason why they became 
abolitionists. They also reject the notion that “you need to kill to 
demonstrate that killing is wrong”. Equal Times sat down with them separately 
during the 7th World Congress Against the Death Penalty, which took place in 
Brussels last week. The event, held every three years, brings together 
abolitionists from around the world to exchange stories, strategies and best 
practices to fight against state-led executions, wherever they take place, with 
no exception as regards to the crimes committed by those facing the gallows, 
the firing squad or the lethal injection.

Ndume, can you tell us how you ended up on death row?

N.O.: I was falsely accused of robbing and killing a store owner in Memphis 
Tennessee in October 1983. The crime actually happened 400 miles away from my 
home in Saint-Louis, Missouri, where I was born and raised. I had never been to 
Tennessee, and certainly not to kill anyone. But the prosecution claimed they 
found my fingerprints on the car that was used in the crime. In fact, all the 
evidence was fabricated and they withheld evidence in court that could have 
acquitted me. Several people testified that I was in Missouri at the time of 
the crime but it didn’t make any difference. I was found guilty and sent to 
death row. It took 28 years [Editor’s note: Ndume spent 28 years in total in 
prison, 20 of which were on death row], a lot hard work from my wife and a law 
firm in New York before the evidence finally came home, showing that the 
prosecution had lied at the trial about the fingerprints and that they withheld 
the evidence showing I was innocent.

Jerry, how did you go from chief executioner to death penalty abolitionist?

J.G.: I was the chief executioner for the state of Virginia for 17 years, with 
a total of 62 executions under my belt. Then, in 1999, I was forced to resign. 
It’s a long story but I’m glad that I did because there was a guy by the name 
of Earl Washington who was innocent and I came within two weeks of taking his 
life [Earl Washington, who was sent to death row on murder charges, was fully 
exonerated in 2000]. But God spared him and that helped me to know God answered 
my prayers. Because I always prayed to God that he would never allow me to 
execute an innocent person. I wasn’t at the trial when these people were 
sentenced. I had to rely on the verdicts of a criminal justice system, a court 
system I believed in giving a fair and impartial trial, but that’s not always 
the case.

Ndume, how did it feel to be convicted of a crime you didn’t commit?

N.O.: I was angry. I was mad as hell. How could this happen? Of course, I knew 
from the start of the trial that the stage was pretty much set against me. It 
was an all-white jury in a city that was predominantly black. And there I was, 
a young black man accused of killing a prominent white person in the city of 
Memphis. I was well aware at the time of the systemic, institutionalised racism 
in America, but I still didn’t think that this white jury would find me guilty 
based on what was presented in court, but they actually did.

And how was life on death row?

N.O.: It’s horrible. Being in prison in the United States is horrible anyway 
but sitting on death row…If you can imagine, I was living 23 hours a day in a 4 
x 9 feet cell where I couldn’t fully stretch my arms. Every time you are 
brought out they shackle you on the wrists, they shackle your feet, they chain 
you up and they shelter you in a cage outside where you can stay for one hour. 
That’s what it’s like. The food is no good. The medical [care] is no good. I 
mean…it’s horrible. What kept me going was the fact that I knew I shouldn’t be 
there in the first place. I always had my family and people around me to 
support me. They gave me every reason to keep getting up, walking in the face 
of adversity and dealing with it. I certainly didn’t want to lay down and roll 
over and let them do what they intended to do to me without me giving them some 
kind of fight.

Jerry, how do you know that there were no innocents amongst the 62 people you 
executed?

J.G.: I was fortunate enough to talk to the guys prior to them being executed, 
and 99 % of them admitted they did the crime. They wanted forgiveness. If you 
look at the average death row inmates, they spend 15 to 30 years on death row 
and if you stay in a cubicle for that long period of time – this is what 
inmates said – the cell has a tendency to close in on you and it feels like you 
are buried alive. A lot of them mentally, psychologically, are already dead and 
they want to get it over with.

But do you think that capital punishment is a fair execution of justice, even 
if someone is guilty?

J.G.: No, it’s not. Look, we used to have what’s called a ‘24-hour death 
watch’. We would keep an eye on inmates to stop them from killing themselves…so 
that we could kill them! Death is going to happen. It is the beginning of life 
to come. God didn’t give us death for punishment. Men use it as punishment to 
get revenge. We can’t get rid of death, but we could stop killing to 
demonstrate to others that killing is wrong.

Ndume, how do you feel towards Jerry?

N.O.: I don’t want to hold anything personal against him but the fact that he 
didn’t have something in him to say “I don’t care what my job is, if part of my 
job is to do this shit, I’m going to do something else because I don’t want to 
participate in this kind of madness” is unfortunate. Me, personally, I wouldn’t 
do that job. You always have a choice. He may be just a cog in a wheel to make 
the wheel turn, but nobody put a gun to his head. It’s a choice.

Jerry, what would you answer to Ndume? Do you have any regrets for executing 
these people?

J.G.: Not really. It wasn’t my doing. It was the state of Virginia’s doing. I 
didn’t execute anybody for myself. They were going to be executed regardless. 
If I didn’t do it, someone else was going to do it. I prepared these guys for 
life to come afterwards. I don’t think anyone else would have done that. I did 
them a favour because a lot of them weren’t ready.

A few years ago, there seemed to be a momentum towards abolition in the US. 
Several states had either abolished the death penalty or exonerated their death 
row inmates. There were several high-profile cases, like Troy Davis. That 
momentum seems all but gone, especially since the nomination, by Donald Trump, 
of 2 conservative justices to the US Supreme Court. [Editor’s note: the US 
Supreme Court could abolish the death penalty if it ever interpreted it as a 
violation of the Eight Amendment to the United States Constitution that bans 
“cruel and unusual punishments”]. Is the Trump presidency a setback for the 
abolitionist movement in the US?

N.O.: Of course. Until this guy got elected, people in the US were hopeful that 
there would be some changes to how the death penalty is dealt with through the 
court system. But having this clown elected is obviously a huge setback. His 
hateful, racist rhetoric, the stuff he espouses and represents... But I’m still 
hopeful though. I will continue to do what I’m doing by lending my voice and 
just trying to make sure that people are educated about these issues. As long 
as you have the death penalty, innocent people will be subjected to it. I could 
have come out of prison, live life and never thought about it again, but I 
refuse to do that. Knowledge makes us responsible. When you know something, 
then you are responsible at this point. You can’t feign ignorance. And I think 
the world should look at the US with disdain: the leader of the world, 
supposedly, and yet it still practices this barbaric, antiquated notion that 
somehow you can kill somebody to demonstrate that killing is wrong.

J.G.: It’s a 100 % setback. We are supposed to be moving forward. The American 
system is broken, from top down, from the president on down. You never have a 
perfect system. How can we stop the cycle of violence? One way is to stop the 
killing.

(source: equaltimes.com)