[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OHIO, TENN., ARK., IOWA

[Rick Halperin]

March 20



OHIO:

Ohio attorney general chastises judge over death penalty



A federal judge improperly praised Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine's decision to delay an 
execution based on the judge's scathing critique of the state's lethal 
injection method, the state attorney general said.

In a court filing earlier this week, Attorney General David Yost said 
Magistrate Judge Michael Merz' remarks were an improper use of the judge's 
position.

At issue is a series of execution delays ordered by DeWine, a Republican, after 
Merz raised concerns about Ohio's lethal injection method.

After the governor issued his first delay - of the February execution of death 
row inmate Warren Henness - Merz said that decision "embodies excellent public 
policy."

The judge also said he was "deeply gratified" by DeWine's expression of trust 
in Merz' lethal injection ruling.

"The Court fully expects that the Governor will do whatever is needed legally 
to keep the public commitment he has made, the important first step being the 
reprieve of Warren Henness," Merz wrote last month.

The attorney general said judges "are not supposed to use the federal bench as 
a bully pulpit to influence state policy."

The judge's "statements needlessly (and perhaps unintentionally) entangle the 
federal judiciary in a policy dispute on a hot-button issue," Yost said.

A message was left with Merz about Yost's remarks.

DeWine has ordered the prisons department to come up with a new lethal 
injection method, a process that could take months or years.

Yost says that wouldn't prevent the state from carrying out executions earlier 
with its current system.

The governor "has announced his intention to develop a new protocol, but he has 
never suggested that he would deny death-row inmates the choice to use the 
current protocol," Yost said.

Ohio could still use the current method if a federal appeals court rejects 
Merz' criticism of Ohio's method or if the state can't come up with a new 
method, Yost said.

Merz said on Jan. 14 that Ohio's system could cause inmates severe pain because 
the 1st drug, the sedative midazolam, doesn't render them deeply enough 
unconscious. He suggested inmates could experience a sensation similar to 
waterboarding.

But Merz stopped short of halting executions, saying attorneys for Henness 
hadn't shown that viable execution alternatives exist in Ohio.

Afterward, the governor postponed Henness' execution until September and then 3 
more executions into the fall and then 2020.

"Ohio's not going to execute someone under my watch when a federal judge has 
found it to be cruel and unusual punishment," DeWine said in January.

A DeWine spokesman confirmed that executions could resume if Merz' order was 
overturned by a higher court, or if the state created a new lethal injection 
method that was found constitutional.

"If the court decision was overturned on the basis of fact, the governor would 
certainly look if situation has changed," press secretary Dan Tierney said 
Tuesday.

Henness was sentenced to death for killing 51-year-old Richard Myers in 
Columbus in 1992. Myers had been helping Henness find a drug treatment for his 
wife, authorities said.

(source: Associated Press)








TENNESSEE:

TENNESSEE LAWMAKERS 1 STEP CLOSER TO SPEEDING UP DEATH-ROW EXECUTIONS



As U.S. executions hover near historically low levels, a bill passed by the 
Tennessee House aims to remove 1 state court’s review before putting inmates to 
death which ultimately would speed up the process of getting a death row inmate 
– to execution

The House voted 73-22 Monday for legislation to skip Tennessee’s Court of 
Criminal Appeals and provide automatic state Supreme Court death penalty 
reviews. The Senate could follow this week.

Court of Criminal Appeals Judge John Everett Williams has said his court’s last 
four death penalty reviews took 3 to 6 months. Federal courts account for most 
of the sometimes-3-decades of death penalty court reviews.

Tennessee executed 3 inmates last year.

(source: 1057news.com)








ARKANSAS:

Plan on execution competency favored



Legislation to create a new method for determining the competency of death-row 
prisoners -- after the old method was found unconstitutional -- was endorsed 
Tuesday by the House Judiciary Committee.

In a pair of 4-3 decisions handed down in November, the Arkansas Supreme Court 
said a state law granting the director of the Department of Correction the 
authority to determine whether a condemned prisoner is competent for execution 
violates the inmate's due-process rights.

House Bill 1792, by Rep. Jimmy Gazaway, R-Paragould, would change the law to 
require that the prison director conduct an evidentiary hearing "that comports 
with the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment" before determining 
competency.

The bill is 1 of 2 proposals being pushed by the state attorney general's 
office that seek to change state death-penalty law to comply with Supreme Court 
decisions, in hopes that Arkansas will then be able to carry out executions 
again.

The House Judiciary Committee approved HB1792 by a voice vote Tuesday, sending 
the bill to the full House.

(source: arkansasonline.com)








IOWA:

No death penalty, ever



Our friend from the Iowa Interfaith Alliance was nervous last week about a 
proposal to reinstate the death penalty in Iowa for the first time in a 
half-century. It made us nervous, until we heard that members of the House 
really aren’t talking about it. But the Interfaith Alliance says that it needs 
to pick up a few votes in the Senate to make certain this barbaric practice 
does not return to Iowa.

We have had the opportunity to read a new book called Solitary by Albert 
Woodfox. Anyone who believes in capital punishment should read it. Woodfox 
landed in prison as a teen after a juvenile life on the hustle in New Orleans. 
In the notorious Angola prison, he was framed for the murder of a prison guard 
despite physical evidence that was ignored and eyewitness testimony that was 
suppressed. Because he insisted that the prison system was cruel and inhumane, 
and because he insisted that the criminal justice system is racist, Woodfox was 
kept in solitary confinement, 23 hours a day in a rat-infested cell, for 40 
years for a murder he didn’t commit. By any account, Angola was cruel and 
inhumane, and there is little doubt that Louisiana’s criminal justice and law 
enforcement regimes were set up to maintain a Jim Crow order.

Iowa incarcerates a far higher number of blacks than whites. So does Minnesota. 
So does nearly every state. There are far more people of color on death row 
than whites, and it is not because people of color are more criminally prone, 
and certainly not more prone than anyone else of capital offenses. Recently 
enacted prison reform acknowledged as much. Then how can the death penalty be 
fairly applied, if we have not come to terms with the fact that the justice 
system sometimes — and in some places, often — produces different results for 
people of different colors?

That is not to say that any judge or lawyer is racist, but the facts are the 
facts. Law enforcement authorities tell us that minorities do not commit crimes 
at any higher rates than whites. Yet our death rows are predominantly black.

Albert Woodfox could have been one of them.

So could the death row inmates found to be innocent by Northwestern University 
journalism students, and other projects, using witness reports and DNA 
evidence. Albert Woodfox could have been one of them. He is reason enough that 
the death penalty should be abolished across the nation.

If you believe in our Constitution, capital punishment and solitary confinement 
are cruel and inhumane.

If you are pro-life, you are against the death penalty.

If you are realistic, you know that innocent people like Albert Woodfox do get 
railroaded. How can we have that on our conscience?

If you think the threat of capital punishment will keep that school shooter 
from shooting, think again. There is no evidence that capital punishment 
prevents crime. If so, there would be no one on Texas’s death row.

If you want revenge, move to Iran or Saudi Arabia. Revenge is not a part of our 
constitutional culture. Justice is.

Iowa has a mandatory life sentence without possibility of parole for capital 
offenses like murder. We are protected. We don’t need to kill somebody to 
prevent murder.

We should consider the story of Albert Woodfox. How can you call for the death 
penalty when you know an innocent man could be in the gallows? Is that a risk a 
civilized society can take?

Not here, not now. Not ever again.

(source: The Storm Lake Times)