[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TENN., ARK., NEB., ARIZ., CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

May 9



TENNESSEE----impending execution

As execution date approaches for TN man convicted of murder, efforts to halt it 
increase



The religious community and people against the death penalty are calling on 
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to stop the scheduled execution of Don Johnson. He 
is scheduled to be executed next week.

In 1985, Johnson was convicted in Shelby County of killing his then wife 
Connie. Johnson is scheduled to die May 16, that is unless the governor 
intervenes.

Johnson has been sitting on death row since his conviction in 1985. Several 
execution dates have come and gone since then. Those against the death penalty 
hope this execution doesn't happen.

Johnson is asking Lee for clemency, that he remain in prison, but his life be 
spared. Over the past three decades, Johnson says he has accepted 
responsibility for what happened and has found God. While in prison, he has 
become a Seventh-day Adventist minister. He spends his days on death row 
ministering to other inmates in the prison and on death row.

Johnsons daughter is also asking that her father not be executed, saying she 
has forgiven him.

Religious organizations are also stepping in. The Catholic church sent a letter 
to Governor Lee asking Johnson's life be sparred. A statement from the Catholic 
Diocese said in part, "Johnson's transformation of life only supports the 
process of our justice system and offender rehabilitation."

"I would plead with Governor Lee. I think he is a man of faith and is concerned 
with justice and he has the authority to stop this," said Rev. Amy Howe.

Howe is a board member of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. 
She is also asking the governor to spare Johnson’s life.

Not everyone is asking that Johnson's life be sparred. His son and other family 
members support the execution moving forward. The Local I-Teams Jeni Diprizio 
has been chosen a media witness, should the execution move forward. She will be 
filing several stories between now and the end of next week.

(source: localmemphis.com)

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

Their father killed their mother. Now, the siblings disagree on whether he 
should be executed.



Sometimes, you can start in the same home — in this case, a house in Covington, 
Tennessee — and end up different places.

Jason Johnson and Cynthia Vaughn grew up together. In 1984, the 2 siblings lost 
both their parents: Their mother, Connie Johnson, they lost to murder. They 
lost their father, who had adopted Vaughn when he married Connie, when he was 
condemned to death row for that murder.

Today, days before their father is expected to be executed for the killings, 
the siblings couldn't be further apart.

Jason Johnson, 38, plans to see his father executed on May 16, “not to see him 
die,” he said, “just to see my family actually have some closure.”

Cynthia Vaughn, Jason Johnson's half-sister, wants her adoptive father to live. 
She’s even begged the governor for mercy.

Donnie Johnson, investigators revealed, had shoved a plastic trash bag down his 
wife’s throat, suffocating her to death, and left her body in a mall parking 
lot just weeks before Christmas.

At the time, Jason Johnson was 4 and Vaughn was 7. Afterward, they went to live 
with an aunt, but have since grown apart.

Donnie Johnson, who now goes by Don, converted to Christianity behind bars, his 
attorneys wrote in an application for clemency filed in March.

The man who admits to killing his wife is now an elder in the Seventh-day 
Adventist Church.

But Jason Johnson believes his father’s story of redemption is all a con.

“He’s an evil human being. He can talk Christianity and all that,” he said. 
“That is all my father is. That’s all he’s ever been, is a con man.”

Donnie Johnson: He killed his wife in 1984. Here's a timeline of the crime.

Don Johnson himself acknowledges that he has been a con man: His attorneys said 
so in his petition for clemency. But the petition also said he was transformed.

And Vaughn said she believes that transformation. The petition for clemency 
hinges on how Vaughn, who declined through her father’s attorneys to speak to 
reporters, has forgiven her father.

“Over these past few years, Don has become one of my last connections to my 
mother, and his execution will not feel like justice to me,” Vaughn wrote in an 
opinion piece for The Tennessean. “It will feel like losing my mother all over 
again.”

Vaughn remembered more of what happened after they moved in with an aunt, Jason 
Johnson said — but he said he remembers growing up and being made fun of 
because his father had killed his mother.

Despite his childhood, Jason Johnson wants people to know that he turned out 
alright: He runs equipment for a construction company in Alabama and has two 
children. He was happily married for 16 years until his wife passed away in 
February.How siblings arrived at opposing conclusions

For Vaughn, it was a 2012 meeting with her stepfather that took her from hating 
him to letting the anger go and finding healing, she wrote.

Don Johnson, who answered written questions from the USA TODAY Network - 
Tennessee through his attorneys, said meeting with Vaughn was “the most 
humbling experience” of his life.

“(My relationship with Cynthia) is one of the richest blessings a father could 
hope for,” he said. “Something I carry with joy in my heart, each and every 
day.”

Jason Johnson also met his father in person while he was on death row — several 
times, around 1999. He called him too, he said, and wanted to give him a 
chance.

His meetings didn’t end like Vaughn’s. Rather, he said his father tried to 
control his life, and eventually he cut ties.

In his own words: 'If my work is done, then I am content," death row inmate 
says

An estranged family

Don Johnson wrote that he is estranged from his son.

“I pray that one day he can forgive me for my wrongs, for my responsibility for 
the loss of his mother, and for my inability to be the father he so deserves,” 
he wrote.

Jason Johnson said he doesn’t understand his sister’s point of view — after 
all, she hated their father passionately for years. Now, the two siblings 
aren’t in contact.

When he learned that she was part of the clemency petition, Jason Johnson 
called the governor’s office to tell them another side, he said.

“If he found redemption, that doesn’t matter, that’s between him and God,” 
Jason Johnson said. “His forgiveness is to come from the Lord and his 
redemption is to come from the Lord, not the government. The Bible also says, 
‘An eye for an eye.’”

(source: Memphis Commercial Appeal)

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

Family of Waffle House murder victims call for death penalty for Reinking



The family of a Waffle House shooting victim called for the death penalty at a 
hearing Wednesday.

Travis Reinking is charged with killing 4 people inside the Antioch restaurant 
last April.

Every one of his hearings draws dozens of people whether he appears or not, 
including the victims’ families and Waffle House team members.

Wednesday’s hearing was brief and he was not there.

“It's important to us that he gets justice. Not just justice, but true 
justice,” Shaundelle Brooks said. She lost her son Akilah DaSilva in the 
shooting. “It’s important that I be here and that I make sure I understand the 
process.”

DeEbony Groves’ family doesn’t miss a court date either.

“It's a piece of the puzzle that ties that story together for my sister,” 
Di’Angelo Groves said Wednesday.

That story for Brooks, only ends with justice.

“Eye for an eye,” she said. “Death penalty.”

“For me, it's just being able to eventually sit down and hear what Travis' 
reasons were for doing what he did,” Groves said.

“His family gets to see him, they get to talk to him, they get to be around 
him,” Brooks said. “We don't get that. We have to go to the cemetery. We can 
talk, but we don't get a response. They need to feel what we're feeling.”

A pre-trial date was set for July at Wednesday’s hearing. Attorneys have 600 
gigabytes worth of evidence to go through before then.

(source: WSMV news)








ARKANSAS:

Federal Court Hears 2 Weeks of Testimony in Arkansas Lethal-Injection Challenge



A 2-week federal trial on the constitutionality of Arkansas’s lethal-injection 
protocol came to a close May 2, 2019, as the parties presented legal arguments 
to the court after eight days of testimony. U.S. District Judge Kristine G. 
Baker must now determine whether the state’s three-drug protocol beginning with 
the sedative midazolam is allowable. Lawyers representing a group of death-row 
prisoners presented testimony from witnesses of recent executions, as well as 
medical experts who said that midazolam does not render prisoners unconscious. 
In his closing argument, the prisoners’ lawyer Will Freeman likened the 
three-drug cocktail of midazolam followed by a paralytic drug and the 
heart-attack inducing drug potassium chloride to being conscious while “having 
gasoline poured on you and being set on fire.” The Arkansas attorney general’s 
office presented testimony from other execution witnesses and medical 
professionals that contradicted the prisoners’ evidence. “The prisoners’ burden 
is … [to] show that the midazolam protocol is sure or very likely to cause 
needless suffering by pointing to actual objective evidence, or at the very 
least, demonstrating a strong scientific consensus," Assistant Attorney General 
Jennifer Merritt argued. “They’ve simply failed to carry the burden.”

Much of the testimony in the trial came from people who had witnessed the four 
executions performed in Arkansas in April 2017, with an intense focus on the 
executions of Kenneth Williams (pictured) and Marcel Williams. Kelly Kissel, a 
former Associated Press reporter who has witnessed ten executions, provided a 
detailed timeline of Kenneth Williams’s execution. “Three or four minutes into 
the execution was where he had the episode in which his body lurched forward 15 
times in quick succession and then five additional times at a slower rate,” 
Kissell testified. “It was lurching, jerking, convulsing.” Kissel also 
testified that Williams moaned loud enough that he could hear it in the witness 
chamber, even though the microphone in the execution chamber had been turned 
off. Cassandra Belter, a lawyer from Philadelphia who had assisted in Kenneth 
Williams’s defense, corroborated Kissell’s account. “He was convulsing up and, 
like, bucking against the restraints,” she testified. “At that point, I think 
at 10:55 [p.m.], he also groaned in pain. The breathing became audible, he was 
gasping as it grew stronger to the point that it sounded like he was choking.” 
Former Arkansas Times reporter Jacob Rosenberg recounted the execution of 
Marcel Williams, testifying: “At the time he was breathing heavily with [his] 
chest lifting off of the gurney and his back arching in order to do so. And his 
eyes began to slowly droop, though one sort of stayed open throughout this 
process, and his heavy breathing and arching sort of continued throughout this 
time.”

The state’s witnesses characterized the prisoners’ reactions differently, 
describing them as “muscle spasms,” rather than “convulsions.” State Sen. Trent 
Garner, a legislative proponent of capital punishment who witnessed Kenneth 
Williams’s execution, said that "[f]or approximately 10 to 15 seconds there 
were some brief involuntary muscle spasms. His chest rose 2 to 3 inches a few 
times." Garner, who has no medical training, testified that he can recognize 
pain from seeing soldiers killed and injured during his military service in 
Afghanistan. “I call it involuntary because I didn’t see any pain on his face, 
no grimacing. I didn’t hear any noises that would indicate pain,” he said.

The 2 sides also presented competing testimony from medical professionals. 
Craig W. Stevens, a professor of pharmacology at Oklahoma State University in 
Tulsa, said "For a certain, [the second and third drugs are] going to cause 
severe pain because midazolam does not produce anesthesia. ... Even at massive 
doses, persons still respond to noxious stimulus. There will be pain and 
suffering masked by the paralytic.” State’s witness Dr. Daniel Buffington, a 
clinical pharmacologist with the University of South Florida, said convulsions 
are a known side effect of midazolam. “They would go from still to moving or 
moving aggressively or gasping or coughing, making an audible sound. It’s when 
the body is sending a signal to the body so it’s a neuromuscular response to 
try to get more air at that moment,” he said.

In closing arguments, Freeman called the Arkansas execution protocol “a clear 
step backward. It is sure or very likely to cause serious illness and needless 
suffering when it is implemented, and, respectfully, we have identified an 
alternative that is feasible; it is readily implemented and is, in fact, 
significantly likely to reduce the substantial risk of severe pain.” To fulfill 
the requirement that the prisoners present a viable alternative execution 
method, attorneys offered secobarbital, a drug used in physician-assisted 
suicide, or the firing squad.

(source: Death Penalty Information Center)








NEBRASKA:

Judge denies motion seeking to find out if Ricketts influenced AG's office to 
seek death penalty for Trail



Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts' office won't have to turn over any communications 
it may have had with state prosecutors over their decision to seek the death 
penalty against Aubrey Trail, following a judge's ruling Wednesday.

Defense attorney Ben Murray said he was just trying to determine whether the 
decision was based on the circumstances of the case "and not on some improper 
influence."

He said he didn't know if it happened in this instance, but said it has 
happened before, pointing to a 2013 letter then-Gov. Dave Heineman sent to the 
Douglas County Attorney regarding seeking the death penalty against Nikko 
Jenkins, who killed 4 people in Omaha.

"We're not just taking a shot in the dark here," Murray told Saline County 
District Judge Vicky L. Johnson.

Assistant Attorney General Mike Guinan argued against the motion, calling it 
"basically a fishing expedition," based only on Ricketts spending personal 
money to put the question of whether the state should have the death penalty 
before voters after state lawmakers repealed it in 2016.

Nebraskans ultimately voted to keep capital punishment on the books.

In court Wednesday arguing against the defense motion, Guinan said he highly 
doubted there were any communications like the defense was seeking. But if a 
prosecutor had some kind of political motivation, what would the court do and 
what would the remedy be?

"Would there be some kind of courtroom confessional where we absolve 
prosecutors of impure thoughts?" Guinan posed, facetiously.

He said Trail's attorneys just wanted to see if there was political pressure to 
seek the death penalty in this case.

"Which there should not be," Johnson jumped in. "It's just not appropriate."

Guinan agreed and said he was involved early in making all charging decisions, 
large and small, and wasn't pressured by anyone.

This had nothing to do with politics, he said.

"We believe the facts clearly justify the finding," Guinan said.

In the end, Johnson said it was premature because Trail hasn't been convicted 
yet and overruled the motion.

Trail is set to go to trial in June on charges of first-degree murder and 
improper disposal of human remains in the November 2017 slaying of Sydney 
Loofe.

Last month, prosecutors added a conspiracy charge alleging he conspired with 
Boswell to solicit young women online, to recruit others to carry out a murder 
and to select Loofe as their victim.

Loofe, 24, met Boswell on the dating app Tinder and went missing Nov. 16, 2017, 
after going on a date with Boswell the night before.

Loofe’s remains were found in Clay County on Dec. 4, 2017, and investigators 
allege Trail strangled her before he and Boswell dismembered and dumped her 
body and then fled the state, according to court documents.

Trail has told investigators and news reporters that Loofe died at his hands 
accidentally.

(source: Lincoln Journal Star)








ARIZONA:

Juror who voted to send man convicted in killing of police officer to life in 
prison speaks out



A member of the jury in the sentencing phase of a man who was convicted in the 
killing of Gilbert Police lieutenant nine years ago is speaking out about her 
decision to vote for the man to be sentenced to life in prison.

The woman said a life sentence was the right choice, even as the jury foreman 
said most of the jury wanted to sentence Christopher Redondo to death.

The jury had spent five months on this capital punishment trial. The foreman, 
Jessica Neisler, said at one point, at least 7 out of the 12 jurors would have 
voted to sentence Redondo to the death penalty, but 1 juror adamantly 
disagreed.

"There was one particular who she just told us I'm not going to change my vote. 
This is where I stand so if we're hung, we're hung," said Neisler. "She wasn't 
gonna cave, so we had to all convince ourselves what would be fair for the 
family."

The juror who Neisler said "wasn't gonna cave" is Myla Fairchild. Fairchild 
said since doctors declared Redondo severely mentally ill, he should be shown 
some mercy.

"He had not any opportunities to take care of the mental illness. He was poor, 
severely abused, and this is not an excuse for his behavior. Just for me, it 
just was a mitigating circumstance I can't ignore, and it's just the law. It 
was just having to follow the law, and it was very difficult to do," said 
Fairchild.

Jurors are given specific instructions on how to deliberate, and one of those 
instructions is that a juror cannot change their vote for another juror. 
However, even Fairchild cannot say justice was served in this case.

"There is no possible way for justice to ever be served on any crime," said 
Fairchild. "Justice would be Lt. Shuhandler comes back to life, he's with his 
family, none of this ever happened."

Fairchild was asked if she believed the punishment given to Redondo fit the 
crime.

"I can't answer that," said Fairchild. "I don't have any answer for that."

Neisler said she cried when she signed off on the life sentence for Redondo.

"Because he deserved the death penalty, because he got away with murder," said 
Neisler. "He was already serving a life sentence for another murder, and this 
one, he just got away with it."

"We were definitely a little bit disappointed, because it would've been nice to 
see him get the justice he deserves," said Lt. Shuhandler's daughter, Meredith. 
"After 9 years, we just want it to be done. We're OK with it."

If the penalty phase had ended with a hung jury, it would have been declared a 
mistrial. Then, it would be up to the prosecution if they wanted to pursue a 
new penalty phase of the trial, and that could have taken several more years.

(source: Fox News)








CALIFORNIA:

California Has a Moratorium on Executions. Prosecutors Want New Death Sentences 
Anyway.



In Courtroom 106 in downtown Los Angeles, a jury has begun hearing testimony in 
the long-awaited trial of a man accused of stabbing to death 2 women in their 
homes at night. The suspect stalked his victims, ingratiating himself as a 
repairman, and then killed them in a spasm of violence. One victim was nearly 
decapitated: another’s breasts slashed off. One of the women, a former 
girlfriend of the actor Ashton Kutcher, was found in a pool of blood on the 
stairs. The gruesomeness of the killings and the celebrity connection have 
earned the perpetrator the tabloid-style moniker of The Hollywood Ripper. 
Prosecutors are asking jurors to deliver a death sentence.

Nearly 400 miles to the north, in Sacramento, prosecutors have come together to 
seek a death sentence for Joseph James DeAngelo, the man accused of being the 
so-called Golden State Killer, who terrorized communities up and down the state 
in the 1970s and 1980s before an arrest was made last year with the help of a 
genealogy website.

And there are several other capital cases underway in California, including the 
trial of a man accused of killing an officer in Sacramento and a suspect 
described as a serial killer in Los Angeles County. A prosecutor may also seek 
a death sentence for the man charged in the recent synagogue shooting near San 
Diego.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, issued a moratorium in March on executions in 
the state, which has more death row inmates than anywhere else in the Western 
Hemisphere. But that decision has not stopped local prosecutors from seeking 
new death sentences, underscoring the divide in the state between conservative 
prosecutors and liberal reformers like the governor who see ending capital 
punishment as an urgent moral issue.

And as liberal as California voters are generally, as recently as 2016 they 
rejected a ballot measure that would have abolished capital punishment, and 
approved another one to fast-track executions.

These divisions, experts say, are setting the backdrop for what could be a 
contentious fight as Mr. Newsom takes new steps beyond the moratorium to 
abolish capital punishment.

For now, the moratorium amounts to temporary reprieves for each of the 737 men 
and women on California’s death row, which will last for the duration of his 
time as governor.

“It’s got to be really confusing for the average citizen who sees both things 
going on and doesn’t understand how all of the above can be occurring,” said 
Michele Hanisee, the president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys 
in Los Angeles County. She is seeking a death sentence in one of her cases: The 
man accused of being a serial killer, Alexander Hernandez, who is charged with 
killing five people in a shooting rampage in the San Fernando Valley in 2014.

“The simple answer is this: The district attorneys of the state of California 
took an oath to uphold and follow the law,” Ms. Hanisee said. “I think the 
governor probably did too, but he doesn’t care.” The governor, she added, does 
“not have the legal authority to tell them not to seek death or not to follow 
the law.”

New death sentences in California have declined in recent years — 2018 was a 
record low, with five new sentences. The drop aligns with a national trend, as 
public support for capital punishment has waned and juries have been reluctant 
to impose death sentences in the face of evidence of racial disparities and 
high-profile exonerations. Before Mr. Newsom’s moratorium, 20 other states, 
including most recently Washington and Delaware, had abolished the practice.

Public support for capital punishment across the country has dropped 
substantially since the 1990s, according to polling data from Gallup.

California, while maintaining a large death row, has not executed anyone since 
2006. There were longstanding legal challenges to the state’s lethal injection 
protocol that had halted executions even before Mr. Newsom’s moratorium.

Many supporters of capital punishment say that while the system can be reformed 
to reduce racial disparities, and thus produce fewer death sentences, the 
penalty should remain an option for prosecutors and juries in the most heinous 
of crimes, including some of the cases underway in California.

“The case for the death penalty is the moral part of it,” said Kent 
Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, an 
organization in Sacramento that favors the death penalty and supported a ballot 
initiative in 2016 in which voters approved fast-tracking executions. “For the 
very worst murderers, nothing short of execution is adequate.”

Research that shows racial disparities in the capital punishment system — that 
black and Latino men are disproportionately sent to death row — has led to an 
acknowledgment that the system is flawed, and is at the heart of calls for 
abolition. But in California, supporters of the death penalty argue that white 
men are charged with committing some of the most egregious crimes, including 
Michael Gargiulo, the Hollywood Ripper suspect, or Mr. De Angelo, who was once 
a police officer.

“Gargiulo is a white dude,” Ms. Hanisee said. “Golden State Killer, he’s a 
white guy who was a cop.” She also noted that many of the 24 death row inmates 
who have exhausted all of their appeals — and would be next in line for 
executions if they were proceeding — were white men.

“Of the 24 or so who are presently eligible for execution, 1/2 of them are 
white men,” she said. “So let’s execute them.”

In an interview, Mr. Newsom said his administration was considering several new 
steps to dismantle the state’s capital punishment system, and that his 
moratorium was a first step on what he hoped was a path that ended with 
abolition. He said his advisers were studying how he could commute the 
sentences of current death row inmates to life without parole. Mr. Newsom has 
the power to commute sentences in which the inmate has only one felony, but 
more than half of the death row population has at least two felonies; to 
commute those sentences would require approval from the State Supreme Court.

Mr. Newsom’s advisers are focusing on the Supreme Court’s decision to block 
several pardons or commutations — though not for death row inmates — issued by 
former Gov. Jerry Brown before he left office in January. Those rejections were 
the first time in decades the court had blocked a governor’s commutations, and 
Mr. Newsom has asked the court for an explanation.

He hopes the explanation will offer some guidance “that will allow us to form 
better judgment on next steps if we want to look to commutations on the capital 
punishment side.”

“Life without the possibility of parole. We are not releasing anybody. We are 
by no means pursuing that,” Mr. Newsom said.

Mr. Newsom also said he was discussing with the attorney general’s office what 
role the state could play in blocking prosecutions of new death sentences. But 
legal experts say this power is limited: The state could decline to defend 
capital cases on appeal, but it does not have the power to order district 
attorneys, who are elected at the county level, to not seek death.

“He does not have the authority to tell prosecutors or even the attorney 
general what the policy is going to be with respect to individual 
prosecutions,” said Shilpi Agarwal, a staff attorney with the American Civil 
Liberties Union in San Francisco. “As long as the death penalty is on the books 
they are free to seek it in any individual prosecution.”

One possibility is that the attorney general could take cases away from local 
prosecutors. But experts say that is unlikely and would be unprecedented.

“I have not seen any indication from our attorney general that they want to 
impose the governor’s view and take cases away from us so that we cannot seek 
capital punishment,” said Anne Marie Schubert, the Sacramento County district 
attorney, who is part of the prosecution in the Golden State Killer case.

Ms. Schubert added that, “Capital punishment is the law in California, and just 
because Gavin Newsom has a personal opposition to it doesn’t mean that we as 
prosecutors abandon our obligation to enforce the law in the appropriate cases. 
I’m not this zealot about the death penalty, but it is the law.”

Those who oppose capital punishment, like Mr. Newsom and Ms. Agarwal, say that 
no matter how gruesome a particular case is, it does not justify perpetrating a 
system they see as biased, with the possibility of wrongful convictions. Almost 
immediately, Mr. Newsom’s moratorium had an impact nationally, with candidates 
running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020 coming out against 
capital punishment.

“When you are putting a moratorium on the largest death row in the Western 
Hemisphere, it’s going to have an impact, we believe, on the national debate,” 
Mr. Newsom said. “This was not just about California. It’s not just about the 
situational nature of prosecutions in this state. It’s about a deeper question 
about our values and who we are.”

All of this appears to be heading to a new ballot initiative in California, 
perhaps as soon as 2020, about whether or not to keep capital punishment.

“The deeper question is, when is this ripe for reconsideration at the ballot?” 
Mr. Newsom said.

If there were to be another fight at the ballot over capital punishment, 
Californians would most likely hear a lot about the Golden State Killer and 
other terrible crimes.

“We will talk about the facts of these cases and what these people did,” Ms. 
Hanisee said. “And if the California voters vote to get rid of the death 
penalty, so be it. But it needs to be an honest debate.”

(source: New York Times)