[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----NEB., WIS., ARIZ., ORE., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 2



NEBRASKA:

Death Row: Could Nebraska see its 1st woman sentenced?



A woman accused of murder may be the 1st woman on death row in the state.

Bailey Boswell will go on trial in s6 months, but those against the death 
penalty say there are better options.

Currently, there are 12 men on death row in Nebraska.

In March 2020, Bailey Boswell, one of the people accused of killing and 
dismembering Lincoln woman, Sydney Loofe, could be the 1st woman to get the 
death penalty.

The death penalty hasn't always been an option; the state has gone back and 
forth on the death penalty.

In 2015, lawmakers got rid of it and a year later it was voted back in.

The last execution in Nebraska was in 2018 and Carey Dean Moore was put to 
death.

Moore's death was the first in the state to use lethal injection and reignited 
the conversation over the death penalty.

Matt Maly with Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty says this 
method needs to be reevaluated.

“Even if we wanted to continue doing secret executions and to continue to not 
have transparency in such a gray and important process," says Maly. "We still 
don’t even have the drugs to do it that way.”

Nebraska’s supply of lethal drugs expired in 2018 but Maly says his group still 
wants it off the books entirely.

“We’re not going to give up on this issue. Nebraskans have been fighting to get 
rid of the death penalty for decades, and we’ll continue to do public education 
and be all over this state, teaching people the facts about the death penalty.”

Governor Pete Ricketts has fought to keep the death penalty for years.

In a statement on his website, “I will veto any attempt to repeal the death 
penalty here in our state. This proposal is the wrong direction and would 
soften our state’s approach to dealing with criminals.”

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Death-row prisoners in the 
U.S. typically spend more than a decade awaiting execution.

“From a victim’s perspective, there’s over 30 families who have been through 
horrible, horrible things and have things done to their loved ones," says Maly. 
"They have been told this crime was so terrible that we’re going to seek the 
ultimate punishment. This person is going to be executed for what they’ve done 
to you and almost all of those families, it never happened.”

As far as Boswell potentially being the first woman on death row, Maly says it 
shouldn’t be an option.

“We have the full ability to lock them up for a life sentence, they’ll never 
ever come before a parole board, there is zero chance of them ever getting out 
and walking the streets again. Again, we can save a lot of money that way and 
just lock them up and forget about them.”

According to a Creighton University study, the state spends around $14.6 
million a year to keep its capital punishment system.

An average of $23.2 million more a year than other states without it

The costs come from appeals, pre-trials and attorneys.

(source: Fox News)








WISCONSIN:

"More than half of death row prisoners are people of color." — Gwen Moore on 
Friday, July 26th, 2019 in a tweet----Wisconsin lawmaker hits the target with 
claim on racial background of death row prisoners



All told, some 2,700 people are on death row at the state level. A little more 
than 60 are in federal prisons awaiting the death penalty.

Wisconsin was one of the first states to abolish capital punishment, on July 
10, 1853.

The move followed the 1851 execution of John McCaffary, the 1st and last person 
to be executed under Wisconsin state law.

More than 2,000 people witnessed the execution by hanging of McCaffary in 
Kenosha. He had received the death penalty for drowning his wife, Bridgett 
McCaffary, on July 23, 1850, in a backyard cistern. The hanging turned into a 
gruesome spectacle, as McCaffary struggled on the end of the rope for some 20 
minutes as he was slowly strangled, according to the MurderPedia.org website. 
The uproar over the slow public strangulation of McCaffary prompted Wisconsin 
to ban the death penalty.

While there is no death penalty in Wisconsin, the issue resonates nationwide -- 
particularly since the Trump administration moved in July 2019 to reinstate the 
federal death penalty.

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., slammed the reinstatement in a July 26, 2019 
tweet:

"The death penalty is a discriminatory policy. More than 1/2 of death row 
prisoners are people of color. The Trump administration isn’t fooling anyone by 
reinstating the federal death penalty and executing a white supremacist first. 
Distraction & deflection is their goal."

Is Moore right that "more than 1/2 of death row prisoners are people of color"?

Establishing the terms

Before we jump in, some background on the issue.

As of August 28, 2019, there are 30 states that currently allow the death 
penalty. They include Alabama, Colorado, Louisiana, Texas and Utah. Most of the 
death penalty states are in the west and south, with the nearest ones to 
Wisconsin being Indiana, Ohio and Kansas. Capital punishment was abolished in 
Illinois in 2011.

All told, some 2,700 people are on death row at the state level. A little more 
than 60 are in federal prisons awaiting the death penalty.

Meanwhile, according to a March 30, 2014, National Public Radio article, "The 
Journey from ’Colored’ to ‘Minorities’ to ‘People of Color,’" the definition of 
"person of color" has varied over the years.

"In U.S. history, ‘person of color’ has often been used to refer only to people 
of African heritage," the article states. "Today, it usually covers all/any 
peoples of African, Latino/Hispanic, Native American, Asian or Pacific Island 
descent, and its intent is to be inclusive."

With that in mind, how does Moore’s death-row claim stack up?

The evidence

When asked to back up the claim, Moore’s staff referred PolitiFact Wisconsin to 
2 reports.

The 1st is a September 2011 report by the American Civil Liberties Union, "Race 
and the Death Penalty." It asserted that "People of color have accounted for a 
disproportionate 43% of total executions since 1976 and 55% of those currently 
awaiting execution."

The 2nd report Moore’s office cited was from the Equal Justice Initiative, a 
non-profit organization based in Montgomery, Alabama, that provides legal 
representation to prisoners.

Its report also said more than half of the people on state death rows in the 
United States are people of color: "Of the more than 2,700 people currently 
under a death sentence, 42 % are black, 13 % are Hispanic, and 42 % are white."

The data in the Equal Justice Initiative report came from a May 31, 2019, 
report from the Death Penalty Information Center, which compiled data from the 
death penalty states and found that as of May 2019, there are 2,721 inmates on 
death row.

It included the same racial statistics cited by the Equal Justice Initiative, 
but with an additional 3% listed as "other."

Those reports, however, only cover state-level death penalty cases.

Federal data

To get a handle on the makeup of federal prisoners, we turned to the Death 
Penalty Information Center, which is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit 
organization that provides the media and the public with analysis and 
information about capital punishment.

As of April 1, 2019, it found there were 62 inmates with the following racial 
background:

White -- 27 (43.5%)

Black -- 26 (41.9%)

Latino -- 7 (11.3%)

Native American -- 1 (1.6%)

Asian -- 1 (1.6%)

So, people of color make up a majority of death row inmates at both the state 
and federal levels.

Our ruling

Moore said "More than 1/2 of death row prisoners are people of color."

Reports from organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Equal 
Justice Initiative and the Death Penalty Information Center confirm the death 
row racial population claim, both at the state and federal level.

We rate her claim True.

(source: politifact.com)








ARIZONA:

Arizona man formerly on death row takes plea deal to get life sentence



An Arizona man who was formerly on death row will not be executed after all, 
partly because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a completely different case.

But he won't be released from prison either. Joel Escalante-Orozco on Friday 
accepted a new plea agreement for a life sentence.

The Arizona Supreme Court had thrown out his death sentence in 2017 after the 
U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an Arizona case that prosecutors could not make the 
threat of "future dangerousness" an issue during trial.

On March 10, 2001, Maria Garza-Rivera was found dead in her apartment. She had 
been stabbed repeatedly, beaten and sexually assaulted.

According to his supervisor, Escalante-Orozco, a maintenance worker, was seen 
having a conversation with Garza-Rivera a day before. After she was killed, 
Escalante-Orozco fled to Mexico. He was arrested in Idaho in 2007, convicted 
and sentenced to death in 2013.

During Escalante-Orozco's trial, his lawyers objected to jurors being able to 
consider his potential for release when deciding on the death penalty. Their 
objection was denied.

The Arizona Supreme Court vacated Escalante-Orozco's death sentence due to the 
U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Lynch v. Arizona, which said the possibilities of 
a future law allowing for parole doesn't diminish a defendant's right to inform 
a jury of his parole ineligibility, according to court records.

The state Supreme Court also stated that prosecutors did try to use concern 
about future dangerousness to win the death penalty. Prosecutors introduced 
evidence of actions Escalante-Orozco took against his ex-wife while also 
talking about the crime against Garza-Rivera.

"Escalante-Orozco is in his 40s, and the jury could have believed he would live 
to see release. The jury deliberated for about 13 hours, which suggests it gave 
careful consideration to the sentencing options," the court ruled in 2017. "We 
cannot know what role the possibility of release played in the jurors’ minds as 
they decided the propriety of the death penalty." (source: azcentral.com)








OREGON:

Few Pending Cases Meet Oregon's Higher Bar For Death Penalty



For a state that hasn’t seen an execution in more than 2 decades, the death 
penalty has cast an enormous shadow in Oregon this year.

Now, the potential for any future executions has become much more limited, even 
in pending cases that were eligible for the death penalty when they were 
charged, an analysis by OPB has found.

A new law that restricts the state’s only capital crime took effect Sept. 29. 
Prosecutors, victims, lawmakers and an army of advocacy groups had already 
traded barbs on the issue for months. The debate was so fraught that Gov. Kate 
Brown nearly called lawmakers in for a special legislative session, before 
deciding against it.

Especially controversial are decades-old death penalty cases — at least two 
inmates formerly sentenced to die are no longer eligible under the change to 
state law. But those cases represent a sliver of the impact Oregon’s shifting 
approach to the death penalty will have. The greatest outcome, sweeping and 
immediate, will be felt in the everyday charging decisions made by prosecutors 
across the state.

As the new rules took effect Sunday, at least 43 open cases included one or 
more charges of aggravated murder, the state’s only death-eligible crime. Under 
the now narrower definition of the law, though, OPB found just 1 of those cases 
appears certain to proceed as an aggravated murder charge. Up to five 
additional defendants have cases that potentially still qualify.

The remaining aggravated murder charges will likely be downgraded to 1st-degree 
murder, a new crime under Oregon law that carries a maximum sentence of life in 
prison without parole.

“The vast majority of cases will not meet that definition of aggravated 
murder,” Washington County District Attorney Kevin Barton said, echoing 
prosecutors around the state who have fought the changes. “It’s possible a few 
might, but I’m talking a few statewide.”

For those who oppose the death penalty, that’s the very point of the narrowed 
law. They view the immediate reduction in death penalty cases, and their 
decreased use in subsequent years, as a long-needed correction.

“Oregon had a significantly expansive view of what constituted aggravated 
murder,” said Carl Macpherson, executive director of Metropolitan Public 
Defender, the state’s largest public defense firm. “The narrowing of the law 
was fantastic and, I think, was appropriate.”

Changed Approach

The steep reduction in potential death penalty cases is the result of Senate 
Bill 1013, which passed the Legislature this year almost solely on the strength 
of Democratic support.

Oregon has a fickle history with the death penalty, but it’s been enshrined in 
the state constitution since 1984. It can only be removed through a public 
vote. SB 1013 was a way for lawmakers to drastically reduce instances in which 
a death sentence is even an option.

To do that, the bill strictly narrowed what constitutes aggravated murder. The 
crime had previously encapsulated a wide array of potential factors. SB 1013 
ensures it can only be used in small subset of murders. Those include 
premeditated murders of children under 14 years old or murders of law 
enforcement officers, terrorist attacks that kill at least two people, and 
prison killings carried out by someone who’d previously been convicted of 
murder.

The practical impact of the law on Oregon executions is negligible, for now. 
The state’s last 2 governors have halted executions in the state, a policy that 
has been in place since 2011. Yet that political environment has not stopped 
prosecutors from seeking the death sentence.

To get a sense of how SB 1013’s changes would impact Oregon’s criminal justice 
system, OPB compiled data for all open aggravated murder cases awaiting trial, 
then compared the facts of the alleged crimes against the law’s new definition. 
District attorneys in 11 of the 16 counties with such cases also offered some 
insight into how they believe SB 1013 had impacted them. Prosecutors in 
Multnomah, Lincoln and Tillamook counties declined to comment, while officials 
in Linn and Douglas counties didn’t respond to inquiries.

The cases OPB found span a wide array of narratives, from prison-yard 
stabbings, to drug deals or romantic entanglements gone awry, to alleged serial 
killings. They reveal the latitude prosecutors used to have in wielding 
aggravated murder charges, sometimes saddling the same defendant with multiple 
counts of Oregon’s most severe charge for a single killing.

Now — in at least 86% of cases OPB analyzed — the charge is no longer an 
option.

In Washington County, seven open aggravated murder cases will no longer be 
eligible for the death penalty, Barton confirmed. Executions are also “off the 
table” in 3 Lane County cases, District Attorney Patty Perlow said.

In Multnomah County, as many as nine murder cases could be downgraded from 
aggravated murder. Though neither a spokesperson nor District Attorney Rod 
Underhill would discuss specifics, that list potentially includes the case of 
Jeremy Christian, the alleged white supremacist accused of carrying out a 2017 
triple stabbing on a Portland light-rail train that left 2 men dead.

Homer Lee Jackson, an alleged serial killer accused of sexually assaulting and 
murdering four Portland women in the 1980s and ’90s, also appears ineligible 
for the death sentence.

In Malheur County, prosecutors had planned to seek the death penalty against a 
defendant named Anthony Montwheeler, but the man’s alleged fatal stabbing of 
his ex-wife doesn’t qualify, according to District Attorney David Goldthorpe.

The list also includes two men who’ve previously been sentenced to death, but 
who have been granted new trials. The defendants, David Lee Cox and Martin 
Johnson, are no longer eligible for execution under the new definitions.

Even one case that appears to fit snugly within the new definition of 
aggravated murder is off limits, a prosecutor said. Marion County defendant 
Craig Bjork was convicted of a quadruple murder that included his two young 
sons decades ago in Minnesota. He subsequently killed an inmate in that state.

Bjork was eventually transferred, and wound up in the Oregon State 
Penitentiary. He is now accused of killing a fellow inmate there in 2013.

The details of Bjork’s history — a twice-convicted murderer now accused of 
killing a fellow inmate — appear to match up well with Oregon’s revised 
aggravated murder law. But Marion County Deputy District Attorney Katie Suver 
said that’s not the case, and that the county is dropping its bid to have Bjork 
sentenced to death. The reason: Suver said the precise language of the crimes 
of which Bjork was convicted in Minnesota are now incompatible for prosecution 
under Oregon’s death penalty law.

“This is something that we have gone over and over and over,” Suver said. “I 
can safely say our analysis is correct. Bjork’s lawyers know our analysis is 
correct.”

In Clackamas County, District Attorney John Foote also has an open aggravated 
murder case that will move forward as a murder charge, no longer eligible for 
the death penalty. He argues the focus on changing the law has ignored crime 
victims.

“We have a double murder here where the family has been dealing with that,” 
Foote said. “And now they find out that the Legislature changed the law in 
their case, in the middle of their case. … They don’t understand why someone 
would do that to them.”

In other cases, it’s less clear how prosecutors will proceed.

“I’m still deciding how to address the matter in this case,” Deschutes County 
District Attorney John Hummel wrote in an email regarding the case of Tashina 
Jordan, who allegedly shot and killed her 7-year-old disabled son last year.

In the sole instance where a prosecutor signaled he will likely move forward 
with an aggravated murder case, Malheur County’s Goldthorpe said he believes 
the law still applies to a convicted murderer named James DeFrank, who is 
accused of killing another inmate at Eastern Oregon’s Snake River Correctional 
Institution in 2011.

“My evaluation up to this point (so not a permanent determination) leads me to 
believe that the new statute … does still allow [the death penalty] to be 
sought in Mr. DeFrank’s case,” Goldthorpe wrote in an email to OPB.

‘A Sick Charade’

The state’s prosecutors have often said SB 1013 has injected unwarranted 
confusion into the state’s criminal justice system. Perlow, the Lane County 
district attorney, went so far as to suggest that the bill’s backers welcomed 
“chaos.”

But death penalty opponents say the new arrangement makes more sense than the 
system Oregon has worked within for decades.

They point out that death penalty cases often require more resources, as 
defense attorneys scramble to minutely investigate not only their clients’ 
alleged crimes, but their lives. Salient details about a history of abuse 
suffered by a defendant, for instance, could be key in convincing jurors they 
don’t deserve death.

“It is extremely time consuming, extremely long and very expensive,” Macpherson 
said. When Metropolitan Public Defender fields a death penalty case, he said, 
each defense team includes 2 attorneys, a mitigation specialist, a fact 
investigator and legal assistants.

But in the majority of aggravated murder cases, prosecutors don’t seek death. 
Death penalty opponents said that has led to a waste of resources in many 
aggravated murder cases.

“It’s like a sick charade that we put on that defense attorneys, prosecutors 
and all the other system stakeholders are going through,” said Bobbin Singh, 
executive director of the Oregon Justice Resource Center. “I think 1013 
mitigates the impact of the ineffectiveness of that charade. It makes that 
charade a little bit smaller.”

Lewis and Clark College law professor Aliza Kaplan has extensively studied the 
costs of capital punishment in Oregon and believes the death penalty should be 
eliminated in the state. SB 1013 is a step in the right direction, she said.

“To me, it’s moving cases along faster and resolving them, and it’s getting to 
the very same result that we’ve always gotten: that very few people end up with 
the death penalty in Oregon,” Kaplan said.

The debate between these 2 viewpoints was seemingly decided on Sept. 29, when 
the bill went into effect without any changes. But the outcome might have been 
far different.

The state’s prosecutors were key voices calling on Brown and legislative 
leaders to convene a special session to tweak the bill, which they say extended 
to more cases than they initially realized. Prosecutors wanted the special 
session to change the law so nearly all 43 aggravated murder cases OPB analyzed 
would still potentially qualify for the death penalty.

That opinion had backing from Brown, and Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, one of 
SB 1013’s key authors. The tweak prosecutors had in mind appeared amenable to 
many Republican lawmakers, too.

But a special session didn’t materialize. Brown announced Sept. 18 that not 
enough votes had emerged. Ultimately, the proposed changes could not muster 
enough support it seemed among House Democrats, who’d achieved their goal: 
drastically limiting the death penalty.

(source: opb.org)








USA:

DOJ Considered Using Fentanyl For Federal Executions



A 3-page memo filed by the DOJ in 2018 discussed the potential use of the 
deadly synthetic opioid for death penalty cases.

A court filing by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed that the 
federal government actively considered using fentanyl to carry out executions 
of death row inmates.

The synthetic opioid—which is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine and one of 
the primary causes of opioid-related overdose deaths in the United States—was 
considered for use in death penalty cases in a 3-page memo filed by the DOJ in 
2018.

The memo did not reveal why the government considered and eventually discarded 
the idea of using fentanyl in favor of the barbiturate pentobarbital, which 
Attorney General William Barr said would be used when the government announced 
new executions slated for later this year.

Coverage by Reuters and other sources noted that the memo was brought to light 
when a federal judge ordered the DOJ to show its complete "administrative 
record" on Barr's decision to use pentobarbital. The full contents of the memo 
were not made public.

Department spokesperson Wyn Hornbuckle declined to answer questions in regard 
to the memo, while Mark Inch, the former Bureau of Prisons' director, 
acknowledged that he had written the memo but also did not answer any questions 
about its contents, stating that it would be in conflict with his current role 
as the head of Florida's Department of Corrections.

A Drug Shortage & Botched Executions

Reuters and other sources also noted that the department's consideration of 
fentanyl might have been due to changes in the availability of drugs used for 
lethal injections since the last government-ordered execution in 2003.

Pharmaceutical companies have prevented the use of their drugs for execution, 
which has resulted in both the federal and state governments using different 
drugs or combinations of drugs to carry out capital punishment sentences.

These "cocktails" have resulted in executions where the prisoners appeared to 
suffer physical pain. The family of a death row inmate in Ohio sued the state's 
director of corrections in 2014 after the prisoner appeared to struggle for air 
for nearly 25 minutes after receiving a mixture of benzodiazepine and 
hydromorphone, an opioid, while the 2018 execution of Nebraska inmate Carey 
Dean Moore, which used a mixture of fentanyl, potassium chloride and a 
paralytic, was reported by witnesses to take longer than previous executions.

Ohio Legislator Suggests Using Fentanyl Seized By Police

Despite these incidents, some lawmakers have called for fentanyl to be used in 
executions, including Ohio Republican legislator Scott Wiggam, who in August 
2019 suggested the use of fentanyl seized by police in criminal cases for 
lethal injections.

The state's governor, Mike DeWine, dismissed the idea on the grounds that it 
would not pass "constitutional muster."

Robert Dunham, director of the Washington-based non-profit group the Death 
Penalty Information Center, said that he wasn't surprised that the government 
would consider fentanyl for lethal injections, given its prevalence in the 
national news.

"But there is something fundamentally wrong about using a drug implicated in 
illegal activities as your method of executing prisoners," he added.

(source: thefix.com)

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

Jury will soon decide whether man in CresCom double murder should be sentenced 
to death



A federal jury will soon decide whether Brandon Council should be executed for 
killing 2 CresCom bank employees during a 2017 robbery.

Council’s defense attorneys rested their case on Tuesday during the 3rd week of 
the federal, death penalty trial.

The jury convicted Council last week on murder charges for killing Katie Skeen 
and Donna Major.

On Aug. 21, 2017, Council went into the Conway CresCom bank, while on the run 
from other robberies in North Carolina. Council went to Major’s teller stand, 
waited about 45 seconds and then shot her twice. He ran into Skeen’s office and 
shot her in the head. Council then went back to Major and shot her in the head.

Council robbed the bank and fled to North Carolina. Police arrested him driving 
a car he bought with money stolen from CresCom. Officers found the gun, clothes 
and money from the robbery in the car’s trunk.

The defense, like on Monday, highlighted Council’s youth and his time at Dobbs 
Training School in North Carolina. The school was designed to help convicted 
children in a school-type setting, but inmates and officials described it as 
more of a prison for children.

Deborah Grey is a social worker and completed an extensive review of Council’s 
family history. She conducted more than 75 interviews, reviewed thousands of 
pages of documents and spent over 600 hours on the case. She testified for 
nearly six hours on Thursday about the time before Council’s birth until he was 
25 years old.

Council’s father was not involved in his son’s life for the first 18 years, 
Grey said. His side of the family, including his father, had extensive mental 
and substance-abuse issues. Though, Grey said, she was not testifying on 
whether Council has a mental health condition.

Council’s mother was more like a big sister than a mom and Council’s 
grandmother was his caregiver, Grey said. Family and friends described the home 
as one that met Council’s needs, but more through buying material items than 
showing love.

“This is a household described as cold,” Grey said.

There was drug dealing and use throughout the neighborhood and Council was 
often confined to the yard, Grey said.

Council did well in school, Grey said, until the 7th grade when he experienced 
several significant events. Council’s mother secretly married their church’s 
pastor — who was having an affair with one of Council’s aunts. Council’s 
grandmother also became ill and died.

Council then lived with his mom and stepfather, who physically and sexually 
abused him, Grey said Council disclosed.

Grades started to suffer and Council spent more time in the neighborhood, Grey 
said. He was sent to Dobbs after an arrest for dealing drugs.

Inmates said Dobbs was a prison for children where guards would physically and 
sexually abuse the boys and where there was constant fighting, Grey said. Other 
students described Council as quiet and people from his hometown of Wilson, 
North Carolina, stepped up to protect him.

“He was small, he was non-violent, Grey said.

Council spent about 27 months, over two stints, in Dobbs, Grey said. That 
exceeded the average stay of about 6 months to a year.

After he was released from Dobbs, Council held dozens of jobs over the next 
eight years, Grey said. He never earned more than $13,000 a year. Police also 
arrested Council several times on charges, including larceny, breaking and 
entering and possession of stolen goods.

During cross-examination, Grey said she was only tasked with looking at the 
first 24 years of Council’s life. Council would serve 6 years in prison shortly 
after turning 25. She also admitted that Council received his high-school 
equivalency diploma while at Dobbs, which only 13 % of inmates achieved.

There were also no records to support his claims of sexual and physical abuse 
by his stepfather or at Dobbs, Grey said.

(source: myrtlebeachonline.com)