[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----KAN., OKLA., ORE., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 4



KANSAS:

U.S. Supreme Court to hear Kahler death sentence appeal----Court schedules 
three Kansas cases for fall docket



3 appeals involving Kansas will be on the U.S. Supreme Court docket when the 
court reconvenes for its October term, with 1 case centered on a capital murder 
conviction and subsequent death penalty sentence delivered by a jury and judge 
in Osage County, Kan.

On Oct. 7, the first day of this year’s term, the Court will hear the 
defendant’s appeal in Kansas v. James Kraig Kahler, the capital murder case 
arising from Osage County. In the appeal, defendant Kahler does not dispute 
killing his wife, the couple’s 2 daughters, and his wife’s grandmother in 
November 2009, but argues Kansas law unconstitutionally prevented him from 
asserting an insanity defense in his case. The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed 
the conviction and death sentence, and the U.S. Supreme Court granted the 
defendant’s request to review that decision.

The Kansas Attorney General’s Office reported it is the first time in modern 
Kansas history that the state has had three cases pending before the high court 
at one time. The attorney general’s office will represent Kansas in all three 
appeals as it does in all U.S. Supreme Court litigation.

“The U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear only about 1 % of the cases they are 
asked to review each term,” said Attorney General Derek Schmidt. “It is highly 
unusual for a single state, especially a small state like Kansas, to have 3 
cases pending before the Court simultaneously. We are working vigorously to 
prepare for these 3 arguments and look forward to presenting the State’s cases 
in the fall.”

Kansas last participated in oral argument at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015, 
when the attorney general successfully argued that that the death sentences 
imposed on two capital murder defendants in Wichita and one in Great Bend did 
not violate the U. S. Constitution. Those cases were Kansas v. Jonathan and 
Reginald Carr and Kansas v. Sidney Gleason.

(source: osagecountyonline.com)








OKLAHOMA:

More benefits planned for some Okla. death row inmates----Some of the 44 death 
row inmates will be moved to a unit that gives them more benefits and access to 
the outdoors



The Oklahoma Department of Corrections plans to move some of the 44 death row 
inmates housed at the prison’s maximum-security H-Unit to another unit to give 
them more benefits and access to the outdoors.

The agency’s interim Director Scott Crow says in a letter released Thursday to 
the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma that he plans to move 
“qualifying inmates” to another unit by the end of October.

Crow says the move will allow those inmates to have direct sunlight, better 
access to the outdoors and unrestricted conversation with other inmates.

The ACLU of Oklahoma warned Crow in a July letter about numerous potential 
constitutional violations of the rights of death row inmates, mostly by 
confining them to their cells for 23 hours per day.

(source: Associated Press)








OREGON:

Death penalty for Jeremy Christian is not an option, given Oregon’s new law, 
defense attorneys tell judge



Defense attorneys for Jeremy Christian -- who is accused of aggravated murder 
for the killings of 2 strangers on a Northeast Portland MAX train -- filed 
court papers this week asking a judge to dismiss the death-penalty murder 
charges against their client.

The attorneys say that, due to a new law passed by the state Legislature and 
that went into effect Sunday, Christian can no longer be tried for aggravated 
murder and therefore is no longer eligible for the death penalty if he’s found 
guilty.

The new law, which was signed by the governor and passed into law as Senate 
Bill 1013, narrows the definition of aggravated murder, which is the only crime 
in Oregon that can draw a death sentence. In order to be convicted of that 
crime, a defendant must have killed two or more people as an act of organized 
terrorism; intentionally killed a child younger than 14 with premeditation; 
killed another person while locked up in jail or prison for a previous murder; 
or killed a police, correctional or probation officer.

Under the new law, Christian’s attorneys say that prosecutors could choose to 
pursue him under the newly created charge of first-degree murder. That crime 
calls for sentences ranging from life in prison with a 30-year minimum to a 
“true life” prison term, meaning Christian would spend the rest of his life 
locked up if convicted of 1st-degree murder.

Christian, 37, is currently scheduled for trial starting Jan. 21.

Christian was arrested on allegations of fatally stabbing Ricky Best and 
Taliesin Namkai-Meche in the neck on a train as it pulled into the Hollywood 
MAX station on May 26, 2017. A third passenger, Micah Fletcher, was stabbed in 
the neck but survived.

Although Christian is accused of killing two people, he no longer appears to be 
eligible for aggravated murder charges because all evidence -- at least that 
which has been available publicly -- shows Christian acted on his own and not 
as part of an organized act of terrorism.

Prosecutors haven’t yet filed a response to the defense attorneys’ requests. 
Brent Weisberg, a spokesman for the Multnomah County District Attorney’s 
Office, said: “We’re just trying to figure out our next steps right now.”

Since the House and Senate approved the bill in June, there has been much 
debate about the intentions of the bill’s backers and whether they were 
confused about which cases the bill would apply to.

There’s been some controversy about whether all lawmakers who voted for the 
bill understood that the bill would apply to defendants, such as Christian, who 
allegedly killed before the bill took effect Sept. 29 but who hadn’t yet gone 
to trial.

But much of the controversy has swirled around whether the bill applies to an 
entirely different set of defendants: People who were previously convicted, but 
whose convictions have been overturned and they have been granted new future 
trials or future re-sentencing hearings.

The Oregon Department of Justice issued an opinion finding that the law applies 
to these old death penalty cases that have been overturned, as well as pending 
cases. That prompted calls for Gov. Kate Brown to call a special legislative 
session to “fix” the bill and any confusion over it. Brown said in September 
that she would not, explaining that there wasn’t support among lawmakers to 
pass the fix.

Meanwhile, Christian’s attorneys -- Greg Scholl and Dean Smith -- have asked 
for a hearing in which they can argue their case that the death penalty is no 
longer an option in Christian’s case. The lawyers point out that the bill, as 
passed, states that it applies “to crimes committed before, on or after (Sept. 
29, 2019) that are subject to sentencing proceedings occurring on or after 
(Sept. 29, 2019).”

(source: oregonlive.com)








USA:

Jurors Report Experiencing Continuing Trauma After Serving in South Carolina 
Death-Penalty Trial



Jurors in South Carolina report that they are experiencing profound 
psychological effects from their exposure to graphically violent images, 
testimony, and argument during the death-penalty trial of Tim Jones, Jr. 
(pictured). Three months after the June 13, 2019 conclusion of the penalty 
phase of a trial in which jurors sentenced Jones to death for killing his five 
young children, nine of the 18 Lexington County jurors and alternates from the 
case agreed to speak with the local newspaper, The State, about the case. The 
evidence, the newspaper said, has left them shaken and haunted, and is having a 
continuing impact on their lives.

Throughout the 21-day trial, jurors heard graphic testimony about how Jones 
killed his five children, drove around with their bodies in black garbage bags 
for 9 days, and eventually dumped their remains in the rural Alabama woods. 
News reports reflect that the trial was halted “almost every day” as jurors 
required time to process the evidence about the crime.

“I think about it every day,” said one woman who served as an alternate juror. 
“Many times during the trial, I went in the jurors’ bathroom and just wailed – 
cried my eyes out.” Another alternate juror — a military veteran — said that 
the trial dredged up memories of mass war crime graves in Bosnia. “I smelled 
death in Bosnia, and since then, I’ve had nightmares about it,” she said. The 
trial “brought it back like it was yesterday.” Another juror said that “[t]here 
wasn’t a day when I didn’t drive home and say to myself, ‘I cannot believe I’m 
in the middle of this.’ It was every day.”

A psychology professor at Wofford College, Dawn McQuiston, explained to The 
State that jurors can experience mental health issues after exposure to 
gruesome testimony. This “secondary trauma,” McQuiston said, produces symptoms 
such as “sudden crying, nightmares, anxiety and depression” comparable to the 
symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. People who have experienced 
secondary trauma, she said, often need psychological counseling in its 
aftermath. “The people typically selected for jurors — they’ve never seen or 
heard such graphic details before. You can only imagine the shock to their 
system,” said McQuiston.

The jurors’ experiences highlight one of the underappreciated consequences of 
death penalty trials. Jones had repeatedly offered to plead guilty in exchange 
for multiple life-without-parole sentences, and jurors would have been spared 
the long-term trauma from their service if the plea offer had been accepted. 
However, local prosecutors turned down the offer and proceeded with the trial. 
“If this wasn’t the case for the death penalty, we don’t need a death penalty,” 
11th Circuit Solicitor Rick Hubbard, who prosecuted the case, told The State. 
“For me, I could not live with a decision not to seek the death penalty.”

The capital trial also created a range of other hardships for the jurors. 
“There were people on the jury living paycheck to paycheck. Fifteen dollars a 
day [the juror’s daily stipend] doesn’t go very far. Some employers weren’t 
paying them,” one juror explained to The State. “There were single parents and 
young men with families – it was a hardship.” Another juror had to skip medical 
treatments to attend the trial. Others had to begin working on the weekends.

Still, jurors thought Jones deserved death. ““It wasn’t hard to do the right 
thing with Tim Jones. He wasn’t crazy. He was evil,” one juror said. Another 
juror, who wasn’t sure she would be able to cast a vote for death, said, “I did 
the right thing. Those children had no voice but us.”

The capital trial also had an adverse impact on the victims’ family. Jones’ 
ex-wife, the mother of the murdered children, testified against sentencing 
Jones to death. “He did not show my children mercy by any means. But my kids 
loved him and if I’m speaking on behalf of my kids and not myself,” she said, 
they would not have wanted their father to die. Jones’s father, stepmother, 
sister, and two brothers all also pleaded with jurors to save Jones’s life. A 
2012 study published in the Marquette Law Review found that family members in 
homicide proceedings in which the death penalty was unavailable were 
physically, psychologically, and behaviorally more healthy and expressed 
greater satisfaction with the legal system than family members in death-penalty 
cases.

(source: Death Penalty Information Center)

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

DeWitt Chili's killer to face federal trial and possibility of death penalty in 
2020



A federal trial date has been set for the man who shot and killed 2 people at 
the Chili’s in DeWitt during a robbery in 2018.

William Wood Jr.'s federal trial has been scheduled to begin on March 2, 2020 
in Binghamton before Senior Judge Thomas J. McAvoy. Wood faces the possibility 
of the death penalty if convicted on federal murder charges.

He pleaded guilty to state murder charges in Onondaga County on March 1, 2019, 
and, on April 15, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of 
parole.

Wood, 33, admitted to killing Kristopher Hicks and Stephen Gudknecht on the 
night of Sept. 14, 2018 at the Chili’s on Erie Blvd. in DeWitt. He also 
admitted to attempting to kill another employee, who survived.

Wood used to work at the restaurant and admitted to planning the robbery with 
the help of 4 others, who have all been convicted in connection to the crime.

(source: cnycentral.com)

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

In one of the deadliest bank robberies in recent memory, man sentenced in 
Conway murders



A federal jury sentenced Brandon Council to death for shooting and killing 2 
employees during a robbery at the Conway, South Carolina, CresCom bank in 2017.

The jury delivered its sentencing verdict Thursday morning after nearly three 
weeks of trial. The same jury convicted Council on murder and robbery last 
week. The panel consisted of 8 women and 4 men.

Council showed no emotion as the verdict of “death” was read on two accounts. 
Members of the victims’ families also showed little reaction to the verdict, 
though a few sobs could be heard in the room.

On Aug. 21, 2017, Council went into the 16th Avenue branch and approached Donna 
Major at the teller counter. He waited about 45 seconds before pulling out a 
gun and shooting Major twice.

Katie Skeen screamed in her nearby office, and Council ran to her. Council shot 
Skeen from point-blank range and killed her.

Council then ran back to Major, who was on the floor behind the counter, and 
shot her in the head. He then robbed the bank.

Council stole Skeen’s car from the parking lot and fled to North Carolina, 
where he picked up a prostitute and stayed at a hotel. The next day, he used a 
person he just met to buy a car using money from the robbery.

On Aug. 23, police arrested Council outside of a Greenville, North Carolina, 
hotel. FBI investigators spoke to Council, who detailed his crime spree and his 
reasoning.

The jury found the government met all of its required elements to sentence 
Council to death. The defense provided 50 different mitigating factors as 
reasons why Council should not be put to death. At least 1 juror supported 27 
of the 50 factors, but in the end it did not convince the panel enough to 
sentence Council to life in prison.

“These were intentional and senseless murders,” federal prosecutor Nathaniel 
Williams said after the verdict.

(suorce: thestate.com)






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

‘Death Penalty, Bring It Forth!’: Trump Loves Capital Punishment----Trump has 
openly called for capital punishment to be used against people he’s accused of 
“treason,” “spying,” and other crimes for years.



Days after a whistleblower triggered an impeachment inquiry over Donald Trump's 
phone call with the president of Ukraine, Trump insinuated that the person 
should be executed.

“You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The 
spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now,” 
the president said.

And as Trump proceeds to accuse members of Congress of “treason,” and his own 
intelligence officers of being “spies,” it bears remembering that the man has 
long called for the execution of people of all stripes.

For Trump, capital punishment is more than a sober matter of justice; it’s 
another instrument to strike fear into the hearts of his perceived enemies. He 
relishes acting out executions at his rallies and at times speaks about it in 
near-cinematic tones.

At a campaign rally in 2015, Trump discussed his love for the 1974 movie “Death 
Wish,” in which Charles Bronson plays a vigilante fighting crime in New York 
City by summarily executing people with an air of ill intent.

Trump openly fantasized about acting out the plot of “Death Wish” in real life 
before a crowd of supporters in Franklin, Tennessee, on Oct. 3, 2015:

“In fact, I have a license to carry in New York, can you believe that? Nobody 
knows that,” Trump said, as he pantomimed drawing a firearm from his hip. 
“Somebody attacks me, somebody attacks me … Oh, they’re gonna be shocked. Can 
you imagine? Somebody says, ‘Oh, there’s Trump. He’s easy pickins.’” He then 
pantomimed more gunplay: “What’d you say?”

It was a deeply revealing moment for Trump, but not out of the ordinary. Trump 
has been calling for capital punishment since long before he became president.

1989

When 4 black males and 1 Latino male, aged 14 to 16, were on trial in 1989 for 
the assault and rape of a white female who had been jogging in Central Park, 
Donald Trump spent $85,000 to run a full-page advertisement in four New York 
City newspapers calling for their executions via the reinstatement of the death 
penalty. “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” the ad blared 
in bold capital letters.

The 5 men were later exonerated by DNA evidence, but Donald Trump has never 
retracted or apologized for his demand to have them put to death.

2011-2014

In his since -eleted “From the Desk of Donald Trump” video blog, Trump called 
for the death penalty for Drew Peterson, a police officer convicted of killing 
his wife. Trump also wanted to “bring the death penalty to Norway,” as a 
punishment for mass shooter Anders Breivik.

On Twitter, Trump additionally called for the death penalty for Colorado mass 
shooter James Holmes; Tucson mass shooter Jared Loughner; the Tsarnaev 
brothers, who carried out the Boston Marathon bombing; unspecified “perverts” 
who abduct children; and Jeffrey T. Johnson, who shot and killed a co-worker at 
the Empire State Building, and was killed at the scene by police officers.

But for some villains, a simple execution isn’t good enough for Trump. “Now 
they give the death penalty where they give a slight injection so that they 
don’t have pain when the needle goes in, to slowly put them to sleep. I mean, 
these people have to be treated very, very severely,” Trump said on MSNBC’s 
"Morning Joe" in 2010.

On another occasion, Trump took the Babylonian “eye for an eye” approach, 
suggesting that Alton Nolen, who beheaded a woman at a Vaughan Foods store in 
Oklahoma, should also be beheaded.

Trump’s support for the death penalty is also not limited to the cases of 
murderers, terrorists, or those who've committed sex crimes against children. 
In 2013 he explicitly called for the execution of Edward Snowden, whom he 
labeled a “traitor” and a “spy.”

2016 Presidential Campaign

During the Republican primary and presidential campaign of 2016, Trump 
reiterated his support for capital punishment as well as torture. “I’ve always 
supported the death penalty. I don’t even understand people that don’t,” Trump 
said in a February town hall in New Hampshire.

During numerous other campaign events, Trump lamented how Bowe Bergdahl, a U.S. 
soldier who deserted his post and was taken hostage by the Taliban, got off too 
easy. Trump would gleefully act out how in “the old days” Bergdahl would have 
been executed by firing squad. And, just in case the “old days” act left any 
doubt as to how Trump would handle the Bergdahl situation, he called for 
Bergdahl’s execution directly:

The execution president

Trump has continued to support the death penalty in office and has even looked 
for opportunities to expand its use. Trump’s Department of Justice recently 
asked the Federal Bureau of Prisons to revive the federal death penalty, which 
has been dormant since 2003.

On multiple occasions, Trump has also tacitly endorsed other countries’ use of 
the death penalty for some drug crimes, such as Singapore, a country where 
possessing 500 grams of marijuana can be punishable by death.

During remarks in February, Trump characterized a conversation with Chinese 
President Xi Jinping in almost exactly the same fashion, quoting Xi as saying 
the reason China doesn’t have a drug problem is that dealers get the death 
penalty. “End of problem,” Trump said. Trump also hailed a deal he struck with 
Xi to expand China’s death penalty to manufacturers of fentanyl.

Perhaps it was conversations like this that inspired Trump to suggest, during 
his remarks on the opioid crisis in March of 2018.. that the United States 
implement the death penalty for certain drug crimes.

“Drug traffickers kill so many thousands of our citizens every year. And that’s 
why my Department of Justice will be seeking so many much tougher penalties 
than we’ve ever had ... led by the death penalty, for the really bad pushers 
and abusers.”

At the same event, Trump did include a caveat.

“The ultimate penalty has to be the death penalty,” he said. “Now maybe our 
country’s not ready for that; it’s possible. It’s possible that our county’s 
not ready for that. And I can understand it, maybe. Although personally, I 
can’t understand that.”

(source: vice.com)