[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., ARIZ., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 14



TEXAS:

Death penalty waived in Royse City capital murder case----The office of Hunt 
County District Attorney Noble D. Walker Jr. has waived the death penalty in 
connection with a capital murder case out of Royse City.



2 men will not be sentenced to death by lethal injection if they are convicted 
of capital murder in connection with the February homicides of 2 people in 
Royse City.

Hunt County District Attorney Noble D. Walker Jr. said his office filed the 
motion Friday with the 354th District Court in the cases against Dearis Rayvone 
Davis, 19, of Arlington and Calvin Earl Rayford, 18, of Rowlett.

“We have waived the death penalty as a punishment based on the evidence in the 
case,” Walker said, declining further comment.

Davis and Rayford are each being held in lieu of $1 million bond on charges of 
capital murder of multiple persons, filed by the Royse City Police Department.

Both were taken into custody May 29 and were indicted in August on the capital 
murder charges by the Hunt County grand jury involving the deaths of Courtland 
Trowell-Wilmore and a juvenile male whose family is asking for his name to be 
withheld from publication.

The Royse City Police Department reported it had found 2 people dead in the 
Woodland Creek subdivision during the early hours of Feb. 3, with a 3rd 
individual believed to have left the scene.

One of the two victims was a high school student at the time of his death, and 
the other was a former student.

Capital murder carries a sentence upon conviction of lethal injection or life 
in prison without the possibility of parole.

Davis will now need a new attorney, as he had been represented by the West 
Texas Regional Public Defender for Capital Cases program, which only handles 
death penalty cases, while Rayford has hired a defense attorney.

Arraignment hearings in their cases are scheduled later this month in the 354th 
District Court.

(source: Greenville Herald-Banner)








PENNSYLVANIA:

Commentators Criticize Pennsylvania Death Penalty, Call for Reform or Abolition



As the September 11, 2019 Pennsylvania Supreme Court argument date approached 
in 2 cases challenging the constitutionality of the state’s death penalty, 
commentators and stakeholders weighed in on the case in op-eds across the 
state. These opinion articles highlighted the work of a June 2018 report by the 
Pennsylvania Task Force and Advisory Committee on Capital Punishment that found 
deep flaws in the administration of the Commonwealth’s death penalty, as well 
as the experiences of exonerees and victims’ family members.

Daniel Filler, a law professor and member of the Task Force’s advisory 
committee, wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer, “Our legislators have not 
stepped up to ensure a fair and effective process for deciding [death penalty] 
cases. Pennsylvania is the only state in the country that does not fund a 
statewide capital defender program or contribute to the costs of representing 
indigent capital defendants. Each county must fund the defense individually, 
and most simply cannot afford the price tag. Without adequate representation, 
Pennsylvania has sentenced numerous defendants to death only to later find that 
they were severely mentally ill or innocent or intellectually disabled and thus 
ineligible for a death sentence.” Filler urged the court to step in to act 
where the legislature had failed, saying, “Our society has rules and norms and 
at some point a court can no longer ignore a death penalty system that does not 
conform to them.”

The (Allentown) Morning Call published an op-ed by former federal prosecutor 
Thomas Farrell, who wrote, “As a former prosecutor, I am deeply troubled by 
this fact: Pennsylvania does not choose fairly those it condemns to death.” He 
noted the racial and geographic disparities that plague Pennsylvania’s death 
penalty, saying, “If Pennsylvania wants a death penalty system worthy of its 
ultimate power, then it needs to start by reforming its process for capital 
prosecutions. Life or death for a murder defendant depends more than anything 
on in which of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties he is prosecuted. … The pernicious 
effects of race, whether the defendant’s or the victim’s, continue to distort 
prosecutorial and sentencing decisions.” Farrell concluded, “when it comes to 
the death penalty, an imperfection can mean a wrongful execution. Almost as 
momentous, it means we the people — through our legislature, courts, 
prosecutors, and juries — have acted unjustly. That risk has persisted for over 
40 years despite our best efforts to get it right. It’s time to stop.”

In a separate op-ed for The Legal Intelligencer, law professor Jules 
Epstein—who authored one of the amicus briefs filed in support of the 
prisoners’ challenge—echoed those sentiments, presenting specific data on 
racial bias in Pennsylvania. “At its simplest, the data conclusively show the 
following—white victim cases result in the imposition of a sentence of death at 
over twice the rate where the victim is black. The data are compelling. The 
report shows based on the court system’s own data that death sentences returned 
at penalty trials were at 45% (31 in 69) in cases with white victims and 20% 
(15 in 74) in cases with black victims. … [O]ther data show that race is also a 
factor in prosecutorial decision-making on whether to classify a case as 
capital-eligible; and the disparate use of peremptory challenges to exclude 
black citizens from jury service in capital cases is shown to have a long and 
ignoble history in Pennsylvania.” These disparities, Epstein writes, call the 
entire Pennsylvania death-penalty scheme into question: “This racial influence 
compromises fairness, creates arbitrariness and undermines confidence in the 
criminal justice system. The consistency and power of these findings raise the 
fundamental question of whether the death penalty is imposed arbitrarily, i.e., 
without the ‘reasonable consistency’ required by the Constitution’s commands.”

Vicki Schieber, a victim’s advocate whose daughter, Shannon, was murdered in 
Pennsylvania in 1998, wrote in an op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that 
“Pennsylvania’s death penalty is too broken to fix and does not serve victims 
like me.” Schieber also served on the advisory committee and said, “The years 
of work I did with the committee studying Pennsylvania’s death penalty system 
left me with no doubt that it is deeply unfair and broken. My experience as a 
victim’s mother — being mocked and disrespected during the trial of my 
daughter’s killer — showed me that victims’ interests are not served by the 
death penalty.” Schieber said “[v]ictims deserve better than endless trials and 
appeals that expend countless dollars on death penalty cases. We deserve better 
than a system meting out the ultimate punishment in our name whether we want it 
or not.” “Pennsylvania,” she said, “should abolish the death penalty and 
replace it with a system that truly honors victims and their surviving family 
members.”

Two death-row exonerees with Pennsylvania connections shared their personal 
experiences and described the systemic problem of wrongful convictions. Ray 
Krone and Kirk Bloodsworth wrote, “If sentencing an innocent person to death 
isn’t cruel, then nothing is. Nationwide, since 1973, 166 people have been 
exonerated and freed from death row with evidence of their innocence. Six of 
them were in Pennsylvania. Citizens should not look away from the cruelty. It 
is carried out in your names and with your tax dollars.” Krone was born and 
raised in York, Pennsylvania, before moving to Arizona as part of his military 
service. Following his honorable discharge, he was wrongfully convicted and 
sentenced to death as a result of false bitemark testimony by a government 
forensic expert. Bloodsworth was sentenced to death in Maryland and now heads 
the Philadelphia-based death-row exoneree program, Witness to Innocence. The 
1st former death-row prisoner to be exonerated by DNA evidence, Bloodworth was 
convicted and sentenced to death after the prosecution withheld exculpatory 
evidence and manipulated 2 young eyewitnesses into falsely identifying him. 
“Our wrongful convictions were caused by junk science, mistaken eyewitness 
identification, prosecutorial misconduct, and above all, lack of access to 
high-quality legal representation at trial — all of which remain problems in 
Pennsylvania’s broken death penalty system,” the men explained. “Our death 
penalty system is still broken, inaccurate, and unreliable. In Pennsylvania and 
every state, we have life without parole sentences for the small number of 
offenders who show no hope for rehabilitation. Because the death penalty 
inevitably comes with the risk of killing innocent people, the Supreme Court of 
Pennsylvania should strike it down as cruel and unconstitutional.”

(source: Death Penalty Information Center)

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

Death-penalty case at the State Supreme Court is a reminder that Harrisburg 
lawmakers not doing their job



On Wednesday morning, a federal defense attorney and a representative of the 
Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office argued before the Pennsylvania Supreme 
Court in Cox/Marinelli v. Commonwealth, that the way the death penalty works in 
Pennsylvania is unconstitutional. They want the court to strike down the death 
penalty by invoking king’s bench power, which allows the court to rule on cases 
that have “immediate public importance.”

The crux of the argument is that there are systemic problems with the death 
penalty that require the court’s intervention. The basis for this argument is 
largely the 280-page report of the Pennsylvania Joint State Commission about 
the death penalty that was released last summer after seven years of 
preparation. The bipartisan commission found that the death penalty was 
unevenly applied and influenced by race and geography. According to the report, 
97% of death-penalty sentences are converted to life or less, often due to 
ineffective counsel.

In 2015, Gov. Tom Wolf put a moratorium on executions.

The hearing ended with a representative from the Office of Pennsylvania State 
Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati (R., Jefferson). Scarnati’s office 
argued that the goal of the Joint State Commission is to inform legislative 
decisions, not to be used to invoke king’s bench and bypass the legislature. 
Further, if the court does move to rule on this, it would disincentivize the 
legislature from conducting further research that could be used as “handcuffs” 
against it in the future.

In other words: How dare anyone take a well-researched bipartisan report that 
was paid for by the taxpayers and, unlike the state Senate, actually do 
something with it?

The Joint Commission report doesn’t call for abolishing the death penalty -- 
as this board has in the past. It provides a series of recommendations for the 
legislature to implement, including a state fund for creating a state-funded 
capital defender office. Over a year since the report was published, the Senate 
didn’t even hold a hearing about the death penalty, let alone seriously act on 
the recommendations.

In the last budget, the legislature did set aside $500,000 for county public 
defenders offices to apply to reimburse cost of indigent capital defense -- far 
from the recommended statewide defense office or any systemic change.

This is not the first time the Supreme Court has had to do the Senate’s job. In 
2018, only months before the midterm election, the court had to draw a fair 
congressional district map because the Senate failed to do so. Scarnati then 
asked the Supreme Court of the United States to strike down that map.

In fact, recent analysis by Spotlight PA, the new investigative newsroom in 
Harrisburg powered by The Inquirer, found that the number of bills that the 
General Assembly sent last year to the governor’s desk is half of what it used 
to send a few decades ago.

Instead of threatening to stop the review of data and conducting research, 
Scarnati and other senators should start taking their job more seriously and 
bring legislative solutions to fix broken systems in Pennsylvania. A discussion 
about fixing, or abolishing, the death penalty would be a good start.

(source: Editorial, Philiadelphia Inquirer)

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

Reclaiming your identity: Two of the Exonerated Five talk to Penn State 
students about prison system, activism



On April 19, 1989, teenagers Yusef Salaam and Raymond Santana spent their day 
hanging out in the park with friends.

That same night, Trisha Meili was brutally assaulted and raped during her jog 
through Central Park.

Yusef and Raymond became 2 of the 5 African American and Hispanic boys who 
would later be coined, “The Central Park 5,” who were falsely convicted of the 
attacks and sentenced to five to 10 years in prison for a crime they didn’t 
commit. The boys were between the ages of 14 and 16 at the time of their 
conviction.

Their detailed story was taken to the big screen by director Ava DuVernay, who 
adapted their experiences into the critically acclaimed Netflix four-part 
mini-series, “When They See Us.”

Yusef Salaam and Raymond Santana arrived at Alumni Hall in the HUB-Robeson 
Center on Sept. 12 to lead a conversation titled, “Now They Hear Us: Living 
Without Regret and Inspiring Future Generations.” The conversation revolved 
around how the film adaptations of their lives can be used to start discussions 
about racial injustice embedded in the U.S. judicial system.

“They’ve always seen us as 3/5 of a person,” Salaam said regarding 
institutionalized racism in police forces. “We’re talking about the morphing of 
slavery into Jim Crow into the modern thing which is the prison industrial 
complex.”

Adrianna Willis attended the conversation and was captivated by the comments 
and experiences that didn’t make it to the TV screen. She said conversations 
like these are essential for students to take part in.

“It’s important for people to realize that the film wasn’t just a drama series, 
it was factual,” Willis (freshman-biology) said. “These events actually 
happened. This stuff is serious, and people need to learn about it.”

In 2002, serial rapist and murderer Matias Reyes confessed to the crime, 
exonerating the Central Park Five. Santana served 5 years in prison and Salaam 
served 6 years and 8 months before being released.

The two men discussed the trials and tribulations of returning to life 
following prison. Santana was 14 and Salaam was 15 when they were falsely 
convicted. Salaam reminisced on recently finding two photographs of himself, 
one prior to the case where he looked like a normal teenager, and one a few 
days after he was released from prison. He said the men in those pictures were 
2 different people.

“There’s not a day that goes by that we don’t think about the case or what 
happened to us,” Santana said, “But do we stop living? No.”

The event was free and open to the public. Although the topics were heavy and 
intense, the two men had a positive attitude and brought humor into the 
conversation. Students packed in to Alumni Hall, which reached maximum 
capacity.

“I wanted to hear their side of the story,” Haleem Abdullah (freshman- 
mechanical engineering) said. “They got arrested for something they didn’t do, 
and they had to lie just because the police told them to. I wanted to see how 
they felt when they were in jail, what they thought about, that kind of stuff.”

The conversation included a question-and-answer portion where students could 
interact directly with the 2 men and pose individual questions. One student 
expressed his experience with the prison system and asked how the men prevent 
their prison experiences from defining them. For Santana, the key is in trying 
to reclaim lost time.

“We dealt with going into prison at 14, coming out at 21. There’s this gap 
that’s missing,” Santana said. “How do you reclaim that? It’s hard but you have 
to try. That’s why I started my clothing line. When I was 14, I loved to sketch 
and that was taken from me. I wanted to relive that, so Park Madison was born.”

A major player in the mini-series, and in history itself, was President Donald 
Trump. According to TIME, Trump spent $85,000 placing ads in local newspapers 
pushing for the use of the death penalty in their case. For Salaam, seeing 
Trump on the campaign trail and ultimately in the Oval Office following these 
ads and his involvement in the case was troubling.

“Every great story has a great villain,” Salaam said, regarding Trump. “How do 
we codify this reality, so people understand what we’re really seeing is white 
supremacy and white dominance? Those are the only laws that are running America 
right now.”

Instead of focusing on the trauma in their past, the 2 men have put their 
energy towards activism and education. They agree the power is not only in 
their own hands, but also in the hands of the students that sat in front of 
them.

“We have to understand our power,” Salaam said. “If we unify under the fact 
that we all want justice, we have power. I’m talking about people in the 
audience that represent the kaleidoscope of the human family. As we push 
forward, we need to know we are the answer to the questions that we seek. You 
begin to plant the seeds in the future hearts and minds of people, so then the 
marathon continues.”

(source: The (Penn St. Univ.) Daily Collegian)








ARIZONA:

Court says Arizona inmate deserves new chance to show lawyer failed him



A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that an Arizona death-row inmate should 
have another chance to prove his attorney did not fully investigate evidence of 
his intellectual disabilities in his trial for a 1989 Phoenix double-murder.

A 3-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said there is a 
“reasonable probability” that David Ramirez’s sentencing would have been 
different if his attorney at the time had presented evidence of the defendant’s 
low IQ and a history of abuse, sexual assault, neglect and developmental 
issues.

“The (sentencing) judge did find several mitigating factors, and only 3 
aggravating factors,” Chief Judge Sidney Thomas wrote in his opinion. “Had the 
evidence of a mental impairment been introduced, as well as the evidence of the 
level of abuse Ramirez suffered, there is a substantial claim that the judge 
‘would have struck a different balance.’”

The U.S. Attorney’s office for Arizona did not respond to request for comment 
on the case Wednesday. But Tim Gabrielsen, an assistant federal public defender 
for Arizona, said that while he welcomed the decision, “it’s regrettable that 
it took this long” to reach this point.

Ramirez has spent nearly 30 years on death row for the stabbing deaths of his 
girlfriend, Mary Gortarez, and her 15-year-old daughter, Candie, in Gortarez’s 
Phoenix apartment on May 25, 1989.

Police were called to the apartment that morning by neighbors who reported 
hearing thuds and sounds of struggle for around half an hour. When they 
arrived, police found what appeared to be the scene of a violent struggle with 
Ramirez “apparently intoxicated” and covered in blood, which was splattered 
throughout the apartment.

Gortarez was found on the living room floor, stabbed 18 times in the neck, 
back, stomach and left eye. Candie’s naked body was found in a bedroom, stabbed 
15 times around her neck. Neither victim died immediately and records say 
Ramirez sexually assaulted Candie before she died.

A jury convicted Ramirez guilty on two counts of 1st-degree murder in December 
1990.

At sentencing, Ramirez presented a sentencing report that talked about his 
chaotic childhood, a history of sexual and substance abuse, a poor school 
record and the fact that his state of mind was muddled at time of the murders 
by drugs and alcohol. Three family members testified to varying levels of 
maternal support for Ramirez, and 2 prison guards said he was a good worker in 
prison.

The sentencing judge agreed there were several mitigating factors for Ramirez, 
but also found 3 aggravating factors: 2 previous felony convictions, multiple 
murders and the “especially cruel, heinous or depraved manner” of the killings. 
He sentenced Ramirez to death.

In his most recent appeals, however, Ramirez has argued that the public 
defender who represented him at trial – who had never handled a capital case 
before – failed to investigate and present evidence that would have weighed in 
his favor.

The attorney agreed, saying in later court filings that she was unprepared to 
represent “someone as mentally disturbed as David Ramirez, especially in a 
capital case.” She relied on the psychologist’s finding that Ramirez was “well 
within the average range of intelligence.”

But they psychologist said he would not have reached the findings he did if the 
attorney had presented him with fuller records on Ramirez’s background. Those 
would have led to different tests that showed Ramirez with an IQ in the 70 to 
77 range.

The appeals court said the evidence presented at Ramirez’s sentencing painted a 
“relatively innocuous” picture compared to what later emerged.

Family members who were subsequently contacted said Ramirez had little 
relationship with his mother, who routinely beat him with “anything she could 
get her hands on, including electrical cords and shoes.” She reportedly drank 
while pregnant with Ramirez and told family members she would put beer in 
Ramirez’s bottle when he was young.

He was often left in charge of younger siblings, one of whom died of exposure 
after their mother left them at home without heat one night while she went out 
partying. Family members noted developmental delays in the young Ramirez, who 
did not know how to comb his hair or use utensils, for example.

The appeals court ordered the case back to district court to more fully 
investigate Ramirez’s claim of an ineffective attorney. It turned down his 
other appeals, including a claim that courts improperly rejected his mitigating 
circumstances, and refused to grant permission for other issues.

(source: KTAR news)








CALIFORNIA:

Mother Charged in Death of 7-Month-Old Child----Royal M. suffered head and neck 
injuries on Nov. 6, 2018 in a case that became a homicide, officials said.



A young mother was charged Friday with assault causing the death of her 
7-month-old baby, the 3rd time in recent years that a mother has been charged 
with her child's murder in the Antelope Valley.

Anaiyah Perry, 21, did not enter a plea when she appeared in court in 
Lancaster, and was ordered held in jail in lieu of $2 million. She's expected 
to appear in court again for her arraignment in 2 weeks.

The coroner's autopsy found that baby Royal M. died of blunt force neck trauma, 
and determined it to be a homicide. But the law enforcement investigation 
stretched 10 months before authorities this week arrested Perry, and the Lso 
Angeles County District Attorney's Office filed counts of assault and murder.

A 911 call brought emergency responders to a Lancaster home the afternoon of 
last Nov. 6. The child was airlifted to Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, but 
could not be revived.

Carrying his baby, the father went to a neighbor's house seeking help, recalled 
Debbie Stober, whose family was then sharing the house next door with another 
family.

"He said, 'help me, help me, my baby's not breathing.'"

Stober called 911 as her husband performed CPR with directions from the 911 
call-taker until paramedics arrived. During that time, Perry, then 20, held the 
couple's other son, staying mostly outside, Stober said.

The young couple were living with his parents at their home. It was Stober's 
understanding that the grandparents provided much of the child care, but at the 
time were away from the house on election day in order to vote.

"They're good people, a good family," said Day Riggle, the next door neighbor, 
who spoke of the devastating impact on them. "The mother of the baby, that's 
another story. But I don't know how much of that, of my feelings toward her 
now, are because of what I know."

The criminal filing does not assert any allegations of previous abuse by Perry, 
nor does it describe what the assault entailed.

When the father brought the baby, the initial suspicion was that he may have 
choked on something, the neighbors said. Later, in conversations with 
authorities, they were told the possibility of shaken baby syndrome was being 
examined, they said. Perry is 5 foot 11 and weighs 270 pounds, according to the 
booking records of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.

It is the latest in a series of alleged deadly abuse cases by parents that have 
rocked the Antelope Valley.

In 2013, 8-year-old Gabriel Fernandez died after months of what a jury found to 
be abuse and torture. Last year, the boy's mother Pearl Sinthia Fernandez was 
sentenced to life in prison, and her boyfriend Isauro Aguirre was sentenced to 
death.

The prosecution is currently seeking the death penalty against Heather Barron 
and boyfriend Kareem Leiva in the death last year of her son Anthony Avalos, 
10.

In both cases, before the children died, the county's Department of Children 
and Family Services had launched investigations into reports of abuse, but 
allowed the children to remain with their birth mothers and their boyfriends.

The neighbors of Royal M's parents do not believe there had ever been occasion 
for DCFS to come to the house.

After Royal's death, the parents moved to Los Angeles, and the grandparents 
continued to care for Royal's brother. At Perry's appearance Friday, the court 
issued a protective order for him.

(source: nbclosangeles.com)

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

1 of 2 men accused in 2017 shooting death of 5-year-old pleads not guilty to 
all charges



1 of the 2 men accused of being responsible for the death of 5-year-old Kason 
Guyton in 2017 pleaded not guilty to 12 felony charges Friday morning.

Jonathan Rae Knight, 30, appeared before Kern County Superior Court Judge 
Michael Bush and pleaded not guilty to 1st-degree murder, attempted murder and 
shooting at a vehicle, among other charges after the Kern County grand jury 
indicted him and Jeremy DeWayne King, 26, on 12 felony charges. An arrest 
warrant has been issued for King and he is still at large.

Knight is being held at the Kern County Jail without bail. His trial is 
scheduled to begin Oct. 28, and he will appear in Kern County Superior Court 
Oct. 18 for a readiness hearing.

Knight turned his back to cameras after Bush granted news media permission to 
record his arraignment.

On Feb. 23, 2017, Kason Guyton was shot and killed while riding in a car at the 
600 block of California Avenue. His 7-year-old brother, Brian Guyton, was 
wounded but survived.

The boys were in a car driven by Davyon Vercher, a member of the East Side 
Crips, who was on parole at the time of the shooting. Vercher was dating the 
boys’ mother, according to court reports.

King and Knight are known members of the West Side Crips.

Both Knight and King are charged with 1st-degree murder with 2 alleged special 
circumstances, including shooting from a vehicle and participating in a gang, 
according to District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer, who spoke at a news conference 
Thursday.

The 2 could face the death penalty if convicted but that decision has not yet 
been made by the DA’s office, Zimmer said.

(source: bakersfield.com)








USA:

US considered using fentanyl to kill death row prisoners



The US Department of Justice examined using fentanyl in lethal injections as it 
prepared last year to resume executing condemned prisoners, a then untested use 
of the powerful, addictive opioid that has helped fuel a national crisis of 
overdose deaths.

The department revealed it had contemplated using the drug in a court filing 
last month, which has not been previously reported.

In the end, it decided against adopting the drug for executions. 
Attorney-General William Barr announced in July his department instead would 
use pentobarbital, a barbiturate, when it resumes federal executions later this 
year, ending a de facto moratorium on the punishment put in place by the 
administration of US President Barack Obama.

But the special consideration given to the possibilities of fentanyl, even as 
federal agents were focused on seizing illegal imports of the synthetic opioid, 
show how much has changed since the federal government last carried out an 
execution nearly 20 years ago.

Many pharmaceutical companies have since put tight controls on their 
distribution channels to stop their drugs being used in executions.

As old supply chains vanished, many states, and the federal government in turn, 
have been forced to tinker with their lethal recipes. They have experimented 
with different drugs, in some cases leading to grisly "botched" executions in 
which the condemned prisoners have visibly suffered prolonged, excruciating 
deaths, viewed by some as a breach of the constitutional ban on "cruel and 
unusual" punishments.

In 2017, Nebraska and Nevada announced they would use fentanyl, which is 100 
times more powerful than morphine, in new multi-drug execution protocols.

By 2018, the US Justice Department was also examining the "use of fentanyl as 
part of a lethal injection protocol", according to a 3-page internal memorandum 
from March 2018 by the director of the department's Bureau of Prisons.

The Justice Department revealed the memo's existence in an August court filing 
after a federal judge ordered it to produce a complete "administrative record" 
showing how it arrived at the new pentobarbital execution protocol announced in 
July.

The full contents of the memo are not public. It is not known why the 
department decided to examine fentanyl, what supply channels were considered or 
why it ultimately rejected fentanyl as a protocol. The government's court 
filing shows the only other named drug examined as the subject of a department 
memo was pentobarbital, the drug it now says it wants to use in December and 
January to kill 5 of the 61 prisoners awaiting execution on federal death row.

Wyn Hornbuckle, a department spokesman, declined to share a copy of the memo or 
to answer questions about the government's execution protocol.

Mark Inch, who was the Bureau of Prisons' director at the time, acknowledged in 
a brief telephone interview writing the memo. Inch, who abruptly resigned a 
couple months after writing the memo, declined to answer questions, in part 
because he said it would be in conflict with his current role running Florida's 
Department of Corrections.

Doctors can prescribe fentanyl for treating severe pain. In recent years, 
illegal fentanyl has become a common additive in bootleg pain pills and other 
street drugs, contributing to the tens of thousands of opioid overdose deaths 
in the country each year. Even tiny quantities can slow or stop a person's 
breathing.

Earlier this year, an Ohio lawmaker proposed using some of the illegal fentanyl 
seized from drug traffickers to execute condemned inmates.

Death penalty researchers say that just because a drug is deadly does not mean 
it is always appropriate as an execution drug.

"I don't think it'd be a surprise that the government would be looking at 
alternative methods of carrying out lethal injection, and fentanyl has been in 
the news," Robert Dunham, the director of the Washington-based non-profit group 
the Death Penalty Information Center, said in an interview.

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

In August 2018, Carey Dean Moore became the 1st person in the United States to 
be executed using a protocol that included fentanyl.

Nebraska prison officials injected him with fentanyl and 3 other drugs. Moore 
took 23 minutes to die. Witnesses said that before succumbing, Moore breathed 
heavily and coughed and that his face turned red, then purple.

(source: Reruters)

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

Executions would curb murder rate----Quick executions needed to curb murder 
rate



All of our states and the federal government need to bring back the death 
penalty. There are murders, mass shootings being committed daily across our 
country. There are children, women, men, police, EMTs and many other being 
murdered everyday that must be dealt with.

When someone is accused with murder and found guilty of murder, they should 
have 90 days to appeal their verdict. If not, they should be executed within 10 
days later. They [shouldn’t] have the privilege of going to prison for 20 years 
to life, getting sex changes or medical life saving transfers that people have 
been waiting for years for. Who pays for all of this? We do, the taxpayers.

Our states and federal governments have to get up off of their dead rears and 
take responsibility to something different and get the job done now, not wait 
10 years from now. When the execution takes place it should be carried out in 
the same manner that the murders were committed. If done, the murder rate in 
the great USA would collapse (thank God).

William E. Hickey

Littlestown, Pennsylvania

(source: Letter to the Editor, Baltimore Sun)