The StandDown Texas Project

Philadelphia Event

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports, "An effort to fund art instead of death row," by A.D. Amorosi.

The Philadelphia poet, painter, musician, and activist Aja Beech spent the Memorial Day weekend — whose official observance commemorates those who died serving their country — finalizing the annual "Execute Art Not People" event, which seeks to redirect state funds from prison death rows to arts and education programs.

 "With everyone volunteering time and space, we had to work around some very busy schedules — quite a round-the-clock labor of love," says Beech, noting this year’s participation by Rittenhouse Square’s Ethical Society, host of Friday’s exhibition, and the Mural Arts Program, which will hold a related interactive painting session.

Interactive involvement from across Philadelphia’s arts scene has been key to expanding the event, which was started in Harrisburg five years ago by Pennsylvanians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (PADP). Beech has been the regional face of the operation since 2010.

"The interactive-art thing has always been an important aspect of the event, so that people experience the art and its relationship to the death penalty," says Beech, author of a 2011 book of poetry titled Beccaria, after 18th-century Milanese philosopher and jurist Cesare Beccaria, who opposed the death penalty.

To that end, on Friday evening "Execute Art" will screen Concrete, Steel and Paint, a 2009 documentary about the Mural Arts Program’s work inside Graterford Prison. It also will display artwork by prisoners. Among them is Charles Lawson, who is serving a life term at Graterford, works with Mural Arts’ Healing Walls program there, and is a cofounder of Art for Justice, which encourages prison artists.

And:

Screening/Exhibition  Execute Art Not People Free. 6-9 p.m. Friday at the Ethical Society of Philadelphia, 1906 Rittenhouse Square. For information, e-mail PhillyPADP@gmail.com, or call 267-639-6169

Prejean Papers Featured in DePaul University Exhibit

"Exhibit on anti-death penalty activist opens at DePaul," is the AP post, via the Rockford Register Star.

An exhibit dedicated to the life of a nationally known Roman Catholic anti-death penalty activist is opening in Chicago.

Sister Helen Prejean wrote the book "Dead Man Walking," which later became a film starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn.

The exhibit at DePaul University looks at notable moments in her activism over the decades and includes correspondence with people on death row. Prejean donated her papers to DePaul in 2010.

The exhibit is called "In Deeds and Words: The Prejean Ministry Against the Death Penalty."

DePaul University has issued a news release, "Noted Anti-Death Penalty Activist Sister Helen Prejean to Visit DePaul for May Lectures, Opening of Exhibition on Her Life and Work."

Sister Helen Prejean, C.S.J., the activist and author whose book “Dead Man Walking” helped fuel the current anti-death penalty movement in the United States, will appear at DePaul University May 14 to dedicate an exhibition highlighting her work to end capital punishment.

 “In Deeds and Words: The Prejean Ministry Against the Death Penalty” examines notable moments in Prejean’s 30 years of advocacy on behalf of death row inmates and her activism to abolish the death penalty. The exhibit highlights her relationships and correspondence with individuals on death row. It also highlights the process of writing her best-selling books, “Dead Man Walking” and “The Death of Innocents,” and adapting the former for the 1995 film starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn.

The exhibit will be open to the public Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Nov. 30 in DePaul’s Special Collections and Archives, Room 314 of the Richardson Library, 2350 N. Kenmore Ave., Chicago.

And:

On May 15 at 7 p.m., Prejean will present a lecture titled “Dead Man Walking—the Journey Continues,” in which she will reflect on current efforts to roll back the death penalty around the country. A 6:30 p.m. reception will precede the talk.

Both programs are free and will be held at Cortelyou Commons, 2324 N.  Fremont St., Chicago, but reservations are required at eventRSVP@depaul.edu.

On May 16 at 6:30 p.m., Prejean will participate in a public conversation about the writing process behind her past best-sellers and her upcoming book “River of Fire.” The program will be held in Room 220 of the Lincoln Park Student Center, 2350 N. Sheffield Ave., Chicago.

“Sister Prejean has long been a leading light in the fight for social justice across a wide spectrum of issues, especially the movement to end capital punishment in the United States,” said the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M., DePaul’s president. “We are deeply honored that she has chosen DePaul to preserve the record of her life’s work.”

Prejean first announced the donation of her archives to DePaul in February 2011, coincidentally just after the Illinois Legislature’s surprising vote to abolish the death penalty. She was invited to consult on the issue with Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, who signed the legislation several weeks later, making Illinois the 16th state in the nation to outlaw capital punishment. In recent months, Connecticut has repealed its death penalty and a referendum has been placed on the November ballot asking California voters if that state should abolish capital punishment.

The launch of the Prejean exhibit coincides with the opening of Prejean’s papers for researchers and academic use. The collection is multifaceted and contains rich resources not only on the issue of capital punishment, but also in charting the development of Prejean’s activism, the process of writing and publishing a book, and the social justice issues that underlie much of the death penalty debate.

Victims' Families Boost Conn. Death Penalty Repeal

That's the title of an AP report written by Shannon Young.  It's widely distributed and also available via the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and many other outlets.  In theme, it picks up where Susan Campbell's Hartford Courant column leaves off.   Here's the top:

The vote to repeal Connecticut's death penalty brought a moment of triumph for Elizabeth Brancato, a lifelong opponent of capital punishment despite the murder of her mother in 1979.

Brancato had lobbied lawmakers for years, becoming more resolved against capital punishment as she met families of other victims frustrated by endless appeals. She also started a blog to highlight the voices of other victims' relatives in favor of repeal that she felt were overshadowed in the debate.

She was at the statehouse Wednesday night as the state legislature gave final approval to a bill that will make Connecticut the 17th state to repeal capital punishment. A week earlier, she was in the gallery when it cleared its biggest hurdle with an early morning vote in the state Senate.

"It was one of the best moments of my life," Brancato said.

Brancato is among roughly 180 relatives of crime victims who pushed for repeal in private meetings with lawmakers, via petition drives and at news conferences. National advocates say the large size of their campaign sets Connecticut apart from other states, but relatives who oppose the death penalty are speaking up more often across the United States.

On the other side of the debate, death penalty supporters had perhaps the state's most compelling advocate in Dr. William Petit Jr., the only survivor of a 2007 home invasion in which two paroled burglars killed his wife and two daughters. Last year, Petit successfully lobbied state senators to hold off on legislation for repeal while one of the two killers was still facing a death penalty trial.

This year, many lawmakers said they were swayed by the stories of people who oppose capital punishment despite losing loved ones to horrific crimes.

This is an excellent time to once again point to the blog, Connecticut Murder Victims' Families Speaking Out Against the Death Penalty.

Earlier Connecticut coverage begins in the preceding post.  Related posts are in the vicitims' issues index.

Connecticut Repeal Vote May Come as Early as Tomorrow

"After a last count, death penalty vote likely Wednesday," is the CT Mirror report by Mark Pazniokas.

With Gov. Dannel P. Malloy pledging to sign the bill into law, the state Senate is preparing for a vote as soon as Wednesday on a measure to repeal the death penalty for future crimes.

Leaders of the Senate Democratic majority intend Tuesday to canvass their 22 members for a final time, with the expectation of getting a commitment from at least 18 senators, the bare minimum necessary for passage.

"We'll make a final decision tomorrow," Senate President Pro Tem Donald E. Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn, said Monday night. "Do we want to move forward one way or the other? Yes."

Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, a longtime death-penalty opponent who presides over the Senate, is prepared to break a tie by casting a vote for repeal should the 36-member Senate deadlock.

If all three Democratic senators who have been publicly undecided cast a vote for repeal, the measure would pass with 19 votes. The three are Sen. Edith G. Prague of Columbia, Carlo Leone of Stamford and Joseph J. Crisco of Woodbridge.

"I feel good about the conversations we've been having with the members," said Sen. Eric Coleman, D-Bloomfield, co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a proponent of repeal.

He declined to discuss conversations with specific senators, and he measured his words carefully in an interview Monday night. But when asked if he believed the Senate now had the votes for repeal, he replied, "I think so."

"Easter Week march in Hartford to spotlight opposition to Connecticut's death penalty," is the AP report in the New Haven Register.

An Easter Week march in Hartford will highlight opposition to the state’s death penalty law by Connecticut Christian religious leaders.

The Bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut and others are marching beginning at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday from Christ Church Cathedral to the Capitol, where Connecticut legislators are considering a bill this session to end the death penalty for future cases and replace it with life in prison.

Earlier coverage from Connecticut begins at the link.

 

When Murder Gets Personal

That's the title of Deldelp Medina's California Progress Report post.  She Northern California Outreach Coordinator for California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and a spokesperson for the SAFE California campaign.

When my aunt was murdered by her own son, my cousin Manuel, the local DA pushed for a death sentence against my family's wishes. I know what it’s like when a DA just doesn’t listen.

Now, District Attorneys are turning a deaf ear on California voters. Even though SAFE California submitted more than enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot, each and every day, 58 District Attorneys continue to wield the power of death sentences in every county across California.

That’s why I’m speaking out to urge every California District Attorney to stop seeking death sentences until voters can decide for themselves this November.

Earlier coverage of the California ballot initiative begins at the link.

OK Governor Says She Will Not Delay Stemple Execution

A day after members of the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty met with Governor Mary Fallin, the governor has rejected a reprieve in the case of Shaun Stemple.  The governor has extended the reprieve issued in another case, however.

"Governor says she won't delay Tulsa killer's execution Thursday despite family's plea of innocence," is the Tulsa World report by Barbara Hoberock.

Gov. Mary Fallin's office said Tuesday that she does not intend to issue a stay of execution for Tulsa County killer Timothy Shaun Stemple.

Stemple, 46, is set to be executed Thursday for the 1996 killing of his wife, Trisha Stemple, 30.

His family met Tuesday with the Governor's Office to seek a stay to pursue evidence of his innocence.

They held a news conference with the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty to urge a stay.

The Pardon and Parole Board last month voted 4-1 to deny clemency to Stemple.

"We don't have the power to grant clemency without a recommendation from the (Pardon and Parole) board," said Alex Weintz, a spokesman for Fallin.

"Okla. Governor unlikely to stay execution," is the latest AP filing, via KRMG-TV.

The Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty met with Fallin's deputy general counsel Rebecca Frazier to plead for a stay of execution.

Coalition co-chair Lydia Polley said Stemple's family has compiled evidence that was never presented in court.

Stemple was sentenced to death for the 1996 murder of his 30-year-old wife, Trisha Stemple, who was beaten with a baseball bat and run over with a pickup truck in Tulsa.

"Group protests execution, claims too much doubt," is by La'Tasha Givens at KFOR-TV.

Led by the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, the Stemple family gathered at the State Capitol pleading for a stay of execution.

The family says there are theories from forensic pathologists who say the death of the victim was by car accident, not from murder.

The family says that evidence, as well as other items, never made it into court.

"When my sister in law died, my brother didn't even get to grieve her death. Within a few days, all fingers were pointing to him because he had life insurance and he had an affair," Janae Smucker said.

She says her brother is no killer.

"There is too much doubt," Sen. Consatnce Johnson said.

Supporters of Stemple have put together a website, Free Shaun.  There is also more on the case at the Oklahoma Coalition website.

In the other Oklahoma death penalty case, the Tulsa World reports, "Garry Allen execution again is delayed," by Cary Aspinwall.

Garry Thomas Allen is now scheduled to be executed April 12 after Gov. Mary Fallin issued an additional 26-day stay Tuesday.

Allen, 56, was set to be executed Saturday after a 30-day stay that was granted in February expired.

Last month, Fallin granted the 30-day stay from the original Feb. 16 execution date to allow time to evaluate the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board's clemency recommendation.

The governor met with the Federal Public Defender's Office, the Oklahoma Attorney General's Office and the victim's family to review Allen's case and, after examining the arguments and evidence, determined that clemency should be denied and the sentence of death shall be carried out, spokesman Alex Weintz said.

Earlier coverage of the Garry Allen case begins at the link.

Signatures Submitted for California Repeal Ballot Initiative

"Californians may vote on death penalty in November," is the Sacramento Bee report by Sam Stanton.

The SAFE California Campaign said it has collected about 800,000 signatures to get a measure on the November ballot to transfer the sentences of death-penalty inmates to life without the possibility of parole.

The campaign, whose name stands for "Savings, Accountability, Full Enforcement," needed to turn in slightly more than 504,000 signatures to the secretary of state's office. If approved for the ballot, the measure would mark the first time since Californians approved the death penalty in 1978 that state voters have an opportunity to weigh in on the practice.

Only one other state – Oregon – has set aside capital punishment by a vote of the people, though it was reinstated in 1978. Sixteen other states have done away with it through legislation or the courts.

California's situation is different from most states' because of the sheer size of its death row – 725 inmates and counting – and the cost of maintaining it.

Advocates for abolishing the state's death penalty – a coalition of the American Civil Liberties Union, lawyers, crime victims and law enforcement officials – will argue it's a pocketbook issue: They estimate that the death penalty costs the state $137 million a year because of the time-consuming court appeals that ensue and requirements for maintaining prisoners on death row.

Given the lengthy appeals process, only 13 men have been executed since capital punishment was restored in California. The average time they spent on death row before execution was 17.5 years, state prison officials say.

"Bid to end death penalty headed to the ballot," by Bob Egelko for the San Francisco Chronicle.

For the third time in 40 years, Californians will likely vote in November on the death penalty, a practice that has had at least as much impact on the state's politics as on its institutions of crime and punishment.

Opponents of capital punishment said Thursday they were submitting 800,000 signatures on petitions for an initiative to close the nation's largest Death Row, which has 725 condemned prisoners. The measure needs 504,760 valid signatures to make the ballot.

"California voters are ready to replace the death penalty with life in prison with no chance of parole," declared Jeanne Woodford, who oversaw four executions as warden of San Quentin State Prison. She now heads the anti-capital-punishment group Death Penalty Focus.

It was an unusually optimistic statement in a state whose residents have consistently supported the death penalty. The most recent Field Poll, in September, showed 68 percent support - although respondents in the same survey, when asked their preferred sentence for murder, backed life without parole over death, 48 to 40 percent.

"End death penalty measure likely to be on November ballot," by Howard Mintz for the Silicon Vallery Mercury News.

The SAFE California Act would replace the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of parole. If approved, the law would convert the death sentences of the state's 725 death row inmates to life in prison terms and eliminate the death penalty option in murder cases.

Californians historically have strongly supported the death penalty, famously ousting former Chief Justice Rose Bird and two Supreme Court colleagues in 1986 for refusing to uphold death sentences.

But at the same time, the state's death penalty system has been marred by epic delays of 20 years or more in legal appeals. Just 13 inmates have been executed since the restoration of capital punishment in 1978, prompting even some leading death penalty supporters to question its benefits.

California has not executed an inmate in six years, the result of ongoing legal challenges to the state's lethal injection method that are expected to extend a moratorium on the use of the death chamber for at least another year.

"Death penalty opponents move closer to November ballot initiative," by Carol J. Williams of the Los Angeles Times.  It's via the Bellingham Herald.

"Our focus in times of fiscal crisis should be crystal clear. The death penalty wastes $184 million a year over life without parole," said Gil Garcetti, a former Los Angeles County district attorney whose support for the death penalty has been eroded by the soaring costs of maintaining a punishment seldom meted out.

But those who support capital punishment say the opponents' cost-savings figures are inflated. The number of new death sentences fell dramatically last year and for the last decade have been well below the rate of the 1990s, said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

Audio of the complete press conference is available at, "California death penalty ban headed towards November ballot," by Rina Palta for KALW-FM.

This morning at San Francisco’s City Hall, members of the SAFE California Coalition submitted signatures to the Department of Elections to put an initiative on the November ballot that would end the death penalty in California. Proponents say they gathered over 800,000 signatures, which will now be reviewed by elections officials before they’re able to send the proposal to voters. If passed, the initiative would replace capital punishment with life without the possibility of parole.

SAFE California’s message is three-pronged. The group says California’s death penalty is expensive, prone to error, and ineffective–both in that it hasn’t been carried out in years because of constitutional lawsuits, and because, they say, it doesn’t make California safer.

Southern California Public Radio posts, "Death penalty to get up or down vote from California voters," by Corey Moore of KPCC-FM.  There is audio at the link.

Come November, California voters can decide whether lawmakers should switch out the state’s death penalty for life in prison without parole. Supporters of the SAFE California Act have gathered more than the 500,000 signatures they need to place the measure on the ballot — almost 300,000 more.

“799,589 signatures," said L.A. County District Attorney Gil Garcetti after checking his text messages for the latest petition update. "That’s incredible. That is incredible.”

More on the measure is at SAFE California.

Earlier coverage from California begins at the link.

Connecticut Roundup - Murder Victims' Survivors Rally for Repeal

"Death penalty: Repeal of barbaric law should not be compromised," is the editorial in today's Danbury News Times.

State Sen. Andrew Roraback, whose district includes New Milford, Brookfield and Kent, was the only Republican senator in 2009 to vote to repeal the death penalty in Connecticut.

And:

We believe that Roraback, an 18-year veteran in the General Assembly, is a pragmatic politician who is leveraging his clout in the Senate on the death penalty repeal to gain votes for his amendment.

That may well be the way bills get passed.

But Roraback's amendment -- which is worthwhile -- should be attached to a different bill.

We believe that repeal of the death penalty is too important -- it is ethically imperative -- to be jeopardized.

The Day reports, "Victims' relatives favor abolition of death penalty," by JC Reindl.

Rae Giesing of Groton has lived through the horror of losing a child to murder.

Six years ago, her adult son, Gregory Giesing, was killed in his Groton apartment by a 19-year-old man with a sawed-off shotgun. The killer, who also killed Gregory Giesing's stepbrother, Derek Von Winkle, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

On Wednesday, Giesing recalled during a gathering of death penalty opponents in the Capitol that she was glad the murderer, Ian Cooke, wasn't sentenced to death.

"I want him to think about it for the rest of his life," she said.

Giesing was among a group of nearly two dozen relatives of murder victims who on Wednesday urged lawmakers to pass legislation that would end the death penalty in Connecticut and replace it with life imprisonment without parole.

"If our legislators really care about us, they will get rid of the death penalty once and for all," said Elizabeth Brancato of Torrington, whose mother, Barbara McKitis, was raped and murdered in 1979.

"Families of slaying victims rally against death penalty in Connecticut," by Jordan Fenster in the New Haven Register.

In early 2011, Brian Patterson was killed in Virginia.

A little more than a year later, Patterson’s cousin, Khalilah Brown-Dean came forward to protest the death penalty in Connecticut.

Brown-Dean was one of six speakers, all of them family members of slaying victims, who took part in a press conference and rally Wednesday to end the death penalty. Those six speakers are among 179 family members of slaying victims who signed a letter to legislators arguing against capital punishment.

“There is simply no justice in taking the life of another,” Brown-Dean said.

Earlier coverage of the repeal effort in Connecticut begins at the link.

Kansas Repeal Legislation

"Tuesday forum to focus on repeal of state’s death penalty law," is Ron Sylvester's Wichita Eagle report.

As a bill to repeal the death penalty languishes in the Statehouse, a local church-women’s group hopes to help revive legislators’ interest on the issue.

The United Methodist Women’s group at College Hill United Methodist Church in Wichita is sponsoring a forum on the death penalty Tuesday. It follows a daylong rally last November at Wichita State University by the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, which said it is seeing similar programs sprouting up across the state.

“The death penalty has reached a point where it’s outdated,” said Jeff Wicks, an attorney with the Kansas Death Penalty Defense Unit and one of Tuesday’s speakers. “It comes from a time when we didn’t have the ability to maintain law and order, as we do now.”

The forum hopes to generate interest in House Bill 2323, which would abolish the death penalty in Kansas in favor of life in prison without the possibility of parole. The bill was introduced last February and remains in the House Committee on Federal and State Affairs.

Rep. Steve Brunk R-Wichita, chairs the committee and said he doesn’t foresee any action on the bill this year.

“We’ve got a lot of issues before us this session, and so far this hasn’t risen to the top 10,” Brunk said. “I just don’t see it gaining a lot of traction in the legislature.”

And:

Death penalty opponents say capital punishment is a budget issue that could save the state millions of dollars. Two studies in the past decade show it costs the state about four times as much to pursue the death penalty as it does to keep someone in prison for life.

“It’s not just the state, but it costs the county, too,” said Donna Schneweis, chair of the board for the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty. “The county bears the brunt of the costs of these prosecutions.”

More on the Kansas cost factor at the link; also, coverage of Kansas repeal legislation in 2010.  Related posts are in the state legislation index.

 here: http://www.kansas.com/2012/01/23/2186507/tuesday-forum-to-focus-on-repeal.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2012/01/23/2186507/tuesday-forum-to-focus-on-repeal.html#storylink=cpy

MA

Protest at the Supreme Court

"Death Penalty Protesters Are Arrested at U.S. Supreme Court," is the AP report via the New York Times.  It's also available via the Washington Post.

Fourteen people have been arrested at the Supreme Court for protesting the use of the death penalty in the United States. A court spokeswoman, Kathy Arberg, announced the arrests soon after justices began hearing oral arguments on Tuesday. It is illegal to demonstrate on the court’s plaza that faces the Capitol. The protests are timed to observe the 35th anniversary of the execution of Gary M. Gilmore; the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty in 1976, and Mr. Gilmore was put to death in 1977 after a 10-year moratorium on executions.

"14 Arrested In Death Penalty Protest at Supreme Court," is Tony Mauro's post at the BLT.  A photo is at the link.

Inside, the Supreme Court was hearing arguments in a dusty federal tax case. Outside, police were arresting 14 death penalty protesters who unfurled a 30-foot wide banner with the message "STOP EXECUTIONS!" on the Court's marble plaza. One by one this morning, the demonstrators were escorted or dragged away for violating the federal law (40 U.S.C. 6135) that forbids "processions or assemblages" on Supreme Court grounds.

The protest marked the 35th anniversary of the Utah execution by firing squad of Gary Gilmore, the first execution since the high court's reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. It was a repeat of a similar demonstration five years ago, and in between, numerous others -- from Princeton philosopher Cornel West to demonstrators dressed like Guantanamo detainees -- have been arrested in the same location.

The demonstrators assembled beforehand at the nearby United Methodist Building where they discussed what to expect when arrested, and held hands in prayer. Bethesda, Maryland solo practitioner Mark Goldstone, longtime lawyer for Court protesters, briefed the group on the legalities, and told them, as he put it later, "It's too bad you aren't corporations, because then you would have more First Amendment protections."

Another Former Warden Calls for Repeal

The Salem Statesman Journal reports, "Former Oregon warden seeks end to death penalty."  It's written by Alan Gustafson.

A former state penitentiary warden who oversaw the last two inmate executions in this state has joined an advocacy group determined to repeal Oregon's death penalty.

In an interview Friday with the Statesman Journal, Frank Thompson described the death penalty as "a failed public policy."

"In my opinion, capital punishment fails terribly in meeting any evidence-based outcomes," he said.

The retired Oregon Department of Corrections administrator was at the helm of the Oregon State Penitentiary during the lethal-injection executions of serial killer Douglas Wright in 1996 and Salem double killer Harry Moore in 1997 — the only inmates put to death since Oregon voters reinstated capital punishment in 1984.

This week, Thompson joined Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, becoming one of three new members on its advisory council.

And:

The ex-warden said he favors life in prison as the suitable alternative punishment for convicted murderers sentenced to death.

"I do believe that life without the possibility of parole is an effective sanction in lieu of the death penalty," he said.

Looking back on his leadership role in planning and carrying out the two executions in the 1990s, Thompson said he performed his duty as "a good soldier."

But, he said, it was a daunting task that remains etched in his memory.

"It's a life-changing experience," Thompson said.

Earlier coverage of corrections workers speaking against capital punishment begins at the link.

NAACP Speaks Out in Georgia, Also

"NAACP tells Ga. lawmakers to end death penalty," is the AP filing datelined Atlanta, via the Rockdale Citizen.

The Georgia chapter of the NAACP is asking state lawmakers to end capital punishment.

NAACP state president Edward Dubose said at a rally Monday that execution is murder. State Sen. Vincent Fort has said he will file legislation to end capital punishment.

Dubose cited the case of Troy Davis, who was convicted of killing an off-duty policeman in Savannah and executed last year. Davis' case attracted worldwide attention amid claims from his supporters that Davis was innocent and that there was too much doubt for an execution.

"Georgia lawmakers begin work immediately," is by Walter C. Jones of Morris News Service.  It's via the Augusta Chronicle.

Unlike most opening days of the General Assembly, the Senate got right to work debating substantive legislation Monday.

And:

Outside, two hundred or so supporters of Amnesty International and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People rallied against the death penalty. Many held posters or wore buttons with a photo of Troy Davis, a Savannah man executed last year for killing an off-duty policeman.

“If they can do it to him, they could do it to any of us,” said Rep. Sharon Beasley-Teague, D-Red Oak.

As in most years, legislation is pending calling for a halt to capital punishment, but the bills never come up for a vote in committee. This year, Senate Democratic Whip Vincent Fort of Atlanta announced plans to introduce legislation that would prohibit a death sentence based solely on eyewitness testimony.

Related posts are in the abolition and state legislation indexes; also coverage of the Troy Davis case.

Maryland Roundup

"NAACP head calls for death penalty abolition this year," is the title of Michael Dresser's Baltimore Sun report.

Ben Jealous, the national NAACP president, came to Annapolis Tuesday to call on Maryland legislators to make this the year the state does away with the death penalty.

Flanked by several legislators, Jealous said he intends to return to Annapolis repeatedly through the 90-day legislative session that starts Wednesday to work for repeal.

Death penalty opponents have come close in recent years to securing the votes needed to remove capital punishment from the books, but each time have fallen a few votes short.

This year, they are hoping that lingering doubts about the guilt or innocence of Troy Davis, a 42-year-old who was convicted of murder in 1981 and executed in Georgia in September, will give fresh impetus to their efforts.

Jealous, who noted that he will soon move to a new House in Silver Spring, said he plans to meet with Gov. Martin O'Malley soon to urge him to step up efforts to secure the votes needed for repeal. O'Malley is an opponent of the death penalty but has been reluctant to make repeal a priority since an effort at full abolition fell short in 2009. He has talked about possibly using the state budget to remove funding to administer capital punishment, but that would not be a permanent change to Maryland law.

"NAACP president Jealous calls for abolishing death penalty in Md; set sights on Conn., Calif.," is the AP report, via the Washington Post.

NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said Tuesday that Maryland needs to abolish capital punishment to help lead the way in ending it in other states, and he believes the September execution of Troy Davis in Georgia last year has sparked greater interest in ending the death penalty.

“People in this country care about fairness,” Jealous said at a news conference in Annapolis with other civil rights leaders and state lawmakers opposed to capital punishment. “They’re outraged about what happened to Troy Davis. They want to see our country join the rest of the western world and abolish the death penalty. In order to get there, Maryland has to do it.”

And:

Some Maryland lawmakers will seek a repeal in the legislative session that begins Wednesday. They say they have a majority of support in both the House and Senate, but they say they are one vote shy on a Senate committee to move the bill to a full vote.

“We’ve abolished it in Illinois in recent years; we’ve abolished it in New Jersey in recent years; we’ve abolished it in New Mexico in recent years, and there is no reason why it has not been abolished here, except for a few politicians who have gotten in the way,” Jealous said.

Jealous said the Baltimore-based NAACP is focusing on two other states where they believe there is opportunity for repeal, Connecticut and California.

“Even in Georgia, people see an opportunity to start sort of chipping away at the death penalty in a way that we haven’t seen, because the state is still on fire” over the Davis case, Jealous said.

Related posts are in the abolition and state legislation indexes.

The Baltimore Sun also reports, "Opening of death penalty trial in prison death delayed." It's by Andrea F. Siegel.

With jury selection extending past last week, opening statements that had been scheduled for Monday in the death penalty trial of a prisoner charged with killing a correctional officer are expected to take place Wednesday.

Lee Edward Stephens, 32, is one of two life-term prisoners accused of fatally stabbing David McGuinn in July 2006 as he walked on a skinny catwalk along cells at the Maryland House of Correction. The slaying was among the main reasons the prison, in Jessup, was closed.

The case ultimately could test the validity of the state's 2009 death penalty law changes, reserve the death penalty for murders in which there is a videotaped confession, a video recording of the crime, or DNA or other biological evidence linking the defendant to the crime. In this case, prosecutors said they have DNA. The trial is expected to last seven weeks.

Earlier coverage of the Maryland trial begins at the link.

Hospira Under Fire for Sales of Pancuronium, Used in Executions

Reuters distributes, "Doctors pressure Hospira over execution drug," written by Ben Hirschler.  It's via the Baltimore Sun.

An international group of 25 doctors demanded on Friday that U.S.-based Hospira take action to prevent its muscle relaxant drug pancuronium being used for executions in the United States.

There has been controversy about using prescription medicines for lethal injections in the last two years, and campaigners have succeeded in curbing supplies of some products, causing drug shortages that have slowed U.S. executions.

Hospira stopped making another drug, thiopental, last January, and Denmark's Lundbeck later restricted distribution of pentobarbital, which U.S. states that carry out the death penalty switched to when thiopental was not available.

Hospira, however, has not curbed supplies of pancuronium -- a decision consultant neurologist David Nicholl of Birmingham's City Hospital, England, and colleagues said was out of line with its corporate commitment to be "an ethical global citizen."

"It is time for Hospira to live up to those fine words, without affecting patients' care, by putting in place a restricted distribution system for pancuronium," they wrote in an open letter to The Lancet medical journal.

Nicholl and other doctors from Britain, Italy, Ireland, India, Australia and Saudi Arabia said there was a very real possibility that pancuronium, when used for executions, could cause extreme pain and suffering in a paralyzed prisoner.

Hospira, the sole supplier of the medicine, said it had regularly written to U.S. states making clear its opposition to use of its drugs in executions.

But Chief Executive Michael Ball said restricting distribution of pancuronium had to be considered carefully to avoid jeopardizing the health of patients who needed therapeutic access to the medicine, including inmates of prison hospitals.

"We continue to explore options around optimizing distribution of all of our products," Ball said in a response in The Lancet.

"US pharmaceutical firm Hospira under fire over use of its drugs in executions," by Ed Pilkington reporting from New York for the Guardian.

One of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, the Illinois-based firm Hospira, is coming under heavy pressure from the medical profession to tighten up its procedures to prevent the use of its drugs in US executions.

Twenty-five prominent doctors from the UK, Italy, India and Australia have published an open letter in the Lancet to Michael Ball, Hospira's chief executive. They urge him to take a more rigorous approach to the use of Hospira's trademarked drug Pancuronium in the triple cocktail of lethal injections used by many of the 34 states that still practise the death penalty.

"No responsible pharamceutical company should have anything to do with executions," the doctors say. They add that it is time for the company to impose restrictions on its disbribution system of the drug to prevent it ending up in the hands of executioners.

Pancuronium is an extremely effective muscle relaxant used widely by anaesthetists to prevent patients moving, for instance in the event of abdominal surgery. In many US states it is also used as the second of three lethal drugs to be administered to condemned prisoners.

First, a barbiturate is used to put prisoners to sleep; then, the muscle relaxant is given to stop them moving or screaming; finally, a third chemical, potassium, is injected to stop their heart.

The doctors who signed the open letter, led by David Nicholl, a neurologist at City Hospital in Birmingham, want to see Hospira following the example of Lundbeck, the Danish manufacturer of a barbiturate called pentobarbital that has been also used in US executions. Lundbeck last year introduced a strict end-user agreement that prevents the product finding its way into death chambers even via third parties.

And:

This is the second time that Hospira has come under fire for the use of its drugs in judicial killings. A year ago it suspended all production in America of sodium thiopental, a barbiturate widely used as the first stage of the lethal cocktail, after it became clear that it could face penalties in Italy, where it was also manufacturing the sedative.

Supplies of the key ingredients of the lethal injection are already running low in several states, raising hopes among opponents of the death penalty that this might lead to de facto abolition. Last month the European Commission imposed Europe-wide restrictions on exports of key anaesthetics used to kill prisoners in the US.

Nicholl said that the aim was to debunk the myth that the method of execution was medically approved. "The myth has spread that lethal injections have the involvement of doctors and are therefore kinder and more humane. There is no evidence for that."

Related posts are in the lethal injection index.  Notable posts include:

• European Union Steps Up Pressure With New Controls
• Lethal Injection Drug Commentary From India
• Lundbeck Protests Today's Scheduled Florida Execution
• More Roadblocks for Execution Drugs
• More on the Lundbeck Actions
• An Update on Foreign-Sourced Lethal Injection Drugs
• States Moving Quickly to Switch Execution Drug
• Letter From Europe
• Editorial Commentary on Lethal Injection
• Extended Coverage of the Hospira Announcement

Former Corrections Workers Speaking Up

AFP posts, "Ex-jailers become US anti-death penalty advocates," by Chantal Valery.  It's datelined Washington. Here's an extended excerpt:

"I can see their faces in my nightmares," said Allen Ault, a former Georgia prison warden among a growing number of ex-jailers and executioners opposed to the death penalty in the United States.

Across the country, prison workers who once supported the death penalty are beginning to lend their voices, alongside other prominent figures, to the campaign to abolish capital punishment in favor of life imprisonment.

In his role as the director of the Georgia Department of Corrections in the 1990s, Ault supervised five executions in a death row that he had built 20 years earlier.

Ault would give the order to pull the switch on death row inmates strapped to an electric chair.

It is "the most premeditated murder that one can do, there's no other way to describe it," Ault said, calling putting inmates to death an "inhumane job for people who have a conscience and who value life."

He was among six retired prison wardens who urged Georgia officials -- in vain -- to try to halt the execution of Troy Davis, an African American who was put to death in September for killing a white off-duty police officer in 1989.

During his career as Florida prison system warden, Ron McAndrew escorted three prisoners to the electric chair, and five others to the death chamber in Texas to be executed by lethal injection.

One day in 1997, the Florida electric chair, known as "Old Sparky," malfunctioned. "We had a fire, it was horrible -- we literally burnt him to death," said McAndrew.

McAndrew is still tormented by memories of telling the technician to continue with the electric charge despite the mishap.

"This work is too dirty, we have become barbarians," he told AFP.

Reginald Wilkinson, who once served as director of Ohio's Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said "it's time... to evolve to a sophisticated society that would allow that life without parole would be a punishment equal to capital punishment."

"I had the responsibility to carry out the law," said Wilkinson, who eventually became an anti-death penalty activist.

Prosecutors, governors -- such as Governor John Kitzhaber of Oregon -- and even judges, such as Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and fellow retired justices John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O'Connor, are raising doubts about the death penalty.

"We see new voices, we've seen much change in the leadership, more people are speaking up," said Steve Hall with The StandDown Texas Project, which advocates eliminating the death penalty in the southern state.

According to the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center, the number of executions and death penalty sentences has dropped 75 percent in the past 15 years to its lowest level since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated in the United States.

And:

"In the US, we have replaced justice with vengeance," said McAndrew. "When it comes to capital punishment, it's very scary, all you need is a person to point his finger at you."

McAndrew still recalls a chance encounter at a Florida airport with a death penalty inmate who had been reprieved and was eventually released.

"He recognized me -- he put his arm around me," said McAndrew. "The last time I saw him, he was in death row in Florida and I was warden.

"I could have possibly extracted this man out of his cell, brought him to the death chamber and put him to death when in fact he was totally innocent. He served almost 20 years for a crime he had not committed."

Earlier coverage of corrections workers voicing their concerns begins at the link.

'No Sense'

"Ohio Supreme Court justice: Death penalty 'makes no sense'," is the title of Alan Johnson's Columbus Dispatch report.

Ohio’s senior Supreme Court justice, Paul E. Pfeifer, told lawmakers this morning that Ohio has a “death lottery,” not a death penalty.

“I have concluded that the death sentence makes no sense when you can have life with out the possibility of parole. I don’t see what society gains,” he told the House Criminal Justice Committee.

“If you aren’t going to consider this, who will? If not now, when? If not you, who?” Pfeifer asked.

The legislative panel is considering House Bill 160, which would abolish the death penalty in Ohio.

Pfeifer, a maverick Republican from Bucyrus who is ending his 19th year on the court, has been advocating abolishment of the death penalty for nearly two years.

Pfeifer was one of three Republican state senators who resurrected Ohio's death-penalty law in 1981 after the old law had been declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The AP filing is, "Ohio lawmakers hear from death penalty opponents, including state Supreme Court justice."  It's by Andrew Welsh-Huggins and is via the Republic.

An Ohio Supreme Court justice who helped write the state's death penalty law says Ohio is no longer well-served by it.

Justice Paul Pfeifer (PY'-fur) says the law's application has become hit-or-miss, depending on where a crime is committed and what the county prosecutor's attitude is.

Pfeifer urged the Ohio House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday to approve a bill that would scrap the 30-year-old law.

Hearings on the bill come as a state Supreme Court task force studies Ohio's law to make sure it works as it should.

"Death penalty opponents make plea to Ohio lawmakers," by Michael Henrich of WNMO-TV.

Pfeifer helped write the law enacted in 1981, but grew skeptical that prosecutors were using it fairly and this year called for its abolition.

Hearings on the bill come as a Supreme Court task force studies Ohio's death penalty law to make sure it works as it should.

But Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor has made it clear that the task force group is not to consider a ban.

The anti-death penalty bill is sponsored by Democratic state Reps. Ted Celeste of Columbus and Nickie Antonio of suburban Cleveland.

Kevin Werner of Ohioans to Stop Executions is live-tweeting the legislative committee hearing.

More on Ohio House Bill 160 is available at the link.

Earlier coverage of the Joint Task Force to Review the Administration of Ohio’s Death Penalty begins at the link.

Politico Examines the Politics of Death Penalty Repeal

"States push to end the death penalty," is the title of Mackenzie Weinger's report at Politico.  It looks at activity in several states.  Here's the beginning, with a focus on California:

Could capital punishment be at death’s door in 2012?

That’s the goal for several states next year, say leading anti-death penalty advocates who are making a push to end the controversial practice.

In California, supporters of abolishing the death penalty have gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures to place a measure on the November ballot, while activists and lawmakers in Maryland, Kansas, Ohio and Connecticut are gearing up for legislative battles in their states.

Advocates say the coming year could be their best opportunity yet to replace the death penalty with life without the possibility of parole in these states, pointing to shifts in public opinion, rising concern over execution costs, Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber’s recent decision to place a moratorium on capital punishment, and Troy Davis’s high-profile execution galvanizing opposition to the death penalty. And in California, the drive for a public referendum could get a boost by appearing on the presidential election-year ballot, backers say.

Davis’s controversial case, which spurred protests in Georgia and around the country, was a wake-up call for many Americans, said Diann Rust-Tierney, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty’s executive director. “That was a sad but stark example to folks of how broken the system is,” Rust-Tierney told POLITICO.

It’s a system that’s not just broken, anti-death penalty activists say, but far too costly.

In California — where capital punishment was passed by the voters over 30 years ago and can only be repealed by referendum — the state’s painful budgetary crisis spells a great opportunity for success in 2012, according to those pushing the measure.

Natasha Minsker of the SAFE California Campaign, the group leading the effort to qualify a measure for the state’s November ballot replacing the death penalty with life without possibility of parole, said a recent study that found California has spent roughly $4 billion to carry out 13 executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978 has fired up the repeal effort in a state plagued by terrible financial problems. The staggering $4 billion figure comes from all costs funding the death penalty system in California, including the trials, appeals, death-row housing, healthcare of inmates and the executions themselves.

“More voters now realize that the death penalty is enormously expensive, and we’re in the worst budget crisis ever in California history,” Minsker told POLITICO. “With the economic crisis right now — that Californians are living everyday with terrible budget cuts — people are much more likely to pay attention to the fact that we are wasting money on the death penalty.”

The campaign has collected 240,000 signatures — California requires 504,000 valid signatures for the referendum to make it onto the ballot — and is aiming to submit about 750,000 by the end of February. And, Minsker added, they’ve already got $1.2 million in their coffers from contributions that ranged in size from $5 to $500,000.

Related posts are in the abolition index.

Phyllis Taylor on the Duane Buck Case

Phyllis Taylor is a surviving victim of Duane Buck, and she's written a letter to the editor in today's Houston Chronicle.

Regarding "Racial pattern in death penalty" (Page A1, Sunday), during Duane Buck's trial, a psychologist told the jury he was more likely to be a future danger because he was black. I am the surviving victim of Duane's crime.

As a Christian, I have forgiven Duane for his actions. My faith in God has given me the strength to fight the cycle of violence and to be compassionate, merciful and respect all life.

Duane himself has expressed deep remorse for his actions and has spent his prison time reflecting and deepening his religious faith. Although I believe Duane deserves punishment, I also believe that he has a right to a fair sentence not based on his race.

For that reason, I, along with 60 elected officials, civil rights leaders, legal professionals, former prosecutors, faith leaders and concerned citizens, have signed a letter to District Attorney Patricia Lykos asking her to ensure that Duane has a fair sentencing hearing free from consideration of his race. I pray that her office finds the courage to do the right thing.

You can read the complete letter signed by more than 60 community leaders, calling on Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos to take positive action in the case; coverage of the letter is at the link. 

Earlier coverage of Duane Buck's case begins at the link.

Opinion Roundup

Former LA District Attorney Gil Garcetti writes the OpEd, "Death penalty cases not a smart use of limited funds," for today's LA Daily News.

I served 32 years in the District Attorney's Office in Los Angeles.

I've been gone for nearly 11 years. In those accumulated 43 years, only two people sent to Death Row from an L.A. court have been executed, despite decades of agony for the families of murder victims and hundreds of millions of dollars in costs to taxpayers.

I have concluded that the death penalty law should be replaced with life imprisonment without the possibly of parole. Why? Because the death penalty serves no useful purpose. It is not a deterrent. It is horrendously expensive, and we cannot afford it.

There also are too many instances, nationwide, where people have been on Death Row until new evidence determined their total innocence. I would not be shocked if one or more of the 720 prisoners on Death Row in California were innocent of the crime for which he or she awaits execution.

Even proponents of the death penalty agree that the current system brings no finality or closure to the family and friends of the murdered victim and that it is outrageously expensive. They argue that it can all be done faster or for less money. They don't fully understand California's laws or justice system.

David Love, the newly-named Executive Director of Witness to Innocence, a national organization of death row exonerees, writes, "The Death Penalty and #OccupyWallStreet," at Huffington Post.

Recently I attended the 12th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty in Austin, Texas. Participants included death penalty abolitionists, and members of Witness to Innocence -- over two dozen freed death row prisoners who spent years in prison, and once faced certain execution for crimes they did not commit. The day's events included a walk past the governor's mansion, and a rally on the Capitol steps.

One thing that struck me about the event in Austin was the presence of Occupy Austin protestors who were present to speak and lend their support. Clearly, they get it. They understand the link between the struggle for economic justice and the fight to end the death penalty in America. Perhaps you don't. Allow me to explain.

And:

America's economic and justice systems thrive on winners and losers, and someone is made to pay in the end. America's government has been sold to the highest bidder in the form of concentrated and unchecked corporate power. In the eyes of many, the political system is working for the few and against the vast majority of everyday people. Unlimited campaign finance is a scourge upon the land, operating as a legalized bribery scheme for the rich and famous. And the death penalty is part of a kangaroo court system in which poor and working class people become scapegoats for society's ills. These scapegoats are utilized to help deflect attention from the nation's problems, as we are all promised that their imprisonment and/or execution will make our problems disappear.

For years, the public had been sold on broken institutions that breed inequality, insensitivity and injustice. But there is ample proof that the people are no longer buying it. And the death machine -- not unlike American-style capitalism with its socialized risk and privatized gain -- is so inherently flawed that tweaking around the edges simply will not do. Fundamentally broken, it must be scrapped and replaced. What is needed is what Dr. King called a radical revolution of values, so that this nation emphasizes human rights over property rights, and upholds people over money.

Now that is why the death penalty abolition movement has so much in common with the Occupy Wall Street folks. Both know the fix is in.

Earlier coverage of California cost issues begins at the link.

Community Leaders Call on DA to Address Buck Sentence

The letter from community leaders to Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos is available in Adobe .pdf format.  Attorneys for Duane Buck issued a news release announcing the letter, "More than 60 Civil Rights and Faith Leaders, Elected Officials, Former Prosecutors, and Past ABA Presidents Call On Harris County D.A. To Provide Remedy in Case of Duane Buck."

Prominent individuals from Texas and across the country are calling on Harris County District Attorney Patricia Lykos to remedy the sentence in a death penalty case involving the government’s reliance on the defendant’s race at sentencing. Duane Buck was scheduled to be executed on September 15, 2011, when the U.S. Supreme Court intervened. Today, the Court denied Mr. Buck’s petition for writ of certiorari.

At Mr. Buck’s capital murder trial in 1997, the State relied upon evidence that African-Americans are more likely to be dangerous as a basis for asking his jury to sentence him to death. District Attorney Lykos now has the discretion to remedy this error.
 
Prominent Texans calling for District Attorney Lykos to provide a remedy include seven members of the Texas Legislature; former Texas Governor Mark White; former Bexar County District Attorney Sam Millsap and Harris County Assistant District Attorney Linda Geffin (who served as a prosecutor in Mr. Buck’s case); seven Past Presidents of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association and current President Earl Musick; President of the Texas NAACP Gary Bledsoe; Archbishop Joseph A. Fiorenza of the Galveston-Houston Archdiocese; Pastor James Nash of Houston Ministers Against Crime; and Southwest Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League Martin B. Cominsky.
 
In a letter delivered to District Attorney Lykos on September 28, 2011, the signatories wrote: “We write to you today, as elected officials, civil rights leaders, faith leaders, legal professionals, past ABA presidents, a former governor, and concerned citizens dedicated to protecting the integrity of the criminal justice system, to request that you refrain from seeking an execution date in Duane Buck’s case until the parties and courts have been given adequate opportunity and time to address the troubling issues in Mr. Buck’s case. We believe that no one should be executed whose death sentence was based on racially-biased evidence.”
 
Other distinguished signatories include John Payton, Director-Counsel of NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc.; Wade Henderson, President and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; Deborah Lauter, National Civil Rights Director of the Anti-Defamation League; and past American Bar Association Presidents Philip Anderson, William Ide, Carolyn Lamm, and Roberta Ramo.

On May 5, 1997, Mr. Buck was convicted of capital murder in Harris County for the July 1995 shooting deaths of Debra Gardner and Kenneth Butler. A third person, Phyllis Taylor, was shot but survived her wound. Ms. Taylor is also a signatory to the attached letter. She has forgiven Mr. Buck and does not wish to see him executed.
 
During Mr. Buck’s trial, the prosecutor relied on evidence from psychologist Walter Quijano that being an African-American increased the likelihood one would be dangerous in the future. In its closing argument, the government vouched for the credibility of Dr. Quijano’s opinion and urged the jury to rely on it to find that Mr. Buck would be dangerous. The jury found him to be a future danger and he was sentenced to death.  As Justice Sotomayor noted in her dissent from the denial of certiorari, “the prosecution invited the jury to consider race as a factor in sentencing.”
 
On June 9, 2000, while Mr. Buck’s case was pending on appeal, then-Attorney General of Texas John Cornyn issued a press release acknowledging error in the cases of six individuals whose death sentences had been unconstitutionally based on the government’s reliance on race as a factor in sentencing. The Attorney General identified Mr. Buck’s case as one of those six cases. He further stated that Texas would not contest federal appeals in those cases, and stated that if the attorneys for the identified defendants raised claims challenging the government’s reliance on race at sentencing, the Attorney General would waive all procedural defenses available to it.
 
Despite this concession, Mr. Buck is the only defendant of the six identified by Mr. Cornyn who has not been granted a new sentencing trial free from the government’s reliance on his race as a basis for requesting a death sentence.
 
“The use of race in sentencing poisons the legal process and breeds cynicism in the judiciary,” the letter to District Attorney Lykos reads. “Refraining from setting an execution date for Mr. Buck until the courts have a meaningful opportunity to address the fundamental injustice in his case will help restore public confidence in the criminal justice system.”

Earlier coverage of the Supreme Court's denial of Buck's request for  a review of his case is at the link and begins earlier coverage of his case.  In the next post, I'll link to extensive news coverage of the Court's action.

A Man Who Knew About the Electric Chair

That's the title of Ralph Blumenthal's post at the New York Times City Room blog about Lewis E. Lawes, the legendary warden of New York's Sing Sing Prison, Lewis E. Lawes.  Here's an extended excerpt of this must-read:

Nobody killed more people, with more regret, than Lewis E. Lawes.

The warden of the Sing Sing Correctional Facility for 21 years, Lawes supervised the executions of 303 prisoners, all the while condemning the practice of capital punishment as barbaric, inequitable and futile.

As Hollywood’s favorite “fearless, fighting warden,” with a soft heart for his “boys,” Lawes was in charge of the prison through two turbulent decades, from the Jazz Age and the Great Depression to World War II.

“I shall ask for the abolition of the Penalty of Death,” he wrote in 1923, quoting Lafayette, “until I have the infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to me.”

Executions at the prison, in Ossining, N.Y., left Lawes physically ill, his trove of papers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice shows. Once, when a condemned man named Patrick Murphy pleaded for a strictly prohibited last drink of spirits, Lawes broke the rules to deliver a medicinal dose of bourbon. Murphy accepted it gratefully and then offered it back to the stricken Lawes, saying, “You need the shot more than I do, warden.”

But he was no pushover. “Hell,” he wrote in one of his many books, “Invisible Stripes,” “the only law in Sing Sing is Lawes.”

So with the United States Supreme Court now reviewing the Alabama case of the death row inmate Cory Maples, whose appeal got waylaid in the mail, and weeks after a lethal injection ended the life of Troy Davis still protesting his innocence in the killing of a Georgia police officer, it would hardly be amiss to summon Lawes (who died in 1947 at 63) as an expert witness on the subject of state-ordered death.

Barely one out of 80 killers actually paid with his life, Lawes liked to note. Where was the equity in that? And, he asked, “Did you ever see a rich man go the whole route through to the Death House? I don’t know of any.”

Recently, a number of prominent former corrections officials have spoken out against capital punishment; coverage begins at the link.

In 2004, Blumenthal wrote Miracle at Sing Sing : How One Man Transformed the Lives of America's Most Dangerous Prisoners.  The long time Times writer served as the paper's Houston bureau chief several years ago.

An Update on the Hank Skinner Case

Attorneys representing Hank Skinner have issued a news release this morning, "Current and Former Elected Officials, Former Judges, Prosecutors and Law Enforcement Urge State Officials to Test DNA in Skinner Case."

Here's the text:

Hank Skinner remains scheduled for execution on November 9 despite the fact that key pieces of evidence in his case have never been subjected to DNA testing.  Today, former judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officers, along with current and former elected officials from Texas, delivered a letter to state officials calling on them not to execute Mr. Skinner until that DNA testing can be performed.  The letter was sent to Governor Rick Perry, Attorney General Greg Abbott and Gray County District Attorney Lynn Switzer.  
 
The State previously obtained the November 9 execution date even though Mr. Skinner is awaiting two separate court decisions, either of which could compel District Attorney Switzer to provide access to the previously untested evidence. Mr. Skinner’s federal court appeal follows a March 2011 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which confirmed Mr. Skinner’s right to sue for access to the DNA evidence using a federal civil rights law. A motion is also pending in state court under a new Texas law that went into effect in September designed to remove procedural barriers from post-conviction DNA testing.

In the letter, the prominent Texans express “grave and growing concerns about the State’s stubborn refusal to date to test all the evidence in the Skinner case. Executing Mr. Skinner without testing all the relevant evidence would suggest official indifference to the possibility of error in this case and needlessly undermine public confidence in Texas’s criminal justice system.”

Signatories to the letter include: Rodney Ellis, Texas State Senator and author of the recent legislation reforming Texas’ post-conviction DNA testing law; Mark White, former Governor of Texas; Morris L. Overstreet, former Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and former Amarillo Assistant District Attorney; Sam Millsap, former Bexar County District Attorney; Kenneth J. Mighell, former United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas; and Earl D. Musick, former Lieutenant of the Houston Police Department.

The letter cites widespread public support for using DNA testing when available, with eighty-five percent of Texans agreeing that an inmate should have access to testing if it has a chance of proving him innocent. In May, the Texas Legislature voted with overwhelming bipartisan support to pass reforms that increase access to post-conviction DNA testing.

Earlier this month, Michael Morton was exonerated after 25 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. DNA testing cleared Mr. Morton’s name and identified the true perpetrator of the crime.  Mr. Morton’s case, the letter states, highlights the need for the State to consent to DNA testing when untested DNA evidence is available.

The never-tested evidence in Mr. Skinner’s case includes: a man’s windbreaker found next to victim Twila Busby’s body, which had blood splatter, perspiration stains and human hairs on it; two knives, at least one of which was a likely murder weapon; a bloody towel; scrapings from Ms. Busby’s fingernails, which may contain blood or skin cells of the perpetrator; and swabs from a rape-kit.  

The letter concludes: “There is simply no justifiable reason why Texas continues to waste taxpayer dollars in its decade-long fight to prevent scientific testing in Mr. Skinner’s case. We implore you to take the lead in the search for truth in this case.  Test the DNA evidence before moving forward with Mr. Skinner’s execution.  If that requires a brief reprieve of Mr. Skinner’s scheduled November 9 execution, that short delay will be a small price to pay to maintain public confidence in Texas’s criminal justice system.”

The letter to Governor Perry, Attorney General Abbott, and the Gray County District Attorney -- signed by former Texas Governor Mark White and others -- is available in Adobe .pdf format.

Readers who wish to sign a petition urging DNA testing can do so at the link.

Earlier coverage of Hank Skinner's quest for DNA testing begins at the link.

Death Penalty's Unlikely Opponents

That's the title of a report at CNN, posted by Eliott C. McLaughlin.  There is video at the link.  Here are two excerpts from this must-read:

Charisse Coleman has no real compassion for the man who walked into the Thrifty Liquor Store in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1995 and put three bullets in her brother, Russell.

But she doesn't want Bobby Lee Hampton -- one of more than seven dozen killers on Louisiana's death row -- executed, either.

"My opposition to the death penalty has nothing to do with Bobby Lee Hampton," Coleman said. "He's a bad dude. He's never going to be a good dude. If I got a call that said Bobby Lee Hampton dropped dead in his cell last night, I don't think it would create a ripple in my pond."

She added, though, "I will be goddamned if I will let Bobby Lee Hampton make me a victim, too, by taking me down that road of bitterness and revenge."

Coleman, 50, is among the most unlikely opponents of the death penalty, people who lost loved ones to unspeakable violence yet believe executing the killer will do nothing for family members or society.

Their stance is backed by groups like Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation and Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights, and their reasons aren't as religious or political as one might think. Some feel so strongly they've spoken against the death penalty even when it wasn't an option in their loved one's case.

And:

Jan Brown of Houston said she can't pinpoint why she loathes the death penalty, but she always has, even when her 9-year-old daughter's killer was executed.

A Southern Baptist until 1984, Brown said capital punishment is tantamount to "legalized murder." She said she doesn't know when she developed her disdain. The first time she considered it may have been when she told a prosecutor she didn't want James Earhart to die, she said.

"Maybe I'm just selfish," she said. "Maybe he'd tell me what her last words were. Maybe he'd tell me why she had to die. Maybe because I think it's barbaric. Maybe if one of my children ended up in the same situation, I wouldn't want them to die."

Brown, 65, said the entire process leading up to Earhart's lethal injection was more about the perpetrator than the victim. Brown was a suspect until police found Kandy Janell Kirtland's deteriorating body, her hands bound, in a rubbish pile in Bryan, Texas. Brown said she was further devastated when protesters staged a vigil at Earhart's 1999 execution -- not for the innocent girl who never got to see fifth grade, but for her killer.

Brown said she went through 12 years of hell because a prosecutor seemed to care more about Texas' reputation for being tough on crime than about helping Kandy's family heal.

Related posts are in the victims' issues index.

David Protess on the Hank Skinner Case

Protess is President of the Chicago Innocence Project.  He posts, "Keeping You Posted: Is Texas About to Kill an Innocent Man?" at Huffington Post.

On October 4th, I wrote about the latest outrage in the case of Hank Skinner, a resident of Texas' Death Row. Although Skinner recently won his case before the U.S. Supreme Court and in the Texas legislature -- giving him two opportunities to ask for DNA tests that could prove his innocence -- he still faces imminent death by lethal injection. That's because a Texas judge, indifferent to Skinner's requests to scientifically scrutinize untested crime scene evidence, has set his execution date for November 9th -- two weeks from today.

Believing this wouldn't really happen, even in Texas, I expressed my optimism to one of Skinner's lawyers at a recent benefit for the Southern Center for Human Rights. The lawyer assured me that Texas was dead serious. He had asked the Texas judge for a stay of execution but, having heard nothing, was heading to Amarillo to argue the DNA motion in federal court. If the federal magistrate defers to the state courts, he will be back in the Panhandle to ask a judge to apply the Texas statute that mandates DNA testing in cases like Skinner's. Unfortunately, that would be the same judge who signed Skinner's latest death warrant. So goes the ping-pong life of a death penalty lawyer.

Knowledgeable sources in Texas tell me that Skinner's chances will plummet if he loses before the lower court judges. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rarely sides with criminal defendants (Skinner already has lost there three times), and the U.S. Supreme Court has returned Skinner's case to the lower courts.

And:

Sensing the urgency, Skinner's wife, Sandrine, a French national, has booked a flight from Paris so she can be near her husband in what could be his final days. Skinner's daughter, Natalie, will be joining them from Virginia, the state where her father was raised.

They have posted a petition imploring the local district attorney to release the evidence for testing. Since the cost of the tests will be borne by the defense, there is no compelling reason to let the evidence sit in storage. Not when a man's life hangs in the balance.

Earlier coverage begins with Hank Skinner's federal court hearing, at the link.

A Roundup of World Day Against the Death Penalty Activities

"Okla. group pushes for repeal of death penalty," is the title of Sean Murphy's AP report, via the Alva Review-Courier.

A group of religious leaders and academics cited Oklahoma's frequency in imposing the death penalty and the number of condemned inmates who have been exonerated as reasons Monday to halt executions in the state.

The Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty held a community roundtable at the Capitol as part of the 9th annual World Day Against the Death Penalty.

"Executions, regardless of the method used, are cruel and inhumane, and can and have gone wrong in many cases," said Kenny Fikes, co-chairman of the coalition.

The Rev. Edward Weisenburger of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Oklahoma City said religious leaders have a responsibility to speak out against the death penalty.

"Human life, in all its stages, is sacred," Weisenburger said.

Oklahoma has executed 96 inmates since 1976, putting the state third behind Texas and Virginia, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. But when weighted for population, Oklahoma leads the nation in both executions and death row exonerations, said Susan Sharp, a death penalty researcher at the University of Oklahoma.

"We're the state with the highest per-capita execution rate and the highest per-capita wrongful conviction rate," Sharp said. "There's something wrong with that picture."

The Tulsa World carries, "Oklahoma death-penalty critics point out problems."  It's by Barbara Hoberock.

The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs issued the statement, "The International Commission against the Death Penalty moves its headquarters to Geneva."

President of the Swiss Confederation Micheline Calmy-Rey today took part in the opening of the fourth meeting of the International Commission against the Death Penalty in Geneva. She welcomed the decision by the Commission to move its headquarters from Madrid to Geneva, where it will be integrated into the Academy of International Humanitarian Law and of Human Rights

The abolition of the death penalty is a central plank in Swiss human rights policy. This is why Switzerland supported Spain's initiative to establish an independent international commission against the death penalty. This decision was taken at the fourth World Congress against the Death Penalty in February 2010 in Geneva with the aim of persuading as many countries and actors as possible to commit themselves to the goal of abolition.

The Commission consists of high-ranking personalities from various countries and is chaired by Federico Mayor Zaragoza from Spain. It is assisted by a support group consisting of representatives of several countries. As of October 2011, the support group will be chaired by Paul Koller, the Swiss ambassador for human rights issues.

The Financial Channel posts, "The EU and the abolition of the death penalty in the world."

The global abolition of the death penalty is one of the main objectives of the EU’s human rights policy. In 2010, the EU issued more than 15 statements on the death penalty, most of which were on individual death penalty cases, and carried out numerous demarches against the death penalty. HR/VP Catherine Ashton also declared, in her speech to the European Parliament in June 2010, the EU’s work on abolishing the death penalty worldwide a “personal priority”.

The abolition of the death penalty is one of the thematic priorities under the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR). Since 1994, the European Commission has funded through the EIDHR over 50 projects worldwide, with an overall budget of more than €33 million.

"Today, October 10, is World Day Against Death Penalty," by JohnThomas Didymus is at Digital Journal.

Activists worldwide campaigning for abolition of the death penalty are today marking World Day Against Death Penalty. This year, opponents of the death penalty are emphasizing to governments that the death penalty is cruel and inhumane.

A declaration by Catherine Ashton, European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, in commemoration of the World Day Against Death Penalty, said:

"The European Union and the Council of Europe reaffirm their united opposition to the death penalty, and their commitment to its worldwide abolition. We consider capital punishment to be inhumane, and a violation of human dignity. Experience in Europe has taught us that the death penalty does not prevent an increase in violent crime, and nor does it bring justice to the victims of such crimes. Any capital punishment resulting from a miscarriage of justice, from which no legal system can be immune, represents irreversible loss of human life."

IPS News posts, "'The Death Penalty Has No Dissuasive Effect'," by Gustavo Capdevila.

Capital punishment continues to exist because in some countries people are barraged with propaganda depicting it as a curb on crime, which it is not, said Federico Mayor Zaragoza, chair of an international commission against the death penalty that inaugurated its new headquarters in Geneva Monday.

And:

So far, 104 countries have abolished the death penalty while another 35 have a moratorium on executions, Mayor Zaragoza pointed out. "That makes a total of 139 countries without executions, which is good news," he enthused.

"Death row: America's torture chamber.  Inmates are locked up for 23 hours a day in solitary confinement for an average of 14 years. That meets the definition of torture," is by Rachel Meeropol for the Guardian.

Monday being the 9th anniversary of the World Day Against the Death Penalty seems an appropriate moment to examine why I believe this.

According to the Convention Against Torture, a treaty ratified by the US in 1994, torture is defined, in part, as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is inflicted on a person for such purposes as […] punishing him for an act he […] has committed or is suspected of having committed." The experience of American death row inmates fits this definition.

Among the approximately 3,250 prisoners on death row in the US, the vast majority will serve years in solitary and crippling conditions, awaiting execution. Of the 34 states that still kill people, at least 25 hold death row inmates in solitary confinement for 23 hours or more a day. Sensory deprivation is prevalent. On death row in Texas, hundreds of condemned men are isolated in 60-square-foot, single-person, solid-front cells for 23 hours a day. The prisoners exercise alone for one hour each day in a metal cage. Meals are served through a locking metal flap in the cell door. There are no work or group recreation programs; nor can the prisoners speak to each other through the solid cell walls and door.

Death row prisoners in the United States spend decades in these dehumanising conditions. Of the 52 people executed in the United States in 2009, the average length of time on death row was 169 months – over 14 years. Many spend much longer. Manuel Valle, for example, was executed last month by the state of Florida after 33 years on death row. Over those decades of lost time, it is not uncommon for prisoners repeatedly to come within hours of death, only to get a temporary reprieve, and then a new execution date.

After the Execution of Troy Davis Execution - Continued Commentary

Stephen Dear writes, "What I Learned at My Arrest at Troy Davis' Execution," for Huffington Post.  He's the executive director of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty.

A few minutes before Troy Davis was scheduled to be poisoned to death in Jackson, Ga., on Sept. 24, I made the sign of the cross, took a deep breath and, with my friend Kurt, calmly stopped traffic and walked across the street into a phalanx of heavily armed police and SWAT officers at the gates of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison. We were surrounded.

"I am here to stop the execution of Troy Davis," I said.

They screamed at me to leave.

At that moment, with a thousand people standing behind us watching and cheering, I knew things would never be the same in the movement to abolish the death penalty. There were too many new faces in the crowd.

"I am here to stop the execution of Troy Davis."

They screamed into my face and grabbed me.

"We are nonviolent. We are unarmed. We mean you no harm, officers."

We were handcuffed tightly behind our backs, and yelled at again. (Nearly two weeks later, I still cannot feel my left thumb from the heavy plastic ties left on for one hour.) We were placed in a police van with three young men, fellow protesters. Two more new friends, a father and son from a Georgia church, would join us.

We did not know Troy's fate until we were released in the morning. That same night Lawrence Brewer was executed in Texas.

Charged with disorderly conduct, we go to court on Nov. 17.

And:

I have heard all the arguments for the death penalty backwards and forwards. Religious leaders of all kinds must come to reject the death penalty as now just a relic of the Old South -- racist, error-prone, expensive and brutalizing. It is cruel and unusual. There is nothing biblical about America's death penalty.

The death penalty is a sin. Jesus has nothing to do with the death penalty, and America's death penalty has nothing to do with the prophets of the Jewish Bible.

I believe that this decade is a kairos moment on the death penalty -- a special, opportune time the way the 1980s were in South Africa prior to the end of apartheid. Religious leaders have a choice: stand, speak and nourish this historic movement, or be irrelevant as the death penalty withers but more Troy Davises are condemned and executed. Clearly, more are choosing to speak.

I had been in Georgia the week before Troy's execution to deliver the letter organized by People of Faith Against the Death Penalty and Amnesty International and signed by more than 3,500 religious leaders from across the country and beyond. CNN and other media reported PFADP's finding that no such letter in modern history was thought to have nearly as many endorsements from religious leaders. More than 1 million people signed petitions for Troy.

We are winning. States have started to abolish the death penalty and more are close to doing so in the next two or three years.

In light of the massive mobilization that so many people helped bring about, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles did more than seal Troy's fate with their failure to grant clemency.

They triggered a new wave of the abolition movement.

They have challenged the consciences of clergy and laity to become involved in new ways. In recent days Christian theologians and ethicists across America have started collecting signatures on a public letter calling for abolition. A similar letter from Catholic theologians decrying the death penalty now has more than 300 signers so far.

Our movement will never be the same.

On Saturday I was an honorary pallbearer at Troy Davis' funeral in Savannah, Ga. Troy empowered millions of people and that is how I will remember him. He asked everyone to pledge to work to end the death penalty. I so pledge, and you can too.

Now that Troy has been laid to rest, let us take this sad moment and transform it from despair into hope and action.

Today's Lexington Herald Leader carries Rev. Marian McClure Taylor's OpEd, "Ban the death penalty, hideous example of nation's violence."  She is executive director of the Kentucky Council of Churches.

The Sept. 21 execution of Troy Davis affected me the way it did many who saw his picture and read the details. It made me feel sick, and it made me grow even more determined to end the death penalty.

When I say "it made me feel sick," I mean horror at the ritual killing, and sadness about the tragic death Georgia's courts were trying to address. But it also put me in touch with the widespread sickness in which our country's history of violence makes many Americans comfortable with our public executions.

Of our nation's regional histories of violence, I am most familiar with the Deep South where I've lived most of my life. Georgia, where Troy Davis was killed, has one of the worst histories of lynching for example. A Mississippi woman has quilted listings of each lynching victim by state.

Viewing her work at a Louisville museum, my god-daughter asked, "Where's Georgia?" Then we saw an entire separate quilt displayed on the next wall, just to make room for Georgia's list.

Perhaps this history of violence blinds our Bible-believing region to the fact that biblical standards for just executions have never been, and cannot be, met in this country. Instead, the Bible calls us to participate in God's endless mercy.

A Roundup of Troy Davis Coverage

"Digital Age Drives Rally to Keep a Georgia Inmate From Execution," by Kim Severson for the New York Times.

As Troy Davis faces his fourth execution date, the effort to save him has come to rival the most celebrated death row campaigns in recent history.

On Monday, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles will give Mr. Davis what is by all accounts his last chance to avoid death by lethal injection, scheduled for Wednesday.

Whether history will ultimately judge Mr. Davis guilty or innocent, cultural and legal observers will be left to examine why Mr. Davis, convicted of killing a Savannah police officer, Mark MacPhail, 22 years ago, has been catapulted to the forefront of the national conversation when most of the 3,251 other people on death row in the United States have not.

The answer, experts say, can be found in an amalgam of changing death penalty politics, concerns about cracks in the judicial system, the swift power of digital political organizing and, simply, a story with a strong narrative that caught the public’s attention.

“Compelling cases that make us second-guess our justice system have always struck a chord with the American public,” said Benjamin T. Jealous, president of the N.A.A.C.P. “Some are simply more compelling in that they seem to tap deeply into the psyche of this country. A case like this suggests that our justice system is flawed.”

Like others involved in the case, he credits Mr. Davis’s sister, Martina Correia, a media-friendly former soldier who has long argued that the police simply got the wrong man, with keeping the story alive.

And the story has been compelling. A parade of witnesses have recanted since the original trial, and new testimony suggests the prosecution’s main witness might be the killer.

There are racial undertones — Mr. Davis is black and the victim was white — and legal cliffhangers, including a stay in 2008 that came with less than 90 minutes to spare and a Hail Mary pass in 2009 that resulted in a rare Supreme Court decision.

Altogether, it had the makings of a story that has grabbed many armchair lawyers and even the most casual opponent of the death penalty.

The list of people asking that the Georgia parole board offer clemency has grown from the predictable (Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Indigo Girls) to the surprising, including 51 members of Congress, entertainment heavyweights like Cee Lo Green and death penalty supporters including William S. Sessions, a former F.B.I. director, and Bob Barr, a former member of Congress, and some leaders in the Southern Baptist church. (Unlike some other states, in Georgia the governor cannot commute a death sentence; only the parole board can.)

Propelled by a recent flood of digital media including Twitter traffic and online petition requests, the case has become fodder for discussion in fashionable Atlanta bistros, Harlem street corners and anywhere living room sleuths gather in their search for another Casey Anthony trial to dissect.

Today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution carries expanded, updating coverage.  "Troy Davis' legal team finishes making its case before parole board," is by Bill Rankin.

Troy Anthony Davis' legal team has finished presenting its case to the state Board of Pardons and Paroles in a last-ditch bid to win clemency.

"We believe we have established substantial doubt in this case," Stephen Marsh, one of Davis' lawyers, said after a three-hour hearing. The execution should not be allowed to go forward, he said.

The five-member board will now hear from prosecutors and surviving relatives of Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail, who was gunned down in a Burger King parking lot in 1989.

The five-member board began its 9 a.m. hearing. It has not said whether it will issue its decision today as to whether Davis will be granted clemency or whether his execution should be carried out as scheduled on Wednesday at 7 p.m.

The Journal-Constitution also has, "Troy Davis’ life in board’s hands," by Rankin and Rhonda Cook.

The condemned in Georgia always have a long and tortuous journey to the execution chamber. But the case of Troy Anthony Davis, whose execution is set for Wednesday, has been perhaps the most extraordinary and controversial legal odyssey in the state’s history.

It also has generated the most worldwide attention of any Georgia case. On Thursday, Davis’ supporters gave the state Board of Pardons and Paroles the names of 663,000 people asking Davis be spared execution. Advocates are using social media to rally support and organize protests around the world.

Davis’ case has taken one unexpected turn after another since he was sentenced to death 20 years ago for the murder of Savannah Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail. On two occasions, the district attorney who put Davis on death row issued final statements believing nothing stood in the way of Davis’ execution, only to see the case reconsidered. On Monday, the parole board is scheduled to meet once again to determine whether Davis should live or die.

Even though Davis, 42, was condemned to die for killing a cop and prosecutors steadfastly stand behind his conviction, his innocence claims have attracted a host of dignitaries. Among them, former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI, former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher and former FBI Director William Sessions say Davis should be granted clemency.

“This case is extraordinary because there have been substantial questions of his innocence for almost a decade,” said death-penalty lawyer Stephen Bright, a professor at Yale Law School. “It has attracted attention from all around the world, and the extraordinary number of people supporting him — and the prominence of some of them — is unprecedented.”

This Wednesday marks the fourth time the state has set a date for Davis to be put to death by lethal injection.

The AP filing is via Rome News-Tribune, "Parole board to consider high-profile death penalty case."  It's written by Greg Bluestein.

Supporters of Troy Davis planned to make a last-ditch effort Monday to stop his execution for the 1989 murder of an off-duty Savannah police officer, asking the Georgia pardons board to grant clemency to the high-profile death-row inmate now that his legal appeals are exhausted.

The five-member Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles were to meet at 9 a.m. Monday to consider arguments surrounding Davis, who claims he is innocent of the killing of Mark MacPhail. He's set to be put to death by injection Wednesday, the fourth time in four years the state has tried to execute the 42-year-old man.

The pardons board, which has the power to commute death sentences but rarely does so, decided in 2007 to delay his execution for 90 days to grant the courts more time to review the case. A year later, it denied Davis clemency and allowed his execution to go forward. Since then, though, three new members have been appointed to the panel.

Other coverage includes;

"Amid international scrutiny, pardons board weighs clemency for Troy Davis," by Jim Mustian for the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.

"Killer's Last Bid for Clemency," at the Wall Street Journal by Cameron McWhirter.

"Georgia parole board hearing last-ditch appeal from death-row inmate," at CNN.

"MLK's daughter enters fray of Ga. death penalty case," by Melanie Eversley in USA Today.

"MLK daughter: Don't execute Troy Davis," at UPI.

The Institute for Southern Studies posts, "The extraordinary movement to save Troy Davis."

Also, Bianca Jagger has published her, "Letter to Chairman of Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles: Grant Clemency to Troy Davis," at Huffington Post.

Earlier coverage of Troy Davis' pending execution begins at the link.

An Update on the Troy Davis Case

"Should Davis be executed? No: Questions about his guilt continue to plague his conviction," is the title of William S. Sessions' OpEd in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

In 2007, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles issued a stay of execution for Davis and took the admirable position that it would “not allow an execution to proceed in this State unless and until its members are convinced that there is no doubt as to the guilt of the accused.”

Because this case continues to be permeated by doubt, the Board of Pardons and Paroles’ stance continues to be the right one. In reality, there will always be cases, including capital cases, in which doubts about guilt cannot be erased to an acceptable level of certainty. The Davis case is one of these, and it is for cases like this that executive clemency exists.

Those responsible for clemency play a vital role in ensuring our legal system includes a measure of compassion and humanity. The death penalty should not be carried out, and Davis’ sentence should be commuted to life.

Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman's latest syndicated column is, "Troy Davis, victim of judicial lynching; Troy Davis faces execution on 21 September, despite seven of nine non-police witnesses recanting. Where is the justice in that?"  It's via the Guardian.

In the most recent Republican presidential debate in Tampa, Florida, when CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked, hypothetically, if a man who chose to carry no medical insurance, then was stricken with a grave illness, should be left to die, cheers of "Yeah!" filled the hall. When, in the prior debate, Governor Rick Perry was asked about his enthusiastic use of the death penalty in Texas, the crowd erupted into sustained applause and cheers. The reaction from the audience prompted debate moderator Brian Williams of NBC News to follow up with the question, "What do you make of that dynamic that just happened here, the mention of the execution of 234 people drew applause?"

That "dynamic" is why challenging the death sentence to be carried out against Troy Davis by the state of Georgia on 21 September is so important. Davis has been on Georgia's death row for close to 20 years, after being convicted of killing off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah. Since his conviction, seven of the nine non-police witnesses have recanted their testimony, alleging police coercion and intimidation in obtaining the testimony. There is no physical evidence linking Davis to the murder.

Last March, the US supreme court ruled that Davis should receive an evidentiary hearing, to make his case for innocence. Several witnesses have identified one of the remaining witnesses who has not recanted, Sylvester "Redd" Coles, as the shooter. US District Judge William T Moore Jr refused, on a technicality, to allow the testimony of witnesses who claimed that, after Davis had been convicted, Coles admitted to shooting MacPhail. In his August court order, Moore summarised, "Mr Davis is not innocent."

One of the jurors, Brenda Forrest, disagrees. She told CNN in 2009, recalling the trial of Davis, "All of the witnesses – they were able to ID him as the person who actually did it." Since the seven witnesses recanted, she says: "If I knew then what I know now, Troy Davis would not be on death row. The verdict would be not guilty."

Today, supporters of Troy Davis submitted well over 600,000 petition signature calling for clemency.

USA Today reports, "Ga. death-row case shows power of social media."  It's written by Melanie Eversley.

A social media campaign to stop an execution in Georgia next week is drawing support from hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

Celebrities, Nobel laureates and national leaders have joined the NAACP, Amnesty International and the grassroots group Change.org to urge Georgia authorities to grant clemency to Troy Davis, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday. They are flooding Twitter with several tweets a minute, signing online petitions and, starting today, planning to rally around the country.

And:

The latest effort, triggered when a new execution date was set last week, includes celebrities John Legend, Mia Farrow and the Indigo Girls. All are tweeting under #TooMuchDoubt, a search term devised by Amnesty International and the NAACP. Davis supporters also have created Facebook pages.

"In the moment, when our nation stumbles toward complete failure of its justice system, we have to give every citizen the opportunity to express their outrage and their intention that the state not do this in their name," NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous says. "When the state executes an innocent person, every citizen is implicated in that act."

The tweets ask the public to contact the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles — the group with the authority to halt Davis' death — and to urge the panel to grant clemency. They also ask people to sign one of three petitions the groups are circulating online.

"I think the key thing we are trying to express to the Georgia authorities is there are just so many doubts," says Laura Moye, death penalty abolition campaign director for Amnesty International USA.

The board is scheduled to meet Monday to consider the case. If it does not grant clemency, there is no official next legal step, but "we are not going to stand by quietly if that is what happens," Moye says. The NAACP also is calling on Chatham County, Ga., District Attorney Larry Chisolm to move to withdraw the death warrant, Jealous says.

Representatives from Amnesty International and the NAACP presented four petitions with more than 600,000 signatures to the state parole board Thursday. An online petition sponsored by Davis' sister, Kimberly Davis, and Change.org has collected more than 233,000 signatures.

This is what more than 650,000 petition signatures look like.

Troy Davis' case has caught the attention of people around the world.  Alice Kim, Director of the Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council, is no stranger to the issue of capital punishment.  She's worked tirelessly to keep Illinois exonerees connected and to provide forums for them to bear witness.  At her Dancing the Dialectic blog, she's posted, "'I need a poem' for Troy Davis."  Here's a brief excerpt:

"I need a poem, need a poem, a master poem, once and for all, I need a poem to destroy poetry and break these iron bars." I fall in love with these words every time I read them, words written by exonerated death row prisoner and poet Delbert Tibbs. Today, I repeat these words for Troy Davis.

I want there to be a poem so powerful, so magical, so momentous that it can save Troy's life. He is scheduled to be executed thirteen days from today on Wednesday, September 21 at 7pm in Georgia. It is possible that these next thirteen days will be his last. If business as usual is not interrupted then a legal lynching will take place. But Troy has survived three previous execution dates because of doubts about his guilt, and I want to hope that Troy will be spared from execution a fourth time, that the power of the people will be the poetry that can save his life.

It seems that her post is, at least partially, inspired by Delbert Tibbs' "I Need a Poem."  Delbert Tibbs' story is told in the play, "The Exonerated;" he's the anchor of the play.  He was exonerated from death row in Florida and lives in Chicago.  He's a national treasure.  Everyone should get to hear Delbert speak his poetry.

Earlier coverage of Troy Davis' case begins at the link.

Execution Date Set in Troy Davis Case

"Troy Anthony Davis' execution set for Sept. 21," is the Atlanta Journal-Constitution report by Bill Rankin.

The Georgia Department of Corrections has set the execution of Troy Anthony Davis for 7 p.m. on Sept. 21.

The agency set the time and date a day after a Chatham County judge signed a death warrant for Davis, who was convicted of killing an off-duty Savannah police officer in 1989.

Davis' appeals are exhausted. He is expected to once again ask the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant him clemency. The board has previously denied that request.

Davis, 41, was convicted of killing Officer Mark Allen MacPhail as MacPhail ran to the aid of a homeless man being pistol-whipped outside a Burger King.

The case has attracted international attention because a number of key prosecution witnesses either recanted or backed off their trial testimony. Other witnesses have come forward and said another man at the scene told them he was the actual killer.

The AP filing is, "Troy Davis execution date set for Sept. 21," by Greg Bluestein.  It's via the Savannah Morning News.

Davis has exhausted his appeals, but his attorney Jason Ewart has said they plan to ask the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles for clemency. The five-member panel has the power to commute or postpone executions, but rarely does so.

The order, which was provided to the Associated Press by Davis' defense attorney Brian Kammer, sets a window between Sept. 21 and Sept. 28 for the execution. The Georgia Attorney General's office confirmed the order but didn't elaborate.

Davis has long said he could prove he was wrongly convicted of the killing of Mark MacPhail. The officer was working off-duty at a Savannah bus station when he was shot twice while rushing to help a homeless man who had been attacked. Eyewitnesses identified Davis as the shooter at his trial, but no physical evidence tied him to the slaying. Davis was convicted of the murder in 1991 and sentenced to death.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2009 agreed he should have the rare chance to argue he was innocent before a federal judge. It was the first time in at least 50 years that the court had granted an American death row inmate such an innocence hearing.

During two days of testimony in June 2010, U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr. heard from two witnesses who said they falsely incriminated Davis and two others who said another man had confessed to being MacPhail's killer in the years since Davis' trial.

But Moore concluded in August that several of the witnesses had already backed off their incriminating statements during the 1991 trial — so it wasn't new evidence — and that others simply couldn't be believed. He ruled that while the evidence casts some additional doubt on the conviction, "it is largely smoke and mirrors" and not nearly strong enough to prove Davis' innocence.

Davis appealed, but the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to hear the challenge in November. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected it in March.

Amnesty International, which has long championed Troy Davis' case, issued a statement, "Troy Davis: clemency urged in case 'riven with doubt' after execution set."

Amnesty International has urged the Board of Pardons and Parole in the US state of Georgia to grant clemency to death row inmate Troy Anthony Davis after a judge ordered that his execution will take place later this month (between 21-28 September).

 

Troy Davis, 42, has been on death row since being convicted in 1991 of the killing of an off-duty policeman Mark Allen MacPhail, who was shot in Savannah, Georgia in 1989.

 

Davis has always protested his innocence and there are longstanding doubts about the fairness of his trial. There is no physical evidence linking Davis to the crime and seven out of nine prosecution witnesses later recanted or changed their initial testimonies in sworn affidavits.

 

Amnesty International USA Executive Director Larry Cox said:

 

“The board stayed Davis’ execution in 2007, stating that capital punishment was not an option when doubts about guilt remained.

 

“Since then two more execution dates have come and gone, and there is still little clarity, much less proof, that Davis committed any crime.

 

“Amnesty International respectfully asks the board to commute Davis’ sentence to life and prevent Georgia from making a catastrophic mistake.”

 

Since the launch of its 2007 report, “Where Is the Justice for Me? The Case of Troy Davis, Facing Execution in Georgia”, Amnesty has campaigned intensively for clemency for Davis.

 

On 12 April 2011 Amnesty issued an “Urgent Action” to its membership on his behalf and more than 300,000 signatures have been gathered for Davis since the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles last considered clemency. Following an “evidentiary hearing” last summer, a former FBI director William Sessions renewed his support for the inmate, and Nobel laureates Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Jose Ramos Horta have recently appealed to the board for clemency

Earlier coverage of the Troy Davis case begins at the link.

Duane Buck & Tainted Future Dangerousness Testimony

Once again, expert witness testimony about future dangerousness provided during the sentencing phase of a Texas capital murder trial is at issue.

Texas Defender Service has issued a news release, "Texas Set to Execute Man Despite Improper Racist Evidence, Presented by Prosecution at Trial.  Attorneys urge prosecutors, courts, and Governor Perry to halt execution in case in which prior Attorney General John Cornyn admitted error."

Today, attorneys for Duane Edward Buck filed a clemency petition with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles urging the Board and Governor Perry to intervene and halt the execution of Mr. Buck, scheduled for September 15, 2011.

On May 5, 1997, Mr. Buck was convicted of capital murder in Harris County for the July 1995 shooting deaths of Debra Gardner and Kenneth Butler. A third person, Phyllis Taylor, was also shot, but survived her wound. Ms. Taylor has forgiven Mr. Buck and does not wish to see him executed.

During Mr. Buck’s trial, psychologist Walter Quijano was called by the defense and testified, based on several factors, that he did not believe Mr. Buck would be dangerous in the future.  On cross-examination, the prosecutor elicited improper testimony from Dr. Quijano that the fact that Mr. Buck was African-American increased the likelihood of his being dangerous in the future.  The State urged the jury in its closing argument to rely on Dr. Quijano’s testimony.  The jury did so, found that Mr. Buck would be a future danger, and he was sentenced to death.

After Mr. Buck’s trial, but while his case was pending on appeal, on June 10, 2000, in a highly-unusual move, then-Attorney General John Cornyn issued a press release calling for the retrial of six individuals who had been sentenced to death based on improper introduction of, and reliance on, race as a factor in sentencing.  Mr. Cornyn identified Mr. Buck’s case as one of those six cases. Then-Attorney General (now Senator) Cornyn stated that Texas would not contest federal appeals in those six cases and that if the attorneys for the six identified defendants amended their appeals to include objections to Dr. Quijano’s testimony, the Attorney General would not object.

Then-Attorney General Cornyn first confessed error based on the testimony of Dr. Quijano in the case of Victor Saldaño. Attorney General Cornyn stated: “As I explained in a filing before the United States Supreme Court...it is inappropriate to allow race to be considered as a factor in our criminal justice system....[T]he United States Supreme Court agreed. The people of Texas want and deserve a system that affords the same fairness to everyone.”

The six cases in which the Attorney General conceded error were those of Gustavo Garcia, Eugene Broxton, John Alba, Michael Gonzales, Carl Blue, and Duane Buck.  In the other five cases, courts granted new sentencing trials to the inmates to allow them fair trials untainted by consideration of race.

Despite this concession, Mr. Buck’s case has slipped through the cracks.  For complicated reasons related to the intricate litigation process in post-conviction proceedings, the issue related to the improper racial testimony and arguments in Mr. Buck’s case has not been redressed.  Mr. Buck is the only one of the six death row inmates identified by the Attorney General who was not granted an opportunity to have a colorblind sentencing.  Mr. Buck now faces execution on September 15, 2011.

The clemency petition filed today asks the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Perry to intervene.  In it, attorneys for Mr. Buck state: “Five out of the six cases in which Attorney General John Cornyn conceded error resulted in new sentencing hearings.  Mr. Buck has not received the same corrective process. The State of Texas cannot and should not tolerate an execution on the basis of an individual’s race, particularly where this State’s highest legal officer has acknowledged the error, not only in similarly situated cases, but in this case.”

Lawyers for Mr. Buck are also asking the Harris County District Attorney’s Office and the Attorney General of Texas to intervene and withdraw Mr. Buck’s execution date.  “This case represents an obvious injustice that must be remedied by prosecutors, the courts or by Governor Perry and the Board of Pardons and Paroles,” said Kate Black, counsel for Mr. Buck. “If Mr. Buck is executed, not only will Texas have violated the constitution, it will have violated its citizens’ basic moral values by permitting an execution to be carried out that is based on an individual’s race.”

The clemency petition for Duane Edward Buck is available via Sribd.  Two archived news releases issued by then-Attorney General John Cornyn on June 9, 2009 reference the case.

Those who would like to urge clemency can sign on to a statement at Change.org.

Related posts are in the future dangerousness index.

Bhuiyan's Fight - From the Blogs

"'My Islamic Faith Teaches Me This Too'," is Ta-Nehisi Coates' post at the Atlantic.  He notes yesterday's New York Times Q&A with Bhuiyan.

According to the Times, Bhuiyan -- who was uninsured -- was immediately discharged the next day, and spent weeks sleeping on friends sofas and relying on physician samples for painkillers.

Stroman, for his part, was sentenced to die.

Bhuiyan wants no part of it:

I was raised very well by my parents and teachers. They raised me with good morals and strong faith. They taught me to put yourself in others' shoes. Even if they hurt you, don't take revenge. Forgive them. Move on. It will bring something good to you and them. My Islamic faith teaches me this too. He said he did this as an act of war and a lot of Americans wanted to do it but he had the courage to do it -- to shoot Muslims. After it happened I was just simply struggling to survive in this country. I decided that forgiveness was not enough. That what he did was out of ignorance. I decided I had to do something to save this person's life. That killing someone in Dallas is not an answer for what happened on Sept. 11.

It is tempting to direct this toward the likes of Herman Cain and the anti-Muslim bigots who he delights in stoking up. That would be a mistake. Attempting to carry other people's ignorance generally. 

This should be directed at those of us who believe in the injustice of the death penalty, and believe in free worship. It's deeply inspiring.

At the Dallas Morning News, Michael Landauer posts, "Does it matter if a juror has regrets?"

This press release just came through the inbox (bold added for emphasis by me):

    On the eve of the execution of Mark Stroman in Texas, a juror that sentenced him to death admits that she made a mistake at trial -- and asks that his life be spared

    One of twelve jurors who served in the trial of Mark Stroman in 2002 has made a last-minute appeal to the Governor of Texas to spare his life.

    With only 24 hours until Mr Stroman's scheduled execution, Jenifer Sheehan has come forward to reveal how she was badly misled by the District Attorney Greg Davis during the trial. She has also expressed regret at her decision in the case, insisting that she was not given an opportunity to understand the wishes of the victims.

    "When I walked into that courtroom to serve as a juror I believed in the Death Penalty, but as time has passed I have come to deeply regret my decision to sentence Mark to death. Unfortunately, although I had doubts when we were deliberating, I was not able to stand up to the other bullies on the jury.

    "I was misled by the prosecution into believing that the murder of Mr. Patel was a capital crime and know now that Mark did not go into the gas station to rob Mr. Patel. I am sure of that and so I should not have taken the decision to give him the death sentence because his crime did not warrant the death penalty.

    "I also did not know that surviving victim Rais Bhuiyan, did not want Mark to be executed, and the other victims supported his efforts. The prosecution presented the evidence in such a way as to give us just the opposite impression. If I had known that they had such a strong belief in forgiveness there is no way that I would have taken the decision for him to be executed.

    "I know that some of the other jurors feel like I do and I urge them to come forward as I am in this appeal for Mark's life to be spared. I also urge Rick Perry to listen to my voice as a juror as I say that I made the wrong decision and that Mark Stroman should not be executed."

And:

Normally, I would say that a juror has a right to reconsider, but that it means nothing. After all, the system has very strict rules about what information can be given to the jury, and if jurors learn some things after the fact that change their opinion, well, that's just part of the process.

But in this case, I am troubled by the notion that the prosecutors convinced the jury that the victims wanted retribution and that they made the legal technical argument that the death of Mr. Patel was a robbery. How can they argue it both ways? It's a hate crime and a robbery?

That said, I am not sure the family's wishes should be considered too heavily. After all, I don't think it's right to allow victims to choose the punishment for a crime. Otherwise, why have a legal system at all?

Morning News Editorial Board member Mike Hashimoto posts, "One remaining detail from the Rais Bhuiyan story."

Rais Bhuiyan seems like a well-meaning person with a good heart. He survived a shotgun blast to his face fired by a racist idiot. His crusade today is to spare the life of that idiot, Mark Stroman, who's scheduled for lethal injection Wednesday.

Bhuiyan's motives are his own, and I won't question them. He's a better man than I am on this score. And since he came to the attention of an Editorial Board that opposes capital punishment, period, I'm not surprised we've taken up his cause. (I dissent, but what's new in that?)

Earlier coverage of Rais Bhuiyan's work begins with the preceding post.

Rais Bhuiyan's Extraordinary Campaign

"Texas inmate set to die for post-9/11 killings," is the title of Michael Graczyk's AP report.

Condemned inmate Mark Stroman was looking to the federal courts to prevent his execution Wednesday for killing a Dallas-area convenience store clerk during a shooting he said was in retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Stroman, 41, said he went on a shooting spree in the weeks following the 2001 attacks targeting people of Middle East descent, claiming it was a patriotic response to terrorism. Two men were killed and a third was wounded. Stroman is scheduled for lethal injection Wednesday evening in Huntsville.

In an unusual step, the lone shooting survivor, Rais Bhuiyan, a native of Bangladesh, has asked the courts to halt the execution. In a lawsuit, he argues that his religious beliefs as a Muslim told him to forgive Stroman. He also wants to spend time with the convict to learn more about why the shootings occurred.

The AFP post, "Hate-crime victim fights to stop execution," is via the Express Tribune.

Days after the attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States, Stroman’s attorney says, the then 31-year-old stone cutter “could not go to the Middle East, so he turned on those who he thought were Middle Easterners who had come to the USA.”

One of the men he shot was Rais Bhuiyan, who lost an eye in the brutal violence but against all odds survived.

But the Bangladesh-born Bhuiyan is seeking mercy, not revenge. He is demanding clemency for Stroman and is set to appear in court just hours before the convict is scheduled to be put to death.

The hearing is scheduled for Wednesday in the state capital Austin, where Bhuiyan has sued Texas Governor Rick Perry and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) in a bid to halt Stroman’s execution.

Bhuiyan says his rights as a victim have been violated, and he wants the chance to speak with Stroman so that he can have a “healing dialogue,” said a source who is working with the victim and his organization, “World Without Hate.”

Bill Mears' updated CNN report, "Texas Man To Be Executed For Revenge Killing After 2001 Terror Attacks," is via WSB-TV.

The Supreme Court denied a stay of execution last month. Stroman's supporters are urging the governor and the state Board of Pardons and Parole to grant clemency. He also has a request pending before the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the execution. Barring a last-minute reprieve, he is set to die at 6 p.m. (7 p.m. ET).

In Pakistan, the English-language Nation reports, "Shot in face in 9/11 aftermath, Muslim victim pleads for his attacker's life."

"I never hated him, I just felt sorry for him because he was disturbed and ignorant," he said.

But it was only after he went on a pilgrimage to Makkah in 2009 that he started to devote more time to campaigning against Stroman's death penalty sentence.

"After I came back from pilgrimage, I thought if we kill him, what are we getting? But if we give him a chance, we can get some good out of it," Bhuiyan said.

He continued: "Stroman's execution will not eradicate hate crimes from this world. The cycle of violence should be stopped, we have suffered enough."

As part of the campaign, Bhuiyan has now launched legal proceedings against Governor Perry, claiming that the state of Texas ignored his rights as a victim.

In an interview with Huffington Post, Bhuiyan said his efforts on behalf of Stroman were motivated by his Muslim faith. The Holy Quran teaches that those who forsake retribution and forgive those who have wronged them become closer to God, he said.

"My faith teaches me that saving a life is like saving the entire human race," he said.

Earlier coverage of Rais Bhuiyan's efforts begins at the link.  In the next post, I'll link to takes from the blogosphere.

News Coverage of Rais Bhuiyan's News Conference

"Victim Sues to Stop Murderer's Execution," is the Texas Tribune report by Ingrid Husby and Ioanna Makris.

Rais Bhuiyan is suing Gov. Rick Perry to stop the state from executing the man who shot him in the head nearly 10 years ago.

“I never hated him,” Bhuiyan said at a press conference this morning. “ I was never angry at him.”

Bhuiyan, an Israeli Muslim who lives in Dallas, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday claiming that Texas would violate his rights as a victim by proceding with the scheduled execution of Mark Stroman on July 20. Bhuiyan, the sole survivor of the September 2001 Dallas convenience store shooting spree, believes that Stroman is reformed and wants Perry to halt the execution.

On Sept. 21, 2001 Stroman, a methamphetamine addict suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, walked into a Dallas convenience store and went on a rampage after his half-sister was killed in the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers.

And:

Stroman shot four people, and only Bhuiyan survived. The gunshot felt like a million bees hitting his face, he said. But even as blood poured down the side of his head, he said he never lost hope that he would survive. Now, he's hoping that by pursuing his rights as a victim he can help Stroman survive.

“I grew mentally and spiritually over the years,” Bhuiyan said, “and I realized hate does not bring anything but fear.”

He hopes if the execution is stayed that Stroman will speak out against hate crimes and advocate for peace.

Dianne Solis writes, "Dallas shooting victim sues to stop attacker’s execution," for today's Dallas Morning News.

A man wounded in a hate crime following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has filed a lawsuit in Travis County against Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, asking for a temporary injunction to stop the execution of Mark Stroman.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, argues that Rais Bhuiyan’s rights were violated during Stroman’s 2002 trial. Bhuiyan and his attorneys held a news conference Thursday morning on the steps of the Travis County Courthouse.

Stroman is scheduled for execution by injection July 20 at the Huntsville state prison.

The KUT-FM report is, "Victim Seeks to Halt Assailant’s Death Sentence," by Axel Gerdau.  There is audio at the link.

Danalynn Recer is an attorney assisting in the case. She cites the Texas Victims Rights Act.

“The act fails to meet the needs of many victims, because the criminal justice system offers them only one response of anger, of hatred, of vengeance,” Recer said. “The law provides no options to victims like Rais who need something other than vengeance to heal.”

Lawyers anticipate a hearing on Monday. The Governor’s Office says it has not received the lawsuit and would need a favorable recommendation from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant clemency.

"Shooting victim sues to stop assailant's execution," is the YNN Austin report by Bonnie Gonzalez.  YNN is the Time Warner Cable, 24 hour local news channel.  There is video at the link.

Bhuiyan says the families of the other victims stand behind him in the request to the Governor. The website for his campaign can be found here.

Stroman’s execution is set for July 20, 2011.

The brief AP post is, "Wounded clerk sues Perry over execution next week," via the Houston Chronicle.

Today's Daily Texas carries, "Victim of 2001 attempted murder begs clemency for his shooter," by Jillian Bliss.

Earlier coverage begins with Bhuiyan's OpEd articulating why is calling for a commutation.  The lawsuit, Bhuiyan v. Perry, is available via Scribd.

Forgiveness Teaches Us the Value of Life

That's the title of Rais Bhuiyan's OpEd in today's Austin American-Statesman.

When Mark Stroman walked into the gas station where I worked, I knew what was happening. He had a gun. Here we go again, another robbery, I thought. I offered him money, but he simply asked me: "Where are you from?"

"Excuse me?" I said. Then he pulled the trigger. It felt like a million stars exploding in my head. I knew I was going to die as I fell to the floor. My mother's and father's faces flashed before my eyes as I passed out.

I still don't know how I survived the attack. I just know that every day I thank God for sparing me, and I pray that I can use my second chance to make some small difference in the world. As I struggled to recover from my injuries, I realized that the shooting in the gas station was no robbery. He never even looked at the money. A muddled, ignorant and misguided man had responded to the barbaric attack on the twin towers on 9/11 by attempting to kill me because he thought I was of Middle Eastern descent.

It may sound strange, but I never hated Mark for his crime. He was ignorant — so ignorant that he picked on someone who had never been to the Middle East.

And:

I want more than anything for him to stay alive, not because I am convinced he is a good person, but because I want him to learn more about the world, more about why his actions were wrong — and to help to teach others these important lessons.

I love the great state of Texas, but it makes me mad that some of the state's elected and appointed officials want to kill Mark. He shot and tried to kill me, yet I have never wanted him to die. The family members of Mark's other victims support my personal battle to stop his execution.

So why do some of the state's elected and appointed officials think we should execute him? In whose name is this going to happen?

That is why I am taking Gov. Rick Perry to court. Perry decreed that April 10-16 would be Victims' Rights Week. "I encourage all Texans," he said, "to join in this effort by learning more about victims' rights and supporting victims of crime whenever possible. We can help our fellow Texans on the road to recovery with compassion and respect."

As a victim of a "hate crime," I had hoped to see a little of that compassion and respect. The Texas Victims' Bill of Rights says I am entitled to dignity. I have been bitterly disappointed by the legal process, which only causes me more suffering. Nobody told me what was happening at the trial; the prosecutors told the jury, "This man needs to die."

Bhuiyan's lawsuit, Bhuiyan v. Perry, is available via Scribd.

Earlier coverage of Rais Bhuiyan's campaign for compassion and a commutation for his attacker begins at the link.  In the next post, I'll link the extensive coverage of his news conference, yesterday.

9/11 Hate Crime Victim Sues to Halt July 20 Execution

The Dallas Observer has posted, "Rais Bhuiyan, Victim of Post-9/11 Shooting, to Sue the State to Try to Spare Attacker's Life," written by Anna Merlan.

At 10 this morning on the steps of the Heman Marion Sweatt Travis County Courthouse, Rais Bhuiyan, who was shot in the face by white supremacist Mark Stroman as part of a post-September 11, 2001 shooting spree, will announce that he's filing suit today against Gov. Rick Perry and other state officials. The suit is a last-ditch effort to prevent Stroman's execution, which is scheduled for July 20 in Huntsville.

Bhuiyan, who was working behind the counter of a Pleasant Grove convenience store when he was attacked, says in the pleading that Perry has violated his rights as a victim of a violent crime by ignoring his requests to meet with Stroman for mediation, something he's entitled to by law. "Victim restoration," improving the quality of care for victims of violent crime, is something Perry has long said is part of his platform as governor.

And:

We couldn't reach Bhuiyan this morning, but he and his attorney have sent a statement explaining the motivations behind the suit -- and offering a defense of Stroman's actions that resulted in two men dead and another blinded in one eye.

Bhuiyan's lawyer, Khurrum Wahid, said in a statement, "It is ironic that Rais Bhuiyan was shot by someone thinking it was a blow against Muslims, yet Islamic law would respect Rais' desire for forgiveness. The state of Texas has failed him as a victim. After suffering such a traumatic experience, surely we should respect Mr. Bhuiyan, rather than traumatize him again. We often hear, 'What about the rights of the victim!' The victim has rights even when his voice is not one of vengeance but one of forgiveness."

A press release sent last night lays out in more detail what Bhuiyan's camp says were the circumstances surrounding Stroman's state of mind before his shooting spree, which left two other men dead and Bhuiyan blinded in one eye and disfigured.

The lawsuit filed in state district court in Travis County, Bhuiyan v. Perry, is available from Scribd.

The news release, issued this morning by Bhuiyan's attorneys, is printed in full, below.  It's titled, "Shooting survivor sues Gov. Perry over violation of Victims' Rights, demanding stay of Mark Stroman execution."

A man who survived being shot in the face in 2001 will sue Texas Governor Rick Perry and other officials today, demanding respect for his rights as a victim of violent crime.  A press conference will be held on the steps of the courthouse.

Rais Bhuiyan was shot by Mark Stroman in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.  Fueled by his addiction to methamphetamine, which he used to medicate his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Mark Stroman was close to the edge when he caught his girlfriend having an affair. Then came 9/11, and Mark Stroman responded to the fact that his half-sister was killed in the World Trade Center by setting out to take revenge on "Arabs".  He killed two innocent men and tried to kill Mr Bhuiyan.

The previous Dallas District Attorney pushed forward with the death penalty without consulting the victims for their views. Mark Stroman's lawyers put up a desultory defense, and he was on death row in record time - convicted after less than a day.

Due to his strong religious belief in the importance of forgiveness, Mr Bhuiyan never wanted to see Mark Stroman die.  Supported in his campaign by the families of the two other victims, Mr Bhuiyan has recently criss-crossed Texas in search of a politician willing to listen to him.

Mr Bhuiyan was kept in the dark for a decade concerning his entitlements under the Texas Victims' Bill of Rights.  He has belatedly learned of his rights, every one of which has been ignored.  He has the right to mediation with Mark Stroman, who is willing to meet with him and apologize for his crimes, but the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has not responded to the request.

This has been just one part of a catalogue of failings, which also included a lack of meaningful mental health assistance with the trauma he suffered after being shot in the face.

Governor Perry decreed that April 10-16, 2011, would be Victims' Rights Week. See http://www.texansforequaljustice.org/docs/cvrw11.pdf.  "I encourage all Texans," he said, "to join in this effort by learning more about victims' rights and supporting victims of crime whenever possible.  We can help our fellow Texans on the road to recovery with compassion and respect."

With Mark Stroman's execution scheduled for 20 July, time is extremely short.

Rais Bhuiyan said: "Along with families of the other victims in the case, I have been ignored and sidelined, year after year. My parents taught me to believe passionately in compassion and respect. If Governor Perry really means it when he says victims' rights are a priority, we need action rather than hollow words."

Khurrum Wahid, Mr Bhuiyan's lawyer, said: "It is ironic that Rais Bhuiyan was shot by someone thinking it was a blow against Muslims, yet Islamic law would respect Rais' desire for forgiveness. The State of Texas has failed him as a victim. After suffering such a traumatic experience, surely we should respect Mr Bhuiyan, rather than traumatise him again. We often hear "What about the rights of the victim!" The victim has rights even when his voice is not one of vengeance but one of forgiveness."

***ENDS***

Notes to editors:

Under Texas law, the victim has "the right to request victim-offender mediation coordinated by the victim services division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice" (Tex. Code Crim. Proc. 56.02(a))

Among his "Principles for a Stronger Texas," Gov Perry states that he "focused resources on certain key areas including [...] victims' rights" http://www.governor.state.tx.us/priorities.

Earlier coverage of Bhuiyan's campaign for a commutation of his attacker's death sentence begins at the link.

Lundbeck and a Doctor's Advice

"Danish firm withdraws execution drug," is the unsigned UPI report.

The company announced it would only supply pentobarbital, an essential drug in the treatment of life-threatening epileptic seizures, to company-approved hospitals and treatment centers.

The decision comes six months after a U.S. company, Hospira, said it would no longer manufacture sodium thiopental, another anesthetic that has been used in lethal injections.

After that action, several states carrying out execution by lethal injection switched to pentobarbital.

At New Scientist, Michael Marshall post, "Danish firm stops supplying US death penalty drug."

Another drug used by US executioners just got the chop. Pharmaceutical firm Lundbeck of Copenhagen, Denmark, has announced that it will not sell pentobarbital to prisons in US states where the death penalty is legal.

And:

Jason Clark, a public information officer at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), which replaced sodium thiopental with pentobarbital in March this year, says: "The agency has an adequate supply of the drug to carry out executions that have been or may be scheduled."

Texas has executed more people than any other state since the death penalty was reinstated in the US in 1976. The TDCJ has eight executions scheduled over the next three months. "We will continue to monitor the situation closely," says Clark.

From the UK's Stourbridge News, "Victory for Hagley Doc in death-row campaign."

Dr David Nicholl led a campaign which forced multi-national company Lundbeck Pharmaceuticals to change its distribution procedures for pentobarbital in American states that execute prisoners by lethal injection.

The drug is a powerful anaesthetic which, according to human rights charity Reprieve, has been used in the execution of 18 prisoners.

Consultant neurologist, Dr Nicholl, from Woodlands Avenue, said: “This is a massive victory, it is the first time a major pharmaceutical company has taken such direct action to ensure its drugs are used to benefit the health of patients, not assist in state sponsored execution.”

Human rights activists have been working for months to put pressure on Danish company Lundbeck amid fears the drug does not prevent unnecessary suffering.

And:

As part of their campaign, Dr Nicholl and more than 60 fellow clinicians signed an open letter to Lundbeck chief executive Ulf Wiinberg in the medical journal The Lancet.

The letter, published on June 9, demanded the company “restrict the distribution of pentobarbital to legitimate users but not executioners”.

On July 1, Lundbeck, which sells the drug under the name Nembutal, agreed to change its methods of distribution in a bid to prevent its product ending up in US prisons for executions.

Earlier coverage of questions about the use of pentobarbital, pressure on drug companies, and Lundbeck's actions, at the links.  Related posts are in the lethal injection index.

More Pressure on Drug Companies

"Death Penalty Opponents Push to Stall Lethal Injections," is the title of David Von Drehle's latest post at Time.

Back when Florida executed prisoners in an electric chair, part of the ritual involved plunging the entire maximum security state prison into total darkness as they switched off the grid and onto backup generators. The purpose of this exercise was to protect Florida Power and Light from possible bad publicity–a company in the electricity business doesn’t want the words “time of death” linked to its name on the front page.

Death penalty opponents are using that same principal to try to stall executions by lethal injection. In a letter delivered Tuesday, Helen Prejean, the renowned author of “Dead Man Walking,” asked Cardinal Health, a pharmaceutical company headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, to recall $27,000 worth of Nembutal, an anesthetic, purchased by the State of Georgia. The drug is intended to be used as part of a 3-drug sequence to knock out condemned prisoners, then paralyze them and, finally, stop their hearts. As Prejean put it to Cardinal Chairman and CEO George Barrett, this use of the drug is ” not for the purpose of ‘improving people’s lives,’ as you say on your website, but to kill people, i.e. persons sentenced to death.”

Lundbeck is taking action to attempt to restrict use of its pentobarbital, as noted at the link.

A Conversation With David Kaczynski

Josh Medsker, the propietor of Twenty-Four Hours, has posted a terrific interview with David Kaczynski of New Yorkers for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.  Here are two excerpts.  You'll want to follow the link to read the entire interview, and see more of Twenty-Four Hours.

Why did the NTADP change from "against the death penalty" to "alternatives to the death penalty"? What philosophical change went on?

When New York’s death penalty was ended by the Court of Appeals in 2007, NYADP had a choice: either continue in a watchdog role to prevent reinstatement of the death penalty, or use our groups’ relationships and ethical capital to work toward a reduction in violence and healing for victims of violence. We argued that the death penalty was ineffective in reducing crime, and that it tended to aggravate rather than alleviate the grief of murder victims’ family members. As NYer’s Against the DP, we had formed many collaborative relationships with members of law enforcement, victims families, mental health advocates, social justice advocates, and clergy. What if we expanded our mission to promote common-ground goals? We had this crazy idea that if we brought all these folks together, we could create a critical mass of influential, committed people dedicated addressing the problem of violence in a serious way. We figured our only obstacles would be apathy and ingrained thinking. It actually did feel like a relief to finally be For something instead of Against something. In this case, we think the best alternative to the death penalty is for violence not to occur in the first place.

And:

Going back to the Journeys question... What historically has caused Texas to have such a strong affinity (so to speak) for the death penalty? Do you think that if your group helped change peoples' minds in Texas that it would reverberate out towards the weaker states?

Well, I lived in Texas for eight years in the 1980’s and [my wife] Linda and I still have vacation property and plans to retire in West Texas. Yeah, there are cultural differences, but I think people are pretty much the same everywhere. No one wants a system that executes the innocent and Texas has a bad record in that regard. The rate of death sentencing has gone down about 50% in Texas in recent years. Prosecutors are now less eager to seek it and juries are far less willing to impose it. Religion may play a part in Texas, since Southern Baptists, I believe, have a statement that favors the death penalty, unlike most religious groups that have statements opposing it. I think the Journey of Hope has been extremely effective in Texas, because it invites people to think more deeply about what their faith means. Unfortunately, I suspect that the more the death penalty gets used, the harder it is to get rid of since there is a general reluctance to question the status quo. There’s a certain hard-headedness in some people that desires the death penalty no matter how counter-productive it is shown to be. I’ve met a few hard-headed Texans. But, as we know, Texas has no monopoly on that breed.

Again, thanks to Josh.

Learn more about the NYADP vison, After the Death Penalty: More Justice, Less Violence.

A Profile of Joanne Woodford

"Joanne Woodford: ardent foe of the death penalty," is the title of Kevin Fagan's San Francisco Chronicle profile.

As she made her way up Market Street the other day on a tea break from her new job as head of the most prominent anti-death penalty organization in California, Jeanne Woodford strode slowly, shoulders hunched. Stylish in a collarless black pantsuit hung loosely around her slight frame, she emanated none of the toughness that a prison guard adopts to deal with hard-case inmates.

But a look into those brown eyes reveals the steel that made her one of the first female cellblock guards at San Quentin State Prison, the first female warden there in 1999, and then head of California's prison system from 2004 to 2006.

The steel is in a gaze so steady her head barely moves as she bores in on even slight points of conversation. And it's in her carefully delivered, low-toned voice, the kind that demands attention from across a room.

It's easy to see why Woodford earned a reputation as a guard who could stop fights with her words alone, and never had to swing her baton - even though she says she preferred running counseling sessions to staffing a gun tower.

And it's easy to see how she was able to give the orders at four executions for her staff to begin pumping deadly chemicals into a condemned man's veins, even as she longed to work one day to make sure nobody else would ever have to give those orders again.

That day came May 12, when Death Penalty Focus announced her appointment as executive director.

And:

"I am anything but soft on crime," she said. "I absolutely think people should be accountable for their crimes. But executing people is not the right way.

"It's totally about retribution, and that serves no one."

Earlier coverage of Woodford begins at the link.

Former Warden to Lead Death Penalty Focus

"Former CA Prison Warden Tapped as a Leader of Anti-Death Penalty Movement," is the title of a news release issued this morning by Death Penalty Focus.  Here's the entire release:

Jeanne Woodford, former Undersecretary and Director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and Warden of San Quentin State Prison, has been selected as the new executive director of Death Penalty Focus, board president Mike Farrell announced today.  San Quentin houses California’s death row and Woodford, a 33-year veteran of corrections and law enforcement, oversaw four executions as warden.

“After each execution, I faced the reality that I had not made the world any safer.  The death penalty is a failed public policy and I am committed to spending the rest of my career working to end this costly and ineffective practice,” said Ms. Woodford.  “The death penalty fails to serve victims’ families, does not keep the public safer than the alternative of life without the possibility of parole, inflicts unnecessary stress and trauma on prison personnel, and drains taxpayer resources that could be better spent providing crucial services to homicide victims’ families.”

Founded in 1988, Death Penalty Focus is one of the largest nonprofit advocacy organizations in the nation dedicated to the abolition of capital punishment.  Ms. Woodford will focus attention on building Death Penalty Focus’ programs that give voice to law enforcement officers, victims’ family members, the wrongfully convicted, and people of faith in opposing the death penalty. 

“Jeanne Woodford will lead the death penalty abolition movement at a pivotal moment in our nation’s history.  With public support for capital punishment eroding, and growing numbers of states considering repeal legislation, Ms. Woodford will be a central figure in hastening the day when the death penalty is recognized as a relic of a bygone era,” said Mr. Farrell.           

Four states (Illinois, New Mexico, New Jersey, and New York) have abolished the death penalty in four years, bringing the number of states that do not have the death penalty to 16, along with the District of Columbia.  Bills to abolish the death penalty are under consideration in Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas with support from Republican and Democratic legislators, law enforcement officers, victims’ family members, and growing numbers of the general public.

“As a veteran of law enforcement and a cabinet-level state official, Jeanne Woodford has a unique perspective on the policies needed to keep families safe and use tax dollars most efficiently.  As the warden of San Quentin, Ms. Woodford speaks with unique authority and first-hand experience about the risks of executing the innocent and the failure of the death penalty in California to bring resolution to many victims or deter crime," said Barry Scheck, Co-Director of the Innocence Project and Professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York City.
California, where more than 700 men and women are on death row, has not conducted an execution since January, 2006 due to challenges to the state’s lethal injection protocols.  A 2010 Lake Research Partners poll showed that a clear majority of voters nationwide (61%) and in California (62%) would prefer a punishment other than the death penalty for first-degree murder.  A recent poll by David Binder Research found that 63% California voters would support converting the sentences of everyone on death row in California to life without the possibility of parole to save the state more than $1 billion in five years.
Ms. Woodford succeeds Lance Lindsey, who is credited with quadrupling the organization’s membership during his 16-year tenure, leading Death Penalty Focus to become, as Human Rights Watch recently noted, “one of the premier organizations seeking to abolish the death penalty by educating and mobilizing the public, and ensuring that the use of this arbitrary and barbaric practice receives the intense critical scrutiny that it deserves.” 

Ms. Woodford will be making her first public appearance on May 12th at DPF’s Annual Awards Dinner in Beverly Hills. Details:

Read Ms. Woodford’s bio.

Read Ms. Woodford’s opinion editorial in The Los Angeles Times, “California Warden Now Believes that Executions Don’t Make Us Safer,”

Read a profile of Ms. Woodford in The New York Times Magazine.

"Former California prisons leader joins fight against death penalty," is the Los Angeles Times news article written by Carol J. Williams.  Here's an extended excerpt from the beginning of the report:

As the clock ticked past midnight and the death chamber phone refused to ring, San Quentin State Prison Warden Jeanne Woodford would calmly signal the executioners to inject a lethal dose of chemicals into the condemned man's veins.

Reared in a Roman Catholic family, she grew up believing that only God had the right to take a life. But four times in her 30-year career in California corrections, the soft-spoken mother of five carried out executions of notorious killers, remorseful and unrepentant alike.

Woodford resigned as director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation four years ago, dismayed over state authorities' clinging to policies such as the death penalty that she had concluded are wasteful, discriminatory and fail to make the public safer.

Now, as the state tries to restart the execution machinery after a five-year legal hiatus, Woodford has crossed to the other side of the contentious debate over capital punishment. On Thursday, the abolitionist nonprofit Death Penalty Focus will announce Woodford's appointment as executive director, a new role that will see her standing on the other side of the walls of San Quentin should any of the 713 death row inmates meet his or her end at the hands of the state.

"I never was in favor of the death penalty, but my experience at San Quentin allowed me to see it from all points of view. I had a duty to carry out, and I tried to do it with professionalism," Woodford, 56, said in explaining how she had to put her personal abhorrence of execution aside to do her job. "The death penalty serves no one. It doesn't serve the victims. It doesn't serve prevention. It's truly all about retribution."

Woodford says she sees an opportunity to get rid of the death penalty in the current quest for budgetary restraint. If the public can be educated about the true costs of capital punishment — at least $200 million a year, she says — as well as its potential for irreversible error, support for the ultimate penalty would wither, Woodford predicts. It is that prospect that has lured her from a brief retirement to the post with Death Penalty Focus from which she will lobby against the policy she once imposed.

"There comes a time when you have to ask if a penalty that is so permanent can be available in such an imperfect system," she says of the mounting instances elsewhere in the country of death row inmates being exonerated by DNA evidence. "The only guarantee against executing the innocent is to do away with the death penalty."

Executions were few and far between during her years at San Quentin, and Woodford focused her attention on the goal of rehabilitation, preparing those with prospects for release to live within the law once they got outside. San Quentin — its storied ocher fortress on a promontory above San Francisco Bay and nestled amid some of the most liberal communities in the country — gained a reputation as a leading progressive penal institution in the years she was there.

Built by inmates housed on a ship until the first wing opened in 1852, San Quentin was one of the first prisons to create an Alcoholics Anonymous chapter, Woodford recalls, and was able to harness the altruism and energy of volunteer counselors and teachers to augment the corrections department's meager rehabilitation resources. In the 1980s and '90s, inmates earned their GEDs, college degrees and trade skills, and aspired to finish their time in the Success Dorm, the re-entry program that would prepare them for life when they got out.

But as she made her way up the ranks, Woodford became increasingly troubled by the state's embrace of capital punishment, restored as a sentencing option in 1978, the year she arrived at San Quentin with a freshly printed degree in criminal justice from Sonoma State University. Though it would be more than a decade before the first of 13 executions was carried out, she watched with dismay as the political football of capital punishment was tossed among tough-on-crime candidates for county district attorney offices and the statehouse.

It was the third of the four executions during her tenure as warden, the 2001 lethal injection of Robert Lee Massie, that brought her to see the death penalty as a failed policy draining funds better used elsewhere. Massie, sentenced to death a second time after his first capital conviction was commuted in 1974, had been a victim of abuse in the state's foster care system, mistreatment born of dwindling state funding and oversight that set him on a path of destruction, she said.

After 26 years at San Quentin, Woodford was tapped by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to serve as corrections director in 2004, a job she initially hoped would allow her to reform the system from inside. She wanted to close the revolving door of parole violators flooding the prisons for three-month terms, enough to compound overcrowding and soak up medical care but too short to get into rehabilitative programs.

"It was an incredibly expensive bus ride to nowhere," she said of the vicious circle of petty offenses sending parolees back inside to reconnect with hardened criminals.

Earlier coverage from California begins at the link.

Marie Deans

"A Local Life: Marie Deans, 70, defender of the condemned," is the title of Colman McCarthy's remembrance in yesterday's Washington Post.

To many of the condemned men waiting to be electrocuted or drugged to death in a Virginia prison on charges of capital murder, Marie Deans was known as the “angel of death row.” She preferred the phrase “courageous fool.”

Her advocacy, which spanned more than three decades and was based on her steeled opposition to capital punishment, took many paths.

She pestered Washington and Virginia law firms to provide pro bono defense attorneys for inmates too poor to pay for post-conviction habeas appeals. She made hundreds of visits to Virginia’s grimy death row and more than 30 times accepted prisoners’ invitations to be in the death house for their final hours.

She was on hand, too, as a celebrator of justice when years of work helped free a falsely convicted prisoner — Earl Washington Jr. — from Virginia’s death row.

Washington, poor, black, illiterate and mentally disabled, was convicted of raping and murdering a Culpeper mother in 1982. He could not afford an appeals lawyer, and Virginia would not supply one.

It was Mrs. Deans who, after investigating on her own the arrest and trial records, found repeated errors suggesting a wrongful conviction. She scrambled to find a team of lawyers to save Washington. The defense attorneys maintained that Washington’s initial confession was bullied out of him because of his limited intelligence.

Irrefutable DNA evidence exonerated him. He had come within nine days of execution, marking the first time in memory that newly uncovered evidence led to the freeing of a death-row prisoner in the state. He was taken off death row in 1994, released from prison in 2001 and received an absolute pardon in 2007.

“Marie Deans brought hope and humanity to death-row inmates living under barbaric conditions,” said Donald P. Salzman, a criminal defense lawyer and litigator who now is pro bono counsel at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom.

“Her indefatigable insistence on justice for Earl Washington Jr. led to his release from death row and eventual exoneration,” Salzman said.

At the time of her death in a Charlottesville hospice on April 15, after months of fighting lung cancer, Marie Deans, 70, was a major figure in the high stakes and often dispiriting world of death penalty abolition. Once immersed, she found the rituals of capital punishment to be void of mercy.

Up close, she saw it grounded in arbitrariness, racism and legal absurdities. “The death penalty,” she told interviewers from Amnesty International in 1989, “is something that is destroying the soul of our people. If people don’t know that, it just tells me how quickly it is destroying us.”

And:

In 1972 in Charleston, her mother-in-law, Penny Deans, was murdered by an escaped convict. At the scene of the crime, Mrs. Deans once recalled, she was told by a police officer not to worry: “We’ll find the bastard and fry him.”

Capture him, she said, but don’t kill him for me.

“He had a family, too,” she told The Washington Post in 1989. “If he was executed, it would be another murder. It would be worse in a way, because he would be put on death row and the family would have been told every day for 10 years — or eight years or six years or however long it takes — that he was going to be killed. I think that’s worse.”

In 1976, she formed Murder Victims’ Families Against the Death Penalty (now called Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation) and a few years later moved from Charleston to Richmond, in part because she knew the workload would be heavier.

"Celebrating the life of Marie Deans," is Todd Peppers' remembrance for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.  He's a professor at Roanoke College.

On Friday, April 15, one of the nation's leading advocates for the abolition of the death penalty passed away quietly in a Charlottesville hospice. Her name was Marie McFadden Deans, and for decades she fought to bring fairness, justice and decency to what Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun once decried as "the machinery of death," namely, our country's bewildering and stubborn commitment to the barbaric practice of killing its citizens to show that killing is wrong. Marie was a tireless worker who never sought the limelight, but in her death we should pause and consider her contributions to fight against the death penalty regime.

Marie's devotion to abolishing the death penalty was sparked by the brutal murder of her beloved mother-in-law by an escaped convict. In the face of such a horrific loss, Marie responded by founding Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation, an organization that sought to give a voice to families who believed that the death penalty was not the answer to the terrible loss of their loved ones. At the same time, Marie threw herself into work with Amnesty International and toured prisons across the country — documenting abuses and providing needed data to litigate the cruel and unusual conditions imposed on the forgotten inhabitants of death row.

In 1983, Marie founded the Virginia Coalition on Jails and Prisons — an organization dedicated to fighting for basic legal rights for the men on death row.

And:

Marie's efforts not only focused on the men already on death row, but those men on trial for capital murder. Marie was incensed by a legal system which shackled indigent defendants with poorly trained defense attorneys and inadequate resources to hire expert witnesses. Marie became a mitigation expert, collecting relevant information on the backgrounds of capital defendants and weaving that information into a compelling narrative that would be presented to a jury weighing whether to sentence the defendants to life or death. Marie quickly established herself as a leading mitigation expert, and, largely due to her efforts, only two of the 200 men that Marie helped defend were ultimately sentenced to death.

Letter From Europe

That's the heading of Raymond Bonner's European reports for the New York Times.  Today, he writes, "Drug Company in Cross Hairs of Death Penalty Opponents."

Virtually all European countries ban capital punishment, and the European Union has been a leader in the effort to ban it worldwide. But that has not stopped European companies from contributing to the active death penalty machine in the United States through the supply of drugs used in lethal injections.

A Danish pharmaceutical company, Lundbeck, has become the latest to supply a drug to U.S. death penalty states — Ohio used it to put a man to death two weeks ago, and Texas is planning to use it in an execution scheduled for April 5.

That has put the medium-size company in the cross hairs of death penalty opponents. In the last six months, these forces have succeeded in stopping Italian and British companies from exporting lethal injection drugs to the United States.

A Lundbeck spokesman said the company was shocked when it learned recently that its drug, pentobarbital, was being used in executions. “This is fully against what we stand for,” the spokesman, Anders Schroll, said by telephone. “We are in the business of improving people’s lives.” He said that the drug had legitimate uses in controlling epilepsy and that the company had no control over how the drugs were used once the company sold them to its distributors in the United States.

Reprieve, a human rights organization in Britain, has led the campaign to stop European companies from selling lethal injection drugs to the United States. It called Lundbeck’s position “extremely disappointing.”

And:

Lundbeck’s pentobarbital has been sold to Ohio, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Texas, said Mr. Schroll, the company spokesman.

Earlier this month, representatives from Reprieve and a prominent U.S. death penalty lawyer, Joseph Margulies, met with Lundbeck officials. They asked the company to put a provision into their contracts with their U.S. distributors that the drug could not be resold to any state for execution purposes. Mr. Schroll said the distributors would not sign such restrictive contracts.

Sales of pentobarbital in the United States account for less than 1 percent of the company’s total revenues, Mr. Scholl said. Given that, Mr. Margulies countered: “They should not allow their modest profit from the drug to make them complicit in capital punishment.”

Mr. Schroll said that the company was in a very uncomfortable situation. Most of Lundbeck’s employees are against the death penalty, he said. Denmark itself has not had a civilian execution since 1882.

Earlier coverage of Lundbeck and its drug pentobarbital, in the posts:

• News Coverage of Texas Lethal Injection Litigation
• Arizona to Switch to Single-Drug Lethal Injection
• Ohio Execution
• An Update on Lethal Injection Drugs
• Drugmaker Requests Pentobarbital Not Be Used for Executions
• Oklahoma Prepares for Substitute Drug Execution

Related posts, in the lethal injection index.

In The Nation

The Nation's current issue features the monthly column, Ten Things.  This month it's, "Ten Things to Abolish the Death Penalty," conceived by Walter Mosley, with research by Rae Gomes.  As in all things death penalty, it's Texas heavy.  Here's an extended excerpt from this must read:

On March 9th, Illinois became the fourth US state in the past five years to abandon the death penalty, a significant shift in the country's growing rejection of capital punishment. After weeks of deliberation, Republican Governor Pat Quinn not only signed a bill into law that kills the death penalty in the state, he also commuted the sentences of all 15 men on death row—men who would have still faced execution even with the new law in place. In 2003, then-Illinois Governor George Ryan famously emptied death row, citing grave concerns about innocent people facing execution as well as "the fairness of the death penalty system as a whole.” Last week, Quinn echoed his predecessor.

For Nathson Fields, one of countless men who were wrongfully convicted after being tortured under corrupt Chicago police commander Jon Burge, the victory was especially sweet. "I spent eleven-and-a-half years on death row for a crime I did not commit. Illinois tossing out the death penalty will affect other states. This will send the message that it can be done. It should be done.”

What can we do to build on the success in Illinois? We can get involved by joining abolitionist groups, signing petitions and contacting our elected officials. But, as Gov. Quinn did, we must also listen to those who have grappled with this system firsthand: former prisoners, death row lawyers, prisoners' family members, activists and victims of violent crime. Margaret Summers of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and Liliana Segura of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty asked ten such experts to share their thoughts, on cases that stand out, on strategies that work and on what Americans should know about the death penalty today.

1 Anthony Graves, exonerated from Texas’s death row in 2010.

I know how easy it was for them to take my freedom and set out to kill me. I feel that if it was that easy, I’m sure there have been many mistakes in the past, that many men and women on death row are innocent. It’s not an infallible system. Anyone can be sentenced to death for a crime they didn’t commit. That alone is a reason that the death penalty should be abolished. Read Graves's here and go to Witness to Innocence.

2 Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director, Equal Justice Initiative.

Nearly 135 years after Congress enacted the 1875 Civil Rights Act to eliminate racially discriminatory jury selection, the practice continues, especially in death penalty cases where hundreds of death row prisoners have been convicted or condemned by juries where people of color were illegally excluded. This racial bias has undermined the credibility of capital punishment and contributed to the marginalization of African Americans and other racial minorities from full representation when the most critical issues in our communities are decided. Read about Racial Discrimination in jury selection.

3 Martina Correia, activist, sister of Troy Davis, who is currently on Georgia's death row.

We must target the doctors who assist in state sanctioned killings and ban the sale or availability of drugs used in executions. We should launch a campaign of death row family members and members of groups like Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation to challenge the US at the United Nations, calling executions a human rights violation, a morally corrupt and selective process of exterminating people without resources. Go to Physicians for Human Rights.

4 David Dow, Texas death penalty lawyer, author of  Autobiography of an Execution.

Learn about the Michael Richard case. He was mentally disabled. On the morning of his execution, in 2007, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case on the constitutionality of lethal injection. Lawyers in my office scrambled to file a petition for Richard raising the issue, but he was executed because we did not finish by the time the court closed at 5. The court would not stay open late for us. I think if we had been able to get the petition filed, he would still be alive today.

5 Natalie Skinner, daughter of Hank Skinner, who is currently on Texas's death row.

If people would take the time to learn about the people on death row, they would be surprised to find out that many are parents with children who love them very much. Their relationships with their families don't just stop when they are sentenced to die. At the end of the day, the death penalty hurts more people than it helps by continuing the very cycle of violence it was put in place to break.

Read the rest at the link.

Catholic Bishops Join Call for Illinois Repeal

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has issued a news release, "Bishops Urge Illinois Governor to Sign Bill Ending Death Penalty."

Signing a bill to end the use of the death penalty would “begin building a culture of life in our country,” said the bishop who oversees the domestic justice efforts of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in a letter to the governor of Illinois.
           
In his March 3 letter, Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton, California, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, joined the bishops of Illinois in urging Governor Pat Quinn to sign SB 3539, a bill that would end the use of the death penalty in Illinois and provide funds for training for law enforcement and services for families of murder victims.
           
“I hope and pray that you will take this essential step by signing SB 3539 and further Illinois’ leadership role in turning away from the death penalty with all its moral problems and issues of fairness and justice,” wrote Bishop Blaire.
           
Bishop Blaire also cited the opposition of both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II to the death penalty and quoted the 2005 statement of the U.S. bishops, A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death: “Even when people deny the dignity of others, we must still recognize that their dignity is a gift from God and is not something that is earned or lost through their behavior. Respect for life applies to all, even the perpetrators of terrible acts. Punishment should be consistent with the demands of justice and with respect for human life and dignity.”

The full text of Bishop Blaire’s letter follows:

Dear Governor Quinn:

On behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, I join the Catholic bishops of Illinois and urge you to sign SB 3539, which would end the use of the death penalty in Illinois and provide funds for training for law enforcement and services to families of murder victims.

Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, have called for the end to the use of the death penalty as a sign of greater respect for all human life. In A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death, the Catholic bishops of the United States wrote “Even when people deny the dignity of others, we must still recognize that their dignity is a gift from God and is not something that is earned or lost through their behavior. Respect for life applies to all, even the perpetrators of terrible acts. Punishment should be consistent with the demands of justice and with respect for human life and dignity.” The legislation before you would help to begin building a culture of life in our country.

I hope and pray that you will take this essential step by signing SB 3539 and further Illinois’ leadership role in turning away from the death penalty with all its moral problems and issues of fairness and justice.
Sincerely,

Most Rev. Stephen E. Blaire
Bishop of Stockton
Chairman, USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development

Earlier coverage from Illinois begins at the link.  Related posts are in the religion index.

Illinois Editorial & Column Call for Governor to Sign Repeal Bill

Today's Chicago Sun-Times carries the editorial, "It takes courage to correct injustice."

It’s not easy to do the right thing when it comes to an issue as emotional as the death penalty.

Exhibit A is a statement circulated earlier this year by the parents of Jeanine Nicarico, murdered at 10 years old in 1983 by Death Row inmate Brian Dugan. Jeanine’s parents called the House vote in January to abolish the death penalty “an act of cowardice, laziness and disregard for justice” and asked the Senate and Gov. Quinn to reject it.

That’s a strong statement, especially coming from two people who long publicly sought the execution of three men who turned out to be innocent.

Former Gov. George Ryan revealed a different emotional reaction to the death penalty in a 2010 deposition that recently came to light. At one point, he talked about a former classmate who had asked, “Are you going to kill my son?” At another point, he cited the case of Anthony Porter, who was within 50 hours of execution when a legal technicality saved him. Porter also later turned out to be innocent.

And:

The legislation to abolish the death penalty has been approved by the General Assembly and sits on the governor’s desk.

Signing it would not be an act of cowardice or laziness.

It would be an act on the side of justice.

"Quinn should sign bill banning death penalty," is the title of Jerry Moore's column in the Batavia Republican.

When it comes to capital punishment, there’s no moratorium on opinions.

Illinois residents have wrestled with capital punishment since 2000 when Gov. George Ryan placed a ban on executions. During a veto session earlier this year, state legislators voted to abolish the death penalty. Gov. Pat Quinn has until March 18 to sign the bill.

The voting went largely along party lines. Two local legislators, however, broke ranks with their caucus and sided with their political rivals.

Former state Rep. Bob Biggins, R-41st District, of Elmhurst and Sen. Ron Sandack, R-21st District, of Downers Grove voted to abolish capital punishment.

And:

Measures can be passed to provide more safeguards, but what if even these don’t work all the time? How can a government compensate a victim of injustice when the person is dead?

Rotting in prison for the rest of your life is no walk in the park. The best way to avoid executing an innocent person is to ban the practice. Quinn should sign the bill.

Both Chicago papers examine the last-minute lobbying.  The Sun-Times report is, "Cardinal George, world leaders lobbied Quinn on death penalty," written by Dave McKinney.

Cardinal Francis George, politicians from Great Britain and Germany and the mother of a murdered college student are among thousands of people who have lobbied Gov. Quinn on death-penalty repeal legislation now on his desk.

Since the General Assembly narrowly passed the landmark measure in January, Quinn’s office has been inundated with calls, letters and e-mails that decidedly tilt in favor of doing away with the death penalty.

Quinn spokesman Grant Klinzman said roughly 12,000 people have urged the governor to sign the death-penalty repeal, while about 700 have encouraged him to veto it.

Late Tuesday, Quinn’s office released 167 pages of correspondence from those advocating both sides of the issue in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Chicago Sun-Times.

The Tribune report, "Quinn under pressure on executions," is by Monique Garcia.

Gov. Pat Quinn sat stoically and took pages of handwritten notes as family members of murder victims begged him to preserve the death penalty as an option for those convicted of killing their loved ones, the impassioned pleas coming during a closed-door meeting last week with the prosecutors who helped put the killers behind bars.

Weeks earlier, the governor followed much the same routine as he was told the capital punishment system is too broken to keep in place by Sister Helen Prejean, a New Orleans nun whose experiences with a Death Row inmate became the basis for the film "Dead Man Walking."

In both cases, Quinn gave no indication of what he'll do with a bill sitting on his desk that would abolish the death penalty in Illinois. It's a historic question for Quinn that will help define his term as governor. And he's had no shortage of advocates on both sides trying to sway him in a state where the death penalty has a high-profile and troubled past.

The Sun-Times also publishes, "Kankakee father shaped George Ryan’s Death Row decision," by Natasha Korecki.

A Kankakee father who once asked George Ryan to spare his son from the death penalty said Tuesday he’s surprised to hear that Ryan credits him for helping him make the now-famous decision to clear out Death Row in 2003.

In a jailhouse deposition given last year — but released just this week — Ryan said an encounter with a worried father he had long known from their native Kankakee made “a big impact on my decision.”

Claude Lee, 76, confirmed Tuesday he was one who approached then-Gov. Ryan and asked: “Are you going to kill my son?”

Lee’s adult son, Eric, was on Death Row at the time for killing a police officer during a traffic stop in Kankakee in 1996.

“I asked him, was there a way he could save my son’s life?” Lee recalled Tuesday.

But he didn’t know the impact he made.

“That does surprise me, but it wasn’t just me,” he said.

Lee said Ryan recognized Illinois’ death penalty system was flawed. Lee was able to put a personal face on the men who were on Death Row, he said.

When Ryan put a moratorium on executions and commuted all death sentences to life terms, he spared Eric Lee, who is now at Menard Correctional Center.

“My son was a sick man, he was a mental case,” Claude Lee said. “George was a friend before [my son] was in jail. . .. We were in the same party. I was a committeeman. He was a state rep.”

Earlier coverage from Illinois begins with articles on the Ryan deposition and this update on Gov. Quinn's consideration of the repeal bill.

Beaumont Enterprise Examines Texas Death Penalty & Sentencing

The Enterprise report is, "Option of life means fewer get death," written by Sonja Garza.

In 1998, it took only 12 minutes for a Jefferson County jury to decide Elroy Chester should die.

Twelve minutes - one minute for each juror - to sentence a man to death.

The jury's decision in the fatal shooting of Port Arthur fireman Willie Ryman III was the culmination of what was described as the worst crime spree in the county's history.

And while the circumstances surrounding Chester's crime wave - in which prosecutors alleged five people were killed, five more were shot and three girls were raped - were extreme, such a verdict is less likely today.

In fact, it is rare that a Texas jury even arrives at a death verdict anymore, experts say.

Last year, Texas juries sentenced eight convicted killers to death, the lowest since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court approved new death penalty statutes, according to data from the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. By comparison, Death Penalty Information Center data show more than 25 new people were added to the ranks of the Texas death row each year between 1985 and 2004.

Executions are also down. Texas executed 17 people in 2010, the lowest since 2001. By comparison, the Lone Star State executed a high of 40 people in 2000.

District Attorney Tom Maness said he cannot readily remember the last death penalty conviction in Jefferson County. Texas prison information shows the most recent Jefferson County killer placed on death row under the state judicial system was more than 12 years ago.

And:

For Beaumont resident Chris Castillo, national outreach coordinator for Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation, revenge for his mother's 1991 slaying in Houston is not his goal.

Castillo, a former Beaumont Enterprise reporter, said his mother, Pilar Castillo, 52, was strangled to death in her home. Officials suspect the killer or killers were men who were renovating her house who invaded it in the middle of the night and robbed her. To this day, the killers have not been caught.

Castillo said he experienced myriad emotions after his mother's death, but ultimately decided he wanted to put aside his anger.

"I don't want someone's execution to be my mother's legacy," he said.

"I think it is kind of ironic: The way we get back at them is killing somebody else."

Castillo envisions a day in which more and more states will do away with capital punishment.

He acknowledged Texas might well be the last.

Sign the Petition Calling for Clemency for Tim Adams

You can sign the Change.org petition, from this link, or by clicking on the Take Action box in the right column.

Texas is poised to execute Timothy Adams on February 22, 2011, in spite of staunch opposition to his death sentence from the victim’s family, three jurors from Mr. Adams’ trial, and his fellow church members. Mr. Adams is a devoutly religious military veteran who has taken full responsibility for what he did. He poses no danger to society and has the love and support of his family, who has already endured the tragic death of a loved one and should not be forced to endure another.

Ask the Texas Parole Board to recommend and Governor Rick Perry to grant clemency to Timothy Adams.

You can send a letter to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles at:

Rissie Owens, Presiding Officer
Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles
P. O. Box 13401
Austin, Texas 78711-3401

You can e-mail Governor Rick Perry or send him a tweet, as well.

An Illinois Sidebar

Jon Burge.

For those who have followed developments in Illnois, that name is a major part of the decade-long story of Governor Ryan's moratorium, exonerations, reform initiatives, and the Illinois General Assembly's vote earlier this month to repeal the state's death penalty.

But for many outside of Illnois, it would have been easy to miss the name entirely.

"Cop Gets 4½ Years for Lying About Torture," is the Courthouse News Service report.

Former Chicago police Commander Jon Burge was sentenced to 4½ years in prison for lying about the police torture of suspects. Burge denied that officers ever abused suspects in custody, but evidence at a 2003 trial showed that he suffocated suspects with plastic bags, shocked them with electrical devices and put loaded guns to their heads.

Burge, 63, of Apollo Beach, Fla., was convicted in June 2010 of two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of perjury for his false answers in the 2003 civil case.

Burge, a 23-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department, was fired in 1993 over abuse allegations. More than a decade later, special prosecutors were appointed to investigate police torture; the 4-year investigation found that the abuses were outside the statute of limitations.

And:

The police torture led then-Illinois Gov. George Ryan to place a moratorium on the state's death penalty. Ryan pardoned four of Burge's alleged victims.

I want to highlight Alice Kim's thoughts on the sentence.  She's the Director of The Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council, where she's produced many programs with Illinois exonerees.  She also writes the blog, Dancing the Dialectic.

In a lengthy meditation, she asks, "Was Justice Served?"

I've had Jon Burge on my mind. He was sentenced to four and a half years yesterday for obstructing justice and lying about the torture of more than 100 African American men and women at Area 2 and 3 Police headquarters in the 1970s and 1980s.

This is far less time than the twenty-one long years that Ronald Kitchen spent behind bars (thirteen of those years on death row), wrongfully convicted as the result of a tortured confession that put him and his co-defendant Marvin Reeves away for a crime they did not commit. And it's far less time than the twenty-eight years of hard time served by Mark Clements, who was beaten repeatedly by police officers under Burge's command when he was only sixteen years old.

Jon Burge was responsible for destroying the lives and livelihoods of over 100 African American men and their families. He abused his power and authority as a commanding police officer. And he got away with it for years.

There's much more on her blog --  which is why I've added it to the left-colmn webroll, Diversions.

Earlier coverage from Illinois begins with the post, "Illinois Lt. Gov. Urges Signing Repeal Law."

Death Sentences Plunge in Texas

That's the title of Allan Turner and Mike Tolson's report in today's Houston Chronicle.  It's subtitled, "Foes cite new law, DNA testing; backers blame judges, delays in executions."

Juries in Texas — the nation's most-active death penalty state — sentenced only eight killers to die this year, the lowest number since 1976 when the U.S. Supreme Court ended its ban on capital punishment. Seventeen killers were put to death in 2010, six fewer than last year for the lowest total since 2001.

So far this year, Harris County, which typically has led the state in assessing death sentences, has condemned two convicted killers.

The figures were released Monday in an end-of-year review of capital punishment by the Austin-based Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. The report came just weeks after a poll by Washington, D.C.'s Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-capital punishment group, found that only a third of registered voters in death penalty states thought death is the most appropriate punishment for murder.

"It shows that Texas and the rest of the country are moving away from the death penalty, even in Harris County. It's an astonishing development," said coalition executive director Kristin Houlé.

Houlé attributed the drop to Texas' 2005 life without parole statute and to the high cost to counties of seeking the death sentence.

Also eroding support for capital punishment is DNA testing, which has led to the exoneration of scores of inmates convicted of serious crimes, said Richard Dieter, the Washington, D.C., group's director.

"It's not that (most) people are all or nothing about the death penalty," Dieter said. "They just have this growing sense of uncertainty. It's a slow wearing away of confidence ... a feeling that it is just too risky."

And:

This year, Harris County juries sent Garland Harper, convicted of stabbing his girlfriend and strangling her two daughters, and Mabry Landor, convicted of killing Houston police officer Timothy Abernethy, to death row. Juries in Dallas, Brazos, Nueces, Rusk and Travis counties also sentenced killers to death

Harris County District Attorney's spokeswoman Donna Hawkins said the county has averaged two death sentences annually since life without parole became an option. "While we cannot speak for other jurisdictions," she said, "Harris County has not seen a decline in death sentences.

Life without parole was added as a sentencing option in capital murder cases in late 2005. By then the decline in death sentences already had begun in Texas and elsewhere. During the heyday of capital punishment in Texas in the 1990s, it was not uncommon for Harris County to send four or five murderers to death row. In 1992, it was responsible for 10 of the state's 31 new death-row inmates. In the past three years, however, Harris County has totaled only three death sentences, and in 2009 it did not record one at all.

District Attorney Pat Lykos called the decision to seek a death sentence "the gravest and most profound decision that a district attorney makes."

"We will continue to seek the death penalty in appropriate cases," she said.

Since Texas' resumption of executions in 1982, 464 killers — 115 of them from Harris County — have been put to death. Currently, 105 Harris County killers await execution.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports, "Texas death penalty sentences fall again, California picks up slack."  It's written by Aman Batheja.

Only eight people were condemned to death in Texas this year, the lowest level since the state reintroduced capital punishment in 1976, according to data in a new report from the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Texas juries have been opting for the death penalty less often in recent years, in part due to the introduction of life without parole as an option in 2005. Several Texas prosecutors have said they are now less likely to push for the death penalty.

Over the same period that Texas death sentences have fallen, California's rate of condemned has been rising. Last year, the Golden State sent 29 people to its San Quentin death row. Texas sent 9. This year, California juries have picked death 21 times as of Oct. 1.

Earlier coverage of the TCADP report, Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2010: The Year in Review, begins with the preceding post.

TCADP Releases 2010 Annual Report

The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty has issued its annual report, Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2010: The Year in Review.  The report is available in Adobe .pdf format at the link.

TCADP has also issed a news release announcing the report, "Only 2% of Texas Counties Imposed Death Sentences This Year, According to New Report from TCADP.  Death sentences, executions drop in 2010 as concerns about reliability and fairness continue to plague Texas death penalty system."

Here's an extended excerpt from the release:

Death sentences in Texas have dropped more than 70% since 2003, reaching a historic low in 2010 according to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty’s (TCADP) new report, Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2010: The Year in Review. TCADP, an Austin-based statewide, grassroots advocacy organization, releases this annual report each December in conjunction with the anniversary of the resumption of executions in Texas in 1982.
 
Juries condemned eight new individuals to death in Texas in 2010, which is the lowest number of new death sentences since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Texas’ revised death penalty statute in 1976. These new sentences occurred in six counties: Brazos; Dallas; Harris; Nueces; Rusk; and Travis.
 
Recent sentencing trends illustrate the arbitrary and biased imposition of the death penalty. An analysis of data from 2007 to 2010 reveals that only 21 counties – 8% of the 254 counties in Texas – meted out death sentences over the last four years. Out of a total 43 death sentences imposed statewide between 2007 and 2010, Dallas County leads with seven, followed closely by Harris County, with six new sentences.  Bexar and Travis Counties each accounted for three new death sentences since 2007. Nearly three-fourths of all death sentences in Texas over the last four years have been imposed on people of color – 40% African American, 30% Hispanic/Latino, and 2% other.
 
As part of the report, TCADP has produced two interactive maps highlighting new death sentences by county from 2007 to 2010 and from 1976 to 2010. Clicking on each county reveals the total number of sentences, the number executed, the number awaiting execution, and the number exonerated. See below for links to each map.
 
The number of executions also dropped in 2010.  The State of Texas executed 17 people, the lowest number since 2001.  The state remains the nation’s leading executioner, accounting for approximately 37% of U.S. executions in 2010.  The number of executions in Texas this year represents a smaller percentage of the national total than it has in recent years, however.
 
“Texas – along with the rest of the nation – is moving away from the death penalty,” said Kristin Houlé, Executive Director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.  “The system is broken beyond repair, and the continued decline in new death sentences shows that jurors and prosecutors in Texas are seeking other ways to address violent crime.”
 
Concerns about wrongful convictions and emerging evidence of wrongful executions dominated headlines this year.  On October 27, 2010 Anthony Graves walked out of the Burleson County Jail after spending 18 years in prison – including 12 years on death row – for a crime he did not commit. Prosecutors dropped all charges against Graves and declared him innocent after conducting their own investigation of the case.  His conviction was based on the testimony of Robert Carter, who was convicted and executed for the same crime in 2000 and who recanted several times, including from the gurney.  Anthony Graves is the 12th person in Texas to be wrongfully convicted and removed from death row and the 138th nationwide.

The ongoing inquiry into the case of Cameron Todd Willingham also underscored the fallibility of the system. Willingham was executed in 2004 for setting a fire to his Corsicana home in 1991 that killed his three young daughters. The Texas Forensic Science Commission admitted “flaws” in the science used to convict him. In January it will hold a special meeting with some of the fire experts who have examined the case since the time of conviction and concluded that there was no evidence to support the finding of arson.
 
In another case of “flawed” science, recent DNA testing of evidence that was used to convict and execute Claude Jones ten years ago this month revealed that the strand of hair belonged to the victim, not to Jones, as a forensic expert testified during his 1990 trial. While the DNA results do not exonerate Jones, they raise serious questions about the reliability of his conviction.
 
Other highlights of Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2010: The Year in Review include the following:
•    In three capital murder trials, juries rejected the death penalty and opted for a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Over the last three years, juries have rejected the death penalty in a dozen cases (two each in Travis and Bexar Counties).
•    Three inmates scheduled for execution in 2010 received last-minute stays; the execution date of another inmate was withdrawn. On March 24, Henry “Hank” Skinner received a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court shortly after eating his “last meal.” In October, the Court heard arguments to determine whether Skinner can seek access to post-conviction DNA testing through the federal Civil Rights Act.  Texas officials have refused to release key pieces of evidence gathered at the crime scene in 1993 for testing.
•    At least six inmates received reduced sentences in 2010 and were removed from the death row population, including several inmates whose death sentences were overturned because jurors did not hear mitigating evidence during their original trials. Three other inmates died in custody, including Ronald Chambers, who spent 35 years on death row and was awaiting a fourth sentencing hearing related to the 1975 murder of Mike McMahan.
•    A nationwide shortage of the first drug used in the lethal injection protocol, sodium thiopental, led some states to postpone executions as their supplies dwindle or expire.  In November, officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice revealed that they had enough drugs on hand to execute 39 people, but that doses of sodium thiopental will expire in March 2011.
•    There currently are 317 people (307 men and 10 women) on death row in Texas. Texas holds the third-largest death row population in the nation, after California (713) and Florida (393).

News coverage of the report will be in the next post.

Coverage of TCADP's 2009 report is at the link.  The Death Penalty Information Center issues an annual report focusing on national trends.  I expect it will be issued soon.  Coverage of the DPIC 2009 report is noted at the link. 

Related posts are in the reports index