The StandDown Texas Project

Helen Prejean Keeps Campaigning for Repeal

"Sister Helen Prejean's passion to end the death penalty is a challenge to others," is the New Orleans Times-Picayune profile written by Sheila Stroup. It's available in a slightly abbreviated version, "After 2 decades, nun's crusade continues," via AP and NECN.  Here's the beginning:

For two decades, Sister Helen Prejean has traveled around the country and the world, speaking out against capital punishment. She tells audiences about being a spiritual adviser to inmates on death row and talks about what it means to accompany a man to his death. She tells of meeting the families of the doomed men and the families of their victims. She talks about how the court system works, and how it doesn’t. She speaks of forgiveness.

She calls her passion to end the death penalty “a journey that’s still happening.”

During an interview many years ago, she took me back to the beginning of that journey, when her audiences were considerably smaller than they are now. “I had my smallest crowd right here in New Orleans, at the St. Christopher Home,” she said. “Three people showed up, and two of them nodded off.”

That was before her book “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States,” was published in 1993, and before Susan Sarandon won an Oscar portraying her in the movie.

Since then, Sister Helen has given hundreds and hundreds of talks and filled countless auditoriums. She wrote a second book, “The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions,” which came out in 2004.

Related posts are in the activism and religion category indexes.

Exoneree Curtis McCarty

Omaha World-Herald columnist Matthew Hansen writes, "Decades on death row drive death penalty fight."  Here's the beginning of this must-read:

Oklahoma is killing a man at midnight, and so as darkness falls, another man on H Block slips off his prison-issue shoes.

He sits crossed-legged in front of the open toilet in his cell. He grips a shoe in each hand. He begins.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

As far as Curtis McCarty can remember, it just happens.

Another inmate takes off his shoes, and Curtis does, too, and the drumbeat spreads up and down the hallway and through the dozens of two-man cells commonly known as death row.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The visitors begin to arrive. The grieving family members of the victim who has been brutally murdered. State officials upholding the laws of the state of Oklahoma. News reporters bearing witness in their constitutionally protected role. And the men whose job it is to administer a lethal dose of drugs to a convicted murderer and then watch as he dies.

As the visitors wait for the clocks to strike midnight, the banging grows louder and louder until it reverberates all the way through the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. The pipes shake. The walls and the floors tremble. Louder and louder until it seems like the building might crumble. Until it seems like the world might end.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Earlier coverage from Nebraska begins at the link; also availble, earlier coverage of Curtis McCarty.

More Commentary From David Love

"Putting the Brakes on Philly's Death Penalty," is David Love's latest essay at Huffington Post.  Here's an extended excerpt from the beginning of this must-read:

Witness to Innocence is a national organization originally founded as a project of Sister Helen Prejean of the book Dead Man Walking. Our mission is to empower exonerated death row survivors and their loved ones to become leaders in the death penalty abolition movement. We provide a support network for our members, each of whom spent an average of 10 years on death row for a crime they did not commit.

WTI members speak to audiences throughout the country about their experiences on death row, testify before state legislatures, work with state abolition groups and change hearts and minds in the process. WTI has been involved in successful death penalty repeal efforts in six states over six years.

In Maryland, my advocacy director Kirk Bloodsworth and I stood with Gov. Martin O'Malley as he signed the state's death penalty repeal bill into law. We stood with abolitionists and Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Annapolis who realize the death penalty doesn't work. The government should not be in the business of killing people, and we oppose executions under any circumstances. Capital punishment is expensive, and discriminates against the poor and people of color. And most of all, innocent people are put to death.

So, why are we here? WTI decided to convene the Philadelphia Moratorium Campaign, a diverse coalition of religious leaders, human rights and civil liberties organizations, prisoners' rights groups, legal defense organizations, community groups and others.

We are calling on Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams to place a moratorium on death penalty prosecutions in this city. In addition, we are planning a public outreach campaign, in which death row exonerees will go out to the communities in this city, talk to the people and to lawmakers and educate them about the problems with the death penalty.

Once again, why are we here today? We are here because Pennsylvania is a leader in the death penalty. About 200 people are on death row, fourth behind California, Florida and Texas.

Earlier commentary from David Love begins at the link.

Exonerated Prisoners Are Winning the Fight Against the Death Penalty

That's the title of an article in the current edition of the Nation, written by David Love, the executive director of Witness to Innocence.  The subtitle is, "'I killed the thing that almost killed me,' said Kirk Bloodsworth, who faced execution in Maryland, the latest state to outlaw capital punishment."

Earlier this month, I was at the State House in Annapolis when Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley made history, erasing a centuries-old practice with the stroke of the pen. On May 2, O’Malley signed a law repealing the death penalty, making it the eighteenth state to abolish capital punishment, and the sixth state in six years, after New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Illinois and Connecticut.

Standing with me were two men who had a very personal stake in the governor’s actions: Kirk Bloodsworth and Shujaa Graham, both of whom were exonerated from death row. They are just two of the 142 death row prisoners who have been released due to their innocence over the past forty years. Shujaa was number twenty, and Kirk was number forty-eight. Along with organizers and lawmakers, such exonerated death row survivors—who spent an average of ten years on death row for crimes they did not commit—are leading the charge to halt executions throughout America.

Earlier coverage of Maryland's repeal of the death penalty begins at the link.  Also available, more from David Love.

In Maryland

"Maryland death penalty supporters plan referendum petition drive to overturn repeal," is by Brian Witte for AP.  It's via the Washington Post.

Maryland death penalty supporters launched a petition drive Friday aimed at overturning the state’s newly signed repeal of capital punishment, while opponents vowed to campaign hard if the matter lands on the ballot next year.

Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger joined Del. Neil Parrott, R-Washington, and Sen. James Brochin, D-Baltimore County, to urge voters to sign a petition to put the question on the ballot in November 2014.

And:

Death penalty supporters will need to get 55,736 valid signatures by June 30 to put the matter on the ballot. They will need 18,579 by May 31 to proceed with the drive.

Parrott, who is chairman of MDPetitions.com, helped petition laws to the ballot in last year’s election for the first time in 20 years. They included a same-sex marriage measure, a bill allowing in-state tuition for some students who are not in the country legally and a measure redrawing the state’s congressional districts. All three were upheld by voters.

MDPetitions.com has made it easier to trigger a referendum because of an online tool that enables residents to conform information they need to include with signatures as it is required by the Maryland State Board of Elections. That has reduced the number of signatures that previously would have been thrown out.

Parrott said MDPetitions.com will not participate in petition drives relating to other statewide measures this year in order to focus on the death penalty.

WBAL-AM posts, "Death Penalty Supporters Will Move Forward With A Referendum," by Robert Lang.

Maryland death penalty supporters say they are planning a petition drive that is aimed at overturning the state's newly signed death penalty repeal.

Republican Delegate  Neil Parrott and Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott Shellenberger, a Democrat, announced the petition drive for a referendum Friday, a day after Gov. Martin O'Malley signed the repeal measure into law.

Parrott, a Washington County Republican, is chairman of MDPetitions.com. He has already submitted petition language to the Maryland State Board of Elections to be sure that the language is legally sufficient.

They would need to get 55,736 signatures to petition the measure to referendum in November 2014. They would need to get one-third of those signatures by midnight May 31 to qualify to move forward.

Leaders of the NAACP and Maryland Citizens Against State Executions say they will fight this effort.  Both groups believe a majority of Maryland voters will agree to let the repeal of the death penalty stand.

Earlier coverage from Maryland begins at the link.

Albany Times Union Editorial Honors David Kaczynski

Today's Albany Times Union publishes the editorial,"To Mr. Kaczynski, in awe."  He's recently retired as the executive director of New Yorkers for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

The fight against violence, and the quest for justice, is stronger for his effort. It must go on.

David Kaczynski is far too humble, and much too introspective, to ever be entirely comfortable in the public spotlight. That was true almost 20 years ago, in the brutal scrutiny that came with his courageous decision to turn in his brother, the Unabomber. And it was true, too, in his valedictory Monday night as the most accomplished death penalty opponent in New York.

The occasion was Mr. Kaczynski's retirement as director of the group New Yorkers for Alternatives to the Death Penalty — once known as New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty, before the state's capital punishment law was wiped off the books. But it was no time to declare victory, or to bask in the success of a powerful movement against the politics of vengeance.

And:

The need for restorative justice and more sensitivity toward crime victims is as great as ever.

One great triumph of a group that as recently as 2007 was in search of a new mission is its critically important role in the development of the very successful anti-gun program known as SNUG. Another is an effort, known as Limits of Loyalty, in which victims of violent crime and witnesses to violent crime are encouraged to embrace the larger cause of justice.

New York's death penalty statute was struck down by the state's Court of Appeals in 2004.  Lawmakers have declined to reauthorize capital punishment.

There is additional coverage of David Kaczynski on this site.

Kirk Bloodsworth Calls for Kansas Repeal

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports, "Exonerated by DNA, advocate seeks demise of capital punishment."  It's written by Tim Carpenter.

Maryland fisherman Kirk Bloods-worth's journey from death row to freedom is raw material for a cinematic thriller.

"From the moment I was arrested until the moment I was released, I told anyone and everyone I was an innocent man," he said.

The big screen adaptation would begin with his arrest in the middle of the night for the ghastly rape and murder of 9-year-old Dawn Hamilton near Baltimore in 1984. He hadn’t previously been in trouble with the law, but detectives ignored a tantalizing suspect, and the jury rejected trial witnesses who testified Bloodsworth was at home during the slaying.

The sharp clack of a judge's gavel would mark imposition of the harshest of punishment — a trip to the gas chamber.

"The courtroom erupted in applause," Bloodsworth said. "My mother cried. My father tried to object. He was led from the courtroom. I was just mad."

"Exonerated death row survivor fights capital punishment in Kansas," is the Lawrence Journal-World coverage by Ian Cummings.

Kirk Bloodsworth wants the death penalty abolished in Kansas. And in every other state, and in every nation across the world. He’s absolute on that point, and many feel he has a right to be that way.

The death penalty almost killed Bloodsworth in 1985, when he was convicted and sentenced to death for a murder he didn’t commit. The former Marine was exonerated by DNA testing in 1993, and travels the country as the advocacy director for Witness to Innocence, an organization of exonerated death row survivors. Bloodsworth visited Kansas for the first time Monday, at the invitation of Kansas University student groups, and told his story at the Kansas Memorial Union. It’s a frightening story, and Bloodsworth hopes that the more people hear it, the more will agree with him that the death penalty isn’t safe to use.

Some Kansas lawmakers and judges already agree with him, and a bill to abolish the death penalty is awaiting action in the Legislature.

Earlier coverage from Kansas begins at the link.

Invitation to an Execution

That's the title of Perre Tristam's account at the Flagler Live Editor's blog.  Here's the beginning:

I’m inviting you to join me at an execution this evening, Florida’s fourth this year. Larry Eugene Mann, 59, is scheduled to be killed at 6 p.m. by lethal injection in the state’s death chamber at Starke prison, 75 miles northwest of Palm Coast. I’ve never been to an execution. And by going to one, I don’t mean that I’ll be a witness to it. I would refuse even if offered the dishonor, as reporters frequently are. I’ll be witnessing the vigils, the protests and the counter-protests outside the prison grounds, which take place every time there is an execution. It’s become part of the ritual of executions across the country, though neither executions nor protests (and supportive demonstrations, because those happen, too) get more than a few paragraphs’ coverage here and there, and virtually no more than a passing mention on the evening news, ahead of the weather.

After covering a recent workshop on the death penalty in Florida, I decided to join Father Phil Egitto, the pastor at Our Lady of Lourdes, the Catholic church in Daytona Beach, and the bus-load of people he has taken to every single execution at Starke for years, to stand vigil. The bus made a stop at the Winn-Dixie shopping center near Woody’s Barbecue on State Road 100 at 3 p.m. this afternoon. I boarded it, along with Jackie Morelewicz, who organized the March workshop, and who usually stands vigil, in protest of executions, outside the Flagler County Courthouse, whenever needles ready to end a life in Starke. We’re not likely to be back in town until 9 or 10 p.m. I have no idea how the afternoon and evening will go. I will do my best to chronicle it here as it unfolds. the account will be written in reverse order: the fresher entries will appear at the top.

Earlier coverage from Florida begins at the link.

Mann's execution was the first in Florida this year; the state's 75th execution since 1979.  To date, there have been seven executions in American death penalty states this year; a total of 1,327 post-Furman executions since 1977.

The Voices of the Exonerated

David Love posts, "Building the Grassroots Foundation to Abolish the Death Penalty," at Huffington Post.  He's the Executive Director of Witness to Innocence.

I'm the Executive Director of Witness to Innocence. WTI was founded 10 years ago, originally as a project of Sister Helen Prejean of the book and the film Dead Man Walking. The mission of WTI is to empower exonerated death row survivors and their loved ones to become effective leaders in the movement to abolish the death penalty. WTI is the only nonprofit of exonerated death row survivors and their families. Our members spent an average of 10 years on death row for crimes other people committed. Since 1973, 142 death row prisoners in the U.S. have been released due to innocence.

Witness to Innocence has two purposes: First, we serve as a support network for former death row prisoners, and seek justice for the wrongfully convicted, including state and federal compensation. Second, our members work with state abolition groups across the country, testify before legislatures, and speak to audiences across the nation about their experiences and the compelling issue of innocence and the death penalty. WTI and its members were involved in repeal efforts in New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Illinois, Connecticut and most recently Maryland. And we're involved in Delaware, Colorado, Montana, Kansas, Arkansas, Alabama and other death belt states.

Related posts are in the abolition, exoneration, and innocence category indexes.

Delaware Opinion Roundup

Today's Wilmington News Journal publishes the editorial, "Delaware House should vote to end death penalty."

The Delaware Senate has voted to abolish the death penalty. The state House of Representatives should do the same.

The death penalty, as it now stands, is an expensive, somewhat arbitrary system. It takes too long to carry out, placing an additional burden on victims, our criminal justice system and society as a whole. This delay, warranted by both court orders and the public’s belief that no innocent person should be put to death, negates claims that capital punishment serves as a deterrent. In addition, the growing rarity of executions underscores the methods used to kill the prisoners. Each execution raises again the specter of the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

And:

In 2012 the National Academies examined academic studies of the deterrence effect since 1976 when the Supreme Court ended a four-year moratorium on executions. The National Academies found that no research proves or disproves a deterrence effect. The report recommended that claims that say otherwise “should not influence policy judgments about capital punishment.”

For all of these reasons, the House should pass Senate Bill 19, and the governor should sign it.

The News Journal also publishes an OpEd, "Death penalty painful to victims' families," written by Kristin Froehlich.

As the sister of a murder victim, I support repeal of Delaware’s death penalty because it harms victims’ family members.

My younger brother, David, was only 22 when he was murdered along with four of his friends. They were stabbed and their bodies burned beyond recognition. David’s dental records were needed to identify his body. This quintuple homicide shocked and hurt our entire community.

How can we possibly respond to such horror?

My family had no input about whether or not to seek the death penalty. But because the state determined that they would pursue a death sentence, it took more time and money than it would have if it was a regular murder case with a punishment of life in prison without parole.

Going for the death penalty exacted a huge emotional cost on my family as we waited three years for the trial to begin.

The pain of our loss, the waiting and the uncertainty all left us with a profound sense of powerlessness.

It was a relief to have legal finality once prosecutors dropped the death penalty and the killer was sentenced to life without parole. In the years since then, I have chosen to work for repeal of the death penalty because I learned firsthand how the death penalty harms victims’ family members.

Earlier coverage from Delaware begins at the link.

Duane Buck Case Update

Arise America TV has an interview with NAACP LDF attorney Christina Swarns and former Buck prosecutor Linda Geffin.  You can view the archived video; Duane Buck coverage starts at 16:45 into the streaming video.

Jordan Smith writes, "Execution Assembly Line Gets Rolling; 12 executions are currently scheduled through July," for the current edition of the Austin Chronicle.  Part of the article focuses on the Buck case.

The issue of racial bias is also central to the ongoing case of Duane Buck, sentenced to death in 1997 for the double murder of Debra Gardner, his former girlfriend, and Kenneth Butler in Houston; a third victim, Phyllis Taylor, survived the attack. Last week, 102 people – including Taylor, 10 members of the Legislature, one former governor, and a former Harris County prosecutor who helped to try his case – signed a letter imploring Harris County D.A. Mike Anderson to grant Buck a new punishment hearing, arguing that his original sentencing was marred by racial bias.

Buck's case is one of seven identified in 2000 by Texas' then-Attorney General John Cor­nyn as having been tainted at sentencing by racially-biased testimony from psychologist Walter Quijano; Buck is the only defendant not yet granted a new sentencing hearing. In his case, as in two others, Quijano was hired by the defense; he testified that Hispanics and blacks are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. On cross-examination, however, then-prosecutor, now state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, focused Quijano on the race issue: "[T]he race factor, black, increases the future dangerousness for various complicated reasons; is that correct?"

"Yes," Quijano replied.

Whether a person poses a future danger to others is among three questions jurors must consider before imposing a death sentence. In her closing, Huffman argued that jurors should consider Quijano's judgment as reliable. Buck was ultimately sentenced to death. Signatories to the letter in support of giving Buck a new sentencing hearing suggest that to allow him to die without remedying the tainted sentencing hearing would be to "condone" racial discrimination in the courtroom.

The latest push to get Buck a new hearing comes in anticipation that Anderson would soon seek a new date for Buck's execution. Anderson has said that he will not act – either to agree to a new hearing, or to push for an execution date – before the Court of Criminal Appeals weighs in on the most recent appeal of the case, filed earlier this month, that again seeks a new sentencing hearing. "We are waiting on a ruling and we will act accordingly," he said.

"Texas Officials Pressed for New Sentencing Hearing for Buck," is the South Florida Times report.

Some 102 prominent persons from Texas and  around the country have called on Texas officials to provide a new, fair sentencing hearing for Duane Buck, an African American condemned to death even though after his sentencing jury was told that he posed a future danger because of his race.

“The State of Texas cannot condone any form of racial discrimination in the courtroom,” their statement says. “The use of race in sentencing poisons the legal process and breeds cynicism in the judiciary. No execution should be carried out until the courts have a meaningful opportunity to address the evidence of fundamental injustice in Mr. Buck’s case. A new, fair sentencing hearing for Mr. Buck is absolutely necessary to restore public confidence in the criminal justice system.”

Those calling for the new hearing include Benjamin Todd Jealous, NAACP President and CEO; Mark White, former governor of Texas; 10 members of the Texas Legislature; 17 former prosecutors and judges from Texas and across the county, including former Harris County Assistant District Attorney Linda Geffin, who served as a prosecutor in the case; American Bar Association President Laurel Bellows and past presidents Philip Anderson, William Ide, Carolyn Lamm and Roberta Ramo; Archbishop Joseph A. Fiorenza of the Galveston-Houston Archdiocese; and several pastors, including the Rev. William A. Lawson of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston.

“The diverse chorus of voices calling for a new, fair sentencing hearing for Duane Buck reflects how Texas’s disturbing appeal to racial bias fundamentally undermines the integrity of the entire criminal justice system and makes each of us less safe,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, director counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund Inc. which represents Buck, along with the Texas Defender Service and attorney Kate Black.  “For anyone to trust the criminal justice system, it must be fair to everyone.”

Linda Geffin, one of the Harris County Assistant District Attorneys who prosecuted Duane Buck has started a Change.org petition calling for a new sentencing trial.

At Duane Buck's 1997 capital sentencing hearing in Harris County (Houston), the trial prosecutor elicited testimony from a psychologist that Mr. Buck posted a future danger because he is black. A significant new study finding racial bias in Harris County’s death penalty system was released in an appeal filed by Mr. Buck earlier this month.  Mr. Buck challenges his death sentence as an unconstitutional product of racial discrimination and presents research showing that at the time of his 1997 capital trial, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office was over three times more likely to seek the death penalty against African American defendants like himself, than against similarly-situated white defendants.  The research also shows that Harris County juries were more than twice as likely to impose death sentences on African American defendants in cases like Mr. Buck’s, than on similarly situated white defendants.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund maintains up to date information on the Buck case.

Earlier coverage begins at the link.  Related posts are in the race category index.

Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty

Richard Viguerie's Conservative HQ blog posts, "Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty to Debut at CPAC."

Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, a national network of conservatives questioning the alignment of capital punishment with conservative principles, will debut at CPAC (March 14-16).

Local conservative leaders from Montana, Kentucky, Texas, and Kansas will be in attendance. National figures Jay Sekulow and Richard A. Viguerie are also supporters of the group. 

"Conservatives should question how the death penalty actually works in order to stay true to small government, reduction in wasteful spending, and respect for human life," said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice.  

Roy Brown, former Montana House Majority Leader and a republican candidate for Montana governor in 2008, helped found Montana Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty several years ago. Brown was enthusiastic about expanding his grassroots effort, and will attend CPAC as part of the new national effort. 

And:

Richard A. Viguerie, known as the “Funding Father” of the conservative movement, also supports the new group. “Conservatives have every reason to believe the death penalty system is no different from any (other government programs) which we conservatives know are rife with injustice,” Viguerie said.

"Former State Senator Opposes Death Penalty," is the KULR-TV report by Christine Corrado.

In February the House Judiciary Committee shot down a measure to replace the death penalty with life in prison without parole. The "Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty" group led by former State Senator Roy Brown, will meet in Washington D.C. in March at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

"I am a conservative and I don't like to see waste and inefficiencies, I don't like to see the taxpayers money squandered on these long appeal processes and and so I'd like to see it end here," says Brown.

Brown hopes to persuade other conservatives to understand the advantages of abolishing the death penalty.

Earlier coverage from Montana begins at the link.  More at Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.

A Terrible Burden to Victims’ Families

That's the title of Bob Autobee's OpEd in Colorado's Pueblo Chieftain.

I am a veteran corrections officer. No one would ever call me soft on crime. For nearly all of my life, I supported the death penalty.

When my son, corrections officer Eric Autobee, was murdered, I still supported the death penalty and it seemed proper justice that they would seek the ultimate punishment for his offender.

That was the old me, before I learned and experienced how the system really doesn’t work. It has been a nightmare. Given what I know now, I can no longer support Colorado’s broken death penalty system. What’s more, I will work to end it to ensure that our resources are better used and no family ever has to go through what my wife and I have endured.

Justice should be swift. This simply isn’t possible with the death penalty.

Our case is the poster child for this. It has been more than 10 years since Eric was murdered and the case is still being fought. Thousands of hours, millions of dollars, and an unspeakable emotional toll on my family has been poured into the fight for a death sentence.

And:

As a victim’s father who has been trapped in the labyrinth of the death penalty, and after seeing the real misuse of resources, I am begging our elected officials to do away with our broken death penalty system.

Colorado can do better by our corrections officials, and we can do much better by victims.

Earlier coverage of Bob Autobee's change of heart begins at the link.  Also available, the most recent coverage from Colorado.

Jerry Givens' Mission

The Washington Post reports, "Ex-Virginia executioner becomes opponent of death penalty."  It's by Justin Jouvenal.

Jerry Givens executed 62 people.

His routine and conviction never wavered. He’d shave the person’s head, lay his hand on the bald pate and ask for God’s forgiveness for the condemned. Then, he would strap the person into Virginia’s electric chair.

Givens was the state’s chief executioner for 17 years — at a time when the commonwealth put more people to death than any state besides Texas.

“If you knew going out there that raping and killing someone had the consequence of the death penalty, then why are you going to do it?” Givens asked. “I considered it suicide.”

As Virginia executed its 110th person in the modern era last month, Givens prayed for the man, but also for an end to the death penalty. Since leaving his job in 1999, Givens has become one of the state’s most visible — and unlikely — opponents of capital punishment.

His evolution underscores that of Virginia itself and the nation. Although polls show that the majority of state residents still support the death penalty, Virginia has experienced a sea change on capital punishment in recent years that is part of a national trend.

The state has had fewer death sentences over the past five years than any period since the 1970s. Robert Gleason, who was put to death Jan. 16, was the first execution in a year and a half. As recently as 1999, the state put 13 to death in a single year.

Earlier coverage of Jerry Givens begins at the link.

In Maryland

"Ministers call for repeal of Md. death penalty," is the AP report, via NECN.A coalition of Maryland religious leaders is calling lawmakers to end the practice of capital punishment in the state.

Ministers representing diverse faiths, including Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Muslims, convened in Annapolis on Wednesday to urge lawmakers to repeal the state's death penalty law.

"The death penalty should not be legal in Maryland because capital punishment has been shown not to be a deterrent," said Rabbi Seth Bernstein, president of the Howard County Board of Rabbis, during a news conference.

"In states where capital punishment is legal, murder rates are persistently higher than the murder rates of other states in our union where the death penalty is illegal," Bernstein added.

The group of clergy insisted that capital punishment has been marred by racial discrimination, arguing that minority defendants are more likely than other populations to be sentenced to death.

Faith leaders also raised the issue of mistaken executions, saying that there is no guarantee that innocent people won't be executed for crimes they did not commit.

Maryland's last execution was under former Gov. Bob Ehrlich in 2005, when Wesley Eugene Baker was put to death for the 1991 murder of a woman at a Baltimore County shopping center.

Since 1976, Maryland has executed five people. Five men remain on death row.

Earlier coverage from Maryland begins at the link.

Kirk Bloodsworth in Maryland

Today's New York Times reports, "A Death Penalty Fight Comes Home."  It' written by Scott Shane.

Kirk Noble Bloodsworth, a beefy, crew-cut man
whose blue T-shirt read “Witness to Innocence,” took the microphone in a church hall here and ran through his story of injustice and redemption one more time. Twenty years ago, he walked out of a Maryland prison, the first inmate in the nation to be sentenced to death and then exonerated by DNA.       

About 60 activists against the death penalty listened with rapt attention, preparing to descend on state legislators to press their case. Maryland appears likely in the next few weeks to join the growing list of states that have abolished capital punishment. Some longtime death penalty opponents say no one in the country has done more to advance that cause than Mr. Bloodsworth. But ending executions in Maryland, the state that once was determined to kill him, would be a personal victory for him.       

Even for proponents of capital punishment, Mr. Bloodsworth’s tale is deeply unsettling.

And:

Even after his release, Mr. Bloodsworth could never quite escape the false charges that had threatened him with execution. He tried to return, he said, to “a normal life,” but he was haunted by what he had learned about the justice system.       

“If it could happen to me, it could happen to anybody,” he said. He threw himself into work against capital punishment and for justice reform, first as a volunteer speaker and later as a professional advocate. Last month he began work as the advocacy director for Witness to Innocence, a Philadelphia-based coalition of exonerated death row inmates who push to end capital punishment.       

The movement to end the death penalty has garnered more support from politicians and the public as it has shifted from moral condemnation of capital punishment to a more practical argument: that mistakes by witnesses and the police inevitably mean that innocent people will be executed. While DNA gets the limelight, of 142 prisoners sentenced to death and then exonerated in the last 40 years, just 18 were freed over DNA evidence, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington.

The Times also has this excellent graphic on death sentences and state repeal.

Earlier coverage from Mayland begins at the link.  Earlier coverage of Kirk Bloodsworth's advocacy is also available.

His story is told in Bloodsworth: The True Story of One Man's Triumph over Injustice by Tim Junkin; a must-read.

An Update From Maryland

"Senators wrestle with death penalty vote," is Erin Cox's report in today's Baltimore Sun.  It's also available via Huffington Post.  Here's the beginning:

State Sen. Allan Kittleman is torn.

When lobbied by the ACLU and the NAACP to repeal Maryland's death penalty, Kittleman asks how he can ensure the most heinous murderers will never kill again.

When approached by fellow senators or state's attorneys who want to keep capital punishment, Kittleman questions whether there can be a foolproof way to ensure the state doesn't kill an innocent person.

"My mindset on this has always been divided," said Kittleman, a Howard County Republican who hopes to skip his own committee to listen to another panel's death penalty hearings before the legislation reaches the Senate floor. "It really is an issue that I'm struggling with, and I want to make sure I do the right thing."

Like a handful of other publicly undecided senators, Kittleman's internal struggle has made him a target in a behind-the-scenes lobbying press conducted in part by elected officials, prosecutors, religious groups, a Catholic bishop, the wrongly accused and advocates who have strong views on one side or the other.

In a divided chamber considered key to overturning the death penalty, Kittleman and a few other senators may cast the deciding votes on whether to uphold Maryland's narrowly written capital punishment law or to erase it from the books for the first time in 35 years.

The death penalty debate, perhaps the most emotional issue of the General Assembly session, does not break cleanly down party lines as lawmakers choose instead to yield to constituent views, emotion or their moral beliefs.

The Washington Post notes, "Today in D.C.: Four things to watch for," by Maggie Fazeli Fard.

Maryland death penalty repeal effort: Relatives of murder victims are joining a rally in Annapolis this afternoon in favor of repealing the state’s death penalty.

Earlier coverage from Maryland begins at the link.

Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley on Repealing Capital Punishment

Here is the full text of Governor O'Malley speech on repealing capital punishment, given yesterday.  It's via Southern Maryland News Net.

Thank you very much. It’s wonderful to be here with all of you. Lt. Governor, thank you for those heartfelt and very principled remarks. And thank you all for stepping up and for being here on this issue. County Executive Ike Leggett, it’s good to see you. County Executive Rushern Baker, Chairman Frosh, so many that are here,… Senator Gladden, Delegate Rosenberg.

It would seem to me that, especially in tough times, if there if something that we’re doing through our government that is expensive, and does not work, then we should stop doing it.

The death penalty is expensive and it does not work. And for that reason alone, I believe we should stop doing it.

So this week, once again, I will be filing legislation to repeal the death penalty in Maryland. And I want to share with you how I come to this issue. I want to share with you my reasons for doing this once again. And I thank all of the delegates, and senators,… Lt. Governor, and county executives for being here and being supportive of this repeal of the death penalty in Maryland.

Investing In Strategies that Work
Anyone who has ever looked in the eyes of a young boy or a girl,… or has sat to comfort a mom or a dad whose life has been turned totally upside down by the loss of a child,… by the violent taking of the life of a loved one,… who has felt the despair of entire neighborhoods, and entire cities because of violence, and the violent taking of life. The degradation of violence. The violent destruction of violence. The ripping apart of the fabric of life that others have sewn for themselves and their families,… understands that the most fundamental responsibility we have as a people is to safeguard the lives of people.

To govern is to choose. And particularly in an era of limited budget resources, every dollar that we choose to spend on a policy that is wasteful and does not work – when instead we could be doing more of the things that do work to protect life – seems to me to run counter to the pragmatic “do the things that work” governance that is the hallmark of our State, and what our people desire.

The death penalty does not work in terms of preventing violent crime and the taking of human life. If you look over 30 or 40 years, the death penalty was on the books, and yet Baltimore still became the most violent and addicted city in America. Having the death penalty on the books did nothing to keep the homicides from rising.

Conversely, over these last several years, we’ve been doing the things that work. We’ve been making our police departments more effective. We’ve been deploying to where the crime is. We’ve been using DNA technology and DNA evidence to solve crimes, as well as to exonerate those who were wrongly accused. We’ve been putting technology in the hands of law enforcement. We’ve been solving cases.

And as a result of doing the things that actually work, we’ve been able to drive violent crime down to three decade lows. We’ve been able to save scores and scores of lives that otherwise would have been taken by rising homicide numbers.

We know what works. Investing in law enforcement. Investing in data-driven policing. Increasing the availability of drug treatment. Performance measurement. Strengthening partnerships between police and neighbors. Investing in the latest crime fighting technologies, DNA analysis, healing vulnerable families – these are the things that work to reduce violent crime and save lives. The death penalty does not work.

Justice
Good people on both sides of this issue have, in the past, disagreed about the morality of the death penalty. I think there is increasingly less disagreement about its effectiveness, especially in our State. I wanted to shift to another topic, which is the justice and the morality of the death penalty.

Year after year, states which have a death penalty have actually had a higher murder rate than states which do not have a death penalty. That would seem to indicate to me that the death penalty, again, does not work as a deterrent.

And the other facts are even more troubling,… In 2008, the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment that was led by distinguished son of Maryland, former United States Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti, took a look at this issue with dedication, with fairness, with a lot of different perspectives around the table, and with a respect for differences of opinion. They did very good work. They held hours of hearings and considered in a very open, transparent, and also compassionate way, days of testimony from citizens who came at this issue from a variety of perspectives. And, quite frankly, a lot of personal pain.

The Commission found that for every 8.7 Americans sent to death row, there has been one innocent person exonerated.

It was near unanimous in reporting that quote “the administration of the death penalty clearly shows racial bias.” It determined that no administrative fixes could end these disparities.

And it found that the cost to taxpayers of pursuing a capital case is three times as much as the costs of pursuing a non-death penalty homicide conviction, where a person receives a life sentence without parole.

Who We Choose to Be
So, in conclusion, who do we choose to be?

To govern is to choose. All of us have to ask ourselves, “Is it worth wasting taxpayer dollars on a policy that does not work?”

And perhaps there is another question we might ask, which is “Who do we, as a People, aspire to be?”

Across our ever more closely linked world, the majority of executions take place in seven countries: Communist China. Iran. Iraq. North Korea. Saudi Arabia. Yemen. And the United States of America.

On the other hand, 141 countries have chosen to abolish capital punishment. I won’t read you that list, but as you might conclude, it is a much more expansive community than the number who still use the death penalty.

So who do we choose to be? In whose company to we choose to walk forward? Will we be a society guided by the notion that two wrongs somehow make a right? Or will we be a society that’s guided by the fundamental civil and human rights that we understand are bestowed on humankind by God? A society guided by the dignity of every individual. A society that is always moving forward to what’s right.

Today is the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who taught us that “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.”

The choice is really ours. We know what works. We know what does not work.

And we know that the way forward is always found through greater respect for the human dignity of all.  Thanks very much.

Earlier coverage from Maryland begins at the link.  There will be news coverage of Gov. O'Malley's speech in the next post.

The Last Supper Plates

You can view Julie Green's "Last Supper" plates at her website.

Oregon Public Broadcasting posts, "OSU Professor Draws Attention To Death Penalty Through 'Last Supper' Plates.

When Julie Green was living in Oklahoma in the late 90s, she would open her morning paper and find an intriguing, if somewhat morbid, detail. If the state executed someone, the paper printed the contents of their last meal.

"They actually humanized death row for me," she says. "It hit home to me that those meals were so personal and so specific."

She was drawn to these last meals, and eventually came up with the idea of painting representations of them on ceramic plates.

The Associate Professor of Art at Oregon State University has a new exhibit of her plates opening this week in Corvallis.

Some of the plates are paintings of plates full of fried chicken, ravioli and other comfort food. One is a pack of cigarettes. Another simply says, "None."

All of the plates are cobalt blue on white porcelain, reminiscent of fine china. It’s very much like the traditional plates Green grew up with.

Green says, "I think it's helpful that there’s some beauty in the piece ... to balance the inherent sadness of the subject matter.”

Green has been creating these plates for 13 years, and has painted over 500 meals in this way. You can see many of them at a new exhibit opening this week at The Arts Center in Corvallis. It’s called The Last Supper: 500 Plates.

Last year, Terra Magazine published, "Plates of Honor: Julie Green memorializes final meal choices by death-row prisoners."  It was written by Angela Yeager.  Here's a small excerpt; follow the link if you want to learn more about Ms. Green and her work.

When she accepted a position in the Oregon State University Department of Art in 2000, she began The Last Supper, a project that would translate her feelings into a public statement. Her first piece was a portrayal of those tacos and doughnuts that had caught her attention in Norman. Expressed through blue mineral paint fired on white porcelain plates, the series now has more than 500 pieces depicting last-supper choices by death-row inmates.

The work has been exhibited widely in the United States and internationally, most recently at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. The Corvallis Arts Center plans a show in early 2013. National news media including Ceramics Monthly, Gastronomica and National Public Radio have featured The Last Supper, as has Dark Rye, an online magazine produced by Whole Foods Market. OSU-Cascades artist Henry Sayre has included text and images, as well as Green’s narrative tempera paintings, in the 2012 edition of his textbook A World of Art, published by Prentice-Hall.

At Oregon State, Green teaches painting, drawing and contemporary issues in art. In 2011, she received grant support from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Its prestigious award is given to only 25 contemporary artists a year to acknowledge painters and sculptors nationwide who create work of exceptional quality.

Green paints The Last Supper plates in her studio in a cozy historic bungalow in Corvallis, which she shares with her husband, artist Clay Lohmann. Every month or two, she loads newly painted plates into a dish rack and drives a slow half-mile to the home of artist and collaborator Antonia “Toni” Acock, who fires them in her ceramics kiln.

Oregon State University issued a news release on the Joan Mitchell Foundation grant, "OSU faculty member wins prestigious art grant."

Profile of An Abolitionist

The current edition of the Louisville Eccentric Observer is themed the 2012 People Issue.  One of those profiled is, "The Rev. Patrick Delahanty: The Abolitionist."  It's written by Joe Sonka.  Here'a the beginning:

If you’ve ever walked through the bustling halls of the capitol annex in Frankfort during a session of Kentucky’s General Assembly over the past three decades, there’s a good chance you’ve run into the Rev. Pat Delahanty.

One of the founders of the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty 24 years ago, Delahanty is a tireless advocate for reforming the state’s capital punishment system. He balances his time building a grassroots network across the commonwealth and giving state legislators information about how our justice system isn’t working.

Last year, his work was bolstered by an American Bar Association report that found such deep flaws in Kentucky’s system that they recommended suspending the death penalty here.

“Even if you support the death penalty, you probably don’t support the one we have,” Delahanty says. “So knowing what we have now gives us more information to go out and show people what they’re supporting.”

The Catholic priest, who lives in Old Louisville, is already gearing up for next year’s General Assembly, and from his recent discussions with legislators, he senses momentum is on their side.

“I think Kentucky could be the first state in the South (to abolish the death penalty),” he says. “It won’t be 2013 — the short session is not enough time, and we’re not at that point yet — but we’re getting close to it. 2014 is possible, 2015 is more likely.”

Earlier coverage from Kentucky begins at the link.

State Repeal Roundup

We have repeal items from three states today, Connecticut, Kentucky, and Maryland.

In Kentucky, AP reports, "Death Penalty Opponents Ask Governor for Support."  It's via WBKO-TV.

Activists have delivered more than 1,500 postcards to Gov. Steve Beshear asking that he sign no more death warrants and that he work to abolish the death penalty.

Kaye Gallagher, coordinator of the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, delivered the postcards from across the state to Beshear's office late Monday.

Each of the cards said three decades of experience shows the death penalty is "a risky, arbitrary, unfair, ineffective and costly distraction from justice."

And:

Kentucky has executed three people since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976, two by lethal injection and one in the electric chair.

Columnist Susan Campell writes, "Connecticut should not stop part-way on abolishing the death penalty," in the Register Citizen of Litchfield County.

Here in the Land of Steady Habits, change comes one toe in the water at a time. First, we had marriage lite, or civil unions, and when the sky didn’t fall, we went all in for marriage equality.

Similarly, when the state decided to abolish capital punishment — as legislators did in April — they did so, but only partly. The death penalty was abolished for future cases, but it is still an option for 11 men waiting on death row. Some of those men are in court claiming the death penalty is applied capriciously, and prejudicially.

They remain under the threat of lethal injection in part because of the lobbying efforts of Dr. William Petit, the lone survivor of a 2007 home invasion that took the lives of a mother and her two daughters, and left the doctor for dead.

He didn’t die, and he’s taken his grief and started a family foundation that aims to do good. He’s also lobbied hard to retain the death penalty, so that the two men tried and convicted for the destruction of his family will — eventually, perhaps — die at the hand of the state.

I do not question Dr. Petit’s grief or his motivation.

I do not believe, however, that a grieving husband and father should set public policy. The state appeared poised to abolish capital punishment in 2011, until Dr. Petit made an impassioned plea that convinced even the likes of the now-retired Sen. Edith Prague — who’d originally been poised to vote to repeal — to back away and leave the death penalty in place.

"Why Martin O'Malley Needs to Lead Maryland to Death Penalty Abolition," is Brian Evans' Huffington Post essay.  He's with Amnesty International.

Opposing the death penalty is not the political third rail it used to be (or at least was considered to be). It has become a mainstream choice. Especially now, and especially in a state like Maryland, with its tiny death row and no death sentences since 2004.

For Maryland's political leadership, choosing to repeal its moribund capital punishment law shouldn't be a hard vote. The public prefers life without parole. Governor Martin O'Malley has been not only an admitted but an avowed abolitionist since he assumed office in 2007, and he was re-elected in 2010 by double digits. This past year he demonstrated his state's readiness for groundbreaking lawmaking with passage of both marriage equality and the DREAM Act. In fact, death penalty abolition is less groundbreaking than either of these, as four states have legislatively abolished the death penalty since O'Malley has been Maryland's Governor.

Sadly, his state is not one of them.

He can and should rectify this in 2013.

Earlier coverage from Connecticut, Kentucky, and Maryland begins at the links.  Related posts are in the abolition index.

Death Penalty: Another Step Towards Abolition

That's the title of Elisabetta Zamparutti's commentary posted at Inter Press Service.  She is a member of the Italian parliament and treasurer ofthe international abolition organization Hands Off Cain.  Here's the beginning:

On Dec. 18, 2007, the approval of a resolution for a moratorium on executions by the United Nations General Assembly was hailed as a milestone in the struggle to abolish the death penalty worldwide. It is true that the United Nations may not impose the abolition of the death penalty, but the moral and political value of the resolution is undeniable.

Since the founding of the abolitionist organisation Hands Off Cain in 1993, 56 of the 97 retentionist States that were members of the U.N. at that time have abandoned the practice of the death penalty. Fifteen of them have done so since 2006, the year following the re-launching of the initiative at the U.N. General Assembly. Three more countries (Palau, East-Timor and Tuvalu) that became members of the U.N. after 1993 are also abolitionist.

On the eve of the fourth U.N. General Assembly vote on the death penalty resolution, expected later this year, it is important to review the current situation.

There are 154 countries and territories that, to varying degrees, have decided to renounce the death penalty. Of these: 100 are totally abolitionist, seven are abolitionist for ordinary crimes, five have a moratorium on executions in place and 42 are de facto abolitionist (i.e. countries that have not carried out any executions for at least 10 years or countries that have binding obligations not to use the death penalty). On the other hand, there are 44 retentionist countries.

There were 19 countries that carried out executions in 2011, compared to 27 countries in 2006.

Related posts are in the aboltion and international category indexes.

In Washington State

KIRO-FM posts, "Opponents launch new effort to abolish death penalty," by Tim Haeck.

Opponents will try again to pass a bill abolishing the death penalty in Washington state during the next legislative session.

Backers of the death penalty argue it provides closure for victims, but Sen. Debbie Regala (D-Tacoma) says that's not always true, given how long appeals can take.

"The prolonged process means that there is no closure for a long period of time and for many people it reopens the wound over and over."

Regala opposes the death penalty even though her brother-in-law was murdered in Seattle in 1980 and his killer was never caught. She says cost is one big reason why.

"We spent six to ten times as much money pursuing a death penalty as we would if we went for life without the possibility of parole," Regala says.

Earlier coverage from Washington begins at the links.

Related posts are in the abolition and state legislation indexes.

Will Maryland Be the Next State to Repeal?

"NAACP to step up Maryland death penalty fight," is by Michael Dresser for the Baltimore Sun.  Here's the beginning of the article.

The NAACP is vowing to mount in Annapolis its largest-ever effort to abolish the death penalty in a state, saying Maryland's historic role in the civil rights movement makes it an appropriate place for the push.

In an interview, NAACP President Ben Jealous said Maryland is the civil rights organization's top priority in its broader campaign to eliminate capital punishment from the American justice system. He said the group will spend more than it ever has in a state as it rallies citizens to pressure lawmakers for repeal.

"We'll make sure people hear from their constituents in a way they've never heard from them before," Jealous said.

The NAACP has historically opposed the death penalty for a variety of reasons, including racial disparities in how it is applied. Jealous said Maryland is especially important to the NAACP because of the state's civil rights history — including the careers of native sons Thurgood Marshall and Frederick Douglass.

"There's a special debt of honor to get this done in Maryland for the NAACP," Jealous said.

His announcement comes as Gov. Martin O'Malley, a death penalty opponent, is weighing whether to put the full weight of his office behind a renewed effort to shut down Maryland's Death Row. A previous O'Malley effort ended in 2009 with a compromise bill that narrowed the circumstances under which a killer can be sentenced to death but left capital punishment on the books.

Earlier coverage from Maryland begins at the link.

A Q&A with Sr. Helen Prejean

"Activist discusses work against death penalty," is the conversation with Houston Chronicle reporter Harvey Rice.  Here's the beginning of this must-read:

Sister Helen Prejean, 73, anti-death penalty advocate and author of "Dead Man Walking," which was made into a movie in 1995 of the same name, was in Houston for the 10th anniversary of GRACE, the Gulf Region Advocacy Center, which represents low-income death-penalty defendants at no cost. She spoke with Houston Chronicle reporter Harvey Rice about her passion for her cause.

Q. Was it your experience with Patrick Sonnier, whose 1984 execution inspired your book "Dead Man Walking," that led you to be outspoken against the death penalty, or was it something else?

A. When he was killed in the electric chair he looked at my face. I had never seen an execution before with my own eyes. I went outside and vomited. Support for death penalty was 87 percent at the time. I realized the people are never going to see this, but I've witnessed it. I've witnessed the guards who had to do the killing. One who said I have to quit. I met the victims' families. They are given this illusory promise (that the death penalty will bring them closure.) I began speaking out immediately after that execution. I wrote a book, "Dead Man Walking." It was to get the word out to the people, to get them to face the reality of the death sentence, to gradually take them into the horror. That's what I tried to do.

More about Sr. Helen Prejean is at the link; you can also visit her website, Prejean.org.

Liliana Segura on Death Penalty Activism

"Marching Against the Death Penalty in Texas," is Liliana Segura's latest post at the Nation.

On a Tuesday last March, the state of Mississippi executed Larry Matthew Puckett, a 35-year-old man convicted of sexually assaulting and killing his boss’s wife, 28-year-old Rhonda Hatten Griffis, in 1995. Matt, as his family called him, was an Eagle Scout at the time; he had just graduated from high school and was days away from leaving for basic training with the Navy before he was arrested. From the beginning he insisted on his innocence, claiming that his former employer had killed his wife in a rage upon discovering her and Matt together in her mobile home. Although his story contained inconsistencies, there were red flags. Griffis was beaten to death with a club, yet her blood was nowhere to be found on Puckett’s clothes, just on her husband’s. Nor was Puckett’s semen found on her body.

The Mississippi Innocence Project reviewed his case in 2008, primarily due to concerns over the role of one of two now-famously discredited medical examiners whose testimony had sent innocent men to death row. But neither man was central to his case. Nor was there DNA to test. No further inquiry went forward. The courts upheld his conviction.

But Puckett’s family continued to believe him, particularly his mother, Mary. When his lawyers pushed to fight for his sentence to be commuted to life without parole, she recalls, “We always protested and said no, that’s not what we want for him. We want him to come home.”

Related posts are in the activism category index.

New Hampshire Supreme Court to Review State's Sole Death Sentence

"Daylong hearing set in death sentence appeal," is Lynne Tuohy's AP report, via the Boston Globe.

The state’s only death-row inmate will have his day in court — all day — when the New Hampshire Supreme Court hears arguments pertaining to his sentence.

Michael Addison was sentenced to death for fatally shooting a 35-year-old Manchester police officer, Michael Briggs, in 2006, when Briggs tried to arrest him on robbery charges.

The justices in Addison’s case will be deliberating the death penalty for the first time in more than 50 years — deciding, among other things, whether Addison’s sentence is just or was a product of passion or prejudice.

The justices will hear arguments in the case beginning Wednesday morning, holding four blocks of hearings that are scheduled to end at 3 p.m.

Court observers say the daylong hearing on Addison’s conviction and death sentence is unprecedented. A typical hearing before the justices lasts half an hour.

"New Hampshire Supreme Court to hear convicted killer Addison's appeal this week," is Bill Smith's report for the New Hampshire Union Leader.

The state Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Wednesday in the appeal of the man sentenced to die for the 2006 murder of Manchester police officer Michael Briggs.

Defense attorneys have appealed condemned killer Michael Addison's conviction and the death sentence imposed by a Hillsborough County jury in 2008.

Addison was convicted of capital murder in the death of Briggs, who was gunned down in an alley while in pursuit of a suspect in 2006.

In an order handed down Nov. 2, the high court set aside a full day for hearing the 22 issues raised in the condemned man's appeal.

Addison's attorneys have raised the constitutionality of the state's death penalty as an issue in the case.

Several other questions of law have been raised on appeal. The justices are being asked to decide if the trial judge erred in not changing the location of the trial, and whether prosecutors were unfairly permitted to raise "passion, prejudice or other arbitrary factors" in arguments to the jury.

The Nashua Telegraph reports, "Death penalty opponents to hold vigils outside Addison’s Supreme Court hearings," by Joseph G. Cote.

While lawyers and justices parse complex legal concepts and jargon and a convicted cop killer waits to see if he will be executed, death penalty opponents will be thinking about the big picture later this week and protesting outside the state’s highest court.

The New Hampshire Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty will hold silent vigils outside the New Hampshire Supreme Court before and after hearings on Michael Addison’s trial in the 2006 shooting death of Manchester Police Officer Michael Briggs.

The hearings, which will be held from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Wednesday, could decide whether Addison will become the first person executed in New Hampshire in decades.

The coalition said death penalty opponents, including former law enforcement officers, church leaders and relatives of murder victims, will participate in the vigils from 7:30-9 a.m. and 2:45-4 p.m. at the 1 Charles Doe Drive courthouse.

Earlier coverage of Michael Addison's case begins at the link.

California Roundup

"California's Death Penalty: All Cost and No Benefit," is the title of Danny Glover and Mike Farrell's essay at Huffington Post.

While many important issues will be decided this Tuesday, one stands out for its national and historic importance: In California, the future of the death penalty hangs in the balance with Proposition 34. Also known as the SAFE California Act of 2012, Prop 34 will replace the death penalty with life in prison with no possibility of parole.

The fact is, California's death penalty is all cost and no benefit. The latest Field Poll, out Friday, shows that more voters than ever before support replacing the death penalty, and that Prop 34 is leading in the polls. The Field Poll says 45 percent of likely California voters support Prop 34, while 38 percent oppose. Of those who have already voted, a full 48 percent said they voted yes, while 42 percent voted no.

A big reason for the spectacular surge in support is people's awareness that the Golden State is flat broke. Voters now understand that the death penalty is far more expensive than life in prison with no chance of parole. They realize that California has sunk billions of dollars into a broken system -- while most death row inmates die of old age.

Also at HuffPost, Exoneree Franky Carrillo writes, "Calif. Leads the Nation in Wrongful Convictions -- I Would Know."

A new project at UC Berkeley Law School, the California Wrongful Convictions Project, has been studying the problem of innocent people in California convicted of crimes they did not commit, and they've just released their findings [PDF]. I wish I could say I was shocked by what they found.

California currently leads the nation in wrongful convictions. With more than 200 innocent people locked up for crimes they did not commit since 1989, and 123 exonerations, California exceeds every other state in the U.S. when it comes to this dubious distinction.

This came as no surprise to me. I was one of those 200 innocent people.

I was locked up more than 20 years ago for a murder I did not commit and last year, I was finally able to prove my innocence and was released. Including my 20 years, the total amount of time spent in prison by innocent people in California is 1,311 years.

Ever since I was released, I've been traveling around the state urging voters to vote YES on Proposition 34 to replace the death penalty with life in prison because of the risk of executing an innocent person. I know first-hand that innocent men and women can be convicted of terrible things they had nothing to do with, and that the death penalty always will run the awful risk of executing one of those people. It could have been me.

"A Challenge to Dennis Prager, Death-Penalty Supporter," is by Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic.

Over at Ricochet, Dennis Prager has an item mocking the California ballot initiative that could end the death penalty in the Golden State, in part because doing so would save a lot of taxpayer money. Says Prager (emphasis added):

There's a ballot measure (in California they're called propositions) to eliminate the death penalty. The idea behind this measure, Proposition 34, is that death penalty is too expensive and therefore should be abolished. The idea is so morally vapid that it's hard to believe people would take it seriously. Justice should never be a matter of money.  Do supporters of Prop. 34 really mean to suggest that, yes, heinous murderers should be executed, but because it's costly we should allow every murderer to live?

What I wonder is if Prager fully understands the implications of his argument, which I'd urge him to carry to its logical conclusion. If justice should never be a matter of money, will he start using his radio show and columns to insist that the people who perform autopsies be adequately trained and funded? Will he urge legislators to approve funds to remedy the atrocious state of forensic investigation in America, and fund rivalrous redundancy, so that private labs would check up on the work of state run forensic teams that often make mistakes? Will he insist on compensating the victims of guys like Steven Hayne -- or at least speak out against state laws that leave some wrongly jailed victims of prosecutorial misconduct without any state compensation at all upon their release? Will he speak up against asset forfeiture laws that give law enforcement agencies across the country a financial incentive to victimize innocent people?

After all, justice should never be a matter of money, right? And yet all over America, there are countless areas where additional funding could prevent innocents from being subject to unjust state action. But they are never funded, and more often than not conservatives are the ones standing in the way.

Earlier coverage of Prop. 34, the SAFE California ballot initiative, begins at the link.

Profile of An Activist

"Woman crusades to save sister’s life, end the death penalty," is by Tracy Simmons for Religion News Service, available via the Washington Post.  It's also available via Huffington Post.

They stood in front of a shopping mall, shackled together, heads down, nameplates dangling around their necks, bearing the names of men and women who have died on America's death row.

Cal Brown.

Teresa Lewis.

Cameron Todd Willingham.

Behind them, stood Victoria Ann Thorpe, dark makeup painted on her cheeks and a sign painted to look like blood stains waving above her head: "Their blood is on our hands."

Somehow, despite Thorpe's gory exterior, she's approachable.

"Would you like information on the death penalty?" she asks shoppers as they exit the mall, unable to avert their eyes from the scene in front of them. She hands them a clipboard and one by one, they fill out postcards showing their support to abolish the death penalty in Washington. The cards will later be sent to state lawmakers. The group has also protested at Gonzaga University and so far has collected more than 200 signatures.

Thorpe, along with the Safe and Just Alternatives organization and The Inland Northwest Death Penalty Abolition Group, is seeking to pass a state law to replace the death penalty in Washington state with life without parole.

Related posts are in the profile category index.

GRACE Law Marks 10th Anniversary with Events

You can find out about all the activities at the Gulf Region Advocacy Center - GRACE Law - website.  They include:

Fantasy Memorabilia Auction.
October 15th through November 12th

Online Silent Auction
November 12th through 17th

Intimate Luncheon with Sister Helen Prejean. 
November 15th 11:30 am – 1:30pm

Telling the Narrative: Life is a Story.
November 15th at 6:00 p.m.

Film Screening Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
November 16th at 6:30 p.m.

Culminating in the big event:

10th Anniversary Awards Dinner Gala & Silent Auction - November 17th at 6:30 p.m.
Hosted by Jason Baldwin, keynote speaker Mike Farrell, live performance by Steve Earle. Special guests include Shelley Fabares, Anthony Graves, Rais Bhuiyan and others.

Last year, Jeffrey Toobin's profiled the work of GRACE and its founder Danalynn Recer in his New Yorker article, "The Mitigator: A new way of looking at the death penalty."  It's noted at the link.

A Tangled Case

Today's Texas edition of the New York Times reports, "A Death Row Struggle Between Advocates and Lawyers."  It's written by Maurice Chammah of the Times's reporting partner, the Texas Tribune, where it is also posted.  Here's the beginning:

Preston Hughes III, a death row inmate, is 46 but seems much older, with white hair, thick glasses and a quiet, slow voice that rises only when the subject of his lawyer comes up.

Mr. Hughes, convicted in 1989 of fatally stabbing two young people, has tried multiple times to dismiss his court-appointed lawyer, Patrick McCann. He said that Mr. McCann, who has been his lawyer for 14 years, had not raised his claims of innocence and is “helping the state cover this up.”

Mr. McCann says he cannot comment on why he will not pursue these claims, which were not introduced in Mr. Hughes’s original trial. But Texas and federal law set a high burden of proof for new claims of “actual innocence” so late in the judicial process, a bar that Mr. McCann said was “almost impossible” to meet.

Mr. Hughes, who says he did not commit the murders, is scheduled to be executed Nov. 15. He says all of his lawyers have failed him. “They just want to do things on their own,” he said recently from death row in Livingston.

While Mr. McCann is suing the state over lethal injection procedures, arguing that prison officials would be “experimenting” on his client, a handful of advocates are publicizing what they believe is new evidence of Mr. Hughes’s innocence.

The advocates, who do not have legal training, are campaigning for Mr. Hughes’s exoneration and supporting his efforts to have Mr. McCann fired.

The issue of advocates’ doubting the work of lawyers is common in death penalty cases, especially as an execution date nears.

“Once the lawyers do the spadework, a lot of people want to come in,” said Jeff Blackburn, a lawyer who runs the Innocence Project of Texas, “and they don’t understand that we’re limited with the art of the possible here.” He called Mr. McCann a “great lawyer.”

David Kaczynski's New Blog at the Albany Times Union

David Kaczynski is the Executive Director of New Yorkers for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.  He's started a new blog at the Albany Times Union, and I'll be adding to the left-column webroll.  It's a must-read from a thoughtful leader of peace, community, and non-violence.

"Unveiling Violence," is his first post.  Here's the beginning:

Michael Hooper was put to death on August 14, and so became the 100th person executed by Oklahoma since it reinstated its death penalty law in 1977. He was also the 1304th person executed in the US since the Supreme Court re-opened the door to the execution chamber in Gregg v. Georgia (1976).

Hooper was sentenced to death for the 1993 murders of his girlfriend Cynthia Lynn Johnson and her two children, five-year-old Tonya Kay, and three-year-old Timothy Glenn.

Somewhere on his journey through our nation’s byzantine capital punishment system, Hooper’s death sentence was overturned and subsequently reinstated.  Near the end, Hooper declined to join a clemency petition filed by his court-appointed attorney, who argued that Hooper’s mental health issues and history of child abuse constituted compelling reasons to spare his client from execution.

In many ways, Hooper’s case sounds like a typical death row tale of woe: a horrific crime perpetrated by a deeply damaged individual. While on death row, Hooper found Jesus and expressed a belief that his sins had been forgiven and that he would go to heaven following his execution.

Religious faith often grows stronger in people faced with death, including many death row inmates. Religion offers a promise that atonement can be meaningful, that redemption is possible, and that death is not the final answer. I recall a Christian chaplain trying to comfort me at the start of my brother’s death penalty trial by pointing out that many people throughout history have been “saved” on their way to the gallows. Knowing my brother’s views on religion, however, I was not comforted – but perhaps that had more to do with my own lack of faith than with my brother’s.

In 1999, Pope John Paul II, during his visit to the diocese of Saint Louis, Mo., appealed to the people of the United States (Catholics in particular) to seek an end to the death penalty. After citing many familiar arguments against the death penalty, including references to the system’s flaws and underlying cruelty, the pontiff stressed an issue that advocates, both pro and con, seldom talk about. He argued that we should not oppose the death penalty primarily because of what it does to those who’ve been condemned, but rather because of what it does to us.

New York no longer has a death penalty and NYADP is now focused on reducing violence and promoting restorative justice.

Oklahomans Call for Repeal

"Oklahoma senator pledges to abolish state's death penalty," is by Megan Rolland in today's Oklahoman.

Sen. Constance Johnson's told a gathering of religious leaders at the state Capitol that she had a decision to make when her brother was slain in 1981 on the Langston University campus.

“Before I could go forward, I had to forgive,” Johnson, D-Forest Park, said.

Although the man accused of her brother's murder was only in jail until the trial, Johnson said she didn't believe in the death penalty 31 years ago and she still doesn't.

Wednesday was a worldwide day of opposition to capital punishment, and an Oklahoma association of religious leaders presented a theological statement opposing the death penalty.

The Rev. William Tabbernee, executive director of the Oklahoma Conference of Churches, said he was shocked when he came to Oklahoma that capital punishment was still condoned.

He said 87 countries and 17 U.S. states have abolished the death penalty.

“Isn't it time Oklahoma abolish the death penalty?” he asked.

And:

Johnson said she will be proposing legislation to abolish the death penalty in Oklahoma next session. This is not the first time she has authored an abolition bill, but she said her proposed legislation has never even been heard on the floor or even granted a hearing in committee.

More on World Day Against the Death Penalty is at the link.  Related posts are in the abolition, religion, and state legislation indexes.

New Criticism of Kansas Capital Punishment Law

"Critics say Kan. death penalty law must go," is the title of John Milburn's AP post.  It's via the Hutchinson News.

A leading death penalty opponent says it's time for Kansas to stop sentencing criminals to be executed after the latest appealed conviction was overturned, the sixth such reversal in six cases before the state's high court.

Donna Schneweis, chairwoman of the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, says she realizes the odds of repealing the 1994 law are slim, but a growing segment of society is changing its view on capital punishment in the United States.

"It was a concept that people wanted to try," she said. "We think the death penalty fails as a policy. As legislators learn more about it, they will see that it doesn't make sense."

Policymakers say the Kansas law works and should remain on the books despite the overturning of convictions by the state Supreme Court.

And:

Republican Gov. Sam Brownback has spoken out in the past about the death penalty, including his presidential run in 2007 when he said the nation should strive to create a culture of life. He said at the time that it should be held out for special cases, such as Osama Bin Laden or other terrorist figures.

Sherriene Jones Sontag, the governor's spokeswoman, said Friday that Brownback supports the death penalty "when there are no other options to protect society."

House Minority Leader Paul Davis, a Lawrence Democrat and attorney, said ongoing discussions about the death penalty law are healthy, but not likely to produce changes. Davis supports the limited law, but agrees the public views are changing.

"I think it's something we're going to be talking about for quite a while. Once an execution occurs people may want to bring the discussions more into the light," Davis said.

The last execution in Kansas was in June 1965 by hanging.

Earlier coverage from Kansas begins at the link.

Retooling the Death Penalty Debate

That's the title of Graham Kates' post at the Crime Report, on the voices of crime victims and family survivors speaking out against capital punishment.  It focuses on California and Connecticut.  It's also available via Salon.  Here's the beginning:

Victoria Coward remembers hearing the gunshots ring out from Edgewood Park, not far from her New Haven home in June 2007. Later that night her worst fears were realized when detectives knocked on her front door.

Her 18-year-old son, Tyler, was dead from gunshot wounds to the head and chest.

Two years later, when police arrested and charged Jose Fuentes-Pillich, a 23-year-old who she thought was Tyler's friend, Coward had already joined a campaign against the death penalty.

When she contacted Fuentes-Pillich after his conviction in 2010, she explained why she didn’t wish him dead.

“I told him it would be wrong for me to say, ‘You should die.’ That’s not in me. That’s in God’s hands … the first thing I need to do is forgive you for taking my son’s life,” Coward recalled in an interview with The Crime Report.

Connecticut became the 17^th state to abolish the death penalty in April. As opponents step up their national campaign, they are discovering some surprising allies among people like Coward— challenging the long-held stereotype that the families of murder victims automatically support capital punishment.

Coward and other relatives of murder victims were important players in Connecticut’s abolition movement, which was spearheaded by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and partner non-profit the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty (CNADP).

Murder Victims Families for Human Rights and Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation are two national organizations active in the debate.  Related posts are in the victims' issues category index.

Earlier coverage from California and Connecticut and Connecticut's repeal of the death penalty begins at the link.

From David Kaczynski

"Unabomber's brother on violence and treating mental health," is David Kaczynski's OpEd from the Houston Chronicle.  He's the Executive Director of New Yorkers for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.  New York no longer has capital punishment; the organization now works to reduce root causes of violence

In the late 1980′s, my brother Ted Kaczynski, then living in an isolated cabin in Montana, sought mental health treatment. He didn't know that he had schizophrenia, but he knew that he couldn't sleep and that he felt incredibly anxious around people. He requested help in a letter to the county mental health service. He was informed by return letter that he had to appear in person at the clinic 60 miles away and that he had to find a way to pay for treatment. Since Ted had no money, and since his paranoia and deep shame made it overwhelmingly difficult for him to apply for welfare benefits, he never received any treatment.

Hindsight is always 20/20. It's easy to say, in the aftermath of a horrific tragedy, that someone should have done something to help these troubled men before they turned violent. But as I have expressed in earlier posts, there are no easy answers that jump out from these tragedies. Most people with mental illness are not at all dangerous. Most people who indulge violent fantasies or who make veiled threats at some point in their lives never act on them. So how do we distinguish between the merely troubled person and someone who is likely to carry out violence?

Unfortunately, in place of struggling with these serious and difficult questions, the default position often involves focusing on "strong" punishment. For example, conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg believes that James Holmes should get the death penalty, arguing that he is "probably not" mentally ill (hunh?). Perhaps Goldberg believes that the next potential mass murderer will be deterred from taking lives if we take Holmes' life – but I suspect Goldberg is much too smart to believe that. Rather, I suspect that Goldberg – who doesn't much like or trust big government – is willing to make an exception in the case of the death penalty in order to spare us from having to wrestle with more complicated issues, such as the difficulty of reconciling our commitment to constitutional rights/civil liberties with our desire to intervene before the next disaster happens.

But by ignoring the reality of mental illness – by assuming as a matter of ideology that just about everyone is a free, autonomous actor entirely responsible for their own actions – we effectively absolve ourselves from any responsibility to the next group of victims. And that is being irresponsible.

Related posts are in the mental illness index.  Additional response to syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg's column is also available.

More NC Cases to Get Review Under RJA

Today's News & Observer of Raleigh carries the AP report, "NC judge to hear 4 Racial Justice Act appeals."  It's written by Allen Reed.

Four North Carolina death row inmates are scheduled to have their sentences reviewed under the revised Racial Justice Act in a hearing that may reveal the first fallout of the General Assembly's recent rollbacks to the law.

Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks has scheduled a preliminary hearing Friday morning in Fayetteville. The four convicted murderers are trying to use the law that allows death row prisoners to use statistics to show that racial bias influenced their sentences.

Tye Hunter, executive director of the Durham-based Center for Death Penalty Litigation, said the convicts want to have their sentences reduced to life in prison under the original 2009 Racial Justice Act, not the amended version passed by the General Assembly last month. Assistant Cumberland District Attorney Rob Thompson seeks to have Weeks recused, and declined to comment on the hearing.

Judge Weeks will examine the cases of Tilmon Golphin, a 34-year-old black man; Quintel Augustine, a 34-year-old black man; Christina Walters, a 33-year-old American Indian woman; and Jeffrey Meyer, a 45-year-old European man. All were convicted of first degree murder in Cumberland County.

"Racial Justice Act: Four Fayetteville convicted murderers get a hearing on claims of racial bias," is by Paul Woolverton in the Fayetteville Observer.

A Racial Justice Act hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. today for four of the Fayetteville area's most notorious murderers, just four days after the legislature voted to roll back much of the controversial law.

The three men and one woman claim that racism was a factor in the decisions to give them the death penalty. Today's hearing, before Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks, is to take up preliminary matters before an evidentiary hearing scheduled for July 23 in Fayetteville.

And:

The Racial Justice Act of 2009 allowed convicts on death row to use statistical data to prove that racism in the criminal justice system was a significant factor in the imposition of the death penalty. If a defendant's data convinces the judge, the judge must convert his sentence to life in prison without parole.

The law was intended to rectify a history of institutional racism in the state criminal justice system.

Nearly every one of North Carolina's more than 150 death-row defendants filed Racial Justice Act claims. White defendants advance their claims on allegations that blacks were blocked from serving on juries by racist prosecutors and on claims that people who kill white people are more likely to be sentenced to death than people who kill nonwhites.

"North Carolina Regresses on Race and Gender Bias," is Andrew Rosenthal's post at the New York Times Taking Note blog.

In 2009, North Carolina’s lawmakers surprised everyone by passing the Racial Justice Act, the first law in the nation to allow death row inmates to get their sentences reduced to life without parole if they could show their case was tainted by racial bias. It seemed like a watershed moment for a state that has played a key part in this nation’s bitter history of racism.

That lasted until late last year, when the legislature decided to repeal that law and replace it with a mockery of justice. Then Gov. Bev Purdue displayed real courage by vetoing the new measure and making the Racial Justice Act stick.

It took a few months, but the North Carolina legislature managed on Monday to finish the job. It passed a bill that disposes of the Racial Justice Act and replaces it with a law that so severely limits the proof an inmate can use to show race bias that it renders it useless. It doesn’t allow an inmate to use statistical data, for instance, to demonstrate racial bias in death sentences and requires him to show discrimination in the place he was sentenced, not in the entire state.

Only last April, a judge rescinded a death sentence for the first time under the Racial Justice Act, saying that evidence of racial bias in jury selection across North Carolina showed a clear need to overhaul the system of choosing jurors in death penalty cases.

Linc Caplan, who covers legal issues for the Times editorial board, said that North Carolina’s prosecutors were behind the gutting of the Racial Justice Act.

“Experts in the state can’t think of one prosecutor who has explained the repeated patterns of an all-white or 11 white, 1 black, juries in death penalty cases,” he said. “Those types of juries convicted and sentenced to death scores of people in 30 of North Carolina’s 100 counties, according to an NAACP brief, where prosecutors systematically excluded qualified black jurors through peremptory challenges. The notion that justice was done in these cases was a fraud.”

The Carrboro Citizen reports, "Carrboro, Chapel Hill call for death-penalty repeal," by Rose Laudicina.

According to Chapel Hill Town Council Member Penny Rich, it’s not unusual for the municipalities in Orange County to be more forward-thinking than other towns in North Carolina.

And when it comes to the topic of the death penalty, Orange County is once again ahead of the curve.

Both Chapel Hill and Carrboro recently passed resolutions calling for North Carolina, the federal government and the U.S. military to repeal the death penalty.

In both instances the resolution passed unanimously.

The Carrboro Board of Aldermen and the Chapel Hill Town Council were the first two local governments in North Carolina to pass such a resolution.

Earlier coverage of North Carolina's Racial Justice Act begins at the link.

From North Carolina

"Fight Grows to Repeal Death Penalty in North Carolina," is the North Carolina News Service post by Stephanie Carroll Carson & Dallas Heltzell.

A grassroots movement to repeal North Carolina's death penalty is seen as gaining momentum.

More than 700 businesses and congregations are on record supporting a resolution asking the state to eliminate the death penalty, using the money saved to help murder victims' families and fund programs to prevent violent crimes.

A study done by a Duke University professor found that the state spends an average of $11 million a year in trial costs related to death-penalty cases.

Larry Erwin, owner of Elk Pharmacy in Elkin, added his support to the resolution last week.

"It's so costly to keep people on Death Row and go through all the trial scenarios that are involved. I think it would be a lot easier on the court system and free up a lot of court time."

This month, Carrboro and Chapel Hill became the first two towns in the state to pass resolutions calling for repeal of the death penalty.

Stephen Dear, executive director of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, says it's time to end this centuries-old punishment.

"More and more people are beginning to see it as a relic of a bygone era, an expensive, error-prone system infected with racial and class bias."

Earlier coverage from North Carolina begins at the link.

Arizona Bows to 9th Circuit on Execution Procedure

The AP reports, "Arizona to execute inmate in new process that allows witnesses to see more of lethal injection."  It's by Amanda Lee Myers, via the Star Tribune.

Witnesses expect to be able to see prison officials inject a lethal drug into a condemned inmate for the first time in Arizona history on Wednesday, when the state is scheduled to execute its fourth prisoner of the year.

Arizona opened up the process after a federal judge recently sided with The Associated Press and other news organizations in Idaho to allow witnesses full viewing access to lethal injections.

Until now, witnesses from the news media, the state and victims' family members walked into the death chamber at the state prison in Florence after the inmates had been injected and covered with a sheet up to their chest or neck. Once the witnesses were in place, the drugs then coursed through the inmates' veins.

Now witnesses will see the actual injection, something that defense attorneys sought in an effort to ensure inmates don't experience any unnecessary pain.

Samuel Villegas Lopez is set to be Arizona's fourth inmate to die by a single-drug lethal injection. Two more condemned prisoners whose appeals are nearing their end could be executed by the end of the year, which would put the state on pace to match its busiest year for executions and among the busiest death-penalty states in the nation.

Lopez was sentenced to die for the brutal rape and murder of a 59-year-old Phoenix woman in 1986. Of the 126 inmates on Arizona's death row, only five have been there longer than him.

The U.S. Supreme Court turned down his last appeal on Tuesday, paving the way of the execution. He also lost a number of last-minute efforts to avoid the death penalty, including a request with the state Supreme Court to delay his execution until Arizona has a new governor. He claimed that Gov. Jan Brewer and the state's clemency board were prejudiced against him.

KPHO-TV reports, "AZ execution to go on today amid protests," by Heather Brummitt.

Execution witnesses outside of prison officials will be allowed to see more of the lethal injection process for the first time in Arizona history as the state gears up to put to death its fourth condemned inmate this year.

Until Wednesday's scheduled execution, news media and victims' family members entered the death chamber at the state prison in Florence after the inmate had been injected and covered with a sheet up to his chest or neck.

The state opened the process after a federal judge sided with The Associated Press and other news organizations in Idaho to allow full viewing access for witnesses.

And:

The Coalition of Arizonans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (CAADP) was planning a protest of the execution. According to the organization, they want to promote alternatives to the death penalty in Arizona.

Earlier coverage of Arizona lethal injection issues begins at the link.

To date, there have been 22 executions in American states in 2012; a total of 1,299 post-Furman excutions since 1977.  Today's scheduled execution would be Arizona's fourth in 2012.

The Inferno

Kay Campbell posts, "Prison chaplain questions death penalty value," at the Huntsville Times.

In 1981, Philip Workman walked into a Wendy’s restaurant in Memphis, brandished a gun, and had the employees hand him the money out of the cash drawer.

Cornered moments later by police officers in a corner of the parking lot, Workman fired the gun. A police officer fell.

In 2007, Workman was executed for that homicide.

Trouble is, says the Rev. Joseph Ingle, who will speak in Huntsville Tuesday, Workman’s gun is not the one that killed that police officer.

The officer, according to forensic evidence analyzed after Workman’s ‘82 trial, was killed by the kind of bullet that is in police pistols, not Workman’s. The officer, in short, appears to have been killed by another officer’s shot.

Ingle’s latest book, “The Inferno: A Southern Morality Tale,” chronicles what happened between that moment in the parking lot and Workman’s execution by lethal injection 26 years later.

“It was pretty much a nightmare,” Ingle said this week from his home office in Nashville. “If you ever think the issue of capital punishment and our criminal justice system aren’t politically fraught, you need to take another look. It is beyond appalling.”

And:

Rather than take a United Church of Christ congregation, Ingle chose to become a self-supporting prison chaplain. He volunteers in Riverbend Maximum Security Prison in Nashville. From 1974 until 1983, he was the executive director of the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons, a multi-state organization that sought to abolish the death penalty.

Abolishing the penalty makes sense not only to avoid executing people for crimes they didn’t commit, but also in simple dollars and cents.

“Nationally, there is a move away from capital punishment,” Ingle said, “but you don’t see that in the South. Since 1977, more than 93 percent of the executions in the U.S. have been in the South.”

And patterns for those executions follow disturbingly familiar paths of racial discrimination.

“If you kill a white person, you are 11 times more likely to die for that crime than if you kill a black person,” Ingle said. “And it’s even worse if you’re a black person and you kill a white person. Then you are 22 times more likely to die.”

The article notes that Ingle will be speaking the evening of Tuesday, June 19th at a meeting of the Interfaith Mission Service at the 88 Buffet Restaurant on University Drive in Huntsville.

The Inferno is available at the link from Amazon.com.  He's also the author of Last Rites.

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."