The StandDown Texas Project

Lame Duck Legislative Session in Ohio

"Legislative proposal would shield source of Ohio lethal injection drugs, protect experts," is by AP Legal Affairs Writer Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

The names of companies whose drugs are used for lethal injection in Ohio would be shielded under legislation introduced Monday in a move some lawmakers hope will restart capital punishment in the state.

The legislation would also bar companies from entering into contracts prohibiting states from acquiring drugs for executions, and it would protect the identities of anyone involved in executions in Ohio.

The Republican-backed legislation, sponsored by state Reps. Jim Buchy and Matt Huffman and pushed by prosecutors, would also prevent information about a lethal injection drugmaker or distributor from being disclosed in court.

"Legislation introduced adding secrecy to executions," is by Alan Johnson of the Columbus Dispatch.

Legislation that Attorney General Mike DeWine and county prosecutors say is needed to move forward with executions in Ohio, but which would add a new level of secrecy to the process, was introduced today in the General Assembly.

State Reps. Jim Buchy, R-Greenville, and Matt Huffman, R-Lima, said House Bill 663 "will update current law pertaining to capital punishment by lethal injection through issuing confidentiality for persons and entities involved in the procurement of lethal injection drugs. It also voids agreements that prevent the supplying of any drug or combination of drugs to be used in executing a punishment by lethal injection.

And:

The Republicans lawmakers said in a statement that the proposal "follows findings issued by the Joint Task Force to Review the Administration of Ohio’s Death Penalty." However, the proposal, as written, includes none of dozens of recommendations made by the committee.

"Ohio lawmakers looking to keep execution drug sources secret," is by Marc Kovac of Dix News Capital Bureau, via the Wooster Daily Record.

Executions have been on hold for most of the year, after a federal judge stayed scheduled lethal injections while state prison officials consider changes to the execution process.

In August, U.S. District Court Judge Gregory L. Frost ruled "the state of Ohio and any person acting on its behalf is hereby stayed from implementing an order of execution of any Ohio inmate issued by any court of the state of Ohio until Jan. 15, 2015 or until further order from the court."

Frost issued a comparable stay earlier in the year, following the prolonged death of Dennis McGuire in January and a subsequent decision by the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to increase the dosage of two drugs used in lethal injections.

McGuire, who received a capital sentence for the rape and murder of a pregnant Preble County woman, was the first inmate executed using a new two-drug combination. The process took about 25 minutes, and witnesses described him gasping for breath.

Earlier coverage from Ohio begins at the link.  You can also jump to news of Ohio lethal injection issues.

Related posts are in the state secrecy and state legislation category indexes.

Multi-State Case Roundup

There is case news from Pennsylvania, Mississippi, and Ohio.

Courthouse News Service posts, "Death Penalty for PA Prisoner Thrown Out," by Andrew Thompson.

Blocking the execution of a Pennsylvania prisoner, a federal judge cited lapses by defense counsel with respect to evidence of childhood abuse and medical history.

Darrick Hall was one of three men convicted for the Dec. 18, 1993, armed robbery of a Chester County laundromat, and Hall was convicted for murdering the laundromat attendant. Prosecutors showed that while Hall and his two accomplices were changing clothes after the shooting, they joked about the guns they had used.

Though the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the death penalty for Hall, U.S. District Judge James Gardner found Wednesday that habeas relief is required because of deficiencies by Hall's trial attorney.

Even a basic investigation into Hall's life would have unearthed evidence of extreme childhood abuse and a history of significant head traumas and seizures, according to the 180-page ruling.

"Attorneys for death row inmate argue before Mississippi Supreme Court that key witness lied," is the AP report, via the Mississippi Link.

Lawyers for a Mississippi death row inmate told state Supreme Court justices Monday that he deserves a new trial because evidence that defense lawyers did not obtain the first time shows that a key state witness lied

Willie Jerome Manning is appealing an Oktibbeha County judge’s denial of his post-conviction challenges. Manning came within hours of being put to death last year on separate charges before the state high court halted it.

Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over the 1993 slayings of 90-year-old Emmoline Jimmerson and her daughter, 60-year-old Alberta Jordan. Police and prosecutors say the women were beaten and had their throats slashed. They were killed during a robbery attempt at their Starkville apartment.

Manning was convicted and sentenced to death in the case in 1996, but lawyers argued Monday that the conviction should be overturned because of questions about a witness who put Manning at the scene. Current lawyers also argued that either the state concealed evidence from Manning’s original lawyers or the defense was too ineffective to find it.

Earlier coverage of Willie Manning's case begins at the link.

"Fed appeals court rejects death penalty exemption," is the Toledo Blade report by Jim Provance.

A federal appeals court Monday rejected the argument from convicted murderer James Frazier that he is mentally retarded and exempt from Ohio’s death penalty.

Frazier, 73, who is on death row at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution, was convicted of robbing and killing Mary Stevenson, a disabled woman at Northgate Apartments where Frazier was attending a crack cocaine party late on March 1, 2004, or early the next morning. Frazier apparently robbed Ms. Stevenson for money when the party was short of drugs.

IQ tests conducted before Frazier’s trial in Lucas County Common Pleas Court found his score to be slightly above 70, the threshold above which the law presumes someone is not mentally retarded. The court noted that the expert hired by the defense found he was not retarded, prompting his attorneys to drop that line of strategy at trial.

Related posts are in the post-conviction review category index.

OTSE Continues Death Penalty Forums in Ohio

Today's Toledo Blade posts, "Lourdes to host panel on Ohio death penalty."

A panel of four people whose lives have been directly affected by Ohio’s death penalty will discuss recommendations for reforming capital punishment from 7 to 9 p.m. today at Lourdes University.

The forum, which will take place at the Franciscan Center, features Derrick Jamison, who spent nearly 20 years on death row before he was exonerated in 2005; Charles Keith, whose brother was on death row before having his sentence commuted and who lost a loved one to a homicide; Terry Collins, former director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, and Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John Russo, who serves on the Ohio Supreme Court’s Joint Task Force to Review the Administration of the Death Penalty.

There's more information at the Ohioans to Stop Executions website.

Earlier coverage from Ohio begins at the link; you can jump to earlier news of the OTSE forums. 

Also available, news of the Joint Task Force to Review the Administration of Ohio's Death Penalty, with links to the Final Report & Recommendations and the Dissenting Report of the Joint Task Force.

LI Editorials - Alabama & Ohio

"How Alabama executes," is the Anniston Star editorial.

If the state of Alabama is going to execute condemned prisoners, it must be upfront and transparent about the process. Today, that’s not happening.

Until that changes, Alabama and its embattled Department of Corrections carries the stench of a government that wishes the public didn’t have a right to know how it plans to kill those on death row.

On Tuesday, Star reporter Tim Lockette outlined the situation of inmate Thomas Arthur, 73, who has been on death row since 1983 for the murder of Troy Wicker of Muscle Shoals. Arthur’s execution has been delayed as Alabama, along with other states that execute prisoners by lethal injection, dealt with a shortage of the necessary drugs.

Stocked with its new three-drug execution cocktail — an anaesthetic, a drug that relaxes the muscles, another drug that stops the heart — Alabama is on the verge of resuming executions. Problem is, the state hasn’t revealed the protocol it will follow when executions begin again at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.

Today's Cleveland Plain Dealer publishes the editorial, "Death penalty protocol in Ohio needs light, not darkness."

Draft legislation that would allow providers of lethal injection drugs to remain anonymous and that would indemnify doctors assisting with state executions from censure by their state licensing boards is emanating from Attorney General Mike DeWine's office.

What's next, allowing the execution team to wear masks?

This latest step in Ohio's death penalty dance -- stemming from a series of missteps that have put the state's execution protocol under examination by a federal judge – will push Ohio even further into the dark ages.

Earlier coverage from Alabama and Ohio, at the links.

Roundup of OTSE Death Penalty Forums in Ohio

The Dayton Daily News reports, "Death penalty changes debated in Springfield," by Brett Turner.

State death penalty reform recommendations were discussed during a forum Thursday in Springfield.

The event, held at St. Teresa Catholic Church and sponsored by Ohioans to Stop Executions, focused on a series of 56 recommendations issued in May by the Ohio Supreme Court’s Joint Task Force to Review the Administration of Ohio’s Death Penalty.

While the recommendations wouldn’t eliminate the death penalty in Ohio, the panelists talked about ways the reforms could keep innocent people off death row. Springfield was one of several Ohio stops on the forum tour.

"Ex-Death Row Inmate Hopes His Story Will Reform Ohio Executions," is by Jim Heath for WNBS-TV.

 After 22 years in prison, Joe D'Ambrosio was thinking of the gurney he would be strapped to in just 72 hours.  He was set to be executed by the state of Ohio knowing he was innocent of murder charges. 

"It's literally over, no one wants to listen to the dead man walking," said D'Ambrosio.  "Once you're convicted, you're through.  If you don't have power, money or influence, and you get hooked into the system, you're done."

And:

After 22 years in prison, Joe D'Ambrosio was thinking of the gurney he would be strapped to in just 72 hours.  He was set to be executed by the state of Ohio knowing he was innocent of murder charges. 

"It's literally over, no one wants to listen to the dead man walking," said D'Ambrosio.  "Once you're convicted, you're through.  If you don't have power, money or influence, and you get hooked into the system, you're done."

WCMN-TV posts, "Death Penalty Comes Into Question In Ohio," by Mike Bowersock.

Earlier this year, the Ohio Supreme Court released a review on Ohio's death penalty.

None of the recommendations dealt with abolishing it but there were more than 50 recommendations to make it fair.

Tuesday night, some of the people involved with it spoke at a Columbus forum sponsored by Ohioans To Stop Executions.

"I see a change in public opinion mostly because of what we've been seeing nationally with what we see with DNA evidence," said Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Stephen McIntosh, who worked on the review.

 Earlier coverage from Ohio begins at the link. You can also jump to earlier news of the OTSE forums.  Also available, news of the Joint Task Force to Review the Administration of Ohio's Death Penalty, with links to the Final Report & Recommendations and the Dissenting Report of the Joint Task Force.

Ohio Prosecutors Back DeWine LI Secrecy Plan

"Ohio prosecutors demand immunity for execution drug makers," is the AP report filed by Andrew Welsh-Huggins, via the Guardian.  It's also available from HuffPost.

Ohio prosecutors want the identities of pharmacists who create specialty doses of execution drugs shielded, and say doctors who consult with Ohio about its execution process should be given immunity from regulatory discipline.

The proposals, which appear in draft legislation, address concerns about the state’s current two-drug injection method, said John Murphy, executive director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association.

Executions are on hold until February because of challenges to the method, which has resulted in prolonged executions in Ohio and Arizona. Without a viable way of executing prisoners, “we don’t have a death penalty in the state,” Murphy said Thursday.

If enacted, the laws would bring Ohio into line with states like Missouri and Texas, which each use a single, compounded dose of pentobarbital to put inmates to death. The states won’t say where the drug comes from.

Alan Johnson writes, "Proposal would make executions more secretive," for the Columbus Dispatch.

Changes in Ohio’s lethal-injection law advocated by Attorney General Mike DeWine and Ohio prosecutors would create a new layer of secrecy around Ohio executions by shielding drug suppliers, physicians who advise the state, execution team members and others from public disclosure.

DeWine and the prosecutors say the state will in effect have a moratorium on capital punishment until those changes are made because of the difficulty in obtaining drugs used to execute convicted killers.

The legal changes, in draft form, were endorsed last week by the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association.

If enacted, they would allow drug-compounding companies to supply drugs for lethal injections while remaining anonymous to the public, media and defense attorneys,  The Dispatch learned. The proposal would officially label as “confidential state secrets” the names of those who manufacture, compound, import, transport, test and distribute drugs and equipment used in lethal injections.

Also contemplated is a law providing total legal immunity for a physician to advise the state on execution protocol at court hearings and possibly even become a part of the execution team. Another provision would extend anonymity to state prison employees on the execution team.

Earlier coverage of the Ohio Attorney General's secrecy proposal begins at the link.

With this post, I'm adding state secrecy to the category index.