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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jun 25, 2006 21:34:15 GMT -5
Sometimes, innocence is a distraction; Capital punishment foes should focus instead on lawlessness of state's machinery of death
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court decided, in a 5-to-3 opinion, that a Tennessee prison inmate named Paul G. House was entitled to prove he did not commit the crime for which he was sent to death row. On the same day, I received a letter from Centurion Ministries, which argued for more than a decade that a Virginia man named Roger K. Coleman had not committed the crime for which he was executed in 1992. The letter admitted that Centurion had been wrong.
These cases have something in common: They pivot on the question of innocence. For too many years now, though, death penalty opponents have seized on the nightmare of executing an innocent man as a tactic to erode support for capital punishment in America.
Innocence is a distraction. Most people on death row are like Roger Coleman, not Paul House, which is to say that most people on death row did what the state said they did. But that does not mean they should be executed.
Focusing on innocence forces abolitionists into silence when a cause celebre turns out to be guilty. When the DNA testing ordered by Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia proved that Coleman was a murderer, and a good liar besides, abolitionists wrung their hands about how to respond. They seemed sorry that he had been guilty after all.
I, too, am a death penalty opponent, but I was happy to learn that Coleman was a murderer. I was happy that the prosecutors would not have to live with the guilt of knowing that they sent an innocent man to death row.
The day before the DNA results were reported in the Coleman case last January, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Paul House case. In House's case, the DNA testing has already been done, and it tends to suggest that he is indeed innocent. During oral arguments, however, Justice Antonin Scalia (who was one of the three dissenters when the court decided the case this weekmonth) argued that disputes over factual findings in a case can't be endlessly rehashed.
He is certainly right about that. As Justice Scalia has said elsewhere, of course we are going to execute innocent people if we have the death penalty. The criminal justice system is made up of human beings, and fallible beings make mistakes.
But perhaps that is a price society is willing to pay.
If the death penalty is worth having, it might still be worth having, despite the occasional loss of innocent life. Paul House might be innocent, but how long will we keep death row inmates alive, waiting to find out?
In Coleman's case, the Virginia Supreme Court did not address the arguments that he had raised in his appeal, because his lawyer had filed the papers one day late. When the case got to the United States Supreme Court, the court, in an opinion by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, began its analysis by saying, "This is a case about federalism."
The case did have something to do with the relationship between the Supreme Court and Virginia's highest court. But is that what the case was really about?
Coleman was saying that his trial lawyer had been incompetent, and that the Virginia courts were refusing to address the question of whether his trial lawyer had been incompetent because his appellate lawyer had filed the appeal a day late.
Federalism might be a plot line in this story, but it hardly seems to be the major issue. When the Supreme Court brushed aside Coleman's appeal 15 years ago, the justices said that a death row inmate cannot complain when his lawyer misses a filing deadline, because the lawyer is the agent of the client, and clients are responsible for the failings of their agents.
As a result of this syllogism, my client Johnny Joe Martinez was executed in 2002, because his court-appointed appellate lawyer neglected to file a proper appeal - a mistake he freely admitted to, attributing it to inexperience.
When the Martinez case reached the federal courts, those courts, invoking the Coleman decision, said too bad for Martinez; the mistake of his lawyer was attributable to him. I could go on with other examples.
Of the 50 or so death row inmates I have represented, I have serious doubts about the guilt of 3 or 4 - that is, 6 to 8 %, about what scholars estimate to be the percentage of innocent people on death row.
In 98 % of the cases, however, in 49 out of 50, there were appalling violations of legal principles: Prosecutors struck jurors based on their race; the police hid or manufactured evidence; prosecutors reached secret deals with jailhouse snitches; lab analysts misrepresented forensic results.
Most of the cases do not involve bogus claims of innocence, like the one that swirled for 15 years around Roger Coleman, but the government corruption that the federal courts overlook so that the states can go about their business of executing.
The House case will make it hard for abolitionists to shift their focus from the question of innocence, but that is what they ought to do.
They ought to focus on the far more pervasive problem: that the machinery of death in America is lawless, and in carrying out death sentences, we violate our legal principles nearly all of the time.
David Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston, is author of "Executed on a Technnicality: Lethal Injustice of America's Death Row." (source: Houston Chronicle, Viewpoints - Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston, is author of "Executed on a Technnicality: Lethal Injustice of America's Death Row." This article originally appeared in The New York Times)
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jun 25, 2006 21:37:34 GMT -5
2 recent decisions suggest the U.S. Supreme Court may be stirring itself for a major review of the death penalty. The high court voted 5-3 to ease rules giving inmates a last chance at proving their innocence if new evidence, especially objective scientific evidence such as DNA, turns up. It also voted 8-0 to scrutinize the prevalent system of executing criminals by lethal injection to see if that supposedly "humane" method is actually cruel and unusual punishment.
37 states and the U.S. government now execute by lethal injection. But a report in a British medical journal, The Lancet, last year suggested the current 3-drug thingytail might only mask the outward symptoms of excruciating pain. The 1st chemical, sodium pentothal, is an anesthetic. The 2nd chemical, pancuronium bromide, causes muscle paralysis but does not block pain or interfere with consciousness. The 3rd chemical, potassium chloride, stops the heart.
Lawyers for a Florida inmate, Clarence E. Hill, argued that dying inmates may actually feel intense pain without being able to express themselves. Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion stressed that only the manner in which Hill would be executed was being reviewed, not the constitutionality of capital punishment itself. If Hill eventually wins, the justice noted, Florida could still execute him by lethal injection by using a more acceptable protocol.
Legalities aside, the Hill case is almost a parody of today's convoluted capital punishment cases. He was strapped to a gurney, with intravenous lines already inserted, when Kennedy stayed his execution nearly 5 months ago.
A companion 5-3 ruling last Monday, also written by Kennedy, ordered a new habeas corpus hearing for Paul G. House, a Tennessee man sentenced to death in the 1985 murder of a young mother. Prosecutors arguing for a death penalty suggested to jurors that House had sexually assaulted Carolyn Muncey and then killed her. Later, DNA testing indicated semen on Muncey's nightgown did not come from House.
Kennedy, again writing for the majority, said the belated DNA evidence was a "new disclosure of central importance" in the way jurors might look at the case. While Kennedy himself said he was simply following a 1995 case, legal analysts said his "holistic" approach signals lower-court judges to take a generous view of the way new evidence, scientific and otherwise, might undermine convictions.
In our view, the fact that there would even be a legal controversy over such a basic question of fairness is further evidence that the death penalty in America is still far from being fair and equitable.
(source: Editorial, Denver Post)
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jun 28, 2006 19:04:00 GMT -5
The death penalty debate shouldn't be about legal technicalities. It offers false promises of peace for victims' families and appropriate justice for convicted killers.
It's unfortunate that lawyers dominate this discussion. The death penalty was the focus of two recent court cases, but neither one addressed the issue of abolition, which would be the best solution.
Capital punishment is on hiatus in Missouri. That's thanks to a federal judge's ruling on Monday that the way executions are currently carried out in our state brings the possibility of "unconstitutional pain and suffering." That's a tortured phrase if there ever was one.
I believe most death penalty supporters don't care. If they could, they would ratchet up the "pain and suffering" of a convicted murderer.
Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., a straightforward Supreme Court case about a Kansas death penalty law also set off ideological fireworks. The Kansas case involves sentencing guidelines and mitigating and aggravating factors that juries have to consider. The fireworks revolved around whether innocent people have been executed.
Justice Antonin Scalia, in his opinion on the Supreme Court case, wrote: "Like all other human institutions, courts and juries are not perfect. One cannot have a system of criminal punishment without accepting the possibility that someone will be punished mistakenly. That is a truism, not a revelation," Scalia writes this in support of the death penalty. He is reinforcing his opinion that American courts are so careful about executions that it's easier to find murderers who are wrongfully exonerated than wrongfully executed.
But then, after spending the bulk of his opinion debunking what he views are bad claims of innocence, Scalia says it doesn't matter anyway.
Scalia writes: "The American people have determined that the good to be derived from capital punishment - in deterrence, and perhaps most of all in the meting out of condign justice for horrible crimes - outweighs the risk of error."
What a chilling blast of hot air.
I can't be as indifferent to someone else's life as Scalia. And I disagree that the death penalty is just. In his dissent, Scalia points out that since 1976, 500,000 murders have been committed but only 7,000 convicted killers were sentenced to death. The people who are executed are overwhelmingly those too poor to hire a good defense attorney.
According to a Gallup poll, 2/3 of Americans support the death penalty although when asked about the sentence of life without parole, Americans are evenly split.
Ultimately, questions of innocence, mitigating factors or cruel and unusual punishment distract us from the bottom line here. The death penalty is an unnecessary relic. We can sentence people to life without parole and keep our society safe.
Executions send the false message that exacting vengeance will settle wrongs and solve problems. In reality, it just exacerbates things. That's the message of Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation. (The group's Web site is http://www.mvfr.org.)
If anyone has reason to support the death penalty, this group does. Even if you support the death penalty, the group offers one of the most important perspectives in this debate to consider.
Source: Opinion, Brian Lewis, News-Leader
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 1, 2006 4:55:20 GMT -5
By Linda P. Campbell, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Try Rolando Cruz.
Or Randall Dale Adams.
They weren't actually put to death while not guilty of the killings for which they were convicted.
But they came close. And the states of Illinois and Texas would have carried out those sentences if not for monumental intervening efforts.
In Monday's Supreme Court ruling in Kansas vs. Marsh upholding a provision of that state's capital sentencing method, Justice Antonin Scalia spends 14 pages of a concurring opinion kicking Justice David Souter in the shins for fretting that juries sometimes condemn the wrong men.
"The dissent does not discuss a single case -- not one -- in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit," Scalia fumes.
True. Yet the point of the dissent written by Souter (and joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer) is not that states are wantonly executing innocents but that a growing body of evidence indicates that the system does not prevent the kind of "freakish capital sentencing" that the Supreme Court has said violates the Eighth Amendment.
As Souter notes, Illinois' governor alone determined that 17 Death Row inmates proved to be innocent. In 2004, Illinois freed Gordon "Randy" Steidl, who had spent 12 years on Death Row for two killings that a state police investigation found he hadn't committed and became "the 18th person in Illinois to be exonerated after being sentenced to death," the Chicago Tribune reported.
Rolando Cruz and a co-defendant were among those who wrongly spent time on Illinois' Death Row, convicted in 1985 of the notorious rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico. Though appeals courts reversed the convictions twice, Cruz was tried a third time, in 1995. After he was acquitted, charges were dropped against his co-defendant.
Last fall, another man was indicted in Nicarico's 1983 killing, according to Tribune archives.
Randall Dale Adams spent 12 years on Texas' Death Row for killing a Dallas police officer before the documentary The Thin Blue Line focused enough doubt on the conviction that he won release.
"Within the category of capital crimes, the death penalty must be reserved for 'the worst of the worst,'" Souter writes.
"One object of the structural sentencing proceeding ... is to eliminate the risk that a death sentence will be imposed in spite of facts calling for a lesser penalty."
The principle that the Constitution requires "a reasoned moral response," meaning certainty that a particular defendant deserves the ultimate penalty for a particularly heinous killing, isn't some arbitrary invention of bleeding-heart Souters. It stems from high court rulings that halted capital punishment nationwide in 1972 and allowed its reinstatement in 1976.
Scalia, like a sore winner, sounds determined to pick a fight with colleagues as well as capital punishment foes.
"A broader conclusion that people should derive ... is that the dissenters' encumbering of the death penalty in other cases, with unwarranted restrictions neither contained in the text of the Constitution nor reflected in two centuries of practice under it, will be the product of their policy views -- views not shared by the vast majority of the American people," Scalia writes.
How ironic that Scalia didn't care for the court's invoking the "national consensus" rationale last term to hold the death penalty unconstitutional for those who kill while younger than 18.
Curious, too, that it was Justice Anthony Kennedy (not Souter) who wrote that 2005 opinion, the same Kennedy who voted this week to uphold Kansas' death penalty.
And it was Kennedy (not Souter) who in the juvenile death penalty case noted international sentiment on capital punishment, a reference that clearly still infuriates Scalia.
"There exists in some parts of the world sanctimonious criticism of America's death penalty, as somehow unworthy of a civilized society," Scalia wrote in the Kansas case, his nose righteously scraping the ceiling. "It is a certainty that the opinion of a near-majority of the United States Supreme Court to the effect that our system condemns many innocent defendants to death will be trumpeted abroad as a vindication of these criticisms. For that reason, I take the trouble to point out that the dissenting opinion has nothing substantial to support it."
He then argues that the possibility of a death sentencing mistake has been reduced to "an insignificant minimum" while "it is easy as pie to identify plainly guilty murderers who have been set free."
Of course, he fails to name a single "plainly guilty murderer" who has wrongly been set free.
To Scalia, the eventual release of those wrongly convicted shows the system works.
Not a bad point. Except that the system hasn't necessarily worked because witnesses are reliable, defense lawyers are competent or prosecutors focus on truth. Sometimes it has worked only because dogged appellate lawyers won't relent, crusading law professors and their students donate their time, journalists insist on exposing the system's flaws, and new evidence convinces judges that justice hasn't been done.
Souter never has written that the death penalty is unconstitutional under all circumstances. Ridicule and bullying would seem more likely to push him over that brink than pull him back.
Source : Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Linda P. Campbell is an editorial writer for the Star-Telegram. 817-390-7867 lcampbell@star-telegram.com )
http://www..dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/14928391.htm
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 3, 2006 19:31:27 GMT -5
2 recent decisions suggest the U.S. Supreme Court might be stirring itself for a major review of the death penalty. The high court voted 5-3 to ease rules giving inmates a last chance at proving their innocence if new evidence, especially objective scientific evidence such as DNA, turns up. It also voted 8-0 to scrutinize the prevalent system of executing criminals by lethal injection to see if that supposedly "humane" method is actually cruel and unusual punishment.
Thirty-seven states and the U.S. government now execute by lethal injection. But a report in a British medical journal, The Lancet, last year suggested the current 3-drug thingytail might only mask the outward symptoms of excruciating pain. The 1st chemical, sodium pentathal, is an anesthetic. The 2nd chemical, pancuronium bromide, causes muscle paralysis but does not block pain or interfere with consciousness. The 3rd chemical, potassium chloride, stops the heart.
Lawyers for a Florida inmate, Clarence E. Hill, argued that dying inmates actually might feel intense pain without being able to express themselves. Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion stressed that only the manner in which Hill would be executed was being reviewed, not the constitutionality of capital punishment itself. If Hill eventually wins, the justice noted, Florida still could execute him by lethal injection by using a more acceptable protocol. ...
In our view, the fact that there would even be a legal controversy over such a basic question of fairness is further evidence that the death penalty in America is still far from being fair and equitable.
(source: The Denver Post)
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 6, 2006 3:34:40 GMT -5
In 2002 Americans were very, very happy because they had only 16,638 criminal homicides: and they had reason to be happy, because from 1984 to 1993 criminal homicides were 22,000 per year. In contrast, in the same year (2002), in Italy we were very concerned because, with a population that is 1/5 of America, we had 638 criminal homicides, and we were very concerned about it, even if 638 were half the homicides of 1994.
Americans love to think the drop is a result of the death penalty. We cannot agree because Italy does not impose the death penalty. (In Europe this punishment is strictly prohibited and the majority of the world is abolitionist).
Actually Italy ended capital punishment in 1888 and imposed it again only under fascism. In those sad years the homicide rate was 5 times bigger than what we have now, and, in the 20 years following the definitive end of the death penalty (1948-1968), the homicide rate dropped from 5 to 1.4. Something like this happened in Canada in the years that followed the end of capital punishment in 1976.
Curiously, in the same year, the Supreme Court gave the green light to a "new and improved" American death penalty and, with the shooting of Gary Gilmore ( Jan. 17, 1977), the hangman was back in business and the experiment began.
Now, after more than 1,000 administrative killings, we can say with Justice Blackmun that "the death penalty experiment has failed". Hangman states are not in a better situation than states without the death penalty. In the 10 states with the lowest homicide rate eight do not have the gallows, 1 does not impose the death penalty and 1 has an empty death row.
The death penalty is an enormous waste of lives, money, time and resources.
This cancer is destroying the American justice system. It is not a deterrent and kills the poor, the weak, the mad, the illiterate, the black.
Of the thousand killed some were innocent, many mad and many more not guilty of a crime that warranted capital punishment. All of them would be alive, and some free, if they had had a competent counsel. Sooner or later Americans will realize that the death penalty is immoral, indecent, illegal, expensive, stupid, cruel, dangerous, racist, class-related and a violation of human rights.
DOTT. CLAUDIO GIUSTI Forll, Italia
(source: Letter to the Editor, Jakarta Post)
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 7, 2006 0:16:17 GMT -5
Throw the book at 'em in prison
It hurts to say this, but there is no constitutional right to read a newspaper.
Now, there ought to be a law making people at least subscribe to their local daily paper.
Despite repeated personal pleas to our local lawmakers in the Golden Spread, not one has shown even remote interest in pursuing a state law mandating newspaper subscriptions, and it appears highly unlikely any will join this paper drive in the near future.
There's freedom of the press and - I guess - freedom from the press.
That goes for productive members of society and also for those who choose not to follow the rules of civilized society.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that prison inmates who do not toe the line in the hoosegow can have their access restricted to "secular" newspapers and magazines, such as the daily paper.
It was a 6-2 ruling with Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissenting, saying that the First Amendment includes "rights to receive, to read and to think."
(I looked and can't find this phrase in the First Amendment. Stevens and Ginsburg must be among the ever-growing number of people who think they know more about the U.S. Constitution than the people who wrote it. They had newspapers and prisons in 1791, but the Founding Fathers curiously left out the rights of criminals to read the newspaper.)
Fortunately, prisons can continue to use newspapers as a tool to control inmate behavior.
At Amarillo's Clements Unit, the prison library has newspapers for inmate perusal. Family members can pay for subscriptions for individual inmates, which follows state policy.
However, bad boys who act bad behind bars won't be reading the Globe-News.
The pen can be mightier than the sword in the pen.
"(Inmates) can misuse the newspaper," said Senior Warden Bruce E. Zeller.
"They can roll it up and put a paper clip at the end of it or use some other kind of metal, like a razor blade from a disposable razor, and make a spear out of it. Sometimes they take newspapers or magazines and roll them up tight and stiff. They can dip the end in feces and poke you with it.
"We monitor that pretty good. If it is obvious they are not utilizing it properly, we'll take that stuff out."
What is so ironic about using the newspaper and your own feces as a weapon is that if inmates used this MacGyver-like ingenuity in a positive fashion, they probably wouldn't be behind bars in the first place.
And then they would be free to read whatever they wanted - like the Constitution.
(source: The Amarillo Globe-News--Dave Henry is an editorial writer for the Amarillo Globe-News)
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 9, 2006 6:32:56 GMT -5
The Supreme Court rolls back 100 years of defining mental illness. Los Angeles Times, Editorial FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY, most U.S. courts have recognized a balanced definition of legal insanity. Last week, the Supreme Court rejected it. In an opinion by Justice David H. Souter, who is usually more sensitive to defendants' rights, the court spurned the appeal of Eric Clark, who was 17 when he shot a Flagstaff, Ariz., policeman after the officer stopped his pickup truck. The teenager was convicted for "intentionally or knowingly" killing a law enforcement officer even though Clark, who had a history of delusional behavior, said he thought the cop was a space alien. Souter, writing for himself and five colleagues (Justice Stephen G. Breyer opted out of some parts of the majority opinion) in the 6-3 ruling, said the Constitution's guarantee of due process did not prevent Arizona from lopping off one of two prongs of a definition of legal insanity known as the M'Naghten rule. That rule, which originated in England in 1843, allows for an insanity plea when a defendant, because of a mental disease, either does not know the "nature and quality" of his actions or doesn't realize that those actions are wrong. Arizona deleted the reference to the "nature and quality" of the act, meaning that it was sufficient for the state to prove that Clark knew he had done wrong by introducing evidence that he fled from the scene. Despite the long pedigree of the M'Naghten rule in both Britain and the United States, Souter said that "the insanity rule, like the conceptualization of criminal offenses, is substantially open to state choice." The immediate effect of the ruling will be limited because only a handful of states have gone as far as Arizona in weakening M'Naghten. (California's penal code preserves both prongs of the rule, though it has eliminated an additional defense known as "diminished capacity.") Still, the decision sends a signal to legislators in other states that M'Naghten is fair game. The irony is that until the 1980s, the M'Naghten rule was viewed as the stricter definition of legal insanity. Prosecutors preferred it to a more liberal formula used by some courts allowing a defendant to mount an insanity defense if he "lacked substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law." Although presidential assailant John W. Hinckley Jr. was acquitted under this liberal test, public outrage over the verdict moved some states to make it harder to cite insanity as a reason for acquittal. In Arizona, what Clark was denied was not an acquittal by reason of insanity but a verdict of "guilty except insane," which would have permitted him to be sent to a mental institution rather than prison - the same fate as Hinckley. Clark's killing of Officer Jeffrey Moritz was a horrific tragedy that might have been averted if Clark had been institutionalized. But once the deed was done, the courts - including the high court - should have given him more of an opportunity to prove that bad acts are sometimes committed by mad people. Source : Los Angeles Times, Editorial www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-insanity5jul05,0,793023
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 9, 2006 20:50:18 GMT -5
Brian Lewis has given much-needed perspective to an integral issue in American society which, unfortunately, many citizens regard as peripheral.
In his June 28 column, "Recent cases highlight need to eliminate death penalty," Lewis supplies many compelling reasons to support his position that "the death penalty is an unnecessary relic. We can sentence people to life without parole and keep our society safe."
As we celebrate the independence of our country, let us also soberly reflect on the existence of laws that do not serve the common good of our great nation.
The death penalty is one of these laws. It does not deter violent crime. It is expensive. It dehumanizes those involved in the process as well as the rest of us who read about an execution in the newspaper. It causes additional suffering to all the families involved. It breeds retribution.
Our lawmakers need to look beyond the political expediency of appearing to be "hard on crime." We as a people need to move beyond thinking that violence committed in our names will serve the common good of our society and will "solve a problem."
Other democracies throughout the world have rejected the use of the death penalty. Its continued use in our country demeans us as a nation and as 21st century human beings. Many thanks to the editorial board of the News-Leader for its fine efforts to provide us with superb information and reflection on this issue.
Donna Walmsley, Springfield
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 9, 2006 20:52:04 GMT -5
I don't understand how anyone disagrees with the death penalty or how it's done. Our prisons are filling up and our tax dollars pay for those twisted murderers to live with free shelter, food, medical care, et cetera after they butcher their victims.
I don't get any of those things for free and I am not a criminal. I think they are being rewarded for their actions!
I would not blink an eye if a new law was passed stating violent criminals have to be put to death in the same manner as their victims were murdered. That's justice!
Brooke Simmons, Springfield
(source for both: Letter to the Editor, (Mo.) News-Leader)
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 9, 2006 22:25:02 GMT -5
Executions halted for courts' questions By Gail Gibson, The Baltimore Sun As an Oklahoma legislator in the 1970s, Bill J. Wiseman followed the will of his district and voted to restore the state's death penalty. But with deep personal reservations about capital punishment, he also sought out a more humane alternative to electrocution and became the unwitting architect of the injection protocol now used in nearly every U.S. execution. Now, as then, Wiseman's concerns about the process run deep. He never anticipated that lethal injection could be botched by problems of inadequate sedation or the use of a chemical to paralyze an inmate's muscles, as a widely publicized medical study reported last year. And he never anticipated that state after state would adopt the same method and use it for more than two decades without re-examination and, in many instances, without exacting guidelines. "What you are talking about here is a competency issue," said Wiseman, now a university administrator and Episcopal priest who says that state officials should intervene again to set right a system that across the country - and in Maryland - has become a jumble of prisoner appeals and makeshift moratoriums. "Whatever you feel about capital punishment, properly done, this is a painless thing. It's just a question of competency." The push to modernize lethal injection protocols has long been advocated by anti-death penalty activists. It has also gained support from capital punishment supporters, who see it as a practical way to avoid delays in carrying out death sentences. But few states have implemented changes, even under growing pressure from the nation's courts. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision last month, opened the door for death row inmates to bring new challenges to the way states use lethal injection. The court did not rule on the merits of the procedure, but it pointedly noted that a Florida inmate's challenge still "appears to leave the state free to use an alternative lethal injection procedure." Other courts rule In lower courts across the country, other judges have more bluntly issued the same instruction. Last week, a federal judge in Missouri put executions on hold until the state revises its lethal injection protocols, including the involvement of an anesthesiologist. That ruling came after a surgeon who assists in Missouri's executions testified that he had used only half the usual dose of anesthesia in recent executions and acknowledged that because he is dyslexic, he sometimes transposes numbers. Federal judges in California and Arkansas have scheduled evidence hearings to weigh the claims of death row inmates that lethal injection procedures are cruel and unusual. And some states are acting on their own accord. In Ohio, corrections officials said they would modify protocols to avoid the kind of problem that occurred during a May execution when, after a prolonged effort to inject the deadly chemicals, inmate Joseph Lewis Clark pushed himself up on the gurney and said: "It don't work." But most states have resisted making changes to the three-chemical thingytail that has become the standard for U.S. executions. In Maryland last month, an administrative law judge agreed with part of the procedural challenge brought by death row inmate Vernon Lee Evans Jr. - ruling that the protocols were "legally ineffective" because they were not created with public input - but that finding was rejected by Public Safety Secretary Mary Ann Saar. Oklahoma's highest appeals court found the state's lethal injection procedure constitutional in a ruling last month, with one judge finding that an inmate's request "to be spared the imposition of his legally imposed punishment because it might cause him to suffer or experience pain unpersuasive (and rather ironic) as his murderous acts have been the cause of the ultimate pain and suffering for the victim and her family." After Oklahoma became the first in the country to adopt lethal injection in 1977, other states steadily followed suit. The federal government and 37 of the 38 states that allow capital punishment now use lethal injection. (Nebraska still uses the electric chair.) 1,029 executions Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, states had conducted 1,029 executions as of the end of June - 861 of those by injection, according to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. Douglas A. Berman, an Ohio State University law professor who closely tracks sentencing issues, said there has been little incentive for states to overhaul lethal injection procedures. "Nobody involved with the process truly has a direct interest in making it better," Berman said. The defendants themselves typically have a greater stake in blocking execution altogether, he said, while state officials fear that they will only face new challenges if they adopt a new method of execution. "They've been doing executions like this for a long time," Berman said. "There's emerging evidence of reasons to be concerned, but we don't have enough examples like we had with the electric chair of people catching on fire or screaming out in excruciating pain." In each state that has the death penalty, the chemical mixture used at executions is generally the same. Condemned prisoners are first injected with a sedative that is expected to make them unconscious for the rest of the procedure. They then receive injections of pancuronium bromide to paralyze the muscles and potassium chloride to stop the heart. But there is no uniform protocol regarding who administers the drugs, how much of each chemical should be used or how prison officials should proceed if an inmate's veins are too compromised to receive injections - a problem for inmates with a history of illicit injected drug use, such as heroin addiction. Fueling challenges to lethal injection, the British medical journal The Lancet published a study last year that concluded that some executed men might have suffered intense, burning pain as they died. The study said that could have happened if the inmates were not given enough anesthesia at the start of the procedure and it noted that because potassium chloride causes intense pain, veterinarians have been cautioned about its use in ending the lives of dogs and cats. "You do see substantial variations among the states on who's doing the injection - even the information they provide about who's doing the injection," said Deborah W. Denno, a Fordham University law professor who has written extensively about state execution procedures. "This process, even though it has become so much more visible to us, particularly over the last couple years, it's still incredibly underground." In a 2002 survey that Denno conducted on state death penalty protocols, she found that just nine states published detailed information about the type and amount of chemicals used in lethal injection. Even among those that made the information available, there was a broad range in amount used and how drugs were administered. Not as planned In Oklahoma, Bill Wiseman said in a recent interview that he never intended the second chemical, used to paralyze the muscles, to be part of the protocol. He said he anticipated a two-step process, in which an inmate would be heavily sedated and then given an injection to stop the heart. Now, Wiseman said, it would be possible for states to adopt a single-step procedure, allowing inmates to be killed by a large overdose of barbiturates - essentially the same procedure that Oregon approved in allowing doctor-assisted suicides. "It's not that hard to err on the side of giving them plenty of barbiturate. So what if you kill them? That's why we came to the dance," Wiseman said. He opposes capital punishment broadly, but says that whatever changes are adopted, "this is probably a subject where there's no point in having 37 different good solutions. It probably ought to be one." A turning point could come in California, where U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose has scheduled a two-day evidence hearing in September to review that state's lethal injection procedures. Earlier this year, Fogel raised questions about the state's execution protocol, prompting the state in February to call off the execution of Michael Angelo Morales. Fogel had ruled that a professional licensed to administer intravenous medications must inject the lethal dose. But the execution could not go forward because the state was unable to find anesthesiologists willing to assist with state executions - a perceived violation of a physician's oath to do no harm. Kent Scheidegger, legal director and general counsel for the California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supports the death penalty, said that if the state wound up adopting changes to the lethal injection procedure that ultimately were upheld by the liberal-leaning 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, other states would have a clear template to follow. "As a matter of policy, we should not go about gratuitously inflicting pain, but the possibility that something may go wrong, and a murderer may suffer some minute fraction of the pain he inflicted on the victim, doesn't bother me," Scheidegger said. "I don't actually think there's anything wrong with the existing protocol, but sometimes you can make changes that simply eliminate issues." Source : The Baltimore Sun www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.lethal08jul08,0,4714268.
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 9, 2006 22:34:31 GMT -5
David A. Love, Spokesman Review The high court should be commended for taking steps to send the death penalty on its way out. Although capital punishment is still alive in the United States, two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions reflect America's growing distaste for executions. In House v. Bell, the justices ruled 5 to 3 that Tennessee death row inmate Paul Gregory House can introduce DNA evidence to try to overturn his conviction for the 1985 murder of a neighbor. DNA testing revealed that the semen on the victim's nightgown belonged to her husband, not House. (House was the first person to bring DNA evidence to the Supreme Court to maintain his innocence.) Meanwhile, in Hill v. McDonough, the court was unanimous in allowing Florida death row inmate Clarence Hill to challenge the chemicals used in executions on the ground that they are too painful and violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Most states, including Florida, use three drugs to kill a prisoner: sodium thiopental (a painkiller that is administered at the beginning of the execution that induces unconsciousness), pancuronium bromide (which paralyzes the inmate) and potassium chloride (to induce a heart attack). Lawyers for Hill cited a 2005 study in the Lancet medical journal that found that pancuronium bromide can suffocate a person, while potassium chloride can cause muscle cramping and burning of the veins before the person dies. The study also questioned whether the painkiller can wear off before the inmate's death. Hill, who is on Florida's death row for the 1982 murder of a police officer, was strapped to a gurney with tubes running into his arms when Justice Kennedy intervened and blocked the execution in January. Of the 38 states that have the death penalty, 37 states use lethal injection (Nebraska's electric chair is being contested). The Bush administration and many states supported Florida in arguing that extending the appeals process would come at the expense of finality and justice for the families of the victims. These supporters of capital punishment seem intent on keeping the death train running, despite the problems inherent in the system. But the Supreme Court's recent decisions are a hopeful sign of its increasing discomfort with many aspects of the death penalty system, as Steven Shapiro of the American Civil Liberties Union said. I believe the death penalty itself constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The international community deplores it as a violation of human rights law, and the European Union forbids it. As a society, we should not countenance a lust for blood, vengeance and retribution that will never make the victims' families whole. Although states may attempt to make torture cleaner, more antiseptic, less graphic and more acceptable, it cannot change what is an inherently barbaric practice. The court's decisions bring us a little closer to the day when the United States can rejoin the international community by banning capital punishment once and for all. Source : Spokesman Review www.spokesmanreview.com/local/story.asp?ID=139143
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 9, 2006 22:40:22 GMT -5
The Baltimore Sun
Executions in several states have been put on hold - or procedures have been ordered changed - in response to inmate claims that the three-drug injection process used in nearly every U.S. execution is an unconstitutional form of cruel and unusual punishment. The federal government and 37 of the 38 states that allow capital punishment use lethal injection. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, states have conducted 1,029 executions - 861 of those by injection.
CALIFORNIA
Status //Executions on hold until September, when a federal evidence hearing is scheduled to review the state's lethal injection procedures. Issues //U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled this year that a medical professional must inject the lethal dose of drugs at executions, but the state could not find anesthesiologists willing to assist.
Case in question //Michael Angelo Morales, 46, sentenced to death for the 1981 rape and murder in Lodi, Calif., of 17-year-old Terri Winchell.
Death row population //652
MISSOURI:
Status //Executions on hold until the state revises its lethal injection protocols in accordance with a federal judge's order last month.
Issues //U.S. District Judge Fernando J. Gaitan Jr. has ordered specific changes to the lethal injection protocol, including requiring an anesthesiologist to mix the drugs and establishing a procedure to ensure that the inmate is unconscious.
Case in question //Michael Anthony Taylor, 39, sentenced to death for the 1989 rape and murder of 15-year-old Ann Harrison.
Death row population //52
NORTH CAROLINA
Status //Executions resumed in April after state officials complied with a federal judge's order and used a brain wave monitor to make sure that a condemned prisoner was unconscious during execution.
Issues //In his order requiring changes this year, U.S. District Judge Malcolm J. Howard cited concerns that inmates were not fully sedated before officials administered potentially painful chemicals to paralyze the muscles and stop the heart.
Case in question //Willie Brown Jr., 61, sentenced to death for the killing of convenience store clerk Vallerie Ann Roberson Dixon during a 1983 robbery.
Death row population //188
OHIO
Status //The state plans to modify lethal injection protocols before its next execution, scheduled for Wednesday, to avoid insufficient sedation that occurred during its most recent execution.
Issues //After problems finding a suitable vein to administer sedatives left condemned prisoner Joseph Lewis Clark asking officials to find another way to kill him, the state said it would make changes to how intravenous lines are injected and increase monitoring of the inmate directly before the execution.
Case in question // Clark, sentenced to death for killing 23-year-old David Manning during a Toledo gas station robbery in 1984. Clark was executed May 2.
Death row population //195
MARYLAND
Status //The state's top appeals court in February stayed a scheduled execution to consider a range of issues, including whether Maryland's lethal injection procedure is illegal because it was created without legally required public input. An administrative law judge ruled last month that the protocols were improperly adopted, but that finding was rejected by the state's top corrections official.
Issues //Death row inmate Vernon Lee Evans Jr. has launched challenges on multiple fronts. In addition to the procedural challenges in state court, he has filed a federal lawsuit claiming that Maryland's lethal injection procedures would violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Case in question //Evans, 56, sentenced to death in a 1983 double murder intended to silence witnesses in a federal drug trial. Two Pikesville motel employees, Susan Kennedy and David Scott Piechowicz, were killed in the machine-gun slaying.
Death row population // 8
[ Sources: The Death Penalty Information Center; court records]
Source : The Baltimore Sun
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 10, 2006 20:21:48 GMT -5
Re: "Purpose of this penalty," by Bill Brown, Wednesday Letters.
When a mother wraps her arms around her little ones and says, "If you try to harm my babies, I will kill you," that is deterrence.
From robbery to rape, there is a strong incentive to kill innocent victims, who might otherwise identify the criminal. Especially for repeat offenders, lengthy prison terms are the same punishment either way, so there is actually less risk by killing the victims or a police officer. It's the easy way out.
Only the ultimate penalty eliminates that incentive, the only hope that the helpless victim has.
The death penalty must be applied consistently and impartially to be a deterrent. The word on the street needs to be: If you kill your victim, you kill yourself.
Janet Schramm, Richardson
(source: Letter to the Editor, Dallas Morning News)
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Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 14, 2006 0:07:44 GMT -5
Dear Editor,
This is in response to Rich Smith's article making the argument that death penalty is wrong.
1. He says that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the reinstatement of the death penalty, and he says that crime has increased since then. If he can demonstrate some iron clad relationship there between the two phenomena, let's see it. If he can not, then I can only say, "So what?"
Might it be the case (if, indeed, he is right) that society as a whole has changed in the last 30 years, and maybe that is because we have so little regard for innocent life that we feed and house murderers on death row forever, and that the effect of the death penalty is thus blunted? Might it be that no one really believes there is going to be a punishment? Might that be a contributing factor to our social ills?
2. I would agree that abortion has diminished respect for life in our country. However, to equate murder by abortion and execution of a guilty murderer in any way is to fail to understand the difference between murder and justice.
3. To say that all life is sacred, and therefore that no life is to be executed, is to argue against such time honored and respected doctrines as the right of taking life in a just war or in self-defense or in the protection of the innocent and helpless. It is the coward's argument which gets him off the hook when, in certain circumstances, he otherwise might have to stand up to the evildoer.
4. In executing the guilty murder, we, the people, or whoever the authority is, does not pick and choose whose life to protect. In spite of Catholic teaching, the Bible says certain people are not to live. I realize there are some problems which come up when ever that argument is put forth ("What about witches, etc., for instance," we hear); however, the context of his article is the upcoming execution of Bobby Glen Wilcher, and the Bible is crystal clear on the rightness of execution of murderers.
5. He implies that some death penalty proponents would say we should execute some because they are merely "lost souls." That statement deserves an apology. I know of no Christian who would so argue. It constitutes slander, a breach of the command not to bear false witness.
6. He says that because we cannot choose one life over another, Catholics stand on the side of life for all. That is an un-Biblical position. It pits Catholic teaching against Christian teaching at that point.
7. To hold a prayer vigil for Mr. Wilcher while he's being executed is OK if they are praying for his conversion before he takes his last breath. We should pray for that. I hope he will. But if he becomes a Christian a minute before he dies, that does not mean he should escape punishment. He should not; he is still a guilty murderer.
8. His final sentence is, "We believe in the Giver of Life." Well, other Christians do, too, but we also believe in doing what the Giver of Life says. And it could just be that our failure to do so over the years is a large part of the problem we have in our society today.
- Robert E. Hays, Pearl
(source: Letter to the Editor, The (Miss.) Scott County Times)
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