Rick Halperin
2018-11-06 14:17:49 UTC
November 6
NORTH CAROLINA:
Suspects in 2 Henderson County accused killers will face death penalty at trial
Accused killers Terry Brank and Anthony Moore both had hearings Monday in their
domestic and family violence cases. News 13 was there, and learned that each of
the accused will face the death penalty in trial.
Brank is accused of killing Laura Cox with an edged weapon in their home in
July.
Major Frank Stout told News 13 that there were 13 calls for service made to the
home the year Cox died.
Not all of them were domestic related, but, Stout said, investigators were
quite familiar with the address.
Since 2005, Stout says there were 54 total calls for service. 15 of those were
domestic related, though not all of them involved Brank.
Cox's frend Vicky Seelig said Brank was gone from the home for more than a
month, but came back at the end of May, with no protective order on file at the
clerk’s office to keep him away.
Moore is accused of throwing gasoline on Teresa Stallings and lighting her on
fire -- resulting in her death 6 months later.
Stallings, 44, died at the Burn Center at Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem in
July.
"She got in an argument with her boyfriend and she was going out of the house
to leave and he threw gasoline on her," Stallings' sister Andrea Blankenship
told News 13 this past August. "And she didn't know what it was. And she got in
her car, and he lit her on fire in her car,."
Stallings fought for her life.
"She was in the ICU at Wake Forest, and they did 3, 4 surgeries a week, skin
grafting, because she lost her ear, her breast, her lips," Blankenship said.
The family told News 13 they hoped the murder charge would bring some justice
for Stallings, and keep Moore off the streets.
(source: WLOS news)
FLORIDA:
Man exonerated in Seminole County double murder after 10 years on death
row----Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin 'nearly executed for a crime he didn't commit'
All charges have been dropped against a man who spent more than 14 years in
jail and a decade on Florida's death row for the 2004 murders of his Altamonte
Springs neighbors, according to State Attorney Phil Archer.
Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin was arrested at 24 years old and received the death
penalty in 2006 for the stabbing deaths of his neighbors, Cheryl Williams and
her mother, Carol Bareis.
Aguirre, an undocumented immigrant from Honduras, found their bodies, but
didn't report it in fear of being deported, he told authorities. The victims
had been stabbed dozens of times. While checking for a pulse, Aguirre's
attorneys said he got their blood on his clothing.
The Innocence Project, which works to exonerate wrongly convicted people, took
on Aguirre’s case in 2011.
In 2016, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously overturned Aguirre’s conviction
and death sentence based on new evidence that included DNA testing of multiple
pieces of crime scene evidence that implicated another suspect: the victims’
daughter and granddaughter, Samantha Williams. Williams later confessed that
she committed the murders to numerous friends and acquaintances who had no
connection to Aguirre, according to the Innocence Project.
Archer planned to seek the death penalty again in a re-trial, but Aguirre's
lawyers presented the State Attorney's Office with additional evidence
"undermining Williams’ alibi and further implicating her emerged in recent
pretrial proceedings," according to a news release.
On Monday, the State Attorney's Office announced it was dropping the
prosecution of Aguirre, now 38. His 2nd trial was set to begin this week.
"While the State has serious concerns about the credibility of Mr.
Aguirre-Jarquin's statement of facts regarding his participation in this
incident, the State does not believe further incarceration of Mr.
Aguirre-Jarquin is warranted or justified at this time," a spokesperson for the
State Attorney's Office said. "We appreciate the efforts of his attorney's in
presenting this new evidence."
"From the bottom of my heart, this humble immigrant thanks you." Clemente
Aguirre-Jarquin https://t.co/64oELedXP3 pic.twitter.com/U1LmTazaHM — Innocence
Project (@innocence) November 5, 2018
Williams has not been charged in the deaths of her mother and grandmother.
A spokesperson for the state attorney's office said prosecutors "will be
meeting with the Seminole County Sheriff's Office over the coming weeks to
review the evidence and determine if there are any investigative avenues that
can be pursued, or any further action to be taken in this case."
Aguirre's exoneration hearing Monday in Seminole County was attended by more
than a dozen lawyers who worked on his case over the last decade, along with
his 2 sisters and friends.
After the hearing Aguirre thanked his legal team.
“I have only forgiveness in my heart for those who did wrong to me," Aguirre
said.
“Mr. Aguirre was nearly executed for a crime he didn’t commit,” one of
Aguirre’s lead trial attorneys, Joshua Dubin, said. “While we are overjoyed
that his ordeal is finally over, the case of Clemente Aguirre should serve as a
chilling cautionary tale about how dangerous it is when there is a rush to
judgment in a capital case."
There is an immigration hold on Aguirre's jail file preventing his release.
(source: clickorlando.com)
******************
Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin: Florida Death Row Exoneration #28
Circuit Judge John D. Galluzzo has dismissed all charges and exonerated
Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin after prosecutors announced today, in the middle of
jury selection, that they will not proceed with
his retrial. Clemente spent nearly 15 years behind bars — including 10 on
Florida's death row.
Kudos to The Innocence Project and the dedicated team of attorneys who donated
their time and worked for years to make this possible.
“Mr. Aguirre was nearly executed for a crime he didn’t commit,” said Joshua
Dubin, one of Aguirre’s lead trial attorneys.
This is the 28th death row exoneration in Florida since executions resumed in
the 1970's. One wonders how many more innocent people remain on Florida's death
row and how many other innocent men and women have already been executed. We
will never know for sure. By state statute, the evidence is destroyed after an
execution.
Please support the statewide organized grassroots effort to end executions in
Florida.
Please share this message with others. Only with your help can the work be done
and progress made.
(source: Mark Elliott, Executive Director Floridians for Alternatives to the
Death Penalty----www.fadp.org)
ALABAMA:
Legal battle centers on release of Alabama execution details
A federal appeals court is considering whether a lower court judge was wrong to
rule that Alabama's execution protocol should be unsealed at the request of
news outlets.
U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre ruled in May that the public has "a common law
right of access" to a redacted version of the state's lethal injection protocol
and related court records. The state appealed, and a three-judge panel of the
11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta on Monday heard arguments in the
appeal.
The Associated Press, The Montgomery Advertiser and the Alabama Media Group had
asked the court in March to unseal records in a lawsuit brought by death row
inmate Doyle Lee Hamm. Alabama prison officials in February halted Hamm's
scheduled execution at the last minute when the lethal injection team was
unable to connect an intravenous line to his veins.
Alabama has for years refused to release the details of its execution process
and where it gets the drugs used in lethal injections.
The public has a great interest in understanding how Alabama carries out
executions and the unsealing of the documents would likely "promote
understanding of a historically significant event," Bowdre wrote in a 19-page
memorandum ordering the release of the records. She wrote that the state could
keep secret some information, like the names of low-level prison employees
involved in executions.
Hamm's attorneys had sued to block his execution, saying his veins were so
damaged by lymphoma, hepatitis and past drug use that it would be extremely
difficult to execute him. As part of that litigation, the state provided Hamm's
attorneys with a redacted copy of the execution protocol after securing a
protective order from the judge to keep it confidential.
Stephen Frisby, a lawyer for the state argued in court that while the execution
protocol was provided to Hamm's attorneys and the judge, it was never attached
to a filing in the case and therefore shouldn't be considered a judicial record
that is subject to release.
Bowdre had concluded in her order that it was a judicial record because she
"needed and relied upon" that document to decide Hamm's case. The reason it
wasn't formally filed is because the parties and the court were rushing to
address Hamm's claim before his scheduled execution date, she wrote.
Frisby argued that even if the execution protocol is subject to the common-law
right of access, the state's interest in keeping it secret for security reasons
outweighs the interest of news outlets to access it.
Catherine Martinez, representing the news outlets, acknowledged that the state
has legitimate security interests but argued that redactions can eliminate that
problem. The balancing test between the parties' interests starts with the
presumption that judicial records are open to the public, she said.
Frisby also argued that the news outlets shouldn't have been allowed to
intervene in Hamm's case because they waited until the case had been dismissed.
But Martinez noted that their motion was filed the same day that the case was
dismissed and that the court's jurisdiction over a sealing order extends beyond
the end of the case.
The panel of judges grilled Frisby, repeatedly asking why an execution protocol
should be exempt from release and whether the public is entitled to know what
the judge considers when deciding a case.
But Judge Gerald Tjoflat cautioned Martinez not to take the harsh questioning
of the state as an indication that her side had a leg up. The judges asked
Martinez about the timing of the new outlets' motion to intervene in the case
and the balancing test judges use to determine whether to unseal documents.
(source: Associated Press)
LOUISIANA:
Conservative-led effort to abolish death penalty headed to Louisiana, activists
say
While abolition of the death penalty has long been considered a liberal policy
goal, a new group of conservatives activists say it fundamentally conflicts
with their view of a limited government, and they are now organizing an effort
to end its practice in Louisiana.
In 2013, the number of Republican lawmakers proposing legislation to end the
death penalty in their states more than doubled from single digits to 20, and
doubled again in in 2016 to 40, according to a group called Conservatives
Concerned About the Death Penalty, which sponsored a forum on the issue
Thursday evening at Tulane University. Likewise, nearly a third of the
co-sponsors of bills abolishing the death penalty were Republicans in 2016 and
2017, up from nearly zero a decade ago, the group’s research shows.
Louisiana is among those states, with legislation to eliminate the death
penalty in 2017 sponsored by Republican state Sen. Dan Claitor of Baton Rouge,
whose conserative bona fides include honors from the Louisiana Family Forum.
Claitor’s stated views that the death penalty is expensive and ineffective fall
right in line with the thinking being adopted by many other conservaties, said
Hannah Cox, a national organizer for Conservatives Against the Death Penalty.
Cox was still strongly in support of the death penalty when she first began
working in conservative politics, she told the crowd at the Tulane panel. But
when asked to research a bill regarding the death penalty for the mentally ill,
she began to examine the policy’s effects for the first time, and became
convinced that it contradicted her conservative principles.
“People who have never been to prison think that life is the most valuable
thing they have, but it’s actually freedom,” Cox said, noting that many
death-row inmates give up on the appeals process and submit to execution as a
way of ending their incarceration. “When you lose your freedom, you realize
that.”
Michael Cahoon, a local organizer for the progressive Promise for Justice
Initiative, said he was asked to join the penalty to provide the “liberal”
perspective on the issue. But raised as a Catholic opposed to it for religious
reasons, Cahoon said he feels the issue fits clearly as a conservative one.
“I actually think the conservative case against the death penalty is much more
direct — a limit on government power,” Cahoon said.
Cox and Cahoon laid out a number of objections to the death penalty:
It has great potential for error, possibly resulting in the government
putting an innocent person to death. Nearly 1 in 10 people sentenced to death
have subsequently been exonerated since the penalty was reinstated in the
1970s, Cox said.
It is too expensive, with millions spent by each death-penalty state on
their cases every year that could be redirected into law-enforcement. Many
critics of the justice system focus on the lengthy appeals process in
death-penalty cases, which can drag on for decades. A study in North Carolina,
however, showed that the 70 % of the cost was incurred during
the initial trial and sentencing phase, because the state must pay for so much
more forensic testing and specialized experts to even seek the conviction.
It is not a deterrent. States with the death penalty regularly see higher
rates of violent crime than those without it. Meanwhile, most law-enforcement
experts agree that the best deterrent to crime is the perceived likelihood of
arrest — thoughts of eventual sentences are far more abstract and unlikely to
play a role in a heated moment.
It is applied seemingly at random. Many people say they support it only for
the “worst of the worst,” but it is much more commonly applied to routine
crimes. Many serial killers plead to life in prison, and the death-penalty was
not even sought for 9/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, for example.
It is racially biased — usually around the race of the victim, even moreso
than the race of the criminal. The last time a white person was put to death in
Louisiana for killing a black person was in 1752, Cahoon noted — and that was a
slave considered property, so the sentence was actually applied for destruction
of property, not for killing a person.
That disparity, Cahoon said, shows that the implementation of the law
implicitly values the lives of one racial group more than another — a direct
contradiction of nearly anyone’s values imaginable.
It does harm to victims of crime. A death-penalty trial is frequently the
worst thing that can happen to crime victims, Cahoon said. Every development
becomes front-page news, often for 2 decades while the lengthy appeals run
their course.
“A lot of people put the healing process on hold until the legal process is
finished,” Cahoon said. “In the death penalty, that process could be 30 years.
It could be never.”
The death-penalty opponents found few critics in their audience of 50, most of
whom were college-aged. One man questioned whether isolating death-row inmates
makes the general prison population safer, but Cahoon and Cox said that there
is little evidence that the murders placed on death row are more dangerous than
those who plead to life, and that better measures can be used to ensure safety
in prisons anyway.
While some opponents of the death penalty envision a sweeping federal decision
to repeal it, Cox said that Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty has
decided that a state-by-state approach is more effective. For one thing, a
single federal decision abolishing it could be overturned by a subsequent
federal decision, essentially reinstating it yet again. State-level actions, by
contrast, would have to be overturned individually.
The effort is also playing out in state legislatures — and must do so in
Louisiana, Cahoon said, where the state Constitution does not lend itself to
challenging the death penalty through a court decision. Claitor has already
begun building allies for his work in Baton Rouge, however. His 2017 bill
passed a Republican-majority committee, and both state Sen. J.P. Morrell and
state Rep. Terry Landry (2 Democrats) have introduced similar bills — and
activists predict the Catholic Church, opposed to the death penalty for
decades, can be a particularly influential ally in the state.
“It’s not partisan, or bipartisan, even. It’s nonpartisan,” Cahoon said.
“Especially in Louisiana, you have nonpartisan reasons that really bring people
together.”
In order to support those efforts, Conservatives Concerned Against the Death
Penalty is forming a chapter specifically for Louisiana, Cox said. They hope to
have the structure in place by the end of the year, so they can begin work
during next year’s legislative session.
(source: uptownmessenger.com)
OHIO:
U.S. Supreme Court won’t review Ohio death penalty law
Declining to hear an appeal challenging Ohio’s death penalty law,
the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for a Marion County court to
sentence a man convicted of murder and rape in 1993 in Marion County.
By doing so, the justices chose not to review an Ohio Supreme Court decision
last April holding that the state’s death penalty law does not violate the
Constitution.
Instead, the Marion Court of Common Pleas can hold a hearing to determine
whether Maurice Mason of Marion should be sentenced to death for the murder and
rape of 19-year-old Robin Dennis.
Attorneys for Mason argued that Ohio’s death penalty law violated the
Constitution because a judge — as opposed to a jury — imposed the sentence. The
U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 struck down a Florida death penalty law in which a
jury issued an advisory sentence, but a judge could rule for the death penalty.
Kort Gatterdam, a Columbus attorney representing Mason said he was
“disappointed” the justices “not to take the case at this time. We were hopeful
they would take a look at Ohio’s statute because it had the same flaws as
Florida’s.”
(source: The Columbus Dispatch)
********************
North Royalton man admits killing woman, daughters, as judges hear evidence in
potential death-penalty case
A 3-judge panel began hearings Monday to decide whether to accept George
Brinkman’s guilty plea to murder charges that make him eligible to face the
death penalty in the grisly June 2017 slayings of a North Royalton mother and
her 2 adult daughters.
Brinkman, 46, showed little emotion Monday as he admitted to murdering his
longtime friend, 42-year-old Suzanne Taylor, and her 2 daughters who witnesses
said looked up to Brinkman like a second father, Taylor Pifer, 21, and Kylie
Pifer, 18.
Brinkman used a knife to slit Taylor’s throat, strangled Kylie Pifer with a
telephone cord and smothered Taylor Pifer with a pillow, before placing their
bodies in Taylor’s bed, investigators said.
When a person charged in a death-penalty case in Ohio wants to plead guilty,
prosecutors must first present evidence to prove each charge the person wants
to plead to is based in fact before a judicial panel can accept the plea and
find that person guilty.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court judges Peter J. Corrigan, Michael
Shaughnessy and Timothy McCormick immediately began that hearing Monday after
Brinkman said he wished to plead guilty.
Brinkman faces either execution, life in prison with no chance at parole or
life with parole after 20, 25 or 30 years on the murder charges. He could face
additional time behind bars on top of the life sentence as he also pleaded
guilty to aggravated burglary, kidnapping and offenses against a human corpse
charges in connection with the women’s deaths.
Brinkman is also accused of fatally shooting a Stark County couple in their
home. That case will be tried separately in Summit County after the case that
began Monday is wrapped up.
Corrigan, Shaughnessy and McCormick will preside over the hearings because
Brinkman waived his right to have a jury make those decisions.
Thomas Conway, part of the team of defense lawyers representing Brinkman, said
in court Monday that his client had offered several times to plead guilty and
serve a life sentence with no chance at parole. But Cuyahoga County Prosecutor
Michael O’Malley and his office refused to drop the pursuit of the death
penalty.
Witnesses called on the 1st day of testimony illuminated Brinkman’s
relationship with Taylor, and the discovery of the women’s bodies.
Brinkman and Taylor went to grade school together, and remained friends into
adulthood, Taylor’s boyfriend, Scott Plymale, testified. Brinkman had no family
and often needed a place to sleep, so Taylor opened up her home to him on
holidays and cold nights, Plymale said. Brinkman helped with work around the
house.
“She told me once that she wasn’t going to let a friend freeze to death because
they didn’t have a place to stay,” Plymale said.
Brinkman drove a black cargo van with a red stripe down the side that the
family referred to as the “A-Team van," and one year for Christmas Taylor
Pifer’s boyfriend, Dale Kostar, outfitted the van with neon lights as a gift.
“She thought of [Brinkman] as another father,” Kostar said of his late
girlfriend. “He would probably be one of the first persons they would call.”
On June 10, 2017, Taylor texted Plymale that she had not been feeling well and
was going to take a nap, which Plymale said was out of character. That
afternoon, Plymale helped one of the daughters after she got a flat tire at
SouthPark Mall. He told Taylor that he was going to take her daughter to Sears
to get her tire fixed, but Taylor called him on the phone and told Plymale to
just send the girl home.
Plymale said he then went shopping and bought Taylor flowers because she was
sick. He dropped them off at her home and noticed Brinkman’s van was backed up
to the front window, he said. The doors were locked and all the windows were
shut, which he found unusual because the house had no air conditioning and it
was the summer. He put the flowers on the porch and left.
The next evening, after no one heard from Taylor or her daughters for more than
24 hours, Kostar said he went to the house while he spoke to Plymale on the
phone.
Kostar said he used his experience as a contractor to pick the lock and enter
the home. He noticed the bouquet of roses that Plymale had left the day earlier
on the kitchen table, and that Taylor’s bedroom door, which was always open,
was closed and latched shut.
He opened the door, and saw what he could tell was Kylie Pifer’s arm hanging
over the side of the bed from beneath the covers on her mother’s bed. He said
he could tell there were more bodies under the blanket.
Plymale told Kostar to get out of the house, and then hung up and called
police, who later found all three women’s bodies, face down and side-by-side,
in the bed.
Sometime after the discovery, Kostar said he called Brinkman to inform him.
Brinkman seemed surprised, sad and genuinely heartbroken from the news, Kostar
said.
Police and the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office sealed off the house
all week as part of the investigation. When the home was unsealed, Plymale
said, he and other family friends and relatives came to clean the house and
find the documents and paperwork. That’s when he noticed a lock of hair on top
of a suitcase just outside Taylor’s bedroom door.
Taylor had long, flowing dark hair that stretched to her lower back, and she
took pride in her locks, Plymale said.
Police came back to the home and found the woman’s hair strewn about the house,
leading investigators to believe Brinkman had cut off Taylor’s hair before he
took the knife to her throat.
The hearings are expected to last several days.
(source: cleveland.com)
KENTUCKY:
Murder suspect wants death penalty removed
The attorneys for a man suspected of killing a woman at her Russellville
apartment is seeking to have the death penalty removed as a potential
punishment.
Demetrius Roberson, 24, is charged with murder, attempted murder, 1st-degree
robbery and 9 counts of 1st-degree wanton endangerment.
The charges stem from an Aug. 21, 2016, shooting in which Lexus Bell, 21, was
killed at her apartment in front of several children, who were there in
anticipation of traveling to a birthday party the next day, according to
police.
Acting Logan County Commonwealth's Attorney Justin Crocker is seeking the death
penalty for Roberson, who is currently incarcerated on an unrelated robbery
conviction.
Roberson's attorneys, Michael Bufkin and Audrey Woosnam, filed three motions to
exclude the death penalty on the grounds that the state's death penalty statute
is unconstitutional.
Woosnam said in one motion that the state's death penalty law was drafted based
on language in the Model Penal Code, a text published in 1962 by the American
Law Institute that assists state legislatures in the setting of law relating to
criminal penalties.
The death penalty statute was removed from the Model Penal Code in 2009, with
members of the American Law Institute questioning the soundness of implementing
capital punishment, and Woosnam argues that Kentucky's statute "is no longer
consisting with evolving standards of decency" and violates Roberson's rights.
Woosnam seeks in another motion to declare the state death penalty
unconstitutional, arguing that it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and
noting that 20 states have abolished the death penalty.
No one in Kentucky has been executed since 2008, and a state court judge issued
an injunction in 2010 preventing the state from carrying out further executions
until new protocols regulating lethal injunction as a method of execution are
implemented.
In a 3rd motion, Woosnam argues that the death penalty violates due process
rights on several grounds.
"Several aspects of Kentucky's criminal justice system create a substantial
risk of sentencing to death and ultimately executing persons for whom death is
a disproportionate punishment, or even those who are completely innocent,"
Woosnam said in one motion.
Defendants in capital cases also receive inadequate legal counsel, Woosnam
argued. He said public defenders with high caseloads and low salaries struggle
under an inadequately funded system to provide effective representation of
clients in death penalty cases.
Other factors that throw the legality of the death penalty into question
include capital juries being incapable of rendering fair and impartial verdicts
due to not understanding jury instructions, a lack of opportunity for convicted
defendants to wage meaningful appeals and inadequate safeguards under state law
to prevent the execution of mentally ill defendants, Woosnam argued.
A hearing to address the motions has been set for Nov. 13 in Logan Circuit
Court.
2 co-defendants, Reba Kirk and Jordan Lunsford, have pleaded guilty to crimes
associated with Bell's death and have been sentenced. Cases against 2 more
co-defendants, Tayveon Bibb and Deon Young, are pending.
(source: Bowling Green Daily News)
TENNESSEE:
Tennessee death row inmates want firing squad as execution alternative
Lawyers for 4 inmates on Tennessee’s death row are seeking the firing squad as
an alternative to the state’s execution methods of lethal injection and the
electric chair, The Tennessean reported Monday.
The inmates who filed suit in federal court late Friday included David Earl
Miller, scheduled to be executed Dec. 6 for the 1981 rape and murder of Lee
Standifer, the newspaper reported. The other inmates are Nicholas Todd Sutton,
Stephen Michael West and Terry Lynn King.
The lawsuit asks the court to postpone Miller's execution until his case can be
heard, The Tennessean reported. Tennessee’s execution protocol stipulates that
Miller will be asked to choose his method of execution 30 days before the
sentence is carried out. That means Miller must make his choice Tuesday, the
newspaper reported. The lawsuit wants the court to stop state officials from
presenting Miller with that choice.
The lawsuit was filed a day after 63-year-old Edmund George Zagorski was
executed by electric chair for a pair of 1983 murders.
Zagorski won a legal action to bypass Tennessee’s lethal injection execution,
winning the right to die by the electric chair on Nov. 1.
Trained professionals reduce error rates in executions by firing squad, the
lawsuit claims.
"The firing squad significantly reduces a substantial risk of unnecessary and
severe pain when compared with" Tennessee's three-drug cocktail used in lethal
injections, sparing the men suffocation, internal chemical burn and paralysis,
The Tennessean reported, citing the lawsuit.
Only Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah formally authorize the use of a firing
squad, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. It was last used in
the United States in 2010 by Utah officials.
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
MISSOURI:
Dilatory Tactics in a Death Penalty Case?----My co-authored amicus brief urges
the Supreme Court to bring an end to decades-long abusive litigation by
convicted murderer Russell Bucklew.
In 1996, Russell Bucklew murdered Michael Sanders as his 2 young sons—only 4
and 6 years old—watched their father bleed to death in front of them. Then, as
the young daughters of Bucklew's other victim, Stephanie Ray, cried and wailed
for their mother, Bucklew handcuffed and dragged her away to endure hours of
rape and torture. Bucklew's reign of terror continued when he broke out of
jail, forced victims to go into hiding, and ambushed 1 victim's mother in her
own home. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death over 20 years ago.
Tomorrow the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Bucklew v. Precythe, in
which Bucklew is raising an "as applied" challenge to Missouri's method of
executing him (lethal injection). Counsel of record Allyson Ho, several of her
colleagues at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and I have filed an amicus brief in
support of Missouri. We filed the brief on behalf of the sister of Michael
Sanders and Arizona Voice for Crime Victims. Our amicus brief urges the Court
to reject Bucklew's challenge and end more than 2 decades of litigation.
Bucklew's latest challenge argues that, as applied to him, Missouri's method of
carrying out the capital sentence constitutes cruel and unusual punishment
because of his unique medical condition (benign oral tumors). This challenge
could have been raised more than decade ago. In June 2008, Bucklew filed a
pleading asking to hire a medical expert to support a clemency application—and
supported his request by claiming that, because of his condition, "execution by
lethal injection may pose a substantial and intolerable risk of inflicting
serious harm and excruciating pain." His 2008 filing included extensive
argument that he would "suffer the risk of serious harm amounting to cruel and
unusual punishment during the administration of Missouri's lethal injection
protocol in light of his affliction with cavernous hemangioma." It even stated
that Bucklew sought to demonstrate that Missouri's procedure was
unconstitutional "as applied uniquely" to him.
Yet despite his obvious awareness of a possible as-applied challenge based on
his condition, Bucklew refused for years to bring such a challenge. Instead, he
brought or joined a series of facial challenges—always ensuring that his
as-applied challenge was at the ready for later use. After years of litigation
on facial challenges, in May, 2014, less than 2 weeks before his scheduled
execution, Bucklew finally brought his as-applied challenge. Having held that
challenge in reserve for years, Bucklew was able to secure a stay of execution
from the Supreme Court while Missouri's other capital defendants could not, and
he staved off dismissal of his new as-applied claims despite the dismissal of
the other defendants' facial challenges.
In proceedings below, the district court and the court of appeals saw through
Bucklew's strategy and held that, even after extensive discovery, he had not
made any real effort to discern what procedures would actually be used at his
execution—and thus could not show that any such procedures would be more
painful than his lethal gas alternative. As the Eighth Circuit noted, Bucklew
successfully prolonged his as-applied challenge in 2015 by arguing for the
necessity of further fact-finding—and then showed no interest in that
fact-finding once his challenge was revived. Specifically, three years before,
Bucklew argued that the Eighth Circuit should reverse the dismissal of his
complaint to allow him to take further discovery regarding what changes the
State could make to its protocol to accommodate his condition—because without
knowing the exact parameters of the protocol, Bucklew could not effectively
argue against them. But once Bucklew secured reversal and remand, he stopped
caring about what changes Missouri would make to its procedures, and did
nothing to determine what, exactly, the effects of those procedures would be
with respect to his condition. The district court ruled for the State and the
Eighth Circuit affirmed.
As a result of these manipulative litigation tactics, Michael Sanders' family
has been harmed. The first part of our amicus brief reviews the academic and
other literature on the effect of such delays on victims' families. The
literature confirms that long after the immediate loss and physical trauma are
over, victims' families continue to suffer from psychological trauma, which
courts frequently overlook. A victim's experience with the criminal justice
system—particularly when the process is long-delayed, convoluted, and seemingly
never-ending—compounds the initial effect of the violent crime. In capital
cases in particular, years of delay exact an enormous physical, emotional, and
financial toll on victims' families. The delays also keep family members from
experiencing a sense of "closure"—the hope that they will be able to put the
murder behind them.
In this particular case, the Eighth Circuit properly sought to put an end to
Bucklew's abusive litigation and dilatory tactics, rejecting his "as applied"
challenge to Missouri's use of lethal injection to carry out the execution. Now
that the case is before the Supreme Court, Missouri has responded in detail to
Bucklew's as-applied claims in its brief. Seventeen States have supported
Missouri's analysis on the lack of merit to Bucklew's claims in an amicus
brief.
Our amicus brief takes a different tack and focuses on victim-related issues.
We urge the Court to reject Bucklew's arguments because of his deliberate
dilatory tactics. Here is how our brief concludes:
For as long as this Court has recognized § 1983 method-of-execution claims,
it has also recognized the potential for their abuse. See, e.g., Gomez v. U.S.
Dist. Court for N. Dist. of California, 503 U.S. 653, 654 (1992) (per curiam)
(rejecting method-of-execution challenge and explaining that "[e]quity must
take into consideration the State's strong interest in proceeding with its
judgment and Harris' obvious attempt at manipulation"). And this Court has held
that "[b]oth the State and the victims of crime have an important interest in
the timely enforcement of a sentence" that should be protected by dismissing
abusive § 1983 suits. Hill v. McDonough, 547 U.S. 573, 584 (2006) (citing
Gomez).
In Hill, this Court held that capital defendants could sometimes step
outside the habeas framework and use § 1983 to challenge the method of their
planned execution. Id. at 583. At the same time, the Court recognized the
obvious potential for abuse in using § 1983 as a procedural vehicle given that,
among other things, such suits are not subject to the bar on successive habeas
petitions—and warned that repetitive, dilatory, and strategic § 1983 suits
should not be allowed to trump the interest of victims. Id. at 584. The Court
explained that its decisions upholding § 1983 method-of-execution suits "do not
diminish that interest, nor do they deprive federal courts of the means to
protect it." Ibid. This is so, in part, because "the 'last-minute nature of an
application' or an applicant's 'attempt at manipulation' of the judicial
process may be grounds for denial of a stay" or other relief. Ibid. (quoting
Gomez, 503 U.S. at 654).
Although Hill was most directly concerned with stay applications, it
approvingly cited cases that applied the same reasoning to dismiss outright
"[r]epetitive or piecemeal" § 1983 claims. Id. at 584–85 (noting courts' use of
their equitable authority "to dismiss suits they saw as speculative or filed
too late in the day" as an example of how "dilatory or speculative suits" could
be addressed); id. at 584 (citing White v. Johnson, 429 F.3d 572, 574 (5th Cir.
2005), which dismissed a § 1983 action because the claimant "has been on death
row for more than six years, and only now, with his execution imminent, has
decided to challenge a procedure for lethal injection that the State has been
using for his entire stay on death row").
It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate case for exercising equitable
authority to protect crime victims against repeated manipulation of the
judicial process than this one. Bucklew refused to make his as-applied
challenge until the last moment—a mere 12 days before his execution—despite his
awareness of the availability of such a challenge at least 6 years earlier. See
White, 429 F.3d at 574 (dismissing § 1983 method-of-execution challenge where
the claimant was aware of its availability "for more than six years" and only
brought it "with his execution imminent"). Despite virtually unlimited
opportunities to bring (and have resolved) any as-applied claims during that
six-year period, Bucklew chose not to do so. Even after he was finally forced
to bring his claim, he has been careful to avoid any real merits
determination—arguing that a lethal gas procedure Missouri has not used for 50
years could possibly be constitutional, while offering the testimony of an
expert who claims that no procedure whatsoever, gas or otherwise, could be
satisfactory.
Unless the judgment below is affirmed, Bucklew will continue to bring suit
after suit for no purpose other than drawing out these proceedings and dragging
his victims through as many years of litigation as he possibly can. The
"important interest" of crime victims that this Court recognized in Hill should
be vindicated here by holding that the equities lie with the victims who have
been denied peace and closure for over two decades—and affirming the judgment
below on that ground.
I hope that the Supreme Court will affirm the judgment of the Eighth Circuit.
(source: Paul G. Cassell is the Ronald N. Boyce Presidential Professor of
Criminal Law and University Distinguished Professor of Law at S.J. Quinney
College of Law at the University of Utah----reason.com)
*************
U.S. Supreme Court death penalty case puts Kavanaugh on the spot
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday considers a Missouri murderer’s bid to avoid
execution by lethal injection on the grounds that the procedure might rupture
blood-filled tumours on his body due to a rare ailment, with new Justice Brett
Kavanaugh likely to be the deciding vote.
Lawyers for Russell Bucklew, 50, have argued that because of a congenital
condition called cavernous haemangioma the lethal injection could cause undue
agony in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual
punishment.
In Missouri, execution is authorised using either lethal injection or lethal
gas. The state in practice uses only lethal injection. Bucklew, whose appeal is
neither contesting his guilt nor seeking to avoid execution, has suggested
being put to death by gas.
The high court on March 20 issued a stay of execution moments before Bucklew
was scheduled to be put to death so he could pursue his appeal. The vote was
5-4, with four of the court’s five conservative justices voting to deny the
request.
The conservative justice who voted with the court’s four liberals to grant the
stay, Anthony Kennedy, has since retired. He was replaced by Kavanaugh, a
conservative appeals court judge who was appointed by President Donald Trump
and joined the court last month after a fierce Senate confirmation battle.
Trump’s other Supreme Court appointee, conservative Justice Neil Gorusch, voted
against granting the stay. The justices issued a similar stay of execution for
Bucklew in 2014.
Bucklew was convicted of the 1996 murder in southeastern Missouri of Michael
Sanders, who was living with Bucklew’s former girlfriend Stephanie Ray at the
time. Bucklew fatally shot Sanders at his trailer home, kidnapped and raped
Ray, shot at Sanders’ 6-year-old son and wounded a police officer before being
apprehended, according to court papers.
Bucklew’s condition has caused large, blood-filled tumours to grow on his face,
head, neck and throat, according to court papers.
A ruling is due by the end of June.
Bucklew’s case represents the latest fight at the Supreme Court involving the
death penalty, though he is not challenging the constitutionality of capital
punishment. While some liberal justices have questioned the death penalty, the
high court has steered clear of cases that directly challenge its legality.
In March, the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against
Bucklew, saying he had failed to show lethal gas would not cause him similarly
intense pain as lethal injection. Bucklew then appealed to the Supreme Court.
In 2015, the Supreme Court upheld the use of a drug employed by Oklahoma in its
lethal injections. The court made clear that when challenging a method of
execution, inmates must show that there is an alternative method that would be
less painful.
A convicted double murderer named Edmund Zagorski was executed by electric
chair in Tennessee last Thursday after arguing that the state’s lethal
injection procedure would be too painful.
(source: Reuters)
CALIFORNIA:
2 California death row inmates found dead; suicide suspected
2 condemned multiple murderers, including a serial killer, apparently committed
suicide within hours of each other on the nation’s largest death row,
California officials said Monday.
Corrections officials said they found Andrew Urdiales, 54, unresponsive during
a security check at San Quentin State Prison late Friday.
He was sentenced to death on Oct. 5 by an Orange County judge for killing 5
women in California, and previously faced the death penalty for 3 murders in
Illinois.
Urdiales had been on California’s death row since Oct. 12.
Separately, authorities say they found Virendra Govin, 51, unresponsive alone
in his cell in a different death row housing unit late Sunday.
Govin was sentenced in December 2004 for committing four Los Angeles County
murders.
Officials said that while both men’s deaths are being investigated as suicides,
there is no indication that their deaths are related.
California has not executed anyone since 2006 and inmates are far more likely
to die from suicide or old age.
Since California reinstated capital punishment in 1978, 79 condemned inmates
have died from natural causes, 25 have committed suicide, 13 have been executed
in California, 1 was executed in Missouri, and 1 was executed in Virginia.
There currently are 740 offenders on California’s death row.
The suspected suicides were announced the same day that a federal
court-appointed special master who oversees prison mental health care
criticized California corrections officials for proposing that they be allowed
to start negotiating an end to federal oversight of suicide prevention efforts.
Special master Matty Lopes called the state’s proposal “incredibly premature”
given the continued problems outlined in an expert’s report also released
Monday.
Attorneys representing inmates said the state’s suicide rate is, for the second
year in a row, on track to exceed 24 suicides per 100,000 inmates. That was
before 6 suicides since Sept. 1, including the 2 on death row.
That far exceeds the national state prison rate of 16 suicides per 100,000
inmates.
The exchange came as a federal judge considers appointing an outside
investigator to weigh a whistleblower’s allegations that top California
corrections officials are misleading federal officials about improvements in
the treatment of mentally ill inmates.
State officials again denied that there was any fraudulent activity but said
some mistakes have since been corrected.
(source: Associated Press)
_______________________________________________
A service courtesy of Washburn University School of Law www.washburnlaw.edu
DeathPenalty mailing list
***@lists.washlaw.edu
http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty
Unsubscribe:
NORTH CAROLINA:
Suspects in 2 Henderson County accused killers will face death penalty at trial
Accused killers Terry Brank and Anthony Moore both had hearings Monday in their
domestic and family violence cases. News 13 was there, and learned that each of
the accused will face the death penalty in trial.
Brank is accused of killing Laura Cox with an edged weapon in their home in
July.
Major Frank Stout told News 13 that there were 13 calls for service made to the
home the year Cox died.
Not all of them were domestic related, but, Stout said, investigators were
quite familiar with the address.
Since 2005, Stout says there were 54 total calls for service. 15 of those were
domestic related, though not all of them involved Brank.
Cox's frend Vicky Seelig said Brank was gone from the home for more than a
month, but came back at the end of May, with no protective order on file at the
clerk’s office to keep him away.
Moore is accused of throwing gasoline on Teresa Stallings and lighting her on
fire -- resulting in her death 6 months later.
Stallings, 44, died at the Burn Center at Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem in
July.
"She got in an argument with her boyfriend and she was going out of the house
to leave and he threw gasoline on her," Stallings' sister Andrea Blankenship
told News 13 this past August. "And she didn't know what it was. And she got in
her car, and he lit her on fire in her car,."
Stallings fought for her life.
"She was in the ICU at Wake Forest, and they did 3, 4 surgeries a week, skin
grafting, because she lost her ear, her breast, her lips," Blankenship said.
The family told News 13 they hoped the murder charge would bring some justice
for Stallings, and keep Moore off the streets.
(source: WLOS news)
FLORIDA:
Man exonerated in Seminole County double murder after 10 years on death
row----Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin 'nearly executed for a crime he didn't commit'
All charges have been dropped against a man who spent more than 14 years in
jail and a decade on Florida's death row for the 2004 murders of his Altamonte
Springs neighbors, according to State Attorney Phil Archer.
Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin was arrested at 24 years old and received the death
penalty in 2006 for the stabbing deaths of his neighbors, Cheryl Williams and
her mother, Carol Bareis.
Aguirre, an undocumented immigrant from Honduras, found their bodies, but
didn't report it in fear of being deported, he told authorities. The victims
had been stabbed dozens of times. While checking for a pulse, Aguirre's
attorneys said he got their blood on his clothing.
The Innocence Project, which works to exonerate wrongly convicted people, took
on Aguirre’s case in 2011.
In 2016, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously overturned Aguirre’s conviction
and death sentence based on new evidence that included DNA testing of multiple
pieces of crime scene evidence that implicated another suspect: the victims’
daughter and granddaughter, Samantha Williams. Williams later confessed that
she committed the murders to numerous friends and acquaintances who had no
connection to Aguirre, according to the Innocence Project.
Archer planned to seek the death penalty again in a re-trial, but Aguirre's
lawyers presented the State Attorney's Office with additional evidence
"undermining Williams’ alibi and further implicating her emerged in recent
pretrial proceedings," according to a news release.
On Monday, the State Attorney's Office announced it was dropping the
prosecution of Aguirre, now 38. His 2nd trial was set to begin this week.
"While the State has serious concerns about the credibility of Mr.
Aguirre-Jarquin's statement of facts regarding his participation in this
incident, the State does not believe further incarceration of Mr.
Aguirre-Jarquin is warranted or justified at this time," a spokesperson for the
State Attorney's Office said. "We appreciate the efforts of his attorney's in
presenting this new evidence."
"From the bottom of my heart, this humble immigrant thanks you." Clemente
Aguirre-Jarquin https://t.co/64oELedXP3 pic.twitter.com/U1LmTazaHM — Innocence
Project (@innocence) November 5, 2018
Williams has not been charged in the deaths of her mother and grandmother.
A spokesperson for the state attorney's office said prosecutors "will be
meeting with the Seminole County Sheriff's Office over the coming weeks to
review the evidence and determine if there are any investigative avenues that
can be pursued, or any further action to be taken in this case."
Aguirre's exoneration hearing Monday in Seminole County was attended by more
than a dozen lawyers who worked on his case over the last decade, along with
his 2 sisters and friends.
After the hearing Aguirre thanked his legal team.
“I have only forgiveness in my heart for those who did wrong to me," Aguirre
said.
“Mr. Aguirre was nearly executed for a crime he didn’t commit,” one of
Aguirre’s lead trial attorneys, Joshua Dubin, said. “While we are overjoyed
that his ordeal is finally over, the case of Clemente Aguirre should serve as a
chilling cautionary tale about how dangerous it is when there is a rush to
judgment in a capital case."
There is an immigration hold on Aguirre's jail file preventing his release.
(source: clickorlando.com)
******************
Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin: Florida Death Row Exoneration #28
Circuit Judge John D. Galluzzo has dismissed all charges and exonerated
Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin after prosecutors announced today, in the middle of
jury selection, that they will not proceed with
his retrial. Clemente spent nearly 15 years behind bars — including 10 on
Florida's death row.
Kudos to The Innocence Project and the dedicated team of attorneys who donated
their time and worked for years to make this possible.
“Mr. Aguirre was nearly executed for a crime he didn’t commit,” said Joshua
Dubin, one of Aguirre’s lead trial attorneys.
This is the 28th death row exoneration in Florida since executions resumed in
the 1970's. One wonders how many more innocent people remain on Florida's death
row and how many other innocent men and women have already been executed. We
will never know for sure. By state statute, the evidence is destroyed after an
execution.
Please support the statewide organized grassroots effort to end executions in
Florida.
Please share this message with others. Only with your help can the work be done
and progress made.
(source: Mark Elliott, Executive Director Floridians for Alternatives to the
Death Penalty----www.fadp.org)
ALABAMA:
Legal battle centers on release of Alabama execution details
A federal appeals court is considering whether a lower court judge was wrong to
rule that Alabama's execution protocol should be unsealed at the request of
news outlets.
U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre ruled in May that the public has "a common law
right of access" to a redacted version of the state's lethal injection protocol
and related court records. The state appealed, and a three-judge panel of the
11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta on Monday heard arguments in the
appeal.
The Associated Press, The Montgomery Advertiser and the Alabama Media Group had
asked the court in March to unseal records in a lawsuit brought by death row
inmate Doyle Lee Hamm. Alabama prison officials in February halted Hamm's
scheduled execution at the last minute when the lethal injection team was
unable to connect an intravenous line to his veins.
Alabama has for years refused to release the details of its execution process
and where it gets the drugs used in lethal injections.
The public has a great interest in understanding how Alabama carries out
executions and the unsealing of the documents would likely "promote
understanding of a historically significant event," Bowdre wrote in a 19-page
memorandum ordering the release of the records. She wrote that the state could
keep secret some information, like the names of low-level prison employees
involved in executions.
Hamm's attorneys had sued to block his execution, saying his veins were so
damaged by lymphoma, hepatitis and past drug use that it would be extremely
difficult to execute him. As part of that litigation, the state provided Hamm's
attorneys with a redacted copy of the execution protocol after securing a
protective order from the judge to keep it confidential.
Stephen Frisby, a lawyer for the state argued in court that while the execution
protocol was provided to Hamm's attorneys and the judge, it was never attached
to a filing in the case and therefore shouldn't be considered a judicial record
that is subject to release.
Bowdre had concluded in her order that it was a judicial record because she
"needed and relied upon" that document to decide Hamm's case. The reason it
wasn't formally filed is because the parties and the court were rushing to
address Hamm's claim before his scheduled execution date, she wrote.
Frisby argued that even if the execution protocol is subject to the common-law
right of access, the state's interest in keeping it secret for security reasons
outweighs the interest of news outlets to access it.
Catherine Martinez, representing the news outlets, acknowledged that the state
has legitimate security interests but argued that redactions can eliminate that
problem. The balancing test between the parties' interests starts with the
presumption that judicial records are open to the public, she said.
Frisby also argued that the news outlets shouldn't have been allowed to
intervene in Hamm's case because they waited until the case had been dismissed.
But Martinez noted that their motion was filed the same day that the case was
dismissed and that the court's jurisdiction over a sealing order extends beyond
the end of the case.
The panel of judges grilled Frisby, repeatedly asking why an execution protocol
should be exempt from release and whether the public is entitled to know what
the judge considers when deciding a case.
But Judge Gerald Tjoflat cautioned Martinez not to take the harsh questioning
of the state as an indication that her side had a leg up. The judges asked
Martinez about the timing of the new outlets' motion to intervene in the case
and the balancing test judges use to determine whether to unseal documents.
(source: Associated Press)
LOUISIANA:
Conservative-led effort to abolish death penalty headed to Louisiana, activists
say
While abolition of the death penalty has long been considered a liberal policy
goal, a new group of conservatives activists say it fundamentally conflicts
with their view of a limited government, and they are now organizing an effort
to end its practice in Louisiana.
In 2013, the number of Republican lawmakers proposing legislation to end the
death penalty in their states more than doubled from single digits to 20, and
doubled again in in 2016 to 40, according to a group called Conservatives
Concerned About the Death Penalty, which sponsored a forum on the issue
Thursday evening at Tulane University. Likewise, nearly a third of the
co-sponsors of bills abolishing the death penalty were Republicans in 2016 and
2017, up from nearly zero a decade ago, the group’s research shows.
Louisiana is among those states, with legislation to eliminate the death
penalty in 2017 sponsored by Republican state Sen. Dan Claitor of Baton Rouge,
whose conserative bona fides include honors from the Louisiana Family Forum.
Claitor’s stated views that the death penalty is expensive and ineffective fall
right in line with the thinking being adopted by many other conservaties, said
Hannah Cox, a national organizer for Conservatives Against the Death Penalty.
Cox was still strongly in support of the death penalty when she first began
working in conservative politics, she told the crowd at the Tulane panel. But
when asked to research a bill regarding the death penalty for the mentally ill,
she began to examine the policy’s effects for the first time, and became
convinced that it contradicted her conservative principles.
“People who have never been to prison think that life is the most valuable
thing they have, but it’s actually freedom,” Cox said, noting that many
death-row inmates give up on the appeals process and submit to execution as a
way of ending their incarceration. “When you lose your freedom, you realize
that.”
Michael Cahoon, a local organizer for the progressive Promise for Justice
Initiative, said he was asked to join the penalty to provide the “liberal”
perspective on the issue. But raised as a Catholic opposed to it for religious
reasons, Cahoon said he feels the issue fits clearly as a conservative one.
“I actually think the conservative case against the death penalty is much more
direct — a limit on government power,” Cahoon said.
Cox and Cahoon laid out a number of objections to the death penalty:
It has great potential for error, possibly resulting in the government
putting an innocent person to death. Nearly 1 in 10 people sentenced to death
have subsequently been exonerated since the penalty was reinstated in the
1970s, Cox said.
It is too expensive, with millions spent by each death-penalty state on
their cases every year that could be redirected into law-enforcement. Many
critics of the justice system focus on the lengthy appeals process in
death-penalty cases, which can drag on for decades. A study in North Carolina,
however, showed that the 70 % of the cost was incurred during
the initial trial and sentencing phase, because the state must pay for so much
more forensic testing and specialized experts to even seek the conviction.
It is not a deterrent. States with the death penalty regularly see higher
rates of violent crime than those without it. Meanwhile, most law-enforcement
experts agree that the best deterrent to crime is the perceived likelihood of
arrest — thoughts of eventual sentences are far more abstract and unlikely to
play a role in a heated moment.
It is applied seemingly at random. Many people say they support it only for
the “worst of the worst,” but it is much more commonly applied to routine
crimes. Many serial killers plead to life in prison, and the death-penalty was
not even sought for 9/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, for example.
It is racially biased — usually around the race of the victim, even moreso
than the race of the criminal. The last time a white person was put to death in
Louisiana for killing a black person was in 1752, Cahoon noted — and that was a
slave considered property, so the sentence was actually applied for destruction
of property, not for killing a person.
That disparity, Cahoon said, shows that the implementation of the law
implicitly values the lives of one racial group more than another — a direct
contradiction of nearly anyone’s values imaginable.
It does harm to victims of crime. A death-penalty trial is frequently the
worst thing that can happen to crime victims, Cahoon said. Every development
becomes front-page news, often for 2 decades while the lengthy appeals run
their course.
“A lot of people put the healing process on hold until the legal process is
finished,” Cahoon said. “In the death penalty, that process could be 30 years.
It could be never.”
The death-penalty opponents found few critics in their audience of 50, most of
whom were college-aged. One man questioned whether isolating death-row inmates
makes the general prison population safer, but Cahoon and Cox said that there
is little evidence that the murders placed on death row are more dangerous than
those who plead to life, and that better measures can be used to ensure safety
in prisons anyway.
While some opponents of the death penalty envision a sweeping federal decision
to repeal it, Cox said that Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty has
decided that a state-by-state approach is more effective. For one thing, a
single federal decision abolishing it could be overturned by a subsequent
federal decision, essentially reinstating it yet again. State-level actions, by
contrast, would have to be overturned individually.
The effort is also playing out in state legislatures — and must do so in
Louisiana, Cahoon said, where the state Constitution does not lend itself to
challenging the death penalty through a court decision. Claitor has already
begun building allies for his work in Baton Rouge, however. His 2017 bill
passed a Republican-majority committee, and both state Sen. J.P. Morrell and
state Rep. Terry Landry (2 Democrats) have introduced similar bills — and
activists predict the Catholic Church, opposed to the death penalty for
decades, can be a particularly influential ally in the state.
“It’s not partisan, or bipartisan, even. It’s nonpartisan,” Cahoon said.
“Especially in Louisiana, you have nonpartisan reasons that really bring people
together.”
In order to support those efforts, Conservatives Concerned Against the Death
Penalty is forming a chapter specifically for Louisiana, Cox said. They hope to
have the structure in place by the end of the year, so they can begin work
during next year’s legislative session.
(source: uptownmessenger.com)
OHIO:
U.S. Supreme Court won’t review Ohio death penalty law
Declining to hear an appeal challenging Ohio’s death penalty law,
the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for a Marion County court to
sentence a man convicted of murder and rape in 1993 in Marion County.
By doing so, the justices chose not to review an Ohio Supreme Court decision
last April holding that the state’s death penalty law does not violate the
Constitution.
Instead, the Marion Court of Common Pleas can hold a hearing to determine
whether Maurice Mason of Marion should be sentenced to death for the murder and
rape of 19-year-old Robin Dennis.
Attorneys for Mason argued that Ohio’s death penalty law violated the
Constitution because a judge — as opposed to a jury — imposed the sentence. The
U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 struck down a Florida death penalty law in which a
jury issued an advisory sentence, but a judge could rule for the death penalty.
Kort Gatterdam, a Columbus attorney representing Mason said he was
“disappointed” the justices “not to take the case at this time. We were hopeful
they would take a look at Ohio’s statute because it had the same flaws as
Florida’s.”
(source: The Columbus Dispatch)
********************
North Royalton man admits killing woman, daughters, as judges hear evidence in
potential death-penalty case
A 3-judge panel began hearings Monday to decide whether to accept George
Brinkman’s guilty plea to murder charges that make him eligible to face the
death penalty in the grisly June 2017 slayings of a North Royalton mother and
her 2 adult daughters.
Brinkman, 46, showed little emotion Monday as he admitted to murdering his
longtime friend, 42-year-old Suzanne Taylor, and her 2 daughters who witnesses
said looked up to Brinkman like a second father, Taylor Pifer, 21, and Kylie
Pifer, 18.
Brinkman used a knife to slit Taylor’s throat, strangled Kylie Pifer with a
telephone cord and smothered Taylor Pifer with a pillow, before placing their
bodies in Taylor’s bed, investigators said.
When a person charged in a death-penalty case in Ohio wants to plead guilty,
prosecutors must first present evidence to prove each charge the person wants
to plead to is based in fact before a judicial panel can accept the plea and
find that person guilty.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court judges Peter J. Corrigan, Michael
Shaughnessy and Timothy McCormick immediately began that hearing Monday after
Brinkman said he wished to plead guilty.
Brinkman faces either execution, life in prison with no chance at parole or
life with parole after 20, 25 or 30 years on the murder charges. He could face
additional time behind bars on top of the life sentence as he also pleaded
guilty to aggravated burglary, kidnapping and offenses against a human corpse
charges in connection with the women’s deaths.
Brinkman is also accused of fatally shooting a Stark County couple in their
home. That case will be tried separately in Summit County after the case that
began Monday is wrapped up.
Corrigan, Shaughnessy and McCormick will preside over the hearings because
Brinkman waived his right to have a jury make those decisions.
Thomas Conway, part of the team of defense lawyers representing Brinkman, said
in court Monday that his client had offered several times to plead guilty and
serve a life sentence with no chance at parole. But Cuyahoga County Prosecutor
Michael O’Malley and his office refused to drop the pursuit of the death
penalty.
Witnesses called on the 1st day of testimony illuminated Brinkman’s
relationship with Taylor, and the discovery of the women’s bodies.
Brinkman and Taylor went to grade school together, and remained friends into
adulthood, Taylor’s boyfriend, Scott Plymale, testified. Brinkman had no family
and often needed a place to sleep, so Taylor opened up her home to him on
holidays and cold nights, Plymale said. Brinkman helped with work around the
house.
“She told me once that she wasn’t going to let a friend freeze to death because
they didn’t have a place to stay,” Plymale said.
Brinkman drove a black cargo van with a red stripe down the side that the
family referred to as the “A-Team van," and one year for Christmas Taylor
Pifer’s boyfriend, Dale Kostar, outfitted the van with neon lights as a gift.
“She thought of [Brinkman] as another father,” Kostar said of his late
girlfriend. “He would probably be one of the first persons they would call.”
On June 10, 2017, Taylor texted Plymale that she had not been feeling well and
was going to take a nap, which Plymale said was out of character. That
afternoon, Plymale helped one of the daughters after she got a flat tire at
SouthPark Mall. He told Taylor that he was going to take her daughter to Sears
to get her tire fixed, but Taylor called him on the phone and told Plymale to
just send the girl home.
Plymale said he then went shopping and bought Taylor flowers because she was
sick. He dropped them off at her home and noticed Brinkman’s van was backed up
to the front window, he said. The doors were locked and all the windows were
shut, which he found unusual because the house had no air conditioning and it
was the summer. He put the flowers on the porch and left.
The next evening, after no one heard from Taylor or her daughters for more than
24 hours, Kostar said he went to the house while he spoke to Plymale on the
phone.
Kostar said he used his experience as a contractor to pick the lock and enter
the home. He noticed the bouquet of roses that Plymale had left the day earlier
on the kitchen table, and that Taylor’s bedroom door, which was always open,
was closed and latched shut.
He opened the door, and saw what he could tell was Kylie Pifer’s arm hanging
over the side of the bed from beneath the covers on her mother’s bed. He said
he could tell there were more bodies under the blanket.
Plymale told Kostar to get out of the house, and then hung up and called
police, who later found all three women’s bodies, face down and side-by-side,
in the bed.
Sometime after the discovery, Kostar said he called Brinkman to inform him.
Brinkman seemed surprised, sad and genuinely heartbroken from the news, Kostar
said.
Police and the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office sealed off the house
all week as part of the investigation. When the home was unsealed, Plymale
said, he and other family friends and relatives came to clean the house and
find the documents and paperwork. That’s when he noticed a lock of hair on top
of a suitcase just outside Taylor’s bedroom door.
Taylor had long, flowing dark hair that stretched to her lower back, and she
took pride in her locks, Plymale said.
Police came back to the home and found the woman’s hair strewn about the house,
leading investigators to believe Brinkman had cut off Taylor’s hair before he
took the knife to her throat.
The hearings are expected to last several days.
(source: cleveland.com)
KENTUCKY:
Murder suspect wants death penalty removed
The attorneys for a man suspected of killing a woman at her Russellville
apartment is seeking to have the death penalty removed as a potential
punishment.
Demetrius Roberson, 24, is charged with murder, attempted murder, 1st-degree
robbery and 9 counts of 1st-degree wanton endangerment.
The charges stem from an Aug. 21, 2016, shooting in which Lexus Bell, 21, was
killed at her apartment in front of several children, who were there in
anticipation of traveling to a birthday party the next day, according to
police.
Acting Logan County Commonwealth's Attorney Justin Crocker is seeking the death
penalty for Roberson, who is currently incarcerated on an unrelated robbery
conviction.
Roberson's attorneys, Michael Bufkin and Audrey Woosnam, filed three motions to
exclude the death penalty on the grounds that the state's death penalty statute
is unconstitutional.
Woosnam said in one motion that the state's death penalty law was drafted based
on language in the Model Penal Code, a text published in 1962 by the American
Law Institute that assists state legislatures in the setting of law relating to
criminal penalties.
The death penalty statute was removed from the Model Penal Code in 2009, with
members of the American Law Institute questioning the soundness of implementing
capital punishment, and Woosnam argues that Kentucky's statute "is no longer
consisting with evolving standards of decency" and violates Roberson's rights.
Woosnam seeks in another motion to declare the state death penalty
unconstitutional, arguing that it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and
noting that 20 states have abolished the death penalty.
No one in Kentucky has been executed since 2008, and a state court judge issued
an injunction in 2010 preventing the state from carrying out further executions
until new protocols regulating lethal injunction as a method of execution are
implemented.
In a 3rd motion, Woosnam argues that the death penalty violates due process
rights on several grounds.
"Several aspects of Kentucky's criminal justice system create a substantial
risk of sentencing to death and ultimately executing persons for whom death is
a disproportionate punishment, or even those who are completely innocent,"
Woosnam said in one motion.
Defendants in capital cases also receive inadequate legal counsel, Woosnam
argued. He said public defenders with high caseloads and low salaries struggle
under an inadequately funded system to provide effective representation of
clients in death penalty cases.
Other factors that throw the legality of the death penalty into question
include capital juries being incapable of rendering fair and impartial verdicts
due to not understanding jury instructions, a lack of opportunity for convicted
defendants to wage meaningful appeals and inadequate safeguards under state law
to prevent the execution of mentally ill defendants, Woosnam argued.
A hearing to address the motions has been set for Nov. 13 in Logan Circuit
Court.
2 co-defendants, Reba Kirk and Jordan Lunsford, have pleaded guilty to crimes
associated with Bell's death and have been sentenced. Cases against 2 more
co-defendants, Tayveon Bibb and Deon Young, are pending.
(source: Bowling Green Daily News)
TENNESSEE:
Tennessee death row inmates want firing squad as execution alternative
Lawyers for 4 inmates on Tennessee’s death row are seeking the firing squad as
an alternative to the state’s execution methods of lethal injection and the
electric chair, The Tennessean reported Monday.
The inmates who filed suit in federal court late Friday included David Earl
Miller, scheduled to be executed Dec. 6 for the 1981 rape and murder of Lee
Standifer, the newspaper reported. The other inmates are Nicholas Todd Sutton,
Stephen Michael West and Terry Lynn King.
The lawsuit asks the court to postpone Miller's execution until his case can be
heard, The Tennessean reported. Tennessee’s execution protocol stipulates that
Miller will be asked to choose his method of execution 30 days before the
sentence is carried out. That means Miller must make his choice Tuesday, the
newspaper reported. The lawsuit wants the court to stop state officials from
presenting Miller with that choice.
The lawsuit was filed a day after 63-year-old Edmund George Zagorski was
executed by electric chair for a pair of 1983 murders.
Zagorski won a legal action to bypass Tennessee’s lethal injection execution,
winning the right to die by the electric chair on Nov. 1.
Trained professionals reduce error rates in executions by firing squad, the
lawsuit claims.
"The firing squad significantly reduces a substantial risk of unnecessary and
severe pain when compared with" Tennessee's three-drug cocktail used in lethal
injections, sparing the men suffocation, internal chemical burn and paralysis,
The Tennessean reported, citing the lawsuit.
Only Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah formally authorize the use of a firing
squad, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. It was last used in
the United States in 2010 by Utah officials.
(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
MISSOURI:
Dilatory Tactics in a Death Penalty Case?----My co-authored amicus brief urges
the Supreme Court to bring an end to decades-long abusive litigation by
convicted murderer Russell Bucklew.
In 1996, Russell Bucklew murdered Michael Sanders as his 2 young sons—only 4
and 6 years old—watched their father bleed to death in front of them. Then, as
the young daughters of Bucklew's other victim, Stephanie Ray, cried and wailed
for their mother, Bucklew handcuffed and dragged her away to endure hours of
rape and torture. Bucklew's reign of terror continued when he broke out of
jail, forced victims to go into hiding, and ambushed 1 victim's mother in her
own home. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death over 20 years ago.
Tomorrow the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Bucklew v. Precythe, in
which Bucklew is raising an "as applied" challenge to Missouri's method of
executing him (lethal injection). Counsel of record Allyson Ho, several of her
colleagues at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and I have filed an amicus brief in
support of Missouri. We filed the brief on behalf of the sister of Michael
Sanders and Arizona Voice for Crime Victims. Our amicus brief urges the Court
to reject Bucklew's challenge and end more than 2 decades of litigation.
Bucklew's latest challenge argues that, as applied to him, Missouri's method of
carrying out the capital sentence constitutes cruel and unusual punishment
because of his unique medical condition (benign oral tumors). This challenge
could have been raised more than decade ago. In June 2008, Bucklew filed a
pleading asking to hire a medical expert to support a clemency application—and
supported his request by claiming that, because of his condition, "execution by
lethal injection may pose a substantial and intolerable risk of inflicting
serious harm and excruciating pain." His 2008 filing included extensive
argument that he would "suffer the risk of serious harm amounting to cruel and
unusual punishment during the administration of Missouri's lethal injection
protocol in light of his affliction with cavernous hemangioma." It even stated
that Bucklew sought to demonstrate that Missouri's procedure was
unconstitutional "as applied uniquely" to him.
Yet despite his obvious awareness of a possible as-applied challenge based on
his condition, Bucklew refused for years to bring such a challenge. Instead, he
brought or joined a series of facial challenges—always ensuring that his
as-applied challenge was at the ready for later use. After years of litigation
on facial challenges, in May, 2014, less than 2 weeks before his scheduled
execution, Bucklew finally brought his as-applied challenge. Having held that
challenge in reserve for years, Bucklew was able to secure a stay of execution
from the Supreme Court while Missouri's other capital defendants could not, and
he staved off dismissal of his new as-applied claims despite the dismissal of
the other defendants' facial challenges.
In proceedings below, the district court and the court of appeals saw through
Bucklew's strategy and held that, even after extensive discovery, he had not
made any real effort to discern what procedures would actually be used at his
execution—and thus could not show that any such procedures would be more
painful than his lethal gas alternative. As the Eighth Circuit noted, Bucklew
successfully prolonged his as-applied challenge in 2015 by arguing for the
necessity of further fact-finding—and then showed no interest in that
fact-finding once his challenge was revived. Specifically, three years before,
Bucklew argued that the Eighth Circuit should reverse the dismissal of his
complaint to allow him to take further discovery regarding what changes the
State could make to its protocol to accommodate his condition—because without
knowing the exact parameters of the protocol, Bucklew could not effectively
argue against them. But once Bucklew secured reversal and remand, he stopped
caring about what changes Missouri would make to its procedures, and did
nothing to determine what, exactly, the effects of those procedures would be
with respect to his condition. The district court ruled for the State and the
Eighth Circuit affirmed.
As a result of these manipulative litigation tactics, Michael Sanders' family
has been harmed. The first part of our amicus brief reviews the academic and
other literature on the effect of such delays on victims' families. The
literature confirms that long after the immediate loss and physical trauma are
over, victims' families continue to suffer from psychological trauma, which
courts frequently overlook. A victim's experience with the criminal justice
system—particularly when the process is long-delayed, convoluted, and seemingly
never-ending—compounds the initial effect of the violent crime. In capital
cases in particular, years of delay exact an enormous physical, emotional, and
financial toll on victims' families. The delays also keep family members from
experiencing a sense of "closure"—the hope that they will be able to put the
murder behind them.
In this particular case, the Eighth Circuit properly sought to put an end to
Bucklew's abusive litigation and dilatory tactics, rejecting his "as applied"
challenge to Missouri's use of lethal injection to carry out the execution. Now
that the case is before the Supreme Court, Missouri has responded in detail to
Bucklew's as-applied claims in its brief. Seventeen States have supported
Missouri's analysis on the lack of merit to Bucklew's claims in an amicus
brief.
Our amicus brief takes a different tack and focuses on victim-related issues.
We urge the Court to reject Bucklew's arguments because of his deliberate
dilatory tactics. Here is how our brief concludes:
For as long as this Court has recognized § 1983 method-of-execution claims,
it has also recognized the potential for their abuse. See, e.g., Gomez v. U.S.
Dist. Court for N. Dist. of California, 503 U.S. 653, 654 (1992) (per curiam)
(rejecting method-of-execution challenge and explaining that "[e]quity must
take into consideration the State's strong interest in proceeding with its
judgment and Harris' obvious attempt at manipulation"). And this Court has held
that "[b]oth the State and the victims of crime have an important interest in
the timely enforcement of a sentence" that should be protected by dismissing
abusive § 1983 suits. Hill v. McDonough, 547 U.S. 573, 584 (2006) (citing
Gomez).
In Hill, this Court held that capital defendants could sometimes step
outside the habeas framework and use § 1983 to challenge the method of their
planned execution. Id. at 583. At the same time, the Court recognized the
obvious potential for abuse in using § 1983 as a procedural vehicle given that,
among other things, such suits are not subject to the bar on successive habeas
petitions—and warned that repetitive, dilatory, and strategic § 1983 suits
should not be allowed to trump the interest of victims. Id. at 584. The Court
explained that its decisions upholding § 1983 method-of-execution suits "do not
diminish that interest, nor do they deprive federal courts of the means to
protect it." Ibid. This is so, in part, because "the 'last-minute nature of an
application' or an applicant's 'attempt at manipulation' of the judicial
process may be grounds for denial of a stay" or other relief. Ibid. (quoting
Gomez, 503 U.S. at 654).
Although Hill was most directly concerned with stay applications, it
approvingly cited cases that applied the same reasoning to dismiss outright
"[r]epetitive or piecemeal" § 1983 claims. Id. at 584–85 (noting courts' use of
their equitable authority "to dismiss suits they saw as speculative or filed
too late in the day" as an example of how "dilatory or speculative suits" could
be addressed); id. at 584 (citing White v. Johnson, 429 F.3d 572, 574 (5th Cir.
2005), which dismissed a § 1983 action because the claimant "has been on death
row for more than six years, and only now, with his execution imminent, has
decided to challenge a procedure for lethal injection that the State has been
using for his entire stay on death row").
It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate case for exercising equitable
authority to protect crime victims against repeated manipulation of the
judicial process than this one. Bucklew refused to make his as-applied
challenge until the last moment—a mere 12 days before his execution—despite his
awareness of the availability of such a challenge at least 6 years earlier. See
White, 429 F.3d at 574 (dismissing § 1983 method-of-execution challenge where
the claimant was aware of its availability "for more than six years" and only
brought it "with his execution imminent"). Despite virtually unlimited
opportunities to bring (and have resolved) any as-applied claims during that
six-year period, Bucklew chose not to do so. Even after he was finally forced
to bring his claim, he has been careful to avoid any real merits
determination—arguing that a lethal gas procedure Missouri has not used for 50
years could possibly be constitutional, while offering the testimony of an
expert who claims that no procedure whatsoever, gas or otherwise, could be
satisfactory.
Unless the judgment below is affirmed, Bucklew will continue to bring suit
after suit for no purpose other than drawing out these proceedings and dragging
his victims through as many years of litigation as he possibly can. The
"important interest" of crime victims that this Court recognized in Hill should
be vindicated here by holding that the equities lie with the victims who have
been denied peace and closure for over two decades—and affirming the judgment
below on that ground.
I hope that the Supreme Court will affirm the judgment of the Eighth Circuit.
(source: Paul G. Cassell is the Ronald N. Boyce Presidential Professor of
Criminal Law and University Distinguished Professor of Law at S.J. Quinney
College of Law at the University of Utah----reason.com)
*************
U.S. Supreme Court death penalty case puts Kavanaugh on the spot
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday considers a Missouri murderer’s bid to avoid
execution by lethal injection on the grounds that the procedure might rupture
blood-filled tumours on his body due to a rare ailment, with new Justice Brett
Kavanaugh likely to be the deciding vote.
Lawyers for Russell Bucklew, 50, have argued that because of a congenital
condition called cavernous haemangioma the lethal injection could cause undue
agony in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual
punishment.
In Missouri, execution is authorised using either lethal injection or lethal
gas. The state in practice uses only lethal injection. Bucklew, whose appeal is
neither contesting his guilt nor seeking to avoid execution, has suggested
being put to death by gas.
The high court on March 20 issued a stay of execution moments before Bucklew
was scheduled to be put to death so he could pursue his appeal. The vote was
5-4, with four of the court’s five conservative justices voting to deny the
request.
The conservative justice who voted with the court’s four liberals to grant the
stay, Anthony Kennedy, has since retired. He was replaced by Kavanaugh, a
conservative appeals court judge who was appointed by President Donald Trump
and joined the court last month after a fierce Senate confirmation battle.
Trump’s other Supreme Court appointee, conservative Justice Neil Gorusch, voted
against granting the stay. The justices issued a similar stay of execution for
Bucklew in 2014.
Bucklew was convicted of the 1996 murder in southeastern Missouri of Michael
Sanders, who was living with Bucklew’s former girlfriend Stephanie Ray at the
time. Bucklew fatally shot Sanders at his trailer home, kidnapped and raped
Ray, shot at Sanders’ 6-year-old son and wounded a police officer before being
apprehended, according to court papers.
Bucklew’s condition has caused large, blood-filled tumours to grow on his face,
head, neck and throat, according to court papers.
A ruling is due by the end of June.
Bucklew’s case represents the latest fight at the Supreme Court involving the
death penalty, though he is not challenging the constitutionality of capital
punishment. While some liberal justices have questioned the death penalty, the
high court has steered clear of cases that directly challenge its legality.
In March, the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against
Bucklew, saying he had failed to show lethal gas would not cause him similarly
intense pain as lethal injection. Bucklew then appealed to the Supreme Court.
In 2015, the Supreme Court upheld the use of a drug employed by Oklahoma in its
lethal injections. The court made clear that when challenging a method of
execution, inmates must show that there is an alternative method that would be
less painful.
A convicted double murderer named Edmund Zagorski was executed by electric
chair in Tennessee last Thursday after arguing that the state’s lethal
injection procedure would be too painful.
(source: Reuters)
CALIFORNIA:
2 California death row inmates found dead; suicide suspected
2 condemned multiple murderers, including a serial killer, apparently committed
suicide within hours of each other on the nation’s largest death row,
California officials said Monday.
Corrections officials said they found Andrew Urdiales, 54, unresponsive during
a security check at San Quentin State Prison late Friday.
He was sentenced to death on Oct. 5 by an Orange County judge for killing 5
women in California, and previously faced the death penalty for 3 murders in
Illinois.
Urdiales had been on California’s death row since Oct. 12.
Separately, authorities say they found Virendra Govin, 51, unresponsive alone
in his cell in a different death row housing unit late Sunday.
Govin was sentenced in December 2004 for committing four Los Angeles County
murders.
Officials said that while both men’s deaths are being investigated as suicides,
there is no indication that their deaths are related.
California has not executed anyone since 2006 and inmates are far more likely
to die from suicide or old age.
Since California reinstated capital punishment in 1978, 79 condemned inmates
have died from natural causes, 25 have committed suicide, 13 have been executed
in California, 1 was executed in Missouri, and 1 was executed in Virginia.
There currently are 740 offenders on California’s death row.
The suspected suicides were announced the same day that a federal
court-appointed special master who oversees prison mental health care
criticized California corrections officials for proposing that they be allowed
to start negotiating an end to federal oversight of suicide prevention efforts.
Special master Matty Lopes called the state’s proposal “incredibly premature”
given the continued problems outlined in an expert’s report also released
Monday.
Attorneys representing inmates said the state’s suicide rate is, for the second
year in a row, on track to exceed 24 suicides per 100,000 inmates. That was
before 6 suicides since Sept. 1, including the 2 on death row.
That far exceeds the national state prison rate of 16 suicides per 100,000
inmates.
The exchange came as a federal judge considers appointing an outside
investigator to weigh a whistleblower’s allegations that top California
corrections officials are misleading federal officials about improvements in
the treatment of mentally ill inmates.
State officials again denied that there was any fraudulent activity but said
some mistakes have since been corrected.
(source: Associated Press)
_______________________________________________
A service courtesy of Washburn University School of Law www.washburnlaw.edu
DeathPenalty mailing list
***@lists.washlaw.edu
http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty
Unsubscribe: