Only a fellow executioner like 59-year-old Jerry Givens would know how crushingly hard it will continue to be for those who put Troy Davis to death last week even as he continued to insist on his innocence.
“The executioner is the one that suffers,” Givens says on the day after Davis’s execution in Georgia. “The person that carries out the execution itself is stuck with it the rest of his life. He has to wear that burden. Who would want that on them?”
During the 17 years that Givens worked as an executioner in Virginia, he put 62 men to death. And each time, he felt what he calls “the executioner high,” an adrenalized state that always imparted a merciful unreality as he sat behind a curtain and pulled the lever, releasing a fatal cocktail of three drugs that seemed to him less humane than the electricity he previously unleashed by pulling a switch. The chemicals of lethal injection always took eternal minutes longer than the deadly jolt from the electric chair.
September 2011 posts
September 28, 2011
ACLU of Southern California: Jails Report
I|I|I|I ACLU/SC JAILS REPORT 2011 I|I|I|I
"To be an inmate in the Los Angeles County jails is to fear deputy attacks. In the past year, deputies have assaulted scores of non-resisting inmates, according to reports from jail chaplains, civilians, and inmates. Deputies have attacked inmates for complaining about property missing from their cells.
via www.aclu-sc.org
September 27, 2011
Alabama Inmate Sues to Read Southern History Book - NYTimes.com
A convict’s lawsuit says he was told by a prison official that an award-winning book about the heinous treatment of black prisoners after the Civil War was “too incendiary” for him to read.
Last Friday, Mark Melvin, who is serving a life sentence at Kilby, filed suit in federal court against the prison’s officials and the state commissioner of corrections, claiming they have unjustly kept a book out of his hands.
The book, which was sent to him by his lawyer, is a work of history. More specifically, it is a Pulitzer Prize-winning work of Southern history, an investigation of the systematically heinous treatment of black prisoners in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mr. Melvin, 33, alleges in his suit that prison officials deemed it “a security threat.”
via www.nytimes.com
September 21, 2011
Corrections Officials Sign-On for Troy Davis | Southern Center for Human Rights
ATLANTA, GEORGIA-This morning, six retired corrections officials, including Dr. Allen Ault, retired Director of the Georgia Department of Corrections and former Warden of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison where he oversaw executions for the state, have sent the following letter to Georgia Corrections Officials and Governor Nathan Deal asking them to urge the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to reconsider the decision they made on Tuesday, September 20, 2011 to deny Troy Davis Clemency despite concerns about his guilt. Davis is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday, September 21 at 7:00pm at Georgia Diagnostics & Classifications Prison in Jackson, Georgia.
Statement:We write to you as former wardens and corrections officials who have had direct involvement in executions. Like few others in this country, we understand that you have a job to do in carrying out the lawful orders of the judiciary. We also understand, from our own personal experiences, the awful lifelong repercussions that come from participating in the execution of prisoners. While most of the prisoners whose executions we participated in accepted responsibility for the crimes for which they were punished, some of us have also executed prisoners who maintained their innocence until the end. It is those cases that are most haunting to an executioner.
via www.schr.org
'Irvine 11' case goes to jury - latimes.com
Some of the so-called Irvine 11 students who are accused of illegally disrupting a speech by U.S. Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren at UCI last year join hands with their attorney, Dan Stormer, third from left, before the start of closing arguments. (Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press / September 19, 2011)
Defense and prosecution focus on the 1st Amendment during closing arguments in a case that grew out of Muslim students' protest at an Israeli ambassador's speech at UC Irvine.By Lauren Williams, Los Angeles TimesSeptember 21, 2011
via www.latimes.com
September 20, 2011
Violent crime falls again: why some experts are 'stumped' - CSMonitor.com
In a trend that has some experts "stumped," violent crime in 2010 dropped 6 percent from the year before – the fourth consecutive annual decline, according a report released Monday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The numbers come as the housing market remains stagnant and unemployment remains persistently high – conditions that might lead to a rise in crime. Moreover, most law enforcement agencies throughout the US are undergoing budget cuts, with 1 percent fewer law-enforcement officers on the streets today than there were in 2008, the FBI data say.
In this light, the continued decline in violent crime is forcing some criminologists to reexamine the what might be the causes of crime. “It will be years before we get the answer, if we do, to what’s going on right now,” says William Pridemore, a criminal justice professor at Indiana University in Bloomington. “Criminologists have been pretty stumped.”
[ the all important why ]
Fewer Teenagers in Lockups - NYTimes.com
While it is welcoming news that incarceration rates for juvenile offenders have declined, more reforms are needed.
Federal statistics released earlier this summer show that the number of juvenile offenders held under lock and key dropped by about 25 percent during the last decade, and by more than half in Vermont, Connecticut, New Mexico and Louisiana. That’s welcome news, given that young offenders who are locked up are more likely to become dangerous criminals than those who are supervised through community-based guidance programs.
While many states have refashioned their policies, some continue to lock up teenagers despite declining violent crime rates. An analysis of the most recent federal data by the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice shows that only 1 in 20 arrests of young people are for serious, violent crimes like murder, rape or aggravated assault. About 80 percent of those taken in state custody are locked up for drug offenses, misdemeanors or property crimes.
via www.nytimes.com
September 19, 2011
Don Heller: A California Republican against death penalty - LA Daily News
I have been a Republican for many years. I wrote the ballot initiative that reinstated the death penalty in California in 1978. I believe those who commit willful and intentional murder should be locked up and severely punished in the interest of public safety.
I made a terrible mistake 33 years ago, but it is one that can be corrected. People are working hard to give voters the opportunity in the next election to replace the death penalty with life in prison without possibility of parole. If given that chance, I call upon all Californians to join me in voting yes to abolish capital punishment.
I have not gone soft on crime. I believe that public safety is one of the primary purposes of a government predicated on the rule of law.
FBI - Latest Crime Statistics: Volumes Continue to Fall
Latest Crime StatisticsVolumes Continue to Fall
09/19/11
via www.fbi.gov
The Death Penalty: Why We Fight for Equal Justice - Andrew Cohen - The Atlantic
Reuters
Last week, Texas officials refused to halt the execution of Duane Edward Buck even though his 1997 capital murder trial was concernedly tainted by unconstitutional racial testimony from an expert witness. The Supreme Court, which temporarily blocked the execution, will review Buck's case later this month. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Georgia officials plan to execute convicted murderer Troy Davis, whose guilt is much more in doubt today than it was two decades ago when he was sentenced to die. Despite the public protests over Davis's fate, the justices in Washington will likely have to intervene there, too, if his life is to be spared while the "new" evidence is meaningfully re-examined.
"Nearly 40 years after the Supreme Court first took away the death penalty, we may be closer than many people think to another turning point on capital punishment."
Perry the Executioner - News - The Austin Chronicle
By midmorning on Aug. 30, 2007, Austin defense attorney Keith Hampton still had not heard a word from the Board of Pardons and Paroles. Time was of the essence; unless the BPP recommended a commutation and Gov. Rick Perry then accepted it, Hampton's client Kenneth Foster would be dead by dinnertime. Hampton was agitated. He grabbed his suit jacket and headed out, walking from his office toward the Capitol complex. He was going to the BPP office to do ... something.
Just days before, he'd made the same trek with Foster's father and grandfather for a meeting with BPP Chair Rissie Owens. They were there to plead Foster's case: He had been just 19 when a passenger in a car Foster was driving fatally shot Michael LaHood, son of a prominent San Antonio family. Although Foster did not pull the trigger and had no idea that his companion, Maurecio Brown, would shoot anyone, the state argued at trial that Foster should be put to death, pursuant to the state's law of parties. That statute posits that if a person should have anticipated that a crime would be committed, that person bears the same responsibility for the crime as the doer. As they talked, Hampton watched Owens "for a signal" as to which way the board might eventually rule. "Rissie was a good poker player, and she has to be," he said; Hampton detected no clues.
But Foster was special: He had killed no one. It wasn't that he had been fingered for a killing he didn't commit (like so many other claims of innocence to come from the row, some more disturbing – or more likely – than others); it was that Foster quite simply was not responsible for LaHood's murder. It was a point that earned the case attention from around the world. The mayor of Rome lit the Colosseum in support of Foster's case; Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela sent letters of support. It was a unique set of circumstances, and Hampton was hoping the BPP would see that Foster was worthy of mercy. "This is not a dress rehearsal; this is a one-shot deal," Hampton recalled thinking on the morning he pleaded Foster's case before Owens – and he knew, should he win a commutation, "it would be really unprecedented" in the modern era of Texas' death penalty. If the BPP denied the request, then Perry would be powerless to stop the execution; under Texas law, absent a recommendation from the BPP, the governor has the power only to issue one 30-day stay of execution. Even if the BPP issued a favorable recommendation to the governor, that wouldn't guarantee Perry would accept it; if history were any indication, it was likely that he would not.
September 18, 2011
Congratulations to Hong Kong Police on Their World-Record Cocaine Bust
Hong Kong's Narcotics Bureau seized 1,250 pounds of cocaine, worth, in their estimation, $77 million, setting a new world record (and they think they'll find more!). Eight people were arrested, including one American, five Mexicans and one Colombian.
via gawker.com
[ "a new world record" | war on drugs ]
September 15, 2011
Huffpost - Troy Davis Execution: Former FBI Chief William S. Sessions Calls On Georgia To Stay Order
The execution of Troy Davis, a Georgia death row inmate scheduled to die in less than a week, should be halted because of "pervasive, persistent doubts" about his guilt, said William S. Sessions, a former federal district judge in Texas and FBI director under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, in a sharply-worded editorial on Thursday.
"Serious questions about Mr. Davis' guilt, highlighted by witness recantations, allegations of police coercion, and a lack of relevant physical evidence, continue to plague his conviction," Sessions wrote. He urged a state pardons board to commute the sentence to life in prison.
The unusual plea from Sessions, which appears in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is the latest high-profile call for clemency for Davis, whose looming execution has become a lightning rod for national and international criticism. Among those who have called for a halt to the execution, scheduled for Sept. 21 at 7 p.m., are Pope Benedict XVI, former President Jimmy Carter and the leadership of the NAACP and Amnesty International.
September 14, 2011
Texas Moratorium Network: 235th Execution Carried Out [yesterday] Under Governor Rick Perry
Steven Michael Woods Jr. was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m., 10 minutes after the lethal injection dose began, said Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. It was the 10th execution carried out in Texas this year.
"You're not about to witness an execution. You are about to witness a murder," Woods said before he was injected, according to Lyons. Woods added that his co-defendant was the one responsible for two 2001 killings, she said.
Earlier Tuesday, the state's high court rejected a stay of execution for Woods.
September 07, 2011
seamy valley cheers rick perry on death penalty
Brian Williams becomes the next reporter to almost, but not quite, hold Rick Perry to account for the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham. During the GOP debate Wednesday night, Williams asked without naming Willingham, or going at Perry armed with the science that undermined the prosecution's case. (A pity: this came on the heels of the moderators trying to get Perry in a spat with Jon Huntsman about who was "anti-science.")
Williams simply asked in general if Perry had ever struggled with the idea that someone who was killed via capital punishment was innocent. The weak sauce allowed Perry to wriggle off the hook: "No, sir. I've never struggled with that at all. The state of Texas has a very thoughtful, a very clear process in place of which -- when someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing, they go through an appellate process, they go up to the Supreme Court of the United States, if that's required.
"But in the state of Texas, if you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you're involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas, and that is, you will be executed."
Is it Legal to Photograph or Videotape Police? Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union
Since 9/11, a disturbing pattern of innocent individuals being harassed by the police for taking still and video photographs in public places has emerged across the country.
The ACLU, photographers' groups, and others have been complaining about such incidents for years — and we have been consistently winning in court. Recently, an appeals court ruled, on behalf of an ACLU client, that Americans have a First Amendment right to videotape the police making an arrest in a public park.
Yet, a continuing stream of these incidents (often driven by police who have been fed "nonsense" about links between photography and terrorism) makes it clear that the problem is not going away. New examples continue to be reported weekly, and sometimes daily, on web sites such as Photography is Not a Crime.
via www.aclu.org
Know your rights ("all three of them" [Clash]): "Taking still and video photographs of things that are plainly visible in public spaces is a constitutional right — and that includes the outside of federal buildings, as well as transportation facilities, and police and other government officials carrying out their duties..."
23 D.C. cops charged with crimes in 2011 | Washington Examiner
Samuel Walker, a criminal justice professor emeritus at the University of Nebraska who specializes in police accountability, said he was astonished by the sheer numbers of D.C. police officers arrested and the level of criminality. "This might even exceed New Orleans, probably everybody's candidate for worst police department in the country," Walker said...
Twenty-three D.C. police officers have been arrested this year on charges ranging from sexual assault to killing a mother and her 1-year-old daughter, a rate of alleged abuse by city cops that one expert places on par with the worst-run city police departments in the country.
The city's police force was on the wrong side of several crime stories in the past week:
> An off-duty D.C. police officer with a history of alcohol problems allegedly was drunk and jumped on the hood of a vehicle and shot at transgendered people inside, striking at least one.
[ HT Crime Report ]
September 06, 2011
OSU book thief sentenced to probation and restitution | The Columbus Dispatch
A former Ohio State University student avoided prison today but likely has forfeited his future as a lawyer for stealing books from the Moritz College of Law. In a deal that allowed him to escape jail time, Christopher B. Valdes, 24, formerly of the University District but now living with his mother in Florida, was placed on five years of probation and ordered to pay $34,619.88 in restitution for books he sold online. As of this morning, Valdes has paid back $19,450. Valdes also agreed that he “will not have or pursue employment or education in the field of law,” according to the details of his guilty plea in Franklin County Common Pleas Court. Assistant Prosecutor John Litle said the ban on law school and practice is in place only for the five years of probation. But Valdes would have to pass character and fitness requirements to become a lawyer. “As a practical matter ... it’s unlikely that he can do that” because of the felony conviction, Litle said. Valdes had been indicted on a fourth-degree felony count of theft that could have landed him in prison for up to 18 months. He pleaded guilty in June to a lesser fifth-degree felony punishable by up to a year in prison. Valdes, who is no longer a student at Ohio State, was accused by campus police of stealing more than 200 books between November 2009 and last October after advertising them for sale online. Officers learned of the thefts in August 2010, when the university received an e-mail from a Brazilian lawyer who had bought a volume online and found a crossed-out OSU ink stamp on its inside front cover, according to court documents. A check confirmed that the title had vanished from the shelves. Valdes was arrested after police set up a sting involving a hidden camera and a marked book.
via www.dispatch.com
September 05, 2011
Arizona Now Charging $25 for Prison Visits
Arizona has, like, no money. Should it raise taxes? Cut services? Or—wait—what about this: Charge people $25 a head to visit friends and family members in its overcrowded jails?
If you know Arizona—and if you do, I'm so sorry—I bet you can guess which option the state is going with:
New legislation allows the department to impose a $25 fee on adults who wish to visit inmates at any of the 15 prison complexes that house state prisoners. The one-time "background check fee" for visitors, believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, has angered prisoner advocacy groups and family members of inmates, who in many cases already shoulder the expense of traveling long distances to the remote areas where many prisons are located.
via gawker.com
September 04, 2011
Rick Perry and the death penalty - Juana Summers - POLITICO.com
The death penalty just isn’t what it used to be in presidential politics.
As Rick Perry picks up his campaign going into the fall, his home state is set to add six more executions — including one somewhat controversial one — to the already record tally he’s amassed during his years as governor. They’ll come at what could be politically inconvenient times, as Perry participates in key debates and heads out on the trail.
Continue Reading
via www.politico.com
September 02, 2011
Tickle The Wire | Calif. Man Gets 6 Years in Sextortion Case
In the eyes of authorities, Luis Mijangos was a skilled computer hacker who went on the rampage and tried to extort sexually explicit videos from women and girls in what some referred to as a “sextortion” case.
On Thursday, Mijangos ,32, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, who lived in Santa Ana, Calif., was sentenced to 6 years in prison in Los Angeles federal court for his sinister crime.
Authorities said that FBI computer forensics experts determined that Mijangos infected more than 100 computers that were used by approximately 230 individuals, of which at least 44 were juveniles.
DUI drivers [take a bus or] beware this holiday weekend | Orange County Register
Authorities have been on the lookout for drunken drivers through a summer Anti-DUI campaign that that will continue through the Labor Day weekend.
Enforcement patrols have been carried out by the multiagency anti-DUI task force known as "Avoid the 38," which includes the Sheriff's Department, the California Highway Patrol, and local police departments.
Law enforecment will be out in force this Labor Day weekend.REGISTER FILE PHOTOADVERTISEMENTHoliday travel tips, click here.
[ It's strange to think of this as the land of the free given the USA's unmatched incarceration level and our country's appetite for police blockaded streets, no probable cause required ]
