j u s t c r i m

No more death penalty? | OneNewsNow.com

No more death penalty - As California officials have halted death row executions at least until next year, a former prosecutor says the state may be considering pulling the plug on the death penalty.

 

via www.onenewsnow.com

S.F's district attorney on the death penalty | SFGate

"... When I was appointed district attorney by Mayor Gavin Newsom on Jan. 9, I stated that I was not categorically opposed to the death penalty and would consider it in appropriate cases. I have also stated that I do not personally believe the death penalty is a good tool. These remarks have been closely analyzed by many and have caused concern from some quarters, so I want to explain my position....

via www.sfgate.com

[ this is how a simple, logical groundswell to abolish capital punishment in California begins ... and it's about time ]

Debatepedia, Debate on Capital Punishment

Capital punishment is the execution of a person by the state as punishment for a crime. The word "capital" comes from the Latin word "capitalis", which means "regarding the head". At one point and time capital crimes where punished by severing the head. Crimes that can result in the death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offenses. Capital punishment has been used in societies throughout history as a way to punish crime and suppress political dissent. In most places that practice capital punishment today, the death penalty is reserved as punishment for premeditated murder, espionage, treason, or as part of military justice. In some countries sexual crimes, such as rape, adultery and sodomy, carry the death penalty, as do religious crimes such as apostasy (the formal renunciation of the State religion). In many retentionist countries (countries that use the death penalty), drug trafficking is also a capital offense. In China human trafficking and serious cases of corruption are also punished by the death penalty.

via debatepedia.idebate.org

via Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) - Execution List 2011

 

Available at http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/execution-list-2011

Ohio Catholic Bishops Seek To End Death Penalty (NPR)

Archbishop Dennis Schnurr of Cincinnati and Bishop Frederick Campbell of Columbus are among 10 Catholic church leaders in Ohio who have signed a statement urging the state to stop using the death penalty, weeks after an Ohio Supreme Court justice issued the same call.   Ohio put eight people to death last year, the most since 1949, The Columbus Dispatch reported.   The statement signed by the Catholic bishops said they believe capital punishment is wrong in nearly all cases and that "just punishment can occur without resorting to the death penalty."

www.npr.org

Kicking the death penalty out of Illinois | Campaign to End the Death Penalty

By: Marlene Martin

Both the state House and Senate have passed legislation that will abolish the death penalty. As of mid-January, that bill sat on the desk of Gov. Pat Quinn. With his signature—and it was still not certain as the New Abolitionist was being produced that Quinn would sign the legislation—Illinois would become the 16th state without the death penalty.           

Exonerated Illinois death row prisoners like Nathson Fields feel the significance of this moment, even before Quinn had announced his decision. “I feel elated, full of hope,” said Fields. “I spent eleven and a half years on death row for a crime I did not commit. Illinois being on the verge of tossing out the death penalty—this will affect other states. This will send the message that it can be done, it should be done.”           

via nodeathpenalty.org

Federal judge set to tour new San Quentin death chamber - San Jose Mercury News

Nearly five years ago, a San Jose federal judge went on a highly unusual expedition to San Quentin's aging death chamber, eventually finding that the converted eerie green gas chamber was outdated and replete with potential problems for carrying out executions.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel will return to San Quentin, this time for a tour of the state's new and untested death chamber, built for nearly $900,000 and designed solely for lethal injections. With the visit, California will take a step toward resolving whether it can resume executions on a death row now brimming with nearly 720 inmates.

But it may prove to be a small step.

via www.mercurynews.com

58 killers and counting | death, county, orange - O.C.'s death row - The Orange County Register

When serial killer Rodney James Alcala was hustled off to death row at San Quentin State Prison in April, he joined 57 other killers condemned to die by Orange County judges.

The Orange County list begins with John Galen Davenport, who was sentenced in 1981 for a vicious torture, rape and murder a year earlier. He is still appealing his case 30 years later.

Gunner Lindberg, left, on Dec. 23, 1997, right in June 2007, was sentenced to death for the racially-motivated stabbing death of Thien Minh Ly, a Vietnamese-American man who had recently earned a graduate degree from Georgetown University. Ly, 24, was stabbed about 40 times on the Tustin High School tennis courts in January 1996 where he had gone to practice in-line skating. Lindberg was the first person sentenced to death using California's hate-crime special circumstance. His case has been affirmed by the California Supreme Court.MARK BOSTER, LA TIMES; CA DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS; TEXT BY LARRY WELBORN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, MORE PHOTOS »ADVERTISEMENTMore from Crime Courts SafetyHazmat team at Goldenwest-Edinger; area evacuatedDriver gets 9 years in TapouT founder's deathTrial set for former H.B. officer accused of rape

via www.ocregister.com

San Quentin Construction: Putting death row on hold - Vallejo Times Herald

Gov. Jerry Brown has 25 billion reasons for delaying construction of a $356 million death row complex at San Quentin State Prison.

There is little debate over whether death-row inmates -- and guards -- need a safer and more modern facility. The current death row is antiquated and overcrowded, requiring the state to pay a premium for staffing.

We don't think it should be built at San Quentin, where engineering for the site has driven up the estimated cost of construction. We also question whether all the state's condemned inmates need to be housed in one complex. Given the time they spend on death row before they are executed or die of old age, they could be housed at other maximum-security prisons as across the state and returned to San Quentin for their execution.

via www.timesheraldonline.com

FDA Dragged Into Execution-Drug Controversy - Law Blog - WSJ

As state prisons in recent months have searched overseas for supplies of thiopental sodium, a question has lurked in the background: Will the Food and Drug Administration permit thiopental imports, even though there are no FDA-approved, foreign suppliers of the drugs?

Last month, the FDA announced that it would permit prison officials to import thiopental to their hearts’ content. But the agency said it also would not vouch for the safety and purity of imported thiopental.

Today, six death-row inmates from Arizona, California and Tennessee sued the FDA in federal court, claiming the agency has violated federal law by allowing states to import thiopental that has not been reviewed for safety and purity. (Click here for the complaint.)

via blogs.wsj.com

ACLU: Dollars for Education, Not Executions

When I saw Governor Brown’s proposed budget cuts earlier this month, there was one cut that really stood out:

“Higher education takes a $1 billion dollar hit in Governor’s budget.”

While we’ve been out fighting for education equality, Governor Brown’s proposed budget cut ensures that increased tuition and overcrowded classrooms will keep higher education even farther out of reach for many California residents. Some of the worst examples of prioritizing executions above education can be found right here in Southern California: counties like LA, Orange, and Riverside are state leaders in sentencing people to death – at a cost of $1 million each! – all while laying off teachers and cutting local education spending.

via action.aclu.org

Lethal Injection and the F.D.A. - NYTimes.com

A shortage of the drug used in executions has widened the gap between the reality of carrying out capital punishment and its support in American law.

Sodium thiopental is at the heart of this story. A fast- and short-acting general anesthetic, it has been used to put convicts under and make executions methodical. For more than a year, however, a shortage of the drug has widened the gap between the reality of carrying out executions and support for them in American law. In October, a majority of the Supreme Court wrongly insisted there was no evidence that the shortage had any bearing on whether an execution can be done constitutionally. Now the evidence is impossible to ignore.

We strongly oppose capital punishment on many grounds. Even with judicial blessing, the conduct of executions in this country is a shambles. In Arizona and Georgia, the sodium thiopental used in executions has possibly been ineffective and almost certainly been illegal. It came from Dream Pharma, an unlicensed British supplier, run from a driving school. The batches carried a date of 2006. They were likely made by a company in Austria that went out of business. The drug is said to be effective for only a year. As a foreign-made drug without approval by the Food and Drug Administration, it is prohibited by federal statute.

via www.nytimes.com

Alabama Supreme Court to Review Two EJI Death Penalty Cases | Equal Justice Initiative

The Alabama Supreme Court has ordered further review for two EJI clients on Alabama's death row: Christopher Floyd and Oscar Doster. In separate appeals, EJI sought additional review in each case, and the State's highest court will now address important constitutional claims in each case.

Christopher Floyd was tried and sentenced to death by an all-white jury after the Houston County prosecutor barred from jury service 10 of the 11 African Americans who were qualified to serve as jurors at his trial.

African Americans constitute 27% of the population of Houston County and the prosecutor's office has a documented history of illegal racial discrimination in jury selection. In a recent report, EJI documented that 8 out of 10 African Americans qualified for jury service have been struck by Houston County prosecutors in death penalty cases.

via eji.org

Capital punishment in Michigan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Capital punishment has been illegal in the U.S. State of Michigan since 1846, making Michigan's death penalty history unusual in contrast to other States. Michigan was the first English-speaking government in the world to abolish totally the death penalty for ordinary crimes. [1] The Michigan State Legislature voted to do so on May 18, 1846, and this has remained in law since.[2] Although the death penalty was retained on the books for treason until 1963, Michigan has not executed any person since statehood.

Quinn refuses to be pinned down on death penalty repeal - Chicago Tribune

Quinn also said the opinions of legislators are "very serious indeed. These are men and women who went before the voters and got elected in their districts, and they voted their conscience."

In Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley made his position clear, saying certain crimes "should be handled" by the death penalty.

"I have met parents, that their child has died, and this person has been out of prison," Daley said on Wednesday. "I mean, how do they live with that?"

via articles.chicagotribune.com

State of Illinois - Come on, Man- Abolish Capital Punishment

Illinois Death Penalty Repeal Awaits Gov. Quinn's Signature (ACLU Blog of Rights)

On Tuesday, January 11, the Illinois Senate acted to address a national embarrassment for the state — our failed death penalty system. By a vote of 32 to 25, the Senate passed Senate Bill 3539, which repeals the death penalty in Illinois. The bill is now sitting on Gov. Pat Quinn's desk waiting for his signature to become law.

Houston death penalty challenge must end, court rules

Houston death penalty challenge must end, court rules.  Statesman.com.  By Chuck Lindell | Wednesday, January 12, 2011

"A Houston defendant cannot challenge the state’s death penalty laws as unconstitutional before his capital murder trial begins, the state’s highest criminal court ruled today.

John Edward Green Jr., charged with robbing and killing a Houston woman in 2008, had challenged the Texas death penalty law because “its application has created a substantial risk that innocent people have been, and will be, convicted and executed.”

District Judge Kevin Fine held a Dec. 6 hearing on Green’s motion, hearing from defense experts who testified about 138 exonerations of U.S. death row inmates since 1978, including 12 in Texas.

At the urging of prosecutors, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted the hearing the following day and requested briefs to determine if proceedings should continue. ..."

Texas Moratorium Network: Cleve "Sarge" Foster Receives Last Minute Stay of Execution from U.S. Supreme Court

Cleve Foster received a last minute stay of execution from U.S. Supreme Court today. More than 60 people gathered at the Texas Capitol to protest the execution rejoiced at the news received from a phone call from other protesters gathered in Huntsville.

A former Army recruiter who maintained his innocence in the rape-slaying of a woman in Fort Worth nine years ago has received a reprieve from execution Tuesday evening.

Forty-seven-year-old Cleve Foster’s lethal injection was stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court so it can further review an appeal. In the court’s brief order, Justices Antonin Scalia and Sam Alito indicated they would have allowed the punishment to proceed.

via stopexecutions.blogspot.com

[scotus capital stays are, i believe, relatively uncommon]

Illinois House Votes to Repeal Death Penalty; Senate Vote Next

As you know by now, the House passed a death penalty abolition bill on the second try yesterday. Democratic state Rep. Pat Verschoore voted against the bill the first time, then changed his vote after the bill’s sponsor appealed to him…

“I’d been back and forth on this since they started talking about abolishing it,” Verschoore said. State Rep. Karen Yarbrough, D-Maywood, the proposal’s sponsor, asked him to reconsider his vote, he said.

“She’s helped me on some legislation I’ve had through the years, and so I said I’d give her the vote,” Verschoore said.

via standdown.typepad.com

on capital mitigation specialists

Hughes, Emily, Mitigating Death. Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, Vol. 18, p. 337, 2009; Washington University in St. Louis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-10-03. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1726045

Capital mitigation specialists are critical members of the capital defense team. Their job involves investigating the life history of the defendant in order to develop a comprehensive defense against execution at the sentencing phase of a capital trial. To develop the life history of the defendant, capital mitigation specialists must uncover as much information as they can about the defendant from the defendant’s family, friends, and virtually any other person in the defendant’s life. This Article examines the role of mitigation specialists who have formal social work training, exploring how legal ethics and world views they experience on capital defense teams interact with ethical norms and world views they learn as social workers. By understanding how ethical norms and world views from law and social work interact, this Article strives to ensure that interdisciplinary capital defense teams anticipate and resolve ethical conflicts in order to safeguard the capital defendant’s constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel.

Capital Punishment in U.S. Down Again - NYTimes.com

Year-end figures compiled by a group opposed to the death penalty show a 12 percent drop in 2010, to 46 executions, from 52 the previous year.

States are continuing a trend of executing fewer prisoners and juries are wary of sentencing criminal defendants to die, according to year-end figures compiled by a group that opposes the death penalty.

The 46 executions in 2010 constituted a nearly 12 percent drop from the previous year’s total of 52, according to the group, Death Penalty Information Center, which produces an annual report on execution trends. The overall trend shows a marked drop when compared with the 85 executions in 2000.

via www.nytimes.com

Can Ending Capital Punishment Help States Cut Costs? - ABC News

In 2003, Seattle resident Robert Kerr was abducted from his apartment and found dead 30 miles from his home, with his bank account emptied and without clothes or identification. At the end of 2010, the state of Washington has yet to arrest or convict anyone for his death.

While Kerr's killers have never been found, the state will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in the coming year on the death penalty for people already behind bars -- a situation that has reformers, and Kerr's family, clamoring for change.

Kerr's case is one of thousands of unsolved murders, and it's the reason his sister, Judy Kerr, supports her state, California, in abolishing the death penalty and reallocating the millions of dollars it spends on death row inmates each year to solving cold cases.

via abcnews.go.com

(via Sentencing Law and Policy)

"a peculiar institution" for a very long time

"So much has been written and said on the subject of capital punishments that it seems almost like presumptive vanity to pursue the topic any further."   "The Cabinet, No. LXXV," Philadelphia Repertory 2 (1812), quoted in David Garland, Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 2010), 9.

Harris County Hearing Convenes

Capital punishment in Texas will go on trial Monday, as lawyers for an accused killer prepare to argue that the death penalty is unconstitutional because it carries high risks that innocent people could be executed.

Lawyers for John E. Green Jr., who is charged with killing a woman in front of her children, are not challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty, only how the punishment is applied by the state.

At the hearing before State District Judge Kevin Fine in Houston, Mr. Green's lawyers are expected to argue that he should not be prosecuted for capital murder, which is punishable by death.

via standdown.typepad.com

Oklahoma's lethal injection process not fit for animals | NewsOK.com

But one key point is getting lost in the shuffle: Even with this change, Oklahoma's lethal injection process is nothing like animal euthanasia. In fact, it would be illegal to euthanize an animal in Oklahoma the way the state intends to execute John Duty on Dec. 16.

Keep in mind the proposed switch is to the first drug in Oklahoma's three-drug lethal injection procedure. The first drug is an anesthetic, intended to ensure that the inmate does not experience the effects of the second drug, which paralyzes him, and the third drug, which stops the heart.

The decision to paralyze inmates before executing them with the third drug presents a fundamental problem. If the anesthetic is not delivered properly (and ample evidence suggests the danger of maladministration is real), the inmate will likely experience excruciating pain and suffering.

via newsok.com

Deep in the Heart of Texas, Death Penalty Goes on Trial - Law Blog - WSJ

Some statistics on the application of the death penalty in Texas: In the last 30 years, the state has executed 464 people, far more than in any other state.

The Lone Star state has also exonerated a dozen death-row inmates during that time period.

The question, then: At what point do the false-positives (so-to-speak) reach an unacceptable level? If 100 death-row inmates were exonerated, many would likely say without equivocation that something was seriously wrong. If only one had been exonerated, many would call it an aberration, the exception that proves the rule.

via blogs.wsj.com

A justice’s blind eye to the truth - The Boston Globe

I’M NOT a regular reader of The New York Review of Books, but I wasn’t going to miss newly-retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens’s essay on capital punishment in the latest issue. Last Sunday, The New York Times spotlighted the Stevens article as a “remarkable’’ piece of writing that finally settled a “legal mystery’’ — namely, why Stevens had changed his original view on the death penalty, and announced in 2008 that he now considered it to be unconstitutional.

via www.boston.com

[thru Sentencing Law  & Policy and How Appealing]

Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) - Capital Punishment, 2009 - Statistical Tables

Capital Punishment, 2009 - Statistical Tables

Tracy L. Snell

December 2, 2010    NCJ 231676

Presents characteristics of persons under sentence of death on December 31, 2009, and persons executed in 2009. Preliminary data on executions by states during 2010 are included. Tables present state-by-state information on the movement of prisoners into and out of death sentence status during 2009, status of capital statutes, and methods of execution. Numerical tables also summarize data on offender characteristics such as gender, race, Hispanic origin, age at time of arrest for capital offense, legal status at time of capital offense, and time between imposition of death sentence and execution. Data are from the National Prisoner Statistics (NPS-8) series.

Highlights include the following:

• In 2009, 52 inmates were executed: 24 in Texas; 6 in Alabama; 5 in Ohio; 3 each in Georgia, Oklahoma, and Virginia; 2 each in Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee; and 1 each in Indiana and Missouri.
• 51 executions were by lethal injection; 1 by electrocution.
• From January through November in 2010, 12 states executed 45 inmates, 3 fewer than the number executed during the same period in 2009.

Part of the Capital Punishment Series

via bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov

Judge to Rule on Death Penalty Constitutionality — Death Penalty | The Texas Tribune

Texas' messy death penalty saga continues Monday in a Houston courtroom, where a district judge will for the first time in state history consider whether the risk of executing an innocent person makes capital punishment unconstitutional.

Harris County District Judge Kevin Fine is set to hold a hearing in the case of John Edward Green, who is charged with fatally shooting a Houston woman during a robbery in June 2008. Harris County prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in the case. But Green’s attorneys and capital punishment opponents want Fine to rule that prosecutors can’t seek the death penalty because the way it is administered in Texas is unconstitutional. They say they have proof that at least two wrongfully convicted men have been executed. With so many chances for error in the courts, they argue, Texas shouldn't risk putting an innocent person to death. “The current system is profoundly and fundamentally flawed from top to bottom,” says Andrea Keilen, executive director of the Texas Defender Service.

Prosecutors, however, argue that higher courts, not a trial judge, should rule on the constitutionality of the death penalty. Besides, they write in a brief, Green hasn’t been convicted, so the whole question of the death penalty in his case ought to be a moot point.

via www.texastribune.org

Stevens' Death Penalty Case Lets Himself Off Too Easily - TIME

Suppose that you hired a highly regarded architect to design a fancy house. He comes up with the most impressive and elaborate plans, but all the basic calculations about stresses and loads are completely wrong, and from the moment you first open the front door, the place starts falling apart.

Still, you have a lot invested in the house, and you don't want to tear it down, so you bring in an engineer who proposes that you jack up the north wing, and when that doesn't work you hire a contractor who advises you to instead lower the south wing. One expert suggests reinforcing the foundation. Another expert tells you to redesign the roof.

You try them all, and more. And this goes on for years, plunging you into debt, baffling your neighbors, and never coming close to fixing your house, which looks more and more hopeless with each new "repair." Then one day, the original architect comes by, sees the ruin, shakes his head sadly and asks why, oh why, did you let all those butchers tinker with his beautiful design.

via www.time.com

California, courts: Governor should grant clemency to Kevin Cooper - latimes.com

By Alan M. Dershowitz and David B. Rivkin Jr. December 1, 2010

"The state of California may be about to execute an innocent man." That is the warning of Judge William Fletcher of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a 101-page dissent from the court's decision to uphold the murder conviction of Kevin Cooper. Although the courts lack the power to grant clemency, the governor has the responsibility to do so when justice requires it. Now Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is duty-bound to use that power to save a possibly innocent man from death.

via www.latimes.com

On the Death Sentence by John Paul Stevens | The New York Review of Books

David Garland is a well-respected sociologist and legal scholar who taught courses on crime and punishment at the University of Edinburgh before relocating to the United States over a decade ago. His recent Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition is the product of his attempt to learn “why the United States is such an outlier in the severity of its criminal sentencing.” Thus, while the book primarily concerns the death penalty, it also illuminates the broader, dramatic differences between American and Western European prison sentences.

Describing his study, Garland explains:

In fact, despite its ostensible amorality, his work makes a powerful argument that will persuade many readers that the death penalty is unwise and unjustified.

via www.nybooks.com

J. Stevens on Capital Punishment - New York Times

Supreme Court Memo

Ex-Justice Criticizes Death Penalty

By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: November 27, 2010

" ... In a detailed, candid and critical essay to be published this week in The New York Review of Books, [Stevens] wrote that personnel changes on the court, coupled with “regrettable judicial activism,” had created a system of capital punishment that is shot through with racism, skewed toward conviction, infected with politics and tinged with hysteria...."

execution watch heard live online today | 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM pacific

Execution Watch with Ray Hill can be heard on KPFT HD-2 and here from 6:00 PM CT to 7:00 PM CT  [4 TO 5 Pacific] ... on any day an execution is scheduled in Texas.

TDCJ's list of Scheduled Executions
TDCJ Execution Procedure (PDF)
Past Executions and Programs
Blog
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Links

Larry Wooten

Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 6:00 pm

Execution

Sentenced to death in 1998 at age 39 following his conviction in the robbery-murders of an elderly couple in Paris, Texas, for whom he had worked as a handyman. The state's highest criminal court in 2004 granted him a new trial on his claim that could not be executed because he is mentally retarded. The trial, held in the same Lamar County District Court where he had been convicted and sentenced to death, found that he was not retarded.

Backpage on Larry Wooten

Guests: · Scott Cobb   President of the Texas Moratorium Network, he is active in lobbying efforts to end the death penalty. He has organized lobby days, conducted grassroots training, drafted anti-death penalty legislation and organized many protests against capital punishment. A principle organizer of the annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty, he has lobbied every Texas legislature since 2001 to declare a moratorium on the death penalty. · Jim Skelton   Our show's legal analyst, Jim is an educator who has worked as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney in capital cases. · Gloria Rubac · George White   A co-founder of Journey of Hope, White was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life for the murder of his wife, Charlene, after an armed robber burst into White's place of business and shot the couple multiple times. A capital murder trial later described as "a mockery and a sham," resulted in a conviction and life sentence for White. He was freed in 1989 after his conviction was overturned; the charge against him was dismissed in 1992.

8th world day against the death penalty: usa

8th World Day Against the Death Penalty: USA [World Coalition Against the Death Penalty]

( Aurélie Plaçais on 2010/5/2 21:20:00 )

"On 10 October 2010, the 8th World Day Against the Death Penalty is dedicated to the USA which executed 52 people and handed down 106 death sentences in 2009."

alabama's machinery of death

Equal Justice Initiative -  Alabama Executes Mentally Impaired Inmate Holly Wood (September 9, 2010) 

"In its fourth execution this year, the State of Alabama put to death Holly Wood today. The Alabama Supreme Court denied Mr. Wood's request for a stay and Governor Riley denied his application for clemency in spite of strong evidence that he suffers from the type of intellectual impairments that the United States Supreme Court has held bar the death penalty, and which his inexperienced lawyer failed to present at his trial.

Holly Wood, an African-American man with an IQ less than 70, was too poor to hire a lawyer. The trial court appointed him a lawyer who had just been admitted to the Bar and had no experience in criminal law. The lawyer failed to pursue evidence of Mr. Wood's severe mental impairments even though a competency evaluation revealed that Mr. Wood could not read at better than a third-grade level and had a low IQ. Mr. Wood was convicted and sentenced to death..." [RESTOFSTORY]

 

seven in ten californians

Field Poll: By Mark DiCamillo and Mervin Field (July 2010)

"The latest Field Poll finds seven in ten (70%) California voters continuing to support the death penalty as a punishment for serious crimes in this state. However, if given a choice, about as many voters would personally opt to impose a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole (42%) as would choose the death penalty (41%) for someone convicted of first-degree murder...

There are now 705 prisoners on Death Row in San Quentin State Prison.Their fate awaits the resolution of a number of legal challenges to the lethal injection procedures used to carry out the death sentence..."

"arbitrary, biased, expensive and susceptible to fatal error"

"California's death penalty system is arbitrary, biased, expensive and susceptible to fatal error. It cannot be fixed. It should not be tinkered with. It should be ended." 

(Cross-posted to Huffington Post and Calitics.) ACLU Blog of Rights:  Let's Cut the Death Penalty and Save California $126 Million a Year  Posted by Ramona Ripston, Executive Director, ACLU, July 20, 2010.

bearing witness ... execution watch

Execution Watch ( http://www.executionwatch.org ) - Online and on radio 6:00 pm central time to 7:00 pm central time -- 4 pm to 5 pm pacific.  Execution Watch broadcasts on any day an execution is scheduled in Texas. [Standown]   ... Today being Tuesday, July 20, 2010 ... they're on:

Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 6:00 pm

Execution

"Condemned in 1998 for the stabbing deaths of Houston Grand Opera tenors Richard Alan Wrotenbery and Forrest G. Henderson, both 31, during an apparent robbery in their Houston apartment 10 years earlier. Jackson, formerly of Missouri City, has insisted on his innocence. He was linked to the slayings by DNA evidence and a bloody fingerprint on the apartment door. The discovery of widespread problems at the HPD crime lab led investigators from the Harris County District Attorney's office in 2003 to order a retesting of the evidence in Jackson's case..."

juvenile proceedings

Applying Roper v. Simmons in Juvenile Transfer and Waiver Proceedings: A Legal and Neuroscientific Inquiry (by John Matthew Fabian) first published on June 4, 2010

Abstract [free]:  "In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court held the death penalty unconstitutional as applied to juveniles in Roper v. Simmons.  The Court reasoned that juveniles were less criminally culpable than adults because they lack maturity, they are more vulnerable to peer influence, and their character is not as well formed as that of adults. Although Roper addressed the imposition of the ultimate punishment of death within the context of a juvenile’s moral blameworthiness for a crime of murder, this article considers the application of the Court’s reasoning in Roper to the issue of juvenile waiver. Specifically, the author asks the question whether Roper’s ultimate language distinguishing juveniles from adults in capital cases should apply to the conventional practice of their trial and sentencing as adults. Despite the fact that juvenile transfer is a less serious sanction than the death penalty, this inquiry confronts the traditional objective of the juvenile court system, a system of punishment that was founded on rehabilitation rather than retribution. The author questions whether the punitive objectives of deterrence and retribution are satisfied by juvenile waiver and whether the mitigating effect of adolescence negates the trial of youth as adults."  International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology XX(X) 1–24.  © 2010 SAGE Publications DOI: 10.1177/0306624X10371283

 

MAGWOOD v . PATTERSON, WARDEN, et al.

MAGWOOD  v  PATTERSON, WARDEN, et al. No. 09–158. Argued March 24, 2010—Decided June 24, 2010

SYLLABUS IN PART:  Petitioner Dagwood was sentenced to death for murder. After the Alabama courts denied relief on direct appeal and in postconviction proceedings, he sought federal habeas relief. The District Court conditionally granted the writ as to his sentence, mandating that he be released or resentenced.

The state trial court sentenced him to death a second time. He filed another federal habeas application, challenging this new sentence on the grounds that he did not have fair warning at the time of his offense that his conduct would permit a death sentence under Alabama law, and that his attorney rendered ineffective assistance during the resentencing proceeding. The District Court once again conditionally granted the writ.

The Eleventh Circuit reversed, holding in relevant part that Magwood’s challenge to his new death sentence was an unreviewable “second or successive” challenge under 28 U. S. C. §2244(b) because he could have raised his fair-warning claim in his earlier habeas application.

Held:  The judgment is reversed and the case is remanded...

___________________________________________________

ANALYSIS IN BRIEF:

SCOTUSblog - "Court rules in favor of capital defendant in Magwood v. Patterson" - Magwood v. Patterson, opinion recap.  Kevin Russell | Thursday, June 24th, 2010

"Federal habeas law generally allows prisoners to bring a single habeas petition; “second and successive” petitions are highly disfavored and must meet very strict criteria.  This morning, the Court held in Magwood v. Patterson (No. 09-158), that when a criminal defendant succeeds in having his original sentence overturned, a later habeas petition challenging his new sentence should be treated as a first petition (not as a “second or successive” petition), even if it raises grounds that could have (but were not) made against the original sentence.  Writing for himself and Justices Stevens, Scalia, Breyer, and Sotomayor, Justice Thomas explained that under the text of the federal habeas statute, when a prisoner is resentenced and appeals the new sentence, he is challenging a different judgment than was challenged in his prior habeas petition.  Justice Kennedy, joined by the Chief Justice and Justices Ginsburg and Alito, dissented."

shoot me now utah shoot me now utah shoot me now utah

Shoot Me Now - Are firing squads a better means of execution than lethal injection? SLATE - By Margot Sanger-Katz. Posted Wednesday, June 16, 2010):

"Ronnie Lee Gardner, on death row in Utah for the murder of a defense attorney in 1985, is scheduled to be executed this week. At one time, he had selected to die by lethal injection, but in a court hearing in April, he expressed a different preference: "I would like the firing squad, please." Utah is the only state in the country that still executes inmates by firing squad. Did Gardner make a foolish choice?" [RESTOFSTORY@SLATE]

 

j. steven's evolution

SCOTUS BLOG - Doubts About Death - The evolution of Justice Stevens’s capital punishment jurisprudence - "The following essay for our series on John Paul Stevens is by Lauren Sudeall Lucas (scroll down on this page to see her bio). Lucas clerked for Justice Stevens during the 2006 Term, and is now a Staff Attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia."

"The 2006 Term, during which I served as a law clerk to Justice Stevens, has been characterized by many as the year in which the Court made clear that it had become a strikingly more conservative institution...

For one group, however, there was perhaps one bright spot: the group was capital defendants and the bright spot was Justice Stevens.  The death penalty cases from the 2006 Term demonstrated a continuing evolution in Justice Stevens’ jurisprudence regarding the legal process by which we put capital defendants to death and the Justice’s willingness to recognize the flaws in a system that has long been broken..."  [SCOTUSBLOG]

"Jesus Christ, Capital Defendant"

"Shortly thereafter, I came up with what might be the worst idea ever by an untenured faculty member at a Baptist university -- I would stage the trial of Christ in that Baptist church, under Texas capital punishment rules..." 

Mark Osler: Jesus Christ, Capital Defendant.  HuffPost @ http://tinyurl.com/373ybxf

"A good way to end up on death row in Texas

"A good way to end up on death row in Texas is to be accused of a capital crime and have Jerry Guerinot represent you..." Adam Liptak (May 17, 2010) New York Times, Sidebar ...

cdcr: lethal injection regs to the office of administrative law

CDCR PRESS RELEASE:  "The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) completed its rulemaking activities and submitted its lethal injection regulations to the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) today.  The rulemaking documents include the final regulation text, final statement of reasons, public comments and other required documents..." California's OAL is at http://www.oal.ca.gov/.

 

"eliminating counties' role"

Gershowitz, A. M. (2010). Statewide Capital Punishment: The Case for Eliminating Counties' Role in the DeathPenalty. Vanderbilt Law Review, 63(2), 307+.

"In almost every state that authorizes capital punishment, local county prosecutors are responsible for handling capital trials and for deciding when to seek the death penalty. This approach has proven to be arbitrary and inefficient. Because death penalty cases are extremely expensive and complicated, counties with large budgets and experienced prosecutors are able to seek the death penalty often. By contrast, smaller counties with limited budgets frequently lack the funds and institutional knowledge to seek the death penalty in even the most truly heinous cases. The result is geographic arbitrariness within a state. The difference between life and death may depend on the side of the county line where the offense was committed..."

breaker morant - "shoot straight"

legal ethics

Human Rights Now! The Amnesty International Human Rights Blog Log - Courts Ignore Secret Affair in TX Death Penalty Case (Posted by: Brian Evans, April 20, 2010):

"In the context of the Troy Davis case, I’ve written quite a bit about how the US Supreme Court, so far, as avoided taking a definitive position on whether it’s constitutional to execute someone who can establish his innocence.  Yesterday, the Supreme Court declined an opportunity to decide whether a sexual affair between a judge and prosecutor resulted in an unfair trial for the defendant.

"Both of these questions ought to be no-brainers.  No, you should never execute people who have established their innocence; and yes, a judge-prosecutor romance should lead to a new trial for the defendant.  But for Charles Dean Hood, whose case the high Court brushed off yesterday, no new trial will be forthcoming.  He will remain on death row in Texas, awaiting a re-sentencing hearing on an unrelated issue..."

_______________

"Supreme Court Denies Review in Texas Case Involving Judge's Affair With DA" [Tony Mauro, The National Law Journal, April 20, 2010] 

http://tinyurl.com/y4j2g6f

with or without you

"See the stone set in your eyes | See the thorn twist in your side  | I wait for you |  Sleight of hand and twist of fate | On a bed of nails she makes me wait | And I wait without you | With or without you  |  With or without you ... "

Death Row U.S.A. Winter 2009 - A Quarterly Report by the Criminal Justice Project of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

JURISDICTIONS WITH CAPITAL PUNISHMENT STATUTES: 38

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida,Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi,Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina,Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee,Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wyoming, U.S. Government, U.S. Military.

JURISDICTIONS WITHOUT CAPITAL PUNISHMENT STATUTES: 15

Alaska, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan,Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, WestVirginia, Wisconsin.