Judgment Day

Interesting article from today's Denver Post discussing prisoners who were once on death row but later exonerated--here are highlights:

Since 1973, 129 people have walked off death rows in 26 states after evidence proved they were wrongfully convicted, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Florida leads all states with 22 exonerations, followed by 18 in Illinois. Oklahoma is one of five states that have each freed eight inmates from death row. One of the Oklahoma men, Ron Williamson, spent nine years on death row and came within five days of execution before he was set free by DNA evidence.

Nobody has ever been able to produce irrefutable proof that any innocent man was executed in recent U.S. history, but Oklahoma's execution of Malcolm Rent Johnson has troubled many death penalty opponents. He went to his execution proclaiming his innocence.

A star prosecution witness against Johnson, convicted of the 1981 rape and strangulation of an elderly woman, was police chemist Joyce Gilchrist, who was later fired amid allegations of shoddy forensic work and misleading testimony.

The LA Times has this opinion piece—here are highlights:

[Respected LA entertainment lawyer] George R. Hedges stood by Adam Miranda for two decades and happened upon evidence in the file of the Los Angeles County district attorney's office that a different man stabbed a drug dealer to death in 1980. On Monday, that changed everything, as the state Supreme Court threw out Miranda's death sentence and ordered a new penalty trial.

Miranda had an attorney whose firm was willing to donate millions of dollars worth of time to his case. Most of the 669 people on San Quentin's death row aren't nearly as lucky. If they have lawyers at all, they're usually harried, well-meaning professionals who do the best they can with the limited resources the state gives them to pursue their appeals. Earlier this year, one defense lawyer told the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice that, in a single death-penalty case, he typically must review 100 boxes of files and explore 40 areas in which things may have gone wrong -- but must tell his clients that "maybe I can only do seven of them" because there isn't enough money to do the rest.

Miranda is not a sympathetic symbol for abolishing the death penalty. Jurors were presented with a videotape at trial that showed him killing an Eagle Rock convenience store clerk; having committed such a brutal crime, he should never again walk free. But his sentence -- death, and not life without parole -- was based in part on another killing. The letter found in the prosecutor's file, but never shared with the defense as required by law and thus never considered by the sentencing jury, contained evidence of another man's admission to that crime.

More from the AP:

Georgia moved forward with preparations to execute a man convicted of killing his girlfriend, who on Tuesday night could become the first inmate put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection.

Barring a last-minute reprieve from the courts, William Earl Lynd will be put to death at 7 p.m., making him the first prisoner executed since September, when the high court took up a challenge to lethal injection and effectively halted all executions nationwide for seven months.

Lynd has already selected his final meal: two pepper jack barbecue burgers with crisp onions; two baked potatoes with sour cream, bacon and cheese; and a strawberry milkshake.

Lynd, now 53, was sentenced to die for kidnapping and shooting his live-in girlfriend, Ginger Moore, 26, in south Georgia in 1988, after the two consumed Valium, marijuana and alcohol. Prosecutors said she suffered a slow, agonizing death, regaining consciousness twice after being shot in the head.

The five-member Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday rejected Lynd's clemency appeal without comment.

Texas conducted the nation's last execution, putting Michael Richard to death on Sept. 25, 2007, the same day the Supreme Court agreed to consider the Kentucky case, brought by two prisoners who claimed the lethal injection method violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The Death Penalty Information Center reports here about a recent study conducted by Professor David Sloss of the St. Louis University School of Law, and others, finding only a small percentage of eligible murder cases in Missouri are prosecuted as death penalty cases, and even fewer result in a death sentence. Ninety-five percent of intentional homicide cases are never presented to the jury as capital cases. Of the other five percent, half are sentenced to death while the jury rejects the death penalty in the other half.

According to Prof. Sloss:

Prosecutors in St. Louis County pursued capital trials in more than 7 percent of their intentional homicide cases. In contrast, prosecutors in Jackson County (Kansas City) pursued capital trials in fewer than one-half of 1 percent of their cases. These disparities raise the disturbing possibility that decisions about who lives and who dies may be guided more by the philosophical predilections of individual prosecutors than the culpability of individual defendants.

But rather than depending on which are the worst crimes, the chance of a death sentence appears to rest more on what part of the state the crime was committed in. To lessen the effect of geography and the leanings of individual prosecutors, the authors of the study recommend a narrowing of the class of cases eligible for the death penalty.

From The Atlanta-Journal Constitution:

A federal judge in Atlanta on Wednesday rejected arguments that Georgia's method of execution by lethal injection is unconstitutional.

Ruling from the bench after 90 minutes of arguments, U.S. District Court Judge Beverly Martin found Georgia's procedures similar enough to Kentucky's, which were upheld last month by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Martin denied relief to condemned killer Jack Alderman, convicted of killing his wife outside of Savannah in 1974. Her ruling also clears the way for Tuesday's planned execution of William Lynd for killing his girlfriend in Berrien County in 1988.

Alderman's lawyers, from the New York law firm Clifford Chance and Atlanta's King & Spalding, fiercely litigated the challenge, taking testimony from state prison officials and experts. They contend Georgia's procedures pose an unacceptably high risk of severe pain and run afoul of the Constitution's guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment.

Kentucky, Georgia uses a three-drug cocktail: the sedative sodium pentothal followed by pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxer that stops breathing, and potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest.

But Michael Siem, one of Alderman's lawyers, said Georgia has none of the safeguards that the U.S. Supreme Court cited when upholding Kentucky's procedures.

In Kentucky, Siem said, a prison official confirms that the sodium pentothal has rendered the inmate unconscious before the next drugs are injected. There is required training for those who execute inmates in Kentucky, while Georgia's protocol does not call for it, he said.

But Eddie Snelling, a lawyer from the state attorney general's office, told Martin that lethal injection here is administered by trained officials and overseen by two licensed nurses with decades of experience. One nurse looks for indicators to make sure the inmate is unconscious before the other drugs are administered and two physicians stand by to give advice, Snelling said.

The team that administers lethal injections conducts at least two practice sessions a year, Snelling said. If an execution is scheduled, the team undergoes three or four days of practice sessions before the execution.

Capital Defense Weekly has updates today in three death penalty cases:

New Execution Date

Georgia officials have set May 6th as the execution date for William Earl Lynd. If executed Lynd will be the first person executed following the lifting of the execution moratorium post-Baze.

Fifth Circuit Grants A COA In Anthony Cardell Haynes v. Quarterman

The Fifth Circuit on Wednesday granted a COA in Anthony Cardell Haynes v. Quarterman, No. 07-70004, in light of Snyder v. Louisiana and prosecutorial strikes based, purportedly, on race.

The Next In Line To Be Executed In Alabama Dies Of Natural Causes

Daniel Siebert in Alabama, who came within a day of being executed on Oct. 24 before being granted a stay by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta pending Baze, died of natural causes Tuesday. Alabama convicted Siebert of five murders and he had confessed to more than a dozen homicides in total nationwide.

The family of one of his victims, Beatrice McDougall, noted in a prepared statement: “He lost his life in a more humane way than any of his victims. . . . We are not vindictive nor do we rejoice today.” more here.

The Santa Maria Times has this interesting editorial this morning—especially with all the Baze talk lately— that begins by discussing the case of Marine Cpl. Cesar Armando Laurean who’s the primary suspect in the murder of pregnant Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach in North Carolina last December. After an extensive manhunt, Laurean was arrested in Mexico on April 10th.

Laurean’s case is one of many that anger U.S. prosecutors, who don't like other governments telling them how U.S. criminal law should be applied. But Mexican law is very clear. It does not believe in the death penalty and will not send a foreigner back to his or her country if he or she potentially could be put to death. Last year, Mexico handed over 73 suspected criminals to the U.S., but only after assurances that none would face the death penalty if convicted of his or her crimes.

For 30 years, U.S. authorities have had to abide by a 1978 treaty that forces them to relinquish a capital punishment sentence even for the worst offenders. In Laurean's case, Onslow County (N.C.) District Attorney Dewey Hudson had to promise Mexican officials that he would not seek the death penalty if Laurean was convicted of the pregnant Marine's death. The most he could face would be life in prison.

SCOTUSblog has two Baze updates: "First post-Baze maneuvers" and "Baze Commentary: Justice Stevens’ Concurrence”. Highlights for the first update, second is provided in full:

"First post-Baze maneuvers":

The state of Florida moved quickly on Thursday to get Supreme Court permission to carry out the execution of a death-row inmate, and a prisoner in Mississippi asked the Court to rule itself or tell a lower court to rule on his challenge to that state’s execution procedure. These were the first filings in the Court in the wake of Wednesday’s ruling upholding the basic elements of execution by use of lethal drug injections.

Click to read more ...

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments this morning in Kennedy v. Louisiana, a case involving the constitutionality of imposing the death penalty for child rape. In 1976 the Supreme Court banned capital punishment for the crime of rape, but Louisiana has since passed a law allowing execution for rape of a child under age 12, reasoning the Court’s holding only applied to rape of an adult woman. And even though, theoretically, there are other crimes a person could be convicted of and sentenced to death (i.e., treason, espionage), capital punishment has been used exclusively for murder convictions for decades.

The outcome of the case is expected to have a significant impact around the country, with Georgia, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas all have laws authorizing capital punishment for the rape of a child, and Missouri indicating it may follow suit. Any state wishing to enact such legislation, however, must outline the circumstances in which the death penalty is warranted.

Simply sentencing child rapists to death, without aggravating circumstances, may be viewed by the Supreme Court as an arbitrary imposition of the death penalty. Under Louisiana law, a defendant convicted of aggravated rape of a child under the age of 12 qualifies for a death sentence. One of Kennedy’s arguments is that the Louisiana statute simply states the crime (aggravated rape) and restates the elements (child under 12).

Kennedy argues no aggravating factors are present, and most of the other states mentioned above with similar statutes require the defendant have a previous conviction of sexual assault. Louisiana maintains its statute should be narrowly construed because it only applies to defendants that seek out children under 12. The Court may find this is not narrow enough, because neither the judge nor the jury has an basis to differentiate between individual child rapists.

Additional coverage:

• SCOTUSblog Argument Preview
• Texas to argue for right to execute child rapists at Supreme Court
• Court meeting to weigh death penalty for child rapists
• Should child rapists face death penalty?

Death Row at San Quentin, which currently houses 622 inmates.The Death Penalty Information Center has this short summary of a study recently completed by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) on the relationship between homicide and execution rates. The results are quite interesting, and continue to prove that capital punishment is not an effective deterrent. Here are the highlights:

• States that execute many people and states that execute no one show the biggest decline in homicides (34% and 36% declines, respectively).
• States that execute few people have the least decline (24%) in homicides.
• The data shows that the homicide rates in states such as Texas, which leads the nation in executions, and in non-execution states such as New York, show the biggest declines.

The study looked at the effect of the 1,051 legal executions on the 446,457 homicides in the 50 states and D.C. during the 1984-2006 period.

The Journal Star reports here that the state’s high court will not reconsider its decision that electrocution is unconstitutional.

In February, the court ruled electrocution is cruel and unusual punishment when considering the case of Raymond Mata Jr.

Mata was convicted for the 1999 kidnapping and killing of 3-year-old Adam Gomez of Scottsbluff. Parts of the boy’s body were found in a freezer and dog bowl at Mata’s home. Bone fragments also were recovered from the stomach of Mata’s dog.

The court said in its February opinion that evidence shows that electrocution inflicts “intense pain and agonizing suffering” and that it “has proven itself to be a dinosaur more befitting the laboratory of Baron Frankenstein” than a state prison. Nebraska was the only state with electrocution as its sole means of execution. The February ruling left the state with a death penalty, but no way of carrying it out.

Sentencing Law and Policy provides this commentary in response to the article:

"If and when the Nebraska AG seeks cert on this issue, I think the US Supreme Court would be inclined to GVR the case back to the state courts after the Justices establish a general legal standard for method of execution cases in Baze."

The Death Penalty Information Center discusses two reports released this week by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California on the high costs of California's death penalty system. The article is here. The first report, The Hidden Death Tax, is here. The second report, Death by Geography, is here. Some highlights:

Posted on April 4, 2008 at 06:56AM by Blakely in Incarceration, Capital Punishment | Post a Comment