Month: June 2012

Mississippi may see most executions since 1950s

June 11, 2012 Source : http://www.timesdaily.com

With four execution so far and two scheduled this month, Mississippi is on pace to have more executions in 2012 than it has had in any year since the 1950s.

The last time Mississippi executed more than four inmates in any single year was in 1961, when five died in the gas chamber. There were eight executions in each of the years 1955 and 1956. In those days, inmates were put to death for crimes like armed robbery, rape or murder. Today, the only crime punishable by death in Mississippi is capital murder — a murder that happens during the commission of another felony.

The increase in executions comes as fewer people are being sentenced to death across the country. Some experts say the upward trend in Mississippi isn’t likely to last.

Don Cabana, a former Mississippi corrections commissioner and author of the book, “Death At Midnight: The Confessions of an Executioner,” said the increase “was absolutely predictable” and has more to do with timing and the pace of appeals than anything else.

“You have a number of people who have been sitting on death row for a long time whose cases kind of simultaneously, or in close proximity, started exhausting their appeals,” Cabana said.

Three of the men executed so far this year were convicted of crimes committed in 1995 and the other was convicted in the 1990 stabbing deaths of four children.

Jan Michael Brawner, who’s scheduled for execution on Tuesday, was convicted in the 2001 killings of his 3-year-old daughter, his ex-wife and her parents in Tate County. Gary Carl Simmons Jr., scheduled to die by injection June 20, was convicted of shooting and dismembering a man in Pascagoula over a drug debt in 1996.

“Mississippi went for a long time with no executions, or hardly any executions. It’s due to the slowness of the appellate process. But now these cases are coming to fruition,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group that collects and analyzes information on the death penalty.

Jim Craig, an attorney who has worked on appeals for death row inmates, believes there’s more to it than that.

Craig said that seven out of 11 men executed in Mississippi since 2008 were represented on appeal by the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel when it was led by attorney Bob Ryan, who took over the office in 2002. Glenn S. Swartzfager took over the office in 2008.

In a 2006 affidavit obtained by The Associated Press, Ryan described a situation in which the office lacked manpower and funding and he sometimes relied on trial summaries when filing appeals in numerous cases. At one point, he was essentially “the sole counsel on 21 cases,” he wrote in the affidavit.

Craig says he’s convinced that some of those men would be alive, either still appealing their cases or having their death sentences reduced, if they had better representation. Craig said many appeals were filed based only on the court transcript, and the post-conviction office didn’t bother to interview witnesses.

“This is more than just the usual things moving at the usual speed. This is a breakdown in the system of providing lawyers to poor people when the state is trying to execute them,” he said.

The Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel was created by the Legislature in 2000 to represent indigent death row inmates in appeals.

“A pace of one or two executions a year is about what Mississippi has averaged. The reason why we have had 11 since 2008, I think it has to do with the failures of the post-conviction office in those years,” Craig said.

The number of executions in Mississippi has fluctuated from year to year. There were two executions last year, three in 2010, none in 2009 and two in 2008. There also have been long gaps in executions over the years because of litigation. There were lulls between 1964 and 1983 and again from 1989 to 2002.

So far this year, Mississippi is only one execution behind Texas. Texas, however, has more executions scheduled for the remainder of the year than Mississippi. Texas has executed some 460 more people than Mississippi since 1976, but Texas has a much larger population.

There are 52 inmates on death row in Mississippi, which ranks 15th among death penalty states. Two of the inmates on Mississippi’s death row are women, though it has been decades since a woman was executed in Mississippi. California has the most death row inmates with around 723.

Richard Jordan, 66, who was first convicted in 1977, is the oldest person on Mississippi’s death row and has been there the longest, according to the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Jordan has an appeal pending in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mississippi Supreme Court sets execution date for Gary Carl Simmons Jr.- June 20

June 5, 2012 source : http://www.therepublic.com

JACKSON, Miss. — The Mississippi Supreme Court set a June 20 execution date Tuesday for 49-year-old Gary Carl Simmons Jr.

The court set the date and granted Simmons’ request for in-person contact visits with a forensic psychologist and a neuropsychologist for the purpose of conducting mental health evaluations. His attorneys had argued that the mental evaluation was necessary because Simmons may have post-traumatic stress disorder or other illnesses and had suffered from abuse as a child.

Simmons was convicted for shooting and dismembering Jeffrey Wolfe, who was killed in August 1996 after going to Simmons’ Pascagoula home to collect on a drug debt.

Timothy Milano, Simmons’ co-defendant and the person authorities said shot Wolfe, was convicted on the same charges and sentenced to life in prison.

Simmons worked as a grocery store butcher when he and Milano were charged with killing Wolfe. Police said the pair kidnapped Wolfe and his female friend and later assaulted the woman and locked her in a box. Police later found parts of Wolfe’s dismembered body at Simmons’ house, in the yard and in a nearby bayou.

Simmons also argued his original lawyers were ineffective at trial and that he never later had lawyers good enough to point out shortcomings.

In addition, he argued his legal cause suffered in part because of ineffective assistance by Bob Ryan, formerly head of the state office meant to handle post-conviction appeals for people sentenced to death.

The state’s high court, however, denied Simmons’ request to challenge the performance of prior post-conviction counsel.

Amnesty International Usa – Support a strong Arms Trade Treaty this July!

KILLER FACT: Just six countries export 74% of the world’s weapons! The world’s most powerful countries must put human rights before profits and stop arming abusers.

Support  click here

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Is The Death Penalty Moral ?

Sentencing reforms need to be set in place preventing ‘permanent’ punishments. Sentencing needs to be derived from a ‘protect us from the bad elements’ point of view and not from a ‘pay them back for their nefarious deeds’ point of view.

When a law is created from a retribution or payback perspective, it violates the spirit of law and order, particularly, when a sentence option is death, having the wrong person or an aggressive prosecution and then doing something as ‘unacceptable’ as they did sounds like childish retribution and just doesn’t weigh in as making sense.

If you have the wrong person and you kill them, then heaven save us all. It could be you, me, any family member, friend or a complete stranger; it doesn’t matter because they are dead. This is dangerous to us all and why are we paying taxes to have a law like this if there is a potential that we can be easily killed by accidentor wrongly but legally. It doesn’t matter how rarely it might happen, death just doesn’t sound smart to me.

Again, if the prosecution believes that the person is guilty, their expert experience with the judicial system give them an advantage as well as increase the likelihood that an innocent person gets the death penalty.  I am not insinuating that prosecutors are evil, maybe, maybe not; the point is when the sentencing is so permanent it leaves NO room for mistakes. In this era of human rights I find it difficult that the most valuable right we have, the right to life, is not protected.

How can we punish someone for something we say is wrong and are abhorred by and then go and do the exact same thing to them ourselves, collectively, and feel justified in our actions.  We ignore the reality of it all by saying we are more humane and we would not be doing it if they did not make the choices they have chosen.  Then we sit down, contemplate, debate, and plan laws, voting on them and finally making a decision in the first degree of culpability to impose a death penalty.

If you say killing is wrong, then it’s wrong. Period.

Source : http://socyberty.com

Canada – Luka Rocco Magnotta likely to be extradited from Germany by end of June

June 07 , 2012 Source : http://www2.canada.com

BERLIN – German prosecutors said Thursday the Canadian porn star accused of the grisly killing and dismemberment of a Chinese student in Montreal last month will likely be extradited by the end of June.

“We hope that he can be extradited by the end of the month,” a spokesman for the Berlin public prosecutor’s office, Martin Steltner, told AFP following the arrest of Luka Rocco Magnotta in the German capital on Monday.

Steltner said the first official step in the extradition procedure should be taken later Thursday.

Luka Rocco Magnotta

Luka Rocco Magnotta

“Berlin prosecutors will submit the extradition request for Luka Rocco Magnotta to Berlin’s higher regional court, which is to examine whether it complies with the law,” he said.

If the court upholds the legality of the request, the public prosecutor would then submit it to the German government for a routine examination of whether the penalty the suspect would face in his home country could violate his human rights, Steltner said.

Germany does not extradite to countries that have the death penalty, which Canada does not.

The 29-year-old Magnotta was picked up in a Berlin Internet cafe looking up online articles about himself after a witness tip ended a 10-day-long international manhunt while he was on the run to Paris and then Berlin.

He is awaiting extradition to face charges in Canada of murdering 33-year-old Chinese student Lin Jun, believed at one point to have been his lover.

Magnotta allegedly filmed himself on the night of May 24-25 killing Lin with a pickaxe and dismembering the body before sending a foot and a hand to the headquarters of Canadian political parties, including the ruling Conservatives.

Canadian police said Wednesday they were probing a macabre new twist in the case after further body parts sent from Montreal turned up at Vancouver schools. It was not immediately clear whether the limbs belonged to Lin.

A torso, which has been identified as belonging to Lin, was discovered in a suitcase outside Magnotta’s apartment building, but his head and his second hand and foot were all unaccounted for before Tuesday.

A series of new videos from Magnotta – likely filmed after the murder – have surfaced on the Internet and appear to be authentic, according to police.

In one, posted on the video-sharing site YouTube, a seemingly cavalier Magnotta is seen smoking and says, “what’s up and hi to all my fans,” while Madonna’s song “La Isla Bonita” plays in the background.

Police called the initial video showing the murder “sordid” and said the crime scene was virtually covered in blood.

Lin had been studying computer science in Montreal before his gory death.

His grieving parents, accompanied by his sister and uncle, arrived in Montreal late Tuesday from China to meet with Chinese diplomats, police and university administrators, the Chinese consulate told AFP.

Vancouver police said the packaging and addresses on the boxes sent to two schools there, in the far west of the country, were similar to those on the parcels discovered at the political offices in eastern Canada.

Montreal police spokesman Ian Lafreniere told reporters that a note was included with one package sent to a Vancouver school, as well as one of the packages delivered to Ottawa, but did not discuss the contents of the notes.

After a warrant was issued for Magnotta’s arrest, local media reported that a note sent with a severed foot to Conservative Party headquarters indicated that more body parts had been sent in the mail, and that the person who dismembered the victim would kill again.

Magnotta, who has been dubbed the “Canadian Psycho” and the “Butcher of Montreal,“ fled Canada on May 26, initially to Paris, before boarding a bus to Berlin on Friday.

Canadian authorities said he will face charges of first-degree murder and committing indignities to a body. He is also expected to be charged with publishing and mailing obscene matter to Canadian politicians.

Magnotta, who has worked as a bisexual porn star and as a gay prostitute called “Angel,” has changed his name and used several aliases. He had several fraud convictions on his record.

A series of judge-imposed conditions reportedly banned him from owning or using a camera or a computer, and from accessing the Internet.

Germany’s daily Bild, reporting on Magnotta’s past, said he was a high school graduate who had grown up with his grandparents.

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I ask  : Magnotta will not fight for his extradition, it seems normal because Canada no longer practices the death penalty. In such cases, is – what Canada should reconsider to reinstall the death penalty ? What do u think ? 

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CALIFORNIA – Death Row suicide highlights executions’ delays

June 10, 2012 Source : http://www.mercurynews.com

SAN FRANCISCO—When James Lee Crummel hanged himself in his San Quentin Prison cell last month, he had been living on Death Row for almost eight years—and he was still years away from facing the executioner.

California’s automatic death penalty appeals take so long that the state’s 723 condemned inmates are more likely to die of old age and infirmities —or kill themselves—than be put to death.

Since capital punishment was reinstated in 1978, California has executed 13 inmates, and none since 2006. But 20 have committed suicide, including Crummel, who abducted, sexually abused and killed a 13-year-old boy on his way to school in 1979. Another 57 inmates have died of natural causes. The ponderous pace of this process has helped make the state’s death row the most populous in the nation, and it has generated critics from all quarters.

Victim rights groups say the delays amount to justice denied. Death penalty opponents say the process, like execution itself, amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

And now the state’s voters will get an opportunity this November to vote on a measure that would abolish the death penalty, which critics deride as an inefficient and expensive system for a financially troubled state.

It took the Supreme Court four years to appoint Crummel a public defender, and it took his attorney almost that long to file his opening brief after several time extensions. Crummel’s appeal was expected to consume a few more years before the high court decided the case.

While most condemned inmates welcome legal delays, even those seeking a speedy resolution are stymied.

Scott Peterson, who was sentenced to death seven years ago for murdering his pregnant wife Laci, is attempting to get his case before the Supreme Court as soon as possible, because he says he was wrongly convicted.

Peterson’s parents hired a top-notch private appellate lawyer after sentencing, while other Death Row inmates wait an average of five years each for appointment of taxpayer-funded public defenders.

“We are moving at lightning speed compared to most automatic appeals,” said Peterson’s attorney Cliff Gardner. “He wants to establish his innocence.”

The slow wheels of death penalty appeals, and the billions of dollars spent on them over the years, are making converts of some of capital punishment’s biggest backers, including the author of a 1978 ballot measure that expanded the types of crimes eligible for capital punishment in the state.

Retired prosecutor Donald Heller, who wrote the 1978 proposition, and Ron Briggs, the initiative’s campaign manager who now serves on the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors, say they support abolition in California because the system is too costly and hardly anyone is being put to death.

“We’d thought we would bring California savings and safety in dealing with convicted murderers,” Briggs said in a statement. “Instead, we contributed to a nightmarish system that coddles murderers and enriches lawyers. ”

The current measure—known as the SAFE California Act—would convert all death sentences to life in prison without parole and redirect $100 million from the death penalty system to be spent over three years investigating unsolved murders and rapes.

Despite the growing backlog, district attorneys continue to send murderers to death row. Five new inmates have arrived this year, and several more are expected, including Los Angeles gang member 24-year-old Pedro Espinoza who was convicted of shooting to death a high school football player. A jury recommended death for Espinoza, and a judge is scheduled formally sentence him in September.

Meantime, Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley is attempting to immediately resume executions of two longtime Death Row inmates Mitchell Carleton Sims, 52, and Tiequon Aundray Cox, 46, who have exhausted all of their appeals. Sims has been on Death Row since 1987, Cox since 1986.

“It is time Sims and Cox pay for their crimes,” said Cooley, who is asking that the inmates be executed with a single drug rather than the three-drug lethal cocktail now being challenged in federal and state courts. The California District Attorneys Association is backing Cooley’s attempt to resume executions.

Cooley argues appeals rather than trials consume the lion’s share of what the state spends administering the death penalty in California. Cooley wants executions to remain on hold until after the November election. But if the death penalty is retained, he proposes a change in the law to allow the State Court of Appeal to start handling death penalty appeals rather than automatically sending every case to the Supreme Court for review.

Appealing the death penalty in California takes decades for a variety of reasons. There are too few qualified attorneys to handle too many automatic death penalty appeals, resulting in inmates waiting about five years each for a public defender. Once an inmate is represented by counsel, it still takes additional years to put together the voluminous trial record that serves at the heart of the appeal.

Those records often exceed 70,000 pages, according to Peterson’s attorney, adding that he wouldn’t be surprised if his client’s record reached 80,000 pages.

Gardner says he expects to file his appeal brief later this month, which would be a first for any inmate sentenced to death during the past 12 years.

None of the estimated 250 prisoners in that category is as far along as Peterson, according to a study of California’s death penalty published last year by 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Arthur Alarcon and Loyola Law School professor Paula Mitchell.

They estimated that $4 billion has been spent on all facets of the state’s death penalty since 1978, including $925 million on appeals.

California’s death penalty, the authors said, is a “multibillion-dollar fraud on California taxpayers” that has seen “billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent to create a bloated system, in which condemned inmates languish on death row for decades before dying of natural causes and in which executions rarely take place.”

US – CANADA Luka Rocco Magnotta Case, canadian killer cannibal and necrophiliac

June 8, 2012 Source : http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Now that accused Canadian cannibal Luka Rocca Magnotta is in custody, and body parts of his alleged victim have turned up at several locations, new questions about whether Magnotta could be a suspect in similar crimes have emerged.

In January, body parts were found strewn near the iconic Hollywood sign in California. With no suspect for that crime, even though it happened nearly 3,000 miles from where Magnotta is accused of dismembering a 33-year-old college student, some news organizations have speculated that the cases are connected.

But retired FBI agent Harold Copus laughed off this supposed connection. “There is also a possibility that martians could be responsible,” he told the Huffington Post.

He said he is not trying to make light of the situation, but indicated that the reports are overreaching.

On May 29, 33-year-old Jun Lin’s torso was found in a suitcase near Magnotta’s apartment. Later that morning, authorities were called to the headquarters of the Conservative Party of Canada to investigate a suspicious package. Inside, they found Jun’s severed foot. Another body part –– Jun’s severed hand –– was found that night inside a package at the Ottawa Postal Terminal. The package had been addressed to the Liberal Party of Canada.

Other body parts belonging to Jun were found at the apartment building, and his right hand and foot were found earlier this week at two Vancouver schools.

A head and appendages were found in the Hollywood Hills by two dog walkers in mid-January. The victim has since been identified as 66-year-old Hervey Medellin, a local resident who often hiked the area.

Contacted by HuffPost today, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department said the agency reached out to police in Montreal, but said it was only to “determine a timeline,” which is standard procedure.

According to Copus, it is far too soon to intertwine the two cases.

“Every law enforcement agency that has a similar case is going to see if there is any possibility that this guy could be responsible for it. That is normal and law enforcement has a duty to do that,” said Copus, now head of Copus Security Consultants in Atlanta. “Nothing more should be read into any of it at this point.”

Instead, Copus said the concern at this point should be about copycats.

“Whenever something like this happens, there is always the possibility that it could inspire other troubled individuals to act out in a similar manner. They might also try to outdo the person who inspired them – and take it a step further.”

ARIZONA – Samuel Villegas Lopez – Execution June 27, 2012 – 10:00 a.m

June 27, 2012 Source : http://tucsoncitizen.com

The U.S. Supreme Court late Thursday denied death-row inmate Samuel Lopez’s final appeal, clearing the way for his execution at 10 a.m. today in Florence.

Lopez’s attorney, assistant federal public defender Kelley Henry, said there will be no other efforts to block his execution. Lopez, 49, was convicted in 1987 of raping and murdering Estefana Holmes in her Phoenix apartment. On Friday, the Arizona Supreme Court also denied a stay, and Arizona’s Board of Executive Clemency denied a commutation bid.

His execution will be the first in which witnesses will watch, via closed-circuit TV, the insertion of the catheters that deliver the fatal drug pentobarbital. Attorneys for inmates in prior executions condemned the practice of inserting catheters into the prisoners’ groins. Officials said the executioners had found it difficult to find suitable veins in the arms and legs.

In earlier executions, witnesses only saw the prisoner after the catheters had been inserted.

June 26, 2012 Source : http://www.azcentral.com

A death-row inmate set to be executed in Arizona on Wednesday has lost his last appeal, clearing the way for the lethal injection to proceed.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a request from Samuel Villegas Lopez to delay his execution to consider arguments that his trial attorneys were incompetent.

June 6, 2012 Source : http://www.azcentral.com

ll executions carried out in Arizona are witnessed by members of the public and the media. But the witnesses only see the condemned prisoner as he says his last words and lapses into unconsciousness.

During the next execution, scheduled for June 27, the witnesses also will be able to watch as executioners insert the intravenous catheters that deliver the deadly drug into the prisoner’s veins.

Just last week, a federal judge in Phoenix denied requests by defense attorneys and the media to witness those preparations. A federal judge in Idaho denied a similar request from the media Tuesday.

But in a letter Wednesday to death-row prisoner Samuel Lopez, who faces execution June 27, Arizona Corrections Director Charles Ryan said that witnesses to the execution –– who generally include five members of the media — will be allowed to watch his catheter insertion via closed-circuit television.

The location of the catheters has been an ongoing court issue in the past several executions. The Department of Corrections frequently claims that its medical staff for executions are unable to find suitable veins in the arms or legs of the condemned prisoners, prompting them to surgically insert a line into prisoners’ groin areas.

During a March execution, a condemned man asked to speak to his attorney before the execution as the medical staff repeatedly stuck him without finding a vein, eventually putting the line into the femoral vein in his groin. He was not allowed to speak to the attorney and instead communicated with him by code during his last words.

Ryan has previously refused to allow anyone to view the process.

In May, judges at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals questioned why Arizona media had not expressed its First Amendment right to witness the procedure.

A 2009 decision by the 9th Circuit ruled that the public has a right to witness all aspects of an execution. Only California and Ohio have allowed it until now.

Nonetheless, the Arizona Department of Corrections fought the motion to allow attorneys into the room to see the catheters inserted. The First Amendment Coalition of Arizona also asked to witness, but a U.S. District Court judge in Phoenix denied their motions.

The attorneys filed an appeal in the 9th Circuit on Wednesday morning asking that a prisoner’s attorneys be allowed to watch the procedure in order to gather evidence, regardless of whether he or she is invited as a witness by the prisoner.

But also Wednesday, Lopez received a note from Ryan informing him that the executioners will be using a single drug, pentobarbital, to carry out his execution, and that he could make a final statement to the witnesses. However, he was told that his microphone would be cut off if he made offensive statements.

A Department of Corrections spokesman said the note to Lopez speaks for itself.

In the last paragraph, Ryan told Lopez that the closed-circuit monitors in the execution chamber will be turned on as the IVs are inserted before the execution, and that there will be a live microphone in the room so that the witnesses can hear what is said during the procedure.

“Over the past two years, ADC stopped illegally importing the execution drugs, switched to a one-drug protocol and now is making the execution process more transparent. These are steps in the right direction,” said Assistant Federal Public Defender Dale Baich, who will witness Lopez’s execution as his guest. “ADC now recognizes that the entire execution process can be transparent and, at the same time, the anonymity of the medical personnel who carry out the executions can be protected.”

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ALABAMA – Mental retardation finding may save convicted Jefferson County murderer from death sentence

June 8, 2012 Source : http://blog.al.com

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — A Jefferson County murderer who served more than four years on Death Row then won a new trial and was reconvicted, may avoid a second death sentence after a state expert found he was mentally retarded, a hearing revealed today.

Esaw Jackson, 33, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2007 for a shooting the year earlier in Ensley that killed a woman and a teenager and wounded the mother’s two teen children.

A Jefferson County jury also convicted him of capital murder in 2011, and recommended a sentence of death in a 10-2 vote.

Pre-sentence testing ordered by Circuit Judge Stephen Wallace, the judge in the current trial, determined Jackson had an IQ of 56, well below the normal legal threshold for mental retardation, which is a 70 IQ.

The U.S. Supreme Court has banned executing mentally retarded murderers.

In today’s hearing, prosecutor Mike Anderson asked for more time to obtain and examine Jackson’s school records for evidence of mental retardation, another indicator courts use to determine if the death penalty should be barred.

Wallace set a July 13 hearing, and said he wants to set the final sentencing after Anderson reports back.

If the assessment holds that Jackson is mentally retarded, “the sentence would have to be life without parole,” said one of Jackson’s lawyer, Erskine Mathis.

Judges in capital cases are not bound by the jury’s sentencing recommendation, but in most cases Alabama judges have overridden the jury’s recommendation of life without parole and imposed death instead.

Fewer than 10 percent of the judicial overrides have resulted in the lesser capital sentence, according to the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery.

Jackson was 27 when he fired a rifle at least 15 times into a car stopped at a traffic light on 19th Street and Avenue V. Killed were Pamela Montgomery, 42, and Milton Poole III, 16. Montgomery’s children, Shaniece Montgomery, then 19, and Denaris Montgomery, then 17, were wounded.

The jury in Jackson’s original trial also recommended death in a 10-2 vote, and then-Circuit Judge Gloria Bahakel sentenced him to death. The Alabama Supreme Court overturned his convictionand sentence in 2011, citing improper testimony in the 2007 trial.

Four years after watching his mother and best friend die, Denaris Montgomery committed a murder himself, and now is serving a 21-year prison term.

Exonerated death row inmate to speak in Colorado Springs – Juan Melendez

June 8, 2012  Source : http://www.csindy.com

Rev. Roger Butts, organizer for Coloradans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. “And God forbid we execute an innocent person.”

Juan Melendez nearly became that person. After 17 years on death row in Florida for a 1983 murder — and several denied appeals — that state’s Supreme Court finally overturned his conviction when a key witness recanted his testimony. Ten years after his release, he’s bringing his story to Colorado Springs. On Sunday evening. Melendez will speak and respond to questions at First Congregational Church, 20 E. Saint Vrain St., at 6 p.m.

“The guy is just so incredibly inspiring,” says Rev. Butts. “I have a feeling that if I spent 17 years on death row, I’d be bitter, and angry, and mean, and just a recluse or something. But this guy is so unbelievably inspiring.”

His visit is sponsored by Coloradans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, who hope to pass legislation in 2013 to make Colorado the 18th state in the union to end capital punishment. For more information, contact Rev. Roger Butts at revrogerb@msn.com

Check out the trailer for Juan Melendez 6446, a documentary about Melendez’s perilous journey through capital punishment’s legal apparatus.

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