Month: July 2015

Nevada pursues death chamber, controversial drug

Monday, July 13, 2015

Nevada has no executions on the immediate horizon but is pushing ahead to build a new death chamber at Ely State Prison and would use a drug at the heart of a recent U.S. Supreme Court case to carry out lethal injections.
Brian Connett, deputy director at the Nevada Department of Corrections, said department lawyers were reviewing the June 29 decision over the use of midazolam in Oklahoma executions “to determine what, if any, impact it may have on Nevada.”
“Nevada would use the drugs midazolam and hydromorphone to administer a lethal injection and has an adequate supply of these drugs to carry out an execution if ordered,” he said in an email.
But death penalty watchdogs said use of the drug almost assuredly would spawn lawsuits after highly publicized incidents of botched executions.
Three Oklahoma death row inmates sued after that state first used midazolam last year in the execution of Clayton Lockett. Witnesses reported Lockett writhed, gasped and moaned. Prison officials tried to halt the execution process, but Lockett died after 43 minutes.
Midazolam, an anti-anxiety drug, is intended to put inmates in a comalike state before other drugs to bring about death are administered. Critics argue it does not guarantee unconsciousness to avoid pain from the subsequent drugs.
Similar prolonged executions using midazolam occurred in Ohio and Arizona in 2014.
LETHAL DRUG RULING
In its 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court said the use of midazolam does not violate Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. The majority also noted that midazolam had been used in other executions about a dozen times without complications.
About 10 days later, Oklahoma set new execution dates in September and October for the 3 inmates who challenged the use of the drug.
A 2-drug injection of midazolam and the painkiller hydromorphone, the same combination planned for use by Nevada, was 1st used for lethal injection by Ohio in January 2014. Witnesses said that it took about 25 minutes for condemned killer Dennis McGuire to die and that during the process he made loud snorting or choking noises while his midsection convulsed.
Rob Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington-based nonprofit group, said the court’s decision doesn’t settle the question over midazolam’s use.
“That doesn’t mean that there will not be challenges to midazolam elsewhere,” he said.
Dunham said that while justices found the Oklahoma inmates didn’t meet their burden of proof to halt the use of the drug, “it doesn’t mean that midazolam is constitutional.”
He said a state “that is concerned about the execution process would have serious doubts about using midazolam.”
The last execution in Nevada was April 26, 2006, at the now-shuttered Nevada State Prison in Carson City. Daryl Mack was executed for the 1988 rape and murder of Betty Jane May in Reno.
Starting at least 11 years ago and up through Mack’s execution, Nevada used a combination of pentobarbital, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride in its execution protocol. But Nevada and other states have been pressed to find alternatives after death penalty opponents pressured manufacturers not to sell them for executions.
Nevada has executed 12 inmates since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. About 80 men are on Nevada’s death row.
NEW DEATH CHAMBER
Besides the issue of lethal drugs, Nevada is building a new death chamber at Ely State Prison after Nevada State Prison, where executions were conducted, closed in 2012.
Less than a week after Gov. Brian Sandoval signed a capital improvement bill on June 15 that included $860,000 to remodel a prison administrative building into a new death chamber, the state Public Works Board published a notice seeking statements of qualifications from architectural and engineering firms to perform the work.
The deadline for submitting those statements was Thursday, and it is unclear how many were submitted. The prison project was one of dozens of maintenance projects approved by state lawmakers for the next 2 years.
State lawmakers, who rejected funding for a new execution chamber in 2013, approved the expenditure this year despite reservations about the cost and lingering uncertainty over the death penalty.
San Quentin's brand new, costly - and still unused - death chamber
San Quentin’s brand new, costly – and still unused – death chamber
Critics have called the new execution chamber “an outrageous boondoggle.”
“This proposed new facility may sit unused forever, or it could require further remodeling if lethal injection is rejected in court,” Nancy Hart, president of the Nevada Coalition Against the Death Penalty, and Tod Story, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, wrote in a May 27 opinion piece.
“Even if lethal injection is upheld, there are serious doubts about the availability of the lethal drugs needed for an execution,” they wrote.
Plans call for remodeling 1,900 square feet of visitation and courtroom areas of an administrative building at the Ely Prison to accommodate an execution chamber.
During legislative hearings, Chris Chimits, deputy administrator with the state Public Works Board, said the chamber would be modeled after California’s San Quentin State Prison execution facility, the construction of which was overseen by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Mary Woods, spokeswoman for the Nevada Department of Administration, said a design contract could be presented to the Board of Examiners for approval in November.
After that, the design, permitting and construction process is expected to take about a year.

 

BREAKING : Obama Frees Dozens Of Nonviolent Federal Inmates

July 13, 2015

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama announced Monday that he has granted dozens of federal inmates their freedom, as part of an effort to counteract draconian penalties handed out to nonviolent drug offenders in the past.

The 46 inmates who had their sentences reduced represent a small fraction of the tens of thousands of inmates who have applied. The U.S. Justice Department prioritizes applications from inmates who are nonviolent, low-level offenders, have already served at least a decade in prison, and would have received a substantially lower sentence if convicted today, among other factors.

“I am granting your application because you have demonstrated the potential to turn your life around,” Obama wrote in a letter to the inmates. “Now it is up to you to make the most of this opportunity. It will not be easy, and you will confront many who doubt people with criminal records can change. Perhaps even you are unsure of how you will adjust to your new circumstances.”

The president has now issued nearly 90 commutations, the vast majority of them to nonviolent offenders sentenced for drug crimes under outdated sentencing rules.

Thanks to stringent mandatory minimums and other laws, a number of nonviolent drug offenders have been sentenced to life in prison without parole. One such applicant for clemency was Dicky Joe Jackson, who was caught selling meth in order to pay for a bone marrow transplant for his young son. He told The Huffington Post earlier this week that he had seen “child molesters come in and out of here, rapists come in and out of here, murderers come in and out here,” and yet he was still serving a life sentence without parole.

Another applicant was Alice Marie Johnson, a mother of five who was hoping for commutation of her life-without-parole sentence. After she divorced and lost her job, she got involved in the drug trade and was sentenced as a first-time nonviolent offender. “I did do something wrong,” she recently told HuffPost. “But this [was] a bad choice in my life that has cost me my life.”

The overwhelming majority of those who just received clemency had been sentenced for crimes involving crack and cocaine, while two were marijuana cases.

Neither Jackson nor Johnson was included in the list of individuals who had their sentences commuted.

A number of federal sentencing reforms have been implemented since the height of the drug war. In 2010, Congress passed a law narrowing the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. The Justice Department also announced in 2013 that it would no longer seek mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug offenders. The following year, the U.S. Sentencing Commission agreed to reduce drug trafficking sentences retroactively.

Both Republicans and Democrats recognize that the criminal justice system is in dire need of additional reform. But commutations have been slow-going. According to The New York Times, the White House has asked the Justice Department to speed up the process by which it sends over applicants.

In his letter to those who received clemency, the president continued, “Remember that you have the capacity to make good choices. By doing so, you will affect not only your life, but those close to you. You will also influence, through your example, the possibility that others in your circumstances get their own second chance in the future. I believe in your ability to prove the doubters wrong, and change your life for the better.”

“I want people to know I didn’t kill this man,” death row inmate Richard Glossip still claims innocence

Richard Glossip, 52, will be the next Oklahoma inmate to be executed under the state lethal injection protocol approved by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Court of Criminal Appeals set Glossip’s execution date for September 15, 2016.
Glossip will be put to death for his role in the brutal murder of Barry Van Treese in 1997.
Late last year, Ali Meyer traveled to McAlester to talk with Glossip about his case, his execution and his claims of innocence.
“I’m prepared for whatever happens, but it’s not easy,” Glossip said behind a wall of thick glass and metal bars. “It’s like you’re in a tomb, just waiting to die so they can finish it off. You hardly get any contact, and the contact you have is with guards. It’s hard; harder than people think it is. People think we’ve got it easy down here. It’s not true.”
Richard Eugene Glossip has been on Oklahoma’s death row for 17 years.
“The dying part doesn’t bother me. Everybody dies, but I want people to know I didn’t kill this man (Barry Van Treese). I didn’t participate or plan or anything to do with this crime. I want people to know that it’s not just for me that I’m speaking out. It’s for other people on death row around this country who are innocent and are going to be executed for something they didn’t do. It’s not right that it’s happening. We’re in a country where that should never happen.”
Richard Glossip was convicted of murder-for-hire in the 1997 death of Barry Van Treese.
“They offered me a life sentence at my 2nd trial. I turned it down because I’m not going to stand there and admit to something that I didn’t do. Even though my attorneys said I was an idiot for turning it down because I could end up back on death row. I prefer death row than to tell somebody I committed a crime I didn’t do.” Glossip said. “I understand people want the death penalty, especially in the state of Oklahoma because of the crimes that are committed. I understand that even though I don’t believe in it. But, one thing you should be absolutely sure about is that you’re not about to kill an innocent man.”
Glossip’s co-worker, Justin Sneed, confessed to the murder of Barry Van Treese. Sneed testified against Glossip in exchange for his life. Sneed is now serving a life sentence.
“I wake up and look at these walls and think, ‘How the hell am I here?’ I think about it, try to figure out what went wrong. I just can’t figure it out. It’s a scary thing.”
The State of Oklahoma will use the controversial execution drug Midazolam to put Richard Glossip to death.
“It just really doesn’t make any sense to me what’s going on. They’re just in such a hurry to kill.”
Last year, the State of Oklahoma spent 5 months revamping the death chamber to carry out executions.
“You’re crammed in this box and every day you think about dying. You know they’re putting these cells up there to stick you in. I think that’s when it got even scarier the day they started construction because then you know they’re going through all this stuff to make sure they kill somebody. That’s a scary thing to think about.”
WHAT HAPPENED IN ROOM 102 — Oklahoma Prepares to Execute Richard Glossip 
On June 29, the very day the United States Supreme Court upheld Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol in Glossip v. Gross, signaling to the state that it could resume executions, State Attorney General Scott Pruitt wasted no time. His office sent a request to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals asking that death warrants be signed for the next 3 men in line for the gurney – the same 3 men whose challenge had made it all the way to Washington. “The above inmates have exhausted all regular state and federal appeals,” the attorney general wrote, respectfully urging the Court to schedule their executions. On Wednesday, July 8, the Court complied, setting 3 dates for the fall.
Richard Glossip is 1st in line to die, on September 16. As the lead plaintiff in the case before the Supreme Court, his name became synonymous with the legal fight over midazolam, a drug linked to a number of botched executions, but which the Court decided is constitutional for carrying out lethal injections. Glossip, who spoke to The Intercept hours after the ruling, did not have time to dwell on the decision. Even if the Court had ruled in his favor, he pointed out, Oklahoma remained determined to execute him and has provided itself with a range of options for doing so – most recently, adding nitrogen gas to the mix. With a new execution date looming, “I’m trying to stop them from killing me by any method,” Glossip said, “because of the fact that I’m innocent.”
Glossip has always maintained his innocence, ever since he was arrested in the winter of 1997 for a grisly killing that authorities prosecuted as a murder-for-hire. It is true that he himself did not kill anyone – a 19-year-old man named Justin Sneed confessed to police that he beat the victim to death with a baseball bat – but Glossip was identified as the “mastermind” behind the crime. Sneed, who worked for Glossip, claimed his boss pressured him to carry out the murder, offering him employment opportunities and several thousand dollars in return. There was very little additional evidence to back up his claims, but Sneed nevertheless was able to secure the state’s conviction of Glossip, saving himself from death row. Today, Sneed is serving life without parole at a medium security prison in Lexington, Oklahoma. Meanwhile, Glossip faces execution, while continuing to insist he had nothing to do with the murder. Last January, he came within a day of being executed and was in the process of saying goodbye to family when the Supreme Court granted certiorari to his lethal injection challenge.
Glossip has some outspoken supporters, including family members, the longtime anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean, as well as his former defense attorney, Wayne Fournerat, who was adamant in a conversation with The Intercept that his former client is innocent. But last October a particularly unlikely figure came forward to plead that Oklahoma spare Glossip’s life: O’Ryan Justine Sneed – Justin Sneed’s grown daughter. In a letter to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, she wrote that, based on her many communications with her dad, she “strongly believe[s]” that Richard Glossip is an innocent man. “For a couple of years now, my father has been talking to me about recanting his original testimony,” she wrote. “I feel his conscious [sic] is getting to him.”
Justine Sneed’s letter never reached the board. It arrived in the mail too late for Glossip’s attorneys to submit it for consideration. To date, Sneed himself has not come forward – according to his daughter, he fears what it could mean for his plea deal. Nor has she made any further public statements since her letter was published. (The Intercept made numerous attempts to reach her for an interview.) Her claims do not prove that Sneed lied, of course. But the available records in the 18-year-old case of Richard Glossip are themselves good reason for concern. From the police interrogation of Justin Sneed in 1997 to transcripts from Glossip’s 2 trials, the picture that emerges is one of a flimsy conviction, a case based on the word of a confessed murderer with a very good incentive to lie, and very little else. As Oklahoma gets ready to restart executions using its newly sanctioned lethal injection protocol, time is running out to answer the question: Could the state be preparing to kill an innocent man?
It was sometime after 4 a.m. on January 7, 1997, that 33-year-old Richard Glossip woke up to the sound of pounding on the wall outside his apartment at the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City. He lived there with his girlfriend of five years, D-Anna Wood; she later described waking up to “scraping on the wall.” It was “kind of scary loud,” she said.
Glossip had lived at the motel since 1995, when he was hired by the owner, Barry Van Treese, a father of 5 who lived some 90 miles away and owned a second motel in Tulsa. Van Treese happened to be visiting Oklahoma City, but he generally relied on Glossip to run the daily operations, only dropping by a couple times a month to pay his staff and check on the property. For managing the Best Budget Inn, Glossip received a salary of $1,500 a month, as well as room and board in the apartment adjacent to the motel’s office. On Mondays, which were usually slower nights, he and Wood would lock the front door to the motel around 2 a.m. Any guest trying to check in after that hour had to ring a buzzer to get in.

Read more: http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/#ixzz3fnr8JI6T

Lawyers for Colorado movie gunman James Holmes wrap up case

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Defense lawyers trying to avoid the death penalty for Colorado movie massacre gunman James Holmes wrapped up their case on Friday, hoping they have convinced jurors he was legally insane when he carried out one of the worst U.S. mass shootings.
They concede that he killed 12 people and wounded 70 when he opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle, shotgun and pistol inside a movie theater in 2012, and that had rigged his apartment with bombs before he left. But they say he suffers schizophrenia and was not in control of his actions.
Prosecutors accuse Holmes of being a cold-blooded murderer who aimed to kill all 400 people in the packed midnight premiere of a Batman film at the Century 16 cinema in Aurora, a Denver suburb. He failed in part because the drum magazine he bought for his rifle jammed.
After playing jurors a video of the defendant naked and running head-long into a cell wall, and another of him thrashing around in restraints at a hospital, the defense rested.
The prosecution said it would not present any rebuttal case. Attorneys from both sides will make closing arguments on Tuesday.
The defense team had earlier called a succession of psychiatrists and psychologists who studied Holmes, as well as jail staff who met him after he was arrested at the scene dressed head-to-toe in body armor, a gas mask and a helmet.
Their star expert witness, Raquel Gur, director of the Schizophrenia Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania, spent a grueling 4 days on the stand defending her diagnosis that Holmes was legally insane.
“He was not capable of differentiating between right and wrong,” Gur said on Thursday. The noted psychiatrist and author once examined Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and Arizona mass shooter Jared Loughner.
“He was not capable of understanding that the people that he was going to kill wanted to live.”
2 court-appointed psychiatrists reached a different conclusion: while Holmes is severely mentally ill, they have told jurors, he was legally sane when he planned and carried out the massacre.
Holmes did not testify in his own defense.
Throughout the trial he has displayed almost no reaction to the parade of more than 200 victims, law enforcement officials, medical workers and other witnesses who took the stand, just a few feet in front of where he sat tethered to the floor beneath the desk used by his attorneys.
Sometimes he turned his head to watch videos of himself played on a court television. Responding with 1-word answers, he told Arapahoe County District Court Judge Carlos Samour on Thursday that he understood his decision not to testify.
Holmes has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and if the jury agrees he would avoid the death penalty. Under Colorado law, the prosecution must prove he was sane for him to be found guilty of multiple counts of 1st-degree murder and attempted murder. District Attorney George Brauchler attacked Gur’s testimony during lengthy cross-examination.
Suggesting she neglected important indicators of Holmes’ state of mind, he said she failed to take detailed notes, and wrote a much shorter report than the court-appointed psychiatrists.
“Why not just send in a postcard?” Brauchler asked.
Jurors have posed questions to many witnesses, and Gur faced more than 50 written queries from the jury that were read to her by the judge.
They included whether she considered other diagnoses such as autism. She replied that she did. “The presentation was most consistent with … schizophrenia,” Gur said.

 

Trial for Iowa’s final execution consumed Council Bluffs, Glenwood

July 12, 2015

Fifty years before the Nebraska Legislature eliminated the death penalty, Iowa accomplished the same feat in 1965. The final two executions ordered by the state of Iowa occurred in 1962 after trials in southwest Iowa.

The infamy for the 29th and 30th hangings in Iowa’s history was reserved for the “Mad Dog Killers” – Charles Noel Brown and Charles Edward Kelley – who went on a three-state killing spree in February of 1961 that ended in Council Bluffs.

 On Feb. 22, 1961, after killing men earlier in the week in Minneapolis and Omaha, Brown and Kelley asked Alvin E. Koehrsen of Walnut for a ride as he was pulling away from work. Mr. Koehrsen was an IRS agent who worked at the Federal Building, better known as the Council Bluffs Post Office.

Koehrsen let the men and their female companion into his car and unknowingly drove to his death. The Mad Dog Killers were caught that same night in a roadblock on I-29 near the road to Big Lake and the Pottawattamie County Jail.

The “Mad Dog Killers” committed murder together, were captured together and were booked together. Their ill-fated pairing ended here, for their trials were separate – and they took completely different paths to their ultimate appointment with the Fort Madison gallows.

•••••

Every young lawyer in Council Bluffs circa 1961 knew the drill. Since there was not yet a Public Defender Office, they all knew they had to take turns defending people accused of crimes who could not afford attorneys.

Perhaps the lawyers’ only solace was in knowing that at least they would not have to worry about defending capital crimes in peaceful Council Bluffs. That comforting thought ended with the Mad Dog Killers, who only happened to come to the area, hopping on the first bus out of town while fleeing Minneapolis. The luck of the draw.

Similarly, it was the luck of the draw or the spin of the wheel that determined the lawyers assigned to the Mad Dog Killers. Charles Noel Brown received proper counsel, was convicted of the Koehrsen murder, and was hanged at Fort Madison on July 24, 1962.

Charles Edward Kelley would suffer the same fate but in a much more newsworthy manner due to the impassioned defense of his appointed attorney, Robert C. Heithoff.

Two authority figures in Mills County would be directly impacted by Heithoff’s unexpectedly vigorous defense of Kelley. Sheriff Ed Barkus and Judge Leroy H. Johnson were thrust center stage for this case when Heithoff successfully filed for a change in venue, citing that Kelley could never get a fair trial in Pottawattamie County.

Barkus was now the sheriff of record who would have to escort Kelley to Fort Madison if convicted and, by law, must witness the hanging. Johnson of Shenandoah, serving his normal rotation to Mills County, began presiding over the jury trial, unaware of the final role he would have to play.

•••••

In 1961, Heithoff was an attorney of some prominence, since he began practicing law in Council Bluffs in 1951. But his change of venue strategy outraged the city.

His insanity defense for the 20-year-old Kelley, who had already signed a confession, did not go over well either. Heithoff virtually had no case to begin with, and then literally had no case when Johnson threw out the insanity defense.

That is when the trial took another surprising turn. Heithoff’s closing arguments to the jury were not for Kelley’s innocence – but for his life.

“I will not discuss the evidence,” began Heithoff to the three men and nine women of the jury. “I will discuss the punishment.”

Citing historical data from Iowa, Heithoff mentioned that Iowans typically do not sentence to death someone of Kelley’s youthful age and that a trend was growing statewide to eliminate the death penalty. Lastly, Heithoff reluctantly turned to the Bible.

“Almighty God did not invoke capital punishment upon Cain. He branded him with a mark. That was the judgment of God, and I submit that it is exempt from any possibility of error. … We do not want Kelley released. He should be isolated from society. I ask for his life.”

The jury voted 10-2 for first-degree murder conviction and the death penalty. The lack of a unanimous verdict created a hung jury, and a retrial was imminent. Heithoff again confounded the legal community and public by instructing Kelley to now plead guilty, hoping to capitalize on the momentum at hand to save Kelley’s life.

The unorthodox move meant that Johnson must now solely decide Kelley’s fate. Johnson called for a special hearing on May 25, 1961. At this hearing, Heithoff did not let up, bringing in new evidence of a possible history of epilepsy with Kelley.

And he continued his theme of mercy to the judge: “The easy thing and perhaps the popular thing is to hang Kelley. Many people would applaud you. Some would rejoice. But later, after consideration and thought, people would not gain in any acclaim of death. All life is worth saving, and mercy is the highest attitude of man.”

The judge announced that two weeks would be needed for his decision, a surprising delay that added to the growing tension and media frenzy. On June 7, 1961, in front of a packed courthouse in Glenwood, Johnson informed the defendant that he would be taken to Fort Madison, where “you will be hanged by the neck until dead.”

Heithoff would appeal, using the same lines of reasoning to the Iowa Supreme Court, summarized best by his comment: “I still believe only God giveth and God taketh.”

The Iowa Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for Kelley in a split decision. Charles Edward Kelley became the last person put to death by order of the state of Iowa on Sept. 6, 1962.

•••••

Serial killers like Kelley are immortalized by their three full names in American crime lore; Heithoff was a mere footnote in history whose legal career in Council Bluffs was jeopardized after months of tension, unwelcome media attention and harassing phone calls at home.

Even losing the case did not soften the criticism; Barkus would give Heithoff hell for years whenever their paths crossed for making the sheriff witness the hanging.

As the ripple effects of the case swirled around the key individuals involved in the proceedings and extended past Council Bluffs into various legal circles throughout Iowa, the least affected was Heithoff. He was not on a crusade against the death penalty; his only real agenda was to advocate for his client as best he could.

Heithoff used this same approach as he returned to private practice and won back his adopted hometown of Council Bluffs. Heithoff had another 45 years of a successful law career with countless grateful clients, including the Council Bluffs police and fire unions. His death in 2007 was front-page news in The Nonpareil.

And Heithoff proved to be prophetic about the trend in Iowa away from capital punishment. The final push for repeal came from law enforcement officials themselves, who no longer wanted to witness the hangings. Three years after Kelley was hanged, Iowa eliminated the death penalty.

So did Iowa’s last death penalty case directly cause its elimination? There is no obvious evidence of this link, and Heithoff himself would never take such credit, believing that only the client mattered. But out of his belief system came powerful persuasiveness, including these last words from Heithoff heard by the Kelley jury:

“Where is the human heart that would not be satisfied that year after year, behind gray stone walls and hostile guards, this man would live out his life?”

Memorial For The Youngest Teen Executed

July 13, 2015

Alcolu, SC (WLTX)- On Saturday the young boy, executed without a fair trial was honored with a memorial.

George Stinney Jr. was 14-years-old when he was electrocuted in the connection of the death of two young white girls in Alcolu.

George Stinney Jr. was convicted of killing 11-year-old Betty Binnicker and 7-year-old Mary Emma Thames in Alcolu. Three months after his trial he was executed in the electric chair.

His name was cleared last year after almost 70 years. Now the family seeks closure.

The memorial was organized by ‘A New Day’ or A.N.D.

“It was three families touched by this death, we were hurt and so were the two little girls families” says Irene Lawson-Hill the second cousin to George Stinney Jr.

She along with about 20 other family members were at the memorial. She says she’s happy to see new things added to the stone because it keeps his memory alive.

“They added this face, the picture wasn’t there. They had the execution date, they had his name and birthday” says Lawson-Hill. “I hope that no other kid in America, no matter what state they live in will not through this again. That there will be physical evidence before they execute another person”.

To fully heal, she says their family needs a public apology.

“We know we have to forgive the state for what happened, we can’t bring him back from what happened. But we feel that an apology would help mend our hearts to let us know that the state is behind us, that they didn’t just ignore this case” she says.

At the memorial, students from Ridge View High School sang the National Anthem. This group dedicated a full school project to his memory in 2013.

“His conviction was mostly due to racial profiling and because of his race so we feel that keeping his memory alive is kind of like showing south Carolina has made a mistake and that these mistakes are still being made and we have to realize them and go back and look at how people are convicted and profiled” says Kiana Sweatt a student at Ridge View.

A global view of America’s relationship with capital punishment

China. Iran. Saudi Arabia. Iraq. The United States of America.
What you just read is, according to Amnesty International, a list of the countries that executed the largest numbers of prisoners in 2014.
While the U.S. Supreme Court was making huge news last month with its decisions on Obamacare and same-sex marriage, it also issued a ruling on another hot-button issue: capital punishment. The question before the court was a narrow one, whether Oklahoma’s lethal injection procedure constituted cruel and unusual punishment. By a 5-4 vote, the court said no.
But the opinions released June 28 reflected a bitter controversy within the court about capital punishment that coincides with polling indicating a decline in support for it among Americans.
The arguments for and against capital punishment (the mistakes, the question of deterrence, unequal application, etc.) are well established.
But the Amnesty report released earlier this year helps put that controversy into a global context. Simply put, the United States is part of a relatively small minority of countries – 22 in 2014 – that still impose capital punishment. And it’s fair to say that many Americans wouldn’t normally choose the company the U.S. is keeping on that list. For a number of years now, the United States has been the only country in the Americas to execute anyone at all.
The office of the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, says 160 U.N. members have either abolished capital punishment or are not executing anyone. And Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says, “The death penalty has no place in the 21st century.” The European Union makes abolishing capital punishment a precondition for membership.
Amnesty, which keeps careful numbers on capital cases globally, acknowledges that in many countries, the figures are not public and it is hard to know how many people actually were executed. That is certainly true of China, which executes far more people than any other country. Amnesty thinks there were several thousand executions there last year, but China considers the figure a state secret. There were at least 289 in Iran, 90 in Saudi Arabia, 61 in Iraq and 35 in the U.S.
The next 5 were Sudan (at least 23), Yemen (22), Egypt (15), Somalia (14) and Jordan (11). Also not very inspiring company.
While the number of known executions worldwide fell last year, substantially more people were actually sentenced to death, Amnesty says. That’s mostly due to large numbers in Nigeria and Egypt. Nigeria is battling the Boko Haram extremist group, and Egypt has been conducting mass trials of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had formed the previously government. But death sentences and executions are not the same thing.
Just because you’ve banned or suspended capital punishment doesn’t mean your country is a paragon of virtue, of course. And in those that do conduct executions, not all cases are equally clear. Few Americans would probably go along with the decision of Iranian authorities last year to execute a woman who stabbed a man during a sexual assault.
It’s also worth comparing the death sentence Dzhokar Tsarnaev received last month for the Boston Marathon bombings, which killed 3 people, with the sentence Norway imposed on right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik for a much deadlier act of terrorism – a bombing and shooting spree that killed 77 people in 2011.
Breivik famously complained about bad video games in the prison where he is serving 21 years. If that term seems incredibly light by U.S. standards, it can be extended indefinitely if authorities determine that he still poses a threat to society.
Then, there was Indonesia’s decision to execute drug offenders in response to what its new president says is a “national emergency” of drug abuse. 8 – Nigerian, Brazilian and Australian citizens, as well as one Indonesian – were shot by a firing squad in late April despite international appeals to spare their lives.
President Joko Widodo’s decision to go ahead with executions in drug cases appears politically popular with Indonesians.
But overall, capital punishment seems to be one of those issues where public attitudes don’t necessarily influence government policy.
Take these numbers from Russia. Russia suspended executions in the 1990s. However, a large majority still favored imposing capital punishment for a variety of offensives (The numbers are a few years old now, but are unlikely to have changed a great deal). The biggest percentage favored permitting execution in cases of sexual offenses against teenagers. Only about a quarter of those polled were in favor of keeping the moratorium or banning capital punishment altogether.
Then, there’s Britain, which hasn’t executed anyone for more than 1/2 a century – since 1964.
Still, Amnesty International said, polls indicated that as recently as 5 years ago, a bare majority – 51 % – favored the use of capital punishment. By last year, that figure had fallen to 45 %.
July 10, 2015

 

TEXAS – UPCOMING EXECUTION JULY 16 – Clifton Williams at 6 p.m EXECUTION HALTED !

JULY 16. 2015

The Texas Court of Appeals has halted the execution of a death row inmate just hours before he was set to be killed.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The Texas Court of Appeals has halted the execution of death row inmate Clifton Lamar Williams on Thursday just hours before he was set to be killed.

“This is a subsequent application for a writ of habeas corpus filed pursuant to the provisions of Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 11.071 § 5 and a motion for a stay of execution,” the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas order read on Thursday.

The Court of Appeals said that it approved William’s appeal application, which is now returned to a trial court for a review on its merits before a final decision is determined.

In a brief order, the court agreed to return the case to the trial court in Tyler to review an appeal from Williams’ attorneys. They want to examine whether incorrect FBI statistics regarding DNA probabilities in population estimates cited by witnesses could have affected the outcome of Williams’ trial.

“We need time to look at this,” said Seth Kretzer, one of Williams’ lawyers. “No way we can investigate this in five hours.

“It requires some time, and the CCA saw that.”

 

July 10, 2015

East Texan Clifton Williams heads to the gurney next Thursday, July 16, after nine years spent on death row for the murder of Cecelia Schneider.

Williams, 31, was 21 years old at the time of Schneider’s murder, July 9, 2005. Court records show that he broke into the 93-year-old’s Tyler home, stabbed, strangled, and beat her, then laid her body on her bed and set her bed on fire. He left Schneider’s house with her car and her purse, which contained $40. He argued at trial that his friend, Jamarist Paxton, forced him to break into the house with him, and coerced him into cutting his hand so as to leave his DNA on-scene. But police weren’t able to find any evidence that would substantiate Williams’ claims about accomplices, and Paxton denied involvement. In Oct. 2006, Williams was found guilty of capital murder (in addition to a number of other offenses) and sentenced to death.

Williams’ attorneys have argued in state and federal petitions for relief (as well as a petition for a Certificate of Appealability) that Williams suffers from a wide range of mental illnesses, including paranoid schizophrenia, with which he was diagnosed when he was 20. They have tried to argue that his mother suffered from mental illness, and that Williams had trouble functioning from an early age. They also claim Williams was the victim of incompetent counsel, as attorneys at trial failed both to establish Williams as the victim of mental illness and to mitigate his standing as a future danger to society. Most notably, his petitions for relief note, trial counsel erred by stating their intent to establish mental illness before Williams received a court-ordered psych exam, giving prosecutors the ability to refute counsel’s claims without any established medical standing.

Last September, attorneys Seth Kretzer and James Volberding presented Williams’ case to the U.S. Supreme Court in hopes that the Justices would hear Williams’ mental illness claims. Specifically, records note, they wanted to prove that one ruling – ex parte Briseño, which lays out three basic conditions to determine competence – blocks Williams from arguing mental retardation on the basis ofAtkins v. Virginia (which placed a categorical ban on executing the mentally ill, and was previously rejected by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals). The Supreme Court denied that petition in early April, however, without comment or explanation. Williams’ attorneys do not plan to file any last-minute appeals.

Williams will be the 10th Texan executed this year, and 528th since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1976. However, his execution coincides with emerging reports that indicate the number of Texans being sent to death row has now significantly decreased. In fact, jurors around the state have yet to sentence anyone to death in 2015. The last person to receive such a sentence was former Kauf­man County attorney Eric Williams (no relation), who shot and killed Chief Assistant District AttorneyMark Hasse on Jan. 31, 2013, before killing County D.A. Michael McLelland and his wife Cynthia two months later. He was sentenced to death last Dec­em­ber. It’s the first time in more than 20 years that the state has made it to July without issuing a new death sentence.

Execution Watch with Ray Hill
can be heard on KPFT 90.1 FM,
in Galveston at 89.5 and Livingston at 90.3,
as well as on the net here
from 6:00 PM CT to 7:00 PM CT
on any day Texas executes a prisoner.

Obama to become first sitting president to visit a prison

July 10. 2015

President Obama will become the first sitting president to visit a federal prison, part of a push he plans next week for reforming the criminal justice system.

UPCOMING EXECUTIONS 2015, UPDATE

UPDATE JULY 10, 205

Month State Inmate
July
14 MO David Zink EXECUTED 7.41 PM
15 OH Alva Cambell, Jr. – STAYED*
15 OH Warren K. Henness – STAYED
16 TX Clifton Williams  STAYED
August
12 TX Daniel Lopez  executed
18 TN David Miller – STAYED
26 TX Bernardo Tercero
September
2 TX Joe Garza
16 OK Richard Glossip
17 OH Angelo Fears – STAYED*
17 OH William Montgomery – STAYED^
October
6 TN Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman – STAYED
6 TX Juan Garcia
7 OK Benjamin Cole
11 TX Gilmar Guevara
14 TX Licho Escamilla
28 OK John Grant
28 TX Christopher Wilkins
November
17 OH Cleveland R. Jackson – STAYED*
17 OH Robert Van Hook – STAYED^
17 TN Nicholas Sutton – STAYED