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OKLAHOMA – Execution date set for Okla. death row inmate – Michael Edward Hooper

June 17, 2012 Source : http://mcalesternews.com

Hooper,-Michael.jpg

McALESTER — An execution date has been set for a death row inmate at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.

Michael Edward Hooper, 39, is set to be executed Aug. 14 for the 1993 shooting murders of his ex-girlfriend, Cynthia Lynn Jarman, age 23, and her two children, Tanya Kay Jarman, age 5, and Timmy Glen Jarman, age 3.

“Hooper shot each victim in the head twice and buried their bodies in a shallow grave in a secluded field,” stated Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt in a press release. “The victims had been missing for several days before being discovered.

“The truck that Cynthia had been driving also was found abandoned and burned. Police records, including domestic violence reports, show that Hooper and Jarman had previously been in a physically violent relationship.”

According to court records, Hooper was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder for the Dec. 7, 1993, shootings and was sentenced to death on each count.

Hooper met Cynthia Jarman in early 1992 and the pair dated through the summer of 1993, according to court records. The nature of their relationship was a physically violent one and Hooper threatened to kill his girlfriend on numerous occasions, court records state.

In July of 1993, Cynthia Jarman began dating Hooper’s friend, Bill Stremlow, and in November of 1993, she moved in with her new boyfriend. “Before moving in with Stremlow, (Cynthia) Jarman confided in a friend that (Hooper) had previously threatened to kill her if she ever lived with another man,” court documents state.

On Dec. 6, 1993, Cynthia Jarman told a friend that she wanted to see Hooper one last time. The next day, she dropped Stremlow off at work and borrowed his truck for the rest of the day, according to court records.

“Jarman picked up her daughter, Tonya, at school that afternoon,” court records state. “At that time, Tonya’s teacher saw Tonya get into Stremlow’s truck next to a white man who was not Stremlow. Jarman failed to pick up Stremlow from work that evening as planned. Later that night, Stremlow’s truck was found burning in a field. The truck’s windows were broken out. An accelerant had been used to set the truck on fire.

“On December 10, a farmer and police officers discovered the bodies of Jarman and her two children buried in a shallow grave in another field. … Each victim had suffered two gunshot wounds to the face or head.”

Police arrested Hooper and collected evidence from his parent’s home, including a gun, that matched the evidence at the crime scene.

Before Hooper was found guilty by jury of these three murders and then sentenced to death, the prosecutor said the following in a portion of his closing statement at trial:

“At some point, Tonya managed to get away and flee into the woods. The moment Tonya stepped from that truck and headed for the woods, everyone’s worst nightmare came true for her. If you think back, many of us children had the nightmare that I’m referring to, the nightmare of running from something that you cannot get away from. As children, many of us in those dreams in those nightmares were being chased by an evil monster. Tonya Jarman, on that night, had this nightmare become a reality for her. She was being chased through the woods by an evil monster bent on killing her, which he did, this Defendant did. I want you to imagine with me for a moment what that little girl went through as she moved from the car and ran through the woods with the Defendant after her. It was obvious from the evidence that she did not get very far before, at some point, she was fired at, and that bullet went whizzing through her coat, through the hood of her coat and into a tree branch. Now, we don’t know how long a time passed between the time she was shot and the time she was caught, but it must have seemed like a terribly, terribly, terribly long time. Imagine the horror that Tonya felt when, as she ran from the Defendant, she was caught and turned around and he once again looked that little girl in the face and shot her just below her left eye. After that, he then executes her as well with the second shot and then left that little girl to die alone in the woods with her blood spilling onto the ground.”

OREGON – Death Row Inmate Sues to be Executed – Gary Haugen

june 17, 2012  Source : http://www.allgov.com

Oregonian Gary Haugen is having trouble making up his mind whether he wants to live or die. The 49-year-old prisoner has been on death row since 2007 for fatally beating and stabbing fellow inmate David Polin in 2003, while Haugen was serving a life sentence without parole for beating his ex-girlfriend’s mother to death in 1981. Both crimes were exceptionally violent: Polin’s skull was crushed and he had been stabbed 84 times.

Originally scheduled to die August 16, 2011, Haugen waived his appeals to protest the “arbitrary and vindictive nature of the death penalty,” but the Oregon Supreme Court cancelled his execution because Haugen’s attorneys argued that he was mentally incompetent to waive his appeals. After a hearing found him competent, he was scheduled to die December 6, when Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber announced he was granting Haugen a reprieve from execution, and that he would not allow any executions to proceed, at least until the state legislature has a chance to consider and enact reforms. Kitzhaber called Oregon’s death penalty system “compromised and inequitable.”
 
Haugen initially thought Kitzhaber’s action “was a smash, [that] something good was done,” and his attorneys filed papers accepting the Governor’s reprieve. Within a short time, however, Haugen changed his mind, calling the Kitzhaber “a paper cowboy” who “couldn’t pull the trigger.” He was particularly critical of Kitzhaber’s decision to submit possible reforms to the 2013 State Legislature, rather than in 2012; that decision likely flowed from the fact that the legislature meets for only 35 days in even numbered years but for 160 days in odd years.
Now Haugen wants the courts to force Kitzhaber to allow his execution. In a lawsuit filed May 24, Haugen’s new attorneys argue that a pardon or reprieve must be accepted by the inmate to be valid, and that Haugen’s prior attorneys did not have his consent to file papers welcoming the reprieve. They also argue that Governor Kitzhaber exceeded his constitutional authority in granting the reprieve, because a reprieve is ordinarily time-limited, rather than open-ended.
The lawsuit may face rough going, however, as it relies on two very old cases (from 1918 and 1926) for its “acceptance” argument, and cites only a 43-year-old legal dictionary for the proposition that the Governor can issue only time-limited reprieves. Neither theOregon Constitution nor relevant statutes place any such restrictions on the Governor’s power.

 

FLORIDA – Man gets death penalty for double murder – Terence Tabius Oliver

June 15, source : http://www.floridatoday.com

Terence Tabius Oliver was given two death sentences in a Viera courtoom Friday for a 2009 double murder.

Oliver, 36, was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder following a jury trial in March. Oliver shot and killed Andrea Richardson, 36, and Krystal Pinson, 25, at Richardson’s Titusville home.

Oliver, 36, was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder following a jury trial in March. Oliver shot and killed Andrea Richardson, 36, left, and Krystal Pinson, 25, right, at Richardson’s Titusville home.

Oliver suspected Pinson, a former girlfriend, was informing police about his whereabouts following other crimes he had committed in Volusia County. According to court documents, he was seen the day before the murders driving about a mile from the scene of the crime, and he was wearing a dreadlock wig to disguise his appearance.

Oliver parked outside the neighborhood and walked to Richardson’s house after dark, carrying a semi-automatic pistol with a full magazine and one round loaded in the chamber. He went through the front door of the house at about 2 a.m. and walked to the back. He shot Pinson as she was laying in bed. Richardson tried to flee toward the rear door of the house.

One of Oliver’s shots went through Richardson’s wrist and grazed his forehead, evidence that he had raised his arms in a defensive way, knowing he was about to be shot, according to police. Oliver fired two more times into Richardson, who was found lying in a fetal position, with his pants around his knees, as he was apparently trying to clothe himself.

Oliver shot Pinson eight times. He also tried to cover up the scene by making it look as if it were a robbery gone wrong.

The cold, calculated and premeditated nature of the murders led to stiffer penalties.

During the trial, Oliver’s defense attempted to show positive sides of his character by pointing out that he finished high school and attended Le Cordon Blue Culinary Academy, planning to be a chef. Oliver’s younger brother, Tyrell, testified that they grew up going to church and Oliver sang gospel songs. Tyrell said he looked up to his older brother.

Judge Robert Wohn sentenced Oliver in agreement with the jury’s 12-0 recommendation for the death penalty. Wohn also sentenced Oliver to life in prison for armed burglary of a dwelling with discharge of a firearm causing death, and five years for being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Oliver previously was convicted of other felonies, including a robbery with a deadly weapon in 1995 and resisting arrest in 2002.

Oliver said he was sorry for the losses of the victims, but proclaimed his innocence and quoted from the Bible. He said he loved Pinson and they had been to church together several times.

“If I had a dollar, Krystal got 75 cents,” he said.

“I have a God who sits up high and looks down low,” Oliver said. “You call me a murderer and an animal, which I’m not.”

He admitted to doing things in the past, but said every child makes mistakes. Oliver said he and Richardson were friends who went to school together and had no ill feelings.

Oliver addressed his parents, telling them he loved them and they raised him right. Oliver’s mother ran crying from the courtroom after the sentencing, which took 30 minutes.

“Justice was served today, and it will be served again when he is put to death,” said Sandra Pinson, Krystal’s mother.

Us – Death Row Report and following statistics

June 16 : CLICK HERE to see the Latest Death Row U.S.A. Report

The April 1, 2012 report includes the following statistics:

The number of inmates on death rows across the nation is 3,170, an decrease from 3,189 reported on January 1, 2011.

Jurisdictions (having 10 or more inmates) with the highest percent of minorities on death row

– Delaware (78%)
– Texas (71%)
– Louisiana (70%)
– Pennsylvania (69%)
– Arkansas (65%)
– California (65%)

Jurisdictions with the most inmates on death row:

– California (724)
– Florida (407)
– Texas (308)
– Pennsylvania (204)
– Alabama (200)
Source: NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, “Death Row USA” Spring 2012.

Ohio judge: Condemned killer not competent to be executed – Abdul Awkal

June 15, 2012 Source : http://www.ohio.com

CLEVELAND: An Ohio judge has ruled a condemned killer not mentally competent to be executed for the death of his wife and brother-in-law.

The ruling Friday by Cuyahoga County Judge Stuart Friedman on Abdul Awkal comes just a week after Gov. John Kasich ordered a last-minute reprieve hours before Awkal was set to die.

Awkal is convicted of killing his estranged wife and brother-in-law in a Cleveland courthouse in 1992 as the couple prepared to divorce.

Awkal’s attorneys had argued during several days of testimony that he is so mentally ill he believes the CIA is orchestrating his execution.

The Ohio Parole Board voted 8-1 last month against recommending mercy. Most members concluded Awkal had planned the shooting and it wasn’t because of a psychotic breakdown.

OREGON – Death Row Inmate Demands Execution – Gary D. Haugen

June 15, 2012 Source : http://www.courthousenews.com

SALEM, Ore.  – A death row inmate sued Gov. John Kitzhaber in state court, demanding to be put to death. Kitzhaber “announced that he would refuse to permit any further executions to occur while he served as governor,“ Gary D. Haugen says in his complaint in Marion County Court. Kitzhaber issued a “temporary reprieve of plaintiff’s death sentence” in November and then imposed the moratorium.
Haugen, 50, seeks judicial intervention, calling his reprieve “invalid and ineffective” because he refuses to accept it. He claims that state law requires that the person receiving a reprieve accept it. “Plaintiff has rejected the reprieve and therefore it is legally ineffective to halt the execution of this sentence,” the complaint states.
Haugen also claims that the reprieve is “beyond the governor’s constitutional authority” because it does not last for a definite time.
He also questions the governor’s reasons for issuing the reprieve. Rather than suspending the death penalty because it is inhumane, Kitzhaber suspended it “because of defendant’s moral opposition,” Haugen says.
He claims that the Oregon Constitution “does not confer upon him [Kitzhaber] the power to suspend the operation of any Oregon law for the reason that he is opposed to it.”
Haugen claims that a governor may grant clemency, but it must be because it has been determined that the prisoner deserves mercy, which may come in the form of a pardon, a reduction in sentence or a reprieve based on the inhumanity or injustice of proceeding with the death penalty.
Kitzhaber has called the death penalty ineffective and “morally wrong,” and said he does not wish to “participate” in it.
Haugen quotes the governor as saying, “Oregon’s application of the death penalty is not fairly and consistently applied. [I do] not believe that state-sponsored executions bring justice.”
A death warrant hearing in September 2011 found Haugen competent to be executed. He accepted the finding and chose not to challenge it. He was scheduled to be executed on Dec. 6, 2011. Haugen asked the court to determine that the governor’s reprieve is unconstitutional, and that the court “would become legally obligated to conduct a death warrant hearing” and “to issue a death warrant directing the plaintiff’s sentence to be carried out.” The complaint does not mention the nature of Haugen’s crime, but Oregon media refer to him as a “two-time killer.”
The case resembles the famous case of Gary Gilmore, who demanded to be executed in Utah in 1977, and got his wish.  Haugen is represented by Harrison Latto of Portland.  

MISSOURI – 19 Missouri Death Row Inmates Awaiting High Court Ruling

June 15, 2012 Source : http://stlouis.cbslocal.com

St. LOUIS (KMOX) – Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster is prodding the state supreme court to set some execution dates for 19 individuals.

Koster said  it’s been more than a year since Missouri carried out an execution, largely due to concerns over whether the old three drug system was cruel and unusual punishment.

“We have a law in the state of Missouri, the death penalty law is very clear and our filing  was a recognition that the Supreme Court can not simply be silent on this issue.”

“It needs to answer these questions one way or another, and so the single drug protocol that has been developed by the department of corrections,  will probably come under scrutiny over the enxt several months but it is time to move this process forward and silence on this issue is really not an option.”

Last month, Missouri became the first state in the nation to adopt, Propofol, a surgical anesthetic as its execution drug. After Koster asked the high court to set execution dates, it filed orders in six cases, asking inmates to “show cause” why they shouldn’t be executed. They have until June 29 to respond.

Propofol,  is  the same anesthetic that caused the overdose death of pop star Michael Jackson.  Critics question how the state can guarantee a drug untested for lethal injection won’t cause pain and suffering for the condemned.

Propofol, made by AstraZeneca and marketed as Diprivan, gained notoriety following Jackson’s death in 2009. Spokespeople for AstraZeneca and its U.S. marketer, APP, declined comment on its use in executions. But Dieter questioned if enough research has been done.

“Any drug used for a new purpose on human subjects should certainly be tested very, very carefully,” Dieter said. “I can only imagine the things that might go wrong.”

Adding to the concern, some say, is Missouri’s written protocol which, like the one it replaced, does not require a physician to be part of the execution team. It states that a “physician, nurse, or pharmacist” prepares the chemicals, and a “physician, nurse or emergency medical technician … inserts intravenous lines, monitors the prisoner, and supervises the injection of lethal chemicals by nonmedical members of the execution team.”

Jonathan Groner, an Ohio State University surgeon who has studied lethal injection extensively, said propofol is typically administered by either an anesthesiologist, who is a physician, or a nurse anesthetist under the physician’s direct supervision. Improper administration could cause a burning sensation or pain at the injection site, he said.

Groner said high doses of propofol will kill by causing respiratory arrest. But the dosage must be accurate and the process must move swiftly because propofol typically wears off in just a few minutes.

“If they start breathing before the heart stops, they might not die,” Groner said. That would force the process to be restarted.

Critics also question the safety of the single-drug method. Missouri becomes the third state with a single-drug protocol, along with Arizona and Ohio. Three others — South Dakota, Idaho and Washington — have options for single- or multiple-drug executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. California and Kentucky are exploring a switch to the one-drug method.

CALIFORNIA – Cost of death penalty can be calculated

June 15, 2012 Source : http://napavalleyregister.com

In his opinion piece (“Would repealing the death penalty really save money?,” June 10), Michael O’Reilley tells California voters that passing the SAFE (Savings Accountability Full Enforcement) California initiative on Nov. 6 would not result in any cost savings for the state.

Mr. O’Reilley relies on the same argument advanced by many proponents of the death penalty, which is that there is no reliable evidence that repealing the death penalty will save money because the “true cost” of the current system is “difficult to determine.”

For too many years, Californians have been kept in the dark about how much the state is spending on its broken death penalty system because, they were told, such a cost analysis was impossible to perform. That is simply not the case.

In our three-year-long, exhaustive investigation into the costs of California’s death penalty, Senior Judge Arthur L. Alarcón and I reviewed every available source of cost data. Our mission was to tell voters the truth about what they are spending on the state’s current system — one that has been described as “dysfunctional” by both the former and current chief justices of the California Supreme Court.

Our research revealed that while there is, indeed, a lack of political will when it comes to tracking these costs, there is no question that California’s death penalty has cost taxpayers billions of dollars over the past 34 years. We relied on court records, state budgets, and other objectively reliable data to calculate the costs associated with each stage of process from trials through final appeals.

The findings in our report are supported by the Blue-Ribbon Panel convened by the state Senate, the California Commission for the Fair Administration of Justice, which did a similar study and reported similar data in its Final Report published in 2008.

The following facts are undisputed:

• California taxpayers have funded roughly 2,000 death penalty trials over the past three decades;

• California houses more than 22 percent of the nation’s death row inmates, but has carried out no more than 1 percent of all executions nationwide in that time — 13 executions since 1978;

• The vast majority of condemned inmates die on death row before their sentences are ever carried out, which means that those inmates receive state-funded medical care for the entirety of their lives — an expense that Mr. O’Reilley argues (incorrectly) is incurred only under a life without possibility of parole (LWOP) sentence, but not under a sentence of death.

Voters must decide for themselves whether Mr. O’Reilley’s argument that the current system is a deterrent to violent crime that comes at no added cost to taxpayers rings true. Voters must also consider whether — when it comes to public safety — the current dysfunctional death penalty system is a good use of our state’s limited resources when more than 10,000 homicides committed over the past 10 years remain unsolved.

In the current economic climate, voters should not be satisfied with being told that it is impossible to calculate what the death penalty costs. Voters should demand to know the truth.

Mitchell is co-author (with Judge Arthur L. Alarcón) of “Executing the Will of the Voters? A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature’s Multi-Billion-Dollar Death Penalty Debacle,” and lives in Los Angeles.

ALABAMA – Prison chaplain questions death penalty value

June 14, 2012 Source : http://www.al.com

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — In 1981, Philip Workman walked into a Wendy’s restaurant in Memphis, brandished a gun, and had the employees hand him the money out of the cash drawer.
Cornered moments later by police officers in a corner of the parking lot, Workman fired the gun. A police officer fell.

In 2007, Workman was executed for that homicide.

Trouble is, says the Rev. Joseph Ingle, who will speak in Huntsville Tuesday, Workman’s gun is not the one that killed that police officer.

The officer, according to forensic evidence analyzed after Workman’s ‘82 trial, was killed by the kind of bullet that is in police pistols, not Workman’s. The officer, in short, appears to have been killed by another officer’s shot.

Ingle’s latest book, “The Inferno: A Southern Morality Tale,” chronicles what happened between that moment in the parking lot and Workman’s execution by lethal injection 26 years later.

“It was pretty much a nightmare,” Ingle said this week from his home office in Nashville. “If you ever think the issue of capital punishment and our criminal justice system aren’t politically fraught, you need to take another look. It is beyond appalling.”

Ingle himself never had taken a look until his senior year in seminary. That’s when, to satisfy a requirement, he began volunteering in a jail in Harlem for 20 hours a week for a year.

“Meeting those men just changed my life,” Ingle said.

It also changed his ministry. Rather than take a United Church of Christcongregation, Ingle chose to become a self-supporting prison chaplain. He volunteers in Riverbend Maximum Security Prison in Nashville. From 1974 until 1983, he was the executive director of the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons, a multi-state organization that sought to abolish the death penalty.

Abolishing the penalty makes sense not only to avoid executing people for crimes they didn’t commit, but also in simple dollars and cents.

“Nationally, there is a move away from capital punishment,” Ingle said, “but you don’t see that in the South. Since 1977, more than 93 percent of the executions in the U.S. have been in the South.”

And patterns for those executions follow disturbingly familiar paths of racial discrimination.

“If you kill a white person, you are 11 times more likely to die for that crime than if you kill a black person,” Ingle said. “And it’s even worse if you’re a black person and you kill a white person. Then you are 22 times more likely to die.”

Ingle said that the current mood in the U.S. of distrusting government should extend to this issue.

“Think about it,” Ingle said. “We don’t trust the state with our taxes, and we’re going to trust the state to say who lives or dies?”

 

MISSISSIPPI – Gary Carl Simmons – Execution June 20 – Update EXECUTED 6:16 p.m

Last Statement

“I’ve been blessed to be loved by some good people, by some amazing people. I thank them for their support. Let’s get it on so these people can go home. That’s it,” Simmons said as he lay strapped on a gurney in the execution chamber moments before the procedure was carried out.

June 19, 2012 Source : http://www.clarionledger.com

Attorneys for a former butcher convicted of dismembering a man over a drug debt and raping a woman he locked in a metal box have asked the Mississippi Supreme Court to stop Wednesday’s planned execution.

Gary Carl Simmons Jr. is scheduled to be executed Wednesday at 6 p.m. CDT for the 1996 killing of Jeffery Wolfe, whose body was found in pieces in a Jackson County bayou. Simmons also was convicted of kidnapping and raping Wolfe’s friend and sentenced to life on those charges.

Simmons lawyers said in a motion Tuesday that recent mental exams show he has long-term substance abuse problems, post-traumatic stress disorder and “mild executive-level brain dysfunction.” They also argue that his previous lawyers didn’t do a good job.

The attorney general’s office has argued in the past that Simmons’ sanity “is not in question.”

Simmons’ current attorneys say his trial lawyers didn’t explore mental health problems for sentencing purposes and the issue wasn’t properly raised by previous appeal lawyers.

The motion filed Tuesday said that until recently, Simmons “had never undergone a mental health evaluation for the purposes of developing mitigating evidence.”
Simmons’ previous appeals have been rejected by Mississippi courts and the U.S. Supreme Court.

When the Mississippi Supreme Court set Simmons’ execution date on June 5, the justices also gave him permission to get two mental health exams. Simmons’ lawyers later asked for a two-week delay of the execution, saying more time was needed for the tests and to file appeals based on those results. The court declined that request in a 6-2 decision on June 14.

Court records say that Simmons planned the death and dismemberment of a drug dealer because he didn’t have the money to pay him for marijuana.

Wolfe and his female friend went to Simmons’ house in Jackson County on Aug. 12, 1996, to collect the debt estimated at up to $20,000. Timothy Milano, Wolfe’s former brother-in-law, shot Wolfe numerous times with a .22 caliber rifle inside Simmons’ home, according to court records.

read the full article : click here 

June 13, 2012 Source : http://www2.wkrg.com

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – The Mississippi attorney general’s office says a death row inmate’s recent request for mental health testing is meant only to delay his execution, scheduled for Tuesday.

Gary Carl Simmons‘ lawyers have asked the Mississippi Supreme Court stay his execution because they say more time is needed for two mental health evaluations and an appeal based on their results.

On June 5, the court set the execution date for Simmons, but granted his requests for evaluations by a forensic psychologist and a neuropsychologist.

The Mississippi attorney general’s office argued Wednesday the request for mental evaluations is a delay tactic and the court should rescind the order and deny a stay.

The 49-year-old was convicted of shooting and dismembering Jeffrey Wolfe in August 1996 in Pascagoula.

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