EXECUTIONS US 2015

Susan Sarandon Reads Richard Glossip’s Statement (via Sister Helen Prejean) on The Dr. Phil Show

Actress Susan Sarandon read this message from Richard Glossip on The Dr. Phil Show on Monday, August 31, 2015:

Mr. Van Treese’s death was a horrible thing, and something no family should have to go through. But I did not murder him. And yet that’s what the State of Oklahoma is going to do to me. I have to ask: How does murdering another innocent man make things better? I also have a family who should not have to suffer through that; they should not have to see their father, their brother, their uncle killed. That is not justice.

I have been fighting for my innocence for 18 years. I now understand how important my fight is, not just for myself but for everyone facing the death penalty for something they didn’t do. I’m not doing this for myself alone. I hope and pray that my eventual exoneration will help others, and that this country will finally realize just how broken our system is, and how easy it is to make mistakes. Let me be clear, I do not want to be a martyr — I want to live — but if the worst happens, I want my death not to be in vain. If my execution ensured no other innocent man was sent to the death chamber, I am prepared to die for that cause.

I have never been in trouble with the law in my life. I have worked hard. Paid my taxes. I was a good citizen and always tried to help others. Now I have gone from doing everything right to fighting for my life. I’m asking everyone to stand up and let their voices be heard. Go torichardeglossip.com and join this fight. Call Governor Fallin. We have to stand together to make a difference.

God bless you all, please know that I’m praying for you all.

Richard Glossip

http://drphil.com/shows/page/14006_GlossipStatement/

Missouri: Court denies motions from man set to be executed Tuesday

The Missouri Supreme Court has denied the latest legal challenges from a man scheduled to be executed Tuesday for raping and killing a 15-year-old Kansas City girl in 1989.
The judges ruled Friday to overrule a motion that sought a stay of execution for Roderick Nunley.
The court also rejected his request for a writ of habeas corpus, which allows prisoners to challenge their convictions on constitutional grounds.
Nunley was 1 of 2 men who pleaded guilty and received the death penalty in the death of Ann Harrison.
   Michael Taylor (left), Roderick Nunley (right)    She was waiting for a school bus in front of her home when she was abducted.
Michael Taylor was executed for the same crime in 2014.
Source: Associated Press, August 30, 2015

UPCOMING EXECUTIONS 2015, UPDATE

UPTADE AUGUST 29, 2015

Month State Inmate
August
13 TX Tracy Beatty – STAYED
18 TN David Miller – STAYED
26 TX Bernardo Tercero (foreign national) STAYED
27 MS Richard Jordan (date requested by Atty. Gen.; not final) EXECUTION HALTED
27 PA Maurice Patterson – STAY LIKELY
28 PA Hector Morales- STAY LIKELY
September
1 MO Roderick Nunley EXECUTED 9:09 PM
2 TX Joe Garza STAYED
3 PA Herbert Blakeney- STAY LIKELY
16 OK Richard Glossip
17 OH Angelo Fears – STAYED*
17 OH William Montgomery – STAYED^
29 TX Perry Williams
October
6 MO Kimber Edwards
6 TN Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman – STAYED
6 TX Juan Garcia
7 OK Benjamin Cole
14 TX Licho Escamilla
28 OK John Grant
28 TX Christopher Wilkins
November
3 TX Julius Murphy
10 TX
Gilmar Guevara
17 OH Cleveland R. Jackson – STAYED*
17 OH Robert Van Hook – STAYED^
17 TN Nicholas Sutton – STAYED
18 TX Raphael Holiday

TEXAS EXECUTION TODAY – Daniel Lee Lopez at 6 p.m EXECUTED 6:31 PM

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Texas inmate Daniel Lee Lopez got his wish Wednesday when he was executed for striking and killing a police lieutenant with an SUV during a chase more than six years ago.

The lethal injection was carried out after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected appeals from his attorneys who disregarded both his desire to die and lower court rulings that Lopez was competent to make that decision.

“I hope this execution helps my family and also the victim’s family,” said Lopez, who spoke quietly and quickly. “This was never meant to be, sure beyond my power. I can only walk the path before me and make the best of it. I’m sorry for putting you all through this. I am sorry. I love you. I am ready. May we all go to heaven.”

As the drugs took effect, he took two deep breaths, then two shallower breaths. Then all movement stopped.

He was pronounced dead at 6:31 p.m. CDT — 15 minutes after the lethal dose began.

Lopez, 27, became the 10th inmate put to death this year in Texas, which carries out capital punishment more than any other state. Nationally, he was the 19th prisoner to be executed.

Lopez’s “obvious and severe mental illness” was responsible for him wanting to use the legal system for suicide, illustrating his “well-documented history of irrational behavior and suicidal tendencies,” attorney David Dow, who represented Lopez, had told the high court. Dow also argued the March 2009 crime was not a capital murder because Lopez didn’t intend to kill Corpus Christi Lt. Stuart Alexander.

The officer’s widow, Vicky Alexander, and three friends who were witnesses with her prayed in the chamber before Lopez was pronounced dead by a doctor. Some people selected by Lopez as witnesses sang “Amazing Grace” from an adjacent witness area.

Alexander, 47, was standing in a grassy area on the side of a highway where he had put spike strips when he was struck by the sport utility vehicle Lopez was fleeing in.

Lopez, who also wrote letters to a federal judge and pleaded for his execution to move forward, said last week from death row that a Supreme Court reprieve would be “disappointing.”

“I’ve accepted my fate,” he said. “I’m just ready to move on.”

Nueces County District Attorney Mark Skurka said Lopez showed “no regard for human life” when he fought with an officer during a traffic stop, then sped away, evading pursuing officers and striking Alexander, who had been on the police force for 20 years. Even when he finally was cornered by police cars, Lopez tried ramming his SUV to escape and didn’t stop until he was shot.

“He had no moral scruples, no nothing. It was always about Daniel Lopez, and it’s still about Daniel Lopez,” Skurka said Tuesday. “He’s a bad, bad guy.”

Lopez was properly examined by a psychologist, testified at a federal court hearing about his desire to drop appeals and was found to have no mental defects, state attorneys said in opposing delays to the punishment.

Deputies found a dozen packets of cocaine and a small scale in a false compartment in the console of the SUV.

Records showed Lopez was on probation at the time after pleading guilty to indecency with a child in Galveston County and was a registered sex offender. He had other arrests for assault.

Testimony at his trial showed he had at least five children by three women, and a sixth was born while he was jailed for Alexander’s death. Court records show Lopez had sex with girls as young as 14 and had a history of assaults and other trouble while in school, where he was a 10th-grade dropout.

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press.

 

 

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Texas inmate Daniel Lee Lopez has been trying to speed up his execution since being sent to death row five years ago for striking and killing a police lieutenant with an SUV during a chase.

On Wednesday, he’s hoping to get his wish.

The 27-year-old prisoner is set to die in Huntsville after getting court approval to drop his appeals. A second inmate scheduled to be executed this week in Texas, the nation’s most active death penalty state, won a court reprieve Tuesday.

Lopez is facing lethal injection for the 2009 death of Corpus Christi Lt. Stuart Alexander. The 47-year-old officer was standing in a grassy area on the side of a highway where he had put spike strips when he was struck by the sport utility vehicle Lopez was fleeing in.

Last week from death row Lopez said: “It’s a waste of time just sitting here. I just feel I need to get over with it.”

Attorneys representing Lopez refused to accept his intentions, questioning federal court findings that Lopez was mentally competent to volunteer for execution. They appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the punishment, arguing his crime was not a capital murder because he didn’t intend to kill the officer, and that Lopez had mental disabilities and was using the state to carry out long-standing desires to commit suicide.

“It is clear Lopez has been allowed to use the legal system in another attempt to take his own life,” attorney David Dow told the high court.

Lopez, who also wrote letters to a federal judge and pleaded for his execution to move forward, said a Supreme Court reprieve would be “disappointing.”

“It’s crazy they keep appealing, appealing,” he said last week of his lawyers’ efforts. “I’ve explained it to them many times. I guess they want to get paid for appealing.”

Lopez was properly examined by a psychologist, testified at a federal court hearing about his desire to drop appeals and was found to have no mental defects, state attorneys said in opposing delays in the punishment.

Alexander had been a police officer for 20 years. His death came during a chase that began just past midnight on March 11, 2009, after Lopez was pulled over by another officer for running a stop sign in a Corpus Christi neighborhood. Authorities say Lopez was driving around 60 mph.

Lopez struggled with the officer who made the stop and then fled. He rammed several patrol cars, drove at a high speed with his lights off and hit Alexander like “a bullet and a target,” said an officer who testified at Lopez’s 2010 trial.

When finally cornered by patrol cars, Lopez used his SUV as a battering ram trying to escape and wasn’t brought under control until he was shot, officers testified.

“It’s a horrible dream,” Lopez said from death row. “I’ve replayed it in my mind many times.”

Deputies found a dozen packets of cocaine and a small scale in a false compartment in the console of the SUV.

Records show Lopez was on probation at the time after pleading guilty to indecency with a child in Galveston County and was a registered sex offender. He had other arrests for assault.

Lopez would be the 10th inmate executed this year in Texas. Nationally, 18 prisoners have been put to death this year, with Texas accounting for 50 percent of them.

On Tuesday, another death row prisoner, Tracy Beatty, 54, received a reprieve from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. He had been scheduled for lethal injection Thursday. He’s on death row for the 2003 slaying of his 62-year-old mother, Carolyn Click, near Tyler in East Texas.

At least seven other Texas inmates have execution dates in the coming months.

No drug, no death: State’s lethal injection protocol stalls execution of South Mississippi murderer

July 24, 2015

HARRISON COUNTY — The execution of Richard Gerald Jordan, Mississippi’s longest-serving death row inmate, is being held up over a lawsuit. Jordan filed suit to stop the state from using a lethal cocktail he says is experimental and could cause him great pain before he dies.

Jordan exhausted all of his appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court at the end of June, paving the way for Attorney General Jim Hood to request an execution date of the high court.

In other such cases from as far back as April 1989, the Attorney General’s Office has filed for an execution date within a day or two of the exhaustion of an inmate’s final appeal.

Attorney General Jim Hood’s office said Jordan’s litigation has held up the request to set an execution date because the Mississippi Department of Corrections “can no longer obtain (the anesthetic) pentobarbital and thus will have to obtain another drug in (its) place.”

“That change has not been made as of yet and we have informed the federal court we will not request an execution date prior to that change,” Hood’s office said.

MDOC did not wish to comment, citing the pending litigation.

The state adopted the latest lethal-injection protocol in 2011 after European manufacturers of the previous execution drug ceased its distribution to prisons in the United States because it did not want them used in executions.

Jordan’s lawsuit, filed by the Solange MacArthur Justice Center in New Orleans, requested an injunction to stop the use of the current execution protocol.

In the suit, lawyer Jim Craig said Mississippi is one of the last states in the nation to use a compounded form of pentobarbital before injecting a paralytic drug and potassium chloride to execute a condemned person.

He questioned whether the state could mix a safe and effective form of pentobarbital as an anesthetic.

Even if it did, Craig said, it could act more slowly than the previous drugs used, resulting in a person remaining conscious and aware he is suffocating when the par

alytic drug is administered prior to potassium chloride to stop the heart.

“… The untried and untested drugs …” the suit says, result in a substantial risk for the condemned to face a “torturous death by live suffocation and cardiac arrest.”

Jordan is suing based on his right to not suffer cruel and unusual punishment.

Family wants justice

That means little to the family members of Jordan’s victim, Edwina Marter, who have waited more than 39 years for closure.

“This has been going on for us far too long,” said Marter’s sister Mary Degruy. “When is this going to happen? Nobody is calling us.”

Edwina Marter was 37 years old when Jordan kidnapped and killed her in Harrison County on Jan. 11, 1976.

Degruy still visits her sister’s grave in New Orleans often, leaving flowers and maintaining its surroundings in her memory.

Marter and her husband, Charles, had been together for years and had two sons.

“She was very good-hearted and she loved her kids,” Degruy said. “She did charity and they were well known in Mississippi. She would always come and stay with us for a week or two when the kids weren’t in school. We did everything together when we could.”

Charles Marter over the years has often spoken out about his wife’s killing and the delay in justice, but now in his 70s, he no longer wants to discuss it, his son Eric Marter said.

Eric Marter said he was 11 years old when his mother was murdered.

“She was a stay-at-home mom and she took care of us,” he said. “She was always there for us. But ours wasn’t a normal childhood with a mom and dad because of this.”

As for Jordan, he said, “He should have been executed a long time ago.”

The murder plot

Jordan killed Edwina Marter execution-style shortly after he arrived in South Mississippi on Jan. 11, 1976, and spotted Gulf National Bank at U.S. 90 and U.S. 49 in Gulfport. He called and asked for the name of the senior commercial loan officer and was told it was Charles Marter, who was also vice president of the bank.

Jordan went through a Gulfport city directory, which at that time listed occupations, to find Marter’s home address.

Jordan went to the home, posing as an electrical repairman to check the breaker boxes, and Edwina Marter let him in.

He grabbed her as her 3-year-old son slept in a bedroom and forced her into a car. He drove to De Soto National Forest, where he let her out and killed her.

After the killing, Jordan called Charles Marter demanding a $25,000 ransom in exchange for his wife’s safe return. He told Marter to wrap the ransom up in a brown paper bag and drop it off at a location on U.S. 49. Marter gathered up the money, but also alerted authorities.

Twice Marter tried to deliver the ransom to Jordan, but Jordan saw law enforcement officers as Marter was making his way to the drop-off point. He left both times. He contacted Marter a third time, telling him to leave the money under a jacket on Interstate 10 near the Canal Road exit.

Marter left the money, but neither he nor Jordan knew authorities were watching.

When Jordan picked up the money, authorities chased him, but he eluded them. He drove to a discount pharmacy to buy new clothes, then called a taxi. He was in a taxi when authorities arrested him in a roadblock.

Jordan confessed to killing Edwina Marter and told authorities where to find her body. Her family said she’d been shot and tied to a tree.

“He took my sister away and we’re still dealing with it,” Degruy said. “I think he’s been living long enough. It’s not fair to us. You know, you don’t like people to die, but he deserves it.”

UPCOMING EXECUTION – TEXAS, Gregory Russeau, June 18, 2015 6 pm EXECUTED 6.49 PM

June 18, 2015

 

Gregory RusseauGregory Russeau ( Texas Department of Criminal Justice via AP file)

Asked by a warden if he had a final statement, Russeau thanked his family and friends for what they had done for him and thanked three friends who were witnesses “for being here with me so I do not have to transition alone.”

“I’m at peace, I’m good,” he said. “I’m ready to go home.”

He began snoring as the lethal dose of pentobarbital began and all movement stopped within about a minute.

He was pronounced dead at 6:49 p.m. CDT, 21 minutes later.

 

Russeau will be the ninth Texan executed this year

On Thursday, June 18, the state of Texas plans to execute Gregory Russeau, a 45-year-old Tyler man, convicted in Oct. 2002 of killing 75-year-old James Syvertson in his auto shop’s garage on May 30, 2001.

Russeau was found guilty of capital murder after jurors deliberated for less than an hour. He argued, after his conviction, that he was found guilty because his attorney Clifton Roberson fumbled his handling of witnesses and failed to argue that law enforcement planted evidence (two hairs belonging to Russeau found on a bottle) at the crime scene. Those concerns were raised in subsequent petitions for writ of habeas corpus filed by Jeffrey Haas.

Haas, it should be said, had his own issues. As a petition for relief filed in 2012 by Carlo D’Angelo notes: “Both the 2004 and 2009 petitions for habeas corpus that Mr. Haas filed in the state district court contained no claims that were based upon any evidence or the result of any investigation that occurred outside of the Clerk’s Record and trial transcript in either of the Petitioner’s cases, thus indicating that Mr. Haas did virtually nothing to investigate the facts pertaining to the actions of trial and appellate counsel, potential mitigation, and potential prosecutorial misconduct and withholding of evidence.”

The trial court held an evidentiary hearing on Dec. 2, 2004, during which Roberson and his co-counsel Brandon Baade testified to the competence of their representation of Russeau. Six months later, in June 2005, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued an opinion that upheld Russeau’s conviction but remanded the case back to trial for a new sentencing. There, he was represented – once again – by Roberson and Baade, the two attorneys who failed to properly represent him in the first place, and whom Russeau specifically asked the court to not appoint for the second hearing (on the grounds that Roberson and Baade had waived the attorney-client privilege when they testified at the hearing.)

Russeau’s second punishment-determination hearing was held in 2007 and resulted in the same findings and sentence as his first. (Unsurprisingly, his argument hinged on the claim that Roberson and Baade did a bad job representing their client.) He was denied a 2009 petition for relief, filed by Haas, in 2010, at which point D’Angelo assumed Russeau’s counsel. A Feb. 2012 federal petition was denied, as was an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals in March 2014. Appeals for relief from the U.S. Supreme Court were denied in October.

Russeau will be the ninth Texan executed this year, and the 527th since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

Death row inmate maintains innocence to the last

Missouri – Richard Strong Execution – June 9, 2015

June 10,2015

Missouri murderer Richard Strong was executed by lethal injection Tuesday night after authorities turned aside a last-minute plea from his daughter, who was only months old when Strong killed her mother and 2-year-old half-sister.

Strong, 47, was pronounced dead at 6:58 p.m. at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, Missouri, according to the state Department of Corrections.

He ate a last meal of fried chicken, a cheeseburger and donuts, and asked forgiveness, according to the department.

His last words were: “Jehovah-jireh, you’re my provider. Your grace is sufficient for me. Forgive me for my sin. Abba-Abba, take my soul in your hands.”

Gov. Jay Nixon focused on Strong’s victims in a statement, acknowledging “there have been many lives deeply affected by these crimes.”

Petrina Thomas, whose niece was the toddler Strong killed, witnessed the execution and said in a statement she read to reporters that her family “was so glad that it is finally over.” (Read her full statement below.)

The execution was carried out after an unsuccessful plea for clemency from his daughter, who was a baby in 2000 when Strong murdered her mother and her half-sister. Last-minute appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court and to Nixon also failed.

Strong was sentenced to death in 2003 for fatally stabbing his 23-year-old girlfriend, Eva Washington, and her daughter from a previous relationship, Zandrea Thomas, in their suburban St. Louis apartment. He left Alyshia Strong, his baby with Washington, unharmed.

Alyshia Strong, now 14, said she has forgiven her father and pleaded for clemency in the days before his execution.

“I understand that my father needs to face consequences and to pay for what he did, but I do not think it is right for me to lose my father as part of the punishment,” Alyshia Strong wrote in her clemency petition.

She wrote that she frequently visits her dad in prison, and said his advice led her to behave better in school.

“My father told me that I should stay clear of the drama at school, and stay focused on the books, not the people. I listened to my father’s advice, and I can honestly say that I had less drama in my school year than I would have if I had not listened to my father,” she wrote.

The U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 against issuing a stay that would have postponed Tuesday’s execution. Strong’s attorney, Jennifer Herndon, argued that Strong was mentally ill. She said both Strong and Washington suffered from mental illness and argued frequently, according to The Associated Press.

“He just snapped,” Herndon said. “It was just sort of a powder keg waiting to explode. It wasn’t a healthy relationship.”

Nixon declined to halt the lethal injection, saying in a statement that the fatal stabbing of the mother and daughter was “very brutal.”

Strong is the fourth person to be executed in Missouri this year, and the 16th in the U.S.

Petrina Thomas, Zandrea Thomas’ aunt, read this statement during a press briefing following the execution, according to the Department of Corrections:

On behalf of the Thomas family, we would like to thank the state of Missouri for finally providing our family with closure of the horrific death of my niece and her mom. For 14 years, we have impatiently waited for this day to come. It has been said that time heals all wounds. I do not agree; the wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it is never gone. The reality is we will grieve forever. We will not get over the loss of our loved ones, and we will learn to live with it. We will heal, and we will rebuild around the loss that we have suffered. We will never be the same again. He had a chance to watch his daughter grow up and laugh and smile with her. We never got a chance to see her first day of school, graduations, or watch her go on prom. My brother will never get a chance to walk his daughter down the aisle for her wedding day. Human life has dignity at any age. Nothing can justify the shedding of innocent blood or the taking of lives. You must take 100 percent responsibility for your choices and your actions, and pay with your own life. Revelation 21:4 reads: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

We are at peace now and so glad that it is finally over. Thank you

Upcoming Executions 2015

Month State Inmate
June
5 PA Hubert Michael – STAYED
9 MO Richard Strong – EXECUTED
18 AL Robin Myers – STAYED
18 TX Gregory Russeau EXECUTED 6.49 PM
23 TN Charles Wright – STAYED
July
14 MO David Zink
15 OH Alva Cambell, Jr. – STAYED*
15 OH Warren K. Henness – STAYED
August
12 TX Daniel Lopez
18 TN David Miller – STAYED
26 TX Bernardo Tercero
September
17 OH Angelo Fears – STAYED*
17 OH William Montgomery – STAYED
October
6 TN Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman – STAYED
6 TX Juan Garcia
November
17 OH Cleveland R. Jackson – STAYED*
17 OH Robert Van Hook – STAYED^
17 TN Nicholas Sutton – STAYED