USA NEWS

Guilty Verdict for James Holmes in Aurora Attack

JULY 16, 2015

CENTENNIAL, Colo. — Inside Courtroom 201, the families of the dead and wounded watched in taut silence on Thursday afternoon as the judge shuffled through a stack of verdict forms containing the fate of James E. Holmes, the gunman who slipped into a Colorado movie theater in 2012 and opened fire on their sons and daughters, friends and loved ones.

As the judge began reading the verdicts — guilty, guilty, guilty — repeated 165 times over an entire hour, for each count of murder and attempted murder, the families sobbed quietly, clutched one another’s shoulders and nodded along to a recitation of guilt that many had been waiting nearly three years to hear.

Sandy Phillips wrapped herself tightly in the green scarf that her slain daughter, Jessica Ghawi, had loved. A father whose son was killed patted the arm of Joshua Nowlan, who was wounded and now walks with a cane.As each name of the 12 people killed and 70 wounded was read, and read again — prosecutors filed two charges per victim — the families looked to the corner of the public gallery and gave one another a quiet nod or an arm squeeze.

After an emotional 10-week trial, one of the longest and most complex in this state’s history, it took a jury of nine women and three men about 12 hours of deliberation over two days to convict Mr. Holmes on all counts. He now faces a lengthy sentencing process in which prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

The jury’s verdict roundly rejected arguments from his defense lawyers that he had had a psychotic break and was legally insane when he carried out the massacre inside the Century 16 theater in suburban Aurora, Colo., on July 20, 2012. His lawyers argued he was not in control of his thoughts or actions, but prosecutors said Mr. Holmes, despite being mentally ill, had plotted the shootings with calculation and knew what he wanted to accomplish when he started firing into the crowd.

As Judge Carlos Samour Jr. read the 165 counts against Mr. Holmes, the defendant stood silently between his lawyers, staring straight ahead, with his hands tucked into the pockets of a pair of khaki-colored pants. He did not glance at his parents sitting two rows behind. When the hourlong recitation of the verdicts was done, he sat down and lightly swiveled in his chair.

Coming within days of the Aurora shooting’s third anniversary, the guilty verdict ends one phase of a grueling legal saga, but another one is set to begin.

As the district attorney in suburban Arapahoe County argues for the death penalty, the jury will begin weighing the toll and nature of Mr. Holmes’s actions to decide whether to send him to prison for life or to Colorado’s death row.

The sentencing phase is expected to take weeks. It could feature more wrenching statements from survivors and families of the victims, as well as testimony from defense witnesses discussing the role that mental illness played in propelling Mr. Holmes toward the movie theater that night.

“Look for the defense to emphasize the fact that James Holmes truly suffers from a serious mental illness, that he is in dire need of ongoing treatment and that while incarcerated he does not pose any real threat or danger to society,” said Steven Pitt, a forensic psychiatrist in Arizona who has followed the case closely. “Look for the prosecution to try and minimize the extent of Holmes’s mental illness and instead depict him as someone who is depraved and rotten to the core.”

The district attorney, George Brauchler, has said that for Mr. Holmes, “justice is death.”

Prosecutors argued that Mr. Holmes plotted the shootings for several weeks, deliberately and meticulously, because he had lost his first and only girlfriend, had dropped out of his graduate program and had generally lost his purpose in life.

To that end, prosecutors brought in professors and classmates who described Mr. Holmes’s struggles as a first-year graduate student in the neuroscience program at the Anschutz Medical Campus of the University of Colorado. Mr. Holmes quit the program in June 2012, after he failed important oral exams, and declined the chance to retake them.

Prosecutors showcased pages from a spiral notebook in which Mr. Holmes inscribed murderous fantasies and nonsensical theories about life and death, and where he plotted what kind of attack to carry out, and how and where to do it.

But where prosecutors saw calculation, the defense saw “a whole lot of crazy.”

Two psychiatrists who testified for the defense said Mr. Holmes lacked the ability to tell right from wrong or act with intent — critical elements of sanity under Colorado law.

Their testimony clashed with two court-appointed psychiatrists who said that although Mr. Holmes suffered a severe mental illness on a spectrum with schizophrenia, he was not legally insane when he walked into the theater.

Some families responded with visible relief, and public officials in Colorado — many of whom attended memorial services and have met with victims’ families — said they hoped that the verdict would bring a small measure of solace. Others were warier of a sentencing process that could lead to years of appeals if Mr. Holmes is sentenced to death.

“This has been an emotional and difficult time for the victims, their families, loved ones and friends,” Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado said in a statement. “My hope is that this step brings some peace to each of them and begins the healing process for all of Colorado.”

After the verdict was delivered, Jansen Young stood outside the courthouse in an afternoon rain and said she felt a weight lifted. When the shooting started that night, her boyfriend, Jonathan Blunk, pushed her under the seats and boxed her in, she said. He was killed, and on Thursday, his name was the first one read in the litany of murder victims.

Ms. Young said she had looked at Mr. Holmes in court and could not fathom his demeanor.

“It’s amazing to me that there is no response,” she said.

Jessica Watts, a cousin of Mr. Blunk, said the pain she experienced during the trial had gotten so bad that a month ago she stopped attending. She spent the summer going to the pool and zoo with her children — following the advice that another victim’s family member had given her, to focus on the living — but on Thursday, her phone started ringing.

She said she began shaking as the verdict was read, and tried to calm herself by thinking about the people for whom she had come to court that day. “It’s all these families that have been touched by this massive tragedy,” Ms. Watts said. “Win, lose, whatever, there’s 12 people that are never coming back.”

Read: aurora-doc-jury-instructions-james-holmes

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.”

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.

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.

How a President Hillary Clinton could help end the death penalty

Thursday, July 9, 2015

On the last day of this year’s Supreme Court term, the court handed down Glossip v. Gloss, ruling 5-4 that Oklahoma’s death penalty protocols were constitutional, despite the significant risk that the state’s experimental lethal injection procedures would result in death by torture.
Glossip is likely to be remembered for more than the specific holding of the case, however. In addition to Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent taking apart the majority’s logic on the narrow issue at stake, Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a separate dissent concluded: “I believe it highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment.” Breyer’s dissent is important, leading some to even conclude that the Supreme Court might actually rule that way in the near future. But this probably won’t happen unless a Democratic president replaces one of the Republican-appointed justices on the court, which is another reason the Supreme Court will be a top issue in the 2016 presidential race.
A majority of the Supreme Court has never held that the death penalty is categorically unconstitutional – indeed, there have never been more than 2 justices at any one time who supported this view. In the 1972 case Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court suspended executions, but 3 of the 5 justices in the majority held that the death penalty would be constitutional if applied fairly. Only 2 justices – William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall – held that the death penalty was always unconstitutional, a position they held for the rest of their tenures.
2 other justices, Harry Blackmun and John Paul Stevens, wrote opinions shortly before their retirement suggesting that the death penalty might be unconstitutional. But otherwise every justice has supported the compromise the court reached in 1976: The death penalty is constitutional if applied in a more fair and rational manner.
It is possible that Breyer’s opinion will be seen as a fraying of this compromise and a crucial step towards a ruling that the death penalty is unconstitutional. But if so, it is likely to be a process that plays out over a fairly long period.
At Slate, Robert J. Smith gives the most optimistic reading of Breyer’s dissent from the perspective of death penalty opponents, suggesting that there might be 5 votes on the current court to abolish the death penalty.
His argument is superficially persuasive. Justice Anthony Kennedy has been the swing vote to hold the death penalty unconstitutional for some offenses and offenders: those with mental disabilities, felons under 18, and people convicted of the sexual assault of children. It’s true, Smith acknowledges, that this collectively represents a small fraction of people sentenced to death. But on gay and lesbian rights, Kennedy started out by authoring some modest, incremental opinions – such as those striking down rarely enforced anti-sodomy laws – and proceeded to a landmark opinion creating a national right to same-sex marriage. Particularly with public opinion trending against the death penalty, why wouldn’t Kennedy write the death penalty equivalent of Obergefell v. Hodges?
The comparison, though, fails to withstand scrutiny. The crucial difference is that on LBGT rights, Kennedy batted 1.000. He never rejected an important claim that came to a vote on the merits. On the death penalty, conversely, Kennedy has hardly been a consistent friend to abolitionists. He joined, for example, a notorious opinion by former Chief Justice William Rehnquist holding that new evidence of actual innocence did not entitle someone convicted of a capital crime to federal habeas corpus relief. He has voted to uphold the constitutionality of victim impact statements, which lead to harsher punishments; death sentences where the mitigating and aggravating factors found by a jury were equally balanced; and another state’s lethal injection protocol.
Admittedly, some of these opinions are 2 decades old, and Kennedy might have changed his mind about the fundamental constitutionality of the death penalty. (Stevens, after all, was 1 of the 3 justices who authored the joint opinion announcing the 1976 compromise.) But Glossip itself provides powerful evidence against this possibility. Among other things, Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion represents a sort of obscene gesture to death penalty opponents: “If you use legal methods to prevent states from carrying out a particular form of execution, it therefore has the right to carry out less humane ones.”
This is nothing less than a justification for torture. It is very hard to imagine someone who opposes the death penalty in principle joining this opinion, which is exactly what Kennedy did.
It is thus vanishingly unlikely that this court will hold the death penalty unconstitutional. The interesting question is what might happen should a justice nominated by a Democrat become the median vote of the court. In a recent paper, the University of Maryland legal scholar Mark Graber suggests that we are about to see a much more polarized Supreme Court that, rather than hewing towards centrist opinions, swings well to the left or right depending on who has the fifth vote.
The death penalty is one area where this may be most evident. Unless popular opinion shifts strongly in favor of the death penalty, Breyer’s opinion may very well reflect the default position of Democratic nominees, even the most conservative ones. If President Hillary Clinton can replace one of the Republican nominees on the court, we could ultimately see a decision declaring that the death penalty violates the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments
But there’s a dark side to the polarized court from the perspective of death penalty opponents. If President Scott Walker or Marco Rubio replaces Justice Ginsbug and/or Breyer, states might aggressively expand the death penalty to encompass homicides committed by minors or the sexual assault of children – and these laws would likely be upheld.
Breyer’s dissent does not reflect a court that is going to rule the death penalty unconstitutional in the short term. But it does suggest that it is a medium-term possibility – and that the stakes of future presidential elections are about to get even higher, with control of the median vote of the Supreme Court accruing a greater policy impact than it’s ever had.
Source: theweek.com, July 8, 2015

 

CONNECTICUT ABOLISHES JUVENILE LIFE-WITHOUT-PAROLE SENTENCES

Last week, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy signed SB 796, which abolished life-without-parole sentences for all children.

The new law requires judges to consider both the hallmark features of adolescence as well as the scientific differences between child and adult offenders whenever children are sentenced in adult court for serious crimes. Furthermore, the law establishes special parole eligibility for children, ensuring review after serving no more than 30 years, and specifying youth-related factors for the parole board to consider.

The bill provides earlier parole eligibility for more than 200 individuals who are currently serving sentences for offenses committed while they were children.

Connecticut joins a growing number of states that have abolished the practice of sentencing children to die in prison. Nevada,Vermont, Hawaii, West Virginia, Delaware, Wyoming, and Texas also recently eliminated death-in-prison sentences for children.

Florida – Court Upholds Death Row Inmate’s Sentence

Jul 01, 2015

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A federal appeals court has rejected a Virginia death row inmate’s claim that he can’t be executed because he is intellectually disabled.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday unanimously upheld Alfredo Prieto’s death sentence for the 2005 slayings of two George Washington University students.

At issue in Prieto’s appeal was last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Florida case that a rigid cutoff on IQ test scores cannot be used to determine whether someone is intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution. Virginia’s law on determining whether a defendant is intellectually disabled was virtually identical to Florida’s.

The appeals court said it could not conclude that no reasonable juror would find Prieto eligible for the death penalty.