USA NEWS

WA: King County Public Defender welcomes moratorium on executions

february 15, 2014

David Chapman, interim Public Defender for King County, issued the following statement on Governor Jay Inslee’s announcement Tuesday to place a moratorium on executions in Washington state:

“I’m deeply encouraged by Governor Inslee’s decision to place a moratorium on executions in our state. This was a courageous move on his part and an important one, as it affords us an opportunity to begin a much-needed statewide discussion about this controversial and costly penalty. Questions abound about whether the death penalty is fair or equitable and about whether we, as a society, want state-sanctioned violence to be our answer to violence in our society. The Innocence Project, meanwhile, has proven that our system of justice is fallible. And once a person is executed, exoneration is meaningless.

“Governor Inslee has given us the time-out we need to begin this conversation and address these critical issues. I applaud his courage and his leadership.”

(source: Maple Valley Reporter)

ARIZONA: Jodi Arias Trial Sentencing Pushed Back

february 16, 2014

Jodi Arias will have her sentencing trial date pushed back from March 17 because of a prosecutor’s scheduling conflict – amid a report saying that she might have to get new lawyers after motions were filed this week.

Arias was convicted of murdering her boyfriend, Travis Alexander, at his suburban Phoenix home in 2008. A jury could not get to a verdict on her sentence.

The Arizona Republic reported that Juan Martinez, the prosecutor in question, has to handle a death penalty trial May 12, reported The Associated Press.

Maricopa County Superior Court Presiding Criminal Judge Joseph Welty this week said that the death penalty trial will go first. The suspect in that case is accused of killing a Phoenix-area police officer in 2007.

(Source: The Epoch Times)

Missouri: Judge Blocks Sale of Drug for Execution

february 13, 2014

A federal judge late Wednesday temporarily blocked an Oklahoma compounding pharmacy from selling a drug to the Missouri Department of Corrections for use in a Feb. 26 execution.

The temporary restraining order was issued in connection with a lawsuit in United States District Court in Tulsa filed by a Missouri death row inmate, Michael Taylor, whose lawyers say the state contracts with the Apothecary Shoppe in Tulsa for the drug.

The lawsuit argued that recent executions involving the drug, compounded pentobarbital, indicate it will probably cause “severe, unnecessary, lingering and ultimately inhumane pain.”

The state has not revealed the name of the pharmacy, and the Tulsa pharmacy has not said whether it is the supplier. The judge, Terence Kern, set a hearing for Tuesday.

(Source:NYT)

Ex-governors want California death penalty reform

february 14, 2014

LOS ANGELES — Three former California governors announced a proposed ballot initiative Thursday designed to speed up the state’s lengthy death penalty process.

Former Govs. George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Gray Davis said they were launching a signature-gathering effort for the measure that would limit appeals available to death row inmates, remove the prisoners from special death row housing, and require them to work at prison jobs in order to pay restitution to victims.

The former governors, appearing with law enforcement officials at a news conference, made it clear they want executions to begin as soon as possible. There are more than 700 prisoners on California’s death row.

“Old age should not be the leading cause of death on death row,” former Gov. Pete Wilson said.

They agreed the death penalty system is crippled by waste and inefficiency.

“We all know the death penalty system is broken at the appellate level,” said former Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley.

His predecessor in that job, Gil Garcetti, is leading the opposition to the initiative and was a proponent of Proposition 34, the 2012 ballot measure that would have repealed the death penalty in California. The vote was 48 percent in favor and 52 percent opposed, one of the closest votes ever on a death penalty referendum.

A statement from the former governors said “Californians overwhelmingly reaffirmed their support for the death penalty” with the vote on Prop. 34.

Executions have been halted since 2006 because of lawsuits in federal and state courts over changing a three-drug lethal-injection method that had been used to carry out death sentences.

Asked about the availability of drugs to carry out executions, the governors said they could not comment and that would be an issue for the California Department of Corrections.

Two relatives of victims spoke and decried the length of time it takes to resolve a death penalty appeal. Phyllis Loya said it took four years for an attorney to be assigned to a man convicted of killing her son.

Davis said it can take 10 years before a federal application for review of a death penalty case is resolved and another 10 years to clear state appellate courts.

San Bernardino County District Attorney Michael Ramos, representing the California District Attorneys Association, said if the initiative passes there would be no frivolous appeals and the state would see enormous fiscal savings.

With the initiative, backers want to bypass automatic appeals to the California Supreme Court and instead distribute them to other appeals courts unless it is necessary for a case to be heard by the high court.

Absent from the press conference were former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and current Gov. Jerry Brown. Brown is personally opposed to the death penalty but has said he would abide by the law.

He declined comment on the proposed initiative Thursday.

Garcetti called the initiative a misguided effort and predicted legal challenges would take decades to resolve.

Anna Zamora of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California later issued a statement saying: “This flawed proposal will only make matters worse. It will create more delays and overburden our already strained court system. Worst of all, it will greatly increase the risk that California could execute an innocent person.”

(Source: AP, Sacramento Bee)

Kentucky. high court to hear death penalty appeal – Michael Dale St. Clair

february 13, 2014

The Kentucky Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in the case of a death row inmate who has twice won a new trial.

The justices on Thursday will take up the case of 57-year-old Michael Dale St. Clair, who was convicted in the 1991 slaying of distillery worker Frank Brady in Bullitt County.

St. Clair has won three trials in the case, which has lingered for years in appeals.

St. Clair and another inmate escaped from an Oklahoma prison before going on a multistate spree that ended in Kentucky with Brady’s death. St. Clair also faces a murder charge in New Mexico for the 1991 kidnapping and slaying of paramedic Timothy Keeling.

St. Clair also received a second death sentence for capital kidnapping from the Hardin County Circuit Court.

BREAKING: Washington governor suspends the death penalty in his state!

february 11, 2014 (AP)

Gov. Jay Inslee said Tuesday he was suspending the use of the death penalty in Washington state, announcing a move that he hopes will enable officials to “join a growing national conversation about capital punishment.”

The Democrat said he came to the decision after months of review, meetings with family members of victims, prosecutors and law enforcement.

“There have been too many doubts raised about capital punishment, there are too many flaws in this system today,” Inslee said at a news conference. “There is too much at stake to accept an imperfect system.”
Inslee said that the use of the death penalty is inconsistent and unequal. The governor’s staff briefed lawmakers about the move on Monday night and Tuesday morning.nslee’s moratorium, which will be in place for as long as he is governor, means that if a death penalty case comes to his desk, he will issue a reprieve, which isn’t a pardon and doesn’t commute the sentences of those condemned to death.

“During my term, we will not be executing people,” said Inslee, who was elected in 2012. “Nobody is getting out of prison, period.”

Last year, Maryland abolished the death penalty, the 18th state to do so and the sixth in the last six years.

Nine men await execution at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. The state Supreme Court just last month rejected a petition for release from death row inmate Jonathan Lee Gentry, sentenced for the murder of a 12-year-old girl in 1988. Gentry could be the first execution in the state since September 2010, when Cal Coburn Brown died by lethal injection for the 1991 murder of a Seattle-area woman. A federal stay had recently been lifted in Gentry’s case, and a remaining state stay on his execution was expected to be lifted this month.

The decision by the governor comes following a recent decision by the state Department of Corrections, which is in the process of changing its execution protocol to allow witnesses to executions to see the entire process, including the insertion of intravenous catheters during a lethal injection.

The new witness protocol, currently a draft that is in its final stages of approval, includes the use of television monitors to show the inmate entering the death chamber and being strapped down, as well as the insertion of the IVs, which had both previously been shielded from public view.

Through public disclosure requests, The Associated Press had sought information about any potential changes to the execution protocols. State corrections officials spoke with the AP about the new procedures late last month.

The change is in response to a 2012 federal appeals court ruling that said all parts of an execution must be fully open to public witnesses. That ruling was sparked by a case brought by The AP and other news organizations who challenged Idaho’s policy to shield the insertion of IV catheters from public view, in spite of a 2002 ruling from the same court that said every aspect of an execution should be open to witnesses.

(Source: AP)

Bid to spare Jodi Arias from death penalty rejected by Arizona judge

february 9, 2014

Phoenix – An Arizona judge rejected a bid by the lawyers of Jodi Arias, the woman convicted last year in the death of Travis Alexander, to spare her from the death penalty. As reported by Reuters, court papers related to the judge’s ruling were released on Friday.

Maricopa Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens stated in her ruling that the claim by defense attorneys that a state law permitting a second penalty phase for Arias was unconstitutional and represented cruel and unusual punishment was wrong.

Alexander was found dead in his Phoenix home in 2008 after being stabbed and shot. Arias was convicted of murder in May 2013, but a jury deadlocked in trying to determine her sentencing. A new jury is set to reconvene on March 17 for the trial’s second penalty phase.

Stephens is quoted by Reuters as writing in part of her three-page ruling, “Defendant has not been ‘acquitted’ of the death sentence by the jury’s failure to reach a verdict, and thus there is no constitutional bar to retrying the penalty phase.”

This report is provided by Justice News Flash – Phoenix Legal News

INDIANA – Overstreet challenges execution over competency – Michael Dean Overstreet

february 9, 2014

A man who has spent nearly 15 years on Indiana’s death row for raping and killing a Franklin College student says he isn’t competent to be executed.

Michael Dean Overstreet was convicted in 2000 of the 1997 death of Kelly Eckart. He’s previously challenged his execution on grounds including the effectiveness of his attorneys and his mental state at the time of the crime.

The Indianapolis Star reports (http://indy.st/1nJmuRR ) the new competency challenge is a rare strategy at the time of sentencing.

Public defender Steven Schutte says Overstreet is the first defendant he’s encountered in 20 years who doesn’t appear to understand his sentence.

Eckart’s mother, Connie Sutton, says she wants the legal wrangling to end so the execution can proceed.

Indiana hasn’t had an execution since 2009.

FLORIDA – Jimmy Ryce’s Killer Appeals SCOTUS To Stay His Execution – Juan Carlos Chavez

February 7, 2014 (cbs)

The South Dade man convicted of killing Jimmy Ryce in 1995 has filed an appeal with the United States Supreme Court to stay his execution, which is currently scheduled for next Wednesday.

Juan Carlos Chavez has been on death row since his conviction in 1998.

The Ryce family declined to comment on the appeal Friday, but Don and Ted Ryce sat down for interviews with CBS4 News earlier in the week ahead of the pending execution.

“I just want it to be over. I want to get it behind us,” Don Ryce said.

Now there is a chance the day Done Ryce has waited almost 19 years for will be delayed.

“There is a reasonable possibility that the Supreme Court would consider a stay in this instance,” Miami-based appeals attorney Richard Klugh said Friday night.

Klugh is not connected to the case, but is familiar with the history and the letter of the law.

“It could take days, it could take a matter of weeks. But most likely the Supreme Court will try to move expeditiously,” he said.

Chavez was convicted in 1998 of the kidnap, rape and murder of 9-year-old Jimmy Ryce.

The farm hand told police he dismembered the boy’s body, put the parts in planters, and then filled them with concrete.

Jimmy’s family held out hope he’d be found alive. Posters with his pictured were plastered all over South Florida.

After Chavez’s arrest, confession and conviction, they waited patiently for justice to be served.

Jimmy’s mother and sister would not live to see the day.

“This person, Juan Carlos Chavez, who’s been on death row for so long, he’s outlived my mother, Claudine. He’s outlived my sister,” Jimmy’s brother Ted said. “Now… Now, it’s time.”

Chavez’s attorneys argue the lethal cocktail administered to death row inmates violates the U.S. Constitution, saying it amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment.”

It’s a punishment Don Ryce thinks is well-deserved, even though it won’t bring his little boy back.

“I hate the word closure because what it implies is that there’s an end and everything is okay,” Ryce said. “And that’ll never happen.”

If the execution moves ahead as planned on Wednesday, Don and Ted Ryce said they plan to be in the viewing gallery at the state prison in Starke.

CALIFORNIA : Man gets death penalty in 1988 murder of pregnant woman – Jason Michael Balcom

february 7, 2014 (latimes)

A man who raped and murdered a pregnant woman in her Costa Mesa home a quarter of a century ago was sentenced to death Friday.

 

Jason Michael Balcom strangled and stabbed 22-year-old Malinda Gibbons in the chest on July 18, 1988.

Her husband, Kent Gibbons, found his wife dead in their apartment, bound and gagged with his neckties. Police said she had been sexually assaulted.

At the time of the crime, Balcom, then 18, was living with his mother and aunt in a Costa Mesa motel less than a mile away from the apartment. He had been  released from juvenile hall just weeks before the murder.

Investigators cracked the cold case more than a decade later when DNA evidence linked Balcom, now 43, to the crime.

Balcom’s DNA was entered into a nationwide database in 2004 after he was convicted of rape in Michigan, where he and his mother moved after the murder.

He was serving a 50-year prison term when Orange County prosecutors extradited him  to stand trial.

In 2012, an Orange County jury convicted Balcom of first-degree murder with sentencing enhancements for murder during commission of sodomy, rape, robbery and burglary. But jurors deadlocked on whether to recommend the death penalty.

A second jury recommended the death penalty last year, a decision that was affirmed in Superior Court on Friday.