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Vote Yes on Prop 34 by Frank Carrillo (Exonerated of murder after 20 years in prison)

October 23, 2012 http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Freedom.

It’s hard to imagine it being taken away without just cause. But it happens — more often than you might think.

When I was just 16 years old, I was stripped of my freedom, wrongfully convicted of a murder I did not commit. I spent twenty years behind bars before I was finally able to prove my innocence.

But I always wonder, if I had been sentenced to death, would I have been able to prove my innocence in time?

This is why I believe so strongly in Proposition 34, which will replace California’s death penalty with life in prison without possibility of parole. With the election just two weeks away, it’s a critical time to make sure California voters hear about the true costs of the death penalty.

Today we’re launching our first Yes on 34 TV ad across the state’s airwaves, urging millions of California voters to replace the death penalty with life in prison without parole. With this new ad, my story will travel farther than ever before — on television.

Most people can’t imagine being found guilty of a crime they didn’t commit. I never expected that my youth would slip away in prison after I was wrongly convicted. But with this new TV ad, millions of viewers across the state can hear my real-life story and learn that our criminal justice system is good but not perfect. I am living proof that with the death penalty we always risk the execution of an innocent person.

I am honored by the all-star team that came together to help share my story of wrongful conviction with voters — including Emmy-winner Martin Sheen, iconic actor and director Edward James Olmos, Grammy- and Academy Award-winner and world-famous musician Hans Zimmer and Lili Haydn, the “Jimi Hendrix” of violin.

Also Donald Heller, the man who wrote California’s death penalty law, will be sharing his story on the radio. He explains that he never considered the costs of implementing the law and now sees it as a “huge” mistake that also risks the execution of an innocent person.

Voting Yes on Proposition 34 makes sense for California. We can save $130 million every single year by replacing the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of parole. This money can be better spent on education and on tools that actually improve safety in our communities, like testing DNA evidence and investigating unsolved murders. We can also make sure that California never makes an irreversible mistake.

The TV ad that tells my story is just one part of the path to victory for Prop 34. You’ll be hearing our message on the radio and seeing our volunteer teams on the ground across California. We have two weeks left to get the facts about the death penalty to as many voters as possible. We can’t do this without the help from our hard-working volunteers. Will you sign up to help Proposition 34 win on November 6? Then watch our campaign ad, and share with everyone you know.

Together, on November 6, we’ll make history.

MISSING PEOPLE : Autumn Pasquale Missing: 12-Year-Old New Jersey Girl Last Seen Riding Bike Saturday

A 12-year-old girl disappeared on Saturday while riding her bike, and several agencies have been working night and day to find her.

Autumn Pasquale, of Clayton, N.J., was last seen leaving her home on a white Odyssey BMX bike at around 12:30 p.m., the South Jersey Times reports. Her parents, upon realizing she didn’t make it to a friend’s house, reported her missing at about 9:30 p.m.

 

Autumn Pasquale Missing

She’s described by posters on a Facebook page set up to help find her as blonde, 5-foot-2 and weighing 120 pounds. She was last seen wearing navy blue shorts underneath navy blue sweatpants, a yellow T-shirt with “Clayton Soccer” on front, and bright blue high-top sneakers.

If you have any information on her whereabouts, please call the Clayton Police Department at 856-881-2300.

 

Steven Lawayne Nelson Sentenced To Death Penalty For Murder Of Texas Pastor Clint Dobson

Steven Lawayne Nelson http://www.huffingtonpost.com

FORT WORTH, Texas — The Rev. Clint Dobson was sitting in his church office writing a sermon when a convicted felon began scouring the neighborhood for a car to steal.

The felon honed in on the church, where investigators say he suffocated the young pastor and severely beat his secretary before fleeing in one of their cars.

New details of Steven Lawayne Nelson’s past – offenses that led up to what prosecutors called his most heinous crime – were revealed during a week-long hearing to decide Nelson’s fate following his conviction last week of killing Dobson. On Tuesday, jurors chose the death penalty.

“It is hard for me to fathom that you did what you did for a car and a laptop and a phone,” Dobson’s father-in-law, Phillip Rozeman, said in a statement after the sentencing. “The world is going to miss a leader. It’s sad to know all the people that won’t be helped because Clint is not here.”

Nelson suffocated Dobson, leaving him dead on the floor with a bag over his head and lying near his severely beaten secretary. Nelson had driven away in the secretary’s car, then later sold Dobson’s laptop and bought some items at a mall using the victims’ credit cards.

Jurors had the option of sentencing Nelson to life in prison without parole. For a death sentence, jurors had to unanimously agree that Nelson posed a danger to society, that he intended to kill and that there were no mitigating circumstances to diminish his culpability.

The 25-year-old Nelson showed no reaction as his sentence was read. He was later heard yelling after he was taken to a holding cell, where he broke a sprinkler head, causing flooding in the courtroom shortly after most people had left.

Three days before the murder, Nelson had been released from a court-ordered anger-management program, part of a deal with Dallas County prosecutors after he was arrested for aggravated assault on his girlfriend. He earlier had served time behind bars for a two-year sentence for theft, and spent much of his teen years in juvenile facilities after committing various crimes.

Dobson had taken a considerably different life path. The 28-year-old had done missionary work and had big plans for NorthPointe Baptist Church in Arlington, about 15 miles west of Dallas. The young minister was known by friends and relatives as a generous, helpful person who also had a fun-loving side.

His widow, Laura Dobson, said she will continue to be her husband’s voice and “be a reminder that good will always triumph evil.”

“I refuse to let you get the best of me,” she told Nelson in a victim impact statement after the sentence. “You have wrecked so many lives … that nobody will want to remember you after this.”

Nelson had denied killing the minister, blaming two friends for the crime. He said he stayed outside and only came into the church to steal a laptop. He admitted stepping around Dobson and the secretary on the floor to get the laptop, but said they were still alive when he was there.

Blood from both victims was found on a pair of Nelson’s shoes, and studs from his belt were found at the church, according to testimony. Prosecutor Bob Gill said Nelson’s violence didn’t stop as he awaited his murder trial, and that he fatally strangling an inmate with a blanket. Nelson hasn’t been charged in that death.

“Now you know why the state decided to seek the death penalty,” Gill told jurors. “That’s all that can be done here. It could not be more clear.”

Defense attorneys asked jurors to spare Nelson’s life, saying his mother neglected him, his father abused him and he was prescribed medication for attention deficit disorder. But Nelson never got the help he needed, even after he set his mother’s bed on fire when he was 3, and never learned how to get along with others and not hurt people.

Referring to Nelson’s childhood, defense attorney Bill Ray said the initial decisions “that put him on a track for permanent derailment were beyond his control, and if that’s not a mitigating factor, I don’t know what is.”

SOUTH DAKOTA – Death penalty called incentive for Robert

 October 20,2012 http://www.argusleader.com

The lawyer for a man executed this week says the death penalty created an incentive for his client to murder corrections officer Ronald “R.J.” Johnson.

Mark Kadi, who represented 50-year-old Eric Robert in the capital case, wrote a letter to the Argus Leader saying his client devised an escape plan that involved murder to ensure a death sentence in the event his escape failed.

“The availability of the death penalty encouraged rather than discouraged Robert to commit this crime,” Kadi wrote. “I know this because Eric told me so.”

After the murder in April 2011, Robert quickly pleaded guilty and insisted the judge issue a death penalty, then strongly objected to a mandatory Supreme Court review, which delayed his execution. He wrote a letter to Attorney General Marty Jackley earlier this month encouraging revisions to state law to guarantee a speedy death for a death row inmate who was not fighting it.

Jackley, who prosecuted the case, rejects the notion that Johnson’s murder was anything but a failed, “poorly executed” escape attempt.

He also said the death penalty will protect corrections officers from an inmate who had promised to kill again.

Robert was executed by lethal injection Monday.

Kadi: Failed overdose before escape try

Kadi, who watched the execution, said in his letter that Robert felt “hopeless” behind bars, and that the inmate had attempted suicide by drug overdose before the escape attempt with fellow inmate Rodney Berget.

Robert was serving an 80-year sentence for kidnapping and failed to secure a sentence reduction.

“Robert viewed a life sentence as being identical to a death sentence with the exception that the latter had a set date. Robert believed he needed to get out, one way or the other,” Kadi wrote.

Kadi’s letter says Robert had time to read the state’s death penalty statute and understood that killing a law enforcement officer in an act of escape would satisfy several of the aggravating factors that would justify an escape attempt.

Johnson was not afforded the additional protection the Legislature hoped to provide when adding those provisions to its death penalty statutes, Kadi wrote.

 Read the letter From Eric Robert to Attorney General Marty Jackley

Read the letter From Eric Robert’s Attorney, Mark Kadi

These factors, intended to be a shield, now served to target those the law protects in accordance with their important service to the public,” Kadi said. “The Legislature never intended these factors to be used in such a manner.”

Escape was only goal, Jackley says

Jackley rejects the notion that Robert and Berget’s crime was a suicidal act. Both men had escape histories, he said, and he contends escape alone was the goal.

“All the evidence in the case points to this being a poorly planned, poorly executed escape attempt,” Jackley said.

The attorney general also took issue with the notion that the death penalty does not provide a deterrent, particularly in Robert’s case. Robert said he would kill again if he weren’t executed.

“I can’t say if the death penalty will deter others from committing crimes in the future, but it deterred Eric Robert from committing any other crimes,” Jackley said.

Removing danger to prison staff

Future dangerousness framed key portions of Jackley’s argument for a death sentence in both Robert and Berget’s pre-sentence hearings. Berget also was sentenced to death for the crime.

Associate Warden Troy Ponto testified at Berget’s hearing that inmates segregated from the rest of the population can pose dangers during their daily interactions with officers.

Maximum security inmates are guarded by three officers any time their door is open.

“When we bring out inmates out of their cell, whether it be for a walk-through for medical, inmates have attempted to head-butt staff, punching them, kicking them,” Ponto said.

“We have good policies in place, but there is a risk when we take some of these guys out.”

Certain situations present further potential for violence. An inmate on a hunger strike would require additional interaction with medical staff, for example.

Robert and Berget both went on a hunger strike at the Minnehaha County Jail in the months after the murder of Johnson.

Ponto also said inmates are evaluated every 90 days to determine whether they should stay in segregation.

Johnson’s murder prompted a tightening of security measures at the prison. Lynette Johnson, Ron Johnson’s widow, said after Robert’s execution Monday night that “more needs to be done” to protect the officers at the penitentiary.

Speedy executions such as Robert’s rare

Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said the idea of an inmate committing a crime to earn a death sentence is highly unusual but not unheard of.

“Some believe that (serial killer) Ted Bundy deliberately went to Florida and committed murders because that was the state that was most likely to execute him,” Dieter said. “He was offered a plea bargain sparing his life, but he turned it down.”

Gary Gilmore, the first person executed following the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, volunteered for execution and was hanged three months from his sentence.

Robert’s explicit statement about his wish to die makes the case stand out, Dieter said.

The speed of Robert’s execution stands out as well. Of the 32 executions in the U.S. this year, Robert’s is the only one that happened within a year of the sentence. The next-shortest delay was six years.

The average wait time so far is 17 years.

Robert’s body was claimed by his family, Department of Corrections spokesman Michael Winder said.

 

 

Executed At 14: George Stinney’s Birthday Reminds Us That The Death Penalty Must End

October 19 2012 http://newsone.com/

george junius stinney jr birthday

George Junius Stinney Jr., the 14-year-old Black boy who died as the youngest person ever executed in the United States in the 20th century, would have been 83-years-old this Sunday.

Instead, his birthday will serve as a haunting reminder of why the death penalty needs to be abolished.

When two White girls, 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and 8-year-old Mary Emma Thames, went missing in Alcolu, S.C., on March 22, 1944, after riding in to town on their bicycles, Stinney was arrested the following day for allegedly murdering them.

The girls had allegedly passed Stinney’s home, where they asked him where they could find a particular kind of flower. Once the girls did not return home, hundreds of volunteers looked for them until their bodies were found the next morning in a ditch.

Because Stinney joined the search team and shared with another volunteer that he had spoken to the girls before they disappeared, he was arrested for their murders.

Without his parents, Stinney was interrogated by several White officers for hours. A deputy eventually emerged announcing that Stinney had confessed to the girls’ murders. The young boy allegedly told the deputies that he wanted to have sex with the 11-year-old girl, but had to kill the younger one to do it. When the 8-year-old supposedly refused to leave, he allegedly killed both of them because they refused his sexual advances.

To coerce his confession, deputies reportedly offered the child an ice cream cone.

There is no record of a confession. No physical evidence that he committed the crime exists. His trial — if you want to call it that — lasted less than two hours. No witnesses were called. No defense evidence was presented. And the all-White jury deliberated for all of 10 minutes before sentencing him to death.

On June 16, 1944, his frail, 5-foot-1, 95-pound body was strapped in to an electric chair at a state correctional facility in Columbia, S.C. Dictionaries had to be stacked on the seat of the chair so that he could properly sit in the seat. But even that didn’t help. When the first jolts of electricity hit him, the head mask reportedly slipped off, revealing the agony on his face and the tears streaming down his cheeks. Only after several more jolts of electricity did the boy die.

It was, without question, one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in U.S. history. Yet, decades later,33 states in the United States still practice this barbaric form of so-called justice. And the way it has been applied to our community has been especially unjust — and discriminatory.

Since 1973, almost 30 years after Stinney’s execution, 141 people in 26 states have been exoneratedfrom death row after new evidence cleared them of wrongdoing, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Seventy of those individuals were Black men and one was a Black woman, which accounts for more than half of the wrongfully convicted. Twelve of them were Latino.

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, says that race and other unjust factors determine who is sentenced to death.

“It’s those who are the most vulnerable,” Dieter told NewsOne in a phone interview. “If you have a poor lawyer or if you kill a White person, you’re more likely to get the death penalty. If you kill someone in Texas, it’s different than if you are accused of killing someone in another state and that is terribly unfair.”

What is even more unfair is that, since 1977, the majority of death row defendants have been executed for killing White victims, according to Amnesty International. But more than half of all homicide victims are African American. A Yale University Law School study reports that Black defendants are sentenced to death at three times the rate of White defendants when the victim is White.

Things really have not changed since little George Stinney was executed for killing two White girls based on virtually no evidence and pure racism.

Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the National Coalition To Abolish The Death Penalty, told NewsOne in an interview that Stinney’s upcoming birthday should remind us all that a flawed method of administering justice for the victim is not just if it clearly targets a particular group of people.

“If we don’t care whether or not race is influencing these cases, how are we going to make the system care if it turns out that our children are not getting the education they need or we’re not getting a fair shake in mortgages?” Rust-Tierney asked. “That is what this is about.”

Her Washington, D.C.-based organization played a pivotal role in helping to abolish the death penalty for juveniles in the United States with its 1997 “Stop Killing Kids Campaign” that lead to South Dakota and Wyoming banning the practice for offenders under the age of 18. The U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the practice against juveniles in 2005.

Before the High Court’s ruling, however, 71 juveniles were on death row. Two-thirds of them where offenders of color, and more than two-thirds of their victims were white.

“For people of color, the criminal justice system has been designed to be about us and around us but never with us,” Rust-Tierney said.

It certainly wasn’t with Stinney when his court-appointed attorney didn’t even care to call witnesses or provide evidence in his defense. And the justice system certainly wasn’t with his parents when a lynch mob ran them out of town, leaving their son in that South Carolina courtroom to face his fate all by himself.

I believe the best way we can commemorate the birth of this poor 14-year-old boy’s short life is to take a moment to really ask ourselves why we need this cruel form of punishment to begin with. Some will argue that if you kill someone, you should be put to death.

Well, the vast majority of convicts who are found guilty of killing someone are not sentenced to death. So why the selective application?

Is it making our streets safer?

No.

Has it put innocent lives on death row for crimes they did not commit?

Yes.

Of the 33 states in the Union that administer the death penalty, California voters will have the choice on Nov. 6 to vote for or against Proposition 34.

Not only would it end the death penalty in California, it would save the state more than $130 million per year in costs from death penalty cases. The measure would also require convicted killers to work and pay restitution in to a victim’s compensation fund.

Greg Akili, the Southern California field director for Safe California, told NewsOne that as much as $100 million of the money saved from executions can potentially go to a crime victim’s fund to help support their cases.

“That is a better use of the money because many of the victims that we work with and who have been supporting the initiative are victims of rape and murder but their cases are not being aggressively pursued,” Akili said. “So the money that we save from executing people here in California can be used for that fund.”

Proposition 34 is a smart, cost-effective way of administering justice that can truly help make our street’s safer and ensure that no innocent person is killed for a crime they did not commit.

We do not know what Stinney would have done with his 83 years had he lived that long. But what we do know is that the ugly, inhumane practice that took his life nearly seventy years ago is as flawed and broken now as it was back in 1944.

Currently, more than half of the 3,170 of the people on death row are people of color,according to the Equal Justice Initiative. Forty-three percent of them are African-American.

In Alabama, for example, 80 percent of all death sentences are imposed in cases where the victim is White even though 65 percent of the state’s murder victims are Black.

The racial bias that forced a 14-year-old Stinney in to an electric chair some 68 years ago clearly exists today.

So when we sit in our church pews this Sunday morning, lead our congregations in prayer, and deliver the good word, let us not forget that little George Stinney was born.

Let us take a moment of silence to reflect on the fact that the United States –  along with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and China — tops the list of countries with the highest execution rates in the world. We are not serving justice nor are we serving any God by using the death penalty to take another human being’s life. We’re merely serving our primal desire to get even.

But as little George Stinney should remind us, there was nothing even about the way it was applied to him or others since his execution.

It’s time to end the death penalty in America. Now and forever.

 

TEXAS – Appeals court race highlights statewide campaigns

october 19,2012 http://www.sfgate.com

In 2010, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller faced discipline for closing the courthouse just as a death row inmate was trying to file an appeal, and she was fined $100,000 for not disclosing more than $2 million in property and income on her personal financial statements.

The discipline in the death penalty case was later tossed on appeal, and Keller has appealed the ethics fine. But it’s those blemishes on the Republican’s career that Democratic defense attorney Keith Hampton hopes will propel him to win Keller’s seat in November and break the GOP’s hold on the state’s highest court for criminal cases.

“She’s banking on nobody noticing,” Hampton said, noting the $100,000 fine remains the largest in the history of the Texas Ethics Commission.

Keller did not respond to repeated telephone and e-mail requests for an interview.

Keller was hauled before the state Commission on Judicial Conduct for ordering the court shut at 5 p.m. on Sept. 25, 2007, which lawyers for condemned killer Michael Richard said blocked them from filing a last-minute appeal. Richard was executed that night for the rape and slaying of a Houston-area nurse who had seven children.

Keller faced removal from the bench, but the commission instead issued a “public warning,” one of the least severe sanctions at its disposal, while criticizing her for casting “public discredit on the judiciary.”

Keller appealed, and got the ruling dismissed by a special court of review, which said the commission had overstepped its legal authority.

In 2010, she said, “”What happened to me shouldn’t happen to any judge” and called the “Killer Keller” nickname death penalty opponents have her was hurtful and uncivil.

Hampton says the death penalty case and the ethics fine show a judge who is indifferent to justice in the death penalty, and willing to ignore the law to protect her own finances. Keller filed corrected financial disclosure forms, saying the failure to disclose was merely a mistake.

Keller was first elected in 1994. She had plenty of practice filing the forms, Hampton said.

“I fill out those papers, too,” Hampton said. “They go on and on about bonds, stocks and property. I don’t know how you miss that.”

Hampton is a criminal defense attorney who has appeared for the 9-member court in death penalty cases. He says his experience handling capital punishment cases at every level, from the trial court to the U.S. Supreme Court, give him a unique perspective on the gravity surrounding life-and-death issues before the court.

“The result does matter. Innocence should matter. Guilt should matter. Life or death should not be indifferent,” Hampton said.

In a 2010 interview with The Associated Press, Keller said her critics ignore her work chairing a task force that provides legal aid for the indigent, and another that ensures offenders with mental illness receive proper treatment.

Keller said then she expected the ethics issues to be raised during her 2012 reelection campaign.

“I can deal with it,” she said.

There are other statewide races on the ballot Nov. 6.

Court of Criminal Appeals Judges Barbara Parker Hervey and Elsa Alcala are running for new terms. Both are Republican who did not draw Democrat opponents.

The nine-member state Supreme Court has three seats up for election, with Republican incumbents Don Willett (Place 2) and Nathan Hecht (Place 6) running for new six-year terms.

Hecht, first elected in 1988, is the longest-serving member of the court with a reputation as one of its intellectual leaders. He has drawn Democratic opponent Michele Petty, a San Antonio attorney, who has made an issue of a $29,000 ethics fine levied against Hecht in 2007 for an illegal campaign contribution. Hecht appealed and the case is still pending.

Willett, who has served on the court since 2005, did not draw a Democratic opponent.

Former state district judge John Devine of Houston, who got attention for fighting to keep the Ten Commandments on display in his courtroom, is on the ballot in Place 4 after he defeated incumbent Justice David Medina in the primary. Devine did not draw a Democratic opponent in the general election.

The state Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas, has two places on the ballot.

In the open seat in Place 1, Republican Christi Craddick, an oil and gas attorney, party activist and daughter for former House Speaker Tom Craddick, faces Democrat Dale Henry, a licensed petroleum engineer and former Mills County commissioner for the six-year term.

Craddick says it is important that state encourage drilling and energy development and protect the industry from overreaching federal regulations. State officials and energy companies have been fighting federal agencies over myriad issues in recent years, from the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline to the environmental impact of the oil and gas drilling process called fracking.

Henry says he supports drilling, including fracking, but believes oil and gas companies are polluting the state’s land and water. Henry says he will fight for strict enforcement of environmental protections laws. The race has also drawn Libertarian candidate Vik Wall and Green Party candidate Chris Kennedy.

Commissioner Barry Smitherman, appointed by Gov. Rick Perry, is running to fill the rest of his unexpired term in Place 2. Smitherman is a former chairman of the Public Utility Commission and led that agency in 2008 when the state pledged billions of dollars to boost wind energy. He says energy companies should be encouraged to explore and drill. Smitherman did not draw a Democratic opponent.

Human Rights Commission passes resolution to abolish death penalty in Kentucky

October 19, 2012 http://www.courier-journal.com

Arguing that capital punishment is often applied unfairly against minorities and the poor, the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights board has passed a resolution opposing the death penalty in Kentucky.

The commissioners at a meeting in Lexington Wednesday urged the Kentucky General Assembly to repeal the law that allows the use of the death penalty in murder convictions. The commission also urged Gov. Steven Beshear to sign any such law brought before him.

The resolution unanimously passed by the commissioners will be submitted to Beshear and to each state legislator.

As of April 1, Kentucky had 35 inmates on Death Row at the Kentucky State Penetentiary in Eddyville, according to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Marco Allen Chapman was the last Kentucky inmates executed, by lethal injection in 2008.

State Sen. Gerald Neal, D-Louisville, said the state legislature has considered abolishing the death penalty several times without passing a measure. He said he expects that a bill proposing the end of capital punishment will be introduced again and that he wouldn’t be surprised if the measure might have a chance to be enacted. “In my view, it could happen, because it’s so long overdue,” Neal said.

The commission resolution read:

“Since 1976, when Kentucky reinstated the death penalty, 50 of the 78 people sentenced to death have had their death sentence or conviction overturned, due to misconduct or serious errors that occurred during their trial. This represents an unacceptable error rate of more than 60 percent.”

The resolution said that “statistics confirm that the imposition of the death penalty is disproportionately imposed on minorities and the poor. African Americans constitute 12 percent of the U.S. population, but represent 42 percent of prisoners on death row.”

It cited figures from Amnesty International that more than 20 percent of black defendants executed since 1976 were convicted by all-white juries.

Additionally, it said, states are more likely to seek the death penalty when the offender is black and the victim is white, and that a death sentence is more likely to be imposed on black offenders convicted of killing a white victim.

The resolution also noted that more than 90 percent of defendants in capital cases are indigent and cannot afford an experienced criminal defense attorney.

According to Amnesty International, more than two-thirds of the countries in the world have abolished the death penalty in law or practice.

The Kentucky Commission on Human Rights is the state authority that enforces the Kentucky and United States Civil Rights acts, which make discrimination illegal.

Utah could join states allowing prisoners to donate organs

octobre 18,2012 http://www.sltrib.com

A Utah lawmaker wants to make it possible for inmates to do a final good act if they happen to die while serving time.

Rep. Steve Eliason, R-Sandy, is again proposing a bill that would allow inmates to voluntarily agree to posthumously donate their organs. In the 2012 session, his bill passed the House but time ran out before it could be considered by the Utah Senate. The criminal justice interim committee approved the inmate medical donation act on Wednesday.

“In some respects, it’s a way for someone who is trying to pay their dues to society to get one last shot on their way out,” he said in an interview.

Over the past four years, an average of 15 inmates have died each year while incarcerated, according to the Utah Department of Corrections. The department began including organ-donor consent forms in the paperwork given to inmates during orientation at the end of 2011 after speaking with Eliason about his proposal.

“They liked the idea so much they implemented it anyway even though it did not become law,” Eliason said.

Mike Haddon, Corrections deputy director, told the interim committee that inmates are being given donor forms as they go through medical and dental screenings upon arrival at the prison. He said that in the past, organ donation “was a consideration” for some inmates as they passed away.

But Eliason still wants it enshrined in statute so the policy isn’t subject to the whims of changing administrations. He said he also plans to include jails in this year’s draft legislation.

Laws governing organ donation by either living or deceased prison inmates — a population that numbers about 2 million — vary from state to state. Federal law prohibits compensating donors for organs, and that bars prisoners, like others, from benefiting in any way.

Nationwide, there are 116,000 people on the waiting list for organs; about 80 percent are waiting for a kidney, according to data from the United Network for Organ Sharing. There have been about 16,586 transplants so far this year, most using organs from deceased donors. In Utah, 705 people are on waiting lists for organs, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.

A single healthy donor can provide up to 24 different organs and tissues — from kidneys to skin to corneas — that can help others, Eliason said.

…………………………………………………………….

By doing some research on the states that allow organ donation, I discovered a website called G.A.V.E (prisoner organ donation) from willing Inmates. http://www.gavelife.org/

G.A.V.E. is an organization set up to make a difference in the organ shortage in the U.S. with the help of willing and healthy volunteer prisoners.  Prisoners frequently ask to help through living kidney donations or multiple donations after execution to anyone in need.  However, they are just as frequently denied unnecessarily by prison administration and transplant authorities.

There are typically only between 10,000-15,000 donations given annually which provide organs for a small fraction of the greater than 112,000 Americans on waiting lists.  Yet inmates make up nearly 2,000,000 potential donors.  If just 1% chose to participate and were allowed to do so, this would nearly double the number of current organ donations in the U.S. While this won’t solve the problem, it will have a dramatic impact.

This site explores why donations from willing prisoners are not occurring now and advocates for a change to allow healthy and willing inmates the opportunity to save lives.

If the interested visitor finds the content and ideas of this site intriguing, meritorious, or worthy of debate, G.A.V.E. welcomes your input.  Of course, G.A.V.E. is looking for your support, but the quickest way to kindle a fire is to rub two opposing opinions together.

TEXAS-Death penalty sought in killing of Montgomery County mom, abduction of baby -Verna McClain

October 18, 2012 http://www.chron.com

Montgomery County prosecutors on Thursday announced they will seek the death penalty against a Houston woman accused of abducting a newborn boy and fatally shooting his mother in April.

Verna McClain, 30, is charged with capital murder in the death of Kala Golden Schuchardt and is being held in the Montgomery County Jail without bail.

Montgomery County District AttorneyBrett Ligon declined to discuss the factors he considered in making his decision, saying he wanted to avoid pre-trial publicity.

“I’ll let the notice speak for itself,” Ligon said.

Authorities say McClain shot and killed 28-year-old Schuchardt on April 17 in the parking lot of Northwoods Pediatric Center in Spring before placing the woman’s newborn, Keegan Schuchardt, in her car and speeding off.

Police located the 3-day-old infant, safe and unharmed, later that evening at McClain’s home in Houston. The boy was with McClain’s sister, police said.

Does The Death Penalty Provide ‘Closure’ to Victim’s Families? Three Perspectives

October 18, 2012 http://blogs.kqed.org

This coming election Californians will decide on Proposition 34, which would outlaw the death penalty and replace it with life in prison without the possibility of parole. It would also direct $30 million a year for three years to investigate unsolved rape and murder cases.

The measure is the latest chapter in a seesaw legal and political dispute over capital punishment that stretches back 50 years in California.

But setting aside the main argument of the “Yes on 34″ camp, that the billions of dollars spent on the death penalty could better be used to solve crimes; and “No on 34″ backers, that the death penalty process could be made more efficient and cheaper, there’s another issue that often comes up in the overall debate.

Many supporters of the death penalty say it is the only fair societal consequence for the perpetrators of the most heinous crimes, and that it gives victims’ families a sense of closure. Scott Shafer has been following this question around the death penalty for more than a dozen years, and he frequently addresses the question of closure in his reporting.

Earlier this year, Shafer interviewed Mark Klaas, father of Polly Klaas — the 12-year-old girl who was kidnapped from her Petaluma home and murdered by Richard Allen Davis. Klaas has long been an advocate of the death penalty and opposes Prop. 34. He told Shafer that families say witnessing the execution of the perpetrator of a crime against a family member has helped them.

Mark Klaas: It does make a difference. It’s about carrying out the law. It’s about the final judgment. Those individuals I’ve talked to -– family members who have witnessed executions — are grateful for the experience, sad that it had to come to that, but satisfied that justice has been fulfilled.

Scott Shafer: What do you mean they’re sad it had to come to that?

Mark Klaas: Well the taking of a life is not something that should ever be looked upon lightly. And nobody finds great joy in it, including the families of murder victims. And they know this better than anyone else. But it is the law, and it is a final judgment…

I believe [Davis’] execution would bring closure to my daughter. She is the one that he contemplates as he acts out in his prison cell. It’s not going to change my life one way or the other. But I don’t invest a lot of time or energy in thinking about Richard Allen Davis. He’s dominated my family’s life quite enough as it is. I’m content to see him at least be on death row and know that at some point he may have to face that final judgment.

As warden at San Quentin Prison, home of California’s only death row for men, Jeanne Woodford presided over four executions. She says it’s a “natural reaction,” to want someone who harmed a loved one to die, but says she thinks that closure does not come to pass for families. Shafer explored this question with her in an interview he conducted late last year. Woodford told him:

People wait years for an execution that may or may not happen. People come to the prison thinking that the execution will somehow bring closure to them. I’ve just never had someone who that’s happened to.

In fact, I’ve had reporters tell me that family members told them a month or two after the execution that they regretted having been involved in the process.

Then there’s the story of Gayle Orr, whom Shafer interviewed 10 years ago. In 1980 Orr’s 19-year-old daughter was stabbed and killed near Auburn. Her daughter’s murderer was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. Orr entered what she calls a “period of darkness” during which she felt isolated and consumed with rage.

Eventually she started attending and taking classes at church, where a common topic was forgiveness. A classmate suggested that Orr should forgive her daughter’s murderer, which at first infuriated her  but ultimately prompted her to write a letter of forgiveness to her daughter’s killer.

“And the instant that I put that letter in the mailbox,” she told Shafer in that 2002 interview and confirmed in a phone call last week, “all the anger, all the rage, all the darkness that I’ve been carrying around, all the ugliness I’ve been carrying around in my body for 12 long years, instantly was gone. Just gone. And in its place I was filled with this sense of joy and love. And I was truly in a state of grace, simply from offering forgiveness to another human being.”

It’s now been 20 years since Orr mailed that letter. Since then she has created a foundation in her daughter’s name, dedicated to forgiveness and a peaceful world. Orr changed her name to “Aba Gayle,” which she says means “beloved of the Father,” and she is “totally and absolutely opposed to the death penalty under any circumstances.”

She believes that carrying anger and rage toward another person perpetuates one’s sense of being a victim. “Being a victim is a choice,” she says “and I have chosen not to be a victim any longer. … Not only did I heal myself, I healed my whole family. When you’re filled with rage, you can’t be a wife, you can’t be a mother, so healing that rage does so much benefit, not just to me, but to everyone around me.”

Aba Gayle said she still grieves for her daughter, and while she doesn’t believe her daughter’s murderer should be executed, she believes he should spend his life in prison.