Capital punishment

Swiss Government Wants To End Death Penalty Everywhere

July 19 2012 AP- huffington Post

GENEVA — The Swiss government has reaffirmed its commitment toward seeking the abolition of the death penalty “throughout the world.”

A Foreign Ministry statement Thursday says Switzerland firmly opposes the death penalty “in any and all circumstances” anywhere on the planet.

The statement came in response to Hamas authorities hanging three Palestinians on Tuesday who were convicted of murder in different cases, the sixth such executions in the Gaza Strip this year.

Switzerland called for a moratorium on capital punishment in the Gaza Strip, calling the death penalty “a violation of the most fundamental of human rights.”

Switzerland outlawed capital punishment for civilians in 1942 and for the Swiss military in 1992. The country also belongs to the Council of Europe, which opposes the death penalty.

 

CONNECTICUT – AP Interview: Death row inmate says new law unfair – Daniel Webb

July 17, 2012 The associed Press : AJC 

SOMERS, Conn. — Daniel Webb is awaiting execution for the 1989 kidnapping and murder of a Connecticut bank executive, but he believes he is also paying a price for another, unrelated crime that has heavily influenced the state’s debate on capital punishment.

Webb told The Associated Press in a death row interview that he thinks there would be no capital punishment in the state if not for the public’s desire to execute the men responsible for the 2007 home-invasion slayings of a mother and her two daughters in suburban Cheshire. The only survivor of that crime, Dr. William Petit, lobbied to keep the death penalty for the men who killed his family, Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky.

“Dr. Petit is angry with them and with his anger he wants to kill all of us,” said Webb, who spoke by telephone from behind a glass window. “Now you are trying to increase my suffering and take away the little that I had because you want to make Komisarjevsky suffer. That’s not right.”

Webb was sentenced to die for the slaying in Hartford of Diane Gellenbeck, a 37-year-old Connecticut National Bank vice president, who was taken from a downtown parking garage and shot to death near a local golf course as she ran from an attempted sexual assault.

The state legislature in April abolished capital punishment, but only for future crimes. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and key state lawmakers had insisted on that as a condition of their support for repeal in a long-running debate that focused on the Petit case.

“If you are going to abolish the death penalty, abolish the death penalty,” said Webb. “I don’t think you can have a law that has double standards. Abolish means abolish, doesn’t it?”

A spokesman for Malloy declined to comment on Webb’s assertion.

William Petit’s sister, Hanna Petit Chapman, said she does not care what Webb thinks. She compared him to her relatives’ killers for laying blame with others.

“His condemnation is a direct result of his choices and actions. His finger pointing and blaming others sounds very familiar to what we heard from Komisarjevsky and Hayes. He could have let her go, yet, chose to shoot her five times when she escaped. I am not sure how that translates to being my family’s fault,” she said.

The balding, bearded Webb also complained during the hour-long interview Friday that the conditions of his confinement are unbearable and amount to torture.

Death-row inmates at Northern Correctional Institution are kept isolated in 8-by-12 foot cells with almost no human contact, even with other death-row inmates. They are given an hour of recreation a day, alone in cell-sized cages in the prison yard.

Webb, 49, says he has no friends on death row. He can only communicate by shouting through his steel door or into an air vent, something he says makes conversations with other inmates almost impossible.

Correction Department spokesman Brian Garnett described the conditions as humane and constitutional.

The mother of Webb’s victim is not sympathetic. Dorothy Gellenbeck, 86, said Webb deserves to live in the harshest conditions and to die for killing her daughter.

“I have had a lot of years to miss my girl,” Gellenbeck said from her home in Pennington, N.J. “I don’t care what the new Connecticut law is. He is guilty of murder and at the time of the murder the death penalty was in effect. And why should he live, when he killed someone?”

Connecticut’s only execution since 1960 came in 2005, after serial killer Michael Ross voluntarily gave up his appeals.

“I can now see what can push a man to that point,” said Webb. “I’d rather be dead than live like this.”

Webb said he attempted to hang himself in January, and later wrote a letter to court officials asking to give up his appeals and be executed. He has since rescinded that decision, saying lawyers and mental health professionals convinced him to wait and see how legal challenges to the death penalty are received.

Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Kane testified during public hearings this spring that he expects inmates to challenge the constitutionality of keeping them on death row by arguing the sentence is now unfairly applied based on the date of the crime.

Webb said he also has evolved and matured since 1989. Nobody, he said, should be held in isolation, just waiting to die.

“I’m still human,” he said. “People grow. Even people as despised as Joshua or Hayes, they can change over time.”

TEXAS – YOKAMON HEARN – EXECUTION – July 18 – 6:00 p.m EXECUTED 6:37 p.m

July 18 2012

FILE This photo provided by the Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice shows Texas death row inmate Yokamon Hearn who will be the first prisoner executed under the state's new single-drug procedure. Hearn is set to die Wednesday, July 18, 2012, for the March 25, 1998, murder of stockbroker Frank Meziere in Dallas. (AP Photo/Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice, File)

Hearn showed no apparent unusual reaction to the drug as his execution began. He was pronounced dead at 6:37 p.m., about 25 minutes after the lethal dose began flowing.

Asked by the warden if he wanted to make statement

he said: “I’d like to tell my family, I love you and I wish you all well. I’m ready.”

Last Meal: Same  salad being fed to every other thug on the row that day

Update :  Condemned prisoner Yokamon Hearn is headed to the Texas death chamber after having his appeals rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.

————————–

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — An inmate who once bragged about the headlines generated by the carjacking and murder that sent him to death row will be noted in Texas history for a different reason: Yokamon Hearn will be the first prisoner executed under the state’s new single-drug procedure.

Hearn, 33, is set to die Wednesday for the March 1998 fatal shooting of Frank Meziere, a 23-year-old suburban Dallas stockbroker who was abducted at gunpoint while he cleaned his car at a self-service car wash in Dallas. Meziere was driven to an industrial area and shot 10 times before his body was dumped on the side of a road.

Hearn will be the sixth Texas prisoner executed this year, but the first since the Texas Department of Criminal Justice announced its switch to single-drug lethal injections amid a drug shortage that has left states scrambling for acceptable alternatives.

Texas said last week it will now use a single dose of pentobarbital, instead of using the sedative in combination with two other drugs. Ohio became the first state a year ago to use a single drug, and several other states have since made the switch. Courts have upheld the practice, despite death penalty opponents’ claims that it takes prisoners take longer to die with a single drug.

Hearn has not made an appeal based on method of execution or claims of innocence. Instead, his appeals have focused on his mental capacity, the competence of his attorneys and whether recent lower federal court rulings improperly blocked his current lawyers from pursuing appeals.

In 2004, a federal court spared Hearn less than an hour before he could have been taken to the Huntsville death chamber so that it could consider arguments that he was mentally impaired and therefore ineligible for the death penalty.

That appeal subsequently was rejected, and attorneys more recently told the U.S. Supreme Court that while tests show Hearn’s IQ is considerably higher than levels determining mental impairment, he suffers from a fetal alcohol disorder that should disqualify him from execution.

Jason January, the former Dallas County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Hearn for capital murder, dismissed claims that Hearn was disabled.

“He was quite capable of functioning and figuring out how to rob people,” January said this week. “What I really recall is the medical examiner at trial placing demonstrative knitting needles through a Styrofoam head 10 times through and through, depicting the different bullets that went through Meziere’s head.”

Hearn, known to his friends as “Yogi,” was 19 at the time of Meziere’s murder and had a lengthy record that included burglary, robbery, assault, sexual assault and weapons possession.

A security camera video at a convenience store next to the car wash captured images of Hearn with two other Dallas men and a woman from Oklahoma City. They had been out looking for someone to carjack, authorities said.

According to trial testimony, Hearn and Delvin Diles forced Meziere into the stockbroker’s car, and Hearn drove it to an area near Dallas’ wastewater treatment plant. The two others, Dwight Burley and Teresa Shirley, followed in a second car.

Meziere, from Plano, was shot with a stolen, assault-style rifle and then with a .22-caliber pistol. Shirley testified that Hearn shot Meziere with the rifle and then continued to fire after he hit the ground. Diles then shot him with the pistol.

She also testified that Hearn later waved around a newspaper account of the crime and was pleased it said Meziere had been shot in the head, or “domed” in street slang. According to The Dallas Morning News, Hearn told her: “I told you I domed him. I told you. I told you.”

Diles, 19 at the time, pleaded guilty and received consecutive life terms for Meziere’s death and an unrelated aggravated robbery. Shirley, 19, and Burley, then 20, pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and received 10-year prison sentences.

Hearn would be the 483rd inmate executed since Texas resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982. He is among at least nine men with execution dates in the coming months.

Associed Press – Miami Herald
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ARIZONA – Samuel Villegas Lopez – Executed 10:37 a.m June 27 2012

June 27, 2012 Source :

Samuel Lopez, who stabbed a Phoenix woman to death in 1986, was executed today at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Florence, three days before his 50th birthday.

Lopez had no last words.

No members of Lopez’s family were present, witnesses said. Eight members of the family of Estefana Holmes, his victim, spoke with reporters after the execution.

Victor Arguijo, Holmes’s brother, who traveled with other family members from Fort Worth, Texas, said, “We are not here to seek vengeance nor to avenge, but to seek justice for our family. This execution today will not bring our beloved Tefo back, but hopefully will bring closure.”

Lopez’s final meal consisted of one red chili con carne, one green chili con carne, Spanish rice, a jalapeño, an avocado, cottage cheese, French fries, a Coke, vanilla ice cream and pineapple.

The execution procedure began shortly before 10 a.m., as a group of six prison medical team members inserted intravenous catheters into Lopez’s arms. Lopez chatted with them and winced slightly, as government representatives, media, attorneys and Holmes’s family members watched on closed-circuit TV. Then prison officials opened the curtains between the death chamber and the witness area. The execution began at 10:08 a.m. and ended at 10:37 a.m., taking more than twice as long as recent prior executions.

Lopez blinked, yawned, breathed rapidly, then his mouth dropped open, witnesses said.

On Tuesday the U.S. Supreme Court declined without comment his appeal for a stay. One aspect of Lopez’s death marked a departure from prior recent executions in Arizona, including three earlier this year, after extended legal disputes. For the first time, the Department of Corrections allowed witnesses to watch, via close-circuit cameras, as executioners inserted the intravenous catheters that deliver the fatal drug, pentobarbital, into the condemned man.

Previously, the department only allowed the curtain between observers and the inmate to be pulled back after the catheters were in place. Where and how the catheters were inserted in earlier executions led to legal accusations that the department was engaging in cruel and unusual punishment. Corrections officials have said that problems finding suitable veins in the condemned man’s arms or legs have forced them to insert catheters into the groin area.

As in past executions, Lopez was told by officials that his microphone would be cut off if he said anything offensive. In March, as convicted murder Robert Towery was being executed, officials refused his requests to speak with his attorney as medical staff repeatedly stuck him without being able to find a vein, eventually using his groin area. Towery communicated with his attorney by code during his last words.

Defense attorneys in Arizona have repeatedly brought these issues to court; the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that no part of an execution should be shielded from media witnesses.

Lopez was convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering Holmes in her apartment in central Phoenix in 1986. He stabbed the grandmother and seamstress more than 23 times and slashed her throat with her own kitchen knives after a fierce struggle. A few days later, while being interviewed by police investigating an unrelated sexual-assault incident, Lopez mentioned details of Holmes’ murder that hadn’t been released to the public, police said. His attorneys, on appeal of his 1987 conviction and death sentence, argued that those details had been common knowledge in the neighborhood.

Lopez’s attorney, Kelley Henry, an assistant federal public defender, criticized the execution and said Lopez was denied due process. “This broken process began at trial where untrained attorneys failed to raise crucial evidence about Sammy’s horrific and abusive family history. It continued up until this week as the courts refused to hear the merits of Sammy’s claims because of procedural barriers,” she said.

Lopez’s attorneys had sought stays in both state and federal courts. In state court, they argued that he couldn’t get a fair hearing before Arizona’s Board of Executive Clemency, and that a majority of the five members had been improperly appointed as political cronies of Gov. Jan Brewer. In federal court, they argued that state courts hadn’t adequately considered factors that should have mitigated against a death sentence for Lopez, such as his brutal upbringing and a mental impairment caused by his childhood abuse of inhalants and other drugs.

On May 15, Arizona’s Supreme Court stayed his execution, originally set for that day, to allow a lower court to consider the argument that new clemency board members hadn’t received all the training required by state law. But last Friday, the court turned down his attorneys’ request for a second stay of execution, after a lower court ruled that there had been enough time for the training to be completed.

Also last Friday, Arizona’s Board of Executive Clemency denied Lopez’s bid for a commutation to life without parole. More than a dozen members of Holmes’ extended family spoke at the board hearing in favor of his execution.

A small group of protesters braved the heat Wednesday to demonstrate against the death penalty, but were kept away from the prison by state troopers.

OHIO – JOHN ELEY – EXECUTION JULY 26, 2012 COMMUTED

UPDATE :

July 11, 2012

On July 10, Ohio Governor John Kasich (pictured) granted clemency to death row inmate John Eley, who was scheduled to be executed on July 26.  Eley’s sentence was reduced to life in prison without parole. The governor said he based his decision on evidence that Eley acted under the direction of another person, and that his mental capacity was limited, saying, “Without those factors it is doubtful that Eley would have committed this crime.” The prosecutor in the case and one of the judges who sentenced Eley to death called for mercy. The Ohio Parole Board voted 5-3 against recommending clemency.  Those who voted for clemency said that Eley’s crime was not one of the “worst of the worst,” and that similar crimes rarely receive death sentences. This is the third death-row clemency granted by Gov. Kasich, including two issued in 2

The Ohio Supreme Court summarized the facts of the case as follows:

During the early afternoon of August 26, 1986, Eley was visiting Melvin Green at the home of Green’s girlfriend in Youngstown. Accordingto Eley, he and Green were just sitting around when Green suggested that they go down to the “Arab store.” Eley and Green left the house and proceeded down a path through the woods leading to the Sinjil Market.
Along the way, Green showed Eley a “Black Snub nose gun,” and told Eley he “was going to take the Arab off.” Since the proprietor of the store, Ihsan Aydah, knew Green’s face, Eley agreed to go in alone and rob the store while Green waited outside.
Eley entered the store and told Aydah to put his hands up and to turn and face the wall. Green had told Eley that Aydah had a gun under the store counter, so when Aydah lowered his hands and went under the counter, Eley fired a shot. Eley claimed that he aimed at Aydah’s shoulder. However, the shot hit Aydah on the right side of his head, approximately four inches above the earlobe. Aydah died the next day of shock and hemorrhage due to a gunshot wound to the head.Just before Eley fired the gun, Green entered the store. After the shot, Green ran behind the counter and got into the cash register. He took Aydah’s wallet while Aydah lay wounded on the floor. As the two left the store, Green gave Eley a brown paper bag with the money and wallet. According to Eley, they went up the street, “got to the path and run up the woods.”. . .

Several days after the murder, Eley was arrested by Youngstown police at the residence of his cousin’s girlfriend, Carlotta Skinner. After his arrest, Eley told police that he and Green had split the money taken in the robbery, which was around $700. However, Eley later gave the money back to Green “because he said it was all on him and he had to get out.”
. . .
[After being arrested, i]n his voluntary statement Eley admitted that he and Green had robbed the Sinjil Market, and that he shot Aydah. [The arresting officer] testified that Eley did not appear to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs during the interview and was “very calm” and “passive.” The grand jury indicted Eley on one count of aggravated murder
with a specification that the murder was committed during, or immediately after, the commission of an aggravated robbery
According to an affidavit of trial counsel, before trial Eley refused to accept various plea offers that were conditioned on Eley’s testimony against Green, including an offer of a voluntary manslaughter charge with a six-year sentence. that Eley was the principal offender. This count also carried a firearm specification. In addition, Eley was indicted on one count of aggravated robbery (R.C. 2911.01[A][1] and [2]) and one count of conspiracy (R.C.2923.01[A]). Each count carried a firearm specification.
In May 1987, Eley waived his right to a jury trial and opted for a trial before a three-judge panel. Eley pled not guilty to the charges against him, there by withdrawing a prior plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. . . .
Trial was held before a three-judge panel on May 11–12, 1987, but the defense chose not to present any evidence. The panel found Eleyguilty of aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, the felony-murder capital specification, and two of the three firearm specifications, but no guilty of conspiracy. During the mitigation hearing, several family members testified
on Eley’s behalf. Eley’s mother, Cecilia Joseph, divorced Eley’s father when Eley was seven or eight years old, and stated that Eley had “not much” of a relationship with his father. Joseph testified that on Christmas night 1964, her second husband had been drinking and began choking her and her daughter. At that time, Eley stabbed the second husband with a knife in order to stop him. Joseph testified that Eley dropped out of high school in the ninth grade, but later entered the Job Corps and learned to be a welder. Eley sent money home to his mother during this time, and gave her money to help her finish paying for nursing school. Joseph stated that while Eley has had problems with drugs and alcohol, he is a better person when he is not under the influence. She characterized Eley as “church oriented,” and believed he had been “born again.”
Eley’s sister, Susan Laury, testified that Eley had helped the family financially while he was in the Job Corps, and that Eley is normally a “quiet, sweet, gentle person that wouldn’t hurt anybody.”Dr. Douglas Darnall, a clinical psychologist, found Eley to be of borderline intelligence, and ranked him in the twelfth percentile on theWechsler Adult Intelligence Test. According to Darnall, Eley has a history of chronic alcohol and polysubstance abuse, but exhibited “no evidence of psychosis or major defective disorder.” In addition, Darnall testified that Eley understands the difference between right and wrong. Darnall found Eley to be remorseful, but Eley never mentioned that he felt remorse for the victim. However, two police officers who witnessed Eley’s confession testified that Eley was remorseful before he made that statement. Eley made a short unsworn statement at the mitigation phase that consisted of several biblical quotations from the Book of Romans.

After deliberation, the panel unanimously found that the aggravating circumstance outweighed the mitigating factors beyond a reasonable doubt, and sentenced Eley to death. Upon appeal, the courtof appeals affirmed the convictions and sentence of death.

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Split Ohio Parole Board rejects clemency for condemned killer of convenience store owner

June 20, 2012  Source : http://www.therepublic.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The prosecutor who charged John Eley with a capital crime and a judge who sentenced him to death both want the killer of a Youngstown convenience store owner spared, saying he doesn’t deserve a death sentence.

Their unusual support was not enough to sway the Ohio Parole Board, which voted 5-3 Wednesday in a rare split decision to recommend against clemency for Eley.

Eley, 63, is scheduled to die July 26 for the 1986 killing of store owner Ihsan Aydah. Gov. John Kasich has the final say on mercy.

Eley refused to testify against his alleged conspirator, Melvin Green, in exchange for a deal that would have removed the death penalty. Green, who was acquitted in a separate trial, was considered the mastermind of the crime by investigators.

Opposition to Eley’s execution from the prosecutor and the judge, as well as the detective who investigated the crime, don’t outweigh the nature of the crime, according to the five board members who rejected clemency.

The supporters’ assertions “do not outweigh the fact that Eley took the gun from Green, entered the store with the intent to rob the victim, knew that the victim had a gun and might try to use it, and then shot him in the head,” the board said.

The board also rejected claims by Eley’s lawyers that he is mentally ill and mentally disabled.

It’s not unusual for judges or prosecutors to change their mind about individual cases or the death penalty itself, but on-the-record testimony on behalf of a condemned inmate is relatively rare.

The three board members who supported Eley’s plea for mercy say he is not the “worst of the worst” killers, and argue that many similar convenience store robbers who committed more serious crimes escaped death sentences.

They also said the crime wouldn’t have happened without Green. And they argued that Eley was a victim of a game of bluff by prosecutors as they threatened him with a death sentence to force his testimony against Green.

“The prosecutors ‘played a bluff’ all the way to the end, and when Eley did not cooperate, they were stuck with the death penalty conviction,” the three dissenting members said.

Former Mahoning County prosecutor Gary Van Brocklin told the board that Green set up the entire robbery. Former Mahoning County judge Peter Economus — now a federal judge — said if defense attorneys had presented more reasons why Eley should have been spared, he wouldn’t have voted in favor of a death sentence.

Clemency “should be granted for Mr. Eley in this case,” Economus wrote to both the parole board and Kasich on June 7.

“Frankly, I am surprised that his death sentence was not modified by the courts who have reviewed this case over the years.”

Board members opposed to clemency rejected Economus’ argument, saying several courts have previously ruled that factors that could have been presented to the jury about Eley but weren’t — such as the effect of a head injury in earlier life on his behavior — wouldn’t have changed the outcome.

Green, 54, is in prison and scheduled for release in October on charges he illegally carried a concealed weapon, had a gun in a car and possession of drugs. But he also faces the possibility of additional time for violating parole on a prior aggravated robbery conviction, according to state prison records. Those charges are unrelated to the Eley case.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MISSOURI – 19 Missouri Death Row Inmates Awaiting High Court Ruling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ARIZONA – Samuel Villegas Lopez – Execution June 27, 2012 – 10:00 a.m

June 27, 2012 Source : http://tucsoncitizen.com

The U.S. Supreme Court late Thursday denied death-row inmate Samuel Lopez’s final appeal, clearing the way for his execution at 10 a.m. today in Florence.

Lopez’s attorney, assistant federal public defender Kelley Henry, said there will be no other efforts to block his execution. Lopez, 49, was convicted in 1987 of raping and murdering Estefana Holmes in her Phoenix apartment. On Friday, the Arizona Supreme Court also denied a stay, and Arizona’s Board of Executive Clemency denied a commutation bid.

His execution will be the first in which witnesses will watch, via closed-circuit TV, the insertion of the catheters that deliver the fatal drug pentobarbital. Attorneys for inmates in prior executions condemned the practice of inserting catheters into the prisoners’ groins. Officials said the executioners had found it difficult to find suitable veins in the arms and legs.

In earlier executions, witnesses only saw the prisoner after the catheters had been inserted.

June 26, 2012 Source : http://www.azcentral.com

A death-row inmate set to be executed in Arizona on Wednesday has lost his last appeal, clearing the way for the lethal injection to proceed.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a request from Samuel Villegas Lopez to delay his execution to consider arguments that his trial attorneys were incompetent.

June 6, 2012 Source : http://www.azcentral.com

ll executions carried out in Arizona are witnessed by members of the public and the media. But the witnesses only see the condemned prisoner as he says his last words and lapses into unconsciousness.

During the next execution, scheduled for June 27, the witnesses also will be able to watch as executioners insert the intravenous catheters that deliver the deadly drug into the prisoner’s veins.

Just last week, a federal judge in Phoenix denied requests by defense attorneys and the media to witness those preparations. A federal judge in Idaho denied a similar request from the media Tuesday.

But in a letter Wednesday to death-row prisoner Samuel Lopez, who faces execution June 27, Arizona Corrections Director Charles Ryan said that witnesses to the execution –– who generally include five members of the media — will be allowed to watch his catheter insertion via closed-circuit television.

The location of the catheters has been an ongoing court issue in the past several executions. The Department of Corrections frequently claims that its medical staff for executions are unable to find suitable veins in the arms or legs of the condemned prisoners, prompting them to surgically insert a line into prisoners’ groin areas.

During a March execution, a condemned man asked to speak to his attorney before the execution as the medical staff repeatedly stuck him without finding a vein, eventually putting the line into the femoral vein in his groin. He was not allowed to speak to the attorney and instead communicated with him by code during his last words.

Ryan has previously refused to allow anyone to view the process.

In May, judges at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals questioned why Arizona media had not expressed its First Amendment right to witness the procedure.

A 2009 decision by the 9th Circuit ruled that the public has a right to witness all aspects of an execution. Only California and Ohio have allowed it until now.

Nonetheless, the Arizona Department of Corrections fought the motion to allow attorneys into the room to see the catheters inserted. The First Amendment Coalition of Arizona also asked to witness, but a U.S. District Court judge in Phoenix denied their motions.

The attorneys filed an appeal in the 9th Circuit on Wednesday morning asking that a prisoner’s attorneys be allowed to watch the procedure in order to gather evidence, regardless of whether he or she is invited as a witness by the prisoner.

But also Wednesday, Lopez received a note from Ryan informing him that the executioners will be using a single drug, pentobarbital, to carry out his execution, and that he could make a final statement to the witnesses. However, he was told that his microphone would be cut off if he made offensive statements.

A Department of Corrections spokesman said the note to Lopez speaks for itself.

In the last paragraph, Ryan told Lopez that the closed-circuit monitors in the execution chamber will be turned on as the IVs are inserted before the execution, and that there will be a live microphone in the room so that the witnesses can hear what is said during the procedure.

“Over the past two years, ADC stopped illegally importing the execution drugs, switched to a one-drug protocol and now is making the execution process more transparent. These are steps in the right direction,” said Assistant Federal Public Defender Dale Baich, who will witness Lopez’s execution as his guest. “ADC now recognizes that the entire execution process can be transparent and, at the same time, the anonymity of the medical personnel who carry out the executions can be protected.”

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OHIO – Abdul Awkal gets reprieve

June 15, 2012 

UPDATE

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

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

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

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

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

June 6, 2012 Source : http://www.marionstar.com

COLUMBUS – Ohio Gov. John Kasich has granted a condemned killer a two-week reprieve to allow a court to conduct a hearing on the inmate’s mental competency.

The reprieve Tuesday evening temporarily spared Abdul Awkal, who was facing execution today.

Kasich said he ordered the reprieve to allow Cuyahoga County Judge Stuart Friedman enough time to hold a hearing on Awkal’s mental condition. Friedman ruled Monday there was evidence to believe Awkal was not competent to be executed.

The 53-year-old Awkal was sentenced to die for killing his estranged wife from an arranged marriage and his brother-in-law in a Cuyahoga County court basement in 1992.

The man convicted in the slayings of his estranged wife and brother-in-law at a Cleveland courthouse was in good spirits Tuesday at the southern Ohio prison where he is being held.

If put to death, Abdul Awkal would be the second man Ohio executes this year since the end of an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment that lasted six months.

The Ohio Supreme Court late Tuesday afternoon rejected 5-2 Awkal’s request to delay the execution to allow a hearing about his mental competency, a request opposed by the state.

Awkal’s mental health has been the subject of court hearings for years, and a Cuyahoga County judge ruled Monday that there was enough evidence that Awkal was insane to justify a hearing about his competency.

Awkal’s attorneys said a delay was necessary to conduct a proper court hearing on Awkal’s competency before Wednesday’s execution.

The state opposed the request, and Republican Gov. John Kasich and the Ohio Parole Board rejected Awkal’s request for mercy based on his mental health allegations.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason said a delay at this stage was unnecessary and the request wasn’t fair to surviving family members.

The Ohio Parole Board voted 8-1 last month against recommending mercy, with most members concluding that Awkal planned the shooting and that it wasn’t the result of a psychotic breakdown.

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