Capital punishment

SOUTH DAKOTA – AG asks US Supreme Court to reject Moeller’s death-row appeal

may 7, 2012 source :http://www.mitchellrepublic.com

PIERRE (AP) — South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reject a death row inmate’s plea to overturn his conviction for raping and killing a Sioux Falls girl 22 years ago.

Donald Moeller last month petitioned the court to overturn his conviction based on what he described as incomplete jury instructions. Moeller maintains that the jury that sentenced him to death for the 1990 rape and murder of 9-year-old Becky O’Connell should have been told he would not have been eligible for parole had jurors sentenced him to life in prison. He contends that he might have received the death penalty because jurors falsely thought he could eventually be released on parole if given a life sentence.

Jackley on Monday said that the brief filed by the state in response to Moeller’s claim says jury instructions “fully comply with settled law and constitutional standards.”

Moeller was convicted and sentenced to die in 1997. The state Supreme Court affirmed the sentence, and Moeller has lost appeals on both the state and federal levels.

Moeller was convicted of abducting the girl from a convenience store, driving her to a secluded area, then raping and killing her. Her body was found the next day with a slashed throat and stab wounds.

Moeller initially was convicted in 1992 but the state Supreme Court ruled that improper evidence was used at trial and overturned the conviction.

“Two juries of South Dakota citizens have heard the facts of this case and both unanimously decided that Moeller’s crime warranted a death sentence,” Jackley said in a statement. “Twenty-two years and seven appeals to hold Moeller accountable and to await justice for Becky and her family is clearly too long.”

ARIZONA – Death-row inmate’s case before AZ clemency board

May 7, 2012 Source : http://www.myfoxphoenix.com

PHOENIX (AP) – Arizona’s largely new clemency board on Monday is expected to consider the case of a death-row inmate set for execution next week.

But the attorney for Samuel Villegas Lopez has asked the five-member board, which has three new members, to delay the execution and a decision in the matter.

Attorney Kelley Henry argues that the new board members should have additional training before considering Lopez’s request for mercy.

Gov. Jan Brewer overhauled the board last month, replacing two voting members and longtime Chairman Duane Belcher with three new people in what some defense attorneys and anti-death penalty advocates said was a political move.

Lopez is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection next Wednesday at the state prison in Florence in what would be the fourth execution in Arizona this year.

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Can we rationally debate death row ?

may 4, 2012, source : http://www.southbendtribune.com

If anyone personifies evil, it is Anders Breivik. The 33-year-old Norwegian violently disrupted his country’s usual peace on July 22, 2011, by gunning down 69 mostly young people at a summer camp. A bomb he planted in Oslo killed eight others. He did it all to defend Norway against multiculturalism, he later raved.

Yet, on one point, Breivik is not talking crazy. At his trial, which began April 16, he pronounced a the maximum penalty for his actions — 21 years in prison, or longer if the government meets certain conditions — “pathetic.” He “would have respected” the death penalty, Breivik said. Of course, he won’t get it; Norway abolished capital punishment long ago.

Norway has suffered deeply because of Breivik, and I don’t mean to add insult to injury. But this situation illustrates what’s wrong with banning the death penalty in all cases. If executing an innocent man is the worst-case scenario for proponents of the death penalty, then threatening Breivik with prison is the reductio ad absurdum of death-penalty abolitionism

Anti-death-penalty sentiment is hardly limited to Europe. Last week Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy signed a bill abolishing capital punishment, which means that no future Anders Breivik need fear execution in that state. Sixteen other states have no death penalty; California voters will get a chance to join them in a November referendum.

In the United States, abolitionist arguments are gaining traction, especially claims about the high cost of lengthy death-penalty litigation and the risk of executing people by mistake. Malloy also cited a “moral component” to his decision.

Such practical and moral concerns are at their most understandable in run-of-the-mill convenience-store murder cases, where the risk of error seems relatively high compared with the benefits of punishing murder with death.

But Breivik’s was no ordinary crime. It presents the special case of a cold-blooded massacre of children by a political terrorist whose guilt is unquestionable and who remains utterly unrepentant; indeed, he told the court that he would kill again if given the opportunity.

What is morally worse: putting the author of this bloodbath to death or letting him live, with the accompanying risk — however small — that he might broadcast his message to receptive audiences from jail, or escape, or one day litigate his way to freedom?

There is no scientific answer. To oppose the death penalty regardless of the crime or the consequences of letting the perpetrator live is a consistent and principled position. If Norwegians consider doing so a point of pride, that’s their choice.

In Connecticut, 62 percent of registered voters support the death penalty for murder, according to aQuinnipiac University poll published last month — so it took some political courage for the legislature and governor to do what they did.

But note that the Connecticut law is not retroactive: It does not apply to the 11 men already on death row, including two sentenced to death for a 2007 home invasion in which they raped and strangled a mother, murdered her two daughters and then set the bodies ablaze.

This tells me that the Connecticut politicians who voted to ban future capital punishment still find it hard to argue against the death penalty in every specific case, no matter how ghastly.

The stubborn fact is that death-penalty abolitionism runs counter to one of humanity’s oldest and most persistent moral intuitions: that there should be condign retribution for the most monstrous transgressions.

Even in Norway, Breivik’s rampage caused some second thoughts. Immediately after his crimes last summer, a man named Thomas Indrebo observed online that “the death penalty is the only just sentence in this case!!!!!!“ Indrebo was later assigned as a lay judge in Breivik’s trial and had to be dismissed because of his comment.

That was the right call, legally. But I wonder if the Breivik case will cause more people in Europe to ask whether there really is no place in civilization for capital punishment.

Both abroad and at home, we need less polarized debate, less moralizing — and more honest legislative efforts to reconcile valid concerns about the death penalty with the public’s clear and consistent belief that it should remain available for the “worst of the worst” offenders.

FLORIDA – Declared competent, convicted murderer receives new sentence

may 3 , 2012, source : http://www.baynews9.com

Carlos Bello was originally sentenced to death after being convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Detective Gerald Rauft in 1981. A change in his sentencing means he will spend life in prison.

Bello

TAMPA 

The man convicted of killing a Tampa police detective more than 30 years ago will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

According to Bay News 9’s partner newspaper the Tampa Bay Times, Carlos Bello claimed for decades he was too mentally ill to understand his conviction.

Bello was sentenced to death after being convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Detective Gerald Rauft in 1981. That sentence was later thrown out. Since then, Bello’s attorney said his client was too incompetent to understand court proceedings or his sentencing. But, last February a Hillsborough Circuit Judge declared Bello competent.

Within the past month Bello has shown an understanding of life in prison over a death sentence.

In court Wednesday he said understood perfectly that the court was offering life behind bars instead of the death penalty.

Canadian on death row ‘horrendously sorry’ but victims’ families show no mercy

may 2 2012, source : http://www.globalnews.ca

watch the court’s video : click here

DEER LODGE, Montana – A Canadian on death row in Montana for killing two men said he is “horrendously sorry” Wednesday, but the passage of time appeared only to have steeled the resolve of the victims’ families to show him no mercy.

A visibly angry Thomas Running Rabbit, son of one of the victims, said he would seek justice for the father he never knew until “Ronald Smith’s last breath.”

“The decisions he made he has to pay for,” Running Rabbit told Smith’s clemency hearing. “He had no mercy for my father – a person I have never met.”

He then pointed at Smith and said: “I’m Thomas Running Rabbit. I do not fear you.”

A cousin, Camille Wells, called Smith “an animal.”

“He is the scum of the earth and I will hate him until the day I die.”

And an uncle told the Montana Board of Pardons and Parole that 30 years was too long to wait for justice. William Talks About said the victims’ mothers never got to see justice done before they died.

“Ronald Smith needs to be executed,” said Talks About. “Thirty years is too long.”

Smith, 54, has been on death row ever since he admitted to shooting Thomas Mad Man Jr. and Harvey Running Rabbit in 1982. He originally asked for the death penalty, but soon after changed his mind and has been fighting for his life ever since.

He is asking the board to recommend his death sentence be commuted. The board is to give its recommendation the week of May 21. Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer will have the final say.

Originally from Red Deer, Alta., Smith was 24 and had been taking LSD and drinking when he and Rodney Munro marched the two men into the woods where Munro stabbed one of them and Smith shot them both in the head.

Munro accepted a plea deal, was eventually transferred to a Canadian prison and has completed his sentence.

It was a cold-blooded crime. They wanted to steal the men’s car, but Smith also said at the time he wanted to know what it was like to kill someone.

Talks About said both victims were much loved by their families. They searched for them for a month after they disappeared.

“Up and down both sides of the highway,” he said. “This is how much we loved our boys. This is how much we cared for them.”

Earlier during the hearing, Smith faced the families and said he didn’t expect them to forgive him, but hoped to be given the chance to get on with his life.

“I do understand the pain and suffering I’ve put you through,” he said. “It was never my intent to cause any suffering for anybody. I wish there was some way I could take it back. I can’t.

“All I can do is hope to move forward with my life and become a better person.”

Smith broke down and cried when his sister, Rita Duncan, read a letter he had written to their mother after her death last year.

Smith covered his eyes, brushed away tears and was patted on the shoulder by his lawyer.

Duncan said although she shut Smith out of her life for years, he has always loved her and she is proud to be his sister.

“I honestly do not know what I would do without my brother by my side. I can’t bear the thought of losing another brother and I’m sorry if this sounds selfish. I don’t know what I would do without him,” said Duncan, her voice quavering.

She asked people in the packed courtroom to put themselves in her place.

“Wouldn’t you want grace and mercy to be shown to him when he’s done everything in his power to change himself and become the man he is today?” she asked.

“Mercy is not about getting something that we deserve. Grace is getting something that we do not deserve, so today I am here pleading for both mercy and grace for my brother Ron.”

Smith was long thought to be the only Canadian facing execution in the United States, but a Canadian connection recently emerged in another case.

Court documents say Robert Bolden, currently on death row for murdering a bank security guard in Missouri, has Canadian citizenship. He was born to a Canadian woman in Newfoundland where his father was stationed with the U.S. air force. The family moved back to the U.S. when Bolden was a young child.

Smith’s daughter, Carmen Blackburn, also spoke at the hearing. She said she didn’t know the man her father was in 1982, but she knows who he has become.

“This situation is not easy on anybody involved, but I can only hope that everyone can look into their hearts and listen to the real facts about my dad, because I truly don’t know what I would do without him in my life,” she said, crying as she spoke.

“I’ve seen a man who has many regrets about the things that he has done. He shows his remorse in his eyes and in his voice and every time we talk. I wish I could take away that pain.”

A psychologist told the hearing that Smith is a model prisoner and poses little threat to the people around him. Dr. Bowman Smelko said Smith has shown improvement during his time in prison and his cognitive ability has jumped 16 points from low to high average.

“He was not exposed to drugs and alcohol. He was not exposed to chaos. He has demonstrated significant change in attitude, thoughts and behaviour,” Smelko said.

The hearing also heard that Smith is well-liked by prison guards.

Joe Warner, who has now retired, was there the day Smith arrived at the prison 30 years ago. Over the years, he said, Smith showed him nothing but respect and he considers Smith a friend. Once a proponent of the death penalty, Warner said he now feels differently.

“I’ve kind of changed my mind,” said Warner, who added that getting to know Smith contributed to that.

Warner drew disapproving murmurs from the families of the victims when he said he would like to see Smith eligible for parole some day.

After decades of appeals, the clemency hearing is Smith’s last chance to make a case before the board as to why he should not be executed.

Smith’s lawyer Greg Jackson told the hearing that the bid for clemency isn’t meant to minimize the “terrible crime” that Smith is guilty of, but “is a request for mercy.”

Jackson said Smith is not the same man who killed the young men.

“He is a changed man,” said Jackson. “He has reformed his life. He has expressed deep remorse and deep regret.

“He has a life that is worth preserving.”

When the state asked if Smith had any comment to make about the testimony of the witnesses, he replied: “I wish there were words I could say that would help ease their pain. How do you apologize? Sorry just doesn’t cover it.

“My words of sorrow don’t mean anything to these people. I wish they did.”

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OKLAHOMA – Michael Selsor is set to be executed at 6 p.m EXECUTED

Michael Bascum Selsor, 57, was pronounced dead at 6:06 p.m.

In his last words, Selsor, stretched out on a table with intravenous tubes in his arms, spoke to his son, Robert Selsor, and sister, Carolyn Bench, who sat on the other side of a glass panel.

“I love you and till I see you again next time. Be good,” Selsor said.

“I’ll be waiting at the gates of heaven for you. I hope the rest of you make it there as well. I’m ready.”

 

may 1  Source : http://mcalesternews.com

Oklahoma State Penitentiary death row inmate Michael Bascum Selsor, 57, is set to be executed today at 6 p.m. in the prison’s death chamber.

On April 16, the convicted killer was denied clemency by a 4-1 vote of the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board.

Selsor was set to be served his last meal at about noon today. He requested Kentucky Fried Chicken’s crispy two breast and one wing meal with potato wedges and baked beans, with an added thigh, apple turnover, two biscuits and honey, salt, pepper and ketchup.

read his case : click here

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OKLAHOMA – Green Country Family Waits Decades For Justice

TULSA, Oklahoma  april 24 source : http://www.newson6.com

For the next 20 years, Debbie and her mother drove to the prison twice a year to oppose parole for both men.

Watch the video news: click here 

Clayton’s daughter and her mother

 

 

 

A Green Country family has waited nearly four decades for justice. Michael Selsor was given a death sentence for murdering Clayton Chandler in 1975. Selsor’s execution is next week.

Chandler’s family has been fighting for 37 years for this execution, waiting while Selsor had years of appeals and a second trial. Now that clemency has been denied, they’re finally allowed to tell their story.

On September 15th, 1975, Clayton Chandler was getting ready to close the U-Tote-M convenience store, along with worker Ina Morris, when Michael Selsor and Richard Dodson came in to rob it.

They later told police they agreed ahead of time: leave no witnesses.

“He had a choice,” daughter Debbie Huggins said. “He did not have to kill Dad; he did not have to pull the trigger.”

After getting around $500 from the register, Selsor shot Clayton six times; he died on the floor. Dodson shot Morris in the head, neck and shoulder, but she survived. The two men were later arrested in California.

At the first trial, a jury found Selsor guilty and sentenced him to die. But the next year, the Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional and seven years after that, Selsor was up for parole.

“We thought our nightmare in hell was losing Dad, little did we know what was in store for us,” Debbie said.

For the next 20 years, Debbie and her mother drove to the prison twice a year to oppose parole for both men.

“Every year you went before the parole board,” Debbie said. “It took you back to the night he died, gut wrenching, the fear, the trauma, the feelings, they all come forward.”

Selsor’s many appeals paid off and he was granted a new trial 20 years after his first, but that jury also found him guilty and sentenced him to death.

More Than 36 years after Clayton Chandler was gunned down, Selsor is scheduled to die.

“No remorse, no I’m sorry, nothing but hate,” Debbie said.

Debbie says she and her mother were not driven to fight all these years out of a sense of revenge, only by the desire to get justice for the man they loved and lost.

“My dad did not have a choice,” Debbie said. “He’s gone. Michael Selsor should pay the same price.”

Both Selsor and Dodson had records when arrested for murdering Clayton. Plus, Selsor told police they’d committed four robberies before the one they weren’t arrested for. In previous robberies, they stabbed the clerk and shot another with a shotgun.

Selsor’s execution is next Tuesday.

OKLAHOMA – Limited drug supply may hinder executions

April 30 source : http://www.tulsaworld.com

Michael B. Selsor: His execution is set for Tuesday unless the governor intervenes.

When (and if) Michael Selsor’s death sentence is carried out Tuesday, Oklahoma will only have enough supply of its lethal injection cocktail to execute one more inmate.

The pentobarbital that Oklahoma has used for the first part of its three-step execution process is in short supply nationally, and the Oklahoma Department of Corrections has nearly exhausted its remaining doses with the executions of Gary Welch and Timothy Stemple earlier this year.

“We’re still exploring our options,” DOC spokesman Jerry Massie said.

Pentobarbital became the first step of Oklahoma’s three-part lethal injection formula in 2010, after sodium thiopental supplies ran short and a federal judge blocked states from using foreign-manufactured versions of the drug.

In the second and third steps of Oklahoma’s lethal injection, vecuronium bromide stops respiratory function and potassium chloride stops the heart, Massie said.

According to Board of Corrections reports, as many as seven executions are possible in Oklahoma this year, which would be double the annual average. In 2001, the state executed a record 18 inmates.

Unless the governor intervenes, Selsor is scheduled to die Tuesday at Oklahoma State Penitentiary for his role in the shooting death of a Tulsa convenience store manager during a 1975 robbery spree that left at least three other people injured. He was originally sentenced to death, but that sentence was commuted to life in prison after the state’s death penalty law was found unconstitutional. An appeals court granted him a new trial in 1998, and another jury found him guilty and once again sentenced him to die.

Because execution dates aren’t set until an inmate’s final appeal is denied, and the U.S. Supreme Court takes its recess in June, officials don’t anticipate having to make a decision regarding the lethal injection drugs for several months, Massie said.

Death-row inmate Garry Thomas Allen was scheduled to be executed this month, but a federal judge issued a stay so that questions regarding his mental competency might be examined.

There are other drugs on the market that work similarly to pentobarbital, but switching drugs would likely initiate a court challenge similar to what the state faced when it switched to pentobarbital from sodium thiopental, Massie said. A judge ultimately ruled to allow Oklahoma to use the drug, which is widely used in veterinary medicine.

Over the past few years, several drug manufacturers have refused to sell those drugs to states that intend to use them for executions.

 

CONNECTICUT – Conn. death penalty repeal to stir challenges

april 28 source : http://www.lohud.com

HARTFORD, Conn. (WTW) — The repeal of capital punishment in Connecticut came too late for Richard Roszkowski, whose death penalty trial is set this year for killing three people in Bridgeport.

The case will be closely watched as a possible test of the new law that is supposed to apply only to future crimes.

The repeal measure signed into law Wednesday by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy preserves the death penalty for the 11 inmates on Connecticut’s death row and for pending cases like Roszkowski’s. With challenges expected from defense lawyers in those cases, Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Kane and Chief Public Defender Susan Storey say state courts likely will decide whether the prospective repeal violates the rights of death row inmates and people with pending capital felony cases.

“There are very strong arguments that certainly will be made that any future executions would be unconstitutional,” Kane said.

A new argument raised by the repeal, legal experts say, is whether it violates the constitutional right to equal protection by differently treating two groups of people — those who committed capital crimes before the repeal and those who committed such crimes afterward.

It’s not clear if Roszkowski’s public defenders will use the repeal law to challenge the state’s attempts to put him on death row. Michael Courtney, supervisor of the public defenders’ capital defense unit, declined to comment on Roszkowski’s case, but said officials in his office will meet soon to discuss the potential effects of the new law.

“Ultimately that issue may well be appropriate to litigate,” Courtney said.

The state has about a dozen pending capital felony cases, although the death penalty is not being sought in all of them. Another case that may challenge the repeal is an appeal by nearly all the state’s death row inmates who allege the death penalty is arbitrary and racially biased. That case is set to go to trial in June.

Roszkowski, 47, a former Trumbull resident, was convicted of capital felony and murder in 2009 and sentenced to lethal injection for gunning down a man, woman and 9-year-old girl on a Bridgeport street on Sept. 7, 2006. But the trial judge later threw out the death sentence because of a mistake in the jury instructions and ordered a new penalty phase, which is set to begin with jury selection in June.

Prosecutors said Roszkowski killed ex-girlfriend Holly Flannery, 39, her daughter Kylie and his former roommate Thomas Gaudet, 38. Witnesses testified at trial that Roszkowski stalked Flannery after she broke off their relationship and falsely believed Gaudet was having an affair with her.

Opinions in the legal community are mixed as to whether the repeal will have any impact on current death row inmates and pending capital felony cases.

In testimony submitted to the legislature’s Judiciary Committee in March, the Quinnipiac University School of Law Civil Justice Clinic said repealing the death penalty for future murders would have no effect on current or past cases. The clinic noted that the state Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty in November, and that New Mexico’s 2009 death penalty repeal for future crimes was upheld last year by that state’s Supreme Court — which is the only court in the country to have directly addressed the issue.

But Storey, the chief public defender, told the Judiciary Committee in March that a prospective repeal was certain to raise legitimate constitutional issues.

“A prospective appeal would be an important advance, but leaving existing death sentences in place would not fully implement the policy goals of repealing the death penalty,” Storey testified.

Opponents of the repeal law have said they’re worried that death row inmates could successfully argue to have their sentences commuted to life in prison. That was an argument of Dr. William Petit, the only survivor of a 2007 home invasion in which two paroled burglars killed his wife and two daughters. The two killers are now on death row.

William Dunlap, a professor at the Quinnipiac University School of Law, said defense lawyers in death penalty cases will certainly raise issues related to the repeal, but he doesn’t believe they will be successful. He said equal protection violations occur when groups of people are treated differently for no good reason, but the change of the state’s capital felony law provides a good reason.

“When the (pre-repeal) crimes were committed, those people knew or certainly had reason to know that Connecticut had the death penalty,” Dunlap said.

Connecticut is the 17th state to repeal capital punishment, and the fifth in five years. In the past five decades, the state has executed only one person, serial killer Michael Ross in 2005, who pushed for his death sentence to be carried out.

BOOKS : “The Death Penalty Failed Experiment: From Gary Graham to Troy Davis in Context”

A new book published in electronic format, The Death Penalty Failed Experiment: From Gary Graham to Troy Davis in Context by Diann Rust-Tierney, examines the problem of arbitrariness in the death penalty since its reinstatement in 1976. Through an analysis of the cases of Gary Graham and Troy Davis, the author argues that race, wealth and geography play a more significant role in determining who faces capital punishment than the facts of the crime itself. Both defendants had significant claims of innocence; both were black defendants who were ultimately executed in the South; in both cases, the victim in the underlying murder was white.  Graham was executed in Texas in 2000 and Davis was executed in Georgia in 2011.  Rust-Tierney writes, “How do you administer the most severe punishment imaginable in a manner that is accurate, free from bias and demonstrably fair? Until we are all seen and treated as equal, we cannot afford to keep capital punishment.”  Ms. Rust-Tierney is an attorney and Executive Director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Download a copy of the ebook here.

(D. Rust-Tierney, “The Death Penalty Failed Experiment: From Gary Graham to Troy Davis in Context,” McKinney & Associates, April 2012).  The Death Penalty Failed Experiment is the second publication in McKinney & Associates’ Voice Matters: An eBook Series on Public Relations with a Conscience.  See Arbitrariness and Race.  Read more Books on the death penalty.  Listen to DPIC’s Podcast on Arbitrariness.